Transcriber's Notes:
1. Page scan source: http://www.archive.org/details/fourphaseslovet00heysgoog
2. This volume includes the following short-stories:
a. [Eye-Blindness and Soul-Blindness.];
b. [Marion];
c. [La Rabbiata];
d. ["By the Banks of the Tiber."]

FOUR PHASES OF LOVE

BY

PAUL HEYSE.

TRANSLATED

By E. H. KINGSLEY.

LONDON:
G. ROUTLEDGE & CO. FARRINGDON STREET;

NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET.
1857.

[EYE-BLINDNESS AND SOUL-BLINDNESS.]

CHAPTER I.

At the open window, which looked out into the little flower-garden, stood the blind daughter of the village sacristan, refreshing herself in the cool breeze that swept across her hot cheeks; her delicate, half-developed form trembled, her cold little hands lay folded in each other upon the window-sill. The sun had already set, and the night-flowers were beginning to scent the air.

Further within the room sat a blind boy on a stool, at the old spinet, playing wild melodies. He might have been about fifteen years old--only, perhaps, a year older than the girl. Whoever had heard and seen him, now throwing up his large eyes, and now turning his head towards the window, would never have suspected his privation--so much energy, and even impetuosity, lay in his every movement.

Suddenly he broke off in the midst of a religious hymn, which he seemed to have altered wildly after his own fancy.

"You sighed!" he said, turning his face towards her.

"I! No, Clement--why should I sigh? I only shrank together as the wind blew in so strongly!"

"But you did sigh. Do you think that I did not hear it as I played?--and I feel even here how you are trembling."

"Yes; it has grown so cold."

"You cannot deceive me. If you were cold you would not stand at the open window. But I know why you sigh and tremble!--because the doctor is coming to-morrow, and will prick our eyes with needles--that is what makes you so afraid; and yet he said how soon it would all be over, and that it would only be like the prick of a pin. And you, who used to be so brave and patient, that my mother always mentioned you as an example when I was little and cried when anything hurt me, though you were only a girl--have you now lost all your courage? Do you never think of the happiness we have to look forward to?"

She shook her little head, and answered, "How can you think that I am afraid of the passing pain! But I am oppressed with silly, childish thoughts, which I cannot drive away. Ever since the day that the doctor the baron sent for came down from the castle to your father, and mother called us out of the garden--ever since that hour something weighs upon me and will not go away. You were so full of joy that you did not perceive it; but when your father began to pray, and blessed God for this mercy, my heart was silent and did not follow his prayer. I thought within myself, 'What have I to be thankful for?' and could not understand."

Thus she spoke in a quiet resigned voice. The boy again struck a few light chords. Between the sharp whizzing tones, peculiar to the instrument on which he played, rang the distant songs of home-returning peasants--a contrast, like that of their bright active life, with the dream-life of these blind children.

The boy seemed to feel it. He rose quickly, walked with a firm step to the window--for he knew the room and all its furniture--and said, as he threw back his bright fair locks, "You are incomprehensible, Mary! Our parents and all the village congratulate us. Will it not be a gain after all? Until it was promised me I never asked much about it. We are blind, they say; I never understood what was wanting in us. When we sat without there by the wood, and travellers came by, and said, 'Poor children!' I felt angry, and thought, 'What have they to pity in us?' But that we are different from others, I know well enough. They often talked about things which I could not understand, yet which must be very beautiful. And now that we are going to know them too, the longing never leaves me day nor night."

"I was contented as I was," said Mary, sadly, "I was so happy, and should have liked to be as happy all my life. It will all be different now! Have you never heard people complain that the world is full of sorrow and care--and did we know care?"

"Because we did not know the world--and I will know it at all risks! I suffered myself to be pleased with groping about in the dark with you, and being obliged to do nothing, but not always! Often, when my father taught us history, and told us about heroes and bold deeds, I asked him if any of them had been blind? But whoever had done anything great could see. And then I often plagued myself all day long with thoughts about it. Then when I played on the spinet, or was allowed to play on the organ, in your father's place, I forgot my uneasiness for a time; but when it came back, I thought, 'Must you always play the organ, and go the few hundred paces up and down the village that you know; and must no one out of the village ever know you; and must none ever name you after you are dead?' Look you, Mary,--since the doctor has been at the castle, I hope that I yet may become a perfect man; and then I will go out into the world and take the path that pleases me, and I shall have nothing to ask any one!"

"And not me, Clement?"

She said it uncomplainingly and without reproach.

But the boy answered vehemently, "Sister Mary, do not talk such nonsense--I cannot bear it! Do you think that I would leave you alone at home and steal away amongst strangers? Do you not trust me?"

"I know well what happens when young men go from the village to the town, or on their wanderings, no one goes with them, not even their own sisters. And here too, even before they are grown up, the boys run away from the little girls and go into the woods with each other, and mock the girls when they meet them. Till now they have left you and me together, and we played and learned with each other. You were blind like me--what did you want with the other boys? But when you can see, and want to sit in the house with me, they will laugh at you, as they do at everyone who won't go with them. And then--then you will go quite away for a long, long time, and I had grown so accustomed to be with you."

She had spoken the last words with difficulty; then her sorrow overcame her and she sobbed aloud. Clement drew her closely to him, stroked her cheek, and said entreatingly, "You must not cry! I will never go away from you! never! never! rather than do that I will remain blind and forget everything. I will not leave you if it makes you cry. Come, be calm, be cheerful. You should not heat yourself, the doctor said, because it is so bad for your eyes, darling, darling Mary!"

He pressed her closer in his arms and kissed her for the first time in his life. His mother called to him from the neighbouring parsonage-house. He led the still weeping girl to an arm-chair by the wall, let her sink gently into it and hastened out.

Shortly after, two dignified looking men strode down from the castle-hill towards the village. The rector, a tall, powerful figure, with all the strength and majesty of an apostle, and the sacristan, a slender man with an expression of humility about him, and whose hair was already as white as snow. They had both been invited by the baron to spend the afternoon with himself and the doctor, who had come from the town, at his invitation, to examine the children's eyes, and to try the effects of an operation. He had again assured both the rejoicing fathers of his hopes of a perfect cure, and had begged them to hold themselves in readiness for the following day. The mothers had decided on preparing all that was necessary in the parsonage, for they were unwilling to separate the children on the day which was to restore them that light of which they had been together so long deprived.

When the two fathers reached their homes, which lay just opposite to each other, the rector pressed his old friend's hand, and said with a moistening eye, "God be with us and them!" Then they separated. The sacristan entered his house--all was still--the maid was without in the garden. He entered his chamber and rejoiced in the stillness which permitted him to be alone with his God. As he stepped over the threshold, he started--his child had arisen from the chair and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes; her bosom heaved painfully; her cheeks and lips were blanched. He spoke to her and entreated her to calm herself, and asked her earnestly, "What has happened to you?" She answered but with tears which she herself understood not.

CHAPTER II.

They had placed the children in bed in two upper rooms of the rectory looking towards the north. In the absence of shutters, the windows were carefully covered with dark curtains, so that in the brightest day scarcely a ray of light could creep in. The rector's wide orchard overshadowed the walls, and kept at a distance the murmur of external life.

The doctor had recommended that particular care should be taken of the little girl; all that depended on him had succeeded; now, in quiet, must nature do the rest; and the girl's easily excitable temperament required the most careful attention and precaution.

At the decisive moment, Mary had been firm, when her mother burst into tears, as she heard the doctor's footstep on the stairs, she had gone to her and encouraged her.

The doctor began with the boy, who, excited but of good courage, sat down and bore all; only at first he would not allow anyone to hold him during the operation, but at Mary's entreaties he at last permitted it to be done.

When the doctor, after some seconds had elapsed, removed his hands from the boy's eyelids, he screamed loudly with joyous terror.

Mary recoiled. Then she bore without a murmur the passing pain. But tears burst from her eyes, and her whole frame trembled; so that the doctor hastily placed a bandage over her eyes, and assisted her himself to her room; for her knees trembled under her. There, on her couch, sleep and fainting struggled long over her, whilst the boy declared that he was perfectly well, and only lay down at his father's earnest entreaties.

But he did not sleep at once. Coloured forms--coloured now for the first time--glided by him, full of mystery; forms which, as yet, were nothing to him, and which were to become so much, if the people were right who wished him joy. He asked his father and mother, as they sat by his bedside, about innumerable things, which truly the most profound science could hardly have solved. What does it know of the well-springs of life? His father entreated him to have patience, for with God's help he would soon be able to resolve his doubts more clearly for himself. Now, rest was necessary for him, and above all for Mary, whom he might so easily awake with his talking. Then he was silent, and listened through the wall. He begged them, in whispers, to open the door, that he might hear whether she slept or was not sighing from pain. His mother did as he wished. Then he lay motionless and listened, and the breathing of his sleeping little friend, as it sighed softly in and out, sang him, too, at last, to sleep.

So they lay for hours. The village without was more quiet than usual. When a peasant had to pass the rectory with his cart, he guarded carefully against noise. Even the children, who may have been told by their master, did not storm out of the school as noisily as was their wont, but went in twos and threes, whispering, and glancing shily at the house, as they passed to more distant play-grounds. Only the song of the birds ceased not among the branches; but when has its sound disturbed or wearied a rest-seeking child of man?

The bells of the cows returning from pasture first awakened the two children. The boy's first question was, whether Mary had inquired for him yet? He asked her then, in a low voice, how she was. Her heavy sleep had hardly refreshed her, and her eyes burned under their light covering. But she forced herself to say that she was better, and chatted gaily with Clement, over whose lips streamed the wildest thoughts.

Late, when the moon had already risen from behind the wood, hesitating little hands knocked at the rector's door. It was the little village girls, who brought a garland of their fairest garden flowers for Mary, and a nosegay for Clement. When they brought them to the boy, his face brightened; their scent and cool sprinkling of dew refreshed him. "Thank them for me very much. They are good girls; I am ill now, but when I can see I will defend them against the boys." Mary, when they laid the garland on her bed, pressed it gently back with pale little hands, and said, "I cannot, mother! I feel giddy when flowers are so near me! Take them to Clement, too."

She soon sank again into her feverish half-sleep. The wholesome approach of day tranquillized her at last, and the doctor, who came early, found her freer from danger than he had dared to hope. Long he sat by the boy's bedside, listened smiling to his strange questions, warned him kindly to be patient and quiet, and left with the best prognostications.

Much use recommending calmness and patience to one who has at last caught a distant glimpse of a new and highly praised land! His father was obliged, as often as his duties permitted him, to go up to his room and talk to him. The door then was not to be shut, that Mary might hear the beautiful stories too. Legends of pious men and women on whom God had laid and removed heavy sufferings were repeated. The tale of poor Henry, for whom the pious maiden was willing in her humility to sacrifice herself, and how God brought all to a happy ending was related, and all the edifying histories which the worthy man was able to recollect.

When the pious rector glided gradually from tale to prayer, or the mother with her clear voice sang a hymn of thanksgiving, Clement folded his hands, or sang with her; but directly after he began new questionings, which showed that he took more interest in the stories than in the hymns. Mary asked about nothing. She was friendly with every one, and no one suspected what deep thoughts and questions were seething in her little breast.

They grew visibly better from day to day, and on the fourth day after the operation the doctor permitted them to get up. He himself supported the little girl, as she stepped, weak and trembling, across the darkened room towards the open door, in which the boy stood, stretching forth his hands, joyously seeking hers. Then he grasped her hand firmly, and entreated her to lean on him, which she did confidingly. They paced to and fro in the chamber together, and he, with that delicate sense of locality so peculiar to the blind, guided her carefully past the different pieces of furniture.

"How are you now? he asked her.

"I am well," was her answer, "to-day as ever."

"Come," he said, quickly, "lean on me, you are weak still, it would refresh you to breathe a little sweet meadow air out of doors, for the air here is thick and heavy. But it is not good for us yet, the doctor says. Our eyes would get sore, and be blind again, if they were to look out into the light too soon. Oh, I know already what light and darkness mean. No flute note is so sweet as when your eyes can do that. It hurt me, I must say, yet I could have looked for ever into the beautiful coloured world, so blissful was the pain. You will feel it too. But it must be many days before we are so happy. But then I will do nothing all day long but see. I want to know so many things, Mary. They say that each thing has a different colour. I wonder what colours your face and mine are? Dark or bright? It would be horrible if they were not very bright. Shall I know you with my eyes? now, touching you so, I could pick you out with my little finger from all the other people in the world. But in future we shall have to learn to know each other all anew again. I know now that your hair and cheeks are soft to touch, will they be so to my eyes? I want to know so much, and it is so long to wait."

After this fashion he chattered incessantly, without remarking how silently she walked beside him. Many of his words had sunk deep into her heart. It had never occurred to her that she too was to see, and she hardly knew what to think about it. She had heard of mirrors, without understanding what was meant. She thought now that when a person who saw opened his eyes, his own face appeared to him.

When she was again in her little bed, and her mother thought she slept, the idea flashed across her mind. "It would be horrible if our faces were not bright!" She had heard of ugly and beautiful, and she knew that ugly people were pitied, and often less loved than others. "Oh, if I should be ugly," she thought to herself, "and he care no more about me. It used to be all the same when he played with my hair and called it silken threads. That will all cease now if he sees that I am ugly; and he--even if he is ugly, I will never let him know it, because I shall love him still. But no! I know that he cannot be ugly--he cannot be."

Long she lay restless with sorrow and anxiety. The air was sultry; without, in the garden, the nightingales called complainingly to each other, and a sobbing west wind beat against the window panes. She was entirely alone in the chamber, for her mother's bed, which had been placed beside hers, had been removed on account of the closeness of the room. And besides, they no longer thought a night watcher necessary, as her fever had entirely disappeared. And just on this very evening it returned again, and tossed her to and fro, until, long after midnight, a short, heavy sleep fell upon her.

Meanwhile the storm, which had circled muttering around the horizon half the night, approached in its might, spread itself over the forest, and then paused. The wind was still. A crash of thunder burst in upon Mary's sleep. Half dreaming she sprang up; she knew not what she sought or thought, a nameless anxiety forced her to rise, her pillow was so hot. Now she stood by the side of her bed and heard the strong rain rushing down without. But it cooled not her feverish brow. She tried to collect herself and think, but found nothing within her soul but the miserable thought with which she had fallen asleep. A strange determination arose within her. She would go to Clement now he was alone; what prevented her from putting an end to her uncertainty, and seeing both herself and him? She thought but of this alone, and every word of the doctor was forgotten; so she went unhesitatingly, just as she had arisen from her couch, towards the door which stood half open, found the end of the bed, crept on her little bare feet, to the side of the sleeping boy, and bending over him, with bated breath, tore the bandage hastily from her eyes.

But she started when all remained dark as before. She had forgotten that it was night, and that she had been told that in the night all people were blind. She had fancied that a light streamed from an eye that saw, and lighted both itself and what it looked upon. Now she felt the boy's breath soft upon her cheek, but she could distinguish no form. Already terrified, and in despair, she wished to go back. There flamed through the now uncovered window-panes a flash one second long--then another and another--the air waved to and fro with the intensity of light--thunder and rain-stream without increased in roar; but she gazed for one short moment on the curly brow that lay softly pressed on the pillow before her--then the vision vanished into the darkness, her eyes gushed with tears, and, overcome with unspeakable terror, she rushed to her room, replaced the bandage, and sank upon her bed, feeling, with a sense of unalterable conviction, that she had seen for the first and the last time.

CHAPTER III.

Weeks have passed away. For the first time, the young powers of the eyes are to be tested by light. The doctor, who had, in the meantime, directed the simple treatment of the children from the town, arrived at the village on a cloudy day, in order to be present himself and to enjoy the fruit of his cure with them.

Instead of the curtains, they had weaved garlands of boughs before the windows, and decked both rooms gaily with green branches and flowers. The baron himself, and all in the village who were connected with either of the families, had arrived to wish both parents and children happiness, and to enjoy the surprise of the healed ones.

Mary pressed herself, with a sad anxiety, amongst the boughs in the corner, when Clement, flushed with delight, was placed opposite to her, and seized her hand.

He had entreated to be allowed to see her first of all. At the same moment they loosed the coverings from their eyes.

A cry of utter inexpressible joy rang from the boy's lips. He remained fixed on the same spot,--a glorified smile upon his face,--moving his bright eyeballs hither and thither. He had forgotten that Mary was to stand before him, and knew not as yet what the human form might be. She, too, did nothing to put him in mind of her. She stood, motionless, only lightly moving her eyelids, which overshadowed bright brown dead eyes. Yet they had no suspicion of the truth. "The wondrous things," they thought, "which seem so strange to her at first, have paralysed her for a time." But when the boy's delight broke loudly forth, they told him "That is Mary:" and he stretched out his hand towards her cheeks in his old manner, and said, "You have a bright face!" Then her tears flowed apace, she shook her head hastily, and said, hardly intelligibly, "It is still dark here! It is all as it used to be!"

Who can describe the misery of the next few hours! The doctor, deeply affected, led her to a chair by the window, and examined her eyes. The thin grey film of the cataract which he had removed had not reappeared. Nothing distinguished the pupils from those of health but their lifeless sorrowful fixedness.

"The nerve is paralysed," he said, "some sudden vehement light must have destroyed it." The sacristan's wife fainted, she fell pale as death in her husband's arms. Clement at first hardly understood what had happened. His soul was too full of its newly-gained existence. But Mary lay bathed in tears, and would answer none of the doctor's questions. Even later, they could learn nothing from her. "She did not know how it had happened. They must forgive her for having cried so childishly. She would bear all as it had been appointed. Had she ever known anything different?"

When they had made Clement clearly understand the misfortune, he was beside himself, sprang towards her, and cried incessantly, "You shall see too! I will have nothing more than you! Ah! now I know for the first time what you have lost! One does not see oneself; but all around have eyes, and look at us as if they loved us. And they shall look at you so too, only be patient and do not cry." And then he asked for the doctor, and rushed to him, beseeching him with tears to help Mary. The bright drops stood in the good man's eyes--he restrained himself with difficulty, and persuaded the boy to be tranquil; "he would see what could be done," and gave him hopes, in order to avoid an excitement which might be dangerous for him. He did not conceal the hopeless truth from the parents.

But the boy's sorrow seemed to have comforted Mary. She sat still by the window, and called him gently to her. "You must not be so sorry," she said, "it all comes from God. Be happy, as I am happy, that you are cured. You know already that I never wished very much for it. And now I should be quite contented if it did not grieve my parents so. But they will grow used to it, and you too, and so it will be as well--if you only love me as you used to do--that I remain as I was."

He would not be comforted, and the doctor insisted on the children being separated. They took Clement down into the large room below, where the people from the village pressed around him. They shook his hand, one after another, and spoke kindly words; but the crowd stupified him. He only said, "Do you know yet that Mary is blind still?" and then began to weep afresh.

It was high time to replace the bandage and to take him to a cool and quiet room. There he lay down, exhausted with joy, sorrow, and weeping. His father spoke gently and piously to him, which did him but little good; even in his sleep he wept, and seemed to dream painfully.

But on the following day, curiosity, desire for information, and astonishment asserted their rights, and his sorrow for Mary only appeared when he happened to see her. He visited her in the early morning and asked her whether she had not altered or got better during the night. But then the bright world that opened itself before him claimed all his attention, and when he returned to Mary it was only to tell her of some new wonder, often checking himself in the midst of his rapid narration, as a glance at his poor little friend reminded him what pain his joy must cost her. But, in truth, it did not cause her much pain; she wanted nothing for herself; to hear him talk so enthusiastically was pleasure enough for her. But when he began to come more rarely, fancying that he made her sad, or was silent because all other interests vanished before the one on which he did not dare to speak, she became uneasy; formerly she had seldom been separated from him during the day, now she was much alone. Her mother, indeed, often came to sit with her; but the cheerfulness of the once lively woman had departed, since her darling hopes had been so rudely crushed; she could say nothing to her child but mere words of comfort which her own heavy sighs belied, and which could be but of little use to Mary. How much of what she now suffered had she foreseen? and yet the sense of separation gave her inexpressible pain.

Now she sat often again under the boughs in her father's garden and span. When Clement came to her, her poor eyes gleamed strangely. He was ever kind to her, sat down on the bench beside her, and caressed her hair and cheeks as in the old times. She begged him once not to be so silent. When he told her about the world and the new things he had learned each day about it, it did not make her feel envious. But when he did not come at all she was so lonely. She never put him in mind, by a single word, of the promise he had given her one evening never to leave her; she had long ago renounced it. She seemed doubly dear to him, he had no longer to be guarded before her. His heart overflowed, and he talked for hours about the sun and moon and stars, and the flowers, and the trees; and, above all, how their parents and she herself looked. She trembled with happiness in her inmost heart, when he told her innocently, that she was prettier than all the other girls in the village. Then he told her how graceful she was, and that she had such a pretty head, and dark, soft eyebrows. He had seen himself, too, in a looking-glass, but he was not nearly so pretty; he did not want to be, and it was all the same to him, as long as he grew up to be a clever man. Men appeared generally not to be so pretty as women. She did not understand all of this, but this much she did understand, that she pleased him, and what could she desire more? They never returned to this subject; but he was indefatigable in describing the beautiful world to her. When he came not, she thought over his words, and grew almost jealous of this world which robbed her of him; gradually this feeling of enmity grew stronger, and, at last, became more powerful than her pleasure at his happiness. Above all things she hated the sun, for she knew that he was the brightest of all, and in her obscure notions, bright and beautiful were one and the same thing. Nothing discomposed her more than his bursts of admiration over the setting sun, when he was with her of an evening. He had never spoken of her in such words, and why did he forget her so utterly over this scene that he never saw the tears that her strange jealous sorrow forced into her eyes?

But still heavier grew her heart, when the rector, as soon as the doctor permitted it, began anew the education of his son. Previous to his cure, Clement had passed the greater part of his day in practising music; religious instruction, history, mathematics, and a little Latin, were all which formerly had appeared necessary or possible; and Mary had been permitted to share his lessons, which, after all, included only the most necessary information. Now, when the boy exhibited the strongest inclination towards natural science, he was set seriously to work, and prepared for one of the higher classes of the town school.

His steady will worked unceasingly onwards, and his really superior talents enabled him in a surprisingly short time to bring himself up to his age, and to recover lost time. He sat many hours, even then, with his books, in the sacristan's garden. But the old way of talking was out of the question, and Mary felt, but too well, that she was doubly parted, both from instruction and from the friend of her childhood.

CHAPTER IV.

Autumn interrupted for a time the boy's studies. The rector determined to take him with him for some days into the neighbouring mountains, before the winter set in, to show him hill-side and valley, and to let him have a wider look into that world which already seemed so beautiful to him, even on the barren village plains. When the boy was told of it he asked, "And we shall take Mary with us too?"

They tried to dissuade him from it, but without her he refused to travel. "Even if she does not see anything, they say the mountain air is so healthy, and she has been so pale and thin for a long time, and will be quite lonely without me." So they did as he wished; the little maiden was lifted into the carriage beside him, and a short day's journey brought them to the foot of the mountain range.

Now began the journey on foot. Patiently the boy led his blind little friend, more reserved than ever. Often he longed to climb this or that isolated rock-peak which promised him a new view, but he supported her as she went, and would not desert his post, however much his parents begged him. Only when they had reached some eminence, and were seated at rest in a shady nook, did he leave the maiden, and sought his own way amongst the dangerous rocks, collecting curious stones, or flowers that did not grow in the plains below. When he returned to the resting-place he had ever something for Mary--berries, or a sweet-scented flower, or the soft nest of a bird which the wind had dislodged from its tree.

She received everything cheerfully from him, and seemed more contented than she had been at home. And she was so, too; for she breathed the same air with him all the day long. But even then her foolish jealousy accompanied her, and she felt angry with the mountains, whose autumnal beauty, she fancied, only made the world dearer to him, and widened the separation between them. Her strange manner struck the rector's wife. She talked with her husband now and again about the child, who was as dear to them as their own, and both placed her obstinate melancholy to the account of her disappointed hopes; and yet she regretted nothing that had been promised, or that she had been told to expect--only what she had already known and enjoyed.

At the end of the second day's journey they were to pass the night at a lonely house celebrated for the neighbourhood of a magnificent waterfall. They had a long day's journey, and the women were quite tired out. When they reached the house, the rector led his wife within, without proceeding onward to the chasm, from which the roar of the waterfall could be plainly heard. Mary, too, was very tired, but she insisted on following Clement, who cared not to rest so soon; so they climbed together higher up the steps, and ever louder the sound of the roaring water was borne towards them. Half-way up the steep path Mary's last strength deserted her: "I will sit here," she said; "go on to the end, and come back for me when you have seen enough." He begged her to let him take her back to the house first, but she was already seated, and so he left her, and advanced towards the roar, deeply affected by the solitude and majesty of the scene.

The girl sat on a stone and awaited his return. She thought that he lingered very long away. A cold shiver struck through her, and the distant muttering thunder of the fall terrified her, "Why does he not come back?" she thought to herself; "he will forget me in his joy now as ever. I wish I could find my way back to the house, that I might get warm."

So she sat, full of anxiety, and listening intently. Suddenly she fancied that she distinguished his voice calling to her; trembling, she started up. What should she do? Almost involuntarily she took a step forward, but her foot slipped, she tottered and fell. Fortunately the stones near the path were overgrown with moss, but still the fall nearly stunned her, and she cried wildly for help. In vain! her voice could not reach Clement, who stood close to the abyss, surrounded by the roarings of the fall, and the house was far too distant. A bitter pain shot through her heart as she lay there between the stones, neglected and helpless. With tears of despair in her eyes, she raised herself painfully. All that she loved best seemed to her at this moment hateful, and the bitterness of her soul permitted no thought of the nearness of the Omnipresent to rise before her.

So Clement found her when, for her sake, he tore himself away from the witchery of the marvellous scene.

"I come!" he cried to her from a distance. "It is fortunate that you did not go with me. The path above is so narrow that the smallest slip would cost a life! How unfathomably deep it plunged, and roared and sprang up in clouds of spray, till one's senses were lost! Feel how sprinkled I am with the fine water-spray!--but what is the matter with you? You are as cold as ice, and your lips tremble. Come--I was wrong to leave you in the chilly air--God forbid that it should have made you ill!"

She remained obstinately silent, and permitted herself to be led back to the house. The rector's wife was alarmed. The girl's sweet, delicate features were strangely disturbed. They hastened to give her a warm draught and to put her in her bed, without learning more from her than that she was not well.

And ill, indeed, she was--and so ill, that she longed for it all to be over. She hated the life that showed itself so hostile to her. In bitter, God-forgotten thinking she lay, and of her own will broke the last threads which bound her to mankind. "I will go out to morrow," she said, darkly, to herself; "he shall lead me himself to the cliff where a false step costs a life--and my death will not cost him much! Why should he for ever bear the burden which he has laid on himself out of mere compassion?"

Ever stronger the unholy determination twined itself about her heart. What had become of the old bright, loving courage in this short month of concealed sorrow? She even thought on the consequences of her sin without horror, and said, defyingly, to herself, "They will manage to become reconciled to it as they have become reconciled to my remaining blind, and he will be freed from that picture of misery that destroys all his pleasure in that beautiful world he loves so much." That was ever the last thought when a feeling of uncertainty rose within her.

In the room next to hers, only separated from it by a thin partition, sat the rector and his wife. Clement was still loitering about under the trees without, unable to tear himself from the stars, and the mountains, and the muffled music of the waterfall.

"I feel very uneasy," said the rector's wife, "at Mary's being so sad and reserved; the slightest occurrence agitates her. If it lasts she will be quite worn out. I wish you would talk to her, and try to persuade her not to take what cannot be altered so deeply to heart."

"I am afraid that I should speak in vain," said the rector. "If what she has already been taught, and the love of her parents, and our daily care of her, have not spoken to her heart, mere human words will be of no avail. If she had learned humility before God, she would have submitted to his will, which has left her so much to be thankful for, with gratitude instead of murmuring."

"But he has taken much from her."

"Ay, indeed! but not all, or for ever! That is my hope and my prayer. The power of loving, and of looking on all as worthless compared to the love of God and man, seems to have gone from her; but it returns when we return to God! As she now is she longs not for him, she hugs her discontent and hatred too closely to her heart--but her heart is too true to bear this miserable companionship much longer; then when it is free from discontent, God will enter into it, and love will find its old place again, and then she will have an inward light to guide her, though night may still hang before her eyes."

"God grant it! And yet the thought of her future makes me very unhappy."

"She will not be lost, if she is not determined to lose herself. Even were all who now love her and tend her to be called away, all human kindness would not have died. And if she marks well the hand of God, and the way He would lead her, she will bless her blindness, which from her childhood upwards has kept her from the false glitter of the world, and brought her nearer to what is true."

Clement interrupted the conversation. "You cannot think," he cried, "how beautiful the night is. I would give one of my eyes, if Mary could have it, to see this glory of the stars! I hope the noise of the waterfall does not keep her awake. I cannot forgive myself for letting her sit so long in the cold."

"Speak lower, dearest son," said the mother; "she is sleeping close to us, and the best thing you can do is to go to rest too."

Whisperingly the boy bade them "Good-night!" When his mother went into Mary's room, she found her tranquil, and apparently sleeping. That strange expression of her features had given place to a sweet tranquillity. The storm had passed over, and had destroyed nothing of the beautiful within her. Even shame and regret hardly made themselves felt, so powerfully reigned within her the joyous peace which had been preached to her from the neighbouring room. For the evil gains its influence over us slowly and creepingly; the victory of the good is soon decided.

CHAPTER V.

Her friends remarked with astonishment, the next morning, the change which had passed over her. The rector's wife could not but believe that Mary had overheard their conversation through the partition.

"So much the better." said the rector; "now I shall have nothing more to say." Most moving was the lovingness of manner which Mary showed towards Clement and his parents. She wished for nothing more than to be permitted to belong to them. She received their love almost with surprise, as something to which she had no claim.

She did not, indeed, speak much more than before, but what she said was cheerful and kindly. There was a deprecating shrinking expression about her whole being, as if she was silently entreating forgiveness. She took Clement's arm again when they walked. She often begged that she might be allowed to sit down and rest, not that she was tired, but in order to leave the boy in freedom to clamber where he would. She smiled when he returned and told her all that he had seen: her old jealousy had disappeared since she had begun to demand nothing more for herself than the happiness of knowing him happy.

Thus strengthened and fortified, she ended the journey. And happy for her that she was so strengthened; for, when she arrived at home, she found her mother lying ill of a dangerous complaint, which ended fatally a few days after her return. And now, after the acute sorrow of the first few weeks had become lessened, her sad and altered life demanded duties from her which formerly she would hardly have been equal to. Her household cares occupied her early and late. In spite of her privation, she knew every cranny of the small house thoroughly, and if she herself was but seldom able to help with her own hands, yet she was clever and full of forethought in ordering all things so that her sorrowing father should want for nothing. A wonderful power and confidence came over her. Where in old times it had taken many a squabble to induce man and maid to do what was right, now a single gentle word from her sufficed. And if anything wrong happened, or work was done with an ill will, a steady glance from those large blind eyes quelled the most rebellious.

Since she felt that she must be cheerful for the sake of her father--since she understood that she must work and shape her life herself--the hours became ever rarer in which she felt the separation from Clement so painfully; and at last, when he was obliged to go to the high school in the town, she was able to say farewell to him, even more composedly than the others. It is true that she went about for weeks as in a dream--as if the best half of her being had been torn away from her. But soon she was as cheerful as before, sang her favourite songs to herself, and rallied her father till she won a smile from him. When the rector's wife came across with letters from the town? and read her news and messages from Clement, her heart beat quickly, and she lay longer at night without sleep visiting her eyelids. The next morning she was bright and cheerful as before.

At the vacation Clement returned to his parents, and his first walk was to the sacristan's house. Mary distinguished his step already in the distance, remained fixed where she was, and listened whether he would ask for her. She smoothed her hair, which still rolled in tresses down her slender neck, hastily with her hands, and rose from her work. As he entered the door every trace of excitement had vanished from her features. Cheerfully she gave him her hand, and begged him to sit near her and to talk to her. Then he forgot how the time flew by, and had to be called by his mother, who begrudged his long absence from her; for he seldom remained the whole vacation at the village, but wandered into the mountains, to which his growing affection for natural science attracted him.

The years rolled on their accustomed way; the old people withered slowly, and the young ones bloomed rapidly. When Clement returned once again at Easter, and Mary arose from her spinning wheel, he was astonished to see how tall and stately she had grown since the autumn. "You are quite a woman," he said; "and I, too, am no longer a child; only feel how my beard has grown over my winter studies." A blush flitted across her cheek as he took her hand and placed it on his chin, to let her feel the newly-sprung down. He had, too, many more things to tell her than the first time he returned. The tutor with whom he lived had daughters, and these daughters had lady friends. He was obliged to describe them one and all with the greatest accuracy. "I can make nothing out of the girls," he said; "they are silly and frivolous, and chatter too much. There is one, Cecilia, that I can endure a little better than the others, because she can hold her tongue, and does not make grimaces in order to look pretty. But what do they bother me for? The other evening, when I went into my room, I found a bunch of flowers on my table, and let it lie, and never took the trouble to put it in water, though I was sorry for the flowers; but it annoyed me. And the next day there was such a giggling and whispering amongst the girls that I could not speak to them for anger. Why cannot they leave me alone? They know that I have no time for their nonsense!"

Not one word of all this did Mary lose, and spun an endless thread of strange thoughts out of it. She was almost in danger of injuring herself with fruitless dreamings, if a too well grounded cause of anxiety and real sorrow had not saved her. Her father, who had for a long time been able to do his duty with difficulty, had a paralytic stroke, and lay nearly a year perfectly helpless, until a second attack put an end to his sufferings. Not for an hour did his child leave his side. Even when the vacations brought Clement home again, she only permitted herself to talk to him during his short visits to the sickroom.

She grew ever more firm, ever more self-denying. She complained to no one, and would have required the help of none had her blindness permitted her to do all herself. And thus her misfortune, which had tutored her soul, accustomed her also to household duties, neglected by many a seeing one. She kept the strictest order over all things of which she had the care, and no amount of cleanliness could satisfy her, as she was unable to judge by the eye when the least speck of dust was removed. The tears sprang into Clement's eyes when he saw her busied washing her crippled father, or combing out his thin locks. She had grown pale in the close air of the sick-room; but her brown eyes had a deeper light from that very cause, and in all her common household work, the true nobility of her whole being only became the more evident.

The old man died, his successor took possession of the cottage, and Mary found a welcome refuge in the rectory. Clement, who in the mean time had gone to a distant university, and who was unable to visit home twice a-year as formerly, was informed of all these changes by letters, which reached him but rarely, and were answered irregularly. Now and then his letters contained a note for Mary, in which he expressed himself condescendingly and jestingly, so unlike his old self, and addressed her as if she were still a child, so that his mother shook her head and said nothing of it before his father. Mary had these strange letters carefully read to her, begged them, and preserved them.

After her father's death she received a short excited letter from him, in which he neither endeavoured to comfort her nor said a word showing a participation with her sorrow, only earnest entreaties to take care of her health, and to be quiet, and to let him know exactly how she was. This was in winter, and this letter the last to Mary. They expected a visit from him at Easter. He remained away, and wrote that he could not resist the opportunity of accompanying a celebrated professor on a botanical tour. His father was satisfied, and Mary succeeded at last in calming the mother's disappointment.

He arrived unannounced at Whitsuntide on foot, untired by a long march since daybreak, with healthy cheeks, and he was a full-grown man. So he entered the quiet house, in which his mother was sitting alone, for it was the Saturday evening before the feast-day. With a cry of joy the startled woman clasped him round the neck. "So you," she cried, as she loosened herself from his arms, and took a step backwards to measure the long absent one with the full gaze of love, "So you have returned to us once again, unkind, forgetful one. You still remember the way to your father and mother. God be praised! I thought that you had made up your mind never to return till you were a professor, and then perhaps my poor old eyes might never have rejoiced in the sight of you again here below. But I will not scold you. You are faithful. You are the old Clement. And you will give me such a Whitsun feast as I have not had for many a day, to me and your father, and to us all.

"Mother," he said, "how happy I am to be here once again! I could not bear at last to remain longer away. I do not know how it happened, I made no resolution beforehand. I felt that I must get home. One bright morning, instead of going to lecture, I walked through the town-gates, and strode away as if I fled from sin. I accomplished such journeys as I had never made before, good as I used to be on foot. Where is my father? where is Mary?"

"Don't you hear him." said the mother, "your father is above in his study." They heard the firm step of the old man as he paced to and fro above them. "All is as it used to be," continued the mother. "That has been his Saturday's walk for the twenty years that I have known him. And Mary is out in the field with our people. I have sent her out because she will not let me do anything. When she is at home she would make me sit in the corner with my hands in my lap, if she had her own way, and do everything herself. We have some new servants now, and I like her to look over them until they have got used to her. How astonished she will be to find you here! But come, I will bring you to your father, just to let him see you, and it will soon be dinner time. Come, he will not be angry at your disturbing him."

She led her son, stepping lightly before him, but still holding his hand in hers, up the stairs. Gently she opened the door, beckoned to Clement, and stepping backwards herself, pushed him in. "There he is," she cried; "at last you have him." The old man started as out of deep thought. "Who?" he asked, almost impatiently. Then he looked in his son's face, brightly lighted by a gleam of sun. "Clement," he cried, between astonishment and joy, "you here?" "I longed for home," said the son, and pressed the proffered hand warmly. "I shall stay here for the feast, father, if you have room for me, now that Mary is under your roof." "How can you talk so," interrupted his mother, quickly; "if I had seven sons I could find place for them all. But I will leave you to your father. I must go to the kitchen and the garden, they will have spoilt you in the town, you must be content for love's sake." She was already gone, as the father and son stood silently opposite each other; "I have disturbed you," said Clement, at last; "you were writing your sermon; tell me if I shall go." "You only disturb one who has disturbed himself. Since this morning have I paced to and fro, thinking on my text, but grace was not with me, and the grain hath not brought forth. I have felt strangely; a gloom is over me that I cannot shake off." He went to the little window that looked out towards the church, the way to which lay through the churchyard. There it glowed tranquil with its flowers and glittering crosses in the midday sun. "Come here, Clement," said the old man, gently; "place yourself by me. Do you see that grave to the left, with primroses and monthly roses? You have never seen that one before. Do you know who sleeps there? My good, true friend, the father of our Mary!" He left the window at which his son, deeply struck, remained standing. He paced again to and fro through the chamber, and in the silence they could hear the sand crackle under his steady tread. "Aye!" said the old man, with a deep sigh, "no one knew him as I knew him; no one gained so much from him, no one lost so much with him as I did. What knew he of the world and its wisdom; that is but folly before God. What he knew was all revealed to him from within, and from the Holy Book, and from sorrow. He has become blessed, because he was blessed."

After a pause he spoke again: "Whom have I now to shame when I am proud of heart, and save me when my faith wavers; and to decide the thoughts that accuse and excuse me? The world grows too wise for me! What I hear I understand not, and what I read my soul will not understand, for it is grief to it! How many rise up and think that they speak with tongues? and, behold! it is but lip-work! And the mockers hear it and rejoice therein. Mine old friend, would I were where thou art."

Clement turned. He had never before heard his father talk of the sorrows of his own soul. He went to him and sought for words of consolation. "Cease, my son," said the old man, checking him, "What can you give me, that Heaven could not have given me better? See, it was shortly after his death, I slept above here. The night awoke me with its storm and rain; I felt sad, even to death; then he appeared to me--a light shone about him--he was in his garments as when he lived--he spoke not, but stood at the foot of my bed, and looked calmly down upon me. At first, it oppressed me sorely! I was not enough grown in grace to look on the face of a glorified being. The next day I felt the peace that it had left behind it. From that time it came not again until last night. I had been reading a book in the evening, blasphemous against God and God's word; I had gone to my bed in anger--then it was that, after midnight, I again started suddenly from my sleep, and he stood before me--dressed as at the first time, but with the Bible in his hand, open, and written with letters of gold. He pointed to a passage with his finger, but there came a gleam from out the leaves, so that I gazed on it in vain, and for the fullness of the light could read never a word! I drew myself nearer to him, half rising up; he stood--pity and love in his face, which changed to grief as I strove to read and could not. Then the tears sprang to my eyes--from the brightness, they grew dark---and he vanished softly away, and left me weeping."

The old man had gone again to the window, and Clement saw a strong shudder pass over him. "Father!" he cried, and seized his nerveless hand--it was damp and cold; "Father, you alarm me! You should send for the physician."

"To the physician!" cried the old man, almost angrily, and stretched himself up in every limb, "I am well. Therein it lies. My soul longs and strives for death, and my body selfishly withstands it!"

"These dreams, father, agitate you."

"Dreams! I tell you that I was awake, as I am at this moment."

"I do not doubt, father, that you were awake; but so much the more does this severe attack, which pursues you with visions even when you are awake, alarm me. See! even now you are quite overcome by the mere recollection, and your pulse rises. I know, little of a doctor as I am, that you had fever last night and are under its influence now."

"And you think that you know as much as that poor worm!" cried the old man. "Oh, the marvellous wisdom! Oh, the gracious science! But what right have I to complain? Do I not deserve punishment for blurting out God's secrets, and making my full heart a mark for the scorner? Is this the fruit of your learning? Do you expect to gather figs from this bramble? But I know you well--you miserable ones, who make new gods for the people, and in your hearts worship yourselves alone--your days are numbered."

He went towards the door; his bare forehead was flushed. He did not look towards Clement, who stood gazing on the floor; suddenly he felt his father's hand on his shoulder.

"Tell me openly, my son, are you as far gone already as those whose ravings I have read of with shuddering? Do you already hold, with those sleek materialists, that the miracle is ridiculous, and the spirit but a tale told from one to another, and to which man listens? Has neither thy youth, nor the seeds of thankfulness God sowed in your heart, been able to choke those weeds? Answer me, Clement!"

"Father," said the young man, after some consideration, "how shall I answer you this thing? I have dedicated my whole life to the consideration of this question. I have heard it decided in different ways, by men whose opinions I revere. Amongst my dearest friends are some who think what you condemn. I hear and learn and do not venture as yet to decide."

"He who is not for me is against me, saith the Lord."

"How can I be against Him? How can I be against the Spirit? Who ventures to ignore the spiritual, even though he binds it to the material? Do not its miracles remain what they were, even though they may be the result of natural causes? Is it a disgrace to a noble statue that it is hewn out of stone?"

"You speak like them all; so they intoxicate you with dark similes, so they deafen you with high sounding words, that you may not hear the still small voice within you; and you have come to keep Whitsuntide holy with us?"

"I came because I loved you."

There was silence between them. Several times the old man opened his mouth as if about to speak, and then pressed his lips firmly together again. They heard Mary's voice below in the house, and Clement stepped, listening, back from the window, at which he had been standing sorrowfully. "It is Mary," said the old man; "have you forgotten her too? Did the recollection of your childhood's playmate never pass before your soul, when your blasphemous companions endeavoured to destroy your pure, godly childishness of heart with their miserable sneers? Did she never remind you of the wonders the spirit can perform--even when it is deprived of sense--alone, out of itself. I should say of God, in a humble heart, which is rich in faith?"

Clement repressed the answer which rose ready to his lips. They heard the light step of the blind girl on the stairs. The door opened, and with flushing cheek Mary stood on the threshold; "Clement," she cried, fixing the bright brown eyes on the spot where he really stood. He approached her and took the hand that waited for his. "Oh! what pleasure you have given your parents! Welcome, welcome! How quiet you are!" she added.

"Dearest Mary, yes, I am here once again. I was obliged to come to see you all. How well you look, and you have grown so tall."

"I have gained a fresh life since the spring. The winter was heavy for me. I am so happy with your father and mother, Clement! Good day, dearest father." she added, "we went out so early that I could not press your hand;" she took it now. "Go below my child;" said the old man, "Clement will go with you--you can show him your garden. There is yet a little time before dinner. Think on my words, Clement."

The young people went. "What is the matter with the father?" asked Mary, when they were below. "His voice sounded strangely, and yours too. Was he angry with you?"

"I found him excited. He seems ill. Has he not complained of anything?"

"Not to me; but he has been restless, and sometimes silent for hours together. It struck my mother, too. Has he been harsh towards you?"

"We had a discussion about serious things; he asked me, and I could not deny my opinions."

The girl became thoughtful; not until they reached the open air did her face brighten. "Is it not beautiful here?" she asked, spreading out her hands.

"I really did not recognize it again," he answered. "What a wonderful place you have made out of the little barren spot! Ever since I can remember there were only a few fruit trees, and mallows and alders; and now it is full of roses!"

"Yes," she said. "Your mother used not to care about the garden then, and now she delights in it The sacristan's son, who has learned gardening in the town, gave me the first rose bush, and planted it himself; then we added others and now it is quite beautiful. But the finest are not in flower yet."

"And you take care of them yourself?"

"You are astonished at it, because I cannot see," she said gaily; "but I understand what is good for plants. I can tell by the scent when one is fading, or going out of flower, or wants watering; they always tell me. But, indeed, I cannot gather you a flower; for they prick my fingers."

"I will do it for you," he said, and broke off a spray from one of the monthly roses. She took it "You have gathered so many buds with it!" she said. "I will keep one for myself, and place it in water. Take the blooming one again for yourself."

They wandered along the trim paths till the mother called them to table. Clement was reserved before his father; but Mary, usually so shy at taking part in the conversation, had to-day a hundred things to tell and to ask about. Even the old man gradually lost the impression of his first conversation with his son, and the old trusting feeling soon regained its place between them again.

But during the next day it was impossible to avoid fresh causes of dissention. The old man wished to be enlightened on the state of theology at the University, and the conversation soon wandered to more general subjects. The more Clement tried to avoid disagreeable points, the more vehemently the old man pressed him. Many an anxious involuntary, glance from his mother sustained him, indeed, in his determination to avoid definite explanations; but when he parried a question, or answered with an unmeaning word, the enforced silence wrung his very heart. Mary managed, even, to revive the old tone again for a time; but he saw that she too suffered, and avoided her when he met her alone, for he knew that she would have asked him, and felt that from her he could conceal nothing. A shadow seemed to pass over him when he came into her presence. Was it the recollection of that childish promise to which he had been so untrue? Was it the belief that in the difference of opinion which had estranged him from his parents, she ranged herself silently on their side? And yet he felt a yearning towards her which grew ever more irresistible--a longing which he could not ignore, and which he struggled against fiercely; for he was full of his science and of his prospects, and avoided, with the selfishness of fancied inward strength, all that might clog his onward way.

"I will be a traveller,--a foot traveller." he often said to himself. "I must carry a light bundle!" It made him heavy at heart when he contemplated the possibility of his being chained to a wife, who would demand a part of his being for herself. And a blind wife! One that he must always fear to leave for a moment! Here in the village, where all went on its simple way, and to which she had been accustomed since her childhood, here she was protected from all the confusing accidents which she could not fail to encounter in the town. So he persuaded himself that he should do her an injustice if he married her: whether he grieved her or not by his determination, was a point that he avoided considering.

He expressed himself still more openly when he departed. On the last day, when he had embraced his parents, and had been told that Mary was in the garden, he left a farewell for her, and with beating heart went down the village street, and then crossed, sideways, over the fields towards the forest. The garden opened into the fields too, and his nearest way would have been through a little wicket-gate. He made a wide détour. But when he reached the fields, he was unable to follow the narrow path through the springing corn without casting one glance round; so he stood still in the mild sunshine, and looked back over the huts and the houses. Behind the hedge which surrounded his father's garden, he saw the slender figure of the blind girl. Her face was turned towards him, but she dreamed not that he was so near her. Hot and hasty sprang the tears to his eyes; but he repressed them with a powerful effort. Then he sprang like a madman over the ditches and paths back to the hedge. She started. "Farewell, Mary!" he said, with a clear voice, "I am going away again, perhaps for a year!" He passed his trembling hand over her forehead and temples.

"Farewell! You are going?" she said. "One thing I beg of you,--write oftener to your parents; your mother longs for it so; and send me a greeting, too, sometimes."

"Yes;" he answered, absently. Then he departed.

"Clement!" she cried, once again, after he had left her. He heard her, but did not look round. "It is well that he did not hear me," she said gently to herself. "And what had I to say to him?"

CHAPTER VI.

From that day the son never remained long at his father's house. Each time he came he found his father harsher and more impatient--his mother ever with the same love, but more reserved towards him--Mary, tranquil, but silent when the men spoke; she also showed herself but seldom.

On a bright day late in autumn, we find Clement once more in the room in which, as a boy, he had passed the time devoted to his cure. One of his friends and fellow-students had accompanied him; they had both passed the usual time at the University, and they were just returned from a long journey, in the course of which Wolf had been unwell, and wished to recruit himself in the quiet of the village. Clement was obliged to acquiesce, although, amongst all his friends, this was the very one he thought most unlikely to suit his father. He managed, however, to fall into the ways of thinking of the old people with unexpected tact and dexterity, and particularly won the mother's heart by the lively interest he pretended to take in all household matters; he was also able to give her many little bits of advice, and relieved a complaint under which she laboured by some simple remedy; for he had prepared himself to succeed an old uncle who was an apothecary, a profession for which his inclinations and acquirements really unfitted him; yet he was of an easy disposition and delighted to be quiet and to enjoy himself from time to time. He had never had much real feeling in common with Clement, and so at his first step into the rectory he felt himself in an utterly strange atmosphere, and would certainly have seized the smallest excuse for leaving a circle which constrained and wearied him, had not the blind girl struck him, at the first glance, as a remarkable problem to be solved. It is true she avoided him as much as she could. The first time he took her hand she withdrew it from his with an inexpressible disquietude, and quite lost her self-command, yet he hung about her for hours at a time, watched her way of managing affairs, and examined with a gay recklessness, which it was impossible to be angry with, the means by which she kept up a communication with the outer world, and studied the way in which the senses she had preserved, made up for the one she had lost; he could not understand why Clement thought so little of her. He, however, avoided meeting her more than ever, and particularly when he found her in Wolf's company; then he grew pale and turned away, and the villagers often met him in lonely forest paths, seemingly lost in gloomy reveries.

He was returning one evening from a melancholy distant wandering, and had just passed from the wood into the corn-fields, when he met Wolf advancing towards him. Wolf was more excited than usual. After a long visit to Mary, who had interested him even more than ever, he had gone to the little village inn, and had drunk so much of the country wine, that he took a fancy to wander about the fields in the cool of the evening to refresh himself.

"You will not get rid of me so soon!" he cried to Clement. "I must study your little blind witch a little more first; she is cleverer than a dozen women in the town, who only use their eyes to ogle God's man; and now she keeps me in order; it is really marvellous!"

"So much the better for you if she tames you a little." said Clement, sharply.

"Tame! that she will never make me! when I look at her, and her graceful figure and beautiful face, faith, it is not to grow tamer! Don't believe that I would do her any harm; but do you know that I sometimes think that if she did ever love any one, it would be a wonderful love; one like her, who sees not, only feels, and such feeling, so delicate and strong and charming, such as one never can find elsewhere; he will be a happy man round whose neck she throws her arms!"

"You would do better to keep your thoughts to yourself."

"Why? whom do they harm? and whom should I injure if I were to make her, at least, a little in love with me, just to see how the nerves will extricate themselves out of the difficulty? so much of the inner fire is usually cooled by the eyes--but here--

"Beware how you try experiments upon her!" Clement burst out. "I tell you solemnly, that for the future, I will neither hear nor see aught of this--so beware!"

Wolf cast a keen side-long glance at him, seized his arm, and said laughing, "I really believe that you are in love with the girl and want to keep the experiment for yourself. How long have you grown so particular? you used to listen readily enough when I said what I thought of women."

"I am not your teacher! What have I to do with your foul thoughts? But I think that I have a right to prevent your sullying one with them who is so dear to me, and who is a thousand times too pure to breathe the same air with you."

"Oho! oho!" said Wolf, carelessly. "Too good! too good! you are a fine fellow, Clement! a very fine fellow! out of my sunshine, my dear boy."

He gave him a slight blow and turned away. Clement stood still; his cheeks grew suddenly pale. "You shall explain what you mean by these words," he said sternly.

"Not such a fool! ask others if you want to know. You will soon find one who has a greater fancy to preach to deaf ears than I have."

"What do you mean? Who are the others? Who dares to speak ill of her? Who?"

He held Wolf with a hand of iron. "Fool!" growled Wolf, angrily; "you spoil my walk with your tedious cross-questionings. Let me go free!"

"Not from this place do you move till you have given me an explanation;" said Clement, wild with rage.

"Indeed! Go and settle it with the sacristan's son if you happen to be jealous; poor devil! to go on with him till he was ready to jump out of his skin, and then to give him his marching orders. Pah! is that honourable? He complained to me, and I consoled him. She is just like other women, I told him, a coquette. Now she is trying it on upon me, but we know how to manage matters, and are not going to let our mouths be shut, and have other good fellows fall into the same snare."

"Retract your words!" shouted Clement, almost beside himself, shaking Wolf violently by the arm.

"Why? It is true, and I can prove it. Go--you are a child!"

"And you--are a scoundrel!"

"Oho! now it is your turn to eat your words."

"I retract not a syllable!"

"Then you know the consequences. You shall hear from me as soon as I get to town."

Therewith he turned coolly away from him and went towards the village. Clement stood for a time rooted to the spot. "Miserable wretch!" burst from his lips. His bosom laboured violently--a bitter agony nested within it. He threw himself upon the ground amongst the corn, and lay long, recalling a thousand times over each word which had so terribly moved him.

When he returned to the house late in the evening, he found, contrary to his expectation, that the family were still together.

Wolf was not there. The old man paced with firm steps through the chamber; his mother and Mary sate with their work in their laps, contrary to the custom of the house at so late an hour. When Clement entered, his father paused in his walk, and turned his head gravely towards him.

"What had passed between you and your friend? He departed whilst we were in the fields, and has left but a scanty greeting behind him; when we returned home we found a messenger removing his luggage. Have you quarrelled? Why else should he have left this house so hastily?"

"We had a dispute. I am happy not to find him under this roof."

"And what did you quarrel about?"

"I cannot tell you, father. I would willingly have avoided it; but there are things which an honest man cannot hear spoken. I long knew that he was wild, and spared neither himself nor others; but I never saw him before as he was to-day."

The father looked steadily at his son, and asked in a low voice--

"And how will it be arranged?"

"As is the custom amongst men of honour," answered Clement, firmly.

"Do you know how Christians are accustomed to arrange quarrels?"

"I do know, but cannot do it. If he had insulted me, I could have forgiven him, and spared him his punishment; but he has slandered one who is dearer to me than myself."

"A woman, Clement?"

"Yes, a woman!"

"And you love this woman?"

"I love her!" said the young man, in a low voice.

"I thought that it was thus." cried the old man. "The town has destroyed you. You have become one of the children of this world, following after strange women, and swaggering for them, and making of them the false idols of your folly! But I tell you that, so long as I live, I will labour to bring you back to the Lord, and will shatter your idols! Has God wrought a miracle in you that you should deny him? Aye, it were better that you sate still in darkness, and that the door had for ever remained shut through which the spirit of lies has crept into your heart!"

The young man restrained himself with difficulty. "Who has given you the right, father," he cried at last, "who has given you the right of accusing me of ignoble inclinations? Because I must do what must be done in this world to restrain the insolence of the base, am I therefore base? There are different ways of fighting against the spirit of evil. Yours is the way of peace, because you have to deal with men in the aggregate. I stand opposed to a single man, and know what I have to do."

"Thou canst not change him," the old man cried angrily: "wilt thou tread God's ordinances under thy feet? He is no son of mine who raises his hand against his brother. I forbid the meeting in the strength of my priestly and paternal power. Beware how you brave it."

"So you cast me from your house," said Clement gloomily. The mother, who had burst into tears, arose, and rushed towards her son. "Mother," he said sternly, "I am a man, and may not be false to myself." He approached the door, and glanced over towards Mary, who sought him sorrowfully with her great blind eyes. His mother followed him; her sobs choked her voice. "Do not retain him, wife," cried the old man; "he is no longer a child of ours if he be not a child of God. Let him go whither he will; he is dead to us."

Mary heard the door shut, and the mother fall to the ground with a cry from her inmost mother's heart. Then the palsied feeling which had kept her seated went from her. She arose, went to the door, and with a powerful effort bore the fainting woman to her bed. The old man stood by the window and spoke not a word; his clasped hands trembled violently.

A quarter of an hour later, some one knocked at the door of Clement's room. He opened it, and Mary stood before him. The room was in confusion. She struck her foot against his travelling trunk, and said sorrowfully, "What are you going to do, Clement?" Then his rigid grief gave way; he seized her hands, and pressed his eyes, in which the hot tears stood, against them. "I must do it," he said; "I have long felt that I have lost his love; perhaps he will feel, when I am far away from him, that I have never ceased to be his son."

She raised him up. "Do not weep so, or I shall never have the strength to utter what I must say. Your mother would say it, did your father not forbid her. The sound of his voice told me how hard it was for him to be so stern; but thus he will remain. I know him well. He believes that his sternness is a duty to God, to make him offer up his own heart as a sacrifice."

"And do you think that it is required of him?"

"No, Clement! I know but little of the world, and know not the nature of the laws which force men of honour to fight. But I know you well enough to know that the mere opinion of the world would never prevent your considering honestly what is right and what is wrong--even in this case. You may owe it to the world, and to the woman you love;--but still, you owe more to your parents than to either. I know not the girl they have slandered, and may not be able quite to understand the depth of the pain it must give you not to do all for her.--Do not interrupt me. Do not think that I have any fear that for her sake you might withdraw from me those last scanty remains of friendship these last years of separation have spared me.--I give you up utterly to her, if she but makes you happy.--But you have no right to do, even for her sake, what you contemplate doing, even were she a thousand times dearer to you than father or mother. You have no right to leave your father's house in anger, and so close the door for ever on yourself. Your father is old, and will take his opinions to the grave with him. He would have had to sacrifice the essence and substance of his whole life if he had given way. You sacrifice to him the passing respect that you may possess in the eyes of strangers. For if the girl you love so can desert you because you refuse to bring down your father's gray hairs in sorrow to the grave, she has never, never been worthy of you"--

Her voice failed her. He had thrown himself on a chair, and groaned bitterly. She stood ever near the door, and waited for his answer. Across her brow lay a strange anxious expression, as if she listened even to him with her very eyes. Suddenly he sprang up, laid his hands upon her shoulders, and cried, "It was for thee that I would have done it, and for thy sake alone will conquer my own heart!" Then he rushed past her, and down the narrow stairs.

She remained above. His last words had quivered in her very soul, and a stream of blissful thoughts swept through her fearful, half-incredulous heart. She seated herself trembling on the travelling-trunk. "For thee! For thee!" still rang in her ears. She almost feared his return. If he should have meant differently?--and how was it possible that he should not mean differently? What was she to him?

At last she heard him returning--her agitation gained on her; she arose, and moved towards the door. He entered, clasped her in his arms, and told her all!

"It is I who am blind," he cried; "you are the seeing one--the prophetess! What were I now without thy light? Lost for all eternity! driven from all the hearts I love through mine own miserable blindness! And now--now--all again mine--aye, and more than I knew of--more than I dared to hope for!"

She hung mute and agitated upon his neck; all her long-suppressed love burst forth, and glowed in her kisses, despising the tepid rendering of mere words.

The day dawned upon their happiness.

Now he learned, too, what she had so long kept silent, and what this same room had seen, in which they now, for ever irrevocably united, pressed each other's hands, and parted in the light of the breaking day.

In the course of the day a letter arrived from Wolf, dated the night before, from the next village. "Clement need not trouble himself," he wrote. "He retracted all he had said; he knew best that it was all an idle lie; anger and wine had put it into his head. He had really thought, when he saw him so cold about it, that it would only have cost him a word to win the girl; and when he saw that Clement was in earnest, he had slandered what he felt was for ever beyond his reach. He should not think him worse than he was, and excuse him to the girl and his parents, and not quite give him up for ever."

When Clement read these lines to Mary, she said, with some emotion, "I only pity him. I never felt comfortable when he was near me, and how much he might have spared both us and himself! But I can think of him calmly now. How much have I to thank him for!"

[MARION.]

When holy Saint Louis wore the crown of France, the good old town of Arras was just six hundred years younger than it is now. That she was a thousand times merrier she had to thank, not her youth alone, but, before even that, the noble guild of poets who resided within her walls, and who, by their ballads and miracle-plays, and pleasant rhyming romances, spread her fame over all fair France.

Now it happened one early spring about the time, that in a garden in Arras, behind the house of one of these valiant singers, a young woman was busied tying up vines to their trellises. She was beautifully formed, of that pleasant roundness that usually indicates a cheerful soul within, and she had a sweet, gentle face. Her calm dark eyes swept now and then over the garden as if they knew neither joy nor sorrow; but her hands were active and dreamed not. After the fashion of well-to-do townswomen, she wore her fair hair adorned with many an artful ribbon ornament, and her gown was tucked up for work, and, perhaps, possibly also, for the sake of her darling little feet.

As the charming vision wandered in her tranquil activity still further into the garden, there appeared at the door of the house which opened into it, a man, who formed both in face and manner a most remarkable contrast to her. He was of middle size, with a keen eye, and irregular features. His black cloak indifferently concealed his high left shoulder, and his legs seemed to have been made after very different patterns. But still his figure, however incongruous its parts might seem, was brought into a striking unison by the boldness and vivacity of his carriage; and about his mouth there played an expression that must have made him dangerous in sarcasm, or very charming in a more kindly humour.

He gazed for a while at the fair young gardener, and seemed to enjoy her beauty. He shook his head irresolutely. At last he plucked the barrel-cap with the green cock's-feather deeper over his forehead, and strode towards her.

The fair woman looked round, her cheek coloured slightly, and her eyes brightened. She let her hands fall by her side, and gazed silently at him as he neared her.

"Good-day, Marion!" said the man, almost roughly. "Is there any one beside yourself in the garden?"

"No, Adam."

"It is well--I wish to speak with you. You are a good wife, Marion, and do your duty; but yet I must tell you that I cannot endure you any longer!"

The bright cheeks grew pale as death; but she was silent and looked steadily before her.

"No!" continued Adam; "longer I cannot bear it! You are very lovely, Marion, and that I know now, four weeks after our wedding, better than I did when I courted you, but--you are so wearisome, Marion! I will not say that you are absolutely without sense; but the Holy Virgin only knows whether it is asleep, or waiting in good hope of some mighty thought, when it is to appear. I have waited long for it, and now my patience is at an end. Have you once, only once, since we have been man and wife chattered amusingly, or made one single joke? or have my brightest strokes of wit ever found more favour from you than half a smile? Have you not ever gone calmly on your way like a statue? What is the use of my now and then making the discovery that you really are flesh and blood, when from morning to night I am obliged to laugh at my own jokes by myself, and so applaud my own rhymes with my own hands. Fool that I was! I should have thought of it sooner--when I fell in love with you! Now, I thought, she will begin to thaw! Confess yourself--have we not wearied each other as thoroughly as any wedded pair in Christendom?"

The young wife remained obstinately silent, but her eyes filled with heavy drops. Adam broke a young twig hastily from the tree, and continued--

"I will not say that other women are, in the long-run, better, or more amusing--I do not say so; and I have at least to thank you for showing me so early that I have made a great mistake in taking a wife. But, for the third time--I can stand it no longer! Am I to mope and fritter away my young life in this hole, merely because I had the luck to think you pretty? And am I never to set foot in Paris, at the king's court, in the chambers of princes, where my talent would bring me honour and distinction?--and never set a foot in the houses of learned doctors of the University, where there are more clever things said in one hour than you produce in a year? and all this because you are a pretty woman--for you are one--and, by chance, my proper wife! May the devil bake me into a pancake if I stand it!"

He paced up and down a few times, gesticulating vehemently, glanced sideways at his wife, and began again.

"Are you not a standing proof that I am right? Why don't you cry, as any other ordinary woman would do, and fall upon my neck and beseech me to remain, and say that I am your darling Adam--your only love--your handsome Adam, though, by-the-bye, I am not handsome, and promise everything, whether you can perform it or not? There you stand, and don't know how to help yourself! Am I to give up my art and my young years for the pleasure of staring at you? And supposing we should have children, and they take after you! Do you expect that I shall be able to compose the stupidest birthday ode, with six or seven boys and girls, all as lovely as pictures, and as stupid, sitting round me and staring at me? But we will not part in enmity; and so I tell you, in all love and friendship, that you can no longer be my wife! I will away to Paris as soon as I can raise money enough for the journey; you can return to your parents, or, if you like, you can go to my old uncle, who is so fond of you; he will take good care of you--you shall want for nothing; and if you should have a child, I will keep it as my own--but, remain with you I cannot, Marion! By my soul's salvation! a poet I am, and a poet I will remain--and weariness is poison to the merrie art! Now I am going to my uncle--be a good girl, and let us part friends."

He stretched out his hand towards her, but she saw it not for tears. He thought it needless on that account to wait and see whether she would behave as he had told her other women would do under the circumstances; he turned hastily towards the door and disappeared into the house.

An hour after the wedded pair had thus parted "in friendship," the door of a stately house, in which lived the rich senator, Adam's uncle, was thrown open, and Adam stepped hastily out, in high excitement. He hurried onwards without regarding which way he took, and now and then scraps of his internal conversation with himself burst forth, as he clenched his fist or twisted his fingers in his long round-cut hair.

"The old shark!" he growled. "And yet he had got rags of virtuous poverty to cover the nakedness of his avarice! What is it to him if I and my wife choose to agree to a friendly separation? I wish he would take her himself, if it were not a pity for her, pretty young thing! Truly, whether I moulder here or not touches not his money-bags; but, to travel and to see the world, and gain wisdom--ay! that pinches Master Money-bags sore! Pah! because he gave me the cottage, and arranged my household, am I to freeze in Arras, and blunder about with those rogues of balladmakers, and hide my light under a bushel? If I am obliged to travel like a mountebank, and train dogs and apes to get to Paris, I'll do it! I'll show the old gold-scratcher that Adam de la Halle is no petticoat knight, but knows how to follow his own way."

And this same way of his own carried him this time to the Three Golden Lilies, the best tavern in the good old town of Arras. There were but few guests in the drinking-room at this hour. Adam seated himself in a corner, and did not look up until the host, bringing him wine, greeted him respectfully,

"You come as if called for, Master Adam," said mine host of the Lilies. "There is one of my guests, see you--the man sitting yonder by the stove and looking towards you. Well, a week ago he brought a troop of players into the town, to play the great passion-piece at Easter, in the cathedral The reverend gentlemen there sent for them; and now it wants fourteen days to the time, and they are all loitering about idle and eating their pay before they get it; and their director lodges with me, and drinks stoutly on the score. 'Sir,' I said to him just before you came in, 'sir,' said I, 'if you could manage to scrape together a little money by your art in the mean time, it would do both you and me good.'--'Ay!' said he, 'if we had only a decent piece, a mystery, or a miracle; for I have left my whole bundle of plays behind at Cambria, all except the passion-piece.'--'Eh, sir!' said I. 'Here with us the country is alive with gay minstrels, troubadours, and ballad-singers and there is Master Adam de la Halle, who is worth them all put together.'--'By St. Nicholas,' said my man, 'I would give him half the receipts if he would write me a piece, and it succeeded'--and just at that moment you came through the door, and so he sent me to ask you."

Adam rose up, swallowed his wine hastily, and then went straight to the leader of the strollers, who sprang from his seat respectfully, and bowed low. They conversed for a short time, and then shook hands. "So be it," said Adam; "within eight days your people shall play. And the day after I shall receive my money, and now our Lady preserve you. I will go and set about your affair at once." So he went, and after his fashion, he growled something between his teeth, that sounded very much like "I'll make them remember me."

Eight days had passed away, and Marion sat in her chamber one afternoon, with eyes red with weeping, and cheeks pale with sorrow, so intently engaged turning over old letters which she had in her lap that she did not hear the door open, and one of her old playmates enter. When her friend called her by name, she sprang up startled. "Good day, Perette," she said; "what brings you here?" "or rather, what keeps you here?" answered the girl, saucily; "you sit and you cry, and you never think of going near the Three Lilies, where your husband's new piece is to be acted by the strange players. What a wife you are! I should be the first to go if I had a husband who could charm half the town into the courtyard of an old inn. What have you got there? Have you been studying all the old songs your Adam made on you? I should think that you ought to have them all at your fingers' ends now like your rosary." The poor wife began to weep bitterly. "Don't you know then," she sobbed, "and is not the whole town of Arass talking about it--that he is going to Paris, and intends to leave me behind, and is never, never coming back again?" "Bah! nonsense," cried Perette, "what has put all that into your head?" "He said it to me himself, word for word; and since that time he has never eaten at home, and only returns very late at night, and sleeps below in the saloon." "Well, well, he has had his hands full of his new play, and then men are always fanciful, Marion, and must always be doing something to plague us; but, God be praised! all are not dead that do not laugh. Dry your eyes, be a sensible woman, and come with me to the play. What will your husband think of you if you don't even wish to see a play he has written himself?"

So half comforting, half scolding, she drew the sorrowing young wife out of her room to the Three Lilies.

There all was gay enough. A number of the townspeople were seated on benches in the spacious courtyard. The windows of the low buildings at the side had been chosen as boxes by the more distinguished of the burghers. And the stage was erected in a large barn at the end of the yard, the mighty doors having been removed for that purpose. Marion and Perette arrived at the moment of the exit of Dame Avaritia, who had spoken the prologue, and assured many rich burghers of the town of her further protection. Not a place was left free for our two fair sight-seers, either in the courtyard, or at the windows. But Perette was not to be daunted, and knowing the house, she made her way through a side building, and advanced with Marion up to the barn. Here they placed themselves behind the great linen cloths with which the stage had been fenced off, and peeped through a rent in the curtain at the play, unhindered by the actors, who, in their fantastic dresses, sought to pay their court to the two pretty women. Marion took not the slightest notice of them, and stood rooted to one spot. Perette exercised the sharpness of her little tongue on the player folk now and then, and, in common parlance, gave them quite as good, or perhaps better than they brought.

But Master Adam, little dreaming that his young wife was watching him, had, in the meantime, advanced from the other side in his own character and costume.

He began in smooth verses to bewail his sorrows. He wanted to go to Paris, and never a sou had he in his pockets, and his millionaire of an uncle had, just at this moment, been attacked by the most hopeless complaint in the world, an obstinate avarice, so that from him there was nothing to hope. To him entered a doctor, whom Adam consulted as to whether it was possible to cure avarice, for he could show him a splendid specimen of it, if he wished to try his hand. Whereupon the doctor broke forth into a learned dissertation on the different varieties of the disease, distinguishing those curable from those incurable; and in the case which Adam described, he had but little doubt that he could be of service, if he was only permitted to see the patient himself. Then a third personage advanced, so ridiculously like Adam's venerable uncle in figure and manner and dress, that the laughter of the spectators seemed never coming to an end. To this worthy gentleman the doctor advanced with great politeness, felt his pulse, and looked gravely at his tongue, asked about this and that, and then made some more pointed inquiries about specific symptoms of the miser fever, from which he understood he suffered. Upon which the old gentleman burst into a great rage, upbraided his rascally nephew soundly for accusing him of having such a scandalous complaint, and declared the grounds upon which he refused to assist him on his journey to Paris. The principal reason was, that Adam was only just married, and had already grown tired of his wife, who nevertheless was, as all Arras knew, a perfect model of beauty and virtue.

In ever-increasing irritation had poor Marion been an unsuspected participator in all this conversation--and who could blame a virtuous wife for feeling irritated--when all at once she saw her domestic sorrows made a butt for a laughing public. She took no heed of the polished verses and comical grimaces with which the conversation of the three actors was adorned, and which so delighted the audience. With a bitter anxiety, and forgetting all else, she now listened to the answer her husband was to give to her uncle. When, however, Adam drily explained to the audience that a pretty woman was not necessarily an amusing one, and that his Marion's mouth was better adapted for kisses than conversation, that nevertheless no one grew wiser by kissing, but, on the contrary, by witty conversation; and that he would present any one amongst them, who had ever heard his Marion give utterance to an observation at all bordering on the witty, the sum of two golden crowns; then the poor listener could no longer restrain herself. With one bound she was on the stage, and stood with glowing eyes and angry brow directly opposite to him who had so basely slandered her.

"Are you not ashamed, Adam?" she cried in the midst of his harangue; "are you not ashamed to speak thus of your own wedded wife before all the town? Oh, if you had ever loved me, only a little, a little, that speech would never have passed your lips! And now tell me, have I deserved it from you? Have I ever caused you one hour's grief? Have I not done everything to please you? And now will you speak ill of me before all Arras?"

So angry and heart-grieved, amidst tears and sobbings, scolded the poor beauty. The audience who took it all for part of the play, laughed at first, aye, and some amongst them were mischievous enough to enjoy their neighbour's domestic discomfort. When, however, they began to see that it was the veritable Marion herself, the worst of them lost their gaiety and stared astonished at the stage. But Adam, much as he was startled at first by this sudden apparition, quickly recovered himself, and cried loudly and undauntedly, "My good fellow-townsmen, this does not belong to our play; this woman fell suddenly in amongst us, and does not belong to our company at all. Let me entreat some of you to lead her away. You hear that she does not talk verse, like all the actors who have the honour of performing this most remarkable farce before your worthinesses!" Therewith, he took Marion gently by the hand, to lead her from the stage. But she shook herself free, and encouraged by the demand of some amount the spectators, that she should be permitted to remain, and fight for her own cause, cried, "Aye! and I will, I say too! and make you all the judges of whether I have not been badly played upon. It is true that I am naturally silent, but is it to be considered a fault, on my part, if I do what you men are always throwing in the teeth of us poor women, letting alone all useless chattering, and listening quietly to what my husband has to say?" "Marion is right." "Long live Marion! she shall speak again!" shouted the spectators, laughing, and waving her encouragement. "And," she continued, growing even more eloquent, "if I have no right to be here because I do not speak verses, I know enough and of the very best too! My husband, who slanders me now, wrote them on me himself before we were married; and you shall hear them that you may know how double-tongued he is, and what fair words he once had for my praise, although he now has only complaints."

Therewith she stepped to the edge of the stage and sang the following verses, with a voice that threatened to desert her--

"Cheeks as red and eyes as dancing,

Arms and necks like lilies glancing,

You may find in Arras town.

Hearts as soft and limbs as rounded,

Forms with every grace surrounded,

You may meet with, up and down!

But with wisdom no one's blest,

Like the maiden I love best!"

A shout of laughter answered this strophe; some began to sing the réfrain and others joined them. But a voice from the crowd asked, "But how can you prove, fair Marion, that this lady of whom he talks is not another than yourself?" "Listen again," cried Marion, "there is no doubt about it." Then she sang--

"Others may more sweetly sing,

Lighter through the dancers swing,

Never a straw I care!

Prattle half an hour free,

Marion's rosy lips to me,

That's a pleasure rare!

Prettier, wittier ne'er was known,

Than my Marion, darling one!"

This time the whole audience sang the réfrain with her, and then resounded loud cheerings for the songstress, who stood with the tears still in her eyes, frightened at her own boldness, but lovelier than ever on the stage. Adam sprang from the back of the scene and cried, "Silence, good burghers all! I too have a word to say." All were silent, and curious to know how he would manage to bring himself into grace again. He said, "There is not one amongst you who cannot perceive that my dear wife here has blamed me terribly, and managed to get all the laughter on her side; for that, I thank her from the very bottom of my soul: I tell you all truly that my heart quivered with joy at each word she spoke, and when, at last, she hit upon the charming idea of making my own words witness against me, I said quietly to myself, Master Adam, you are a rogue if you desert such a model of a wife, though it rained honours and doubloons in Paris! and so I come penitently hoping that my dear fellow-townsmen will intercede for me with my wife, that she may take her insolent, reckless husband back to her heart and love, and forget what his slanderous tongue has said of her."

As he said this with ah emotion, which no one had ever seen him under before, there was a deep silence in the court--Marion smiled at him with an assuring kindness--fell upon his neck, and said, "You dear, mischievous man." Then broke from all the windows and benches a universal shout of congratulation. But Adam, freeing himself from the arms of his wife, grasped her hand firmly, and cried, "I owe you the third song." it runs thus--

"Let those who will to Paris wander,

And time and gold for learning squander,

For me I mean at home to rest!

All the knowledge that's worth knowing

Lies, fresh springing, ever blowing,

In a gentle woman's breast.

Wiser woman ne'er was known

Than the one----I call mine own!"

We need hardly say how gaily all joined in the réfrain this time. Just, however, as they were all in full song, there arose a noise of contention before the house; certain people had kindly let Adam's uncle know that his nephew had introduced his honourable presentment on the stage, and the old gentlemen came, with a company of archers, firmly determined to make his irreverent nephew pay dearly for his indiscretion. The people were now busied in the house explaining to him the favourable turn things had taken, and when he heard of Adam's recantation and the renunciation of the Paris idea, he permitted himself to be pacified, became gracious and forgave the saucy poet, who approached humbly with Marion on his arm; and in order to strike a joyous blow against the accusation of avarice, he gave a grand banquet that very evening at the Three Lilies, where Marion was obliged to dance with all the great people of the town.

The play was quite spoilt for the good burghers of Arras; but we have, however, so much faith in their good heartedness, as to believe that the miracle, as performed by Marion, pleased them more than if, as was originally intended, the angel Gabriel and half a dozen of his body guard, had descended from heaven and kicked Dame Avaritia out of the country with due honour. It is possible that there might have been never a miser the less in Arras for it, and now, at least, there was one happy pair the more.

[LA RABBIATA.]

CHAPTER I.

The sun had not yet risen. Over Vesuvius lay a broad grey sweep of mist, which spread itself out towards Naples, and overshadowed the little towns along the coast. The sea was tranquil, but on the Marina, which is situate in a narrow inlet under the high Torrentine cliffs; fishermen and their wives were already busied, dragging in with stout ropes the net boats, which had been fishing at sea during the night. Others cleaned up their boats, shook out the sails, and brought oars and spars out of the great railed vaults, cut deep in the rock, in which they kept their tackle at night. No one was idle. For even the old people, who were no longer able to go to sea, ranged themselves amongst the long rows of those who drew the nets, and here and there there stood an old woman with her distaff on one of the flat roofs, or took care of the children, whilst her daughter helped her husband at his work.

"Look there, Rachella! there is our padre, Eurato," said an old woman, to a little thing of ten years old, who swung its little spindle by her side; "He has just stepped into the boat. Antonino is going to take him over to Capri. Maria Santissima! how sleepy the holy man looks still!" and therewith she waved her hand towards a kindly looking little priest, who had seated himself cautiously in a boat below her, having first carefully raised his black coat and spread it over the seat. The people on the shore paused in their work to see their padre start, who nodded and greeted them kindly right and left.

"Why must he go to Capri, grandmother?" asked the child. "Have the people over there got no priest of their own that they are obliged to borrow ours?"

"Do not be so silly," answered the old woman, "They have plenty of priests, and beautiful churches, and a hermit too--which we have not. But there is a noble signora there, who stopped once a long time here at Lorento, and was so ill that the padre was often obliged to carry her the Hoste, when she did not think that she should live through the night. Well, the Holy Virgin helped her, and she got strong and well again, and was able to bathe every day in the sea. When she went from here to go over to Capri, she left a pretty heap of ducats behind for the Church and the poor people, and said that she would not go until our padre promised to visit her over there, that she might confess to him, for it is wonderful how fond she is of him; and we may bless ourselves that we have a padre who has gifts like an archbishop, and who is asked after by all the great people. The Madonna be with him." And therewith she nodded down towards the boat which was just putting off.

"Shall we have fine weather, my son?" asked the little priest, looking thoughtfully towards Naples.

"The sun is not up yet," answered the young man; "It will soon scatter that bit of fog when it rises."

"So, let us start at once, and avoid the heat." Antonino was in the act of grasping the long oar, in order to push off the boat, when he suddenly checked himself, and looked up towards the steep path which led from the little town of Lorento, down towards the Marina.

A slender girlish form was visible above, tripping hastily over the rough stones, and waving a handkerchief She carried a small bundle under her arm, and was poorly enough dressed; yet she had an almost noble, though rather wild way of throwing her head back on her shoulders, and the black tresses which she wore twined round her forehead decked her like a coronet.

"What are we waiting for?" asked the little priest.

"There is some one coming down who wants to go to Capri. If you will permit it, padre, we shall not go the slower, for it is only a young girl, hardly eighteen."

Just as he spoke the girl appeared round the end of the wall which bordered the winding path. "Lauretta!" cried the padre, "what can she want in Capri?"

Antonino shrugged his shoulders. The girl approached with hasty steps, looking straight before her.

"Good day! La Rabbiata!" cried some of the young sailors. They might indeed have said more if the proximity of their padre had not kept them a little in order, for the short defiant manner with which the girl received their greetings seemed to irritate them vastly.

"Good day, Lauretta!" cried the padre, "how goes it with you? Do you want to go over to Capri with us?"

"If you will permit me, padre."

"You must ask Antonino there. He is the patron of the boat. Every one is master of his own, and God of us all."

"Here is a half Carolus," said Lauretta, without looking at the young boatman, "can I go over for it?"

"You may want it more than I;" murmured Antonino, and moved some baskets filled with oranges on one side to make room. He was going to sell them at Capri, for the rocky islet does not produce enough for its numerous visitors.

"I will not go with you for nothing." said the girl; and the dark eyebrows drew together.

"Come, my child." said the padre, "he is an honest young fellow, and does not want to get rich from your poverty; there--step in," and he reached her his hand, "and seat yourself near me. See there! He has spread his jacket for you that you may sit the softer. He was not half so thoughtful of me. But young blood! young blood! It is always so! They will take more care of one little girl, then of ten holy fathers."

"Well, well! you need not make any excuses, 'Tonino; it is God's law that like should cling to like."

In the mean time, Lauretta had slipped into the boat, and seated herself, first pushing the jacket on one side without saying a word. The young fisherman let it be, and muttered something between his teeth. Then he pushed stoutly against the beach, and the little bark flew lightly out into the bay.

"What have you got in your bundle?" asked the padre, as they swept over the sea, just beginning to be freckled with the first sunbeams.

"Thread, silk, and a little loaf, padre, I am going to sell the silk to a woman in Capri, who makes ribbons, and the thread to another."

"Did you spin it yourself?"

"Yes, padre."

"If I remember rightly, you have learned to weave ribbons too?"

"Yes, padre, but my mother is so much worse, that I cannot leave her for long at a time; and we are too poor to buy a loom."

"Much worse! Dear, dear, when I saw her at Easter, she was sitting up."

"The spring is always the worst time for her. Since we had the great storm and the earthquake, she has been obliged to keep her bed from pain."

"Don't weary of prayers and supplications to the Holy Virgin, my child,--she alone can help her. And be good and industrious, that your prayers may be heard."