'Felipe,' I said, 'take me where they will ask no questions.'

He said never a word, but he turned his mule about, end for end, retraced
some part of the way we had gone, and, striking into another path, led me
to the mountain village, which was, as we say in Scotland, the kirkton of
that thinly peopled district.  Some broken memories dwell in my mind of
the day breaking over the plain, of the cart stopping, of arms that
helped me down, of a bare room into which I was carried, and of a swoon
that fell upon me like sleep.

The next day and the days following the old priest was often at my side
with his snuff-box and prayer book, and after a while, when I began to
pick up strength, he told me that I was now on a fair way to recovery,
and must as soon as possible hurry my departure; whereupon, without
naming any reason, he took snuff and looked at me sideways.  I did not
affect ignorance; I knew he must have seen Olalla.  'Sir,' said I, 'you
know that I do not ask in wantonness.  What of that family?'

He said they were very unfortunate; that it seemed a declining race, and
that they were very poor and had been much neglected.

'But she has not,' I said.  'Thanks, doubtless, to yourself, she is
instructed and wise beyond the use of women.'

'Yes,' he said; 'the Senorita is well-informed.  But the family has been
neglected.'

'The mother?' I queried.

'Yes, the mother too,' said the Padre, taking snuff.  'But Felipe is a
well-intentioned lad.'

'The mother is odd?' I asked.

'Very odd,' replied the priest.

'I think, sir, we beat about the bush,' said I.  'You must know more of
my affairs than you allow.  You must know my curiosity to be justified on
many grounds.  Will you not be frank with me?'

'My son,' said the old gentleman, 'I will be very frank with you on
matters within my competence; on those of which I know nothing it does
not require much discretion to be silent.  I will not fence with you, I
take your meaning perfectly; and what can I say, but that we are all in
God's hands, and that His ways are not as our ways?  I have even advised
with my superiors in the church, but they, too, were dumb.  It is a great
mystery.'

'Is she mad?' I asked.

'I will answer you according to my belief.  She is not,' returned the
Padre, 'or she was not.  When she was young--God help me, I fear I
neglected that wild lamb--she was surely sane; and yet, although it did
not run to such heights, the same strain was already notable; it had been
so before her in her father, ay, and before him, and this inclined me,
perhaps, to think too lightly of it.  But these things go on growing, not
only in the individual but in the race.'

'When she was young,' I began, and my voice failed me for a moment, and
it was only with a great effort that I was able to add, 'was she like
Olalla?'

'Now God forbid!' exclaimed the Padre.  'God forbid that any man should
think so slightingly of my favourite penitent.  No, no; the Senorita (but
for her beauty, which I wish most honestly she had less of) has not a
hair's resemblance to what her mother was at the same age.  I could not
bear to have you think so; though, Heaven knows, it were, perhaps, better
that you should.'

At this, I raised myself in bed, and opened my heart to the old man;
telling him of our love and of her decision, owning my own horrors, my
own passing fancies, but telling him that these were at an end; and with
something more than a purely formal submission, appealing to his
judgment.

He heard me very patiently and without surprise; and when I had done, he
sat for some time silent.  Then he began: 'The church,' and instantly
broke off again to apologise.  'I had forgotten, my child, that you were
not a Christian,' said he.  'And indeed, upon a point so highly unusual,
even the church can scarce be said to have decided.  But would you have
my opinion?  The Senorita is, in a matter of this kind, the best judge; I
would accept her judgment.'

On the back of that he went away, nor was he thenceforward so assiduous
in his visits; indeed, even when I began to get about again, he plainly
feared and deprecated my society, not as in distaste but much as a man
might be disposed to flee from the riddling sphynx.  The villagers, too,
avoided me; they were unwilling to be my guides upon the mountain.  I
thought they looked at me askance, and I made sure that the more
superstitious crossed themselves on my approach.  At first I set this
down to my heretical opinions; but it began at length to dawn upon me
that if I was thus redoubted it was because I had stayed at the
residencia.  All men despise the savage notions of such peasantry; and
yet I was conscious of a chill shadow that seemed to fall and dwell upon
my love.  It did not conquer, but I may not deify that it restrained my
ardour.

Some miles westward of the village there was a gap in the sierra, from
which the eye plunged direct upon the residencia; and thither it became
my daily habit to repair.  A wood crowned the summit; and just where the
pathway issued from its fringes, it was overhung by a considerable shelf
of rock, and that, in its turn, was surmounted by a crucifix of the size
of life and more than usually painful in design.  This was my perch;
thence, day after day, I looked down upon the plateau, and the great old
house, and could see Felipe, no bigger than a fly, going to and fro about
the garden.  Sometimes mists would draw across the view, and be broken up
again by mountain winds; sometimes the plain slumbered below me in
unbroken sunshine; it would sometimes be all blotted out by rain.  This
distant post, these interrupted sights of the place where my life had
been so strangely changed, suited the indecision of my humour.  I passed
whole days there, debating with myself the various elements of our
position; now leaning to the suggestions of love, now giving an ear to
prudence, and in the end halting irresolute between the two.

One day, as I was sitting on my rock, there came by that way a somewhat
gaunt peasant wrapped in a mantle.  He was a stranger, and plainly did
not know me even by repute; for, instead of keeping the other side, he
drew near and sat down beside me, and we had soon fallen in talk.  Among
other things he told me he had been a muleteer, and in former years had
much frequented these mountains; later on, he had followed the army with
his mules, had realised a competence, and was now living retired with his
family.

'Do you know that house?' I inquired, at last, pointing to the
residencia, for I readily wearied of any talk that kept me from the
thought of Olalla.

He looked at me darkly and crossed himself.

'Too well,' he said, 'it was there that one of my comrades sold himself
to Satan; the Virgin shield us from temptations!  He has paid the price;
he is now burning in the reddest place in Hell!'

A fear came upon me; I could answer nothing; and presently the man
resumed, as if to himself: 'Yes,' he said, 'O yes, I know it.  I have
passed its doors.  There was snow upon the pass, the wind was driving it;
sure enough there was death that night upon the mountains, but there was
worse beside the hearth.  I took him by the arm, Senor, and dragged him
to the gate; I conjured him, by all he loved and respected, to go forth
with me; I went on my knees before him in the snow; and I could see he
was moved by my entreaty.  And just then she came out on the gallery, and
called him by his name; and he turned, and there was she standing with a
lamp in her hand and smiling on him to come back.  I cried out aloud to
God, and threw my arms about him, but he put me by, and left me alone.  He
had made his choice; God help us.  I would pray for him, but to what end?
there are sins that not even the Pope can loose.'

'And your friend,' I asked, 'what became of him?'

'Nay, God knows,' said the muleteer.  'If all be true that we hear, his
end was like his sin, a thing to raise the hair.'

'Do you mean that he was killed?' I asked.

'Sure enough, he was killed,' returned the man.  'But how?  Ay, how?  But
these are things that it is sin to speak of.'

'The people of that house . . . ' I began.

But he interrupted me with a savage outburst.  'The people?' he cried.
'What people?  There are neither men nor women in that house of Satan's!
What? have you lived here so long, and never heard?'  And here he put his
mouth to my ear and whispered, as if even the fowls of the mountain might
have over-heard and been stricken with horror.

What he told me was not true, nor was it even original; being, indeed,
but a new edition, vamped up again by village ignorance and superstition,
of stories nearly as ancient as the race of man.  It was rather the
application that appalled me.  In the old days, he said, the church would
have burned out that nest of basilisks; but the arm of the church was now
shortened; his friend Miguel had been unpunished by the hands of men, and
left to the more awful judgment of an offended God.  This was wrong; but
it should be so no more.  The Padre was sunk in age; he was even
bewitched himself; but the eyes of his flock were now awake to their own
danger; and some day--ay, and before long--the smoke of that house should
go up to heaven.

He left me filled with horror and fear.  Which way to turn I knew not;
whether first to warn the Padre, or to carry my ill-news direct to the
threatened inhabitants of the residencia.  Fate was to decide for me;
for, while I was still hesitating, I beheld the veiled figure of a woman
drawing near to me up the pathway.  No veil could deceive my penetration;
by every line and every movement I recognised Olalla; and keeping hidden
behind a corner of the rock, I suffered her to gain the summit.  Then I
came forward.  She knew me and paused, but did not speak; I, too,
remained silent; and we continued for some time to gaze upon each other
with a passionate sadness.

'I thought you had gone,' she said at length.  'It is all that you can do
for me--to go.  It is all I ever asked of you.  And you still stay.  But
do you know, that every day heaps up the peril of death, not only on your
head, but on ours?  A report has gone about the mountain; it is thought
you love me, and the people will not suffer it.'

I saw she was already informed of her danger, and I rejoiced at it.
'Olalla,' I said, 'I am ready to go this day, this very hour, but not
alone.'

She stepped aside and knelt down before the crucifix to pray, and I stood
by and looked now at her and now at the object of her adoration, now at
the living figure of the penitent, and now at the ghastly, daubed
countenance, the painted wounds, and the projected ribs of the image.  The
silence was only broken by the wailing of some large birds that circled
sidelong, as if in surprise or alarm, about the summit of the hills.
Presently Olalla rose again, turned towards me, raised her veil, and,
still leaning with one hand on the shaft of the crucifix, looked upon me
with a pale and sorrowful countenance.

'I have laid my hand upon the cross,' she said.  'The Padre says you are
no Christian; but look up for a moment with my eyes, and behold the face
of the Man of Sorrows.  We are all such as He was--the inheritors of sin;
we must all bear and expiate a past which was not ours; there is in all
of us--ay, even in me--a sparkle of the divine.  Like Him, we must endure
for a little while, until morning returns bringing peace.  Suffer me to
pass on upon my way alone; it is thus that I shall be least lonely,
counting for my friend Him who is the friend of all the distressed; it is
thus that I shall be the most happy, having taken my farewell of earthly
happiness, and willingly accepted sorrow for my portion.'

I looked at the face of the crucifix, and, though I was no friend to
images, and despised that imitative and grimacing art of which it was a
rude example, some sense of what the thing implied was carried home to my
intelligence.  The face looked down upon me with a painful and deadly
contraction; but the rays of a glory encircled it, and reminded me that
the sacrifice was voluntary.  It stood there, crowning the rock, as it
still stands on so many highway sides, vainly preaching to passers-by, an
emblem of sad and noble truths; that pleasure is not an end, but an
accident; that pain is the choice of the magnanimous; that it is best to
suffer all things and do well.  I turned and went down the mountain in
silence; and when I looked back for the last time before the wood closed
about my path, I saw Olalla still leaning on the crucifix.




THE TREASURE OF FRANCHARD.


CHAPTER I.  BY THE DYING MOUNTEBANK.


They had sent for the doctor from Bourron before six.  About eight some
villagers came round for the performance, and were told how matters
stood.  It seemed a liberty for a mountebank to fall ill like real
people, and they made off again in dudgeon.  By ten Madame Tentaillon was
gravely alarmed, and had sent down the street for Doctor Desprez.

The Doctor was at work over his manuscripts in one corner of the little
dining-room, and his wife was asleep over the fire in another, when the
messenger arrived.

'Sapristi!' said the Doctor, 'you should have sent for me before.  It was
a case for hurry.'  And he followed the messenger as he was, in his
slippers and skull-cap.

The inn was not thirty yards away, but the messenger did not stop there;
he went in at one door and out by another into the court, and then led
the way by a flight of steps beside the stable, to the loft where the
mountebank lay sick.  If Doctor Desprez were to live a thousand years, he
would never forget his arrival in that room; for not only was the scene
picturesque, but the moment made a date in his existence.  We reckon our
lives, I hardly know why, from the date of our first sorry appearance in
society, as if from a first humiliation; for no actor can come upon the
stage with a worse grace.  Not to go further back, which would be judged
too curious, there are subsequently many moving and decisive accidents in
the lives of all, which would make as logical a period as this of birth.
And here, for instance, Doctor Desprez, a man past forty, who had made
what is called a failure in life, and was moreover married, found himself
at a new point of departure when he opened the door of the loft above
Tentaillon's stable.

It was a large place, lighted only by a single candle set upon the floor.
The mountebank lay on his back upon a pallet; a large man, with a
Quixotic nose inflamed with drinking.  Madame Tentaillon stooped over
him, applying a hot water and mustard embrocation to his feet; and on a
chair close by sat a little fellow of eleven or twelve, with his feet
dangling.  These three were the only occupants, except the shadows.  But
the shadows were a company in themselves; the extent of the room
exaggerated them to a gigantic size, and from the low position of the
candle the light struck upwards and produced deformed foreshortenings.
The mountebank's profile was enlarged upon the wall in caricature, and it
was strange to see his nose shorten and lengthen as the flame was blown
about by draughts.  As for Madame Tentaillon, her shadow was no more than
a gross hump of shoulders, with now and again a hemisphere of head.  The
chair legs were spindled out as long as stilts, and the boy set perched
atop of them, like a cloud, in the corner of the roof.

It was the boy who took the Doctor's fancy.  He had a great arched skull,
the forehead and the hands of a musician, and a pair of haunting eyes.  It
was not merely that these eyes were large, or steady, or the softest
ruddy brown.  There was a look in them, besides, which thrilled the
Doctor, and made him half uneasy.  He was sure he had seen such a look
before, and yet he could not remember how or where.  It was as if this
boy, who was quite a stranger to him, had the eyes of an old friend or an
old enemy.  And the boy would give him no peace; he seemed profoundly
indifferent to what was going on, or rather abstracted from it in a
superior contemplation, beating gently with his feet against the bars of
the chair, and holding his hands folded on his lap.  But, for all that,
his eyes kept following the Doctor about the room with a thoughtful
fixity of gaze.  Desprez could not tell whether he was fascinating the
boy, or the boy was fascinating him.  He busied himself over the sick
man: he put questions, he felt the pulse, he jested, he grew a little hot
and swore: and still, whenever he looked round, there were the brown eyes
waiting for his with the same inquiring, melancholy gaze.

At last the Doctor hit on the solution at a leap.  He remembered the look
now.  The little fellow, although he was as straight as a dart, had the
eyes that go usually with a crooked back; he was not at all deformed, and
yet a deformed person seemed to be looking at you from below his brows.
The Doctor drew a long breath, he was so much relieved to find a theory
(for he loved theories) and to explain away his interest.

For all that, he despatched the invalid with unusual haste, and, still
kneeling with one knee on the floor, turned a little round and looked the
boy over at his leisure.  The boy was not in the least put out, but
looked placidly back at the Doctor.

'Is this your father?' asked Desprez.

'Oh, no,' returned the boy; 'my master.'

'Are you fond of him?' continued the Doctor.

'No, sir,' said the boy.

Madame Tentaillon and Desprez exchanged expressive glances.

'That is bad, my man,' resumed the latter, with a shade of sternness.
'Every one should be fond of the dying, or conceal their sentiments; and
your master here is dying.  If I have watched a bird a little while
stealing my cherries, I have a thought of disappointment when he flies
away over my garden wall, and I see him steer for the forest and vanish.
How much more a creature such as this, so strong, so astute, so richly
endowed with faculties!  When I think that, in a few hours, the speech
will be silenced, the breath extinct, and even the shadow vanished from
the wall, I who never saw him, this lady who knew him only as a guest,
are touched with some affection.'

The boy was silent for a little, and appeared to be reflecting.

'You did not know him,' he replied at last, 'he was a bad man.'

'He is a little pagan,' said the landlady.  'For that matter, they are
all the same, these mountebanks, tumblers, artists, and what not.  They
have no interior.'

But the Doctor was still scrutinising the little pagan, his eyebrows
knotted and uplifted.

'What is your name?' he asked.

'Jean-Marie,' said the lad.

Desprez leaped upon him with one of his sudden flashes of excitement, and
felt his head all over from an ethnological point of view.

'Celtic, Celtic!' he said.

'Celtic!' cried Madame Tentaillon, who had perhaps confounded the word
with hydrocephalous.  'Poor lad! is it dangerous?'

'That depends,' returned the Doctor grimly.  And then once more
addressing the boy: 'And what do you do for your living, Jean-Marie?' he
inquired.

'I tumble,' was the answer.

'So!  Tumble?' repeated Desprez.  'Probably healthful.  I hazard the
guess, Madame Tentaillon, that tumbling is a healthful way of life.  And
have you never done anything else but tumble?'

'Before I learned that, I used to steal,' answered Jean-Marie gravely.

'Upon my word!' cried the doctor.  'You are a nice little man for your
age.  Madame, when my _confrere_ comes from Bourron, you will communicate
my unfavourable opinion.  I leave the case in his hands; but of course,
on any alarming symptom, above all if there should be a sign of rally, do
not hesitate to knock me up.  I am a doctor no longer, I thank God; but I
have been one.  Good night, madame.  Good sleep to you, Jean-Marie.'



CHAPTER II.  MORNING TALK


Doctor Desprez always rose early.  Before the smoke arose, before the
first cart rattled over the bridge to the day's labour in the fields, he
was to be found wandering in his garden.  Now he would pick a bunch of
grapes; now he would eat a big pear under the trellice; now he would draw
all sorts of fancies on the path with the end of his cane; now he would
go down and watch the river running endlessly past the timber landing-
place at which he moored his boat.  There was no time, he used to say,
for making theories like the early morning.  'I rise earlier than any one
else in the village,' he once boasted.  'It is a fair consequence that I
know more and wish to do less with my knowledge.'

The Doctor was a connoisseur of sunrises, and loved a good theatrical
effect to usher in the day.  He had a theory of dew, by which he could
predict the weather.  Indeed, most things served him to that end: the
sound of the bells from all the neighbouring villages, the smell of the
forest, the visits and the behaviour of both birds and fishes, the look
of the plants in his garden, the disposition of cloud, the colour of the
light, and last, although not least, the arsenal of meteorological
instruments in a louvre-boarded hutch upon the lawn.  Ever since he had
settled at Gretz, he had been growing more and more into the local
meteorologist, the unpaid champion of the local climate.  He thought at
first there was no place so healthful in the arrondissement.  By the end
of the second year, he protested there was none so wholesome in the whole
department.  And for some time before he met Jean-Marie he had been
prepared to challenge all France and the better part of Europe for a
rival to his chosen spot.

'Doctor,' he would say--'doctor is a foul word.  It should not be used to
ladies.  It implies disease.  I remark it, as a flaw in our civilisation,
that we have not the proper horror of disease.  Now I, for my part, have
washed my hands of it; I have renounced my laureation; I am no doctor; I
am only a worshipper of the true goddess Hygieia.  Ah, believe me, it is
she who has the cestus!  And here, in this exiguous hamlet, has she
placed her shrine: here she dwells and lavishes her gifts; here I walk
with her in the early morning, and she shows me how strong she has made
the peasants, how fruitful she has made the fields, how the trees grow up
tall and comely under her eyes, and the fishes in the river become clean
and agile at her presence.--Rheumatism!' he would cry, on some malapert
interruption, 'O, yes, I believe we do have a little rheumatism.  That
could hardly be avoided, you know, on a river.  And of course the place
stands a little low; and the meadows are marshy, there's no doubt.  But,
my dear sir, look at Bourron!  Bourron stands high.  Bourron is close to
the forest; plenty of ozone there, you would say.  Well, compared with
Gretz, Bourron is a perfect shambles.'

The morning after he had been summoned to the dying mountebank, the
Doctor visited the wharf at the tail of his garden, and had a long look
at the running water.  This he called prayer; but whether his adorations
were addressed to the goddess Hygieia or some more orthodox deity, never
plainly appeared.  For he had uttered doubtful oracles, sometimes
declaring that a river was the type of bodily health, sometimes extolling
it as the great moral preacher, continually preaching peace, continuity,
and diligence to man's tormented spirits.  After he had watched a mile or
so of the clear water running by before his eyes, seen a fish or two come
to the surface with a gleam of silver, and sufficiently admired the long
shadows of the trees falling half across the river from the opposite
bank, with patches of moving sunlight in between, he strolled once more
up the garden and through his house into the street, feeling cool and
renovated.

The sound of his feet upon the causeway began the business of the day;
for the village was still sound asleep.  The church tower looked very
airy in the sunlight; a few birds that turned about it, seemed to swim in
an atmosphere of more than usual rarity; and the Doctor, walking in long
transparent shadows, filled his lungs amply, and proclaimed himself well
contented with the morning.

On one of the posts before Tentaillon's carriage entry he espied a little
dark figure perched in a meditative attitude, and immediately recognised
Jean-Marie.

'Aha!' he said, stopping before him humorously, with a hand on either
knee.  'So we rise early in the morning, do we?  It appears to me that we
have all the vices of a philosopher.'

The boy got to his feet and made a grave salutation.

'And how is our patient?' asked Desprez.

It appeared the patient was about the same.

'And why do you rise early in the morning?' he pursued.

Jean-Marie, after a long silence, professed that he hardly knew.

'You hardly know?' repeated Desprez.  'We hardly know anything, my man,
until we try to learn.  Interrogate your consciousness.  Come, push me
this inquiry home.  Do you like it?'

'Yes,' said the boy slowly; 'yes, I like it.'

'And why do you like it?' continued the Doctor.  '(We are now pursuing
the Socratic method.)  Why do you like it?'

'It is quiet,' answered Jean-Marie; 'and I have nothing to do; and then I
feel as if I were good.'

Doctor Desprez took a seat on the post at the opposite side.  He was
beginning to take an interest in the talk, for the boy plainly thought
before he spoke, and tried to answer truly.  'It appears you have a taste
for feeling good,' said the Doctor.  'Now, there you puzzle me extremely;
for I thought you said you were a thief; and the two are incompatible.'

'Is it very bad to steal?' asked Jean-Marie.

'Such is the general opinion, little boy,' replied the Doctor.

'No; but I mean as I stole,' explained the other.  'For I had no choice.
I think it is surely right to have bread; it must be right to have bread,
there comes so plain a want of it.  And then they beat me cruelly if I
returned with nothing,' he added.  'I was not ignorant of right and
wrong; for before that I had been well taught by a priest, who was very
kind to me.'  (The Doctor made a horrible grimace at the word 'priest.')
'But it seemed to me, when one had nothing to eat and was beaten, it was
a different affair.  I would not have stolen for tartlets, I believe; but
any one would steal for baker's bread.'

'And so I suppose,' said the Doctor, with a rising sneer, 'you prayed God
to forgive you, and explained the case to Him at length.'

'Why, sir?' asked Jean-Marie.  'I do not see.'

'Your priest would see, however,' retorted Desprez.

'Would he?' asked the boy, troubled for the first time.  'I should have
thought God would have known.'

'Eh?' snarled the Doctor.

'I should have thought God would have understood me,' replied the other.
'You do not, I see; but then it was God that made me think so, was it
not?'

'Little boy, little boy,' said Dr. Desprez, 'I told you already you had
the vices of philosophy; if you display the virtues also, I must go.  I
am a student of the blessed laws of health, an observer of plain and
temperate nature in her common walks; and I cannot preserve my equanimity
in presence of a monster.  Do you understand?'

'No, sir,' said the boy.

'I will make my meaning clear to you,' replied the doctor.  'Look there
at the sky--behind the belfry first, where it is so light, and then up
and up, turning your chin back, right to the top of the dome, where it is
already as blue as at noon.  Is not that a beautiful colour?  Does it not
please the heart?  We have seen it all our lives, until it has grown in
with our familiar thoughts.  Now,' changing his tone, 'suppose that sky
to become suddenly of a live and fiery amber, like the colour of clear
coals, and growing scarlet towards the top--I do not say it would be any
the less beautiful; but would you like it as well?'

'I suppose not,' answered Jean-Marie.

'Neither do I like you,' returned the Doctor, roughly.  'I hate all odd
people, and you are the most curious little boy in all the world.'

Jean-Marie seemed to ponder for a while, and then he raised his head
again and looked over at the Doctor with an air of candid inquiry.  'But
are not you a very curious gentleman?' he asked.

The Doctor threw away his stick, bounded on the boy, clasped him to his
bosom, and kissed him on both cheeks.  'Admirable, admirable imp!' he
cried.  'What a morning, what an hour for a theorist of forty-two!  No,'
he continued, apostrophising heaven, 'I did not know such boys existed; I
was ignorant they made them so; I had doubted of my race; and now!  It is
like,' he added, picking up his stick, 'like a lovers' meeting.  I have
bruised my favourite staff in that moment of enthusiasm.  The injury,
however, is not grave.'  He caught the boy looking at him in obvious
wonder, embarrassment, and alarm.  'Hullo!' said he, 'why do you look at
me like that?  Egad, I believe the boy despises me.  Do you despise me,
boy?'

'O, no,' replied Jean-Marie, seriously; 'only I do not understand.'

'You must excuse me, sir,' returned the Doctor, with gravity; 'I am still
so young.  O, hang him!' he added to himself.  And he took his seat again
and observed the boy sardonically.  'He has spoiled the quiet of my
morning,' thought he.  'I shall be nervous all day, and have a febricule
when I digest.  Let me compose myself.'  And so he dismissed his
pre-occupations by an effort of the will which he had long practised, and
let his soul roam abroad in the contemplation of the morning.  He inhaled
the air, tasting it critically as a connoisseur tastes a vintage, and
prolonging the expiration with hygienic gusto.  He counted the little
flecks of cloud along the sky.  He followed the movements of the birds
round the church tower--making long sweeps, hanging poised, or turning
airy somersaults in fancy, and beating the wind with imaginary pinions.
And in this way he regained peace of mind and animal composure, conscious
of his limbs, conscious of the sight of his eyes, conscious that the air
had a cool taste, like a fruit, at the top of his throat; and at last, in
complete abstraction, he began to sing.  The Doctor had but one air--,
'Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre;' even with that he was on terms of mere
politeness; and his musical exploits were always reserved for moments
when he was alone and entirely happy.

He was recalled to earth rudely by a pained expression on the boy's face.
'What do you think of my singing?' he inquired, stopping in the middle of
a note; and then, after he had waited some little while and received no
answer, 'What do you think of my singing?' he repeated, imperiously.

'I do not like it,' faltered Jean-Marie.

'Oh, come!' cried the Doctor.  'Possibly you are a performer yourself?'

'I sing better than that,' replied the boy.

The Doctor eyed him for some seconds in stupefaction.  He was aware that
he was angry, and blushed for himself in consequence, which made him
angrier.  'If this is how you address your master!' he said at last, with
a shrug and a flourish of his arms.

'I do not speak to him at all,' returned the boy.  'I do not like him.'

'Then you like me?' snapped Doctor Desprez, with unusual eagerness.

'I do not know,' answered Jean-Marie.

The Doctor rose.  'I shall wish you a good morning,' he said.  'You are
too much for me.  Perhaps you have blood in your veins, perhaps celestial
ichor, or perhaps you circulate nothing more gross than respirable air;
but of one thing I am inexpugnably assured:--that you are no human being.
No, boy'--shaking his stick at him--'you are not a human being.  Write,
write it in your memory--"I am not a human being--I have no pretension to
be a human being--I am a dive, a dream, an angel, an acrostic, an
illusion--what you please, but not a human being."  And so accept my
humble salutations and farewell!'

And with that the Doctor made off along the street in some emotion, and
the boy stood, mentally gaping, where he left him.



CHAPTER III.  THE ADOPTION.


Madame Desprez, who answered to the Christian name of Anastasie,
presented an agreeable type of her sex; exceedingly wholesome to look
upon, a stout _brune_, with cool smooth cheeks, steady, dark eyes, and
hands that neither art nor nature could improve.  She was the sort of
person over whom adversity passes like a summer cloud; she might, in the
worst of conjunctions, knit her brows into one vertical furrow for a
moment, but the next it would be gone.  She had much of the placidity of
a contented nun; with little of her piety, however; for Anastasie was of
a very mundane nature, fond of oysters and old wine, and somewhat bold
pleasantries, and devoted to her husband for her own sake rather than for
his.  She was imperturbably good-natured, but had no idea of
self-sacrifice.  To live in that pleasant old house, with a green garden
behind and bright flowers about the window, to eat and drink of the best,
to gossip with a neighbour for a quarter of an hour, never to wear stays
or a dress except when she went to Fontainebleau shopping, to be kept in
a continual supply of racy novels, and to be married to Doctor Desprez
and have no ground of jealousy, filled the cup of her nature to the brim.
Those who had known the Doctor in bachelor days, when he had aired quite
as many theories, but of a different order, attributed his present
philosophy to the study of Anastasie.  It was her brute enjoyment that he
rationalised and perhaps vainly imitated.

Madame Desprez was an artist in the kitchen, and made coffee to a nicety.
She had a knack of tidiness, with which she had infected the Doctor;
everything was in its place; everything capable of polish shone
gloriously; and dust was a thing banished from her empire.  Aline, their
single servant, had no other business in the world but to scour and
burnish.  So Doctor Desprez lived in his house like a fatted calf, warmed
and cosseted to his heart's content.

The midday meal was excellent.  There was a ripe melon, a fish from the
river in a memorable Bearnaise sauce, a fat fowl in a fricassee, and a
dish of asparagus, followed by some fruit.  The Doctor drank half a
bottle _plus_ one glass, the wife half a bottle _minus_ the same
quantity, which was a marital privilege, of an excellent Cote-Rotie,
seven years old.  Then the coffee was brought, and a flask of Chartreuse
for madame, for the Doctor despised and distrusted such decoctions; and
then Aline left the wedded pair to the pleasures of memory and digestion.

'It is a very fortunate circumstance, my cherished one,' observed the
Doctor--'this coffee is adorable--a very fortunate circumstance upon the
whole--Anastasie, I beseech you, go without that poison for to-day; only
one day, and you will feel the benefit, I pledge my reputation.'

'What is this fortunate circumstance, my friend?' inquired Anastasie, not
heeding his protest, which was of daily recurrence.

'That we have no children, my beautiful,' replied the Doctor.  'I think
of it more and more as the years go on, and with more and more gratitude
towards the Power that dispenses such afflictions.  Your health, my
darling, my studious quiet, our little kitchen delicacies, how they would
all have suffered, how they would all have been sacrificed!  And for
what?  Children are the last word of human imperfection.  Health flees
before their face.  They cry, my dear; they put vexatious questions; they
demand to be fed, to be washed, to be educated, to have their noses
blown; and then, when the time comes, they break our hearts, as I break
this piece of sugar.  A pair of professed egoists, like you and me,
should avoid offspring, like an infidelity.'

'Indeed!' said she; and she laughed.  'Now, that is like you--to take
credit for the thing you could not help.'

'My dear,' returned the Doctor, solemnly, 'we might have adopted.'

'Never!' cried madame.  'Never, Doctor, with my consent.  If the child
were my own flesh and blood, I would not say no.  But to take another
person's indiscretion on my shoulders, my dear friend, I have too much
sense.'

'Precisely,' replied the Doctor.  'We both had.  And I am all the better
pleased with our wisdom, because--because--'  He looked at her sharply.

'Because what?' she asked, with a faint premonition of danger.

'Because I have found the right person,' said the Doctor firmly, 'and
shall adopt him this afternoon.'

Anastasie looked at him out of a mist.  'You have lost your reason,' she
said; and there was a clang in her voice that seemed to threaten trouble.

'Not so, my dear,' he replied; 'I retain its complete exercise.  To the
proof: instead of attempting to cloak my inconsistency, I have, by way of
preparing you, thrown it into strong relief.  You will there, I think,
recognise the philosopher who has the ecstasy to call you wife.  The fact
is, I have been reckoning all this while without an accident.  I never
thought to find a son of my own.  Now, last night, I found one.  Do not
unnecessarily alarm yourself, my dear; he is not a drop of blood to me
that I know.  It is his mind, darling, his mind that calls me father.'

'His mind!' she repeated with a titter between scorn and hysterics.  'His
mind, indeed!  Henri, is this an idiotic pleasantry, or are you mad?  His
mind!  And what of my mind?'

'Truly,' replied the Doctor with a shrug, 'you have your finger on the
hitch.  He will be strikingly antipathetic to my ever beautiful
Anastasie.  She will never understand him; he will never understand her.
You married the animal side of my nature, dear and it is on the spiritual
side that I find my affinity for Jean-Marie.  So much so, that, to be
perfectly frank, I stand in some awe of him myself.  You will easily
perceive that I am announcing a calamity for you.  Do not,' he broke out
in tones of real solicitude--'do not give way to tears after a meal,
Anastasie.  You will certainly give yourself a false digestion.'

Anastasie controlled herself.  'You know how willing I am to humour you,'
she said, 'in all reasonable matters.  But on this point--'

'My dear love,' interrupted the Doctor, eager to prevent a refusal, 'who
wished to leave Paris?  Who made me give up cards, and the opera, and the
boulevard, and my social relations, and all that was my life before I
knew you?  Have I been faithful?  Have I been obedient?  Have I not borne
my doom with cheerfulness?  In all honesty, Anastasie, have I not a right
to a stipulation on my side?  I have, and you know it.  I stipulate my
son.'

Anastasie was aware of defeat; she struck her colours instantly.  'You
will break my heart,' she sighed.

'Not in the least,' said he.  'You will feel a trifling inconvenience for
a month, just as I did when I was first brought to this vile hamlet; then
your admirable sense and temper will prevail, and I see you already as
content as ever, and making your husband the happiest of men.'

'You know I can refuse you nothing,' she said, with a last flicker of
resistance; 'nothing that will make you truly happier.  But will this?
Are you sure, my husband?  Last night, you say, you found him!  He may be
the worst of humbugs.'

'I think not,' replied the Doctor.  'But do not suppose me so unwary as
to adopt him out of hand.  I am, I flatter myself, a finished man of the
world; I have had all possibilities in view; my plan is contrived to meet
them all.  I take the lad as stable boy.  If he pilfer, if he grumble, if
he desire to change, I shall see I was mistaken; I shall recognise him
for no son of mine, and send him tramping.'

'You will never do so when the time comes,' said his wife; 'I know your
good heart.'

She reached out her hand to him, with a sigh; the Doctor smiled as he
took it and carried it to his lips; he had gained his point with greater
ease than he had dared to hope; for perhaps the twentieth time he had
proved the efficacy of his trusty argument, his Excalibur, the hint of a
return to Paris.  Six months in the capital, for a man of the Doctor's
antecedents and relations, implied no less a calamity than total ruin.
Anastasie had saved the remainder of his fortune by keeping him strictly
in the country.  The very name of Paris put her in a blue fear; and she
would have allowed her husband to keep a menagerie in the back garden,
let alone adopting a stable-boy, rather than permit the question of
return to be discussed.

About four of the afternoon, the mountebank rendered up his ghost; he had
never been conscious since his seizure.  Doctor Desprez was present at
his last passage, and declared the farce over.  Then he took Jean-Marie
by the shoulder and led him out into the inn garden where there was a
convenient bench beside the river.  Here he sat him down and made the boy
place himself on his left.

'Jean-Marie,' he said very gravely, 'this world is exceedingly vast; and
even France, which is only a small corner of it, is a great place for a
little lad like you.  Unfortunately it is full of eager, shouldering
people moving on; and there are very few bakers' shops for so many
eaters.  Your master is dead; you are not fit to gain a living by
yourself; you do not wish to steal?  No.  Your situation then is
undesirable; it is, for the moment, critical.  On the other hand, you
behold in me a man not old, though elderly, still enjoying the youth of
the heart and the intelligence; a man of instruction; easily situated in
this world's affairs; keeping a good table:--a man, neither as friend nor
host, to be despised.  I offer you your food and clothes, and to teach
you lessons in the evening, which will be infinitely more to the purpose
for a lad of your stamp than those of all the priests in Europe.  I
propose no wages, but if ever you take a thought to leave me, the door
shall be open, and I will give you a hundred francs to start the world
upon.  In return, I have an old horse and chaise, which you would very
speedily learn to clean and keep in order.  Do not hurry yourself to
answer, and take it or leave it as you judge aright.  Only remember this,
that I am no sentimentalist or charitable person, but a man who lives
rigorously to himself; and that if I make the proposal, it is for my own
ends--it is because I perceive clearly an advantage to myself.  And now,
reflect.'

'I shall be very glad.  I do not see what else I can do.  I thank you,
sir, most kindly, and I will try to be useful,' said the boy.

'Thank you,' said the Doctor warmly, rising at the same time and wiping
his brow, for he had suffered agonies while the thing hung in the wind.  A
refusal, after the scene at noon, would have placed him in a ridiculous
light before Anastasie.  'How hot and heavy is the evening, to be sure!  I
have always had a fancy to be a fish in summer, Jean-Marie, here in the
Loing beside Gretz.  I should lie under a water-lily and listen to the
bells, which must sound most delicately down below.  That would be a
life--do you not think so too?'

'Yes,' said Jean-Marie.

'Thank God you have imagination!' cried the Doctor, embracing the boy
with his usual effusive warmth, though it was a proceeding that seemed to
disconcert the sufferer almost as much as if he had been an English
schoolboy of the same age.  'And now,' he added, 'I will take you to my
wife.'

Madame Desprez sat in the dining-room in a cool wrapper.  All the blinds
were down, and the tile floor had been recently sprinkled with water; her
eyes were half shut, but she affected to be reading a novel as the they
entered.  Though she was a bustling woman, she enjoyed repose between
whiles and had a remarkable appetite for sleep.

The Doctor went through a solemn form of introduction, adding, for the
benefit of both parties, 'You must try to like each other for my sake.'

'He is very pretty,' said Anastasie.  'Will you kiss me, my pretty little
fellow?'

The Doctor was furious, and dragged her into the passage.  'Are you a
fool, Anastasie?' he said.  'What is all this I hear about the tact of
women?  Heaven knows, I have not met with it in my experience.  You
address my little philosopher as if he were an infant.  He must be spoken
to with more respect, I tell you; he must not be kissed and
Georgy-porgy'd like an ordinary child.'

'I only did it to please you, I am sure,' replied Anastasie; 'but I will
try to do better.'

The Doctor apologised for his warmth.  'But I do wish him,' he continued,
'to feel at home among us.  And really your conduct was so idiotic, my
cherished one, and so utterly and distantly out of place, that a saint
might have been pardoned a little vehemence in disapproval.  Do, do
try--if it is possible for a woman to understand young people--but of
course it is not, and I waste my breath.  Hold your tongue as much as
possible at least, and observe my conduct narrowly; it will serve you for
a model.'

Anastasie did as she was bidden, and considered the Doctor's behaviour.
She observed that he embraced the boy three times in the course of the
evening, and managed generally to confound and abash the little fellow
out of speech and appetite.  But she had the true womanly heroism in
little affairs.  Not only did she refrain from the cheap revenge of
exposing the Doctor's errors to himself, but she did her best to remove
their ill-effect on Jean-Marie.  When Desprez went out for his last
breath of air before retiring for the night, she came over to the boy's
side and took his hand.

'You must not be surprised nor frightened by my husband's manners,' she
said.  'He is the kindest of men, but so clever that he is sometimes
difficult to understand.  You will soon grow used to him, and then you
will love him, for that nobody can help.  As for me, you may be sure, I
shall try to make you happy, and will not bother you at all.  I think we
should be excellent friends, you and I.  I am not clever, but I am very
good-natured.  Will you give me a kiss?'

He held up his face, and she took him in her arms and then began to cry.
The woman had spoken in complaisance; but she had warmed to her own
words, and tenderness followed.  The Doctor, entering, found them
enlaced: he concluded that his wife was in fault; and he was just
beginning, in an awful voice, 'Anastasie--,' when she looked up at him,
smiling, with an upraised finger; and he held his peace, wondering, while
she led the boy to his attic.



CHAPTER IV.  THE EDUCATION OF A PHILOSOPHER.


The installation of the adopted stable-boy was thus happily effected, and
the wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the Doctor's house.  Jean-
Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning; sometimes helped in
the housework; sometimes walked abroad with the Doctor, to drink wisdom
from the fountain-head; and was introduced at night to the sciences and
the dead tongues.  He retained his singular placidity of mind and manner;
he was rarely in fault; but he made only a very partial progress in his
studies, and remained much of a stranger in the family.

The Doctor was a pattern of regularity.  All forenoon he worked on his
great book, the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia, or Historical Dictionary of
all Medicines,' which as yet consisted principally of slips of paper and
pins.  When finished, it was to fill many personable volumes, and to
combine antiquarian interest with professional utility.  But the Doctor
was studious of literary graces and the picturesque; an anecdote, a touch
of manners, a moral qualification, or a sounding epithet was sure to be
preferred before a piece of science; a little more, and he would have
written the 'Comparative Pharmacopoeia' in verse!  The article 'Mummia,'
for instance, was already complete, though the remainder of the work had
not progressed beyond the letter A.  It was exceedingly copious and
entertaining, written with quaintness and colour, exact, erudite, a
literary article; but it would hardly have afforded guidance to a
practising physician of to-day.  The feminine good sense of his wife had
led her to point this out with uncompromising sincerity; for the
Dictionary was duly read aloud to her, betwixt sleep and waning, as it
proceeded towards an infinitely distant completion; and the Doctor was a
little sore on the subject of mummies, and sometimes resented an allusion
with asperity.

After the midday meal and a proper period of digestion, he walked,
sometimes alone, sometimes accompanied by Jean-Marie; for madame would
have preferred any hardship rather than walk.

She was, as I have said, a very busy person, continually occupied about
material comforts, and ready to drop asleep over a novel the instant she
was disengaged.  This was the less objectionable, as she never snored or
grew distempered in complexion when she slept.  On the contrary, she
looked the very picture of luxurious and appetising ease, and woke
without a start to the perfect possession of her faculties.  I am afraid
she was greatly an animal, but she was a very nice animal to have about.
In this way, she had little to do with Jean-Marie; but the sympathy which
had been established between them on the first night remained unbroken;
they held occasional conversations, mostly on household matters; to the
extreme disappointment of the Doctor, they occasionally sallied off
together to that temple of debasing superstition, the village church;
madame and he, both in their Sunday's best, drove twice a month to
Fontainebleau and returned laden with purchases; and in short, although
the Doctor still continued to regard them as irreconcilably
anti-pathetic, their relation was as intimate, friendly, and confidential
as their natures suffered.

I fear, however, that in her heart of hearts, madame kindly despised and
pitied the boy.  She had no admiration for his class of virtues; she
liked a smart, polite, forward, roguish sort of boy, cap in hand, light
of foot, meeting the eye; she liked volubility, charm, a little vice--the
promise of a second Doctor Desprez.  And it was her indefeasible belief
that Jean-Marie was dull.  'Poor dear boy,' she had said once, 'how sad
it is that he should be so stupid!'  She had never repeated that remark,
for the Doctor had raged like a wild bull, denouncing the brutal
bluntness of her mind, bemoaning his own fate to be so unequally mated
with an ass, and, what touched Anastasie more nearly, menacing the table
china by the fury of his gesticulations.  But she adhered silently to her
opinion; and when Jean-Marie was sitting, stolid, blank, but not unhappy,
over his unfinished tasks, she would snatch her opportunity in the
Doctor's absence, go over to him, put her arms about his neck, lay her
cheek to his, and communicate her sympathy with his distress.  'Do not
mind,' she would say; 'I, too, am not at all clever, and I can assure you
that it makes no difference in life.'