JULIETTE: A NORMAN STORY.
I.
Marriage is in one respect not unlike greatness: some are born to it, some achieve it, some have it thrust upon them. And the last-named some are apt to find it as unprofitable an acquisition as to Napoleon the Little it proved to be the nephew of his uncle.
Now, M. de Boisrobert was a born bachelor, and, left to himself, a bachelor he would have died. But who shall gainsay fate? Upon him gayly baccalaureating Fate fixed her eagle eye and made up her mind that he should marry. Not without reason has Fate been made a female. When a person of that charming but inflexible sex makes up her mind that any bachelor of her acquaintance shall marry, we know what happens. Married M. de Boisrobert accordingly was, with what direful consequences to the poor gentleman the reader shall see.
Up to his forty-fifth year Messire Guillaume Georges de Boisrobert, Sieur de Boisrobert and Saintange, had lived the happy life of a country gentleman upon his estates in Normandy, near Evreux, satisfied with himself and with the world. Indeed, he had every reason to be satisfied, possessing as he did a fine château, a princely income, an honorable name, an easy conscience, and the respect of all who knew him. From the summit of his towers, look which way he would (and his sight was keen, as so good a sportsman’s should be), he could scarce fix the boundary of his domains. Farms, meadow-land, and woodland, his broad acres stretched for many a mile along the blue waters of the Eure; upon his pastures fed sheep and cattle by the hundred; in his stables neighed scores of gallant steeds. Yet, strange to say, with all his wealth, envy had no word for him, nor was he even decried more than it was fitting a rich and handsome bachelor should be. Certain maiden ladies of uncertain age, to whose charms he had, perhaps, been ungallantly cold, sometimes, indeed, made light among themselves of his pretensions to noble birth. That, truly, was the simple gentleman’s weakness, and he loved to style himself after the stately fashion written above.
“He De Boisrobert, forsooth!” Mlle. Reiné might say over her tatting (or is it tattling the ladies call it?). “He was never aught but plain” (“plain indeed!” Mlle. Gudule would giggle, pointing the mot with her crochet-needle. Ah! thou thoughtest otherwise, fair Gudule, of his beauty when the embroidered slippers, and watch-pockets, and what-nots worked by thy own fair fingers—or thy maid’s—deluged the château and made largesse for its kitchen!)—“plain Guillaume Robert till his father, the notary, got an army contract and left him money enough to buy the wood in which his dismal old château is buried—the stingy old hunks!”
Now, this was not entirely true; and these fair Ariadnes were, to say the least, uncharitable. But it must be remembered, for the credit of the sex, that these events took place very long ago—so long ago, indeed, as the time of that great and glorious monarch, Louis XIV.—“le doyen des Rois,” as he called himself—whose majesty was like the sun (which orb, indeed, depicted in the act of illuminating the world, he modestly took for his device), and whose grandeur was indisputably shown in the fact that he could eat more for dinner than any man in his kingdom.[[110]] In point of fact, no small number of his loving subjects, owing to their sovereign’s majestic and princely appetite, had rarely anything to eat at all. But to return to our sheep.
M. de Boisrobert was not stingy. On the contrary, his open-handed, and even profuse, hospitality endeared him to all the men about him, who had, no doubt, their own private reasons for liking him, as some of the women had theirs for looking upon him with a different feeling. The manner of his living was almost lordly; and when he was at home, it was nothing but junketing and merriment from month’s end to month’s end. An enthusiastic sportsman himself, his stables and his kennels contained the best that money could buy; while his huntsmen, his gamekeepers, and his beaters were a small army in themselves. Being so rich and so generous, he was naturally looked upon with great respect, and even liking, through all the country round; and many a man who had little reverence for aught besides would doff his hat most humbly to the well-furnished larder of that excellent M. de Boisrobert.
It must be said, however, that in his case—what is unhappily not always true—this respect was rightly his, for better reasons. Amiable, simple, and sincere, a scrupulous observer of his word, his charity was greater than his hospitality, and his piety was as unbounded as his wealth. Every morning he was first at Mass in the little village church of Boisrobert, whose excellent curé was his favorite and, it may be said, his only intimate associate. His best friends, indeed, he counted among that admirable class, whose sterling and unobtrusive virtues he thoroughly appreciated. It was strange that so worthy a penchant was destined to lead him into the great danger of his life. Of the great folks our friend was a little shy; and as for the small farmers and hobereaux, or “squireens” (to borrow from the familiar speech of Ireland a word which alone fitly translates it), who made the bulk of the neighboring landed proprietors, their tastes and habits were little congenial to his own. So good Father Bernard and he were much together; and a pleasant sight it was to see the two friends placidly angling, side by side, for the fish which somehow a French angler seems quite as well satisfied never to catch; or, in the bright summer evenings, playing bowls with all the zest of school-boys on the village green. No more welcome guest than Father Bernard entered the gates of the Château de Boisrobert; and when the November nights grew chilly, and the logs were piled high and glowing in the wide Norman hearth (its owner always quoted Horace at such times, and old Mère Chicon, the housekeeper, knew as well as any one that dissolve frigus was the Latin for “stir up the fire and fetch a bottle of Burgundy,” and had had, indeed, many bouts thereanent with the village schoolmaster, in which that worthy was not always triumphant), our hero liked nothing better than to engage his friend in a contest at chess, or trictrac, or piquet, or, over a jug of Norman cider or the aforesaid Burgundy, to discuss the movements of the court, with which he professed to be in constant communication.
That was, as we have said, the honest gentleman’s foible—almost his sole one; he secretly worshipped rank, and often sighed to think that he, who might—and, he sometimes added to himself, should—have been a De Rohan was only a De Boisrobert, barely a gentleman, by virtue of the lands his money had bought. Yet, if not the rose, he had at least lived near the rose. The son of a notary himself, he was yet distantly connected with one of the noblest names in France, as he was by no means slow in making folks aware.
“My good cousin, De Beaumanoir,” he would say in an off-hand way, pronouncing the name tout sec, like the provincial ladies in the Roman Comique, though to his face he never ventured to address him otherwise than as M. le Comte—“my good cousin De Beaumanoir writes me that he is to visit Saint-Aignan at his country-seat, and will have me to be of the party.”
Or, mysteriously: “The army—but this, you conceive, my friend, is between ourselves—a secret, mind you, of state—the army moves on Flanders this week. I have it direct from Beaumanoir.”
It was then, as you may read in Scarron’s sprightly pages, a common ambition of provincial gentlemen to be thought on familiar terms with the great folks of the court. Truly, an extraordinary time!
At these naïve confidences the curé, who knew his friend’s failing, but respected his virtues, smiled, if at all, to himself.
But M. de Boisrobert’s reverence for his noble kinsman went further than talking of him in season and out of season. He gave a more substantial proof of his regard in making him his sole heir. “The money should go with the title,” he said; “the family must be kept up.” It seemed to him a little price to pay for the privilege of being admitted for a month or two in the year to the rather frigid hospitality of the Hôtel Beaumanoir, of being nightly snubbed by the bluest blood in France, and of having down a great man or two for a day in the shooting season, to convert the Château Boisrobert to his enamored fancy into a new Versailles. His noble cousin he would gladly have had stay longer; but the count, after yawning through forty-eight hours of ennui, invariably left. The lands of Boisrobert he wanted; its simple and placid life he could not stomach. His palate was seasoned to higher flavors.
Not to put too fine a point on it, M. the Count de Beaumanoir was as insolent, imperious, and ungrateful a scoundrel as was to be found in a court where gentry of his pattern were rather a drug. Had it not been that he enjoyed the confidence and familiarity of a still greater rogue than himself—no less a one, to wit, than Monsieur, the brother of the Most Christian King—he would long since have come to grief. He was more than suspected of a share in the mysterious poisoning of the hapless Henrietta of Orleans, and it was only the credit of his patron and his own well-known courage and skill as a swordsman that kept these doubts from taking form.
Such was the heir whom our worthy M. de Boisrobert had selected for the reversion of his vast estates; and his promise once given, the count determined that it should be kept.
II.
Daybreak of a pleasant morning in October, 1681. In the court-yard and stables of the Château de Boisrobert, and in the great farm-yard near by, all is bustle and confusion. Grooms and footmen, herdsmen and farm-servants, are scurrying to and fro, with lanterns and lighted torches, through the gray dawn, tumbling over one another in their haste, shrieking out contradictory orders at the top of their lungs, clamoring and making all the noise possible, as though they had taken a contract for the purpose and felt they had but a limited time to fulfil it. In the farm-yard the heavy Norman horses are being harnessed, with collars that would be in themselves a load for a horse of our degenerate days, to the unwieldy Norman carts, already loaded with huge sacks of wheat and barley; further on, in the barns, a prodigious lowing and bleating and bellowing tell where Pierrot and Hugues are marshalling their herds; in the court-yard, saddled and bridled, are stamping and snorting the steeds which shall bear M. de Boisrobert and his bodyguard of two armed domestics to the great fair of Moulin-la-Forêt. Himself booted and spurred for the journey, that gentleman stands upon the terrace of the château, overlooking these preparations; chiding here, encouraging there, animating all by word and gesture. M. de Boisrobert has not been a nobleman long enough to forget that he is a farmer, and prefers to be his own steward. He finds it saves time and temper as well as money.
By dint of much exhortation and shrill volubility of expletives in the curious Norman patois all is at last in readiness, and they are off, with many tender partings and tearful embraces between Blaise and Madelon, and much scolding from Mère Chicon the housekeeper, and fervent adjurations to the Bon Dieu to bring them a good market and a safe return. The latter prayer may seem superfluous, as the distance is but thirty miles and they are a stout party. But it is the day of the famous Mandrin, most redoubtable of robbers, and of the terrible chauffeurs who extort the farmer’s hidden hoard by roasting his feet at his own fire; so there is some room for trepidation in the bosoms of the simple peasant-girls whom this animated company soon leave behind.
We have not space to follow the great cavalcade as it goes bellowing and baaing and shrieking and sacrréing over the white roads between the hedges and the apple-orchards to the great fair. We cannot even stop with M. de Boisrobert at the tidy little auberge of the Pomme d’Or for the welcome déjeuner of soupe aux croûtes, to be followed by ham, and perhaps a poulet with the freshest of eggs and salad, and the most delicious of cheeses, and a most refreshing draught of cool cider from the great stone jug. Nor can we do more than glance at the humors of the fair—much like other fairs, for the matter of that—with its inevitable jugglers and tumblers and charlatans, swallowing flames as if they were sausages, and pulling endless yards of ribbon from their mouths, to the delight of gaping rustics; its gipsies and gingerbread hawkers; its shrill-voiced peasant women, in high Norman caps, selling eggs and poultry; its shriller-voiced ballad-singers piping out:
“Si le roi m’avait donné
Paris sa grand’ ville,”
or some other favorite chanson of the time. These joys we must pass lightly by, to say that, before the afternoon was well over, M. de Boisrobert had already sold his entire venture at an excellent profit, and it was rumored about the fair that he would go home richer by 20,000 francs (equal to 80,000 now) than when he came. The interest in the lucky capitalist increased; it extended even to his horses, and one or two simple rustics went so far as to push their way, during the temporary absence of the grooms, into the stables, there to gaze in open-mouthed admiration upon the steeds that had the honor of bearing—so history renews itself—M. Cæsar de Boisrobert and his fortune.
The hour for departure drew nigh. As the days were getting short and the homeward ride was long and lonely, and, as already hinted, far from safe—few roads in France were safe in those days after nightfall—M. de Boisrobert commanded an early start. He himself was to ride on ahead, attended only by his two mounted valets, leaving the wagoners and herdsmen to follow more leisurely with the carts. The horses were accordingly brought forth and saddled, and the worthy squire was just setting foot in stirrup when he was accosted by a curé, who, calling him by name, politely craved leave to ride with him, as their road lay in the same direction. M. de Boisrobert assented more than gladly, for not only was company desirable, but a curé the company he most desired, and which could be accepted, as would not have been the case with every comer, without suspicion. So they set forth together.
The curé turned out a most agreeable travelling companion, and M. de Boisrobert secretly felicitated himself on the chance which had thrown them together. So charmed was he with his new-found friend that, when the latter pressed upon him the offer of a supper and a bed at the vicarage, he wavered, until reminded by the sum he had about him of the wisdom of pushing on. But even while he doubted came a most distressing mishap. The horse ridden by one of the servants stumbled, fell, and, before his rider had fairly scrambled to his feet, rolled over stone dead. There was nothing for it but to mount Blaise behind Constant, and so get on as best they might. But, lo and behold! scarcely had Constant drawn rein for the purpose than, with what seemed to the startled hearers almost a shriek, the beast he bestrode set off at a furious gallop, which soon left his luckless rider on the ground with a broken leg. And, strange to say, the poor animal had run but a few yards further when he too stopped, staggered, and—pouf! before one could say Jack Robinson, or its equivalent in Norman French, he is as dead as the very deadest of door-nails or herrings.
Whatever M. de Boisrobert may have thought of this odd coincidence, he had little leisure to dwell upon it; for the next instant his own steed was in convulsions, and, barely giving him time to spring from the saddle, like the others rolled over dead. How account for so singular a fatality? Had some poisonous weed got into their fodder? had some venomous reptile stung them in their stalls? or—uneasy doubts crept into the good gentleman’s mind—had they been foully dealt with by reptiles in human form who meant to waylay and rob, if not murder, the travellers? If the latter, it would be indeed most prudent to accept the good curé’s hospitality. His house was luckily not far off, and the disabled servant being first made comfortable in a wayside cabin, and the sound one despatched to the nearest town for a surgeon, M. de Boisrobert and the curé took their way to the home of the latter.
Night had fallen when they reached it, but enough light still remained to show that it was a partly-ruined château, dating probably from the time of the Crusades. One wing had been so far reconstructed as to be habitable, and the ancient chapel, the curé explained, had also been put in order to serve as the village church. “My parish,” he added with a sigh, “is too poor to build a better.” A moat, still filled with green and stagnant water, surrounded the walls; a few planks served for a pathway across it, where once had hung the feudal drawbridge; a dark and snake-like ivy crawled up the crumbling walls; dense woods cast about it a funereal gloom. Altogether its outward aspect was sombre and forbidding in the extreme, and M. de Boisrobert could not repress a shudder or stifle a sinister presentiment as he looked upon his quarters for the night. Had his host been anybody but a curé, he would have felt like drawing back even then.
A little old man, who filled in the modest household by turns the comprehensive functions of butler, valet, groom, gardener, waiter, cook, and general factotum, took their horses in silence, but with a curious glance at the visitor the latter could not help remarking, and the curé led the way to the drawing-room. This was a lofty, vaulted apartment almost bare of furniture, on the walls of which flapped dismally a few tattered pieces of tapestry, the relics of old-time grandeur. A faggot or two crackled and sputtered feebly on the gloomy hearth. Near it, busied apparently over woman’s work of some kind, were seated an old woman of repulsive aspect and a young girl, the latter of whom the curé introduced as Juliette, his niece, and, briefly requesting her to entertain their guest, excused himself to see to the latter’s entertainment for the night.
And now, as the heroine of this exciting history has at last arrived—a little tardiness, as you know, messieurs, must be forgiven to her sex—it seems only becoming that she should have a chapter to herself.
III.
Lovely? Of course she is lovely. What a ridiculous question! Who ever heard of a heroine who wasn’t lovely, still less a heroine who was also the niece of a rob—Peste! The cat was almost out of the bag that time—so nearly out, in fact, that we may as well slip the noose and let her go at once. Scat! And now, the author’s mind being freed of an enormous load, he breathes more freely and announces that our luckless M. de Boisrobert has literally fallen into a den of thieves. For what purpose otherwise that artful hint about the rustics prying into the stables, the horses falling dead upon the way, the elaborate setting forth of the gloom and desolation hanging like a pall over the ruined château—to what end, do you suppose, was all this expenditure of literary artifice, except to prepare the reader’s mind for some blood-curdling and harrowing event? But the curé? the curé? Why, simply no curé at all: a wolf in sheep’s clothing, as there were then but too many in France.[[111]]
Of this, however, as yet M. de Boisrobert knew nothing. Filled with vague forebodings of evil he could neither define nor reason down, he felt but little in the humor for talk, and still less—being, as you remember, in his tenth lustrum—for flirtation. So, after one or two wise remarks upon the weather, or the state of the crops, or the latest opera, or whatever other topics gentlemen-farmers then chose to break the ice of conversation with a pretty girl, had been answered more virgineo with shy blushes, or faltering monosyllables, or embarrassed and embarrassing silence, M. de Boisrobert betook himself to the window to look out upon the surrounding country. A full moon threw upon every object a lustre like that of day, and—ha! what is this he sees in the court-yard? Can that be his host, the curé, talking so confidentially to those exceedingly sinister-looking chaps (one of whom he now remembers to have had pointed out to him at the fair as a coiner of base money, the other as a more than suspected thief), and handling those three exceedingly long and ugly-looking poniards!—ugh! how their keen edges glitter in the moonlight as the rascals run their dirty thumbs along to try their temper.
M. de Boisrobert turned from the window with a gesture of affright and despair, and beheld Juliette standing before him, no longer a timid child but a lovely and courageous woman, one finger upon her lip, the other pointing to the ill-featured duenna, who had had the good manners to go to sleep. In a few rapid whispers, and still more eloquent gestures, she explained the danger and her unalterable resolve to save him or perish in the attempt. Whether it was her words or her beauty, M. de Boisrobert felt instantly reassured. Indeed, had he known anything of the course of such adventures, he must have felt so from the moment he laid eyes on her. For what other purpose except to save him could he suppose so lovely a creature was to be found in so vile a den? And let it here be said for the benefit of scoffers that the present writer is well aware how often this incident has been used for purposes of fiction—at least ten thousand times in the English language alone. Yes; but does not the very frequency of its use prove it to be founded on fact, that some time or other it was true? Very well; this is the time it was true. Besides, who has said that Juliette is to succeed in her noble but rash endeavor? Suppose—now just suppose—she were to fail; in which of your fictions do you find a stroke of originality like that? If the historian were revengeful; if he had a mind to distort facts, as historians in very remote ages are said sometimes to have done—well, well, we shall see.
In her hurried warning Juliette had made shift to tell M. de Boisrobert that it was meant to put a sleeping potion in his wine, and afterwards to enter his chamber and kill him while still under the influence of the drug.
“Do not for your life refuse to drink,” she added, “but be careful to eat the apple I shall offer you after it, and which will contain the antidote to the drug.”
Scarcely had she ended when the pretended curé came in with his precious comrades, whom he introduced as parishioners. (“A fit flock for such a shepherd!” thought poor M. de Boisrobert.) Supper was served at once, and all went as the young girl had foretold. The wine was drunk and the apple duly presented and eaten with a confidence that must seem truly sublime under the circumstances, remembering, too, that one of M. de Boisrobert’s remote ancestors had lost his entire patrimony through accepting a similar gift from a near female relation. Feigning weariness and sleep, the traveller begged to be excused and was shown to his room.
No sooner was he alone than he began to examine his means of defence and offence. The flints, of course, were taken from his pistols and the bolts removed from the door—they would be poor robbers, totally unworthy the attention of an enlightened reader, who would neglect such obvious precautions as these. Somewhat disconsolately M. de Boisrobert looked under the bed and into the wardrobe, but found no comfort there. Then he piled all the furniture against the door, drew his sword, said his prayers, set his teeth, thought of Juliette (O middle-aged and most forlorn of Romeos!), and awaited the conspirators.
He had not long to wait. Scarcely had he taken position when a stealthy tread outside, a fumbling at the latch, and probably a strong odor of garlic penetrating through the keyhole, announced their arrival. The door was first softly, then strongly, pushed, and then, as the unlooked-for resistance showed their plot was discovered, a furious volley of oaths was followed by an onset that made the barricade tremble. Now should we dearly love to entertain the reader with the description of a terrific combat à l’outrance—also à la Dumas—wherein M. de Boisrobert, calmly awaiting his foes’ approach, falls upon them with such ferocity that in a twinkling he has one spitted like a lark, another cloven to the chine, and the third in headlong flight and bawling lustily for mercy, but pricked sorely in tender places by the relentless sword. But, alas!—such is the fatal limitation of your true story—nothing of the sort took place. On the contrary, our hero was in all probability horribly frightened and thoroughly glad to see a secret panel suddenly slide back, and a white hand thrust through the opening, while the sweetest voice he had ever heard begged him to make haste. To seize that hand—and who shall blame him if he pressed it to his lips?—to dart through the opening—quick! quick! good Jean!—to close the panel, is the work of an instant. Scarcely is it shut when cr-rack! crash! bang! go door and barricade, and the foiled assassins are heard stamping and swearing furiously about the deserted room. If you could but have seen their faces and heard—no, it would not have been edifying to hear their language. But the fugitives are safe. Need it be said that the foresight of the faithful Jean (who, of course, follows his young mistress, having, indeed, waited this long time in the robber’s den only for a chance to be on hand in this emergency) had provided horses, on which they soon reached Evreux, where they lodged an information, which, there being no police there to speak of, led to the prompt arrest of the ruffians.
Placing the lovely Juliette in a convent, M. de Boisrobert returned home. But it was observed that he hunted less than formerly, that he was often closeted with Father Bernard and his notary, and that he spent much time in settling his affairs. Need the result be told? What in the world is a middle-aged bachelor to do whose life is saved by a lovely maiden of spotless virtue? For, be it known, the fair Juliette, left an orphan only a week before, had, by her dying father, a rich farmer of Brézolles, been consigned to the guardianship of this wicked brother, whose evil courses he was far from suspecting. All that is as plain as a pikestaff; as it is that in less than six months after, just long enough to get the trousseau ready (from the Worth of the day, of course) and to see the wicked uncle comfortably hanged, the bells of Friar Lawrence’s—we should say of Father Bernard’s—little church at Boisrobert rang out a merry answer to the problem last propounded.
When the distant echoes of these wedding chimes reached the ears of M. le Comte de Beaumanoir at Paris, he was not at all angry, as people thought he would be. Oh! dear, no. On the contrary, he only smiled, showing a remarkably fine set of teeth. So that people said he was a brave man, this poor M. le Comte, and not by any means as black as he was painted. And, indeed, a great many folks began to commiserate him and to abuse M. de Boisrobert.
IV.
Well?
Well what?
Why, what came of M. de Beaumanoir showing his teeth?
Oh! that? Nothing—just nothing at all. That’s the trouble, you see, of telling a true story: one’s imagination is hampered at every step. It would have been most delightful and exciting to have invented a frightful tale of the count’s vengeance; how he slew his recalcitrant kinsman, immured his weeping bride in a dungeon for life, and laid waste the lands of Boisrobert with fire and sword, etc., etc. But the truth is, he did nothing of the kind. Indeed, his teeth were speedily drawn, and he was glad to get away with his worthless life. The false curé confessed before his death that the count had suborned him to kill his kinsman as he returned from the fair, promising him a sum equal to that which he would be sure to find on M. de Boisrobert’s person, and even suggesting the disguise. He little thought that the very scheme he fondly imagined was to secure him his coveted inheritance was destined really to lose it to him for ever. So ever come to grief the machinations of the wicked! This last escapade was a little too much even for courtly morals, and Monsieur was quietly advised to hint to his murderous favorite that his health would probably be the better for a change of air.
And the fatal consequences resulting from this marriage?
Yes, yes, of course; how stupid to forget it! Well, a cynic might say that for a bachelor to marry at all, especially at forty-five—but never mind the cynic. Their married life was surely not unhappy? Let us hope not. Do Romeo and Juliet ever throw teacups at each other over the breakfast-table because that duck of a spring bonnet is not forthcoming? In romances certainly not; but in true stories—hem! Let us trust, however, that peace reigned eternal over the domestic hearthstone at the Château de Boisrobert. But his marriage had cost its owner an illusion—a life-long illusion; and that is a painful thing at forty-five. Disenchantment seems to come harder as one gets older and has anything left to be disenchanted of. He ceased to believe that rank and birth are the same as goodness, or even greatness, and it cost him many a pang, and no doubt a great deal of real though whimsical unhappiness, to be forced thus suddenly and radically to readjust his scheme of life. But, in spite of the adventure which gave him a wife, perhaps because of it, he never lost his faith in curés or in Juliette; and the games of bowls and of trictrac were all the pleasanter for the sweet face that thenceforth lit them up, and the romping curly-pates that disturbed them and in time effaced from their fond father’s memory his lingering regret for the loss of a noble heir.
TO AUBREY DE VERE.
AFTER READING “POEMS OF PLACES—ITALY,” EDITED BY H. W. LONGFELLOW.
I stood in ancient church, ruined and vast,
Whose crumbling altar of its Lord was bare,
Whose shattered windows let in all the glare
Of noonday heat, and noise of crowds that passed
With careless jest, of malice not assoiled.
Within, fast-fading angels still lent grace
Of art, believing, to the holy place
That cruel hands of its best gift despoiled.
With weary feet I trod the broken floor,
With tearless eyes the maimèd aisles gazed down,
When, lo! afar a waxen taper shone,
Burning a hidden altar clear before:
Here hastened I, here knelt—O poet true!
Thine was the light that shone my sorrow through.