Epilogue

Epilogue

THE HOUSEHOLDER

Savage I was sitting in my house, late, lone: Dreary, weary with the long day's work: Head of me, heart of me, stupid as a stone: Tongue-tied now, now blaspheming like a Turk; When, in a moment, just a knock, call, cry, Half a pang and all a rapture, there again were we!-- "What, and is it really you again?" quoth I: "I again, what else did you expect?" quoth She.

"Never mind, hie away from this old house-- Every crumbling brick embrowned with sin and shame! Quick, in its corners ere certain shapes arouse! Let them--every devil of the night--lay claim, Make and mend, or rap and rend, for me! Good-by! God be their guard from disturbance at their glee, Till, crash, comes down the carcass in a heap!" quoth I: "Nay, but there's a decency required!" quoth She.

"Ah, but if you knew how time has dragged, days, nights! All the neighbor-talk with man and maid--such men! All the fuss and trouble of street-sounds, window-sights: All the worry of flapping door and echoing roof; and then, All the fancies ... Who were they had leave, dared try Darker arts that almost struck despair in me? If you knew but how I dwelt down here!" quoth I: "And was I so better off up there?" quoth She.

"Help and get it over! Reunited to his wife (How draw up the paper lets the parish-people know?) Lies M. or N., departed from this life, Day the this or that, month and year the so and so. What i' the way of final flourish? Prose, verse? Try! Affliction sore long time he bore, or, what is it to be? Till God did please to grant him ease. Do end!" quoth I: "I end with--Love is all, and Death is naught!" quoth She.

RED COTTON NIGHT-CAP COUNTRY

OR

TURF AND TOWERS

TO MISS THACKERAY

This poem, dated January 23, 1873, was published in the early summer of the same year. Browning had been staying with his sister at St. Aubin, in Normandy, and there met Miss Thackeray, who was to tell a tale of the White Cotton Night-cap Country, but a tragedy then just coming to a culmination in the courts supplied Browning with the more suggestive title which he adopted. Mr. Cooke records:--

"In the poem as written the names of the actors and places were correctly given, but when the poem was being revised in proof-sheets they were changed from prudential reasons, because the last act in the tragedy occurred only a brief period prior to the writing of the poem.

"Browning submitted the proof-sheets of the poem to his friend Lord Coleridge, then the English Attorney-General, afterwards Chief Justice, who thought that a case of libel might lie for what was said, however improbable such action might be. He accordingly changed the names to fictitious ones. It was the year following this, and the publication of the poem, that the appeal against the judgment in favor of the will of Mellerio was dismissed, and the case finally set at rest in harmony with the conclusion reached by the poet."

In the second edition of her Hand-Book Mrs. Orr gives the correct names, as furnished to her by Browning himself. These names will be found in the notes at the end of this volume.

I

And so, here happily we meet, fair friend! Again once more, as if the years rolled back And this our meeting-place were just that Rome Out in the champaign, say, o'er-rioted By verdure, ravage, and gay winds that war Against strong sunshine settled to his sleep; Or on the Paris Boulevard, might it prove, You and I came together saunteringly, Bound for some shop-front in the Place Vendôme-- Goldsmithy and Golconda mine, that makes "The Firm--Miranda" blazed about the world-- Or, what if it were London, where my toe Trespassed upon your flounce? "Small blame," you smile, Seeing the Staircase Party in the Square Was Small and Early, and you broke no rib. Even as we met where we have met so oft, Now meet we on this unpretending beach Below the little village: little, ay! But pleasant, may my gratitude subjoin? Meek, hitherto un-Murrayed bathing-place, Best loved of seacoast-nookful Normandy! That, just behind you, is mine own hired house: With right of pathway through the field in front, No prejudice to all its growth unsheaved Of emerald luzern bursting into blue. Be sure I keep the path that hugs the wall, Of mornings, as I pad from door to gate! Yon yellow--what if not wild--mustard flower?-- Of that, my naked sole makes lawful prize, Bruising the acrid aromatics out, Till, what they preface, good salt savors sting From, first, the sifted sands, then sands in slab, Smooth save for pipy wreath-work of the worm: (Granite and mussel-shell are ground alike To glittering paste,--the live worm troubles yet.) Then, dry and moist, the varech limit-line, Burnt cinder-black, with brown uncrumpled swathe Of berried softness, sea-swoln thrice its size; And, lo, the wave protrudes a lip at last, And flecks my foot with froth, nor tempts in vain.

Such is Saint-Rambert, wilder very much Than Joyeux, that famed Joyous-Gard of yours, Some five miles farther down; much homelier too-- Right for me,--right for you the fine and fair! Only, I could endure a transfer--wrought By angels famed still, through our countryside, For weights they fetched and carried in old time When nothing like the need was--transfer, just Of Joyeux church, exchanged for yonder prig, Our brand-new stone cream-colored masterpiece.

Well--and you know, and not since this one year, The quiet seaside country? So do I: Who like it, in a manner, just because Nothing is prominently likable To vulgar eye without a soul behind, Which, breaking surface, brings before the ball Of sight, a beauty buried everywhere. If we have souls, know how to see and use, One place performs, like any other place, The proper service every place on earth Was framed to furnish man with: serves alike To give him note that, through the place he sees, A place is signified he never saw, But, if he lack not soul, may learn to know. Earth's ugliest walled and ceiled imprisonment May suffer, through its single rent in roof, Admittance of a cataract of light Beyond attainment through earth's palace-panes Pinholed athwart their windowed filigree By twinklings sobered from the sun outside. Doubtless the High Street of our village here Imposes hardly as Rome's Corso could: And our projected race for sailing-boats Next Sunday, when we celebrate our Saint, Falls very short of that attractiveness, That artistry in festive spectacle, Paris ensures you when she welcomes back (When shall it be?) the Assembly from Versailles; While the best fashion and intelligence Collected at the counter of our Mayor (Dry-goods he deals in, grocery beside) What time the post-bag brings the news from Vire,-- I fear me much, it scarce would hold its own, That circle, that assorted sense and wit, With Five-o'clock Tea in a house we know.

Still, 'tis the check that gives the leap its lift. The nullity of cultivated souls, Even advantaged by their news from Vire, Only conduces to enforce the truth That, thirty paces off, this natural blue Broods o'er a bag of secrets, all unbroached, Beneath the bosom of the placid deep, Since first the Post Director sealed them safe; And formidable I perceive this fact-- Little Saint-Rambert touches the great sea. From London, Paris, Rome, where men are men, Not mice, and mice not Mayors presumably, Thought scarce may leap so fast, alight so far. But this is a pretence, you understand, Disparagement in play, to parry thrust Of possible objector: nullity And ugliness, the taunt be his, not mine Nor yours,--I think we know the world too well! Did you walk hither, jog it by the plain, Or jaunt it by the highway, braving bruise From springless and uncushioned vehicle? Much, was there not, in place and people both, To lend an eye to? and what eye like yours-- The learned eye is still the loving one! Our land; its quietude, productiveness, Is length and breadth of grain-crop, meadow-ground, Its orchards in the pasture, farms a-field, And hamlets on the road-edge, naught you missed Of one and all the sweet rusticities! From stalwart strider by the wagon-side, Brightening the acre with his purple blouse, To those dark-featured comely women-folk, Healthy and tall, at work, and work indeed, On every cottage doorstep, plying brisk Bobbins that bob you ladies out such lace! Oh, you observed! and how that nimble play Of finger formed the sole exception, bobbed The one disturbance to the peace of things, Where nobody esteems it worth his while, If time upon the clock-face goes asleep, To give the rusted hands a helpful push. Nobody lifts an energetic thumb And index to remove some dead and gone Notice which, posted on the barn, repeats For truth what two years' passage made a lie. Still is for sale, next June, that same château With all its immobilities,--were sold Duly next June behind the last but last; And, woe's me, still placards the Emperor His confidence in war he means to wage, God aiding and the rural populace. No: rain and wind must rub the rags away And let the lazy land untroubled snore.

Ah, in good truth? and did the drowsihead So suit, so soothe the learned loving eye, That you were minded to confer a crown, (Does not the poppy boast such?)--call the land By one slow hither-thither stretching, fast Subsiding-into-slumber sort of name, Symbolic of the place and people too, "White Cotton Night-cap Country?" Excellent! For they do, all, dear women young and old, Upon the heads of them bear notably This badge of soul and body in repose; Nor its fine thimble fits the acorn-top, Keeps woolly ward above that oval brown, Its placid feature, more than muffler makes A safeguard, circumvents intelligence In--what shall evermore be named and famed, If happy nomenclature aught avail, "White Cotton Night-cap Country."

Do I hear-- Oh, better, very best of all the news-- You mean to catch and cage the wingèd word, And make it breed and multiply at home Till Norman idlesse stock our England too? Normandy shown minute yet magnified In one of those small books, the truly great, We never know enough, yet know so well? How I foresee the cursive diamond-dints,-- Composite pen that plays the pencil too,-- As, touch the page and up the glamour goes, And filmily o'er grain-crop, meadow-ground, O'er orchard in the pasture, farm a-field, And hamlet on the road-edge, floats and forms And falls, at lazy last of all, the Cap That crowns the country! we, awake outside, Farther than ever from the imminence Of what cool comfort, what close coverture Your magic, deftly weaving, shall surround The unconscious captive with. Be theirs to drowse Trammelled, and ours to watch the trammel-trick! Ours be it, as we con the book of books, To wonder how is winking possible!

All hail, "White Cotton Night-cap Country," then! And yet, as on the beach you promise book,-- On beach, mere razor-edge 'twixt earth and sea, I stand at such a distance from the world That 'tis the whole world which obtains regard, Rather than any part, though part presumed A perfect little province in itself, When wayfare made acquaintance first therewith. So standing, therefore, on this edge of things, What if the backward glance I gave, return Loaded with other spoils of vagrancy Than I dispatched it for, till I propose The question--puzzled by the sudden store Officious fancy plumps beneath my nose-- "Which sort of Night-cap have you glorified?"

You would be gracious to my ignorance: What other Night-cap than the normal one?-- Old honest guardian of man's head and hair In its elastic yet continuous, soft, No less persisting, circumambient gripe,-- Night's notice, life is respited from day! Its form and fashion vary, suiting so Each seasonable want of youth and age. In infancy, the rosy naked ball Of brain, and that faint golden fluff it bears, Are smothered from disaster,--nurses know By what foam-fabric; but when youth succeeds, The sterling value of the article Discards adornment, cap is cap henceforth Unfeathered by the futile row on row. Manhood strains hard a sturdy stocking-stuff O'er well-deserving head and ears: the cone Is tassel-tipt, commendably takes pride, Announcing workday done and wages pouched, And liberty obtained to sleep, nay, snore. Unwise, he peradventure shall essay The sweets of independency for once-- Waive its advantage on his wedding-night: Fool, only to resume it, night the next, And never part companionship again. Since, with advancing years, night's solace soon Intrudes upon the daybreak dubious life Persuades it to appear the thing it is Half-sleep; and so, encroaching more and more, It lingers long past the abstemious meal Of morning, and, as prompt to serve, precedes The supper-summons, gruel grown a feast. Finally, when the last sleep finds the eye So tired it cannot even shut itself, Does not a kind domestic hand unite Friend to friend, lid from lid to part no more, Consigned alike to that receptacle So bleak without, so warm and white within?

"Night-caps, night's comfort of the human race: Their usage may be growing obsolete, Still, in the main, the institution stays. And though yourself may possibly have lived, And probably will die, undignified-- The Never-night-capped--more experienced folk Laugh you back answer--What should Night-cap be Save Night-cap pure and simple? Sorts of such? Take cotton for the medium, cast an eye This side to comfort, lambswool, or the like, That side to frilly cambric costliness, And all between proves Night-cap proper." Add "Fiddle!" and I confess the argument.

Only, your ignoramus here again Proceeds as tardily to recognize Distinctions: ask him what a fiddle means, And "Just a fiddle" seems the apt reply. Yet, is not there, while we two pace the beach, This blessed moment, at your Kensington, A special Fiddle-Show and rare array Of all the sorts were ever set to cheek, 'Stablished on clavicle, sawn bow-hand-wise, Or touched lute-fashion and forefinger-plucked? I doubt not there be duly catalogued Achievements all and some of Italy, Guarnerius, Straduarius,--old and new, Augustly rude, refined to finicking, This mammoth with his belly full of blare, That mouse of music--inch-long silvery wheeze, And here a specimen has effloresced Into the scroll-head, there subsides supreme, And with the tailpiece satisfies mankind. Why should I speak of woods, grains, stains and streaks, The topaz varnish or the ruby gum? We preferably pause where tickets teach, "Over this sample would Corelli croon, Grieving, by minors, like the cushat-dove, Most dulcet Giga, dreamiest Saraband." "From this did Paganini comb the fierce Electric sparks, or to tenuity Pull forth the inmost wailing of the wire-- No cat-gut could swoon out so much of soul!"

Three hundred violin-varieties Exposed to public view! And dare I doubt Some future enterprise shall give the world Quite as remarkable a Night-cap-show? Methinks, we, arm-in-arm, that festal day, Pace the long range of relics shrined aright, Framed, glazed, each cushioned curiosity, And so begin to smile and to inspect: "Pope's sickly head-sustainment, damped with dews Wrung from the all-unfair fight: such a frame-- Though doctor and the devil helped their best-- Fought such a world that, waiving doctor's help, Had the mean devil at its service too! Voltaire's imperial velvet! Hogarth eyed The thumb-nail record of some alley-phiz, Then chucklingly clapped yonder cosiness On pate, and painted with true flesh and blood! Poor hectic Cowper's soothing sarsnet-stripe!" And so we profit by the catalogue, Somehow our smile subsiding more and more, Till we decline into ... but no! shut eyes And hurry past the shame uncoffined here, The hangman's toilet! If we needs must trench, For science' sake which craves completeness still, On the sad confine, not the district's self, The object that shall close review may be ... Well, it is French, and here are we in France: It is historic, and we live to learn, And try to learn by reading story-books. It is an incident of 'Ninety-two, And, twelve months since, the Commune had the sway. Therefore resolve that, after all the Whites Presented you, a solitary Red Shall pain us both, a minute and no more! Do not you see poor Louis pushed to front Of palace-window, in persuasion's name, A spectacle above the howling mob Who tasted, as it were, with tiger-smack, The outstart, the first spurt of blood on brow, The Phrygian symbol, the new crown of thorns, The Cap of Freedom? See the feeble mirth At odds with that half-purpose to be strong And merely patient under misery! And note the ejaculation, ground so hard Between his teeth, that only God could hear, As the lean pale proud insignificance With the sharp-featured liver-worried stare Out of the two gray points that did him stead, And passed their eagle-owner to the front Better than his mob-elbowed undersize,-- The Corsican lieutenant commented, "Had I but one good regiment of my own, How soon should volleys to the due amount Lay stiff upon the street-flags this canaille! As for the droll there, he that plays the king, And screws out smile with a Red night-cap on, He 's done for! somebody must take his place." White Cotton Night-cap Country: excellent! Why not Red Cotton Night-cap Country too?

"Why not say swans are black and blackbirds white, Because the instances exist?" you ask. "Enough that white, not red, predominates. Is normal, typical, in cleric phrase Quod semel, semper, et ubique." Here, Applying such a name to such a land, Especially you find inopportune, Impertinent, my scruple whether white Or red describes the local color best. "Let be," (you say,) "the universe at large Supplied us with exceptions to the rule, So manifold, they bore no passing-by,-- Little Saint-Rambert has conserved at least The pure tradition: white from head to heel, Where is a hint of the ungracious hue? See, we have traversed with hop, step, and jump, From heel to head, the main-street in a trice, Measured the garment (help my metaphor!) Not merely criticised the cap, forsooth; And were you pricked by that collecting-itch, That pruriency for writing o'er your reds, 'Rare, rarer, rarest, not rare but unique,'-- The shelf, Saint-Rambert, of your cabinet, Unlabelled,--virginal, no Rahab-thread For blushing-token of the spy's success,-- Would taunt with vacancy, I undertake! What, yonder is your best apology, Pretence at most approach to naughtiness, Impingement of the ruddy on the blank? This is the criminal Saint-Rambertese Who smuggled in tobacco, half-a-pound! The Octroi found it out and fined the wretch. This other is the culprit who dispatched A hare, he thought a hedgehog, (clods obstruct,) Unfurnished with Permission for the Chase! As to the womankind--renounce from those The hope of getting a companion-tinge, First faint touch promising romantic fault!"

Enough: there stands Red Cotton Night-cap shelf-- A cavern's ostentatious vacancy-- My contribution to the show; while yours-- Whites heap your row of pegs from every hedge Outside, and house inside Saint-Rambert here-- We soon have come to end of. See, the church With its white steeple gives your challenge point, Perks as it were the night-cap of the town, Starchedly warrants all beneath is matched By all above, one snowy innocence!

You put me on my mettle. British maid And British man, suppose we have it out Here in the fields, decide the question so? Then, British fashion, shake hands hard again, Go home together, friends the more confirmed That one of us--assuredly myself-- Looks puffy about eye, and pink at nose? Which "pink" reminds me that the arduousness We both acknowledge in the enterprise, Claims, counts upon a large and liberal Acceptance of as good as victory In whatsoever just escapes defeat. You must be generous, strain point, and call Victory, any the least flush of pink Made prize of, labelled scarlet for the nonce-- Faintest pretension to be wrong and red And picturesque, that varies by a splotch The righteous flat of insipidity.

Quick to the quest, then--forward, the firm foot! Onward, the quarry-overtaking eye! For, what is this, by way of march-tune, makes The musicalest buzzing at my ear By reassurance of that promise old, Though sins as scarlet they shall be as wool? Whence--what fantastic hope do I deduce? I am no Liebig: when the dyer dyes A texture, can the red dye prime the white? And if we washed well, wrung the texture hard, Would we arrive, here, there and everywhere, At a fierce ground beneath the surface meek?

I take the first chance, rub to threads what rag Shall flutter snowily in sight. For see! Already these few yards upon the rise, Our back to brave Saint-Rambert, how we reach The open, at a dozen steps or strides! Turn round and look about, a breathing-while! There lie, outspread at equidistance, thorpes And villages and towns along the coast, Distinguishable, each and all alike, By white persistent Night-cap, spire on spire. Take the left: yonder town is--what say you If I say "Londres"? Ay, the mother-mouse (Reversing fable, as truth can and will) Which gave our mountain of a London birth! This is the Conqueror's country, bear in mind, And Londres-district blooms with London-pride. Turn round; La Roche, to right, where oysters thrive: Monlieu--the lighthouse is a telegraph; This, full in front, Saint-Rambert; then succeeds Villeneuve, and Pons the Young with Pons the Old, And--ere faith points to Joyeux, out of sight, A little nearer--oh, La Ravissante!

There now is something like a Night-cap spire, Donned by no ordinary Notre-Dame! For, one of the three safety-guards of France, You front now, lady! Nothing intercepts The privilege, by crow-flight, two miles far. She and her sisters Lourdes and La Salette Are at this moment hailed the cynosure Of poor dear France, such waves have buffeted Since she eschewed infallibility And chose to steer by the vague compass-box. This same midsummer month, a week ago, Was not the memorable day observed For reinstatement of the misused Three In old supremacy forevermore? Did not the faithful flock in pilgrimage By railway, diligence, and steamer--nay, On foot with staff and scrip, to see the sights Assured them? And I say best sight was here: And nothing justified the rival Two In their pretension to equality; Our folk laid out their ticket-money best, And wiseliest, if they walked, wore shoe away; Not who went farther only to fare worse. For, what was seen at Lourdes and La Salette Except a couple of the common cures Such as all three can boast of, any day? While here it was, here and by no means there, That the Pope's self sent two great real gold crowns As thick with jewelry as thick could stick, His present to the Virgin and her Babe-- Provided for--who knows not?--by that fund, Count Alessandro Sforza's legacy, Which goes to crown some Virgin every year. But this year, poor Pope was in prison-house, And money had to go for something else; And therefore, though their present seemed the Pope's, The faithful of our province raised the sum Preached and prayed out of--nowise purse alone. Gentle and simple paid in kind, not cash, The most part: the great lady gave her brooch, The peasant-girl, her hairpin; 't was the rough Bluff farmer mainly who,--admonished well By wife to care lest his new colewort-crop Stray sorrowfully sparse like last year's seed,-- Lugged from reluctant pouch the fifty-franc, And had the Curés hope that rain would cease. And so, the sum in evidence at length, Next step was to obtain the donative By the spontaneous bounty of the Pope-- No easy matter, since his Holiness Had turned a deaf ear, long and long ago, To much entreaty on our Bishop's part, Commendably we boast. "But no," quoth he, "Image and image needs must take their turn: Here stand a dozen as importunate." Well, we were patient; but the cup ran o'er When--who was it pressed in and took the prize But our own offset, set far off indeed To grow by help of our especial name, She of the Ravissante--in Martinique! "What!" cried our patience at the boiling-point, "The daughter crowned, the mother's head goes bare? Bishop of Raimbaux!"--that 's our diocese-- "Thou hast a summons to repair to Rome, Be efficacious at the Council there: Now is the time or never! Right our wrong! Hie thee away, thou valued Morillon, And have the promise, thou who hast the vote!" So said, so done, so followed in due course (To cut the story short) this festival, This famous Twenty-second, seven days since.

Oh, but you heard at Joyeux! Pilgrimage, Concourse, procession with, to head the host, Cardinal Mirecourt, quenching lesser lights: The leafy street-length through, decked end to end With August-strippage, and adorned with flags, That would have waved right well but that it rained Just this picked day, by some perversity. And so were placed, on Mother and on Babe, The pair of crowns: the Mother's, you must see! Miranda, the great Paris goldsmith, made The marvel,--he 's a neighbor: that 's his park Before you, tree-topped wall we walk toward. His shop it was turned out the masterpiece, Probably at his own expenditure; Anyhow, his was the munificence Contributed the central and supreme Splendor that crowns the crown itself, The Stone. Not even Paris, ransacked, could supply That gem: he had to forage in New York, This jeweller, and country-gentleman, And most undoubted devotee beside! Worthily wived, too: since his wife it was Bestowed "with friendly hand"--befitting phrase! The lace which trims the coronation-robe-- Stiff wear--a mint of wealth on the brocade. Do go and see what I saw yesterday! And, for that matter, see in fancy still, Since ...

There now! Even for unthankful me, Who stuck to my devotions at high-tide That festal morning, never had a mind To trudge the little league and join the crowd-- Even for me is miracle vouchsafed! How pointless proves the sneer at miracles! As if, contrariwise to all we want And reasonably look to find, they graced Merely those graced-before, grace helps no whit, Unless, made whole, they need physician still. I--sceptical in every inch of me-- Did I deserve that, from the liquid name "Miranda,"--faceted as lovelily As his own gift, the gem,--a shaft should shine, Bear me along, another Abaris, Nor let me light till, lo, the Red is reached, And yonder lies in luminosity!

Look, lady! where I bade you glance but now! Next habitation, though two miles away,-- No tenement for man or beast between,-- That, park and domicile, is country-seat Of this same good Miranda! I accept The augury. Or there, or nowhere else, Will I establish that a Night-cap gleams Of visionary Red, not White for once! "Heaven," saith the sage, "is with us, here inside Each man:" "Hell also," simpleness subjoins, By White and Red describing human flesh.

And yet as we continue, quicken pace, Approach the object which determines me Victorious or defeated, more forlorn My chance seems,--that is certainty at least. Halt midway, reconnoitre! Either side The path we traverse (turn and see) stretch fields Without a hedge: one level, scallop-striped With bands of beet and turnip and luzern, Limited only by each color's end, Shelves down--we stand upon an eminence-- To where the earth-shell scallops out the sea, A sweep of semicircle; and at edge-- Just as the milk-white incrustations stud At intervals some shell-extremity, So do the little growths attract us here, Towns with each name I told you: say, they touch The sea, and the sea them, and all is said, So sleeps and sets to slumber that broad blue! The people are as peaceful as the place. This, that I call "the path" is road, highway; But has there passed us by a market-cart, Man, woman, child, or dog to wag a tail? True, I saw weeders stooping in a field; But--formidably white the Cap's extent!

Round again! Come, appearance promises! The boundary, the park-wall, ancient brick, Upholds a second wall of tree-heads high Which overlean its top, a solid green. That surely ought to shut in mysteries! A jeweller--no unsuggestive craft! Trade that admits of much romance, indeed. For, whom but goldsmiths used old monarchs pledge Regalia to, or seek a ransom from, Or pray to furnish dowry, at a pinch, According to authentic story-books? Why, such have revolutionized this land With diamond-necklace-dealing! not to speak Of families turned upside-down, because The gay "wives went and pawned clandestinely Jewels, and figured, till found out, with paste, Or else redeemed them--how, is horrible! Then there are those enormous criminals That love their ware and cannot lose their love, And murder you to get your purchase back. Others go courting after such a stone, Make it their mistress, marry for their wife, And find out, some day, it was false the while, As ever wife or mistress, man too fond Has named his Pilgrim, Hermit, Ace of Hearts.

Beside--what style of edifice begins To grow in sight at last and top the scene? That gray roof, with the range of lucarnes, four I count, and that erection in the midst-- Clock-house, or chapel-spire, or what, above? Conventual, that, beyond, manorial, sure! And reason good; for Clairvaux, such its name, Was built of old to be a Priory, Dependence on that Abbey-for-the-Males Our Conqueror founded in world-famous Caen, And where his body sought the sepulture, It was not to retain: you know the tale. Such Priory was Clairvaux, prosperous Hundreds of years; but nothing lasts below, And when the Red Cap pushed the Crown aside, The Priory became, like all its peers, A National Domain: which, bought and sold And resold, needs must change, with ownership. Both outside show and inside use; at length The messuage, three-and-twenty years ago, Became the purchase of rewarded worth Impersonate in Father--I must stoop To French phrase for precision's sake, I fear-- Father Miranda, goldsmith of renown: By birth a Madrilene, by domicile And sojourning accepted French at last. His energy it was which, trade transferred To Paris, throve as with a golden thumb, Established in the Place Vendôme. He bought Not building only, but belongings far And wide, at Gonthier there, Monlieu, Villeneuve, A plentiful estate: which, twelve years since, Passed, at the good man's natural demise, To Son and Heir Miranda--Clairvaux here, The Paris shop, the mansion--not to say Palatial residence on Quai Rousseau, With money, movables, a mine of wealth-- And young Léonce Miranda got it all.

Ah, but--whose might the transformation be? Were you prepared for this, now? As we talked, We walked, we entered the half-privacy, The partly-guarded precinct: passed beside The little paled-off islet, trees and turf, Then found us in the main ash-avenue Under the blessing of its branchage-roof: Till, on emergence, what affronts our gaze? Priory--Conqueror--Abbey-for-the-Males-- Hey, presto, pass, who conjured all away? Look through the railwork of the gate: a park --Yes, but à l'Anglaise, as they compliment! Grass like green velvet, gravel-walks like gold, Bosses of shrubs, embosomings of flowers, Lead you--through sprinkled trees of tiny breed Disporting, within reach of coverture. By some habitual acquiescent oak Or elm, that thinks, and lets the youngsters laugh-- Lead, lift at last your soul that walks the air, Up to the house-front, or its back perhaps-- Whether facade or no, one coquetry Of colored brick and carved stone! Stucco? Well, The daintiness is cheery, that I know, And all the sportive floral framework fits The lightsome purpose of the architect. Those lucarnes which I called conventual, late, Those are the outlets in the mansard-roof; And, underneath, what long light elegance Of windows here suggests how brave inside Lurk eyeballed gems they play the eyelids to! Festive arrangements look through such, be sure! And now the tower a-top, I took for clock's Or bell's abode, turns out a quaint device, Pillared and temple-treated Belvedere-- Pavilion safe within its railed-about Sublimity of area--whence what stretch, Of sea and land, throughout the seasons' change, Must greet the solitary! Or suppose, --If what the husband likes, the wife likes too,-- The happy pair of students cloistered high, Alone in April kiss when Spring arrives! Or no, he mounts there by himself to meet Winds, welcome wafts of sea-smell, first white bird That flaps thus far to taste the land again, And all the promise of the youthful year; Then he descends, unbosoms straight his store Of blessings in the bud, and both embrace, Husband and wife, since earth is Paradise, And man at peace with God. You see it all?

Let us complete our survey, go right round The place: for here, it may be, we surprise The Priory,--these solid walls, big barns, Gray orchard-grounds, huge four-square stores for stock, Betoken where the Church was busy once. Soon must we come upon the Chapel's self. No doubt next turn will treat us to ... Aha, Again our expectation proves at fault! Still the bright graceful modern--not to say Modish adornment, meets us: Parc Anglais, Tree-sprinkle, shrub-embossment as before. See, the sun splits on yonder bauble world Of silvered glass concentring, every side, All the adjacent wonder, made minute And touched grotesque by ball-convexity! Just so, a sense that something is amiss, Something is out of sorts in the display, Affects us, past denial, everywhere. The right erection for the Fields, the Wood, (Fields--but Elysées, wood--but de Boulogne) Is peradventure wrong for wood and fields When Vire, not Paris, plays the Capital. So may a good man have deficient taste; Since Son and Heir Miranda, he it was Who, six years now elapsed, achieved the work And truly made a wilderness to smile. Here did their domesticity reside, A happy husband and as happy wife, Till ... how can I in conscience longer keep My little secret that the man is dead I, for artistic purpose, talk about As if he lived still? No, these two years now Has he been dead. You ought to sympathize, Not mock the sturdy effort to redeem My pledge, and wring you out some tragedy From even such a perfect commonplace! Suppose I boast the death of such desert My tragic bit of Red? Who contravenes Assertion that a tragedy exists In any stoppage of benevolence, Utility, devotion above all? Benevolent? There never was his like: For poverty, he had an open hand ... Or stop--I use the wrong expression here-- An open purse, then, ever at appeal; So that the unreflecting rather taxed Profusion than penuriousness in alms. One, in his day and generation, deemed Of use to the community? I trust, Clairvaux thus renovated, regalized, Paris expounded thus to Normandy, Answers that question. Was the man devout? After a life--one mere munificence To Church and all things churchly, men or mice,-- Dying, his last bequeathment gave land, goods, Cash, every stick and stiver, to the Church, And notably to that church yonder, that Beloved of his soul, La Ravissante-- Wherefrom, the latest of his gifts, the Stone Gratefully bore me as on arrow-flash To Clairvaux, as I told you.

"Ay, to find Your Red desiderated article, Where every scratch and scrape provokes my White To all the more superb a prominence! Why, 't is the story served up fresh again-- How it befell the restive prophet old Who came and tried to curse but blessed the land. Come, your last chance! he disinherited Children: he made his widow mourn too much By this endowment of the other Bride-- Nor understood that gold and jewelry Adorn her in a figure, not a fact. You make that White I want, so very white, 'T is I say now--some trace of Red should be Somewhere in this Miranda-sanctitude!"

Not here, at all events, sweet mocking friend! For he was childless; and what heirs he had Were an uncertain sort of Cousinry Scarce claiming kindred so as to withhold The donor's purpose though fantastical: Heirs, for that matter, wanting no increase Of wealth, since rich already as himself; Heirs that had taken trouble off his hands, Bought that productive goldsmith-business he, With abnegation wise as rare, renounced Precisely at a time of life when youth, Nigh on departure, bids mid-age discard Life's other loves and likings in a pack, To keep, in lucre, comfort worth them all. This Cousinry are they who boast the shop Of "Firm-Miranda, London and New York." Cousins are an unconscionable kind; But these--pretension surely on their part To share inheritance were too absurd!

"Remains then, he dealt wrongly by his wife, Despoiled her somehow by such testament?" Farther than ever from the mark, fair friend! The man's love for his wife exceeded bounds Rather than failed the limit. 'T was to live Hers and hers only, to abolish earth Outside--since Paris holds the pick of earth-- He turned his back, shut eyes, stopped ears, to all Delicious Paris tempts her children with, And fled away to this far solitude-- She peopling solitude sufficiently! She, partner in each heavenward flight sublime, Was, with each condescension to the ground, Duly associate also: hand in hand, ... Or side by side, I say by preference-- On every good work sidlingly they went. Hers was the instigation--none but she Willed that, if death should summon first her lord, Though she, sad relict, must drag residue Of days encumbered by this load of wealth-- (Submitted to with something of a grace So long as her surviving vigilance Might worthily administer, convert Wealth to God's glory and the good of man, Give, as in life, so now in death, effect To cherished purpose)--yet she begged and prayed That, when no longer she could supervise The House, it should become a Hospital: For the support whereof, lands, goods, and cash Alike will go, in happy guardianship, To yonder church, La Ravissante: who debt To God and man undoubtedly will pay.

"Not of the world, your heroine!"

Do you know I saw her yesterday--set eyes upon The veritable personage, no dream? I in the morning strolled this way, as oft, And stood at entry of the avenue. When, out from that first garden-gate, we gazed Upon and through, a small procession swept-- Madame Miranda with attendants five. First, of herself: she wore a soft and white Engaging dress, with velvet stripes and squares Severely black, yet scarce discouraging: Fresh Paris-manufacture! (Vire's would do? I doubt it, but confess my ignorance.) Her figure? somewhat small and darling-like. Her face? well, singularly colorless, For first thing: which scarce suits a blonde, you know. Pretty you would not call her: though perhaps Attaining to the ends of prettiness, And somewhat more, suppose enough of soul. Then she is forty full: you cannot judge What beauty was her portion at eighteen, The age she married at. So, colorless I stick to, and if featureless I add, Your notion grows completer: for, although I noticed that her nose was aquiline, The whole effect amounts with me to--blank! I never saw what I could less describe. The eyes, for instance, unforgettable Which ought to be, are out of mind as sight.

Yet is there not conceivably a face, A set of wax-like features, blank at first, Which, as you bendingly grow warm above, Begins to take impressment from your breath? Which, as your will itself were plastic here Nor needed exercise of handicraft, From formless moulds itself to correspond With all you think and feel and are--in fine Grows a new revelation of yourself, Who know now for the first time what you want? Here has been something that could wait awhile, Learn your requirement, nor take shape before, But, by adopting it, make palpable Your right to an importance of your own, Companions somehow were so slow to see! --Far delicater solace to conceit Than should some absolute and final face, Fit representative of soul inside, Summon you to surrender--in no way Your breath's impressment, nor, in stranger's guise, Yourself--or why of force to challenge you? Why should your soul's reflection rule your soul? ("You" means not you, nor me, nor any one Framed, for a reason I shall keep suppressed, To rather want a master than a slave: The slavish still aspires to dominate!) So, all I say is, that the face, to me One blur of blank, might flash significance To who had seen his soul reflected there By that symmetric silvery phantom-like Figure, with other five processional. The first, a black-dressed matron--maybe, maid-- Mature, and dragonish of aspect,--marched; Then four came tripping in a joyous flock, Two giant goats and two prodigious sheep Pure as the arctic fox that suits the snow, Tripped, trotted, turned the march to merriment, But ambled at their mistress' heel--for why? A rod of guidance marked the Châtelaine, And ever and anon would sceptre wave, And silky subject leave meandering. Nay, one great naked sheep-face stopped to ask Who was the stranger, snuffed inquisitive My hand that made acquaintance with its nose, Examined why the hand--of man at least-- Patted so lightly, warmly, so like life! Are they such silly natures after all? And thus accompanied, the paled-off space, Isleted shrubs and verdure, gained the group; Till, as I gave a furtive glance, and saw Her back-hair was a block of solid gold, The gate shut out my harmless question--Hair So young and yellow, crowning sanctity, And claiming solitude ... can hair be false?

"Shut in the hair and with it your last hope, Yellow might on inspection pass for Red!-- Red, Red, where is the tinge of promised Red In this old tale of town and country life, This rise and progress of a family? First comes the bustling man of enterprise, The fortune-founding father, rightly rough, As who must grub and grab, play pioneer. Then, with a light and airy step, succeeds The son, surveys the fabric of his sire, And enters home, unsmirched from top to toe. Polish and education qualify Their fortunate possessor to confine His occupancy to the first-floor suite Rather than keep exploring needlessly Where dwelt his sire content with cellarage: Industry bustles underneath, no doubt, And supervisors should not sit too close. Next, rooms built, there 's the furniture to buy, And what adornment like a worthy wife? In comes she like some foreign cabinet, Purchased indeed, but purifying quick What space receives it from all traffic-taint. She tells of other habits, palace-life; Royalty may have pried into those depths Of sandal-wooded drawer, and set a-creak That pygmy portal pranked with lazuli. More fit by far the ignoble we replace By objects suited to such visitant, Than that we desecrate her dignity By neighborhood of vulgar table, chair, Which haply helped old age to smoke and doze. The end is, an exchange of city stir And too intrusive burgess-fellowship, For rural isolated elegance, Careless simplicity, how preferable! There one may fairly throw behind one's back The used-up worn-out Past, we want away, And make a fresh beginning of stale life. 'In just the place'--does any one object?-- 'Where aboriginal gentility Will scout the upstart, twit him with each trick Of townish trade-mark that stamps word and deed, And most of all resent that here town-dross He daubs with money-color to deceive!' Rashly objected! Is there not the Church To intercede and bring benefic truce At outset? She it is shall equalize The laborers i' the vineyard, last as first. Pay court to her, she stops impertinence. 'Duke, once your sires crusaded it, we know: Our friend the newcomer observes, no less, Your chapel, rich with their emblazonry, Wants roofing--might he but supply the means! Marquise, you gave the honor of your name, Titular patronage, abundant will To what should be an Orphan Institute: Gave everything but funds, in brief; and these, Our friend, the lady newly resident, Proposes to contribute, by your leave!' Brothers and sisters lie they in thy lap, Thou none-excluding, all-collecting Church! Sure, one has half a foot i' the hierarchy Of birth, when 'Nay, my dear,' laughs out the Duke, 'I 'm the crown's cushion-carrier, but the crown-- Who gave its central glory, I or you?' When Marquise jokes, 'My quest, forsooth? Each doit I scrape together goes for Peter-pence To purvey bread and water in his bonds For Peter's self imprisoned--Lord, how long? Yours, yours alone the bounty, dear my dame, You plumped the purse, which, poured into the plate, Made the Archbishop open brows so broad! And if you really mean to give that length Of lovely lace to edge the robe!' ... Ah, friends, Gem better serves so than by calling crowd, Round shop-front to admire the million's-worth! Lace gets more homage than from lorgnette-stare, And comment coarse to match, (should one display One's robe a trifle o'er the baignoire-edge,) 'Well may she line her slippers with the like, If minded so! their shop it was produced That wonderful parure, the other day, Whereof the Baron said, it beggared him.' And so the paired Mirandas built their house, Enjoyed their fortune, sighed for family, Found friends would serve their purpose quite as well, And come, at need, from Paris--anyhow, With evident alacrity, from Vire-- Endeavor at the chase, at least succeed In smoking, eating, drinking, laughing, and Preferring country, oh so much to town! Thus lived the husband; though his wife would sigh In confidence, when Countesses were kind, 'Cut off from Paris and society!' White, White, I once more round you in the ears! Though you have marked it, in a corner, yours Henceforth,--Red-lettered 'Failure,' very plain, I shall acknowledge, on the snowy hem Of ordinary Night-cap! Come, enough! We have gone round its cotton vastitude, Or half-round, for the end 's consistent still, A cul-de-sac with stoppage at the sea. Here we return upon our steps. One look May bid good-morning--properly good-night-- To civic bliss, Miranda and his mate! Are we to rise and go?"

No, sit and stay! Now comes my moment, with the thrilling throw Of curtain from each side a shrouded case. Don't the rings shriek an ominous "Ha! ha! So you take Human Nature upon trust"? List but with like trust to an incident Which speedily shall make quite Red enough Burn out of yonder spotless napery! Sit on the little mound here, whence you seize The whole of the gay front sun-satisfied, One laugh of color and embellishment! Because it was there,--past those laurustines, On that smooth gravel-sweep 'twixt flowers and sward,-- There tragic death befell; and not one grace Outspread before you but is registered In that sinistrous coil these last two years Were occupied in winding smooth again.

"True?" Well, at least it was concluded so, Sworn to be truth, allowed by Law as such, (With my concurrence, if it matter here,) A month ago: at Vire they tried the case.

II

Monsieur Léonce Miranda, then, ... but stay! Permit me a preliminary word, And, after, all shall go so straight to end!

Have you, the travelled lady, found yourself Inside a ruin, fane or bath or cirque, Renowned in story, dear through youthful dream? If not,--imagination serves as well. Try fancy-land, go back a thousand years, Or forward, half the number, and confront Some work of art gnawn hollow by Time's tooth,-- Hellenic temple, Roman theatre, Gothic cathedral, Gallic Tuileries, But ruined, one and whichsoe'er you like. Obstructions choke what still remains intact, Yet proffer change that 's picturesque in turn; Since little life begins where great life ends, And vegetation soon amalgamates, Smooths novel shape from out the shapeless old, Till broken column, battered cornice-block, The centre with a bulk half weeds and flowers, Half relics you devoutly recognize. Devoutly recognizing,--hark, a voice Not to be disregarded! "Man worked here Once on a time; here needs again to work; Ruins obstruct, which man must remedy." Would you demur "Let Time fulfil his task, And, till the scythe-sweep find no obstacle, Let man be patient"?

The reply were prompt: "Glisteningly beneath the May-night moon, Herbage and floral coverture bedeck Yon splintered mass amidst the solitude: Wolves occupy the background, or some snake Glides by at distance: picturesque enough! Therefore, preserve it? Nay, pour daylight in,-- The mound proves swarming with humanity. There never was a thorough solitude, Now you look nearer: mortal busy life First of all brought the crumblings down on pate, Which trip man's foot still, plague his passage much, And prove--what seems to you so picturesque To him is ... but experiment yourself On how conducive to a happy home Will be the circumstance, your bed for base Boasts tessellated pavement,--equally Affected by the scorpion for his nest,-- While what o'er-roofs bed is an architrave, Marble, and not unlikely to crush man To mummy, should its venerable prop, Some figtree-stump, play traitor underneath. Be wise! Decide! For conservation's sake, Clear the arena forthwith! lest the tread Of too-much-tried impatience trample out Solid and unsubstantial to one blank Mud-mixture, picturesque to nobody,-- And, task done, quarrel with the parts intact Whence came the filtered fine dust, whence the crash Bides but its time to follow. Quick conclude Removal, time effects so tardily, Of what is plain obstruction; rubbish cleared, Let partial-ruin stand while ruin may, And serve world's use, since use is manifold. Repair wreck, stanchion wall to heart's content, But never think of renovation pure And simple, which involves creation too: Transform and welcome! Yon tall tower may help (Though built to be a belfry and naught else) Some Father Secchi, to tick Venus off In transit: never bring there bell again, To damage him aloft, brain us below, When new vibrations bury both in brick!"

Monsieur Léonce Miranda, furnishing The application at his cost, poor soul! Was instanced how,--because the world lay strewn With ravage of opinions in his path, And neither he, nor any friendly wit, Knew and could teach him which was firm, which frail, In his adventure to walk straight through life The partial-ruin,--in such enterprise, He straggled into rubbish, struggled on, And stumbled out again observably. "Yon buttress still can back me up," he judged: And at a touch down came both he and it. "A certain statue, I was warned against, Now, by good fortune, lies well underfoot, And cannot tempt to folly any more:" So, lifting eye, aloft since safety lay, What did he light on? the Idalian shape, The undeposed, erectly Victrix still! "These steps ascend the labyrinthine stair Whence, darkling and on all-fours, out I stand Exalt and safe, and bid low earth adieu-- For so instructs 'Advice to who would climb:'" And all at once the climbing landed him --Where, is my story.

Take its moral first. Do you advise a climber? Have respect To the poor head, with more or less of brains To spill, should breakage follow your advice! Head-break to him will be heart-break to you For having preached "Disturb no ruins here! Are not they crumbling of their own accord? Meantime, let poets, painters keep a prize! Beside, a sage pedestrian picks his way." A sage pedestrian--such as you and I! What if there trip, in merry carelessness, And come to grief, a weak and foolish child? Be cautious how you counsel climbing, then!

Are you adventurous and climb yourself? Plant the foot warily, accept a staff, Stamp only where you probe the standing-point, Move forward, well assured that move you may: Where you mistrust advance, stop short, there stick! This makes advancing slow and difficult? Hear what comes of the endeavor of brisk youth To foot it fast and easy! Keep this same Notion of outside mound and inside mash, Towers yet intact round turfy rottenness, Symbolic partial-ravage,--keep in mind! Here fortune placed his feet who first of all Found no incumbrance, till head found ... But hear!

This son and heir then of the jeweller, Monsieur Léonce Miranda, at his birth, Mixed the Castilian passionate blind blood With answerable gush, his mother's gift, Of spirit, French and critical and cold. Such mixture makes a battle in the brain, Ending as faith or doubt gets uppermost; Then will has way a moment, but no more: So nicely balanced are the adverse strengths, That victory entails reverse next time. The tactics of the two are different And equalize the odds: for blood comes first, Surrounding life with undisputed faith. But presently a new antagonist, By scarce-suspected passage in the dark, Steals spirit, fingers at each crevice found Athwart faith's stronghold, fronts the astonished man: "Such pains to keep me far, yet here stand I, Your doubt inside the faith-defence of you!"

With faith it was friends bulwarked him about From infancy to boyhood; so, by youth, He stood impenetrably circuited, Heaven-high and low as hell: what lacked he thus, Guarded against aggression, storm or sap? What foe would dare approach? Historic Doubt? Ay, were there some half-knowledge to attack! Batter doubt's best, sheer ignorance will beat. Acumen metaphysic?--drills its way Through what, I wonder! A thick feather-bed Of thoughtlessness, no operating tool-- Framed to transpierce the flint-stone--fumbles at, With chance of finding an impediment! This Ravissante, now: when he saw the church For the first time, and to his dying-day, His firm belief was that the name fell fit From the Delivering Virgin, niched and known; As if there wanted records to attest The appellation was a pleasantry, A pious rendering of Rare Vissante, The proper name which erst our province bore. He would have told you that Saint Aldabert Founded the church, (Heaven early favored France,) About the second century from Christ; Though the true man was Bishop of Raimbaux, Eleventh in succession, Eldobert, Who flourished after some six hundred years. He it was brought the image "from afar," (Made out of stone the place produces still,) "Infantine Art divinely artless," (Art In the decrepitude of Decadence,) And set it up a-working miracles Until the Northmen's fury laid it low, Not long, however: an egregious sheep, Zealous with scratching hoof and routing horn, Unearthed the image in good Mailleville's time, Count of the country. "If the tale be false, Why stands it carved above the portal plain?" Monsieur Léonce Miranda used to ask. To Londres went the prize in solemn pomp, But, liking old abode and loathing new, Was borne--this time, by angels--back again. And, reinaugurated, miracle Succeeded miracle, a lengthy list, Until indeed the culmination came-- Archbishop Chaumont prayed a prayer and vowed A vow--gained prayer and paid vow properly-- For the conversion of Prince Vertgalant. These facts, sucked in along with mother's-milk, Monsieur Léonce Miranda would dispute As soon as that his hands were flesh and bone, Milk-nourished two-and-twenty years before. So fortified by blind Castilian blood, What say you to the chances of French cold Critical spirit, should Voltaire besiege "Alp, Apennine, and fortified redoubt"? Ay, would such spirit please to play faith's game Faith's way, attack where faith defends so well! But then it shifts, tries other strategy. Coldness grows warmth, the critical becomes Unquestioning acceptance. "Share and share Alike in facts, to truth add other truth! Why with old truth needs new truth disagree?"

Thus doubt was found invading faith, this time, By help of not the spirit but the flesh: Fat Rabelais chuckled, where faith lay in wait For lean Voltaire's grimace--French, either foe. Accordingly, while round about our friend Ran faith without a break which learned eye Could find at two-and-twenty years of age, The twenty-two-years-old frank footstep soon Assured itself there spread a standing-space Flowery and comfortable, nowise rock Nor pebble-pavement roughed for champion's tread Who scorns discomfort, pacing at his post. Tall, long-limbed, shoulder right and shoulder left, And 'twixt acromia such a latitude, Black heaps of hair on head, and blacker bush O'er-rioting chin, cheek and throat and chest,-- His brown meridional temperament Told him--or rather pricked into his sense Plainer than language--"Pleasant station here! Youth, strength, and lustihood can sleep on turf Yet pace the stony platform afterward: First signal of a foe and up they start! Saint Eldobert, at all such vanity, Nay--sinfulness, had shaken head austere. Had he? But did Prince Vertgalant? And yet, After how long a slumber, of what sort, Was it, he stretched octogenary joints, And, nigh on Day-of-Judgment trumpet-blast, Jumped up and manned wall, brisk as any bee?"

Nor Rabelais nor Voltaire, but Sganarelle, You comprehend, was pushing through the chink! That stager in the saint's correct costume, Who ever has his speech in readiness For thick-head juvenility at fault: "Go pace yon platform and play sentinel! You won't? The worse! but still a worse might hap. Stay then, provided that you keep in sight The battlement, one bold leap lands you by! Resolve not desperately 'Wall or turf, Choose this, choose that, but no alternative!' No! Earth left once were left for good and all: 'With Heaven you may accommodate yourself.'"

Saint Eldobert--I much approve his mode; With sinner Vertgalant I sympathize; But histrionic Sganarelle, who prompts While pulling back, refuses yet concedes,-- Whether he preach in chair, or print in book, Or whisper due sustainment to weak flesh, Counting his sham beads threaded on a lie-- Surely, one should bid pack that mountebank! Surely, he must have momentary fits Of self-sufficient stage-forgetfulness, Escapings of the actor-lassitude When he allows the grace to show the grin, Which ought to let even thickheads recognize (Through all the busy and benefic part,-- Bridge-building, or rock-riving, or good clean Transport of church and congregation both From this to that place with no harm at all,) The Devil, that old stager, at his trick Of general utility, who leads Downward, perhaps, but fiddles all the way!

Therefore, no sooner does our candidate For saintship spotlessly emerge soul-cleansed From First Communion to mount guard at post, Paris-proof, top to toe, than up there start The Spirit of the Boulevard--you know Who-- With jocund "So, a structure fixed as fate, Faith's tower joins on to tower, no ring more round, Full fifty years at distance, too, from youth! Once reach that precinct and there fight your best, As looking back you wonder what has come Of daisy-dappled turf you danced across! Few flowers that played with youth shall pester age, However age esteem the courtesy; And Eldobert was something past his prime, Stocked Caen with churches ere he tried hand here. Saint-Sauveur, Notre-Dame, Saint-Pierre, Saint-Jean Attest his handiwork commenced betimes. He probably would preach that turf is mud. Suppose it mud, through mud one picks a way, And when, clay-clogged, the struggler steps to stone, He uncakes shoe, arrives in manlier guise Than carried pick-a-back by Eldobert Big-baby-fashion, lest his leathers leak! All that parade about Prince Vertgalant Amounts to--your Castilian helps enough-- Inveni ovem quæ perierat. But ask the pretty votive statue-thing What the lost sheep's meantime amusements were Till the Archbishop found him! That stays blank: They washed the fleece well and forgot the rest. Make haste, since time flies, to determine, though!"

Thus opportunely took up parable,-- Admonishing Miranda just emerged Pure from The Ravissante and Paris-proof,-- Saint Sganarelle: then slipped aside, changed mask, And made re-entry as a gentleman Born of the Boulevard, with another speech, I spare you.

So, the year or two revolved, And ever the young man was dutiful To altar and to hearth: had confidence In the whole Ravissantish history. Voltaire? Who ought to know so much of him,-- Old sciolist, whom only boys think sage,-- As one whose father's house upon the Quai Neighbored the very house where that Voltaire Died mad and raving, not without a burst Of squibs and crackers too significant? Father and mother hailed their best of sons, Type of obedience, domesticity, Never such an example inside doors! Outside, as well not keep too close a watch; Youth must be left to some discretion there. And what discretion proved, I find deposed At Vire, confirmed by his own words: to wit, How, with the spriteliness of twenty-five, Five--and not twenty, for he gave their names With laudable precision--were the few Appointed by him unto mistress-ship; While, meritoriously the whole long week A votary of commerce only, week Ended, "at shut of shop on Saturday, Do I, as is my wont, get drunk," he writes In airy record to a confidant. "Bragging and lies!" replies the apologist: "And do I lose by that?" laughed Somebody, At the Court-edge a-tiptoe, 'mid the crowd, In his own clothes, a-listening to men's Law.

Thus while, prospectively a combatant, The volunteer bent brows, clenched jaws, and fierce Whistled the march-tune "Warrior to the wall!" Something like flowery laughters round his feet Tangled him of a sudden with "Sleep first!" And fairly flat upon the turf sprawled he, And let strange creatures make his mouth their home.

Anyhow, 't is the nature of the soul To seek a show of durability, Nor, changing, plainly be the slave of change. Outside the turf, the towers: but, round the turf, A tent may rise, a temporary shroud, Mock-faith to suit a mimic dwelling-place: Tent which, while screening jollity inside From the external circuit--evermore A menace to who lags when he should march-- Yet stands a-tremble, ready to collapse At touch of foot: turf is acknowledged grass, And grass, though pillowy, held contemptible Compared with solid rock, the rampired ridge. To truth a pretty homage thus we pay By testifying--what we dally with, Falsehood, (which, never fear we take for truth!) We may enjoy, but then--how we despise!

Accordingly, on weighty business bound, Monsieur Léonce Miranda stooped to play, But, with experience, soon reduced the game To principles, and thenceforth played by rule: Rule, dignifying sport as sport, proclaimed No less that sport was sport, and nothing more. He understood the worth of womankind,-- To furnish man--provisionally--sport: Sport transitive--such earth's amusements are: But, seeing that amusements pall by use, Variety therein is requisite. And since the serious work of life were wronged Should we bestow importance on our play, It follows, in such womankind-pursuit, Cheating is lawful chase. We have to spend An hour--they want a lifetime thrown away: We seek to tickle sense--they ask for soul, As if soul had no higher ends to serve! A stag-hunt gives the royal creature law: Bat-fowling is all fair with birds at roost, The lantern and the clap-net suit the hedge. Which must explain why, bent on Boulevard game, Monsieur Léonce Miranda decently Was prudent in his pleasure--passed himself Off on the fragile fair about his path As the gay devil rich in mere good looks, Youth, hope--what matter though the purse be void? "If I were only young Miranda, now, Instead of a poor clerkly drudge at desk All day, poor artist vainly bruising brush On palette, poor musician scraping gut With horsehair teased that no harmonics come! Then would I love with liberality, Then would I pay!--who now shall be repaid, Repaid alike for present pain and past, If Mademoiselle permit the contre-danse, Sing 'Gay in garret youth at twenty lives,' And afterward accept a lemonade!"

Such sweet facilities of intercourse Afford the Winter-Garden and Mabille! "Oh, I unite"--runs on the confidence, Poor fellow, that was read in open Court, --"Amusement with discretion: never fear My escapades cost more than market-price! No durably-attached Miranda-dupe, Sucked dry of substance by two clinging lips, Promising marriage, and performing it! Trust me, I know the world, and know myself, And know where duty takes me--in good time!"

Thus fortified and realistic, then, At all points thus against illusion armed, He wisely did New Year inaugurate By playing truant to the favored five: And sat installed at "The Varieties,"-- Playhouse appropriately named,--to note (Prying amid the turf that 's flowery there) What primrose, firstling of the year, might push The snows aside to deck his buttonhole-- Unnoticed by that outline sad, severe, (Though fifty good long years removed from youth,) That tower and tower,--our image bear in mind!

No sooner was he seated than, behold, Out burst a polyanthus! He was 'ware Of a young woman niched in neighborhood; And ere one moment flitted, fast was he Found captive to the beauty evermore, For life, for death, for heaven, for hell, her own. Philosophy, bewail thy fate! Adieu, Youth realistic and illusion-proof! Monsieur Léonce Miranda,--hero late Who "understood the worth of womankind," "Who found therein--provisionally--sport,"-- Felt, in the flitting of a moment, fool Was he, and folly all that seemed so wise, And the best proof of wisdom's birth would be That he made all endeavor, body, soul, By any means, at any sacrifice Of labor, wealth, repute, and (--well, the time For choosing between heaven on earth, and heaven In heaven, was not at hand immediately--) Made all endeavor, without loss incurred Of one least minute, to obtain her love. "Sport transitive?" "Variety required?" "In loving were a lifetime thrown away?" How singularly may young men mistake! The fault must be repaired with energy. Monsieur Léonce Miranda ate her up With eye-devouring; when the unconscious fair Passed from the close-packed hall, he pressed behind; She mounted vehicle, he did the same, Coach stopped, and cab fast followed, at one door-- Good house in unexceptionable street. Out stepped the lady,--never think, alone! A mother was not wanting to the maid, Or, maybe, wife, or widow, might one say? Out stepped and properly down flung himself Monsieur Léonce Miranda at her feet-- And never left them after, so to speak, For twenty years, till his last hour of life, When he released them, as precipitate. Love proffered and accepted then and there! Such potency in word and look has truth.

Truth I say, truth I mean: this love was true, And the rest happened by due consequence. By which we are to learn that there exists A falsish false, for truth 's inside the same, And truth that 's only half true, falsish truth. The better for both parties! folks may taunt That half your rock-built wall is rubble-heap: Answer them, half their flowery turf is stones! Our friend had hitherto been decking coat If not with stones, with weeds that stones befit, With dandelions--"primrose-buds," smirked he; This proved a polyanthus on his breast, Prize-lawful or prize-lawless, flower the same. So with his other instance of mistake: Was Christianity the Ravissante?

And what a flower of flowers he chanced on now! To primrose, polyanthus I prefer As illustration, from the fancy-fact That out of simple came the composite By culture: that the florist bedded thick His primrose-root in ruddle, bullock's blood, Ochre and devils'-dung, for aught I know, Until the pale and pure grew fiery-fine, Ruby and topaz, rightly named anew. This lady was no product of the plain; Social manure had raised a rarity. Clara de Millefleurs (note the happy name) Blazed in the full-blown glory of her Spring. Peerlessly perfect, form and face: for both-- "Imagine what, at seventeen, may have proved Miss Pages, the actress: Pages herself, my dear!" Noble she was, the name denotes: and rich? "The apartment in this Coliseum Street, Furnished, my dear, with such an elegance, Testifies wealth, my dear, sufficiently! What quality, what style and title, eh? Well now, waive nonsense, you and I are boys No longer: somewhere must a screw be slack! Don't fancy, Duchesses descend at door From carriage-step to stranger prostrate stretched, And bid him take heart, and deliver mind, March in and make himself at ease forthwith,-- However broad his chest and black his beard, And comely his belongings,--all through love Protested in a world of ways save one-- Hinting at marriage!"--marriage which yet means Only the obvious method, easiest help To satisfaction of love's first demand, That love endure eternally: "my dear, Somewhere or other must a screw be slack!"

Truth is the proper policy: from truth-- Whate'er the force wherewith you fling your speech,-- Be sure that speech will lift you, by rebound, Somewhere above the lowness of a lie! Monsieur Léonce Miranda heard too true A tale--perhaps I may subjoin, too trite! As the meek martyr takes her statued stand Above our pity, claims our worship just Because of what she puts in evidence, Signal of suffering, badge of torture borne In days gone by, shame then, but glory now, Barb, in the breast, turned aureole for the front! So, half timidity, composure half, Clara de Millefleurs told her martyrdom.

Of poor though noble parentage, deprived Too early of a father's guardianship, What wonder if the prodigality Of nature in the girl, whose mental gifts Matched her external dowry, form and face-- If these suggested a too prompt resource To the resourceless mother? "Try the Stage, And so escape starvation! Prejudice Defames Mimetic Art: be yours to prove That gold and dross may meet and never mix, Purity plunge in pitch yet soil no plume!"

All was prepared in London--(you conceive The natural shrinking from publicity In Paris, where the name excites remark)-- London was ready for the grand début; When some perverse ill-fortune, incident To art mimetic, some malicious thrust Of Jealousy who sidles 'twixt the scenes, Or pops up sudden from the prompter's hole,-- Somehow the brilliant bubble burst in suds. Want followed: in a foreign land, the pair! Oh, hurry over the catastrophe-- Mother too sorely tempted, daughter tried Scarcely so much as circumvented, say! Caged unsuspecting artless innocence!

Monsieur Léonce Miranda tell the rest!-- The rather that he told it in a style To puzzle Court Guide students, much more me. "Brief, she became the favorite of Lord N., An aged but illustrious Duke, thereby Breaking the heart of his competitor, The Prince of O. Behold her palaced straight In splendor, clothed in diamonds," (phrase how fit!) "Giving tone to the City by the Thames! Lord N., the aged but illustrious Duke, Was even on the point of wedding her-- Giving his name to her" (why not to us?) "But that her better angel interposed. She fled from such a fate to Paris back. A fortnight since: conceive Lord N.'s despair! Duke as he is, there 's no invading France. He must restrict pursuit to postal plague Of writing letters daily, duly read As darlingly she hands them to myself, The privileged supplanter, who therewith Light a cigar and see abundant blue"-- (Either of heaven or else Havana-smoke,) "Think! she, who helped herself to diamonds late, In passion of disinterestedness Now--will accept no tribute of my love Beyond a paltry ring, three Louis'-worth! Little she knows I have the rummaging Of old Papa's shop in the Place Vendôme!" So wrote entrancedly to confidant, Monsieur Léonce Miranda. Surely now, If Heaven, that see all, understands no less, It finds temptation pardonable here, It mitigates the promised punishment, It recognizes that to tarry just An April hour amid such dainty turf Means no rebellion against task imposed Of journey to the distant wall one day? Monsieur Léonce Miranda puts the case! Love, he is purposed to renounce, abjure; But meanwhile, is the case a common one? Is it the vulgar sin, none hates as he? Which question, put directly to "his dear" (His brother--I will tell you in a trice), Was doubtless meant, by due meandering, To reach, to fall not unobserved before The auditory cavern 'neath the cope Of Her, the placable, the Ravissante. But here 's the drawback, that the image smiles, Smiles on, smiles ever, says to supplicant "Ay, ay, ay"--like some kindly weathercock Which, stuck fast at Set Fair, Favonian Breeze, Still warrants you from rain, though Auster's lead Bring down the sky above your cloakless mirth. Had he proposed this question to, nor "dear" Nor Ravissante, but prompt to the Police, The Commissary of his Quarter, now-- There had been shaggy eyebrows elevate With twinkling apprehension in each orb Beneath, and when the sudden shut of mouth Relaxed,--lip pressing lip, lest out should plump The pride of knowledge in too frank a flow,-- Then, fact on fact forthcoming, dose were dealt Of truth remedial, in sufficiency To save a chicken threatened with the pip, Head-staggers and a tumble from its perch.

Alack, it was the lady's self that made The revelation, after certain days --Nor so unwisely! As the haschisch-man Prepares a novice to receive his drug, Adroitly hides the soil with sudden spread Of carpet ere he seats his customer: Then shows him how to smoke himself about With Paradise; and only when, at puff Of pipe, the Houri dances round the brain Of dreamer, does he judge no need is now For circumspection and punctiliousness; He may resume the serviceable scrap That made the votary unaware of muck. Just thus the lady, when her brewage--love-- Was well a-fume about the novice-brain, Saw she might boldly pluck from underneath Her lover the preliminary lie.

Clara de Millefleurs, of the noble race, Was Lucie Steiner, child to Dominique And Magdalen Commercy; born at Sierck, About the bottom of the Social Couch. The father having come and gone again, The mother and the daughter found their way To Paris, and professed mode-merchandise, Were milliners, we English roughlier say; And soon a fellow-lodger in the house, Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen, young and smart, Tailor by trade, perceived his house-mate's youth, Smartness, and beauty over and above. Courtship was brief, and marriage followed quick, And quicklier--impecuniosity. The young pair quitted Paris to reside At London: which repaid the compliment But scurvily, since not a whit the more Trade prospered by the Thames than by the Seine. Failing all other, as a last resource, "He would have trafficked in his wife,"--she said. If for that cause they quarrelled, 't was, I fear, Rather from reclamation of her rights To wifely independence, than as wronged Otherwise by the course of life proposed: Since, on escape to Paris back again, From horror and the husband,--ill-exchanged For safe maternal home recovered thus,-- I find her domiciled and dominant In that apartment, Coliseum Street, Where all the splendid magic met and mazed Monsieur Léonce Miranda's venturous eye. Only, the same was furnished at the cost Of some one notable in days long since, Carlino Centofanti: he it was, Found entertaining unawares--if not An angel, yet a youth in search of one.

Why this revealment after reticence? Wherefore, beginning "Millefleurs," end at all Steiner, Muhlhausen, and the ugly rest? Because the unsocial purse-controlling wight, Carlino Centofanti, made aware By misadventure that his bounty, crumbs From table, comforted a visitant, Took churlish leave, and left, too, debts to pay. Loaded with debts, the lady needs must bring Her soul to bear assistance from a friend Beside that paltry ring, three Louis'-worth; And therefore might the little circumstance That Monsieur Léonce had the rummaging Of old Papa's shop in the Place Vendôme, Pass, perhaps, not so unobservably.

Frail shadow of a woman in the flesh, These very eyes of mine saw yesterday, Would I re-tell this story of your woes, Would I have heart to do you detriment By pinning all this shame and sorrow plain To that poor chignon,--staying with me still, Though form and face have well-nigh faded now,-- But that men read it, rough in brutal print, As two years since some functionary's voice Rattled all this--and more by very much-- Into the ear of vulgar Court and crowd? Whence, by reverberation, rumblings grew To what had proved a week-long roar in France Had not the dreadful cannonry drowned all. Was, now, the answer of your advocate More than just this? "The shame fell long ago, The sorrow keeps increasing: God forbid We judge man by the faults of youth in age!" Permit me the expression of a hope Your youth proceeded like your avenue, Stepping by bush, and tree, and taller tree, Until, columnar, at the house they end. So might your creeping youth columnar rise And reach, by year and year, symmetrical, To where all shade stops short, shade's service done. Bushes on either side, and boughs above, Darken, deform the path else sun would streak; And, cornered halfway somewhere, I suspect Stagnation and a horse-pond: hurry past! For here 's the house, the happy half-and-half Existence--such as stands for happiness True and entire, howe'er the squeamish talk! Twenty years long, you may have loved this man; He must have loved you; that 's a pleasant life, Whatever was your right to lead the same. The white domestic pigeon pairs secure, Nay, does mere duty by bestowing egg In authorized compartment, warm and safe, Boarding about, and gilded spire above, Hoisted on pole, to dogs' and eats' despair! But I have spied a veriest trap of twigs On tree-top, every straw a thievery, Where the wild dove--despite the fowler's snare, The sportsman's shot, the urchin's stone--crooned gay, And solely gave her heart to what she hatched, Nor minded a malignant world below. I throw first stone forsooth? 'T is mere assault Of playful sugarplum against your cheek, Which, if it makes cheek tingle, wipes off rouge! You, my worst woman? Ah, that touches pride, Puts on his mettle the exhibitor Of Night-caps, if you taunt him "This, no doubt,-- Now we have got to Female-garniture,-- Crowns your collection, Reddest of the row!" O unimaginative ignorance Of what dye's depth keeps best apart from worst In womankind!--how heaven's own pure may seem To blush aurorally beside such blanched Divineness as the women-wreaths named White: While hell, eruptive and fuliginous, Sickens to very pallor as I point Her place to a Red clout called woman too! Hail, heads that ever had such glory once Touch you a moment, like God's cloven tongues Of fire! your lambent aureoles lost may leave You marked yet, dear beyond true diadems! And hold, each foot, nor spurn, to man's disgrace, What other twist of fetid rag may fall! Let slink into the sewer the cupping-cloth!

Lucie, much solaced, I re-finger you, The medium article; if ruddy-marked With iron-mould, your cambric,--clean at least From poison-speck of rot and purulence! Lucie Muhlhausen said--"Such thing am I: Love me, or love me not!" Miranda said, "I do love, more than ever, most for this." The revelation of the very truth Proved the concluding necessary shake Which bids the tardy mixture crystallize Or else stay ever liquid: shoot up shaft, Durably diamond, or evaporate-- Sluggish solution through a minute's slip. Monsieur Léonce Miranda took his soul In both his hands, as if it were a vase, To see what came of the convulsion there, And found, amid subsidence, love new-born So sparklingly resplendent, old was new. "Whatever be my lady's present, past, Or future, this is certain of my soul, I love her! in despite of all I know, Defiance of the much I have to fear, I venture happiness on what I hope, And love her from this day forevermore! No prejudice to old profound respect For certain Powers! I trust they bear in mind A most peculiar case, and straighten out What 's crooked there, before we close accounts. Renounce the world for them--some day I will: Meantime, to me let her become the world!"

Thus, mutely might our friend soliloquize Over the tradesmen's bills, his Clara's gift-- In the apartment, Coliseum Street, Carlino Centofanti's legacy, Provided rent and taxes were discharged-- In face of Steiner now, De Millefleurs once, The tailor's wife and runaway confessed.

On such a lady if election light, (According to a social prejudice,) If henceforth "all the world" she constitute For any lover,--needs must he renounce Our world in ordinary, walked about By couples loving as its laws prescribe,-- Renunciation sometimes difficult. But, in this instance, time and place and thing Combined to simplify experiment, And make Miranda, in the current phrase, Master the situation passably.

For first facility, his brother died-- Who was, I should have told you, confidant, Adviser, referee, and substitute, All from a distance: but I knew how soon This younger brother, lost in Portugal, Had to depart and leave our friend at large. Cut off abruptly from companionship With brother-soul of bulk about as big, (Obvious recipient--by intelligence And sympathy, poor little pair of souls-- Of much affection and some foolishness,) Monsieur Léonce Miranda, meant to lean By nature, needs must shift the leaning-place To his love's bosom from his brother's neck, Or fall flat unrelieved of freight sublime.

Next died the lord of the Aladdin's cave, Master o' the mint, and keeper of the keys Of chests chokefull with gold and silver changed By Art to forms where wealth forgot itself, And caskets where reposed each pullet-egg Of diamond, slipping flame from fifty slants. In short, the father of the family Took his departure also from our scene, Leaving a fat succession to his heir Monsieur Léonce Miranda,--"fortunate, If ever man was, in a father's death," (So commented the world,--not he, too kind, Could that be, rather than scarce kind enough) Indisputably fortunate so far, That little of incumbrance in his path, Which money kicks aside, would lie there long.

And finally, a rough but wholesome shock, An accident which comes to kill or cure, A jerk which mends a dislocated joint! Such happy chance, at cost of twinge, no doubt, Into the socket back again put truth, And stopped the limb from longer dragging lie. For love suggested, "Better shamble on, And bear your lameness with what grace you may!" And but for this rude wholesome accident, Continuance of disguise and subterfuge, Retention of first falsehood as to name And nature in the lady, might have proved Too necessary for abandonment. Monsieur Léonce Miranda probably Had else been loath to cast the mask aside, So politic, so self-preservative, Therefore so pardonable--though so wrong! For see the bugbear in the background! Breathe But ugly name, and wind is sure to waft The husband news of the wife's whereabout: From where he lies perdue in London town, Forth steps the needy tailor on the stage, Deity-like from dusk machine of fog, And claims his consort, or his consort's worth In rubies which her price is far above. Hard to propitiate, harder to oppose,-- Who but the man's self came to banish fear, A pleasant apparition, such as shocks A moment, tells a tale, then goes for good!

Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen proved no less Nor more than "Gustave," lodging opposite Monsieur Léonce Miranda's diamond-cave And ruby-mine, and lacking little thence Save that its gnome would keep the captive safe, Never return his Clara to his arms. For why? He was become the man in vogue, The indispensable to who went clothed Nor cared encounter Paris fashion's blame,-- Such miracle could London absence work. Rolling in riches--so translate "the vogue"-- Rather his object was to keep off claw Should griffin scent the gold, should wife lay claim To lawful portion at a future day, Than tempt his partner from her private spoils. Best forage each for each, nor coupled hunt!

Pursuantly, one morning,--knock at door With knuckle, dry authoritative cough, And easy stamp of foot, broke startlingly On household slumber, Coliseum Street: "Admittance in the name of Law!" In marched The Commissary and subordinate. One glance sufficed them. "A marital pair: We certify, and bid good morning, sir! Madame, a thousand pardons!" Whereupon Monsieur Ulysse Muhlhausen, otherwise Called "Gustave" for conveniency of trade, Deposing in due form complaint of wrong, Made his demand of remedy--divorce From bed, board, share of name, and part in goods. Monsieur Léonce Miranda owned his fault, Protested his pure ignorance, from first To last, of rights infringed in "Gustave's" case: Submitted him to judgment. Law decreed "Body and goods be henceforth separate!" And thereupon each party took its way, This right, this left, rejoicing, to abide Estranged yet amicable, opposites In life as in respective dwelling-place. Still does one read on his establishment Huge-lettered "Gustave,"--gold out-glittering "Miranda, goldsmith," just across the street-- "A first-rate hand at riding-habits"--say The instructed--"special cut of chamber-robes."

Thus by a rude in seeming--rightlier judged Beneficent surprise, publicity Stopped further fear and trembling, and what tale Cowardice thinks a covert: one bold splash Into the mid-shame, and the shiver ends, Though cramp and drowning may begin perhaps.

To cite just one more point which crowned success: Madame, Miranda's mother, most of all An obstacle to his projected life In license, as a daughter of the Church, Duteous, exemplary, severe by right-- Moreover one most thoroughly beloved Without a rival till the other sort Possessed her son,--first storm of anger spent, She seemed, though grumblingly and grudgingly, To let be what needs must be, acquiesce. "With heaven--accommodation possible!" Saint Sganarelle had preached with such effect, She saw now mitigating circumstance. "The erring one was most unfortunate, No question: but worse Magdalens repent. Were Clara free, did only Law allow, What fitter choice in marriage could have made Léonce or anybody?" 'T is alleged And evidenced, I find, by advocate, "Never did she consider such a tie As baleful, springe to snap whate'er the cost." And when the couple were in safety once At Clairvaux, motherly, considerate, She shrank not from advice. "Since safe you be, Safely abide! for winter, I know well, Is troublesome in a cold country-house. I recommend the south room that we styled, Your sire and I, the winter-chamber."

Chance Or purpose,--who can read the mystery?-- Combined, I say, to bid "Intrench yourself, Monsieur Léonce Miranda, on this turf, About this flower, so firmly that, as tent Rises on every side around you both, The question shall become,--Which arrogates Stability, this tent or those far towers? May not the temporary structure suit The stable circuit, co-exist in peace?-- Always until the proper time, no fear! 'Lay flat your tent!' is easier said than done."

So, with the best of auspices, betook Themselves Léonce Miranda and his bride-- Provisionary--to their Clairvaux house, Never to leave it--till the proper time.

I told you what was Clairvaux-Priory Ere the improper time: an old demesne With memories,--relic half, and ruin whole,-- The very place, then, to repair the wits Worn out with Paris-traffic, when its lord, Miranda's father, took his month of ease Purchased by industry. What contrast here! Repose, and solitude, and healthy ways! That ticking at the back of head, he took For motion of an inmate, stopped at once, Proved nothing but the pavement's rattle left Behind at Paris: here was holiday! Welcome the quaint succeeding to the spruce, The large and lumbersome and--might he breathe In whisper to his own ear--dignified And gentry-fashioned old-style haunts of sleep! Palatial gloomy chambers for parade, And passage-lengths of lost significance, Never constructed as receptacle, At his odd hours, for him their actual lord By dint of diamond-dealing, goldsmithry. Therefore Miranda's father chopped and changed Nor roof-tile nor yet floor-brick, undismayed By rains a-top or rats at bottom there. Such contrast is so piquant for a month! But now arrived quite other occupants Whose cry was "Permanency,--life and death Here, here, not elsewhere, change is all we dread!" Their dwelling-place must be adapted, then, To inmates, no mere truants from the town, No temporary sojourners, forsooth, At Clairvaux: change it into Paradise!

Fair friend,--who listen and let talk, alas!-- You would, in even such a state of things, Pronounce,--or am I wrong?--for bidding stay The old-world inconvenience, fresh as found. All folk of individuality Prefer to be reminded, now and then, Though at the cost of vulgar cosiness, That the shell-outside only harbors man The vital and progressive, meant to build, When build he may, with quite a difference, Some time, in that far land we dream about, Where every man is his own architect. But then the couple here in question, each At one in project for a happy life, Were by no acceptation of the word So individual that they must aspire To architecture all-appropriate, And, therefore, in this world impossible: They needed house to suit the circumstance, Proprietors, not tenants for a term. Despite a certain marking, here and there, Of fleecy black or white distinguishment, These vulgar sheep wore the flock's uniform. They love the country, they renounce the town? They gave a kick, as our Italians say, To Paris ere it turned and kicked themselves! Acquaintances might prove too hard to seek, Or the reverse of hard to find, perchance, Since Monsieur Gustave's apparition there. And let me call remark upon the list Of notabilities invoked, in Court At Vire, to witness, by their phrases culled From correspondence, what was the esteem Of those we pay respect to, for "the pair Whereof they knew the inner life," 't is said. Three, and three only, answered the appeal. First Monsieur Vaillant, music-publisher, "Begs Madame will accept civilities." Next Alexandre Dumas,--sire, not son,-- "Sends compliments to Madame and to you." And last--but now prepare for England's voice! I will not mar nor make--here 's word for word-- "A rich proprietor of Paris, he To whom belonged that beauteous Bagatelle Close to the wood of Boulogne, Hertford hight, Assures of homages and compliments Affectionate"--not now Miranda but "Madame Muhlhausen." (Was this friend, the Duke Redoubtable in rivalry before?) Such was the evidence when evidence Was wanted, then if ever, to the worth Whereat acquaintances in Paris prized Monsieur Léonce Miranda's household charm. No wonder, then, his impulse was to live, In Norman solitude, the Paris life: Surround himself with Art transported thence, And nature like those famed Elysian Fields: Then, warm up the right color out of both, By Boulevard friendships tempted to come taste How Paris lived again in little there.

Monsieur Léonce Miranda practised Art. Do let a man for once live as man likes! Politics? Spend your life, to spare the world's: Improve each unit by some particle Of joy the more, deteriorate the orb Entire, your own: poor profit, dismal loss! Write books, paint pictures, or make music--since Your nature leans to such life-exercise! Ay, but such exercise begins too soon, Concludes too late, demands life whole and sole, Artistry being battle with the age It lives in! Half life,--silence, while you learn What has been done; the other half,--attempt At speech, amid world's wail of wonderment-- "Here 's something done was never done before!" To be the very breath that moves the age Means not to have breath drive you bubble-like Before it--but yourself to blow: that 's strain; Strain's worry through the lifetime, till there 's peace; We know where peace expects the artist-soul.

Monsieur Léonce Miranda knew as much. Therefore in Art he nowise cared to be Creative; but creation, that had birth In storminess long years before was born Monsieur Léonce Miranda,--Art, enjoyed Like fleshly objects of the chase that tempt In cookery, not in capture--these might feast The dilettante, furnish tavern-fare Open to all with purses open too. To sit free and take tribute seigneur-like-- Now, not too lavish of acknowledgment, Now, self-indulgently profuse of pay. Always Art's seigneur, not Art's serving-man, Whate'er the style and title and degree,-- That is the quiet life and easy death Monsieur Léonce Miranda would approve Wholly--provided (back I go again To the first simile) that while glasses clink, And viands steam, and banqueting laughs high, All that 's outside the temporary tent, The dim grim outline of the circuit-wall, Forgets to menace "Soon or late will drop Pavilion, soon or late you needs must march, And laggards will be sorry they were slack! Always--unless excuse sound plausible!"

Monsieur Léonce Miranda knew as much: Whence his determination just to paint So creditably as might help the eye To comprehend how painter's eye grew dim Ere it produced L'Ingegno's piece of work-- So to become musician that his ear Should judge, by its own tickling and turmoil, Who made the Solemn Mass might well die deaf-- So cultivate a literary knack That, by experience how it wiles the time, He might imagine how a poet, rapt In rhyming wholly, grew so poor at last By carelessness about his banker's-book, That the Sieur Boileau (to provoke our smile) Began abruptly,--when he paid devoir To Louis Quatorze as he dined in state,-- "Sire, send a drop of broth to Pierre Corneille Now dying and in want of sustenance!" --I say, these half-hour playings at life's toil, Diversified by billiards, riding, sport-- With now and then a visitor--Dumas, Hertford--to check no aspiration's flight-- While Clara, like a diamond in the dark, Should extract shining from what else were shade, And multiply chance rays a million-fold,-- How could he doubt that all offence outside,-- Wrong to the towers, which, pillowed on the turf, He thus shut eyes to,--were as good as gone?

So, down went Clairvaux-Priory to dust, And up there rose, in lieu, yon structure gay Above the Norman ghosts: and where the stretch Of barren country girdled house about, Behold the Park, the English preference! Thus made undoubtedly a desert smile Monsieur Léonce Miranda.

Ay, but she? One should not so merge soul in soul, you think? And I think: only, let us wait, nor want Two things at once--her turn will come in time. A cork-float danced upon the tide, we saw, This morning, blinding-bright with briny dews: There was no disengaging soaked from sound, Earth-product from the sister-element. But when we turn, the tide will turn, I think, And bare on beach will lie exposed the buoy: A very proper time to try, with foot And even finger, which was buoying wave, Which merely buoyant substance,--power to lift, And power to be sent skyward passively. Meanwhile, no separation of the pair!

III

And so slipt pleasantly away five years Of Paradisiac dream; till, as there flit Premonitory symptoms, pricks of pain, Because the dreamer has to start awake And find disease dwelt active all the while In head or stomach through his night-long sleep,-- So happened here disturbance to content.

Monsieur Léonce Miranda's last of cares, Ere he composed himself, had been to make Provision that, while sleeping safe he lay, Somebody else should, dragon-like, let fall Never a lid, coiled round the apple-stem, But watch the precious fruitage. Somebody Kept shop, in short, played Paris substitute. Himself, shrewd, well-trained, early-exercised, Could take in, at an eye-glance, luck or loss-- Know commerce throve, though lazily uplift On elbow merely: leave his bed forsooth? Such active service was the substitute's.

But one October morning, at first drop Of appled gold, first summons to be grave Because rough Autumn's play turns earnest now, Monsieur Léonce Miranda was required In Paris to take counsel, face to face, With Madame-mother: and be rated, too, Roundly at certain items of expense Whereat the government provisional, The Paris substitute and shopkeeper, Shook head, and talked of funds inadequate: Oh, in the long run,--not if remedy Occurred betimes! Else,--tap the generous bole Too near the quick,--it withers to the root-- Leafy, prolific, golden apple-tree, "Miranda," sturdy in the Place Vendôme!

"What is this reckless life you lead?" began Her greeting she whom most he feared and loved, Madame Miranda. "Luxury, extravagance Sardanapalus' self might emulate,-- Did your good father's money go for this? Where are the fruits of education, where The morals which at first distinguished you, The faith which promised to adorn your age? And why such wastefulness outbreaking now, When heretofore you loved economy? Explain this pulling-down and building-up Poor Clairvaux, which your father bought because Clairvaux he found it, and so left to you, Not a gilt-gingerbread big baby-house! True, we could somehow shake head and shut eye To what was past prevention on our part-- This reprehensible illicit bond: We, in a manner, winking, watched consort Our modest well-conducted pious son With Delilah: we thought the smoking flax Would smoulder soon away and end in snuff! Is spark to strengthen, prove consuming fire? No lawful family calls Clairvaux 'home'-- Why play that fool of Scripture whom the voice Admonished 'Whose to-night shall be those things Provided for thy morning jollity?' To take one specimen of pure caprice Out of the heap conspicuous in the plan,-- Puzzle of change, I call it,--titled big 'Clairvaux Restored:' what means this Belvedere? This Tower, stuck like a fool's-cap on the roof-- Do you intend to soar to heaven from thence? Tower, truly! Better had you planted turf-- More fitly would you dig yourself a hole Beneath it for the final journey's help! O we poor parents--could we prophesy!" Léonce was found affectionate enough To man, to woman, child, bird, beast, alike; But all affection, all one fire of heart Flaming toward Madame-mother. Had she posed The question plainly at the outset "Choose! Cut clean in half your all-the-world of love, The mother and the mistress: then resolve, Take me or take her, throw away the one!"-- He might have made the choice and marred my tale. But, much I apprehend, the problem put Was, "Keep both halves, yet do no detriment To either! Prize each opposite in turn!" Hence, while he prized at worth the Clairvaux-life With all its tolerated naughtiness, He, visiting in fancy Quai Rousseau, Saw, cornered in the cosiest nook of all, That range of rooms through number Thirty-three, The lady-mother bent o'er her Bézique While Monsieur Curé This, and Sister That,-- Superior of no matter what good House-- Did duty for Duke Hertford and Dumas, Nay--at his mother's age--for Clara's self. At Quai Rousseau, things comfortable thus, Why should poor Clairvaux prove so troublesome? She played at cards, he built a Belvedere. But here 's the difference: she had reached the Towers And there took pastime: he was still on Turf-- Though fully minded that, when once he marched, No sportive fancy should distract him more.

In brief, the man was angry with himself, With her, with all the world and much beside: And so the unseemly words were interchanged Which crystallize what else evaporates, And make mere misty petulance grow hard And sharp inside each softness, heart and soul. Monsieur Léonce Miranda flung at last Out of doors, fever-flushed: and there the Seine Rolled at his feet, obsequious remedy For fever, in a cold autumnal flow. "Go and be rid of memory in a bath!" Craftily whispered Who besets the ear On such occasions.

Done as soon as dreamed. Back shivers poor Léonce to bed--where else? And there he lies a month 'twixt life and death, Raving. "Remorse of conscience!" friends opine. "Sirs, it may partly prove so," represents Beaumont--(the family physician, he Whom last year's Commune murdered, do you mind?) Beaumont reports, "There is some active cause, More than mere pungency of quarrel past,-- Cause that keeps adding other food to fire. I hear the words and know the signs, I say! Dear Madame, you have read the Book of Saints, How Antony was tempted? As for me, Poor heathen, 't is by pictures I am taught. I say then, I see standing here,--between Me and my patient, and that crucifix You very properly would interpose-- A certain woman-shape, one white appeal, 'Will you leave me, then, me, me, me for her?' Since cold Seine could not quench this flame, since flare Of fever does not redden it away,-- Be rational, indulgent, mute--should chance Come to the rescue--Providence, I mean-- The while I blister and phlebotomize!"

Well, somehow rescued by whatever power, At month's end, back again conveyed himself Monsieur Léonce Miranda, worn to rags, Nay, tinder: stuff irreparably spoiled, Though kindly hand should stitch and patch its best. Clairvaux in Autumn is restorative. A friend stitched on, patched ever. All the same, Clairvaux looked grayer than a month ago. Unglossed was shrubbery, unglorified Each copse, so wealthy once; the garden-plots. The orchard-walks, showed dearth and dreariness. The sea lay out at distance crammed by cloud Into a leaden wedge; and sorrowful Sulked field and pasture with persistent rain. Nobody came so far from Paris now: Friends did their duty by an invalid Whose convalescence claimed entire repose. Only a single ministrant was stanch At quiet reparation of the stuff-- Monsieur Léonce Miranda, worn to rags: But she was Clara and the world beside.

Another month, the year packed up his plagues And sullenly departed, peddler-like, As apprehensive old-world ware might show To disadvantage when the newcomer, Merchant of novelties, young 'Sixty-eight, With brand-new bargains, whistled o'er the lea. Things brightened somewhat o'er the Christmas hearth, As Clara plied assiduously her task.

"Words are but words and wind. Why let the wind Sing in your ear, bite, sounding, to your brain? Old folk and young folk, still at odds, of course! Age quarrels because Spring puts forth a leaf While Winter has a mind that boughs stay bare; Or rather--worse than quarrel--age descries Propriety in preaching life to death. 'Enjoy nor youth, nor Clairvaux, nor poor me?' Dear Madame, you enjoy your age, 't is thought! Your number Thirty-three on Quai Rousseau Cost fifty times the price of Clairvaux, tipped Even with our prodigious Belvedere; You entertain the Curé,--we, Dumas: We play charades, while you prefer Bézique: Do lead your own life and let ours alone! Cross Old Year shall have done his worst, my friend! Here comes gay New Year with a gift, no doubt! Look up and let in light that longs to shine-- One flash of light, and where will darkness hide? Your cold makes me too cold, love! Keep me warm!"

Whereat Léonce Miranda raised his head From his two white thin hands, and forced a smile, And spoke: "I do look up, and see your light Above me! Let New Year contribute warmth-- I shall refuse no fuel that may blaze." Nor did he. Three days after, just a spark From Paris, answered by a snap at Caen Or whither reached the telegraphic wire: "Quickly to Paris! On arrival, learn Why you are wanted!" Curt and critical!

Off starts Léonce, one fear from head to foot; Caen, Rouen, Paris, as the railway helps; Then come the Quai and Number Thirty-three. "What is the matter, concierge?"--a grimace! He mounts the staircase, makes for the main seat Of dreadful mystery which draws him there-- Bursts in upon a bedroom known too well-- There lies all left now of the mother once. Tapers define the stretch of rigid white, Nor want there ghastly velvets of the grave. A blackness sits on either side at watch, Sisters, good souls but frightful all the same, Silent: a priest is spokesman for his corpse. "Dead, through Léonce Miranda! stricken down Without a minute's warning, yesterday! What did she say to you, and you to her, Two months ago? This is the consequence! The doctors have their name for the disease; I, you, and God say--heart-break, nothing more!" Monsieur Léonce Miranda, like a stone Fell at the bedfoot and found respite so, While the priest went to tell the company. What follows you are free to disbelieve. It may be true or false that this good priest Had taken his instructions,--who shall blame?-- From quite another quarter than, perchance, Monsieur Léonce Miranda might suppose Would offer solace in such pressing need. All he remembered of his kith and kin Was, they were worthily his substitutes In commerce, did their work and drew their pay. But they remembered, in addition, this-- They fairly might expect inheritance, As nearest kin, called Family by law And gospel both. Now, since Miranda's life Showed nothing like abatement of distaste For conjugality, but preference Continued and confirmed of that smooth chain Which slips and leaves no knot behind, no heir-- Presumption was, the man, become mature, Would at a calculable day discard His old and outworn ... what we blush to name, And make society the just amends; Scarce by a new attachment--Heaven forbid! Still less by lawful marriage: that 's reserved For those who make a proper choice at first-- Not try both courses and would grasp in age The very treasure, youth preferred to spurn! No! putting decently such thought aside, The penitent must rather give his powers To such a reparation of the past As, edifying kindred, makes them rich. Now, how would it enrich prospectively The Cousins, if he lavished such expense On Clairvaux?--pretty as a toy, but then As toy, so much productive and no more! If all the outcome of the goldsmith's shop Went to gild Clairvaux, where remain the funds For Cousinry to spread out lap and take? This must be thought of and provided for. I give it you a mere conjecture, mind! To help explain the wholesome unannounced Intelligence, the shock that startled guilt, The scenic show, much yellow, black and white By taper-shine, the nuns--portentous pair, And, more than all, the priest's admonishment-- "No flattery of self! You murdered her! The gray lips, silent now, reprove by mine. You wasted all your living, rioted In harlotry--she warned and I repeat! No warning had she, for she needed none: If this should be the last yourself receive?" Done for the best, no doubt, though clumsily,-- Such, and so startling, the reception here. You hardly wonder if down fell at once The tawdry tent, pictorial, musical, Poetical, besprent with hearts and darts; Its cobweb-work, betinselled stitchery, Lay dust about our sleeper on the turf, And showed the outer towers distinct and dread.

Senseless he fell, and long he lay, and much Seemed salutary in his punishment To planners and performers of the piece. When pain ends, pardon prompt may operate. There was a good attendance close at hand, Waiting the issue in the great saloon, Cousins with consolation and advice.

All things thus happily performed to point, No wonder at success commensurate. Once swooning stopped, once anguish subsequent Raved out,--a sudden resolution chilled His blood and changed his swimming eyes to stone, As the poor fellow raised himself upright, Collected strength, looked, once for all, his look, Then, turning, put officious help aside And passed from out the chamber. "For affairs!" So he announced himself to the saloon: "We owe a duty to the living too!"-- Monsieur Léonce Miranda tried to smile. How did the hearts of Cousinry rejoice At their stray sheep returning thus to fold, As, with a dignity, precision, sense, All unsuspected in the man before, Monsieur Léonce Miranda made minute Detail of his intended scheme of life Thenceforward and forever. "Vanity Was ended: its redemption must begin-- And, certain, would continue; but since life Was awfully uncertain--witness here!-- Behooved him lose no moment but discharge Immediate burden of the world's affairs On backs that kindly volunteered to crouch. Cousins, with easier conscience, blamelessly Might carry on the goldsmith's trade, in brief, Uninterfered with by its lord who late Was used to supervise and take due tithe. A stipend now sufficed his natural need: Themselves should fix what sum allows man live. But half a dozen words concisely plain Might, first of all, make sure that, on demise, Monsieur Léonce Miranda's property Passed by bequeathment, every particle, To the right heirs, the cousins of his heart. As for that woman--they would understand! This was a step must take her by surprise! It were too cruel did he snatch away Decent subsistence. She was young, and fair, And ... and attractive! Means must be supplied To save her from herself, and from the world, And ... from anxieties might haunt him else When he were fain have other thoughts in mind."

It was a sight to melt a stone, that thaw Of rigid disapproval into dew Of sympathy, as each extended palm Of cousin hasted to enclose those five Cold fingers, tendered so mistrustfully, Despairingly of condonation now! You would have thought,--at every fervent shake, In reassurance of those timid tips,-- The penitent had squeezed, considerate, By way of fee into physician's hand For physicking his soul, some diamond knob.

And now let pass a week. Once more behold The same assemblage in the same saloon, Waiting the entry of protagonist Monsieur Léonce Miranda. "Just a week Since the death-day,--was ever man transformed Like this man?" questioned cousin of his mate.

Last seal to the repentance had been set Three days before, at Sceaux in neighborhood Of Paris where they laid with funeral pomp Mother by father. Let me spare the rest: How the poor fellow, in his misery, Buried hot face and bosom, where heaped snow Offered assistance, at the grave's black edge, And there lay, till uprooted by main force From where he prayed to grow and ne'er again Walk earth unworthily as heretofore. It is not with impunity priests teach The doctrine he was dosed with from his youth-- "Pain to the body--profit to the soul; Corporeal pleasure--so much woe to pay When disembodied spirit gives account."

However, woe had done its worst, this time. Three days allow subsidence of much grief. Already, regular and equable, Forward went purpose to effect. At once The testament was written, signed and sealed. Disposer of the commerce--that took time, And would not suffer by a week's delay; But the immediate, the imperious need, The call demanding of the Cousinry Co-operation, what convened them thus, Was--how and when should deputation march To Coliseum Street, the old abode Of wickedness, and there acquaint--oh, shame! Her, its old inmate, who had followed up And lay in wait in the old haunt for prey-- That they had rescued, they possessed Léonce, Whose loathing at recapture equalled theirs-- Upbraid that sinner with her sinfulness, Impart the fellow-sinner's firm resolve Never to set eyes on her face again: Then, after stipulations strict but just, Hand her the first instalment--moderate Enough, no question--of her salary: Admonish for the future, and so end.-- All which good purposes, decided on Sufficiently, were waiting full effect When presently the culprit should appear.

Somehow appearance was delayed too long; Chatting and chirping sunk inconsciously To silence, nay, uneasiness, at length Alarm, till--anything for certitude!-- A peeper was commissioned to explore, At keyhole, what the laggard's task might be-- What caused so palpable a disrespect!

Back came the tiptoe cousin from his quest. "Monsieur Léonce was busy," he believed, "Contemplating--those love-letters, perhaps, He always carried, as if precious stones, About with him. He read, one after one, Some sort of letters. But his back was turned. The empty coffer open at his side, He leant on elbow by the mantelpiece Before the hearth-fire; big and blazing too."

"Better he shovelled them all in at once, And burned the rubbish!" was a cousin's quip, Warming his own hands at the fire the while, I told you, snow had fallen outside, I think.

When suddenly a cry, a host of cries, Screams, hubbub and confusion thrilled the room. All by a common impulse rushed thence, reached The late death-chamber, tricked with trappings still, Skulls, crossbones, and such moral broidery. Madame Muhlhausen might have played the witch, Dropped down the chimney and appalled Léonce By some proposal, "Parting touch of hand!" If she but touched his foolish hand, you know!

Something had happened quite contrariwise. Monsieur Léonce Miranda, one by one, Had read the letters and the love they held, And, that task finished, had required his soul To answer frankly what the prospect seemed Of his own love's departure--pledged to part! Then, answer being unmistakable, He had replaced the letters quietly, Shut coffer, and so, grasping either side By its convenient handle, plunged the whole-- Letters and coffer and both hands to boot-- Into the burning grate and held them there. "Burn, burn, and purify my past!" said he, Calmly, as if he felt no pain at all.

In vain they pulled him from the torture-place: The strong man, with the soul of tenfold strength, Broke from their clutch: and there again smiled he, The miserable hands re-bathed in fire-- Constant to that ejaculation, "Burn, Burn, purify!" And when, combining force. They fairly dragged the victim out of reach Of further harm, he had no hands to hurt-- Two horrible remains of right and left, "Whereof the bones, phalanges formerly, Carbonized, were still crackling with the flame," Said Beaumont. And he fought them all the while: "Why am I hindered when I would be pure? Why leave the sacrifice still incomplete? She holds me, I must have more hands to burn!" They were the stronger, though, and bound him fast.

Beaumont was in attendance presently. "What did I tell you? Preachment to the deaf! I wish he had been deafer when they preached, Those priests! But wait till next Republic comes!"

As for Léonce, a single sentiment Possessed his soul and occupied his tongue-- Absolute satisfaction at the deed. Never he varied, 't is observable, Nor in the stage of agonies (which proved Absent without leave,--science seemed to think), Nor yet in those three months' febricity Which followed,--never did he vary tale-- Remaining happy beyond utterance. "Ineffable beatitude"--I quote The words, I cannot give the smile--"such bliss Abolished pain! Pain might or might not be: He felt in heaven, where flesh desists to fret. Purified now and henceforth, all the past Reduced to ashes with the flesh defiled! Why all those anxious faces round his bed? What was to pity in their patient, pray, When doctor came and went, and Cousins watched? --Kindness, but in pure waste!" he said and smiled. And if a trouble would at times disturb The ambrosial mood, it came from other source Than the corporeal transitory pang. "If sacrifice be incomplete!" cried he-- "If ashes have not sunk reduced to dust, To nullity! If atoms coalesce Till something grow, grow, get to be a shape I hate, I hoped to burn away from me! She is my body, she and I are one, Yet, all the same, there, there at bedfoot stands The woman wound about my flesh and blood, There, the arms open, the more wonderful, The whiter for the burning ... Vanish thou! Avaunt, fiend's self found in the form I wore!"

"Whereat," said Beaumont, "since his hands were gone, The patient in a frenzy kicked and kicked To keep off some imagined visitant. So will it prove as long as priests may preach Spiritual terrors!" groaned the evidence Of Beaumont that his patient was stark mad-- Produced in time and place: of which anon. "Mad, or why thus insensible to pain? Body and soul are one thing, with two names For more or less elaborated stuff."

Such is the new Religio Medici. Though antiquated faith held otherwise, Explained that body is not soul, but just Soul's servant: that, if soul be satisfied, Possess already joy or pain enough, It uses to ignore, as master may, What increase, joy or pain, its servant brings-- Superfluous contribution: soul, once served, Has naught to do with body's service more. Each, speculated on exclusively, As if its office were the only one, Body or soul, either shows service paid In joy and pain, that 's blind and objectless-- A servant's toiling for no master's good-- Or else shows good received and put to use, As if within soul's self grew joy and pain, Nor needed body for a ministrant. I note these old unscientific ways: Poor Beaumont cannot: for the Commune ruled Next year, and ere they shot his priests, shot him.

Monsieur Léonce Miranda raved himself To rest; lay three long months in bliss or bale, Inactive, anyhow: more need that heirs, His natural protectors, should assume The management, bestir their cousinship, And carry out that purpose of reform Such tragic work now made imperative. A deputation, with austerity, Nay, sternness, bore her sentence to the fiend Aforesaid,--she at watch for turn of wheel And fortune's favor, Street--you know the name. A certain roughness seemed appropriate: "You-- Steiner, Muhlhausen, whatsoe'er your name, Cause whole and sole of this catastrophe!"-- And so forth, introduced the embassage.

"Monsieur Léonce Miranda was divorced Once and forever from his--ugly word. Himself had gone for good to Portugal; They came empowered to act and stipulate. Hold! no discussion! Terms were settled now: So much of present and prospective pay, But also--good engagement in plain terms She never seek renewal of the past!"

This little harmless tale produced effect. Madame Muhlhausen owned her sentence just, Its execution gentle. "Stern their phrase, These kinsfolk with a right she recognized-- But kind its import probably, which now Her agitation, her bewilderment, Rendered too hard to understand, perhaps. Let them accord the natural delay, And she would ponder and decide. Meantime, So far was she from wish to follow friend Who fled her, that she would not budge from place-- Now that her friend was fled to Portugal,-- Never! She leave this Coliseum Street? No, not a footstep!" she assured them.

So-- They saw they might have left that tale untold When, after some weeks more were gone to waste, Recovery seemed incontestable, And the poor mutilated figure, once The gay and glancing fortunate young spark, Miranda, humble and obedient took The doctor's counsel, issued sad and slow From precincts of the sick-room, tottered down, And out, and into carriage for fresh air, And so drove straight to Coliseum Street, And tottered upstairs, knocked, and in a trice Was clasped in the embrace of whom you know-- With much asseveration, I omit, Of constancy henceforth till life should end. When all this happened,--"What reward," cried she, "For judging her Miranda by herself! For never having entertained a thought Of breaking promise, leaving home forsooth, To follow who was fled to Portugal! As if she thought they spoke a word of truth! She knew what love was, knew that he loved her; The Cousinry knew nothing of the kind."

I will not scandalize you and recount How matters made the morning pass away. Not one reproach, not one acknowledgment, One explanation: all was understood! Matters at end, the home-uneasiness Cousins were feeling at this jaunt prolonged Was ended also by the entry of-- Not simply him whose exit had been made By mild command of doctor "Out with you! I warrant we receive another man!" But--would that I could say, the married pair! And, quite another man assuredly, Monsieur Léonce Miranda took on him Forthwith to bid the trio, priest and nuns, Constant in their attendance all this while, Take his thanks and their own departure too; Politely but emphatically. Next, The Cousins were dismissed: "No protest, pray! Whatever I engaged to do is done, Or shall be--I but follow your advice: Love I abjure: the lady, you behold, Is changed as I myself; her sex is changed: This is my Brother--He will tend me now, Be all my world henceforth as brother should. Gentlemen, of a kinship I revere, Your interest in trade is laudable; I purpose to indulge it: manage mine, My goldsmith-business in the Place Vendôme, Wholly--through purchase at the price adjudged By experts I shall have assistance from. If, in conformity with sage advice, I leave a busy world of interests I own myself unfit for--yours the care That any world of other aims, wherein I hope to dwell, be easy of access Through ministration of the moneys due, As we determine, with all proper speed, Since I leave Paris to repair my health. Say farewell to our Cousins, Brother mine!"

And, all submissiveness, as brother might, The lady curtsied gracefully, and dropt More than mere curtsey, a concluding phrase So silver-soft, yet penetrative too, That none of it escaped the favored ears: "Had I but credited one syllable, I should to-day be lying stretched on straw, The produce of your miserable rente! Whereas, I hold him--do you comprehend?" Cousin regarded cousin, turned up eye, And took departure, as our Tuscans laugh, Each with his added palm-breadth of long nose,-- Curtailed but imperceptibly, next week, When transfer was accomplished, and the trade In Paris did indeed become their own, But bought by them and sold by him on terms 'Twixt man and man,--might serve 'twixt wolf and wolf, Substitute "bit and clawed" for "signed and sealed"-- Our ordinary business-terms, in short. Another week, and Clairvaux broke in bloom At end of April, to receive again Monsieur Léonce Miranda, gentleman, Ex-jeweller and goldsmith: never more-- According to the purpose he professed-- To quit this paradise, his property, This Clara, his companion: so it proved.

The Cousins, each with elongated nose, Discussed their bargain, reconciled them soon To hard necessity, disbursed the cash, And hastened to subjoin, wherever type Proclaimed "Miranda" to the public, "Called Now Firm-Miranda." There, a colony, They flourish underneath the name that still Maintains the old repute, I understand. They built their Clairvaux, dream-Château, in Spain, Perhaps--but Place Vendôme is waking worth: Oh, they lost little!--only, man and man Hardly conclude transactions of the kind As cousin should with cousin,--cousins think. For the rest, all was honorably done, So, ere buds break to blossom, let us breathe! Never suppose there was one particle Of recrudescence--wound, half-healed before, Set freshly running--sin, repressed as such, New loosened as necessity of life! In all this revocation and resolve, Far be sin's self-indulgence from your thought! The man had simply made discovery, By process I respect if not admire, That what was, was:--that turf, his feet had touched, Felt solid just as much as yonder towers He saw with eyes, but did not stand upon, And could not, if he would, reach in a leap. People had told him flowery turf was false To footstep, tired the traveller soon, beside: That was untrue. They told him "One fair stride Plants on safe platform, and secures man rest." That was untrue. Some varied the advice: "Neither was solid, towers no more than turf:" Double assertion, therefore twice as false. "I like these amateurs"--our friend had laughed, Could he turn what he felt to what he thought, And, that again, to what he put in words: "I like their pretty trial, proof of paste Or precious stone, by delicate approach Of eye askance, fine feel of finger-tip, Or touch of tongue inquisitive for cold. I tried my jewels in a crucible: Fierce fire has felt them, licked them, left them sound. Don't tell me that my earthly love is sham, My heavenly fear a clever counterfeit! Each may oppose each, yet be true alike!"

To build up, independent of the towers, A durable pavilion o'er the turf, Had issued in disaster. "What remained Except, by tunnel, or else gallery, To keep communication 'twixt the two, Unite the opposites, both near and far, And never try complete abandonment Of one or other?" so he thought, not said. And to such engineering feat, I say, Monsieur Léonce Miranda saw the means Precisely in this revocation prompt Of just those benefits of worldly wealth Conferred upon his Cousinry--all but!

This Clairvaux--you would know, were you at top Of yonder crowning grace, its Belvedere-- Is situate in one angle-niche of three, At equidistance from Saint-Rambert--there Behind you, and The Ravissante, beside-- There: steeple, steeple, and this Clairvaux-top (A sort of steeple) constitute a trine, With not a tenement to break each side, Two miles or so in length, if eye can judge.

Now this is native land of miracle. Oh, why, why, why, from all recorded time, Was miracle not wrought once, only once, To help whoever wanted help indeed? If on the day when Spring's green girlishness Grew nubile, and she trembled into May, And our Miranda climbed to clasp the Spring A-tiptoe o'er the sea, those wafts of warmth, Those cloudlets scudding under the bare blue, And all that new sun, that fresh hope about His airy place of observation,--friend, Feel with me that if just then, just for once, Some angel,--such as the authentic pen Yonder records a daily visitant Of ploughman Claude, rheumatic in the joints, And spinster Jeanne, with megrim troubled sore,-- If such an angel, with naught else to do, Had taken station on the pinnacle And simply said, "Léonce, look straight before! Neither to right hand nor to left: for why? Being a stupid soul, you want a guide To turn the goodness in you to account And make stupidity submit itself. Go to Saint-Rambert! Straightway get such guide! There stands a man of men. You, jeweller, Must needs have heard how once the biggest block Of diamond now in Europe lay exposed 'Mid specimens of stone and earth and ore, On huckster's stall,--Navona names the Square, And Rome the city for the incident,-- Labelled 'quartz-crystal, price one halfpenny.' Haste and secure that ha'p'worth, on your life! That man will read you rightly head to foot, Mark the brown face of you, the bushy beard, The breadth 'twixt shoulderblades, and through each black Castilian orbit, see into your soul. Talk to him for five minutes--nonsense, sense, No matter what--describe your horse, your hound,-- Give your opinion of the policy Of Monsieur Rouher,--will he succor Rome? Your estimate of what may outcome be From Œcumenical Assemblage there! After which samples of intelligence, Rapidly run through those events you call Your past life, tell what once you tried to do, What you intend on doing this next May! There he stands, reads an English newspaper, Stock-still, and now, again upon the move, Paces the beach to taste the Spring, like you, Since both are human beings in God's eye. He will have understood you, I engage. Endeavor, for your part, to understand He knows more, and loves better, than the world That never heard his name, and never may. He will have recognized, ere breath be spent And speech at end, how much that 's good in man, And generous, and self-devoting, makes Monsieur Léonce Miranda worth his help; While sounding to the bottom ignorance Historical and philosophical And moral and religious, all one couch Of crassitude, a portent of its kind. Then, just as he would pityingly teach Your body to repair maltreatment, give Advice that you should make those stumps to stir With artificial hands of caoutchouc, So would he soon supply your crippled soul With crutches, from his own intelligence, Able to help you onward in the path Of rectitude whereto your face is set, And counsel justice--to yourself, the first, To your associate, very like a wife Or something better,--to the world at large, Friends, strangers, horses, hounds, and Cousinry-- All which amount of justice will include Justice to God. Go and consult his voice!" Since angel would not say this simple truth, What hinders that my heart relieve itself, Milsand, who makest warm my wintry world, And wise my heaven, if there we consort too? Monsieur Léonce Miranda turned, alas, Or was turned, by no angel, t' other way, And got him guidance of The Ravissante.

Now, into the originals of faith, Yours, mine, Miranda's, no inquiry here! Of faith, as apprehended by mankind, The causes, were they caught and catalogued, Would too distract, too desperately foil Inquirer. How may analyst reduce Quantities to exact their opposites, Value to zero, then bring zero back To value of supreme preponderance? How substitute thing meant for thing expressed? Detect the wire-thread through that fluffy silk Men call their rope, their real compulsive power? Suppose effected such anatomy, And demonstration made of what belief Has moved believer--were the consequence Reward at all? would each man straight deduce, From proved reality of cause, effect Conformable--believe and unbelieve According to your True thus disengaged From all his heap of False called reason first?

No: hand once used to hold a soft thick twist, Cannot now grope its way by wire alone: Childhood may catch the knack, scarce Youth, not Age! That 's the reply rewards you. Just as well Remonstrate to yon peasant in the blouse That, had he justified the true intent Of Nature who composed him thus and thus, Weakly or strongly, here he would not stand Struggling with uncongenial earth and sky, But elsewhere tread the surface of the globe, Since one meridian suits the faulty lungs, Another bids the sluggish liver work. "Here I was born, for better or for worse: I did not choose a climate for myself; Admit, my life were healthy, led elsewhere," (He answers,) "how am I to migrate, pray?"

Therefore the course to take is--spare your pains, And trouble uselessly with discontent Nor soul nor body, by parading proof That neither haply had known ailment, placed Precisely where the circumstance forbade Their lot should fall to either of the pair. But try and, what you find wrong, remedy, Accepting the conditions: never ask "How came you to be born here with those lungs, That liver?" But bid asthma smoke a pipe, Stramonium, just as if no Tropics were, And ply with calomel the sluggish duct, Nor taunt "The born Norwegian breeds no bile!" And as with body, so proceed with soul: Nor less discerningly, where faith you found, However foolish and fantastic, grudge To play the doctor and amend mistake, Because a wisdom were conceivable Whence faith had sprung robust above disease. Far beyond human help, that source of things! Since, in the first stage, so to speak,--first stare Of apprehension at the invisible,-- Begins divergency of mind from mind, Superior from inferior: leave this first! Little you change there! What comes afterward-- From apprehended thing, each inference With practicality concerning life, This you may test and try, confirm the right Or contravene the wrong which reasons there. The offspring of the sickly faith must prove Sickly act also: stop a monster-birth! When water 's in the cup, and not the cloud, Then is the proper time for chemic test: Belief permits your skill to operate When, drop by drop condensed from misty heaven, 'T is wrung out, lies a bowl-full in the fleece. How dew by spoonfuls came, let Gideon say: What purpose water serves, your word or two May teach him, should he fancy it lights fire.

Concerning, then, our vaporous Ravissante-- How fable first precipitated faith.-- Silence you get upon such point from me. But when I see come posting to the pair At Clairvaux, for the cure of soul-disease, This Father of the Mission, Parish-priest, This Mother of the Convent, Nun I know-- They practise in that second stage of things; They boast no fresh distillery of faith; 'T is dogma in the bottle, bright and old, They bring; and I pretend to pharmacy. They undertake the cure with all my heart! He trusts them, and they surely trust themselves. I ask no better. Never mind the cause, Fons et origo of the malady: Apply the drug with courage! Here 's our case. Monsieur Léonce Miranda asks of God, --May a man, living in illicit tie, Continue, by connivance of the Church, No matter what amends he please to make Short of forthwith relinquishing the sin? Physicians, what do you propose for cure?

Father and Mother of The Ravissante, Read your own records, and you find prescribed As follows, when a couple out of sorts Rather than gravely suffering, sought your skill And thereby got their health again. Perpend! Two and a half good centuries ago, Luc de la Maison Rouge, a nobleman Of Claise, (the river gives this country name,) And, just as noblewoman, Maude his wife, Having been married many happy years Spent in God's honor and man's service too, Conceived, while yet in flower of youth and hope, The project of departing each from each Forever, and dissolving marriage-bonds That both might enter a religious life. Needing, before they came to such resolve, Divine illumination,--course was clear,-- They visited your church in pilgrimage, On Christmas morn: communicating straight, They heard three Masses proper for the day, "It is incredible with what effect"-- Quoth the Cistercian monk I copy from-- And, next day, came, again communicants, Again heard Masses manifold, but now With added thanks to Christ for special grace And consolation granted: in the night, Had been divorce from marriage, manifest By signs and tokens. So, they made great gifts, Left money for more Masses, and returned Homeward rejoicing--he, to take the rules, As Brother Dionysius, Capucin! She, to become first postulant, then nun According to the rules of Benedict, Sister Scolastica: so ended they, And so do I--not end nor yet commence One note or comment. What was done was done. Now, Father of the Mission, here 's your case! And, Mother of the Convent, here 's its cure! If separation was permissible, And that decree of Christ "What God hath joined Let no man put asunder" nullified Because a couple, blameless in the world, Had the conceit that, still more blamelessly, Out of the world, by breach of marriage-vow, Their life was like to pass,--you oracles Of God,--since holy Paul says such you are,-- Hesitate, not one moment, to pronounce When questioned by the pair now needing help, "Each from the other go, you guilty ones, Preliminary to your least approach Nearer the Power that thus could strain a point In favor of a pair of innocents Who thought their wedded hands not clean enough To touch and leave unsullied their souls' snow Are not your hands found filthy by the world, Mere human law and custom? Not a step Nearer till hands be washed and purified!"

What they did say is immaterial, since Certainly it was nothing of the kind. There was no washing hands of him (alack, You take me?--in the figurative sense!) But, somehow, gloves were drawn o'er dirt and all, And practice with the Church procured thereby. Seeing that,--all remonstrance proved in vain, Persuasives tried and terrors put to use, I nowise question,--still the guilty pair Only embraced the closelier, obstinate,-- Father and Mother went from Clairvaux back Their weary way, with heaviness of heart, I grant you, but each palm well crossed with coin, And nothing like a smutch perceptible. Monsieur Léonce Miranda might compound For sin?--no, surely! but by gifts--prepare His soul the better for contrition, say!

Gift followed upon gift, at all events. Good counsel was rejected, on one part: Hard money, on the other--may we hope Was unreflectingly consigned to purse?

Two years did this experiment engage Monsieur Léonce Miranda: how, by gifts To God and to God's poor, a man might stay In sin and yet stave off sin's punishment. No salve could be conceived more nicely mixed For this man's nature: generosity,-- Susceptibility to human ills, Corporeal, mental,--self-devotedness Made up Miranda--whether strong or weak Elsewhere, may be inquired another time. In mercy he was strong, at all events. Enough! he could not see a beast in pain, Much less a man, without the will to aid; And where the will was, oft the means were too, Since that good bargain with the Cousinry.

The news flew fast about the countryside That, with the kind man, it was ask and have; And ask and have they did. To instance you:-- A mob of beggars at The Ravissante Clung to his skirts one day, and cried "We thirst!" Forthwith he bade a cask of wine be broached To satisfy all comers, till, dead-drunk So satisfied, they strewed the holy place. For this was grown religious and a rite: Such slips of judgment, gifts irregular, Showed but as spillings of the golden grist On either side the hopper, through blind zeal; Steadily the main stream went pouring on From mill to mouth of sack--held wide and close By Father of the Mission, Parish-priest, And Mother of the Convent, Nun I know, With such effect that, in the sequel, proof Was tendered to the Court at Vire, last month, That in these same two years, expenditure At quiet Clairvaux rose to the amount Of Forty Thousand English Pounds: whereof A trifle went, no inappropriate close Of bounty, to supply the Virgin's crown With that stupendous jewel from New York, Now blazing as befits the Star of Sea.

Such signs of grace, outward and visible, I rather give you, for your sake and mine, Than put in evidence the inward strife, Spiritual effort to compound for fault By payment of devotion--thank the phrase! That payment was as punctual, do not doubt, As its far easier fellow. Yesterday I trudged the distance from The Ravissante To Clairvaux, with my two feet: but our friend, The more to edify the country-folk, Was wont to make that journey on both knees. "Maliciously perverted incident!" Snarled the retort, when this was told at Vire: "The man paid mere devotion as he passed, Knelt decently at just each wayside shrine!" Alas, my lawyer, I trudged yesterday-- On my two feet, and with both eyes wide ope,-- The distance, and could find no shrine at all! According to his lights, I praise the man. Enough! incessant was devotion, say-- With her, you know of, praying at his side. Still, there be relaxations of the tense: Or life indemnifies itself for strain, Or finds its very strain grow feebleness. Monsieur Léonce Miranda's days were passed Much as of old, in simple work and play. His first endeavor, on recovery From that sad ineffectual sacrifice, Had been to set about repairing loss: Never admitting, loss was to repair. No word at any time escaped his lips --Betrayed a lurking presence, in his heart, Of sorrow; no regret for mischief done-- Punishment suffered, he would rather say. Good-tempered schoolboy-fashion, he preferred To laugh away his flogging, fair price paid For pleasure out of bounds: if needs must be, Get pleasure and get flogged a second time! A sullen subject would have nursed the scars And made excuse, for throwing grammar by, That bench was grown uneasy to the seat. No: this poor fellow cheerfully got hands Fit for his stumps, and what hands failed to do, The other members did in their degree-- Unwonted service. With his mouth alone He wrote, nay, painted pictures--think of that! He played on a piano pedal-keyed, Kicked out--if it was Bach's--good music thence. He rode, that 's readily conceivable, But then he shot and never missed his bird, With other feats as dexterous: I infer He was not ignorant what hands are worth, When he resolved on ruining his own. So the two years passed somehow--who shall say Foolishly,--as one estimates mankind, The work they do, the play they leave undone?-- Two whole years spent in that experiment I told you of, at Clairvaux all the time, From April on to April: why that month More than another, notable in life? Does the awakening of the year arouse Man to new projects, nerve him for fresh feats Of what proves, for the most part of mankind Playing or working, novel folly too? At any rate, I see no slightest sign Of folly (let me tell you in advance), Nothing but wisdom meets me manifest In the procedure of the Twentieth Day Of April, 'Seventy,--folly's year in France.

It was delightful Spring, and out of doors Temptation to adventure. Walk or ride? There was a wild young horse to exercise, And teach the way to go, and pace to keep: Monsieur Léonce Miranda chose to ride. So, while they clapped soft saddle straight on back, And bitted jaw to satisfaction,--since The partner of his days must stay at home, Teased by some trifling legacy of March To throat or shoulder,--visit duly paid And "farewell" given and received again,-- As chamber-door considerately closed Behind him, still five minutes were to spend. How better, than by clearing, two and two, The staircase-steps and coming out aloft Upon the platform yonder (raise your eyes!) And tasting, just as those two years before, Spring's bright advance upon the tower a-top, The feature of the front, the Belvedere?

Look at it for a moment while I breathe.

IV

Ready to hear the rest? How good you are!

Now for this Twentieth splendid day of Spring, All in a tale,--sun, wind, sky, earth and sea,-- To bid man, "Up, be doing!" Mount the stair, Monsieur Léonce Miranda mounts so brisk, And look--ere his elastic foot arrive-- Your longest, far and wide, o'er fronting space. Yon white streak--Havre lighthouse! Name and name, How the mind runs from each to each relay, Town after town, till Paris' self be touched, Superlatively big with life and death To all the world, that very day perhaps! He who stepped out upon the platform here, Pinnacled over the expanse, gave thought Neither to Rouher nor Ollivier, Roon Nor Bismarck, Emperor nor King, but just To steeple, church, and shrine, The Ravissante!

He saw Her, whom myself saw, but when Spring Was passing into Fall: not robed and crowned As, thanks to him, and her you know about, She stands at present; but She smiled the same. Thither he turned--to never turn away.

He thought ...

(Suppose I should prefer "He said"? Along with every act--and speech is act-- There go, a multitude impalpable To ordinary human faculty, The thoughts which give the act significance. Who is a poet needs must apprehend Alike both speech and thoughts which prompt to speak. Part these, and thought withdraws to poetry: Speech is reported in the newspaper.)

He said, then, probably no word at all, But thought as follows--in a minute's space-- One particle of ore beats out such leaf!

"This Spring-morn I am forty-three years old: In prime of life, perfection of estate Bodily, mental, nay, material too,-- My whole of worldly fortunes reach their height. Body and soul alike on eminence: It is not probable I ever raise Soul above standard by increase of worth, Nor reasonably may expect to lift Body beyond the present altitude.

"Behold me, Lady called The Ravissante! Such as I am, I--gave myself to you So long since, that I cannot say 'I give.' All my belongings, what is summed in life, I have submitted wholly--as man might, At least, as I might, who am weak, not strong,-- Wholly, then, to your rule and governance, So far as I had strength. My weakness was-- I felt a fascination, at each point And pore of me, a Power as absolute Claiming that soul should recognize her sway. Oh, you were no whit clearlier Queen, I see, Throughout the life that rolls out ribbon-like Its shot-silk length behind me, than the strange Mystery--how shall I denominate The unrobed One? Robed you go and crowned as well, Named by the nations: she is hard to name, Though you have spelt out certain characters Obscure upon what fillet binds her brow, Lust of the flesh, lust of the eye, life's pride. 'So call her, and contemn the enchantress!'--'Crush The despot, and recover liberty!' Cried despot and enchantress at each ear. You were conspicuous and pre-eminent, Authoritative and imperial,--you Spoke first, claimed homage: did I hesitate? Born for no mastery, but servitude, Men cannot serve two masters, says the Book; Master should measure strength with master, then, Before on servant is imposed a task. You spoke first, promised best, and threatened most; The other never threatened, promised, spoke A single word, but, when your part was done, Lifted a finger, and I, prostrate, knew Films were about me, though you stood aloof Smiling or frowning 'Where is power like mine To punish or reward thee? Rise, thou fool! Will to be free, and, lo, I lift thee loose!' Did I not will, and could I rise a whit? Lay I, at any time, content to lie? 'To lie, at all events, brings pleasure: make Amends by undemanded pain!' I said. Did not you prompt me? 'Purchase now by pain Pleasure hereafter in the world to come!' I could not pluck my heart out, as you bade: Unbidden, I burned off my hands at least. My soul retained its treasure; but my purse Lightened itself with much alacrity. Well, where is the reward? what promised fruit Of sacrifice in peace, content? what sense Of added strength to bear or to forbear? What influx of new light assists me now Even to guess you recognize a gain In what was loss enough to mortal me? But she, the less authoritative voice, Oh, how distinct enunciating, how Plain dealing! Gain she gave was gain indeed! That, you deny: that, you contemptuous call Acorns, swine's food not man's meat! 'Spurn the draff!' Ay, but those life-tree apples I prefer, Am I to die of hunger till they drop? Husks keep flesh from starvation, anyhow. Give those life-apples!--one, worth woods of oak, Worth acorns by the wagon-load,--one shoot Through heart and brain, assurance bright and brief That you, my Lady, my own Ravissante, Feel, through my famine, served and satisfied, Own me, your starveling, soldier of a sort! Your soldier! do I read my title clear Even to call myself your friend, not foe? What is the pact between us but a truce? At best I shall have staved off enmity, Obtained a respite, ransomed me from wrath. I pay, instalment by instalment, life, Earth's tribute-money, pleasures great and small, Whereof should at the last one penny piece Fall short, the whole heap becomes forfeiture. You find in me deficient soldiership: Want the whole life or none. I grudge that whole, Because I am not sure of recompense: Because I want faith. Whose the fault? I ask. If insufficient faith have done thus much, Contributed thus much of sacrifice, More would move mountains, you are warrant. Well, Grant, you, the grace, I give the gratitude! And what were easier? 'Ask and have' folk call Miranda's method: 'Have, nor need to ask!' So do they formulate your quality Superlative beyond my human grace. The Ravissante, you ravish men away From puny aches and petty pains, assuaged By man's own art with small expenditure Of pill or potion, unless, put to shame, Nature is roused and sets things right herself. Your miracles are grown our commonplace; No day but pilgrim hobbles his last mile, Kneels down and rises up, flings crutch away, Or else appends it to the reverend heap Beneath you, votive cripple-carpentry. Some few meet failure--oh, they wanted faith, And may betake themselves to La Salette, Or seek Lourdes, so that hence the scandal limp! The many get their grace and go their way Rejoicing, with a tale to tell,--most like, A staff to borrow, since the crutch is gone, Should the first telling happen at my house, And teller wet his whistle with my wine. I tell this to a doctor and he laughs: 'Give me permission to cry--Out of bed, You loth rheumatic sluggard! Cheat yon chair Of laziness, its gouty occupant!-- You should see miracles performed! But now, I give advice, and take as fee ten francs, And do as much as does your Ravissante. Send her that case of cancer to be cured I have refused to treat for any fee, Bring back my would-be patient sound and whole, And see me laugh on t'other side my mouth!' Can he be right, and are you hampered thus! Such pettiness restricts a miracle Wrought by the Great Physician, who hears prayer, Visibly seated in your mother-lap! He, out of nothing, made sky, earth, and sea, And all that in them is, man, beast, bird, fish, Down to this insect on my parapet. Look how the marvel of a minim crawls! Were I to kneel among the halt and maimed, And pray 'Who mad'st the insect with ten legs, Make me one finger grow where ten were once!' The very priests would thrust me out of church. 'What folly does the madman dare expect? No faith obtains--in this late age, at least-- Such cure as that! We ease rheumatics, though!'

"Ay, bring the early ages back again, What prodigy were unattainable? I read your annals. Here came Louis Onze, Gave thrice the sum he ever gave before At one time, some three hundred crowns, to wit-- On pilgrimage to pray for--health, he found? Did he? I do not read it in Commines. Here sent poor joyous Marie-Antoinette To thank you that a Dauphin dignified Her motherhood--called Duke of Normandy And Martyr of the Temple, much the same As if no robe of hers had dressed you rich; No silver lamps, she gave, illume your shrine! Here, following example, fifty years Ago, in gratitude for birth again Of yet another destined King of France, Did not the Duchess fashion with her hands, And frame in gold and crystal, and present A bouquet made of artificial flowers? And was he King of France, and is not he Still Count of Chambord?

"Such the days of faith, And such their produce to encourage mine! What now, if I too count without my host? I too have given money, ornament, And 'artificial flowers'--which, when I plucked, Seemed rooting at my heart and real enough: What if I gain thereby nor health of mind, Nor youth renewed which perished in its prime, Burnt to a cinder 'twixt the red-hot bars, Nor gain to see my second baby-hope Of managing to live on terms with both Opposing potentates, the Power and you, Crowned with success? I dawdle out my days In exile here at Clairvaux, with mock love, That gives, while whispering 'Would I dared refuse!'-- What the loud voice declares my heart's free gift! Mock worship, mock superiority O'er those I style the world's benighted ones, That irreligious sort I pity so, Dumas and even Hertford, who is Duke.

"Impiety? Not if I know myself! Not if you know the heart and soul I bare, I bid you cut, hack, slash, anatomize, Till peccant part be found and flung away! Demonstrate where I need more faith! Describe What act shall evidence sufficiency Of faith, your warrant for such exercise Of power, in my behalf, as all the world, Except poor praying me, declares profuse? Poor me? It is that world, not me alone, That world which prates of fixed laws and the like, I fain would save, poor world so ignorant! And your part were--what easy miracle? Oh, Lady, could I make your want like mine!"

Then his face grew one luminosity.

"Simple, sufficient! Happiness at height! I solve the riddle, I persuade mankind. I have been just the simpleton who stands-- Summoned to claim his patrimonial rights-- At shilly-shally, may he knock or no At his own door in his own house and home Whereof he holds the very title-deeds! Here is my title to this property, This power you hold for profit of myself And all the world at need--which need is now!

"My title--let me hear who controverts! Count Mailleville built yon church. Why did he so? Because he found your image. How came that? His shepherd told him that a certain sheep Was wont to scratch with hoof and scrape with horn At ground where once the Danes had razed a church. Thither he went, and there he dug, and thence He disinterred the image he conveyed In pomp to Londres yonder, his domain. You liked the old place better than the new. The Count might surely have divined as much: He did not; some one might have spoke a word: No one did. A mere dream had warned enough, That back again in pomp you best were borne: No dream warned, and no need of convoy was; An angel caught you up and clapped you down,-- No mighty task; you stand one metre high, And people carry you about at times. Why, then, did you despise the simple course? Because you are the Queen of Angels: when You front us in a picture, there flock they, Angels around you, here and everywhere.

"Therefore, to prove indubitable faith, Those angels that acknowledge you their queen, I summon them to bear me to your feet From Clairvaux through the air, an easy trip! Faith without flaw! I trust your potency, Benevolence, your will to save the world-- By such a simplest of procedures, too! Not even by affording angel-help, Unless it please you: there 's a simpler mode: Only suspend the law of gravity, And, while at back, permitted to propel, The air helps onward, let the air in front Cease to oppose my passage through the midst!

"Thus I bestride the railing, leg o'er leg, Thus, lo, I stand, a single inch away, At dizzy edge of death,--no touch of fear, As safe on tower above as turf below! Your smile enswathes me in beatitude, You lift along the votary--who vaults, Who, in the twinkling of an eye, revives, Dropt safely in the space before the church-- How crowded, since this morn is market-day! I shall not need to speak. The news will run Like wild-fire. 'Thousands saw Miranda's flight!' 'T is telegraphed to Paris in a trice. The Boulevard is one buzz--'Do you believe? Well, this time, thousands saw Miranda's flight: You know him, goldsmith in the Place Vendôme.' In goes the Empress to the Emperor: 'Now--will you hesitate to make disgorge Your wicked King of Italy his gains, Give the Legations to the Pope once more?' Which done,--why, grace goes back to operate, They themselves set a good example first, Resign the empire twenty years usurped, And Henry, the Desired One, reigns o'er France! Regenerated France makes all things new! My house no longer stands on Quai Rousseau, But Quai rechristened Alacoque: a quai Where Renan burns his book, and Veuillot burns Renan beside, since Veuillot rules the roast, Re-edits now indeed 'The Universe.' O blessing, O superlatively big With blessedness beyond all blessing dreamed By man! for just that promise has effect, 'Old things shall pass away and all be new!' Then, for a culminating mercy-feat, Wherefore should I dare dream impossible That I too have my portion in the change? My past with all its sorrow, sin and shame, Becomes a blank, a nothing! There she stands, Clara de Millefleurs, all deodorized, Twenty years' stain wiped off her innocence! There never was Muhlhausen, nor at all Duke Hertford: naught that was, remains, except The beauty,--yes, the beauty is unchanged! Well, and the soul too, that must keep the same! And so the trembling little virgin hand Melts into mine, that 's back again, of course! --Think not I care about my poor old self! I only want my hand for that one use, To take her hand, and say 'I marry you-- Men, women, angels, you behold my wife! There is no secret, nothing wicked here, Nothing she does not wish the world to know!' None of your married women have the right To mutter 'Yes, indeed, she beats us all In beauty,--but our lives are pure at least!' Bear witness, for our marriage is no thing Done in a corner! 'T is The Ravissante Repairs the wrong of Paris. See, She smiles, She beckons, She bids 'Hither, both of you!' And may we kneel? And will you bless us both? And may I worship you, and yet love her? Then!"-- A sublime spring from the balustrade About the tower so often talked about, A flash in middle air, and stone-dead lay Monsieur Léonce Miranda on the turf.

A gardener who watched, at work the while Dibbling a flower-bed for geranium-shoots, Saw the catastrophe, and, straightening back, Stood up and shook his brows. "Poor soul, poor soul, Just what I prophesied the end would be! Ugh--the Red Night-cap!" (as he raised the head) "This must be what he meant by those strange words While I was weeding larkspurs, yesterday, 'Angels would take him!' Mad!"

No! sane, I say Such being the conditions of his life, Such end of life was not irrational. Hold a belief, you only half-believe, With all-momentous issues either way,-- And I advise you imitate this leap, Put faith to proof, be cured or killed at once! Call you men, killed through cutting cancer out, The worse for such an act of bravery? That 's more than I know. In my estimate, Better lie prostrate on his turf at peace, Than, wistful, eye, from out the tent, the tower, Racked with a doubt, "Will going on bare knees All the way to The Ravissante and back, Saying my Ave Mary all the time, Somewhat excuse if I postpone my march? --Make due amends for that one kiss I gave In gratitude to her who held me out Superior Fricquot's sermon, hot from press, A-spread with hands so sinful yet so smooth?"

And now, sincerely do I pray she stand, Clara, with interposing sweep of robe, Between us and this horror! Any screen Turns white by contrast with the tragic pall; And her dubiety distracts at least, As well as snow, from such decided black. With womanhood, at least, we have to do: Ending with Clara--is the word too kind?

Let pass the shock! There 's poignancy enough When what one parted with, a minute since, Alive and happy, is returned a wreck-- All that was, all that seemed about to be, Razed out and ruined now forevermore, Because a straw descended on this scale Rather than that, made death o'erbalance life. But think of cage-mates in captivity, Inured to day-long, night-long vigilance Each of the other's tread and angry turn If behind prison bars the jailer knocked: These whom society shut out, and thus Penned in, to settle down and regulate By the strange law, the solitary life-- When death divorces such a fellowship, Theirs may pair off with that prodigious woe Imagined of a ghastly brotherhood-- One watcher left in lighthouse out at sea, With leagues of surf between the land and him, Alive with his dead partner on the rock; One galley-slave, whom curse and blow compel To labor on, ply oar--beside his chain, Encumbered with a corpse-companion now. Such these: although, no prisoners, self-entrenched, They kept the world off from their barricade.

Memory, gratitude, was poignant, sure, Though pride brought consolation of a kind. Twenty years long had Clara been--of whom The rival, nay, the victor, past dispute? What if in turn The Ravissante at length Proved victor--which was doubtful--anyhow, Here lay the inconstant with, conspicuous too, The fruit of his good fortune!

"Has he gained By leaving me?" she might soliloquize: "All love could do, I did for him. I learned By heart his nature, what he loved and loathed. Leaned to with liking, turned from with distaste. No matter what his least velleity, I was determined he should want no wish, And in conformity administered To his requirement; most of joy I mixed With least of sorrow in life's daily draught, Twenty years long, life's proper average. And when he got to quarrel with my cup, Would needs out-sweeten honey, and discard That gall-drop we require lest nectar cloy,-- I did not call him fool, and vex my friend, But quietly allowed experiment, Encouraged him to spice his drink, and now Grate lignum vitæ" now bruise so-called grains Of Paradise, and pour now, for perfume, Distilment rare, the rose of Jericho, Holy-thorn, passion-flower, and what know I? Till beverage obtained the fancied smack. 'T was wild-flower-wine that neither helped nor harmed Who sipped and held it for restorative-- What harm? But here has he been through the hedge Straying in search of simples, while my back Was turned a minute, and he finds a prize, Monkshood and belladonna! O my child, My truant little boy, despite the beard, The body two feet broad and six feet long, And what the calendar counts middle age-- You wanted, did you, to enjoy a flight? Why not have taken into confidence Me, that was mother to you?--never mind What mock disguise of mistress held you mine! Had you come laughing, crying, with request, 'Make me fly, mother!' I had run upstairs And held you tight the while I danced you high In air from tower-top, singing 'Off we go (On pilgrimage to Lourdes some day next month), And swift we soar (to Rome with Peter-pence), And low we light (at Paris where we pick Another jewel from our store of stones And send it for a present to the Pope)!' So, dropt indeed you were, but on my knees, Rolling and crowing, not a whit the worse For journey to your Ravissante and back. Now, no more Clairvaux--which I made you build, And think an inspiration of your own-- No more fine house, trim garden, pretty park, Nothing I used to busy you about, And make believe you worked for my surprise! What weariness to me will work become Now that I need not seem surprised again! This boudoir, for example, with the doves (My stupid maid has damaged, dusting one) Embossed in stucco o'er the looking-glass Beside the toilet-table! dear--dear me!"

Here she looked up from her absorbing grief, And round her, crow-like grouped, the Cousinry, (She grew aware) sat witnesses at watch. For, two days had elapsed since fate befell The courser in the meadow, stretched so stark. They did not cluster on the tree-tops, close Their sooty ranks, caw and confabulate For nothing: but, like calm determined crows, They came to take possession of their corpse. And who shall blame them? Had not they the right? One spoke. "They would be gentle, not austere. They understood, and were compassionate. Madame Muhlhausen lay too abject now For aught but the sincerest pity; still, Since plain speech salves the wound it seems to make, They must speak plainly--circumstances spoke! Sin had conceived and brought forth death indeed. As the commencement, so the close of things: Just what might be expected all along! Monsieur Léonce Miranda launched his youth Into a cesspool of debauchery, And, if he thence emerged all dripping slime, --Where was the change except from thin to thick, One warm rich mud-bath, Madame?--you, in place Of Paris-drainage and distilment, you He never needed budge from, boiled to rags! True, some good instinct left the natural man, Some touch of that deep dye wherewith imbued By education, in his happier day, The hopeful offspring of high parentage Was fleece-marked moral and religious sheep,-- Some ruddle, faint reminder (we admit), Stuck to Miranda, rubbed he ne'er so rude Against the goatly coarseness: to the last, Moral he styled himself, religious too! Which means--what ineradicable good You found, you never left till good's self proved Perversion and distortion, nursed to growth So monstrous, that the tree-stock, dead and dry, Were seemlier far than such a heap grotesque Of fungous nourishing excrescence. Here, Sap-like affection, meant for family, Stole off to feed one sucker fat--yourself; While branchage, trained religiously aloft To rear its head in reverence to the sun, Was pulled down earthward, pegged and picketed, By topiary contrivance, till the tree Became an arbor where, at vulgar ease, Sat superstition grinning through the loops. Still, nature is too strong or else too weak For cockney treatment: either, tree springs back To pristine shape, or else degraded droops, And turns to touchwood at the heart. So here-- Body and mind, at last the man gave way. His body--there it lies, what part was left Unmutilated! for, the strife commenced Two years ago, when, both hands burnt to ash, --A branch broke loose, by loss of what choice twigs! As for his mind--behold our register Of all its moods, from the incipient mad, Nay, mere erratic, to the stark insane, Absolute idiocy or what is worse! All have we catalogued--extravagance In worldly matters, luxury absurd, And zeal as crazed in its expenditure Of nonsense called devotion. Don't we know --We Cousins, bound in duty to our kin,-- What mummeries were practised by you two At Clairvaux? Not a servant got discharge But came and told his grievance, testified To acts which turn religion to a farce. And as the private mock, so patent--see-- The public scandal! Ask the neighborhood-- Or rather, since we asked them long ago, Read what they answer, depositions down, Signed, sealed and sworn to! Brief, the man was mad. We are his heirs and claim our heritage. Madame Muhlhausen,--whom good taste forbids We qualify as do these documents,-- Fear not lest justice stifle mercy's prayer! True, had you lent a willing ear at first, Had you obeyed our call two years ago, Restrained a certain insolence of eye, A volubility of tongue, that time, Your prospects had been none the worse, perhaps. Still, fear not but a decent competence Shall smooth the way for your declining age! What we propose, then" ...

Clara dried her eyes, Sat up, surveyed the consistory, spoke After due pause, with something of a smile.

"Gentlemen, kinsfolk of my friend defunct, In thus addressing me--of all the world!-- You much misapprehend what part I play. I claim no property you speak about. You might as well address the park-keeper, Harangue him on some plan advisable For covering the park with cottage-plots. He is the servant, no proprietor, His business is to see the sward kept trim, Untrespassed over by the indiscreet: Beyond that, he refers you to myself-- Another servant of another kind-- Who again--quite as limited in act-- Refer you, with your projects,--can I else? To who in mastery is ultimate, The Church. The Church is sole administrant, Since sole possessor of what worldly wealth Monsieur Léonce Miranda late possessed. Often enough has he attempted, nay, Forced me, wellnigh, to occupy the post You seemingly suppose I fill,--receive As gift the wealth intrusted me as grace. This--for quite other reasons than appear So cogent to your perspicacity-- This I refused; and, firm as you could wish, Still was my answer, 'We two understand Each one the other. I am intimate --As how can be mere fools and knaves--or, say, Even your Cousins?--with your love to me, Devotion to the Church. Would Providence Appoint, and make me certain of the same, That I survive you (which is little like, Seeing you hardly overpass my age And more than match me in abundant health) In such case, certainly I would accept Your bounty: better I than alien hearts Should execute your planned benevolence To man, your proposed largess to the Church, But though I be survivor,--weakly frame, With only woman's wit to make amends,-- When I shall die, or while I am alive, Cannot you figure me an easy mark For hypocritical rapacity, Kith, kin and generation, crouching low, Ever on the alert to pounce on prey? Far be it I should say they profited By that first frenzy-fit themselves induced,-- Cold-blooded scenical buffoons at sport With horror and damnation o'er a grave: That were too shocking--I absolve them there! Nor did they seize the moment of your swoon To rifle pocket, wring a paper thence, Their Cousinly dictation, and enrich Thereby each mother's son as heart could wish, Had nobody supplied a codicil. But when the pain, poor friend! had prostrated Your body, though your soul was right once more, I fear they turned your weakness to account! Why else to me, who agonizing watched, Sneak, cap in hand, now bribe me to forsake My maimed Léonce, now bully, cap on head, The impudent pretension to assuage Such sorrows as demanded Cousins' care?-- For you rejected, hated, fled me, far In foreign lands you laughed at me!--they judged. And, think you, will the unkind one hesitate To try conclusions with my helplessness,-- To pounce on and misuse your derelict, Helped by advantage that bereavement lends Folk, who, while yet you lived, played tricks like these? You only have to die, and they detect, In all you said and did, insanity! Your faith was fetish-worship, your regard For Christ's prime precept which endows the poor And strips the rich, a craze from first to last! They so would limn your likeness, paint your life, That if it ended by some accident,-- For instance, if, attempting to arrange The plants below that dangerous Belvedere I cannot warn you from sufficiently, You lost your balance and fell headlong--fine Occasion, such, for crying Suicide! Non compos mentis, naturally next, Hands over Clairvaux to a Cousin-tribe Who nor like me nor love The Ravissante: Therefore be ruled by both! Life-interest In Clairvaux,--conservation, guardianship Of earthly good for heavenly purpose,--give Such and no other proof of confidence! Let Clara represent The Ravissante!' --To whom accordingly, he then and there Bequeathed each stick and stone, by testament In holograph, mouth managing the quill: Go, see the same in Londres, if you doubt!"

Then smile grew laugh, as sudden up she stood And out she spoke: intemperate the speech!

"And now, sirs, for your special courtesy, Your candle held up to the character Of Lucie Steiner, whom you qualify As coming short of perfect womanhood. Yes, kindly critics, truth for once you tell! True is it that through childhood, poverty, Sloth, pressure of temptation, I succumbed, And, ere I found what honor meant, lost mine. So was the sheep lost, which the Shepherd found And never lost again. My friend found me; Or better say, the Shepherd found us both-- Since he, my friend, was much in the same mire, When first we made acquaintance. Each helped each,-- A twofold extrication from the slough; And, saving me, he saved himself. Since then, Unsmirched we kept our cleanliness of coat. It is his perfect constancy, you call My friend's main fault--he never left his love! While as for me, I dare your worst, impute One breach of loving bond, these twenty years. To me whom only cobwebs bound, you count! 'He was religiously disposed in youth!' That may be, though we did not meet at church. Under my teaching did he, like you scamps, Become Voltairian--fools who mock his faith? 'Infirm of body!' I am silent there: Even yourselves acknowledge service done, Whatever motive your own souls supply As inspiration. Love made labor light."

Then laugh grew frown, and frown grew terrible. Do recollect what sort of person shrieked-- "Such was I, saint or sinner, what you please: And who is it casts stone at me but you? By your own showing, sirs, you bought and sold, Took what advantage bargain promised bag, Abundantly did business, and with whom? The man whom you pronounce imbecile, push Indignantly aside if he presume To settle his affairs like other folk! How is it you have stepped into his shoes, And stand there, bold as brass, 'Miranda, late; Now, Firm-Miranda'? Sane, he signed away That little birthright, did he? Hence to trade! I know and he knew who 't was dipped and ducked, Truckled and played the parasite in vain, As now one, now the other, here you cringed, Were feasted, took our presents, you--those drops, Just for your wife's adornment! you--that spray Exactly suiting, as most diamonds would, Your daughter on her marriage! No word then Of somebody the wanton! Hence, I say, Subscribers to the 'Siècle,' every snob-- For here the post brings me the 'Univers'! Home and make money in the Place Vendôme, Sully yourselves no longer by my sight, And, when next Schneider wants a new parure, Be careful lest you stick there by mischance That stone beyond compare intrusted you To kindle faith with, when, Miranda's gift, Crowning the very crown, The Ravissante Shall claim it! As to Clairvaux--talk to Her! She answers by the Chapter of Raimbaux!" Vituperative, truly! All this wrath Because the man's relations thought him mad! Whereat, I hope you see the Cousinry Turn each to other, blankly dolorous, Consult a moment, more by shrug and shrug Than mere man's language,--finally conclude To leave the reprobate untroubled now In her unholy triumph, till the Law Shall right the injured ones; for gentlemen Allow the female sex, this sort at least. Its privilege. So, simply "Cockatrice!"-- "Jezebel!"--"Queen of the Camellias!"--cried Cousin to cousin, as yon hinge a-creak Shut out the party, and the gate returned To custody of Clairvaux. "Pretty place! What say you, when it proves our property, To trying a concurrence with La Roche, And laying down a rival oyster-bed? Where the park ends, the sea begins, you know." So took they comfort till they came to Vire.

But I would linger, fain to snatch a look At Clara as she stands in pride of place, Somewhat more satisfying than my glance So furtive, so near futile, yesterday, Because one must be courteous. Of the masks That figure in this little history, She only has a claim to my respect, And one-eyed, in her French phrase, rules the blind. Miranda hardly did his best with life: He might have opened eye, exerted brain, Attained conception as to right and law In certain points respecting intercourse Of man with woman--love, one likes to say; Which knowledge had dealt rudely with the claim Of Clara to play representative And from perdition rescue soul, forsooth! Also, the sense of him should have sufficed For building up some better theory Of how God operates in heaven and earth, Than would establish Him participant In doings yonder at The Ravissante. The heart was wise according to its lights And limits; but the head refused more sun, And shrank into its mew, and craved less space. Clara, I hold the happier specimen,-- It may be, through that artist-preference For work complete, inferiorly proposed, To incompletion, though it aim aright. Morally, no! Aspire, break bounds! I say, Endeavor to be good, and better still, And best! Success is naught, endeavor 's all. But intellect adjusts the means to ends, Tries the low thing, and leaves it done, at least; No prejudice to high thing, intellect Would do and will do, only give the means. Miranda, in my picture-gallery, Presents a Blake; be Clara--Meissonnier! Merely considered so by artist, mind! For, break through Art and rise to poetry, Bring Art to tremble nearer, touch enough The verge of vastness to inform our soul What orb makes transit through the dark above, And there 's the triumph!--there the incomplete, More than completion, matches the immense,-- Then, Michelagnolo against the world! With this proviso, let me study her Approvingly, the finished little piece! Born, bred, with just one instinct,--that of growth,-- Her quality was, caterpillar-like, To all-unerringly select a leaf And without intermission feed her fill, Become the Painted Peacock, or belike The Brimstone-wing, when time of year should suit; And 't is a sign (say entomologists) Of sickness, when the creature stops its meal One minute, either to look up at heaven, Or turn aside for change of aliment. No doubt there was a certain ugliness In the beginning, as the grub grew worm: She could not find the proper plant at once, But crawled and fumbled through a whole parterre. Husband Muhlhausen served for stuff not long: Then came confusion of the slimy track From London, "where she gave the tone awhile," To Paris: let the stalks start up again, Now she is off them, all the greener they! But, settled on Miranda, how she sucked, Assimilated juices, took the tint, Mimicked the form and texture of her food! Was he for pastime? Who so frolic-fond As Clara? Had he a devotion-fit? Clara grew serious with like qualm, be sure! In health and strength he,--healthy too and strong, She danced, rode, drove, took pistol-practice, fished, Nay, "managed sea-skiff with consummate skill." In pain and weakness, he,--she patient watched And whiled the slow drip-dropping hours away. She bound again the broken self-respect, She picked out the true meaning from mistake, Praised effort in each stumble, laughed "Well climbed!" When others groaned "None ever grovelled so!" "Rise, you have gained experience!" was her word: "Lie satisfied, the ground is just your place!" They thought appropriate counsel. "Live, not die, And take my full life to eke out your own: That shall repay me and with interest! Write!--is your mouth not clever as my hand? Paint!--the last Exposition warrants me, Plenty of people must ply brush with toes. And as for music--look, what folk nickname A lyre, those ancients played to ravishment,-- Over the pendule, see, Apollo grasps A three-stringed gimcrack which no Liszt could coax Such music from as jew's-harp makes to-day! Do your endeavor like a man, and leave The rest to 'fortune who assists the bold'-- Learn, you, the Latin which you taught me first, You clever creature--clever, yes, I say!"

If he smiled "Let us love, love's wrong comes right, Shows reason last of all! Necessity Must meanwhile serve for plea--so, mind not much Old Fricquot's menace!"--back she smiled "Who minds?" If he sighed "Ah, but She is strict, they say, For all Her mercy at The Ravissante, She scarce will be put off so!"--straight a sigh Returned "My lace must go to trim Her gown!" I nowise doubt she inwardly believed Smiling and sighing had the same effect Upon the venerated image. What She did believe in, I as little doubt, Was--Clara's self's own birthright to sustain Existence, grow from grub to butterfly, Upon unlimited Miranda-leaf; In which prime article of faith confirmed, According to capacity, she fed On and on till the leaf was eaten up, That April morning. Even then, I praise Her forethought which prevented leafless stalk Bestowing any hoarded succulence On earwig and black-beetle squat beneath;-- Clairvaux, that stalk whereto her hermitage She tacked by golden throw of silk, so fine, So anything but feeble, that her sleep Inside it, through last winter, two years long, Recked little of the storm and strife without. "But--loved him?" Friend, I do not praise her love! True love works never for the loved one so, Nor spares skin-surface, smoothening truth away. Love bids touch truth, endure truth, and embrace Truth, though, embracing truth, love crush itself. "Worship not me, but God!" the angels urge: That is love's grandeur: still, in pettier love The nice eye can distinguish grade and grade. Shall mine degrade the velvet green and puce Of caterpillar, palmer-worm--or what-- Ball in and out of ball, each ball with brush Of Venus' eye-fringe round the turquoise egg That nestles soft,--compare such paragon With any scarabæus of the brood Which, born to fly, keeps wing in wing-case, walks Persistently a-trundling dung on earth?

Egypt may venerate such hierophants, Not I--the couple yonder, Father Priest And Mother Nun, who came and went and came, Beset this Clairvaux, trundled money-muck To midden and the main heap oft enough, But never bade unshut from sheath the gauze, Nor showed that, who would fly, must let fall filth, And warn "Your jewel, brother, is a blotch: Sister, your lace trails ordure! Leave your sins, And so best gift with Crown and grace with Robe!"

The superstition is extinct, you hope? It were, with my good will! Suppose it so, Bethink you likewise of the latest use Whereto a Night-cap is convertible, And draw your very thickest, thread and thrum, O'er such a decomposing face of things, Once so alive, it seemed immortal too!

This happened two years since. The Cousinry Returned to Paris, called in help from Law, And in due form proceeded to dispute Monsieur Léonce Miranda's competence, Being insane, to make a valid Will.

Much testimony volunteered itself; The issue hardly could be doubtful--but For that sad 'Seventy which must intervene, Provide poor France with other work to mind Than settling lawsuits, even for the sake Of such a party as The Ravissante. It only was this Summer that the case Could come and be disposed of, two weeks since, At Vire--Tribunal Civil--Chamber First.

Here, issued with all regularity, I hold the judgment--just, inevitable, Nowise to be contested by what few Can judge the judges; sum and substance, thus:--

"Inasmuch as we find, the Cousinry, During that very period when they take Monsieur Léonce Miranda for stark mad, Considered him to be quite sane enough For doing much important business with-- Nor showed suspicion of his competence Until, by turning of the tables, loss Instead of gain accrued to them thereby,-- Plea of incompetence we set aside.

--"The rather, that the dispositions, sought To be impugned, are natural and right, Nor jar with any reasonable claim Of kindred, friendship, or acquaintance here. Nobody is despoiled, none overlooked; Since the testator leaves his property To just that person whom, of all the world, He counted he was most indebted to. In mere discharge, then, of conspicuous debt, Madame Muhlhausen has priority, Enjoys the usufruct of Clairvaux.

"Next, Such debt discharged, such life determining, Such earthly interest provided for, Monsieur Léonce Miranda may bequeath, In absence of more fit recipient, fund And usufruct together to the Church Whereof he was a special devotee.

"--Which disposition, being consonant With a long series of such acts and deeds Notorious in his lifetime, needs must stand, Unprejudiced by eccentricity Nowise amounting to distemper: since, In every instance signalized as such, We recognize no overleaping bounds, No straying out of the permissible: Duty to the Religion of the Land,-- Neither excessive nor inordinate.

"The minor accusations are dismissed; They prove mere freak and fancy, boyish mood In age mature of simple kindly man. Exuberant in generosities To all the world: no fact confirms the fear He meditated mischief to himself That morning when he met the accident Which ended fatally. The case is closed."

How otherwise? So, when I grazed the skirts, And had the glimpse of who made, yesterday,-- Woman and retinue of goats and sheep,-- The sombre path one whiteness, vision-like, As out of gate, and in at gate again, They wavered,--she was lady there for life: And, after life--I hope, a white success Of some sort, wheresoever life resume School interrupted by vacation--death; Seeing that home she goes with prize in hand, Confirmed the Châtelaine of Clairvaux.

True, Such prize fades soon to insignificance. Though she have eaten her Miranda up, And spun a cradle-cone through, which she pricks Her passage, and proves peacock-butterfly, This Autumn--wait a little week of cold! Peacock and death's-head-moth end much the same. And could she still continue spinning,--sure, Cradle would soon crave shroud for substitute, And o'er this life of hers distaste would drop Red-cotton-Nightcap-wise.

* * * * *

How say you, friend? Have I redeemed my promise? Smile assent Through the dark Winter-gloom between us both! Already, months ago and miles away, I just as good as told you, in a flash, The while we paced the sands before my house, All this poor story--truth and nothing else. Accept that moment's flashing, amplified, Impalpability reduced to speech, Conception proved by birth,--no other change! Can what Saint-Rambert flashed me in a thought, Good gloomy London make a poem of? Such ought to be whatever dares precede, Play ruddy herald-star to your white blaze About to bring us day. How fail imbibe Some foretaste of effulgence? Sun shall wax, And star shall wane: what matter, so star tell The drowsy world to start awake, rub eyes, And stand all ready for morn's joy a-blush?

THE INN ALBUM

The story told in this poem was suggested to Browning, but not followed in all its details, by an adventure of Lord De Ros, a friend of Wellington's and mentioned frequently by Greville in his Memoirs. The circumstances of De Ros's villainy were much talked of in London at the time of their occurrence, just before the middle of this century.

I

"That oblong book 's the Album; hand it here! Exactly! page on page of gratitude For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view! I praise these poets, they leave margin-space; Each stanza seems to gather skirts around, And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine, Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'ersprawls And straddling stops the path from left to right. Since I want space to do my cipher-work, Which poem spares a corner? What comes first? 'Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!' (Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!) Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--' If a fellow can dine On rump-steaks and port wine, He needs not despair Of dining well here'-- 'Here!' I myself could find a better rhyme! That bard 's a Browning; he neglects the form: But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense! Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide! I 'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt. A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work! Three little columns hold the whole account: Ecarté, after which Blind Hookey, then Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut. 'T is easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."

Two personages occupy this room Shabby-genteel, that 's parlor to the inn Perched on a view-commanding eminence; --Inn which may be a veritable house Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste Till tourists found his coigne of vantage out, And fingered blunt the individual mark, And vulgarized things comfortably smooth. On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag; His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds; They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World. Grim o'er the mirror on the mantelpiece, Varnished and coffined, Salmo ferox glares, --Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.

So much describes the stuffy little room-- Vulgar flat smooth respectability: Not so the burst of landscape surging in, Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair Is, plain enough, the younger personage Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best. He leans into a living glory-bath Of air and light where seems to float and move The wooded watered country, hill and dale And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist, A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed patch Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close For hillside shelter, make the village-clump, This inn is perched above to dominate-- Except such sign of human neighborhood, "And this surmised rather than sensible" There 's nothing to disturb absolute peace, The reign of English nature--which means art And civilized existence. Wildness' self Is just the cultured triumph. Presently Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place That knows the right way to defend itself: Silence hems round a burning spot of life. Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood, And where a village broods, an inn should boast-- Close and convenient: here you have them both. This inn, the Something-arms--the family's-- (Don't trouble Guillim: heralds leave out half!) Is dear to lovers of the picturesque, And epics have been planned here; but who plan Take holy orders and find work to do. Painters are more productive, stop a week, Declare the prospect quite a Corot,--ay, For tender sentiment,--themselves incline Rather to handsweep large and liberal; Then go, but not without success achieved --Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech, Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole, On this a slug, on that a butterfly. Nay, he who hooked the salmo pendent here, Also exhibited, this same May-month, "Foxgloves: a study"--so inspires the scene, The air, which now the younger personage Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South I' the distance where the green dies off to gray, Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place; He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek. His fellow, the much older--either say A youngish-old man or man oldish-young-- Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep In wax, to detriment of plated ware; Above--piled, strewn--is store of playing-cards, Counters and all that 's proper for a game. He sets down, rubs out figures in the book, Adds and subtracts, puts back here, carries there, Until the summed-up satisfaction stands Apparent, and he pauses o'er the work: Soothes what of brain was busy under brow, By passage of the hard palm, curing so Wrinkle and crowfoot for a second's space; Then lays down book and laughs out. No mistake, Such the sum-total--ask Colenso else!

Roused by which laugh, the other turns, laughs too-- The youth, the good strong fellow, rough perhaps.

"Well, what 's the damage--three, or four, or five? How many figures in a row? Hand here! Come now, there's one expense all yours not mine-- Scribbling the people's Album over, leaf The first and foremost too! You think, perhaps, They 'll only charge you for a brand-new book Nor estimate the literary loss? Wait till the small account comes! 'To one night's Lodging,' for--'beds' they can't say,--'pound or so; Dinner, Apollinaris,--what they please, Attendance not included;' last looms large 'Defacement of our Album, late enriched With'--let 's see what! Here, at the window, though! Ay, breathe the morning and forgive your luck! Fine enough country for a fool like me To own, as next month I suppose I shall! Eh? True fool's-fortune! so console yourself, Let 's see, however--hand the book, I say! Well, you 've improved the classic by romance. Queer reading! Verse with parenthetic prose-- 'Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!' (Three-two fives) 'life how profitably spent' (Five-naught, five-nine fives) 'yonder humble cot,' (More and more naughts and fives) 'in mild content; And did my feelings find the natural vent In friendship and in love, how blest my lot!' Then follow the dread figures--five! 'Content?' That 's appetite! Are you content as he-- Simpkin the sonneteer? Ten thousand pounds Give point to his effusion--by so much Leave me the richer and the poorer you After our night's play; who 's content the most, If, you, or Simpkin?" So the polished snob. The elder man, refinement every inch From brow to boot-end, quietly replies:

"Simpkin 's no name I know. I had my whim."

"Ay, had you! And such things make friendship thick. Intimates, I may boast we were; henceforth, Friends--shall it not be?--who discard reserve, Use plain words, put each dot upon each i, Till death us twain do part? The bargain 's struck! Old fellow, if you fancy--(to begin--) I failed to penetrate your scheme last week, You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs! Because you happen to be twice my age And twenty times my master, must perforce No blink of daylight struggle through the web There 's no unwinding? You entoil my legs, And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no! A very pretty piece of shuttle-work Was that--your mere chance question at the club-- 'Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide? I'm off for Paris, there 's the Opera--there 's The Salon, there 's a china-sale,--beside Chantilly; and, for good companionship, There 's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose We start together?' 'No such holiday!' I told you: 'Paris and the rest be hanged! Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights? I 'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours? On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse The week away down with the Aunt and Niece? No help: it 's leisure, loneliness, and love. 'Wish I could take you; but fame travels fast,-- A man of much newspaper-paragraph, You scare domestic circles; and beside Would not you like your lot, that second taste Of nature and approval of the grounds! You might walk early or lie late, so shirk Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er, And morning church is obligatory: No mundane garb permissible, or dread The butler's privileged monition! ~No~! Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!' Whereon how artlessly the happy flash Followed, by inspiration! ''Tell you what-- Let 's turn their flank, try things on t' other side! Inns for my money! Liberty 's the life! We 'll lie in hiding: there 's the crow-nest nook, The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about, Inn that 's out--out of sight and out of mind And out of mischief to all four of us-- Aunt and niece, you and me. At night arrive; At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart. And while I'm whizzing onward by first train, Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks And says I shun him like the plague) yourself-- Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay Despite the sleepless journey,--love lends wings,-- Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait The faithful advent! Eh?' 'With all my heart,' Said I to you; said I to mine own self: 'Does he believe I fail to comprehend He wants just one more final friendly snack At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth, Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?' And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,--nay, grave? Your pupil does you better credit! No! I parleyed with my pass-book,--rubbed my pair At the big balance in my banker's hands,-- Folded a check cigar-case-shape,--just wants Filling and signing,--and took train, resolved To execute myself with decency And let you win--if not Ten thousand quite, Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst Of firework-nosegay! Where 's your fortune fled? Or is not fortune constant after all? You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think. You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height. How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"

The more refined man smiles a frown away.

"The lesson shall be--only boys like you Put such a question at the present stage. I had a ball lodge in my shoulder once, And, full five minutes, never guessed the fact; Next day, I felt decidedly: and still, At twelve years' distance, when I lift my arm A twinge reminds me of the surgeon's probe. Ask me, this day month, how I feel my luck! And meantime please to stop impertinence, For--don't I know its object? All this chaff Covers the corn, this preface leads to speech, This boy stands forth a hero. 'There, my lord! Our play was true play, fun not earnest! I Empty your purse, inside out, while my poke Bulges to bursting? You can badly spare A doit, confess now, Duke though brother be! While I 'm gold-daubed so thickly, spangles drop And show my father's warehouse-apron: pshaw! Enough! We 've had a palpitating night! Good morning! Breakfast and forget our dreams! My mouth 's shut, mind! I tell nor man nor mouse.' There, see! He don't deny it! Thanks, my boy! Hero and welcome--only, not on me Make trial of your 'prentice-hand! Enough! We 've played, I 've lost and owe ten thousand pounds, Whereof I muster, at the moment,--well, What 's for the bill here and the back to town. Still, I 've my little character to keep; You may expect your money at month's end."

The young man at the window turns round quick-- A clumsy giant handsome creature; grasps In his large red the little lean white hand Of the other, looks him in the sallow face.

"I say now--is it right to so mistake A fellow, force him in mere self-defence To spout like Mister Mild Acclivity In album-language? You know well enough Whether I like you--like 's no album-word, Anyhow: point me to one soul beside In the wide world I care one straw about! I first set eyes on you a year ago; Since when you 've done me good--I 'll stick to it-- More than I got in the whole twenty-five That make my life up, Oxford years and all-- Throw in the three I fooled away abroad, Seeing myself and nobody more sage Until I met you, and you made me man Such as the sort is and the fates allow. I do think, since we two kept company, I 've learnt to know a little--all through you! It 's nature if I like you. Taunt away! As if I need you teaching me my place-- The snob I am, the Duke your brother is, When just the good you did was--teaching me My own trade, how a snob and millionaire May lead his life and let the Duke's alone, Clap wings, free jackdaw, on his steeple-perch, Burnish his black to gold in sun and air, Nor pick up stray plumes, strive to match in strut Regular peacocks who can't fly an inch Over the courtyard-paling. Head and heart (That 's album-style) are older than you know, For all your knowledge: boy, perhaps--ay, boy Had his adventure, just as he were man-- His ball-experience in the shoulder-blade, His bit of life-long ache to recognize, Although he bears it cheerily about, Because you came and clapped him on the back, Advised him 'Walk and wear the aching off!' Why, I was minded to sit down for life Just in Dalmatia, build a seaside tower High on a rock, and so expend my days Pursuing chemistry or botany Or, very like, astronomy because I noticed stars shone when I passed the place. Letting my cash accumulate the while In England--to lay out in lump at last As Ruskin should direct me! All or some Of which should I have done or tried to do, And preciously repented, one fine day, Had you discovered Timon, climbed his rock And scaled his tower, some ten years thence, suppose, And coaxed his story from him! Don't I see The pair conversing! It 's a novel writ Already, I 'll be bound,--our dialogue! 'What?' cried the elder and yet youthful man-- So did the eye flash 'neath the lordly front, And the imposing presence swell with scorn, As the haught high-bred bearing and dispose Contrasted with his interlocutor The flabby low-born who, of bulk before, Had steadily increased, one stone per week, Since his abstention from horse-exercise:-- 'What? you, as rich as Rothschild, left, you say London the very year you came of age, Because your father manufactured goods-- Commission-agent hight of Manchester-- Partly, and partly through a baby case Of disappointment I've pumped out at last-- And here you spend life 's prime in gaining flesh And giving science one more asteroid?' Brief, my dear fellow, you instructed me, At Alfred's and not Istria! proved a snob May turn a million to account although His brother be no Duke, and see good days Without the girl he lost and some one gained. The end is, after one year's tutelage, Having, by your help, touched society, Polo, Tent-pegging, Hurlingham, the Rink-- I leave all these delights, by your advice, And marry my young pretty cousin here Whose place, whose oaks ancestral you behold. (Her father was in partnership with mine-- Does not his purchase look a pedigree?) My million will be tails and tassels smart To this plump-bodied kite, this house and land Which, set a-soaring, pulls me, soft as sleep, Along life's pleasant meadow,--arm left free To lock a friend's in,--whose, but yours, old boy? Arm in arm glide we over rough and smooth, While hand, to pocket held, saves cash from cards. Now, if you don't esteem ten thousand pounds (--Which I shall probably discover snug Hid somewhere in the column-corner capped With 'Credit,' based on 'Balance,'--which, I swear, By this time next month I shall quite forget Whether I lost or won--ten thousand pounds, Which at this instant I would give ... let 's see, For Galopin--nay, for that Gainsborough Sir Richard won't sell, and, if bought by me, Would get my glance and praise some twice a year,--) Well, if you don't esteem that price dirt-cheap For teaching me Dalmatia was mistake-- Why then, my last illusion-bubble breaks, My one discovered phœnix proves a goose, My cleverest of all companions--oh, Was worth nor ten pence nor ten thousand pounds! Come! Be yourself again! So endeth here The morning's lesson! Never while life lasts Do I touch card again. To breakfast now! To bed--I can't say, since you needs must start For station early--oh, the down-train still, First plan and best plan--townward trip be hanged! You 're due at your big brother's--pay that debt, Then owe me not a farthing! Order eggs-- And who knows but there 's trout obtainable?"

The fine man looks wellnigh malignant: then--

"Sir, please subdue your manner! Debts are debts: I pay mine--debts of this sort--certainly. What do I care how you regard your gains, Want them or want them not? The thing I want Is--not to have a story circulate From club to club--how, bent on clearing out, Young So-and-so, young So-and-so cleaned me, Then set the empty kennel flush again, Ignored advantage and forgave his friend-- For why? There was no wringing blood from stone! Oh, don't be savage! You would hold your tongue, Bite it in two, as man may; but those small Hours in the smoking-room, when instance apt Rises to tongue's root, tingles on to tip, And the thinned company consists of six Capital well-known fellows one may trust! Next week, it 's in the 'World.' No, thank you much. I owe ten thousand pounds: I 'll pay them!"

"Now,-- This becomes funny. You 've made friends with me: I can't help knowing of the ways and means! Or stay! they say your brother closets up Correggio's long lost Leda: if he means To give you that, and if you give it me" ...

"I polished snob off to aristocrat? You compliment me! father's apron still Sticks out from son's court-vesture; still silk purse Roughs finger with some bristle sow-ear-born! Well, neither I nor you mean harm at heart! I owe you and shall pay you: which premised, Why should what follows sound like flattery? The fact is--you do compliment too much Your humble master, as I own I am; You owe me no such thanks as you protest. The polisher needs precious stone no less Than precious stone needs polisher: believe I struck no tint from out you but I found Snug lying first 'neath surface hairbreadth-deep! Beside, I liked the exercise: with skill Goes love to show skill for skill's sake. You see, I 'm old and understand things: too absurd It were you pitched and tossed away your life, As diamond were Scotch-pebble! all the more, That I myself misused a stone of price. Born and bred clever--people used to say Clever as most men, if not something more-- Yet here I stand a failure, cut awry Or left opaque,--no brilliant named and known. Whate'er my inner stuff, my outside 's blank; I 'm nobody--or rather, look that same-- I 'm--who I am--and know it; but I hold What in my hand out for the world to see? What ministry, what mission, or what book --I 'll say, book even? Not a sign of these! I began--laughing--'All these when I like!' I end with--well, you 've hit it!--'This boy's check For just as many thousands as he he 'll spare!' The first--I could, and would not; your spare cash I would, and could not: have no scruple, pray, But, as I hoped to pocket yours, pouch mine --When you are able!"

"Which is--when to be? I 've heard, great characters require a fall Of fortune to show greatness by uprise: They touch the ground to jollily rebound, Add to the Album! Let a fellow share Your secret of superiority! I know, my banker makes the money breed Money; I eat and sleep, he simply takes The dividends and cuts the coupons off, Sells out, buys in, keeps doubling, tripling cash, While I do nothing but receive and spend. But you, spontaneous generator, hatch A wind-egg; cluck, and forth struts Capital As Interest to me from egg of gold. I am grown curious: pay me by all means! How will you make the money?"

"Mind your own-- Not my affair. Enough: or money, or Money's worth, as the case may be, expect Ere month's end,--keep but patient for a month! Who 's for a stroll to station? Ten 's the time; Your man, with my things, follow in the trap; At stoppage of the down-train, play the arrived On platform, and you 'll show the due fatigue Of the night-journey,--not much sleep,--perhaps, Your thoughts were on before you--yes, indeed, You join them, being happily awake With thought's sole object as she smiling sits At breakfast-table. I shall dodge meantime In and out station-precinct, wile away The hour till up my engine pants and smokes. No doubt, she goes to fetch you. Never fear! She gets no glance at me, who shame such saints!"

II

So, they ring bell, give orders, pay, depart Amid profuse acknowledgment from host Who well knows what may bring the younger back. They light cigar, descend in twenty steps The "calm acclivity," inhale--beyond Tobacco's balm--the better smoke of turf And wood fire,--cottages at cookery I' the morning,--reach the main road straightening on 'Twixt wood and wood, two black walls full of night Slow to disperse, though mists thin fast before The advancing foot, and leave the flint-dust fine Each speck with its fire-sparkle. Presently The road's end with the sky's beginning mix In one magnificence of glare, due East, So high the sun rides,--May 's the merry month.

They slacken pace: the younger stops abrupt, Discards cigar, looks his friend full in face.

"All right; the station comes in view at end; Five minutes from the beech-clump, there you are! I say: let 's halt, let 's borrow yonder gate Of its two magpies, sit and have a talk! Do let a fellow speak a moment! More I think about and less I like the thing-- No, you must let me! Now, be good for once! Ten thousand pounds be done for, dead and damned! We played for love, not hate: yes, hate! I hate Thinking you beg or borrow or reduce To strychnine some poor devil of a lord Licked at Unlimited Loo. I had the cash To lose--you knew that!--lose and none the less Whistle to-morrow: it 's not every chap Affords to take his punishment so well! Now, don't be angry with a friend whose fault Is that he thinks--upon my soul, I do-- Your head the best head going. Oh, one sees Names in the newspaper--great This, great That, Gladstone, Carlyle, the Laureate:--much I care! Others have their opinion, I keep mine: Which means--by right you ought to have the things I want a head for. Here 's a pretty place, My cousin's place, and presently my place, Not yours! I 'll tell you how it strikes a man. My cousin 's fond of music and of course Plays the piano (it won't be for long!) A brand-new bore she calls a 'semi-grand' Rosewood and pearl, that blocks the drawing-room, And cost no end of money. Twice a week Down comes Herr Somebody and seats himself, Sets to work teaching--with his teeth on edge-- I 've watched the rascal. 'Does he play first-rate?' I ask: 'I rather think so,' answers she-- 'He's What's-his-Name!'--'Why give you lessons then?'-- 'I pay three guineas and the train beside.'-- 'This instrument, has he one such at home?'-- 'He? Has to practise on a table-top, When he can't hire the proper thing.'--'I see! You 've the piano, he the skill, and God The distribution of such gifts.' So here: After your teaching, I shall sit and strum Polkas on this piano of a Place You 'd make resound with 'Rule Britannia'!"

"Thanks! I don't say but this pretty cousin's place, Appendaged with your million, tempts my hand As key-board I might touch with some effect."

"Then, why not have obtained the like? House, land, Money, are things obtainable, you see, By clever head-work: ask my father else! You, who teach me, why not have learned, yourself? Played like Herr Somebody with power to thump And flourish and the rest, not bend demure Pointing out blunders--'Sharp, not natural! Permit me--on the black key use the thumb!' There 's some fatality, I 'm sure! You say 'Marry the cousin, that's your proper move!' And I do use the thumb and hit the sharp: You should have listened to your own head's hint, As I to you! The puzzle 's past my power, How you have managed--with such stuff, such means-- Not to be rich nor great nor happy man: Of which three good things where 's a sign at all? Just look at Dizzy! Come,--what tripped your heels? Instruct a goose that boasts wings and can't fly! I wager I have guessed it!--never found The old solution of the riddle fail! 'Who was the woman?' I don't ask, but--'Where I' the path of life stood she who tripped you?'"

"Goose You truly are! I own to fifty years. Why don't I interpose and cut out--you? Compete with five-and-twenty? Age, my boy!"

"Old man, no nonsense!--even to a boy That 's ripe at least for rationality Rapped into him, as maybe mine was, once! I 've had my small adventure lesson me Over the knuckles!--likely, I forget The sort of figure youth cuts now and then, Competing with old shoulders but young head Despite the fifty grizzling years!"

"Aha? Then that means--just the bullet in the blade Which brought Dalmatia on the brain,--that, too, Came of a fatal creature? Can't pretend Now for the first time to surmise as much! Make a clean breast! Recount! a secret 's safe 'Twixt you, me, and the gate-post!"

"--Can't pretend, Neither, to never have surmised your wish! It 's no use,--case of unextracted ball-- Winces at finger-touching. Let things be!"

"Ah, if you love your love still! I hate mine."

"I can't hate."

"I won't teach you; and won't tell You, therefore, what you please to ask of me: As if I, also, may not have my ache!"

"My sort of ache? No, no! and yet--perhaps! All comes of thinking you superior still. But live and learn! I say! Time 's up! Good jump! You old, indeed! I fancy there 's a cut Across the wood, a grass-path: shall we try? It 's venturesome, however!"

"Stop, my boy! Don't think I 'm stingy of experience! Life --It 's like this wood we leave. Should you and I Go wandering about there, though the gaps We went in and came out by were opposed As the two poles still, somehow, all the same By nightfall we should probably have chanced On much the same main points of interest-- Both of us measured girth, of mossy trunk, Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow, And so forth,--never mind what time betwixt. So in our lives; allow I entered mine Another way than you: 't is possible I ended just by knocking head against That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began By getting bump from; as at last you too May stumble o'er that stump which first of all Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure, Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise. I, early old, played young man four years since And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike Failure and who caused failure,--curse her cant!"

"Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime, Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah-- But how should chits distinguish? She admired Your marvel of a mind, I 'll undertake! But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is, When years have told on face and figure" ...

"Thanks, Mister Sufficiently-Instructed! Such No doubt was bound to be the consequence To suit your self-complacency: she liked My head enough, but loved some heart beneath Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top After my young friend's fashion! What becomes Of that fine speech you made a minute since About the man of middle age you found A formidable peer at twenty-one? So much for your mock-modesty! and yet I back your first against this second sprout Of observation, insight, what you please. My middle age, Sir, had too much success! It 's odd: my case occurred four years ago-- I finished just while you commenced that turn I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach. Now, I don't boast: it 's bad style, and beside, The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet (Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!) Good-nature sticks into my buttonhole. Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced On what--so far from 'rosebud beauty' ... Well-- She 's dead: at least you never heard her name; She was no courtly creature, had nor birth Nor breeding--mere fine-lady-breeding; but Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that, Style that a Duchess or a Queen,--you know, Artists would make an outcry: all the more, That she had just a statue's sleepy grace Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault (Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose Only the little flaw, and I had peeped Inside it, learned what soul inside was like. At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife-- I wish--now--I had played that brute, brought blood To surface from the depths I fancied chalk! As it was, her mere face surprised so much That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares The cockney stranger at a certain bust With drooped eyes,--she 's the thing I have in mind,-- Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize-- Such outside! Now,--confound me for a prig!-- Who cares? I 'll make a clean breast once for all! Beside, you 've heard the gossip. My life long I 've been a woman-liker,--liking means Loving and so on. There 's a lengthy list By this time I shall have to answer for-- So say the good folk: and they don't guess half-- For the worst is, let once collecting-itch Possess you, and, with perspicacity, Keeps growing such a greediness that theft Follows at no long distance,--there 's the fact! I knew that on my Leporello-list Might figure this, that, and the other name Of feminine desirability, But if I happened to desire inscribe, Along with these, the only Beautiful-- Here was the unique specimen to snatch Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said-- 'Beautiful' say in cold blood,--boiling then To tune of 'Haste, secure whatever the cost This rarity, die in the act, be damned, So you complete collection, crown your list!' It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused By the first notice of such wonder's birth, Would break bounds to contest my prize with me The first discoverer, should she but emerge From that safe den of darkness where she dozed Till I stole in, that country-parsonage Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless, Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years She had been vegetating lily-like. Her father was my brother's tutor, got The living that way: him I chanced to see-- Her I saw--her the world would grow one eye To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all! 'Secure her!' cried the devil: 'afterward Arrange for the disposal of the prize!' The devil's doing! yet I seem to think-- Now, when all 's done,--think with 'a head reposed' In French phrase--hope I think I meant to do All requisite for such a rarity When I should be at leisure, have due time To learn requirement. But in evil day-- Bless me, at week's end, long as any year, The father must begin, 'Young Somebody, Much recommended--for I break a rule-- Comes here to read, next Long Vacation.'--'Young!' That did it. Had the epithet been 'rich,' 'Noble,' 'a genius,' even 'handsome,'--but --'Young'!"

"I say--just a word! I want to know-- You are not married?"

"I?"

"Nor ever were?"

"Never! Why?"

"Oh, then--never mind! Go on! I had a reason for the question."

"Come,-- You could not be the young man?"

"No, indeed! Certainly--if you never married her!"

"That I did not: and there 's the curse, you 'll see! Nay, all of it 's one curse, my life's mistake Which nourished with manure that 's warranted To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full In folly beyond fieldflower-foolishness! The lies I used to tell my womankind! Knowing they disbelieved me all the time Though they required my lies, their decent due, This woman--not so much believed, I 'll say, As just anticipated from my mouth: Since being true, devoted, constant--she Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain And easy commonplace of character. No mock-heroics but seemed natural To her who underneath the face, I knew Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged Must correspond in folly just as far Beyond the common,--and a mind to match,-- Not made to puzzle conjurers like me Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir, And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest! 'Trust me!' I said: she trusted. 'Marry me!' Or rather, 'We are married: when, the rite?' That brought on the collector's next-day qualm At counting acquisition's cost. There lay My marvel, there my purse more light by much Because of its late lie-expenditure: Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand-- To cage as well as catch my rarity! So, I began explaining. At first word Outbroke the horror. 'Then, my truths were lies!' I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange All-unsuspected revelation--soul As supernaturally grand as face Was fair beyond example--that at once Either I lost--or, if it please you, found My senses,--stammered somehow--'Jest! and now, Earnest! Forget all else but--heart has loved, Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!' Not she! no marriage for superb disdain, Contempt incarnate!"

"Yes, it 's different,-- It 's only like in being four years since. I see now!"

"Well, what did disdain do next, Think you?"

"That's past me: did not marry you!--- That 's the main thing I care for, I suppose. Turned nun, or what?"

"Why, married in a month Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort Of curate-creature, I suspect,--dived down, Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else-- I don't know where--I 've not tried much to know,-- In short, she 's happy: what the clodpoles call 'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life Respectable and all that drives you mad: Still--where, I don't know, and that 's best for both."

"Well, that she did not like you, I conceive. But why should you hate her, I want to know?"

"My good young friend,--because or her or else Malicious Providence I have to hate. For, what I tell you proved the turning-point Of my whole life and fortune toward success Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault Much on myself who caught at reed not rope, But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith, Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw And I strike out afresh and so be saved. It 's easy saying--I had sunk before, Disqualified myself by idle days And busy nights, long since, from holding hard On cable, even, had fate cast me such! You boys don't know how many times men fail Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large, Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey, Collect the whole power for the final pounce! My fault was the mistaking man's main prize For intermediate boy's diversion; clap Of boyish hands here frightened game away Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first I took the anger easily, nor much Minded the anguish--having learned that storms Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin. Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh? Reason and rhyme prompt--reparation! Tiffs End properly in marriage and a dance! I said 'We 'll marry, make the past a blank'-- And never was such damnable mistake! That interview, that laying bare my soul, As it was first, so was it last chance--one And only. Did I write? Back letter came Unopened as it went. Inexorable She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself With the smug curate-creature: chop and change! Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed, Forgiveness evangelically shown, 'Loose hair and lifted eye,'--as some one says. And now, he 's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"

"Well, but your turning-point of life,--what 's here To hinder you contesting Finsbury With Orton, next election? I don't see" ...

"Not you! But I see. Slowly, surely, creeps Day by day o'er me the conviction--here Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go! --That with her--maybe, for her--I had felt Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect Any or all the fancies sluggish here I' the head that needs the hand she would not take And I shall never lift now, Lo, your wood-- Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,-- There she stands, ending every avenue, Her visionary presence on each goal I might have gained had we kept side by side! Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids: The steam congeals once more: I 'm old again! Therefore I hate myself--but how much worse Do not I hate who would not understand, Let me repair things--no, but sent a-slide My folly falteringly, stumblingly Down, down, and deeper down until I drop Upon--the need of your ten thousand pounds And consequently loss of mine! I lose Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull Adventure, lose my temper in the act" ...

"And lose beside,--if I may supplement The list of losses,--train and ten-o'clock! Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign! So much the better! You 're my captive now! I 'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick This way--that 's twice said; we were thickish, though, Even last night, and, ere night comes again, I prophesy good luck to both of us! For see now!--back to 'balmy eminence' Or 'calm acclivity' or what 's the word! Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease A sonnet for the Album, while I put Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house, March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth-- (Even white-lying goes against my taste After your little story.) Oh, the niece Is rationality itself! The aunt-- If she 's amenable to reason too-- Why, you stopped short to pay her due respect, And let the Duke wait (I 'll work well the Duke). If she grows gracious, I return for you; If thunder 's in the air, why--bear your doom, Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust Of aunty from your shoes as off you go By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought How you shall pay me--that 's as sure as fate. Old fellow! Off with you, face left about! Yonder 's the path I have to pad. You see, I 'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps Because the woman did not marry you --Who look so hard at me,--and have the right, One must be fair and own."

The two stand still Under an oak.

"Look here!" resumes the youth. "I never quite knew how I came to like You--so much--whom I ought not court at all: Nor how you had a leaning just to me Who am assuredly not worth your pains. For there must needs be plenty such as you Somewhere about,--although I can't say where,-- Able and willing to teach all you know; While--how can you have missed a score like me With money and no wit, precisely each A pupil for your purpose, were it--ease Fool's poke of tutor's honorarium-fee? And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt At once my master: you as prompt descried Your man, warrant, so was bargain struck. Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run Sometimes so close together they converge-- Life's great adventures--you know what I mean-- In people. Do you know, as you advanced, It got to be uncommonly like fact We two had fallen in with--liked and loved Just the same woman in our different ways? I began life--poor groundling as I prove-- and ambitious to fly high: why not? There 's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point, My shrewd old father used to quote and praise-- 'Am I born man?' asks Sancho; 'being man, By possibility I may be Pope!' So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step And step, whereof the first should be to find A perfect woman; and I tell you this-- If what I fixed on, in the order due Of undertakings, as next step, had first Of all disposed itself to suit my tread, And I had been, the day I came of age, Returned at head of poll for Westminster --Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit, To form and head a Tory ministry-- It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been More strange to me, as now I estimate, Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream. I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh, I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week. A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,-- With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink; But one to match that marvel--no least trace, Least touch of kinship and community! The end was--I did somehow state the fact, Did, with no matter what imperfect words, One way or other give to understand That woman, soul and body were her slave Would she but take, but try them--any test Of will, and some poor test of power beside: So did the strings within my brain grow tense And capable of ... hang similitudes! She answered kindly but beyond appeal. 'No sort of hope for me, who came too late. She was another's. Love went--mine to her, Hers just as loyally to some one else.' Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law-- Given the peerless woman, certainly Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match! I acquiesced at once, submitted me In something of a stupor, went my way. I fancy there had been some talk before Of somebody--her father or the like-- To coach me in the holidays,--that's how I came to get the sight and speech of her,-- But I had sense enough to break off sharp, Save both of us the pain."

"Quite right there!"

"Eh? Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all! Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone The lovers--I disturb the angel-mates?"

"Seraph paired off with cherub!"

"Thank you! While I never plucked up courage to inquire Who he was, even,--certain-sure of this, That nobody I knew of had blue wings And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,-- Some little lady,--plainish, pock-marked girl,-- Finds out my secret in my woeful face, Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball, And pityingly pours her wine and oil This way into the wound: 'Dear f-f-friend, Why waste affection thus on--must I say, A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice-- Irrevocable as deliberate-- Out of the wide world? I shall name no names-- But there's a person in society, Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray In idleness and sin of every sort Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age, A byword for 'successes with the sex' As the French say--and, as we ought to say. Consummately a liar and a rogue, Since--show me where's the woman won without The help of this one lie which she believes-- That--never mind how things have come to pass, And let who loves have loved a thousand times-- All the same he now loves her only, loves Her ever! if by 'won' you just mean 'sold,' That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp, Continuing descent from bad to worse, Must leave his fine and fashionable prey (Who--fathered, brothered, husbanded,--are hedged About with thorny danger) and apply His arts to this poor country ignorance Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man Her model hero! Why continue waste On such a woman treasures of a heart Would yet find solace,--yes, my f-f-friend-- In some congenial--fiddle-diddle-dee?'"

"Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described Exact the portrait which my 'f-f-friends' Recognize as so like? 'Tis evident You half surmised the sweet original Could be no other than myself, just now! Your stop and start were flattering!"

"Of course Caricature's allowed for in a sketch! The longish nose becomes a foot in length, The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,--still, Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts: And 'parson's daughter'--'young man coachable'-- 'Elderly party'--'four years since'--were facts To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though-- That made the difference, I hope."

"All right! I never married; wish I had--and then Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes! I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free. In your case, where's the grievance? You came last, The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose You, in the glory of your twenty-one, Had happened to precede myself! 'tis odds But this gigantic juvenility, This offering of a big arm's bony hand-- I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know-- Had moved my dainty mistress to admire An altogether new Ideal--deem Idolatry less due to life's decline Productive of experience, powers mature By dint of usage, the made man--no boy That's all to make! I was the earlier bird-- And what I found, I let fall; what you missed, Who is the fool that blames you for?"

"Myself-- For nothing, everything! For finding out She, whom I worshipped, was a worshipper In turn of ... but why stir up settled mud? She married him--the fifty-years-old rake-- How you have teased the talk from me! At last My secret's told you. I inquired no more, Nay, stopped ears when informants unshut mouth; Enough that she and he live, deuce take where, Married and happy, or else miserable-- It's 'Cut-the-pack;' she turned up ace or knave, And I left Oxford, England, dug my hole Out in Dalmatia, till you drew me thence Badger-like,--'Back to London' was the word-- 'Do things, a many, there, you fancy hard, I'll undertake are easy!'--the advice. I took it, had my twelvemonth's fling with you-- (Little hand holding large hand pretty tight For all its delicacy--eh, my lord?) Until when, t'other day, I got a turn Somehow and gave up tired: and 'Rest!' bade you, 'Marry your cousin, double your estate, And take your ease by all means!' So, I loll On this the springy sofa, mine next month-- Or should loll, but that you must needs beat rough The very down you spread me out so smooth. I wish this confidence were still to make! Ten thousand pounds? You owe me twice the sum For stirring up the black depths! There's repose Or, at least, silence when misfortune seems All that one has to bear; but folly--yes, Folly, it all was! Fool to be so meek, So humble,--such a coward rather say! Fool, to adore the adorer of a fool! Not to have faced him, tried (a useful hint) My big and bony, here, against the bunch Of lily-colored five with signet-ring, Most like, for little-finger's sole defence-- Much as you flaunt the blazon there! I grind My teeth, that bite my very heart, to think-- To know I might have made that woman mine But for the folly of the coward--know-- Or what's the good of my apprenticeship This twelvemonth to a master in the art? Mine--had she been mine--just one moment mine For honor, for dishonor--anyhow, So that my life, instead of stagnant ... Well, You've poked and proved stagnation is not sleep-- Hang you!"

"Hang you for an ungrateful goose! All this means--I who since I knew you first Have helped you to conceit yourself this cock O' the dunghill with all hens to pick and choose-- Ought to have helped you when shell first was chipped By chick that wanted prompting 'Use the spur!' While I was elsewhere putting mine to use. As well might I blame you who kept aloof, Seeing you could not guess I was alive, Never advised me 'Do as I have done-- Reverence such a jewel as your luck Has scratched up to enrich unworthiness!' As your behavior was, should mine have been, --Faults which we both, too late, are sorry for: Opposite ages, each with its mistake: 'If youth but would--if age but could,' you know. Don't let us quarrel! Come, we're--young and old-- Neither so badly off. Go you your way, Cut to the Cousin! I'll to Inn, await The issue of diplomacy with Aunt, And wait my hour on 'calm acclivity' In rumination manifold--perhaps About ten thousand pounds I have to pay!"

III

Now, as the elder lights the fresh cigar Conducive to resource, and saunteringly Betakes him to the left-hand backward path,-- While, much sedate, the younger strides away To right and makes for--islanded in lawn And edged with shrubbery--the brilliant bit Of Barry's building that's the Place,--a pair Of women, at this nick of time, one young, One very young, are ushered with due pomp Into the same Inn-parlor--"disengaged Entirely now!" the obsequious landlord smiles, "Since the late occupants--whereof but one Was quite a stranger"--(smile enforced by bow) "Left, a full two hours since, to catch the train, Probably for the stranger's sake!" (Bow, smile, And backing out from door soft-closed behind.)

Woman and girl, the two, alone inside, Begin their talk: the girl, with sparkling eyes-- "Oh, I forewent him purposely! but you, Who joined at--journeyed from the Junction here-- I wonder how he failed your notice. Few Stop at our station: fellow-passengers Assuredly you were--I saw indeed His servant, therefore he arrived all right. I wanted, you know why, to have you safe Inside here first of all, so dodged about The dark end of the platform; that's his way-- To swing from station straight to avenue And stride the half a mile for exercise. I fancied you might notice the huge boy. He soon gets o'er the distance; at the house He'll hear I went to meet him and have missed; He'll wait. No minute of the hour's too much Meantime for our preliminary talk: First word of which must be--oh, good beyond Expression of all goodness--you to come!"

The elder, the superb one, answers slow.

"There was no helping that. You called for me, Cried, rather: and my old heart answered you. Still, thank me! since the effort breaks a vow-- At least, a promise to myself."

"I know! How selfish get you happy folk to be! If I should love my husband, must I needs Sacrifice straightway all the world to him, As you do? Must I never dare leave house On this dread Arctic expedition, out And in again, six mortal hours, though you, You even, my own friend forevermore, Adjure me--fast your friend till rude love pushed Poor friendship from her vantage--just to grant The quarter of a whole day's company And counsel? This makes counsel so much more Need and necessity. For here's my block Of stumbling: in the face of happiness So absolute, fear chills me. If such change In heart be but love's easy consequence, Do I love? If to marry mean--let go All I now live for, should my marriage be?"

The other never once has ceased to gaze On the great elm-tree in the open, posed Placidly full in front, smooth bole, broad branch, And leafage, one green plenitude of May. The gathered thought runs into speech at last.

"O you exceeding beauty, bosomful Of lights and shades, murmurs and silences, Sun-warmth, dew-coolness,--squirrel, bee and bird, High, higher, highest, till the blue proclaims 'Leave earth, there's nothing better till next step Heavenward!'--so, off flies what has wings to help!"

And henceforth they alternate. Says the girl--

"That's saved then: marriage spares the early taste."

"Four years now, since my eye took note of tree!"

"If I had seen no other tree but this My life long, while yourself came straight, you said, From tree which overstretched you and was just One fairy tent with pitcher-leaves that held Wine, and a flowery wealth of suns and moons, And magic fruits whereon the angels feed-- I looking out of window on a tree Like yonder--otherwise well-known, much-liked, Yet just an English ordinary elm-- What marvel if you cured me of conceit My elm's bird-bee-and-squirrel tenantry Was quite the proud possession I supposed? And there is evidence you tell me true. The fairy marriage-tree reports itself Good guardian of the perfect face and form, Fruits of four years' protection! Married friend, You are more beautiful than ever!"

"Yes: I think that likely. I could well dispense With all thought fair in feature, mine or no, Leave but enough of face to know me by-- With all found fresh in youth except such strength As lets a life-long labor earn repose Death sells at just that price, they say; and so, Possibly, what I care not for, I keep."

"How you must know he loves you! Chill, before, Fear sinks to freezing. Could I sacrifice-- Assured my lover simply loves my soul-- One nose-breadth of fair feature? No, indeed! Your own love" ...

"The preliminary hour-- Don't waste it!"

"But I can't begin at once! The angel's self that comes to hear me speak Drives away all the care about the speech. What an angelic mystery you are-- Now--that is certain! when I knew you first, No break of halo and no bud of wing! I thought I knew you, saw you, round and through, Like a glass ball; suddenly, four years since, You vanished, how and whither? Mystery! Wherefore? No mystery at all: you loved, Were loved again, and left the world of course: Who would not? Lapped four years in fairyland, Out comes, by no less wonderful a chance, The changeling, touched athwart her trellised bliss Of blush-rose bower by just the old friend's voice That's now struck dumb at her own potency. I talk of my small fortunes? Tell me yours Rather! The fool I ever was--I am, You see that: the true friend you ever had, You have, you also recognize. Perhaps, Giving you all the love of all my heart, Nature, that's niggard in me, has denied The after-birth of love there 's some one claims, --This huge boy, swinging up the avenue; And I want counsel: is defect in me, Or him who has no right to raise the love? My cousin asks my hand: he's young enough, Handsome,--my maid thinks,--manly's more the word: He asked my leave to 'drop' the elm-tree there, Some morning before breakfast. Gentleness Goes with the strength, of course. He's honest too, Limpidly truthful. For ability-- All's in the rough yet. His first taste of life Seems to have somehow gone against the tongue: He travelled, tried things--came back, tried still more-- He says he 's sick of all. He 's fond of me After a certain careless-earnest way I like: the iron 's crude,--no polished steel Somebody forged before me. I am rich-- That 's not the reason, he 's far richer: no, Nor is it that he thinks me pretty,--frank Undoubtedly on that point! He saw once The pink of face-perfection--oh, not you-- Content yourself, my beauty!--for she proved So thoroughly a cheat, his charmer ... nay, He runs into extremes, I 'll say at once, Lest you say! Well, I understand he wants Some one to serve, something to do: and both Requisites so abound in me and mine That here 's the obstacle which stops consent-- The smoothness is too smooth, and I mistrust The unseen cat beneath the counterpane. Therefore I thought--'Would she but judge for me, Who, judging for herself succeeded so!' Do I love him, does he love me, do both Mistake for knowledge--easy ignorance? Appeal to its proficient in each art! I got rough-smooth through a piano-piece, Rattled away last week till tutor came, Heard me to end, then grunted 'Ach, mein Gott! Sagen Sie "easy"? Every note is wrong! All thumped mit wrist--we 'll trouble fingers now. The Fräulein will please roll up Raff again And exercise at Czerny for one month!' Am I to roll up cousin, exercise At Trollope's novels for one month? Pronounce!"

"Now, place each in the right position first, Adviser and advised one! I perhaps Am three--nay, four years older; am, beside, A wife: advantages--to balance which, You have a full fresh joyous sense of life That finds you out life's fit food everywhere, Detects enjoyment where I, slow and dull, Fumble at fault. Already, these four years, Your merest glimpses at the world without Have shown you more than ever met my gaze; And now, by joyance you inspire joy,--learn While you profess to teach, and teach, although Avowedly a learner. I am dazed Like any owl by sunshine which just sets The sparrow preening plumage! Here 's to spy --Your cousin! You have scanned him all your life, Little or much; I never saw his face. You have determined on a marriage--used Deliberation therefore--I 'll believe No otherwise, with opportunity For judgment so abounding! Here stand I-- Summoned to give my sentence, for a whim, (Well, at first cloud-fleck thrown athwart your blue,) Judge what is strangeness' self to me,--say 'Wed!' Or 'Wed not!' whom you promise I shall judge Presently, at propitious lunch-time, just While he carves chicken! Sends he leg for wing? That revelation into character And conduct must suffice me! Quite as well Consult with yonder solitary crow That eyes us from your elm-top!"

"Still the same! Do you remember, at the library We saw together somewhere, those two books Somebody said were notice-worthy? One Lay wide on table, sprawled its painted leaves For all the world's inspection; shut on shelf Reclined the other volume, closed, clasped, locked-- Clear to be let alone. Which page had we Preferred the turning over of? You were, Are, ever will be the locked lady, hold Inside you secrets written,--soul absorbed, My ink upon your blotting-paper. I-- What trace of you have I to show in turn? Delicate secrets! No one juvenile Ever essayed at croquet and performed Superiorly but I confided you The sort of hat he wore and hair it held. While you? One day a calm note comes by post-- 'I am just married, you may like to hear.' Most men would hate you, or they ought; we love What we fear,--I do! 'Cold' I shall expect My cousin calls you. I--dislike not him, But (if I comprehend what loving means) Love you immeasurably more--more--more Than even he who, loving you his wife, Would turn up nose at who impertinent, Frivolous, forward--loves that excellence Of all the earth he bows in worship to! And who 's this paragon of privilege? Simply a country parson: his the charm That worked the miracle! Oh, too absurd-- But that you stand before me as you stand! Such beauty does prove something, everything! Beauty 's the prize-flower which dispenses eye From peering into what has nourished root-- Dew or manure: the plant best knows its place. Enough, from teaching youth and tending age And hearing sermons,--haply writing tracts,-- From such strange love-besprinkled compost, lo, Out blows this triumph! Therefore love 's the soil Plants find or fail of. You, with wit to find, Exercise wit on the old friend's behalf, Keep me from failure! Scan and scrutinize This cousin! Surely he 's as worth your pains To study as my elm-tree, crow and all, You still keep staring at. I read your thoughts."

"At last?"

"At first! 'Would, tree, a-top of thee I wingèd were, like crow perched moveless there, And so could straightway soar, escape this bore, Back to my nest where broods whom I love best-- The parson o'er his parish--garish--rarish,'-- Oh, I could bring the rhyme in if I tried: The Album here inspires me! Quite apart From lyrical expression, have I read The stare aright, and sings not soul just so?"

"Or rather so? 'Cool comfortable elm That men make coffins out of,--none for me At thy expense, so thou permit I glide Under thy ferny feet, and there sleep, sleep, Nor dread awaking though in heaven itself!'"

The younger looks with face struck sudden white. The elder answers its inquiry.

"Dear, You are a guesser, not a 'clairvoyante.' I 'll so far open you the locked and shelved Volume, my soul, that you desire to see, As let you profit by the title-page"--

"Paradise Lost?"

"Inferno!--All which comes Of tempting me to break my vow. Stop here! Friend, whom I love the best in the whole world, Come at your call, be sure that I will do All your requirement--see and say my mind. It may be that by sad apprenticeship I have a keener sense: I 'll task the same. Only indulge me,--here let sight and speech Happen,--this Inn is neutral ground, you know! I cannot visit the old house and home, Encounter the old sociality Abjured forever. Peril quite enough In even this first--last, I pray it prove-- Renunciation of my solitude! Back, you, to house and cousin! Leave me here, Who want no entertainment, carry still My occupation with me. While I watch The shadow inching round those ferny feet, Tell him 'A school-friend wants a word with me Up at the inn: time, tide, and train won't wait: I must go see her--on and off again-- You 'll keep me company?' Ten minutes' talk, With you in presence, ten more afterward With who, alone, convoys me station-bound, And I see clearly--and say honestly To-morrow: pen shall play tongue's part, you know. Go--quick! for I have made our hand-in-hand Return impossible. So scared you look,-- If cousin does not greet you with 'What ghost Has crossed your path?' I set him down obtuse."

And after one more look, with face still white, The younger does go, while the elder stands Occupied by the elm at window there.

IV

Occupied by the elm; and, as its shade Has crept clock-hand-wise till it ticks at fern Five inches further to the South,--the door Opens abruptly, some one enters sharp, The elder man returned to wait the youth: Never observes the room's new occupant, Throws hat on table, stoops quick, elbow propped Over the Album wide there, bends down brow A cogitative minute, whistles shrill, Then,--with a cheery-hopeless laugh-and-lose Air of defiance to fate visibly Casting the toils about him--mouths once more 'Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!' Then clasps-to cover, sends book spinning off T' other side table, looks up, starts erect Full-face with her who--roused from that abstruse Question 'Will next tick tip the fern or no?'-- Fronts him as fully.

All her languor breaks, Away withers at once the weariness From the black-blooded brow, anger and hate Convulse. Speech follows slowlier, but at last--

"You here! I felt, I knew it would befall! Knew, by some subtle undivinable Trick of the trickster, I should, silly-sooth, Late or soon, somehow be allured to leave Safe hiding and come take of him arrears, My torment due on four years' respite! Time To pluck the bird's healed, breast of down o'er wound! Have your success! Be satisfied this sole Seeing you has undone all heaven could do These four years, puts me back to you and hell! What will next trick be, next success? No doubt When I shall think to glide into the grave, There will you wait disguised as beckoning Death, And catch and capture me forevermore! But, God, though I am nothing, be thou all! Contest him for me! Strive, for he is strong!"

Already his surprise dies palely out In laugh of acquiescing impotence. He neither gasps nor hisses: calm and plain--

"I also felt and knew--but otherwise! You out of hand and sight and care of me These four years, whom I felt, knew, all the while ... Oh, it 's no superstition! It 's a gift O' the gamester that he snuffs the unseen powers Which help or harm him. Well I knew what lurked, Lay perdue paralyzing me,--drugged, drowsed And damnified my soul and body both! Down and down, see where you have dragged me to, You and your malice! I was, four years since, --Well, a poor creature! I became a knave. I squandered my own pence: I plump my purse With other people's pounds. I practised play Because I liked it: play turns labor now Because there 's profit also in the sport. I gamed with men of equal age and craft: I steal here with a boy as green as grass Whom I have tightened hold on slow and sure This long while, just to bring about to-day When the boy beats me hollow, buries me In ruin who was sure to beggar him. Oh, time indeed I should look up and laugh 'Surely she closes on me!' Here you stand!"

And stand she does: while volubility, With him, keeps on the increase, for his tongue After long locking-up is loosed for once.

"Certain the taunt is happy!" he resumes: "So, I it was allured you--only I --I, and none other--to this spectacle-- Your triumph, my despair--you woman-fiend That front me! Well, I have my wish, then! See The low wide brow oppressed by sweeps of hair Darker and darker as they coil and swathe The crowned corpse-wanness whence the eyes burn black, Not asleep now! not pin-points dwarfed beneath Either great bridging eyebrow--poor blank beads-- Babies, I 've pleased to pity in my time: How they protrude and glow immense with hate! The long-triumphant nose attains--retains Just the perfection; and there 's scarlet-skein My ancient enemy, her lip and lip, Sense-free, sense-frighting lips clenched cold and bold Because of chin, that based resolve beneath! Then the columnar neck completes the whole Greek-sculpture-baffling body! Do I see? Can I observe? You wait next word to come? Well, wait and want! since no one blight I bid Consume one least perfection. Each and all, As they are rightly shocking now to me, So may they still continue! Value them? Ay, as the vendor knows the money-worth O£ his Greek statue, fools aspire to buy, And he to see the back of! Let as laugh! You have absolved me from my sin at least! You stand stout, strong, in the rude health of hate, No touch of the tame timid nullity My cowardice, forsooth, has practised on! Ay, while you seemed to hint some fine fifth act Of tragedy should freeze blood, end the farce, I never doubted all was joke. I kept, Maybe, an eye alert on paragraphs, Newspaper-notice,--let no inquest slip, Accident, disappearance: sound and safe Were you, my victim, not of mind to die! So, my worst fancy that could spoil the smooth Of pillow, and arrest descent of sleep, Was 'Into what dim hole can she have dived, She and her wrongs, her woe that 's wearing flesh And blood away?' Whereas, see, sorrow swells! Or, fattened, fulsome, have you fed on me, Sucked out my substance? How much gloss, I pray, O'erbloomed those hair-swathes when there crept from you To me that craze, else unaccountable, Which urged me to contest our county-seat With whom but my own brother's nominee? Did that mouth's pulp glow ruby from carmine While I misused my moment, pushed,--one word,-- One hair's-breadth more of gesture,--idiot-like Past passion, floundered on to the grotesque, And lost the heiress in a grin? At least, You made no such mistake! You tickled fish, Landed your prize the true artistic way! How did the smug young curate rise to tune Of 'Friend, a fatal fact divides us. Love Suits me no longer. I have suffered shame, Betrayal: past is past; the future--yours-- Shall never be contaminate by mine! I might have spared me this confession, not --Oh, never by some hideousest of lies, Easy, impenetrable! No! but say, By just the quiet answer--"I am cold." Falsehood avaunt, each shadow of thee, hence! Had happier fortune willed ... but dreams are vain. Now, leave me--yes, for pity's sake!' Aha, Who fails to see the curate as his face Reddened and whitened, wanted handkerchief At wrinkling brow and twinkling eye, until Out burst the proper 'Angel, whom the fiend Has thought to smirch,--thy whiteness, at one wipe Of holy cambric, shall disgrace the swan! Mine be the task' ... and so forth! Fool? not he! Cunning in flavors, rather! What but sour Suspected makes the sweetness doubly sweet, And what stings love from faint to flamboyant But the fear-sprinkle? Even horror helps-- Love's flame in me by such recited wrong Drenched, quenched, indeed? It burns the fiercelier thence!' Why, I have known men never love their wives Till somebody--myself, suppose--had 'drenched And quenched love,' so the blockheads whined: as if The fluid fire that lifts the torpid limb Were a wrong done to palsy. But I thrilled No palsied person: half my age, or less, The curate was, I 'll wager: o'er young blood Your beauty triumphed! Eh, but--was it he? Then, it was he, I heard of! None beside! How frank you were about the audacious boy Who fell upon you like a thunderbolt-- Passion and protestation! He it was Reserved in petto! Ay, and 'rich' beside-- 'Rich'--how supremely did disdain curl nose! All that I heard was--'wedded to a priest;' Informants sunk youth, riches and the rest. And so my lawless love disparted loves, That loves might come together with a rush! Surely this last achievement sucked me dry: Indeed, that way my wits went. Mistress-queen, Be merciful and let your subject slink Into dark safety! He 's a beggar, see-- Do not turn back his ship, Australia-bound, And bid her land him right amid some crowd Of creditors, assembled by your curse! Don't cause the very rope to crack (you can!) Whereon he spends his last (friend's) sixpence, just The moment when he hoped to hang himself! Be satisfied you beat him!"

She replies--

"Beat him! I do. To all that you confess Of abject failure, I extend belief. Your very face confirms it: God is just! Let my face--fix your eyes!--in turn confirm What I shall say. All-abject's but half truth; Add to all-abject knave as perfect fool! So is it you probed human nature, so Prognosticated of me? Lay these words To heart then, or where God meant heart should lurk! That moment when you first revealed yourself, My simple impulse prompted--end forthwith The ruin of a life uprooted thus To surely perish! How should such spoiled tree Henceforward balk the wind of its worst sport, Fail to go falling deeper, falling down From sin to sin until some depth were reached Doomed to the weakest by the wickedest Of weak and wicked human-kind? But when, That self-display made absolute,--behold A new revealment!--round you pleased to veer, Propose me what should prompt annul the past, Make me 'amends by marriage'--in your phrase, Incorporate me henceforth, body and soul, With soul and body which mere brushing past Brought leprosy upon me--'marry' these! Why, then despair broke, reassurance dawned, Clear-sighted was I that who hurled contempt As I--thank God!--at the contemptible, Was scarce an utter weakling. Rent away By treason from my rightful pride of place, I was not destined to the shame below. A cleft had caught me: I might perish there, But thence to be dislodged and whirled at last Where the black torrent sweeps the sewage--no! 'Bare breast be on hard rock,' laughed out my soul In gratitude, 'howe'er rock's grip may grind! The plain, rough, wretched holdfast shall suffice This wreck of me!' The wind,--I broke in bloom At passage of,--which stripped me bole and branch, Twisted me up and tossed me here,--turns back, And, playful ever, would replant the spoil? Be satisfied, not one least leaf that's mine Shall henceforth help wind's sport to exercise! Rather I give such remnant to the rock Which never dreamed a straw would settle there. Rock may not thank me, may not feel my breast, Even: enough that I feel, hard and cold, Its safety my salvation. Safe and saved, I lived, live. When the tempter shall persuade His prey to slip down, slide off, trust the wind,-- Now that I know if God or Satan be Prince of the Power of the Air,--then, then, indeed, Let my life end and degradation too!"

"Good!" he smiles, "true Lord Byron!" 'Tree and rock: Rock,'--there's advancement! He's at first a youth, Rich, worthless therefore; next he grows a priest: Youth, riches prove a notable resource, When to leave me for their possessor gluts Malice abundantly; and now, last change, The young rich parson represents a rock --Bloodstone, no doubt. He's Evangelical? Your Ritualists prefer the Church for spouse!"

She speaks.

"I have a story to relate. There was a parish-priest, my father knew, Elderly, poor: I used to pity him Before I learned what woes are pity-worth. Elderly was grown old now, scanty means Were straitening fast to poverty, beside The ailments which await in such a case. Limited every way, a perfect man Within the bounds built up and up since birth Breast-high about him till the outside world Was blank save o'erhead one blue bit of sky-- Faith: he had faith in dogma, small or great, As in the fact that if he clave his skull He'd find a brain there: who proves such a fact No falsehood by experiment at price Of soul and body? The one rule of life Delivered him in childhood was 'Obey! Labor!' He had obeyed and labored--tame, True to the mill-track blinked on from above. Some scholarship he may have gained in youth: Gone--dropt or flung behind. Some blossom-flake, Spring's boon, descends on every vernal head, I used to think; but January joins December, as his year had known no May; Trouble its snow-deposit,--cold and old! I heard it was his will to take a wife, A helpmate. Duty bade him tend and teach-- How? with experience null, nor sympathy Abundant,--while himself worked dogma dead, Who would play ministrant to sickness, age, Womankind, childhood? These demand a wife. Supply the want, then! theirs the wife; for him-- No coarsest sample of the proper sex But would have served his purpose equally With God's own angel,--let but knowledge match Her coarseness: zeal does only half the work. I saw this--knew the purblind honest drudge Was wearing out his simple blameless life, And wanted help beneath a burden--borne To treasure-house or dust-heap, what cared I? Partner he needed: I proposed myself, Nor much surprised him--duty was so clear! Gratitude? What for? Gain of Paradise-- Escape, perhaps, from the dire penalty Of who hides talent in a napkin? No: His scruple was--should I be strong enough --In body? since of weakness in the mind, Weariness in the heart--no fear of these? He took me as these Arctic voyagers Take an aspirant to their toil and pain: Can he endure them?--that 's the point, and not --Will he? Who would not, rather! Whereupon, I pleaded far more earnestly for leave To give myself away, than you to gain What you called priceless till you gained the heart And soul and body! which, as beggars serve Extorted alms, you straightway spat upon. Not so my husband,--for I gained my suit, And had my value put at once to proof. Ask him! These four years I have died away In village-life. The village? Ugliness At best and filthiness at worst, inside. Outside, sterility--earth sown with salt Or what keeps even grass from growing fresh. The life? I teach the poor and learn, myself, That commonplace to such stupidity Is all-recondite. Being brutalized Their true need is brute-language, cheery grunts And kindly cluckings, no articulate Nonsense that 's elsewhere knowledge. Tend the sick, Sickened myself at pig-perversity, Cat-craft, dog-snarling--maybe, snapping" ...

"Brief: You eat that root of bitterness called Man --Raw: I prefer it cooked, with social sauce! So, he was not the rich youth after all! Well, I mistook. But somewhere needs must be The compensation. If not young nor rich" ...

"You interrupt!"

"Because you 've daubed enough Bistre for background. Play the artist now, Produce your figure well-relieved in front! The contrast--do not I anticipate? Though neither rich nor young--what then? 'T is all Forgotten, all this ignobility, In the dear home, the darling word, the smile, The something sweeter" ...

"Yes, you interrupt. I have my purpose and proceed. Who lives With beasts assumes beast-nature, look and voice, And, much more, thought, for beasts think. Selfishness In us met selfishness in them, deserved Such answer as it gained. My husband, bent On saving his own soul by saving theirs,-- They, bent on being saved if saving soul Included body's getting bread and cheese Somehow in life and somehow after death,-- Both parties were alike in the same boat, One danger, therefore one equality. Safety induces culture: culture seeks To institute, extend and multiply The difference between safe man and man, Able to live alone now; progress means What but abandonment of fellowship? We were in common danger, still stuck close. No new books,--were the old ones mastered yet? No pictures and no music: these divert --What from? the staving danger off! You paint The waterspout above, you set to words The roaring of the tempest round you? Thanks! Amusement? Talk at end of the tired day Of the more tiresome morrow! I transcribed The page on page of sermon-scrawlings--stopped Intellect's eye and ear to sense and sound-- Vainly: the sound and sense would penetrate To brain and plague there in despite of me Maddened to know more moral good were done Had we two simply sallied forth and preached I' the 'Green' they call their grimy,--I with twang Of long-disused guitar,--with cut and slash Of much-misvalued horsewhip he,--to bid The peaceable come dance, the peace-breaker Pay in his person! Whereas--Heaven and Hell, Excite with that, restrain with this!--so dealt His drugs my husband; as he dosed himself, He drenched his cattle: and, for all my part Was just to dub the mortar, never fear But drugs, hand pestled at, have poisoned nose! Heaven he let pass, left wisely undescribed: As applicable therefore to the sleep I want, that knows no waking--as to what 's Conceived of as the proper prize to tempt Souls less world-weary: there, no fault to find! But Hell he made explicit. After death, Life: man created new, ingeniously Perfect for a vindictive purpose now, That man, first fashioned in beneficence, Was proved a failure; intellect at length Replacing old obtuseness, memory Made mindful of delinquent's bygone deeds Now that remorse was vain, which life-long lay Dormant when lesson might be laid to heart; New gift of observation up and down And round man's self, new power to apprehend Each necessary consequence of act In man for well or ill--things obsolete-- Just granted to supplant the idiocy Man's only guide while act was yet to choose, With ill or well momentously its fruit; A faculty of immense suffering Conferred on mind and body,--mind, erewhile Unvisited by one compunctious dream During sin's drunken slumber, startled up, Stung through and through by sin's significance Now that the holy was abolished--just As body which, alive, broke down beneath Knowledge, lay helpless in the path to good, Failed to accomplish aught legitimate, Achieve aught worthy,--which grew old in youth, And at its longest fell a cut-down flower,-- Dying, this too revived by miracle To bear no end of burden now that back Supported torture to no use at all, And live imperishably potent--since Life's potency was impotent to ward One plague off which made earth a hell before. This doctrine, which one healthy view of things, One sane sight of the general ordinance-- Nature--and its particular object--man,-- Which one mere eye-cast at the character Of Who made these and gave man sense to boot, Had dissipated once and evermore,-- This doctrine I have dosed our flock withal. Why? Because none believed it. They desire Such Heaven and dread such Hell, whom every day The alehouse tempts from one, a dog-fight bids Defy the other? All the harm is done Ourselves--done my good husband who in youth Perhaps read Dickens, done myself who still Could play both Bach and Brahms. Such life I lead-- Thanks to you, knave! You learn its quality-- Thanks to me, fool!"

He eyes her earnestly, But she continues.

"--Life which, thanks once more To you, arch-knave as exquisitest fool, I acquiescingly--I gratefully Take back again to heart! and hence this speech Which yesterday had spared you. Four years long Life--I began to find intolerable, Only this moment. Ere your entry just, The leap of heart which answered, spite of me, A friend's first summons, first provocative, Authoritative, nay, compulsive call To quit, though for a single day, my house Of bondage--made return seem horrible. I heard again a human lucid laugh All trust, no fear; again saw earth pursue Its narrow busy way amid small cares, Smaller contentments, much weeds, some few flowers,-- Never suspicious of a thunderbolt Avenging presently each daisy's death. I recognized the beech-tree, knew the thrush Repeated his old music-phrase,--all right, How wrong was I, then! But your entry broke Illusion, bade me back to bounds at once. I honestly submit my soul: which sprang At love, and losing love lies signed and sealed 'Failure.' No love more? then, no beauty more Which tends to breed love! Purify my powers, Effortless till some other world procures Some other chance of prize! or, if none be,-- Nor second world nor chance,--undesecrate Die then this aftergrowth of heart, surmised Where May's precipitation left June blank! Better have failed in the high aim, as I, Than vulgarly in the low aim succeed As, God be thanked, I do not! Ugliness Had I called beauty, falsehood--truth, and you-- My lover! No--this earth's unchanged for me, By his enchantment whom God made the Prince O' the Power o' the Air, into a Heaven: there is Heaven, since there is Heaven's simulation--earth. I sit possessed in patience; prison-roof Shall break one day and Heaven beam overhead."

His smile is done with; he speaks bitterly.

"Take my congratulations, and permit I wish myself had proved as teachable! --Or, no! until you taught me, could I learn, A lesson from experience ne'er till now Conceded? Please you listen while I show How thoroughly you estimate my worth And yours--the immeasurably superior! I Believed at least in one thing, first to last,-- Your love to me: I was the vile and you The precious; I abused you, I betrayed, But doubted--never! Why else go my way Judas-like plodding to this Potters' Field Where fate now finds me? What has dinned my ear And dogged my step? The spectre with the shriek 'Such she was, such were you, whose punishment Is just!' And such she was not, all the while! She never owned a love to outrage, faith To pay with falsehood! For, my heart knows this-- Love once and you love always. Why, it 's down Here in the Album: every lover knows Love may use hate but--turn to hate, itself-- Turn even to indifference--no, indeed! Well, I have been spellbound, deluded like The witless negro by the Obeah-man Who bids him wither: so, his eye grows dim, His arm slack, arrow misses aim and spear Goes wandering wide,--and all the woe because He proved untrue to Fetish, who, he finds, Was just a feather-phantom! I wronged love, Am ruined,--and there was no love to wrong!"

"No love? Ah, dead love! I invoke thy ghost To show the murderer where thy heart poured life At summons of the stroke he doubts was dealt On pasteboard and pretence! Not love, my love? I changed for you the very laws of life: Made you the standard of all right, all fair. No genius but you could have been, no sage, No sufferer--which is grandest--for the truth! My hero--where the heroic only hid To burst from hiding, brighten earth one day! Age and decline were man's maturity; Face, form were nature's type: more grace, more strength, What had they been but just superfluous gauds, Lawless divergence? I have danced through day On tiptoe at the music of a word, Have wondered where was darkness gone as night Burst out in stars at brilliance of a smile! Lonely, I placed the chair to help me seat Your fancied presence; in companionship, I kept my finger constant to your glove Glued to my breast; then--where was all the world? I schemed--not dreamed--how I might die some death Should save your finger aching! Who creates Destroys, he only: I had laughed to scorn Whatever angel tried to shake my faith And make you seem unworthy: you yourself Only could do that! With a touch 't was done. 'Give me all, trust me wholly!' At the word, I did give, I did trust--and thereupon The touch did follow. Ah, the quiet smile, The masterfully-folded arm in arm, As trick obtained its triumph one time more! In turn, my soul too triumphs in defeat: Treason like faith moves mountains: love is gone!"

He paces to and fro, stops, stands quite close And calls her by her name. Then--

"God forgives: Forgive you, delegate of God, brought near As never priests could bring him to this soul That prays you both--forgive me! I abase-- Know myself mad and monstrous utterly In all I did that moment; but as God Gives me this knowledge--heart to feel and tongue To testify--so be you gracious too! Judge no man by the solitary work Of--well, they do say and I can believe-- The devil in him: his, the moment,--mine The life--your life!"

He names her name again.

"You were just--merciful as just, you were In giving me no respite: punishment Followed offending. Sane and sound once more, The patient thanks decision, promptitude, Which flung him prone and fastened him from hurt, Haply to others, surely to himself. I wake and would not you had spared one pang. All's well that ends well!"

Yet again her name.

"Had you no fault? Why must you change, forsooth, Parts, why reverse positions, spoil the play? Why did your nobleness look up to me, Not down on the ignoble thing confessed? Was it your part to stoop, or lift the low? Wherefore did God exalt you? Who would teach The brute man's tameness and intelligence Must never drop the dominating eye: Wink--and what wonder if the mad fit break, Followed by stripes and fasting? Sound and sane, My life, chastised now, couches at your foot. Accept, redeem me! Do your eyes ask 'How?' I stand here penniless, a beggar; talk What idle trash I may, this final blow Of fortune fells me. I disburse, indeed, This boy his winnings? when each bubble-scheme That danced athwart my brain, a minute since, The worse the better,--of repairing straight My misadventure by fresh enterprise, Capture of other boys in foolishness His fellows,--when these fancies fade away At first sight of the lost so long, the found So late, the lady of my life, before Whose presence I, the lost, am also found Incapable of one least touch of mean Expedient, I who teemed with plot and wile-- That family of snakes your eye bids flee! Listen! Our troublesomest dreams die off In daylight: I awake, and dream is--where? I rouse up from the past: one touch dispels England and all here. I secured long since A certain refuge, solitary home To hide in, should the head strike work one day, The hand forget its cunning, or perhaps Society grow savage,--there to end My life's remainder, which, say what fools will, Is or should be the best of life,--its fruit, All tends to, root and stem and leaf and flower. Come with me, love, loved once, loved only, come, Blend loves there! Let this parenthetic doubt Of love, in me, have been the trial test Appointed to all flesh at some one stage Of soul's achievement,--when the strong man doubts His strength, the good man whether goodness be, The artist in the dark seeks, fails to find Vocation, and the saint forswears his shrine. What if the lover may elude, no more Than these, probative dark, must search the sky Vainly for love, his soul's star? But the orb Breaks from eclipse: I breathe again: I love! Tempted, I fell; but fallen--fallen lie Here at your feet, see! Leave this poor pretence Of union with a nature and its needs Repugnant to your needs and nature! Nay, False, beyond falsity you reprehend In me, is such mock marriage with such mere Man-mask as--whom you witless wrong, beside, By that expenditure of heart and brain He recks no more of than would yonder tree If watered with your life-blood: rains and dews Answer its ends sufficiently, while me One drop saves--sends to flower and fruit at last The laggard virtue in the soul which else Cumbers the ground! Quicken me! Call me yours-- Yours and the world's--yours and the world's and God's! Yes, for you can, you only! Think! Confirm Your instinct! Say, a minute since, I seemed The castaway you count me,--all the more Apparent shall the angelic potency Lift me from out perdition's deep of deeps To light and life and love!--that's love for you-- Love that already dares match might with yours. You loved one worthy,--in your estimate,-- When time was; you descried the unworthy taint, And where was love then? No such test could e'er Try my love: but you hate me and revile; Hatred, revilement--had you these to bear, Would you, as I do, nor revile, nor hate, But simply love on, love the more, perchance? Abide by your own proof! 'Your love was love: Its ghost knows no forgetting!' Heart of mine, Would that I dared remember! Too unwise Were he who lost a treasure, did himself Enlarge upon the sparkling catalogue Of gems to her his queen who trusted late The keeper of her caskets! Can it be That I, custodian of such relic still As your contempt permits me to retain, All I dare hug to breast is--'How your glove Burst and displayed the long thin lily streak!' What may have followed--that is forfeit now! I hope the proud man has grown humble! True-- One grace of humbleness absents itself-- Silence! yet love lies deeper than all words, And not the spoken but the speechless love Waits answer ere I rise and go my way."

Whereupon, yet one other time the name.

To end she looks the large deliberate look, Even prolongs it somewhat; then the soul Bursts forth in a clear laugh that lengthens on, On, till--thinned, softened, silvered, one might say The bitter runnel hides itself in sand, Moistens the hard gray grimly comic speech.

"Ay--give the baffled angler even yet His supreme triumph as he hales to shore A second time the fish once 'scaped from hook-- So artfully has new bait hidden old Blood-imbrued iron! Ay, no barb's beneath The gilded minnow here! You bid break trust, This time, with who trusts me,--not simply bid Me trust you, me who ruined but myself, In trusting but myself! Since, thanks to you, I know the feel of sin and shame,--be sure, I shall obey you and impose them both On one who happens to be ignorant Although my husband--for the lure is love, Your love! Try other tackle, fisher-friend! Repentance, expiation, hopes and fears, What you had been, may yet be, would I but Prove helpmate to my hero--one and all These silks and worsteds round the hook seduce Hardly the late torn throat and mangled tongue. Pack up, I pray, the whole assortment prompt! Who wonders at variety of wile In the Arch-cheat? You are the Adversary! Your fate is of your choosing: have your choice! Wander the world,--God has some end to serve, Ere he suppress you! He waits: I endure, But interpose no finger-tip, forsooth, To stop your passage to the pit. Enough That I am stable, uninvolved by you In the rush downwards: free I gaze and fixed; Your smiles, your tears, prayers, curses move alike My crowned contempt. You kneel? Prostrate yourself! To earth, and would the whole world saw you there!"

Whereupon--"All right!" carelessly begins Somebody from outside, who mounts the stair, And sends his voice for herald of approach: Half in half out the doorway as the door Gives way to push.

"Old fellow, all's no good! The train's your portion! Lay the blame on me! I'm no diplomatist, and Bismarck's self Had hardly braved the awful Aunt at broach Of proposition--so has world-repute Preceded the illustrious stranger! Ah!"--

Quick the voice changes to astonishment, Then horror, as the youth stops, sees, and knows.

The man who knelt starts up from kneeling, stands Moving no muscle, and confronts the stare.

One great red outbreak buries--throat and brow-- The lady's proud pale queenliness of scorn: Then her great eyes that turned so quick, become Intenser:--quail at gaze, not they indeed!

V

It is the young man shatters silence first.

"Well, my lord--for indeed my lord you are, I little guessed how rightly--this last proof Of lordship-paramount confounds too much My simple headpiece! Let's see how we stand Each to the other! how we stood i' the game Of life an hour ago,--the magpies, stile, And oak-tree witnessed. Truth exchanged for truth-- My lord confessed his four-years-old affair-- How he seduced and then forsook the girl Who married somebody and left him sad. My pitiful experience was--I loved A girl whose gown's hem had I dared to touch My finger would have failed me, palsy-fixed. She left me, sad enough, to marry--whom? A better man,--then possibly not you! How does the game stand? Who is who and what Is what, o' the board now, since an hour went by? My lord 's 'seduced, forsaken, sacrificed,' Starts up, my lord's familiar instrument, Associate and accomplice, mistress-slave-- Shares his adventure, follows on the sly! --Ay, and since 'bag and baggage' is a phrase-- Baggage lay hid in carpet-bag belike, Was but unpadlocked when occasion came For holding council, since my back was turned, On how invent ten thousand pounds which, paid, Would lure the winner to lose twenty more, Beside refunding these! Why else allow The fool to gain them? So displays herself The lady whom my heart believed--oh, laugh! Noble and pure: whom my heart loved at once, And who at once did speak truth when she said 'I am not mine now but another's'--thus Being that other's! Devil's-marriage, eh? 'My lie weds thine till lucre us do part?' But pity me the snobbish simpleton, You two aristocratic tiptop swells At swindling! Quits, I cry! Decamp content With skin I 'm peeled of: do not strip bones bare-- As that you could, I have no doubt at all! O you two rare ones! Male and female, Sir! The male there smirked, this morning, 'Come, my boy-- Out with it! You've been crossed in love, I think: I recognize the lover's hangdog look; Make a clean breast and match my confidence, For, I'll be frank, I too have had my fling, Am punished for my fault, and smart enough! Where now the victim hides her head, God knows!' Here loomed her head, life-large, the devil knew! Look out, Salvini! Here 's your man, your match! He and I sat applauding, stall by stall, Last Monday--'Here 's Othello' was our word, 'But where 's Iago?' Where? Why, there! And now The fellow-artist, female specimen-- Oh, lady, you must needs describe yourself! He 's great in art, but you--how greater still --(If I can rightly, out of all I learned, Apply one bit of Latin that assures 'Art means just art's concealment')--tower yourself! For he stands plainly visible henceforth-- Liar and scamp: while you, in artistry Prove so consummate--or I prove perhaps So absolute an ass--that--either way-- You still do seem to me who worshipped you And see you take the homage of this man, Your master, who played slave and knelt, no doubt, Before a mistress in his very craft ... Well, take the fact, I nor believe my eyes, Nor trust my understanding! Still you seem Noble and pure as when we had the talk Under the tower, beneath the trees, that day. And there 's the key explains the secret: down He knelt to ask your leave to rise a grade I' the mystery of humbug: well he may! For how you beat him! Half an hour ago, I held your master for my best of friends; And now I hate him! Four years since, you seemed My heart's one love: well, and you so remain! What 's he to you in craft?"

She looks him through.

"My friend, 't is just that friendship have its turn-- Interrogate thus me whom one, of foes The worst, has questioned and is answered by. Take you as frank an answer! answers both Begin alike so far, divergent soon World-wide--I own superiority Over you, over him. As him I searched, So do you stand seen through and through by me Who, this time, proud, report your crystal shrines A dewdrop, plain as amber prisons round A spider in the hollow heart his house! Nowise are you that thing my fancy feared When out you stepped on me, a minute since, --This man's confederate! no, you step not thus Obsequiously at beck and call to help At need some second scheme, and supplement Guile by force, use my shame to pinion me From struggle and escape! I fancied that! Forgive me! Only by strange chance,--most strange In even this strange world,--you enter now, Obtain your knowledge. Me you have not wronged Who never wronged you--least of all, my friend, That day beneath the College tower and trees, When I refused to say,--'not friend, but love!' Had I been found as free as air when first We met, I scarcely could have loved you. No-- For where was that in you which claimed return Of love? My eyes were all too weak to probe This other's seeming, but that seeming loved The soul in me, and lied--I know too late! While your truth was truth: and I knew at once My power was just my beauty--bear the word-- As I must bear, of all my qualities, To name the poorest one that serves my soul And simulates myself! So much in me You loved, I know: the something that 's beneath Heard not your call,--uncalled, no answer comes! For, since in every love, or soon or late, Soul must awake and seek out soul for soul, Yours, overlooking mine then, would, some day, Take flight to find some other; so it proved-- Missing me, you were ready for this man. I apprehend the whole relation: his-- The soul wherein you saw your type of worth At once, true object of your tribute. Well Might I refuse such half-heart's homage! Love Divining, had assured you I no more Stand his participant in infamy Than you--I need no love to recognize As simply dupe and nowise fellow-cheat! Therefore accept one last friend's-word,--your friend's, All men's friend, save a felon's. Ravel out The bad embroilment howsoe'er you may, Distribute as it please you praise or blame To me--so you but fling this mockery far-- Renounce this rag-and-feather hero-sham, This poodle clipt to pattern, lion-like! Throw him his thousands back, and lay to heart The lesson I was sent,--if man discerned Ever God's message,--just to teach. I judge-- To far another issue than could dream Your cousin,--younger, fairer, as befits-- Who summoned me to judgment's exercise. I find you, save in folly, innocent. And in my verdict lies your fate; at choice Of mine your cousin takes or leaves you. 'Take!' I bid her--for you tremble back to truth! She turns the scale,--one touch of the pure hand Shall so press down, emprison past relapse Farther vibration 'twixt veracity-- That 's honest solid earth--and falsehood, theft And air, that 's one illusive emptiness! That reptile capture you? I conquered him: You saw him cower before me! Have no fear He shall offend you farther. Spare to spurn-- Safe let him slink hence till some subtler Eve Than I, anticipate the snake--bruise head Ere he bruise heel--or, warier than the first, Some Adam purge earth's garden of its pest Before the slaver spoil the Tree of Life!

"You! Leave this youth, as he leaves you, as I Leave each! There 's caution surely extant yet Though conscience in you were too vain a claim. Hence quickly! Keep the cash but leave unsoiled The heart I rescue and would lay to heal Beside another's! Never let her know How near came taint of your companionship!"

"Ah"--draws a long breath with a new strange look The man she interpellates--soul astir Under its covert, as, beneath the dust, A coppery sparkle all at once denotes The hid snake has conceived a purpose.

"Ah-- Innocence should be crowned with ignorance? Desirable indeed, but difficult! As if yourself, now, had not glorified Your helpmate by imparting him a hint Of how a monster made the victim bleed Ere crook and courage saved her--hint, I say,-- Not the whole horror,--that were needless risk,-- But just such inkling, fancy of the fact, As should suffice to qualify henceforth The shepherd, when another lamb would stray, For warning ''Ware the wolf!' No doubt at all, Silence is generosity,--keeps wolf Unhunted by flock's warder! Excellent, Did--generous to me, mean--just to him! But, screening the deceiver, lamb were found Outraging the deceitless! So,--he knows! And yet, unharmed I breathe--perchance, repent-- Thanks to the mercifully-politic!"

"Ignorance is not innocence but sin-- Witness yourself ignore what after-pangs Pursue the plague-infected. Merciful Am I? Perhaps! the more contempt, the less Hatred; and who so worthy of contempt As you that rest assured I cooled the spot I could not cure, by poisoning, forsooth, Whose hand I pressed there? Understand for once That, sick, of all the pains corroding me This burnt the last and nowise least--the need Of simulating soundness. I resolved-- No matter how the struggle tasked weak flesh-- To hide the truth away as in a grave From--most of all--my husband: he nor knows Nor ever shall be made to know your part, My part, the devil's part,--I trust, God's part In the foul matter. Saved, I yearn to save And not destroy: and what destruction like The abolishing of faith in him, that's faith In me as pure and true? Acquaint some child Who takes yon tree into his confidence, That, where he sleeps now, was a murder done, And that the grass which grows so thick, he thinks, Only to pillow him is product just Of what lies festering beneath! 'T is God Must bear such secrets and disclose them. Man? The miserable thing I have become By dread acquaintance with my secret--you-- That thing had he become by learning me-- The miserable, whom his ignorance Would wrongly call the wicked: ignorance Being, I hold, sin ever, small or great. No, he knows nothing!"

"He and I alike Are bound to you for such discreetness, then. What if our talk should terminate awhile? Here is a gentleman to satisfy, Settle accounts with, pay ten thousand pounds Before we part--as, by his face, I fear, Results from your appearance on the scene. Grant me a minute's parley with my friend Which scarce admits of a third personage! The room from which you made your entry first So opportunely--still untenanted-- What if you please return there? Just a word To my young friend first--then, a word to you, And you depart to fan away each fly From who, grass-pillowed, sleeps so sound at home!"

"So the old truth comes back! A wholesome change,-- At last the altered eye, the rightful tone! But even to the truth that drops disguise And stands forth grinning malice which but now Whined so contritely--I refuse assent Just as to malice. I, once gone, come back? No, my lord! I enjoy the privilege Of being absolutely loosed from you Too much--the knowledge that your power is null Which was omnipotence. A word of mouth, A wink of eye would have detained me once, Body and soul your slave; and now, thank God, Your fawningest of prayers, your frightfulest Of curses--neither would avail to turn My footstep for a moment!"

"Prayer, then, tries No such adventure. Let us cast about For something novel in expedient: take Command,--what say you? I profess myself One fertile in resource. Commanding, then, I bid--not only wait there, but return Here, where I want you! Disobey and--good! On your own head the peril!"

"Come!" breaks in The boy with his good glowing face. "Shut up! None of this sort of thing while I stand here --Not to stand that! No bullying, I beg! I also am to leave you presently And never more set eyes upon your face-- You won't mind that much; but--I tell you frank-- I do mind having to remember this For your last word and deed--my friend who were! Bully a woman you have ruined, eh? Do you know,--I give credit all at once To all those stories everybody told And nobody but I would disbelieve: They all seem likely now,--nay, certain, sure! I daresay you did cheat at cards that night The row was at the Club: 'sauter la coupe'-- That was your 'cut,' for which your friends 'cut' you; While I, the booby, 'cut'--acquaintanceship With who so much as laughed when I said 'luck!' I daresay you had bets against the horse They doctored at the Derby; little doubt, That fellow with the sister found you shirk His challenge and did kick you like a ball, Just as the story went about! Enough: It only serves to show how well advised, Madam, you were in bidding such a fool As I, go hang. You see how the mere sight And sound of you suffice to tumble down Conviction topsy-turvy: no,--that 's false,-- There 's no unknowing what one knows; and yet Such is my folly that, in gratitude For ... well, I 'm stupid; but you seemed to wish I should know gently what I know, should slip Softly from old to new, not break my neck Between beliefs of what you were and are. Well then, for just the sake of such a wish To cut no worse a figure than needs must In even eyes like mine, I 'd sacrifice Body and soul! But don't think danger--pray!-- Menaces either! He do harm to us? Let me say 'us' this one time! You 'd allow I lent perhaps my hand to rid your ear Of some cur's yelping--hand that 's fortified, Into the bargain, with a horsewhip? Oh, One crack and you shall see how curs decamp!-- My lord, you know your losses and my gains. Pay me my money at the proper time! If cash be not forthcoming--well, yourself Have taught me, and tried often, I 'll engage, The proper course: I post you at the Club, Pillory the defaulter. Crack, to-day, Shall, slash, to-morrow, slice through flesh and bone! There, Madam, you need mind no cur, I think!"

"Ah, what a gain to have an apt no less Thou grateful scholar! Nay, he brings to mind My knowledge till he puts me to the blush, So long has it lain rusty! Post my name! That were indeed a wheal from whipcord! Whew! I wonder now if I could rummage out --Just to match weapons--some old scorpion-scourge! Madam, you hear my pupil, may applaud His triumph o'er the master. I--no more Bully, since I 'm forbidden: but entreat-- Wait and return--for my sake, no! but just To save your own defender, should he chance Get thwacked through awkward flourish of his thong. And what if--since all waiting 's weary work-- I help the time pass 'twixt your exit now And entry then? for--pastime proper--here 's The very thing, the Album, verse and prose To make the laughing minutes launch away! Each of us must contribute. I 'll begin-- 'Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!' I 'm confident I beat the bard,--for why? My young friend owns me an Iago--him Confessed, among the other qualities, A ready rhymer. Oh, he rhymed! Here goes! --Something to end with 'horsewhip!' No, that rhyme Beats me; there 's 'cowslip,' 'boltsprit,' nothing else! So, Tennyson take my benison,--verse for bard, Prose suits the gambler's book best! Dared and done!"

Wherewith he dips pen, writes a line or two, Closes and clasps the cover, gives the book, Bowing the while, to her who hesitates, Turns half away, turns round again, at last Takes it as you touch carrion, then retires. The door shuts fast the couple.

VI

With a change Of his whole manner, opens out at once The Adversary.

"Now, my friend, for you! You who, protected late, aggressive grown, Brandish, it seems, a weapon I must 'ware! Plain speech in me becomes respectable Henceforth because courageous; plainly, then-- (Have lash well loose, hold handle tight and light!) Throughout my life's experience, you indulged Yourself and friend by passing in review So courteously but now, I vainly search To find one record of a specimen So perfect of the pure and simple fool As this you furnish me. Ingratitude I lump with folly,--all 's one lot,--so--fool! Did I seek you or you seek me? Seek? sneak For service to, and service you would style-- And did style--godlike, scarce an hour ago! Fool, there again, yet not precisely there First-rate in folly: since the hand you kissed Did pick you from the kennel, did plant firm Your footstep on the pathway, did persuade Your awkward shamble to true gait and pace, Fit for the world you walk in. Once a-strut On that firm pavement which your cowardice Was for renouncing as a pitfall, next Came need to clear your brains of their conceit They cleverly could distinguish who was who, Whatever folk might tramp the thoroughfare. Men, now--familiarly you read them off, Each phiz at first sight! Oh, you had an eye! Who couched it? made you disappoint each fox Eager to strip my gosling of his fluff So golden as he cackled 'Goose trusts lamb'? 'Ay, but I saved you--wolf defeated fox-- Wanting to pick your bones myself?' then, wolf Has got the worst of it with goose for once. I, penniless, pay you ten thousand pounds (--No gesture, pray! I pay ere I depart!) And how you turn advantage to account Here 's the example! Have I proved so wrong In my peremptory 'debt must be discharged'? Oh, you laughed lovelily, were loth to leave The old friend out at elbows, pooh, a thing Not to be thought of! I must keep my cash, And you forget your generosity! Ha ha! I took your measure when I laughed My laugh to that! First quarrel--nay, first faint Pretence at taking umbrage--'Down with debt, Both interest and principal!--The Club, Exposure and expulsion!--stamp me out!' That 's the magnanimous magnificent Renunciation of advantage! Well, But whence and why did you take umbrage, Sir? Because your master, having made you know Somewhat of men, was minded to advance, Expound you women, still a mystery! My pupil pottered with a cloud, on brow, A clod in breast: had loved, and vainly loved: Whence blight and blackness, just for all the world As Byron used to teach us boys. Thought I-- 'Quick rid him of that rubbish! Clear the cloud, And set the heart a-pulsing!'--heart, this time: 'T was nothing but the head I doctored late For ignorance of Man; now heart 's to dose, Palsied by over-palpitation due To Woman-worship--so, to work at once On first avowal of the patient's ache! This morning you described your malady,-- How you dared love a piece of virtue--lost To reason, as the upshot showed: for scorn Fitly repaid your stupid arrogance; And, parting, you went two ways, she resumed Her path--perfection, while forlorn you paced The world that 's made for beasts like you and me. My remedy was--tell the fool the truth! Your paragon of purity had plumped Into these arms at their first outspread--'fallen My victim,' she prefers to turn the phrase-- And, in exchange for that frank confidence, Asked for my whole life present and to come-- Marriage: a thing uncovenanted for! Never so much as put in question! Life-- Implied by marriage--throw that trifle in And round the bargain off, no otherwise Than if, when we played cards, because you won My money you should also want my head! That, I demurred to: we but played 'for love'-- She won my love; had she proposed for stakes, 'Marriage,'--why, that 's for whist, a wiser game. Whereat she raved at me, as losers will, And went her way. So far the story 's known, The remedy 's applied, no farther--which Here 's the sick man's first honorarium for-- Posting his medicine-monger at the Club! That being, Sir, the whole you mean my fee-- In gratitude for such munificence I 'm bound in common honesty to spare No droplet of the draught: so,--pinch your nose, Pull no wry faces!--drain it to the dregs! I say 'She went off'--'went off,' you subjoin, 'Since not to wedded bliss, as I supposed, Sure to some convent: solitude and peace Help her to hide the shame from mortal view, With prayer and fasting.' No, my sapient Sir! Far wiselier, straightway she betook herself To a prize-portent from the donkey-show Of leathern long-ears that compete for palm In clerical absurdity: since he, Good ass, nor practises the shaving-trick, The candle-crotchet, nonsense which repays When you 've young ladies congregant,--but schools The poor,--toils, moils, and grinds the mill, nor means To stop and munch one thistle in this life Till next life smother him with roses: just The parson for her purpose! Him she stroked Over the muzzle; into mouth with bit, And on to back with saddle,--there he stood, The serviceable beast who heard, believed And meekly bowed him to the burden,--borne Off in a canter to seclusion--ay, The lady 's lost! But had a friend of mine --While friend he was--imparted his sad case To sympathizing counsellor, full soon One cloud at least had vanished from his brow. 'Don't fear!' had followed reassuringly-- The lost will in due time turn up again, Probably just when, weary of the world, You think of nothing less than settling-down To country life and golden days, beside A dearest best and brightest virtuousest Wife: who needs no more hope to hold her own Against the naughty-and-repentant--no, Than water-gruel against Roman punch!' And as I prophesied, it proves! My youth,-- Just at the happy moment when, subdued To spooniness, he finds that youth fleets fast, That town-life tires, that men should drop boys'-play, That property, position have, no doubt, Their exigency with their privilege, And if the wealthy wed with wealth, how dire The double duty!--in, behold, there beams Our long-lost lady, form and face complete! And where 's my moralizing pupil now, Had not his master missed a train by chance? But, by your side instead of whirled away, How have I spoiled scene, stopped catastrophe, Struck flat the stage-effect I know by heart! Sudden and strange the meeting--improvised? Bless you, the last event she hoped or dreamed! But rude sharp stroke will crush out fire from flint-- Assuredly from flesh. ''T is you?' 'Myself!' 'Changed?' 'Changeless!' 'Then, what's earth to me?' 'To me What 's heaven?' 'So,--thine!' 'And thine!' 'And likewise mine!' Had laughed 'Amen' the devil, but for me Whose intermeddling hinders this hot haste, And bids you, ere concluding contract, pause-- Ponder one lesson more, then sign and seal At leisure and at pleasure,--lesson's price Being, if you have skill to estimate, --How say you?--I 'm discharged my debt in full! Since paid you stand, to farthing uttermost, Unless I fare like that black majesty A friend of mine had visit from last Spring. Coasting along the Cape-side, he 's becalmed Off an uncharted bay, a novel town Untouched at by the trader: here 's a chance! Out paddles straight the king in his canoe, Comes over bulwark, says he means to buy Ship's cargo--being rich and having brought A treasure ample for the purpose. See! Four dragons, stalwart blackies, guard the same Wrapped round and round: its hulls, a multitude,-- Palm-leaf and cocoa-mat and goat's-hair cloth All duly braced about with bark and board,-- Suggest how brave, 'neath coat, must kernel be! At length the peeling is accomplished, plain The casket opens out its core, and lo --A brand-new British silver sixpence--bid That 's ample for the Bank,--thinks majesty! You are the Captain; call my sixpence cracked Or copper; 'what I 've said is calumny; The lady 's spotless!' Then,--I 'll prove my words, Or make you prove them true as truth--yourself, Here, on the instant! I 'll not mince my speech, Things at this issue. When she enters, then, Make love to her! No talk of marriage now-- The point-blank bare proposal! Pick no phrase-- Prevent all misconception! Soon you 'll see How different the tactics when she deals With an instructed man, no longer boy Who blushes like a booby. Woman's wit! Man, since you have instruction, blush no more! Such your five minutes' profit by my pains, 'T is simply now,--demand and be possessed! Which means--you may possess--may strip the tree Of fruit desirable to make one wise! More I nor wish nor want: your act 's your act, My teaching is but--there 's the fruit to pluck Or let alone at pleasure. Next advance In knowledge were beyond you! Don't expect I bid a novice--pluck, suck, send sky-high Such fruit, once taught that neither crab nor sloe Falls readier prey to who but robs a hedge, Than this gold apple to my Hercules. Were you no novice but proficient--then, Then, truly, I might prompt you--Touch and taste, Try flavor and be tired as soon as I! Toss on the prize to greedy mouths agape, Betake yours, sobered as the satiate grow, To wise man's solid meal of house and land, Consols and cousin! but, my boy, my boy, Such lore 's above you!