The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877

by Various

CONCLUSION.

The events of the last chapter happened on the night of Friday, July 17, 1874. The following day, Saturday, broke calm, clear, and warm. Elmer awoke early, carefully looked out of a crack in his window curtain, and found that the chimney-builder's room was empty.

"The enemy has flown. I wonder if Alma is up?"

He uncovered a small telegraphic armature and sounder standing on the window-seat, and touched it gently. In an instant there was a response, and Alma replied that she was up and dressed and would soon be down.

She met him in the library, smiling, and apparently happy.

"Oh, Elmer, he has gone away. He left a note on the breakfast table, saying that he had gone to New York, and that he should not return till Monday or Tuesday."

"That's very good; but I think it means mischief."

Just here the breakfast bell rang. The table was set for four, but Alma and Elmer were the only ones who could answer the call, and they sat down to the table alone. They talked of various matters of little consequence, and when the meal was over Elmer announced that as the day was quiet, he should make a little photographing expedition about the neighborhood.

"My visit here is now more than a quarter over, and I wish to take home some photos of the place. Will you not go with me?"

"With all my heart, if I can leave father. But please not talk of going home yet. I hope you will not go till things are settled. We want you, Elmer. You are so wise and strong, and—you know what I mean."

"Perhaps I do. At any rate I'm not going till I have paid up that Belford for his insults."

"Oh, let's not talk of him to-day."

This was eminently wise. They had better enjoy the day of peace that was before them. The shadow of the coming events already darkened their lives, though they knew it not. Mr. Denny was so much better that he could spare Alma, and about ten o'clock she appeared, paper umbrella in hand, at the porch, and Elmer soon joined her bearing a small camera, and a light wooden tripod for its support.

The two spent the morning happily in each other's company, and at one o'clock returned to dinner with quite a number of negatives of various objects of interest about the place. After dinner the young man retreated to his room to prepare for the battle that he felt sure would rage on the following Monday.

He did not know all the circumstances of the trouble that had invaded the family, but he felt sure that the confidential clerk intended some terrible shame or exposure that in some way concerned his cousin Alma. So it was he came to call himself her Lohengrin, come to fight her battles, not with a sword, but with the telegraph, the camera, and the micro-lantern.

The Sabbath passed quietly, and the Monday came. After breakfast the student retreated to his room and tried to study, but could not.

About ten o'clock he heard a carriage of some kind stop before the house. His room being at the rear, he could not see who had come, and thinking that it might be merely some stray visitor, and that at least it did not concern him, he turned to his books and made another attempt to read.

After some slight delay he heard the carriage drive away, and the old house became very still. Then he heard a door open down stairs, and a moment after one of the maids knocked at his door.

"Would Mr. Franklin kindly come down stairs? Mr. Denny wished to see him in the library."

He would come at once; and picking up a number of unmounted photographs from the table, he prepared to go down stairs. He hardly knew why he should take the pictures just then. There seemed no special reason why he should show them to Mr. Denny; still, an indefinite feeling urged him to take them with him.

The library was a small room, dark, with heavy book shelves against the walls, and crowded with tables, desk, and easy chairs. There was a student lamp on the centre table, and in a corner stood a large iron safe. Mr. Denny was seated at the table with his back to the door, and with his head supported by his hand and arm. He did not seem to notice the arrival of his visitor, and Elmer advanced to the table and laid the photographs upon it.

"I am glad you have come, Mr. Franklin. I wish to talk with you. I wish to tell you something. A great affliction has fallen upon us, and I wish you, as our guest, to be prepared for it. I think I can trust you, Elmer Franklin. I remember your mother, my boy. You have her features—and I will trust you for her sake. We are ruined."

"How, sir? How is that possible, with all your property?"

"Not one cent of my property—not a foot of ground, or a single brick, or piece of shafting in the mills—belongs to me."

"This is terrible, sir. How did it happen?"

"It is a short and sad story. I was my father's only child, and there were no other heirs. My father's last illness was very sudden, and he left no will. He told me when he died that he had left everything to me. We never found any will that would bear out this assertion. However, the ordinary process of law gave me the property, and I thought myself secure. Suddenly a will was found, in which all the property was left to a distant relative in New York, and I was merely mentioned with some trifling gift. I contested the will and lost the case. It was an undoubted will, and in my father's own handwriting, and dated more than a year before he died and when I was rusticating from college. I thought I must needs sow my wild oats, and day after to-morrow I pay for them all by total beggary. The devisee, by the will, acted very strangely about the property. He did not disturb me for a very long time. He probably feared to do so; and then he made a mortgage of one hundred thousand dollars on the property, took the money, and went abroad."

"And he left you here in possession?"

"Yes. The interest on the mortgage became due. There was no one to pay it, and they even had the effrontery to come to me. I refused again and again, and every time the interest was added to the mortgage till it rolled up to an enormous amount. Meanwhile the devisee died, penniless, in Europe, and on Wednesday Abrams, the lawyer who holds the mortgage, is to take possession of everything—and we—we are to go—I know not whither."

For a few moments there was a profound silence in the room. The elder man mourned his dreadful fate, and the son of science was ready to shout for joy. Restraining himself with an effort, he said, not without a tremor in his voice:

"And have you searched for any other will?"

"That is an idle question, my son. We have searched these years. Then, too, just as I need a staff for my declining years, it breaks under me."

"You refer to Mr. Belford, sir?"

"Yes. Since I injured my foot in the mill, I have trusted all my affairs to him, and now I sometimes think he is playing me false. Even now, when all this trouble has come upon me, he is absent, and I have no one to consult, nor do I find any to aid or comfort me."

"Perhaps I can aid you, sir."

"I do not know. I fear no one can avail us now."

"May I be very frank with you, sir?"

"Certainly. I am past all pride or fear. There can be nothing worse now."

"I think, sir, you have placed too much confidence in that man. He is not trustworthy."

"How do you know? Can you prove it?"

"Yes, sir. You remember the new chimney?"

"Yes; but he explained that, and collected all the money that had been paid on the supposed extra height of the chimney."

"That was very easy, sir, for he had it in his own pocket. I met some of the work people in the village, and casually asked them how high the chimney was to be, and every man gave the real height. Mr. Belford lied to you about it, and pocketed the difference between his measurements and mine. Of course, when detected he promptly restored the money, and thought himself lucky to have escaped so easily. More than that, he claimed that the chimney was capped with stone. It is not. It is brick to the top, and the upper courses were rubbed over with colored plaster."

"I can hardly believe it. Besides, how can you prove it?"

"That will, sir. Look at it carefully."

So saying, Elmer selected a photograph from those on the table and presented it to Mr. Denny.

The old gentleman looked at it carefully for a few moments, and then said with an air of conviction—

"It is a perfect fraud. I had no idea that the man was such a thief."

"Yes, sir. Look at that bare place where the plaster has fallen off. You can see the brick——"

"Oh, I can see. There is no need to explain the picture. Have you any more?"

"Yes, sir; quite a number. I'm glad I brought them with me."

Mr. Denny turned them over slowly, and commented briefly upon them.

"That's the house. Very well done, my boy. That's the mill. Excellent. I should know it at once. And—eh! what's that? The batting mill?"

"Yes, sir. That's the new building going up beyond the millpond."

"Great heavens! What an outrageous fraud! Mr. Belford told me it was nearly done. He has drawn almost all the money for it already, and according to this picture only one story is up. When was this picture taken?"

"On Saturday, sir. Alma was with me. She will tell you."

Mr. Denny rang a small bell that stood at his elbow, and a maid came to the door.

"Will you call Miss Denny, Anna?"

The maid retired, and in a moment or two Alma appeared. She seemed pale and dejected, and she sat down at once as if weary.

"What is it, father? Any new troubles?"

"Were you with your cousin when he took this photograph?"

She looked at it a moment, and then said wearily:

"Yes. It's the batting mill."

Just here the door opened, and Mr. Belford, hat and travelling bag in hand, as if just from the station, entered the room. The two men looked up in undisguised amazement, but Alma cast her eyes upon the floor, and her face seemed to put on a more ashen hue than ever.

"Ah! excuse me. I did not mean to intrude. I'm just from New York, and I have been so successful that I hastened to lay the news before you."

"What have you to say, Mr. Belford," said Mr. Denny coldly. "There are none but friends here, and you need not fear to speak."

Mr. Franklin hastily gathered up the pictures together, and rolling them up, put them in his pocket, with the mental remark that he "knew of one who was not a friend—no, not much."

"I have arranged everything," said Mr. Belford, with sublime audacity. "The note has been taken up. I have even obtained a release of the mortgage, and here is the cancelled note and the release. To-morrow I will have it recorded."

"We are in no mood for pleasantry, Mr. Belford. The sheriff was here to-day, and Abrams is to take possession on Wednesday."

"Oh, I knew that. He did not get my telegram in time, or he would have saved you all this unnecessary annoyance. And now everything is all serene, and there is Abrams's release in full."

He took out a carefully folded paper, and gave it to Mr. Denny. He read it in silence, and then said:

"It seems to be quite correct. We——"

Alma suddenly dropped her head upon her breast, and slid to the floor in a confused heap. She thought she read in that fatal receipt her death warrant. Nature rebelled, and mercifully took away her senses.

Elmer sprang to her rescue, but Mr. Belford intruded himself.

"It is my place, Mr. Franklin. She is to be my wife."

---

The dreary day crept to its end. Alma recovered, and retired to her room. Mr. Denny, overcome by the excitement of the interview, was quite ill, and the visitor, oppressed with a sense of partial defeat, took a long walk through the country. The enemy had made such an extraordinary movement that for the time he was disconcerted, and he wished to be alone, that he could think over the situation. About six o'clock in the afternoon he returned looking bright and calm, as if he had thought out his problem and had nerved himself up to do and dare all in behalf of the woman he loved. He went quietly to his room and began his preparations for a vigorous assault upon the enemy.

He rolled out his micro-lantern into the middle of the room, drew up the curtains at the window that faced Mr. Belford's chamber, and prepared to adjust the apparatus to a new and most singular style of lantern projections. He had hardly finished the work to his satisfaction before he heard Alma's knock at the door. He hastily drew down the curtains, and then invited her to come in.

She opened the door and appeared upon the threshold, the picture of resigned and heavy sorrow. She had evidently been weeping, and the dark dress in which she had arrayed herself seemed to intensify the look of anguish on her face. The son of science was disconcerted. He did not know what to say, and, with great wisdom, he said nothing.

She entered the room without a word, and sat wearily down on a trunk. Elmer quickly rolled out the great easy chair so that it would face the open western window.

"Sit here, Miss Denny. This is far more comfortable."

"Oh, Elmer! Have you too turned against me?"

"Not knowingly. Sit here where there is more air, and before this view and this beautiful sunset."

She rose, and with a forlorn smile took the great chair, and then gazed absently out of the window upon the charming landscape, brilliant with the glow of the setting sun. Elmer meanwhile went on with his work, and for a little space neither spoke. Then she said, with a faint trace of impatience in her voice—

"What are you doing, Elmer?"

"Preparing for war."

"It is useless. It is too late."

"Think so?"

"Yes. Everything has been settled, and in a very satisfactory manner—at least father is satisfied, and I suppose I ought to be."

She smiled and held out her hand to him.

"How can I ever thank you, cousin Elmer? You will not forget me when I am gone."

"Forget you, Alma! That was unkind."

He took her hand, glanced at the diamond ring upon her finger, and looking down upon her as she lay half reclining in the great chair, he said, with an effort, as if the words pained him:

"Alma, you have surrendered to him."

She looked up with a startled expression, and said:

"What do you mean?"

"You have renewed your engagement with Mr. Belford?"

"Yes—of course I have. He—he is to be my husband——"

"On Wednesday."

"Yes. How did you know it?"

Instead of replying he turned to a drawer and drew forth a long ribbon of white paper. Holding it to the light, near the window, he began to read the words printed in dots and lines upon it.

"Here is your own confession. Here are all the messages you sent me from the parlor, when you broke your engagement with him——"

"Oh, Elmer! Did you save that? Destroy it—destroy it at once. If he should find it, he would never forgive me."

"You need not fear. I shall not destroy it, and it shall never cause you any trouble."

She had risen in her excitement, and stood upon her feet. Suddenly she flushed a rosy red, and a strange light shone in her eyes. The sun had sunk behind the hills, and it had grown dark. As the shadows gathered in the room a strange, mystic light fell on the wall before her. A picture—dim, ghostly, gigantic, and surpassingly beautiful—met her astonished eyes. She gazed at it with a beating heart, awed into silence by its mystery and its unearthly aspect. What was it? What did it mean? By what magic art had he conjured up this vision? She stood with parted lips gazing at it, while her bosom rose and fell with her rapid, excited breathing. Suddenly she threw her arms above her head, and with a cry fell back upon the chair.

"Oh, Elmer! My heart——"

He had been gazing absently out of the window at the fading twilight, and hearing her cry of pain, he turned hastily and said:

"Alma, what is it? Are you——"

He caught sight of the picture on the wall. He understood it at once, and went to the stereopticon that stood at the other end of the room and opened it. The lamp was burning brightly, and he put it out and closed the door. Then he drew out the glass slide, held it a moment to the light to make sure that it was Alma's portrait, and then he kissed it passionately, and shivered it into fragments upon the hearthstone.

She heard the breaking glass, and rose hastily and turned toward him.

"Elmer, that was cruel. Why did you destroy it?"

"Because it told too much."

"It was my picture?"

"Yes. I confess with shame that I stole it when you were asleep under the influence of the gas I gave you. It happened to be in the lantern when you came in."

"And so I saw it pictured on the wall?"

"Yes. In that way did it betray me. Forget it, Alma. Forget me. Forget everything. Forget that I ever came here——"

"No—never. I cannot."

"You will be married soon and go away. I presume we may never meet again."

"Oh, Elmer, forgive me. I am the one to be forgiven. I am alone to blame for all this sorrow. I thought I alone should suffer. But—but, Elmer, you will not forget me, and you see—you must see that what I do is for the best. It is the only way. I cannot see my father beggared."

The clear-headed son of science seemed to be losing his self-control. This was all so new, so exciting, so different from the calm and steady flow of his student life, that he knew not what to say or do. He began to turn over his books and papers in a nervous manner, as if trying to win back control of his own tumultuous thoughts. Fortunately Alma came to his rescue.

"Elmer, hear me."

"Yes," he said with an effort. "Tell me about it; then perhaps we can understand each other better."

"I will. Come and sit by me. It grows dark, and I—well, it is no matter. It will do me good to speak of it."

"Yes, do. Sorrow shared is divided by half."

"And joy shared is doubled," she added. "But we will not talk of 'the might have been.'"

Then she paused and looked out on the gathering night for some minutes in silence. Elmer sat at her feet upon a low stool, and waited till she should speak.

"Elmer, say that you will forgive me whatever happens. No matter how dark it looks for me, forgive me—and—do not forget me. I couldn't bear that. On Wednesday I am to be married to Mr. Belford. It is the only way by which I can save my father. There seems no help for it, and I consented this afternoon. Mr. Belford took up the mortgage, and I am to be his reward."

Elmer heard her through in silence, and then he stood up before her, and his passion broke out in fury upon her.

"Alma Denny, you are a fool."

She cowered before him, and covered her face with her hands.

"Have you no sense? Can you not see the wide pit of deceit that is spread before you? Do you believe what he says? Will you walk into perdition to save your father?"

"Oh, Elmer! Elmer! Spare me, spare me, for my father's sake!"

Her sobs and tears choked her utterance, and she shrank away into the depths of the chair, in shame and terror, thankful that the darkness hid her from his view. Still his righteous indignation blazed upon her hotly.

"Where have you lived? What have you done, that you should be so deceived by this man? How can you save your father? If you cannot find that missing will, of what avail is this withdrawal of the mortgage?"

"I do not know. Oh, Elmer! I am weak, and I have no mother, and father is——I must save him if I can—at any price."

"You cannot save him. The devisee who held the will has heirs. They can still claim the property. Besides, how could Mr. Belford pay off that mortgage? Depend upon it, a gigantic fraud——"

"Elmer! Thank God, you have saved——"

She fainted quietly away, and slid down upon the floor at his feet. He called two of the maids, and with their help he took her to her room and placed her upon her own bed. Then, bidding them care for her properly, he returned to his own room, and the heavy night fell down on the sorrowful house.

Far away in the northwest climbed up a ragged mass of sombre clouds. Afar off the deep voice of the thunder muttered fitfully. The son of science drew up his curtains and looked out on the coming storm. There was a solemn hush and calm in the air. Nature seemed resting, and nerving herself for the warfare of the elements.

He too had need of calm. He drew a chair to the window, and sitting astride of it, he rested his arms upon the back, and his chin upon his folded hands, and for an hour watched the lightning flash from ragged cloud to ragged cloud, and gave himself to deep and anxious thought. The thunder grew nearer and nearer. The dark veil of clouds blotted out the stars one by one. The roar of the water falling over the dam at the mill seemed to fill all the air with its murmur. Every leaf and flower hung motionless.

He heard the village clock strike nine, with loud, deep notes that seemed almost at hand. Every nerve of his body seemed strung to electric tension, and all nature tuned to a higher pitch as if dark and terrible things were abroad in the night.

He heard a sound of closing blinds and windows. The servants were shutting up the house, and preparing it for the storm.

One of them knocked at his door, and asked if she should come in and close his windows.

He opened the door, thanked her, and said he would attend to it himself. As he closed the door and stepped back into the room, he stood upon something and there was a little crash. Thinking it might be glass, he lit a candle and looked for the broken object, whatever it might be.

It was Alma's engagement ring, broken in twain. It had slipped from her nerveless finger when they took her to her room. With a gesture of impatience, he picked up the fragments, and threw them, diamond and all, out of the window into the garden below.

Then for another hour he sat alone in the darkness of his room, watchful and patient. He drew up the curtain toward Alma's room. There was a light there, and he sat gazing at her white curtain till the light was extinguished. The other lights were all put out one after the other, and then it became very still.

The clock struck ten. The gathering storm climbed higher up the western sky. The lightning flashed brighter and brighter. There was a sigh in the tree tops as if the air stirred uneasily.

Suddenly there was another light. Mr. Belford's curtain was brightly illuminated by his candle. Elmer moved his chair so that he could watch the window, and waited patiently till the light was put out. Then he saw the curtain raised and the window drawn down.

"All right, my boy! That's just what I wanted. Nemesis has a clear road, and her shadowy sword shall reach you. Now for the closed circuit alarm."

He silently pulled off his shoes, and then, with the tread of a cat, he felt about his room till he found on the table two delicate coils of fine insulated wire, and a couple of tacks. Carefully opening the door, he crept down stairs and through the hall to the door of the library. The door was closed, and kneeling down on the mat he pushed a tack into the door near the jamb and stuck the other in the door post. From one to another he stretched a bit of insulated wire. Then, aided by the glare of the flashes of lightning, that had now grown bright and frequent, he laid the wires under the mat and along the floor to the foot of the stairs. Then in his stockinged feet he crept upward, dropping the wires over into the well of the stairway as he went. In a moment or two the wires were traced along the floor of the upper entry and under the door into his room. Here they were secured to a small battery, and connected with a tiny electric bell that stood on the mantle shelf. To stifle its sound in case it rang, he threw his straw hat over the bell, and then he felt sure that at least one part of his work was done.

Louder and louder rolled the thunder. The lightning flashed brightly and lit up the bare, mean little room where the wretch cowered and shivered in the bed, sleepless and fearful he knew not why. He feared the storm and the night. He feared everything. His guilty heart made terrors out of the night and nature's healthful workings. The very storm, blessed harbinger of clearer days and sweeter airs, terrified him.

There was a sound of rushing wind in the air. A more vivid flash blinded him. He sat up in bed and stopped his coward ears to drown the splendid roll of the thunder. Another flash seemed to fill the room.

Ah! What was that? His eyes seemed to start from their sockets in terror.

There, written in gigantic letters of fire upon the wall, glowed and burned a single word:

FRAUD!

He stared at it and rubbed his eyes. It would not be winked out. There was a loud crash of thunder and a furious dash of rain against the window; then another blinding stroke of lightning. He drew the clothing over his head in abject terror. Again the thunder rolled as if in savage comment on the writing on the wall.

It was a mistake, a delusion. He would face the horrid accusation.

It was gone, and in its place was a picture. It seemed the top of——

Ah! It was that chimney. Already the false stucco had fallen off, and there, pictured upon his wall in lines of fire, were the evidences of his fraud and crime.

He sprang from the bed with an oath and looked out of the window. Darkness everywhere. The beating rain on the window pane ran down in blinding rivulets. A vivid flash of lightning illuminated the garden and the house. Not a living thing was stirring. He turned toward the bed. The terrible picture had gone. With a muttered curse upon his weak, disordered nerves, he crept into bed and tried to sleep.

Suddenly the terrible writing glowed upon the wall again, and he fairly screamed with fright and horror:

MURDER!

He writhed and turned upon the bed in mortal agony. He stared at the letters of the awful word with ashen lips and chattering teeth. What hideous dream was this? Had his reason reeled? Could it play him phantom tricks like this? Or was it an avenging angel from heaven writing his crimes upon the black night?

"Great God! What was that?"

The writing disappeared, and in its place stood a picture of his wretched victim and himself. Her fair, innocent face looked down upon him from the darkness, and he saw his own form beside her.

He raved with real madness now. Great drops of perspiration gathered on his face. He dared not face those beautiful eyes so calmly gazing at him. Where had high Heaven gained such knowledge of him? How could God punish him with such awful cruelty?

"Hell and damnation have come," he screamed in frantic terror. The thunder rolled in deep majesty, and none heard him. The wind and rain beat upon the house, and his ravings disturbed no one.

"Take it away! Take it away!" he cried in sheer madness and agony.

It would not move. The lightning only made the picture more startling and awful. The sweet and beautiful face of Alice Green lived before him in frightful distinctness, and his very soul seemed to burn to cinder before her serene, unearthly presence.

It was her ghost revisiting the earth. Was it to always thus torment him?

"Thank God! It has gone."

The room became pitch dark, and he fell back upon the pillow in what seemed to him a bloody sweat. He could not sleep, and for some time he lay trembling on the bed and trying to collect his senses and decide whether he was in possession of his reason or not.

Suddenly there was a flash of light, and a new vision sprang into existence before him.

An angel in long white robes seemed to be flying through the air toward him, and above her head she held a sword. Beneath her feet was the word "Nemesis!" in letters of glowing fire.

The poor wretch rose up in bed, kneeled down upon the mattress, and facing the gigantic figure that seemed to float in the air above him, cried aloud in broken gasps.

"Pardon! For—Christ——"

He threw up his arms and screamed in delirious terror.

The angel advanced through the air toward him and grew larger and taller. She seemed ready to strike him to the ground—and she was gone.

He fell forward flat on his face, and tears gushed from his eyes in torrents. For a while he lay thus moaning and crying, and then he rose, staggered to the wash basin, bathed his face with cold water, and crept shivering and trembling into bed.

---

The storm moved slowly away. The lightning grew less frequent, and the thunder rolled in more subdued tones. The wind subsided, but the rain fell steadily and drearily. One who watched heard the clock strike twelve and then one.

Slowly the laggard hours slipped away in silence. The rain fell in monotonous showers. The darkness hung like a pall over everything.

The wretch in his bed tossed in sleepless misery. He hardly dared look at the blackness of the night, for fear some new vision might affright him with ghostly warnings. What had he better do? Another night in this haunted room would drive him insane. Had he not better fly—leave all and escape out of sight in the hiding darkness? Better abandon the greater prize, take everything in reach, and fly from scenes so terrible.

He rose softly, dressed completely, took a few essentials from his table, did them up in a bundle, and then like a cat he crept out of the room, never to return. The house was pitch dark and as silent as a tomb. He had no need of a light, and, feeling his way along with his hands on the wall, he stole down stairs and through the hall till he reached the library door. With cautious fingers he turned the handle in silence and pushed the door open. It seemed to catch on the threshold, but it was only for an instant, and then he boldly entered the room.

Placing his bundle upon the table, he took out a small bunch of keys, and with his hands outstretched before him he felt for the safe. It was easily found, and then he put in the key, unlocked the door, and swung it open. With familiar fingers he pulled out what he knew were mere bills and documents, and then he found the small tin box in which—

A blinding glare, an awful flash of overpowering light blazed before him. His eyes seemed put out by its bewildering intensity, and a little scream of terror escaped from his lips. A hand seized him by the collar and dragged him over backward upon the floor. The blazing, burning light filled all the room with a glare more terrible than the lightning. He recovered his sight, and saw Nemesis standing above him, revolver in hand, and with a torch of magnesium wire blazing in horrid flames above his head.

"Stir hand or foot, and—you understand. There are six chambers, and I'm a good shot."

"Let me up, you fool, or I'll kill you."

"Oh! You surprise me, Mr. Belford. I thought it was a common robber."

"No, it is not—so lower your pistol."

"No, sir. You may rise, but make the slightest resistance, and I'll blow your brains into muddy fragments. Sit in that chair, and when I've secured you properly, I'll hear any explanation you may make. Your conduct is very singular, Mr. Belford, to say the least. That's it. Sit down in the arm chair. Now I'm going to tie you into it, and on the slightest sign of resistance I shall fire."

The poor, cowed creature sank into the chair, and the son of science placed his strange lamp upon the table. With the revolver still in hand, he procured a match and lit a candle on the table. Then he extinguished his torch, and the overpowering light gave place to a more agreeable gloom. Then he took from his pocket a tiny electric bell and a little battery made of a small ink bottle. Then he drew forth a small roll of wire, and securing one end to the battery, with the revolver still in hand, he walked round the chair three times, and bound the thief into it with the slender wire.

"Stop this fooling, boy! Lower your revolver, and let me explain matters."

"No, sir. When I have you fast so that you can do no harm, I talk with you—not before. Hold back your head. That's it. Rest it against the chair while I draw this wire over your throat."

"For God's sake, stop! Do you intend to garrote me?"

"No. Only I mean to make you secure."

"This won't hold me long. I'll break your wires in a flash, you little fool."

"No, you will not. The moment the wire is parted that bell will ring, and I shall begin firing, and keep it up till you are disabled or dead."

The man swore savagely, but the cold thread of insulated wire over his throat thrilled his every nerve. It seemed some magic bond, mysterious, wonderful, and dreadful. This cool man of science was an angel of awful and incomprehensible power. His lamp of such mystic brilliance and that battery quite unnerved his coward heart. What awful torture, what burning flash of lightning might not rend him to blackened fragments if the wires were broken! To such depths of puerile ignorance and terror did the wretch sink in his guilty fancy. He dared not move a muscle lest the wire break. The very thought of it filled him with unspeakable agony. The son of science placed himself before his prisoner. With the revolver at easy rest, he said:

"Mr. Belford, I am going to call help. Do not move while I open the door."

In mortal terror the wretch turned his head round to see what was going on. He managed to get a glimpse of the room without breaking the wire round his throat, and he saw the young man stoop to the floor at the door and pick up something. Then he made some strange and rapid motions with the fingers of his right hand, while the left still steadied the revolver.

For several minutes nothing happened. The two men glared at each other in silence, and then there was a sound of opening doors. One closed with an echoing slam that resounded strangely through the old house, and then there were light footsteps in the hall.

"Oh! Elmer! What is it? What has happened?"

"Nothing very serious—merely a common burglar. I called you because I wished help."

"Yes, I heard the bell, and I read your message in my room by the sound. I dressed as quickly as possible. Is there no danger?"

"No. Stand back. Do not come into the room. Call the men, and let them wake the gardener and his son. You yourself call your father, and bid him dress and come down at once. And, Alma, keep cool and do not be alarmed. I need you, Alma, and you must help me."

Then the house was very still, and the watcher paced up and down before his prisoner in silence. There came a hasty opening of doors, and excited steps and flaring lamps in the hall.

"'Tis the young doctor. Oh! By mighty! Here's troubles!"

"Quiet, men! Keep quiet. Come in. He cannot hurt you."

The three men, shivering and anxious, peered into the room with blanched faces and chattering teeth.

"Have you a rope?"

The calm voice of the speaker reassured them, and all three volunteered to go for one.

"No. One is enough. And one of you had better go to Mr. Denny's room and help him down stairs. You, John, may stop with me."

"Gods! Sir, he will spring at me!"

"Never you fear. He's fastened into the chair. Besides——"

"Ay, sir, you've the little pet! That's the kind o' argiment."

"It is a rather nice weapon—six-shooter—Colt's."

Presently, with much clatter, the gardener's son brought a rope, and then, under Mr. Franklin's directions, they bound the man in the chair hand and foot.

A moment after they heard Mr. Denny's crutch stalking down the stairs, and Alma's voice assuring him that there was indeed no danger—no danger at all.

"What does this mean, Mr. Franklin?" said the old gentleman as he came to the door.

"Burglary, sir. That is all. You need fear nothing. We have secured the man."

Mr. Denny entered the room leaning on Alma's arm. He saw the open safe and the papers strewed upon the floor, and he lifted his hand and shook his head in alarm and trouble.

"A robbery! Would they ruin me utterly? Where is the villain?"

"There, sir."

Alma turned toward the man in the chair, and clung to her father in terror. The old man lifted his crutch as if to strike.

"My curse be upon you and yours."

"Oh, father, come away. Leave the poor wretch. Perhaps he has taken nothing."

The men gathered round in a circle, and Elmer drew near to Alma. She felt his presence near her, and involuntarily put out her hand to touch him.

"My curse fall on you! Who are you? What have I done to you—you—viper?"

The man secured in the chair, and with the wire drawn tightly over his throat, replied not a word.

Elmer advanced toward him, and Alma, with a little cry, tried to hinder him.

"Do not fear. He cannot move. I will release his head, and perhaps you will recognize him."

The wire about his throat was loosened, and the wretch lifted his head into a more comfortable position.

"Ah!"

"Great Heavens! It is Mr. Belford!"

"Yes, sir," said he. "I forgot to put away some papers, and I came down to secure them, and while I was here that wretch surprised me, threatened to murder me, and finally overpowered me and bound me here as you see. If you will ask him to release me, I will get up and explain everything."

"It's a lie," screamed Mr. Denny, lifting his crutch. "I don't believe you—you thief—you robber! It's a lie!"

"Oh, father!" cried Alma. "Release him—let him go. He will go away then, and leave us. He has done wrong; but let him go. It must be some awful mistake—some——"

"No! Never! never! ne—v——"

The word died away on his lips, for on the instant there was a loud ring at the hall door. They all listened in silence. Again the importunate bell pealed through the echoing house.

"It is some one in distress," said Elmer. "John, do you take a light and go to the door. Ask what is wanted before you loose the chain, and tell them to go away unless it is a case of life or death."

They listened in breathless interest to the confused sounds in the hall. There was a moving of locks, and then rough voices talking in suppressed whispers. The candles flared in the cold draught of wind that swept into the room, and the sound of the rain in the trees filled the air. Then the door closed, and John returned, and in an excited whisper said:

"It's Mr. Jones, the sheriff."

At this word Mr. Belford struggled with his bonds, and in a broken voice he cried:

"Oh, Mr. Denny, spare me! Let me not be arrested. I will restore every——"

"Silence, sir!" said Elmer. "Not a word till you are spoken to. What does he want, John?"

"He says he must see Mr. Denny. It's very important—and, oh, sir, he's a'most beside himself, and I wouldn't let him in."

"Call him in at once," said Mr. Denny. "It is a most fortunate arrival. The very man we want."

John returned to the hall, and in a moment an old man, gray-haired and wrinkled, but still vigorous and strong, stood before them. He seemed a giant in his huge great-coat, and when he removed his hat his massive head and thick neck seemed almost leonine.

"Ah! Mr. Sheriff, you have arrived at a most opportune moment. We were just awakened from our beds by this robber. We captured him, and we have him here."

"Beg pardon, sir. Sorry to hear it, but 'twere another errant that brought me here. The widow Green's daughter, Alice, she that was missing, has been found in the mill-race—dead."

They all gave expression to undisguised astonishment, and the prisoner in the chair groaned heavily.

"And I have come for the key of the boat house, sir, that we may go for the—body, sir."

"How horrible! When did all this happen?"

"We dunno, sir. I'd like the key ter once."

"Certainly—certainly, Mr. Sheriff. But this man—cannot you secure him for the night?"

"Oh, ay. But the child, sir. The boys wants your boat to go for her."

"Poor, poor Alice!" cried Alma, wringing her hands.

"John," said Elmer, "get the key for Mr. Jones. Jake, you and your father can go with the men, and, Mr. Jones, perhaps you had better wait with us, for we have a little matter of importance to settle, and we need you."

"Now," said Mr. Franklin, "I have one or two questions I wish to ask the man, and then, Mr. Jones, you will do us a favor if you will take him away.

"Lawrence Belford, as you value your soul, where did you obtain that will?"

If a bolt from the storm overhead had entered the room, it could not have produced a more startling impression than did this simple question. Mr. Denny dropped his crutch, and raised both hands in astonishment. Alma gave a half suppressed scream, and even the sheriff and John were amazed beyond expression.

The man in the chair made no reply, and presently the breathless silence was broken by the calm voice of the young man repeating his question.

"I found it in the leaves of a book in the old bookcase in the mill office."

"What?" cried Mr. Denny, leaning forward and steadying himself by the table. "My father's will! Did you find it? Release him, John. How can we ever thank you, Mr. Belford? It is the missing will——"

"Oh, Lawrence!" said Alma. "Why did you not tell us? why did you not show it? How much trouble it would have saved."

"Have patience, Alma. Let Mr. Belford rise and bring the will."

"No," said Mr. Franklin. "Hear the rest of the story. Mr. Belford, you destroyed or suppressed that will, did you not?"

"Yes, I did—damn you!"

"Good Lord!" cried the sheriff. "Did ye hear that?—destroyed it! That's State's prison."

"Oh, Mr. Franklin, Mr. Denny! have mercy on me! Do not let them arrest me."

The poor creature seemed to be utterly cowed and crushed in an instant.

"Marcy!" said the sheriff, taking out a pair of handcuffs. "It's little marcy ye'll git."

"You ask for mercy!" cried Mr. Denny, his face livid with passion. "You—you wretch! Have you not ruined me? Have you not made my child a beggar, and carried my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave? You knew the value of this will—and you destroyed it! Your other crimes are as nothing to this. I could forgive your monstrous frauds in my mills——"

Mr. Belford winced and looked surprised.

"Ay! wince you may. I have found out everything, thanks to—but I'll not couple his name with yours. And the release of the mortgage—have you that?"

"No, sir. It is in that bag on the table."

The old gentleman eagerly took up the bundle that lay on the table, and began with trembling fingers to open it.

"Wait a moment, Mr. Denny," said Mr. Franklin. "I should like to ask this man a question or two."

Mr. Denny paused, and there was a profound silence in the room.

"Lawrence Belford, if you are wise, you will speak the truth. That release is a forgery—or at least it has no legal value."

"It is not worth a straw," replied the prisoner with cool impudence; "and on the whole, I'm glad of it. The mortgage will be foreclosed to-morrow."

"Your share will be small, Mr. Belford. I am afraid your partner will find some difficulty in making a settlement with you, unless he joins you in prison."

Mr. Denny sat heavily down in an arm-chair and groaned aloud. In vain Alma, with choking voice, tried to comfort him. The blow was too terrible for words, and for a moment or two there was a painful silence in the room.

Mr. Franklin seemed nervous and excited. He fumbled in his pockets as if in search of something. Presently he advanced toward the old gentleman and said quietly:

"Mr. Denny, can you bear one more piece of news—one more link in this terrible chain of crime?"

"Yes," he replied slowly. "There can be nothing worse than this. Speak, my son—let us hear everything."

"I think, sir," said the young man reverently, "that I ought to thank God that He has enabled me to bring such knowledge as He has given me to your service."

Then after a brief pause he added:

"There is the will, sir."

With these words he held out a small bit of sheet glass about two inches square.

"Where?" cried Mr. Denny in amazement. "I see nothing."

"There it is—on that piece of glass. That dusky spot in the centre is a micro-photographic copy of your father's will."

"My son, my son, do not trifle with us in this our hour of trial."

"Far be it from me to do such a thing. Alma, will you please go to my room and bring down my lantern? And John, you may go and help Miss Denny. Bring a sheet from the spare bed also."

"I do not know what you mean, my son. You tell me the will is destroyed, and you say you have a copy. Is it a legal copy? and how do you know it is really my father's will? Have you read it?"

"Yes, sir. You shall read it too presently. I have already shown it to a lawyer, and he pronounced it correct and perfectly legal."

"But why did you not tell us of it before?"

"I have only had it a few days, sir, and I wished first to crush or capture this robber."

"Hadn't ye better let me take him off, sir?" said the sheriff. "He's done enough to take him afore the grand jury. Besides, we have another bitter bill against him down in the village."

"No," said Mr. Franklin. "Let him stay and see the will. It may interest him to know that all his villainous plans are utterly overthrown."

"Shut up, you whelp," said the man in the chair.

"Shut up—ye," replied the sheriff, administering a stout cuff to the prisoner's ear. "Ye best hold your tongue, man."

Just here Alma and John returned with the lantern. Under Elmer's directions they hung the sheet over one of the windows, and then the young man prepared his apparatus for a small trial of lantern projections. Mr. Denny sat in his chair silent and wondering. He knew not what to say or do, and watched these preparations with the utmost attention.

"Mr. Sheriff, if you please, you will stand near Mr. Belford, to prevent him from attempting mischief when I darken the room. John, you may put out all the candles save one."

Alma took her father's hand and kneeled upon the floor beside him as if to aid and comfort him.

"Now, John, set that candle just outside the door in the entry."

A sense of awe and fear fell on them all as the room became dark, and none save the young son of science dared breathe. Suddenly a round spot of light fell on the sheet, and its glare illuminated the room dimly.

"Before I show the will, Mr. Sheriff, I wish you to see a photo that may be of use to you in that little matter in the village of which you were speaking."

Two dusky figures slid over the disk of light. They grew more and more distinct.

"Great God! It's Alice Green!"

A passion of weeping filled the room, and Elmer opened the lantern, and the room became light. Alma, with her head bent upon her father's knee, was bathed in tears.

"Poor, poor lost Alice!"

"And the fellow with her? Who is he?" cried the sheriff.

"That is Mr. Belford—Mr. Lawrence Belford," said Elmer with cool confidence. "That picture was taken through a telescope from my room on the morning of the 13th."

"The 13th! Why, man, that was the day she was missed."

"Yes. Mr. Belford was with her that day, and perhaps he can explain her disappearance."

The prisoner groaned in abject terror and misery. He saw it all now. His dream pictures were explained. His defeat and detection were accomplished through the young man's science. That he should have been overthrown by such simple means filled him with mortification and anger.

"You shall have the picture, Mr. Sheriff. You may need it at the trial. And now for the will."

The room became again dark, and the figures on the wall stood out sharp and distinct on the sheet. Then the picture faded away, and in its place appeared writing—letters in black upon white ground:

"Salmon Falls, June 1, 1863.

"I, Edward Denny, do hereby leave and bequeath to my son, John Denny, all of my property, both real and personal. All other wills I have made are hereby annulled. My near death prevents a more formal will.

"Edward Denny.
"Witness:
"John Maxwell, M.D."

"My father's will. Thank——"

There was a heavy fall, and Elmer opened his lantern quickly. It was too much for the old man. He had fallen upon the floor insensible.

"A light, John, quick."

They lifted him tenderly, and with Alma's help the old sheriff and the serving man took him away to his room.

The moment the two men were alone, the prisoner in the chair broke out in a torrent of curses and threats. The young man quietly took up his revolver, and said sternly:

"Lawrence Belford, hold your peace. Your threats are idle. You insulted me outrageously the day I came here. I bear you no malice, but when you attempted your infamous plan to capture my cousin and to ruin her father, I sprang to their rescue with such skill as I could command. We shall not pursue you with undue rigor, but with perfect justice——"

"Oh, Mr. Franklin, have mercy upon me! Let me go! Let me escape before they return. I will go away—far away! Save me, save me, sir! I never harmed you. Have mercy upon me!"

"Had you shown mercy perhaps I might now. No, sir; justice before mercy. Hark—the officer comes."

They unfastened the ropes about Belford, and released the wires, and in silence he went away into the night, a broken-down, crushed, and ruined man in the hands of his grisly Nemesis.

The young man flung himself upon the lounge in the library, and in a moment was fast asleep.

---

The red gold of the coming day crept up the eastern sky. The storm became beautiful in its fleecy rains in the far south. As the stars paled, the sweet breath of the cool west wind sprang up, shaking the raindrops in showers from the trees. The birds sang and the day came on apace.

To one who watched it seemed the coming of a fairer day than had ever shone upon her life. The vanished storm, the fresh aspect of nature moved her to tears of happiness. Long had she watched the stars. They were the first signs of light and comfort she had discovered, and now they paled before the sun. Thus she sat by the open window in the library and watched with a prayer in her heart.

She looked at the mantel clock. Half past four. In half an hour the house would be stirring. All was now safe. She could return to her room. She rose and approached the sleeper on the lounge. He slept peacefully, as if the events of the night disturbed him not.

He smiled in his dreams, and murmured a name indistinctly. She drew back hastily and put her hand over her mouth, while a bright blush mounted to her face. Just here, through the sweet, still air of the morning, came the sound of the village bell. Tears gathered in her eyes and fell unheeded upon her hands, clasped before her.

"Poor—lost—Alice—nineteen—just my——"

"Alma."

She turned toward the sleeper with a startled cry. He was awake and sitting up.

"What bell is that?"

"It is tolling. They have found her."

"Yes, it is a sad story. Alma?"

She advanced toward him. He noticed her tears and the morning robe in which she was dressed.

"What is it, Elmer? Do you feel better?"

"Yes. It was a sorry night for us."

"Yes, the storm has cleared away."

He did not seem to heed what she said.

"How long have you been up?"

"Since it happened. After I saw father up stairs, I came down and found you here asleep. And Elmer—forgive me—it was wrong, but I did not mean to stay here so long——"

"Alma!"

"You will pardon me?"

"Oh! Pardon you—pardon you—why should I? I dreamed the angels watched me."

"I was anxious, and we owe you so much. We can never reward you—never!"

"Reward, Alma! I want none—save——"

"Save what?"

He opened his arms wide. A new and beautiful light came into her eyes.

"Can there be greater reward than love?"

"No. Love is the best reward—and it is yours."

class="right"Charles Barnard.

---

THE MURDER OF MARGARY.

Our own politics have so absorbed the attention of the press and the public for the last six months, that events of decided international prominence have attracted merely a brief notice, instead of the careful discussion which their importance warranted. Even the "Eastern question," that has so long kept the European world in a state of excitement and anxiety almost as intense and even more painful than that in which our own country is now plunged, excited but a fitful interest here. It was only by an effort that we could extend our political horizon as far east as Constantinople. All beyond was comparative darkness. In this darkness, however, history has gone steadily on accumulating new and important data, which must be taken note of if we would keep up with the record of the times.

The term "Eastern question" has come to mean the political complications arising from the presence of the Turkish empire in Europe. The expression might much more appropriately be applied to the serious difficulties that have for the last year and a half existed between the governments of England and China, and which have, as it now appears, been brought to a reasonably satisfactory conclusion. These difficulties sprang out of the murder of an English subject, Augustus Raymond Margary by name, who was travelling in an official capacity in a remote part of the Chinese empire. They were still further complicated by an almost simultaneous attack upon a British exploring expedition that had just crossed the Chinese frontier from Burmah, with the intention of surveying and opening up to trade an overland route between that country and the Middle Kingdom. To understand the matter it will be necessary to give a brief recapitulation of some events that went before.

The vast importance of establishing an overland trade route between India and China will be seen by a glance at the map. It has been the unrealized dream of generations of India and China merchants. "The trade route of the future" it has been called; and when we consider the vast marts of commerce that such a highway would bring in direct contact, it is impossible to think the name thus enthusiastically given an exaggeration. An overland passage between China and Burmah has long been known and made use of by the native merchants of these countries. From time immemorial it has served as a highway for invading armies or peaceful caravans. How highly the two governments appreciated its importance to the commercial prosperity of their respective subjects is shown by the clause in a treaty concluded by them in 1769, which stipulated that the "gold and silver road" between the two countries should always be kept open. European travellers in Eastern lands, from the ubiquitous Marco Polo down, have also done their best to call attention to it. It may therefore seem somewhat strange that England, the commercial interest of whose Indian empire would be most directly promoted by the opening up of this new channel of trade, should have gone so long without paying much official attention to the matter. Recent events, however, have proved, what was probably foreseen by those whose business it was to study up the subject, that there were grave practical difficulties to be overcome before the plan could be successfully carried out.

In the first place it was necessary to secure the consent of both the Burmese and Chinese governments—a task of almost insurmountable difficulty because of the natural dislike of these two powers to share with another the trade monopoly they had heretofore exclusively enjoyed. Then again there lies between the civilizations of India and China a broad tract of wild and mountainous country, inhabited by a mongrel race of savages, known as Shans and Kakhyens, who, while nominally owing allegiance to one or the other of their more civilized neighbors, practically find their chief support in levying blackmail on all people passing through their territory.

To fit out an exploring expedition strong enough to defy the attacks of the savages, and yet small enough not to convey the idea of an invasion, was, therefore, a work requiring much patience and diplomacy. At length, however, in 1867, the British Government in India succeeded in gaining the consent of the King of Burmah to the passage through his dominions of a mission combining the necessary strength and limits. Under the command of Major Slade, this little army made its way safely through the debatable land of the Kakhyens and Shans, and, entering the province of Yunnan, penetrated as far into the Chinese empire as the city of Momien. But here its further progress was checked.

Yunnan was at the moment in the very crisis of a rebellion against the imperial government. The population of the province is largely Mohammedan. How the religion of the Prophet first obtained so firm a foothold there is still for antiquaries to discover. A semi-historical legend says that the germs of the faith were planted by a colony of Arabs who settled in the country more than a thousand years ago. However this may be, it is certain that the first Mohammedans were not Chinese. By intermarriage, propagation, and adoption, they slowly but steadily communicated their belief to the original inhabitants, until, at the time of which we are writing, more than a tenth of the ten million inhabitants were fanatical Mussulmans. To the mixed race that embrace this creed the general name of Panthays has been given, though for what reason is not known.

In 1855 the Panthays, oppressed, it is said, by the Chinese officials, rose up in rebellion against the imperial government. Led by an obscure Chinese follower of Mohammed, called Tu-win-tsen, the insurrection grew rapidly in extent and success. One imperial city after the other fell into the hands of the rebels, until the entire western section of the province was in their possession and organized as a separate and independent nation, under the sovereignty of Tu-win-tsen, who had in the mean while assumed the more euphonious title of Sultan Soleiman.

It was when Soleiman had attained the height of his glory that Major Slade's party entered Yunnan, and it was with him as the governor de facto that the British commander entered into negotiations. Such a proceeding, though it may have been necessary, was fatal to the further progress of the expedition. The Chinese authorities naturally refused to pass on a party that had, however innocently, entered into friendly relations with its rebellious subjects. Major Slade had the good sense to understand this. The mission retraced its steps into Burmah, and the exploration of the "trade route of the future" was indefinitely postponed.

The visit of the English party to Momien was the signal for a rapid downfall of Soleiman's power. The imperial government, seriously alarmed at the practical recognition of the rebels' independence by an outside power, now put forth all its might to reëstablish its authority. It was successful.

Under the energetic command of one Li-sieh-tai, a famous general who had once himself been a rebel, the Chinese armies wrested back the country, foot by foot, to its former governors. In 1872 Tali-fu, the last and most important stronghold of the rebellion, was closely invested. After a desperate resistance, it was obliged to open its gates.

The end of Soleiman was dramatic in the extreme. He was told that his followers should be spared if he himself would surrender. He agreed to the terms, and, after administering a dose of poison to himself, his three wives and five children, he mounted his chair, and was borne to the camp of his enemies, where he arrived a corpse sitting erect, the imperial turban on his head and the keys of his capital clasped tightly in his hand. His head, preserved in honey, was sent to Peking. The imperial troops poured into Tali-fu. A general massacre occurred. Those Mohammedans that were not slaughtered fled to the mountains, where they still continued to keep up a guerilla warfare. But the rebellion was practically at an end, and by 1874 the authority of the central government was firmly established throughout the province.

The trade between Burmah and China, which had ceased almost entirely during the long years of the rebellion, again sprang into activity, and once more the attention of the Indian government was attracted to it. In 1874 a new expedition of exploration was prepared and placed under the command of Colonel Browne. The consent of the King of Burmah was obtained, and the British minister in Peking, Mr. Thomas Wade, was instructed to explain the object of the mission to the Chinese government, so that it might receive no opposition upon crossing the Chinese frontier. It was also arranged that a special messenger should be despatched from Peking across China to the frontier to act as interpreter to the expedition, and to prepare the mandarins along the route for its approach. For this responsible and dangerous service, Augustus Raymond Margary was selected—a young man attached to the English consular department, a perfect master of the Chinese language and customs, and a fine type of the best class of young Englishmen.

Provided with the necessary passports from the British minister, countersigned by the Tsung-li-yamen, the Chinese foreign office, Mr. Margary started on his journey. He went up the Yangtsze river as far as Hankow in one of the huge American steamers of the Shanghai Steam Navigation Company. At Hankow, on September 4, 1874, he bade good-by to Western civilization, and, with a Chinese teacher and two or three Chinese attendants, began his trip through a vast and populous country, a terra incognita to Europeans.

His diary of this journey has recently been published. It is interesting in the extreme, though devoid of those startling episodes that generally give charm to accounts of travels in unexplored lands.

He has no old theories to prove and no ambition to start new ones, but simply jots down his impressions of people and things with no attempt at elaboration. The result is, we have a plain, faithful, unvarnished picture of Chinese life and manners, as seen by an intelligent, unprejudiced man. Upon the whole, we think this picture most decidedly favorable to the Chinese character.

Did space permit, we should like to follow Mr. Margary, stage by stage, through his long journey of 900 miles. The first part, through the provinces of Yunnan and Kwei-chow as far as the city of Ch'en-yuan-fu, was made by boat—a long and monotonous trip of four weeks, through a country so picturesque that the "sight was at last completely satiated with the perpetual view of the most glorious scenery that ever made the human heart leap with wonder and delight."

At Ch'en-yuan-fu he exchanged his boat for a chair, in which he completed his journey; traversing Kwei-chow and Yunnan, and the debatable hill land that lies between the latter province and Burmah; arriving in Bhamo, on the Burmese side of the border, on January 17, 1875, where he joined the expedition of Colonel Browne that was advancing to meet him.

Except in two or three instances, he was treated with courtesy by the people and respect by the officials. In the exceptional cases a display of his Chinese passports sufficed to quickly change the demeanor of the mandarins; while a few calm words of rebuke upon their want of politeness generally caused popular mobs to disperse abashed. An instance of this is given by him in his account of his stay at Lo-shan, a small naval station on the Yangtsze. In returning from a visit to the mandarin of the place, he was surrounded by a dense crowd of street rabble, leaping and screaming like maniacs, and shouting to one another: "I say! Come along. Here's a foreigner. What a lark! Ha, ha, ha!" Margary descended from his chair and delivered a short address:

"Why do you crowd round me in this rude manner? Is this your courtesy to strangers? I have often heard it said that China was of all things distinguished for civility and courtesy. But am I to take this as a specimen of it? Shall I go back and tell my countrymen that your boasted civility only amounts to rudeness?" "I was astonished," he adds, "at the effect this speech produced. They listened with silence, and when I had done walked quietly back quite abashed. Only a few remained; and over and again after this many an irrepressible youngster was severely rebuked for any sign of disrespect by his elders."

Contrast this with the effect which such a speech as that of Margary's, delivered by a Chinaman, would have had upon an English or American mob, and we cannot repress a slight feeling of sympathy with the natives of the Flowery Kingdom when they call us "outside barbarians."

His Chinese letters of recommendation, given him by the Tsung-li-yamen to the viceroys of the three great provinces through which he passed, proved of inestimable value. In the viceroy of Yunnan especially he found an unexpected ally and friend, who issued instructions to the officials all along the road to receive the foreigner with the utmost respect. The extent to which these instructions were carried out depended, of course, very largely on the temperament of the local mandarins. "Some were obsequious, others reserved, but most of them met me with high bred courtesy worthy of praise, and such as befits a welcome from man to man."

"Taking all these experiences together," says Sir Rutherford Alcock, formerly British minister to China, a gentleman by no means inclined to judge Chinese officials favorably, "the impression left is decidedly to the advantage of the central government so far as the bona fides of the safe-conduct given is concerned."

A great deal of Margary's success was also undoubtedly due to his personal magnetism and thorough acquaintance with Chinese habits. Indeed, no one can read this diary without deriving from it a high idea of the genuine attractiveness and solidity of the author's character. In sickness, in trouble, in delay, in vexation, there runs through it all a refreshing, manly, Anglo-Saxon spirit. Knowing as we do what is coming, we find ourselves involuntarily catching with hope at little incidents that seem to delay onward march. Reading these pages, it is impossible to realize that he who wrote them is dead. It is with a mournful feeling of utter and fatalistic helplessness that we follow this young and generous hero while he travels, all unconsciously, down to his death. To the very last all seems to go well with him. At Manwyne, the last city on his journey, the renowned and dreaded Li-sieh-tai, the suppressor of the Mohammedan rebellion, actually prostrated himself before him and paid him the highest honors, warning the assembled chiefs of the savage hill people that they had best take good care of the stranger, as he came protected by an imperial passport.

On the 16th of February, 1875, Colonel Browne's expedition, accompanied by Margary, broke up their camp at Tsitkaw, in Burmah, and advanced toward the Chinese frontier.

Arrangements had been made with the practically independent chieftains of this wild region for the safe passage of the party through the hilly country. As it advanced, however, ominous rumors of a projected attack by the hill savages and Chinese frontiersmen reached the ears of its members. Though these rumors were generally discredited, it was thought best to send forward Margary as a pioneer, he being well known to the people and officials of the Chinese border town of Manwyne. Margary willingly undertook the mission. With his Chinese teacher and attendants, he hastened on in advance, the rest of the expedition following more slowly. The last communications that came from him were dated "Seray," a town just inside the Chinese frontier. He reported that thus far the road was unmolested and the people civil. On the strength of these advices, Colonel Browne pressed on, crossed the Chinese frontier, and advanced as far as Seray. It was here, on the morning of February 21, that Margary and his attendants had all been murdered, near Manwyne.

Hardly had the news been communicated when it was found that the expedition was surrounded by a large body of armed men, who instantly began an attack. The assailants, a motley crowd of Kakhyens and Chinese border men, were soon repulsed; but as reports came streaming in that large bodies of Chinese train bands were advancing to their aid, it was thought best to beat a retreat. This was safely effected, and by the 26th of February the expedition found itself once more at Bhamo. Thus mournfully ended the second attempt to explore "the trade route of the future."

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The mere fact that a British subject had been murdered, and a British exploring expedition attacked on Chinese soil, would in itself have created a grave subject for diplomatic discussion between the governments of England and China. But the matter was rendered doubly serious by the presence of many circumstances tending to show that the outrage had been committed with the tacit connivance, if not at the direct instigation, of the provincial authorities of Yunnan. The whole affair, it was claimed, was not the result of an outbreak of booty-seeking savages, but the culmination of a systematic plot on the part of the Chinese officials.

In laying the matter before Prince Kung, Mr. Wade, the English minister, plainly implied that such was his opinion, and demanded from the Chinese government the promptest and most searching investigation.

An imperial decree was at once issued, commanding the governor of Yunnan to proceed at once to the spot and enter upon a thorough examination of the case. Mr. Wade, however, demanded some securer guarantee that strict justice should be done. He submitted to the Tsung-li-yamen an ultimatum containing three principal conditions: that such British officials as he might see fit to appoint should go to Yunnan and assist at the investigation; that passports should be immediately issued, to enable another expedition to enter Yunnan by the same route; and that a sum of $150,000 be placed in his hands as a guarantee of good faith. The Chinese government demurred at first to these demands, but the threat of Mr. Wade to leave Peking unless they were accepted before a certain day finally caused it to give a reluctant consent. Some months were then spent in diplomatic wrangling over the conditions under which the British officials should proceed to Yunnan, and what their powers should be on their arrival there. The Chinese government showed, in the opinion of Mr. Wade, a strong desire to avoid fulfilling its part of the contract. The negotiations on several occasions assumed an acute character of danger. Both parties prepared for war. The English minister concentrated the English fleet in the China seas; the Chinese government bought up large supplies of arms and ammunition. But Prince Kung and his advisers had the good sense to see that the chances in a struggle of arms would be too unequal, and always submitted at the last moment. At last the Chinese government, having agreed to all the preliminary conditions, and having also despatched a high officer, Li-hang-chang, to Yunnan to thoroughly investigate the affair, "without regard to persons," the British minister agreed to let the English mission of investigation proceed. Mr. Grosvenor, a secretary of legation, was placed at its head. Li-hang-chang went on in advance.

This high official seems to have done his duty in a spirit of strict impartiality. His reports to the government make no attempt to conceal the guilt of the provincial officials, or to shield them from deserved punishment. He immediately ordered the arrest of the general commanding at Momien and a number of other local officers, pushing his inquiries with vigor and with what appears a sincere desire to arrive at the ground facts. In the course of his labors he came to the conclusion that Li-sieh-tai, whom we have already mentioned, was one of the instigators, probably the chief one, of the attack on the mission. He at once memorialized the throne to have him arrested and brought up for trial. In this memorial he gives what seems to us, upon an unprejudiced comparison of testimony, the truest version of the affair. He believes the murder of Margary and his attendants to have been the work of "lawless offenders," greedy of gain, but that the attack upon Colonel Browne's party was made at the secret instigation of Li-sieh-tai and other provincial officials, although that general was not on the spot, nor were there any soldiers concerned in the assault. He shows that Li-sieh-tai had already written to the governor of Yunnan, telling him that he (Li) was "taking vigorous measures to protect the region against invasion," and that the governor had written back commanding him to stop all further proceedings and quiet the apprehensions of the people. This command, however, was not received until after the murder and attack had taken place. "It appears from this, consequently" (the report adds), "that although Li-sieh-tai had no intention of committing murder, he is liable to a charge of having laid plans to obstruct the expedition; and your servants have agreed, after taking counsel together, that he should not be suffered to take advantage of his official rank as a cover for lying evasions, gaining time with false statements, in dread of incurring punishment."

Immediately upon receipt of this memorial a decree appeared in the Peking "Gazette" ordering Li-sieh-tai to be degraded from his rank, and commanding him to proceed at once to Yunnan for trial before the high commission.

As we have said before, we think Li-hang-chang's account is substantially correct. There are a great many circumstances tending to exculpate Li-sieh-tai from any wish to have Margary murdered. Had such been his wish, he might more easily have disposed of him when he passed through en route for Burmah. Moreover, at the very time of Margary's murder, Mr. Elias, a member of the expedition, who had struck off from the main body in order to explore another route to Momien, was entertained by Li-sieh-tai at Muangnow, a town at some distance from the seat of the murder. Though completely in his power, Mr. Elias received all possible civility compatible with a determined and successful opposition to his further advance. Now it seems absurd to believe that Li-sieh-tai felt any stronger personal dislike for Margary than he felt for Mr. Elias.

In regard to his complicity in the attack on the expedition, the evidence is just as strong on the other side. He had a deep and by no means unnatural prejudice against English exploring parties. The last mission of the kind had entered into negotiations, as we have already mentioned, with the enemies against whom this Chinese general was prosecuting bitter war. The smouldering embers of the rebellion were not even yet entirely extinguished; the presence of an armed body of foreigners, no matter how small, who had previously shown a friendly disposition toward the Mohammedan usurpation, might awaken new hopes in the breasts of the still surviving rebels. This feeling, combined with the jealous wish of the border merchants, both Chinese and Burmese, to retain a monopoly of the overland trade, undoubtedly inspired a general feeling of hostility among the local officials and the people, which found a ready instrument in the greedy and savage character of the frontier tribes. Where so much combustible matter was heaped up, it needed but a hint to bring on the catastrophe that followed.

While Li-hang-chang and the Chinese commission were conducting the preliminary investigations, Mr. Grosvenor and his colleagues were approaching. Their journey across the empire was attended not only with no opposition or difficulty, but they were received everywhere with great and even obsequious respect. Upon arriving in Yunnan they found an immense pile of evidence awaiting their inspection. Mr. Grosvenor's report has not yet been published, we believe, but from general rumor, and the fact that nothing has been heard to the contrary, we are justified in believing that he found the state of the case to be substantially as it was reported by the Chinese high commissioner. After having reviewed the evidence presented, after having witnessed the execution of a number of wretches convicted of direct complicity in the murder of Margary, the Grosvenor commission pursued its way, escorted by troops that had been despatched from Burmah for the purpose.

Diplomatic negotiations were once more transferred to Peking, and turned upon the compensation to be offered by China for the violation of international law that had occurred upon her soil. The demands of the British minister, who had in the mean time been knighted as Sir Thomas Wade by the Queen, as a just acknowledgment of his efficient services, were considered too severe by the Chinese government, and at one time it looked as if all further negotiations would be broken off.

Sir Thomas finally carried his threat to leave Peking into execution. Prince Kung had evidently not expected so decided a step, and was seriously alarmed by it, for the Chinese government have shown throughout the affair a very wise disposition not to push matters to the last extreme. Li-wang-chang (a brother, we believe, of the official who was sent to Yunnan), the governor of the province of Chihli, the highest and most powerful statesman in the country, was immediately granted extraordinary powers, and sent after the English minister. After some diplomatic fencing Sir Thomas agreed to meet the Chinese envoy at Chefoo—a seaport about half way between Shanghai and Peking, a great summer resort of the foreigners in China—the Newport of the eastern world. Here, in the month of September, 1876, with much surrounding pomp and ceremony, a convention was signed between the English and the Chinese plenipotentiaries. The final settlement of the difficulty was celebrated by a grand banquet, given by Li-wang-chang to Sir Thomas and the other foreign ambassadors, who had been drawn to Chefoo by their interest in the negotiations.

The following is a synopsis of the agreement:

1. An imperial edict to be published throughout the Chinese empire, setting forth the facts of the affair, subject to the directions and approval of the British minister.

2. Consular officials to visit the various towns and public places to see that the said imperial edict is posted where all can see it.

3. The family of Margary to be paid about $250,000 indemnity.

4. A further indemnity to be given, covering all expenses of the unsuccessful expedition under Colonel Browne.

5. A special embassy of apology to be sent to England.

Then follow a number of concessions with regard to placing on a better footing the relations of foreign ambassadors to the Chinese authorities, the enlargement of the foreign settlement at Shanghai, etc.

But by far the most important clause is that opening up to foreign trade four new ports on the Yangtsze river. This concession is virtually equivalent to throwing open the whole interior of the country to foreign merchants.

Altogether the British minister has certainly won a triumph that well deserved a knighthood.

Undoubtedly he had a very strong indictment against the Chinese authorities, although we cannot help regarding the matter of the murder and the attack as more the misfortune than the fault of the central government. Nevertheless, western nations are fully justified in rigidly holding the Peking authorities responsible for any violation of international duties committed anywhere within their jurisdiction; and it is not only fair, but expedient, that when such cases do occur some practical and important reparation should be made for them. The concessions obtained by Sir Thomas Wade, though sweeping, are not, in our opinion, excessive. On the other hand, the Chinese government by granting them has fully satisfied the demands of justice. It could not have gone further without losing the respect and incurring the dangerous opposition of its people. Indeed, throughout the negotiations Prince Kung and his advisers have had to contend against a powerful anti-foreign party in the court and the nation. Strong fears were entertained more than once that the reactionary element would get the upper hand. Some idea of Prince Kung's difficulties may be conceived when we read that one morning the walls of Peking were found covered with placards bitterly denouncing the policy of the government, and calling upon all good subjects to rise up against such unpatriotic leaders.

When Li-wang-chang, who enjoys great popularity in his province, was en route for Chefoo to negotiate with Sir Thomas Wade, the people of Tien-tsin made the most determined efforts to prevent him from going further. For a time he was literally besieged in his own yamen, and it was only by the publication of a proclamation warning the people that they were guilty of rebellion against the emperor when they hindered the progress of his representatives, that the opposition was withdrawn.

Sir Thomas deserves the highest praise for going just far enough and no further in his demands. Yet the last mail from China brings the news that the foreign residents there are intensely dissatisfied with the result of the settlement. This was to be expected. Any settlement short of one effected by war would have met the disapproval of these gentry. The interests of the Chinese and the foreign merchants are too antagonistic to admit of impartial judgment on questions of this sort. England, in their opinion, could gain greater concessions by war than by negotiations—ergo, they would have all such troubles settled by "blood and iron."

The London "Times" puts it very well when it says:

"Those Englishmen who reside in the treaty ports are not impartial judges of the concessions. Too often they go to Canton or Shanghai in a frame of mind that would exasperate a much less vain people than the Chinese. They sometimes talk as if they thought it a mere impertinence on the part of an inferior race to have a pride of its own, and they act as if the chief end of the Chinese were to minister to the demands of British trade."

Walter A. Burlingame.

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THE LETTERS OF HONORÉ DE BALZAC.

The first feeling of the reader of the two volumes which have lately been published under the foregoing title is that he has almost done wrong to read them. He reproaches himself with having taken a shabby advantage of a person who is unable to defend himself. He feels as one who has broken open a cabinet or rummaged an old desk. The contents of Balzac's letters are so private, so personal, so exclusively his own affairs and those of no one else, that the generous critic constantly lays them down with a sort of dismay, and asks himself in virtue of what peculiar privilege, or what newly discovered principle it is, that he is thus burying his nose in them. Of course he presently reflects that he has not broken open a cabinet nor violated a desk, but that these repositories have been very freely and confidently emptied into his lap. The two stout volumes of the "Correspondence de H. de Balzac, 1819-1850,"[1] lately put forth, are remarkable, like many other French books of the same sort, for the almost complete absence of editorial explanation or introduction. They have no visible sponsor; only a few insignificant lines of preface and the scantiest possible supply of notes. Such as the book is, in spite of its abruptness, we are thankful for it; in spite, too, of our bad conscience. What we mean by our bad conscience is the feeling with which we see the last remnant of charm, of the graceful and the agreeable, removed from Balzac's literary physiognomy. His works had not left much of this favoring shadow, but the present publication has let in the garish light of full publicity. The grossly, inveterately professional character of all his activity, the absence of leisure, of contemplation, of disinterested experience, the urgency of his consuming money-hunger—all this is rudely exposed. It is always a question whether we have a right to investigate a man's life for the sake of anything but his official utterances—his results. The picture of Balzac's career which is given in these letters is a record of little else but painful processes, unrelieved by reflections or speculations, by any moral or intellectual emanation. To prevent misconception, however, we hasten to add that they tell no disagreeable secrets; they contain nothing for the lovers of scandal. Balzac was a very honest man, but he was a man almost tragically uncomfortable, and the unsightly underside of his discomfort stares us full in the face. Still, if his personal portrait is without ideal beauty, it is by no means without a certain brightness, or at least a certain richness of coloring. Huge literary ogre as he was, he was morally nothing of a monster. His heart was capacious, and his affections vigorous; he was powerful, coarse, and kind.

The first letter in the series is addressed to his elder sister, Laure, who afterward became Mme. de Surville, and who, after her illustrious brother's death, published in a small volume some agreeable reminiscences of him. For this lady he had, especially in his early years, a passionate affection. He had in 1819 come up to Paris from Touraine, in which province his family lived, to seek his fortune as a man of letters. The episode is a strange and gloomy one. His vocation for literature had not been favorably viewed at home, where money was scanty; but the parental consent, or rather the parental tolerance, was at last obtained for his experiment. The future author of the "Père Goriot" was at this time but twenty years of age, and in the way of symptoms of genius had nothing but a very robust self-confidence to show. His family, who had to contribute to his support while his masterpieces were a-making, appear to have regretted, the absence of further guarantees. He came to Paris, however, and lodged in a garret, where the allowance made him by his father kept him neither from shivering nor from nearly starving. The situation had been arranged in a way very characteristic of French manners. The fact that Honoré had gone to Paris was kept a secret from the friends of the family, who were told that he was on a visit to a cousin in the South. He was on probation, and if he failed to acquire literary renown, his excursion should be hushed up. This pious fraud did not contribute to the comfort of the young scribbler, who was afraid to venture abroad by day lest he should be seen by an acquaintance of the family. Balzac must have been at this time miserably poor. If he goes to the theatre, he has to pay for the pleasure by fasting. He wishes to see Talma (having to go to the play, to keep up the fiction of his being in the South, in a latticed box). "I shall end by giving in.... My stomach already trembles." Meanwhile he was planning a tragedy of "Cromwell," which came to nothing, and writing the "Héritière de Birague," his first novel, which he sold for one hundred and sixty dollars. Through these early letters, in spite of his chilly circumstances, there flows a current of youthful ardor, gayety, and assurance. Some passages in his letters to his sister are a sort of explosion of animal spirits:

Ah, my sister, what torments it gives us—the love of glory! Long live grocers! they sell all day, count their gains in the evening, take their pleasure from time to time at some frightful melodrama—and behold them happy! Yes, but they pass their time between cheese and soap. Long live rather men of letters! Yes, but these are all beggars in pocket, and rich only in conceit. Well, let us leave them all alone, and long live every one!

Elsewhere he scribbles: "Farewell, soror! I hope to have a letter sororis to answer sorori, then to see sororem," etc. Later, after his sister is married, he addresses her as "the box that contains everything pleasing; the elixir of virtue, grace, and beauty; the jewel, the phenomenon of Normandy; the pearl of Bayeux, the fairy of St. Lawrence, the virgin of the Rue Teinture, the guardian angel of Caen, the goddess of enchantments, the treasure of friendship."

We shall continue to quote, without the fear of our examples exceeding, in the long run, our commentary. "Find me some widow, a rich heiress," he writes to his sister at Bayeux, whither her husband had taken her to live. "You know what I mean. Only brag about me. Twenty-two years old, a good fellow, good manners, a bright eye, fire, the best dough for a husband that heaven has ever kneaded. I will give you five per cent. on the dowry." "Since yesterday," he writes in another letter, "I have given up dowagers and have come down to widows of thirty. Send all you find to Lord Rhoone [this remarkable improvisation was one of his early noms de plume]; that's enough—he is known at the city limits. Take notice. They are to be sent prepaid, without crack or repair, and they are to be rich and amiable. Beauty isn't required. The varnish goes, and the bottom of the pot remains!"

Like many other young men of ability, Balzac felt the little rubs—or the great ones—of family life. His mother figures largely in these volumes (she survived her glorious son), and from the scattered reflection of her idiosyncrasies the attentive reader constructs a sufficiently vivid portrait. She was the old middle-class Frenchwoman whom he has so often seen—devoted, active, meddlesome, parsimonious, exacting veneration, and expending zeal. Honoré tells his sister:

The other day, coming back from Paris much bothered, it never occurred to me to thank maman for a black coat which she had had made for me; at my age one isn't particularly sensitive to such a present. Nevertheless, it would not have cost me much to seem touched by the attention, especially as it was a sacrifice. But I forgot it. Maman began to pout, and you know what her aspect and her face amount to at those moments. I fell from the clouds, and racked my brain to know what I had done. Happily Laurence [his younger sister] came and notified me, and two or three words as fine as amber mended maman's countenance. The thing is nothing—a mere drop of water; but it's to give you an example of our manners. Ah, we are a jolly set of originals in our holy family. What a pity I can't put us into novels!

His father wished to find him an opening in some profession, and the thought of being made a notary was a bugbear to the young man: "Think of me as dead, if they cap me with that extinguisher." And yet, in the next sentence, he breaks out into a cry of desolate disgust at the aridity of his actual circumstances: "They call this mechanical rotation living—this perpetual return of the same things. If there were only something to throw some charm or other over my cold existence. I have none of the flowers of life, and yet I am in the season in which they bloom. What will be the use of fortune and pleasures when my youth has departed? What need of the garments of an actor if one no longer plays a part? An old man is a man who has dined, and who watches others eat; and I, young as I am—my plate is empty, and I am hungry. Laure, Laure, my two only and immense desires, to be famous and to be loved—will they ever be satisfied?"

These occasional bursts of confidence in his early letters to his sister are (with the exception of certain excellent pages, addressed in the last years of his life to the lady he eventually married) Balzac's most delicate, most emotional utterances. There is a touch of the ideal in them. Later, one wonders where he keeps his ideal. He has one of course, artistically, but it never peeps out. He gives up talking sentiment, and he never discusses "subjects"; he only talks business. Meanwhile, however, at this period, business was increasing with him. He agrees to write three novels for eight hundred and twenty dollars. Here begins the inextricable mystery of Balzac's literary promises, pledges, projects, and contracts. His letters form a swarming register of schemes and bargains through which he passes like a hero of the circus, riding half a dozen piebald coursers at once. We confess that in this matter we have been able to keep no sort of account; the wonder is that Balzac should have accomplished the feat himself. After the first year or two of his career, we never see him working upon a single tale; his productions dovetail and overlap, and dance attendance upon each other in the most bewildering fashion. As soon as one novel is fairly on the stocks he plunges into another, and while he is rummaging in this with one hand, he stretches out a heroic arm and breaks ground in a third. His plans are always vastly in advance of his performance; his pages swarm with titles of books that were never to be written. The title circulates with such an assurance that we are amazed to find, fifty pages later, that there is no more of it than of the cherubic heads. With this, Balzac was constantly paid in advance by his publishers—paid for works not begun, or barely begun; and the money was as constantly spent before the equivalent had been delivered. Meanwhile more money was needed, and new novels were laid out to obtain it; but prior promises had first to be kept. Keeping them, under these circumstances, was not an exhilarating process; and readers familiar with Balzac will reflect with wonder that these were yet the circumstances in which some of his best tales were written. They were written, as it were, in the fading light, by a man who saw night coming on, and yet couldn't afford to buy candles. He could only hurry. But Balzac's way of hurrying was all his own; it was a sternly methodical haste, and might have been mistaken, in a more lightly-weighted genius, for elaborate trifling. The close tissue of his work never relaxed; he went on doggedly and insistently, pressing it down and packing it together, multiplying erasures, alterations, repetitions, transforming proof-sheets, quarrelling with editors, enclosing subject within subject, accumulating notes upon notes.

The letters make a jump from 1822 to 1827, during which interval he had established, with borrowed capital, a printing house, and seen his enterprise completely fail. This failure saddled him with a mountain of debt which pressed upon him crushingly for years, and of which he rid himself only toward the close of his life. Balzac's debts are another labyrinth in which we do not profess to hold a clue. There is scarcely a page of these volumes in which they are not alluded to, but the reader never quite understands why they should bloom so perennially. The liabilities incurred by the collapse of the printing scheme can hardly have been so vast as not to have been for the most part cancelled by ten years of heroic work. Balzac appears not to have been extravagant; he had neither wife nor children (unlike many of his comrades, he had no illegitimate offspring), and when he admits us to a glimpse of his domestic economy, we usually find it to be of a very meagre pattern. He writes to his sister in 1827 that he has not the means either to pay the postage of letters or to use omnibuses, and that he goes out as little as possible, so as not to wear out his clothes. In 1829, however, we find him in correspondence with a duchess, Mme. d'Abrantès, the widow of Junot, Napoleon's rough marshal, and author of those voluminous memoirs upon the imperial court which it was the fashion to read in the early part of the century. The Duchess d'Abrantès wrote bad novels, like Balzac himself at this period, and the two became good friends.

The year 1830 was the turning point in Balzac's career. Renown, to which he had begun to lay siege in Paris in 1820, now at last began to show symptoms of self-surrender. Yet one of the strongest expressions of discontent and despair in the pages before us belongs to this brighter moment. It is also one of the finest passages:

Sacredieu, my good friend, I believe that literature, in the day we live in, is no better than the trade of a woman of the town, who prostitutes herself for a dollar. It leads to nothing. I have an itch to go off and wander and explore, make of my life a drama, risk my life; for, as for a few miserable years more or less!... Oh, when one looks at these great skies of a beautiful night, one is ready to unbutton——

But the modesty of the English tongue forbids us to translate the rest of the phrase. Dean Swift might have related how Balzac wished to express his contempt for all the royalties of the earth. Now that he is in the country, he goes on:

I have been seeing real splendors, such as fine, sound fruit and gilded insects; I have been quite turning philosopher, and if I happen to tread upon an anthill, I say, like that immortal Bonaparte, "These creatures are men: what is it to Saturn, or Venus, or the North Star?" And then my philosopher comes down to scribble "items" for a newspaper. Proh pudor! And so it seems to me that the ocean, a brig, and an English vessel to sink, if you must sink yourself to do it, are rather better than a writing-desk, a pen, and the Rue St. Denis.

But Balzac was fastened to the writing desk. In 1831 he tells one of his correspondents that he is working fifteen or sixteen hours a day. Later, in 1837, he describes himself repeatedly as working eighteen hours out of the twenty-four. In the midst of all this (it seems singular), he found time for visions of public life, of political distinction. In a letter written in 1830 he gives a succinct statement of his political views, from which we learn that he approved of the French monarchy having a constitution, and of instruction being diffused among the lower orders. But he desired that the people should be kept "under the most powerful yoke possible," so that in spite of their instruction they should not become disorderly. It is fortunate, probably, both for Balzac and for France, that his political rôle was limited to the production of a certain number of forgotten editorials in newspapers; but we may be sure that his dreams of statesmanship were brilliant and audacious. Balzac indulged in no dreams that were not.

Some of his best letters are addressed to Mme. Zulma Carraud, a lady whose acquaintance he had made through his sister Laure, of whom she was an intimate friend, and whose friendship (exerted almost wholly through letters, as she always lived in the country) appears to have been one of the brightest and most salutary influences of his life. He writes to her in 1832:

There are vocations which we must obey, and something irresistible draws me on to glory and power. It is not a happy life. There is within me the worship of woman (le culte de la femme), and a need of love which has never been fully satisfied. Despairing of ever being loved and understood by such a woman as I have dreamed of, having met her only under one form, that of the heart, I throw myself into the tempestuous sphere of political passions and into the stormy and desiccating atmosphere of literary glory. I shall fail perhaps on both sides; but, believe me, if I have wished to live the life of the age itself, instead of running my course in happy obscurity, it is just because the pure happiness of mediocrity has failed me. When one has a fortune to make, it is better to make it great and illustrious; because, pain for pain, it is better to suffer in a high sphere than in a low one, and I prefer dagger blows to pin pricks.

All this, though written at thirty years of age, is rather juvenile; there was to be much less of the "tempest" in Balzac's life than is here foreshadowed. He was tossed and shaken a great deal, as we all are, by the waves of the time, but he was too stoutly anchored at his work to feel the winds.

In 1832 "Louis Lambert" followed the "Peau de Chagrin," the first in the long list of his masterpieces. He describes "Louis Lambert" as "a work in which I have striven to rival Goethe and Byron, Faust and Manfred. I don't know whether I shall succeed, but the fourth volume of the 'Philosophical Tales' must be a last reply to my enemies and give the presentiment of an incontestable superiority. You must therefore forgive the poor artist his fatigue [he is writing to his sister], his discouragements, and especially his momentary detachment from any sort of interest that does not belong to his subject. 'Louis Lambert' has cost me so much work! To write this book I have had to read so many books! Some day or other, perhaps, it will throw science into new paths. If I had made it a purely learned work, it would have attracted the attention of thinkers, who now will not drop their eyes upon it. But if chance puts it into their hands, perhaps they will speak of it!" In this passage there is an immense deal of Balzac—of the great artist who was so capable at times of self-deceptive charlatanism. "Louis Lambert," as a whole, is now quite unreadable; it contains some admirable descriptions, but the "scientific" portion is mere fantastic verbiage. There is something extremely characteristic in the way Balzac speaks of its having been optional with him to make it a "purely learned" work. His pretentiousness was simply colossal, and there is nothing surprising in his wearing the mask even en famille (the letter we have just quoted from is, as we have said, to his sister); he wore it during his solitary fifteen-hours sessions in his study. But the same letter contains another passage, of a very different sort, which is in its way as characteristic:

Yes, you are right. My progress is real, and my infernal courage will be rewarded. Persuade my mother of this too, dear sister; tell her to give me her patience in charity; her devotion will be laid up in her favor. One day, I hope, a little glory will pay her for everything. Poor mother, that imagination of hers which she has given me throws her for ever from north to south and from south to north. Such journeys tire us; I know it myself! Tell my mother that I love her as when I was a child. As I write you these lines my tears start—tears of tenderness and despair; for I feel the future, and I need this devoted mother on the day of triumph! When shall I reach it? Take good care of our mother, Laure, for the present and the future.... Some day, when my works are unfolded, you will see that it must have taken many hours to think and write so many things; and then you will absolve me of everything that has displeased you, and you will excuse, not the selfishness of the man (the man has none), but the selfishness of the worker.

Nothing can be more touching than that; Balzac's natural affections were as robust as his genius and his physical nature. The impression of the reader of his letters quite confirms his assurance that the man proper had no selfishness. Only we are constantly reminded that the man had almost wholly resolved himself into the worker, and we remember a statement of Sainte-Beuve's, in one of his malignant foot-notes, to the effect that Balzac was "the grossest, greediest example of literary vanity that he had ever known"—l'amour-propre littéraire le plus avide et le plus grossier que j'aie connu. When we think of what Sainte-Beuve must have known in this line, these few words acquire a portentous weight.

By this time (1832) Balzac was, in French phrase, thoroughly lancé. He was doing, among other things, some of his most brilliant work, certain of the "Contes Drôlatiques." These were written, as he tells his mother, for relaxation, as a rest from harder labor. One would have said that no work would have been much harder than compounding the marvellously successful imitation of mediæval French in which these tales are written. He had, however, other diversions as well. In the autumn of 1832 he was at Aix-les-Bains with the Duchess of Castries, a great lady, and one of his kindest friends. He has been accused of drawing portraits of great ladies without knowledge of originals; but Mme. de Castries was an inexhaustible fund of instruction upon this subject. Three or four years later, speaking of the story of the "Duchesse de Laugeais" to one of his correspondents, another femme du monde, he tells her that as a femme du monde she is not to pretend to find flaws in the picture, a high authority having read the proofs for the express purpose of removing them. The authority is evidently the Duchess of Castries.

Balzac writes to Mme. Carraud from Aix: "At Lyons I corrected 'Lambert' again. I licked my cub, like a she bear.... On the whole, I am satisfied; it is a work of profound melancholy and of science. Truly, I deserve to have a mistress, and my sorrow at not having one increases daily; for love is my life and my essence.... I have a simple little room," he goes on, "from which I see the whole valley. I rise pitilessly at five o'clock in the morning, and work before my window until half-past five in the evening. My breakfast comes from the club—an egg. Mme. de Castries has good coffee made for me. At six o'clock we dine together, and I pass the evening with her. She is the finest type (le type le plus fin) of woman; Mme. de Beauséant [from "Le Père Goriot">[ improved; only, are not all these pretty manners acquired at the expense of the soul?"

During his stay at Aix he met an excellent opportunity to go to Italy; the Duke de Fitz-James, who was travelling southward, invited him to become a member of his party. He discourses the economical problem (in writing to his mother) with his usual intensity, and throws what will seem to the modern traveller the light of enchantment upon that golden age of cheapness. Occupying the fourth place in the carriage of the Duchess of Castries, his quarter of the total travelling expenses from Geneva to Rome (carriage, beds, food, etc.) was to be fifty dollars! But he was ultimately prevented from joining the party. He went to Italy some years later.

He mentions, in 1833, that the chapter entitled "Juana," in the superb tale of "The Maranas," as also the story of "La Grenadière," was written in a single night. He gives at the same period this account of his habits of work: "I must tell you that I am up to my neck in excessive work. My life is mechanically arranged. I go to bed at six or seven in the evening, with the chickens; I wake up at one in the morning and work till eight; then I take something light, a cup of pure coffee, and get into the shafts of my cab until four; I receive, I take a bath, or I go out, and after dinner I go to bed. I must lead this life for some months longer, in order not to be overwhelmed by my obligations. The profit comes slowly; my debts are inexorable and fixed. Now, it is certain that I will make a great fortune; but I must wait for it, and work for three years. I must go over things, correct them again, put everything en état monumental; thankless work, not counted, without immediate profit." He speaks of working at this amazing rate for three years longer; in reality he worked for fifteen. But two years after the declaration we have just quoted, it seemed to him that he should break down: "My poor sister, I am draining the cup to the dregs. It is in vain that I work my fourteen hours a day; I can't do enough. While I write this to you I find myself so weary that I have just sent Auguste to take back my word from certain engagements that I had formed. I am so weak that I have advanced my dinner hour in order to go to bed earlier; and I go nowhere." The next year he writes to his mother, who had apparently complained of his silence: "My good mother, do me the charity to let me carry my burden without suspecting my heart. A letter for me, you see, is not only money, but an hour of sleep and a drop of blood."

We spoke just now of Balzac's sentimental consolations; but it appears that at times he was more acutely conscious of what he missed than of what he enjoyed. "As for the soul," he writes to Mme. Carraud in 1833, "I am profoundly sad. My work alone sustains me in life. Is there then to be no woman for me in this world? My physical melancholy and ennui last longer and grow more frequent. To fall from this crushing labor to nothing—not to have near me that soft, caressing mind of woman, for whom I have done so much!" He had, however, a devoted feminine friend, to whom none of the letters in these volumes are addressed, but who is several times alluded to. This lady, Mme. de Berny, died in 1836, and Balzac speaks of her ever afterward with extraordinary tenderness and veneration. But if there had been a passion between them, it was only a passionate friendship. "Ah, my dear mother," he writes on New Year's day, 1836, "I am harrowed with grief. Mme. de Berny is dying; it is impossible to doubt it. No one but God and myself knows what my despair is. And I must work—work while I weep!" He writes of Mme. de Berny at the time of her death as follows. The letter is addressed to a lady with whom he was in correspondence more or less sentimental, but whom he never saw: "The person whom I have lost was more than a mother, more than a friend, more than any creature can be for another. The term divinity only can explain her. She had sustained me by word, by act, by devotion, during my worst weather. If I live, it is by her; she was everything for me. Although for two years illness and time had separated us, we were visible at a distance for each other. She reacted upon me; she was a moral sun. Mme. de Mortsauf, in the 'Lys dans la Vallée,' is a pale expression of this person's slightest qualities." Three years afterward he writes to his sister: "I am alone against all my troubles, and formerly, to help me to resist them, I had with me the sweetest and bravest person in the world; a woman who every day is born again in my heart, and whose divine qualities make the friendships that are compared with hers seem pale. I have now no adviser in my literary difficulties; I have no guide but the fatal thought, 'What would she say if she were living?'" And he goes on to enumerate some of his actual and potential friends. He tells his sister that she herself might have been for him a close intellectual comrade if her duties of wife and mother had not given her too many other things to think about. The same is true of Mme. Carraud: "Never has a more extraordinary mind been more smothered; she will die in her corner unknown! George Sand," he continues, "would speedily be my friend; she has no pettiness whatever in her soul—none of the low jealousies which obscure so many contemporary talents. Dumas resembles her in this; but she has not the critical sense. Mme. Hanska is all this; but I cannot weigh upon her destiny." Mme. Hanska was the Polish lady whom he ultimately married, and of whom we shall speak. Meanwhile, for a couple of years (1836 and 1837), he carried on an exchange of opinions, of the order that the French call intimes, with the unseen correspondent to whom we have alluded, and who figures in these volumes as "Louise." The letters, however, are not love letters; Balzac, indeed, seems chiefly occupied in calming the ardor of the lady, who was evidently a woman of social distinction. "Don't have any friendship for me," he writes; "I need too much. Like all people who struggle, suffer, and work, I am exacting, mistrustful, wilful, capricious.... If I had been a woman, I should have loved nothing so much as some soul buried like a well in the desert—discovered only when you place yourself directly under the star which indicates it to the thirsty Arab."

His first letter to Mme. Hanska here given bears the date of 1835; but we are informed in a note that he had at that moment been for some time in correspondence with her. The correspondence had begun, if we are not mistaken, on Mme. Hanska's side, before they met; she had written to him as a literary admirer. She was a Polish lady of great fortune, with an invalid husband. After her husband's death, projects of marriage defined themselves more vividly, but practical considerations kept them for a long time in the background. Balzac had first to pay off his debts, and Mme. Hanska, as a Polish subject of the Czar Nicholas, was not in a position to marry from one day to another. The growth of their intimacy is, however, amply reflected in these volumes, and the dénouement presents itself with a certain dramatic force. Balzac's letters to his future wife, as to every one else, deal almost exclusively with his financial situation. He discusses the details of this matter with all his correspondents, who apparently have—or are expected to have—his monetary entanglements at their fingers' ends. It is a constant enumeration of novels and tales begun or delivered, revised or bargained for. The tone is always profoundly sombre and bitter. The reader's general impression is that of lugubrious egotism. It is the rarest thing in the world that there is an allusion to anything but Balzac's own affairs, and to the most sordid details of his own affairs. Hardly an echo of the life of his time, of the world he lived in, finds its way into his letters; there are no anecdotes, no impressions, no opinions, no descriptions, no allusions to things heard, people seen, emotions felt—other emotions, at least, than those of the exhausted or the exultant worker. The reason of all this is of course very obvious. A man could not be such a worker as Balzac and be much else besides. The note of animal spirits which we observed in his early letters is sounded much less frequently as time goes on; although the extraordinary robustness and exuberance of his temperament plays richly into his books. The "Contes Drôlatiques" are full of it, and his conversation was also full of it. But the letters constantly show us a man with the edge of his spontaneity gone—a man groaning and sighing, as from Promethean lungs, complaining of his tasks, denouncing his enemies, and in complete ill humor generally with life. Of any expression of enjoyment of the world, of the beauties of nature, art, literature, history, human character, these pages are singularly destitute. And yet we know that such enjoyment—instinctive, unreasoning, essential—is half the inspiration of the poet. The truth is that Balzac was as little as possible of a poet; he often speaks of himself as one, but he deserved the name as little as his own Canalis or his own Rubempré. He was neither a poet nor a moralist, though the latter title in France is often bestowed upon him—a fact which strikingly helps to illustrate the Gallic lightness of soil in the moral region. Balzac was the hardest and deepest of prosateurs; the earth-scented facts of life, which the poet puts under his feet, he had put above his head. Obviously there went on within him a vast and constant intellectual unfolding. His mind must have had a history of its own—a history of which it would be most interesting to have an occasional glimpse. But the history is not related here, even in glimpses. His books are full of ideas; his letters have almost none. It is probably not unfair to argue from this fact that there were few ideas that he greatly cared for. Making all allowance for the pressure and tyranny of circumstances, we may believe that if he had greatly cared to se recueillir, as the French say—greatly cared, in the Miltonic phrase, "to interpose a little ease"—he would sometimes have found an opportunity for it. Perpetual work, when it is joyous and salubrious, is a very fine thing; but perpetual work, when it is executed with the temper which more than half the time appears to have been Balzac's, has in it something almost debasing. We constantly feel that his work would have been vastly better if the Muse of "business" had been elbowed away by her larger-browed sister. Balzac himself, doubtless, often felt in the same way; but, on the whole, "business" was what he most cared for. The "Comédie Humaine" represents an immense amount of joy, of spontaneity, of irrepressible artistic life. Here and there in the letters this occasionally breaks out in accents of mingled exultation and despair. "Never," he writes in 1836, "has the torrent which bears me along been more rapid; never has a work more majestically terrible imposed itself upon the human brain. I go to my work as the gamester to the gaming-table; I am sleeping now only five hours and working eighteen; I shall arrive dead.... Write to me; be generous; take nothing in bad part, for you don't know how, at moments, I deplore this life of fire. But how can I jump out of the chariot?" We had occasion in writing of Balzac in these pages more than a year ago[2] to say that his great characteristic, far from being a passion for ideas, was a passion for things. We said just now that his books are full of ideas; but we must add that his letters make us feel that these ideas are themselves in a certain sense "things." They are pigments, properties, frippery; they are always concrete and available. Balzac cared for them only if they would fit into his inkstand.

He never "jumped out of his car"; but as the years went on he was able at times to let the reins hang more loosely. There is no evidence that he made the great fortune he had looked forward to; but he must have made a great deal of money. In the beginning his work was very poorly paid, but after his reputation was solidly established he received large sums. It is true that they were swallowed up in great part by his "debts"—that dusky, vaguely outlined, insatiable maw which we see grimacing for ever behind him, like the face on a fountain which should find itself receiving a stream instead of giving it out. But he travelled (working all the while en route). He went to Italy, to Germany, to Russia; he built houses, he bought pictures and pottery. One of his journeys illustrates his singular mixture of economic and romantic impulses. He made a breathless pilgrimage to the island of Sardinia to examine the scoriæ of certain silver mines, anciently worked by the Romans, in which he had heard that the metal was still to be found. The enterprise was fantastic and impracticable; but he pushed his excursion through night and day, as he had written the "Père Goriot." In his relative prosperity, when once it was established, there are strange lapses and stumbling-places. After he had built and was living in his somewhat fantastical villa of Les Jardies at Sèvres, close to Paris, he invites a friend to stay with him on these terms: "I can take you to board at forty sous a day, and for thirty-five francs you will have fire-wood enough for a month." In his joke he is apt to betray the same preoccupation. Inviting Charles de Bernard and his wife to come to Les Jardies to help him arrange his books, he adds that they will have fifty sous a day and their wine. He is constantly talking of his expenses, of what he spends in cab hire and postage. His letters to the Countess Hanska are filled with these details. "Yesterday I was running about all day: twenty-five francs for carriages!" The man of business is never absent. For the first representations of his plays he arranges his audiences with an eye to effect, like an impresario or an agent. In the boxes, for "Vautrin," "I insist upon there being handsome women." Presenting a copy of the "Comédie Humaine" to the Austrian ambassador, he accompanies it with a letter calling attention, in the most elaborate manner, to the typographical beauty and the cheapness of the work; the letter reads like a prospectus or an advertisement.

In 1840 (he was forty years old) he thought seriously of marriage—with this remark as the preface to the announcement: "Je ne veux plus avoir de cœur!... If you meet a young girl of twenty-two," he goes on, "with a fortune of 200,000 francs, or even of 100,000, provided it can be used in business, you will think of me. I want a woman who shall be able to be what the events of my life may demand of her—the wife of an ambassador, or a housewife at Les Jardies. But don't speak of this; it's a secret. She must be an ambitious, clever girl." This project, however, was not carried out; Balzac had no time to marry. But his friendship with Mme. Hanska became more and more absorbing, and though their project of marriage, which was executed in 1850, was kept a profound secret until after the ceremony, it is apparent that they had had it a long time in their thoughts.

For this lady Balzac's esteem and admiration seem to have been unbounded; and his letters to her, which in the second volume are very numerous, contain many noble and delicate passages. "You know too well," he says to her somewhere, with a happy choice of words belonging to the writer, whose diction was here and there as felicitous as it was generally intolerable—"Vous savez trop bien que tout ce qui n'est pas vous n'est que surface, sottise et vains palliatifs de l'absence." "You must be proud of your children," he writes to his sister from Poland; "such daughters are the recompense of your life. You must not be unjust to destiny; you may now accept many misfortunes. It is like myself with Mme. Hanska. The gift of her affection explains all my troubles, my weariness, and my toil; I was paying to evil, in advance, the price of such a treasure. As Napoleon said, we pay for everything here below; nothing is stolen. It seems to me that I have paid very little. Twenty-five years of toil and struggle are nothing as the purchase money of an attachment so splendid, so radiant, so complete."

Mme. Hanska appears to have come rarely to Paris, and when she came to have shrouded her visits in mystery; but Balzac arranged several meetings with her abroad, and visited her at St. Petersburg and on her Polish estates. He was devotedly fond of her children, and the tranquil, opulent family life to which she introduced him appears to have been one of the greatest pleasures he had known. In several passages which, for Balzac, may be called graceful and playful, he expresses his homesickness for her chairs and tables, her books, the sight of her dresses. Here is something, in one of his letters to her, which is worth quoting: "In short, this is the game that I play; four men will have had, in this century, an immense influence—Napoleon, Cuvier, O'Connell. I should like to be the fourth. The first lived on the blood of Europe; il s'est inoculé des armées; the second espoused the globe; the third became the incarnation of a people; I—I shall have carried a whole society in my head. But there will have been in me a much greater and much happier being than the writer—and that is your slave. My feeling is finer, grander, more complete, than all the satisfactions of vanity or of glory. Without this plenitude of the heart I should never have accomplished the tenth part of my work; I should not have had this ferocious courage." During a few days spent at Berlin, on his way back from St. Petersburg, he gives his impressions of the "capital of Brandenburg" in a tone which almost seems to denote a prevision of the style of allusion to this locality and its inhabitants which was to become fashionable among his countrymen thirty years later. Balzac detested Prussia and the Prussians.

It is owing to this charlatanism [the spacious distribution of the streets, etc.] that Berlin has a more populous look than Petersburg; I would have said "more animated" look if I had been speaking of another people; but the Prussian, with his brutal heaviness, will never be able to do anything but crush. To produce the movement of a great European capital you must have less beer and bad tobacco, and more of the French or Italian spirit; or else you must have the great industrial and commercial ideas which have produced the gigantic development of London; but Berlin and its inhabitants will never be anything but an ugly little city, inhabited by an ugly big people.

"I have seen Tieck en famille," he says in another letter. "He seemed pleased with my homage. He had an old countess, his contemporary in spectacles, almost an octogenarian—a mummy with a green eye-shade, whom I supposed to be a domestic divinity.... I am at home again; it is half-past six in the evening, and I have eaten nothing since this morning. Berlin is the city of ennui; I should die here in a week. Poor Humboldt is dying of it; he drags with him everywhere his nostalgia for Paris."

Balzac passed the winter of 1848-'49 and several months more at Vierzschovnia, the Polish estate of Mme. Hanska and her children. His health had been gravely impaired, and the doctors had absolutely forbidden him to work. His inexhaustible and indefatigable brain had at last succumbed to fatigue. But the prize was gained; his debts were paid; he was looking forward to owning at last the money that he should make. He could afford—relatively speaking at least—to rest. His fame had been solidly built up; the public recognized his greatness. Already, in 1846, he had written: "You will learn with pleasure, I am sure, that there is an immense reaction in my favor. At last I have conquered! Once more my protecting star has watched over me.... At this moment the public and the papers turn toward me favorably; more than that, there is a sort of acclamation, a general consecration.... It is a great year for me, dear Countess."

To be ill and kept from work was, for Balzac, to be a chained Prometheus; but there was much during these last months to alleviate his impatience. His letters at this period are easier, less painfully preoccupied than at any other; and he found in Poland better medical advice than he deemed obtainable in Paris. He was preparing a house in Paris to receive him as a married man—preparing it apparently with great splendor. At Les Jardies the pictures and divans and tapestries had mostly been nominal—had been present only in grand names, chalked grotesquely upon the empty walls. But during the last years of his life Balzac appears to have been a great collector. He bought many pictures and other objects of value; in particular, there figures in these letters a certain set of Florentine furniture which he was willing to sell again, but to sell only to a royal purchaser. The King of Holland appears to have been in treaty for it. Readers of the "Comédie Humaine" have no need to be reminded of the author's passion for furniture; nowhere else are there such loving or such invidious descriptions of it. "Decidedly," he writes once to Mme. Hanska, "I will send to Tours for the Louis XVI. secretary and bureau; the room will then be complete. It's a matter of a thousand francs; but for a thousand francs what can one get in modern furniture? Des platitudes bourgeoises, des misères sans valeur et sans goût."

Old Mme. de Balzac was her son's factotum and universal agent. His letters from Vierzschovnia are filled with prescriptions of activity for his mother, accompanied always with the urgent reminder that she is to use cabs ad libitum. He goes into the minutest details (she was overlooking the preparation of his house in the Rue Fortunée, which must have been converted into a very picturesque residence): "The carpet in the dining-room must certainly be readjusted. Try and make M. Henry send his carpet-layer. I owe that man a good pour-boire; he laid all the carpets, and I once was rough with him. You must tell him that in September he can come and get his present. I want particularly to give it to him myself."

His mother occasionally annoyed him by unreasonable exactions and untimely interferences. There is an episode of a letter which she writes to him at Vierzschovnia, and which, coming to Mme. Hanska's knowledge, endangers his prospect of marriage. He complains bitterly to his sister that his mother cannot get it out of her head that he is still fifteen years old. But there is something very touching in his constant tenderness toward her—as well as something very characteristically French—very characteristic of the French sentiment of family consistency and solidarity—in the way in which, by constantly counting upon her practical aptitude and zeal, he makes her a fellow worker toward the great total of his fame and fortune. At fifty years of age, at the climax of his distinction, announcing to her his brilliant marriage, he signs himself Ton fils soumis. To his old friend Mme. Carraud he speaks thus of this same event: "The dénouement of that great and beautiful drama of the heart which has lasted these sixteen years.... Three days ago I married the only woman I have loved, whom I loved more than ever, and whom I shall love until death. I believe that this union is the recompense that God has held in reserve for me through so many adversities, years of work, difficulties suffered and surmounted. I had neither a happy youth nor a flowering spring; I shall have the most brilliant summer, the sweetest of all autumns." It had been, as Balzac says, a drama of the heart, and the dénouement was of the heart alone. Mme. Hanska, on her marriage, made over her large fortune to her daughter.

Balzac had at last found rest and happiness, but his enjoyment of these blessings was brief. The energy that he had expended to gain them left nothing behind it. His terrible industry had blasted the soil it passed over; he had sacrificed to his work the very things he worked for. One cannot do what Balzac did and live. He was enfeebled, exhausted, broken. He died in Paris three months after his marriage. The reader feels that premature death is the logical, the harmonious completion of such a career. The strongest man has but a certain fixed quantity of life to expend, and we may expect that if he works habitually fifteen hours a day, he will spend it while, arithmetically speaking, he is yet young.

We have been struck in reading these letters with the strong analogy between Balzac's career and that of the great English writer whose history was some time since so expansively written by Mr. Forster. Dickens and Balzac take much in common; as individuals they strongly resemble each other; their differences are chiefly differences of race. Each was a man of affairs, an active, practical man, with a temperament of almost phenomenal vigor and a prodigious quantity of life to expend. Each had a character and a will—what is nowadays called a personality—which imposed themselves irresistibly; each had a boundless self-confidence and a magnificent egotism. Each had always a hundred irons on the fire; each was resolutely determined to make money, and made it in large quantities. In intensity of imaginative power, the power of evoking visible objects and figures, seeing them themselves with the force of hallucination, and making others see them all but just as vividly, they were almost equal. Here there is little to choose between them; they have had no rivals but each other and Shakespeare. But they most of all resemble each other in the fact that they treated their extraordinary imaginative force as a matter of business; that they worked it as a gold mine, violently and brutally; overworked and ravaged it. They succumbed to the task that they had laid upon themselves, and they are as similar in their deaths as in their lives. Of course, if Dickens is an English Balzac, he is a very English Balzac. His fortune was the easier of the two, and his prizes were greater than the other's. His brilliant opulent English prosperity, centred in a home and diffused through a progeny, is in strong contrast with the almost scholastic penury and obscurity of much of Balzac's career. But the analogy is still very striking.

In speaking formerly of Balzac in these pages we insisted upon the fact that he lacked charm; but we said that our last word upon him should be that he had incomparable power. His letters only confirm these impressions, and above all they deepen our sense of his strength. They contain little that is delicate, and not a great deal that is positively agreeable; but they express an energy before which we stand lost in wonder, in an admiration that almost amounts to awe. The fact that his devouring observation of the great human spectacle has no echo in his letters only makes us feel how concentrated and how intense was the labor that went on in his closet. Certainly no solider intellectual work has ever been achieved by man. And in spite of the massive egotism, the personal absoluteness, to which these pages testify, they leave us with a downright kindness for the author. He was coarse, but he was tender; he was corrupt in a way, but he was hugely natural. If he was ungracefully eager and voracious, awkwardly blind to all things that did not contribute to his personal plan, at least his egotism was exerted in a great cause. The "Comédie Humaine" has a thousand faults, but it is a monumental excuse.

Henry James, Jr.