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 TRAJAN: 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A SENTIMENTAL YOUNG MAN, 
 WITH SOME EPISODES IN THE COMEDY OF 
 MANY LIVES ERRORS. 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 HENRY F. KEENAN 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 CASSELL & COMPANY LIMITED 
 1885 
 
COPYRIGHT, 
 
 1885, 
 BY O. M. DUNHAM. 
 
 All Rzghts reserved- 
 
TO 
 
 MAJOR HENRY A. HUNTINGTON, 
 OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS. 
 
 In the works of the Queen Anne writers, whom you adore, and 
 whose convivial humanities you have done so much to rescue from 
 forgetfulness, the dedicatory epistle was not the least of the 
 author s thought. Twas meant as the quintessence of the odor 
 and color of the garden kindly incense of amity and admiration, 
 hinting to the world the originals of the virtues embalmed in the 
 text. If I hint this identification in your case, with whatever may be 
 found admirable in these pages, your own modesty may resent it, 
 but your friends will applaud ^the indiscretion of embalming some of 
 the traits which endear you to men of gentle mind. While I cannot 
 hope to equal the exquisite wit of the works you have so felicitously 
 commented, I can at least emulate their authors, in the hearty 
 loyalty with which I dedicate this first fruit of literary leisure to 
 you. I have long looked forward to the time when some work of 
 my head and heart should bear your name on the frontispage. It 
 is an amiable vanity, which I hope you will take in good part, and 
 though the pundits you revere put more wit in the ingratiating 
 epigraphs to their patrons, none subscribed their tribute with more 
 hearty affection and admiration than is implied in this long cher 
 ished homage of the friend of your youth. 
 
 H, F. K. 
 
 NEW YORK, Feb., 1885. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. PAGE. 
 
 I. VIA DOLOROSA .... i 
 
 II. BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS . 14 
 
 III. IN THE CAFE VOLTAIRE . . . * 28 
 
 IV. STATE SECRETS . . 34 
 V. "TRAJAN S WAY" . .46 
 
 VI. TRAJAN RENEWS HIS YOUTH ... 60 
 
 VII. THE HOUSE OF ARDEN . . . .75 
 
 VIII. THE CARNOTS . , 99 
 
 IX. THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES . .115 
 
 X. A FRIEND AT COURT . . . . 132 
 
 XI. AN^OCEAN EPISODE . . . .153 
 
 XII. THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST . 165 
 
 XIII. "EVERY DOOR is BARRED WITH GOLD" . 180 
 
 XIV. THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEENS . 194 
 XV. A CHATEAU AT CRE"CY . . . .207 
 
 XVI. THEO RESUMES THE COMEDY . . 221 
 
 XVII. THE WOLF IN THE FOLD . . . .240 
 
 XVIII. THE RAVINE OF REVECHE . . . 258 
 
 XIX. " HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD " . 280 
 
 XX. THE AMBER ELVES . 292 
 
 XXI. PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING . . .314 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 XXII. " To BE WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE DOTH 
 
 WORK LIKE MADNESS IN THE BRAIN," . 337 
 
 XXIII. AN ESSAY IN ^SOP . . 353 
 
 XXIV. TRAJAN GOES TO COURT . . 37 
 XXV. CESAR S FORTUNES . . . 3 8 5 
 
 XXVI. AN IMPERIAL VICTIM . . 46 
 
 XXVII. A TANGLED WEB . 4 21 
 
 XXVIII. A MISSION TO THE KING . . 43 1 
 
 XXIX. TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PAWN 447 
 
 XXX. A MASQUE OF CUPID . . .464 
 
 XXXI. JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND is SHORN 488 
 
 XXXII. LIKE A TALE THAT is TOLD . . 49 8 
 
 XXXIII. HORROR S HEAD . 5 ! 9 
 
 XXXI?. TRAJAN PLAYS A NEW ROLE . . . 53 6 
 
 XXXV. IN THE LION S MOUTH 57 l 
 
 XXXVI. THEO PLAYS HER LAST CARD . . . 5 8 9 
 
 XXXVII. IN LA ROQUETTE . . 6 9 
 
 XXXVIII. VIA ALLEGRO 6 33 
 
TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 VIA DOLOROSA. 
 
 WHEN this century, from which bearing in mind its 
 experience better things were expected, was at 
 three-score and ten, proving the truth of the adage that 
 there is no fool like an old fool, the events of which these 
 pages are the history came to pass a time, as you see, 
 within the memory of lads now turning their teens and 
 maids still deep in the plot of that old, old story, always 
 sweetly new ! The time was the twelve months between 
 May, 1870, and May, 1871 ; the place Paris ; the personages 
 whose fortunes you are to follow, Americans. The event 
 that linked their destinies coincident with the prologue of 
 a momentous drama, during whose action the world held its 
 breath. It was mid-afternoon on such a May day as is seen 
 only under Parisian skies. But the invitation of the sky 
 could not alone account for the multitudes thronging the 
 leafy park, the blooming parterres of the gardens and the 
 broad ways of the Champs Elysees. The Court was about to 
 set out for St. Cloud, and the pleasure-loving Parisians were 
 to be treated to a spectacle. Gorgeous lines of soldiery 
 formed in statuesque ranks along the pebbly walks and hot 
 asphalt ways facing the palace. Save for the waving 
 plumes, the glistening wall rested immobile and silent as 
 the granite sphinxes whose solemn eyes blinked sleepily 
 under the ardent sunshine. There was just the perception 
 
2 TRAJAN. 
 
 of a movement in the shining cuirasses as the swelling notes 
 of a cavalry bugle echoed and re-echoed in sonorous blasts 
 through the crowded aisles of the park and died away far 
 over the turrets of the palace. The refrain was caught up 
 and prolonged by the orchestras shaded in the vernal allees 
 of the gardens. The Imperial Guards, flaming in scarlet and 
 glittering casques, formed in serried ranks from the Rivoli 
 gates and the Place du Carrousel to the borders of the Seine. 
 Outriders in the magenta and gold of the line dashed in 
 excited movement along the graveled roadway?, adjusting 
 the obstacles for the Imperial advent. Squadrons of the 
 guards formed on each side of the wide way through which 
 the procession was to pass to the Champs Elysees. On a 
 signal from the trumpets, they divided, facing their horses 
 inward and waited immovable as the Egyptian figures at the 
 golden gates. A thin column of smoke curled upward from 
 the Arch of the Carrousel ; a loud crackling detonation of 
 artillery announced that Majesty was about to leave the 
 palace ; another that Majesty was in the vestibule, and the 
 long line of fire made by the red-breeched troopers moved 
 as with one impulse into an attitude of respectful attention. 
 From the middle porch of the Tuileries, as the guards 
 came to a salute, a short, stout figure, clad in a gentleman s 
 walking dress, appeared, and slowly descended the velvet- 
 carpeted steps. To the salutations of the soldiers and popu 
 lace he slightly raised his hat, and came downward with a 
 painful and halting step. The crowd in the rear broke into 
 a shout, " Vive V Empereur ! " Halting as the lackeys held 
 the door of the landau open, the Emperor half turned. A 
 lady, tall, slight and graceful, appeared in the group at the 
 doorway. She was speaking with animation to the cham 
 berlain, with her face to the multitude. Her eyes were 
 bright, large and of a purplish gray color full of life and 
 vivacity. Her hair, coiled in great masses over a shapely 
 head, shone like burnished copper as the sunbeams fell with 
 coruscating effect upon it. The mouth, long and partly open, 
 
VIA DOLOROSA. 3 
 
 displayed glistening white teeth, and lips, perhaps, a trifle 
 too vermilion for the lady s age. The heavy droop of the 
 eyelids gave a languorous cast to the otherwise energetic 
 physiognomy. She tripped lightly down the broad steps, a 
 sunshade in her right hand serving as a walking-cane, while 
 in her left she upheld with charming daintiness a robe of 
 silver-gray color. As the outlines of her figure became dis 
 tinct on the crimson carpet, a tumultuous cry, " Vive Vlm- 
 peratricc!" resounded far back in the shrubberies of the 
 garden. The lady bowed with gracious recognition, and 
 giving a hand to the Emperor, stepped into the landau. 
 
 At the same moment a graceful lad of fourteen or fifteen 
 years, mounted on a jet black pony, shot out from the 
 entrance to the Carrousel, and riding close to the carriage, 
 reined in suddenly, and taking off his hat, brought it down 
 to the saddle as he bent to the occupants. The mother 
 smiled fondly as her eye rested on the boy, whose face was 
 a striking counterpart of her own. " Vive Ic Prince Imperial ! " 
 acclaimed the crowd, and the Emperor, Empress and Prince 
 gravely bowed in response. The trumpets broke into another 
 long blast ; the postillions touched their horses Majesty was 
 e?t route the prince riding beside the Imperial carriage, the 
 troopers falling into groups of fours. 
 
 As the carriage emerged from the palace garden on the 
 banks of the Seine, you would have sworn the inscrutable 
 person lolling jadedly on the cushions was in some subtle 
 way akin to the solemn figures of the sphinxes, whose eyes 
 seemed to open wide as the master of France drove by. Had 
 they been asked, perhaps they would have solved the riddle 
 many men were pondering even then in what seemed the 
 apogee of Csesarism. Would they have told Caesar that he 
 should never again pass those fateful portals in state ? 
 
 The Parisians afterwards recalled the event as the Romans 
 apotheosized the sinister journey of the great Julius from 
 the tearful pleadings of Calpurnia to the base of Pompey s 
 statue. But there was nothing of the Ides of March in the 
 
4 TRAJAN. 
 
 Emperor s reception. The huzzahs of the multitude were 
 spontaneous and hearty. All hats flew off when the benig 
 nant smiles of the Empress supplemented the gracious incli 
 nations of Napoleon. As Eugenie carelessly examined the 
 acclaiming groups, her radiant smile changed unaccount 
 ably, as though something incongruous had been obtruded 
 upon her sight. She leaned over to the Emperor, shading 
 both faces with the long lace fringe of the parasol, and 
 whispered in his ear. With a gesture almost impatient, 
 Napoleon pushed the lace from before him and followed the 
 direction of the Empress s gaze. Those nearest the carriage 
 turned also. What they saw I can not tell, but what they 
 might have seen was this : A young man leaning negligently 
 against one of the gay pagodas at the end of the bridge of 
 the Holy Fathers, presenting a curious contrast with the 
 fervid enthusiasm of his fellows. The effect of his pose 
 and the expression of his face were something sinister, with 
 out being malevolent. His eyes, dark with a changing 
 blackness, were fixed on the imperial couple. A sneer, 
 which was more pitying than disdainful, marred the admira 
 ble lines of the countenance. He was evidently conscious 
 that the imperial eye was upon him ; his pale cheeks flushed 
 and his eyes darkened, while the lines of his mouth deep 
 ened with a shade of the malign ; but the eyes glittered 
 unshrinkingly under the ordeal. In another moment the 
 equipage had passed beyond him, and the retinue closed 
 the group from his sight. The movement of the crowd 
 dislodged him from his leaning posture. He started 
 impatiently, took off his hat, debated inwardly, and then 
 glanced around him in a perplexed, irresolute way. Pres 
 ently the wide street was empty. He crossed the roadway 
 and leaning on the pedestal of one of the sphinxes, studied 
 it attentively ; then, with a half-suppressed, mocking laugh, 
 said aloud : 
 
 " You at least do not add hypocrisy to servile baseness. 
 You do not shout for Caesar." 
 
VIA DO LO ROSA. 5 
 
 This outspoken apostrophe in the English tongue aroused 
 the attention of a neighboring gendarme on duty, who, 
 laudably suspicious of such familiarity with the imperial 
 works of art, or, perhaps, convinced of some ulterior design 
 against the state, came over and, touching the young man on 
 the shoulder, said with insinuating politeness : 
 
 " Monsieur is a stranger in Paris ? May I have the 
 pleasure of inscribing his name and address in my car-net. 
 Monsieur has excited the curiosity of his majesty s officer 
 of the day." 
 
 The young man s lips curled somewhat disdainfully, and 
 apparently misunderstanding the official s zeal, answered 
 without embarrassment : 
 
 "Trajan Gray, painter, Rue Dragon, 29." 
 
 " Merci bien, monsieur, Paris likes to keep track of its 
 guests and warn them when they seem to be making false 
 steps." 
 
 The gendarme bowed gravely and gave the young man a 
 significant look. 
 
 Trajan Gray, thus addressed, was about to reply ; then, 
 thinking better of it, saluted his monitor absently and set out 
 toward the bridge. As the humorous suggestion of the 
 gendarme s motive flashed on his mind, he laughed outright. 
 Resting on the balustrade of the bridge, where the panorama 
 of the Seine spread before him as far as the base of the 
 Trocadero, he began idly to contemplate the varied monu 
 ments of palatial grandeur and picturesque industry lining 
 its banks and covering its surface. He seemed only vaguely 
 conscious of the grotesque contrast the river afforded, as it 
 winds its way through the heart of the city. He diverted 
 himself in following the surprising commerce its shallow 
 current supports, performing the most unexpected functions. 
 He counted mechanically the garishly dismasted ships 
 which serve as bath and wash houses lining every rood of 
 the banks ; then set himself to studying the tranquil groups 
 who day in and day out, many months in the year, extract 
 
6 TRAJAN. 
 
 from the shallow waters the fish that supplies the humbler 
 tables of the city. His face grew more troubled as he con 
 trasted these semi-aquatic industries, comparing the sordid 
 thrift of the river toilers with the affluent indolence of the 
 crowds on the banks. The Parisian is fond of defining him 
 self as a citizen of the world, born to a heritage of such 
 universal knowledge that nothing surprises him or unduly 
 stimulates his curiosity. A Turk or a Mohawk may pass on 
 the Boulevard in all his aboriginal bravery, and the genuine 
 Parisian would no more turn his head to look than the city 
 fathers who confounded the Goths in the Roman Capitol. 
 But as Trajan Gray stood on the bridge of the Holy Fathers, 
 his body bent over the parapet, many a passer looked at him 
 a second time with something of questioning in the curious 
 glance. The women particularly studied the shapely out 
 lines of the figure with an interest somewhat piqued by the 
 young man s obvious oblivion and easily discerned indiffer 
 ence. Some of them ejaculated pityingly as they turned 
 again to look at the figure : 
 
 " Tiens ! another for the morgue to-night. It s a pity, too. 
 That s the sort that should live." 
 
 For the Seine suggests death or traffic only to the 
 Parisians who seek the boulevards and the populous 
 places for loitering or pleasure. To them there is a 
 tragic significance in such an attitude as Trajan s that 
 lovely May afternoon. Even the gendarme repented 
 of his suspicion, and though of a taciturn and unde 
 monstrative habit, as a race, approached the young man 
 with an evident desire to placate. But Trajan was oblivious 
 of his presence and heedless of his kindly scrutiny. It was 
 a face that told much, but yet what it told was not conclusive. 
 It indicated a life not unacquainted with joyous seasons, pain 
 and defeated hopes. At the present moment, a page eloquent 
 of anguish and some strong but covert purpose ; a face that 
 had the lines that guilt or sorrow may leave on young faces ; 
 traces of inward combat that mark the human lineaments as 
 
VIA DOLOROSA. 7 
 
 vaguely as storm and time surfaces exposed to their havoc. 
 For it is in the prime of youth that guilt, or sorrow, or shame, 
 or the dominant passions leave their most permanent tokens. 
 In the middle-aged or the elderly, the natural forces of decay 
 mingle their traces so congenially with the marks of suffer 
 ing that it is not easy to say whether years or griefs have 
 wrought the ravages. 
 
 Meanwhile, Trajan, unconscious of the crowd and its 
 speculations, continued abstractedly studying the bustling 
 scene beneath him. Lumbering omnibuses, their roofs 
 laden with noisy afternoon tourists, clattered by, the long, 
 circling coil of the driver s whip swinging through the air 
 close to the young man s ears. The granite roadway shook 
 under the passing vehicles, as the big Norman horses were 
 with difficulty reined in to the regulation pace. Squads of 
 students from the neighboring schools of Medicine, Law, 
 Divinity and the Beaux Arts, passed in gay, chattering com 
 panies, retailing the freaks of the class-rooms, the atelier 
 and^the clinics. Faded models, their scant draperies hastily 
 readjusted, dragged themselves wearily along, stopping now 
 and then to look down at the fleets of bustling little 
 steamers shooting up and down the Seine " swallows " 
 and " flies " as they are not inaptly called their many- 
 colored smokestacks puffing hot blasts of flame in the 
 faces of the unwary gazers. With these came the inces 
 sant train of slow-moving fiacres, laden with matronly 
 shoppers, burdened with spoil of the Bon Marche. Here 
 and there a wondering foreigner stopped the throng, ejacu 
 lating indignant protest against the drivers whose whips and 
 wheels maliciously endangered the inattentive pedestrian ; 
 while the more observant stopped, recognizing the Paris 
 bridge as the point of vantage from which may best be seen 
 the human comedy set on its most circumscribed stage ; 
 where the by-play takes the same tone and volume as the 
 main narrative ; where the red vest and tall glazed hat of 
 the cocker replace the paint and patches of the clown, and 
 the world is both the player and personage. 
 
8 TRAJAN. 
 
 The sun passed lower and lower over the elms of the 
 Tuileries to the west, until the crystal panes of the vast 
 fagades of the Medicean palace glowed like a colossal ori- 
 flamme a signal to the city to be joyful in the pride of 
 Caesar passing in state through the ranks of his loyal Parisi 
 ans yonder. The "swallows" and "flies" on the Seine 
 increased in number as the afternoon waned, rushing swiftly 
 under the bridge, deep in the water with pleasure parties 
 from the river resorts from Bercy to St. Cloud. Long lines 
 of fishers, of both sexes, took their places gravely on the 
 pebbly edge of the water in the shadow of the high bank. 
 The washerwomen in the bathing-boats scrubbed and sang 
 more energetically as the grateful shadows reached them. 
 Life took on its most careless and most joyous note, labor 
 itself turning into a sort of a jocund travesty of Parisian 
 gayety. From the Tuileries garden the music of the imperial 
 bands filled the air with delicious harmony. As the after 
 noon grew older, the traffic on the bridge became so dense 
 that Trajan, lost in dreams or intent on the wonderful life 
 unrolled about and beneath him, found himself jostled and 
 almost crushed. The river was as dense with life, over 
 every wave of its surface, as the bridge and the banks. The 
 eye of the young man lingered on these details, though they 
 seemed of little significance to him. There was a look of 
 yearning as he scanned the waters and the shores, as if 
 uncertain whether to make egress through the crowd or end 
 the struggle in his mind by leaping over the balustrade. An 
 old man far below him, who had sat patiently dangling a line 
 in the glistening wavelets, every now and then looked up 
 irritably, and at last, holding the pole over his head with a 
 squirming bait, half nibbled, shouted : 
 
 " I say, young fellow, can t you move on to some other 
 point ? You ve put ill-luck on my line, with your staring 
 eyes and hungry look." 
 
 Trajan started, and a slight flush of color came to his 
 face. He dropped his arms, turned and looked vaguely 
 
VIA DOLOROSA. 9 
 
 at the flaming line of the Tuileries, whose lurid glow 
 seemed to threaten him, hesitated for a moment, as 
 if to go toward the music, then clasping his hand over 
 his face, turned his back on the Seine and its obtrusive 
 and tumultuous life, and elbowing his way with difficulty, 
 started toward the Latin quarter. At the end of the bridge 
 he stopped, and began to turn over the volumes of a book 
 stall. 
 
 " Be off, you troublesome canaille." 
 
 Trajan turned and saw a little boy cowering before the 
 keeper of the book-stall. 
 
 " I am hungry," answered the child ; " give me a sou to 
 buy bread ? " 
 
 " I have no sou for you," said the man ; " be off ! " 
 
 " Stay," said Trajan ; " here is a sou." 
 
 The little fellow clutched it eagerly with a volley of 
 thanks. 
 
 " You re only wasting your money," said the bookman, 
 shrugging his shoulders ; " he comes here every day." 
 
 " There can be no waste where there s no want. He 
 needs the sou, and I don t." 
 
 Trajan resumed his course toward the Palais Mazarin. He 
 stopped with curious deliberation and scrutinized the placard 
 in the wire cages, under the groined arches of the palace, 
 which made known to the passing world that the seat in the 
 company of the " Forty Immortals," made vacant by the 
 death of Lamartine, had been filled by the choice of Napo 
 leon s prime minister, who was to be formally received the 
 month following. The brooding cast of the youth s face 
 changed into a look of angry scorn as his eye caught the 
 context. 
 
 " Faugh ! " he muttered. " The eagles of Richelieu trans 
 formed into owls and bats immortals only in sycophancy 
 and infidelity to their country." Then, with a shrug of 
 impatience, he turned on his heel and passed out from under 
 the gloomy crypt into the daylight of the Rue de Seine. In 
 
10 TRAJAN. 
 
 the quaint cul-de-sac of this old street, with the swarming 
 life of the Quai Voltaire on his right, and the silent and tor 
 tuous causeway-like Rue de Mazarine* on the left, he hesi 
 tated in uncertainty, as if in doubt which of the three ways 
 to take, then continued up the Rue de Seine. As his eye 
 caught the colors of a print-shop, directly in front of him, 
 he halted before the window, studying abstractedly the 
 engravings, with his mind evidently faraway. A pretty girl, 
 seated demurely with some sort of light work in her hand, 
 the pensive mistress of this aesthetic domain, caught sight of 
 the pale face. She studied it a moment coquettishly, and 
 then, with an outbreak of sudden industry, caught up a pic 
 ture from the counter and came with it to the door, where 
 she stood on tiptoe attempting to hang it upon a hook just 
 above her reach ; but the young man did not seem to under 
 stand the mute appeal she cast over her shoulder as the work 
 of art hung suspended. Turning pettishly, as the dreamer 
 remained unconscious of her maneuver, she made bold to 
 suggest, with faintly disguised pique : 
 
 " If Monsieur wishes to examine, we have large collec 
 tions on the floor above." 
 
 Trajan roused from his reverie started confusedly, and 
 shaking his head, turned away. The discomfited maiden 
 retired with her picture, muttering, " There is another of 
 them disappointed in love. He s very handsome, all the 
 same, and might make himself more amusing than wandering 
 about in that imbecile way." 
 
 Trajan continued up the narrow street, studying with appa 
 rent interest the rare old prints and the endless curiosities 
 which have adorned these medieval fronts since the Latin 
 quarter became the haunt of the scholastic population of 
 Paris. In his long residence in the city he had seen every 
 shop in the quarter scores of times. He was familiar with 
 every atom of bric-a-brac and objet d art exposed to the criti 
 cal nomads of the quarter. He knew their history and gen 
 ealogy as well as their owners, but to-day he dawdled before 
 
VIA DOLOROSA. II 
 
 each bazar as though he had never set eyes on them before, 
 or, perhaps, had come to bid them hail and farewell. The 
 slanting rays of the sun were long since cut off by the high- 
 gabled roofs and the narrow street curved upward like an 
 open tunnel until lost in the dim outlines of the Church of 
 St. Sulpice. He quickened his pace, though still going aim 
 lessly, as he arrived at the corner of the Rue de Seine and 
 the Rue Jacob, where stands a little cremerie very dear to 
 the memory of many an honest prodigal who studied art and 
 mischief in Paris during the last half century. 
 
 Ah ! kind Madame Bonjean, where are the ragouts andpdt/s 
 now that were wont to bring the lads of the university in hun 
 gry hordes to your honest door ? Where that excellent wine 
 of Beaune that on rare days regaled the reckless young devo 
 tees of the divine art ? You have passed away, kindly soul, 
 and the secret of your toothsome dishes is gone with you, 
 nor has your successor found the key of the caves of the 
 delicious nectar that warmed the tissues of the merry com 
 pany that made your hospitable board their home. In this 
 demure and kindly inn Trajan had broken the bread of 
 peace and tasted the salt of contentment many a time. Most 
 of the joys of his Paris life were associated with its modest 
 but dainty board. He stopped irresolutely before the 
 familiar windows. Sounds of disputation, jokes and laugh 
 ter came from within. He turned suddenly, as if by an 
 impulse stronger than his purpose, and passed over the 
 threshold. 
 
 " Bon jour, Monsieur Trajan ; " and Madame Bonjean 
 turned with empressement as she sat enthroned in her comptoir. 
 " You are still in good time ; your friends have just sat 
 down, and the/<?/ au croute is just coming." 
 
 Before the young man could answer, a voice at the other 
 end of the room broke out in friendly excitement : 
 
 " Sapristi ! it s Trajan. Where have you been, old man, 
 since the calends ? " 
 
 These hearty salutations seemed to discomfit and distress 
 
12 TRAJAN. 
 
 their object. He flushed, waved Ins hand with constraint and 
 muttering something about returning again later, turned pre 
 cipitately and fled as if he feared that the company might, 
 by force, impel him to make one at the jolly feast. He was 
 almost purple and out of breath when his flight ended before 
 the stately front of the Palace of the Luxembourg. Enter 
 ing the gate he continued at a rapid pace through the court, 
 the blooming flower-beds and clustering foliage, and never 
 slackened his step till arriving at the Queen s allee, he sank 
 heavily into one of the empty banquettes. From this point 
 of the graveled esplanade could be seen under and through 
 the trees the charming open-air life of Paris in every atti 
 tude of vivacious movement. The terraces were thronged 
 with people of every age, rank and condition engaged in 
 eager enjoyment. Trajan s pale face reflected something 
 like sympathetic animation as he realized the spirit about 
 him. The gambols of the children especially and the solici 
 tude of their bonnes aroused his interest. 
 
 Bevies of little ones were sailing toy-boats on the rippling 
 waters of the basin into which the plashing streams from 
 the tall fountain fell with a tranquilizing cadence ; others 
 were trundling hoops, flying kites, or improvising athletic 
 games of divers sorts. It was a world of infantile merry 
 makers, disporting with the thousand and one wonders that 
 the ingenuity of the Paris toy-man fashions with the fecund 
 invention of the fairy god-mothers. A gayer scene or one 
 more in disaccord with the melancholy cast of Trajan s 
 thought would be impossible to conjure. Exuberant, 
 unrestrainable enjoyment of health, sun, air and sound limb 
 on one side on the other, listless brooding, anguish and 
 unmistakable despair. Crouched limply, rather than sit 
 ting in the penumbra of the shadow of Marie Stuart, it 
 would have been difficult to tell the cast of the young man s 
 thought ; to divine whether his dejection was brooding 
 every-day care or irresolution before some meditated pur 
 pose ; whether uncertainty or determination was the secret 
 
VIA DOLOROSA. 13 
 
 of the misery the face revealed. A small urchin trund 
 ling his hoop against the legs of the sitting figure, drew back 
 in ludicrous affright as the large eyes fixed themselves 
 absently upon the intruder. The nurse-maids, trim and 
 debonnaire, gathering in the vicinity lingered to scrutinize 
 the young man. 
 
 " What beautiful eyes ! " said one, a pink-cheeked, laugh 
 ing gossip ; " he must be a young prince." 
 
 " A curate or a prince," amended her neighbor. 
 
 "Oh, no," responded pink-cheeks, sagely; "he would 
 not be seated here." 
 
 " Perhaps the Prince of Evil," whispered the first, crossing 
 herself piously : " were ever such eyes as these seen in a 
 human head before ! " 
 
 " I will forgive the eyes for the hands," said pink-cheeks, 
 admiringly. 
 
 The eyes were fixed on the gravel straight before the 
 young man so intently that the curious maids, following the 
 gaze, started in affright, as if half expecting to see an uncanny 
 spirit responding to their potent signal. They saw nothing, 
 however, but a small urchin, painfully rearing a fabric of 
 pebbles and blocks. Trajan s eyes followed the movements 
 of the little one as his edifice reached a pyramidal form. 
 Over-ambition to render it perfect toppled the whole mass 
 into wreck, amid the shrieks of laughter of the small specta 
 tors, and a dismal outcry of impatience from the architect 
 himself. The shouts of the children, the babble of the 
 confused tongues, the liurry-skurry of the ball-players, the 
 crunching of heels on the light gravel, the hurly-burly of the 
 merry-go-ronnd, the scolding of Punchinello as he whacked 
 the head of his sweetheart, and all the manifold jocund 
 follies that make up an afternoon in a Paris park were 
 drowned suddenly in the harmonious crash of an orchestra 
 playing from the center of the grounds, under the spreading 
 chestnuts a few yards away. With a flash of impatience, 
 Trajan arose. The soft strains of the music seemed to 
 
14 TRAJAN. 
 
 irritate him. It was one of the fragile melodies in vogue in 
 the last days of the Empire, an echo from the bouffe operas. 
 The young man seemed to resent its intrusive lightness. 
 He passed aimlessly away from the sound, regarding with an 
 interest almost comic the marble figures of the queens of 
 France, which give the name, Queen s Walk, to this part of 
 the Luxembourg Gardens. He came to a full stop before 
 the majestic figure of the Medici, studied the pose atten 
 tively, seeming, however, lost in the twenty generations of 
 French history embodied in the composition and the handi 
 work of the sculptor. As he continued from one to the 
 other of these marble dames, from the bride of battle, Anne 
 of Bretagne, to the hapless Antoinette of Austria, his face 
 assumed a look of listess interest, or rather he made an 
 effort to feel it. Turning backward he passed down the 
 marble steps that lead from the esplanade to the fountain, 
 halted a moment among the infants skurrying along the 
 granite brim of the basin, solicitous for their tiny argosies 
 launched on the smooth bosom of the water. Resuming 
 his course he continued on until he reached the shaded 
 thicket on the right hand of the palace. Here he seated him 
 self before one of the blooming patches of green-sward where 
 matronly Parisians and good natured rentiers lounge of an 
 afternoon, feeding those friendly little gourmands, the 
 sparrows. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS. 
 
 AS Trajan left the jarring jocundity of the scene behind 
 him and entered the tranquil atmosphere of the little 
 amphitheater, its herbage and figures looming up like the 
 objects of a mirage in the misty radiance of the afternoon 
 sun, he grew restful under a subtle pervading influence he 
 
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS. 15 
 
 could not define. His inscrutable face lighted for a moment 
 with animation as he dropped into a Vacant seat. Directly 
 opposite him sat a young man a unique contrast in every 
 belonging. Trajan, though not shabby, was in that state 
 betwixt genteel poverty and well-to-do ease which is the 
 most deceptive of the ambiguities of the human animal. 
 From his dress you could not tell whether he was the well-to- 
 do darling of a doting household or the struggling student 
 living on painfully gathered dole, whereas the young man 
 sitting opposite was the picture of easy conditions. Gar 
 ments not gay nor rich gave you an impression of a youth 
 whose only care for his outer covering was the selection oT 
 the costume he should assume for the day. There was an 
 inexpressible charm, frankness, loyalty, ingenuous good 
 nature and winning gayety in his attitude and movement. 
 Even the birds seized his engaging qualities, for they swirled 
 and flocked about his head, ate from his hand and even 
 audaciously pecked at the crust in his mouth. 
 
 Trajan watched the picture and became unconsciously 
 interested. He reflected with something like self-reproach 
 upon his own morose indifference to the simple joys which 
 gave such evident pleasure to the happy and appreciative 
 nature of the other. Insensibly the engaging humor of 
 the bird-feeder penetrated the gloom of his own thoughts, 
 and for the time all that was sinister in the expression 
 first seen in his face, as his gloomy eye fell upon the Empress, 
 disappeared. The one touch of the simple nature before 
 him acted more potently than the gorgeous and varied pano 
 rama of life in which he had taken part during the after 
 noon. Meanwhile the youth s stores are consumed. The 
 birds still hover over him in clamoring clouds. He laughs 
 softly and makes toward the gate, the more resolute of the 
 feathered brood circling over his head as if conscious that 
 he was going to replenish the coveted store. He stops at the 
 pagoda of La Marchande, as the lollypop woman that pre 
 sides over the small mountain of leaflets, dirty gingerbread 
 
1 6 TRAJAN. 
 
 and dubious confectionery, is pompously called. She beams 
 benignantly and fills the paper bag with the little loaves that 
 form her principal staple and holds them out to her client, 
 who shakes his head good-humoredly. 
 
 " No ; that s too many. The little beggars have been 
 feeding all the afternoon and can t eat much more." 
 
 " But Monsieur Arden can give the rest to the ducks ; 
 they are sadly neglected." 
 
 Arden resigns himself to this specious humanitarianism 
 and returns with his spoil. Trajan watches him with real 
 interest an interest that has fairly transformed the melan 
 choly cast of his countenance, leaving something of sadness, 
 but nothing of the anguish before depicted in every line. 
 As the young man comes toward him his heart leaps for a 
 moment with the hope that he may take the vacant half of 
 the bench beside him. He feels an almost uncontrollable 
 impulse to speak to the stranger. He is disappointed in his 
 hope. Arden resumes his old place, almost buried under 
 the bevies of sparrows fluttering about him. His posture is 
 full of a winning grace. His absorption in his feathered 
 friends is so real that he has no eye for the other envious 
 feeders unable to attract more than sporadic groups. Trajan s 
 face almost breaks into a smile as he watches the contrast 
 and notes that, notwithstanding the seductive assiduities of 
 the worldlings, and their insinuating efforts to tempt the 
 little philosophers to their abundantly laden hands by chirp 
 ings and cooings, the awkward ducks alone waddling about 
 respond to these attentions. The Luxembourg sparrow 
 knows his real friend, and refuses to receive largess from the 
 casual comer who feeds him with divided mind ! 
 
 Why do I linger on these trifling details? Why outline 
 the physiognomy of the young man s surroundings ? Why 
 interpret the thought of the crowd, the intent of the by-play 
 that fell under Trajan s eye that May day ? Because every 
 incident, detail and outline wrought its effect upon the 
 young man s mind, He saw a larger meaning in the con- 
 
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS. 17 
 
 trasts that beset him during that fateful afternoon than he 
 had ever dreamed in his daily familiar intercourse with them. 
 Subtle voices pleaded with him, covert forms assumed 
 meaning and force they had never possessed before. For in 
 his rash and half-mad helplessness, Trajan was in that epi 
 sodic state of clairvoyance when the brain comprehends 
 occult meanings, shrouded from the healthier mood, when 
 life is a joy and death a remote phantom. He was in the 
 state of men who are sinking in deep waters or confronting 
 a certain death. It is to make comprehensible what pre 
 cedes and what follows that I detain the reader with the 
 photographic reproduction of what Trajan Gray saw on that 
 May afternoon, and because all these things produced an 
 effect upon the young man, turned his mind from a wild and 
 wicked purpose, brought about by the most grievous blow 
 that can fall upon the sensitive and undisciplined heart. 
 
 Trajan watches this pastoral play with continually-grow 
 ing conviction. He has lost, in a measure, the burden of his 
 woe, and speculates vaguely on the qualities and antecedents 
 of his neighbor. As the sun lowers, the northern front of 
 the granite pile of the Luxembourg is effaced in deep shad 
 ows, while the light pouring over the western side throws a 
 soft yellow haze on the intensified green of the shrubs that 
 cover the lawn. The gentle plash of the fountain mingles 
 its music with the chirping of the sparrows and the disitant 
 strains of the orchestra, deadened into tremulous echoes by 
 the intervening shrubberies and walls. The voice of a girl 
 singing on a neighboring balcony comes like a nightingale s 
 song when the moon is at the full and the land is buried in 
 shadow. The atmosphere is heavy with the odors of sum 
 mer flowers in the blooming parterres. The thick columns 
 of spray fall like showers of silver from an unseen cloud. 
 
 The children are leaving their play. On the margin of 
 the great circular basin groups of little ones are gath 
 ering in their fleets from the glistening bosom of the 
 water. Children of larger growth stand and busy 
 
1 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 themselves maneuvering in the tiny barks to shore, throwing 
 pebbles behind them as they come careening homeward. A 
 soft summer wind the whispering echo of a breeze stirs 
 the air. The distant orchestra breaks into the last air of the 
 afternoon, " La donna e mobile." Arrested for a moment by 
 the strains of this libertine air, Arden pauses with a small 
 pyramid of bread in his hand. But in a few moments the 
 capricious ingrates, either gorged or attracted elsewhere, 
 cease their clamors and disperse. The rest of the bird- 
 feeders are one by one, departed. The sun sank lower and 
 lower. The music ceased. Long files of nurses with their 
 little broods passed out of the golden gates, chattering and 
 laughing. Presently, in the little green amphitheater, Tra 
 jan and Arden were left alone. The latter took out his 
 watch, looked around reflectively, and, seeing no more mouths 
 to feed, gathered the remnants of his store and tossed them 
 under the lilac bushes beyond him. 
 
 " You re ungrateful little beggars," he said, half aloud, 
 watching the rear-guard of the sparrows fluttering off toward 
 the bushes, chattering and chirping in a bedlam of musical 
 discord. "You will go to the first shabby Frenchman who 
 invites you when I am gone and feed from his hand, just as 
 you do from mine. But as for that," he added, " we re all of 
 the same trempe men, birds and beasts are alike in thanks, 
 if nothing else." As he spoke a sparrow fluttered painfully 
 from under a clump of geraniums. One wing hung limp 
 and broken. The little creature had been concealed while 
 the more lusty groups held the ground. The cripple dragged 
 itself almost to the young man s feet, where fragments of 
 the bread still covered the grass. It hopped about, keeping 
 a constant eye alert as if dreading the attack of some intrud 
 ing tormenfor. Arden eyed it a moment, then putting out 
 his hands filled with crumbs, coaxed it to feed as its com 
 panions had done ; but the wounded creature, evidently 
 reminded of some previous treason, skurried back under the 
 leaves, its broken wing impeding its flight pitifully. 
 
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS. 19 
 
 " Humph ! " said Arden, " I shall modify my axiom ; but 
 as one swallow doesn t make a summer, one sparrow can t 
 change the force of a great truth." 
 
 The impulse of Trajan to accost the stranger drove every 
 thing else from his mind. He arose from his seat with the 
 words formed on his lips but sank back in dread. On 
 what pretext ? What would the other think ? Repulse him 
 probably with disdain. He had created the attributes of the 
 young man in his mind. A generous, sympathetic, unsus 
 picious nature but even such a nature would hardly seek 
 strangers in the street for confidence and companionship ! 
 Arden turned meditatively towards Trajan. His eye rested 
 on the shrinking figure carelessly, and as he passed, Trajan 
 could have arrested him by stretching forth his arm. If his 
 arm had been chained, it would not have been more impos 
 sible. Arden passed on, happy serenity in every movement, 
 humming softly an air from " Mignon." But as if the over 
 ruling power that had wrought the change in Trajan still 
 held the door ajar, the young man stopped as he turned in 
 the circular walk. He stooped over a bed of odorous helio 
 trope, and as he put out his hand to pluck a spray he glanced 
 toward the figure in the seat. 
 
 His hand fell to his side as he stood up and his face flushed 
 crimson. Trajan had risen from his bench and had taken 
 the seat occupied by Arden. By what impulse he was 
 not conscious, but once there, he hurriedly thrust his 
 hand under the foliage and drew forth one of the small 
 loaves left from the birds banquet. There was no 
 overmastering craving to eat, hardly a pang of hunger, for 
 the young man had fasted so long that the desire for food 
 was suspended or deadened. But with the bread in his hand 
 came the impulse to eat. He broke the crust with a trem 
 bling, feverish haste and devoured the pieces, wondering to 
 himself at his own action. He was impelled by an instinct 
 rather than a purpose and was not in a condition to analyze 
 either the act or its motive. It was a simple act, but its 
 
20 TRAJAN. 
 
 effect was as decisive on his future and that of Arden as the 
 most controlling action of long studied premeditation. 
 
 This was the sight that caught Arden s eye as he bent to 
 pluck the blossom in the transparent twilight. The effect 
 was electrical and instant. A great yearning and tender 
 ness came upon him. He was very young ; the years of his 
 life had known no bitterness. Protection and love had 
 hovered over him from the cradle to manhood, and instead 
 of making him selfish, they had bred gentleness and com 
 passionate sympathy with every form of suffering. Impulsive 
 and chivalrous generosity marked every act of his life. 
 
 It was a saying of the young man s sister, that Abu Ben Ad- 
 hem s name in the angel s book of gold was more impressive to 
 her brother than that of the greatest poet or hero in the scrolls 
 of Time. Hunger and poverty are not rare sights in a great 
 city, but hunger and want, in such form as he now saw them, 
 had never come to his eye before. He was strangely stirred 
 by the pathetic misery Trajan s attitude suggested. He saw 
 the young man s face distinctly and read refinement and 
 sensibility there. He was dimly conscious that profligacy 
 or improvidence had no share in the distress outlined in the 
 marks of the troubled countenance. He instantly resolved 
 to proffer his good offices to the stranger, feeling a sort of 
 guilty responsibility in the other s distress. But how, under 
 what pretext ? To boldly offer his purse he felt would be a 
 cruel mortification, for it was plainly not vulgar want that 
 afflicted the object of his good intentions. To even make 
 known that he had seen the unfortunate satisfying his hunger 
 with the crusts flung carelessly under the lilacs would repel 
 and humiliate him, while to be the resource he meditated it 
 was essential to soothe and win confidence. These thoughts 
 flashed through his mind as he retraced his steps, scrutiniz 
 ing Trajan keenly. His own inexperience helped him in 
 the crisis, for, putting himself in Trajan s place, he argued 
 that he would not take it amiss, if in the same misery he 
 received the proffer of interest and friendliness. 
 
BREAD CAST UPOiV THE WATERS. 21 
 
 " He looks like an American," he said to hjmself ; " and 
 a man with such a face can not be an adventurer. He must 
 be in the university, and if he be, I have a comrade s claim 
 and a countryman s right to come to his aid/ Then, with 
 characteristic decision, as he quickened his pace, " I ll be 
 hanged if I don t speak to him." But in spite of the robust 
 romance that inspired this impulse, he grew less confident as 
 the determination grew more decided, and would even then 
 have drawn back had his approach not committed him to 
 intervention. He reached the bench where Trajan had 
 sunk into a sort of collapse, his head resting on his arm 
 thrown over the back of the seat. 
 
 " Pardon me," said Arden, his voice a little tremulous, 
 " I beg you won t think me intrusive, or my motive curiosity, 
 but I think I owe you a good turn, if only in the Arab creed 
 that we are bound in friendly bonds to whomsoever has 
 shared our bread." He hesitated, out of breath, then con 
 tinued in a tone he strove to make natural and frank : " I 
 saw you a moment since and and if I were in such a 
 plight, I should think pretty poorly of the man who could 
 pass by without a sign, or the proffer of a helping hand." 
 
 Trajan had seen Arden turn to come toward him. He 
 knew that some such words would be spoken, because he 
 knew that were the case reversed he would have done the 
 same thing. But though he had longed to speak before, he 
 was lost in an overmastering humiliation now. The horror 
 and shame of his sudden impulse to eat the bread rose 
 before him as a barrier to every thing like equality with the 
 other. He was powerless to turn and look his interlocutor 
 in the face. The voice, cordial, frank, melodious, thrilled 
 him as the music of the mass thrills the shriven sinner at the 
 altar. There was in it a subtle suggestion of a comprehen 
 sion of his hideous resolution and absolution of it, the touch 
 ing of a chord that human agencies reach only in the vital 
 crises of life when the heart strings are charged with agony 
 and their vibrations open the fountain of tears. He raised 
 
22 TRAJAN. 
 
 his head and fixed his dark eyes, dazed and heavy, upon the 
 face of the embarrassed Samaritan but his lips remained 
 sealed. 
 
 The impulsive philanthropist was more perplexed than 
 ever. He was prepared for almost any other form of 
 wounded susceptibility than this. 
 
 " Come," he said to himself, " I have broken the bark and 
 I will get to the fiber now. My name," he broke out, "is 
 Elliot Arden ; I am of the Law School of the Sorbonne, and 
 by the laws of its camaraderie I have a right to be your 
 friend, if you are, as I think, also of the university ! " 
 
 He waited for a response. Certainly he thought this 
 unreserve must win his confidence. He couldn t imagine 
 what else to say. As Trajan remained speechless, Elliot 
 stood confused and alarmed. He began to repent his im 
 pulsive advances. He thought the man an ingrate to subject 
 him to such an ordeal. The dark eyes continued fixed upon his 
 face ; could he be mad ? Then Trajan s head fell over on 
 his breast, his two hands covered his eyes and Elliot saw 
 tears trickling through the long thin fingers. Overcome by 
 this spectacle, the unhappy Elliot dropped into the seat 
 beside this extraordinary victim of over-susceptibility. He 
 waited patiently for the man beside him to reject or accept 
 his kind intentions. 
 
 The sun had disappeared. The silver circle of the crescent 
 moon hung far away over the golden dome of the Invalides. 
 The plash of the fountains in the still air sounded like the 
 rush of the river. The chattering of the sparrows sunk into 
 intermittent chirpings. Far away where the round turret of 
 the observatory rose in the clear twilight above the branches 
 the plaintive opening note of a nightingale soothed the ear. 
 The gravel walks of the garden echoed only to an occa 
 sional step. Paris was at dinner, and the interval was 
 the quietest of the day, for the open-air life that closes 
 with the dinner begins again so soon as that feast is fin 
 ished. 
 
BREAD CAST UPON THE WATERS. 23 
 
 Suddenly Trajan, removing his hands, turned to Elliot 
 and found voice : 
 
 " You must think me an ingrate or an imbecile. But if 
 you knew what I can not tell you, there would be ample 
 excuse for my perverseness. It s only fair to say that you 
 have misjudged me somewhat. I am not suffering from 
 penury, though it is true that it is more than twenty-four 
 hours since I have eaten any thing. The interest you show 
 in me deserves fuller confidence ; but I beg that its refusal 
 may not make you repent your action. I owe it to you to 
 say that the state you see me in is brought about by no fault 
 of my own. Unless," he added quickly, " a man s infirmity 
 be his own fault." 
 
 "This incident to you," continued Trajan, with a melan 
 choly smile, " has the novelty of the unreal and romantic. 
 But for me it has a meaning that I shall never misconstrue 
 during the years of my life. What that meaning is you may 
 some day learn ; what its significance is to me I shall take 
 good care you shall never forget." 
 
 " I do not presume to speak of being necessary to you. I 
 have the desire to do by you as I should expect a man to 
 do by me, if despondency, treason or whal-not had over 
 come my forces of resistance and combat." 
 
 While Elliot uttered the last words, two figures approached 
 the bench where the young men were seated. 
 
 " Messieurs," said one of them, as the two halted, " you 
 have been seen despoiling the herbage. It is against the 
 law to touch the plants in the public gardens. I summon 
 you to answer before the commissaire." 
 
 The men were gendarmes, and had either seen or had 
 been informed of Elliot s plucking the heliotrope for under 
 the Empire official eyes and ears were everywhere. Explana 
 tion was useless. The young men were instantly forced to 
 accompany the gendarmes to the neighboring station, near 
 the Odeon Theatre, a stone s-throw from the palace gates. 
 Before the commissaire a book was opened, and the names 
 and addresses of the culprits written down. 
 
24 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Students, are you, messieurs ? " said the official scruti 
 nizing Trajan closely. The young men displayed their uni 
 versity cards. 
 
 " But you, Monsieur Gray, are a member of the Treize- 
 Treize Club, that meets at the Cafe Procope ! " 
 
 " I am," said Trajan tranquilly. " What has that to do 
 with the affair ? " 
 
 Disregarding the question, the official continued : 
 
 " You took part in the demonstration Victor Noir, and 
 made an incendiary address in the Rue du Temple last 
 month. Is it you or Monsieur Arden that broke the law in 
 the Garden ? " 
 
 " Neither Monsieur Arden nor myself broke any law in 
 the garden," answered Trajan simply. 
 
 "One of you, the gendarme could not distinguish which, 
 bent down and plucked a flower. Was it you, Monsieur 
 Gray ? " continued the official, as though Trajan had not 
 spoken. 
 
 Elliot explained that he had bent over the heliotrope with 
 the intention of picking a bunch, unconscious of the law, but 
 had been diverted. He colored and stammered as he saw 
 Trajan turn his face away, then continued : 
 
 " I saw my friend reaching through the seat to get some 
 thing I had left behind me but he touched no flower nor 
 shrub in the meaning of the law." 
 
 " Is this true ? " said the commissaire, turning to the gen 
 darme who had spoken to the young men. The man ex 
 plained that he was standing at some distance and had 
 remarked the figure stooping and putting out his hand, but 
 could not see in the twilight what followed. 
 
 " Tres Men" said the official nodding ; then pushing a 
 sheet of paper with some printed forms on it, and filled up 
 in writing, toward Trajan directed him to sign. The young 
 man read it to Arden. It was a charge of violating pub 
 lic property, with the answers of the alleged criminals. The 
 young men signed and the official added : 
 
BREAD CAS T UPON THE WATERS. 25 
 
 " You are under surveillance, messieurs, and until it is 
 withdrawn you must deposit a surety of 250 francs each, or 
 wait the determination of the affair before the Correctional 
 Police." 
 
 " But we haven t so much money with us," said Elliot, 
 indignantly. 
 
 " Persons who give themselves up to creating revolutions 
 rarely have," responded the official dryly. 
 
 Trajan said in English : 
 
 " I will explain the meaning of this outrage to you when 
 we get out of the scrape. You are only guilty of being in 
 my company." Then in French he asked : " Will you take 
 our watches as security ? " 
 
 " Certainly not ; this is an imperial bureau, not a pawn 
 shop ! " 
 
 " Will you take a check on the American bankers ? " asked 
 Elliot, regaining his wits. 
 
 " For the whole sum, or for your part alone ? " asked the 
 official, with a significant gleam in his dull, fishy eye. 
 
 " For the whole sum, of course," replied Elliot promptly. 
 
 " No ; I can not do that." 
 
 " Very well," said Elliot, " I will send for the money. 
 Can you oblige me with a messenger and means to write a 
 note ?" 
 
 When this was written and dispatched, the young men 
 were shown into another room in the rear of the semi-judi 
 cial chamber in which this summary justice was dispensed. 
 A gendarme stood obtrusively in the doorway to remind 
 the young men that they were under the eye of the law. 
 
 " Is this a customary thing in Paris ? " asked Elliot, as 
 they seated themselves. 
 
 " Yes, under the present regime. The motive in this 
 business is to intimidate me. I belong to one of the stu 
 dents republican clubs, and the police are constantly watch 
 ing to compromise the members in order to justify expulsion 
 from the city. If they could fasten the slightest misde- 
 
26 TRAJAN. 
 
 meaner on me, I should be. ordered to quit Paris at once. 
 You, as a student, are open to the suspicion of sympathizing 
 with the enemies of the dynasty, even if your name does not 
 figure among the rolls of the clubs." 
 
 " I have heard a great deal about the petty tyrannies of 
 the Empire, but I never would have believed this. I own to 
 a strong admiration for Napoleon and preference for his 
 government above all the makeshifts that have tried to rule 
 France since 1815." 
 
 " If you could make Dogberry out there believe that," said 
 Trajan, laughing, " you would be liberated in a moment." 
 
 " But I am beginning to think better of that impression, 
 now," rejoined Elliot, humorously. 
 
 "Just as every honest man does when he begins to see 
 into the methods by which this generous and splendid peo 
 ple are misgoverned. This, however, is a dangerous theme 
 for such a place. In every bureau of the police there are 
 men who understand English and other tongues. Let us, 
 therefore, be prudent." 
 
 Through the single narrow window of the room the detenus 
 could look out on the open square before the gardens. 
 
 The crowds had dwindled to a few aimless loiterers, or 
 work-folk hurrying homeward. The delicate gray atmos 
 phere that envelops Paris of an evening, like a vaporous 
 reflex of the discolored white of its buildings, was filled with 
 the quality that makes the mirage, in transparent regions of 
 mountain or lowlands, by the sea. Cre*puscule, the French 
 call it, but not the twilight known and loved in Saxon lands. 
 A season of expansion ; when the noise of the great city 
 is suddenly hushed and you hear your own voice clearly for 
 the first time since early morning, with much the sensation 
 that follows emerging from a plunge in the sea. Something 
 of a recognition of this seemed to be in the minds of the two 
 fatefully-met young men, not less than a realization of the 
 strange relations in which they came together. Constant 
 and obtrusive as are the contrasts in life, you would go far 
 
BREAD CAST UP OAT THE WATERS. t 27 
 
 before meeting a more marked one than the caprice of fate 
 had thus thrown together. All that was in Elliot Arden you 
 felt very sure you could read in his face. Frankness, good 
 nature, impulsiveness which might even go to recklessness. In 
 the other, a reserve which could never be reticence rather 
 the shrinking of a creature unacquainted with his kind. 
 
 The two young men stood at the window gazing in silence 
 over the graceful minarets of the churches and palaces spec 
 tral and dim in the transparent air. 
 
 " You have sent to a friend for the money ? " asked 
 Trajan suddenly. " Is there any chance of failure ? " 
 
 " I have sent to my cousin as I didn t care to frighten 
 my mother and sister who couldn t understand the mat 
 ter. It may take some time to find him, but we shall 
 have the better appetite for dinner. You will be charmed 
 with my cousin a sage, philosopher and friend worth know 
 ing and having. He pretends to be a cynic but is any 
 thing else." 
 
 Trajan, with a sudden irresistible burst of feeling, seized 
 his companion s hand and pressing it with both his own, arti 
 culated rapidly : " You are a wonderfully kind fellow. 
 Though," he added faltering, " praise from me might not be 
 construed as in the best form at this moment. It is not 
 every man that can give a crust, and I am afraid it is not 
 every man that can accept one. But your voice, and what 
 I may call your magnanimity, in venturing to recall me to my 
 self, have done a good deal more than you suspect." Then 
 musingly, as he walked the floor and looked through the 
 gathering shadows, " The potent resolutions in life are taken 
 suddenly. You but never mind I am afraid if I talk I 
 shall talk like a fool. Half my life I have been trying to 
 teach myself how to be silent" then, with an air of engag 
 ing levity " but I have been either a poor pupil or a bad 
 teacher. If the lawyer who pleads his own cause has a fool 
 for a client, the philosopher who tries to follow his own doc 
 trine has an imbecile for a student. When I am on the high 
 
road to my most cherished ends, my tongue gets the better of 
 me and delivers me over to my enemies. Almost unconscious 
 of the things I have said, or uttering them from intuition 
 rather than reflection, I have made enemies of the bitterest 
 sort by a phrase, the very form of which was forgotten so 
 soon as spoken." 
 
 During this rather inconsequent monologue, on what was 
 obviously only a superficial phase of his nature, Elliot 
 studied his companion furtively. He felt a sense of trium 
 phant joy in the vindication of his act in the garden, in 
 obtruding himself between the young man and his dimly dis 
 cerned purpose, though the strength of that purpose he was 
 even now far from realizing. He felt a comic embarrass 
 ment as to the manner in which he should sustain his rfile. 
 He feared to allude to the past and distrusted the ordinary 
 commonplaces of life, likely to grate upon a mind &> recently 
 all ajar. The bells of St. Sulpice were sounding eight o clock 
 when a cab stopped before the door of the building in which 
 the friends were detained, a messenger handed Elliot an en 
 velope, which on opening was found to contain the money 
 and a few lines from his cousin Philip. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 IN THE CAFE VOLTAIRE. 
 
 TlfELL, that s an experience that I hadn t antici- 
 VV pated," cried Elliot, drawing a long breath when 
 the money had been counted and a receipt given. " I don t 
 yearn to repeat it, and I shall take care how I ever look at 
 public property in Paris in future." The commissaire stood 
 in the doorway, evidently studying the two young men, and, 
 indeed, an eye less observant or discerning would have 
 found the study an interesting one. Trajan s face a 
 
IN THE CAFE VOLTAIRE. 29 
 
 volume not always open, or, if open, not always easily 
 legible the dark hair long, but not to eccentricity, framed 
 the almost painful pallor of the countenance. Symmetry of 
 limb and figure gave him, as he walked, an unconscious air 
 of self-assertion not altogether disassociated from the arro 
 gance of natures that have suffered much, and through 
 that suffering seem to have broken into a consciousness of 
 power, which sometimes comes as strongly with failure as 
 with triumph in life an appearance, in short, in person, 
 carriage, expression and movement, which makes enemies 
 for some men before they have opened their lips, and 
 adorers for others even after they have opened their lips. 
 
 By the undiscriminating his self-control would have been 
 called overweening, if first impressions were uttered by those 
 who leap at conclusions. A more reserved and subtle judg 
 ment would have called him, however, self-poised, highly 
 endowed, but, perhaps, over-given to reticence and morbid 
 introspection. As we see him in this crisis of his life he 
 moves with the unconscious bearing of a man who, hav 
 ing been under the enemy s fire for half a day, forgets the 
 ordeal mechanically when the foe is broken, not quite sure 
 whether death has disappeared or is still confronting him. 
 
 Elliot, sympathetically conscious of the delicacy of the 
 situation, strove to divert the mind of his companion from 
 himself, and chattered away on every commonplace he could 
 invent. 
 
 Nor was Elliot himself a less striking figure than Trajan 
 Gray. There was in the rich, harmonious accents of his 
 voice, a fascination that made the most prosaic of his 
 thoughtless sayings seductive and persuasive. In figure, 
 while his companion was something under the medium 
 stature, Elliot was slightly above it. His was the clear type 
 of the Anglo-Saxon light hair, blue eyes, roseate, but not 
 ruddy, complexion, and that air of healthful enjoyment of 
 everything which gave the idea of a man who had never 
 endured the trial of a physical or mental disease. 
 
30 TRAJAN. 
 
 Passing the Luxembourg gates into the Rue Vaugirard, 
 the two young men penetrated under the colonnades of the 
 gray old porticoes of the Odeon, the second state theater of 
 France. But its wonderful array of books, running up in 
 stairs of learning, if not of light, into the very groining of 
 the arches, did not arrest them now as at other times. They 
 hurried down the network of lane-like streets, which still 
 show something of the old Paris Trajan loved, and knew, 
 inch by inch, to the broad, new Boulevard St. Germain, 
 down the very same Ruede Seine which Trajan had traveled 
 three hours before, delaying the temptation of the water. 
 
 At the corner of the Quai Voltaire, Elliot turned into a 
 famous restaurant, sacred to the memory and eloquent of 
 the presence of many generations of all that was brilliant, 
 learned, gay, wise and godless in art, letters, romance, philos 
 ophy, statecraft and song a restaurant where Voltaire, with 
 his dear Due de Brabant and his adoring Marquis de Con- 
 dorcet, had reveled. The mark of age was on every thing, 
 save the cuisine ; for, while there is no limit to the Parisian 
 reverence for antiquity in forms, lines, furniture, bric-a-brac 
 and what not, age has no temptations for his stomach, unless 
 it be in wine. 
 
 As they passed up the stairs, Elliot, resuming the conver 
 sation more for the sake of diverting his companion 
 from the late episode than any thing else, said, with ani 
 mation : 
 
 " I live in this quarter by preference ; not that I 
 am an archaeologist and study its monuments scientifically, 
 but I love the atmosphere of the old wits. To me it 
 is a never-ceasing source of generous thought to pass, 
 for example, down the Rue de Seine, the first thoroughfare 
 from the king s quarter, yonder, to the splendid old palace 
 of the Luxembourg. As for the Luxembourg Gardens, I 
 know nothing more enchanting than the atmosphere one 
 enters there. I am far back in the Middle Ages as I walk 
 through the alUes of the queens and study the marble 
 
IN THE CAFE VOLTAIRE. 31 
 
 figures of the princely women who shared with the Capets, 
 Valois and Bourbons the glories, crimes and grandeur of the 
 French monarchy. I have studied the marble faces of 
 Catherine de Medici and Mary, her weak kinswoman, and 
 Margaret of Burgundy and Anne of Austria, and I have sat 
 for hours before that sometime heir-apparent to the throne, 
 Marie Stuart, the wife of the young prince of the House of 
 Valois. I have striven to see if the guilty story of their 
 lives left any trace in the lineaments given them by art ; 
 but they are impassive as their own tombs there is nothing 
 to be learned from them. The rigid lips of Catherine de 
 Medici have nothing to tell of St. Bartholomew, and the 
 beautiful mouth of Mary is forever silent on the story of 
 Darnley and Chastelard." 
 
 Elliot s tone fell into a sort of dreamy monologue, and, 
 turning with Trajan, they passed through the narrow corri 
 dors where the maitre d 1 hotel, coming deferentially forward, 
 took their hats. Elliot was a client well known in the place, 
 and it was to him the maitre addressed the inquiry whether 
 messieurs would dine in the salle a manger or en cabinet. Elliot 
 nodded and the man went away. 
 
 In a moment he returned and informed Elliot, that mes 
 sieurs were served in the cabinet number seven. 
 
 All Paris restaurants seem to have been built on the same 
 model the lower or street floor a great salon adorned in 
 red plush ; endless mirrors, small square tables with snowy 
 linen, glistening crystal and princely silverware ; gar$ons, 
 white-aproned and tidy, and an air of cleanliness pervading 
 everything which would invite an appetite if a man had 
 none ; the street wall cut up into wide compartments of 
 glass, and the interior screened from outside observation by 
 delicate gauzy curtains forming no barrier to the passing 
 scenes without : above, small rooms with cabinets ranged in 
 size from a capacity of four up to that of twenty. 
 
 Elliot and his guest were shown into a cabinet a quatre. 
 Here a small square table was set with charming detail. 
 
32 TRAJAN. 
 
 Flowers adorned it, and the silver might have been taken 
 from the private pantry of a reigning prince. 
 
 Elliot, in his part of host, seated his guest in the most 
 desirable place, and when the soup was served continued 
 the conversation as though it had not been interrupted. 
 
 " I have been attending the lectures, but remain now in 
 the university, more to compare the latest advances of 
 French jurisprudence with Harvard teachings than to qualify 
 myself I am giving time to the belles lettres lectures and 
 find them profitable. I own, however, that half the charm 
 and half the motive of my presence in Paris are the extra 
 ordinary people I meet. I have made some extremely 
 interesting acquaintances men of all countries, all types of 
 and I may say of all grades of cultivation as well as of every 
 rank of genius for genius has ranks as every thing else has, 
 nor can a man without a certain sort of genius suffer the 
 attrition of such society as this of the Paris schools without 
 sinking into obscurity." 
 
 At this moment the discreet waiter appeared at the door 
 and handed Elliot a card. The young man looked at it for 
 a moment with some impatience, then hastily wrote upon it 
 and handed it to the waiter ; but suddenly bethinking him 
 self, exclaimed : 
 
 " Stay ! " Then, in English, to Trajan he said : " My 
 cousin and a friend with whom I have an engagement this 
 evening are outside. Would you mind if they joined us at 
 dinner ? " 
 
 Trajan, who had been listening attentively to Elliot, 
 seemed not to catch exactly the intent of the young man s 
 question and bowed absently. 
 
 Elliot hesitated a moment and then added : " I should 
 be glad to have you meet them, for they are well acquainted 
 in Paris, and besides being agreeable fellows, I have no 
 doubt they will be of service to you." 
 
 Trajan flushed and looked at his friend with a shade of 
 embarrassment. 
 
IN THE CAFE VOLTAIRE. 33 
 
 Elliot, conscious of the mistake he had made, continued : 
 
 " I mean they are the most entertaining men and will, as 
 the French say, egaye if you should happen to feel blue and 
 know of no better company." Then he added to the 
 waiter : " Show the gentlemen in, or, stay, I will go myself 
 excuse me a moment." 
 
 The young man went out of the room and returned a 
 moment later. 
 
 " Mr. Gray, my cousin Mr. Kent, Mr. Carnot." 
 
 To the great surprise of Elliot the second personage 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " Why, Gray, is that you ? Where have you disappeared 
 to of late ? My sister only yesterday sent you a commis 
 sion. One of your rich Americans wants a sketch of the 
 Hotel Cluny and some models from the collection, and 
 Theo thought you would be glad to do it if you had nothing 
 else on your easel." 
 
 Trajan said, with some constraint : " I have been out to 
 Barbison, sketching for the last fortnight, and only returned 
 to Paris yesterday." 
 
 " So you are already acquainted," said Elliot cheerfully. 
 " It is a happy coincidence, as I want Mr. Gray to know 
 me, and I count on you to make him know how much wiser 
 I am than I can make visible myself," and he laughed gayly 
 at his own expense. 
 
 Seats were placed and plates for the two guests, and 
 Trajan took the opportunity of studying the kinsman of his 
 new friend, while the latter fell into conversation together. 
 
 " Your mother expected you to dinner yesterday, and was 
 quite sure you would be home to-day. We have just left 
 there and fancied that as you were not at home we should 
 be certain to find you here." 
 
 " I had intended to go to dinner yesterday," said Elliot, 
 " but I found myself late in the afternoon in the Bois de 
 Boulogne, and took dinner in the park with some of the 
 law fellows." 
 3 
 
34 TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 STATE SECRETS. 
 
 NOT the least endearing of the many souvenirs left his 
 beloved Paris by the recluse of Fernay, the French 
 man of sensibility holds the Maison Voltaire, in which our 
 four friends are installed. Eating is but an incident of a 
 well-served dinner in any country given, of course, the 
 right sort of company and the very atmosphere seems to 
 transform the diners who sit down at the exquisite board of 
 the Maison Voltaire. This effect was palpable in the group 
 of friends, as the admirably disciplined domestics brought 
 on the courses and the meal proceeded to the dessert. 
 While the passing topics of the day formed the staple of dis 
 cussion two of the young men studied Trajan furtively, under 
 cover of the generous Chambertin of a cm for which the 
 Maison was famous among all the rivals of the left bank. A 
 transformation, which was not so much a change as a resto 
 ration, came upon Trajan. The absence of interest, the 
 depression easily mistaken for moroseness vanished. His 
 voice resumed a mellow quality natural to it ; his pale face 
 became roseate ; his eye lost the mocking glitter of an hour 
 before ; the whole effect was to lessen his years and leave 
 him a creature of almost buoyant boyishness, as compared 
 with the half-dazed outcast Elliot had seen him in the 
 Garden. 
 
 This was due obviously to the sudden and subtile bond 
 the strange meeting had established betwixt him and Elliot, 
 though the persuasive humanities of the well-ordered table 
 were not without their agency in the transformation. It 
 would be an obdurate grief that could resist the convivial 
 amenities of dinner, as it is set out among the race who 
 have carried cooking not only to a fine art, but to the dem 
 onstration of means to intellectual ends. It is the dinner 
 
5 TA TE SE CRE TS. 3 5 
 
 that feeds the brain as well as the stomach, which the Paris 
 ian piques himself on presenting. There is no clogging ; 
 no overfeeding ; no uproarious drinking ; all that is earthy 
 in the viands has been smothered in odors that suggest 
 Cathay rather than the kitchen. This well-ordered, noise 
 less service is a ministry of mind rather than of matter. 
 Pots and pans and red-faced cooks have no association with 
 the dainty details. The stately domesticity of the English 
 banquet is wanting, but the profuse trifles that seem part of 
 the feast amply make up the lack. 
 
 There is an appetizing humor in the very discretion with 
 which the gar$on surveys his well-ordered plats j a sugges 
 tion of orotund ampleness in the unctuous queries addressed 
 the head of the table, that would inspire a company of 
 anchorites to well-bred gluttony. 
 
 Next to having dined well, there is no man but loves the 
 moment when he sits down at the table expecting to dine 
 well. Any man who knew the Cafe Voltaire knew that he 
 was going to dine not only on the fat of the land, but on the 
 best morsels of that fat, at any of the three-score tables 
 hidden in their box-like cabinets. Suggestive things could 
 be seen in every nook and corner of the glorious old place 
 from the remarkable personage with pink ribbons and fluffy 
 lace who sat at the comptoir, as one passed up the grand 
 escalier, to the unobtrusive gar9on-in-chief, whose pride it 
 was to know every client entering the savory penetralia a 
 savant who grades the guests by the quality of the wine they 
 drink. The privacy of a duke or a Vanderbilt could not 
 exceed the impressive seclusion of the favored clientele, for 
 whose coming certain cabinets always seemed in waiting. 
 
 When seated therein, the solemn state of a prince could not 
 be more perfect in the ancestral hall. Candelabra light the 
 compact rooms ; while engravings decorate the panels ; the 
 center of the shining marquetry floor is covered with a rug 
 adjusted to the size of the table ; a square window 
 draped with thick stuff curtains, gives air, not light, to the 
 
36 TRAJAN. 
 
 scene. The chairs, high-backed and carved, suggest the 
 spoil of luckless grands seigneurs, victims of the teachings 
 of the patron saint, M. Arouet de Voltaire. Repose 
 and luxury are the surroundings, and the feast insen 
 sibly takes the same tone. The face of the gar$on, as he 
 surveys the altar of his ministrations, is to the observant 
 an animated mirror, reflecting with whimsical accuracy the 
 kind and condition of people he is serving. Nothing could 
 be more descriptively delicate than his attention to Elliot 
 and his guests. Yet the observer, quick through long experi 
 ence in noting the subtile gradations of the garfon s manner, 
 from obsequiousness to toleration, could read in every 
 gesture of the waiter the relative importance of each person 
 in the company. No man whose fortune it has been to 
 study the evolutions of a Paris waiter of the higher school, 
 but is struck by the unobtrusive positivism that marks that 
 most perfect of all social weathercocks, the gar f on. The 
 race is common enough, but its consummate expression can 
 only be found in the rarified strata of Paris society. There 
 is an inexpressible unction, a seductive invitation to eat, 
 drink and be merry in his very tenu, which the race, at its 
 best, elsewhere lacks. He serves the table with pride and 
 pleasure, and his pride increases, not so much with the 
 social status of his guests, as their decorous appreciation of 
 the feast. 
 
 This pleasure is augmented in degree, as the wines are 
 fine and the food well chosen. The waiter in London, 
 Vienna, New York, or any metropolitan accretion of human 
 particles, may subdue you by the austerity of his office, and 
 bully you by the innumerable artifices of a vulgar menial 
 nature, but the Parisian prototype is wiser in his day, and 
 neither begs, bullies nor berates. The largesse you leave 
 him is rather the souvenir of an equal to an equal than the 
 gratuity carelessly tossed to a menial. The Paris " man and 
 brother" brings about his conquest by the negation of all 
 that you associate in your mind with his kind. What tactful 
 
STATE SECRETS. 37 
 
 deference to the host ! What engaging and generous zeal 
 that you shall have the best in the " patron s " cellar ! How 
 seductively you are made to feel that the " patron " himself 
 is a common enemy to combat ; the waiter an ally whom you 
 have invoked ! the demure, respectful, devoted being who 
 adjusts with trained hands and artistic sense the table and 
 its appetizing viands, whose devotions for the moment are 
 not alone the honor and repletion of your friends, but 
 solicitude that your table shall make a. fine effect, and that 
 your dinner shall receive not only the justice of eating, but 
 the encomiums of those honored by the attentions of a 
 friend so superior and so kind ! How insensibly it stimulates 
 a man s best opinion of himself to have such a potentate in 
 attendance, set out in the costume prescribed by his order, not 
 as a mark of condition, but as a regalia of place, like the 
 surplice at the altar, or the livery of the state ! 
 
 These thoughts passed through the active mind of Trajan, 
 as the kindly stimulant of the Burgundy warmed him. He 
 studied Elliot with discreet attention. He thought he had 
 never seen a face of such inexpressible and winning cordi 
 ality, and he longed to translate it to his own canvas yonder 
 in his garret in the Rue Dragon. His heart and brain were 
 working together now. An overmastering and woman-like 
 love filled him as he thought of the action that had brought 
 him, in his most desperate despair, near this manly fellow. 
 He could scarcely realize that this careless, kindly, gay 
 young sybarite the soul of the feast was the man who had 
 come between himself and the hideous fulfillment of the 
 morbid purpose he had long dreaded and finally resolved. 
 
 Nor was Elliot s kinsman, Philip Kent, a less interesting 
 or attractive study. He, too, was a Saxon type, with a dis 
 tant resemblance to his cousin. His form was, however, 
 brawnier. He was fully six feet in stature ; his face was 
 bearded in the fashion then coming into vogue and known 
 as a la Prusse. Regularly cropped beard, and mustaches 
 light and tawny like his hair ; a mouth of regular proper- 
 
38 TRAJAN. 
 
 tions, but at intervals suggesting a want of firmness ; an 
 aquiline nose, perhaps a trifle large for classic beauty, but 
 an indication of force and virility : an open and sincere eye, 
 merry and frank ; a voice of deep, melodious quality, and a 
 manner inspiring confidence. 
 
 The second of the two comers would have been judged a 
 handsome man in any company : he would, indeed, have 
 been attentively considered among the most prominent of 
 social forces. A long, high head of the Caesarian order, well 
 developed and covered by fringes of curling dark hair fall 
 ing in disorder over a square forehead, gave him an unde 
 monstrative air of thought which poets and painters admire; 
 the eye, a dark brownish gray, seemed alive with sympathy 
 and interest ; the olive tint, almost blonde in its delicacy, 
 gave him an aristocratic cast, which left the man something 
 of an enigma were a stranger suddenly called on to define 
 his place. Jules Carnot was the type of a Frenchman 
 endowed with superior education, who, through the varied 
 social attrition of life under the Empire, had been worn into 
 perfect form a man who, in the most marked company, 
 was welcomed by every body as an agreeable, well-informed, 
 well-bred, good-humored companion, of whom not much 
 was known, save that he was a decided acquisition to the 
 salon, the club, the picnic, or what not, and the innumerable 
 gayeties that made up the life of the more favored classes 
 during the latter part of the reign of Napoleon III. 
 
 "You are the eye and the ear of the company," said 
 Elliot, addressing himself to Carnot. "What are all your 
 friends, the princes, dukes and duchesses doing with them 
 selves ? Is it true that the Ollivier ministry is to be thrown 
 out by the Emperor? Is it true that the Vice-Emperor 
 Rouher is to return to power, and that the court is going to 
 indulge in a comedy of warlike errors, as Rochefort is never 
 tired of prophesying ? " 
 
 "Ah! ma foi" responded the Frenchman, with just a 
 tinge of constraint, more in his manner than his words. 
 
STATE SECRETS. 39 
 
 " Who can tell ? The Emperor has a curious habit of brood 
 ing over affairs, giving every body the idea that he is slowly 
 coming to a resolution, then suddenly turning around and 
 carrying out an entirely unexpected programme. The Bis 
 marck business has saddened his life, and the Due de Persigny 
 makes no concealment of the fact that the empire, or the 
 dynasty rather, rests on the hazard of the die, and that die 
 is war." 
 
 " By the way, Carnot, what was that story I heard of your 
 telling about Bismarck overreaching the Emperor in the 
 Luxembourg affair ?" asked Kent. 
 
 " Where was it you heard that ? " said Carnot in surprise. 
 " That is a state secret, or rather, it is a perilous piece of 
 gossip to have associated with a man who stands well in 
 imperial society ; " and he colored as he found the eyes of 
 Trajan fixed on him questioningly. " The story is simple, 
 and I beg that it may not be repeated on my authority. The 
 Emperor had been playing fast and loose with Bismarck at 
 Biarritz, and between them they had hatched up a very 
 nice scheme for the division of spoil that was to follow the 
 defeat of Austria. When the Prussians declared war upon 
 Francis Joseph,Trince Metternich the Austrian ambassa 
 dor, came to Persigny, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and 
 begged an interview with the Emperor. Napoleon evaded 
 him on one pretext or another, until Metternich, losing 
 patience, laid before Persigny the orders of his master, 
 Francis Joseph, categorically promising to Napoleon his own 
 will on the right bank of the Rhine on the sole condition 
 that a French army corps of a hundred thousand men 
 should march at once on Strasbourg, threatening Mayence 
 and Cologne. It was the physician of the Due de Persigny 
 that made this known. The doctor was sitting in the Duke s 
 private cabinet waiting for him, the very day that the Prus 
 sians defeated the forces of Hanover, when Persigny came 
 rushing into the apartment tearing his hair and muttering 
 like an insane man. Not noticing the doctor for a 
 
40 TRAJAN. 
 
 moment he struck the desk, exclaiming : And to call 
 that man a French Prince ! No wonder his paternity is 
 doubted. 
 
 " The doctor coughed to make his presence known. The 
 Duke, instead of ceasing, continued addressing his remarks 
 to the physician. * Could you believe such a thing ? I have 
 offered him on the part of the Emperor of Austria our 
 ancient frontier to the bank of the Rhine, the outlines of 
 royal and imperial France, the dream of Henry IV., the 
 great Richelieu and of Napoleon I. the aspiration of every 
 Frenchman from the Pyrenees to the Channel, and what do 
 you think this man, this Napoleon, this ruler of France, 
 says in return ? * It is too late." Too late ! he broke off in 
 a perfect frenzy of wrath * too late to get without a blow 
 what we have wasted millions of treasure and thousands of 
 lives to obtain ! Too late to carry out the simple and 
 consecutive policy of every French sovereign from Charle 
 magne to Louis Philippe ! 
 
 "A very interesting bit of political tattle," said Elliot, in 
 awe. " What was the pretext ? " 
 
 " The pretext," said Carnot, " was that Napoleon had 
 promised Bismarck to hold his hands off, in return for 
 which, Prussia would close her eyes to a French aggres 
 sion on Luxembourg, and, if things promised well Bel 
 gium." 
 
 " What," said Philip, " the paltry duchy of Luxembourg 
 in exchange for the Rhine from Basle to Coblentz ! Oh, 
 that s absurd ! Imperial promises would break before such 
 an alternative as that. You may say what you please about 
 the infirmity of purpose of Napoleon III., but he would 
 never allow a mere understanding with that ill-bred fellow, 
 Bismarck, to stand in the way of such a magnificent pros 
 pect as that." 
 
 " It seems, however, that he did," concluded Carnot, look 
 ing at Trajan with suggestion as he spoke. The latter 
 merely interjected : 
 
STATE SECRETS. 41 
 
 " You may be sure if there were any thing mean or 
 unmanly the man of December would be equal to it." 
 
 " However," continued Elliot, " that is going away from 
 the point that I was interested in. The air is filled with 
 rumors of war ; the Bourse is agitated and uneasy, and the 
 students in the Quartier are even talking about forming a 
 regiment, and I am asked to join." 
 
 " I do not know any pretext that war could be declared 
 upon now," said Carnot, " unless it is the candidacy of the 
 Hohenzollern prince for the throne of Spain, which, of 
 course, contravenes one of the fundamental principles of 
 French policy. Even an outsider can see that France 
 would stand in a rather perilous position with the Prussian 
 monarchy at one door and a Prussian dynasty at the other. 
 I heard young Gambetta, over in the Cafe Procope, say the 
 other evening, that the empire would walk into the trap and 
 go to war, now when the Prussians are ready, and that if it 
 did the republic would be in existence within a year, for 
 France, he declares, is ridiculously ill-armed and ill-provided 
 more so than Austria was in 1866." 
 
 " But where are all those wonderful chassepots that the 
 gossips have been amusing us with for a year or more ? " 
 asked Philip " to say nothing of that sum of all murderous 
 inventions, the mitrailleuse." 
 
 Elliot rejoined : " They are all Gambetta declares on 
 paper. The Imperial Army has been growing rich and lazy 
 and enervated since the Crimean war, for the Mexican expe 
 dition was merely a grand foray for loot." 
 
 " I do not agree with your young radical," said Philip. 
 " France is the first military power in Europe, and Prussia 
 would find a very different adversary from the one she met 
 in Austria. The conquest, of Von Benedek s army was due 
 to the needle-gun and the incorrigible martinetism and red- 
 tapism of the Austrian war office." 
 
 "Gambetta," continued Elliot, "holds that France is 
 rotten in every sense. National patriotism is obliterated ; 
 
42 TRAJAN. 
 
 the army is held together merely for the support of the 
 dynasty, and in no sense reflects the ancient aspirations and 
 fervor that brought about the conquests of 1793. One cam 
 paign, according to Gambetta, would dissolve the French 
 organization like smoke." 
 
 " A patriotic person, this Gambetta," interjected Philip, 
 contemptuously, " who, thinking that of his country, is will 
 ing to see it brought to peril and, perhaps, destruction ; for 
 if ever the Prussians get this side of the Rhine as victors, 
 they will come with the memory of two hundred years of 
 repression of the affronts put upon them during the present 
 dynasty, and with a smarting sense of the high hand with 
 which they have been checked in their aspirations for unity. 
 Instead of one Blucher, there will be a million, each hun 
 gering for the spoil of the richest country in Europe, and 
 resolute in the destruction of every monument commemo 
 rating the vassalage of the Fatherland. I am free to say, I 
 do not understand patriotism in a Gambetta sense. If it is 
 Republican to wish one s country harm, then I am an Impe 
 rialist." 
 
 " You don t understand Gambetta," interrupted Trajan, in 
 a thick, unsteady voice, struggling to keep the tones from 
 trembling. " He loves France passionately, but he hates 
 the despotism that is settled upon her. He thinks that the 
 destruction of that despotism would be cheaply bought by 
 the temporary defeat of the dynasty s armies, for the armies 
 do not represent the people, nor sympathize with them. 
 This Bonaparte is hateful to every man who values free gov 
 ernment and by free government I mean such an institu 
 tion as exists in England or America. He did a cowardly 
 a dastardly thing he stole a nation s virtue, or, as Pre- 
 vost Paradol said the other day, France is like a great lady 
 who has descended to live with her footman, for eighteen 
 years, blinded to her own degradation and flaunting in her 
 enforced unchastity. To purge herself of this sin France 
 must undergo penitence. That penitence will come when 
 
STATE SECRETS. 43 
 
 she is made to suffer through the instrumentality of this 
 adventurer, who, having first degraded her by violence, 
 holds her in that degradation by stupefying her drugging 
 her with the accursed spirit of riches, and blinding her by 
 the ignis-fatuus of glory. France has been in a delirium 
 for twenty years. She can recover her reason only by the 
 calamity of war. If that war ends in defeat, that will restore 
 the sentiment of manhood, now dormant, that will rekindle 
 the aspirations of the rights of man, which in America have 
 made a great people, and in England a powerful and well- 
 ordered one." 
 
 Trajan paused for a moment. The others looked at him 
 in wonder. He continued : 
 
 " The salvation and protection of society was the plea 
 upon which Bonaparte seized France eighteen years ago. 
 Society is its own saviour and its own protector. Nothing 
 can justify fraud or violence in dealing with society. If the 
 sentiment of virtue, of self-respect had not been stifled in 
 the French people, they would never have endured such an 
 orgie as this malefactor has continued for eighteen years. In 
 the first place he robbed them of their inalienable rights to 
 choose their own form of government, and then corrupted 
 them into quiescence." 
 
 " But every thing was legalized," interrupted Elliot. " The 
 Emperor submitted to a vote of the people, and he got an 
 enormous majority." 
 
 " Yes, he got a majority," responded Trajan, " the basest 
 of the Roman consuls got majorities when they had seized 
 the purple, and, with such appliances as Bonaparte had, it 
 would have been wonderful, indeed, if he could not have 
 snatched an apparent approval from the weak and frivolous 
 and thoughtless mass, intent rather on riches and pleasure 
 than the continuity of their progressive traditions. With 
 the machinery of the ballot in his possession, it was no diffi 
 cult matter for the schemer who conducted his campaign to 
 get a majority out of forty millions of Frenchmen ; even 
 
44 TRAJAN. 
 
 then he got eight millions only to say yes, and, perhaps, a 
 million ventured to say no knowing what that * no implies 
 for them in the way of proscription, obloquy and ostracism. 
 Why am I so vehement in the cause of a stranger people ? 
 Because I hold that the natural divisions of mankind should 
 not be in the arbitrary lines of nations. I believe we should 
 be a universal republic, with no jealousies or distrust ; that 
 such groups of people as are now called nations should 
 make their own local laws, and that the ocean bounds of the 
 globe should contain but one general system of government. 
 Then we should have no wars, no clashing interests of labor 
 and riches ; we should, in fact, realize something of the 
 state that the early Christians foresaw and struggled for." 
 
 " Universal socialism, in fact, is the ideal you aim at," said 
 Philip, with a tolerant smile. 
 
 "Yes, if you wish to so call it," responded Trajan. " Uni 
 versal socialism. Since the unity of the race is the mass, 
 and since society is merely a collection of individuals, the 
 effect of one man s voice upon his neighbor should carry 
 the weight of its worth. His theories should count just as 
 far as they approve themselves to the conscience and judg 
 ment of an untrammeled majority. The deliberate voice 
 of that majority should be the rule of social existence as 
 it was when Moses and Joshua led their hosts of socialists 
 living in the simple communistic principles and practices of 
 the patriarchs. The beginning and germ of the doctrines 
 of socialism are found in the teachings of the Nazarene. 
 The essence of it is Love thy neighbor as thyself, or if 
 you prefer, Do unto others as you would that others 
 should do unto you. These two sayings are to my mind 
 the law and gospel of the much despised and perverted 
 socialism which tyrants conjure in hideous forms to frighten 
 the timid and restrain the liberal. 
 
 " You must remember, " continued Trajan earnestly, 
 fixing his eyes upon Elliot, " that it was part of God s plan 
 of punishment to put a king over Israel, and certainly you 
 
STATE SECRETS. 45 
 
 have read the history of nations in vain, if you have not 
 discovered that the kingly office has been a curse to humanity. 
 Why, above all, should Americans uphold, even by silence, 
 such a monstrosity as this emphasized and aggravated trav 
 esty of the worst estate of the Caesars ? " 
 
 Philip said dryly : " What is it Emerson says about the 
 inconvenience to the good order of the world, when a thinker 
 is let loose ? Reserve your passionate humanities for your 
 poems or your canvas, Gray." 
 
 " Even Disraeli advocated regicide in his early works, and 
 Milton was the tongue and brain of Cromwell," interrupted 
 Elliot. 
 
 Trajan joined the laugh that followed, responding : " Oh, 
 I m far from desiring the death of kings. It is not the king 
 who is to blame, as a general rule, it is the people who sub 
 mit to their punishment. I wouldn t have a limb of this 
 Bonaparte harmed. I would merely set him to work to 
 earn his living, and if he found himself unequal to that, 
 he could find a resource always open to a man of reso 
 lution for death has terrors only for those who create 
 them." 
 
 He stammered as he said this, catching Elliot s eye fixed 
 upon him. But Elliot s glance spoke no reproach. He was 
 deeply fascinated with the singular nature developing before 
 him, and he studied every expression that would aid him in 
 comprehending the young man. He was not without a 
 humorous realization that the union was something like that 
 of a horse and an eagle that each depended on a different 
 element both for movement and faculties. 
 
 Young as he was, Elliot had already discovered that no 
 vineyard has a special ray from the sun that ripens. Genius 
 must bring forth its best in an atmosphere common to all 
 endeavor, as the fragrant and ornamental in nature grow in 
 the same conditions as the useful and nutritious. 
 
 " I protest, gentlemen, against affairs of state," said Car- 
 not, gayly. " The discussion of politics is the business of 
 
46 TRAJAN. 
 
 lawyers and rich men seeking the great prizes in life. Mr. 
 Arden, have you seen Nilsson s Mignon?" 
 
 " Which reminds me," said Elliot suddenly, " that I have a 
 box for Trovatore to-night at the Italietis. Shall we go ? " 
 
 " By all means," said Philip. " I vote for the opera. 
 And you," said he, turning to Carnot " your evening is free, 
 I know, and you will join us." 
 
 " Willingly," Carnot responded. 
 
 Trajan looked at Elliot and said : " It will be impossible 
 for me to go with you. I have work that I ought to do 
 while I m in the humor, and I am in the humor now," he 
 added, in an undertone. 
 
 " We should like to have you go with us, very much," said 
 Elliot, " and you know we are not going to dress for the 
 I fallens" 
 
 But Trajan remained firm, and when the party broke up, 
 Elliot dropped behind and pressing his hand, said warmly : 
 " Remember, my dear fellow, that new friends are strong 
 friends, and that I claim the right of your friendship. I 
 have your address and will be over to-morrow to look at 
 your pictures in the atelier." 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 "TRAJAN S WAY." 
 
 you have met Trajan Gray before, Carnot," said 
 Elliot carelessly, as the former disappeared. 
 " Yes, Gray and I are old acquaintances. My sister 
 Theo has seen a great deal of him in various ways. They 
 met in America, I believe. He has an uncommon history, 
 or one is made for him, as he has always been something of 
 a mystery in the * Quartier. He was the most brilliant 
 pupil in the Beaux Arts but wayward and obstinate. He 
 
" TRAJAN S WA Y." 47 
 
 passes among the masters for an impracticable, and among 
 the students for a genius." 
 
 Elliott was eager to learn more of his friend, and yet not 
 willing to let the fact be see^n to Carnot and his cousin, so 
 he merely said : 
 
 " Another man with a story ? " 
 
 " Well, Trajan Gray s story, so far as I know it, and it is 
 known to but very few, is rather a remarkable one. His 
 father was that rare thing an Irish antiquary. He was 
 Professor of History at Queen s College, in Belfast. His 
 mother was the daughter of a long line of French emigre s 
 who had settled in England during the first revolution, and 
 who had made their way by teaching, so that Trajan de 
 rives his Gallic propensities from both father and mother, 
 since the Irish are but the French under another name. 
 The Grays were originally Scottish settled in Belfast. Be 
 fore his marriage the professor was an improvident bach 
 elor, and found it difficult to change the practices of the 
 scholar. He was devoured by a love for books and a burn 
 ing patriotism. His life-work was intended to be a history 
 of the Caesars, which should supplement that of Gibbon, of 
 which he was whimsically fond. 
 
 " It was from this devotion to Roman literature that his 
 only child got the rather fantastic name of Trajan. In 1845 
 the professor, taking too active a part with the Young 
 Ireland party in the ebullition of that year, lost his place in 
 the college, and after a great many vicissitudes emigrated 
 to America. There he became a hack-writer for a number 
 of periodicals, but died before he had been ten years in the 
 country. Trajan was born in New York, the very year of 
 the family s arrival there. The mother and son, left de 
 pendent, were put to a great many straits, the boy himself 
 finishing his school days at just the time when most lads 
 begin. But studious and observant from a child, he picked 
 up much by observation and incessant reading, at such 
 moments of leisure as could be found in the various callings 
 
48 TRAJAN. 
 
 that he was forced to adopt, and at the outbreak of the 
 Civil War he was in a remunerative and comparatively en 
 viable position as proof-reader in a great American publish 
 ing house. Here chance threw him into association with 
 an eminent American artist, who was struck by his clever 
 ness in drawing and recommended him to take lessons. In 
 a few years Trajan had perfected himself in all the details 
 of the art, and his mother dying in 1863 he enlisted in the 
 army, served a year and a half with his regiment before 
 Richmond, and was mustered out as lieutenant at the close 
 of the Rebellion, in June, 1865. While in the army he 
 wrote an account of the famous slaughter at Cold Harbor, 
 which, when published in a New York paper, for a moment 
 shook Grant s fame as a tactician. It was copied far and 
 wide. I saw it myself in an article in the Revue des Deux 
 Mondes. He was offered a post on the Oriflamme on leav 
 ing the army, but though remarkably successful did not 
 relish the life of a journalist. 
 
 In 1866, when Prussia was marching against Austria, 
 Trajan was sent to the seat of war but the campaign was 
 ended before he got to the field. His journal was dissatis 
 fied with the result, and his drafts on the office were .re 
 turned protested. He quit journalism in disgust and put 
 into execution a purpose he had long meditated, to study 
 painting. He entered the Beaux Arts and worked like a 
 madman day and night for two years, enchanting the in 
 structors by his ardor, and surprising his comrades by his 
 rapid mastery of the French, German and Spanish schools. 
 
 " His pictures were at once recognized as original ; and 
 he carried off some of the more valued prizes of the Salon. 
 He narrowly missed the prize of Rome. It was no secret 
 that he was deprived of it by a very unworthy intrigue. 
 He has passed years in Italy and Germany, and has been 
 several times to America, and it is always said of him, that 
 if he had been born without a tongue there is nothing in 
 art he might not accomplish, But he wounds his best 
 
" TRAJAN S WA Y." 49 
 
 friends, and repels his most ardent admirers by such vehe 
 mences and injudicious outbreaks as you witnessed this 
 evening. I have heard them before, and don t mind them. 
 He is a man of exquisite tenderness of heart, as every poor 
 fellow in the Quartier can attest, for when he has money he 
 never uses it for himself, and his eccentricities of this sort 
 are merely commented on by his comrades with the ex 
 pression, * Oh, that is Trajan s way ? 
 
 " Why, there ought to be a good deal in such a man as 
 that," said Philip, reflectively. " I recollect, now that you 
 mention these circumstances, I, too, have heard of his 
 self-denying generosity with those who have no claim upon 
 him." 
 
 Elliot said nothing, but he made a resolution secretly 
 that Trajan had one friend at least, who would not be re 
 pelled by thoughtlessness in speech or waywardness in con 
 duct. He was, by no means, satisfied with Garnet s sketch 
 of his new friend s history, and meant himself to unravel 
 the strange chain of circumstances which had driven a man 
 of such fine metal to the verge of the rather vulgar destiny 
 of suicide. 
 
 At the opera the three young men found the box already 
 occupied by Elliot s mother and sister. Mrs. Arden was 
 a charming, gentle-faced woman, with whom a faint resem 
 blance could be traced in Elliot s face. 
 
 " Well, Philip, you have found the runaway," she said, as 
 the three entered, after an affectionate greeting from 
 mother, son and sister. " Elliot, your sister sent for you to 
 your rooms this evening, but the messenger said you had 
 not been there since noon." 
 
 " What did you want, Edith ? " said Elliot, turning to his 
 sister, as she gave her hand with cordial warmth to her 
 cousin and Carnot. 
 
 Without waiting for the response, he continued, with 
 rather a tone of disappointment, " Where are Bella and 
 Aunt Caroline ; are they not coming to-night ? " 
 4 
 
50 TRAJAN. 
 
 " No," said Edith ; " Bella is very much fatigued from 
 an excursion to Sceaux, and Aunt Caroline is suffering from 
 one of her regular neuralgic attacks. They expect you 
 over, however, in case we caught sight of you. We ve 
 ordered supper after the opera." 
 
 Elliot s interest in the prima donna did not seem of the 
 most lively sort, and after the second act of " Trovatore " 
 he said carelessly : " I think I will go and see the invalids. 
 I am tired of " Trovatore," if it is the sweetest opera Verdi 
 ever wrote. One gets tired of too much sweetness." 
 
 "That depends a little on the kind, doesn t it?" said 
 Philip maliciously. 
 
 Elliot pretended not to hear him, saluted his mother and 
 sister affectionately and, with an au revoir to Carnot and 
 Philip, left the box. Reaching the street he took a cab and 
 was rolled rapidly through the Boulevard des Italiens as far 
 as the Church of the Madeleine. Then, turning down the Rue 
 Royale, and past the glittering lamps of the Place de la 
 Concorde, he continued up that enchanting sweep of lights 
 and foliage, crowned in the dim distance by the great 
 shadow of the "Arch of the Star." The cab stopped near 
 the corner of the Rue Franois I. The young man, ringing 
 a bell, was admitted to the hallway of one of the imposing 
 mansions of this aristocratic quarter. The concierge came 
 to the guichet as he passed, and it speaks volumes for the 
 charm of Elliot s manner, that even that, at all times surly 
 and repellent personage for concierge is but another name 
 for this smiled with pleasure and informed monsieur that 
 he was " the welcome one." With a good-humored re 
 sponse Elliott ascended the marble stairs, luxuriously car 
 peted in heavy purple tapestry, and rang the bell at the 
 massive double doorway of walnut. In a moment it swung 
 open and a man-servant took the young man s hat and 
 gloves. 
 
 Conjecturing that the indisposition which had kept his 
 cousin from the opera had not confined her to her room, 
 
" TRAJAN S WA Y." 51 
 
 Elliot asked the servant where she was. With the elabor 
 ate particularity of the French domestic he answered 
 gravely : 
 
 " Mademoiselle is in the salon with madame her mother. 
 Madame, your mother, and mademoiselle, your sister, are at 
 the opera and left word that you should go there if you 
 came." 
 
 In the library he found a young girl seated beside a table 
 with an argand burner at her side, reading, and on a low 
 couch, at a little distance, the figure of a lady reclined. 
 Both looked up in surprise as the door opened, the young girl 
 rose and held out her hand. 
 
 " Welcome at last, Mr. Wanderer," said the latter, archly. 
 " If you have not already given an account of yourself, now 
 is the chosen time. We expected you to go with us to 
 Sceaux. I shall never be able to tell you the wonders of 
 the pavilions and the gayety of the dance under the 
 trees." 
 
 "Ah ! you were at the fete champetre, were you, frivol 
 ous young woman ? I am surprised that the dragons of pro 
 priety permitted you into such disreputable dissipation." 
 
 " Why, what can you mean, Elliot ? " said a languid, 
 querulous voice, as the young man went over and greeted 
 the invalid. " I thought Sceaux was one of the suburbs of 
 Paris most frequented by the upper classes." 
 
 " Well, you know, the resorts of the nobility are not always 
 above reproach,, and Bella can tell you that the very place a 
 prudent young person \vould be wisest in avoiding would be 
 the haunts of those favored mortals." 
 
 "Don t tell me that," responded the invalid. "You 
 can not make me believe that people who have grown up 
 with the refined influences of birth and education will de 
 mean themselves by mixing with common people in vulgar 
 pleasures. I won t believe it ! " 
 
 " Very well, auntie, indulge in your admiration for the 
 nobility, and cherish your illusions as long as you can, and 
 
52 TRAJAN. 
 
 while you can keep at such a safe distance from them as you 
 are, perhaps that will be no difficult feat." 
 
 Aunt Caroline could have been heard rather inarticu 
 lately reproaching the young man for willful perversion of 
 both her words and sentiments ; but as she was fatigued, 
 she didn t propose to set herself right in the eyes of persons 
 for whose good opinion she was really indifferent. While 
 this murmured sarcasm was shaping itself at his expense, 
 the object of it had narrowly missed overturning the argand 
 burner, in an inexplicable attempt to force a chair nearer 
 his cousin than the nature of the conversation seemed to 
 demand, pre-supposing the young girl in the possession of 
 unimpaired hearing. She laid down her book but said 
 nothing. The young man adjusting himself comfortably in 
 the chair regarded the shining head before him through 
 the delicate wreaths of smoke exhaling from a Turkish 
 cigarette. 
 
 It was a charming face that confronted him. Bella s 
 complexion was a rare olive, delicate, transparent, and at 
 times almost pink in its delicacy with eyes soft, and lumin 
 ously brown, with such tricks of change as required a long 
 acquaintance to enable one to affirm with confidence their 
 color. Elliot was fond of telling his cousin that she never 
 could be painted, because the artist would never undertake 
 such lips. They were not perfect in outline ; they were 
 every thing that is implied in plumpness, save the familiar 
 and soubrette notion. Plumpness effaces elegance, yet 
 the girl would be called, before every thing else, elegant 
 that is, in repose of manner, musical intonation in the softest 
 of voices and repression in vivacity, which renders a woman 
 at certain moments adorable. It was plain to be seen that 
 the merriness in the eye came from a true poise and mastery 
 of self, which, though rare in woman, is an incomparable 
 charm when found. It is difficult to tell the age of a girl of 
 such peculiar qualities facial and mental. Bella was in 
 her twenty-first year. The cousins had never seen much of 
 
" TRAJAN S WA Y." 53 
 
 each other until the death of Mr. Briscoe, who, having gone 
 to California in " 49," was virtually lost to his family in 
 New York until the completion of the Pacific Railway in 
 1864 when he returned a fourfold millionaire to die and 
 be buried in the vicinage of his fathers, near the home 
 village in Wyndham county, Vermont. It was not until his 
 Harvard course was done that Elliot, coming home in the 
 flush of a brilliant graduation, found his cousin Bella estab 
 lished with his family in New York. Like most young men of 
 aspiration and no bread-winning needs, Elliot had given no 
 thought to marriage indeed the subject, had he stopped to 
 reflect over it, would have seemed ludicrously out of place at 
 his age. He protested to his rSother that he was going to make 
 a name equal to the distinction of the family, and until then 
 he did not propose marrying. His mother made no strenu 
 ous objection to this resolve of her only son but his sister 
 was at once a declared ally to the project ; for, as she often 
 said to her mother in confidence " There isn t a girl in 
 New York fit for Elliot he s a prince among men." 
 
 "But, my child, he will find plenty of princesses ; there 
 never was a fine soul that didn t sooner or later find a con 
 genial one I shall be well satisfied if Elliot finds a good 
 girl, and he can share his fine qualities with her he has 
 enough for both." Edith was not quite satisfied with her 
 mother s qualified devotion to the prince, and often confided 
 her hopes to Bella. That young lady, while astutely assent 
 ing to her cousin s sisterly panegyrics, it was remarked, 
 avoided any original proposition expressive of her own 
 opinion a diplomatic reserve which Edith had not stopped 
 to weigh, as a less absorbed advocate would be very likely to 
 do. 
 
 Highly as Edith placed her brother, he secretly be 
 lieved her to be the pearl of girls. One of the sorrows 
 of his life had been the passion of a college friend 
 for the young girl. He had known the youth in college as 
 a gay, dissolute fellow, uncertain in his tendencies and 
 
54 TRAJAN. 
 
 incapable of the abnegation implied in the love that should 
 win a noble girl. He shrank from interfering in the affair, 
 but a heavy load was taken from his heart when the young 
 man, after months of courtship sent for him as he was 
 quitting Edith s presence and pressing his hand with husky 
 voice, said : 
 
 " Good-by, Arden, old fellow ; I m going to Europe to 
 morrow. I hate this infernal country." 
 
 There were no words needed between the brother and 
 sister. Elliot kissed the young girl s agitated lips and 
 soothed the first sorrow that she had ever known for she 
 had been entirely innocent of the sentiment which had kept 
 the disappointed lover so constantly by her side. The young 
 men that made up the court of Arden House were never at 
 a loss to understand their relations with the daughter of the 
 family after that. Whether Bella had, with the keener per 
 ception of her sex, marked the episode, neither brother nor 
 sister ever knew, but she seemed to have learned the lesson 
 for even Elliot was made to see, that while he held a high 
 place in her esteem, there were none of the signs that indi 
 cated even the incipience of a serious passion. 
 
 To some the lesson of life, its mysteries, its impulses, 
 come only from experience ; to others the problem seems 
 laid bare like a growth in grace, without words and without 
 forewarning. Such natures are the sweeter, as the man 
 whose career is half made for him is generally more agree 
 able than the hapless mortal called the self-made man. -The 
 thistle of the second generation encouraged by friendly soil, 
 has a more delicate bloom and more shapely stamen, than 
 the rose that springs from a seed blown in the air and from 
 an uncongenial soil. Hardness is the enemy of sweetness ; 
 repose is but a thin veneer after a life of hard blows and the 
 ignoble processes which bring about material success. The 
 Ardens were examples of the repose of fine conditions. The 
 fortune that supported the family in luxury, which good 
 breeding kept from ostentation, gave that inbred ease and 
 
" TRAJAN S WAY: 55 
 
 refinement which conies from a knowledge of equality among 
 social forces and not the pretention to superiority which 
 too often mars the self-made rich and successful. So far 
 as it is possible to the infirmities of human nature, the Ardens 
 were democrats ; that is, they not only believed, but they 
 acted on the faith, that equality exists, and can not be sub 
 verted by the accident of wealth or the favor of fortune. 
 Possibly, if put to a severe strain, any one member of the 
 family would have broken down ; but that they did not as a 
 family, this history is a proof ; for if they had, the events 
 which form its main thread would never have come to me 
 to chronicle. 
 
 " You are reading * Romola again, Mademoiselle la 
 Savante. I thought you had committed it to heart when we 
 were in Florence last winter," said Elliot, taking the book 
 and looking at the page. 
 
 " I thought I was getting the best from the story in Flor 
 ence, but I have been haunted by the ghost of Tito. I have 
 never ceased to see his beautiful dead face, with the cruel 
 fingers of Baldassarre clutched about the tender neck. Do 
 you know I resent the author s disposal of the charming 
 Greek." 
 
 " Tito was a wretched cad. He was a false friend, a faith 
 less husband, a treacherous, heartless son. I could have for 
 given him the denial of Baldassarre for, after all, the old 
 man was not his father, but I should have no compunction 
 for a man that could trifle with such a heart and brain as 
 Romola s ! " 
 
 " But that is in the nature of man, after all, isn t it ? " and 
 the young girl half closed her eyes to avoid the indignant 
 and reproachful glance that was fastened upon her. 
 
 " Upon my word, Cousin Bella, I can t imagine where you 
 get such ideas of men. I know none such out of high- 
 pressure romance, and even there they move with a mechani 
 cal and perfunctory action, as though the creation of them 
 rather tried the ingenuity of their authors. Flesh-and-blood 
 
5<> TRAJAN. 
 
 men are perhaps, as Carlyle says, mostly fools, but few mefl 
 are knaves from disposition, or with opportunities to be any 
 thing else. I m afraid this foreign atmosphere is making you 
 cynical, or putting ideas in your head that are rather the 
 property of Frenchmen than the expression of our sort of 
 human nature." 
 
 " In other words, Elliot, you fancy that a young woman 
 should think of men only in the light of possible husbands, 
 and by investing them "with spotlessness from the ways of the 
 world, create that state in them ? " 
 
 " By no means. I hold simply that a woman of heart and 
 refinement and one implies the other should not seek the 
 abnormal. Men may be rascals, women may be insincere 
 and shallow. I am glad to say that I know none, or if I do 
 they hold no place in my mind." 
 
 " But for all that, isn t it wiser to admit that there are 
 Titos in the world, and knowing that they are there, deal 
 with them, if we have to do with them, more humanely than 
 the creator of the wretched Greek ? " 
 
 " No ; I, for one, would rather have agreeable mediocrity 
 for camaraderie than all the attainments of the subtle, money- 
 loving egoist there pointing to Tito in the picture of the 
 first mutiny with Romola. Or take another illustration of 
 the same genre I would rather fashion a mate out of a vil 
 lage tow-head than sit on the throne with a Borgia, a Medici, 
 or a Brinvilliers." 
 
 " There s nothing of the heroic in you, cousin mine, nor 
 for that matter is there in me, but I am perversely inclined 
 to the idealizing of historical monsters." 
 
 At this moment mamma yawned portentously, arose, 
 gathering an ample drapery about her, and coming over to 
 the mantel, adjusted her eye-glasses and examined the clock. 
 " After eleven ; I really can not wait for them ; I should 
 have been in bed an hour ago ! " 
 
 " By the way, auntie, I have found just the man you have 
 been seeking a young American who uses French like a 
 
" TRAJAN S WA Y." 57 
 
 Parisian ; a painter of remarkably fine pictures, which, as 
 he is not the fashion, he can not sell distinguished in the 
 Beaux-Arts as a draughtsman." 
 
 " Who is he ? " asked Bella with lively interest. " Some 
 sour-tempered, disappointed young man, I ve no doubt, who 
 will make me wretched to look at." 
 
 " There is no need of your looking at him," said Mrs. 
 Briscoe, with reproachful asperity. " If he knows French 
 well and can give you the instruction you require in draw 
 ing, I don t see what possible interest his personal appear 
 ance can have ? " 
 
 Elliot restrained an impulse to laugh as he pictured the 
 classic face of Trajan and the comments of his unknown 
 client. 
 
 " I am not going to give you any idea what he is like. 
 He will dine with us to-morrow, and if we can secure him 
 for a few months I shall consider myself an exceptional 
 ambassador, and you, mesdames, the luckiest women in 
 Paris." 
 
 A rumble of a carriage rolling over the paved court an 
 nounced the opera-party. A minute later Edith entered 
 with Philip Kent and Jules Carnot. 
 
 Bella rose and gave her hand cordially to the two gentle 
 men, expressing lively regret at missing the opera. 
 
 "You didn t miss much," said Philip. " Carvalho was in 
 execrable voice. The tenor was lukewarm and indifferent. 
 I remark that of late the Italiens doesn t give itself much 
 concern, unless there is a royalty present." 
 
 " What have you done with mother ? " said Elliot. 
 
 " Mamma has gone out to see that we get a reward for the 
 fatigues of the evening ah, there you are, mamma there 
 is an inquiry for you. Elliot was afraid we had left you on 
 our way home." 
 
 Mrs. Arden laughed cheerfully. She seemed more like 
 the sister of her big son than the mother. She was barely 
 seated when \hzportttres were drawn aside at the end of the 
 
5 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 room, and the butler, standing in the center, announced in 
 the French fashion : 
 
 " Madam is served." 
 
 The supper-table revived the animation that the opera 
 overcast. Bella, who was seated between Jules and Elliot, 
 astonished the gentlemen by her familiarity with the cross 
 currents of the society of the capital. 
 
 " I am hungry to go to the country," she said during a 
 lull in the conversation ; "but I hope we shall not go to any 
 of the watering-places in vogue. They differ from Paris 
 only as a section of the Faubourg St. Germain differs from 
 a section of the Faubourg St. Honore, and both are intoler 
 able to any one who has work to do." 
 
 " That reminds me, Elliot," said Mrs. Briscoe. " Will 
 your artist-friend object to leaving Paris for Bella insists 
 on at least three months of real seclusion." 
 
 " What is the mystery ? " interposed Mrs. Arden ; " have 
 you adopted an artist, Elliot, to complete the original col 
 lection?" * 
 
 " Oh, I forgot to say that I have been fortunate enough 
 to find a man that will, I think, instruct Bella in the things 
 she yearns to know providing her whim outlasts the nego 
 tiation." 
 
 " Who is it?" exclaimed Edith, looking at her brother in 
 surprise. 
 
 "A young American, Mr. Trajan Gray." 
 
 " What a classic name Trajan ! why, I shall be thinking 
 of the conquests of the Antonines, the walls on the 
 Euphrates and the pass over the Balkans to say nothing of 
 the columns in the forum," said Bella, with an air of uncon 
 scious pedantry that set the rest laughing. 
 
 " I hope this Caesarian young person confines his learning 
 to his name, Elliot," said Mrs. Arden, "for if he encourages 
 Bella in her present rage for the abstruse she will be com 
 panion for neither man nor gods." 
 
 "As to that," said Philip, dryly, " there are pedants of 
 
" TRAJAN S WA Y 59 
 
 ignorance as well as knowledge, and the time that the work 
 laid out for a fashionable young woman leaves for study will 
 not give much chance for a dangerous profundity. Miss 
 Bella will drink at the Pierian spring, until she feels the 
 need of a more intoxicating draught." 
 
 " By Jove, Philip, old fellow, because the sex is antipa 
 thetic to you is no reason that you should indulge in gener 
 alizations, which, from any other tongue than yours would 
 sound brutal," rejoined Elliot, affecting a tone of admoni 
 tion. 
 
 " Brutal in the sense that there is nothing so brutal as a 
 fact, perhaps. But learning in women is as discordant as 
 raiment on the lily or foot-notes to a poem." 
 
 "I am quite of Philip s opinion," said Carnot, with 
 steady composure. " Learned women are uncomfortable 
 sort of people. I never knew but one. She was a Russian 
 countess, who set up for doctor. She was clever enough in 
 her profession, but her conversation was what the French 
 call academic quite beyond every body else. She was tol 
 erated, I think, more because of her rank than any thing 
 else. There were few who could resist the distinction of a 
 real countess for family physician. She was a skinny little 
 woman all cheek-bone and eyes but she had countless 
 offers, and finally gave her learning and her meager charms 
 to an abstracted member of her own profession noted more 
 for the fervor of his devotion to music than medicine. She 
 carried on the practice and his clients were generally bene 
 fited by the union." 
 
 " No woman ever changed the destiny of the world by 
 superior learning," said Philip, " while many women have 
 revolutionized the destinies of the race without it." 
 
 "On that basis," said Elliot, "madmen and monks have 
 been the most potent factors in the destinies of the race 
 from Alexander to Luther." 
 
 " Well, young people, if you insist on holding a philo 
 sophical discussion you may take your cigars and we will 
 
60 TRAJAN- 
 
 leave you," said Mrs. Arden, who had been listening 
 abstractedly, 
 
 The ladies arose, bidding the young men good-night, and 
 left the room. The trio smoked for a half hour or more, 
 and then Philip and Carnot bade Elliot adieu. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 TRAJAN RENEWS HIS YOUTH. 
 
 r PRAJAN went from the group in the Cafe Voltaire that 
 1 memorable night in May, with the mandate of a new pur 
 pose on his heart and conscience. The impetus wrought in 
 him by a few hours companionship with a nature serene, 
 open and loyal, had begun the workings of a profound 
 change in him, which while it was to involve him in tortur 
 ing trials and even deadly peril, expanded every virile force 
 in his nature. As he stood irresolute in the dim shadows of 
 the gabled edifice, he regretted that he had quitted the con 
 genial influences of his chivalrous friend. He distrusted the 
 silence of the night. He dreaded the wrenching hand of 
 remembrance tearing at his heart-strings and goading him 
 to the dastard resolution of the day. But a singular syncope 
 had fallen upon his faculties ; the pain of the past, numbed 
 by its own unchecked force, gave but feeble intimation of 
 what it had been. The interest of Elliot, his compelling 
 unreserve, brought new images, more active than the pallid 
 shades of wrong and despair that had possessed him. He 
 realized in the brief companionship, the despicable cowardice 
 of his own conduct. He was ashamed of the figure he had 
 made agonized would, perhaps, be the better expression of 
 his self-abased, present appreciation of his purpose. The 
 more he reflected upon the incidents of the day, the more 
 fatuous, incomprehensible and unmanly his impatience and 
 
TRAJA N RENE WS HIS YO U TH. 6 1 
 
 supine surrender to his morbid impulse seemed to him. What ! 
 a man who had faced death on the battle-field, who had 
 borne poverty and laughed at its sordid shifts : who made a 
 cult of self-denial and a servant of adversity, deliver himself 
 like a brainless debauche to the ignoble and sickly impulse of 
 suicide ? He burned in a fever of self-abasement. 
 
 Nor could he delude himself by the sophistry that faith 
 less love was the single woe he had resolved to fly. He had 
 wickedly persuaded himself that the children of men, divi 
 ded by warring interests, had no tie in common. That he, 
 having no hold on mankind, the world had no claim upon 
 him. That because betrayed love made life a blank, his 
 hand had lost its craft, his brain its creative resources. 
 That courage and hope gone from him, he should find him 
 self homeless, breadless. That without purpose or place life 
 was not only not worth living, but impossible. For months 
 in the delicious torments of a love, not without hope, he had 
 been unable to hold himself to bread-winning. When the 
 blow fell, what inspiration was there left ? The shapes of his 
 pencil, the touch of his brush, no longer responded to the 
 subtle ideas of perfection he had once evoked from the can 
 vas. The end of endeavor came, and it was the fulfillment 
 of the law of life to close the struggle in which he was strip 
 ped not only of arms but the forces to wield them. 
 Poverty he had faced ; but then ambition s lamps were 
 aflame in the horizon of his hope and he could smile at it. 
 But in the wreck of all he had set his heart upon what good? 
 Why strive ? 
 
 Then came a humiliated sense of beginning life anew a 
 sort of moral ticket-of-leave man. Elliot could not compre 
 hend the just mean of the motives driving him to destruc 
 tion. Then he wondered if the young man had really un 
 derstood the sentiment, rather than satisfaction of hunger 
 that had impelled him to pick up the crust ? 
 
 He felt that he would have been better satisfied if the 
 Samaritan had seen into his soul and had been able to see 
 
62 TRAJAN. 
 
 that the act was merely a part of the design of death that had 
 filled his mind. To be a beggar that was the horror of his 
 life up to the very picking of the crusts. He could have 
 gone to a dozen acquaintances and eked out weeks, months, 
 perhaps years, sharing the reputation of the careless, jolly 
 spendthrifts that filled the quarter. It was from the begin 
 ning of such a career of what he loathed as baseness that 
 Trajan had made up his mind to fly. He had known other 
 fellows, clever as himself fellows, even, who had sold pic 
 tures at good prices to rich Americans fall into the fatal 
 disregard of scrupulousness, and had heard them lightly 
 spoken of, seen them repulsed and avoided by men who in 
 kindness rather than repugnance invented clumsy expedients 
 for avoiding them. For between borrower and lender, it is 
 the lender who generally suffers most poignantly the inability 
 of a friend to repay, though between men of delicacy the 
 misery of the* relation is about equal. If the borrower be 
 servant to the lender, the master is the sufferer in the 
 service rendered. For if the two be equal, delicacy forbids 
 transforming the loan into a gift, and circumstances often 
 make it a species of theft. To the hapless borrower it seems 
 such. He begins by observing the most ceremonious be 
 havior and ends in avoiding the man whom circumstances 
 make him wrong. Mutual distrust cements the coldness and 
 the end is hatred on the one hand, and, unless the lender be 
 a soul of exceptional nobility, contempt upon the other. 
 
 Trajan had watched piteous dramas of this sort. Indeed 
 he was himself a victim of many of them, for when he had 
 money, all who asked shared it. He had striven to prevent 
 the usual consequences, but he had seen with sorrow and 
 despair that his advances were ill received. He had proved 
 the odious maxim, that there is no wrong so bitter as the 
 doing of a good deed that can not be returned. He walked 
 along the quai. The lamps were gleaming throwing gro 
 tesque angles of light half-way over the dark current of the 
 Seine. He even turned into the bridgeway where he had 
 
TRAJAN RENE WS HIS YO UTH. 63 
 
 stood a few hours before contemplating it, as one does the 
 approaching railway train that is to take him on a long 
 journey. His mind had been perfectly tranquil. He had 
 longed for a rest that should not be harassed by the cares 
 investing his days and the anguish of a bitter delusion. He 
 wondered as he leaned over the stone balustrade, how he 
 could have been so mad for, after all, if the worst came to 
 the worst, wasn t the recruiting station open to him yonder ? 
 
 But he was forced to own that it was not the fear of finding 
 nothing to do that had made death seem a delicious rest. 
 Trajan, like most of us, when confronted by moral retro 
 spection, insisted on shutting out the real cause of his weak 
 ness. Tie watched the swift current of the river and laughed 
 to himself as he saw the gendarme regarding him furtively. 
 The gendarme, poor man, divined from experience the mean 
 ing of the young man s contemplation, and he resolved to 
 spare himself the disagreeable flurry of fishing the slender 
 looking figure from the water, so he made himself very con 
 spicuous to Trajan, as though intimating that while on a 
 question of principle he acceded to the right of any citizen 
 to dip himself in the Seine, he objected to having the 
 scandal of it in his bailiwick. Trajan, saluting him, gravely 
 set out to retrace his steps. At the end of the bridge he 
 almost stumbled over the figure of a child. It was sobbing 
 piteously. Stooping down, Trajan saw a pallid face framed 
 in a mass of curly hair. 
 
 " What frightens you, my child ?" he said kindly. 
 
 The little creature who had cowered tremblingly as Trajan 
 bent over him, reassured by the friendly voice, broke into a 
 passion of sobs, while his large eyes were fastened on his 
 possible friend. Sitting down on the stone step, Trajan 
 drew the waif toward hm. He was very much soiled, but 
 his dress was not ragged nor coarse. When he had mastered 
 his sobbing, Trajan asked again : 
 
 " Where are your papa and mamma : why are you in the 
 street so late ? : This, however, had the effect of setting 
 
64 TRAJAN. 
 
 the child into a new outburst of tears. Mastering this pres 
 ently, and gaining confidence in Trajan, he suddenly said, 
 between his sobs : " I m hungry where s maman ? " 
 
 Trajan colored to the roots of his hair. His heart smote 
 him with a guilty pang. This child, too, was hungry was 
 he the one to refuse him bread ? He felt in his pocket, but 
 suddenly recollected that he had given his last coin to the 
 beggar-boy of the afternoon. The little one s eyes followed 
 the motion of the hand, and his eyes which had bright 
 ened, filled with tears as it came out empty. The other 
 felt as embarrassed as a devotee who finds himself penniless 
 when the plate reaches him in church. What should he do ? 
 The child was evidently famishing. Useless to take*him to 
 the neighboring eating-houses they made it a rule to refuse 
 all mendicants besides it was against the law to ask for 
 bread. He suddenly thought of the store behind the bench 
 in the Luxembourg. 
 
 " Come," he said to the child ; " come with me, and I 
 will find something for you to eat. It was a long walk for a 
 little fellow faint with hunger, and Trajan, his heart tender 
 with the memory of the day, picked up the tired child and 
 carried him in his arms. He was a comely little man of six 
 or seven, with unkempt black hair and large round eyes. 
 He was hardly warmed by contact with Trajan s body 
 before he was sound asleep. On reaching the Luxembourg 
 gardens Trajan placed his little charge on the first banquette 
 near the gate, and hastened to the bench, where Elliot had 
 left the birds bread. It was too dark to see, but he knew 
 exactly the spot and the clump of lilacs. He leaned over 
 the bench and groped for the crusts. But his arm wasn t 
 long enough, evidently, as he felt nothing. He hadn t even 
 a match, and he didn t like to go across the esplanade 
 to ask for one. Climbing over the bench, he kneeled down, 
 and carefully searched to the very roots of the trees. The 
 bread was gone evidently some hungry dog had discovered 
 the treasure. Bitterly disappointed, he climbed back over 
 
TRAJAN RENEWS HIS YOUTH. 65 
 
 the end of the bench, which, overweighted, tipped and let 
 the young man fall backward. In the scramble he struck 
 the branches of the lilac bush above him, tearing his sleeve 
 and scraping the flesh from his elbow. He brought up 
 sprawling on the ground, his hand resting on something, 
 soft and smooth. He picked it up. As nearly as he could 
 make out it was a thick pocket-case. He got up, wondering 
 how it came there. He could just distinguish at the next 
 bench the form of a woman, but he could not see whether 
 she was alone or not. As he stood thus uncertain, he heard 
 a scuffle directly behind him and the gruff voice of a gen 
 darme, saying : 
 
 " It s past the hour for promenading the gates close in 
 three minutes be off ! " 
 
 " But I m waiting for some one," remonstrated the other, 
 " and I can not go till he comes." 
 
 " You must wait outside the gate, then you can t wait 
 here." 
 
 With the wallet in his hand Trajan stopped to hear the 
 end of this dialogue, hoping it would give him a clue to the 
 owner. He asked himself if some one was playing a prac 
 tical joke, for the wallet seemed to have been thrown on the 
 ground, after he had searched it for the bread. He was 
 positive he had covered every inch under the bushes, or 
 could it have been secreted in the branches and fallen when 
 he rustled them in clutching to stay his mishap ? The 
 gendarme, observing him, came up and ordered him to leave 
 the grounds as the gates were about to close. He suddenly 
 bethought him of the woman could she have dropped it ? 
 He advanced toward the seat where she had stood within 
 arm s reach almost of the branch that had stayed him in his 
 descent. She had disappeared. He walked to the lamp in 
 the direction of the gate to examine the wallet. It was as he 
 suspected. There was a bit of cord loosely fastened around 
 it and by which it had very clearly been tied to the twigs 
 under the leaves. The violent shake he had given the branch 
 5 
 
66 TRAJAN. 
 
 when he threw up his arms to stay his fall had, no doubt, 
 broken the slight stems, for vestiges of them still remained 
 in the knot. He felt a guilty sense of unlawful possession 
 of this unexpected treasure-trove, convinced that it had 
 been put there for a purpose. This sense of involuntary 
 purloining suggested giving it to the gendarme ; but he was 
 at some distance, beating up the reluctant loiterers lurking 
 in the leafy recesses of the garden. Under the impulse 
 Trajan started toward the direction whence his voice could 
 be heard, his jetsam held far from him as if to keep him from 
 the temptation of examining it. His step was arrested by 
 a wailing little cry, broken by piteous sobs : 
 
 " Mamma ! mamma ! I m hungry give me to eat I ll be 
 very, very good" sob sob sob. 
 
 This was an argument that arrested Trajan s uncertainty. 
 There was no pretext for casuistry in that. He knew by 
 experience that an empty stomach was a foe to the refinements 
 of time, place and amenities. He quickened his step toward 
 infantile misery, stronger than abstract proprieties. He lifted 
 the half-unconscious child, who clasped his neck confidingly 
 with his weary little arms. That hug would have braced 
 Trajan to highway robbery. He instantly dedicated the 
 treasure to the child s wants, until he could reach that to 
 which he had a less dubitable title. " Give me to eat," 
 murmured the child, in his pretty French familiarity, his 
 voice faltering. Trajan pressed him to his breast sooth 
 ingly. 
 
 " Poor little fellow ! wait and you shall have to eat." He 
 slipped the wallet into his pocket, and with the sensation of 
 a burglar making off with his spoil, fled rather than walked 
 out of the garden. The motion brought the sobs to an end. 
 The child, with the unconsciousness of babyhood to rank or 
 conditions, wound its weary arms around the young man s 
 neck. People turned to look at him as he hurried down the 
 Rue Vaugirard, down the Rue Cherche-midi until, after 
 twenty minutes walk, which was almost a run, he came to 
 
TRAJA N RENE WS HIS YO U TH. 6 7 
 
 a halt before a double door opening level with the street, in 
 the Rue du Dragon. He had to set the boy down while 
 searching for his key, opening the door and lighting the 
 lamp. The child was sobbing in its sleep, but was awakened 
 by the sharp ecstatic bark of a small black dog that seemed 
 intent on eating Trajan, while a white cat, so large that it 
 seemed, at nrst glance, like an untranquil pillow, stood 
 by the fireplace with its back as much arched as a very fat 
 cat aroused at such an untimely hour could be expected to 
 elongate its vertebrae. 
 
 "Be quiet, Trip sh sh " admonished Trajan as the 
 dog, discovering baby, set up a short howl of indignant 
 reproach. The cat, too, discerning the new-comer, made as 
 if to accept it as a rat ready for the sacrifice, and began to 
 conduct herself with as little dignity as Trip. The lamp 
 lighted, Trajan lifted the child, and placed it on a short 
 dumpy sofa to the no small astonishment of Trip and the 
 cat, both of whom claimed this as their own special preserve. 
 Trip began an agitated investigation of the dangling legs, 
 while his companion gravely contemplated the intruder, 
 alternately questioning Trajan with her large yellow eyes ? 
 and curling her tail in no end of remonstrances at such 
 scandalous innovation upon the habits of a respectable 
 mother of numerous well-reared kittens. 
 
 "Be quiet, you pests," said Trajan, seating himself at the 
 table and tearing open the wallet. It was a rich piece of 
 leather and might contain money ; but Trajan s heart sank 
 as he opened it, for nothing but a thick bundle of papers 
 met his eye. There was a note which he didn t stop to 
 examine. Unfolding the papers Trajan s heart gave a great 
 bound. Bank of England notes ! One two he grew too 
 dizzy to count. There were a half dozen at least all of 
 them, to the young man s dismay, of large denomination 
 ^10,^20! He looked them over feverishly. Yes there 
 was one for ^5. That, he might venture to use. Without 
 looking at the note or the other papers in the wallet, he 
 
68 TRAJAN. 
 
 closed it, put it in a drawer, and locking it, addressed him 
 self to the child. It was still sleeping. 
 
 " Trip, you must take care of the baby while I go for the 
 supper, and, Madame Betty, you must take care that you do 
 not practice with your claws on the visitor. Trip, you shall 
 have some meat, and, Betty, you shall have the feast that 
 pampered cats love." 
 
 Trip wagged his tail in ecstatic assent and Betty brushed 
 herself in the most ridiculous, wheedling way against 
 Trajan s legs, with an intention, as the dog evidently thought, 
 of tripping his master, for he deliberately backed into 
 madame s face, pretending that Trajan s hands needed kiss 
 ing. Thereupon madame retired with stately dignity toward 
 the rug, purring in violent agitation. Trajan closed the 
 door softly behind him, and the three friends were left alone. 
 Trip returned gravely to the sofa where the child slept its 
 breathing broken by short sobs. The dog put its paws upon 
 the body, then climbed up examining the garments interro 
 gatively. Madame, thinking better of her discomfitture, 
 came over likewise, and the two held solemn council over 
 the new comer. Trip having pushed his black nose into 
 baby s face, looked up and announced that it was a harmless 
 sort of an intruder, and perhaps might be an acquisition if 
 taken in hand. Madame, as befits the more cautious nature 
 of her race, began at the feet, carefully abstaining from 
 coming in contact with such squalor. To the evident invita 
 tions of Trip to lay her nose against baby s face, she returned 
 a decided negative. If the master chose to indulge such 
 caprices, she knew her place too well to make a scene. But 
 she washed her hands of the interloper. Very well, wagged 
 Trip, you haven t much humanity. I will lie down here, so 
 that when master comes he will see that I have done my 
 best to make things agreeable for his prottfge. So Madame 
 Betty resumed her place on the rug, this time not so self- 
 possessed, and evidently divided in her mind as to her duty. 
 She sat on her haunches affecting perfect unconcern. But 
 
TRAJA N RENE WS HIS YO U TH. 6 9 
 
 Trip, from the corner of his eye, his cold nose resting on 
 baby s neck, could see that his old friend was not so well 
 satisfied with herself as usual. 
 
 The room was Trajan s atelier. Lighted by three dormer- 
 windows, the chamber covered the whole top floor. At one 
 side a high-canopied bed could be seen through the half- 
 drawn curtains that cut the apartment in two. The walls 
 were covered with oblong patches of tapestry, armor, engrav 
 ings, drawings, medallions, bronze grotesques, busts of 
 famous statuary, portraits, Tuscan vases, Pompeian frag 
 ments, and the host of odds-and-ends that a painter picks 
 up in the old world for " a song." 
 
 On a high upright easel between the two windows, where 
 the joint of the. roof came down, a large canvas, partly in 
 oil, told the work Trajan had been at last. The apartment, 
 though large, was made to look homelike by the sloping 
 roof, which, near the window, came within four feet of the 
 lower sill. The vast floor w r as liberally patched with rich 
 but well-worn rugs of wonderful beauty of color and design. 
 Every thing in the room was an implement of the owner s 
 art down to his two friends, Master Trip and Madame 
 Betty. The ears of these two attending sprites detected 
 Trajan s step long before he had gained the last flight of 
 stairs. When he opened the door they were both at his feet 
 madame forgetting the duties imposed by her age and 
 dignity, and Trip impatient to test the quality of the promised 
 feast. Both were soon gratified by the amplest portions of 
 such meat as Paris butchers reserve for their animal clients 
 madame decorously finishing her repast with a saucer of 
 milk, a rare delicacy that she thought highly appropriate in 
 such a crisis of self-denial as she had been called upon to 
 undergo. The child still slept restlessly. Trajan left it 
 undisturbed, until having heated some bouillon by his spirit 
 lamp, a smoking bowl stood ready. 
 
 " Now, my little man " said he, taking the boy tenderly 
 in his arms "it won t do to go to bed on an empty 
 
70 TRAJAN. 
 
 stomach." The kind tone and the savory odor of the soup 
 brought the little fellow wide awake promptly. A child is 
 the only real philosopher. To him there are no unities of 
 time, place or circumstance. He is hungry. What more 
 natural than to eat. Blessed confidence of childhood 
 religion itself has no profounder lesson no more eloquent 
 attestation of a first cause. How thin the fabric of our 
 sophistries ; how attenuated the maxims of the wise, before 
 that innocent trust, that divine assurance ! Trajan s -heart 
 swelled as he thought of the contrast between him, confident 
 in his intellect, able to reason, and yet less rational than this 
 artless philosopher ! 
 
 " What s your name, my child ? " said Trajan, as the boy, 
 with great satisfaction, drank the bouillon. . 
 
 " Amedee," with a gulp of ineffable contentment. 
 
 " Well, Amedee, you must hold the dish while I prepare 
 the second course. You may si! here on the floor, and Trip 
 will keep an eye on you ; you are not afraid of the dog ? " 
 
 Amedee eyed the dog intermitting the soup for an 
 instant, and then shook his head. Trip considering this a 
 formal introduction, came forward with a cordial \vaggingof 
 the tail, expressive of a willingness to share the soup or any 
 thing else that might befall in the way of eating. Madame, 
 too, having left the saucer in a shining state of emptiness, 
 came up to the new-comer, picking her way daintily as 
 though to say " It behooves one to be sociable in one s 
 own home." She established herself on her haunches 
 before the child, blinking amicably. Amedee s interest in 
 the soup gave way to his delight in the new-comer. He had 
 evidently never seen such a cat in his small life. His eyes 
 grew almost as large as the saucer in the corner when Betty 
 had finished her dessert. In ungovernable astonishment he 
 exclaimed : 
 
 " But it is not a cat ! " 
 
 Betty, conscious that in her quality of feline Jumbo she 
 was entitled to more consideration than this slur upon her 
 
TRAJA N RENE IV S HIS YO U TH. 7 1 
 
 genus implied, moved with impressive dignity to the bright 
 est spot of color on the rug, where, seated upon her haunches, 
 she proceeded to wash her face with large, fluffy paws, cast 
 ing at intervals glances of freezing indifference and disdain 
 upon the occupant of her favorite corner on the sofa. This 
 unpremeditated toilet was, however, rather inconsequently 
 suspended as the savor of the sliced potatoes preparing over 
 Trajan s stove reached her. She compromised her disdain 
 by abstracted purrs as she rubbed her head upon Trajan s 
 legs, occasionally rearing her stout proportions to a slanting 
 posture as the broiling cutlets emitted little appetizing puffs 
 of inviting odor. 
 
 "Yes, little boy," said Trajan, addressing the puzzled 
 skeptic on the sofa, " it is Madame Elizabeth Gray we call 
 her Betty for short Trip and I This," he added, dropping 
 a morsel of the cutlet into Trip s dextrous jaws, " is Mon 
 sieur Trip a very gentlemanly dog. He never worries 
 good little boys who don t worry him ; eh, Trip ? " 
 
 Betty and Trip each gave response in the tokens of their 
 various races. Trip turned his head sidewise, keeping an 
 eye on the sizzling cutlets ; while Betty excelled herself in 
 an arch of such prodigious proportions that Boy on the sofa 
 screamed with delight. Then, as though this were not suffi 
 ciently expressive, Trip broke into a rondo of short staccato 
 yelps, expressive of enthusiastic corroboration, while Betty s 
 dislocated back seemed a species of buzz-saw emitting a 
 perfect frenzied salvo of purrs. 
 
 Understand ? I haven t the slightest doubt the honest 
 pair comprehended every word of the kind fellow who had 
 been their friend ; who had rescued them in the lowest 
 estate known severally to cat-kind and dog-kind. After all, 
 I m convinced that it is only man the human-kind that 
 can hear and not understand heartiness ! He alone can 
 mock and repay with ingratitude, benefaction and love, and 
 the unspeakable goodness that is as natural to the kind 
 heart as rich crops to a fertile soil. Goodness is the first 
 
72 TRAJAN. 
 
 impulse of every man in normal health untroubled 
 digestion ; and an animal has the same unchanging 
 fidelity in kindly impulses that we infer from a laugh. 
 Whatever other sign a man may adopt to deceive, a laugh 
 is always an honest expression. It tells the state of his 
 stomach. 
 
 Don t disdain this homely wisdom, for upon the stomach 
 depends much of the deeds and emprise of life. A disor 
 dered stomach isn t it historical ? brought about Napo 
 leon s discomfiture at Leipsic ! If Cassius hadn t been lean 
 and hungry he would never have sent his battalions off for 
 food when young Caesar was moving in force upon him at 
 Philippi ! An odd jumble of illustrations to point the moral 
 of man s inequality cats, dogs and laughter ! Why not ? 
 There isn t a more agreeable character in Milton than Laugh 
 ter, the Jolly Witch holding both her sides. If the woods 
 have voices, and there be texts for sermons in stones, why 
 may not the verities of life be learned in the eloquent 
 honesty of brutes ? We can sometimes pardon friends who 
 bore or weary us, but we can never forgive those whom we 
 bore or annoy ! Now, the animal who is really our friend, 
 is never bored or wearied by us, and he never bores or 
 wearies us. Therefore, in every sense, a congenial dog is a 
 truer and more trustworthy friend than the frail mortal who 
 reminds us of a repetition of our old jokes, or asks us to 
 pay tribute to his own thrice-told tales of mirth. Trajan 
 had confirmed himself in this creed, and I am but antici 
 pating his own expression of it, for he was fond of setting it 
 forth to his friends. He was fond of saying that Bet and 
 Trip were the only comrades whom he ventured to talk to 
 about himself remembering that the reserve that men have 
 of talking about themselves to others, is not delicacy nor the 
 apprehension of what others may think, but the fear of lay 
 ing one s inmost soul open to the gaze of the world, for a 
 friend is after all a gossip who reveals either too much or too 
 little ; pride in his friend suggests a caution which is fatal 
 
TRAJAN RENEWS HIS YOUTH. 73 
 
 to that succinct continuity, which alone makes self-confes 
 sion plausible or tolerable. 
 
 Trajan, you observe, was fond of paradoxes. He held 
 that man, like the animal, started out with good instincts 
 uppermost, and that, however fallen, there was an appetent 
 root of congeniality somewhere ; that, no matter how hard 
 ened or abandoned, there was no heart that a prayer, a tear, 
 an amiable weakness, a kindly folly, would not vanquish in 
 some sort. He had summered and wintered with his two little 
 friends, and he believed that they knew his sorrows and 
 compassionated them in their mute way. They whisked 
 and gamboled about in his joy with motions as eloquent and 
 soothing as the most perfect songs without words. When 
 his heart was light, they knew it by his step, and when it 
 was sad they knew it by his very glance. 
 
 Amedee meanwhile had satisfied his hunger, and his 
 bright eyes grew heavy. Trajan straightway stripped the 
 poor little body of its clothes, and wrapping the child in 
 one of his own garments laid him in the bed fast asleep. 
 Then he addressed himself to the mysterious wallet. There 
 were 200 in Bank of England notes, and a letter with 
 no address carefully sealed. The mystery of the affair 
 was evidently in the note. Trajan felt that he had no right 
 to open it until he had exhausted every other means of 
 finding the owner. But how was that owner to be found? 
 Through the police ? Was there an official credulous enough 
 in all Paris to accept the young man s story ? Found on a 
 lilac bush in the Luxembourg gardens ! Trajan foresaw 
 that with the summary methods of the French prefecture 
 he would be arrested and held until every crime in Paris had 
 been sifted and its bearings on the wallet traced. Then, 
 too, the abstraction of the ^5 would be held as an irregu 
 larity, serious enough to warrant exemplary punishment, for 
 treasure-trove has a recognized and enforced procedure with 
 French magistrates. 
 
 After weighing over the matter the young man could think 
 
74 TRAJAN. 
 
 of nothing better than inserting an advertisement in 
 Figaro, the general phalanstery of the lost, found, strayed 
 and stolen of Paris. He raised his eyes to the mantel as 
 he came to this conclusion and started guiltily. He saw 
 a reminder of the painful struggle he had gone through on 
 quitting this pleasant refuge in the morning. Getting up he 
 took from the base of the crystal-covered clock a note. It 
 was addressed in a bold, round hand : " Madame Agay, 
 concierge, 29 Rue du Dragon." He took it to the lamp and 
 reached out his hand to hold it over the flame, then drew it 
 back, tore off the envelope and without looking at the 
 inclosure, went to his writing-table, took another envelope, 
 put the note in it, sealed it and wrote in an agitated hand 
 singularly unlike the first superscription in symmetry and 
 repose, " A lesson in life," then thrusting it hastily into a 
 little drawer, got up and paced the apartment ! 
 
 I have often heard Trajan s friend Elliot tell the story. 
 The letter had been written to the mistress of the house, 
 giving her possession of every thing the poor lad possessed 
 as a legacy, upon which he made the charge of the keeping 
 of his two friends the dog and cat. They were to be nur 
 tured as he had nurtured them, and when dead decently 
 buried as is the Christian fashion throughout the pleasant 
 land of France. This legacy, the young man wrote, he felt 
 happy to entrust to Madame Agay, for she was fond of his 
 two proteges, and he knew that she would be the more ten 
 der to them for his sake, as she had always been his good 
 friend. Elliot often speculated as to the animals and how 
 much they understood of the droll will, and how near they 
 came to losing their kind patron. I doubt if in all the 
 sacred closets of Catholic Paris there was a soul more 
 humble than Trajan s, as, after hours of thinking the cat 
 sleeping peacefully on the rug at his feet and Trip renew 
 ing the feast of the evening in his dreams the young 
 man laid himself down beside the rescued waif in the 
 high-canopied bed, as the bells of St. Sulpice yonder 
 clanged out the hour of midnight. 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 75 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 
 
 TRAJAN, as you see, has nothing of the heroic to justify 
 his historian in presenting him as a personage. He is 
 shown to have lost heart ignominiously at the very time men 
 of the true fiber come out strong. He gave up the combat 
 and was willing to put upon men of better approved con 
 stancy the burden of carrying his wounded body from the 
 field. All that he was, and all that his parts fitted him for, 
 we have not yet seen. Fortunately for Trajan the suicidal 
 madness was known only to Elliot. To the healthful mind, 
 to have resolved on the taking of one s own life is but in 
 some degree less guilty than the taking of one s neighbor s. 
 It is only the sorrows of Werther or the woes of the person 
 ages of romance that are held excuse for the " bare bodkin " 
 by comfortable human nature. On the stage we adore 
 Hamlet, in romance we weep for Werther, but in real life to 
 touch the scale that measures the unknown balance betwixt 
 the evils we know and those we know not, is to make sorrow 
 a symbol for the world to jeer and condemn. If death were 
 an expiation, its taking off would be heroism and the rash 
 zealot entering, even in thought, the portal of this holy of 
 holies, a consecrated agent rather than a moral specter, reek 
 ing with profanation. Trajan had sacrilegiously riven the 
 veil and turned from the immortal mystery, not through 
 repentance, not through sudden realization of his desecra 
 tion, but by a whimsical impulse ! Unless desperate through 
 guilt, swirled into crime, or irredeemably skeptical, how 
 could he, a healthful lad of twenty-five, deliberately take 
 upon himself to anticipate the design of providence ? How 
 quit such an atmosphere of intellectual expansion and 
 social seduction as Paris under the Empire ? I am conscious 
 of the absurdities in all that he has done and the puling 
 sentimentality of his sudden infatuation for the too-confid- 
 
76 TRAJAN. 
 
 ing Elliot. Plainly there isn t much of the manly stuff in a 
 young fellow who maunders over a rebuff in love when he 
 has, to offset the blow, youth, good looks, intellect and the 
 prodigious possibilities of recuperation, presented in such a 
 society as that of Paris, at the apogee of the Empire ! As 
 you have, no doubt, already pronounced, the sentiment is 
 unwholesome, the moral pernicious, to men and women with 
 the sober realities of life pressing upon them for action and 
 solution. The morbid freaks of diseased minds are not 
 themes that make fiction entrancing. 
 
 Twere better and gayer and finer, I own, to present this 
 young man as a conquering, heroic personage, from the 
 moment we discovered him on the bridge, startling the 
 lovely Empress by his lurid glance : to evoke thrills of 
 rapture by plunging him into the Seine in pursuit of some 
 struggling unfortunate, or still more thrilling by an intrepid 
 dash rescuing imperiled royalty from a blood-curdling 
 attempt at assassination. All these might have been set 
 before you very readily, for in those days the avengers of 
 manacled liberty were agog in the streets, and the placid 
 waters of the Seine were often ruffled by the desperate and 
 forlorn ! But the men and women of the novel are no more 
 puppets than the flesh and blood that walk the streets, that 
 toil and triumph or yield to the hard conditions that environ 
 them ! When the consul Caius Julius halted at the turbid 
 Rubicon, the conquest of half the world behind him, the 
 mastery of the whole world, in the resolution that wavered 
 in him, death by his own hand was for a moment the 
 thought dividing that masterful mind ; when the great 
 Frederic had stolen his beggarly Prussian heritage into the 
 ranks of the great kingdoms, his mind was divided between 
 prussic acid and the poetical epistle to Voltaire announcing 
 his taking off ! Indeed surcease of this sort, we see in the 
 lives of the greatest, comes as a boon, in the very threshold 
 of deeds of pith and moment. As you have seen, Trajan 
 Gray s past was marked by a good deal out of the common 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 77 
 
 fate that befalls men of intellect and high resolves. We 
 shall see that it was no trivial grief that brought him to 
 the despairing pitch in which Elliot found him for if the 
 heart may break, why not the brain ? 
 
 It was nearly noon the day after the meeting with Trajan. 
 Elliot after a diplomatic conference with Edith, in which he 
 dwelt with much fraternal unction upon his devoirs toward 
 \\\Q protege he was about to bring to the noonday breakfast, 
 set out for Trajan s studio not a little curious to learn the 
 young man s frame of mind. He called a cab and was 
 driven along the banks of the Seine to the Pont Royale, 
 the bridge leading from the noble paved square of the 
 Place de la Concorde to the Faubourg St. Germain, and 
 after a ten minutes drive, saw the No. 29 in the Rue 
 Dragon. 
 
 He was at once enabled to estimate his protege s standing 
 in that archaic abode by the alacrity with which Madame 
 volunteered her politest affirmative that " Monsieur Trage was 
 chez tut" with the additional information that his appartement 
 was au cinquieme. The winding stairs were dark and cramped 
 much like the ascent to a tower but when the narrow 
 slits that served rather to mark the absence of windows, than 
 answer to them, admitted a thin tongue of light, Elliot re 
 marked that the well-worn planks glistened in cleanly order ; 
 that the warped balustrade shone with constant polishing, 
 and though his elbows and shoulders served to keep him in 
 the narrow spiral, not a particle of dust had soiled his dark 
 clothes. He had to pause for breath at the last stair ; for, 
 though Trajan s apartment was called the fifth, it really took 
 six flights of long stairs to reach the floor. Through the 
 wider dormer window on the landing the roofs and courts of 
 the whole square could be seen. Elliot had not noticed 
 before the air of age that marked the building. The tiles in 
 the roof were covered with moss, and noisy broods of turtle 
 doves were strutting and pluming themselves along the peaks 
 and the rims of the eaves. In the distance the green panorama 
 
78 TRAJAN. 
 
 of Meudon and Mont Valerien and the low hills of St. Cloud 
 shut in the horizon. 
 
 In answer to Elliot s low knock there was a sharp bark, 
 and in a moment Trajan stood in the doorway. Elliot gave 
 his hand frankly and the other pressed it with warmth, mak 
 ing place for the visitor on a great arm-chair near the easel. 
 
 " Trip, you scamp, get down." 
 
 That unceremonious personage having at once accepted 
 Elliot s knee as an eligible point of vantage to study his 
 physiognomy. Trip, glancing over his shoulder and signal 
 ing Betty with his tail, proceeded to plant his two paws full 
 on his new friend s shirt front, and making advances of an 
 osculatory intent, that Elliot evaded only by an uncomfort 
 able elasticity of back and neck. Betty, not to be outdone 
 in cordiality, rubbed her head and shoulders with friendly 
 zeal against the young man s ankles. " These creatures are 
 ruined as to behavior," Trajan laughingly explained, " yet 
 they don t often conduct themselves with such effusive 
 warmth to strangers " 
 
 " That proves that I m a kindred spirit. I m not given to 
 cats, but I have known a good many dogs that I am proud 
 to call my friends, so don t trouble yourself : I feel rather 
 flattered at the mark of confidence, for a dog, like a 
 woman, judges by instinct, and, of course, it stimulates 
 my amour propre to be received on such terms on my first 
 visit." 
 
 Trip s efforts to touch Elliot s cheek were finally rewarded, 
 as this proper sentiment was uttered, and then, with an air 
 of triumphant satisfaction, he leaped down and stood at 
 Trajan s feet, as if solicitous to learn whether there were 
 any other evidences of distinguished consideration he could 
 lavish on the newcomer. 
 
 " There s a rat under the bed, I m perfectly sure, Trip, 
 and you ought to show Mr. Arden how you can catch it." 
 Trip regarded the mysterious recesses through the curtain, 
 somewhat incredulously. He cocked his head first on one 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN 79 
 
 side then on the other, yelped interrogatively ; then making 
 a dive for Betty, who sat sagaciously blinking at Trajan, 
 affected to be on the point of mistaking her for the alleged 
 rat ; then thought better of it, and skurrying across the 
 room halted as he reached the curtains, and with an inde 
 scribable motion of head, tail and shoulders, signified to 
 Betty that it was her duty to lend her fine sense of smell to 
 the important quest. But Betty turned her head as one 
 who should say, " Silly thing, don t you know that any rat 
 with an ounce of sense knows enough to know that daylight 
 isn t a time to seek the cheese or bread box ? " 
 
 When the demonstration of the animals gave an oppor 
 tunity, Trajan broke into an expression of wonder that 
 Elliot had come. He had made up his mind he said, 
 that a sober after-thought would have warned him of 
 the imprudence of pushing the acquaintance further. That 
 the world would rate his conduct as silly or sentimental, and 
 a young advocate couldn t afford to set out with such a 
 reputation. 
 
 Elliot, whose eyes had at first wandered about the large 
 chamber in almost reverent admiration, as the exquisite 
 artistic effects of draping revealed themselves in the unequal 
 light, turned his gaze full upon the speaker as the sense of 
 what he at first took for raillery became clear to him. He 
 moved with impatience, however, toward the end uneasy 
 and half indignant. For a moment it came into his mind 
 that Trajan had lost his senses ; that the brooding which 
 had driven him to the terrible resolution of the day before 
 had affected his intellect. For Trajan spoke without excite 
 ment, apparently without emotion, rather as one describing 
 some fantastic episode entirely disassociated from himself. 
 It was no longer the Trajan of the day before without the 
 previous experience of him Elliot would have taken him as 
 one of the gayest and most flippant Bohemians of the Cafe 
 Procope. Gay self-assertion delighting in paradox, with no 
 more serious care in life than a fragile amour. He was at 
 
8o TRAJAN. 
 
 a loss how to reply. He dreaded bringing the young man 
 back to the somber melancholy of the day before. He was 
 afraid to enter into explanation for Elliot, though young, 
 knew that a friendship was writ in vapor that begins in 
 assurances, and is built on protestations. He felt himself 
 strongly drawn toward Trajan. He felt that it would be 
 easy to become tenderly attached to him. Yet his nature 
 shrunk from saying or showing it as an indelicacy. The 
 friendship of men he held to be like the leaves of a delicate 
 plant breathed upon, touched, they became tarnished, 
 faded, and odorless. The silence lasted for some minutes, 
 and Trajan, surprised that his volatile banter evoked no 
 response, asked : 
 
 " You are convinced that I am right ? " 
 
 " I am convinced that you are singularly wrong-headed 
 this morning, and by no means the clever fellow your friend 
 represented you to be. But I am not going to enter the lists 
 to fight the specter you have conjured. I am come to take 
 you to breakfast, and when you have shown me these 
 wonders of yours we shall barely have time to reach the Rue 
 Francois I." 
 
 " Then you still persist in the wild project of engaging me 
 for drawing-master ? " 
 
 " Unless you refuse ; but I hope you won t, for I am 
 counting on getting no end of benefit from you during the 
 vacation. We are going, as I believe I told you, to some 
 quiet retreat near Paris, where I can make use of the law 
 library, and you can continue your painting, if you are so 
 minded. I declare I feel like turning painter myself in such 
 a charming old place as this. I never saw a more perfect 
 atelier in Rome, where, some of the foreign artists have 
 lavished fortunes in bric-a-brac, tapestries, and that sort of 
 thing." 
 
 While speaking, Elliot had got up, and began examining 
 the mural decorations. 
 
 " Why," he exclaimed, taking a bronze medallion in his 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. ST. 
 
 hand, " there is enough value in this room to buy a farm. 
 I" 
 
 He paused and colored. 
 
 Trajan, standing by his side, his hands in the pockets of 
 his short jacket, added with serenity : 
 
 " You can t imagine why a man should talk of starvation 
 with these objects of value in his possession? It s very 
 simple. In the first place, there is not an object of intrinsic 
 value in the whole lot. I picked them up in out-of-the-way 
 places, and the sum total of their cost was not $200. If I 
 were forced to sell them I couldn t get a third of that. If 
 I were forced to buy them I should have to pay perhaps ten 
 times that. Take those medallions, for example. They 
 are genuine antiques. I gathered them in out-of-the-way 
 villages from Capri to Ferrara on a walking tour the second 
 year I was in Europe. These tapestries I picked up in Dal- 
 matia and Venice. The carpet rugs I got in Egypt last 
 year. The busts, in small towns in Italy where toifrists 
 never penetrate. I paid for many of them in sketches for 
 altars and town halls. In others by writing letters for honest 
 peasants. The fine old chests you see yonder, carved, as 
 wood is no longer carved, I got for working as a field-hand 
 in Tuscany, and I packed most of my treasures in. them for 
 transportation to Paris. This writing-desk, which is also a 
 sort of wardrobe, I got in Perugia, from a charming old 
 priest, for furbishing up the sacristy, for I can do a little 
 carpentering. As to selling them, the very thought mad 
 dened me, and, beside, they were intended for a sacred 
 purpose." 
 
 Elliot turned his face to the window. His voice trembled 
 slightly as he said : 
 
 " You ve been reading Balzac too attentively and have 
 fallen into the unwholesome spirit of the French. Real 
 men do not do this sort of thing now out of 
 novels. A week from now you will look back 
 on this business as not only weakly morbid, but un- 
 6 
 
82 TRAJAN. 
 
 manly and even immoral. For, even taking life at-your own 
 estimate, it ought to be precious to you. With youth, health 
 and gifts there is nothing a man of talent should shrink 
 from. Insanity alone can account for the frame of mind I 
 found you in yesterday, and I mean to hold the event over 
 you as a rod. That I believe is the function of a friend, to 
 remind one of his frailties and encourage his foibles ? Noth 
 ing can condone such folly as yours, my friend, but works. 
 And the first one is to dress yourself, and hasten, too, for 
 my mother is a tyrant, about breakfast, and you will enter 
 the house under very bad omens if you keep that important 
 event waiting." 
 
 Trajan excused himself to dress and retired to the alcove. 
 Inside the curtain he kept up a brisk conversation with Trip, 
 who seemed to preside over his master s toilet, for he referred 
 questions of this delicate nature to his superior taste : 
 
 " What do you say to this neck-tie, Trip ? too crumpled 
 I thtnk so myself ; this white and black too dismal I quite 
 agree with you. We ll try this with small purple dots to 
 match with light waistcoat and trowsers and dark coat. As 
 we are going into the company of ladies we must be gy 
 eh, Trip ? How about the shoes ? Have you seen to their 
 cleaning ? You are growing neglectful, Trip. How can a 
 great genius be expected to brush his own shoes ! " In a 
 few moments he reappeared, the neglige jacket of the artist 
 replaced by the garments he had enumerated to his canine 
 confidant. As he came forward he was metamorphosed in 
 every way. His hair still retained the careless air befitting 
 the artist, though it was not the incongruous curtain reach 
 ing the collar by which the artist race signalizes its metier. 
 
 u Well, Madame Betty, do you approve ? " 
 
 Madame Betty had been contemplating Elliot as he moved 
 from one object to another, opening books and turning over 
 the drawings. She yawned amicably as Trajan came from 
 the curtained alcove fastening a cuff-button, and scrutinized 
 the ensemble with deliberate gravity; then in testimony of 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 83 
 
 unreserved approbation, upreared her fluffy back into a per 
 fect parabola, rubbing her head and shoulders with a joyful, 
 bounding motion against her master s trowsers. 
 
 " Madame Betty s approval gained, I think I may venture 
 the scrutiny of your family council," said Trajan, gayly. 
 
 Elliot, bending to fondle Trip s expressive ears, murmured 
 without looking up, rather in continuance of some previous 
 remark, than in response : " Yes, one may trust friends like 
 these they, at least, have no motive to deceive." 
 
 " I don t know about that ; Madame Agay declares that 
 Betty maintains a surreptitious supervision of the larder, 
 which is not without its influence on the cost of living, and 
 that though Trip takes no part in the forays, he reconciles 
 it with his conscience to share the spoil ! " During the drive 
 to the Rue Frangois I. the friends were strangely silent. 
 Trajan was thinking of the transformation twenty-four hours 
 had wrought in his life and purposes, and Elliot was wonder 
 ing whether Bella would repel his friend by some inex 
 plicable caprice. 
 
 The friends had reached the Rue Franfois I., and 
 Trajan s mind had slowly retraced the events of the last 
 twenty-four hours. He had not, until he found himself 
 seated in the Victoria beside Elliot, reflected on the casual 
 covenant of the night before. His mind had been on a 
 strain so tense that when the relief came in solicitude for 
 Amedee, he had wholly forgotten the proposal of Elliot in 
 the Luxembourg garden and his own assent. Had he con 
 sidered it a moment, he would have shown his friend that 
 there was no need for his turning tutor to gain a livelihood. 
 With the changed conditions and the new impulse given him 
 by the events of the day, he felt equal to the slow work of 
 painting and the small rewards it brings in Paris. He had 
 concurred in Elliot s suggestion, because it promised to take 
 him into a new atmosphere, to give him a chance to know and 
 be known by his new friend to remove him from the old life, 
 which had proven insupportable. But now he had new 
 
84 TRAJAN, 
 
 interests. He must prove to Elliot that he was worthy the 
 impulsive confidence he had given him. He had assented to 
 the proposed tutorship in the glow of an almost passionate 
 adoration for the kind young fellow who had come between 
 him and his madness. An inexpugnable compunction held 
 him back from exposing his bruised spirit and passing par 
 alysis even to Elliot. He had shrunk from the sight of those 
 he knew familiarly, for he knew the estimate put upon him. 
 
 He was conscious that he was not taken at his worth, and 
 he resented the careless judgment of his neighbors and com 
 rades, as the actor who is cast for comedy resents the denial 
 of his equal fitness for tragedy ! He had pursued his career 
 with a set purpose to conquer the world in his own way. 
 Alas like all of us when we are young because he felt 
 his own way to be the best suited to his powers and tempera 
 ment. When the collapse came he dreaded the gibes this 
 tacit acknowledgment of his error would draw upon him from 
 sympathizing friends ! He elected rather to dropout of the 
 contest than face the Philistine chorus. " I told you so ! " 
 He was at the time of life when ardent natures who ponder 
 deeply on the world and its ways regard the accidental as 
 immemorially preordained, the trivial as vital a time when 
 the pendulum of resolution swings the whole circuit without 
 producing any analogous action on the dial of the mind. 
 He felt bitterly, that had he lived a career of profligacy or 
 improvidence he would have escaped the esoteric judgment 
 of his fellows and found more cordial countenance. Living 
 in books and his art, and the sort of introspection such a life 
 implies, he was no more fitted to assert himself than the 
 white blackbird in the fable, when it fell among its sable 
 kind and was reviled because its plumage was white ! When 
 the. Victoria stopped and the young men Avere passing into 
 the Arden doorway, Trajan laid his hand on Elliot s arm 
 and said with painful constraint : 
 
 " Forgive me but I think I am venturing more than 
 I can carry out. I I haven t the qualities that would 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEtf. 85 
 
 make even a tolerable instructor. To be of service to your 
 kinswoman, I should require patience, adaptability 
 which at best I do not possess. Furthermore," he 
 added, blushing crimson " is it wise, is it prudent, in 
 you to bring an entire stranger into relations involv 
 ing something of intimacy into your family ? You know 
 nothing of me or but little, and that not likely to commend 
 me to your kinswoman for the work she wants. No no 
 let us dismiss this project. You will know me better by and 
 by. I shall be able to resume work now and make up for 
 lost time and then you can present me to your family as a 
 man who has achieved something. Let us stop before this 
 becomes a mortification and embarrassment to both of us 
 
 " I don t comprehend you at all " said Elliot, who had 
 been listening restively, in a tone almost irritable. "You are 
 as absurd to-day as you were mad yesterday. It is associa 
 tion with folks of a different sort from the Quarter fellows 
 you need. Meet my mother. Ah, Gray when you know her, 
 my cousin, my sister Kate McNair then you -will see life 
 in its true horizon. I believe I should go mad if I didn t have 
 my mother and sister to counteract the cynicism of the 
 Quarter spirit. Trust me, I know what is best for you 
 just now beside," he added, coloring charmingly an adora 
 ble trick this kind lad had, "I am the head of the Arden 
 family and what I command all its members affirm just 
 wait until you see my patriarchal sway " he added laugh 
 ingly, " and you will have no distrust." 
 
 " Ah, I have no distrust of you you are " 
 " Never mind me what you need," continued this youth 
 ful mentor in a convinced tone, " what you need is the 
 influence of good women." Trajan winced and shivered 
 perceptibly. " I don t mean that you have to do with any 
 other what I mean is that you need the friendly interest of 
 such the atmosphere that good women throw about all who 
 come near them even the least intellectual. It is better 
 for a man, I believe, than this perpetual seclusion among 
 
86 TRAJAN. 
 
 books, paintings, or the shadowy idealism of art. A month 
 in the region of the gentler humanities, that women alone 
 realize, will restore you to mental balance, which, I am forced 
 to say, you do not possess at this moment. Say no more," 
 he added, seizing Trajan s arm. " I m a very domineering 
 fellow, and when I take a thing in hand it goes through. 
 
 "The truth is, Gray," he added, solemnly, "you ought 
 to fall in love. That keeps a fellow in mental and moral 
 equilibrium. There s nothing in books, art, bench, bar, or 
 what men strive for like the glorious abandonment of love. 
 Ah pardon my folly ! Have I pained you ? I I didn t 
 dream " Then, as Trajan, with a pleading gesture and 
 ghastly face, turned from him, he cried, " forgive me, I 
 didn t realize I was paining you I never imagined I 
 understand all now," and he pressed Trajan s hand, who 
 still stood with averted face. 
 
 " There s nothing to forgive. You touched a fresh wound. 
 Let us dismiss the subject. I will be guided by you. I shall 
 enjoy the sense of irresponsibility in acting as you dictate." 
 
 The young men found Mrs. Arden and Edith in the 
 drawing-room. Mrs. Arden gave the guest her hand with 
 cordial welcome, while Edith s manner showed a kindly 
 interest in her brother s friend. Trajan thought he should 
 have recognized Mrs. Arden as Elliot s mother, even if he 
 had not been told. Mother and son had the same large, 
 round, violet blue eyes, the same light hair, and of the same 
 fine texture. The mother s features were more uniform and 
 delicate than the son s. The jaw not quite so round, nor 
 the nose so straight. Mrs. Arden s age might have puzzled 
 even her own sex. Were her grown son not in the room she 
 might have been Edith s elder sister. Her voice was of the 
 quality heard among New England women, more particu 
 larly Boston. Trajan thought he had never heard his native 
 tongue spoken with such melodious softness. There was a 
 piquant contrast between the roseate clarity of the mother 
 and son, and the semi-brunette tone of the daughter. 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 87 
 
 Elliot s eyes were a dark gray, turning into light brown 
 under sudden emotion or enlivened interest. As became a 
 maiden of her years, Edith was shrinking in the presence of 
 strangers, unless Elliot was by, when she generally gave 
 evidence of tact and sprightliness. In her devotion to that 
 darling of the household, she would have denied every one 
 of her traits, to the standing scandal of the domestic regime. 
 She leaned caressingly on Elliot s arm as she said to Trajan: 
 
 " Mamma was quite sure, Mr. Gray, that you would miss 
 breakfast, under Elliot s guidance. He has become very 
 naughty about home engagements since he took an apart 
 ment in the Latin quarter. This family will therefore look 
 upon you as a saving influence upon our bad boy. Mamma 
 particularly will show you signs of her favor if such influence 
 continues to prevail." 
 
 " Yes, Gray," said Elliot, pinching his sister s ear, 
 " Madame, our mother, is the tyrant of this household. She 
 carries the rod by night and day. Had we entered the 
 house a miaute after the serving of the breakfast, I should 
 have been led out to one of the household keeps, whose keys 
 you may see upon madame s girdle upon which she tells over 
 our sins as saints their prayers upon a breviary." 
 
 " My son proves that he is not wholly wasting his time in 
 the law school," said Mrs. Arden in her gurgling soft voice, 
 and shaking the keys at the maligner. " My children and 
 their cousin, who lives with us, have made their own code for 
 the inmates of this house. Our old-fashioned home customs 
 are no more known than the frocks and fashions of our 
 grandmothers. I make a feeble stand at punctuality, which 
 was a law of my husband s business and home life, and 
 against that these young people are always in more or less 
 open rebellion." 
 
 " The heir to the throne is never in rebellion ; it is called 
 opposition," said Edith, adjusting her brother s sleeve- 
 buttons. 
 
 " Yes," added Mrs. Arden with comic gravity, " this young 
 
88 TRAJAN. 
 
 gentleman who passes as the head of the house is its most 
 disorganizing influence. " 
 
 " That is when not in disgrace and banishment," said 
 Elliot, laughing. 
 
 "Self-exile can hardly be called banishment," said Edith 
 audaciously. 
 
 The conversation was interrupted by the entrance of 
 Mrs. Briscoe and Bella. While Trajan was bowing to the 
 ladies, the curtains were drawn at the end of the further 
 apartment. A servant entered and announced, " Madame 
 est servie" 
 
 Mrs. Arden took Trajan s arm and led the way through 
 the suite of sumptuous drawing-rooms to the breakfast 
 table. The rare instinct of intelligence and taste, marked the 
 details of this transplanted home. The luxurious richness 
 gave a sense of tranquillity and well-being even to the 
 stranger. Trajan thought to himself that it was no wonder 
 Elliot was such a rare and lovable nature under the influ 
 ences of such a mother and among such surroundings ; for 
 there is as subtle a character in the profusion that wealth 
 enables its possessors to command, as there is in the expres 
 sion that great knowledge gives the mind the power to con 
 vey. It is not a difficult thing to give an air of refinement 
 to walls, floors, and furnishing, but there is something more 
 required to make the house of the flesh habitable to the 
 forms of the mind. With all their artistic instinct, the 
 French do not realize this. Their luxury is depressing and 
 uncharacteristic. 
 
 The breakfast room was in odd contrast to the magnifi 
 cence of the French salle a manger. Soft congenial colors 
 prevailed in carpets, walls, and furniture. The frescoed 
 walls were hung with etchings and engravings of modern 
 masters. One engraving only broke this rule Raphael 
 Morghen s Aurora, an artist proof from the original in the 
 Rospigliosi palace. 
 
 Trajan wondered if the architect of all this ideally 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 89 
 
 arranged interior was Elliot. His admiration was so strongly 
 visible in his face that Elliot said: 
 
 " My mother and cousin planned the furnishing, Gray do 
 you like the house ? " 
 
 "It is an ideal of a civilized interior," said Trajan 
 simply. 
 
 " There, mamma," said Edith, "praise from Sir Hubert 
 Mr. Gray is a painter ! " 
 
 " I m afraid that s satire, Miss Arden," said Trajan color 
 ing " artists are wretched hands in adjusting household 
 furnishing." 
 
 " That can t be true in your case, Mr. Gray : Elliot has 
 been telling me of your wonderful studio," replied Edith 
 eagerly. 
 
 " Mine is a very poor affair compared with those of the 
 great artists in vogue, you have doubtless seen some of 
 them. They are very glad to have visitors," replied Trajan. 
 
 " We ve never been in a studio thanks to the negligence 
 of the head of the house," said Miss Briscoe. " He has 
 perjured his immortal soul repeatedly by promises to take 
 us to Barbison to see Corot s and Rosa Bonheur s. Can we 
 not see yours, Mr. Gray ? " 
 
 " I m afraid it would not repay you for the trouble in 
 getting to it, but if you care to go you shall be made wel 
 come," said Trajan gravely. 
 
 " Madam Betty and Trip are well worth a visit," cried 
 Elliot. " You ve no idea what an interesting family Gray 
 has about him." 
 
 " Models ? " asked Bella, looking at her cousin inquir 
 ingly. 
 
 Elliot laughed " Yes models of fidelity Gray would 
 call them. I recommend you to try your hand on them 
 in emulation." 
 
 " I thought Philip was to breakfast with us ? " said Mrs. 
 Arden, looking at her son. 
 
 " Philip is an uncertain quantity just now. His latest freak 
 
90 TRAJAN. 
 
 is a trip to Norway where I suppose he will gather data to 
 refute Buffon." 
 
 " My opinion," returned Bella composedly, " is that Philip 
 is going to Norway, if he goes, because there s six months 
 night there he finds the light of day here too searching for 
 his dark deeds." 
 
 " Do you know my nephew, Philip, the person these 
 cousins are lampooning in this wicked way, Mr. Gray ? " 
 asked Mrs. Arden, turning to Trajan. 
 
 " Yes, I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Kent last night. 
 He was one of the party that dined with your son in the Cafe" 
 Voltaire. I can attest that these are calumnies. I thought 
 perhaps he might be touched with philosophic misan 
 thropy." 
 
 " Oh, he s any thing but a misanthrope, and I fear not 
 philosophic. He s much given to shading his own merits. 
 His role just now is the repression of Miss Bella s raptures 
 who for that reason has declared war on him and never 
 intermits hostilities," cried Elliot, beaming placidly at his 
 cousin. 
 
 " But wars are only undertaken for conquest, or revenge. 
 Under which cartel has Miss Briscoe declared ? " asked Tra 
 jan turning to that unwarrior-like young person. 
 
 " Vengeance and extermination," said Elliot, " since 
 Philip has long since laid down his arms and sued for 
 peace." 
 
 " I don t concede Mr. Gray s assumption," retorted Bella, 
 " there are wars for sentiment, as when the world marched to 
 the Crusades, and when Napoleon III. fought for Italian 
 unity." 
 
 " But I protest, Miss Briscoe," said Trajan, " these in 
 stances confirm my proposition. The Crusaders marched to 
 retake the Holy Land, the Bonapartes to avenge Waterloo and 
 annex Savoy and Nice." 
 
 " Plainly religion and glory incited both ; these are senti 
 ments. Without that men wouldn t face death. The senti- 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 91 
 
 ment of glory incites one man to battle, another to write a 
 great poem, another to paint a great picture, and to my 
 mind," she added, smiling deprecatingly " the glory of 
 combat is greater than the glory of art ! " 
 
 " Well, are we to understand that it is the glory of combat 
 that incites you to war against the Pagan Philip ? " inquired 
 Elliot maliciously. 
 
 " The glory of chastening conceit and the religion of 
 woman s reason," laughed Bella undauntedly. 
 
 " Speaking of war, Mr. Gray," interposed Mrs. Arden, 
 " are we likely to have war ? " 
 
 * I don t think Bonaparte weak enough or mad enough 
 to go to war now ; that would be too good fortune for his 
 enemies to count on, as France is notoriously unready." 
 
 "I am selfish in the matter," added Mrs. Arden, " for we 
 are settled here for the year. But if war should break out 
 we could never remain in a city so excitable as Paris. The 
 Carnots tell us that secret societies of revolutionists andcom- 
 munists are ready to rise so soon as the soldiers leave." 
 
 "I think that s true," said Trajan seriously, "but at 
 the same time I see no danger for strangers in any event, 
 especially for Americans." 
 
 " Well if war does come I hope we shall be here," said 
 Bella, who had listened attentively. " Do women take part 
 in modern wars, Mr. Gray ? " she added suddenly. 
 
 " As this war, if it comes, will be largely the work of 
 women, or a woman, it is only fair that women would take 
 part," answered Trajan laughing. 
 
 " Why what do you mean ? Has Bismarck or King Wil 
 liam satirized the Empress, as Frederic libeled Pompadour, 
 and are we to have a war in the nineteenth century to avenge 
 a bad epigram, as they had in the eighteenth ? " 
 
 " Ah no nothing so humorous or sentimental as that. 
 The Pope has appealed to the Empress and the Empress is 
 bent on humiliating Prussia." 
 
 " There s a chance for your warlike ardor, Bella," cried 
 
92 TRAJAN. 
 
 Elliot. " Proffer your arsenal to the Empress you can 
 not satirize Bismarck. So that between you and Philip, 
 the Arden family, like the lady in the ballad, will be made 
 famous by the pen or glorious by the sword." 
 
 " Glory or the sword is a good cue for me to enter on," 
 interrupted a hearty voice, and Philip appeared in the room. 
 " Don t disturb yourselves at all, I have breakfasted, but 
 to keep the peace I will join in the coffee and a cigar 
 Apropos of what stirring theme were you citing the trou 
 badour s song, Elliot ? " 
 
 " It is all along of a maid who would go to the wars and a 
 scribe who would write a book." 
 
 " I know of no maid of such a sanguinary turn of mind 
 I m sure and as for the scribe who would write a book, I 
 hope he has not made enemies among the critics. It is not 
 yourself I hope, that thinks of turning scribe ? or do you 
 contemplate a volume on The Reversion of Retainers a 
 subject upon which you should write well as you know 
 nothing of it." 
 
 " Philip, don t encourage these young people ; they have 
 been traducing you," interposed Edith. " I m glad you ve 
 come to confound Bella she delights in speaking evil of the 
 absent." 
 
 " Far be it from me to deny a woman her rights," cries 
 Philip with a bow to Bella. 
 
 " A truce to this raillery, children. What about the 
 country plan ? Kate is at Crecy, and at last we have decided 
 to take the villa there. She says that the house is comfortable, 
 though large enough for a German court. The gardens are 
 ample, indeed they are spacious as a park. The surround 
 ings are all that could be desired and, for a wonder, far 
 surpass the agent s circular. The Marne flows through the 
 village ten minutes walk from the gates. The village is 
 sleepy and ancient, and Bella and Edith were charmed with 
 the place. I, however, shall die of ennui, unless Elliot 
 keeps his promise to fill the house with his friends." 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 93 
 
 " Hunting and fishing ? " asked Elliot. 
 
 "In. abundance. In fact, the village seems to do nothing 
 but fish," said Edith. 
 
 "And as for hunting and sketching I foresee," added 
 Mrs. Arden, "that the younger members of the company will 
 have ample diversion." 
 
 " As to the sketching," said Edith, " I shall be surprised 
 if Bella doesn t turn out an Ary Schseffer or a Rosa 
 Bonheur." 
 
 "Do you know any thing of the place, Gray ?." asked 
 Elliot, " you have knocked about the suburbs a good deal." 
 
 "Yes, I know Crecy very well. I lived in the adjoining 
 village, Cuilly, all one summer and autumn. I know of no 
 more picturesque landscape in France." 
 
 " How far is it from Paris 7" asked Elliot. 
 
 " It is twenty-three miles to the eastward and four miles 
 from the railway. You are as isolated as in the Adirondacks," 
 said Trajan. 
 
 " Crecy Crecy," said Philip musingly. " That s not the 
 place where the Black Prince with King Edward s army of 
 thirty thousand overcame one hundred thousand Frenchmen 
 and captured three kings ? " 
 
 "This is a case where a little knowledge is not out of 
 place," interrupted Bella maliciously. " I m surprised, 
 Philip, that you don t know one of the most interesting places 
 in history. The Crecy where the Black Prince took the 
 motto from the crest of the King of Bohemia/^ dien" 
 
 " Such knowledge, Bella, is not only dangerous 
 it is disheartening, for it reminds one how far he has 
 gone from his school days and the interesting scraps of uni 
 versal history that make most mark in the youthful mind." 
 
 " Perhaps Bella s knowledge is due to the fact that we 
 were near the real Crecy last year in Normandy and passed 
 within ten miles of it at Abbeville don t you recollect, 
 mamma ? " explained Edith. 
 
 " I don t recall it," said Mrs. Arden. " It s more im- 
 
94 TRAJAN. 
 
 portant to find out about our Crecy. You think, Mr. Gray, 
 that we shall find it a tolerable seclusion for a few months ? " 
 
 " I am sure of it that is if you don t seek gayety. The 
 charms of the surrounding country are indescribable. There 
 are but few neighbors an Orleans prince has a chateau a 
 few miles from the village, and the famous show palace of 
 the Rothschilds, Ferrieres, is but three miles distant. There 
 are, too, what is very rare, so near Paris, large tracts of 
 woodland accessible to the public, where the villagers hold 
 charming midsummer fetes. There are innumerable excur 
 sions worth making. Perhaps the most interesting of them 
 is Meaux and the forest of Fontainebleau a few hours 
 drive." 
 
 " Then our leap in the dark has landed us in a sort of 
 earthly paradise," said Bella with animation. " I long to be 
 off at once." 
 
 " We shall be installed by the end of the week, if Elliot 
 will bring his frivolous mind to the business of settling with 
 the agents here," remarked Mrs. Arden placidly. 
 
 " Then you may count it done, madame. My maxim is 
 never to put any thing off that is going to result in a good 
 time, unless something promising, a better turns up." 
 
 " I m afraid that s your practice whether it is your maxim 
 or not," said Mrs. Arden, rising from the table. The gen 
 tlemen remained when the ladies withdrew, and the servant 
 served Chartreuse and cigars. 
 
 " I say, Phil, what the deuce takes you to Norway ? You ll 
 have a much better time out there at the Crecy that the 
 British didn t capture. We shall be very jolly. Gray is to 
 stay the summer and I have invited relays of the law fellows. 
 Mother has along list. We shall be quite a colony and 
 self-dependent for amusement. You ll be much wiser to 
 come with us." 
 
 " What, and falsify Bella s improvised natural history of 
 the country ? " 
 
 " Bella, I m afraid, would make a joke on her own 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 95 
 
 funeral," said Elliot laughing. " Or her wedding," added 
 Philip naively, yawning. 
 
 " Elliot," said Edith suddenly returning, " when you have 
 finished your smoke and talk, bring your friends to the 
 library. Mr. Carnot and his sister are there. Theo has just 
 come from St. Cloud ; the Imperial family have settled 
 there for the summer, and Theo says we re to have invita 
 tions for the fete champetre in July. Don t be long we 
 shall expect you." 
 
 Elliot by chance caught a glimpse of Trajan s face, when 
 his sister mentioned Theo s name. He had risen and was 
 examining an etching. His lips were compressed and his 
 eyes glistened in an unaccountable way. So soon as Edith 
 left the room, Trajan turning to Elliot, said with some agi 
 tation in his voice : 
 
 " I must be off make my homages to your mother and 
 apologies to the other ladies." 
 
 " Why this sudden need of haste ? You, a deity of the 
 realm of delight, where time has no dial nor any manner of 
 compulsion ! You must really make your adieux in person. 
 I refuse to charge myself with them," said Elliot, un 
 easily. 
 
 " You would do well to take Elliot s advice, Gray," said 
 Philip, with more animation than he usually threw into his 
 accent. " Theo Carnot is a woman well worth meeting. She s 
 to the average run of her sex what the heroes of Lafon- 
 taine s fables are to ordinary animals. She s the most remark 
 able creature I ever met, which perhaps isn t saying much, 
 but every man that meets her says the same thing. I count 
 the day lost, that does not give me an hour of her enchant 
 ing company." 
 
 Trajan turned toward the window, saying in a low sup 
 pressed tone, " I have met Miss Carnot. I quite agree with 
 you that she is a remarkable person ! " 
 
 The manner rather than the words suggested something 
 to Elliot. He was convinced that he held the clue of 
 
96 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan s extraordinary conduct of the day before. " Remain 
 here a moment, Gray, I ll be back." 
 
 Philip resumed : " I have seen that young lady in the 
 most trying situations, where it exacted wit and self-com 
 mand to hold her own, and I never sa\v her flinch. The 
 haute monde adore her. She is the soul of the wittiest salons 
 of the Faubourg St. Germain, where, as you know, an 
 untitled divinity does not count for much. But she com 
 mands the /<?.$ before the quarterings of the greatest houses. 
 If her wealth were in proportion to her spirit, she could 
 marry a reigning prince indeed I m not sure that she won t 
 as it is." 
 
 "Yes," said Trajan, abstractedly, " the lady is singularly 
 gifted. I taught her drawing, and she could achieve a fine 
 place with her pencil if she were happily forced to follow it. 
 But she is as ambitious as she is able." 
 
 " It s curious, too. She has the courage of an Apache. 
 I saw her in the Bois, when a party of the court were 
 thrown into consternation by an unruly horse. One of the 
 ladies, Mademoiselle de Valoury, was unseated and fell 
 head downward from the saddle. The men were as 
 Frenchmen usually are in emergencies helpless, and the 
 poor girl in imminent danger of being dashed against the 
 vehicles. Miss Theo shot out from the melee, loosening 
 her foot frdm the stirrup as she darted on, and as she 
 reached the flying horse, caught the bridle, slipping to the 
 ground at the same time and holding her own horse as a 
 support, brought the other brute to a sudden check. I was 
 in a cab and at her side in time to lift Mademoiselle from 
 her dangerous position. By the time the group had reached 
 us, Miss Theo had restored her friend to consciousness. 
 You can imagine the vogue such a bit of self-possession 
 gave the American. It was told the Empress, and that 
 sympathetic soul declared that the heroine deserved the 
 Legion of Honor, and I am told proposes establishing an 
 order des dames ! " 
 
THE HOUSE OF ARDEN. 97 
 
 " Yes," said Trajan absently, " she is a woman of intrepid 
 courage." 
 
 " We regret that you must go so soon," said Mrs. Arden, 
 at this moment entering. " We had hoped that you 
 would join us in a little expedition to Vincennes, where 
 we propose passing the afternoon. You, however, 
 have broken bread with us and we cherish the cult of 
 the Arabs on that sacrament. Elliot s friend is always 
 welcome here," she added, with a kindly glance at the 
 young man. 
 
 " To be your son s friend is a great happiness for any 
 young man," said Trajan, fervidly, "and to be welcomed by 
 his family is a privilege that I shall not abuse," he mur 
 mured, hardly knowing what to say. 
 
 Elliot returning at this moment, accompanied the young 
 man to the door, and as he left him at the head of the stair 
 case, said, .pressing his hand affectionately : 
 
 " You mustn t be surprised to see me running in on you 
 at any time. I am at the disposal of the family this after 
 noon, but if I can manage, I shall be with you in the 
 evening. I have volumes to say to you, and I mean to be 
 a taskmaster as exorbitant as Prospero to Ariel, until you 
 have worked out the problems set for you by your own 
 destiny ! " 
 
 " I shall be a Caliban rather than an Ariel," said Trajan, 
 smiling, "and I m afraid that you ll find me as discordant 
 an agent as the son of Sycorax." 
 
 " Well, even in that role, your best plan will be complai 
 sance, for you know the tree was always ready to imprison 
 Caliban when he was unruly ! " The young men separated. 
 Elliot watched the retreating figure until he had passed out 
 of the vestibule and returned slowly pondering Trajan s 
 latest inexplicable freak. 
 
 " What do you make of him ? " asked Philip, with a 
 show of interest. 
 
 " How make of him ? " 
 
98 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Is he the eccentric Carnot represents him ? By the 
 way, how did you fall in with him ?" 
 
 " Oh, he knows many of our fellows," replied Elliot 
 evasively. "As to eccentricity, he s no more eccentric than 
 you or I." 
 
 " Humph ! that s rather equivocal. I don t know so 
 much about myself, but I can affirm that some of your 
 impulsive exploits would make a strong case before a lunacy 
 board. I m afraid you would be called cracked by the 
 temperate man and Brother." 
 
 A sweet bell jangled out of tune " in the Ophelia sense. 
 I m afraid I can t lay claim to that eminence in eccen 
 tricity ; mine is the sort of crack that sometimes serves to 
 increase the value of a bell in a set of chimes." 
 
 "Ah, when it comes to belles," laughed Philip, "you are 
 beyond my scope. I ll say no more." 
 
 "Well, young men," said Mrs. Arden, entering at this 
 moment, " you must come in and see the Carnots, they are 
 asking for you." Then seating herself near her son, she 
 added : "We re all charmed with your protege, Elliot, 
 though it s rather absurd to call a serious young man, at 
 least a year older than you, protege." 
 
 " It would be more than absurd, if it were the fact," 
 broke in Bella pertly. 
 
 "It s very plain to me," said Elliot, shaking his head 
 solemnly at his cousin, " that I shall have to begin to main 
 tain discipline in this house. Aunt Caroline, I wonder that 
 you permit such disregard of the respect due the head of 
 the family. It s settled, then, that we invite Gray to 
 Cre"cy," he added, in a serious tone. 
 
 " Yes, if it depends on my assent," said Mrs. Briscoe. 
 " His manners are admirable, and I judge that he is well 
 informed. Of course, you know his skill in drawing. I 
 shall be delighted to have him, if Bella wants it," she added, 
 looking toward her daughter, as if not quite certain that she 
 was not going too far even in this non-committal assent. 
 
THE CARNOTS. 99 
 
 "If he draws as well as he talks," Bella continued, " I 
 shall be delighted. He s a trifle too much like a German 
 crossed in love, and uncertain as to suicide or skepticism as 
 a relief. That, however, may be an advantage for us. He ll 
 devote himself more heartily to the gradgrind of life to 
 obliterate the sentimental miseries. I ve noticed that when 
 people are falling out of love, they take more energetically 
 to the routine of life, as after severe sickness one longs to 
 do the work he sees going on about him," she added, with 
 an air of unconscious sagacity. 
 
 " Bravo, Bella ! how long has the lamp of your experience 
 been lighted, that its flames have illuminated such deep 
 recesses and thrown such radiance over the occult mysteries 
 of life ? " asked Philip, with an affectation of surprise. 
 
 " These are of the sort of convictions one derives from 
 the habit of believing ; like the faith which we can not prove," 
 said Bella, running her fingers over the keys of the piano. 
 " I wish your friend s name wasn t Gray," said Edith, sud- 
 suddenly, " I always associate it with melancholy people. 
 The teacher of mathematics at Harmington was a Miss 
 Gray. The girls invariably called her Gay because she 
 was so solemn, I suppose." 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CARNOTS. 
 
 JULES CARNOT, at twenty-seven, was master of all the 
 arts and accomplishments of the man of the world, that 
 is, understood by the admirable phrase in which the French 
 condense so much, savoir faire. To be agreeable, though 
 the lever by which he moved the world, was the least 
 remarkable of the arts by which he endeared himself to the 
 most sharply opposed persons and coteries. His vogue in 
 
100 TRAJAN. 
 
 all ranks of Parisian society, native as well as stranger, was 
 one of those vaguely recognized mysteries, which are the 
 more impenetrable that it never occurs to any one to ask an 
 explanation. Well-bred dunces and pushing parvenus are 
 often tolerated even in the exclusive circle of the exclusive 
 coterie, but Jules was neither. Though not a wit, he was 
 ready, well informed and intellectually inclined ; though no 
 one imagined him poor, it was never assumed that he was 
 rich. To his intimates it was no surprise to see the elegant 
 young man the confidant and familiar of a duke in one 
 sphere, the discreetly jovial camarade of a Bohemian in 
 another. Women called him " adorable ; " men called him 
 "a charming fellow." His English intimates called him " a 
 brick " an adventurous form of admiration, which did not 
 disturb his conventional equipoise, perhaps, because he had 
 been so long in France, that he was more Frenchman than 
 American, and did not quite comprehend the familiar signifi 
 cance of the slangy testimonial. By birth only an Ameri 
 can, Jules was Parisian in adaptability and careless tolera 
 tion of such speech and forms as he did not comprehend. 
 For the savoir faire of the race is as often a negative quality 
 as a knowledge of men and character as silence in nine 
 cases out of ten is accepted as tolerant wisdom too indo 
 lent or too catholic to expose ignorance in others. Paris is 
 the city of all the world where even the stranger is impreg 
 nated insensibly with a moral and social atmosphere of 
 cynical acceptance of appearances, quite irrespective of pos 
 itive conviction. It is the creed of the well-bred to ignore 
 all that concerns a man, not visible in his exterior after 
 certain preliminary conventions have been stipulated. 
 
 Jules Carnot had passed these crucial conventions. He was 
 received in the accepted salons of the capital and tolerated 
 in the ruling caste. No one knew exactly the grounds of 
 his acceptance, or his right among the rulers, but his pres 
 ence and prowess among them were recognized without 
 question. Pushing Americans, who made him one of the 
 
THE CARNOTS. IOI 
 
 lions of their social shows, vaguely regarded him as a per 
 sonage among the Mite ; the French, who received him with 
 almost equal favor, believed him to be a personage in 
 America. 
 
 The Carnots of Jules generation were, in fact, Ameri 
 cans. The children had passed most of their lives in 
 France, where they had been sent to school in deference to 
 a rich aunt, who was to be placated into leaving the boy her 
 fortune. Bertrand Carnot, the father, was the grandson of 
 an Emigre, who, having royalist leanings, quit France in 
 1793, in the red days of the great revolution. This grand 
 father, Jean Carnot, had been a notary in Meaux, and like 
 so many of his countrymen, supported himself in England 
 for a time by teaching the children of Albion the French 
 tongue. He selected a seaport town, where on a clear day 
 his eyes could see the white cliffs of the land he loved. 
 During the conquering years of the Republic, but more 
 especially when Napoleon roused the British lion to impo 
 tent fury, rural England made no distinction as to the sym 
 pathies of the exiled Gaul, and grandfather Carnot was 
 forced to seek his bread among a more tolerant people. He 
 shipped before the mast on an American merchantman at 
 Plymouth in 1801, resolved to seek his fortune among his 
 compatriots in New Orleans or Montreal. 
 
 But he came to his own in vain, in both these cities of his 
 native blood and speech. In 1812 he found himself a pen 
 niless wanderer in the streets of New York, where fortune 
 smiled on him. He fell in with the head of a great com 
 mercial firm that carried on vast traffic with Bordeaux. He 
 served his patron faithfully as valet and private factotum 
 until 1819, when his benefactor dying, left him a legacy 
 which was the foundation of a great fortune to the thrifty 
 Jean. When the will was opened, it was found that the 
 kind master had left the exile $5,000 and a modest house, 
 with an ample garden, in that quarter of the city known as 
 Varick Street, at that time a rural suburb of the metropolis. 
 
102 TRAJAN. 
 
 With this little fortune, which, to the sober notions of 
 Jean, seemed affluence, he sent to his native village for his 
 mother and sweetheart. The mother was dead when the 
 great news reached Meaux, but the sweetheart, who had 
 waited all these years for the fulfillment of the vows they had 
 plighted as boy and girl under the maples of Bishop Bos- 
 suet s garden, a quarter of a century before, was still wait 
 ing. Jean was a middle-aged man of forty and she an 
 elderly spinster of thirty-seven when this befell the lovers. 
 But after their marriage the two set to work with the 
 accumulative thrift of the race, and when Jean died in 1840 
 his son inherited a handsome fortune and a gold mine in 
 real estate, \vhich the shrewd father, with the passion of the 
 Gaul for land, had bought rood by rood in the thriving 
 quarter above Fourteenth Street and the vicinity of Madison 
 Square. The son, Bertrand, before the war, was ranked 
 among the princes of trade in New York. He had houses 
 in New Orleans, Bordeaux and New York, and his fleets 
 covered every track of commerce. His family was in the 
 serenest rank of the social leaders of the metropolis. He 
 had married into one of the most potent " connections " in 
 the politics of the country, selecting his spouse for this sort 
 of prestige rather than wealth, of which he had enough. 
 Unlucky entanglements in cotton just before the Civil War 
 swept most of his fortune away. 
 
 The blow was too much for the mother, who received the 
 news in France, where her son Jules and her two daughters, 
 Clarice and Theodosia, were at school. When the children 
 returned to New York a not less terrible affliction met them. 
 Bertrand Carnot, from the clear-brained, sagacious mer 
 chant, had been stricken into something like imbecility. 
 The two daughters, reared in affluence, came back to the 
 home they knew but little of, with only a dim notion of the 
 change in their life. Little more than the homestead 
 remained to the family, and here for a year the household 
 kept up a shadow of its former state. Carnot s impaired 
 
THE CARNOTS. 103 
 
 faculties were unequal to the task of repairing the wreck 
 which, under other conditions, would not have been hope 
 less. Hundreds unfortunate as he in the crash that fol 
 lowed secession, not only recovered but augmented their 
 fortunes. But with the temperament of his race, succumb 
 ing to disaster, Bertrand Carnot let the golden strands slip 
 through his fingers, and in 1862 even the homestead was 
 swallowed in the flood. 
 
 The girls recoiled from the future that stared them in the 
 face. They could not endure an existence in New York, 
 where the bare wants of life remained to them. They per 
 suaded the father, that with the $2,000 a year left, the family 
 could live in something like ease in France, and, in any 
 event, with their family connections, the opportunities for 
 Jules would be greater. The father was not difficult to per 
 suade, and in 1863 the family expatriated itself to the land 
 of its ancestors. Society, however, put another construction 
 on the return of the Carnots to the land of their forefathers. 
 Clarice Carnot at twenty-two was a rarely beautiful girl in 
 every sense what her compatriots would have called dis- 
 tinguee. She was the conceded beauty of her coterie in New 
 York and Paris. Stately as a princess she was universally 
 known as the " Duchess " among the Brahmin caste of the 
 former city. But it was the austere beauty painters love to 
 put on canvas, when they represent the more frigid deities 
 of the intellects rather than the amours. She was cold, 
 unimpressionable, and, it was said, unbearably haughty, even 
 to insolence. 
 
 During the year of her return to New York, she had 
 suitors for every social scene. Which she preferred, no one 
 knew, nor did she ever give a sign. She had met a young 
 man in Paris, who had followed her to New York, with 
 whom the gossips linked her name obtrusively. Philip Kent 
 had been graduated at Harvard, taken a degree at Oxford, 
 and spent three years in Paris. He was the heir of one of 
 the most pretentious of the commercial magnates of New 
 
104 TRAJAN. 
 
 York, and was commonly known as " Prince Croesus " in 
 the clubs. His sister had married the eldest son of an 
 English duke. The family looked for nothing less than a 
 princess, as a fit mate for such a paragon as they had reared 
 and adorned to regulate the social and political world. 
 
 A few months before the departure of the Carnot family 
 for France, Clarice had asked her father into the library, and 
 exacting a pledge of secrecy until such time as she should 
 lift it, informed him that she was engaged to Philip Kent, 
 but that the marriage could not, for reasons which the young 
 man held obligatory, take place at present, nor the engage 
 ment even be made known. The father s brain, shaken by 
 age and disaster, was quite unsettled by this apparent revival 
 of the family fortunes. He fell into a curious state of 
 whispering. He would take the servants, or any one who 
 happened to be alone with him in the room, into a corner 
 and whisper solemn nothings with his finger on his lips, 
 wagging his head solemnly, and leaving the astonished person 
 helpless with wonder. Philip had visited the house but 
 rarely. One day, Carnot meeting the young man in Wash 
 ington Square, favored him with one of his mysterious confi 
 dences, but went further, revealing his knowledge of the 
 secret, saluted him rapturously as a prospective kinsman, 
 and congratulated him on securing not only the flower of the 
 Carnot flock, but the most beautiful girl in the world. 
 Whether the old man s effusiveness or his semi-insanity 
 repelled him, Philip listened in frigid silence to the infatu 
 ated father, and, with a freezing bow, bade him good-day. 
 
 The same afternoon, Theo entering her sister s room, 
 found Clarice stretched on the floor unconscious, with a 
 note crumpled in her hand. Even before summoning aid, 
 the girl took care to read the contents. It was from Philip, 
 briefly rehearsing the compact they had made and the pen 
 alty forced upon him by its infraction. He then related the 
 luckless interview of the morning, and closed by declaring 
 that to save her pain, rather than any other motive, he with- 
 
THE CARNOTS. 105 
 
 drew his offer, imploring her to forget his wretched exist 
 ence, or that she had ever met one who was in every way 
 unworthy of her. 
 
 On recovering her senses Clarice concealed this letter, 
 alleging some passing pretext to account for the swoon. Her 
 sister discreetly said nothing. The next day, when alone 
 with him, Clarice coldly announced to her father that the 
 engagement with Philip Kent was broken. The old gentle 
 man smiled in silly skepticism, intimating with senile arch 
 ness that lovers quarrels were to matrimony what spring 
 frosts are to plants, providential measures to prevent too 
 rapid maturity. But as the days wore on and Clarice kept 
 wholly in her room, never appearing at table or going out, 
 as she had formerly done even his wandering wits gathered 
 themselves sufficiently together to realize that it was no 
 lovers quarrel, and he began dimly to suspect and torment 
 himself with the truth. Clarice s pride enabled her to 
 stifle whatever of anguish this bitter and humiliating 
 trial cost her. Hers was not the sort of heart one is apt to 
 associate with the pathetic exuberances of the love-lorn. 
 Whatever her feelings were she made no sign. So far. as she 
 knew, her father alone of the family was aware of the dis 
 carding. Presently she was seen at the opera and in social 
 gatherings, with her habitual air of haughty reserve. If any 
 change was remarked, it was that ghe had a trifle more of 
 coldness and imperiousness than before. 
 
 The studious attention of Lord Chester Varian, son of the 
 Earl of Cranstoun, set the gossips agog, prophesying the 
 beauty s fate. It was said on all sides that it would be a 
 match and that the ambitious beauty had jilted Kent for the 
 Cranstoun coronet. Kent s manner confirmed the rumor. 
 He was by no means the commonly accepted type of the 
 broken-hearted swain, but his manner when he met the lady 
 was full of a chivalrous devotion, that the knowing set down 
 as hopeless passion. The sudden departure of the young 
 lord, after a visit to the Carnot mansion, brought gossip 
 
106 TRAJAN. 
 
 and speculation to a dumbfounded silence. In the portentous 
 drama of war then occupying public attention, the final ruin 
 of the Carnots made but a passing ripple on the social cur 
 rent. Too many were borne down in the universal swirl to 
 give any one victim pre-eminence. They passed into the 
 vortex, and the danger threatening others gave them the 
 melancholy comfort of oblivion. 
 
 From out the ranks which, through wealth, circumstances 
 and convention, wield such despotic influence over integral 
 destiny, the Carnots drifted, like the hulk of a great vessel 
 stricken into helplessness before the combat is well begun, 
 into the deep waters of forgetfulness. They drifted pas 
 sively, aimlessly. Head of the house there was none. The 
 father had become a child. The children were left alone to 
 direct the family destiny. The relatives on the mother s 
 side were Southern in their antecedents and sympathies and 
 had with the first outbreak gone South. Clarice made not 
 the least murmur. She gave no sign of discontent. She 
 waited patiently for her father to resume his natural leader 
 ship and she waited in vain. The fine old family home 
 stead in Gramercy Square became hateful, long before it 
 passed from their possession. It was soon evident to the 
 children that their father had lost all power of recovering 
 his ancient faculty of initiative and audacity. The death of 
 his wife had completed, the moral prostration, that always 
 seems to strike hardest when it strikes natures conspicuously 
 resolute and self-dependent. 
 
 In the dispersion of the family treasures, Clarice went 
 through the ordeal tearless, unmurmuring. To the petulant 
 and boyish complaints of Jules, she had but one answer : 
 " We are poor, we must part with the last penny rather than 
 leave a stain on our name." To her sister she said simply : 
 " We must go where our poverty shall be no reproach to us ; 
 we must not linger on the outskirts of a world, simply 
 tolerated, where we have been first." After a time the 
 dreadful business was ended ; the name of Carnot emerged 
 
THE C A KNOTS. 107 
 
 without a stain. No man was a penny the poorer through 
 the family s fault and Clarice was satisfied. In the autumn 
 of 1863 the family were established in a charming apartment 
 in the most genteel of the creamy palaces of the princes 
 quarter in Paris on the Rue Galilee. 
 
 With the personal treasures saved from the New York 
 home, supplemented by antiques, bric-a-brac, tapestries and 
 the exquisite trifles that may be gathered for a song in Paris, by 
 those who know how to buy, the new home was a reflex rather 
 of well-to-do ease than exiled poverty. Until the last detail 
 of the change had been completed and the nine rooms 
 had taken on the air of nameless completion that is implied 
 in familiarity, Clare bore up with a hard, tearless composure 
 piteous to see. She frightened the father, now restored to 
 mental balance, but in revenge, physically and morally supine. 
 Jules and Theo resumed their places in study, the one in 
 the College of France, the other in the Convent des Anges, 
 at Neuilly. 
 
 The end of effort, the blank of utter rest, brought the inevi 
 table reaction. As she found herself alone day after day in 
 the house, sacred from no associations, unsympathetic as 
 new surroundings always are, she gave way to a deeper and 
 deeper melancholy, which the poor old father was powerless 
 to combat, even if he had dared broach the girl s grief. She 
 struggled bravely, determinedly against collapse, but the 
 severe strain of months broke down all resistance. One day 
 Theo was called to the convent vestibule, where Celeste, the 
 housemaid, stood weeping and wringing her hands. Mon 
 sieur had commanded her to bring mademoiselle home at 
 once, her sister Clare was thought to be dying. For weeks 
 Clare s fate hung in terrifying uncertainty. Her feverish 
 paroxysms revealed nothing. Had Theo not taken advan 
 tage of the incident in the old home in Gramercy Park, she 
 would never have known that her reserved and haughty sister 
 was mortal, and suffered from the same ills that wrench the 
 heart of the gentlest and most impulsive. 
 
Io8 TRAJAN. 
 
 The misty yellow haze of a golden September afternoon 
 burnished the foliage in the park opposite the house, the 
 first time Clare was able to sit in the salon, where Theo 
 played softly the airs her sister loved. A wondrous change 
 had been wrought during the captivity of disease. The thick 
 black hair had turned into masses of silvery, fluffy whiteness. 
 As she sat at the window, where the sumptuous equipages 
 of the afternoon world rolled over the smooth roadway of 
 the Champs Elysees with their burden of the gay, the rich, 
 and the luxurious, the girl looked like a draped figure in 
 marble, the head crowned with transparent tresses ot driven 
 snow. The old haughty spirit had been burned out in the 
 crucible of suffering. She gradually resumed her place in the 
 family, and as the days wore on every one was conscious of 
 a subtle transformation. The mind had suffered the same 
 change as the body. Every thing about her was softened 
 not exactly to gentleness, but to passivity. 
 
 Theo and Jules went back to their studies, and the house 
 in the Rue Galilee returned to its monotonous regime. Clare 
 resumed the routine tranquilly, going nowhere, and seeing 
 no one. She had many acquaintances in Paris, familiars of 
 her old days of regnant dominion, but she made no sign to 
 them. Few of them knew that the former belle of New 
 York was living in Paris, and even those who had known 
 her most intimately did not venture to obtrude unbidden. The 
 only interest that attached her to the outside world was her 
 church associations. Catholic, like its ancestors, the cere 
 monial piety of the Roman Church had always been main 
 tained in the Carnot family. Received as parishioners at 
 St. Philippe de Raoul, Clare was not long in winning the 
 deep interest of the, at that time, celebrated priest, Pere 
 Barodet, who had for some time been stirring Paris flocks by 
 the Savonarola-like vigor of his ministry. The priest became 
 warmly interested in his new devotee, dining regularly 
 with the family on Saturday, when Theo and Jules were 
 home for the day. 
 
THE CARNOTS. 109 
 
 Papa Carnot, as he soon became known, fell into his new 
 lines with placid contentment. So soon as he had taken his 
 morning coffee, arrayed with the care to detail habitual to a 
 Frenchman, no matter what his age, he sallied forth into the 
 Champs Elysees, adorned his button-hole with the blossoms 
 of the season, and from ten o clock until one devoured the 
 newspapers on file in the American bank, on the Rue Scribe. 
 The French nature in him, unchanged by sixty years displace 
 ment and alien grafts, came to the surface so soon as he was set 
 down among the influences congenial to its reassertion. It 
 is the French instinct to be gay, if not sustainedly cheerful 
 under conditions which profoundly depress the more 
 equable Saxon. He took very readily to the narrow econ 
 omies and repulsive shifts that distinguish the middle class 
 French. 
 
 He saw nothing degrading in the souring self-denials and 
 niggard calculations that waste the energies which Saxons 
 turn to account in large achievements. To the Parisian 
 there is nothing so valueless as time, though he be born 
 and bred in the land ruled by the maxim that makes time 
 and money convertible terms. Papa Carnot forgot the 
 secret of wealth and conquest, and abandoned himself to 
 the dolce far niente of inaction. To get sight of his favor 
 ite journal, he would sit patiently for hours in the solemn 
 circle of the bank reading-room gazing absorbedly at the 
 books of diagrams adorning the long tables in which the 
 theaters of Paris, the summer hotels, and the great steam 
 ship lines embalm their seductions. 
 
 At the end of a year Papa Carnot could have retailed the 
 wonders of every great industry set forth in these gorgeous 
 catalogues, which form the library of hotel and bank read 
 ing-rooms on the Continent. At one o clock, as regularly 
 as the bell, he was in the pretty salle a manger in the Rue 
 Galilee, presiding at the modest dejetiner a la fourchette with 
 Clare, prattling on the news he had gathered in the jour 
 nals and the gossip of the bank. Saturday, when Theo 
 
no TRAJAN. 
 
 and Jules were home for the day, he interrupted this rou 
 tine, and joined the young folks in little picnics to St. 
 Cloud, Versailles, St. Germain, Meudon and the countless 
 pleasure haunts of the city. Clare never made one in these 
 promenades, from which the others returned merry and 
 hearty to join Pere Barodet and herself at the dinner which 
 on this evening was en fete, with Burgundy and Champagne. 
 
 Papa Carnot s greatest delight, however, after his midday 
 meal and nap, was to saunter down the Champs Elysees, 
 watching the gay masses that promenade under the chest 
 nuts below the Rond-point and fill the springy chairs set 
 in serried ranks between the trottoir and the roadway. His 
 open-air day was ended with an hour, from five until six, 
 among the boisterous groups of nursemaids and children 
 that form the audiences of the French Punch and Judy 
 Les Theatres Guignol. Taking his place frugally outside 
 the rope that marked the paying audience from the gratui 
 tous, he entered into the pantomimic humors of the little 
 scene, saluting the lusty whacks of the manikin Punch on 
 the head of the pigmy Judy, or the woes of the bedeviled 
 gendarmes, with as keen, if not as noisy, a rapture as that of 
 the ecstatic children or their gossiping bonnes. 
 
 Many an American, rolling luxuriously by in his chariot, 
 turned in a puzzled way to catch a second glimpse of the 
 tall, gray-haired man towering above the medley of nurse 
 maids, soldiers, tourists, and what not, absorbed in the 
 mimic woes of Punch, with an expression of vague recogni 
 tion of the calm old face under other circumstances and in 
 other places. Whether the old gentleman ever recognized 
 these startled visions as personages he had met in affairs, 
 or entertained in other days, he made no sign, but when he 
 sat at the dinner table he could give Clare the roster of all 
 the New Yorkers known to them in Paris. At nine o clock 
 the father and daughter, finishing a game of chess or casino, 
 joined in the devotions of the day, according to the Roman 
 rubric, and by ten o clock the house was silent. 
 
THE CARNOTS. Ill 
 
 This monotonous routine went on for two years. The 
 family fitted itself into the new and circumscribed grooves 
 without murmur. The high hopes secretly cherished that 
 Clare s beauty would re-establish their fortunes by a great 
 marriage were long ago abandoned, and Jules was now 
 regarded as the hope of ihe house. Clare encouraged no 
 wooers. Indeed, she did not find herself among people, 
 exclusive as her circle was, where desirable matches were 
 likely. There were vague hopes that the close of the civil 
 war would restore the family some of the debris of the for 
 tune lost in the outbreak of the rebellion as it was in the 
 Southern house of Carnot that the golden chain had snap 
 ped in 1860. 
 
 But in 1866 all hope of regaining even a penny of the 
 lost millions vanished in the report of a judicial commis 
 sion which declared the derelict agents irresponsible and 
 bankrupt. But worse than this was to come. The two- 
 thousand-dollar income derived from the mother s estate 
 was cut down one-half, owing to confiscation and the iron 
 clad oath exacted by Congress, and consequent shrinkage 
 in the value of investments. Clare s passive indifference 
 which had hitherto sustained her, broke down under this 
 new calamity. She succumbed helplessly to the blow, 
 wringing her thin hands and secluding herself in her room. 
 But the scepter passed from her nerveless hand, to one far 
 more capable of wielding it. The faculty of management, 
 which distinguishes the French woman beyond any of her 
 civilized sisters, was inherited in the highest degree by Theo. 
 She happened to be in the house when the meaning of the 
 news was told by the trembling parent. " What, -in heaven s 
 name, is to become of us ; we can never exist on $1,000 a 
 year," groaned the old man helplessly. 
 
 Clare looked out of the window in a listless, uninterested 
 way, as though the question didn t reach her, buried as she 
 was in some distant thought. 
 
 " For," resumed the father, in the tone of a man who in- 
 
112 TRAJAN. 
 
 vites and relishes refutation, " we can never pay 2,000 francs 
 for this apartment, 300 francs for the cook, 150 francs for 
 the maid, Theo s schooling and Jules college, expense sout 
 of 5,000 francs. It will take every penny of our income to 
 live, even by dismissing one servant and reducing the rent 
 in a cheaper apartment." 
 
 He looked dejectedly at Theo, as if she were in some way 
 to suggest means and ways, and she did not disappoint him. 
 
 " Jules shall not quit college," she said, decisively ; " he 
 has but a year more. He shall remain that year, if I have 
 to sell bouquets in the Palais Royal or at the door of the 
 Opera. His career depends upon his graduation, and our 
 future depends upon his career. He must finish it, if the 
 rest of us live in a mansard." 
 
 Clare turned and looked at her sister in languid wonder ; 
 the father s glance fell upon the letters lying on the table 
 in consternation. Theo had always discovered positive con 
 viction and unshakable determination. He felt that a 
 tyrant was about to take the government of the household 
 and disturb the serene ways that he had come to love. He 
 made a feeble attempt to resist the new power. 
 
 " But, my child, how are we to manage ? One thousand a 
 year for four people ; you can see yourself that it is impos 
 sible in the way we live now. Jules should go to work. 
 He has been at school all his life and should be fit for 
 something now. I was a junior partner at his age, and it is 
 my opinion, anyway, that too much schooling unfits young 
 men for active life. No, we can not keep Jules at college 
 on one thousand dollars and live ourselves." 
 
 This was said deprecatingly, as though the poor man 
 were responsible for the inelastic quality of the dollars. 
 
 Theo had risen and was walking the floor with her hands 
 clasped behind her. She stopped before her father, where 
 she could watch Clare s face, and said confidently : 
 
 " I have a plan that will resolve all our difficulties. The 
 present rent can be cut down one-half ; the apartment simi- 
 
THE C A KNOTS. 113 
 
 lar to this on the fourth floor is vacant ; it is in every way 
 as desirable as this and costs but 800 francs. There is 
 1,200 saved at a blow. To my mind the fourth floor is 
 more agreeable than this, for there is a balcony in front and 
 a terrace in the rear. I will quit the convent to-day and 
 that outlay is saved. I will do the work of the bonne and 
 that leak stops. But I have a better resource than these 
 miserable pinchings ; I will put myself into relations with 
 the commission agents in the Rue Scribe, and I can earn 
 oceans of money from New Yorkers who can not shop them 
 selves, not understanding the language. 
 
 " What better are we than others who live in this way ? " 
 she added, as Clare started in dismay. " There are the 
 Flints, the Davisons and the Grants, who live in splendor 
 by the very same means. I am proud as you are," she 
 cried, her voice thick and passionate, "but I am not proud 
 enough to starve as long as there is money in the pockets of 
 any one I know ! Furthermore, what is there equivocal or 
 demeaning in driving to the great magasins, to do the 
 talking and pay the money for people who can t talk 
 with the tradesmen ? There s nothing disgraceful in that, 
 I m sure. One is merely the voice of a rich purse and not 
 its slave, as a banker is. I have often done it for pleasure ; 
 why not for a livelihood ? I will at once make known to 
 all our friends that I am at their service, and you shall soon 
 see me with an income that will put us at ease. We shall 
 live as we have lived ; Jules shall finish his course like a 
 gentleman and begin his career unshackled by the necessity 
 of dividing his mind. He will be a great advocate some 
 day. I heard the cure of the Madeleine tell Father Barodet 
 that young Carnot was regarded as a born orator at the 
 Ecole de Droit." 
 
 " If we reduce expenses, as you suggest," interrupted 
 Clare, with only a degree of change from her usual listless- 
 ness, " we shall lose all our church influence. The Countess 
 de Bellechasse and the Baroness Verneuil, who have opened 
 
114 TRAJAN. 
 
 the faubourgs to Jules, believe him rich, or likely to be. 
 None of these people will countenance us if we exhibit our 
 straits. There is absolution in the church for every sin but 
 poverty. Who among your and Jules aristocratic friends 
 will countenance us au quatrieme ? All Jules advantages 
 thus far have come from his intimacy with the sons of these 
 people. His reception in the Faubourg is due solely to 
 the idea that we have American prospects, and that Jules 
 is to share the rentes of our old aunt, the Baroness Pleine- 
 vide." 
 
 Theo laughed outright as Clare concluded. " A fig for the 
 Bellechasse, the Verneuil, and the rest. The Prince d Amboise 
 is devoted to Jules. I can get along without all this poverty- 
 stricken noblesse better than it can get along without me. 
 " Don t talk to me," resumed Theo after a pause, " there s 
 nothing but sham and pretense, from one end to the other, 
 of these great families. The young men live in the clubs 
 and cafes, gambling and squandering ; they waste enough 
 on opera-dancers and follies of all sorts to keep the home- 
 table well laden. But they never go home. What do they 
 care, if their wretched fathers and mothers pinch and slave, 
 so long as they have means to drive or ride in the Bois, 
 appear at the opera, or shine at court. Jules pointed out the 
 other day a group driving tandem in the Bois, every one of 
 them engaged in some sort of business under fictitious 
 names. The young Count de Blauvault is a partner with 
 the rich butcher Duval ; De Rogny, the swell, is partner in 
 a theater ; the Marquis Clarette has a wine-shop in the Rue 
 Dauphin, kept by his protegee, a grisctte from the Latin 
 quarter. I suppose very rich people, like the De Broglies, 
 the Foulds, the Decazes, who send their domestics to fill the 
 family pews at St. Philippe s, have plenty on their tables and 
 live like Christians ; but it is my experience that in the 
 ordinary French household there is starvation in private and 
 sham abundance in public. Fancy Jules frame of mind, 
 coming in with a college-friend and finding our table, like 
 
THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES. 115 
 
 scores I have seen, without a cloth, and showing stint of any 
 kind in the food." 
 
 " You have made good use of your opportunities, Theo, " 
 said Clare, laughing. " You ought to write sketches of 
 French Interiors for the English magazines ; they would 
 prove irresistible." 
 
 " Who knows but I may ; as I am to be responsible for 
 the family income henceforth, I ll keep that as a possible 
 pot-boiler." 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES. 
 
 THROWN into a good-humor by Theo s lively sallies on 
 their neighbors poverty, the Carnots dismissed gloomy 
 forebodings, and the reconstruction of the domestic regime 
 was left entirely to .the energetic revolutionist. Theo was 
 better than her promise. She quit the convent the same day 
 the evil news came, to the explosive astonishment of her girl 
 friends, all of whom admired, while many stood in whole 
 some awe of her. No one suspected the cause, for it is an 
 article of implicit belief among the French that American 
 and wealth mean the same thing as, a few years since, 
 Briton stood for lordliness and treasure. A long experience 
 of the sharp practices of the boastful islanders has dissipated 
 the belief, which, up to 1870, had not been shaken in regard 
 to the Americans. 
 
 The Carnots were commonly believed to be wealthy, and 
 they took no pains to discredit the impression indeed, the 
 ingenious Theo, for Jules sake, furthered the delusion in 
 countless trifles, known to be most impressive with the cred 
 ulous Gaul. With equal promptness the 2,000 francs rent 
 was diminished to 800. Here Theo gave a foretaste of her 
 business tact. The landlord refused to consent to the 
 
n6 TRAJAN. 
 
 exchange of lease without a large bonus a half-year s rent, 
 to assure him against loss. Theo at once made inquiries at 
 the bank for a family in need of an apartment. There were 
 plenty such, and introducing herself to several, she at last 
 secured a tenant who not only took the lease, but paid a 
 bonus of 500 francs for immediate possession, and secured 
 the services of the quick-witted negotiator to furnish it for 
 them. 
 
 When the work was done, Theo laid down a check for 
 3,000 francs as the result of her fortnight s enterprise. The 
 family looked on their new chief with rapturous amazement. 
 The fourth floor was arranged precisely like the first and was 
 even more commodious, for the balcony could be used as an 
 evening resort, from which to watch the splendid spectacle 
 of Paris en gala on the Champs Ely sees. It must be borne 
 in mind, further, that height does not bear the same infer 
 ence in French mansions that it would in countries where 
 detached houses are the rule. As Theo remarked jocosely, 
 " It was in every way a rise in the world ; there was purer 
 air, more chance for outdoor life on the wide balconies, 
 additional exercise on the extra stairs, and money in 
 purse." 
 
 Not a word had been said to Jules. Great, therefore, was 
 the astonishment of that young dandy when, ringing at the 
 familiar door, a strange servant opened it. He Was living 
 en gar f on in the Latin quarter, and had been off on the 
 Marne visiting one of his comrades during the family trans 
 planting. Theo undertook the explanation, as the young 
 man came in bewildered and dropped upon a sofa, his face 
 an interrogation point. 
 
 " Mon cher, we are a thousand dollars a year poorer than 
 when you were here last. In order to keep you in college 
 until you finish we have reduced expenses, and we want you 
 to economize as much as you can in your pocket-money. 
 We must pinch in every thing, " 
 
 Jules winced. 
 
THEO RE VI VES THE FA MIL Y FOR TUNES. 1 1 7 
 
 "Oh, we shall not be forced to economize in the French 
 sense. Whatever we have to give up, we shall at least have 
 plenty on the table. No floods of Burgundy or champagne 
 when you bring your friends, but enough, and, with good 
 management, some luxuries." 
 
 Then she explained all that had been done, winding up 
 with an expression of cheerful confidence in her ability to 
 meet the crisis, that dispelled the gloom from the handsome 
 face before her. Jules sank back in the cushions, dropped 
 his head on the back of the sofa and looked at his sister 
 wonderingly ; she continued as if answering his thought. 
 
 " There will be no perceptible difference in your circum 
 stances. If you can manage to come and live at home, it 
 will increase your pocket-money to thai* extent. If you 
 keep your rooms in the quarter, of course there is the rent, 
 washing, fuel and countless little expenses you are put to 
 when a friend drops in. Do just as you like about it. We 
 shall be satisfied whatever you do. If you come home, it 
 will cost you six sous a day on the omnibus, unless you walk 
 one way, which I think would be a good plan. It would 
 keep you in good digestion and freshen you for study. 
 Make up your mind to it and we shall be very happy all at 
 home again." 
 
 "When one can t have what one loves, one must love what 
 one has ; your reasoning, Theo, would do credit to our 
 Roman digest. I will give up the rooms to-morrow and send 
 my traps home. How do father and Clare take the new dis 
 pensation ? " he asked, as Theo gave him a rapturous hug 
 for his Spartan self-denial. 
 
 " Clare doesn t seem to mind it at all ; nothing moves 
 her, as you know. Papa really sees no difference. He eats, 
 sleeps, goes to the bank, buys his bouquet, patronizes the 
 pit at Guignol, maunders over chess with Clare, or casino 
 with me, and is perfectly happy. I doubt if he really com 
 prehends the matter at all." Then she added, looking at 
 her brother as she held his two hands in her own, " Jules, 
 
liS TRAJAN, 
 
 mon cher, do you realize that the rehabilitation of the House 
 of Carnot is for us to bring about, your brain and my " she 
 hesitated and colored. 
 
 " Your what ? " asked Jules, curiously. 
 
 " Never mind what," she said in a low voice, looking 
 away from him. " I feel equal to the mission do you ? " 
 
 Jules was but a lad, older by two years than the self-con 
 tained, inveterately confident little manager who sat beside 
 him. The future had never obtruded itself upon him very 
 distinctly. He had his dreams, vague, shadowy dreams, in 
 which abundance, luxury and even fame of some sort 
 figured, but he had never stopped to examine the processes 
 by which all these were to be brought to him. Theo s 
 question gave hiffi a sudden shock, as when one comes to 
 the end of an easy journey by rail and finds a rough road 
 and no vehicle to take him to an unknown destination. His 
 mind was instantly full of retrospect and apprehension. He 
 had lived the ways of a sybarite. He was so accustomed to 
 the pleasant amenities of life, that the mere suggestion of a 
 divergent path gave him a shock such as a man feels who, 
 walking through flowery lanes and blossoms, sees smiling 
 vineyards and abundant fruits in the uplands above him and 
 comes suddenly, fatigued and inert, to a broad and bridge- 
 less stream. The weary work of retracing his steps and the 
 uncertainty of finding a thoroughfare dishearten him. He 
 sinks to the ground, and the longer he gives way to discour 
 agement and inaction, the more remote the chance of regain 
 ing the right path in time. 
 
 Though not rich, Jules had never felt any severe depriva 
 tion in college. His associates in the academy and university, 
 though the sons of wealthy men, many of them of the ancient 
 noblesse, regarded him as rich, because, being an American 
 he could be nothing else. Young men in France, no matter 
 what the parental status, are never allowed lavish pocket- 
 money. It thus happened that Jules was always the Croesus 
 of his class in ready cash. The prudent management of the 
 
THEO RE VI VES THE FA MIL Y FOR TUNES. 1 1 9 
 
 family resources since the return to France, had enabled 
 him to spend as much as in his boyish days, when there was 
 no limit to his allowance. He was always equal to his asso 
 ciates in the hilarious but modest dissipations that the stu 
 dents indulged in in the Latin quarter. He knew perfectly 
 well that the intimacy accorded him by his aristocratic 
 associates was due to their belief in his heirship to American 
 millions. His heart sank as he thought of the change that 
 would come upon his agreeable relations, when it was known 
 that he was poor and almost a pretender that he was not 
 only of the despised bourgeoisie, but of the very poor 
 bourgeoisie. 
 
 Theo watched all this with an aching heart. Her sym 
 pathy with her brother was profound and tender the ruling 
 passion, indeed, of her heart and brain. She loved him as 
 she loved no other member of the family as she could 
 hardly ever love any body in the world she often said to 
 herself. She was very like him, not only in face, but in the 
 finer fibers of her nature. Their two brains seemed to work 
 as one when the brother and sister were moved deeply. She 
 comprehended the drift of his thought as clearly as if he had 
 spoken, but it never occurred to her to view it as ignoble or 
 unmanly in the pampered darling to think only of himself, 
 his pleasures, his vanities, his fine friends and the figure he 
 was to cut in their eyes. To her these considerations did 
 not seem paltry or trivial. 
 
 On the contrary, she quite shared the feeling of angry 
 rebellion that made the lad hate himself and his surround 
 ings. She resented what she considered unmerited poverty, 
 with a bitter, scornful sense of personal and family injury, 
 that made the selfish anguish of the young man natural and 
 consistent. She never dreamed that her own and the family s 
 abnegation fed the brother s selfishness. She thought it 
 only right that the rest of them should pinch and economize, 
 that Jules might live congenially while fitting himself for the 
 destiny awaiting him. He was to restore the ruined fortunes 
 
1 20 TRAJAN. 
 
 of the House of Carnot, and while he girded himself for the 
 battle, what more fitting than that the rest should toil and 
 slave and stint and cheer him on ? It never occurred to her 
 that it was not in preparation for the battle she was sacri 
 ficing the rest. Jules was willing to accept the work allotted 
 him, but in his own way and on his own terms. It was in 
 the spirit of the feudatory led to battle by his liege, sword 
 and buckler thrust into his nerveless hands, instead of win 
 ning them like a real knight, and in the conquest proving his 
 right to wear them. 
 
 Jules was not of the knightly sort. His life had been an 
 easy, if not pampered one. He knew no such thing as 
 self-denial. Not that he was ungenerous or devoid of a cer 
 tain egotistic chivalrousness. In danger he was no coward ; 
 in an emergency he was self-reliant. His severest crosses in 
 life hitherto had been the deprivation of a horse, a box at 
 the opera, and the unstinted bank account of some of his 
 American companions. Not that he had thought deeply or 
 repined habitually over these. His nature was too mercurial 
 for that. In New York the perpetual obtrusion of these 
 wants would perhaps have soured his spirit and embittered 
 him. 
 
 Coming to Paris before these things had begun to make 
 the impression of daily denials, he had rather wondered at 
 the absence of them than brooded over their unattainability. 
 In the Latin quarter he readily fell into the life, half Bohe 
 mian, half scholastic, that distinguishes its academic move 
 ment from nearly every university society in the world. He 
 mingled as readily in the joyous bouts of the bourgeoisie 
 students as in the rarer atmosphere of the young noblesse of 
 the faubourgs. He had picked up all the liberal ftatnboyan- 
 cies of the social freebooters, and was as cynically indifferent 
 to doctrine as the New York railroad magnate who con 
 fessed himself a democrat with democrats, and a republican 
 with republicans but all the time for himself ! He had the 
 arguments of Blanc, Rousseau, and Prudhon at the end 
 
THE O RE VI VES THE FA MIL Y FOR TUNES. 121 
 
 of his tongue. He was in the best standing in that sacred 
 cdnacle which made the table of Voltaire the altar of its devo 
 tions. 
 
 He was an habitue of the Cafe Procope, the temple of con 
 temporary radicalism, political and social. He was loudest 
 in applauding the young oracle of republicanism, Leon 
 Gambetta, in his vehement monologues when the clinking 
 glasses of the Procope guests punctuated the resounding 
 periods. He sat in the hemicycle of the law school under 
 the ministrations of a republican professor, a prince of the 
 Roman empire on one hand, an Italian revolutionist on the 
 other, and whether it was craft, address or indifference, he 
 w.as as intimately trusted by the prince as the prolctaire, the 
 confidant of both. 
 
 He had the rare faculty we see in some men and most 
 women evoking confidence and giving none, with an ex 
 pansive effusion that lured the most wary. He knew some 
 thing of every one that gave him, in a certain sort, the mas 
 tery over his confidants, betrayed by his apparent frankness 
 into saying what, on second thought, was an abiding and 
 bitter regret. For, if the borrower be the servant of the 
 lender, the confidant of a man s conscience is in a sort his 
 master and may become his tyrant. 
 
 Nor was it wholly when the wine was in, that Jules com 
 rades unsuspectingly forged the chain whose keys the young 
 man held. Not that there were any sinister mysteries in the 
 lives of the varied groups into whose intimacy Jules was 
 thrown beyond the fragile amours of the day or college 
 pranks of a boisterous sort. It would, however, have been 
 excessively awkward for the young patrician, whose family 
 hoped for political preference at the hands of the democracy, 
 to have Jules casually hint at the sentiments of loathing and 
 contempt cherished for the proletaire by the noble caste. 
 Nor would the exuberant evangels of the rights of man and 
 universal leveling, have enjoyed confronting their aristo 
 cratic fellows daily, conscious that their inmost convictions 
 
122 TRAJAN. 
 
 were known to the common enemy, before the great day 
 when they were to be put in execution. 
 
 Jules was thus, without any original tendency for the chi 
 cane of life, irresistibly swirled into those prudent compro 
 mises with his friends and his convictions, which end by 
 warping the conscience into insincerity and unscrupulous- 
 ness. As between a plain good action and a plain bad one, 
 involving no one he cared for, he would unhesitatingly have 
 chosen the good not because it was good, but because it 
 was gentlemanly and could bring no sting afterward. But 
 he would have consented to the bad as readily, if the other 
 threatened to mar the symmetrical contour of his daily enjoy 
 ment. His horror of poverty and craving for the considera 
 tion that comes from the power to realize every wish, were 
 more the aspiration for an intellectual freedom than a 
 vulgar craze for social distinction. This was his own ex 
 planation of the agnosticism that enabled him to be all 
 things to all men save to himself. 
 
 From the day that he found Theo at the head of the 
 house, Jules kept the words she had spoken in his mind. He 
 girded himself, day by day, for the work she had set him. 
 His reticence about himself and the family became more 
 studious, as his tongue became more free. His aristocratic 
 friends were regaled less at the charming apartment in the 
 Rue Galilee, nor was he weak enough to cultivate with 
 more marked assiduity the Brahmin agencies that he counted 
 upon to aid him, in that uncertain future that was now 
 always before him, waking or sleeping. 
 
 Theo aided him with matchless/;/^^. She had kept her 
 word to the letter in promising the others ease. The family, 
 for the first time since it came to Paris, had a modest balance 
 at the bankers, and the very first use Theo put that mark of 
 opulence to was to hand in Jules signature as entitled to 
 check on the deposit. This increased his repute among the 
 collegians, not one of whom had such a mark of parental 
 confidence. Theo s skill and business sagacity established 
 
THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES. 123 
 
 her in a splendid income before the end of the first year. In 
 1867 a New Yorker on the boulevards might have imagined 
 himself on Broadway. Every third man he met was an 
 acquaintance or a person known by sight on " the street." 
 Scores of Theo s school friends were in the city with their 
 parents, to visit the great Exposition and replenish the 
 family finery. 
 
 Theo s business became so burdensome that she had to 
 call in help. But no one succeeded like herself. It was 
 not only to do the talking that her clients desired her assist 
 ance, it was to make use of her admirable taste. They were 
 content to be put off with substitutes in ordinary purchases, 
 but in jewelry, silks, bric-a-brac and what not, they preferred 
 to wait days rather than go without the master-mind. Theo 
 was by no means put out by this evidence of her prowess. 
 Nor was she slow in learning the mysteries of the traffic in 
 foreign ignorance and credulity. She had prudently mas 
 tered every detail in one of the American agencies that 
 abound in the Rue Scribe. She paid a round fee, and put 
 herself into the hands of one of the shrewdest usurers in the 
 confidence of her compatriots. It was a woman who had 
 been ruined by the rebellion, the wife of a petty official in 
 the American legation, who had begun her career by news 
 paper letters and then drifted into this peculiar trade. She 
 practiced on the vanity and credulity of the stranger. Hav 
 ing some occult relation with an English journal much read 
 by transatlantic persons, she was enabled to stimulate the 
 morbid craving of Americans for publicity, and made use of 
 this to ingratiate her services with the flattered victim. 
 
 Not a turn in the practice escaped Theo. Gifted with 
 brains, accomplished in letters, she soon left her mentor far 
 behind, and in contemptuous pity gave her such of her clientele 
 as were content with her offices. Well as she knew the im 
 positions practiced upon Americans, she was dumbfounded 
 at the ramifications enmeshing the victim. No sooner was 
 the American in the hands of the agent, than the sys- 
 
124 TRAJAN. 
 
 tematized extortions began ; there was an understand 
 ing with the cabman, an understanding with the shopman, 
 an understanding with the domestics, an understanding 
 with the restaurant, understanding with the theater ticket- 
 seller absolutely an understanding with the railway agents 
 and steamship men. From all these the agent drew a 
 commission as well as from the purchasers. In order 
 to pay commissions and make profit, all these sellers 
 were of course forced to overcharge the luckless stranger, 
 who, unacquainted with the language, was a victim inviting 
 the constant fleecing befalling him or her. It was in most 
 cases her, for men are too shrewd to buy through interpret 
 ers, and if they do, are better judges of values. 
 
 Theo counted the fifty dollars well spent that initiated 
 her into all this iniquity. She did not herself descend to all 
 the meannesses. She refused to share the sous with the 
 cabman, the francs with the salesman, the pour-boire with 
 the waiter, or any of the petty thefts. She made a regular 
 agreement with a few great firms. They were to pay her so 
 much per cent, on every hundred francs bought, and while 
 she exacted payment to the last farthing, she was met with 
 reverential obeisances in every great bazar in the capital. 
 Her clients, it was soon notorious, bought more and 
 with less haggling than any others brought in by outside 
 agents. So gratified were the merchants and so liberal the 
 margins on the sales they made, that not content with the 
 percentage paid Theo they regularly made her presents of 
 dress patterns, laces and the specialties for which she brought 
 most custom. 
 
 When her clients were old friends, they did not venture 
 to offer their chaperon money. In such cases ^andsome 
 presents were given, which, by an understanding with the 
 merchant, were set to Theo s credit, and the value returned 
 in cash when she collected her percentage. Few of the 
 friends who found Theo so exquisitely dressed, so radiant 
 in youth and high spirits, realized the ruin that had been 
 
THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES. 125 
 
 wrought in the family fortunes seven years before. But 
 even had they known the straits to which the Carnots were 
 driven, delicacy would have kept them from offering money 
 to a lady. 
 
 It was generally supposed in New York that the Carnots 
 had gone to Paris to enjoy a rich legacy, and it was vaguely 
 rumored that a noble kinswoman had adopted Jules as her 
 heir. Theo, however, while dressed in perfect taste, in 
 dulged in no extravagance. There wasn t a gleam of gold 
 to be seen about her person but plain as her attire was, 
 every woman that came near her suffered in comparison. 
 Whether it was the slender, willowy figure, the charming 
 pose of arms and head, the sensuous undulation of carriage, 
 it was hard to say ; but among a score of women she was 
 the magnet ; among a roomful of talkers her voice alone 
 subdued. She had an art of her own in making simple 
 draperies and very ordinary materials into gracious folds and 
 furbelows, that cheapened the rich tissues of her friends, 
 costing a hundredfold more. 
 
 She made the fortune of one poor little shopman by ap 
 pearing in a sort of linsey, fitting tight to the body, which so 
 fired every woman that saw it, that nothing would do but 
 she must have one like it. Nor were the merchants slow to 
 recognize this value in their patron. Hundreds of fabrics 
 considered dead stock were sent her, and within a month 
 the enchanted shopman had sold the last ell. It was a 
 comedy that no one could have enjoyed more than the 
 crdfiy little creature herself, to Watch her operations with a 
 rich party of her family acquaintances in one of the grand 
 magazines. As it would not do to offer Theo money, she 
 really must take a dress pattern exactly like the one her 
 taste had chosen for Mrs. Mammon, or a bonnet, or a yard 
 of lace, or a box of gloves, or a bracelet, or a diamond ring, 
 or a fine width of tapestry, or an ormolu clock. The witch 
 edified the home circle with no end of ludicrous accounts of 
 these lively travesties, until the American family on the floor 
 
126 TRAJAN. 
 
 below hearing the hilarity through the open windows would 
 send to know " what was up ! " 
 
 Theo s first year s earnings were something over ten thou 
 sand dollars, to say nothing of an ample wardrobe for herself, 
 Clare, Jules and papa. Nor were Jules and Papa Carnot 
 idle in the harvest of 1867. Husbands, sons and brothers, 
 and even lovers, had to be remembered by fond wives, 
 sisters and sweethearts. The gains from these aids swelled 
 the receipts of 1867-8 to $10,000, and then Theo felt at ease. 
 This was the great epoch in her venture. After the Exposi 
 tion, business fell off, and her earnings did not reach $4,000. 
 The house, too, shared in the good fortune. It was a per 
 fect museum of rare china, bric-a-brac, articles de Paris, 
 engravings and the million bits that go to make a Paris 
 interior an artistic fairy scene. 
 
 Nor was the material gain all. Theo s cleverness, wit, 
 good-humor and beauty became a sort of cult, not only 
 among the colony (as the exiled Americans and English 
 style themselves when settled in any number in a foreign 
 city, for wealth has a sort of free-masonry of its own), but 
 among the social magnates of native society, and she was 
 soon the vogue in the most distinguished salons of the 
 faubourg, where, when it was found that she was sister 
 to the handsome Jules, she was more welcome than ever. 
 She was the inseparable guest of some wealthy family, 
 at the opera, at the theaters, summer watering-places, min 
 isterial fetes, on tours to Fontainebleau, Switzerland and 
 Biarritz. 
 
 When the American Minister, who was at that time a man 
 of fine accomplishments, gave receptions, Theo was invalu 
 able in entertaining the foreigners, for she spoke the German 
 and French tongues with great purity. At one of the great 
 fetes at the ministry of foreign affairs she was remarked by 
 the Emperor himself, who deigned to make a little joke with 
 her to the effect that it was a lucky thing for the Empress 
 that there was no Mademoiselle Carnot in Hoboken when 
 
THEO RE VI VES THE FA MIL Y FOR TUNES. 1 2 7 
 
 he lived there, or France would have had an American 
 consort ! You may be sure Eugenie didn t hear this pretty 
 speech, or she would not have ordered madame, the Duchess 
 de Persigny, to bring the little American and present her. 
 The Empress was so charmed by her sprightliness, wit and 
 modesty that she commanded her chamberlain, in Theo s 
 hearing, to put mademoiselle s name down for the fetes at 
 St. Cloud ! 
 
 It was by a stroke of dazzling adroitness that the witch 
 won the Empress wholly. She had, by order of the cham 
 berlain, accompanied a beautiful New Orleans girl to an 
 imperial reception at the Tuileries. All Paris was agog over 
 r Americaine s beauty and wealth, " a cotton princess," as 
 Pigaro wickedly nicknamed her. She was an orphan and in 
 Paris with a guardian to settle an estate. Her life was 
 made miserable by adventurers writing her their readiness 
 to make her a princess, a queen, if she would but grant an 
 interview. She was very much amused with Theo, and had 
 made her something like a confidant. She was partly French 
 through her grandmother, as well as by her father, who, 
 though born in New Orleans, was of a noble French family, 
 the De la Fleches of Blois. Even in the stately throng of 
 princes, dukes, marshals and noblemen of every rank and 
 nation, the two Americans were not obscure. 
 
 Theo, though not so stately as her companion, was a 
 perfect picture of demure feminine loveliness. She knew 
 many of the young noblemen, and the friends were soon at 
 their ease though the reception was to the kings visiting 
 Paris at the close of the Exhibition. As they sat watching 
 the gorgeous figures in groups in the magnificent salon of 
 the ambassadors, a young man in the full court costume, 
 with dazzling stars on his breast and the broad ribbon of 
 the legion of honor, came forward and bowed low before 
 Theo. She flushed with pleasure, and turning from her 
 companion as she rose, said : 
 
 " Monsieur le prince, I thought you were in Baden. I am 
 
128 TRAJAN. 
 
 enchanted to see you here " then, speaking to I Americaine, 
 she added : " May I take the liberty of presenting to you 
 my brother s friend, the Prince d Amboise Mademoiselle 
 de la Fleche ? Have you been carrying your wicked con 
 quests into the Palatinate, since we saw you ; my brother 
 tells me all the opera folks are in mourning when you leave 
 town. Did you leave Baden-Baden draped in black, or 
 was there a mingling of rouge et noir." 
 
 " Mafoi, Mademoiselle Theo, you American misses have 
 a charming boldness of attack. What could a modest man 
 say to such an indictment ?" 
 
 " A modest man would find an answer very simple the 
 question is, what can a wicked one like the Prince d Amboise, 
 who glories in his wickedness, say ? " laughed Theo, maf- 
 iciously. 
 
 " Ah, as for that, if my colors are struck I must not 
 defend, but I implore grace." 
 
 At that moment the Empress, accompanied by a brilliant 
 bevy of dames, halted just before Theo and the prince. 
 Beckoning the former with a little gesture, she said some 
 what petulantly, as Theo stood courtseying before her : 
 
 " Mademoiselle has forgotten Pere Barodet, in her 
 anxiety to show Mademoiselle de la Fleche the gayeties of 
 Paris." While speaking she had signified her pleasure that the 
 last named lady should approach. 
 
 Theo looking the imperial lady modestly in the face, re 
 plied without an instant s hesitation : " Pardon, your Maj 
 esty. Madame la Princesse de Metternich will convince 
 you that I have not forgotten your majesty s wishes. If f 
 dared take the liberty, I would ask your majesty to bear 
 Mademoiselle de la Fleche in kind memory, for, thanks to 
 her generosity, Pere Barodet now has the ten thousand 
 francs needed to put up the memorial altar. The check will 
 be in the good father s hands by the morning post." 
 
 As Theo uttered this indomitable fib, she stole a warning 
 glance at the amazed beauty. The Empress smiled sweetly 
 
THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES. 129 
 
 on the latter and gave her the imperial hand, which the 
 heiress kissed timidly, blushing and confused. 
 
 " Mademoiselle, you have made me your friend ; the Pere 
 Barodet is the model of a good pastor. Piety like yours will 
 not go without recognition." Saying this, the Empress, 
 turning to Madame Metternich, said archly : 
 
 " Madame la Princesse, twould be a shame to have so 
 good a Catholic and so beautiful a girl lost to France. Can 
 we not devise some means of keeping mademoiselle where 
 good and generous Catholics are so much needed ? " 
 
 " K\\,pour fa majeste" responded the gay princess in her 
 funny German mixture of French, " mademoiselle is very 
 hard to please, apparently. She has been turning the heads 
 of all our beaux gar $ons, who complain of her as cruel. She 
 has left some cavalier in the sunny Louisiana, and has no 
 eyes for our melancholy beaux." 
 
 The Empress fixed her eyes on the young girl, who blushed 
 to a crimson loveliness, that sent a pang of envy into 
 the rouged dowagers, who, unable to distinguish the words 
 of the conversation, could not imagine why the young lady 
 was throwing out these signals with no convoy any where in 
 sight. " This will never do, mademoiselle," said the Em 
 press, gayly tapping her shoulder with the lace of her fan. 
 " Beauty like yours deserves a court for a setting ; you must 
 be a duchess at least." Turning to Theo, who had been 
 permitted to remain near enough to hear this pretty comedy, 
 the Empress continued : " Pere Barodet has told me of your 
 devotion to St. Philippe de Raoul. I shall never have any 
 thing but an indulgent ear for any thing you may wish to say 
 to me." 
 
 The*o bent with a deep reverence, as the Princess de Met 
 ternich, smiling significantly, followed the imperial lady to the 
 dais where the majesties were to be received. 
 
 " My dear, I have made the Empress your friend for life. 
 What an inspiration that check was. You must give me 
 credit for some presence of mind to find such an invention 
 9 
 
130 TRAJAN. 
 
 on the spur of the moment," and Theo looked at her silent 
 companion in reproach. 
 
 " It was a piece of most unheard of " Miss La Fleche 
 seemed to have impudence on the end of her tongue, but 
 thinking better of it, said coldly " audacity. You frighten 
 me with your readiness for intrigue. Such a gift will ruin you 
 unless you curb it. I shall not in this case bring you into 
 discredit, by withholding the check to Pere Barodet ; but 
 Theo, my dear, I have an American prejudice against being 
 fleeced even for the church." 
 
 " Oh, very well, if you don t care to pay it, I can. I was 
 thinking of your interest, not my own, when I said it. Of 
 course if you look upon it as a a fleecing, I will pay it 
 myself." 
 
 Theo began to study the gorgeous costumes about the 
 great chamber. 
 
 " Don t talk nonsense, child. Of course I understand 
 well enough : with your French notions you think no 
 amount of money ill spent that wins the favor of the sov 
 ereign. There I don t agree with you ; I don t think it a good 
 investment, as papa used to say, and, furthermore, I like to 
 do my own giving." 
 
 " But don t you understand that there are scores of 
 princely persons who would part with half their fortune to 
 leave such a souvenir with the Empress. It was not the 
 money that gratified Eugenie. It was the proof that a 
 stranger had appreciated her favorite preacher." 
 
 " This is worse and worse," exclaimed Miss La Fleche, 
 who looked at Theo in shocked surprise. " If I stand well 
 with the lady, it will be through a fraud, for the very motive 
 that makes the gift of value is wanting. I don t care-a straw 
 for Pere Barodet. I m afraid your conscience has been 
 warped by your French association." 
 
 Miss La Fleche was an old school-fellow and could talk 
 with freedom to the astonished Theo, who looked on her in 
 good-humored surprise. 
 
THEO REVIVES THE FAMILY FORTUNES. 131 
 
 At this very moment, while the pair were engaged in this 
 tiff on the moralities, a young chamberlain stepped in front 
 of them and bowing obsequiously, said : 
 
 " Her Majesty commands me to inform les demoiselles de 
 la Fleche and Carnot that they are expected to join the im 
 perial suite near her majesty. I shall have the honor to con 
 duct the demoiselles." 
 
 Theo radiant with this new mark of royal favor, 
 pressed her companion s arm significantly, as they set out 
 through the crowd, which had now become a crush, behind 
 the young man. They followed him across the glittering 
 floor, a thousand lights dazzling them from the pyramids of 
 crystal candelabra overhead, the glories of France looking 
 down on them from the priceless panels on which the pencil 
 of Paul Vernet had set the lineaments of marshals, generals, 
 admirals and statesmen. Theo wondered what their imper 
 ial patron could want with them. But the intoxicating sense 
 of importance inspired in the mere message, that she, Theo 
 Carnot, the bankrupt s daughter, was enjoying an honor and 
 privilege that half \hzparvenus in Paris toiled and schemed 
 in vain to obtain, gave a gleam to her eye and a flush to her 
 olive cheek, that made many a bejeweled, bestarred, and 
 emblazoned bigwig turn with a start of surprise, to examine 
 the exquisite figure. 
 
 As they advanced, always led by the young courtier, reg 
 ulating his steps in respectful obedience to the difficulties of 
 their progress, the salons became less crowded. The per 
 sonages seemed to blaze more resplendentlyin the stars and 
 regalia of the empire. The ministers of Europe were named 
 to them by their guide as they passed. Princes and marshals 
 of the empires of France, Austria, Russia, and the kingdom of 
 Prussia. Cardinals and archbishops mingled in the stately 
 groups. The conversation which broke out in a loud hum 
 in the distant apartment, was here stilled to a low murmur. 
 
 The next moment the two young ladies passed on to 
 the reception-room of the Empress. Here the walls, like 
 
132 TRAJAN, 
 
 
 
 the others, were lustrous with gold, and the panels covered 
 with oil paintings. Though the apartment was spacious, 
 it was at the moment well filled, and lost its fine propor 
 tions. Most of the throng were ladies in dazzling attire, 
 with a sprinkling of gentlemen, somewhat less gorgeous than 
 their brethren in the other rooms. The young man who 
 had conducted the friends thither left them, and approached 
 a lady standing behind the chair of the Empress, whom 
 Theo recognized as the Duchess de Mouchy. The duchess 
 smiled and whispered to her mistress. She bent her head 
 slightly without interrupting the conversation. 
 
 Madame de Mouchy spoke to the young man. He bowed 
 and returned to the young ladies, who stood lost in contem 
 plation of the scene and its beautiful mistress. Eugenie was 
 at that time in the prime of her mature beauty. Theo 
 wondered at the fairness and transparency of her com 
 plexion, brought into vivid relief rather than diminished by 
 the coils of russet-gold hair heaped upon her stately head. 
 Theo, who had a woman s eye for detail, further remarked 
 that her neck and the corsage of pale green blazed with the 
 crown diamonds, the famous Pitt glistening at the point of a 
 dark oblique stomacher, and almost veiled in the rich laces, 
 through which it gleamed like a swarm of dewdrops under the 
 harvest moon. The guide interrupted Theo s reflections by a 
 message from Madame de Mouchy, that they should not quit 
 the salon until they had received another message from her. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 A FRIEND AT COURT. 
 
 THEO and her friend were left to study the novel picture 
 the scene presented. Entirely ignorant of court cere 
 monial, for Theo. had most strangely neglected to inform 
 herself before coming they had only the vaguest notion of 
 what they saw. 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 133 
 
 Like his uncle, Napoleon III. exacted the most rigorous 
 etiquette in the palace a single button awry on a uniform, 
 an untimely gesture, would disgrace the delinquent for a 
 month. If at a/<?te or reception the Emperor or Empress 
 honored a guest by a word, all the rest of the company fell 
 back out of earshot. It was this which surprised Theo when 
 the Empress had summoned herself and Miss de la Fleche 
 early in the evening. She would have been infinitely grati 
 fied if all the maids of honor, the great dames and dowagers, 
 could have heard the words of the imperial patroness, for 
 she knew they would be the topic of every salon before the 
 week was out. All this was to aid Jules. For herself, she 
 argued, she didn t much relish this splendor, hollow, mean 
 ingless, depraved. Her reflections were interrupted by a 
 movement where the Empress sat. The ladies arose, and a 
 page going in front to warn the guests, the imperial hostess 
 set out for the dancing-hall. She addressed most of the 
 personages by name, as they arose and inclined respectfully 
 before her. When near the doorway, the Prince d Amboise 
 entered, apparently in search of somebody. He almost met 
 the Empress face to face. As she saw him, she raised her 
 fan playfully, exclaiming : 
 
 " Ah, Monsieur d Amboise, you are caught ; since when 
 has it become en regie for a prince to forget his promises ?" 
 
 " De grace, your majesty, even piety and promises must 
 give way to ill-health. I am but just returned from Baden- 
 Baden for the fete, though forbidden by the medical tyrants, 
 who now rule the House of Amboise," said the prince, in gay 
 deprecation of the imperial reproach. 
 
 " Very good, Monsieur d Amboise ; you shall now do 
 penance for past sins. At the fete of St. Cloud, on Tuesday 
 next, you shall be cavalier to a charming demoiselle, to whom 
 I am about to present you ; attend ! " 
 
 The young man fell into the train, engaging in conversa 
 tion with Madame le Breton, the familiar attendant of the 
 Empress. On arriving near Theo and Miss de la Fleche, 
 
134 TRAJAN. 
 
 the Empress, by a gesture, commanded their approach ; then, 
 without turning, directed the prince to come forward. Look 
 ing archly at the heiress, the imperial match-maker said : 
 
 " Mademoiselle, I have brought this scapegrace to you 
 for reformation Monsieur le Prince d Amboise 4 ." 
 
 The two bowed as if they had never met before and the 
 Empress continued : " Our young ladies have failed in every 
 attempt to reform him. See what your American art can do. 
 He is a tres mauvais sujet, I assure you, and will require 
 strong measures." She smiled pleasantly at the by no means 
 abashed nobleman, and, turning to Theo added graciously : 
 
 " Mademoiselle Carnot, we shall expect to see you at the 
 fete, at St. Cloud, Tuesday, with Mademoiselle de la Fleche," 
 and passed away, a vision of power and beauty. 
 
 Theo rehearsed the wonders of this night of triumph 
 many a day after. It made her a marked social force in the 
 self-seeking mobs that depended on imperial favor for a 
 thousand schemes of aggrandizement. Its influence remained 
 with Theo long after the kind lady who had shown her 
 so much favor had been driven from the scene of her 
 grandeur and was forgotten by all upon whom she had 
 lavished her generosity. The event brought gold as well as 
 glory, for no sooner was the little American s standing at 
 court made known in the piquant gossip of the Chroniques 
 than mysterious gifts came from all sides, the donors asking 
 merely for the privilege of her acquaintance. It helped her 
 business, too. 
 
 There were few Americans, of the sort that made Paris 
 their headquarters, who could resist worship of a star moving 
 in such a dazzling orbit. Nor was the triumph without its 
 value to Jules. He was taken up by the rich young nabobs. 
 The desire of his life for horses and equipage was gratified 
 within a week after Theo s standing at court became known. 
 He was made a lion by the sons of the rich American resi 
 dents, who, with the extraordinary instinct of our race, very 
 soon discovered that he was not rich. They devised scores 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 135 
 
 of unobtrusive ways of filling his exchequer without leaving 
 a wound to his amour propre. One young man, the son of 
 a pushing matron from Montana, with an inexplicable mania 
 for court life and the association of grandees, Washington 
 Lafayette Grovel, called " Lafe " for short by his familiars, 
 actually forced bets on the admired intimate of courtiers, as 
 a pretext to fill his purse to the amount of thousands of 
 dollars. 
 
 Others pretended to wage baccarat with him and left all 
 the winnings in his hands, by clumsiness in play, in humorous 
 contrast with their skill when contesting with each other. 
 It literally rained gold into the receptacles of the genius of 
 Rue Galilee, and the house became too small for the levees 
 held day after day, merely to receive the cards of the throng 
 that coveted acquaintance with the friend of the sovereign, 
 as Theo was regarded by her envying and admiring com 
 patriots. All this adulation was turned to the best account, 
 where Theo sagaciously divined that Jules interests lay. 
 Jules, as the indispensable companion of the rich young 
 nabobs from over the sea, was missed and mourned in the 
 exclusive circles of the Faubourg, where his vogue among 
 the millionaires, as all Americans were held to be, made a 
 great impression. He was seen in the choice boxes at the 
 opera ; in sumptuous equipages in the Bois. His name was 
 paraded in all the costly revels of the foreign magnates, at 
 the ministerial receptions, and in places where rank and birth 
 alone are found. Discussing the fairy transformation in 
 their fortunes, Jules said one day, as he and Theo sat alone 
 in the pretty salon of the Rue Galilee : 
 
 " If the fortunes of the family are ever restored, ma chtre, 
 the prodigy will be your work ; the rest of us will be as 
 little in it as the globules of water that pass between the 
 mill wheel and the wall, evading the stream that turns the 
 wheel." 
 
 That sagacious young person smiled fondly on the hand 
 some eulogist and shook her head. " If I had only been 
 
136 TRAJAK. 
 
 born a man, all things would be possible. Then I might 
 really do something. But a woman tied hand and foot, to 
 all the stupidities ! It makes me insane sometimes when I 
 see how easily success might be won, if I were only a man." 
 Then, as she saw a humorous expression on her brother s 
 face, she added apologetically : " Not that you aren t worth 
 a dozen ordinary men, but you have too much sensitiveness ; 
 you are too conscientious ; you have that most useless of all 
 mental baggage scruples. You must learn to ignore them. 
 It s the only rule for a real success, I assure you ! I wish I 
 were a man, all the same, that I might be by your side all 
 the time." 
 
 " Why, my dear, what could you do if you were a man 
 more than you are doing ? Indeed, I think it very fortunate 
 that you are not one. I am quite satisfied that you are a 
 woman and very proud that you are my sister," and he 
 kissed her hand gallantly. He was greatly surprised by the 
 bitterness in his sister s voice, for Theo s strong point was 
 invariable good-humor and unrestrained gayety. 
 
 "Do?" she repeated, dreamily t looking out on the 
 crowds ; " I would make men tremble and women adore 
 me in vain," she added with a mocking little laugh. 
 
 "Yes, but it doesn t help one along much to make men 
 tremble ; on the contrary, it would make them avoid one ; 
 and as for the adoration of women, any empty head can 
 bring that about. No, my dear, the trembling is a bad 
 means to an end ; it drives the lambs away, and when they 
 are timid and when they are in flight, it s a bad time for 
 shearing! " 
 
 Up to the evening of the fete at St. Cloud, to which the 
 imperial hostess had herself bidden Theo, the house on the 
 Rue Galilee resembled the palace vestibule. Rumor had 
 invested the little American with carte blanche for the event, 
 and a crush of carriages blocked the street from early morn 
 ing until sunset. Great ladies, who would never have 
 dreamed of climbing a stair in their own lordly palaces in 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 137 
 
 New York or Boston, tripped anxiously up to Theo s fourth- 
 floor boudoir, bearing their own letters of presentation from 
 common friends. The invasion became an inundation, and 
 the exhausted young woman was compelled to seclude her 
 self in the convent to escape the burden of greatness thrust 
 upon her. To some she gave notes of presentation to the 
 grand chamberlain and to the Duchess de Mouchy. But 
 she told every one quite frankly that she really was the 
 humblest guest expected at the feast. " Such charming 
 modesty ! " declared every body. " She deserves the good 
 fortune that has come to her." 
 
 For once there was no exaggeration in the phrase " all 
 Paris." The whole town was talking of the wonderful fete 
 that was to conclude the festivities invented for the sov 
 ereigns visiting France. The novelty of the event was to be 
 a bal masque in which no one would be admitted without 
 costume. For months the tailors and modistes had been 
 preparing sumptuous apparel. When the scene was set at 
 ten o clock, the journals declared that nothing so dazzling 
 had ever been witnessed, even in the magnificent pageantries 
 that had marked Napoleon s reign. 
 
 Theo, in the garb of a vestal, accompanied by Miss de la 
 Fleche as Cleopatra, arrived early to study the people and 
 the place. The Chateau of St. Cloud was a blaze of light, 
 and the gardens a fairy scene of enchanted illumination. 
 The spectacle was witnessed by thousands, who lingered on 
 the opposite side of the river, in the Bois de Boulogne, 
 until long after midnight. The dancing did not end until 
 seven in the morning. The Emperor, in a plain black 
 domino, arrived among the merry-makers at ten o clock 
 precisely. The Empress, who had been announced as 
 Diana, the huntress, to every body s surprise appeared also in 
 a plain pink domino and lace mask. She was attended 
 throughout the evening by one cavalier in the gorgeous cos 
 tume of the Magyar knights, whom every one recognized as 
 Prince Metternich. Theo had been asked to dance by a 
 
138 TRAJAN. 
 
 mask in the glittering costume of a medieval Venetian, and 
 as they moved through the throng, he pointed out the 
 celebrities. In the quadrille, the partner of her vis a vis 
 attracted general wonder. A tall figure, with skin as red as 
 an Indian, wearing a garment of filmy lace, curiously fast 
 ened with rare and precious stones. That," whispered 
 Theo s cavalier, " is the cousin of the Emperor the Prin 
 cess Mathilda, the patroness of the Bohemians and the 
 despair of the Empress. The pretty figure in the next set 
 the shepherdess dancing with the knight of the griffin 
 is the Princess Clotilde, daughter of Victor Emanuel and 
 wife of Plon-Plon. Plon-Plon himself is dancing in the set 
 vis a vis the Emperor, in a blue domino." 
 
 At eleven o clock Theo was warned to be in place to see 
 the famous quadrille arranged for the fete by the poet 
 Gautier, " Puss in Boots." As she stood there all the 
 characters of the legend darted out from all sorts of 
 nooks where they had been cunningly concealed. The 
 apartment represented the fairy dell of Queen Mab, and 
 the graceful figures performed the parts so well that they 
 were forced to repeat. Then followed a Venetian carnival, 
 the personages all costumed in keeping with the legendary 
 traditions of that motley fable. As Theo stood lost in 
 admiration a slender monk in the order of the Jesuits came 
 up to her. It was Jules. He had come to put her up to 
 playing a little comedy on an American friend recently 
 arrived in the city. 
 
 "But who is it?" asked she, not enthusiastic at the 
 prospect. 
 
 " Elliot Arden Kent s cousin." 
 
 Theo started, and it was well that the mask covered 
 her face. 
 
 " Elliot Arden ? tell me about him. How is he Kent s 
 cousin ? I thought the Kents had no male members, out 
 side of Philip, in the younger generation." 
 
 "Ah, it is a family story of a complicated sort too long 
 
A FRIEND A T COURT. 139 
 
 to tell here ; but you can have a great deal of fun with 
 Arden. He is young and handsome as an erl-king, with 
 big blue eyes and almost flaxen hair " 
 
 " Ugh ! " exclaimed Theo, " just the combination I detest ! 
 But how shall I recognize him ? " 
 
 " There he is as Lohengrin, the Knight of the Grail. 
 You can mystify him beautifully if you re in the spirit 
 -go!" 
 
 And Jules glided away laughing, watching Theo as she 
 made her way to the slender figure in silvery doublet and 
 long flaxen hair, wandering among the incognito royalties 
 on the scene. She followed him for a moment in uncer 
 tainty, then boldly placing herself before the shining figure, 
 said, in German : 
 
 " Is the Knight of the Swan seeking Elsa of Brabant ! " 
 
 Lohengrin looked down at the demure Vestal, catching 
 only a gleam of yellowish green through the eyelets of the 
 mask. He was clearly perplexed, for the voice, while unfa 
 miliar, gave a peculiar intonation of knowingness that 
 convinced him that the person knew his name. 
 
 " Elsa lost her swan-knight by too much curiosity. Shall 
 you vanish if I seek to know who you are, whence you came, 
 and the name you bear ?" As he asked these questions he 
 offered his shining arm to the Vestal. As she took it they 
 passed on slowly through the bewildering scene. 
 
 " Yes ; curiosity like this ill-befits a knightly spirit ; 
 enough to know that I am an oracle and can presage your 
 future, or set you on the path of glory." 
 
 "Well, well," laughed the other, " this is wonderful; I 
 was just sighing for a good spirit to lead me safely through 
 this maze of magnificence, and lo, here is an enchantress 
 to give me the chart of life. To begin, what is my name ? " 
 
 " Elliot Arden." 
 
 " My pursuit ? " 
 
 " Student in law in the 6cole de Droit ; entered last 
 month." 
 
140 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Ambition ?" 
 
 " A great jurist and statesman." 
 
 " That s rather easy ; where is the American that hasn t 
 that ambition ? " laughed Lohengrin. " But now, Madame 
 Oracle, you have answered questions that any one might 
 solve ; put on your divination symbols and tell me," and 
 his voice sank into mock seriousness, " is the student in 
 law to become the profound jurist, the jurist the successful 
 statesman the paragon to win in love, or be a heartbroken 
 wreck ? " 
 
 The arm within his trembled slightly as the Vestal replied : 
 
 " In statecraft and war the Ardens are ruled by a propi 
 tiatory planet ; in love they are faithless and can expect no 
 faith." 
 
 The knight halted so suddenly that his mask partly fell, 
 and the girl could see his face was flushed and his eyes wide 
 open in wonder. 
 
 " Ton my faith, Mistress Oracle, the stars you read must 
 deceive you. No Arden I ever knew was faithless in love 
 whatever they may have been in war." 
 
 " An oracle, like a gas-bill, is not to be disputed, or the 
 light will be cut off," answered the Vestal, with a merry 
 laugh. 
 
 They had continued moving during this occult play of 
 wits, the knight evidently searching for some one. At this 
 moment he hurried the vestal rather abruptly toward a 
 figure representing Prospero in his wizard garb. 
 
 " I say, Phil," said Lohengrin, in a tone his companion 
 was not expected to catch, " here s the drollest thing ; some 
 one who knows me ! " Then aloud : " Now if you be an 
 oracle, match your power against this adept in sorcery, the 
 master of Ariel and inventor of pranks, the lord of the isle 
 and tormentor of Caliban. Conjurer of cloud-capped 
 towers and palaces, more airy, though not less magnificent, 
 than this, I present you, comrades in a common craft, Sor 
 cery." Prospero gravely bowed, leaning on his wand ; the 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 141 
 
 Vestal merely bent her head. Lohengrin continued in a 
 tone of raillery : " The oracle declares that the Ardens are 
 faithless in love, and will find no faith. What say you, 
 great Prospero ? " 
 
 " The oracle should perhaps have said some Ardens are 
 faithless," said the Vestal, the gleam through the eyelet 
 directed toward her rival. 
 
 The wizard personage started visibly as the voice fell on 
 his ear, but it was the words not the tone that he seemed to 
 be struck with. He made no answer and Lohengrin said, 
 in evident surprise : 
 
 " That s better. It leaves me a hope that, as there are 
 exceptions to the rule of faithlessness in the Ardens, I may 
 escape the doom you prophesy " 
 
 " Come to me when you are in love and I will tell you," 
 responded the Vestal. 
 
 " But where shall I seek you ? where are your altars ? 
 what devotions are acceptable to you ? what is the penalty 
 for looking on the oracle s face ? " and he made a gesture as 
 if to snatch away the mask. 
 
 Theo shrank back out of reach, and with a penitent 
 motion the knight implored absolution. Then she made 
 answer : 
 
 " When you are in love I shall answer these questions ; 
 when you are in love I shall be near you to keep the course 
 smooth," and she laughed musically and, to the young man, 
 maddeningly. 
 
 " What, has Prospero been struck dumb ? " asked the 
 knight. " Do his powers pale before the priestess of Aphro 
 dite ? Has Ariel quit him ? Is Caliban in the ascendant ? 
 Has his spirit suffered change into something dull and 
 strange ? " 
 
 But at this moment the music, which had been stilled for 
 a few moments, fell upon their ears, so soft, sensuous and 
 entrancing the waltz movement of Undine that as if by 
 one impulse the Knight and Vestal fell into each other s 
 
14 2 TRAJAN. 
 
 arms and moved off in a gliding motion among the shrubbery 
 and ferns set for the Undine quadrille, an enchanting elfin 
 drama in dance and music, the talk of Paris to this day. 
 Leading the goblin host came a figure literally clothed in 
 jewels ; upon her head a glistening net-work of diamonds, 
 blinding in brilliancy ; this again surmounted by conch of 
 opals and amethysts. 
 
 " Who is that wonderful being ? " asked Lohengrin of the 
 Vestal. 
 
 But her oracular powers could not be summoned to answer, 
 and an Oberon at his elbow replied : 
 
 " It is the Countess Walewski, wife of the son of Napoleon 
 First and the Princess Walewski. The figure represents 
 Undine ; the one by her side, with the parachute of dia 
 monds covering her head, diamond wings and silver pennons, 
 is the Countess de Morny, representing Air. The lurid per 
 son, with flowers of burnished gold breaking out all over her, 
 is Fire, the daughter of Queen Christina. The value of the 
 costumes worn in this quadrille is so great that the doors 
 have been locked and the windows guarded until the precious 
 raiment can be returned to the strong boxes, before a soul 
 will be permitted to leave the room." 
 
 It was now two o clock and Theo began to look for Miss 
 de la Fleche to go to supper. She was forced to accept the 
 arm of the sighing Knight, who had exhausted every artifice 
 to make her reveal her face. They had advanced to the end 
 of the spacious suite of apartments where, on the sound of 
 a single horn, an immense pair of curtains, that the shrubbery 
 had partially hidden was drawn aside, and the startled throng 
 beheld a long vista of oriental magnificence, stretching into 
 distance before them, a realization of the Veronese banquets, 
 down to the slender golden-haired pages, the gold and silver 
 ewers and the porphyry columns buttressing two great bal 
 conies, from which the guests could survey the scene, as the 
 Emperor and his royal guests sat down in the first relay. 
 
 At the further end of the room a curtain was painted to 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 143 
 
 represent a continuation of the hall, and the spectator, from 
 where Theo and the Knight stood, could only detect the 
 illusion by the absence of moving figures. Fountains between 
 each of the sumptuously set tables showered purple and 
 crystal streams into silver basins, from which the guests were 
 served the red and white wines of Burgundy and Bordeaux. 
 The attendants were in medieval costumes like the pages, 
 and the astonishment of the guests was so great that for a 
 time none descended the broad marble staircases leading to 
 the center of this ambrosial splendor. The Emperor, who 
 had changed the black domino of the early part of the even 
 ing, for a blue one, was seated just below the railing whence 
 Theo and her escort surveyed this masterpiece of sensuous 
 beauty. Napoleon was surrounded by his royal guests and 
 the great ladies of the court, the Empress keeping up a lively 
 conversation with a tall mask, set down as the Emperor of 
 Russia by the prattling gossips of the scene. 
 
 While the two stood silently absorbed in the varying pano 
 rama of imperial munificence, the Vestal started as a white- 
 gloved hand was laid on her arm. Turning, a Mephis- 
 topheles with blood-red plumes, blood-red doublet and black 
 limbs, stood, as the devil stands in the garden, leering at 
 Marguerite as she surveys the jewels. She almost lost self- 
 possession as she started back with a little scream. 
 
 " Mademoiselle does right to assume the Vestal. It would 
 have been still better had she taken the silver circlet of 
 Aphrodite herself," and the satanic personage bent low. 
 Theo recognized the voice in an instant, but she marveled 
 that he should have penetrated her disguise. 
 
 " How did the princely eye find the priestess in this 
 throng ? " she asked with a voice quite different from the 
 one she had used in addressing Lohengrin. 
 
 " Ah, I see ; we are quits," he cried. " What more natu 
 ral than that the prince of evil should seek out the angel of 
 light ? Furthermore, I am charged by the Empress to see 
 that her charming friends do not lack for amusement, I am 
 
144 TRAJAN. 
 
 come to lead you to a high place and explain to you the 
 treasures of the kingdoms of earth that surround you." 
 
 "Is this the temptation ? " 
 
 " If you like." 
 
 " And if I don t ? " 
 
 " Then it is a tribute ; will you come ? I m sure the 
 Knight of the Grail can find another swan," and he bowed 
 jocularly to the wondering Lohengrin, more puzzled than 
 ever by these flippant references to high personages and 
 sacred things. 
 
 "The Vestal," he said gallantly, " has a nobler mission 
 than upholding a single warrior s courage, or inspiring his 
 arm." 
 
 " Your silver knight has a ready tongue, which rarely goes 
 with a strong arm." 
 
 " In the present the ready tongue goes further than the 
 strong arm, monsieur le prince " retorted Theo saucily. "You, 
 for example, could not lift the swords of your ancestors, lin 
 ing the walls at Amboise ; but who, or what, shall keep you 
 from filling the place a Richelieu or a Mazarin, with ready 
 tongues, made impossible to the Comtes d Amboise ? " 
 
 " Ma foi, mademoiselle, you are a witch, not a vestal. What 
 bird Has whispered my ambitions in your ear ? " 
 
 " As for that, it needs no bird to tell any one who sees the 
 prince and knows his talents, what his future may be if he 
 wills it. You know you told me certain things at the Belle- 
 chasse Hotel. It was not difficult after that to construct a 
 future." 
 
 " But that was badinage, I assure you ; there is nothing so 
 ridiculous as the serious in conversation. I leave that to 
 the English and your unimaginative American men." 
 
 " Seriousness is good in its place. It was by a prayer, not 
 by a laugh, that Henri IV. got Paris." 
 
 " True, but I doubt the efficacy of prayer emphatically. 
 It would take volumes to tell the triumphs of a laugh, from 
 Democritus, who laughed himself to the head of Greek phil- 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 145 
 
 osophy, to Moliere, who laughed the stage into an equality 
 with the pulpit. Then, too, the place of prayer is in the 
 closet, and we can t conquer the world in the closet." 
 
 " Many men have. Indeed, I don t know any who can 
 boast conquest who ever conquered otherwise ! " 
 
 " But aren t we falling into rather abstruse talk for a ball 
 room. I m to have a dance, n* est-ce pas ? " 
 
 This was apropos the waltz measure, swelling in voluptu 
 ous cadence from the empty dancing-room. Lohengrin 
 followed them idly at a distance and watched the Vestal as 
 she floated airily around on the arm of her satanic escort. 
 When the dance was done, they came back toward the spot 
 where he and the Vestal had stood, and when Satan saw him 
 he advanced and, bowing solemnly, said : " Sir Knight, I sur 
 render the Vestal to your valorous charge." Then raising 
 her hand respectfully to his lips, joined a mask evidently 
 awaiting him a few steps away. As the Knight and Vestal 
 passed back to reach the corridor leading to the grand stair 
 case, Lohengrin spied Prospero and invited him to be of the 
 party going down to supper. When he joined them they 
 were pressed along in a merry mob struggling in the same 
 direction. Theo caught sight of Cleopatra, evidently 
 bewildered in the crush, and with her Jules, looking about 
 anxiously. She begged Lohengrin to make his way to them 
 and inform the domino that the Vestal waited them. 
 
 " But you must pledge me not to make off while I am 
 gone," said the knight with unknightly premonition of the 
 Vestal s good faith, 
 
 " I am not an Arden I never recede from a pledge," she 
 retorted, the eyes gleaming toward Prospero. 
 
 Lohengrin bit his lip : there was an almost malignant 
 accent in the way this pleasantry was spoken, that con 
 vinced him of a serious meaning in the mysterious woman s 
 previous utterances. * What can it be ? " he thought, as he 
 moved off hesitatingly. " Can it be directed at Philip ? Has 
 he been jilting some rancorous intriguante ? Perhaps I can 
 10 
 
146 TRAJAN. 
 
 find a clue by surprising Cleopatra or the monk. Approach 
 ing them, he said, with an air of confidence : " Pardon me, 
 holy father, the Vestal whom you see yonder, commands me 
 to bring you, with the queen, Cleopatra, to join us at the 
 supper table." 
 
 " The Vestal shall be obeyed," was the response, in a deep, 
 sepulchral voice, which still sounded familiar to the discon 
 certed ambassador. Philip, on his part, not less piqued than 
 Elliot by the persistence of the vivacious Vestal in recurring 
 to the same theme, seized the absence of his kinsman to pen 
 etrate the mystery, 
 
 " Is it in the books, the stars, or the heart, learned priest 
 ess, that you find the proof of Arden faithlessness ? " he 
 asked, trying to pierce the mask concealing the gleaming eyes. 
 
 " Such wizard powers as Prospero owns, should solve the 
 mystery, if mystery it be," retorted the Vestal, gayly. 
 
 " These powers reveal no trace of Arden s wrong doing." 
 
 " Right and wrong are relative terms ; the compact that 
 an Arden holds it blameless to break, may be construed as 
 lack of faith, by more rigorous moralists," and the voice had 
 a little tremulous tone, that made Philip start and examine 
 the speaker more intently. Lohengrin, with Cleopatra 
 and the monk, appeared at this moment, and the party, 
 presented with mock formality under their mask names, 
 set out for the tables. 
 
 " Holy father," Lohengrin spoke, "you shall act as mas 
 ter of ceremonies, since you have the advantage, I suspect, 
 of knowing all the personalities here ; you must tell us the 
 distinguished people we are breaking bread with." 
 
 " Ah, no ; I refuse that office. I will, if you like, hear all 
 your confessions and, perhaps, if you haven t sinned against 
 me or mine, I will give you absolution," and the monk 
 laughed as he poured champagne with a manipulation of the 
 bottle that belied his garb and talk, whimsically, 
 
 " We should fare better confessing to you then, than the 
 inexorable Vestal here, who has taken my horoscope and 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 147 
 
 detects a sinister spot in the blood of my family," replied 
 Lohengrin, as he laid a /#// daintily on the plate of the 
 Vestal. 
 
 " Though it doesn t become my cloth to say it," the monk 
 went on, "this heathen rival of mine, while ministering to 
 the altars of the exiled gods, is to be trusted implicitly ; she 
 is a seventh daughter of a seventh son and has inherited 
 powers of divination hear her rather for her truth than her 
 cause," and, saying this, the priest bent down and kissed the 
 hand of the Vestal. 
 
 " If this be the placating form of devotion to the oracle, 
 I claim the right to follow the priest s example," whispered 
 Elliot to the Vestal, as she drew back her hand, but with no 
 sign of embarrassment or displeasure. 
 
 u Ah, no," she laughed, " by virtue of his sacred office 
 the monk imprints the chaste kiss of common ministry. 
 You, as the slave of Mars, have no right to share in it." 
 
 " Well, then, if I forswear Mars and take up the symbols 
 of Venus " 
 
 " Still worse you remember that in love you are " 
 
 " Faithless ? " 
 
 " Precisely. You must have the uncommon power that 
 some men have of reading your own heart or, perhaps, you 
 see it in the stars ? " 
 
 " I have heard it so often from rosy lips to-night, that by 
 "damned iteration, I am almost come to believe it. " 
 
 " Give me time and I will prove it." 
 
 " Never, if your eyes and face equal your voice and form." 
 
 "Come, come," interrupted the monk, gravely, in answer 
 to a signal from the Vestal, given under the table, in a sign 
 language he had long since mastered on the Rue Galilee. 
 " People talk love when they talk low, and as a son of chiv 
 alry, the Knight of the Grail knows what befell the sacri 
 legious loves who lifted the eyes of the flesh to the vestal 
 virgins*" 
 
 It was in vain that Philip and Elliot bent every energy, 
 
148 TRAJAN. 
 
 employed every artifice, to discover the three masked con 
 spirators ; for that they were in league to keep up the mys 
 tification there could be no doubt. Unlike most mask balls 
 there was no rule for uncovering at this fete, where, of course, 
 the names of the guests and their persons were known to 
 either the grand chamberlain or some responsible person of 
 the household. The Vestal not only kept her visor down in 
 eating she used her fan with such dexterity that her watch 
 ful neighbors could not even steal a glimpse of her lower 
 face, and they left the table as profoundly ignorant as when 
 they sat down. 
 
 It was six o clock in the morning when Theo and her 
 friend reached the carriage, and drove off for the Rue Gal 
 ilee, having carefully evaded the watchful knight and the 
 perplexed Prospero, lest they should follow and identify 
 them. The wonders of this affair were the theme of clubs, 
 coteries and cafes for the next month. Indeed, on the fall 
 of the Empire, that unwarped censor of public morals, Punch, 
 published a poem ingeniously contrasting that Belshazzar 
 feast with the prison fare of Wilhelmshohe. As for the Par 
 isian journals, turn your files and read the list of great per 
 sonages, the columns of description of such bewildering 
 dresses, such mines of jewels, such display of plate and crys 
 tal such magnificence, in short, as was never before or 
 since fabricated out of the palaces of the Genii or the dreams 
 of an Oriental necromancer. For us, of course, its only 
 interest is the figure qur brilliant Theo played, and the chain 
 of circumstances whose important links, broken in America, 
 were brought within the magnet s scope for reuniting. It is 
 for us to see whether they did unite and what effect the 
 union had in after days and times upon those in whose for 
 tunes our interest has been evoked. Henceforth, Theo and 
 her brother were among the personages of Paris. 
 
 So great a person as the Prince d Amboise was met there 
 after at the family dinner-table, and rumor soon had it that 
 the bankrupt s daughter was to be Princess d Amboise, and 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 149 
 
 mistress of the dozen more chateaux of that great nobleman. 
 Jules, too, was to be the husband of the cotton princess, and 
 all mammondom joined in doing hearty tribute to so much 
 good fortune. But greatness like this is not always con 
 ceded without carping. There were evil disposed persons 
 who hinted ugly doings. Rumors of Theo s apprenticeship in 
 the Rue Scribe were whispered about. But it was remarked 
 that one fine day the dauntless young person rode down in 
 great state to the alleged scene of her studies in sharp prac 
 tice ; that the prince sat in the chariot while she sailed 
 majestically in, and that when she came out, the head of the 
 firm came humbly to the door with tears in her fat eyes, and 
 made the most slavish and groveling signs of deference to 
 the triumphant diplomatist. 
 
 After this, the first rumor was amended by the addition of 
 the visit, in which it was stated, as if by ocular evidence, that 
 the young person had bought her accomplice off, and that 
 her present denials did not offset her previous hints and 
 innuendoes. But where or when, or among what mortal peo 
 ple was it, ever that success did not succeed and cover every 
 species of moral nakedness ? Much indeed need our ravish 
 ing Theo care for the gabble of the envious or the chatter 
 of the malicious. When one has princes and dukes ready to 
 do one homage, why care for the disparagements of the 
 obscure ? Theo was in the garden whose blossoms are fire, 
 where the raptures and roses lull the senses. She knew the 
 repose dear to such a nature as hers, and the great were the 
 silly birds who hatched her golden cuckoo eggs ! 
 
 With social triumphs, however, her commerce slackened. 
 And to lull suspicions she, from time to time, transferred her 
 field of operations to America, going over laden with great 
 argosies for rich clients unable to make the journey to Paris. 
 The profits of this new method, which, since Theo s first ven 
 ture, has become common, soon began to have its perils and 
 she was forced to display all the ingenuity of which she was a 
 consummate mistress. Her vogue in society threw the Ardens 
 
150 TRAJAN. 
 
 and Kent within her reach ; but she never even remotely 
 alluded to the by-play at the bal masqut. She had impressed 
 upon Jules her wish that no allusion should ever be made 
 to the affair, nor to mention in the family that Kent was in 
 Paris. Jules was puzzled for her reasons, but as he obeyed 
 her implicitly was satisfied to do as she said without troub 
 ling himself much with the motives inspiring what he 
 thought a singular request. On her own part, she lost no 
 opportunity to ingratiate herself with the Ardens a some 
 what difficult business, as they shrank from public life, and 
 refused half the invitations sent them. 
 
 The family had but just laid off mourning for Philip s 
 parents, who had. been burned in a frightful disaster on the 
 Hudson river. Mrs. Kent was the favorite sister, and had 
 long acted as mother to Mrs. Arden before her marriage. 
 Philip himself had eyed Theo with startled surprise when 
 he first met her in his aunt s drawing-room. He had seen 
 her as a little girl in New York in the days of his surrepti 
 tious courtship of her sister ; but the past was never alluded 
 to between them indeed, Theo met him like an entire 
 stranger, pretending to have forgotten him. Jules had never 
 seen him in New York, and had no suspicion of what had 
 passed between his sister and the former Adonis of the 
 metropolis. 
 
 Assiduous and seductive in her court to the family, Theo 
 soon found herself an intimate of all but Edith and Philip, 
 who maintained a reserve rather of instinct than expression. 
 Elliot admired the witty little critic of her countrymen s 
 gaucheries in the elegant society of the capital, and defended 
 her stoutly against the acerbities of his cousin and sister. 
 Bella found her helpful and complaisant in guiding her to 
 the wonders of the Paris museums, and her respect for her 
 was not lessened by Theo s persistent refusal to accept the 
 present of even a book from the Arden household. 
 
 She insisted thus on a broad equality, which was very 
 freely conceded. The Ardens knew that the family had met 
 
A FRIEND AT COURT. 151 
 
 misfortunes, but like most of those who had known them in 
 New York, had a vague notion that French kinsmen had 
 helped them to repair it. As the family and its affairs 
 became more and more known to her, Theo s inchoate pur 
 pose of visiting the sin of Clare s blighted life upon the 
 whole family, grew into a settled determination. What 
 misery she could wreak upon them, she could not exactly 
 see. She believed that the Kents had been the obstacle to 
 her sister s happiness, and since the hand of God had visited 
 the sin upon them, why should not these serene sybarites, as 
 she called them, when she looked about her and saw the 
 evidences of princely ease, be made to feel some of the 
 pangs she and hers had been made to suffer through their 
 wicked pride and insolent pretensions ? For, if Clare s life 
 and beauty had not been blasted by the miserable engage 
 ment with Philip, she, like so many girls, with not a tithe of 
 her loveliness, would have married a fortune, and the pov 
 erty and misery of the last six years would have been spared 
 Jules, herself and her father. She would humiliate them, as 
 they had humiliated her ; if she could not do it through 
 Philip and it was plain, that with his prepossessions, which 
 she had tried in vain to conquer, she couldn t she must do 
 it through some other heart that was dear to them. 
 
 Every time her eye rested on the gray hair and the sad 
 face of Clare, she made the covenant anew to herself ; she 
 often caught herself on the verge of tears as she compared 
 the beautiful girl, passing her life so listlessly in this obscure 
 home, with the frivolous and painted harridans that posed 
 as beauties in the great world, and her little heart throbbed 
 with a confirmed purpose of wreaking vengeance upon those 
 near and dear the ingrate who had flung away this rare 
 jewel. 
 
 But her melodramatic introspections did not change the 
 gayety of her manner. Nothing can equal the address of 
 a young and vigorous feminine intellect bent upon some 
 covert achievement. The duplicity of the Italian is frank- 
 
152 TRAJAN. 
 
 ness itself to her guileless demeanor ; the patience of the 
 Hindoo, impetuosity to the deliberation of her preparation ; 
 the firmness of a man, a quivering reed compared to her 
 fixedness. Under a mask of volatility these methods are 
 doubly sinister. Theo often grew frightened at herself as 
 this odious purpose became a haunting spirit, and she 
 resolved to dismiss the demon. She would take her revenge 
 in triumphs over these purse-proud insolents, by leading 
 them in social Mat, by patronizing them, by holding the 
 door of the great open or shut in their faces as caprice should 
 dictate. She would become a princess she turned roseate 
 as this delicious thought came she would be the grandest 
 dame in the ranks of the ancien noblesse, she would be the 
 intimate of royalties, and when these plebeian nobodies 
 approached her, she would drink the intoxicating cup of 
 vengeance to the dregs. Theo was far too shrewd, how 
 ever, to put trust in purely visionary possibilities. That the 
 Prince d Amboise had contemplated the possibility of asking 
 her to marry him, she felt confident ; but whether he would, 
 she knew was dependent upon the likelihood of her being 
 able to put him in possession of a fortune large enough to 
 re-establish the ancient glories of his race. 
 
 If Jules could make a rich marriage she might be a prin 
 cess, if she cared to be, but, she added, as she smiled at 
 herself complacently in the mirror, that she wasn t quite 
 sure that she wanted to be. She was still young enough to 
 hold to the romance that abides for a season in all girlish 
 natures, before they are depraved by worldliness, and she 
 sighed with a little throb of yearning that gave her a momen 
 tary beauty, that does not inspire doubt, of a passion which 
 should absorb her heart, innocent and pure as the visions of 
 her girlhood. Fate was soon to give her the boon ; let us 
 see if her good or bad angel rules when the blessing comes. 
 
AN OCEAN EPISODE. 153 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 AN OCEAN EPISODE-. 
 
 MEN are not by any means such stuff as dreams are made 
 of. If they were, the burdens of this life would end 
 with the sleep. Pain and pleasure are of the same texture 
 woven in the same loom. We look before and after, and 
 the horizon is bounded by the same blank. Our loves, like 
 our hates, leave the taste of ashes on our lips ; our triumphs, 
 like our defeats, leave a trail of bitterness the remembrance 
 of happier things is no less a mirror of our own feebleness 
 than the memory of our failures. The day and the deed are 
 no more of life s purpose than the broken circlet in the pool 
 receding and disappearing and arising anew. 
 
 When the name of Theo Carnot came up in the conver 
 sation at the cafe supper, Trajan Gray was like an exhausted 
 swimmer, who had buffeted the waves and found a moment s 
 refuge on a friendly rock, where another effort promises 
 security. He was plunged violently back into the swirl of 
 foaming tides which had before borne him down. It was 
 love of Theo Carnot that had made two years of his life a 
 dream. It was horror of Theo Carnot that made life a 
 mockery. Two years before he had met her. He was tak 
 ing ship at Havre for New York. The vessel was crowded 
 with German, French and even English emigrants. Trajan 
 had been obliged to secure a stateroom by himself, as he had 
 work to do which he felt should be finished before arriving 
 at New York. The vessel sailed from Havre early in the 
 day, and the young man, without acquaintances on board, 
 went forward to the steerage. The sea was not rough, but 
 the chopping waves of the channel had already affected the 
 unhappy crowds packed in the dark and malodorous quar 
 ters of the emigrants. While Trajan stood watching the 
 waves, there was a stir at the gangway. A girl came scream- 
 
154 TRAJAN. 
 
 ing toward one of the sailors, but between terror and sea 
 sickness found it difficult to make herself understood. 
 
 "Well, ramie, " said the sailor, not unkindly, "what is it? 
 be calm, there s plenty of time." 
 
 " Ah, monsieur, there is some one dying below ; where is 
 the doctor ? where " 
 
 But the frightened creature could articulate no more. A 
 violent spasm of illness sent her reeling against the rail. 
 Trajan, approaching the sailor, asked if there could be any 
 thing serious below. 
 
 " Ah, no ; they all think they are dying when the first 
 attack comes." 
 
 " But wouldn t it be well to have the doctor among them 
 at the beginning?" said the young man, knowing from 
 experience the horrors of the first days at sea. 
 
 " The doctor can t be every where," responded the sailor, 
 shrugging his shoulders. The girl by this time somewhat 
 restored, came back to Trajan, and putting her hand on his 
 arm said, pleadingly : 
 
 " It is not the sea-sickness ; it is some dangerous oh if 
 monsieur would go down himself he would see." 
 
 Trajan s was not the nature to disregard an appeal of this 
 sort. He asked where the sufferer- was quartered, and the 
 girl, not daring to trust herself in the hideous atmosphere, 
 directed him. Descending the steep, greasy stairway, he 
 found himself in the squalid, half-lighted, ill-ventilated 
 schwdrmerei of the steerage. Although no longer liable to 
 sea-sickness, Trajan s eyes swam dizzily as he penetrated into 
 the foul air. Shrieks and groans came from the cots on nil 
 sides. Both sexes were crowded into the place in common. 
 There was no sort of privacy. The cots were arranged in 
 tiers and the occupants thrust themselves in as goods are 
 packed in crates. The floors were already foul with debris 
 from the sick and the refuse of the midday meal. With a 
 good deal of difficulty, Trajan found the spot where the girl 
 described the dying woman to be. But there were a score 
 
AN CEA N EPISODE. 1 5 5 
 
 of helpiess victims, moaning and twisting on the scant beds. 
 Trajan was about to quit the noisome, fetid cave of misery 
 when, from the lower range of berths, a piercing shriek, that 
 arose above the wails of the others, indicated the object he 
 was searching. The shriek was succeeded by groans hardly 
 less terrible. Bending down, Trajan could barely distin 
 guish a woman s form writhing in convulsive pain. He saw 
 in an instant that it was no case of sea-sickness. The suf 
 ferer s hair was in a tangled mass over her neck, and as the 
 paroxysms returned she seized the long masses, twisting them 
 around her wrists, then stuffing coils of them into her mouth 
 strove to stop her outcries with them. 
 
 Trajan touched the woman in the berth above, who was 
 lying with a towel tightly clenched between her teeth. 
 
 " Can you tell me what is the matter with your neighbor ? " 
 he asked. There was no response. He shook her with some 
 emphasis and repeated the question. The woman took the 
 gag from her mouth and, without turning, said, pantingly: 
 
 " She is in childbirth. 
 
 The young man shrunk backward with an exclamation of 
 surprise, his blood surging with indignant fury at the system 
 that could thus trifle with the sacred torments of maternity. 
 He hurried to the deck ; no one could tell him where the 
 doctor was to be found. He set out to seek him in the first 
 cabin. He had not long to search. The doctor was a 
 young man from the Paris schools such as are to be found 
 on all the ocean lines with no experience in medicine or 
 practice, and accepting the post of ship s surgeon for a sea 
 son, with merely nominal pay, for the opportunities it gives 
 for making acquaintances and sometimes lucky marriage. 
 
 Trajan waited at the stairs to hear the report. The 
 doctor came back looking serious. " It is a wretched busi 
 ness, both mother and child will die in that frightful 
 debacle. It is a premature birth brought on by the voyage." 
 
 " Can t a room be found for her in the first cabin ? " 
 asked Trajan, anxiously. 
 
15 TRAJAN. 
 
 11 Impossible ; every state-room was taken ten days ago. 
 The officers are doubled up two in a room to give every 
 available bed to the passengers." 
 
 " Very well," said Trajan, determinedly, " I will see the 
 captain." From port to port the captain of a ship is an im 
 penetrable mystery. Burdened with the awful responsibility 
 which rests upon him, he shuns acquaintance with his sur 
 roundings, and turns a deaf ear to the most seductive allure 
 ments of his transient proteges. Reticence is the law of a 
 well ordered ship, and the captain is the most tenacious 
 apostle of the code. Trajan knew this ; but he was none 
 the less determined to carry out his purpose. The potentate 
 had just descended from the bridge, and entered his office, 
 where a group of ladies were awaiting him, when Trajan 
 caught sight of his insignia. It was embarrassing to expose 
 the situation before ladies, but if they were French that 
 embarrassment would be but trifling. The young man 
 resolutely advanced to the charge. The captain looked at 
 him grimly as he told the story, and shook his head as Tra 
 jan concluded with the request to transfer the unfortunate 
 to his own cabin. 
 
 " Who are you? " said the captain, abruptly. 
 
 Trajan had not thought of mentioning his name, but 
 now an idea struck him. His semi-journalistic occupation 
 would give him a lever on the old martinet. He said as he 
 handed his card : "I am a journalist, and write for the New 
 York press." 
 
 The captain s jaw fell at this. He knew what that meant. 
 A scandal, when the ship reached port, should the woman 
 die. A reprimand from his directors and a damage to the 
 French line, which at that time was under a cloud in the 
 United States. 
 
 " Where is the doctor ? " he asked sharply. 
 
 " I left him in the steerage." 
 
 The captain touched a bell and twirled Trajan s card in 
 his fingers. In a minute a cabin boy appeared. "Go, bring 
 
AN CEA N EPISODE. 1 5 7 
 
 Monsieur Sautane to me ; he is in the steerage." The cap 
 tain looked at Trajan without saying a word. Then he 
 turned and addressed the ladies who had been looking over 
 a book of charts. 
 
 " You heard the tale, mademoiselle," he said, half-smiling 
 at the younger, a dark-eyed, vivacious girl, in a bewitching 
 robe of blue flannel, fitting tightly to her symmetrical body. 
 
 " Yes, man capitaine" she said, casting a glance at Trajan. 
 " I know you re going to rescue this poor creature ; the ship 
 would have no luck if you didn t." As she said this she 
 caught the rapturous smile on Trajan s face and answered it 
 by an imperceptible blush and nod of encouragement. 
 
 " Humph," grunted the captain. " It is mischievously 
 irregular, but you Americans must be humored, I suppose. 
 Well, Monsieur Sautane," he said, as the doctor appeared, 
 " what is this comedy you are playing down there ? " 
 
 " Ah, mon capitaine, it is no comedy, only I don t see what 
 can be done. The woman will die if left there, and since 
 monsieur is willing to give his place, it must be done, to save 
 her life." 
 
 " Tres bien let it be done but monsieur understands 
 that he will have to take the woman s place in the steerage, 
 for when he delivers his ticket he will have no status in this 
 part of the ship ? " This was launched at Trajan as one 
 should say : "Very well, young man, if you insist on forcing 
 an unheard-of thing upon us, you will pay for it by bearing 
 the hardship yourself." 
 
 " I am deeply grateful to you, sir, for giving her a chance 
 for life, and I don t mind the inconvenience at all. I only 
 beg that she may be transferred as soon as possible." 
 
 " Let it be done at once, Monsieur Sautane," said the cap 
 tain, turning his back and taking up some papers, as a sig 
 nal that the interview was ended. Trajan could not resist 
 another glance at his ally in blue, and their eyes met. He 
 could have played the part of St. Simeon Stylites and perched 
 on a masthead during the whole voyage for that sympathetic 
 
158 TRAJAN* 
 
 glance. But as he walked away with the doctor, his mind 
 in a tumult of foolish fancies, that practical official said, 
 good-naturedly : 
 
 " You were lucky to catch the chief in the presence of your 
 countrywoman. If you had found him alone he would have 
 scouted such a thing. He is the strictest disciplinarian 
 on the Transatlantique. Not unkind or a martinet, but 
 rigorous for tradition. You owe your victory to ces demoi 
 selles." 
 
 Trajan was burning to ask the name of one of " ces demoi 
 selles" but resisted. He made a guess that the demoiselle 
 who had intervened in his behalf was the American the doc 
 tor spoke of, though her French accent did not betray it. 
 There was great commotion and no little jealousy among 
 the other unfortunates able to be on deck when Trajan s 
 protegee was carried up on a litter and disappeared in the 
 first cabin. 
 
 " I shall leave my baggage here," said Trajan, as he made 
 up a kit to serve him in the steerage. 
 
 " That s as you please," said the doctor, busy with the 
 invalid. " I don t see how you re to endure those people 
 over there." 
 
 "The people are endurable enough," retorted Trajan, 
 impatiently, " it is the place that is unendurable. I don t 
 see how Christians can allow such iniquities." 
 
 Having no further right in the cabin Trajan retraced his 
 steps to the deck. As he passed up the gangway he met 
 the demoiselle, his ally. She looked at Trajan as he came 
 up the steps holding on the rail, and there was a glance of 
 recognition. He had a wild hope that she would ask if the 
 woman was removed, and thus give him a chance to thank 
 her. But her friends were talking two or three of them in 
 a breath and in an instant they had all passed down into 
 the clatter of the dining-room. He stood at the rail behind 
 the wheel-house, his mind filled with rosy pictures, taking 
 no definite shape. He wondered who the charming girl 
 
AN OCEAN EPISODE. 159 
 
 might be. That she was American he made no doubt. 
 That her heart was fine and generous he was sure else how 
 could she have intervened to aid the woe-stricken ? 
 
 In the dim shapes that filled the horizon of his mind, that 
 mental eye which penetrated the unknown heart did not 
 make a distinct picture of her face. That she was not a 
 beauty was certain. But, per contra, she was charming. 
 Her eye told volumes of the vivacity of her spirit. The 
 truth is that the object of a young man s fancy is as much a 
 myth as the goddesses of the Greeks. They are like the 
 poet s creations, airy forms that take exactly the shape the 
 longing lover gives them in the cells of his brain or the 
 senses of the heart. The stout ship was well rocked in the 
 bosom of that turbulent bit of deep that divides the British 
 Isles from the Norman and Breton coasts, so that when the 
 harbor of Brest came in sight half the company was pros 
 trate, and Trajan had but few companions in his starlight 
 vigil. He lingered under the canopy, where the more 
 adventurous of the ladies held a small court, hoping to hear 
 the voice of his new ideal. As he passed he heard a voice 
 saying in the English tongue : 
 
 " It was an act of real heroism ; the young man deserves 
 the thanks of the whole passenger list." 
 
 "Aw, yes, Miss Theo, it was rather stunning," answered 
 a drawling voice with an unmistakable cockney thickness. 
 " Was the young fellah American I say ? " 
 
 " You may be sure he was American ; you don t find 
 French, or hardly any other nationality capable of such 
 delicacy toward women," said the first voice somewhat stiffly. 
 
 " Bless my soul, Miss Theo, you don t mean to say that 
 you think that I wouldn t have done the same, if I had seen 
 the poor creature as you describe ? " 
 
 A musical laugh, and then the voice : " Every one s a hero 
 when the breach is forced, as we re all prophets after the 
 event ! " 
 
 " Come, now, I say, that s too hard, you know," rejoined 
 
l6o TRAJAN. 
 
 the Briton. " A fellow would be a cad who would do other 
 wise than your hero did." 
 
 " But where is he, Theo ? you must point him out to us. 
 Is he young and handsome, or a seminary student in gog 
 gles ?" (a feminine voice this). 
 
 Trajan was ashamed to listen, but stood rooted to the 
 spot, waiting the answer. 
 
 " Aw, ya as, describe your paragon to us, Miss Theo, 
 that we may pick him out in the morning, for, of course, 
 hero is stamped on his whole person," said the man s 
 voice. 
 
 " No, I m not going to give you any clue. He is no 
 doubt modest, elsewise he couldn t be brave, and he wouldn t 
 thank me for making him a curiosity. So you shall hear no 
 more from me," said the voice, that Trajan, in his silly soul, 
 distinguished as the angel s. 
 
 " Oh, as to that, it s an easy matter to find your knight," 
 said female voice No. 2. " We can go to the doctor." 
 
 41 Who seeks the doctor ? " said that worthy, coming from 
 the cabin door at the moment. 
 
 " Ah, doctor," cried two or three together, " who is the 
 hero of the steerage episode ? Miss Carnot refuses to tell us 
 his name or describe him. You were part of the drama. 
 Do tell us." 
 
 " Ma foi, mesdames ! I do not know the narne. He is a 
 fine young fellow, a poet or a preacher or something of the 
 sort. But his name can be easily known. It is on his ticket 
 and the quartermaster has that." 
 
 " How is his protegee coming on ?" asked the voice of 
 Miss Theo. 
 
 " You should say his two proteges, mademoiselle, for a 
 little son now shares the state-room with the mother, and 
 both are doing finely but that the little fellow needs some 
 garments." 
 
 There was a chorus of wonder and then a voice said : 
 " We must have a sewing bee and make up a layette for the 
 
AN OCEAN EPISODE. 161 
 
 little sea king. But, doctor, who is attending the mother ? 
 Is there a nurse with her ? " 
 
 " Yes, mademoiselle, a stewardess is with her." 
 
 " Couldn t we go down and see the baby ? " asked female 
 voice No. 2. 
 
 " Nothing in the world to prevent." Trajan slipped 
 around the corner of the smoking-room as the party arose 
 and passed to the forward companion-way. He was in a 
 glow of artless rapture. She set some store on his unstudied 
 act. She considered him worth a word of delicate praise- 
 He found himself wishing that there had been some actual 
 crisis where real daring might have been his to play, and the 
 poor mother, and her babe, how little they could realize how 
 they, instead of he, had been the workers of a great deed ! 
 
 Ah, foolish, foolish story ! old as the time when the 
 morning stars warbled the same refrain, always new and al 
 ways the same. As we think on it, the gray vanishes from 
 under our wig, the wrinkles whip themselves out of our 
 frosty old cheeks, the dimness drops from our spectacled 
 eyes, and we trip again under the apple blossoms in the 
 lane yonder, as the bobolink pours his full throat of song 
 into the soft summer air. It was just as well for Trajan 
 that there was no sleep for him that night. He went down 
 in the filthy pit for a moment, but he saw that he could not 
 close his eyes, what with the despairing cries and the fetid 
 air. Taking his blanket he seated himself far up in the 
 peak on a coil of anchor chains. He watched the moon, 
 sometimes leaning over the side to see the prow of the ves 
 sel cleaving through the coruscating masses of water, and 
 breaking it into a fairy spray of phosphorescent sparkles. 
 
 The hot sun was beating on his bare head when he awoke 
 in the morning. The ship was plowing through the ocean 
 at a fine rate. He was hungry and felt his garments cling 
 ing uncomfortably to his skin. He looked about for a place 
 to bathe. But like all the other provisions for the wretched 
 emigrants, this was a travesty. He was hungry and felt 
 ii 
 
162 TRAJAN. 
 
 that he must eat. The coffee was not bad, but the bread 
 was moldy. Hunger, however, made it palatable. Toward 
 noon, as he sat reading on the anchor chains a hand was 
 laid on his shoulder and the doctor said in a hearty tone : 
 
 " Mr. Gray, I looked all over the vessel for you last night, 
 to offer you a bed on my cabin floor, for, of course, you 
 know the captain wasn t in earnest in charging you to remain 
 in this den. But luck is in your favor I bring you a friend 
 who has a bed in his room at your disposal." 
 
 " If you will pardon my boldness, my name is Armitage " 
 and Trajan recognized the voice of the Englishman of the 
 night before " I shall be most happy to put you up. It 
 isn t right that such self-sacrifice as yours should bring so 
 much inconvenience as this upon you." 
 
 " I shall be very glad indeed to take advantage of your 
 offer," said Trajan, laughing, " for, though virtue is its own 
 reward, I think the surroundings count for something." 
 
 " Have you heard from your protegee?" said the doctor, 
 in a mysterious tone. 
 
 "I have heard that there is a baby," answered Trajan, 
 guiltily remembering how he had gained the information. 
 " Are they doing well ? " 
 
 " Charmingly. The mother was conscious of her situation 
 this morning, and her surprise was ludicrous enough when 
 she recognized the change in her circumstances. I told her 
 to whom she was indebted, and she begs that you will give 
 her a chance to thank you and let the baby bear your name." 
 
 " I don t know whether I should assent to that last," said 
 Armitage, laughing, "cut of France, where the search of 
 paternity is not forbidden by law." 
 
 The doctor laughed, and Trajan affected not to under 
 stand the allusion. So, after all, the voyage was to be an 
 agreeable one. Trajan s luggage was transferred to the 
 cabin of Armitage, and as he emerged on deck, refreshed by 
 a bath and cleanliness, he was seized by Armitage, who said 
 authoritatively : 
 
A 2V OCEAN EPISODE. 163 
 
 " I am ordered to present you for muster at the wheel. 
 Next to being a hero, the best thing is to be the hero s 
 keeper but I say," he added, with serio-comic gravity, 
 "don t monopolize all the ladies, you know." 
 
 Trajan manfully resisted a jibe at his new friend s expense, 
 apropos his declarations of the evening before. As they 
 approached the deck-house a charming picture was presented. 
 A score of sea-chairs were set in lines, some facing each 
 other. A dozen ladies were seated on them, some in the 
 grateful convalescence of sea-sickness ; others sewing and 
 reading, while an incessant babble accompanied the whole. 
 
 " Mesdames et demoiselles" said Armitage, "I present you 
 the hero of the ship. If you will say one-half before his 
 face that you have said behind his back, and he can stand 
 it, I will own that he is of the real heroic stamp." Then, 
 looking around and seeing no seat vacant, he added : " Which 
 of you will emulate the virtue of your hero and give him a 
 chair ?" 
 
 The laugh that followed this sally gave Trajan time to 
 recover his presence of mind. He was presented to each of 
 the ladies, and as Miss Theo happened to have a clear space 
 by her chair, the young man hid his confusion under shelter 
 of her sunshade. 
 
 " I was positive, Mr. Gray, even before I saw your card," 
 said the lady, " that you were an American chevalier. Quix 
 otism of that sort is altogether out of the comprehension of 
 Frenchmen. An Englishman might do it, but he would 
 secure a place for himself first." 
 
 Trajan was heartily weary of the episode, and turned the 
 conversation by a penetrating observation on the sublimity 
 of the scene and the perfection of the weather. He was 
 startled and delighted to find that the divinity had conde 
 scended to look at his card, and felicitated himself on his 
 sagacity in discovering that she was not a foreigner. Before 
 the day had passed Trajan was hopelessly enslaved but not 
 from any preference or subtle signal of encouragement given 
 
1 64 TRAJAN. 
 
 by the divinity. Her charm of mind and manner grew with 
 every change in mood. Her wit kept the company in a con 
 tinual qui vive not always so much from the thing she said 
 as its intent and the indescribable drollery of manner. Tra 
 jan confessed to himself that he had never seen a woman so 
 perfectly mistress of all the arms of social combat. 
 
 After luncheon Theo sat down at the piano, and for an 
 hour the crowded cabin was lost in the homes and joys left 
 behind in the exquisite songs without words, or enlivened 
 by the gay staves of Strauss and Offenbach. Trajan sat 
 down in the smoke-room after the event, and the talkative 
 Armitage, with a big pipe in his mouth, came and took the 
 place next him. 
 
 " A remarkable girl, that countrywoman of yours, Mr. 
 Gray. She has captivated the whole ship." 
 
 "Yes," said Trajan, with an effort, "a very charming 
 girl." 
 
 " I ve heard of a face being a fortune ; but if that young 
 woman s wit isn t a mint, then I shall be buried in a blue 
 stocking." 
 
 As the Briton paused, Trajan felt constrained to say some 
 thing, and quite at random remarked : " Miss Carnot isn t 
 an author," vaguely associating the Englishman s disjointed 
 remark into an assertion that Miss Theo was a writer. 
 
 " God forbid," said the other heartily. " So far as I know, 
 she never wrote a line for print in her life." 
 
 " I don t share your thanksgiving," said Trajan, good- 
 humoredly. "If Miss Carnot could put half the wit in 
 writing she lavishes in talking, she would rank as an Ameri 
 can de Stael." 
 
 "As to that," said the Englishman, mischievously, "since 
 no one reads American books, perhaps a freak of book-writ 
 ing might not destroy the lady in Miss Carnot." Then, as 
 if conscious that even the jocose tone in which this was said 
 did not relieve it of a tinge of ill-breeding, he added : 
 " What an amazing change has come over our insular ignor- 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 165 
 
 ance of America since that famous mot was put out ! I have 
 counted the books in railway stalls throughout our island 
 many a time, and I find that American reprints make up 
 fully a third of our current literature." 
 
 Trajan laughed heartily. " If you think your last remark 
 an amende for the first, I decline to receive it for it is 
 almost as true now as when it was written, that our literature 
 does not compare with European authorship with, of 
 course, exceptions that have not been increased since that 
 famous query that so angered my countrymen." 
 
 "Are you serious?" said Armitage, taking his pipe out of 
 his mouth and resting it on the card- table in front of him. 
 " You Americans chaff in such a serious tone that I m never 
 quite sure of my ground. There s Miss Carnot, for example. 
 I talk, as I imagine seriously, with her for an hour, and find 
 out in the end that she has been ridiculing me in the most 
 aerial plunges of my pet hobbies." 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 
 
 Trajan s no small discomfiture, the waif in state 
 room 214 became known as "Gray s baby." He was 
 asked jocosely after its welfare by the male passengers, and 
 even the ladies smiled mischievously whenever the little fel 
 low was the topic. He wisely bore the banter with unim- 
 pairable good-humor, which he was the better enabled to do 
 as it enabled him to conceal the passion that was taking 
 possession of him. He had gained another glimpse of his 
 divinity since his first meeting. Going down one day to 214 
 to see Madame Blaye, as the woman he had rescued from 
 the steerage was registered, he encountered Theo in the 
 room with the baby in her arms, smothering the little waif 
 
1 66 TRAJAN. 
 
 with kisses. She blushed rosily when the young man opened 
 the door in response to a careless " Come in," and with the 
 most charming embarrassment ever thrown out as a bait to 
 an enraptured lover, said sweetly : 
 
 " Madame Blaye, this is your benefactor, Mr. Trajan 
 Gray." The poor woman started toward him she had been 
 sitting as he entered, and, to Trajan s unspeakable surprise, 
 fell on her knees and snatching his hand kissed it repeatedly. 
 She strove to speak, but could only ejaculate in French : 
 
 " Mon Dieu, mon Dieu ! How good you are -beaujeune 
 homme! " 
 
 Trajan was confounded and looked appealingly at Theo 
 who bore the ordeal with comic gravity. Even a lover s 
 woes may be endured, if a woman but make up her mind to 
 it. He disengaged himself somewhat angrily from the 
 grateful creature, who was evidently determined to mark her 
 gratitude by remaining on her knees during her benefactor s 
 call. Trajan ended the scene abruptly by asking if he could 
 be of any service, and then fled. He was quite sure he 
 heard Theo laughing as he reached the outer companion- 
 way. A few minutes later she appeared on deck, serene and 
 apparently oblivious of the scene below. She came where 
 Trajan was seated and declared that she was dying for a 
 tramp. He was on his feet in an instant and the two were 
 soon in the afternoon cavalcade, promenading under the 
 canopy. 
 
 Trajan (to himself) : " What a joy to i>e a man, to be able 
 to give an arm to so adorable a creature ! Oh, what can t 
 I make of my life if it be my good fortune to win this great 
 gift ! " 
 
 Theo (aloud, adjusting a cloud of soft wraps around her 
 handsome throat, and displaying the most enchanting curve 
 of wrist, encased in careless gloves of the sort called 
 mousquetaires) : " Mr. Gray, will you give your immortal 
 mind to guiding my sunshade, so that while it preserves what 
 little complexion I have left it will not obtrude any of its 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 167 
 
 sixteen points into the eyes of the young men, who seem for 
 all the world like bats on shipboard ? " 
 
 Trajan (grasping the thick tortoise-shell handle, and so 
 manipulating it as to shut Theo out from the gaze of the 
 envious young men he was convinced they were envious 
 and at the same time exposing Theo s complexion to every 
 wanton sun-ray that peeped through the canvas awning, 
 thinks, now I ought to be able to hold the conversation in 
 such a way as to find if I really have any chance. Then 
 aloud) :-"Miss Carnot, I ought to win the game with six 
 teen points start ! " 
 
 Theo (mystified, but determined to encourage the play 
 ful wits) : " But doesn t the game require that both should 
 have a cue ? " 
 
 Trajan (discomfited and shifting to another tack) : 
 " Points may be the signs of vantage in chess as well as 
 billiards. With sixteen points I should have all of your 
 game but a few second-rate pieces " (exultingly). 
 
 Theo (triumphantly) : " In chess a pawn is equal to a 
 king when the game is at a certain stage." 
 
 Trajan (crushing all obstacles and pitying the vanquished) : 
 " But while the pawn can never take the king, any piece may 
 take the queen." 
 
 Theo (reflectively) : " But the queen can always manage 
 a stale mate." 
 
 Trajan (with pity, turning to love) : " Ah, I see you under 
 stand chess ; pray what is there you don t understand ? " 
 
 Theo (sighing softly and looking far over the waters) : 
 " I don t understand myself ; what s more I shouldn t like 
 to ; that is, if the result should be the same as when one 
 comes to understand one s fellows." 
 
 Trajan (with his heart thumping so vigorously that he 
 fears his companion s arm must feel the movement, and 
 asking himself what such a wickedly cynical speech could 
 mean. Then aloud): " Surely you understand yourself when 
 you realize that your kindness gives pleasure to those you 
 
1 68 TRAJAN. 
 
 love ; when you know that your accomplishments enliven 
 the spirits of a company like this ; when you know that you 
 admire nobleness rather than pretension, honesty rather than 
 sham a good deed rather than cruelty. Honesty is the key 
 of the heart and certainly there need be no mystery about 
 understanding one s self ! " 
 
 Artless Trajan, he wanted to say something fine. But not 
 knowing how far to venture substituted secondary for prin 
 cipal terms. Love was the word he wanted to use, but he 
 dared not give that as the key, because if there were no love 
 in this fair creature s heart for him it would have been a poor 
 compliment to invent that as the key to such self-knowledge 
 as he strove to make her see. 
 
 Theo (enjoying the young man s confusion, and under 
 standing exactly the cause of his incoherence and anti 
 climax) : " Self-knowledge I have that comes from a good 
 deal of self-study. But one may know many a thing with 
 out understanding it. I know, for example, that the earth 
 turns around the sun, and not the sun around the earth, as 
 my senses persuade me to believe ; but I don t understand 
 it. I know that this great iron ship is sailing on water, and 
 my eyes tell me that it should instantly sink as an iron bar 
 would in a basin of water ; but I know that the laws of force, 
 gravitation and displacement, make it impossible for these 
 plowing tons of weight to sink in these rolling wastes of 
 water." 
 
 Trajan (chagrined and astonished at his own inconse 
 quence and his interlocutor s confident use of scientific illus 
 tration, but determined to enter metaphysics to relieve him 
 of his embarrassment magisterially) : " The study of self, 
 like that of truth, has three principal objects : first, to know 
 the virtues and vices of character ; second, to be able to 
 discern whether we possess the one or the other in the greater 
 number ; and third, to be able to distinguish the one from 
 the other. Now, reduce these maxims to first principles : 
 A lie is a vice, a self-sacrifice is a virtue ; cruelty is a vice, 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 169 
 
 kindness is a virtue ; envy is a vice, generosity is a virtue ; 
 calumny is a vice, magnanimity is a virtue. Now there is 
 nothing intricate in these, and I take the boldest forms to 
 make myself most readily understood. You hate all these 
 vices, and you admire all these virtues. So far your heart 
 is an open page. But all these may be present or absent in 
 degrees, and the sum of the hate that one bears for them 
 all, is the sum of his goodness, or, in other words, his love 
 for virtue. One may fall into errors as to tendencies, may 
 fall by the wayside when put to the test in phases of these 
 general characteristics, and to that extent he is more or less 
 imperfect. But he is conscious of his infirmities as the time 
 that a dial keeps, shows the perfection or the defect in its 
 machinery." 
 
 Theo (with a little yawn) : " Dear me, Mr. Gray, one 
 would imagine you a college professor are you ? " 
 
 Trajan (startled and disappointed) : " No, I m I m a 
 painter, and do an occasional turn at journalism when the 
 fire dies under the kettle in the studio." 
 
 Theo : " Delightful a painter ? Then, I suppose, you 
 know the Latin Quarter, and have a dream of a studio 
 there ! " 
 
 " Yes, I live in the Quarter ; but my studio is a barren 
 reality peopled by dreams." 
 
 Theo (tentatively) : " My brother is a law student, and 
 sometimes lives in the Quarter. Perhaps you know him 
 Jules Carnot ? " 
 
 " No. I know very few of the men outside of the Beaux 
 Arts. I hope I shall meet your brother when I return." 
 
 Theo (with effusion) : " Oh, you return then, do you ? 
 How happy I am ! I shall have one friend the more in 
 Paris. I live there, you know." 
 
 Trajan (sentimentally) : " I wish that I might believe that 
 my presence in Paris would make any difference to you." 
 
 Theo (with serenity and aplomb} : " A friend the more is 
 always a gain in this world. In such a world as Paris, to be 
 
1 70 TRAJAN. 
 
 able to count upon a man like you, capable of such self- 
 sacrifice as brought you into notice in this ship, is a boon 
 that any right-thinking woman must be proud to have." 
 
 When the wicked witch had led the poor lad on until the 
 amusement palled, she feigned fatigue and with seductive 
 grace presented him a volume of Balzac to read aloud. And 
 so the afternoon passed away, and a half-dozen other after 
 noons, for the ship broke her shaft the fifth day out and had 
 to make for port with sail. This prolonged the voyage to 
 nearly two weeks, to Trajan s great joy, who was probably 
 the only one on board that heard the verdict with satisfac 
 tion. Ten days out a terrific storm came on. The ship 
 was on the banks of Newfoundland, wallowing in a heavy 
 sea and dense fog. At midnight the fog lifted and the wind 
 whistled through the rigging in shrieking discord almost 
 human. The storm rose to a gale toward dawn. The dark 
 ness was as thick as the fog that the wind had driven from 
 the surface of the sea. So soon as the pitching, rolling and 
 plunging of the ship became continuous, the passengers 
 huddled in the dining-room. The English and Americans 
 ventured on deck. Distrusting the seamanship of the French, 
 they counted the chances of safety as very slight. The 
 larger number in the cabin faced the danger with calmness. 
 
 Some of the French women, however, shrieked with every 
 lurch of the ship and imploded invisible personages to save 
 them. The night wore away with things apparently going 
 from bad to worse. The loss of the screw left the ship at 
 the mercy of the waves. The hatches were closed, but long 
 before morning objects were floating in the cabin, the pas 
 sengers having taken refuge on the tables and settees as well 
 as in their state-rooms. Trajan had come out of his state 
 room at midnight and looked around for Theo. She was 
 nowhere to be seen. Every woman of the company seemed 
 to be present, even Madame Blaye, pallid and terrified, with 
 her bairn hugged to her bosom. Trajan went over and com 
 forted the poor creature. " But we shall sink, 2 she cried 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 171 
 
 piteously, " we shall be swallowed in the frightful sea. Oh, mon 
 Dieu, mon Dieu ! what an imbecile I was to leave the land ! " 
 
 It was useless to reassure her. She knew the vessel 
 was going down, and at each lurch she dropped on her 
 knees pressing the little one tightly, closing her eyes and 
 expecting the gurgling waters to stifle her. The ship seemed 
 fairly spinning on its beam ends, when, toward three o clock, 
 Trajan saw Theo. coming tranquilly from the passage-way 
 leading to the state-rooms. She did not seem terrified. She 
 was dressed carefully and carried a small leather satchel in 
 her hand. She climbed over the water as it accumulated at 
 the end of the room, and as Trajan came up and gave her. 
 his hand to reach the table, her manner though lacking the 
 gayety, was as serene as among the admiring group of the 
 calm afternoons on the promenade deck. 
 
 " I suppose we shall have small chance to escape with 
 such imbeciles as the French seamen ! " she said in her ordi 
 nary tones, as Trajan sat down beside her. 
 
 " I think we shall pull through," replied Trajan, surprised 
 by the girl s self control. " They have been handling the 
 ship well, Armitage says, and if the storm goes down with 
 sunrise, we shall be all right." 
 
 "Meanwhile, what measure have you taken in the event of 
 the worst ? " asked Theo with composure. " I am dressed 
 ready for the small boats and confide myself to you ! " 
 
 Trajan trembled and his heart gave a great leap. " What 
 ever human arm can do, Miss Carnot, to rescue you from peril, 
 I will do. It is no time to tell you the grateful joy that fills 
 my heart that you should have conferred this priceless privi 
 lege upon me." She rewarded him with a ravishing smile 
 of confidence. 
 
 The night seemed reluctant to break. The great ship 
 rolling and plunging desperately, rose almost perpendicular 
 for a moment ; then meeting a mountain of water, fairly 
 stood suspended, quivering, and fell until the brain reeled 
 with the giddy speed. 
 
172 TRAJAN. 
 
 The morning broke clear and cold and the ship tore on 
 under a wan and threatening sky, over masses of crashing 
 waters, that fairly resembled liquid icebergs, so solid and 
 compact did they rise on either hand before breaking over 
 the deck. The sun arose and the wind calmed as suddenly as 
 it began, but the swell of the sea still flowed and fell in vast 
 furrows of icy water. 
 
 A fog followed, but relieved of the more acute movement 
 of storm and wave, the passengers brightened up into viva 
 cious confidence. The ship was flying under full sail, for 
 the captain dared not slack before the gale. It was midday 
 and the table was set for lunch, with all who were able about 
 it, when the vessel suddenly trembled and a great crash could 
 be heard forward ! The men ran to the deck. The women 
 turned pale and clasped their hands. Every eye was elo 
 quent with despairing inquiry, while ever,y lip was mute. 
 Trajan had rushed above before the vibrations ceased. He 
 suspected a collision with a ship or iceberg, but every thing 
 was shrouded in mystery on deck. The captain vouchsafed 
 no details ; the officers, under the strict discipline of 
 their chief, refused to answer the questions asked them. 
 But Armitage knew from the manuveers of the mate and the 
 gangs at the small boats that the crisis was at hand. He 
 warned Trajan to be prepared to fight his way into the life 
 boats if need be. On this hint the latter wrote on a sheet of 
 his note-book : 
 
 " Get ready, in the smallest space you can, what is indis 
 pensable, and be prepared at the foot of the staircase when 
 you hear your name called. T. G." 
 
 As he passed to his room to prepare himself, he slipped 
 this into Theo s hand. As he returned, she gave him a 
 glance of confidence and comprehension. Armitage arranged 
 with Trajan that one of them should stand by the boat 
 on the side away from the wind, with a pistol in his hand, 
 while the other marshaled such of the ladies as cared to ven 
 ture in the small boat. There were nearly a thousand souls on 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 173 
 
 board 600 emigrants, 300 first cabin, and the crew. The 
 boats could not, even in a smooth sea, hold a third of these. 
 The ship s carpenter, upon whom Armitage kept his eye, 
 emerged from the hold in the forward part of the ship and 
 made a report to the captain. That officer made angry re 
 ply ; the sailors near the group suddenly suspended their 
 work, and, as if by a common signal, rushed to the boats. 
 They surrounded him with pale faces. He gave the sub 
 stance of the carpenter s report. A deep dent had been 
 made in the iron plates of the bow. There was a slight flow 
 of water in the bulkheads, but there was absolutely no ground 
 for despairing while the fires held out and the pumps could 
 be worked. He ordered the officers to take their pistols and 
 force the men back to their duties. He set the example 
 himself by confronting the group at the first boat. 
 
 While trying to sleep, toward three in the morning, a low 
 voice at Trajan s ear aroused him. 
 
 " I think our time has come," said the Englishman. " I 
 heard the captain tell the mate that the water had put out 
 the lower fires. Now, you go and call Miss Carnot. Tell 
 her that we can not undertake to care for more than one 
 woman each. And (to spare herself the anguish of quit 
 ting the others) to let them remain sleeping. I shall wait 
 for you by the skylight facing the smoke-house." 
 
 Trajan tapped lightly at Theo s door. It was instantly 
 opened. "Is that you, Mr. Gray?" she asked. 
 
 " Yes. Are you ready to go on deck ? We may have to 
 quit the vessel at any moment. Armitage will care for 
 your friend, Mrs. Marquand, and I will devote myself to 
 you." 
 
 " I shall be with you in an instant. You may just as well 
 wait for us above. We can reach the rendezvous with less 
 chance of creating alarm if we go alone." 
 
 By seven o clock the council of officers were convinced 
 that the boats should be gotten ready, and the captain was 
 aroused. He confirmed the judgment of the council, and 
 
174 TRAJAN. 
 
 without any undue sign of emotion he came into the cabin, 
 and in a few words announced that he thought the ship was 
 in danger of sinking ; that those who cared to should be 
 prepared to take to the lifeboats ; that if good order were 
 maintained every cabin passenger would find room ; but 
 that haste or crowding would swamp the boats ; those who 
 chose to remain on board should aid the others in getting 
 into the small boats ; as for himself, he proposed to stand 
 by his ship until she went down ! Trajan had listened to 
 this brief seaman-like statement, expecting an outbreak of 
 terror when its import was realized. To his amazement 
 there was not a cry. A great sigh swept through the crowd, 
 but nothing more. 
 
 In ten minutes there were two hundred people on deck. 
 A line of sailors, flanked by stout ropes, stood between the 
 first-class and emigrant deck holding the third-class pas 
 sengers back in case they made a rush. But these poor 
 creatures, deceived by the easier motion of the vessel, were 
 unsuspicious of the impending danger, and occupied them 
 selves with breakfast. During the night all the forward 
 boats had been brought to the rear of the ship. The com 
 paratively easy motion made it possible to swing them to 
 the davits so soon as the others were lowered. The first 
 boat, with twenty women and ten men, beside six sailors, 
 reached the water safely. The second did not fare so well. 
 It was dashed against the ship, overturned, and its load of 
 fifty scattered in the waves. Some of them were rescued, 
 but the larger number were whirled out of sight in the boil 
 ing waters. This checked the fever of many to embark. 
 
 Fully sixty returned to the cabin, preferring to die peace 
 fully, supported by human companionship, rather than risk 
 the horrors of the small boats. Trajan, Armitage, Theo, 
 Mrs. Marquand, and twenty others were assigned to the 
 stern boat, commanded by the second mate. The pro 
 visions, instruments of navigation, and a plentiful supply of 
 wrappings, were packed into the boat. The first woman 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE AT A ST. 175 
 
 lowered, in her terror, fell into the sea, and was swirled 
 under the waves. For a moment the rest shrank from fol 
 lowing, and many fled back to the cabin. Theo came 
 promptly forward, and was lowered into the boat. It was 
 soon full ; but as the vessel still offered a faint possibility of 
 rescue, as signal-guns were firing and distress signals flying, 
 the boat was not cut off. Six boats were lowered, as Trajan 
 could see, counting them as they were left far in the rear. 
 
 The little boat, heavily laden, was soon wretchedly 
 uncomfortable quarters. The men were divided into reliefs 
 for bailing it out, and some of the women insisted on shar 
 ing the toil. The day dragged on miserably. The ship 
 still rode the water, and gave no signs of going down. The 
 fog gradually raised, and when night came the stars could 
 be seen. The mate judged that the ship was not far from 
 Newfoundland within two days run of New York under 
 ordinary circumstances. The sun rose in a clear sky ; the 
 sea became more restless ; but the vessel did not seem to 
 advance perceptibly. Toward noon several of the small 
 boats under sail could be seen within range. Suddenly the 
 danger signal on the ship was seen to dip. Then the report 
 of a cannon was heard. The officer on the bridge in great 
 excitement swept the sea with his glass : " Glory to the 
 Mother of God ! " he shouted, "we are saved. Yonder is a 
 ship of our own line and bound for our own port." * 
 
 Then there was excitement, and the sudden movement of 
 the people to see the deliverance at hand put the little craft 
 in more deadly peril than she had yet encountered. But the 
 good news was true. The great black line of a steamer 
 drove rapidly in sight. Boats were lowered, and within two 
 hours the passengers in the small boats were transferred to 
 the new comer, which proved to be the Ville du Havre, of 
 the French line. She took her sister ship in tow, and three 
 days later both arrived safely in New York harbor. 
 
 Meanwhile, Trajan had been counting on the peril to 
 repress the exuberance of his divinity. But that extraordi- 
 
176 TRAJAN. 
 
 nary young person, though grave, never softened into the 
 mood which the most obtuse lover knows to be essential to 
 love-making. In the small boat, it is true, there had been 
 no opportunity, even for those electric glances that some 
 times ease a lover s miseries. 
 
 When the ships had come to anchor at quarantine, the 
 passengers were restored to the abandoned vessel to reclaim 
 their baggage. Theo had come on, ready to land in a 
 bewitching street costume of the strikingly modest sort this 
 young woman, of all her sex, seemed to know best how to 
 manage. She had much on her active mind now that the 
 fateful voyage had come to a close. She had managed her 
 undeclared lover with consummate address. She had been 
 winning, sympathetic, but never tender. She was always 
 sufficiently mistress of the moment and of herself to freeze 
 the genial current of his lover soul. 
 
 Strive as he would, he could not get into words what she 
 read in his appealing eyes. It was by drollery, ridicule and 
 inconsequence she held the poor fellow from the declaration 
 he was dying but not daring to make. She had learned his 
 purpose of remaining in New York only a month, and quite 
 incidentally, shortly afterward, let him know that she should 
 be in New Orleans until September it was then July. 
 Trajan had hoped that he should see her in New York. 
 She sighed as she regretted the impossibility, but hoped for 
 better fortune when they should both find themselves in 
 Paris. The vision of it gave Trajan s face the glow of an 
 afternoon sunset. As the vessel lay idly in the stream at 
 quarantine, awaiting the customs inspectors, Theo took the 
 vacant seat by Trajan. She was in the greatest embarrass 
 ment she confided to the young man. Trajan assumed an 
 air that proclaimed his readiness to emulate the twelve tasks 
 of Hercules. 
 
 " Have you much baggage, Mr. Gray ?" she asked, avert 
 ing her yellowish green eyes so that the mere edge of their 
 fascinating sparkle was visible to the young man. 
 
THE SIREN SINGS-UNDER THE MAST. 177 
 
 Trajan laughed ; " No," he said, " I m in light marching 
 order ; two small portmanteaus with change of clothing 
 and unfinished sketches." 
 
 " How fortunate ! " she sighed. " My wretched brother 
 had arranged to catch the steamer at Brest, and his trunks 
 were put on at Havre with mine. They are filled with all 
 sorts of men s trappings, and of course I could not pass 
 them at the custom-house. I want to save the delay and 
 the duties as well, for you know," she added, "women are 
 born smugglers, and I am going to ask you to take the keys 
 and assume ownership." 
 
 Trajan was enchanted to relieve the helpless sister from 
 the brother s burdensome charge. He welcomed it as a 
 mark of confidence and a sign of future intimacy, when the 
 hurry of travel would not interfere with his woo.ing. She 
 bade the young man farewell as the vessel touched the dock 
 and gave him an address to send the keys to, with the trunks. 
 She was going immediately with friends to the country. 
 Trajan took the pretty gloved hand, not daring to venture 
 on a gentle pressure. 
 
 Theo s friends were looking on, and Trajan murmured a 
 low farewell. He was not questioned by the customs 
 officials as to his ownership of the trunks, but to his great 
 annoyance the officer, on examining the contents, declared 
 that they would have to be sent to the office, and asked the 
 young man for his address. Ignorant of the contents, Tra 
 jan could make no coherent objection, and deeply chagrined 
 he set out for his lodgings. The next day, as Trajan was 
 about quitting his room, a card was handed him. He didn t 
 recognize the name. On entering the parlor an elderly man 
 with a keen, scrutinizing pair of eyes arose and asked : 
 
 " Mr. Trajan Gray ? " 
 
 Trajan affirmed the fact, when the stranger proceeded at 
 
 once to inform him that he was from the detective branch 
 
 of the customs office, and his mission was to learn if the 
 
 trunks delivered to the inspector of the day before were 
 
 12 
 
178 TRAJAN. 
 
 really Mr. Gray s property. Trajan hesitated to answer, 
 and the man having waited a moment continued : 
 
 "If the property is yours you must appear before the col 
 lector to answer certain interrogations." 
 
 " What reason have you to doubt that the trunks are 
 mine ? " asked Trajan, defiantly. 
 
 "We don t doubt it," answered the official, blandly ; "we 
 know they are not yours we know the owners, and we 
 know how you came to be charged with their entry into the 
 port ! " 
 
 " Oh, very well ; since you know all about them, I have 
 no further responsibility. You will, I suppose, deliver them 
 to the owner when your formalities have been complied 
 with ; " and he delivered the keys and address to the 
 official. 
 
 " That s business," commented the man, as he retired, 
 "you have acted wisely, young man." 
 
 But Trajan was not convinced of this. He felt that Theo 
 would be plagued with the affair, and he reproached himself 
 for not foreseeing the contretemps. She had left the city, 
 and he knew of no means of reaching her save by sending 
 a note to the address to which she had directed him to send 
 the trunks. This he did at once, going over the whole case 
 and regretting any annoyance his failure might cause his 
 charming friend. The note might be forwarded to her at 
 New Orleans, and he might, he thought with a glow, hear 
 from her before he returned to France. His business in New 
 York was a law suit, and he was kept in the courts pretty 
 constantly during the week. One day, as he was passing 
 Stewart s in those days the universal bazar for women 
 he caught sight of a form that seemed familiar entering a 
 coupe. His pulse quickened as well as his steps, but before 
 he could get near enough to see the face, the horses were 
 careering rapidly up Broadway. He looked in vain for a 
 cab to follow, but in a few moments he had lost sight of the 
 coupe*. He was sure that he had seen Theo No other 
 
THE SIREN SINGS UNDER THE MAST. 179 
 
 woman had that graceful, bird-like movement of the neck, 
 and that individuality of costuming. What could it mean ? 
 Had the news of the seizure of the trunks arrested her 
 Southern journey? But if so, she would have certainly 
 sent him her address. 
 
 Armitage called the day after. They had breakfast 
 together and drove to High Bridge afterward. The English 
 man was full of amazement and grumbling. He divided 
 every thing he had thus far seen into two bulks one 
 " beastly " and the other "stunning." The filth of the city 
 astounded him, the luxury of the hotels and private resi 
 dences appalled him. Seated at breakfast he interrupted his 
 amusing comments on the country to say : 
 
 " I say, I saw our stormy^)etrel yesterday." 
 
 " Who ? " asked Trajan, not identifying the person thus 
 figuratively apotheosized. 
 
 " Our heroine, Miss Carnot." 
 
 " Oh, no, that isn t possible ; she left for the South a 
 week ago." 
 
 " Well, she s returned, I assure you, for I saw her yester 
 day at a shop in Broadway. I couldn t very well mistake 
 the person. I defy any one to see her once and confound 
 her with any body else." 
 
 Trajan related his own adventure and the coincidence was 
 dismissed. Returning from High Bridge toward six o clock, 
 the carrriage with our friends was blocked for a few minutes 
 just before emerging into Fifth Avenue. Trajan was watch 
 ing the crowds on the footway, when Armitage suddenly 
 seized his arm, with the exclamation : 
 
 " There, by Jove ! if that isn t the petrel, then I m not in 
 my senses." Trajan barely caught sight of a figure as the 
 carriage shot past, and he, too, was sure that Theo and no 
 other was the person. It was too late to turn and follow 
 the other vehicle, even if the carriage could have been extri 
 cated from the blockade. There was no available pretext 
 that would have imposed upon Armitage, and Trajan shrunk 
 
l8o TRAJAN. 
 
 from exposing his young passion to that jocular cynic s 
 pleasantries. 
 
 A week later he embarked for Europe and was soon 
 absorbed in his old artist life. He found means of meeting 
 Carnot, however, and explained the facts bearing on his 
 luckless trunks. Jules changed color when the incident was 
 mentioned, but when the finale was reached looked relieved. 
 He thanked Trajan, warmly, and informed him that the 
 affair had been settled. There had been some gloves or 
 other dutiable trifles sent his friends, and the custom-house 
 had collected ten times their value. About Theo he said 
 nothing, but Trajan hoped for other opportunities to inquire 
 about that charming being. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " EVERY DOOR JS BARRED WITH GOLD." 
 
 TIME, the tamer, held a loose rein on Trajan s heart and 
 hope during the next few blissful months. He lived 
 and moved in the exaltation of love s lucid atmosphere. He 
 nourished the image his hope created with all the forces and 
 fibres of heart and brain. His hope fed upon his mental 
 vitals, as the young of the pelican feeds upon the physical. 
 Its roseate promise broadened his horizon and stirred his 
 vitalities to unheard-of effort. Living on his fancies alone, 
 his work was a joy and Lis forces tenfold. Doubt was a 
 blank, the future a dream tangible, real, stimulating. Never 
 had his imagination responded with such subtle delicacy to 
 his artistic longings ; never had his brush embodied so 
 readily the airy shapes of the mind. His nimble fingers 
 could hardly keep up with the teeming fancies created by 
 his ardent impulse. 
 
 Most men, when they love for the first time, live on the 
 
"EVERY DOOR IS BARRED WITH GOLD." l8l 
 
 image of their love. Trajan was recreated in his it was 
 his armor armor, did I say ? It was shield, spear and bat 
 tle-axe ! Panoplied in it, he went forth to combat with a 
 serenity that was proof against every form that " the slings 
 and arrows of outrageous fortune " take. Never had his 
 brain responded in such fecundity to his touch as now. His 
 next picture took the second prize of the year in the Salon, 
 and he waited with buoyant eagerness to lay his laurels at 
 the shrine of his goddess. Theo had written Jules of the 
 young man s devotion on the memorable voyage, and Trajan 
 was welcomed cordially in the Rue Galilee. 
 
 Papa Carnot overwhelmed him with effusive testimony. 
 Clare made him feel that he was no stranger, in her unde 
 monstrative way. The young man was hungry to hear of 
 Theo ! When was she to come back ? His heart sank dis 
 mally when it Was announced that she had been forced to 
 put off her return indefinitely. Trajan was gloomy com 
 pany after that. He racked his brain for some device to 
 make it possible to enter into direct correspondence ; but 
 he remarked that the family were very reticent in alluding 
 to Theo s plans. However, he meant to be patient, and win 
 the confidence of the household. His visits to the Rue 
 Galilee were thenceforth regular, if not altogether comfort 
 ing. But Theo, evidently by intention, was rarely mentioned. 
 He obtained a photograph one day from Clare, and set to 
 work with rapture to make a portrait to surprise her when 
 she returned. 
 
 Poor boy ! the happy, happy hours he spent over it, and 
 when it was done, Pygmalion-like, dreamed it was the reality. 
 There was great wonder in the Rue Galilee when this mas 
 terpiece came to hand. Trajan blushed and palpitated with 
 joy at the encomiums of the family. It was Theo to the 
 life, they protested. Never had such a bit of portraiture 
 been seen ! Jules was loudest of all in the jubilee. The 
 technique he declared to be fine as Bonnat or Duran, and 
 insisted that it must go to the next Salon. 
 
1 82 TRAJAN. 
 
 Still the months dragged on. Theo had desired her 
 warmest remembrances to be given to her marine hero, and 
 Trajan was lost in dreams for a week, wherein his Anadyo- 
 mene was confusedly identified with a vivacious young per 
 son, of a yellowish-gray cast of eye and nut-brown complex 
 ion. At last, on a day that remained in Trajan s mind long 
 after as a season of roses, rainbow hues and amaranthine 
 atmosphere, the news came that the petrel was to take ship 
 the next week for home. A wild purpose to be at Havre, 
 nay, to go to Brest, and welcome Ariadne came into his mind, 
 but he shrank from the audacious evidence of self-esteem 
 and devotion. The studio that had witnessed a year of 
 prodigies, was for the next ten days intolerable. 
 
 He walked the streets lost in delicious reverie, the old 
 grinning faces that looked down from immemorial stones, 
 transforming themselves into fairy forms whispering welcome 
 to the queen that was coming over the sea. By a mighty 
 effort he let the whole day pass after Theo reached the Rue 
 Galilee where you may be sure the lad was watching 
 for the intoxicating joy of seeing her pass with her boxes 
 from the cab to the door. It was a wonder that Theo, who 
 rarely missed any thing, had not detected her adorer, for in 
 the rapture of the first glimpse he started impulsively from 
 his concealment, but drew back crimsoning at his own folly. 
 
 The next day his impatience could hold out no longer. He 
 was at the Rue Galilee at the very first hour admissible by 
 convention for a gentleman s call. He ascended the four 
 long stairs, as birds may be supposed to reach their airy 
 bowers. His card was taken in by Celeste, who had come 
 to regard the young man with undisguised approval. She 
 smiled encouragingly. 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle Theo is come, and the voyage has 
 been agreeable." 
 
 Trajan sat in the charming boudoir-like salon, every object 
 in it eloquent of Theo s incomparable taste and adaptiveness. 
 The impatient lover started as the door opened ; he sank 
 
"EVERY DOOR IS BARRED WITH GOLD." 183 
 
 back speechless as Clare came into the room. Theo 
 " begged her kind friend to excuse her to-day. She was 
 worn out, and immersed in certain business affairs which 
 were pressing. Wouldn t Mr. Gray call on Saturday and 
 dine?" 
 
 Trajan found voice, to thank Clare and accept. Then, 
 dimly imagining that Clare must be shocked at his dullness, 
 he excused himself, declaring that she ought to grudge these 
 first moments with her sister, and retreated. He was a good 
 deal shaken by this rebuff. He walked aimlessly down the 
 avenue to the Park Monceau, and sat down in the secluded 
 corner of one of the copses. He could not at first realize the 
 sensation. Presently the stunning sense of the stroke subsided, 
 and he began to reason. How stupid he had been ! Of 
 course, he was hasty, selfish, and even ill-bred, to presume 
 upon his small claims to be received so soon. 
 
 The poor girl had been worn out by the twelve days jour 
 ney on the slow French line, and then the eight hours by 
 rail and the half day in the custom-house atthestation ! He 
 ought to have known better, he declared, with a great ray of 
 comfort breaking in on him in the misery of the first lugu 
 brious stupefaction. He saw it all now. She was not, per 
 haps, even dressed when he sent Celeste to her a few minutes 
 ago. But reason shattered some of the frail fabric of this 
 roseate sophistry. If she had real feeling for him, a tithe of 
 what he felt, no fatigue, no affairs less important than life or 
 death would have prevented her seeing him for a moment, if 
 only to press his hand and look to see if the true light still 
 flamed as a beacon in his eyes ! He counted the days of 
 probation. It was then Tuesday ! What could he do with 
 himself meanwhile ? The studio was intolerable. Oh, fool ! 
 if he had but kept the portrait, he thought, he would have a 
 pretext for inviting her over. Stay ! He had heard of her 
 devotion to Jules. He didn t much fancy Jules, but he 
 would get a portrait of that favored youth ready and unmask 
 it before her in the studio ! 
 
I 84 TRAJAN. 
 
 Now he had something to occupy him ; for wasn t he 
 working for her ? Luckily he knew where Jules s photograph 
 was to be found. He had noticed the name when looking 
 over the family album. In a twinkling he was in a cab and 
 in a half-hour he had secured, from the great Nadar himself, 
 in the Rue d Anjou St. Honore, the aristocratic profile of his 
 beloved s next of kin. 
 
 I protest that the epos of love like this should have a ver 
 nacular of its own. It is a desecration to tell of such hopes 
 and fear, such heroism, such faith, such constancy, as Tra 
 jan s in the worn shreds and patches that paint the every-day 
 follies of mankind. Day and night, to the great distress of 
 Madame Betty and Trip, whose blinking eyes followed him in 
 wonder, the restless devotee toiled over the labor of love. By 
 Saturday the portrait was fairly in colors. It required but a 
 few touches to make it perfect not the speaking marvel of 
 natural grace and radiant enthusiasm that the portrait of 
 Theo presented for not only the air and the sky but the 
 flowers of the field had been plundered to make that a 
 masterpiece. Still Trajan was not wholly dissatisfied, and 
 that is strong testimony for a lover s work to be laid as a 
 tribute at the feet of his mistress ! 
 
 The honest lad kept himself busy with this self-imposed 
 task until the very last minute so that his eagerness should 
 not push him too early on the scene. It was five o clock 
 when Celeste welcomed him with her most friendly smile in 
 the Rue Galilee. He did not ask for any one but merely 
 sent in his name. He had put himself under severe 
 restraint ; but he felt his temples throbbing as he stood look 
 ing out of the window. He turned as he heard a step 
 approaching. It was not Theo ; he knew before he turned 
 that it was not ; but his heart sank none the less. 
 
 " Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Gray," said Clare, in 
 what for her was a cordial tone. " Theo was obliged to go 
 into the city this morning. She should have been back before 
 this* I expect her every minute." 
 
"EVERY DOOR IS BAXRED WITH GOLD." I #5 
 
 Six o clock came and the soul of the scene was still want 
 ing. At half after six dinner was served and Trajan, too 
 sad to talk, sat down silently. 
 
 The solemn banquet was half over when the bell rang and 
 Theo, without waiting to remove her bonnet, tripped into 
 the room with a stream of charming apologies pouring from 
 her breathless lips. She was followed by Jules, who began to 
 explain as Theo gave her two gloved hands to Trajan, 
 meanwhile protesting the odiousness of her conduct and her 
 hopelessness of pardon. But it would have been more than 
 a sin of omission that Trajan could not forgive. Her ardent 
 eyes were on him ; her willful gaiety in all its impressive 
 versatility was in his ears. He was as absolutely under the 
 spell as the helpless prince under Ariel s wand, Prospero s 
 plots and Miranda s beauties. But there was none of the 
 virtue of compassion in this witch s art. She bubbled and 
 glistened and sparkled during the dinner and evening. She 
 had a thousand questions to ask Trajan. She narrated with 
 inimitable drollery the scenes of the voyage, Trajan s debut 
 as hero, and wound up by asking the young man if he had 
 heard any thing further of his "baby." Tantalized and 
 delighted, he was horrified* when in a lull in the conversation 
 he found that no one was in the salon but Theo, Jules and 
 himself. It was eleven o clock. Theo had chidden him 
 sweetly for wasting precious time over the wonderful por 
 trait and vowed that such a hand should occupy itself with 
 emperors, kings and princes alone, and that she meant to 
 have the Empress sit for him. Trajan winced. 
 
 " I have another portrait that I think you will be inter 
 ested in. I want you to come over with Miss Carnot and 
 your brother to see it on the easel, and suggest such changes 
 as are needed for it is a friend of yours." 
 
 Then, very happy, and dreaming dreams, Trajan went out 
 into the glorious moonlight, and when he lay down in his 
 studio the sun had lighted the world and was flooding the 
 eastern gables of the great city. 
 
1 86 TRAJAN. 
 
 What need to prolong the piteous story ? Weeks and 
 months went by in this blissful purgatory for Trajan. She 
 was always gay, pungent and sympathetic. She knew how 
 to stimulate the young man s pride in his art. Indeed, Tra 
 jan never attained the perfect mastery of form and color he 
 reached during Theo s vicarious regency. She was not 
 always accessible to her adorer. For weeks at a time she 
 was with grand friends at Compiegne, where the court gave 
 great fetes, and Theo, by the command of the Empress, had 
 her part to play. But Trajan had found time to broach the 
 subject of his hopes. He had not been discouraged in set 
 terms. Theo had turned the conversation in the most 
 bewitching way. Once, as if by accident, she had expressed 
 earnest disapproval of marriages between people without 
 assured means ! A man must be very selfish, she affirmed, 
 to ask a girl of refined tastes, accustomed to luxury, to assume 
 the burden of a poor man s life ! 
 
 It took Trajan a week to rally from this. But he grew 
 buoyant in convincing himself that this dictum could not 
 apply to his case, for was he not a rising artist, and wouldn t 
 he, in a few years, command his own price ? Hadn t he sold 
 a portrait of one of Theo s friends for 1,000 francs ? So in 
 this self-exalting mirage Trajan built the foundations of his 
 future, and pursued the phantoms with fatuous trust. It 
 was in the beginning of May, 1870, that the blow came. It 
 had never occurred to the young man that there might be 
 another lover. He knew that the gallants of the Faubourg 
 admired the brilliant American ; but he was tranquil so far 
 as they were concerned, for he knew they would never offer 
 their coronets to a dowerless beauty if her charms were the 
 counterpart of the Venus de Milo and the spirit of de Stael. 
 He had vaguely heard, with a sickening dread, of a rich 
 Englishman who was her cavalier at court. He determined 
 to end the agony. But, "like one who having unto truth, 
 by telling of it, made such a sinner of his memory to credit 
 his own lie," he made no doubt of the result. Trajan wrote, 
 
E VER Y DOOR IS BARRED IV I TH GOLD. " 187 
 
 asking Theo to be at home, and received a kind affirmative. 
 
 Just as he set out the postman gave him a handful of letters. 
 Too much preoccupied with his fateful mission to read them, 
 he barely glanced through the pages. One was from Armi- 
 tage, dated San Francisco, and evidently a long time en route. 
 He barely glanced at the beginning, and slipped it in his 
 pocket to read later. 
 
 Theo was alone and radiant, but with such unobtrusive 
 adornment as she above all women seemed to possess the 
 secret of fabricating. 
 
 "You look serious, Maestro," as he had for a long time 
 been familiarly called in the family. " What s the secret 
 burdening your mind ? Another masterpiece for the Salon, 
 I ll wager, and I m to be called on to give final judgment." 
 
 "Yes, Theo, it s a masterpiece, and you re called on for 
 final judgment. I want you to be my wife ; I love you I 
 loved you, I think, the first moment I saw you, two years 
 ago, on the ship. I have thought of you by day and dreamed 
 of you by night every hour since then. Your eye has been 
 on every stroke of work I have done ; your voice has sounded 
 in my ear in the silent hours of the night and through the 
 long days of toil which its echoes cheered and made happy. 
 All that a man with some powers may do, I shall do under 
 your inspiration. All that a woman can dream in the way 
 of devotion I have ready to dedicate to you. Say that you 
 will be my wife," he cried, taking her hand in both his own.^ 
 
 She made no attempt to draw it away. She was looking 
 dreamily at her own portrait, painted by Trajan, on the wall 
 opposite. I doubt if the blood in her veins increased a single 
 throb as this passionate and manly prayer fell upon her ears. 
 She was prepared for it ; she had known from the first that 
 sooner or later it must come. She kept her eyes fixed upon 
 the picture so long that he turned uneasily, and was reassured 
 when he saw where her glance rested. But her eye was not fixed 
 upon the picture to conceal any lurking infirmity of purpose. 
 Theo knew the curious freaks these lambent orbs played. She 
 
1 88 TRAJAN. 
 
 knew that when they were not a mask for mockery or merry 
 making, they had a trick of changing into a sinister opaque 
 green, like the tiger s in the cage when tantalized by the 
 sight of prey beyond his reach. She was not in reality a 
 particle embarrassed to find or utter the words she had pre 
 determined to use. But, in spite of her preparation, in spite 
 of her resolution, the woman in her ruled the hour, and she 
 lost the trick of jaunty concealment she had counted on. 
 
 The delicious tribute of the man s rare homage filled her 
 with a sense of intoxicating, irrepressible triumph. The 
 light in his eye, the passion in his voice, the adoration in his 
 manner displaced the mental balance she had counted on, 
 and she fairly prolonged the interval to enjoy to the utmost 
 the intoxicating realization of her own power over such a 
 fine nature. It was a grateful evidence to her that, in spite 
 of her worldliness, she was mistress of the charms and poten 
 tialities that win genuine love ! 
 
 It was, above all, proof that neither sincerity, affinity, or 
 what not, that the shallow prate of, are needed to conquer the 
 purest love, captivate the most single-minded and aspiring. 
 The hand that Trajan held neither resisted nor affirmed any 
 thing. She sat quite still, contemplative almost as in a 
 reverie and her eyes still averted themselves from his tender, 
 fervid scrutiny. The trumpets of a passing regiment and the 
 trampling of galloping squadrons sounded outside in the 
 still and fragrant air. Trajan strove to clasp her waist 
 fondly believing the silence assent. But she drew back 
 with a slight heightening of color and an ominous glitter in 
 the particolored eyes. In a thick, impulsive, trembling 
 voice, Trajan spoke : 
 
 " Oh, Theo, you cannot be surprised at this you who 
 see all things so clearly. You must have seen this you 
 must have known of my love ? Have you no love for my 
 love ? no answer for my prayer ? no hope for my heart ? I 
 cannot have pained you by saying what I have said ? " 
 
 She still evaded his glance ; she was conscious of the 
 
"EVERY DOOR IS BARRED WITPI GOLD." 189 
 
 green in her eyes now ; she withdrew her hand softly from 
 Trajan s reluctant fingers, and rose from the divan. Once 
 upon her feet she was safe. He could no longer fix her eye 
 with his own frank, eager glance. 
 
 " No, Trajan, you do not surprise me. I have foreseen 
 this for a long time, and I have striven to avert it. I am 
 honest in saying that I thought you would discover the use- 
 lessness of your love for a woman with my objects in life 
 
 T " 
 
 "You love some one else," interrupted Trajan, dolorously. 
 
 She shook her head almost impatiently. " No, I love no 
 one better than I love you." She put out her hand in 
 pleading deprecation as Trajan started rapturously toward 
 her. " Stay hear me out. Love is a luxury, and I have a 
 purpose in life that would make it a crime in me to heed 
 my heart in marrying ! In most cases it is a stern parent that 
 plays this role but I have the fortunes of my family to care 
 for, and I must be my own tyrant." She looked at him in a 
 far-off, dreamy way. " Were I a rich woman as I was born 
 or were you a rich man, I love you well enough to marry 
 you. But I m not." Her voice trembled a little as Trajan 
 made a movement of uncontrollable shocked surprise. 
 
 " Hear me out ; what I am going to say, while it gives 
 you pain, will convince you that even if the conditions were 
 such as I have outlined, you would not find such a mate as 
 you seek in me." 
 
 He seized her hands and strove to say something, but she 
 extricated them quietly, now perfectly mistress of herself, 
 and putting them behind her confronted him as he stood, 
 stupefied and incredulous. 
 
 " You have nothing ; and I would no more think of 
 marrying you than of throwing myself into the Seine, from 
 the Bridge of the Holy Fathers " 
 
 " Oh, my God my God ! Theo, do you know what you 
 are saying ; what you have said ? " cried Trajan, suffocat 
 ingly. 
 
190 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Perfectly. I am proclaiming myself an adventuress, 
 soulless, cruel, heartless, repulsive a woman that no good 
 man could love, and no honest woman pardon." 
 
 She walked to the farther end of the room, turned and 
 came back, and, looking at Trajan as he sat with his head 
 buried in his hands, stroked his hair lightly, then bent over 
 and kissed his forehead. He started shuddering from her ; 
 then, rising, said, supplicatingly : 
 
 "Oh, Theo, in the name of a merciful God, by the 
 memory of your mother, unsay these monstrous things say 
 you were jesting say that you were trying me. In God s 
 name give me a chance to live in the world without loathing 
 you." 
 
 She put her hands behind her, twisting the long tapering 
 fingers spasmodically. 
 
 " You feel that my wicked lips desecrate you. I had 
 meant that they should touch you before I revealed myself. 
 But we can t always order ourselves, I find. Admit my 
 wickedness. Admit the monstrous in all I have said. Isn t 
 it honester to tell you frankly the purposes that divide us 
 than to let you go away in doubt ? Unless my heart were 
 another s, on what pretext could I reject such love as yours? 
 
 " I am more magnanimous than the ingrate who blighted 
 Clare s life. He didn t even bid the woman he had won 
 good-by." She checked herself suddenly, then added, reck 
 lessly, "A life dedicated as mine is to righting family wrongs, 
 would drag a nature like yours down. I own frankly. that 
 nothing can stand between me and my purpose. Ten years 
 ago we were beggars ; to-day we have means that in this 
 country make us rich every penny of my devising. It is a 
 necessity of my nature to rule, or mold, or call it what you 
 will. I rule this house. I shape the thought as well as the 
 actions of every member of it. I must marry, if I ever do, 
 a man who can rule me, but his purposes must be greater 
 than yours. I can t afford the luxury of mating for love. 
 You are not malleable. You are not even adaptable. You 
 
E VER Y DO OK IS BA RRED WITH GOLD. " 191 
 
 have, of all qualities, the most dangerous and useless for a 
 man in your station conscience and the perversity of prin 
 ciple. You abhor the things I adore. The aims I cherish 
 are to you wicked and abominable. I love rank, lineage and 
 the accessories of station. You despise them. I shouldn t 
 mind your poverty if you were free of these compromising 
 trammels." 
 
 Trajan raised his hand pleadingly to stay the flood of this 
 premeditated moral abdication. He strove to speak, but 
 she went on relentlessly triumphantly, even, exalted by 
 this luxury of final, free self-portraiture, as when in anger 
 one gives way to the repressed hates of a life. 
 
 " Oh, don t, don t ! " cried Trajan, rising. " I won t hear 
 such raving ! It is an impeachment upon my manhood. I 
 met you an innocent, pure girl. I will leave you before you 
 can shake that conviction. God bless you, farewell ! " 
 
 Without daring to look at her, he hurried out of the door 
 and down the stairs. Startled by the sudden exit Clare 
 entered the salon. Theo was lying prone upon the floor, 
 her two hands clenched over the undone masses of her 
 hair. 
 
 For a month Trajan lay in the studio in the delirium of 
 brain fever. Toward the first of May the doctors sent him 
 to Barbison, as he babbled incessantly of green fields and 
 forest glades. In that charming woodland he gained 
 strength and calmness, and toward the middle of May 
 returned to Paris. But he couldn t work. He shunned his 
 friends and passed hours in wandering through the ancient 
 quarters of medieval Paris. 
 
 On the morning of the i4th of May he sat in his studio, 
 when Madame Agay laid a mass of letters before him, call 
 ing attention to their long neglect. He took them, and 
 mechanically looked them over. Among others, the letter 
 from Armitage, that he had thrust into his pocket unread on 
 the fatal visit to Theo. It was a closely-written four-page 
 letter, and toward the middle Theo s name appeared. 
 
192 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Before I left New York I found out the secret of our 
 sea-witch. We were right in our surmise that it was she 
 we saw in the carriage that day. By a curious chance I met 
 her a few days after your departure at the house of a friend 
 to whom I brought letters. She was, as usual, the charm of 
 the company. She kept every one in a roar, and what is 
 unusual with brilliant women, her own sex admire her as 
 enthusiastically as the men. I asked my friend when Miss 
 Carnot had arrived in New York, and she told me, naming 
 the day we came in on the steamer. But she added : She 
 is a very busy woman, and has been closeted with lawyers 
 and agents ever since, to the great distress of her friends, 
 who expected her at Newport and Saratoga. 
 
 * Then she has passed all this hot season in New 
 York ? 
 
 Yes, I have seen a good deal of her as we were school 
 friends together. 
 
 " Now I shouldn t take the trouble to go into this detail 
 were it not for what follows. One day a paragraph appeared 
 in all the morning papers hinting at a seizure of a great 
 quantity of smuggled diamonds and other valuables under 
 high duties, in the trunks of a lady well known in the most 
 exclusive society of New York. The authorities had been 
 apprised of the traffic, but it was managed so skillfully that 
 actual evidence was difficult to obtain. Warning had been 
 received in the customs office that a large invoice of 
 diamonds and laces were to be sent by the steamer arriving 
 one day in July. But owing to an accident at sea two 
 steamers came together and the officers were disconcerted 
 until the trunks were delivered into their hands by an inno 
 cent agent of the smuggler a young artist home on a visit 
 from Paris. 
 
 " The modus operandi of the ring is ingenious ; women 
 carry on the trade, and on the home-voyage manage to get 
 acquainted with bachelors with little baggage, and as the 
 ships near New York confide to them that a brother or 
 
E VER Y DOOR IS BARRED WITH GOLD. " 193 
 
 father who had sent his baggage on board was detained at 
 the last moment, and was obliged to wait for the next 
 steamer. Of course the polite bachelor is willing to take 
 the keys and pass the baggage through the custom-house 
 as his own. The value of the present seizure is over 
 $100,000. 
 
 " I think I need add no comment to the foregoing. I 
 wouldn t have bothered you with the nauseous story were it 
 not that I thought I saw an interest stronger than mere 
 friendliness in your devotions to cette beaute du diable" 
 
 The sunlight faded into starless night. Betty and Trip 
 were sorely perplexed by the strange unmoving figure of 
 their master. It was nearly midnight when he raised his 
 head from the desk. He moved with curious tranquillity. 
 Taking a pen, he wrote rapidly, and sealed a note, which he 
 placed on the mantel. Then, looking around the room, 
 changed his coat and vest, emptied his pockets of everything 
 in them, and with a caress for the dog and cat, softly quit 
 the chamber. He wandered off to Montmartre, and sat 
 down. It was a walk of four miles or more, and the exhaus 
 tion brought on prostration. He made an effort to rise, but 
 nature refused to respond, and he dozed on the green sward 
 until the burning morning sun aroused him. He was still 
 weak, and the morning passed before he regained strength to 
 walk back toward the river. Arrived there the expectant 
 crowds distracted him. The day wore away. When the 
 mind that Trajan Gray lost in the Rue Galilee returned to 
 him, Elliot Arden s kindly words were in his ears, and the 
 fervor of his honest accents healing the hurts that treachery 
 had made in the young man s heart. 
 
194 TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEENS. 
 
 THEOPHILE GAUTIER recounts somewhere in one 
 of his many whimsical prefaces, that it was the habit 
 of the great De Balzac to prepare his myriad mind for the 
 shaping of the motives that were to rule in his Human 
 Comedy by diligent reading of the Code Napoleon. Byron 
 conjured the fiery spirits in the brandy bottle. Victor 
 Hugo consults the stars. None of these suggestive 
 sources would reveal to us the conditions governing the lives 
 of the personages in whose careers we may now be supposed 
 to be absorbed. Chained to the car of marching events, 
 this history is forced to follow where fortune leads the per 
 sonages ; the historian serving modestly the part of chorus, 
 obtruding his mask now and then like Bottom and his 
 friends in the poet s Elfin Dream. In deference to the just 
 prejudice of the reader Trajan s odious association with the 
 anarch forces of rational heterodoxy, Communism, has been 
 kept as much as possible in the dim outline of the picture, 
 as Josephus, writing of Saul, would have touched with 
 reluctant lightness upon those episodes in his life after he 
 passed from the feet of Gamaliel and the perfect teachings 
 of the law, when his head was turned on the journey to 
 Damascus ! 
 
 Like the majority of the toilers who sought the shrine of 
 art in Paris, Trajan had found the Areopagus of liberty 
 open to him, and he had gladly entered. It was as natural to 
 become a conspirator under the Empire as a patriot in the 
 colonies under King George. All that was self-respecting, 
 generous, inspired by chimerical impulses, gravitated as 
 inevitably to the secret clubs as magnetic particles to 
 their afftnitative poles. Of the ten thousand students in the 
 Latin quarter, seven-tenths were regularly enrolled members 
 
THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIR TEENS. 195 
 
 in distinctive societies, having small relation with the united 
 or general union, but all animated by a love of liberty and 
 vague dreams of revolution. The executive society acting 
 for all, was known as Les Trcize Treize The Thirteen 
 Thirteens but commonly called the Treize. In this 
 Sanhedrim there were thirteen deputies from every club, 
 representing artists, artisans, architects, divinity, law, medi 
 cine, journalists, poets, novelists, farmers, dramatists, soldiers, 
 and politicians. In this wonderful company were to be 
 found the most eminent names in all these callings. Prevost 
 Paradol had been president until he joined the Ollivier 
 Schism, and in his place Gambetta had been uproariously 
 installed. 
 
 This organization was in relation with subsidiary societies, 
 called filles des Treize, in every Commune in France. 
 Five thousand francs a year were set aside in each to go 
 into the treasury of the central Commune, whenever the 
 Empire was overthrown. Its constitution was modeled 
 on the Brook farm experiment, but its political scope was 
 the decentralization of France. Its articles forbade war, 
 general taxation and capital punishment. Taxes were to be 
 levied by the Commune or township alone. There was to 
 be no army ; no navy ; no executive ; no general ministry. 
 Each township in France was to regulate its own affairs, 
 and when complications arose they were to be settled as 
 individual litigations. By the abolition of the centralizing 
 forces of government, the ambitious were to be shorn of 
 opportunities to entangle the people in wars, waste the pub 
 lic substance and distract individual efforts from the only 
 legitimate purposes of life, subsistence and happiness. 
 
 This earthly Elysium was not wholly believed in by all the 
 enthusiasts who made up the membership but all believed 
 firmly that a Republic governed on the Jeffersonian prin 
 ciple would emerge from its solidarity. Trajan, as president 
 of the artist delegation urged the perfect feasibility of the 
 Commune based, as he said, on the creed of the first com- 
 
196 TRAJAN. 
 
 munard, the Nazarene. Sometimes asked by his opponents 
 in the General Assembly, why the doctrines were not prac 
 ticed in America, he would retort, that it was because the 
 fathers had left their work but half done. That " the country 
 had fallen into the hands of the slave drivers, when the con 
 stitution was adopted, and had been seized by a plutocracy 
 in 1868. That the fate of the union was a proof of the 
 wisdom of the plan of pure township government, or Com 
 munism, as the tendencies in America were precisely those 
 which had driven France to revolution in 1787. More of 
 the people s money was wasted in Washington annually 
 than would subsist all the homeless of Europe in the dignity 
 of small peaceful citizenship as the Commune contemplates." 
 He was listened to with great attention, but the ranks were 
 firm, the ambitious and self-seeking ridiculing the idea as a 
 dream, the sincere and generous worshiping it as a new 
 gospel, that should restore society to patriarchal repose. 
 
 Human judgments, though rarely leaning to the merciful, 
 unlike criminal justice, do consider pleas in mitigation. 
 For a decade the world saw only the atrocious in the idea 
 under which all that was vile masqueraded in Paris in 1871. 
 Hence you are to forbear with Trajan now as you see him 
 the evangel of a creed that was later to stand for every thing 
 monstrous and abhorrent in revolted human nature. The 
 doctrine of Communism, as the sagacious reader knows, is 
 but a half truth, until human nature changes. 
 
 The world is ruled by half truths infinitely more mischiev 
 ous, but their incompleteness is not yet acknowledged, though 
 perfectly demonstrable. " Society rests on half truths, 
 crutches of clay," as Trajan once called them, discussing the 
 subject in the Treize, " which dissolve into their component 
 elements, when the inundating waters of light arise about 
 them and leave their victims helpless in the mire of infidelity 
 and cynicism. " The " whole truth," he proclaimed, " is always 
 radical. One truth must, by its very completeness, impinge 
 on some other truth, as two globes touch in revolving. It is 
 
THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEEN S. 197 
 
 only when a verity is launched into the forces of the mind 
 that commotion and revolution result ! Loyola launched a 
 fact among the pigmy half truths of his time that broadened 
 the narrow faith of mankind ; so did Pym and Milton and 
 Cromwell and Voltaire, and the result was violent efferves 
 cence and truth left as a solid residuum." 
 
 The Treize embalmed these mystic theories in a 
 pamphlet, and Trajan was regarded as a new Rousseau. 
 
 Elliot was curious to be initiated into these wonderful sym- 
 posise, and while the family were in transit to Crecy, Trajan 
 took the opportunity to gratify this laudable research into 
 the infinite of ideal politics. Trajan, working at his easel, and 
 Elliot, lounging among the treasures of the studio, the forego 
 ing was confided to him, as a possible convert to the Samari 
 tan creed. Or sometimes, with Philip, the two young men 
 explored the medieval mysteries of the old quarter, with a 
 delight as profound as Hugo s in " Notre Dame." 
 
 Trajan knew his Paris as intimately and reverently as Bal 
 zac or Sue, and could discourse by the hour on the worthies 
 that made the Marais and Latin Pays the home of history 
 and legend. This resource in Trajan bound Elliot by a new 
 bond ; he knew Paris historically, but its architectural won 
 ders, not found in the books, he knew only in the super 
 ficial way most strangers are satisfied to pass over the 
 obscure memorials in which its older quarters abound. In 
 the quarter called the Marais, where the splendid society of 
 the old capital was concentrated, Trajan revealed edifices 
 upon which the eyes of Richelieu had rested familiarly, thresh 
 olds over which a Retz, a Maintenon, a Conde had stepped 
 daily ; gabled roofs under which Madame de Sevigne 
 had prattled those delightful small-beer chronicles which 
 reveal the wit and gayety and love-making and intrigue 
 and tragedy of the time, when France was as great as the 
 French were joyous and polished and adventurous in love 
 and war. 
 
 In these fanciful jaunts they dined wherever the pangs 
 
198 TRAJAN. 
 
 of hunger overtook them in the fervor of their exploration. 
 Under the luminous revivals of Trajan, Elliot began to com 
 prehend the passionate devotion of the sons of Lutetia to 
 the city of their sires. He was hardly less surprised at the 
 young man s knowledge of the city, than his acquaintance 
 with citizens. In every street he was stopped and saluted 
 fraternally, and Elliot remarked that the people were for 
 the most part artisans of the middle or working class. 
 
 " When, in heaven s name, do you find time to know all 
 these folk ? " 
 
 Trajan laughed. " I don t know half of them hardly 
 even by sight but the signal of the Treize makes us all 
 comrades. I give it more from curiosity than any thing 
 else. I like to see the universality of our brotherhood." 
 
 " I should imagine all Paris part of your band, from the 
 number you meet." 
 
 " All Paris will be, you may be sure, before many 
 years." 
 
 Once or twice during these rambles, the friends encount 
 ered Jules Carnot, who stared in undisguised amazement at 
 the young millionaire s companion and vicinage. He made 
 much of Trajan in his new attitude of confidant to the 
 envied Arden, but the painter did not invite the intimacy. 
 His coldness and taciturnity when Jules made one of the 
 party surprised Elliot and Kent, who talked it over as 
 another of Trajan s strange " ways." Philip joined the 
 tours, as he laughingly told Trajan, to keep a conserva 
 tive guard over his impulsive kinsman, lest he should be 
 entrapped into membership in the Treize, to help establish 
 the Commune ! 
 
 " I m afraid," he added, as they emerged from a bewilder 
 ing maze of tortuous lane-like streets grim tunnel cuts 
 in the solid piles of massive creamy stone " that our adroit 
 friend, Napoleon III., hasn t secured the safety he imagines, 
 if after a hundred years of demolishing and street widening, 
 this wonderful quarter has many counterparts within the 
 
THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEENS. 199 
 
 walls. A well commanded mob could hold such impene- 
 tralia as these a month, if well provisioned." 
 
 " Ah ! if it ever comes to that," said Trajan with a tone 
 of solemn conviction, "there ll be food enough. All the 
 great markets are near this ancient center and the river is 
 close enough to serve as a base." 
 
 " But unless the soldiers join the mob I beg your par 
 don deliverers, no such contingency could come to pass ; 
 bases of supplies would never enter the problem a few 
 volleys of artillery and chassepots on the roofs, would soon 
 convert you to an imperial peace." 
 
 " Well, it may be so unless I am greatly mistaken we 
 shall have a chance to test the matter one of these days. 
 The madness of the imperialists points to an early oppor 
 tunity, and you may be sure there are half a million desper 
 ate enough to try the issue. They are rushing to war, and 
 their extremity will be the republic s opportunity." 
 
 "A reason the more for its baseness," retorted Philip 
 with a shrug ; " mischief is the measure of the mob in poli 
 tics and war, and your friends will discredit whatever they 
 intend of good, by striking even their enemies in the 
 back." 
 
 They passed over the bridge of Arts to the Latin quarter, 
 under the portico of the Immortals, and up the Rue 
 Mazarin to the Rue de 1 Ancienne Comedie and entered the 
 Cafe Procope. Dinner over, they remained to meet the 
 students, who made the place a rendezvous in those exciting 
 days. Every one seemed to know every one else so inti 
 mately that only given names were heard. Trajan explained 
 that it was more precaution than intimacy, as the spies of 
 Pietri abounded in the place, reporting the incendiary 
 vivacities of the over-inflamed propagandists. The conver 
 sation was carried on in the general loudness that marks the 
 prandial Frenchman, sipping his coffee in chalice-like gob 
 let " Mazagran " as it is called. 
 "And is the cafe" just as it was when Beaumarchais sate here 
 
200 TRAJAN. 
 
 that famous first night that Figaro failed in the Comedie ? 
 opposite," asked Elliot, as he gazed around at the red plush 
 sofas and marble-topped tables. 
 
 "Hardly any change, except in the upholstering," replied 
 Trajan. " Revolutionary as they are in ideas, the French 
 are the most conservative and preservative of races in habits 
 and surroundings. These walls, as you see them, Beau- 
 marchais, Marshal Saxe, Voltaire, Diderot, John Law, 
 Franklin and the worthies of the cyclopedia, saw them a 
 hundred years ago. The lower floor covered more space in 
 those days. Up stairs every thing remains the same. You 
 shall see the table where the young Voltaire sipped his 
 tipple, played ecarte and recited verses from his wicked 
 Pucelle, to the roysterers of the Well-Beloved Louis frail 
 court. It is a mosaic of names, carved by the wits and 
 celebrities of those gallant times, and is worshiped as the 
 manes of the godless old cynic who chattered his brilliant 
 blasphemies over it. But hush, there is Gambetta, with a 
 speech in his eye." At the entrance of the Hotspur of the 
 Republic, every one suspended the phrase on his lip and 
 waited to salute the dark swarthy figure as he passed from 
 one to another of those he knew. 
 
 " What is the matter with his left eye ? it has a fixed and 
 glassy stare, quite horrible to see," asked Elliot, after the 
 leader had shaken hands with Trajan and passed on up 
 stairs, where he always sate from eleven o clock until 
 one. 
 
 " It is glass ; he is said to have put his eye out to prevent 
 being apprenticed to a watch maker in his native town 
 of Cahors. Let us go up and hear his comments on current 
 events. He reads the papers aloud and then gives, what 
 the French call, his appreciation of affairs." 
 
 Gambetta was standing beside a column when the young 
 men reached the second floor. He was then quite slim. 
 His shining black hair fell like a mane to his shoulders. 
 His tawny southron face shone as if in the exuding of the 
 
THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEEN S. 201 
 
 oils with which Provencal food is garnished. He was in 
 vigorous health and looked thirty, while he had passed his 
 thirty-eighth birthday. Dressed in the limit of Bohemian 
 carelessness an alpaca frock and loose baggy trowsers, not 
 long enough to cover his scarlet stockings, he would have 
 been taken for a druggist s clerk in slovenly neglige. His 
 hands were large, clumsy, and very white, in grotesque con 
 trast with his reddish-brown complexion. His manner easy, 
 jovial, gay, he seemed to be the natural comrade of every 
 good fellow waiting for a revolution to turn up. His voice, 
 as he read, was like the lingering echo of silver chimes, 
 clear, resonant, penetrating. He stirred Elliot to the mar 
 row as he read the report of a recent speech of the Emperor, 
 interpolating a biting gibe at each pause. With these came 
 animated responses from the rest as the sentiments they 
 cherished in the voice they loved rang out over the din of 
 clinking glasses. While Gambetta was reading, another 
 group entered and took seats near Trajan and his friend. 
 
 Every body in the room bowed and Trajan whispered the 
 names : Gustave Flourens, Dombrowski, Rigault and Ferre, 
 of the advanced communist party. By midnight the great 
 hall was quite full and Gambetta rapped the meeting to 
 order. He then reviewed the political situation and felt 
 sanguine that events were moving so fast, that it was safe to 
 ask his friends to be ready to take the responsibility of 
 government. The recent plebiscite shook t,he Bonaparte 
 dynasty. The army upon which it rested was falling away. 
 
 Flourens spoke to the same effect. He had reports from 
 all the International Lodges. The people were waiting the 
 signal ; " When it comes, we must not only be ready to rule, 
 we must be prepared to execute the robbers who are 
 plundering France." He asked that an executive council, 
 such as Danton directed, should be formed in advance and 
 he craved the glory of sacrificing the chiefs of the imperial 
 conspiracy. The faint applause following this sanguinary 
 sally, did not discourage Ferre, a slim boyish looking fellow 
 
202 TRAJAN. 
 
 with pallid, whiskered and malignant face, large lustrous 
 black eyes, hidden under steel rimmed glasses from sup 
 porting the proposition with fervor. He, for his part, 
 desired to be assigned the place of executioner. He would 
 make such an example of tyrants as should render the 
 people free from any future seizure of their rights by the 
 cattle called kings and emperors. He desired to have as 
 his epitaph, the man that beheaded Bonaparte and that arch- 
 Jesuit his wife. He continued in this strain, growing more 
 and more vehement, until several voices called him to order. 
 
 Trajan rose and glancing in reproach at the speaker, 
 declared himself shocked by such sentiments. For his part, 
 he lamented that a noble cause should be made equivocal 
 by the expressions of such intention on the part of any of 
 its members. " The cardinal doctrine of the creed that holds 
 us together," he said, is " sinlessness from blood. How then, 
 my comrades, can you reconcile such ferocious utterances as 
 we have just listened to, with loyalty to our order ? I for one 
 repel them. I for one declare that if Madame Bonaparte 
 were in peril from these comrades, I would protect her at 
 the risk of my life. I would do more ; I would have my 
 right arm cut off before harm should come to Bonaparte or 
 any of the renegades who keep the people from their own 
 by seizing such incendiary sayings as these we have just 
 heard, and holding them up as the cardinal principles of 
 liberty. I repudiate murder in any form, legalized by a 
 false system of laws, or condemned by the conscience of 
 mankind, as assassination." 
 
 Trajan sat down, acclaimed by three-fourths of the com 
 pany. Ferre, rising, came to the table, his eyes gleaming 
 wickedly through his glasses. " I congratulate you, camarade. 
 We shall see whose methods receive the suffrage of the 
 majority when the commune unfurls its flag." 
 
 " Yes, we shall see," replied Trajan, tranquilly, " but I 
 give warning that if yours is approved I am no longer with 
 the movement." 
 
THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEENS. 203 
 
 " Your speech was enough to show that, it might have 
 been pronounced in Bonaparte s ante-chamber. I recom 
 mend you to try it there," and with a sinister laugh he 
 rejoined Rigault, who broke out in boisterous laughter, as 
 the sallies were recounted to him. 
 
 When the meeting broke up, Elliot pointed out a work 
 man in a blouse, who had been furtively writing while the 
 speeches were going on. He had, Elliot said, listened to 
 Trajan s remarks and taken down every word of them. 
 
 " It is a mouchard. He is sent here by Pietri, chief of 
 police; at every meeting there is a different one. Sometimes 
 a student, sometimes a workingman, sometimes an elegant 
 lounger. These assemblages are only blinds, our real work 
 is done in a subterranean hall adjoining the Cloiserie de 
 Lilas, where the students swarm by thousands to dance, and 
 slip out unobserved by the spies." 
 
 " Do you know you have made an enemy for life of that 
 Ferre fellow ? I never saw malignity so horribly stamped on 
 a human countenance as it was on his while you were speak 
 ing. If this republic of yours ever comes, with any thing 
 like the excesses of 1793, I advise you to give Paris a wide 
 berth." 
 
 " He s a poor animal, that. I had a row with him in the 
 session the other night and shall report him for misfeasance 
 at the next meeting." 
 
 The next night, as a contrast, Trajan accepted an invita 
 tion to the Jardin Mabille. Philip joined them with Jules 
 and the Vicomte Bellechasse. 
 
 " This is the antipodes of the feast of reasoning revolt you 
 offered us last night, Gray," said Elliot, as the two entered 
 the fairy lanes of light and beauty. " Your devotees wor 
 ship the coldness of Platonic sensuousness ; here we have 
 the ministry of the carnal." 
 
 "Yes, this is where Caesarism trains and debauches its 
 worshipers, and you ll see the result when men s work is 
 expected from these effeminate voluptuaries." 
 
204 TRAJAN. 
 
 " What a wonderfully beautiful place it is though ! What 
 a shame that it should be such a haunt of high life degraded. 
 I should like to have Bella and Edith see these wonderful 
 effects of illumination, in the grottoes, that fantastic play of 
 hues on the sober linden leaves. The place is enchanting 
 to me and I own I always have a mad impulse to dance 
 when I come." 
 
 " What ! do decent people dance here ? " asked Trajan 
 in surprise. 
 
 Jules, who heard the question, laughed immoderately. 
 Slipping behind the two friends and taking their arms he 
 pushed them forward under the glare of the circular net 
 work of lamps that made the dancing circle bright as midday. 
 A superbly arranged orchestra, led by a princely-looking 
 person in full evening dress, and decorated with an order, 
 was playing. On the shining floor surrounding the canopied 
 pavilion of the musicians a score of dames in magnificent 
 trained robes, sparkling with diamonds, were at pause 
 between two parts of an Offenbach quadrille. As the music 
 struck up and the dance began Jules said : 
 
 "You are in the best company in the land ; do you see 
 that brisk, middle-sized young man, who looks if he were 
 dying of consumption ? That is the Due de Grammont 
 Caderousse, whose fortune is disappearing in supplying the 
 caprices of that stately blue-eyed blonde, moving in a sort 
 of minuet step before him. Nor is she to be sniffed at, 
 monsieur," he added, as Bellechasse and Philip grinned. 
 " That is the companion of princes, * friend of the Emperor s 
 cousin Plon-Plon, queen regnant of the demi-monde." 
 
 He mentioned her name. It was the famous English 
 Pompadour, whose carnival left a swath of ruin in the 
 noblest families of France. 
 
 " That handsome fellow you see there is the Prince 
 d Amboise, slim in fortune, but of the proudest house in 
 France, and with titles enough to fill a page of the Almanac 
 de Gotha. The little brunette dancing with him presided 
 
THE CLUB OF THE THIRTEEN THIRTEENS. 205 
 
 for years in the villa of the King of Holland, at 
 Meudon." 
 
 " Bellechasse, wasn t there some scandal about Amboise ? " 
 asked Philip. 
 
 "Yes," said the vicomte, "he married, irregularly, an 
 English girl who was thought to be enormously rich. She 
 turned out poor, his people wouldn t recognize the marriage, 
 and so soon as he learned that she was poor, he didn t care 
 to. The girl s people carried the case to the courts, but he 
 knew he was perfectly safe. The ceremony performed 
 between minors, or without the consent of the family, is null 
 in France. The girl went mad, and his family to escape her 
 importunities put her in a madhouse. She escaped, however, 
 and was found in the Seine the other day. She left a little 
 girl, or little boy, I don t remember which. It was kid 
 napped by the girl s family, and the Prince is looking around 
 for another parti. He is inordinately ambitious and dreams 
 of attaining the power of his great ancestors, who were 
 ministers under Henri IV. and Louis XIV. He has brains 
 and capacity, and if Henri Cinq ever comes to what he calls 
 his own, he will be a modern Richelieu." 
 
 " I can see from where we stand," continues Jules, after the 
 vicomte ceased, " the sons of three ministers of the Empire, 
 a half-dozen marquises, including that pitiable creature De 
 Foulk, who married the diva. The Empress brought about 
 the match to save the marquisate from the poor-house. The 
 wedding dot la marquise gave her daughter-in-law was a box 
 of pearl powder of which the noble family alone have the 
 secret. Figaro declares it a bonanza for the diva as she 
 will force all the impresarios to use it in the opera. The 
 marquis, who used to live in very cheap restaurants, now 
 wastes heaps of gold on the opera dames, who fail on the 
 scene. He has been the main dependence of a gambling 
 club in the Place Vendome since he married the diva s 
 millions. In return for all this I am told he treats her to 
 the rod that Solomon advises for the unruly in the shape 
 of fists." 
 
206 TRAJAN. 
 
 "How on earth could a sane woman ever marry a man 
 with that face ? Profligacy was never more plainly stamped," 
 said Elliot, in a tone of disgust. 
 
 "You don t know much of women, monsieur," responded 
 the vicomte laughing, and raising his shoulders, while his 
 eyelids drooped, " a title, if it be sonorous enough, will catch 
 any of them from the Puritan Anglaise to the piquante, 
 insouciante Americaine. 
 
 "Perhaps I don t," said Elliot a little coldly, "but I 
 venture to dispute the last assertion. Only our shoddy 
 people and nouveaux riches, who have no countenance at 
 home, marry abroad in the way you say." 
 
 " It may be true, monsieur, but Americaines are always 
 in the market here with heaps of gold to exchange for titles ; 
 if you doubt, go over the list with Jules at your leisure. I 
 can count a score already married since I came into the 
 social world, and I know of several who would not refuse 
 my own modest title and impoverished exchequer. But I 
 mean to set myself high and try to get beauty with gold," 
 and he laughed quite complacently at this candid confession 
 of acquiescence in the ruling code of the time. 
 
 The dancing had reached an Eleusinian abandon of move 
 ment by this time, and the young men walked out under the 
 leafy arches, where the birds, astonished by the unduly pro 
 longed light, murmured musical remonstrances from the 
 verdurous bowers and grottoes scarcely heeding the amor 
 ous whisperings of the boozy gaillards, as they advanced 
 through the fairy dells. 
 
A CHA TEA U AT CR&CY. 207 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 A CHATEAU AT CR^CY. 
 
 THAT much-contested point in old-time debating clubs, 
 the pleasures of city or country life, finds no place in 
 the unsettled problems of French existence. The French 
 man is as rare as a white blackbird, who does not count upon 
 the time when the sordid struggle of city life shall come to 
 an end, when he shall betake himself to the village, vale or 
 brookside where his younger years were passed. Or, if city 
 born, to some secluded suburb of the town where he may 
 share his heart with Pan and Pallas. While the city of the 
 Violet Crown was never dearer to the Greek than Paris to 
 the Frenchman, the 4atter sighs for the fields that the former 
 never beheld but with disgust. It would perhaps be rash to 
 say that Crecy was the most charming landscape in France, 
 every mile of which captivates the lover of the tranquil and 
 picturesque, but it is safe to say that no other equal space of 
 the earth s surface is more favored in the natural and artificial 
 beauties that enchant the imagination. Though but an hour 
 from the teeming life of Paris, the little valley wherein the 
 ancient village nestles seems as distant from the madding 
 crowd as the most secluded hamlet of the Savoyard Alps. 
 Elliot made it a point to wait for his friend, lest he should 
 make some pretext of not coming at the last moment. At 
 the little station of Esbly they were entrusted to the hospita 
 ble care of Madame Perrinot, who drove the old-fashioned 
 diligence to all the little towns between the railway and 
 Meaux famous as the episcopal seat of the renowned Bos- 
 suet. Madame Perrinot had the reddest cheeks and blackest 
 eyes ever seen on a mortal woman. Madame s only griefs 
 in life were a rival line and a drunken reprobate of a hus 
 band. The latter she managed with intrepid decision when 
 the worst came to the worst, but to circumvent the other she 
 
208 TRAJAN. 
 
 was forever called on to exert the most diverse expedients. 
 Could she have been at her diligence door and the station 
 gate at one and the same moment, every thing would have 
 worked well. But, alas, the bloom of her red cheeks could 
 be in one place only. Claude, her small son, was not always 
 equal to retaining the clients her persuasive bloom captured 
 at the station gate ; for it must be owned that the rival dili 
 gence was far more inviting than the decrepit nondescript 
 Madame Perrinot put at the disposal of her patrons. What 
 with the red cheeks and cordial welcome of " La Perrinot," 
 as she was called for short, and the recommendations of her 
 clients, she bore off most of the wayfarers descending at the 
 station. It was noted, too, that the men invariably gave the 
 preference to La Perrinot. The ill-natured gossips along 
 the route, in the tattling towns of Romaine, Breuil, Les 
 Huppes and Francoy, declared that it was the shrewd tongue 
 and red cheeks of the honest Perrinot that brought about 
 this scandalous monopoly. On the other hand, many of the 
 rich bourgeoisie in the chateaux of the district protested 
 that they chose the conveyance of Jelybotte because it was 
 more commodious and had springs, and that La Perrinot s 
 vehicle was a torture. When the train stopping one day, 
 La Perrinot spied Trajan she saluted him through the 
 iron railings as one who meets an old friend. 
 
 "A la bonne heure, Monsieur Traje" the name had al 
 ways been too much for madame s tongue " I expected 
 you. I knew from Madame Arden that you were coming." 
 
 " A relic of former conquest ? " asked Elliot as Trajan 
 shook hands with his old friend. 
 
 " Yes indeed, the best of friends is Madame Perrinot. 
 Let me present you." 
 
 Jelybotte of the rival diligence glowered at the young 
 men. While the stuffy seats of La Perrinot were all taken, 
 but one patron, an English governess, had the whole of the 
 Jelybotte s capacious chariot to herself and her boxes. 
 Madame Perrinot s joy was in such a triumph as this. 
 
A CHA TEA U AT CRECY. 209 
 
 Victory to be complete, must taste, to the full, the humiliation 
 of the vanquished. " Come, Jelybotte, give me a hand with 
 this heavy baggage you have the time," she added, ma 
 liciously glancing over her shoulder at the single pilgrim in 
 the diligence. " Perhaps I shall ask you to take some of 
 the boxes." 
 
 It often happened that madame s passengers were in a 
 hurry for their baggage and could not wait until she re 
 turned to fetch it. On these rare occasions Jelybotte was 
 patronized by the mistress of the diligence. He gave her 
 a hand with an air of ludicrous resignation but Tra 
 jan unconscious of the compact seeing the crazy old 
 vehicle would be over-laden, called out : 
 
 " You may leave our baggage for your next return. 
 
 " Trh bien" responded madame complacently, shooting 
 a glance out of her wicked eye at her crest-fallen competitor. 
 
 " But it is not very well," roared that indignant victim of 
 his rival s wiles, contrasting his empty coach with the 
 shabby, but crowded, vehicle of his enemy. " You knew 
 when you offered me the baggage, that it was only a ruse to 
 get my help. You have served me that coup before, and I 
 won t stand it. I shall take the load all the same and you 
 shall pay me two francs." 
 
 La Perrinot loved combat, when she had a good audience. 
 She turned from the diligence, where she had been prepar 
 ing to mount, and confronted the glowering Jelybotte. 
 The young men on the seat believed themselves to be 
 thoroughly familiar with the French tongue. The dialogue 
 that ensued undeceived them. But they understood enough 
 to comprehend how it was that poor Perrinot gave way to 
 his dame. I grieve to say that in the intoxication of her 
 triumph, the rosy matron eschewed decorum as well as mag 
 nanimity ; with her arms akimbo on her fat hips and prancing 
 like a pantomimist, under the very nose of her exasperated 
 rival, she favored the company with something more than 
 plain-speaking, until in the heat of the discussion Jelybotte 
 14 
 
210 TRAJAN. 
 
 incautiously alluded to domestic mysteries of the Perrinots, 
 which elicited some revelations as to the Jelybotte house 
 hold that Rousseau would have hesitated to embalm in the 
 expansiveness of his confessions. The poor man put his 
 hands to his ears, fled to his vehicle and drove off cracking 
 his long whip furiously and lashing the horses to revenge his 
 discomfiture. Madame mounted to her seat with unim 
 paired serenity, confiding to the young men, who sat outside 
 with her, that the fellow was a worthless imbecile and she 
 didn t see how decent people could consent to ride with 
 him ? 
 
 Elliot allowed that it was surprising in view of the dis 
 closures madame had found it necessary to make. 
 
 "And those are not the worst do you know," she began 
 vivaciously, plying her whip with energy, as if the wretch 
 Jelybotte were there instead of the unoffending sorrel " do 
 you know" 
 
 "Tell me," interposed Trajan to divert the honest woman 
 from further scandal, which he knew from past experience 
 would be carried to embarrasing details,"- " tell me, are 
 the Comtesse Epinay and family at Crecy this season ? " 
 
 " Ah yes indeed, all the villas are full. There is an 
 American prince in the Chateau Duclos, with an army of 
 servants and I think a hundred horses." 
 
 " What is the name?" asked Trajan, more to keep the 
 voluble lady from her favorite topic than to hear the name. 
 
 " Gobel Govel something like that they have no end of 
 millions but doubtless, they are friends of monsieur, 
 since you will be near neighbors." 
 
 The young man had no friends of that name, madame 
 was pained to learn. She continued chattering incessantly, 
 but as neither Trajan nor Elliot responded or encouraged 
 further confidence she soon relapsed into silence and gave 
 them an opportunity to study the incomparable landscape. 
 The road, hard as rock and smooth as the surface of a 
 stream, ran fenceless over low ridges, covered with lush 
 
A CHA 7^EA U AT CRECY. 211 
 
 grasses and golden grain. Tall poplars set at regular dis 
 tances made it a vast vernal lane,- barred with shimmering 
 sun rays. From the top of each ridge, villages nestling in 
 fluffy verdure could be seen on either hand. Sometimes the 
 mansard and gables of a chateau could be seen as the main 
 road crossed the way to a seignorial domain. A canal for 
 irrigation followed the road all the way, its waters as clear 
 and limpid as a mountain stream ; at each village this was 
 crossed by venerable granite arches upon whose parapets 
 dates as far back as 1640 were easily discernible. 
 
 " This is simply enchanting," exclaimed Elliot, as the 
 diligence climbed to the last hill, from which Crecy could 
 be seen embowered in foliage. " How can any one consent 
 to live immured in cities with such divine pictures as this at 
 hand?" 
 
 " Divine pictures don t fill the purse, nor keep the wheels 
 of industry in movement," replied Trajan absently. "The 
 delight of this place" is that you never tire of its tranquil 
 beauty while I confess I do tire of mountains and the 
 rugged wild woods. I could pass my life here in perfect 
 contentment." 
 
 " I doubt it," said Elliot. " It is too perfect, you would 
 soon sigh for something to readjust, something to change. 
 All this seems so studiously graceful and exquisite that the 
 very completeness of it would madden me. I like to have 
 some handiwork in transforming nature to the physical or 
 aesthetic wants of man." 
 
 " That is consistent with your theory of labor. But we 
 shall be at " Les Charmettes" in a moment." The diligence 
 left the high way and turned into a wide shaded carriage- 
 road leading to a mass of light colored buildings, two stories 
 high and crowned with a mansard and square dormer 
 windows. As the diligence crunched around the circular 
 graveled way the piazza of the chateau came into view. 
 There was a group waiting, and when the young men were 
 recognized, a lively waving of hats and handkerchiefs. La 
 
212 TRAJAN. 
 
 Perrinot brought her horses around with an imposing sweep, 
 and in a moment Edifh was hanging on Elliot s neck. 
 He kissed her fondly, and releasing her as Mrs. Arden came 
 down the two steps to embrace him, he whispered : " Be 
 very informal to Gray." She gave the young man her hand, 
 confiding her delight, that he was to be one of the family of 
 " Charmettes." There was a very cordial welcome for 
 Trajan from the whole family, Bella coming last and 
 remarking : 
 
 " I suppose, Mr. Gray, you know the chateau of Char 
 mettes familiarly, as you must have been here often, while 
 at Crecy ? " 
 
 " Yes, the Dartleys are delightful people, and I was re 
 ceived very kindly." 
 
 " Edith and I have been on voyages of discovery in the 
 house, and we are confident we have come upon a ghost ; 
 but we have waited for Elliot and you to confront the 
 monster are you up in spirits ?" asked Bella. 
 
 " I sometimes raise them," replied Trajan smiling. 
 
 " From fancy, or the vasty deep ? " 
 
 " No from the blues." 
 
 " Mr. Gray, we have arranged your room next to my 
 son s, and the young ladies have taken upon themselves the 
 responsibility of choosing you a studio in the roof Bella 
 will tell you the reason. I don t profess to understand so 
 much about the external necessities of your art," said Mrs. 
 Arden, as Pierre came to take up such luggage as the young 
 men had brought from the station. The Charmettes dif 
 fered slightly from most French chateaux of the seven 
 teenth century. It had been almost entirely rebuilt within 
 a hundred years. Instead of a quadrangle, the center was 
 flanked by two wings, leaving a court in front and rear. The 
 halls instead of dividing the buildings ran along the rear 
 wall giving place for spacious chambers on every floor. The 
 staircases were at each end of the wings instead of the 
 middle, which was taken up by a great suit of drawing- 
 
A CHA TEA U AT CR&CY. 213 
 
 rooms. The large dining hall seating two score guests, and an 
 almost equally spacious breakfast room, were in the south 
 wing. The owner must have designed the Charmettes for good 
 cheer, and plenty to share it, for fifty people could be very 
 comfortably housed, while the cellars and kitchens afforded 
 place for a year s provisions. The furnishing was of the 
 white and gold, called Louis XIV., not unwelcome for 
 summer, but fragile and chilling in winter. The rich tap 
 estries and rugs covering the halls and chambers were 
 brought by the Ardens, the French rarely using carpets or 
 hangings in country houses in summer. 
 
 The young men found sumptuous quarters in the south 
 wing, a dressing room alone separating them. A vast can 
 opied bed, which Elliot likened to a funeral car, with the head 
 scrupulously to the north, took up a large part of each 
 room. As the irreverent Elliot was discoursing on the 
 quaint objects, whose uses puzzled him, Edith s voice was 
 heard in the hall. 
 
 " I came to tell you that you will only have time to dress. 
 We dine at five and drive after dinner, unless Mr. Gray feels 
 fatigued and oh, Ned who do you imagine has taken the 
 neighboring chateau Duclos ? I know you could never 
 guess." 
 
 " No, I don t think I could ! Not our French cook ? " 
 
 " Don t be absurd." 
 
 " Well, I don t see why he shouldn t, judging by the way 
 he plundered us. Nothing would be more natural than his 
 keeping near our mother, as he must know she is a gold mine 
 under his hands." 
 
 " I won t have you tease mamma about that odious fellow. 
 But aren t you curious to know our neighbors ? " 
 
 " Yes, since I know it will please you, pussikin. Who 
 in the name of all that s mysterious can it be ? " asked Elliot 
 as if his happiness were staked on the response. 
 
 " I shall not tell you, Mr. Indifference. I m not going to 
 be treated like a magpie chattering gossip, and I know that 
 
2 14 TRAJAN, 
 
 you won t be able to give your mind to your neck-tie, won 
 dering who it is." 
 
 " Who the magpie is ? " asked Elliot innocently. " Why 
 that s Bella." But Edith wouldn t remain for further tor 
 menting, and ran down stairs. When the young men 
 reached the dining room Bella came up to Elliot laughing and 
 demanding that he should do penance for abusing his sis 
 ter. 
 
 " What, by calling my cousin Bella a magpie ? It was only a 
 guess, I assure you. I should have said owl if I had thought 
 for a moment." 
 
 Bella opened her eyes. " This is too mysterious for me. 
 Edith told me that she couldn t stimulate your curiosity 
 about the occupant of the chateau yonder. My own im 
 pression is that you already knew, for in gossip men are far 
 more curious than women." 
 
 " Yes," said Trajan, smiling at Bella, " you have divined 
 his duplicity. Madame La Perrinot had already told us that 
 it was an American and a millionaire. It is true she wasn t 
 quite sure of the name, but that s a mere trifle compared 
 with the fact that he s a millionaire. Millionaires, like kings, 
 require no names to distinguish them from common folks." 
 
 Elliot burst into a hearty laugh. " Ton my soul, Gray, 
 you re a reckless satirist. The young lady before you will 
 not be apt to forget your humor, and if madame our mamma 
 were present, she would probably have something to say." 
 
 Trajan looked from Elliot to Bella and blushed. The 
 fact that the Ardens and Briscoes might also be millionaires 
 flashed upon him. Elliot hastened to turn the subject. 
 
 " Who is Gobel I never heard of him. Do you know 
 him or them, Edith ? " That young lady justly outraged by 
 her previous rebuff, declined to enlighten the scoffer, and it 
 was not until seated at the table that Mrs. Arden said : 
 " Apropos of the drive, Elliot, we shall be favored with a 
 glimpse of the Grovels, who have taken the Duclos cha 
 teau." 
 
A CHA TEA U AT CRECY. 2 1 5 
 
 " The Grovels ! " gasped Elliot. " You don t mean it, 
 mother? " 
 
 " Why not ? They left their cards yesterday, and you 
 must call in due time." 
 
 " If the Grovels ever find my card in their tray they ll 
 have to steal it. I don t want to know such people ! " 
 
 " But as head of the family, I don t see how you can very 
 well escape it," replied Mrs. Arden. " Of course they will 
 know you are here in fact young Mr. Grovel asked me if 
 the men folks were corning out." 
 
 " And what do you suppose he proposed to Bella ? " cried 
 Edith, looking at Elliot to avoid Bella s uneasy and reproach 
 ful glance. "He absolutely proffered her the use of one of 
 his Mexican ponies to skirmish round the * diggins as he 
 called the country." 
 
 Bella joined the burst of laughter, though she blushed, I m 
 sure I don t know why, for ten minutes afterward. 
 
 " By George ! Gray let s cultivate the Grovels and see 
 the wonderful horses. We could stand the men for the sake 
 of those remarkable beasts. If their tricks are as odd as their 
 master s, they must be well worth acquaintance. Aunt 
 Briscoe, you don t mean to say that you encouraged the 
 Grovel ! " 
 
 Aunt Briscoe s comments on character were always 
 encouraged by the younger members of the family. She had 
 some tricks of expression that convulsed Elliot with merri 
 ment. She was, however, very chary of her judgments 
 before strangers, and it was not for some time that Trajan 
 realized the shrewd profundity of this observant fain^ante. 
 Hence, when this young man asked his aunt s appreciation 
 of the Grovel she knew that he was bent upon exploiting 
 her credulity, and she gave a guarded response. 
 
 " I found the young man sensible. His manners don t 
 differ much from those of the usual underbred people of his 
 class, but considering his chances he has made very good 
 use of them. I have seen people enjoying more advantages 
 
216 TRAJAtf. 
 
 who make a much poorer figure in company," she said with 
 placid decision. 
 
 Every body laughed, and Elliot turned discomfited to his 
 cousin, asking insinuatingly whether that young lady expected 
 a disciple in the Grovel. 
 
 " I fancy, rather, that he will be an evangel in this wilder 
 ness. He gave himself a most exemplary character. He 
 confided to us that he never indulged in spirits, and the 
 habit of this country in substituting wine for water, he 
 thought an iniquity. His mother, dwelling upon * Lafayette s 
 virtues -.he drops the Washington in France remarked that 
 he would be a perfect young man if he didn t eat so much 
 tobacco." 
 
 " Eat tobacco ? " exclaimed Elliot. 
 
 " He chews tobacco, it seems, and his mother laments that 
 nothing can break the odious habit, which he learned in his 
 ranching days in Montana." 
 
 " I believe he was trying to ingratiate himself with your 
 aunt," said Mrs. Arden. " He dwelt with great fervor on 
 his unshakable resolution to remain a * teetotaler. 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe denied that this had captivated her, but 
 Elliot declared that he was going straightway to emulate the 
 Grovel by doing all his wine-bibbing in the secrecy of his 
 own chamber. 
 
 Dinner over, the young people mounted their horses, while 
 Mrs. Arden and her sister jogged after them in a light vic 
 toria. Trajan rode with Edith, and Elliot with Bella. But 
 as the roads were unknown to the latter couple, the party 
 were for the most of the time four abreast, and the artist 
 pointed out the ways leading to such scenic wonders as were 
 to be visited in turn. It was dusk as they turned back. The 
 road homeward led them past the village of Ferrieres, and 
 the sumptuous chateau of the Rothschilds, which in the dim 
 twilight seemed, at first sight, a Tuileries transplanted to this 
 vernal spot. As the party came to the high golden-barred 
 gates, an equipage was just on the point of driving off. 
 
A CHA TEA U AT CRECY. 2 1 7 
 
 " There are the Grovels," said Edith, " I recognize the 
 voice of Washington Lafayette. I won.der if he knows the 
 Baron ? " 
 
 " It is not necessary to know the Baron or his family to 
 enter the chateau," rejoined Trajan. " Cards of admission 
 can be obtained by writing to the major-domo. The 
 chateau is the most famous show-house in Europe, and the 
 first day you have leisure you could not do better than induce 
 the family to come over and examine the treasures of bric-a- 
 brac and household adornment lavished on the six score or 
 more apartments of this colossal pile." 
 
 " Which of the Rothschilds lives here ? " asked Edith, 
 looking at the vast front, with the colonnades of marble 
 shining in the moonlight. 
 
 " Baron Alphonse. It was here the Emperor and Empress 
 were entertained a year or so ago when the service solid 
 gold was melted down immediately after the event, that 
 no common lips might ever desecrate what majesty had 
 touched. The way from here to Paris, twenty-seven miles, 
 was lighted with gas ; the trees were hung with Venetian 
 lamps. The court came out by the road, in carriages fur 
 nished by Rothschild, to imitate the pageantry of Louis 
 XIV., as recorded in Watteau s canvases. The chateau itself 
 is much more sumptuous than the Tuileries, as you shall see 
 when we go through." 
 
 " I am surprised that such, treasures are safe in a lonely 
 country place like this," said Elliot. " An enterprising band 
 of the rogues that rob our banks at home, would make short 
 work of so tempting a place." 
 
 " It s not as easy a thing to do as you fancy," said Trajan. 
 " The chateau is guarded by an army of servants at least 
 two hundred, counting the stables. Then the village, con 
 nected by a subterranean way, is really but a dependence of 
 the estate. A signal from the housekeeper would bring five 
 hundred men in a few minutes. Wait until you have seen 
 the interior and you will see how well every thing is 
 guarded." 
 
- 1 3 TRAJAN. 
 
 The return to Cre cy was under the moonlight, and it was 
 after ten when the horses were sent away. Long after mid 
 night, the nightingales in the neighboring lindens were evi 
 dently astounded by lights high up in the mansard of the 
 chateau, where the two friends were putting the studio in 
 order for the anticipated work of the summer. Many a time 
 afterward the comrades recalled these ideal nights, when, 
 after the pleasures and cares of the day, they came together 
 in kind effusiveness on their mutual ground of endeavor. It 
 would be profitable as a diagnosis of the swift change going 
 on in Trajan, to follow the current of the young men s talk, 
 but as results will illustrate the lad s adaptation to his new 
 surroundings, the ingenious combats of the two may be sup 
 posed. At an age when ideas are plenty, the two were at no 
 loss for themes of infinite dilatation. The groves of the 
 Academy were not more fertile in profoundly metaphysical 
 theses. 
 
 The nightingale had ceased to sing when the friends 
 descended to their rooms, and the white roofs of Crecy were 
 bathed in floods of hazy moonlight. The morning chorus 
 had begun in the trees when Trajan arose from the window 
 and retired to tranquil dreams under the great canopy. When 
 he opened his eyes late in the morning a servant was holding 
 the curtains, and his coffee and rolls were on the little table 
 by the bed. Elliot s voice sounded from the next room car 
 oling a gay French air. At twelve o clock the household 
 gathered in the breakfast room, and thereafter each member 
 was left to his or her own devices. The yourfg ladies were 
 going to the station to meet expected guests, but Trajan, 
 declaring that he must begin the regime properly, declined 
 Elliot s invitation to accompany them, and betook himself to 
 the atelier, where the young people threatened an invasion 
 in force so soon as the new comers were bestowed in their 
 rooms. The atelier commanded a sweep of the country, and 
 Trajan standing at the window saw the cavalcade moving 
 through the grounds and followed it with his eyes until the 
 
A CHA TEA U AT CRECY. 219 
 
 poplars closed it from his sight. The servants had opened 
 the boxes, and he occupied himself in adjusting the tapes 
 tries, armor and easels. When he had ended his work the 
 apartment was an ideal studio, and though it lacked a sky 
 light, the large dormer windows on two sides gave abundance 
 of light. He fell to sketching valorously. The outlines 
 were not, however, his favorite landscape. It was a girlish 
 head with a bewitching dimpled chin and oval face, which 
 without curls and the delicacy of the lines, might have been 
 a study of Elliot. Why did he cover the sheet guiltily, an 
 hour later, as he heard footsteps approaching the door ? 
 
 " Presto, what a wizard you are, Gray ! The place has a 
 new physiognomy. It s almost as picturesque as your 
 Dragon retreat," exclaimed Elliot, who entered, followed by 
 Bella and Edith. 
 
 These charming beings were delighted with the shrine art 
 had fashioned itself. Trajan pointed out the niches in 
 which the devotees were to worship, and said with gravity : 
 
 " But here every thing is to be solemn and orderly. You 
 are not to joke and talk, as I am given to understand is the 
 habit of young ladies. The prize I offer the best worker is 
 a portrait of the prodigy who* turns out the most apt." 
 
 "In that event, you may just as well begin on Bella s at 
 once, because she is the only Arden that has what the 
 French call * suite in her undertakings. I ll lay you ten 
 to one, Gray, that she beats all in portraits within three 
 months," said Elliot, jocularly. 
 
 " Painting, unlike poetry or any other art, doesn t come 
 by assiduity. It is made up of faith and abnegation. I 
 doubt very much Miss Bella s constancy, after she has seen 
 the beauties that surround Crecy. She will feel as the 
 young poet does who reads Shakespeare and then strives to 
 put his infantile language into shape." 
 
 " But let us hope that Bella may prove an exception, for 
 there s nothing infantile about her fancies," said Edith, 
 laughing. 
 
220 TRAJAN. 
 
 "Pray let me answer for myself, Busybodies. I shall 
 be quite content if I can ever draw passably. As for the 
 mystery of color, I shall no more think of mastering that 
 than I should think of enjoying the beauties of Crecy by 
 being able to resolve them into their original elements. 
 There ll be no Rosa Bonheur nor Ary Scheffer in this gen 
 eration of the Ardens." 
 
 "Who knows ? I feel equal to a conquest," cried Edith, 
 suspending her pencil reflectively. " See how well I ve 
 caught those eyes," and she poised her head critically as 
 she surveyed a large-eyed peasant with his scythe poised 
 above his head and an expression so lugubrious that it 
 might be suspected that he was in doubt whether the uten 
 sil were an implement of toil or an improvised gibbet. 
 
 "Yes, Edith, I have remarked that you catch the eyes, 
 but don t be too confident ; art, like love, requires to go 
 deeper," and Bella gave the unwary neophyte a strange look 
 of mingled mischief and mirth. 
 
 "You re always going deep into things, Bella, and the 
 worst is, one can t follow you. What has love or depth got 
 to do with a mill landscape, and peasant, and red-haired 
 girl?" 
 
 " That depends on a good deal. If the peasant is young, 
 unmarried and sentimental, the heart should be the chief 
 study, especially if the red-haired girl is made to look pro 
 pitious," volunteered Elliot in an ex-cathedra tone, from 
 which a full knowledge of art and heart might be inferred. 
 Bella laughed softly and stole a glance at Trajan, absorbed 
 in a sheet almost entirely invisible under carelessly arranged 
 cards. 
 
 " We must inaugurate our regime by promptitude, ladies 
 and gentlemen, and I warn you that the dinner hour is near, 
 and though art is long and life short, it can t be stretched 
 by fostering," and the vandal Elliot began to gather together 
 Bella s materials. There was an outcry from both the 
 amateurs, but he was inexorable. 
 
THEO RESUMES THE COMEDY. 221 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 
 U 
 
 T 
 
 HE first state dinner at Les Charmettes is to be an 
 affair," said Elliot, distracting the artists from their 
 work as the signals of the banquet came from an emissary 
 of the butler. " As host I will take the part of chorus and 
 paint the character of the personages for your better under 
 standing of the drama. 
 
 " First in the list, Kate McNair, a distant relation of Bella s 
 father s family, a perfect trump of an old girl. Devoted to 
 match-making and the kirk. She ll have you married 
 before you mix your second pot of colors unless you look 
 sharp. She hates a Catholic as rats hate terriers or philos 
 ophers science ! She has been- in her forty-first year 
 ever since I ve known a beard s adversity a razor. She 
 wears gowns such as Johnson must have had in his eye on 
 his jaunt to the Hebrides. She has a wit like a beggar s first 
 born at breast, nipping and eager. She speaks the English 
 tongue with a cooing Scotch grace, which I think she retains 
 as a sign that the Scot has not surrendered every thing to 
 the Sassenach, that Bruce died for and Sir Walter wrote to 
 revive ; she will learn every love affair recorded in the 
 remotest corner of your inconstant heart before she has 
 known you a week. As is your knowledge of the kirk and 
 the Covenanters, so will her love be to you ; if you are 
 ignorant of a single article of the creed the Murrayites 
 and the Campbells contended for, she will feed you on the 
 porridge of disdain, and no genuflexions of the children of 
 the world will make her abide you. The Ardens she dimly 
 associates with those that were forgotten when the prophet 
 went up in fire. Bella, here, as being gifted with some of 
 her own oat-fed wit, she regards as the Zenobia of girls." 
 
 " You impudent and disrespectful mischief-maker, how 
 
222 TRAJAN. 
 
 dare you! " cries Bella. " Mr. Gray, our relation is no more 
 like the picture this insolent maligner of his kith paints, 
 than than a " 
 
 "Wasp to a humming-bird ?" 
 
 " Than a March wind to a June breeze or vinegar to 
 acid of lemon that s better, Bella, accept the amendment. 
 Well, she s weak when she comes to Bella, as I was 
 remarking in this pre-raphaelite sketch. She domineers over 
 my poor mother, wheedles Aunt Briscoe, and tolerates 
 Edith, because she, the poor child, swallows the Covenanters, 
 Knox and all, with trusting confidence, as children take 
 nauseous doses to get better terms for the next punishable 
 prank." 
 
 "I won t have Kate talked about in this way," remon 
 strated Edith. " She s an angel, a " 
 
 "Yes, she s the descendant of the angel the prophet 
 wrestled with, and inherits all the belligerence and some of 
 the prowess of her ancestor. She s like the bent hand on 
 the face of the clock, always catching the minute hand, 
 just to show that no one can pass her in the duty of the 
 hour. She will devise a sermon at the least sinful of your 
 suggestions. If you were a woman, she would make the 
 pains of Loyola a pastime, compared with your penance for 
 every new gown or casual furbelow you might thought 
 lessly assume to adorn your person. She s like the Puritan 
 Macaulay describes, who didn t mind the suffering of the 
 bear in baiting, but objected to the pleasure the sinful 
 derived in looking on. She has increased the Arden bank 
 account by the simplicity to which she has reduced our 
 wardrobe, for to have a second suit I am obliged to keep 
 chambers out of her inquisitorial reach. In the love of the 
 Lord she will get up a war in ten minutes that will split 
 families into undying feuds. Music is an abhorrence to her, 
 and there is no work of art that propitiates her, outside of 
 a lurid canvas representing John Knox impolitely pointing 
 a finger of admonition at the astonished Queen of Scots, 
 
THEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 223 
 
 whose ruff expresses the horror the beautiful face was 
 unequal to. She "" 
 
 " I won t stand such calumny ; Mr. Gray, the lady this 
 unworthy relative distorts in this outrageous fashion is the 
 soul of kindness and adores that worthless scamp ; has pet 
 ted and spoiled him all his life, and after John Knox, thinks 
 him the most perfect of mankind. She is a trifle vigorous 
 in speech, and dreadfully sharp in seizing the little points 
 one leaves undefended in the ardor of conversation. Elliot s 
 description suits her as the likening of a chestnut burr to a 
 peach," and Bella flung a glance of disdain at the wanton 
 destroyer of character. 
 
 " But in either aspect, I own to considerable dread of 
 encountering a personage so formidable," said Trajan. 
 
 " Have no fear, Mr. Gray, Kate is the sweetest and best 
 of dear old souls," and Edith looked at him with naive 
 conviction. 
 
 " Bear in mind, Gray, when the evil time comes, I have 
 done my duty as man, friend, and host. I have warned you 
 of the perils of Kate s acquaintance ; if you let the partiality 
 of these young women lull you, there will come a time of 
 regret." 
 
 " I will at once begin a studious siege of Scottish history 
 to make myself tolerable to this formidable personage." 
 
 " Well, let me go on in my part of the chorus and acquaint 
 you with the personages of these sylvan revels. I ll leave 
 the females to Bella s descriptive genius and set forth the 
 men. First, my comrade in the law school, a roaring social 
 ist, with a squint at communism as oblique as your own," 
 continued Elliot, with affable toleration of the two heretics. 
 " The most amazing young inconsequent in the world, 
 Rene Belcour, my crony in the law school, a charming fel 
 low, and like yourself a restless revolutionaire, in love 
 with every pretty girl he sees, so be on your guard, young 
 women. Alfred Claridge, correspondent of the London Par 
 thenon, making notes for essays and books. Herbert Hec- 
 
224 TRAJAN. 
 
 tor, a Harvard man, graduate in law, now switched into 
 literature, occasional correspondent of the Boston Pantarch, 
 somewhat conceited and blast, talks like Plato and acts like 
 a child of nature that is, holds the world as indisputably 
 his own by acquired right." 
 
 " An agreeable personage, truly," said Trajan in dismay. 
 
 "Oh, he s not so disagreeable as Elliot paints him," inter 
 rupted Bella, working away in her niche. " He s what we 
 call bumptious, but very good-natured. My mother admires 
 him immensely and I think it is the knowledge of that that 
 gives our Alcibiades his obliquity of vision in striking his 
 portrait." 
 
 " Very well, last touch to Hector adored by the 
 descendant of the Ardens of Warwick," continued Elliot 
 incorrigibly. " The next figure, ladies and gentlemen, is the 
 renowned Vicomte de Bellechasse descendant and heir- 
 apparent of the dukedom of Contre-Coeur the most dashing, 
 gorgeous, impressible young nobleman, untrue to divine 
 right and lost in the fleshpots of the usurping empire. I 
 have left the ladies for the last tableau, and as Bella prefers 
 her brush I will immortalize these : In order of age, Mrs. 
 Drayton, wife of the late General Drayton, of Lexington, 
 Kentucky. Blue with the blood that percolated through ever 
 so many aristocratic veins, from Pocahontas to Custis-Lee. 
 Daughter, Mrs. Rossitor, wife of late Governor Rossitor, of 
 Virginia, engaged in finding a suitable husband for the Miss 
 Phoebe Rossitor, fascinating witch who doesn t take to 
 books, but dotes on young men, croquet, dancing, boating, 
 and other agreeable pastimes that require the masculine 
 presence to make endurable," 
 
 "You insufferable egotist and gossip, how can you talk so 
 of a young lady," cried Bella indignantly. "Fancy, Edith, 
 that s the fashion we are talked of by these odious young 
 men whom we endure out of politeness. I won t listen to 
 such malignant aspersions upon our sex," she added, putting 
 her hands to her pretty ears. 
 
TffEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 225 
 
 " I think Elliot has sketched his persons pretty truly so 
 far," said Edith, composedly, drawing an eccentric curve on 
 her paper, under Trajan s guidance. 
 
 " Master Tom Rossitor is the last figure in this interesting 
 group. Troublesome young cub, sixteen or thereabout ; ideal 
 of the female Rossitors and thorn in the flesh of Miss Phoebe. 
 Now, Gray, you are au fait with the dramatis persona" 
 
 "But remember, Mr. Gray," Edith interposed, "you are 
 to be enchanted with the dear old Kate, that is if you re not 
 awed," added the little maiden, " for Kate doesn t approve 
 of every body." 
 
 " Hello, where are you ? " exclaimed a well known voice 
 in the hall, " where s this Cave of Calypso, dedicated to the 
 Graces ? " and Philip appeared in the doorway. " Ton my 
 word, Gray, you have the gifts of Aladdin ; the place is as 
 like your Rue *de Dragon parlor, as if it were modeled 
 on it." 
 
 " I brought the draperies and odds and ends to give the 
 room a work-like look," said Trajan. " The imagination 
 needs a good deal of help in painting, and this rubbish sug 
 gests fancies that the bare walls would not." 
 
 " And you have laid the wand upon these young people 
 and got them all at work wonderful most wonderful ! 
 May we look for a chef (Tceuvre from you in the next salon, 
 Edith ? What is to be the genre of your masterpiece, 
 Bella? " asked Philip, taking a chair and seating himself by 
 the table of that absorbe d devotee. 
 
 " You re not to be a tease here, sir ; we shall insist on 
 Mr. Gray s forbidding you the atelier unless you promise 
 silence and respect," said Bella, continuing resolutely with 
 her work. 
 
 " An entirely proper sentiment, Miss Bella, and I promise 
 to carry it out," said Trajan. " The skeptical spirit has no 
 home here. Mr. Kent must leave his incredulity behind 
 when he enters here." 
 
 " Incredulous ! " cried Philip. " I m any thing but that. 
 15 
 
226 TRAJAN. 
 
 Why, I could almost believe in my own power to take in the 
 noble spirit of art in such company." 
 
 A servant appeared at this moment and announced that 
 madame proposed a reunion on the lawn. 
 
 " I suppose we must go," said Edith ruefully, " I could 
 have spent the whole afternoon here. I m doing beautifully, 
 am I not, Mr. Gray ? " 
 
 " It s too early to commend, wait until you have gone 
 through a few ordeals," said the master, consciously. 
 
 " When you want commendation come to me, young 
 ladies," said Philip, humorously. " I will not stint praise 
 there s no jealousy about me." 
 
 On the lawn all the newcomers were disposed in easy 
 attitudes, some of the gentlemen in hammocks, and the 
 ladies under the foliage plying embroidery needles and what 
 not. Trajan was presented to the group and sat down 
 beside Kate, that paragon of all the impossible contradictions 
 Elliot had sketched with free hand. Mrs. Rossitor, very 
 stout and very red in the face, was engaging the vicomte 
 in a lurid narrative of the horrors her family had suffered 
 during the " vile abolition war," while the young vicomte 
 twirled his mustaches and sneakingly followed the move 
 ments of Miss Phcebe, a slim young girl with a pale, delicate 
 face, engaged in knocking croquet balls with master Tom. 
 Mrs. Drayton, the relict of the Kentucky general, was not 
 present, Mrs. Arden explained, as the drive from the station 
 had fatigued her. Edith proposed a game of croquet, and 
 to make the sides complete Mrs. Arden joined as partner 
 to master Tom. Elliot declined to engage, declaring that 
 he would discuss politics with Mrs. Rossitor. Trajan, pro 
 testing his awkwardness, consented to take a mallet as 
 Edith s partner. Miss McNair warned the vicomte, her 
 partner, that she insisted on his giving his whole mind to the 
 game, as she would as soon lose a tooth as a wicket. 
 
 " Then you may as well order a set of teeth, mademoiselle, 
 for I never was known to hit a ball or pass a wicket." 
 
TffEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 227 
 
 " Never mind, keep your eye on me and do as I tell you, 
 and we shall beat them," said the spinster determinedly. 
 I ve carried worse players than you through before now," 
 she added with reassuring blandness. 
 
 The rest laughed, for every one knew that Kate McNair 
 never gave in defeated while brow-beating was left as a 
 resource. 
 
 Victory declared for Master Tom, Mrs. Arden, Hector 
 and Bella, though Kate protested that there was scandalous 
 cheating. Trajan, Edith, Hector and Claridge dropped 
 out of the second game, and Kate re-established her 
 prowess, carrying the astonished vicomte through a dozen 
 arches and crippling her antagonist by " canons," fixed shots, 
 and all manner of artifices known only to the amateurs of 
 this fascinating diversion. The grounds were ringing with 
 the well-merited plaudits of the determined spinster s 
 prowess, when an open Victoria drove up the lawn road. 
 Jules Carnot was driving and Theo sat beside him. She threw 
 kisses to the ladies and leaped out as the horse stopped. 
 
 " I told Jules we should get the reputation olf a bad 
 penny," laughed Theo as Mrs. Arden came forward to wel 
 come her. " We ve accepted an invitation to spend a 
 month with the Grovels, your neighbors. I ran over to 
 announce the news myself." 
 
 Then, knowing every body, the charming Theo had some 
 thing to say to each. 
 
 " I am very glad to know you are near us," said Mrs. 
 Arden heartily, " we had intended to send you an invitation 
 to visit us so soon as we became more settled, and as it is we 
 shall insist on your giving us a week, at least." 
 
 " Have you just left Paris ? " said Elliot, as Jules, relin 
 quishing the reins to the groom, came up. 
 
 " Yes, we left this morning at eight o clock." 
 
 " What is the prospect, war or peace ? " 
 
 " About even. The Prussians are forcing the Emperor s 
 hand, and the rumor of the Hohenzgllern candidacy has 
 
228 TRAJAN. 
 
 driven the Bourse into a panic. If that turns out to be a 
 real move on the chess board, the Emperor will be forced in 
 spite of himself to declare war. Agents have been sent to 
 Austria, Italy, Bavaria and Wurtemburg, offering the aid 
 of France in re-establishing the status of affairs before 
 Sadowa, but no one in Paris hopes much from these negotia 
 tions. My own opinion is that war is inevitable. The 
 eminent Bonapartists have been making heavy transfers to 
 London and New York." 
 
 Herbert Hector spoke in his character of universal diplo- 
 mate : 
 
 " I wrote to my paper a week ago that war was inevitable, 
 and I give the Germans three months to get into Paris " 
 
 " As prisoners of war, you mean," said the Vicomte de 
 Bellechasse, with angry incredulity. 
 
 " I wish I could think so," said the American gravely. " I 
 have just come from Germany. The country is one vast 
 camp. The ardor for war something stupefying. Even 
 were Bismarck disposed to placate the Emperor, the German 
 military party would not consent. They know to a musket 
 what force the French can put in the field, and it is the 
 common opinion in Berlin that their army will be before 
 Paris within twenty days after war is declared, and I am 
 forced to say that I think they are right." 
 
 " Come, gentlemen, don t let us have any war here until it 
 comes. This is the temple of peace, and dinner will be 
 ready before we can dress. Disperse to your tents and be 
 ready for the bell," said Mrs. Arden, as the ladies arose and 
 trooped toward the house. Theo and Jules were induced 
 to remain on condition that a messenger should be sent to 
 the Grovels announcing the fact. Trajan, meanwhile, had 
 wandered off in the park to show Edith the stream that 
 curled and bubbled through the slopes back of the chateau. 
 The small Tom set out after them, but, absorbed in a but 
 terfly chase, soon fell out of sight. 
 
 " An artist s life must be very delightful," said Edith, as 
 
TffEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 229 
 
 Trajan strode onward through familiar paths, pointing out 
 the beauties of rock and rivulet hidden under masses of 
 clustering vines and trees, whose gnarled roots testified an 
 ancient lineage. 
 
 " Why delightful ? " asked Trajan absently. 
 
 " Well, I should imagine that looking at natural objects 
 with the purpose of seeing their beauty in relation to each 
 other, an artist s mind would come to be a reservoir for the 
 reflection of the beautiful in nature alone." 
 
 " I m afraid the artist would be obliged to be young and 
 enthusiastic as you, to live in that sort of an atmosphere. 
 Art is like every thing else that ministers to life, sometimes 
 the reflex of real beauty of soul, sometimes the result only 
 of industry. Very good paintings are produced by sordid, 
 soulless beggars, who would revolt you in ten minutes. The 
 truest exponents of nature sometimes remain unknown and 
 unappreciated until their dying day, as Corot, for example, 
 who painted yonder in the woods of Barbison, unable to pay 
 for his two meals a day and fuel." 
 
 " That will not be your reward, Mr. Gray, for Elliot says 
 you have real genius, and," added the little maiden impul 
 sively, "he is an excellent judge. He selected every object 
 of art and all the paintings for us in Paris and New York." 
 
 Then, bethinking herself, she blushed in delicious con 
 fusion, and Trajan suddenly felt something in his throat that 
 impeded speech. 
 
 " Your brother is a singularly well informed man for his 
 years, but I fear he could hardly force the world to share 
 his opinions of my powers at least just yet. You know," 
 he added, " the test of fine work is not the appreciation of a 
 few. It is the instant recognition of the many that marks a 
 real touch of nature." 
 
 "But didn t you just say yourself, Mr. Gray, that Corot 
 produced his best works and for years no one found out how 
 good they were ? " 
 
 " True, but the quality of his works gave them universal 
 
230 TRAJAN, 
 
 favor, so soon as they became known. Then, too, Corot did 
 in painting what Keats and Coleridge did in poetry ; he 
 went back to the primal truths of art, and the world had 
 been so long befogged with vanities and foolishness that 
 they did not recognize nature when it was set before them. 
 There has been only one Corot in this century, as there was 
 but one Keats and one Coleridge." 
 
 "I don t quite understand it all, I m sure," said Edith re 
 flectively. " Painting is a great mystery to me, as I fancy it 
 is to most people, and perhaps when I have learned some of 
 its practice and heard you and Elliot discuss it fully, I may 
 understand it better. Do you know, I think it is dinner 
 time. Angels of grace ! " as she looked at the tiny watch 
 at her girdle, " ten minutes to five we shall be late, and the 
 house full of strangers." 
 
 " You speak as if some penance would be put upon you. 
 I don t imagine your mother a tyrant to make you tremble," 
 said Trajan quite composedly. 
 
 " It s not mamma but the proprieties which, of course, 
 being a lawless artist you ignore but really we must 
 hasten." 
 
 " Don t be uneasy I am not unmindful of the proprieties 
 and I know a path which will take us to the rear entrance 
 of the chateau in five minutes, if you don t mind my lifting 
 you across the brook, which becomes noisy and broad on 
 the route." 
 
 No, Edith did not mind, and twice the light girlish figure 
 was lifted carefully, with much laughing, and in five minutes 
 the vagrants were in the hall. 
 
 "I shall have time to brush my hair at all events," said 
 Edith smiling, and Trajan wanted to say that if she were 
 wise she would never touch those golden tresses, but let them 
 fall over the clear temples in the delicious confusion of the 
 moment. He said nothing, however, but skipped lightly up 
 to his room. Elliot was just coming out : 
 
 " Hello ! I couldn t imagine what had become of you." 
 
THEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 231 
 
 " Your sister and I wanted to see the brook spring and we 
 went off to the hill-side with young Thomas Rossitor." 
 
 Hardly waiting for Trajan to finish, Elliot interrupted. 
 " The Carnots came over from the Grovels just before the 
 bell rang, and they are going to remain for dinner." 
 
 "Who ? " said Trajan hoarsely, steadying himself by the 
 post of the canopy where he was in the act of hanging his 
 coat. 
 
 " Theo and Jules Carnot ; you have met them ?" 
 
 Trajan had turned from the eyes of the other while this 
 was spoken, and nodded. Elliot continued, "Dinner is 
 announced, you will be late." 
 
 " Make my excuses to your mother, please, and say that I 
 have a bad turn that will make it impossible for me to sit at 
 the table." 
 
 " Good Heavens, Gray ! what do you mean ?" exclaimed 
 Elliot, his face suddenly clouded, " are you ill ? Have 
 you over-fatigued yourself ? You are deadly white. Lie 
 down." 
 
 " No no it s nothing serious, I assure you, and you will 
 be doing me a great kindness if you will make my excuses 
 to your mother quietly. Now go I beg as a favor so that 
 your tardiness may not be remarked." 
 
 " I m sure I don t understand you at all, Gray." 
 
 "You will understand it all later ; when I see you after 
 dinner I will explain go for Heaven s sake." 
 
 Elliot quit the room uneasy and puzzled. It never 
 occurred to him to connect Trajan s refusal to go down with 
 the presence of the Carnots. He whispered Trajan s excuses 
 to his mother, who was alarmed for the young man s health 
 and rang at once for a servant to attend him. When the 
 party was seated, Theo s observant eye remarked the serv 
 ant removing the empty chair and extra plate from Edith s 
 side. She said nothing, but she was bent on penetrating the 
 mystery. It was a mystery only for a moment, and she had 
 no occasion to call in her fine powers to discover its mean- 
 
232 TRAJAN. 
 
 ing. " Where is Mr. Gray ? " asked Bella as Elliot took his 
 place at the foot of the table near her. 
 
 Edith looked up as Elliot bent over to his cousin and said 
 in a low tone : 
 
 " He is feeling unwell, and asks to be excused from 
 dinner." 
 
 " Is Gray with you ?" asked Jules, further up the table, 
 catching Bella s question. 
 
 " Yes," said Elliot. " He is acquainted about here, and 
 is come down to sketch for the summer." 
 
 Theo s curiosity was satisfied. She knew as well as if she 
 had been present, the cause of Trajan s illness and the 
 removal of the superfluous chair. 
 
 " Where has Mr. Gray established his studio ? " she asked 
 Bella politely. 
 
 " In the mansard of the south wing of the chateau a 
 charming apartment." 
 
 "Ah! you really must take us up there after dinner," 
 says the ingenuous lover of the fine arts. " I dote on 
 ateliers one learns so much of the a b c of art among the 
 painter s properties ! " 
 
 The dinner passed off with great gayety. Mrs. General 
 Drayton was arrayed in the grandeur, as she confided to her 
 neighbor the publicist Hector, that had been admired in 
 the court receptions, where five kings were in the room with 
 the emperor. Mrs. General was on the books of time ven 
 turesomely near fourscore. But in the tablets of fashion 
 she was not more than fifty. Her wrinkled cheeks were of 
 a gentle vermilion hue, that did credit to her French maid 
 Jeannette. Her venerable hair was coifed in waves 
 a rimpcratrice, and her skinny old hands glistened with 
 innumerable jewels of every conceivable color and degree 
 of costliness. Her figure was arrayed in a delicate mauve 
 silk, subdued under undulating rolls of priceless lace. Mrs. 
 General, mother of a daughter of forty-nine or fifty, was 
 the sprightliest coquette in the room and absolutely made 
 
THEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 233 
 
 the thin figure and sparse locks of Kate McNair elderly by 
 comparison. Her conversation was as juvenile as her make 
 up, and Mrs. Arden was forced to drown some of her wicked 
 prattle in a clatter of the dishes to keep the venerable 
 cynic s worldliness from the ears of her darlings. 
 
 The Vicomte Bellechasse was effusively gallant to the 
 frisky octogenarian, and as she understood some of the 
 French tongue and pretended to understand all, the young 
 man gave loose rein to the charming habit of his nation in 
 regaling this simple old flirt with the broadest gossip of the 
 clubs and the court. The young men in his vicinity enjoyed 
 the conversation immensely, and the Ardens, who were 
 considerably removed, were mystified by the hilarity, Every 
 one shared the snatches of scandal that sometimes reached 
 the whole table in a lull of quieter talk, save Elliot and his 
 sister. The latter was very pensive, and her lack of appetite 
 so disturbed the watchful Kate that she asked her if she was 
 ailing. No, Edith said, quite as if she were guilty of some 
 sinful deception, she was only a trifle fatigued. She had 
 been taking a long walk. Theo s parti-colored eyes glistened 
 agreeably as she asked in a dulcet tone : 
 
 "Ah ! Edith, have you discovered the delights of Crecy ? 
 The walks about the chateau and the neighboring glen are 
 the joy of the artists. Mr. Gray used to have a favorite 
 haunt in the Ravine de Reveche, as it is called. You must 
 get him to show it to you." 
 
 Edith, as we have learned, was not fond of her radiant 
 countrywoman, and this haphazard shot, which with a 
 woman s instinct the young girl knew to<fce malicious, did 
 not serve to lessen her antipathy to the conquering Theo. 
 
 When the dinner was over the ladies insisted on visiting 
 the studio, and, as they set out, Elliot hastened to Trajan s 
 room. A tray with consomme and wine stood on his table 
 untasted, but the young man was nowhere to be seen. Elliot 
 sat down and waited a few minutes, impatiently, then 
 bethought him that the delinquent had gone to the studio, 
 
234 TRAJAN. 
 
 and he hastened eagerly thither. Trajan, so soon as Elliot 
 left him, had indeed gone to the studio. It was a familiar 
 place, even though new, for his treasures and easel made it 
 his home. He sat down at the window looking out over the 
 trees where he had just walked, the dim shape of a new hope 
 vaguely dawning upon his inward vision. He was wholly 
 unconscious of its significance or reality ; but he felt as one 
 feels who has been tempest-tossed, despairing of rescue, and 
 sees a far-distant sail on the horizon. He got up, and uncov 
 ering the sheets that lay on the tablets of his easel, gazed on 
 the head he had outlined in the morning. A light footstep 
 in the door startled him ; looking up, Edith, with her lips 
 parted and eyes wide open, stood regarding him, speechless ! 
 
 "You gave me such a fright!" she exclaimed. "We 
 thought you were ill and in your room, and every body is 
 coming to see the studio. I hope you are feeling better. 
 You are are you not ? " 
 
 " Oh, it was a mere passing qualm, and I got over it 
 directly," said Trajan, fumbling with the drawings, and slip 
 ping the one he had been contemplating into the middle of 
 the pile. 
 
 "Mr. Gray is here to receive us himself," said Edith, as 
 the party entered. " Miss Carnot, you know Mr. Gray, I 
 believe ? " Edith asked, as Theo came forward with tranquil 
 self-possession. 
 
 " Oh yes, Mr. Gray and I are very old and very dear 
 friends. I m so delighted to find you here, Mr. Gray," she 
 said, giving the young man a hand as composedly as if it had 
 never been presffed and kissed by the man before her. 
 
 "Only wise people enjoy such simple delights, Miss Car 
 not. It is your favorite poet, Mrs. Browning, who preaches 
 that happy life means prudent compromise ; we are wiser 
 than that, and take our delights in following our own ways 
 and believing in our own maxims," answered Trajan, with 
 just a vibration of trembling in the tone, which was not lost 
 upon Edith any more than it was upon Theo. 
 
THEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 235 
 
 At this juncture Elliot pushed through the group entering 
 the room first, and seeing Trajan, said : 
 
 " You have given me a pretty chase. I expected to find 
 you in bed, and here you are, and evidently have been at 
 work." 
 
 " You must not be surprised at Mr. Gray s freaks, Mr. 
 Arden. When he declines dining, you may be sure he has 
 a good reason. The goddess who chooses awkward moments 
 for her best hints, may seize upon the dinner hour as well as 
 another, and when that happens convention must give way 
 to inspiration," murmured Thep, watching her victim out 
 of the corner of her eye, while ostensibly studying the card 
 board on the easel. 
 
 Trajan bit his lip. Was there ever, he thought, a match for 
 this wicked, undaunted little schemer? She flaunted before 
 him with the same malign sprightliness that had captivated 
 him when they first met, and seemed as unconscious of the 
 intervening abyss of falsehood and dishonor her own 
 avowals, as well as what she had not avowed as if she were 
 as pure and true as the most unspotted and sinless in the 
 vineyard. He had shrunk chivalrously from meeting her, 
 seeking to shield her from the embarrassment he supposed 
 she must feel. Though the love he had kept lighted as a 
 sacred fire in his heart had long ago burned out, and the very 
 ashes of it had been purified out of him, he would have fled 
 from Les Charmettes rather than subject her to the humilia 
 tion of appearing before him. But he knew that her coming 
 was a bravado, and her effrontery absolved him from all fur 
 ther obligation. He would show her that even her tough 
 conscience could be touched, and that she should not escape 
 scathless, if the irony she dealt to others had any power of 
 penetrating her own callous heart. I am humiliated to own 
 that Theo, the penetrating, the sagacious, the Machiavellian, 
 had amazingly miscalculated in this intrepid maneuver. She 
 had no sooner heard of Trajan s presence in the chateau on 
 the removal of the plate, than she made up her mind that 
 
236 TRAJAN, 
 
 fear of her prowess had kept her former lover in his room, 
 and she resolved to appear before him and re-subjugate him as 
 she had conquered others. Her career had been one of 
 such unbroken conquest that, like Napoleon before Leipsic, 
 she would be content with nothing but the status quo ante bel- 
 /um, and like the imperial warrior after the disastrous repulse 
 at Leipsic she did not give in defeated. She was more than 
 ever bent upon resuming her sway over the infatuated adver 
 sary who foolishly imagined he could escape her yoke. 
 
 " Miss Briscoe, you must get Mr. Gray to paint your por 
 trait. What couldn t his clever pencil do with such a head 
 as yours, when he made mine the wonder of Paris for a whole 
 season. You must really come to the Rue Galilee to see it. 
 The best judges in Paris pronounce it a chef cTxuvre" 
 
 " Perhaps, Theo, " suggested Jules, " it was the necessity 
 of eking out fact by imagination that gave Gray an advan 
 tage in painting you. In the case of Miss Briscoe it would 
 be just the other way ; the fact surpassing imagination might 
 result in a poor picture." 
 
 " It s often from the hand of a friend that we receive the 
 severest blows, Miss Carnot," said Trajan, disingenuously, 
 "and the nearer the friend the more vital the blow, though 
 I know none of us will subscribe to your brother s ungallant 
 version of the story." 
 
 " Brothers and husbands are licensed revilers of women, 
 and as for Jules, he is prone to believe other people s sisters 
 more perfect than his own," laughed Theo, tacitly admit 
 ting defeat, which, as she was unaccustomed to it, did not 
 sit well upon her charming face or go well with her winning 
 manner. 
 
 Mrs. Arden reminded the company that the horses were 
 waiting and the sunlight waning. Trajan had forgotten all 
 about his illness and was ready with the rest when the caval 
 cade set out. It was an imposing train, as they cantered 
 through the leafy park in irregular groups, Mrs. Arden with 
 the elder ladies in a landau, and the younger people in the 
 
THE 0. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 237 
 
 saddle. The vicomte gallantly lingered with the octo 
 genarian, as she held her voluminous train on the porch, 
 declining to go out and risk the dew. Elliot succeeded in 
 prevailing upon Theo to join the train. Jules was dismissed 
 with the victoria, and she rode off in high spirits. She sat 
 well, as she did every thing, and never was gayer or more 
 seductive. Bella, riding with Hector, did not seem lost in 
 the vivacious comments of that self-satisfied publicist. She 
 had perpetual difficulty with her stirrups, and finally dis 
 mounted to readjust them. Singularly enough, it was just 
 as Elliot and Theo rode up, talking in almost confidential 
 tones, that the obstinate straps were adjusted to the young 
 lady s liking. Thereafter she made a pretext of admiring 
 scenic bits in detail to keep the horses in a walk, and thus, 
 by a singular chance, just behind her cousin and his vis-a- 
 vis. The complacent prattle of the publicist, as he recounted 
 his exploits in the wars, to his no small chagrin, elicited but 
 fragmentary responses from the abstracted Bella, who was 
 wont to lead conversation in whatever company she found 
 herself. Trajan, riding with Miss Phoebe, was far in advance. 
 As the twilight deepened, Hector not being familiar with the 
 road, Bella suggested returning, and the two turned back, 
 Hector relapsing into silence, smitten with a sudden con 
 sciousness that his companion was not properly appreciative 
 of his distinction as the only Boston journalist maintained 
 in the capital of civilization to paint the manners and moral 
 ize on the virtues and vices of the French people. They 
 had ridden but a short distance when they overtook the car 
 riage, where Mrs. Rossitor was expatiating on the wickedness 
 of French society, and explaining how she watched over 
 those spotless cherubs, " my Phoebe and my Tommy." The 
 horses walking behind the carriage, Bella listened to the 
 fond mother, and shook with laughter as Kate McNair inter 
 polated an occasional sarcasm, of which the honest matron 
 was cheerfully unconscious. 
 
 " Which of the wanderers is that behind ? " calls out Mrs. 
 
238 TRAJAN. 
 
 Arden, forced to make a diversion to save herself from an 
 unseemly disturbance of this maternal complacency. 
 
 "It is Mr. Hector and I, Aunt Cordelia," replies Bella 
 demurely. " My stirrup plagued me, and as I didn t know 
 the roads well I thought it prudent to return, and have 
 deprived poor Mr. Hector of the pleasure of the night 
 ride." 
 
 Mr. Hector protested that he was enchanted to return. 
 Would Miss Briscoe join him in a game of chess ? 
 
 " Why not be more sociable and make it cards ? " says the 
 plain spoken Kate, not relishing the nature of the continued 
 story of the young Rossitors. 
 
 They found the octogenarian deep in casino, with the 
 maid, on entering the salon, and were rewarded with fervent 
 ejaculations of welcome by that venerable gamester, who 
 immediately proposed whist, the party being made up greatly 
 to Bella s satisfaction without her, Mrs. Briscoe and Kate 
 joining against the journalist and the veteran. 
 
 " Aunty, I m provoked with you for inviting Miss Carnot 
 to visit here, you know there are strange things said of her," 
 said Bella as the two sat on the porch. 
 
 " Why, my child, you surprise me. I never knew such a 
 general favorite, and I m sure I have heard you say that she 
 had more brains than all the girls you knew." 
 
 " She has too much, Aunty." 
 
 " And as for the things said of her, I m surprised that a 
 girl of your good sense should think of them a second time. 
 If the saint of Sienna were in society there would be idle 
 and malicious things said of her. Don t, I beg you, fall into 
 that pitfall of the vulgar. The wise woman in this world is 
 she who never knows that there is any thing evil said of an 
 other, for it is an admission to even know when evil is said. 
 It is the belief in evil, without evidence, that defiles. Pray, 
 my child, never know there is any thing else to do than right 
 and you ll never hear evil, because people who hint it will 
 be talking to you in an unknown tongue." 
 
THEO. RESUMES THE COMEDY. 239 
 
 Bella was not entirely persuaded by this nihilistic doctrine, 
 for that young lady was convinced of Theo s irredeemable 
 hopelessness. Perhaps she would have had some difficulty in 
 defining the overt sins committed. Indeed, I am sure that 
 the stake would not have drawn from her the special atrocity 
 that had set her in such a state of mind against the female 
 offender. It sometimes happens that a fair dame, resents 
 the fine effect a cast off gown or some idle bit of frippery 
 gives a favorite maid, and I have known feminine minds 
 of the most admirable equilibrium, quite upset by the mar 
 riage of a despised rival with a disdainfully rejected lover. It 
 requires uncommon magnanimity to give in this world 
 unless the thing given is of no sort of use to us, and then it 
 must be really given, not clutched from a reluctant grasp. 
 
 But of course Bella s aunt was unconscious of the thoughts 
 passing in that young lady s mind. Indeed Bella could not 
 have given any very clear notion of them herself or rather 
 she would not have done so even to herself. Jealous of her 
 cousin faugh ! what was her cousin to her. Had he not 
 been her adorer these two years ? Couldn t she have made 
 of him what she would ? But she didn t want to make any 
 thing of him. He was an agreeable yes, an able young 
 man, not nearly so clever as Mr. Gray, nor so diverting as 
 cousin Philip. Hadn t she dreaded his tender outbreaks and 
 purposely held him at arms length, chattering literature and 
 inane philosophy ? What was it to her that his eye lighted 
 with animation at the crocodile cleverness of that designing 
 little marplot Theo ? The two ladies sat silently under the 
 deep shadows of the glass awning, watching the gleams of 
 light as they traveled over the dark masses of foliage. The 
 night was full of the beauty of repose ; the air heavy with 
 fragrance. The concerts of the night birds contrasted with 
 the quiet of the chateau. The ladies watching the shadows, 
 saw, before they heard, a horseman flying toward the porch. 
 Mrs. Arden rose with a sharp exclamation of fright ; Bella 
 sat "quite still and clenched the slender arm of the chair. The 
 
240 TRAJAN. 
 
 horseman leaping to the ground flung the bridle on the 
 horse s neck, and as he distinguished the ladies, he faltered : 
 " Madame Arden, there has been a slight accident Made 
 moiselle Carnot has been thrown from her horse, and it is 
 feared her arm is broken." It was the vicomte who spoke. 
 He added, " Your son directed me to ride forward and tell 
 you, and to have a chamber prepared for the young lady." 
 " Is my son " Mrs. Arden choked " is my son unhurt ? " 
 " Oh, quite unhurt. It was he who caught the horse and 
 is conveying the wounded lady." 
 
 Bella alone heard the fervent sigh that seemed thanksgiv 
 ing as well as relief. Mrs. Arden went off at once to pre 
 pare for the invalid. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 
 
 BELLA asked the vicomte how the accident had hap 
 pened, but he did not know very clearly. The couple 
 had been riding slowly behind the rest of the party and lost 
 the way. The first the rest knew of any thing amiss was the 
 horse of Miss Carnot dashing along the road riderless. Mr. 
 Gray and Mr. Kent had ridden back, and when the vicomte 
 came up Miss Carnot was still in a swoon. The accident 
 had happened about four miles from the chateau and it 
 would be an hour or more before the party could arrive. It 
 was ten o clock when the cavalcade appeared. Theo, still 
 unconscious and moaning, was lifted from Elliot s arms by 
 her brother, who had been sent for, and carried into the 
 house Elliot accompanying her to the door of her room. 
 He was frightfully pale and as the figure of Theo disappeared 
 he staggered and fell. His mother had gone into the room 
 with Theo, but hearing the fall came out with a stifled cry. 
 "Ah, my son my son you are hurt. My God !" she 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 241 
 
 groaned, " he is dead. Hush," she cried, as Edith flung her 
 self at her brother s side sobbing convulsively. " He has 
 fainted, go and call some of the gentlemen to help him to his 
 room." Trajan was at the foot of the stairs and Edith cried 
 out to him : 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Gray, Elliot is dreadfully hurt ! come and 
 help us." Almost in a bound Trajan was at Elliot s side. His 
 mother had torn off his coat, and opened his shirt ; an ugly 
 bruise on the right side showed that he had been injured 
 either by the hoofs of the horse, or by falling upon some 
 sharp object. Trajan, lifting the inanimate form, carried it 
 to Mrs. Arden s room. The doctor who had been sent for 
 was engaged with Theo, and for the moment the young man s 
 care was in Trajan s hands. He had seen enough of abra 
 sions to know exactly how to treat this, and under his direc 
 tions, calmly given, Elliot was soon restored to conscious 
 ness. It was from the severe ordeal after the hurt, rather 
 than the hurt itself, that he succumbed on arriving. The 
 doctor coming presently reported Theo. s arm badly twisted, 
 but no bones broken. His examination of Elliot showed 
 that the fourth rib was crushed but not broken. Beyond a 
 temporary confinement nothing serious was apprehended. 
 Elliot regaining his composure asked for Theo. Informed 
 that she was not seriously hurt, he put his left arm out, drew 
 his sister to him, and began to whisper in her ear as he was 
 fond of doing as a child. Edith s eyes were red and swollen 
 and she sobbed anew as the foolish fellow revived the tender 
 memory of other days. Mrs. Arden sat beside the bed, com 
 posed enough now that She knew the worst. 
 
 " That was a brute of a horse, Gray, he might have been 
 one of Grovel s Mexicans. In his antics he planted both 
 heels in my side as I ran down the gulch to seize him ; luckily 
 his fore feet slipped, or I should have been done for. I 
 never saw such a fearless creature as that girl. By George ! 
 she never winced nor screamed. The brute rolled on her 
 arm after he fell, and she got up as coolly as though in a 
 16 
 
242 TRAJAN. 
 
 drawing-room. It was not until the pain overcame her that 
 she gave in and fainted." 
 
 The doctor ordered quiet for the patient and refused to 
 permit more than one person in the room. 
 
 "I will bring my books down and sit here, Mrs. Arden," 
 said Trajan ; "you need all your strength for to-morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Arden shook her head decisively : " No, I must be 
 at my son s side." 
 
 But the doctor intervened. On no account could madam e 
 remain there. It would needlessly agitate the invalid, who 
 would presently fall into a sound sleep, thanks to the med 
 icine he had given him. 
 
 " Furthermore, madame has another invalid to attend." 
 
 Thus recalled to her duty, Mrs. Arden agreed that Philip 
 and Trajan should take turns in watching Elliot at night, as 
 Philip almost resented the suggestion of a stranger usurping 
 his place near his kinsman. It was far into the morning 
 before ElHot awoke, and it was Trajan s anxious eyes he 
 looked into. 
 
 " How is Miss Carnot ? " was his first impulsive inquiry. 
 
 Trajan had not thought to ask, but answered at a 
 venture that she was doing well the last he had heard 
 which was true, for the last he had heard was the doctor s 
 message delivered in Elliot s presence. He was relieved of 
 embarrassment by the entrance of Edith, who came to say 
 that Theo had breakfasted and inquired for Elliot, not 
 knowing that he had been hurt. Elliot listened eagerly and 
 asked a dozen questions about the heroine, whether her 
 arm would be disfigured ; whether every thing was 
 done for her that could be done ? He was gratified to 
 hear that Bella had sat in her room and watched over 
 her, and declared that she was a trump. Edith strove to 
 divert the subject from Theo, but not until he had ex 
 hausted it did the invalid answer a question or refer to any 
 thing else. 
 
 The doctor came in and examined the bruises ngain, 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 243 
 
 expressed great satisfaction with their condition, and prom 
 ised the young man s recovery within a fortnight if he 
 kept perfectly quiet and gave himself no agitation. Mrs. 
 Arden came in while this was delivered. She looked anx 
 ious, however, and showed that the tears were ready to come 
 upon the smallest pretext ; but at the breakfast table she 
 appeared serene, and, on a hint from one of the company 
 that a sick-house was not the place for strangers, begged 
 that no one would think of curtailing the duration of his or 
 her visit. 
 
 " We shall look to you, Philip, to maintain the gayety of 
 the house, and see that our friends are not made gloomy by 
 the mishap." 
 
 In spite of the kind lady s cheerful attempt, the gathering 
 was in marked contrast with the full table of the evening 
 before. With Elliot, Edith, Bella, and Trajan gone, the 
 conversation flagged, in spite of the vigorous efforts of 
 Philip and Mrs. Briscoe. The young Englishman, Claridge, 
 was reminded by the accident of similar episodes in his 
 numerous visits to the demesnes of the British aristocracy, 
 where, it might be inferred from his artless confidences, he 
 was only less sought than the Prince of Wales himself. "His. 
 bouting with the aristocracy at once gave him high standing 
 with Mrs. Rossitor. She adored the British peerage. She 
 could tell the relationship of every personage in that hie 
 rarchy down to the remotest consanguinal kith. The pre 
 cious volume preserving these sacred memoranda never left 
 her intimate baggage. Her severest affliction, in a well- 
 ordered life, was the angelic Phoebe s hoydenish indifference 
 to these awesome genealogies. It was a severe trial to her 
 that in spite of constant teaching Phoebe referred to the 
 noble Britons, with whose acquaintance fortune had blessed 
 the Rossitors, as " poky old shrumps, who treated Ameri 
 cans like ruff-scuff and only tolerated them when they gave 
 fine dinners. Who" the exasperating young woman would 
 scornfully ask "ever knew a British noble able to pay his 
 
244 TRAJAN. 
 
 hotel bill ? who ever saw one of them that wasn t skulking 
 to economize or avoid creditors ? who ever saw one that 
 didn t tolerate all other races as a sort of ministering domes 
 ticity to his, the Briton s, needs ? The men were all over 
 grown, red-faced and redolent of brandy, the women un 
 gainly dowdies, sneering at graces they could not possess." 
 
 Sentiments like these froze the genial current of Mrs. 
 Rossitor s soul, and she avoided expression of opinions 
 that were likely to lead Phcebe into the utterance of them. 
 But Claridge s congenial confidences threw her off her 
 guard. She was aroused to reminiscences of the great per 
 sonages she had met and entertained in Dresden and other 
 German capitals, where the British aristocracy are to be 
 found in great numbers. Her list of lords and ladies was 
 long and dazzling. It was remarked that the small Tom 
 took on an exceedingly knowing look as mamma dwelt fondly 
 on the imposing memories. Phcebe interlined sotto voce 
 comments to her neighbor, the Vicomte, which threw 
 that light-hearted young nobleman into convulsions of mer 
 riment. 
 
 Jules made his appearance after breakfast with Mrs. 
 Grovel, her son, and daughter. Mrs. Arden was not equal 
 to the ordeal of receiving them, and the placable Mrs. Bris- 
 coe welcomed the bizarre group. 
 
 " Gracious, what a misfortune ! " cried Mrs. Grovel, vio 
 lently fanning her red cheeks and ample person. " And 
 then we had set a week from Thursday for a garden party 
 and ball, and all of Lafe s Court friends were to be at it. 
 Bad luck always follows me," she sighed, then added, as if 
 she had just thought of it : " Can t we go to Theo ? she 
 must be dying to see her friends." 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe rose and led the way, the stout lady puffing 
 out comments on the furniture and apartments as she sailed 
 majestically behind. 
 
 " I declare this shato is nicer than ours, and we pay a 
 fortune for it, just for the season. Them French nobles 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 245 
 
 would rob a red Indian of his beads the selfish wretches 
 I can t put up with them nohow I shall be mighty glad 
 when we get back to Napoleonville, where we do have some 
 comforts without wearing our souls out. I guess your sister 
 and you are glad you ain t got no small children to traipse 
 around the world to get schooling and things. For my part, 
 I think the Hanks High School at Helena good enough to 
 edicate any person, no matter what their station. My 
 brother, the Guv nor, was taught there, and every body 
 knows he s the biggest statesman in the States." 
 
 At this juncture the statesman s sister came to the bed 
 side where Theo was propped up on the pillows, looking 
 any thing but an invalid. 
 
 " Well, I vow ! you re a nice girl, ain t you ? What in 
 torment did you go off galivanting on them strange horses 
 for, when Lafe s always knows you and acts docile and 
 proper ? We were frightened to death, and the girls wanted 
 to come over, but Jules wouldn t hear of it. I hope you 
 are well nursed you must come home with us right away 
 just as soon as ever you are able to put your foot on the 
 floor." 
 
 She had kissed the laughing invalid while delivering this 
 apostrophe, and nodded benignantly to Bella, who arose and 
 withdrew when the portentous figure entered. Mrs. Briscoe, 
 finding Theo in need of nothing, left the friends together. 
 
 " Mighty pretty girl, that Bella I told Lafe he ought to 
 shine up for her and let them smirking duchesses and mar 
 quises go about their business. It s my opinion that all they 
 want of him is his money. Bella don t need that she has 
 several millions in her own right. Her pa left her a half 
 interest in the Ivanhoe, and Grovel says it s, paying bricks 
 of silver." 
 
 "I m afraid Lafayette is late in the field for Bella," said 
 Theo, keeping an eye on the door and speaking in a low 
 tone. " I understand she s engaged already." 
 
 " I wouldn t be afraid to risk Lafe s chances with any girl, 
 
246 TRAJAN. 
 
 so long as the knot isn t tied," said the fond mother with a 
 complacent toss of the head. " Lafe 11 be the richest man 
 in Montana in five years. He 11 be president of the States 
 if he wants to be, and I d like to see the girl could snicker 
 at them prospects ! You re not sweet on young Arden ? " 
 she asked suddenly and apropos of nothing that had gone 
 before, searching the invalid s face with frank scrutiny. 
 
 " Dear me, no ! It would be no use : he s spoken some 
 where else," says Theo, modestly casting down her green 
 eyes. 
 
 " Do tell ! well, how these young people do tangle them 
 selves up. He s a good catch. Grovel tells me the Ardens 
 control more capital than all the banks of California, and 
 there s but two children the brother and sister." 
 
 " Yes, I ve heard that they are very rich," said Theo 
 yawning. 
 
 " Is the young man as well favored as my Lafe ? I m 
 told he s very good looking." 
 
 Well, that s a question of taste," said Theo diplomat 
 ically. " Lafayette is certainly larger and would be more 
 observed in a company than Mr. Arden." 
 
 " Well, I m set on making Lafe marry an American, after 
 Amanda s disgusting trick. There s no trusting these nasty 
 French, and as for an English woman, I d as soon have a 
 fan-tailed pigeon for a daughter-in-law. It riles me just to 
 see them porridge-faced, skim-milk creatures with their airs 
 and affectations." 
 
 " Lafayette is lucky in having such a guardian as his 
 mother," insinuated Theo soothingly. 
 
 " Indeed I should think so. I often tell Grovel that if it 
 wasn t for me, the children would grow up as wild as ruta 
 bagas and amount to dry shucks, for all the advantages our 
 money gives us in the world. I declare I think I was hap 
 pier when we were roughing it in Yahoo Gulch and I stood 
 over the washtub all the morning and cooked for forty 
 men in the mines. We had gay and hearty times then, I 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 247 
 
 tell you," and the matron sighed and surveyed her fat hand 
 encased in a six-button kid, wrinkled and creased like a layer 
 of very brown cream on a surface of very red milk. " D ye 
 think you ll be up to the ball and fete what do you call it, 
 I can never get them nasty French names on the end of my 
 tongue as Lafe and the girls do ? " 
 
 " Fete champetre" amended Theo. " Yes, I shall be able 
 to take my part, don t fear. I wouldn t miss such an event 
 as that for a good deal, and I ll give you the list of my 
 guests as I promised you this very day." 
 
 " Do Lafe s going to have all his dukes and duchesses 
 and no end of court people. The music s all bespoke and 
 some of the big guns of the opera are coming down. I 
 don t see where we re going to stick all the folks. I wonder 
 if the Ardens wouldn t take some of them in they ve got 
 room enough here for a whole camp suppose you ask 
 them you know them better than I do ! 
 
 "Oh pray, dear Mrs. Grovel, don t dream of suggesting 
 such a thing ! The Ardens are the most punctilious people 
 in the world, and though they would consent to receive your 
 company they would cut you dead ever after. No that s 
 not to be dreamed of," cried Theo eagerly, terrified at the 
 very possibility of such a faux pas. 
 
 " I m sure I see nothing wrong in it," declared the honest 
 dowager. " The folks are to be the biggest guns in Paris 
 the ministers and all them great folks you read of at Eu 
 genie s swarreys. I can t understand the thin-skinnedness 
 of some folks. We would do the same thing in a minute, 
 and think it only neighborly." 
 
 Theo was unspeakably relieved when a servant appeared 
 and announced that mademoiselle s brother asked permis 
 sion to enter. Jules came in, saying:" Theo, Lafayette 
 sends you these roses and asks to be received." 
 
 "Ah, that would never do," began Theo. 
 
 "Well, I m sure why not ?" broke out the astonished 
 dame of Yahoo Gulch. " If Lafe can t come into the 
 
248 TRAJAN. 
 
 room to see a sick friend, with his mother and sister by, I d 
 like to know why these finicky furrin notions are enough to 
 drive one crazy." 
 
 " It would never do here," said Theo appealingly. " The 
 Ardens are very strict in the observances of the conven 
 tions ; why, last night when I was carried here in a faint 
 Mr. Elliot in all the agitation of the moment wouldn t cross 
 this threshold, but handed me over like a bundle to his aunt 
 and the servants." 
 
 " Well, I hope the time 11 never come that the roof of my 
 mouth 11 get so cold that butter won t melt on my tongue," 
 ejaculated the astonished matron. 
 
 Theo entrusted a tender message to the honest Lafayette, 
 assuring him of her lively gratitude and a promise to be 
 with him in a day or two, if he had no better company. 
 
 " Shall I send one of the girls over to cheer you up, 
 Theo ? " asked Mrs. Grovel as she kissed the invalid good- 
 by. Assured that the kind proffer was not needed, she 
 waddled out, stopping to examine and feel the draperies as 
 she went. 
 
 " What extraordinary people these Grovels are ! " said 
 Theo, laughing, as Jules took the vacant seat. " I m afraid 
 we shall be compromised, being so much with them." 
 
 " There s doesn t seem to be much danger of that. You 
 are fixed in this house for the present, and you can manage 
 to finish your visit here if you care to. I shall go back to 
 Paris next week." 
 
 "Close the door, Jules," said Theo, adjusting the pillows 
 and turning so that she could watch the young man s face. 
 " Have you thought over what I suggested to you ? " she re 
 sumed as the young man reseated himself " the grands 
 partis in this family. Either Edith or Bella will make a 
 prince of the man that marries her ? " 
 
 " True enough, you restless intriguer but every man 
 can t have them for the making of fine eyes." 
 
 " But any man can have any woman, if he sets his head, 
 as well as his heart, to the work." 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 249 
 
 " All men no man, that I know, has such a head as you, 
 Jacky. If I had your head I would guarantee to marry any 
 woman in the world, barring the impediment of a previous 
 marriage contract ! Besides, Jack, I m the poorest sort of 
 an intriguer. Not for conscience sake," he added laughing 
 lightly, " but through pure indolence. I ought to be rich. 
 God when I see such dolts as Arden, Grovel, and scores 
 more with wealth pouring in on them, sleeping or waking, I 
 want to blow my brains out. I ought to be rich. Life is 
 valueless without money. I am just the man to use it mag 
 nificently but how to get it. By heaven, Jack, I sometimes 
 dream of turning highwayman or bandit, or any thing that 
 will give me a great stake at one stroke ; but it is all a 
 dream for I wouldn t for the vaults of the bank of France 
 put myself in the power of the law I don t say justice, 
 mind you, for if half the rich men you and I know had jus 
 tice done them they would share the fate of the ancient 
 heroes of Hounslow Heath." 
 
 " You talk like a simpleton, mon cher. By a stroke you can 
 be rich, and with no crime, or even compromise. You are a 
 very handsome fellow. You make a better figure in society 
 than any man I know. You are irresistible with women. 
 Bella is not engaged. She has a lurking fancy for her 
 cousin, but I ll clear the way for you there." 
 
 " What, Jack you don t mean that after refusing a prince 
 you would take up with this prating dreamer ? " 
 
 " I didn t say that I was to * take up as you put it 
 Dunce ! I said that I would keep the field clear while you 
 engage the enemy." 
 
 u By Jove, Jack, you ought to have been the man of 
 the family : you ought to be the minister of a great 
 State. What a brain you ve got," and the young man bent 
 over and kissed the pretty hand lying on the counterpane. 
 She stroked his hair fondly, caressing the handsome fellow 
 as a mother her spoiled darling. Then resumed musingly : 
 " There s no time to lose, dear. I can t tell you how irk- 
 
250 TRAJAN. 
 
 some my metier is growing. The society of these odious 
 Grovels fairly makes my teeth chatter though Lafayette 
 could be made tolerable with some trouble, under proper 
 influences, and I think Clare would do him a world of good." 
 She shot a significant glance at Jules as she hinted this auda 
 cious glimpse of her purpose. 
 
 "You consummate schemer that s the secret of your 
 inexplicable amiability to these gawky parvenus. Before 
 Heaven, Jack Carnot, I feel unworthy to touch the hem of 
 your garment." 
 
 Theo received this florid outburst, a s Elizabeth might 
 have listened to the adoration of Essex, and continued : 
 "This lucky accident gives me the pretext I needed to fix 
 Clare out here. You will go home at once and represent 
 my cruel torments and my cries for her company. I will 
 make known her natural solicitude to Mrs. Arden, and you 
 will take her written invitation to our sister. Then our lines 
 are drawn, our campaign set, and the Carnots close the map 
 of Europe again a regnant dynasty." 
 
 She turned and rang the bell, and to the domestic who 
 answered said, " Please see if Madame Arden can spare a 
 moment to come here. I want to speak with her." 
 
 Of course Madame Arden sympathized at once with the 
 natural desire of the sufferer to have her sister, and apolo 
 gized for not herself thinking of the matter. She instantly 
 wrote a note of cordial welcome, and Jules set out immedi 
 ately to bring up the remaining forces for Theo s masterly 
 campaign, the invalid s final admonition to her brother being 
 to instruct Clare s maid to pack all her finest robes in the 
 trunks, without saying any thing to her mistress. The con 
 querors in this world are those who bear the smallest details 
 in mind, and Theo had learned the secret thoroughly. Clare, 
 very much agitated by the unexpected news, made no objec 
 tion, of course, and was at Theo s bedside before sunset, 
 the artful Jules ordering the baggage to be sent after them. 
 As Jules was leaving the room Theo called his attention to 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 251 
 
 a note on the table addressed to himself. On reading it, he 
 shook with laughter. It was from Theo, directing him to 
 ride over to Meaux and make himself known to the kinsmen 
 of the Carnots poor but titled people, dragging out a mis 
 erable existence in that archiepiscopal town. He was to let 
 them know of the presence of Theo and Clare, and inform 
 them that Madame la Baronne and her son would receive an 
 invitation to spend a fortnight at the Chateau Duclos, and 
 that Jules would come over to fetch them. <c Be prudent and 
 diplomatic in the affair," added the generalissimo. " I count 
 upon this noble kinship to impress W. L. G. and his interest 
 ing family, and above all, burn these presents so soon as you 
 have read them." 
 
 
 
 The servant on duty in Theo s hall looked after the 
 young man in surprise as he walked off laughing over this 
 final evidence of Theo s genius ! Mrs. Arden, Bella, and 
 Edith came to welcome Clare. They had never seen her 
 before, and were startled by her majestic and serene, though 
 somewhat faded, beauty. She met their cordiality with high 
 bred ease a contrast in every way to the vivacious sis 
 ter. She made a marked and excellent effect upon the 
 ladies. She was satisfied to find her sister so much better 
 than she had anticipated, and expressed the hope of taking 
 her home by the end of the week. Mrs. Arden insisted that 
 they would expect a visit from their guest, and the sisters were 
 left alone, Clare begging permission to dine in the invalid s 
 room. 
 
 In the morning when Jules came over, Theo gave him a 
 note for Mrs. Grovel, containing the list of guests and a 
 special paragraph recounting the grandeur of her kinswoman 
 the Baroness Pleinevide and her son the young Baron, a cap 
 tain in the imperial guard. " Dear Mrs. Grovel would please 
 her so much by inviting them at once, as Jules could go 
 and fetch them, before he returned to Paris." 
 
 The honest washerwoman was quite taken aback to find 
 that the Carnots were related to noblemen. She regarded 
 
2$2 TRAJAN. 
 
 Jules with a new emotion. "Who," she asked herself, 
 "would have supposed that Theo, who shopped for her and 
 received her presents with gratitude, was great-niece to a 
 real nobleman ? " The good lady began to regret her con 
 fidences to her quondam Satellite. Jules remarked the 
 change of demeanor, and you may be sure he gave Theo a 
 faithful account of the success of her stratagem. That young 
 person evinced no surprise. She laughed a gay little laugh, 
 remarking cynically that she had measured the folks she met 
 in the world, and found that while they differed in size, they 
 were all of the same fiber, spun in the same web, and all 
 bent on eking out their woof in the same direction. It was 
 vital, however, to bring Lafayette on the scene, and for this 
 purpose the day after Clare s coming Theo expressed pro 
 found fatigue of her surroundings, and prayed to be taken 
 down to the salon. The physician saw no danger in the 
 change, and the invalid, looking very charming indeed, was 
 placed in an alcove off the music room, where the company 
 came to congratulate her. Jules brought Lafayette so soon 
 as th.e others had dispersed to their different diversions. 
 
 He was presented to Clare, and her gentle, distraught air 
 made a perceptible impression upon him. He recognized it at 
 once, as he told his mother, as the real " swell air, just 
 fairly as you see it among the court people." Mrs. Grovel was 
 quite speechless before this superior being, and it was quite 
 as well for Theo s schemes that she was, for whatever chance 
 Lafayette might have in capturing Clare s consent to sharing 
 his fortune, would have been destroyed if his mother had 
 revealed her primitive manners in full to the fastidious beauty. 
 Not that Clare had the faintest suspicion of the comedy in 
 which she was cast for the chief role. She tolerated the 
 young man because Jules seemed fond of him, and Theo 
 was amused by his inextinguishable good humor and droll 
 sayings. Jules had been urged by Mrs. Grovel to go off and 
 hurry his relative the Baronne, but the old lady declared that 
 she could not be ready for some days and must get leave 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 253 
 
 from the general for her son s absence. Theo laughed 
 when she read the stately epistle of her father s cousin. She 
 was " enchanted," La Baronne wrote, " to find that her 
 par ens were so near, and she would do herself the honor to 
 accept with empressement the charming hospitality offered, 
 so soon as she could communicate with her dear son Antoine, 
 who was on duty with his regiment, and meanwhile, she had 
 the high privilege of signing herself, Mademoiselle s tout 
 devouee, Amelie Augustine Belpre Baronne de Pleinevide." 
 
 Theo said gayly when she read this worldly-wise little 
 note from her ruse* kinswoman ; 
 
 " The old lady has got to get a new cap and gown, or she 
 would have been here as fast as the horses could carry her. 
 She probably has dined on hot water soup, a cotelette twice 
 a week, with a ragotit as a change, since the lamented Baron 
 left her in the independence of widowhood. I doubt very 
 much whether the good-hearted Mrs. Grovefwill ever get 
 rid of her, if she takes it into her head to fasten upon that 
 favored household. But in that event we shall have 
 the satisfaction of a good deed, as becomes relatives," she 
 concluded, tapping the amused Jules on the shoulder. 
 
 Clare, meanwhile, had been induced to visit the Grovels, 
 where her aristocratic repose produced due effect. Grovel 
 Pere, who had an air of perpetual unrest, " allowed " that the 
 young woman looked a good deal more like a princess than the 
 painted and plastered " shrumps " he saw in Paris, and fur 
 thermore, she didn t seem to be " talking with her mouth, 
 as if afraid she d forget the use of her tongue or let her 
 teeth decay for want of air." Amanda declared that she 
 "beat the princess in the convent all hollow," and the little 
 Grovels were, perhaps for the first time in their lives, awed 
 into silence. Mrs. Grovel was so charmed with the paragon, 
 that she avowed her purpose of tempting Theo with the 
 most coveted object in the bazars of the Rue de la Paix to 
 prevail upon her sister to remain as an indefinite adornment 
 to the Grovel household. Clare s quietness among these 
 
254 TRAJAN. 
 
 exemplars of western haut ton was as much the result of sur 
 prise as inclination. She had never seen such people. Her 
 life in Paris was that of a recluse. She saw the very poor 
 among the parishioners of St. Philippe du Roule, but it was 
 only as a ministering deess. She felt no arrogant superiority 
 for the new sort of people, she simply felt as a secluded 
 scion of ancient rank and fine manners would feel if launched 
 into the regnant societies of London, Paris, or New York. 
 
 She was not lacking in the wit that comes with high refine 
 ment, and the humors of the family soon gave them an interest 
 in her eyes that stood them in better stead than their wealth. 
 She won the frantic devotion of the children during the days 
 she passed in the splendid grounds of the stately chateau. 
 Marion, a bright-faced lad of fourteen, instantly offered her 
 his pony, while Sophronia, a sprite of thirteen, laid her dolls 
 and cherished dainties at the divinity s feet. She was very 
 gentle and sWeet to the brood, and moved the honest dowa 
 ger Grovel to tears of grateful delight when she kissed her 
 two little friends on parting. All this faithfully reported to 
 Theo, put that arch sorcerer in the frame of mind that it 
 may be fancied Prospero was in, when he saw the spells of 
 Ariel binding the young Duke of Milan to the lovely 
 Miranda. And the passive Clare, unconscious of the pivotal 
 part she was playing, what would she have said had she 
 known the instrumentality she was serving in the astute 
 game that was to delude an honest heart ? 
 
 After all, mused Jules as he took Clare back, we deceive 
 in this world, however honest our intentions. Which 
 of us would dare tell our nearest friend the thoughts 
 that pass in our mind ? Do we think of the golden 
 words of the Reverend Felix Allgood as we sit under 
 the ministry of that reverenced divine ? Are we filled 
 with contrition when the service bids us repeat the 
 words " forgive us as we forgive?" We live as much to 
 deceive as to be deceived. Which of us is there that won t 
 believe out of hand the most vicious innuendo that the idle 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD, 255 
 
 retail to us of our friends, while we turn an incredulous ear 
 only when repeated of ourselves ? Clare was moving inno 
 cently in the very circles traced out for her, but who will 
 credit her guilelessness when the plot is laid bare and she is 
 sharing the gains with the astute plotter? So if the charity 
 of the world were of more value than its scorn, we might 
 bespeak it for the guiltless in craft, but as it isn t, why 
 waste time over the posing hypocrisy ! One vice not only 
 hides another, it excuses it, and the sum is oblivion of both. 
 
 Theo was curious to learn Clare s opinion of the family, 
 but dared not ask the question outright. She saw that 
 Clare was more pensive and silent than usual and wisely 
 forebore questioning her. Still another triumph was in 
 store for the conqueror. Two days later La Baronne de 
 Pleinevide arrived in great state in her own carriage, the 
 panels adorned with the arms of the family. A dashing 
 soldier in the blue and gold of the cuirassier set the small 
 Grovels agape with delight. La Baronne, an alert, lithe, 
 little body of seventy-five, skipped out of the chariot and 
 presented herself with the most charming embarrassment to 
 Mrs. Grovel, who happened to be at the porch with her 
 brood about her, when Jules came down, being hastily ap 
 prised of the arrival. His kinswoman was already deep in 
 the graces of her hostess, to whom her broken English was 
 an unspeakable comfort. The big guardsman she could 
 only smile at and caress with her friendly glances, as he 
 could speak no English. He made himself irresistible to 
 Amanda and Master Marion, who were adepts in the 
 French tongue. Reproached by Jules for taking the family 
 by surprise and depriving him of the expected pleasure of 
 driving her over from Meaux, La Baronne cried out in her 
 gay French way : "Ah, but it was too much, what would 
 you ? The horses were there, and we have so little occasion 
 to use the coach, now that Antoine is in Paris, I was 
 enchanted to have so good a tour for them." 
 
 Jules took occasion to make known the situation to the 
 
256 TRAJAN. 
 
 guardsman as he showed him to his quarters. The Grovels 
 were represented as a very good sort of nouveaux riches 
 who were devoted to his sisters and himself, and he hoped 
 that Madame La Baronne would accept their friendly ways 
 without dwelling too much on their peculiarities. 
 
 " Sapristi !" cried the guardsman, dazzled by the sumpt 
 uous apartment assigned him. " One would be content to be 
 a Chinois to be able to afford such magnificence as this. You 
 may be sure mamma will respond with effusion to such 
 hospitable intentions." 
 
 He was right. Never was such a gracious old noble 
 woman seen, since the fairy godmother took up the fortunes 
 of Cinderella. She was urbanity itself to the " Go-vels," 
 whose name she gave up trying to pronounce in comic de 
 spair. Taken in state by Jules to make acquaintance with 
 her great grand-nieces, she was captivated by the lively 
 Theo and impressed prodigiously by the distinguee Clare, 
 who, she protested, resembled her grandmother, the Countess 
 Belpre. She was lost in astonishment at the surroundings of 
 her kinsfolk. Theo knew that in her heart the old lady had 
 imagined her American relations a species of bedizened sav 
 ages. The Ardens she pronounced tres distingues quite the 
 carriage and mien of the noblesse. She touched every one in 
 the company with her child-like joy over her new-found 
 kinsfolk, protesting their goodness in remembering a veiflle 
 cruche like herself in these days of fete. She studied Theo 
 with furtive attention when the demoiselle was not aware of 
 the scrutiny. The guardsman was voted capital company 
 by the young men, and Theo finished the day, conscious of 
 having made a masterstroke in her campaign. 
 
 " Eh bien, ma mtre, what do you make of it all ? " the 
 guardsman asked, as mother and son sat in the latter s bed 
 room before bidding her good-night. 
 
 " Hein" grinned the old lady. " It s plain enough ; La 
 Petite Theo has a parti to make, and our noblesse is to be 
 made to help her." 
 
THE WOLF IN THE FOLD. 257 
 
 " But which one ? I saw no one paying her court." 
 
 " You may be sure it was not for our beaux yeux she 
 asked us here. Soit ! She shall gain her end and she shall 
 pay us for our complaisance by helping you to one of the 
 partis. All these Americans are fabulously rich and you 
 can t go amiss. Select the plainest and you ll be likely to 
 meet less difficulty. At your age looks don t matter. A 
 half million dot will enable you to make love at your 
 leisure." 
 
 " I have been making love for fifteen years without the 
 half million dot I should like the change par bleu." 
 
 " Be prudent, mon cher, and you shall leave here with a 
 half million dot who knows but a million in your sac ? " 
 said the fond parent as she put up her withered cheek for 
 the good-night kiss. 
 
 From which you will remark Theo comes honestly by her 
 Machiavellian principles, and that sooner or later what 
 is bred in the bone comes out in the flesh. How little 
 did the masters and mistresses of these two grand houses, 
 in which for the moment, reader, you and I are lodg 
 ing, with the splendid and wise and witty and beauti 
 ful guests how little did they dream of the parts 
 assigned them in this drama of their own choosing ! The 
 candid and kindly Mrs. Arden, with her life wrapped up in 
 the lad tossing in fever there, distrusted nothing for him 
 more grievous than the silly bruise on his side ; saw no 
 further into the future than the day which should make him 
 the husband of Bella, or, if fortune should deny her that 
 cherished hope, of some other fair and sweet girl worthy of 
 his honest heart. And so the music crashes, and the puppets 
 leer and strut and squeak out yea when they mean nay, and 
 the masks on their faces are transparent as the limpid dews 
 under the morning sun, compared with the mask on their 
 hearts. Sleep peacefully, lions and lambs hug your pil 
 lows, foxes and asses, for the morrow comes, and still the 
 morrow, and you are lions and lambs, wolves and foxes, 
 
258 TRAJAN. 
 
 geese and swans, to the end of the play, and who knows 
 what after ? 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 THE RAVINE OF REVECHE. 
 
 CLARE S coming lessened the party at Les Charmettes. 
 Philip, so soon as Jules mission was made known, found 
 that he had urgent business in Paris, and he was seen no 
 more among the company. He intimated vaguely to Elliot 
 that if war were declared, he would volunteer on Gen. 
 Frossard s staff. That veteran was an old friend, whom he 
 had met at West Point in his cadet days, and nothing would 
 delight him more than witnessing a campaign in Europe. 
 Nothing was to be said to his aunts, as such a project would 
 make them miserable, and Elliot, knowing that his cousin 
 was son and brother in the household, promised to be pru 
 dent. Theo heard of Philip s sudden departure with a 
 vengeful gleam in the satiny orange-green eyes, that Jules 
 remarked, but could not comprehend. Clare, unconscious 
 that her old lover had been so near her, never knew until 
 long afterward the shock she had escaped. 
 
 " Now," murmured the little invalid, " we shall see if it 
 strikes the Ardens as a mesalliance to let their precious blood 
 mingle with the Carnots, exile, refugee, valet, usurer and 
 Cotton King, by the divine right of brains." 
 
 The humor of the comedy pleased her more than the classic 
 justice to be done ; the vengeance upon the race that had 
 brought ruin to the darling of the family. She mused on 
 the strange readiness of every thing to fall into line with her 
 dreams. She had never relinquished the hope of some strik 
 ing triumph which should eclipse the Ardens ; events were 
 of themselves laying a train which should add embitterment 
 to the overshadowing she had dreamed and schemed. Since 
 her masterful success in vanquishing poverty Theo had con- 
 
THE RA VINE OF REVECHE.. 259 
 
 vinced herself that nothing was impossible to the man that 
 knew his own powers and himself surely for he knew others, 
 and to confront facts was to overcome them. She hugged 
 herself in a remorseless sort of joy to think that she was 
 planted in the very citadel of the enemy and that it depended 
 on herself solely, whether they were to be cajoled into 
 accomplices or subtly enmeshed into instruments of the 
 designs fate had put it into her hands to carry out. 
 
 Judge her not too harshly ! She had tasted the cup that 
 made life bitter, at an age when such infirmities as hers should 
 have been soothed by the exotic odors of love. She had 
 not become soured as we see strong men ; she did not 
 make vulgar revenge a prime object in the involved scheme 
 of cross purposes she had set her incomparable powers to 
 carry out. She had the instincts of the fine lady, whose soul 
 has become the slave of intellect. She would have much 
 preferred straightforward methods and the gracious amen 
 ities of her sex, had fate not so shifted the instruments that 
 she was obliged to use them covertly and in the darkness. 
 
 She had never lost the purpose to make Philip repent in 
 the anguish he had caused Clare, the dastard wrong he had 
 done her. She had imagined a fine poetic justice in bring 
 ing him to her own chariot and having kept him on foot, 
 with uncovered head and beseeching eyes, to dismiss him in 
 scorn ! But he had unexpectedly found nothing congenial, 
 where the rest of his sex stood with adulating delight. 
 Through Clare herself nothing was possible. She refused 
 to go where there was any likelihood of an encounter with 
 her quondam lover. Even Theo s disaster would not have 
 moved Clare, had she known that Philip was part of the 
 Crecy company. 
 
 It was not sheer wickedness let this be borne in mind, 
 in the singular girl s justification. Most of us are what we 
 must be, not that we feel we are born to be, or should be, 
 and what we know we are derelict in not being. Theo had 
 no idea that she ought to be any thing else than the conquer- 
 
260 TRAJAN. 
 
 ing arbiter in the lives and fortunes of all who were thrown 
 within her range. It was bred in her bone, and by inherit 
 ance that worldly consideration was worth any price and 
 justified any means in securing. She transmuted all the 
 sacred gifts of womanhood, rare mind, winning wit, intellect, 
 heart and brain, in the flaming crucible of vanity and ego 
 tism, blind to the dross into which the ingredients were 
 transformed. She was never the dark intriguer. She waited 
 for the forces she needed to come to her hand and made 
 her resources irresistible by eschewing mystery, even in her 
 boldest projects. 
 
 It was not the evil people said of her, above breath, she 
 feared ; that could be met and discredited. It was the evil 
 that might be thought, and by long thinking assume danger 
 ous shape, that she guarded against. She never forgot the 
 Baconian apothegm she had once heard Jules read : " If a 
 man be thought secret he invites discovery." Unreserve was 
 the conquering shaft in her armory, that she counted on with 
 never unjustified confidence. She concealed more by a 
 bewildering frankness than another, less adroit, by the most 
 studious reserve. Hate she would never permit herself to 
 cherish for an instant. It was a silly waste of vital tissue, 
 and her beauty needed all her blood and perfect digestion. 
 She never threw that precious force away therefore. 
 
 Upon no injury, slight, defeat, rival, or whatsoever source 
 of bitterness she encountered, did she throw away a hate. 
 She had been foolish enough to love. That was a lesson 
 that taught her the danger of burning the lamp at both 
 ends. She loved still, but as we love the dead, with a 
 resigned forgetfulness ; the passing worship of an ideal, in 
 conflict with our stronger passions. 
 
 Philip at Les Charmettes would have been a double impedi 
 ment to the orderly and decisive manipulation of the con 
 duct of the people in whom her interests were enlisted. While 
 Philip remained free Clare would never marry for, though she 
 never said it, Theo knew that her sister would not give up 
 
THE RA VINE OF REVECHE. 261 
 
 the dream of the past. For, among other things that she had 
 learned since coming to Paris, was the fact that Philip s 
 abandonment had been forced upon him. He had led a 
 wild life in his college days there and become involved in a 
 mesalliance. 
 
 So far as she could permit herself to hate, she hated Philip 
 Kent ; while his influence at Les Charmettes remained undis 
 turbed she could hope for no permanent hold on Elliot. She 
 suspected that Bella was the attraction that had kept Philip 
 from his Norway project, and if he made headway in that 
 new love she would see the dream of her life balked. She 
 would hold the same cup to Bella s lip that had been held to 
 Clare s. She had already shaken Elliot s constancy. She 
 would humiliate the Ardens as the Carnots had been humil 
 iated. All the means were in her hands, if she could but 
 drive Trajan and Philip from the family for a time. The 
 big Antoine must be made use of to dispose of them, and 
 she thought she saw a way of bringing the two into such 
 antagonism, as the Frenchman, with a hint, would be able to 
 turn to account. She took Philip s departure as a truce, not a 
 finality ; she foresaw that so soon as Clare quit Les Charmettes 
 he would be back ; but she meant either to fix Clare there 
 until her ends were served, or secure Philip s neutrality by 
 other measures. 
 
 It had not been faring so well with Elliot these days of 
 Theo s covert triumph. The evening of the second day he 
 was feverish and filled with excruciating pain. 
 
 The poor lad rambled in the strangest fashion of sparrows 
 and flowers. Then breaking off suddenly he pleaded with some 
 one earnestly to come to him out of the water, and not die. 
 Then he painted a roseate picture of two friends who should 
 go through life illustrating every thing famous in romance. 
 Once or twice he named Trajan, but in an appealing or remon 
 strating way. On the seventh day all pain and danger had 
 passed, and the patient was permitted to sit by the window. 
 Trajan brought his easel down and sketched most of the time, 
 
262 TRAJAN. 
 
 while Edith read from Walter Scott or Thackeray. Theo. in- 
 sisted on sharing the invalid s imprisonment an hour or more 
 each day, and when she was announced Trajan always made a 
 pretext to quit the chamber, leaving Mrs. Arden or Edith 
 with the invalids. Resuming his former haunts, the young 
 man passed a great deal of time in the woods, sometimes 
 alone, sometimes with Bella and one or more of the guests. 
 
 Bella showed impartial preferences to none of the gallants. 
 Sometimes she set out with Bellechasse, enjoying his pre 
 tense of a liking for walking which no Gaul was ever known 
 to tolerate. Her patient interest in Hector s introspective 
 prattle led that young man to believe that he was the favored 
 suitor, and he gave himself fine airs accordingly. Before a 
 week was over the young girl knew all the Bostonian had 
 ever seen or experienced, and according to his showing that 
 was a prodigious amount. His prowess in battle was his 
 favorite, as it was his constant theme, and Bella found her 
 self wondering that he wasn t a major-general or great mil 
 itary dignitary. Those who observed Hector closely saw a 
 proposal in his eyes for days. His cheeks, red as apples, 
 fairly glowed with the sense of coming favor, and his 
 intent and mysterious glance, by which he impressed the 
 world with the vastness of his mental possessions, deepened 
 in hidden suggestion. Breakfast was hardly over when he 
 asked Bella if she felt like walking to the woods of Reveche. 
 Bella was meditating a walk and would be ready later in the 
 afternoon. Trajan, happening to hear the dialogue, said to 
 Hector soberly : 
 
 " Keep clear of the Spanish bulls in the Baron Rothschild s 
 part of the wood. They are annoying, and under some 
 provocations dangerous. There were so many attacks on 
 strangers last year that the baron gave orders that the brutes 
 should be confined, but they manage to break out for all 
 that. Should you come across one you need have no fear if 
 you manage properly. Don t turn your back on one, if he 
 comes at you, for in the open field it will be rather playful- 
 
THE RA VINE OF REVECHE. 263 
 
 ness than viciousness that prompts his attentions. But woe 
 to you if you turn tail without sufficient start and a friendly 
 tree or hedge. I learned a good deal of the race in Anda 
 lusia and have often driven a single bull away by facing him. 
 
 Now by a common impulse all the males of the company 
 mocked the vainglories of the rotund Bostonian. His art 
 less self-importance amused them, and when they heard 
 Trajan s admonition they fell to recounting the horrors that 
 surprises in the open fields by bulls had wrought. Hector 
 listened silently to these tales of taurine terror, saying nothing 
 until the dismal yarns were exhausted. He favored his tor 
 mentors with a blood-curdling adventure in Bulgaria, to illus 
 trate how well equipped he was to encounter the neighboring 
 horns should they beset him in his walks abroad. He had, 
 he declared, slaughtered the fiercest bull amon^ the wild 
 herds of the Balkans, and was at that moment the possessor 
 of the medal of valor, presented by the Hospador himself to 
 signalize this gallantry. The sly Miss McNair, sitting by, 
 could not resist a gentle stab at the ingenuous hero. Every 
 body enjoyed the shrewd spinster s jokes even those at 
 whose expense they were made. Affecting an admiring 
 interest in Hector s self-sounded exploits, Kate said guile 
 lessly : 
 
 "Ah, Mr. Hector, you must show us all your medals and 
 orders when we get to Paris. I m very fond of things of 
 that sort, and have a collection myself." 
 
 " Not won by deeds in the field ? " asked the vicomte 
 gravely. 
 
 " No, picked up in little out-of-the-way shops in Paris, 
 Rome, and London ! " 
 
 Hector didn t understand why there was such a hearty 
 laugh as he went off to prepare for the interview, which he 
 resolved was to settle his fortunes. Trajan was talking to 
 Elliot, when the servant announced Mademoiselle Theo. as 
 about to enter. He said he had a bit of sketching to finish, 
 and hastened toward the dressing room door. 
 
264 TRAjAtf. 
 
 " I say, Trajan, why do you go ? I want to talk over 
 something with you and Miss Theo. Do you know she is 
 incomparable company?" 
 
 " Oh ! one s company and two s none I really must get 
 at my sketch while I have the idea warm in me," and Trajan 
 fled as Theo. s chair was set beside the open window. 
 Curiously enough the sight of Edith standing in the hall 
 below quite drove the pressing need of the sketch from his 
 mind. He ran lightly down the stairway and said, as he 
 reached the little maid : 
 
 " You have often asked to see the Ravine of Reveche ; 
 this is a perfect day ; not too warm ; and it will be a great 
 lark to surprise the others who are going there to appear 
 mysteriously among them. I know a secluded path that 
 shortens the distance nearly one-third. We shall have a 
 capital tin*." 
 
 Edith was delighted, nothing would please her better, and 
 when she had gone to apprise mamma and Elliot, she would 
 be at Mr. Gray s disposal. She tripped lightly up the stairs, 
 Trajan s eyes following the willowy graceful figure with per 
 haps something more than the artist s love of fine lines and 
 sinuous movement. I m afraid that if Theo. s bright eyes 
 had happened to fall upon the artist at that moment, the 
 sight would have made a blur upon the clear surface of the 
 mirror in which she inwardly contemplated her meditated 
 triumphs. 
 
 The young people set out directly, passing through the 
 vocal covert, and over the little gurgling brook where the 
 fairness of Elliot s sister had first flashed upon the preoccu 
 pied mind of Trajan. He had ever since felt a quite unac 
 countable tenderness for the spot, and the pensive Edith 
 had several times surprised the young man standing silent 
 and quite absurdly guilty, when she appeared, gazing into the 
 limpid pool and idly flinging honeysuckle sprays into the 
 eddying waters. On other occasions the wise little maid, 
 doubtless reluctant to interrupt the poet s communings, stole 
 
THE RA VINE OF REVECHE. 265 
 
 softly away, without making her presence known, though 
 there were seasons when, not finding him there, she, too, 
 studied the purling water and fed its gurgling shallows with 
 buds from the honeysuckle, as she had seen him do. As 
 for Trajan, he had no notion that he was worshiping the 
 spirit of a shrine in these dryad devotions upon the altar of 
 a momentary memory, nor reflected that while : 
 
 " Some there be who shadows kiss 
 Such have but a shadow s bliss." 
 
 More than that he didn t ask or rather, it did not happen 
 to him to think of more. He had no notion of distinguish 
 ing his fondness for Edith from his love for her brother. She 
 was dear to him because Elliot was his Paladin for Trajan 
 was young, and an artist, and silly enough to believe in close 
 friendship between men. If he had stopped to analyze the 
 delight he felt in being near Edith he would have said 
 straightway that it was because she was dear to Elliot ; nor 
 did he realize the odd fact, that though Mrs. Arden was 
 equally near Achates, he was conscious of no yearning to 
 watch the changing expression of that comely and gentle 
 countenance ! 
 
 The thief is a foolish fellow to come in the night ! 
 He could do his business better in the day, for the very 
 audacity of it is his protection. Trajan walked as con 
 fidingly into the fowler s net, as though his bruised feet and 
 mangled body had never felt the teeth. He marched dream 
 ing and careless into i.he flowery ambuscade, no more feeling 
 the soft pricking of the thorns under the rose leaves, than if 
 his hands were gauntleted and he bore the armor of life, 
 that shields from its roseate missiles as well as its slings and 
 arrows. It was Elliot s face that he felt assured he saw as 
 his brush lingered on the details of the sketch, now trans 
 ferred to canvas. And the days went dreamily on. The 
 divine mystery enveloping him deeper and deeper every 
 hour as he walked, stalked, and rode by the eyes that were 
 not Elliot s, but dear because they were like his ! 
 
266 TRAJAN. 
 
 Yet you will readily see that a prudent young man who had 
 just suffered such a massacre of the sensibilities as this pre 
 posterous fellow, should have been on his guard ! He was 
 not in the least. He allowed himself to gaze on the 
 bewitching blue eyes and golden tresses of the gentle, tender 
 girl, and never took the trouble to ask himself the cost of 
 the loss of such opportunities. I own I have no patience 
 with this young man, in certain phases of his conduct, as I 
 hinted when this history opened I am merely putting into 
 narrative what befell him, from the testimony of others as 
 well as himself ; and ridiculous and contradictory as you now 
 see him, I have lightened the colors as much as I could 
 while keeping good faith with my duty as biographer. Yes, 
 condemn him as he dawdles along the hedges, plucking the 
 scarlet coquelicot, stringing gauzy blades of fern into nosegays, 
 and luring the artless girl into weaving them in her hair, 
 on her hat, and even on her gown, to give him a study for a 
 pastoral, forsooth ! Out upon you, hulking hypocrite ! Have 
 you never read the simplest rudiments of love-making ? 
 
 Why the youngest reader that condescends to follow your 
 aggravating adventures, knows just as well where this is to 
 end, as you do the current of the brook that gurgles 
 through the fields of my lord baron yonder ! And thus it 
 always is ; in the years when we love and are made to be 
 loved, we go on blind as the bat at noonday, unforeseeing as 
 the grub that gleams into wings and radiance by the action 
 of the amorous air. And so, with the yawning gulf of 
 treachery, barely closed in the lurid horizon behind him, 
 Trajan tramps over the green fields, under the clustering 
 blossoms, with a heart light as the spray that plays on the 
 wave, and a happiness deep as the depths that shelter its 
 infinite mysteries, tragedies, and riches. Deep and lasting 
 emotions thrive on silence, I think. At all events, the two 
 were quite content to walk along, only occasionally breaking 
 silence with the most absurd commonplaces, which to record 
 would only give the reader a poorer opinion of the young 
 
THE RA VINE OF R EVE CHE. 267 
 
 man, while Edith, as is the prerogative of the sex, may be 
 as sweetly inane as she pleases. Trajan, of course, knowing 
 the path, was free to look in his companion s eyes and she 
 obliged to find out the beauties he was perpetually apostro 
 phizing was naturally compelled to look into his eyes to see 
 what he was looking at. Beside the brook of Reveche 
 grew clusters of star-like marguerites, and what should enter 
 into Edith s perverse head but to pluck a handful and ask 
 him to name one while she named the other. 
 
 " Shall we tell it in French ? I like the French words the 
 best," said Edith with a maiden s right to disregard gram 
 mar for emphasis. 
 
 " Tell what ? " says Philander, stupidly holding the flower 
 to his lips. 
 
 "Why, did you never say the litany of the marguerite ? " 
 asked Miss Innocence with wide, questioning eyes. 
 
 " No, 1 never did teach it to me ! " 
 
 "Well you name the girl you want to marry to your 
 self, you know," adds Miss Mentor blushing, in altogether 
 surprising confusion. 
 
 " To marry to myself ? " echoes Trajan, puzzledly. 
 
 " Oh, dear me, how obtuse you are. I mean, think to your 
 self of the name of the lady you would like to marry, then 
 name the flower by her name." 
 
 " But, I don t want to marry any one," stammers Philan 
 der reflectively, as though such an idea had never kept him 
 in months of delicious torture, and he had not lain awake 
 weeks o nights dreaming of the possibility. 
 
 Confounded by this contradiction of words and acts, the 
 astonished vestal of the floral mysteries drew back and 
 became so preoccupied in a militant snail rearing its horns 
 under a wild pink, that she quite forgot the marguerites and 
 their symbolic purpose. Trajan wondered why her cheeks 
 were so red, and felt a pang at having wandered so far. She 
 was fatigued by such a walk. They must sit down and 
 recover lost energies. 
 
268 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Don t you feel tired ? We have walked fully two miles. 
 I shouldn t have come so far, but I saw Bella and Hector 
 pushing on towards the Rothschild farm up on the hill 
 yonder. Come," he added, as if inspired by a new zeal, 
 " tell me the mystery of the marguerites. I m surprised that 
 I have never heard it, for I have plucked bales of them 
 about Crecy." 
 
 " But people only learn the mystery when they want to 
 find out whom they are going to marry," and as Edith was 
 still studying the movements of the snail her blushes became 
 still more a matter of surprise to the dull Philander. 
 
 " Well, then, I shall not be apt to learn, as I don t know 
 any one I want to marry," and he pulled the unoffending 
 leaves from their velvet cushion with a movement that would 
 have meant conviction if the hands had not shown a tell 
 tale tremble. 
 
 " That is the most extraordinary thing I ever heard. Why 
 even Elliot wanted to marry ever so many years ago. It 
 was the governess. But he was quite miserable about it, 
 until papa got him a pony. Then when he was in Harvard 
 he frightened us all by falling in love with one of the 
 dancing young women in the English troupe. He really 
 proposed to her, but papa managed to break it off." 
 
 " No," said Trajan, reflectively, as though deeply 
 impressed with these fragile amours of his friend, " I never 
 thought I should like to marry an actress, or a schoolmis 
 tress. I did ask a woman I believed to be an angel to 
 marry me, and she proved to be a monster ! " 
 
 " A monster ! " stammered Edith, shrinking back. 
 
 " Ah, I mean a worldly monster, selfish, cruel, and 
 heartless." 
 
 " And " timidly " was that long ago ? " 
 
 " As time is counted, no. As feelings count, a thousand 
 years." 
 
 " Then you no longer love her," added the pertinacious 
 catechiser. 
 
THE RA VINE OF REVECHE. 269 
 
 " Love her," said Trajan, and an expression almost 
 malignantly contemptuous came into his face ; then he added 
 in a firm voice, " No, the very sight of her is a burden to 
 me. But don t let us talk any more of that. I have buried 
 it now. If you feel equal to another half mile we can join 
 your cousin by the ravine of Reveche, where there is a mys 
 tic spring to show you." 
 
 Edith had another question ready, but the last words 
 stopped it. "When you find the girl you want to marry, I 
 will teach you the rubric of the marguerite." 
 
 " Meanwhile I may keep this one to see if I can solve the 
 mystery by my own efforts may I not ? " And quite un 
 abashed the impudent fellow put it calmly in his vest pocket. 
 With this they set out toward the ravine. Edith found a dis 
 tant object very interesting at the moment, and of course did 
 not see the fate of the flower, nor meet the expression in the 
 silly fellow s eye. Then silence fell upon them again. They 
 had quit the fields and emerged into an embowered path 
 under the deep shadow of a rocky palisade. 
 
 The rocky facade was almost as regular as the 
 wall of a temple, the edge above jutting out in tables of 
 cliff trellised with fringes of mosses and growing things. 
 Pointing to a shelf projecting further over their heads than 
 the others, Trajan recounted its legend. In ancient times a 
 troubadour had sung love into the heart of the radiant 
 maiden, whose stern parent, the fierce old duke, owned all 
 the land as far as Meaux. The luckless lad was caught 
 under my lady s window and hurled from the shelf above 
 and fell where a quaint tablet records the sad little story. Tra 
 jan pushed the vines aside and Edith read the epitaph " Les 
 Amants Malheureux" She drew back with a little shudder 
 as though she felt the warm blood of the lovers under her 
 feet. 
 
 " The peasants say that the boy s blood comes up in these 
 little patches of scarlet, that glow in the deep green like eyes 
 of fire," said Trajan, plucking a sprig of CEillet and handing 
 
270 TRAJAN. 
 
 it to her. A few minutes further on, they came to the mouth 
 of the ravine of Reveche, where the great front of cliff 
 frowned like a vast tablet in the solid rock. The opening 
 was filled with monster oaks and a tangled filmy veil of 
 shrubbery. A slender stream fell in a score of cascades 
 over the mossy stones. The young people penetrated 
 into the fissure, the ravine taking the aspect of a vernal 
 cathedral. 
 
 " Here," said Trajan, as they came to a grotto, embowered 
 under tangled tresses of vines, is La source de la fidelite." 
 The waters of the faithful. The legend is that those who 
 clasp hands in the water will never break faith ; a man will 
 lay down his life and sacrifice every thing for the friend he 
 has made the compact with. On Sundays peasant lovers 
 come here in great numbers." 
 
 Edith looked at the spring. The surface was still and 
 brackish. The mosses growing at the edge dipped their 
 green filaments in the water. As the light fluctuated by the 
 movements of the swaying branches, the little pool took on 
 a blood-red hue that rather startled the young girl. 
 
 "It looks like blood," she murmured. 
 
 " Shall we swear fidelity ? " asked Trajan, bending over the 
 water. 
 
 " If you like," answered Edith in curiosity. 
 
 " Kneel down, as I am now kneeling, on the moss there. 
 Now give me your hand." 
 
 The two hands were clasped under the water. " What, 
 are you frightened ? " asked Trajan as he felt her hand 
 tremble. 
 
 " No, but our hands look as if they were in blood. It is 
 a Druid ceremonial, I think." 
 
 " No, nothing so serious as that ; it is very pretty. Now- 
 repeat the vow when I put it in English, which doesn t improve 
 it ; you mustn t interrupt the formula to ask questions while 
 we are repeating the words." 
 
 "But it may be something I can t subscribe to." 
 
THE RA VINE OF RE VECHE. 271 
 
 " Ah, vows of faith bind lightly, a coquette might take 
 them. Have no fear. The fairies alone are witnesses. 
 
 tlxe fxatxtf ilxat wields tlxe 
 tlxe tjcrtx^xxe tfxat jspaTve tlxe 
 *$$% the sta*s tlxat *xxle afrowe, 
 gxr glxee atttf $Mtte r fteve 
 Iixx01xtlxj f aitlx attrt 
 
 , a* maid, *v Icrxrev we 
 tlxr sxueav fxxleUttj." 
 
 Edith repeated the lines tremulously. When it was done, 
 Trajan held the dripping hand of his companion and gravely 
 dried it with the soft silky mosses. 
 
 " There, oh maid of little faith, the ceremony is done. The 
 vow is entered by the Ariel of the glade, sealed by the signs 
 that rule the hour, as the verse hath it, meaning the star of 
 the season in the heavens. The rite arose long ago, as 
 you see by the words, and the phraseology hardly fits these 
 unknightly times and skeptic inhumanities." 
 
 " It is a pretty legend and I am glad we have followed 
 the custom of the country, though I m afraid we shall be 
 laughed at if we tell it at home." 
 
 " Ah, you shall see them all going through with it, even the 
 sardonic Miss Me Nair, if we can inveigle her to the spot, 
 and I mean to try," said Trajan,, laughing, as he conjured 
 the fantastic figure of the spinster on the mossy margin of the 
 pool. 
 
 " Now for an Alpine climb. Do you feel equal to it ? 
 When we reach the top we shall be on an open plateau, with 
 a short cut home through pretty farm roads and wheat 
 fields." Yes, the young enthusiast felt equal to any effort. 
 The waters of the spring had distilled the elixir of iron into 
 her veins and she could almost fly, she felt so buoyant. 
 The ascent grew more and more difficult. The path wound 
 upward in narrow zigzags, where the gorge grew wider, the 
 undergrowth thicker, and the scene wilder and more fascin- 
 
272 TRAJAN. 
 
 ating. As they pushed onward they startled flocks of birds 
 from their retreats in the wild wood, which scuttled off with a 
 noisy whirr, filling the dim recesses with strange cries and 
 shrill clamors. The two toilers climbed up slowly, the 
 path growing so narrow and obstructed with thick brambles 
 and low hanging branches that Trajan had to go before and 
 aid his companion to climb. A half hour s merry scram 
 bling brought them out on the plateau, where cultivated 
 fields spread out before them, separated from the gorge by a 
 thick fringe of scrub oak and dogwood in snowy bloom. 
 Greatly fatigued Edith sat down on the grass, pulling the 
 branches of the dogwood down to despoil them of their 
 blossoms. 
 
 "Yonder across the ravine," said Trajan, pointing to the 
 open field to their right, "are the farms of the Rothschild. 
 This is the narrowest point of the chasm, and above us the 
 tube you see spanning the breach is a conduit pipe to carry 
 the water used in irrigating the fields. If you will stand up 
 you can see the farm-houses and cow-stables of the baron. 
 Our friends will come out on that side, as they took the 
 upper road, crossing the bridge a little way ahead of us, 
 concealed by the bushes." 
 
 Edith approached the edge of the abyss, but turned back 
 dizzy. The cliffs were as sharply cut as walls, as she could 
 see on the other side where the solid rock went almost 
 straight downward hundreds of feet, with here and there an 
 adventurous bush jutting out straight from the granite and 
 emphasizing its bare appalling surface. 
 
 "Shall we wait here until we see our friends on the other 
 side, or shall we move onward and look for them ? " said 
 Trajan, glancing toward the farm buildings in the distance. 
 
 Before Edith could respond they were startled by a shriek, 
 followed by a hoarse roar. They directed their eyes to the 
 fields on the other side, but could see no one. A shriek, 
 this time faint, and apparently just behind the rim of strag 
 gling bushes, set their hearts beating wildly. Trajan started 
 
THE RA VINE OF REVECHE. 273 
 
 toward the bridge a mile or more above ; but just as he 
 turned Edith gasped : 
 
 " It is Bella ! " 
 
 Trajan turned transfixed. Bella was visible, making for 
 the chasm, some one half-supporting her as she came on ex- 
 haustedly. Edith could not imagine what they were flying 
 from, but Trajan knew only too well, and his heart in the 
 horror of the moment fairly ceased to beat. It was too late 
 for him to reach them by the bridge, and even the gulf was 
 a danger which they might not suspect. 
 
 As the flying figures came on, Trajan, standing on the 
 very verge of the precipice, shouted : 
 
 " Take to the trees don t approach too near the chasm." 
 Then as he recognized Hector, added in a clear confident 
 tone " get between Miss Briscoe and the animal and make 
 him follow you fling your hat at him." 
 
 Bella recognized Trajan, gasped something that could not 
 be heard, and sank exhausted to the ground. Hector made 
 an effort to lift her, but looking behind him, saw the bull 
 lowering his head to strike. He rose, flung his hat at the 
 animal, and made toward a clump of stunted oaks near the 
 edge of the cliff. Whether in fear or by calculation, it was 
 the wisest thing he could have done. The animal turning 
 from Bella, rushed at Hector with a loud bellow. He came 
 on, his head lowered, his eyes flaming, his nostrils covered 
 with foam. 
 
 Trajan meanwhile had flung off his coat, and charging 
 Edith to have no fear, ran to the water conduit and seizing 
 it with his hands and legs, slipped underneath it and began 
 to pass rapidly across, " hand over hand," as a sailor clam 
 bers underneath a rope. Edith looked on in a terror 
 of fascination. The distance was hardly one hundred and 
 fifty feet, but the time seemed an eternity. Half way in the 
 transit her heart sank in sickening horror. The frail pipe 
 sagged and swayed under the heavy weight and regular 
 movements of hands and legs. The climber had reached 
 
274 TRAJAN. 
 
 the center safely when a loud wrenching sound told that the 
 iron had snapped. Edith closed her eyes and sank to the 
 ground. She looked again, desperately, to see the poor 
 fellow s body tumbling into the black deep, hundreds of 
 feet below. No by heavens, the stout iron, though wrenched 
 at the joints, was still unbroken. The enormous sag, how 
 ever, makes the progress more difficult, and he has much 
 climbing and crawling during the last stage of the journey. 
 
 In another instant, Edith sobs with joy as Trajan s head 
 touches the jagged edge of the rock. He scrambles to his 
 feet with the swiftness of an acrobat and is at Bella s side in 
 a flash. He has his stout painter s blade in his hand, and 
 as the bull chases Hector about the bushes, he seizes Bella 
 and drags her a few steps, to the gnarled roots of an old 
 stump, covered with running vines. The bull, quitting 
 Hector who has the advantage of the bushes, makes for the 
 new comer in frantic plunges. Trajan tempts him to the 
 side of the stump to Bella s left, and as he comes on, leaps 
 upon it, with his knife in his hand. But the bull s impetus 
 carries him clear beyond and over the stump. Trajan shouts 
 to Hector to distract the beast in a direction opposite Bella. 
 
 Hector obeys and sets up a clamor. The monster, discon 
 certed for a moment, is uncertain which to go at, but Trajan 
 being nearest, he snorts viciously and with a savage bellow 
 dashes at the intruder. Trajan shouts to Hector to try and 
 get Bella to the bushes. He braces himself on the jagged 
 surface of the stump and bends forward slightly. He has 
 the advantage of the beast, for if it leaps up to strike him, 
 he can dodge, and if it keep its head lowered to rip him, 
 the impetus of the rush will be lost. Bellowing and snorting 
 the enemy comes on with his head down and his flaming 
 eyesfairlybursting from their sockets. But the stumpstops the 
 force of his start and he is obliged to pause. Trajan has 
 seen bull fights in Spain and knows the value of self-posses 
 sion. 
 
 As the bull raises himself on the ddbris, he slips to one 
 
THE RAVINE OF REVECHE. 275 
 
 side, and as the beast clears the stump, runs his knife to 
 the hilt in the swelling throat. The sharp horn in passing, 
 however, has ripped Trajan s arm badly, but in his excitement 
 the young man does not feel it. Bella s danger is now 
 imminent, for the roaring monster is within a few feet of her. 
 Trajan leaps from the stump and with a loud outcry keeps 
 the bull s attention fixed upon himself. The blood is pouring 
 in a thick stream from the gashed neck. Trajan makes a 
 rush and gets hold of the head and horns and thrusts the 
 blade rapidly into the part of the neck where the Toreador s 
 stroke gives the death wound. The blood follows in great 
 gouts, but the vital point is not reached. He shakes him 
 self clear of Trajan s feeble grasp, and half blinded by the 
 blood and mad with anguish darts toward Bella. But 
 Trajan has been mindful of that peril and has kept on the 
 guard side of her. He again slips in on the beast and has 
 him by the horns, his knife having slipped from his hands. 
 
 " You must give me a hand now, Hector, I m nearly done 
 for get a handful of sand and pebbles and fling them into 
 his eyes, while I divert him." 
 
 In the struggle man and beast have gotten to some distance 
 from Bella. She strives to rise, but the deadly fascination 
 of the scene chains her to the ground. Hector comes up 
 with his hat filled with sand. Trajan makes a last desperate 
 wrench. The animal s head is forced down and the sand 
 flung with all Hector s strength into the flaming eyes. 
 Trajan has relinquished his hold and flees to Bella, drags 
 her almost to the bushes, then sinks down limp and help 
 less. The beast, maddened and blind, is no longer able to 
 make out his adversaries and sinks on his knees weltering in 
 gore. As Bella calls Hector to help Trajan, two keepers 
 armed with ropes and stout pikes come up. They lift 
 Trajan. He is a mass of blood, some of it his own. His 
 vest hangs in fragments. His shirt is a dabbled rag. His 
 right side is pierced in several places by the horns. A 
 draught from Hector s brandy flask revives him and he asks 
 
276 TRAJAN. 
 
 if the bull is gone. The keepers answer him that there is 
 no further danger. Bella stands beside the young man in 
 shuddering fear. 
 
 " By George, Gray," cries Hector, " you are enough to 
 frighten any one look at yourself are you hurt ? My God, 
 Gray, you are badly hurt," he exclaimed, as Trajan s face 
 grew ghastly even through the blood. 
 
 " No, I m all right, a few flesh wounds, nothing serious " 
 but his limbs began to sink under him and he staggered 
 to the famous stump and rested gasping with pain and ex 
 haustion. The bull had meanwhile been mastered, and one 
 of the men came forward touching his hat to Hector. 
 
 "Bring the gentleman and lady to the farm and we will do 
 what we can." 
 
 " The gentleman can t walk he s badly gored by the 
 bull." 
 
 "We can carry him between us," said the man readily. 
 
 Trajan had risen and was waving his handkerchief to 
 Edith on the other side. 
 
 " Hector, just run to the edge of the cliff and tell Miss 
 Arden she can join us by going a distance up the path she 
 is on. She will come to the bridge and we will wait for her 
 there." Then he directed the man to give his attention to 
 the lady as he was not in condition to approach her. Bella 
 had by this time recovered in body and in mind and came 
 forward as Trajan spoke. 
 
 " I m sorry," he said, smiling ruefully, " that I must keep 
 you in mind of this business for a little while, but I will 
 send you home by one of the farm men. I m afraid I can t 
 go on just yet." 
 
 He gasped this, forcing himself to make lightly of it, 
 though he felt heavy and numb with loss of blood and pain 
 from the gashed flesh. His clothes were torn to shreds about 
 his body, and what was not torn was a mere clot of blood. 
 
 " You hardly need to make apologies, Mr. Gray, for your 
 appearance I I will not leave you until I see your 
 
THE RA VINE OF RE VECHE. 2 7 7 
 
 wounds dressed and yourself in a conveyance homeward." 
 Then turning to the men, she said : " don t you see this 
 gentleman is unfit to stand. Carry him gently to the 
 farm and let us hasten." It was none too soon, for 
 Trajan had sunk limp and lifeless, to the ground. Bella 
 thought the journey would never end. But in a little more 
 than a half hour the cortege arrived at the farm-house. 
 The blood-stained clothing was removed, Bella herself insist 
 ing on helping. The body was frightfully torn, but no 
 deep wound could be discovered when the blood was washed 
 away. Tender hands soothed and bound the gashes up, and 
 under a strong dose of brandy the young man came back to 
 consciousness. He looked surprised, and to Bella s aston 
 ishment asked, almost in a vexed tone : 
 
 "Where is Miss Arden ? She was to have met us at the 
 bridge as we came here. Hector, for God s sake go and see 
 what has happened to her. Give me any thing you have 
 that I can wear, I can t stand this. I must see for myself " 
 
 " Pray be calm, Mr. Gray," pleaded Bella, startled at the 
 vehemence of the wounded man. " No harm can happen to 
 my cousin. The bull that attacked us was in the field by 
 the merest accident. The keeper informs me that all the 
 stock are locked in a double walled paddock. Besides, 
 Edith is home by this time." 
 
 "It may be true," answered Trajan, doggedly, "but I 
 shall be in torments until I see the poor child safe as she 
 came from her brother s side If you can t give me any 
 thing to wear I will go as I am Hurry, I implore you." 
 
 Along pelisse of a soft fabric was produced, and wrapping 
 himself in it, Trajan dragged himself from the bed, where 
 the kind farmer-folk had laid him. A common country 
 cart was standing in the yard ready harnessed. 
 
 " I will come to see you again, my good friends," said 
 Trajan, shaking the hands of the wondering farmers. " You 
 will accompany me, will you not, Miss Briscoe or can you 
 stand such a rough vehicle ? " 
 
278 TRAJAN. 
 
 11 Why, Mr. Gray, what a question how could I leave 
 you in such a moment ? " 
 
 With the aid of the peasants the young man was bestowed 
 painfully in the cart, but he could not maintain himself in 
 the seat, and some blankets were stretched on the boards. 
 Bella got on the seat beside the farmer and the vehicle shot 
 off, Trajan heroically repressing a groan at each jolt. Bella 
 told the man where to drive. As they neared the bridge 
 they overtook Hector, but Bella made him a sign to say 
 nothing, and as they passed, she bent over whispering: 
 " Look out for Edith we shall not stop, but hurry home 
 ward, where I presume we shall find her." 
 
 Trajan, as Bella had discovered, was again unconscious, and 
 if he had not been the high side-boards would have hidden 
 Hector from view. The ride home was long, and to Bella 
 an ordeal of the most painful character. She did not 
 know whether it was a corpse or a live man that she was to 
 set down at Les Charmettes. Then her mind misgave her 
 about Edith. She had been firm in the conviction -that her 
 cousin had taken the road from the^) ridge homeward it was 
 long but not difficult. Then she shuddered as she thought 
 the frightened girl might have made a mis-step and gone over 
 the precipice. As they came within sight of the house a 
 landau, which she recognized as her aunt s, came furiously 
 toward them. Claridge was on the seat with the driver, and 
 then Bella knew that Edith was safe. Sure enough, she 
 with Miss McNair looked out as they heard the vehicle. 
 Claridge leaped down and ran to the cart. 
 
 " Miss Briscoe, are you really unhurt, are you really safe ? 
 Heavens you are covered with blood." 
 
 " Perfectly well and unhurt ; I wish I could say the same 
 for Mr. Gray," she said tremblingly " I m afraid he is 
 cruelly dangerously hurt " 
 
 " Dangerously Bella what can you mean ? " cried Edith, 
 who had alighted " Did did the animal attack him 
 again ? He was well when I left but where is he ? " A long 
 
THE RAVINE OF REVECHE. 279 
 
 moan from within the cart answered the question as Bella 
 put her fingers to her lips. Claridge got up and looked 
 in. His face was very grave as he leaped down. 
 
 " This is bad work very bad work." He shook his head 
 sadly and motioned the driver to move on. He took 
 his place on the seat, while Bella got into the landau 
 with the others. A stretcher was improvised from the 
 chairs on the lawn, and the mangled form of the young man 
 was carried through the shuddering crowd of guests and 
 servants into the house, up the stairs, and laid upon his own 
 bed. 
 
 "Oh, my darling," sobbed Mrs. Briscoe, as she clung to 
 Bella, "what you have suffered ; what a Providence ! " 
 
 " Yes, mamma think rather of that young hero in the 
 agony of death, and all through my folly." 
 
 " What do you mean, Bella through your folly ? It was 
 not your fault that the beast attacked you, and any man 
 would have done as much " 
 
 " Hush, mother don t talk like that to me, or you will 
 make me show you how wicked I am, and it s better that 
 you shouldn t know ; and as for any man doing what that 
 man did there was one man there before him and he didn t 
 do it there is not one man in ten thousand that would have 
 attempted what Mr. Gray did, and there isn t one in ten 
 thousand that could have succeeded, having attempted it." 
 
 " But, my child, do you see what a sight you are ? " cried 
 the mother, suddenly noticing that Bella s dress was a coat 
 of blood and mud. Bella looked at herself and saw for the 
 first time the marks of the combat. She was faint and sank 
 into a chair. Her mother summoning the servants directed 
 them to carry her to her room. It was not until she had 
 stripped with her own hands and examined her child s body 
 that she could convince herself that she had escaped 
 unscathed. 
 
 " This has been an unlucky house for us so far, I tremble 
 to think of the next disaster. Is Mr. Gray seriously hurt ? 
 
2&> TRAJAN. 
 
 Were his wounds examined at the farm ? " But Bella lay 
 quite still in the bed and Mrs. Briscoe fancying that she was 
 dropping to sleep, stepped softly into her own room. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR DEAD." 
 
 THE disasters of the afternoon had been by Mrs. Arden s 
 command concealed from her son. That robustious 
 invalid, unconscious of his danger, was drinking from the 
 intoxicating cup which Theo came every afternoon and 
 morning to hold to his ready lips. Time had been when 
 Elliot would have scouted the idea of receiving joy from 
 any flacon not held in Bella s ministering hands, and he rel 
 ished it all the more that the priestess was cold and coy 
 and unready to pour out the nectar. Bella s visits to the sick 
 room were short and almost perfunctory. She was like all the 
 Ardens, tender to the suffering and patient with the afflicted, 
 but her ancient gayety responded no more to the young man s 
 artful lurings. She replied in a soft voice and with unequiv 
 ocal directness to his most teasing gibes. Elliot was a good 
 deal puzzled, but confined to his room he could not arrive 
 at a suggestion even of the mystery. Theo could have ex 
 plained a good deal to him, but though she chattered 
 briskly on every possible subject that might divert him, 
 Bella s name was never mentioned between them. He had 
 brought up Trajan often and his growing tenderness for his 
 protege was not diminished when she interposed with hearty 
 emphasis : 
 
 " Trajan Gray is the noblest nature in the whole world." 
 
 The yellow sunlight was lingering in great plashes on the 
 
 floor when Edith, too restless to remain in her own room, 
 
 came to her brother s. Theo, who was reading Maggie 
 
 Tulliver s enforced flight with Philip from " The Mill on 
 
" HOME THE Y BRO UGH T HER WARRIOR. " 281 
 
 the Floss," closed the book as Edith sat down beside her 
 brother. 
 
 "Did you have a long walk, Neddy?" a name Elliot 
 called her when fraternally tender " you look frightfully 
 used up why you must have walked to Romain !" he ex 
 claimed, as he drew her head down and looked closely at 
 her ; " and you have been crying your eyes are red yes 
 I knew it, you are in a fever what does this mean ! " 
 
 " Yes, I have walked a great distance, and I do feel a 
 little tired," she said, resolutely restraining her tears. 
 
 Elliot was alarmed. He knew his sister so well that the 
 signs in her face warned him there was something serious. 
 He rang the bell. 
 
 " I am going to send for mother, and you must go and lie 
 down." 
 
 " Yes, I think I will," stammered the poor child, and she 
 got up quietly and left the room. 
 
 " You may be sure something has gone wrong," said Elliot, 
 as Theo looked dreamily out of the window, making a pe 
 culiarly charming picture framed in the sun rays that fell on 
 her dark complexion. 
 
 " It is quite sinful for me to dawdle here," she rejoined 
 with a bewitching smile, as she arose to go. 
 
 " It s never wrong to comfort the afflicted," answered 
 Elliot. " I should like to have my ribs broken every month 
 if it brought me the same consolation." 
 
 " Consolations, like afflictions, never come alone," retorted 
 Theo, as her eye wandered to the nurse preparing a bolus 
 for the wounded hero. 
 
 Elliot did not quite comprehend this epigram, but 
 laughed as the speaker bade him au revoir. 
 
 Edith had quit Elliot determined to go to her room and 
 lie down. As she came into the hall, she saw the doctor 
 outside Trajan s door giving instructions to his assistant. 
 She hurried forward and laid her hand on his arm. He was 
 a Frenchman, and to the end gallant. He would have sus- 
 
282 TRAJAN". 
 
 pended a surgical operation to pay a compliment. His keen 
 black eyes beamed softly as the pretty girl looked appeal- 
 ingly in his face. 
 
 " Doctor," she stammered piteously, " are you afraid- 
 do you think is there any danger ? " 
 
 There are but two conjunctures when a Frenchman feels 
 bound to tell the truth : when it will injure a rival and 
 swell his own importance. In this case the vanity of the 
 man overcame the prudence of the practitioner. Taking the 
 young girl s hand, and soaring with unutterable importance 
 as an oracle en titre, he said almost jauntily : " Mademoiselle 
 I don t permit myself to think. I am unable to judge 
 and I have telegraphed to Paris for a specialist but I would 
 not be bold enough to even guess at the result Ah " as 
 these dreadful words left his lips, he repented his impru 
 dence, for if he had not caught her the girl would have 
 fallen to the floor. 
 
 " What is it, doctor what ails Miss Arden ? " asked Theo 
 in surprise, coming up at this moment. Before the doctor 
 could reply, Mrs. Arden came out of Trajan s room, and 
 seeing Edith supported by the physician darted forward : 
 
 " Edith Edith what has happened ? Edith, my child, 
 speak to me ! " 
 
 The doctor said hastily : " I was imprudent enough to 
 answer her question about the invalid and she swooned" 
 
 " I m surprised, doctor, that an experienced medical man 
 should answer questions like these from young girls 
 
 " In Heaven s name, Mrs. Arden, who is hurt now ? " 
 asked Theo breathlessly. Edith straightened herself sud 
 denly and looking in the questioner s face said almost 
 harshly, " Trajan Gray is in there on his deathbed." Theo 
 looked at the doctor, looked at Mrs. Arden. A ghastly hue 
 replaced the rich brown of her cheek. 
 
 " Ah no no don t say don t say he has killed him 
 self oh my God my God, don t say it?" She stag 
 gered against the wall where the doctor, mystified, caught 
 
"HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR." 283 
 
 and supported her. She broke from him and confront 
 ing Edith who stood shocked and amazed leaning on 
 her mother whispered hoarsely : " Did he kill himself or 
 or" but her voice died away in a gasp. 
 
 " Mademoiselle," said the doctor in astonishment, " Mr. 
 Gray is severely gored by a bull how dangerous the wound 
 is cannot be known until my confrere comes from Paris. 
 Madame Arden, your daughter s nerves are unstrung from 
 the adventures of the day. She should be in bed and care 
 fully tended. I shall be back after I have obtained some 
 lint, and either myself or confrere will remain during the 
 night. Mr. Gray cannot be left a moment unguarded." He 
 bowed and entered the sick room. As he disappeared Mrs. 
 Arden turned to Theo and briefly recounted the events of 
 the afternoon, and then supporting Edith went to her own 
 chamber. Theo stood perfectly still in the same spot. The 
 ashen color deepened on her face. Her eyes softened to 
 humidity, and as they softened changed from the greenish- 
 yellow to dark gray. She leaned against the wall as if quite 
 lost to all surroundings. Here Clare found her a minute 
 later as she returned from a visit to the Grovels. 
 
 " Good heavens, Theo, what has happened ? Come with 
 me ! " She took the unresisting arm and led her sister along 
 the wide hall to their apartment, and when the door was 
 closed led her, still unresisting, to the divan in the alcove 
 window. " Mon Dieu, Theo, you look like death. Have 
 you been in a faint ? Do speak to me. You ll drive me 
 wild with that frightful look ! " 
 
 " Trajan Gray is lying in his room dying perhaps dead, 
 and I drove him to it ! " 
 
 " Oh, Theo, Theo, I implored you to spare him. I im 
 plored you to let him know from the first. The punishment 
 is come and we deserve it that is the bitterness, Theo, we 
 deserve it. When did this happen ? " 
 
 Theo told the story as she had fceard it in a hard, husky 
 voice but never the sign of a tear. 
 
284 TRAJAN. 
 
 Clare breathed a great sigh of relief "I don t see how 
 you are in the remotest way responsible for Trajan s hurt, 
 Theo ; I was afraid it was something of another sort. It 
 looks as if he were in love with Bella. That s the most rea 
 sonable view of the matter." 
 
 Theo looked at Clare with a flash of incredulous scorn, 
 which changed into a smile of dreadful contempt. Then 
 she said, " Trajan Gray is not the sort of man that forgets 
 his love in a day." 
 
 Clare staggered as if she had been struck. Struck she 
 was, poor thing, by a weapon so terrible that none but a 
 woman and sister could have used it. She sank on a chair 
 and covered her face with her hands. 
 
 Theo was kneeling at her feet in an instant, kissing her 
 hands and pleading to be forgiven. 
 
 " I didn t know what I said, Clare ; oh Clare, forgive me 
 forgive the hateful words. I did not mean, oh I implore 
 you in our mother s name to believe me I had no idea of 
 what I was saying, or the meaning of it when I said it 
 upon my soul, Clare. I would not, could not have been so 
 cruel for whom have I to love if not you ? " and she kissed 
 the poor hands that covered the stricken sister s face. Clare 
 did not remove her hands, but said tenderly and sweetly, 
 " I believe you, Theo, let us say no more about it. I am 
 stupidly sensitive. There, dear," and she bent over and 
 kissed the penitent head. The younger rose hastily from 
 her kneeling posture and Clare shrank into the embrasure 
 of the window as a knock was heard at the door. Theo. 
 opened it and Jules stood before her. 
 
 " What is this I hear about Gray ? " he asked, panting. 
 "One of the Arden servants told us he had been gored to 
 death by a bull. I saw no one as I came in and come to 
 you for news." Theo told all she knew. 
 
 " A plucky fight," he said scrutinizing his sister. " Where s 
 Clare ? Oh, there you are. I suppose this has upset the 
 house again." 
 
"HOME THEY BROUGHl^ HER WARRIOR" 285 
 
 "Yes, Mrs. Arden is broken down. She thinks the 
 chateau is ruled by an evil fate, and I declare it looks like 
 it," added Theo, resuming her old tone, " though I have 
 quite forgotten my hurt arm. Are you going to stay to din 
 ner ? " she said, giving Jules a significant look. 
 
 " No. I will come over immediately after. I imagine 
 the less intrusion upon the family now the better. I must 
 go to Paris to-morrow ! " As he passed out he met Hector, 
 in traveling costume, coming down the hall. 
 
 " Are you off, Hector ; what s up ? " 
 
 " I have received a telegram from my paper, directing me 
 to study the German war preparations. I am off on the 
 next train. What a house this is for misfortunes ! How is 
 Gray?" 
 
 "I didn t see him, but I judge from my sister s report that 
 there is small hope. You were present at the attack ? " 
 
 " Yes," the young man answered, rather restively. " I 
 never witnessed such nerve. There isn t a bull fighter in 
 Andalusia would have dared seize that brute as Gray did 
 I own I was helpless but if I had had all my wits about 
 me I should have lost them in watching his fight. It was 
 superb I m going to write it out for my journal " 
 
 "Substituting yourself for the hero, of course," insinuated 
 Jules blandly " au revoir" and before the indignant scribe 
 could fashion a rejoinder he was gone. A servant at the 
 same time approached Hector, saying : 
 
 "Monsieur Arden requests that you will take the trouble 
 to come to his bedside." 
 
 On entering, Elliot looked surprised at seeing Hector in 
 his traveling suit. 
 
 " Why, Hector, you re not tired of us, are you ? Can t 
 the rest of the company make the time pass while I m 
 pulling myself together?" 
 
 Hector explained about his journalistic mission, and then 
 added : " I should like to stay until Gray s case is decided, 
 but Claridge has promised to telegraph me " 
 
286 TRAJAN. 
 
 Then as Elliot s wide-open eyes and astonished expression 
 struck him he stopped abruptly. 
 
 " What do you mean by Gray s case ? Has any thing hap 
 pened him ? Where is he ? " and the young man started to 
 arise. 
 
 " Stay, Arden you are not fit to move and, above all, you 
 are not in a condition to see what may be over there," 
 pointing to Trajan s room. " They have thought best, I see, 
 not to let you know of the disaster, but further concealment 
 is useless. Lie down quietly, and I will tell you every detail." 
 
 It was not without a species of subdued enjoyment that 
 the journalist rehearsed the events of the afternoon, doing 
 unstinted justice to all the actors, it must be owned, and, 
 though softening his own part, leaving no doubt of the fatal 
 termination to Bella had Trajan not appeared so op 
 portunely. 
 
 " And why did they keep this from me ? Why did they 
 Please pull that bell cord. I can t of course ask you to 
 stay, Hector the place seems fatal good-by." 
 
 The servant entered as Hector answered this farewell. 
 
 " Where is my mother, Pierre ? " 
 
 " Madame is in her chamber, with mademoiselle, your 
 sister." 
 
 " Very well, get Francois to help you to take me over to 
 Mr. Gray s room." 
 
 The two strong men carried the chair down the long cor 
 ridor and entered Trajan s room unannounced. The doctor 
 was busied over the wounded man, whose form was stretched 
 out nearly naked on an oiled silk sheet, spread upon an 
 operating table. The blood had been washed from the 
 body. There were many wounds, most of them stanched 
 with morsels of cotton. The left arm seemed torn into 
 shreds, one of the assistants holding it, while the doctor 
 operated slowly. Trajan s head rested on an air pillow. His 
 eyes were closed, and his breathing was scarcely perceptible. 
 The entrance of Elliot was not remarked by the physician, 
 
"HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR." 287 
 
 and waving the servants from the room he sat quite still, 
 watching the terrible spectacle. The blood-stained clothes 
 lay in a basket beside the table. Elliot shuddered and 
 uttered a groan. The doctor looked around and asked in 
 astonishment : 
 
 "Why do you come here, Monsieur Arden ? this is no 
 place for you, you can do your friend no good." 
 
 " Don t mind me, Doctor," groaned Elliot ; " I should go 
 mad if I were any where else. Continue with your work, 
 and don t mind me. I shall not leave this room until he is 
 saved or lost." 
 
 The doctor shrugged his shoulders and resumed his work. 
 
 " We were obliged to take him from the bed, as he would 
 have smothered there. Some of the wounds are under the 
 arm and near the back, and until they are dressed he can 
 not be replaced in the bed," explained the doctor, keeping 
 on with his work. " I am treating him with a carbolic prep 
 aration which is a strong healing agency as well as an 
 antiseptic. It has achieved miracles in the military hospitals, 
 and I base all my hopes on it." 
 
 Hours passed. Elliot thought with a sickening sense of 
 despair that the awful work would never end. When it was 
 done, there were little patches of cotton from the breast to 
 the calf of the left leg. The victim was under an anaesthetic 
 and gave no sign of life save a gentle and nearly regular 
 breathing. The body was wrapped in a ,thin fabric im 
 pregnated with oil of tar and laid on the bed. Then the 
 physician, charging his aid with the regimen to follow, pre 
 pared to go to dinner, and on Elliot s invitation consented 
 to dine at Les Charmettes. When he returned his confrere, 
 the great Paris surgeon, came with \iirn. He examined the 
 invalid with eyes, ears and hands. Indeed, taking off his 
 waistcoat, he raised the body and held it against his own 
 breast for five minutes, listening intently. The examination 
 lasted an hour. Then the great man retired to the dressing- 
 room with the Crecy practitioner, and the door was closed 
 
288 TRAJAN. 
 
 behind them. The consultation lasted an age, as it seemed 
 to Elliot, but it was only twenty minutes that had passed 
 when they returned. The surgeon was to remain all night, 
 the house doctor informed Elliot, and would beg a bed to 
 be placed in the dressing-room. Elliot looked the question 
 he dared not ask, and the Paris surgeon, with that simplicity 
 which a real man of science deals in, answered gravely : 
 
 " I won t conceal from you that the case is a bad one. 
 There is, however, in all the wounds but one that seems 
 dangerous. The horn in one place entered from the rear of 
 the left side, but whether it penetrated deep enough and 
 high enough to dislocate the vertebrae, I am not yet sure. If 
 it has we shall have to fight death tooth and nail, with only 
 one chance in three." 
 
 " Thank you, sir. We will take that chance hopefully 
 under such a guide as you. I have rung for my mother. 
 You will please consider every thing in this house at your 
 command." 
 
 The surgeon bowed. Mrs. Arden entered as he said : 
 
 " My needs are very few, and until the crisis is past I shall 
 know no o^e and see no one." 
 
 Elliot made a gesture as he saw his mother s alarmed look 
 fixed on him. 
 
 " Have my bed made in here, mother. I am going to stay 
 here for the present." 
 
 Mrs. Arden saw the futility of arguing the matter, merely 
 reminding him that it was hazardous both for Trajan and 
 himself, since, of course, where Elliot was, his sister and 
 mother must be, most of the time. 
 
 The night wore away, and the invalid was no worse. A 
 day, two days, three days a week, and still nothing deci 
 sive. On the eighth day, the Paris surgeon, who could only 
 spare time to come out every three days, announced that 
 the crisis was at hand. The succeeding twenty-four hours 
 would decide between life and death. 
 
 Trajan had not been permitted to speak, and the cords 
 
"HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIOR" 289 
 
 of his body, recovering slowly from laceration and dis 
 placement, made it impossible to turn his head on the 
 pillow. His mind had wandered at intervals, and Elliot 
 heard his own name murmured fondly in the sick man s 
 dreams. There was now to be a painful operation, and 
 Elliot was banished to the dressing-room. It lasted many 
 hours, and there were heart-rending groans that told the 
 story of suffering. The great surgeon came into the little 
 room, but Elliot dared not look in his face. 
 
 " Eh Men" he said, kindly, putting his hands on the 
 young man s shoulder, " your friend will have a few days 
 more of pain, and then the end." 
 
 " He will die," gasped Elliot. 
 
 " No, he will live." 
 
 Let us draw a veil over the impulsive boy rising and em 
 bracing the kind surgeon and flying into the next room to 
 tell the great n r .- T S to his mother, and Edith, and Bella when 
 they had been hastily summoned. 
 
 As the kind surgeon had said, so it was. Trajan mended 
 to the "sight of the eye," as the Crecy doctor expressed it. 
 He raved deliriously at intervals, and upon such occasions 
 no one but Elliot remained to hear the revelations of the 
 distressed heart. Elliot never told what these revelations 
 were, but he looked curiously at Edith as she hovered about 
 the sick-bed and smiled benignantly to himself. 
 
 Naturally, the last blow had sent the company away. Kate 
 McNair, on Mrs. Arden s earnest urging, remained, and was 
 looked upon as one of the family. The young vicomte 
 had accepted Mrs. Grovel s hospitable bidding to the Du- 
 clos chateau, where the Englishman, Claridge, gladly trans 
 ferred himself. Belcour had gone back to Paris, declaring 
 it a crime to make merry while his dear Elliot and Gray 
 were MsoU, and, as he afterward expressed it, " gone down to 
 the porch of Hades with their hands on the bell-pull." 
 
 Theo, denied her tetes-a-tetes with Elliot, had withdrawn to 
 the Grovels , carrying Clare with her. She came over daily 
 
290 TRAJAN. 
 
 to inquire for the invalids, and sometimes succeeded, on one 
 pretext or another, in seeing Elliot. He was distraught and 
 in no mood for the gentle passion his charming friend was 
 slowly feeding. When the crisis had passed, however, he 
 became more sociable and frequently found his way over to 
 the Grovels , where he encountered a house full of the 
 longest possible titles and the most eccentric manners. 
 Lafayette s interest in Clare had grown steadily. He was 
 unaccountably fond of being with her, as Theo told Jules, 
 laughing, mostly because Clare let him do all the talking, 
 and there was no joy to him dearer than that. The like of 
 the display made by the Grovels had never been seen in Crecy. 
 
 The fame of their hunts in my Lord Baron Rothschild s 
 demesnes extended to Meaux and even Paris, where the 
 Chroniques set forth the affluence of their good friend 
 Lafayette in the piquant phrases achievable only in the French 
 tongue by a clever pen. Figaro from the notes of the shifty 
 Hector, published a brilliant romance of the encounter with 
 the bull, in which the modest Boston journalist figured as an 
 intrepid champion of beauty in distress and poor Trajan 
 as a sort of sword-bearer to the redoubtable knight. Trajan 
 found this exhilarating narrative long afterward waiting for 
 him in the Rue Dragon and laughed heartily at the handi 
 work of his compatriot. And so the old order of things 
 resumed itself insensibly in the two chateaux where the reader 
 is for the time being guest, alternating between one and the 
 other and watching the little drama as it develops its plots 
 and brings on its personages. While Trajan is hors du com 
 bat the sagacious reader prefers the grand company of the 
 Grovels, where he is sure of fun and movement, and where 
 he can keep an eye on that captivating witch Theo, whose 
 quartier gtntral is fixed in the grandest chamber of the 
 chateau. 
 
 It is the artful Theo who, after an interview of 
 amusing frankness with her venerable kinswoman, pre 
 vails upon Mrs, Grovel to write inviting Phoebe and her 
 
"HOME THEY BROUGHT HER WARRIORS 291 
 
 mother to visit the Chateau Duclos. She explains to Jules 
 that the big guardsman refuses to remain unless some /#/-// 
 is furnished to "make it worth his while. The Dray tons are 
 not rich as Americans would consider it, but to our dear 
 kinsfolk their $15,000 income is a fortune almost fabulous, 
 and Antoine will be very comfortable on $5,000 of it per 
 annum. So you must lend him a hand with Phcebe, who 
 probably has her mother s weakness for titles ; and now that 
 Trajan is recovering you must renew your siege with Bella." 
 
 Jules doesn t know what to make of that singular girl. 
 Sometimes he is sure she is half won and he tries a bit of 
 tenderness, when she laughs at him and with a droll look 
 turns the talk to something ludicrous. He half believes she 
 is a jilt and trifling with him for her own amusement. She 
 has Claridge and Bellechasse in a fever of devotion, and 
 Jules inclines to think she is after the Bellechasse dukedom, 
 as the vicomte will inherit it when his worn out brother 
 dies, as he must soon. 
 
 " But Bella doesn t know of that. How should she ?" 
 
 " I m not so sure. That s the only mistake, Jack, you make 
 in all your combinations you never concede as much craft 
 to your adversaries as you have yourself. My experience 
 teaches me that every one has a certain measure of craft in 
 his or her kind, and I ve yet to see the marriageable girls 
 that don t know a good deal more of the fellows that dan 
 gle about them than the fellows suspect." 
 
 " Well, Mr. Moralist, we ve got the summer before us, and 
 when the harvest comes if we haven t gathered the crop it 
 will be our own fault. I expect every day to have Clare 
 announce that Lafayette has offered himself." 
 
292 TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE AMBER ELVES. 
 
 IT is, after all, a glad world or a sad one as we please to 
 regard it. The physical depression that a gloomy day 
 induces is changed to delightful transport when we force our 
 own resources to come to our aid. We may imagine that 
 life would become intolerable in the six months night of the 
 North or the sempiternal mists of the mountains, did we not 
 know that the people of these regions pine in the more 
 equable seasons of other lands ! The favored races of 
 Southern Europe are prone to all the depressions of bleaker 
 climes. Naples, the seat of eternal sunshine, contributes to 
 the roll of the hapless in proportion to London suffused with 
 the debilitating moisture of perpetual fog. It is, indeed, in our 
 selves and not in our stars, oh, my brother, that the magnet 
 of all our destinies works its mysterious attractions and 
 repulsions. In the mineral itself lives the fire that sharp 
 concussion evokes latent, unconsumable, but always native. 
 We build ourselves lordly pleasure houses, but the festal 
 tokens must come from ourselves. 
 
 It was with reflections of this agreeably trite sort that 
 Trajan passed into the easier stages of convalescence. 
 His wounds had healed with surprising rapidity. It was 
 only the lacerated arm and the gash in the side that 
 held him in bed. These the physician declared would give 
 him no trouble in a month. It was the wonderful car 
 bolic remedy that had worked the miracle, and the delighted 
 ^Esculapius was embalming the events in a profound 
 exposition to be added to the causes cettbres in the 
 archives of the Academy of Science. Elliot was disposed 
 to impatience with the enthusiastic specialist, but TrajaH 
 tolerated his vagaries with the humility of an acolyte, and* 
 gravely subscribed to his reclamations. His sick room had 
 become the rendezvous of the family. Elliot, whose wounds 
 
THE AMBER ELVES. 293 
 
 were entirely healed, was the first to salute him in the morn 
 ing and the last to leave him at night. Mrs. Briscoe lavished 
 on him the maternal devotion that a darling son alone could 
 expect. 
 
 The family owed Bella s life to him and she thought no 
 recompense could pay that debt. As Trajan became strong 
 enough to sit propped up in bed he insisted that the draw 
 ing lessons should be resumed, as he felt equal to instruct 
 ing his pupils from that point of vantage. Elliot in arrang 
 ing the sketches in Trajan s portfolio came across the head 
 of Edith, begun long before. His sister was looking over 
 his shoulder as he laughed softly and looked into her eyes. 
 A blush prayed him not to jest over the discovery, and the 
 sketch was softly restored to its place. Theo came over 
 every day or wrote polite notes of inquiry but for some 
 reason none of her messages were ever delivered to the sick 
 man unless entrusted to Elliot when Trajan listened with 
 impressive unconcern. One morning Edith came into the 
 room with a bunch of lovely wood violets, lilies of the valley, 
 and fox-glove arranged in a pretty vase. Theo had sent 
 them to the invalid. He never even looked at them. A few 
 minutes afterward Elliot left the room and the nurse was in 
 the dressing chamber ; Trajan seized the moment to say : 
 
 " Miss Arden, will you do. me a great favor ? will you wrap 
 your hand in a towel and fling those flowers out of the win 
 dow ? I shall smother if they remain in the room." 
 
 " I must humor a sick man s fancy, of course," said the 
 maiden gayly, gratifying the strange whim to the letter, and 
 then cheerfully resumed her sketching. There is no telling 
 how far she could have carried her discretion in refraining 
 from the subject had Bella not opportunely come in with 
 her mother. Trajan s whimsical request was never afterward, 
 or not until long afterward, alluded to, but the doctor that 
 day forbade flowers in the sick room, omitting to mention 
 that it was by the sick man s request ! Elliot had resumed 
 his rides with Theo, the first pretext being the young strat- 
 
294 TRAJAN. 
 
 egist s desire to see the field of Trajan s exploit. Edith 
 reluctantly accompanied them, but not till Bella consented 
 to go also. Greatly to Elliot s vexation and Theo s no small 
 discomfiture, the Vicomte Bellechasse and Claridge, hear 
 ing of the proposed tour, invited themselves to escort the 
 ladies. There were no traces of the struggle on the scene. 
 
 The stump bore evidences of the young man s boot heels, 
 but the soft grass was green and unstained and the plowed 
 field innocent of a reminder of the blood shed that exciting 
 day. The water-pipe, too, had been repaired, and some of 
 the ropes serving the workmen were still suspended across 
 the chasm. " And Trajan crossed on that thing ? " asked 
 Elliot incredulously, as Edith pointed out where the cries 
 of Bella had surprised them on the opposite bank. It was a 
 five-inch gas pipe, such as are used for mains in the smaller 
 towns, and jointed in thick sockets. " That sort of pipe is 
 much stronger than you would imagine," said the Vicomte. 
 " I have often seen workmen make use of it, as Gray did, 
 when bridging streams. It requires great skill in the pas 
 sage but otherwise there is no unusual danger." 
 
 " I ll lay you a hundred pounds you can t find a workman 
 in the whole of France that would undertake that passage 
 to the other side," interposed Claridge. 
 
 " I will undertake it myself on that bet," said the intrepid 
 Frenchman taking off his coat. 
 
 The ladies grew pale and frightened and looked at the 
 young men appealingly. Elliot, laughing, reminded the 
 antagonists that the international rancor between Gaul and 
 Briton was not quite in place under the circumstances. 
 
 " I don t doubt a moment, my dear Bellechasse, that you 
 would do it ; who ever heard of a Frenchman that wouldn t 
 dare the devil ; or a Briton," he added diplomatically, " that 
 would not face him ? " 
 
 The antagonists were mollified, and it was proposed to 
 descend the ravine to the Spring of the Faithful, which all 
 the party had heard of, but none had ever seen. The 
 
THE AMBER ELVES. 295 
 
 vicomte was sure he could find it, he had come to it once 
 from the valley road, but there had been a freshet and the 
 entrance to Reveche was flooded. Curiously enough, Edith 
 heard the proposal without volunteering a word about her 
 knowledge of its whereabouts. When the party reached the 
 valley road, they were just to the left of the mouth of the 
 ravine and Edith recollected the place at once. She said 
 nothing, however, and the vicomte led the party to the 
 opening, where all dismounted and set out for the spring. 
 It was not difficult to find, the path up the side of the gorge 
 passing it within a hundred yards from the mouth. But the 
 late rains had made the path impracticable for the ladies. 
 The spring itself was a boiling caldron of yellow muddy 
 water, and the pilgrims were forced to postpone their pledges 
 until the place was accessible. Edith felt guilty at the sense 
 of relief that came upon her when this was told. She 
 vaguely felt that certain hands in the mysterious pool would 
 be a sort of sacrilege, and I am forced to make known, that 
 upon her own confession afterward made to a certain per 
 son whose fortunes I hope the reader is interested in, she 
 would have remorselessly closed up the fountain if she could 
 have managed it. I can t account for this strong antipathy 
 on the part of this charming girl. She was by far the 
 sweetest nature in the Arden family. Certainly she could 
 not have objected to Elliot, or Bella, or even the good- 
 natured Vicomte, or Claridge, for she afterward made much 
 of the latter two, and her devotion to Bella and Elliot is 
 it not a legend in the family ? 
 
 One day, however, later on, riding alone, Theo and Elliot, 
 scouring the valley, passed the ravine and the young man 
 was reminded of the well. They dismounted and climbed 
 the dim cathedral aisle to the bosky shrine. The spring had 
 receded to its normal surface. A melancholy cat-bird sent 
 forth its plaintive refrain in the thick shade above. The 
 daylight fell soft and soothing on the eye ; slanting banners 
 of gold falling through the opening in the branches above 
 
296 TRAJAN. 
 
 as the sun passed to the west, toward the misty head of 
 the ravine. 
 
 " What a scene of dreamy restfulness and divine aspira 
 tion ! " cried Theo, drawing a long breath of sensuous con 
 tent. " I could write a poem here, or say a prayer of real 
 devotion, or do any thing that implies soul, conscience, truth." 
 She said this for the moment forgetting her companion, 
 whose eyes were turned upon her in mute questioning. 
 
 " That s the very sentiment," he said softly, " for the vow 
 of fidelity. It s the God of the fountain that inspires his 
 devotees before they pledge at his altar come, let us receive 
 this sense of absolution as the sign that we are purged for 
 the sacrament." 
 
 They kneeled down. The words of the vow were not easily 
 made out, and Elliot held the drooping tresses of green sus 
 pended to familiarize himself with the faded characters. 
 
 * By the heart that s true in love, " he spelled out when 
 a scream interrupted him. Theo had started back and 
 risen from her knees. 
 
 Her eyes dilating with horror were fixed on the inner edge 
 of the spring. Elliot followed the glance a large black ser 
 pent of the species the French call couleuvre a collier Q\ water 
 adder, hung from the thick clusters of vines, the yellow scales 
 of his belly reflected like amber orbs in the brackish waters 
 of the pool. Theo and Elliot stood transfixed with a sort 
 of fascination. The amber eyes in the pool multiplied until 
 the little basin seemed a caldron of dancing demons, glaring 
 with strange menacing contortions. Picking up a stone, 
 Elliot flung it at the serpent s body coiled in the mosses. The 
 reptile thrust out its forked tongue and disappeared in the 
 bank. The water resumed its somber brackish hue the 
 amber fiends had fled. 
 
 " Ugh ! " shuddered Theo, " I wouldn t put my hand in 
 that water for the keys of Peter. The sight of a snake makes 
 me quake for an hour." 
 
 "It must be an Egyptian spirit that presides here," said 
 
THE AMBER ELVES. 297 
 
 Elliot, no more inclined than his companion to trust himself 
 in the vicinage of the serpent. " You know the snake was 
 the Egyptian symbol of eternity, and I dare say the reptile is 
 harmless, but I own I should be a sad worshiper if the rites 
 of the Nile were in vogue." 
 
 Edith and Bella were in the room when Elliot recounted 
 this episode to the invalid, laughing over his own discom 
 fiture. Edith s eyes met Trajan s at the climax, but neither 
 made any comment. Mrs. Arden innocently asked why 
 Mr. Gray had not mentioned this curious spring among 
 the other wonders of Crecy, but Edith parried the question 
 for him by asking Elliot if Theo was coming to dinner as 
 she had heard him say something about expecting her and Jules. 
 
 All further embarrassment on the subject was put out of 
 mind by great and momentous news. Jules who had been in 
 Paris for some days came in to tell that war was about to be 
 declared. The Prussians were ready at every point. Bismarck 
 had instructed the king to take the high hand with France 
 and force a declaration. The ridiculous booby and volup 
 tuary, the prince of Hohenzollern, had pretended to resign 
 his individual candidature to the throne of Spain only to 
 have it come back later at the hands of the head of the 
 House, the King of Prussia. The Emperor had very natur 
 ally objected to permitting France to be placed between 
 two Prussian princes, menacing the empire from the Pyrenees 
 and the Rhine. The King of Prussia was to be asked to 
 categorically forbid any member of his family from accepting 
 the throne of Spain. If he refused, war would be declared 
 at once. Paris was even indignant that the Emperor waited 
 for the final word from Prussia. The cafes were aflame with 
 patriotic placards. Thousands were marching through the 
 streets howling for war and the march to Berlin ; Count 
 Benedetti was with Bismarck and the king at Ems, and the 
 answer to the French note was expected every day. This 
 exciting topic was under discussion at the dinner table when 
 Theo came in. She had run over to announce the arrival 
 
298 TRAJAN. 
 
 of Mrs. Grovel s piece de resistance, the Prince d Amboise, 
 Duke de Charlroi, one of the greatest noblemen in France, a 
 descendant of the Valois kings, master of a dozen chateaux, 
 and though generally a little pinched for money to meet his 
 princely extravagances, owner of immense wealth. 
 
 " I suppose he s brought to console Amanda for the loss 
 of her count," said the satirical Miss McNair. 
 
 " Indeed the prince might do a great deal worse than 
 marry the sentimental Amanda," retorted Jules. "She is quite 
 as fine looking as the Princess Pierre Bonaparte, and has a 
 million-fold her advantages otherwise." 
 
 "She s not so good a milliner, I imagine," said the persist 
 ent Scot, " and wouldn t be so frugal if the prince should 
 ever meet the fate of his grandfather and be driven to play 
 ing the fiddle, or teaching dancing for his daily bread, as I ve 
 heard said his grandfather did in Leicester square, in Lon 
 don ! " 
 
 " Oh, the princes are part of the people in France now, 
 Miss Kate, and have come to stay," said Jules oracularly. 
 
 " So those scamps, the Comtes d Artois and Provence, 
 told us when they came back under cover of British bayonets 
 and Prussian huzzars, and yet we saw one of them live long 
 enough to sneak away with his handbag stuffed with stolen 
 treasure like any other thief caught in honest men s houses." 
 
 Kate was a vehement democrat and hated kings and their 
 surroundings with a hatred that would bear advantageous 
 comparison with her stout ancestor Knox, of whom in her 
 expansive moments she was fond of prattling. She had the 
 picture of him denouncing that wicked beauty Mary Stuart, 
 hung over her bed in Paris, and the malicious hinted that 
 she performed her orisons to that historic group whenever her 
 hatred of aristocracy seemed to be relaxing. Jules went on 
 to tell how the prince had arrived in imposing state. Out 
 riders had dashed in advance to announce his coming. An 
 army of retainers formed his suite. His secretary was a 
 vicomte and his equerry a gentleman of family. Mrs. 
 
THE AMBER ELVES. 299 
 
 Grovel was quite overwhelmed but this Jules did not men 
 tion, with the state of her guest, and she piteously relegated 
 to Theo the office of receiving and caring for the awe- 
 inspiring personage. That self-possessed young person was 
 quite equal to the task, It was she who had lured him to 
 Crecy. She had her uses for the great man, known only to 
 herself. She had been of service to him at court. She had 
 made his peace with the Empress after one of his most scan 
 dalous backslidings ; she had even put him in the way of rais 
 ing money on a day of sore need. The prince kissed her 
 pretty hand as she welcomed him in the great salon, and pre 
 sented him to the trembling family and awestruck guests. 
 
 "What a witch you are!" the prince whispered as she 
 led him to the foot of the grand stairs where the grave 
 domestics waited to show him to his apartments. " You 
 ought to be a princess ? " 
 
 "Perhaps I shall be," and she flashed an enchanting defi 
 ance at him as he bent in courtly recognition to the admiring 
 circle. He shook with laughter as he passed through the 
 corridor, and the domestics thought him a very humorous 
 and affable prince. He had come for three days only, on 
 the second of which the long-planned and once-deferred 
 fete champetre was to be given. The Baroness and Baron 
 Rothschild were to come the next day from Ferrieres. 
 
 Theo s Paris connections had been potent even there, for 
 the great banker was negotiating with Grovels mining com 
 panies for an investment in the silver shafts. The prince 
 was taken over to call in state on the Ardens. He had met 
 Elliot at the American minister s, but didn t recollect him, 
 for coming upon him a few evenings later at the opera he 
 passed him without a sign. Theo. bore warm invitations for 
 Mrs. Arden, her sister, daughter and Bella to join the prince 
 at dinner, but they all declined save Bella, who accepted 
 with evident pleasure. When Ihey set out to return, the 
 prince asked Theo s permission to dismiss the phaeton and 
 walk. He was full of polite attention to Miss Briscoe, and at 
 
300 TRAJAN. 
 
 the dinner, on Theo s suggestion, was placed between herself 
 and the favored American. Bella s late constraint wore off 
 as the dinner went on and the prince confided to Theo that 
 she was the most charming creature he had ever met a 
 Poictiers a Ninon in short an Olympian divinity. 
 
 " Take care, monseigneur mademoiselle would not feel 
 flattered by such comparisons. She doesn t understand your 
 persiflage and cynical raillery as I do furthermore, she is 
 fiancee" said Theo, as a diversion at Bella s right gave her 
 the prince s ear. 
 
 "Fiancee is not mariee" he returned, "and until a young 
 woman has reached that deplorable cachot she is the guer 
 don of every knight s prowess." 
 
 Bella s conquest of the prince was marked by every 
 one, but the fact did not seem to inspire any jealous 
 heart-burning in the self-poised little intriguante ; pos 
 sibly she had some occult means of divining the noble 
 man s insincerity, or recognized his florid attentions 
 as the caprice of the gallant French nature. She rather 
 seemed to favor his pursuit of the young Diana. She even 
 informed him meaningly, that as she was obliged to go to 
 Paris presently she committed him to the care of her 
 rival and felt sure that he would not find the time heavy on 
 his hands. 
 
 The fete that had occupied the minds of the Duclos 
 chateau was a memorable event at Crecy. Never had the 
 simple bourgeois of that retired corner seen any thing 
 so magnificent. Even the imperial reception of the year 
 before at Ferrieres, afforded no such spectacle of lights, 
 equipages, and music. The gardens of the chateau were 
 like the Champs Elysee concerts, when the great Pas de 
 Loup played those excruciating pieces of Monsieur Wagner. 
 
 The ominous rumors filling Paris and the imminence of 
 war threw a shade of uncertainty upon the attendance of 
 her most cherished guests that distracted the expectant Mrs. 
 Grovel. Even those in the house were uncertain of remain- 
 
THE AMBER ELVES. 301 
 
 ing the day out. The Vicomte de Bellechasse and the 
 big Antoine were in hourly expectation of orders to join 
 their regiments. The uncertainty of the crisis kept many 
 away but the fame of the Montana millionaire s princely 
 cheer held most of those expected faithful. Lord Lyons 
 sent his regrets by his first secretary. Lord Beaufoy, who 
 made a very imposing substitute and danced every set. 
 When the festival began at noon, however, the list of guests 
 would have satisfied the most exacting hostess. It was 
 indeed, as Figaro politely said, the affair of the season and 
 graced by all who were known to the haut ton of Parisian 
 society an acknowledgment which gave untold satisfaction 
 to the gratified Grovels. The Countess and Annette de Belle 
 chasse, with the Marquise Jumelle, came early in the 
 afternoon more, I suspect, in deference to the solicitation 
 of the young vicomte than to gratify themselves or Theo. 
 
 Crecy was en fete with so much movement. Two orchestras 
 imported from Paris were lodged in the Aigle d Or and the 
 Tete Noir, and gathered the townsfolk and peasants from 
 far and near playing in the chateau grounds. Baron Roths 
 child and his baroness arrived at noon, when the open air 
 fete was well under way and the younger guests were 
 battling in croquet, billiards, lawn tennis and green-sward 
 diversions. Mrs. Grovel had gone at the last moment to 
 charge Mrs. Arden and her family not to desert her in the 
 crisis of her glory. Though in no humor for festivity the 
 family promised to be present. Elliot, Bella and Edith 
 went early in the afternoon, and Philip, who had returned 
 on his way to Chalons, promised to take Mrs. Arden and 
 Mrs. Briscoe in the evening. He had learned that Clare 
 was not to attend. 
 
 On the fete itself, the wonders of its miseen sctne, I shall 
 not linger. Were not the glories and the names duly re 
 corded in the Colony Court Circular the following week, and 
 were there not bales of the issue as big as dry goods boxes 
 ordered by the ravished family and all whose names were 
 
302 TRAJAN. 
 
 printed and sent to the American Court journals, which, as 
 every one who is in society knows, are to be found in all the 
 refined communities of our glorious land of equality and 
 Spartan democracy. We may glance in at a few of the 
 episodes of the great fete, which were not without their 
 influence upon subsequent events, but as we are not invited, 
 this shall be done in the most unobtrusive fashion, for Mrs. 
 Grovel at this stage of her social education had not learned 
 that charming device of her compeers in America. She did 
 not know that a facile pen might be secured to record her 
 costumes and give lists of guests, prices, decorations and 
 what not, by thoughtfully providing each of the enterprising 
 journals of her vicinage with a little note of invitation, 
 inclosing all these details, to relieve the perplexed editor ! 
 
 It is far beyond my poor powers to embalm the fabulous 
 beauty of the gowns worn by the various great dames, the 
 jewels and feathers and innumerable artifices of costume, 
 whose secret was in those days only known to Paris ; those 
 are far too delicate for the masculine pen, and as they after all 
 are but the merest glints on the chain whose links are forging 
 under the reader s eyes, what use suspending the bellows or 
 arresting the hammer that would only give the metal time to 
 cool from the white heat necessary to shape all the links 
 uniformly ? For the Vulcan at the literary anvil must 
 fashion his ore into shape while it is malleable, else his 
 handiwork may as well come from the molds, whereout 
 issue the forms that are to life as the chromo to the oil paint 
 ing or the plaster galvanized fayade to the work of the 
 chisel ! 
 
 So you are to figure to yourself the dukes, counts, 
 marquises, barons, duchesses, countesses, baronnes, et 
 cetera, et cetera in such garments as lavish wealth and 
 irreproachable taste suggest. The prince had graciously 
 decorated his manly bosom with the jewels and ribbons of 
 his great orders and glistened like a knight in armor as the 
 Venetian lights, hung in scores on the branches, shone upon 
 
THE AMBER EL VES. 303 
 
 him. To the lay judgment of the masculine guests, Bella 
 was the princess of the fete. Her robe of fleecy silken laces 
 and China crepe sat as lightly on her pliant figure as" spring 
 frost upon branches of willow. A sparkling aigrette of 
 priceless diamonds held up the folds of the lace overskirt at 
 the point of the corsage. The Prince d Amboise hardly 
 gave the other swains a chance to approach this divine 
 being, and set down his name on her card for the three 
 waltzes she had determined to confine herself to. 
 
 Theo, though not so richly dressed, was a work of ravish 
 ing art in the neutral tints she best knew how to combine. 
 She moved among the guests, gathering thrones in her con 
 quering glances. Elliot had never realized her beauty as he 
 did at that moment in the inebriating evidences of her con 
 quest. Indeed, I have said that Theo was not a beautiful 
 woman. Her features were irregular. Her skin olive and her 
 mouth mobile, but indeterminate. Good humor and piquant 
 mirth played upon her round face as ripples upon the sunny 
 surface of a pool. The green gray eyes softened to limpid 
 brown ; the brown changing into the iridescent hues of the 
 cloud that veils the cascade rainbow. Her plump round 
 hands thrust their bewitching shapeliness into her talk, her 
 laugh, her simplest movement, as is the manner of the 
 French. Her feet matched her hands, and the trim ankles 
 which her robe did not at all times conceal were in keeping 
 with the rest of the figure. To all this add the incomparable 
 sprightliness of a manner vivacious as the French, with the 
 seductive reserve of her Anglo-Saxon sisters, and you may 
 get something of a notion of the effect this mistress of every 
 guileful art produced upon her contemporaries. Her glid 
 ing motion, wonderful in such short stature, suggested the 
 leopardess, who had forsaken her wildwood instincts and 
 showed her teeth only for the amusement of the docile 
 lambs if it be permissible to compare so much loveliness 
 with so much of the terrible. 
 
 To set eyes upon her as she tripped the sensuous measure 
 
34 TRAJAN. 
 
 of the " Blue Danube," resting on Elliot s stout arm, was to 
 look again, and to look again was to lose the heart, or 
 head, or both, to so much enchantment. Theo was far too 
 wise for coquetry. She charmed the women as well as the 
 men by the consummate deference of her demeanor. De 
 spising the callow chatterers who lisped inflated compliments, 
 not less than the hollow caresses of her own sex, she made 
 both believe that their tributes were the breath of her joy, 
 the food of her happiness. Where a less skillful hand would 
 have smirked in her perfectly obvious triumphs, Theo bore 
 it all with a meekness that deceived every body that watched 
 the naive comedy unless the antipathetic Bella and Edith 
 be excepted. But, as we know, thgse young women had 
 heartburnings of their own, the fuel of which the angelic 
 Theo was suspected to be supplying. Resplendent and 
 conquering, Bella felt that the substantial honors of the 
 field were the enemy s. Elliot had apparently forgotten 
 her presence in his infatuated devotion to the sorceress. 
 Edith, approaching him in the interval between the dances, 
 reminded him that he had not asked his cousin for a single 
 waltz. He looked rather vexed, if the truth must be said, 
 and a few minutes later went up to the beauty who was sit 
 ting with the prince to make amends. Glancing at her card 
 the tardy wight found the prince s name on all the numbers 
 not erased. 
 
 " You haven t a waltz free, Bella ? " he asked, guiltily. 
 " May I not ask monseigneur to share an old favorite from 
 Faust ? We have not danced together in an age." 
 
 Monseigneur was desott to seem selfish, but as mademoi 
 selle had limited her dances to three he really could not 
 bring himself to forego the pleasure. Elliot, just a shade 
 discomfited, bowed ceremoniously and returned to his god 
 dess. As he crossed the room Edith came up and whispered : 
 " I am tired out, and as Pierre is just come with Mamma 
 and Auntie I m going home. Don t mention it to Bella." 
 Now the pleasures of the dance had always been keenest to 
 
THE AMBER EL VES. 305 
 
 Elliot when his pretty sister was on his arm, but he had not 
 asked her once to-night and let her go without suggesting it. 
 Plainly Theo s second move was successful as the first. 
 She saw Edith going and she was vexed, for it wasn t her 
 purpose to be monopolized the whole evening by her 
 adorer. She had counted on Edith to take Elliot when she 
 had rounded the rdle at the proper stage. Theo set out to 
 find Claridge, who had been lounging in the veranda, dis 
 coursing on war and politics to the distracted Amanda. 
 That hapless damsel, arrayed like a favorite sultana, had 
 been strangely neglected. She adored dancing and had 
 been asked but once during the evening by the unhappy 
 Antoine, who had received orders to join his regiment the 
 next day at Nancy. 
 
 Philip, to whom Edith had written, begging him to come 
 out for the ball, as Bella would be without escort, had 
 found the visit possible, when it was further mentioned that 
 Clare had gone to Paris to avoid the crowd and would not 
 return until quiet was restored. He returned to make his 
 adieux, as he was to begin active duty on Vinoy s staff, so 
 soon as the army was in motion. He had good-naturedly 
 given his arm to Amanda when he saw her forlorn condition, 
 and Theo, pretending to rally Antoine, warned him that the 
 American would cut him out. Antoine glowered savagely 
 at the unconscious offender, going so far as to jostle him 
 rudely whenever he could get near enough. His prospects 
 of capturing the Yahoo heiress, Theo had adroitly insinu 
 ated, were excellent. During the evening he was feverishly 
 bent on making the most of the time left him, but incau 
 tiously indulging in too much champagne had been carried 
 off by La Baronne to hide his unseemly lapse. He had 
 begun to believe Theo that he stood well with Amanda, 
 and cursed his fate that the long-wished-for war had come 
 just when fortune stood with beckoning hand ready to crown 
 his poverty with the Montana millions. So it happened 
 that the pensive Amanda had been left to ruminate almost 
 20 
 
306 TRAJAN. 
 
 unnoticed in the halls of her family grandeur and triumph. 
 Theo s quick eye had seen all this. Hence it was that, 
 effulgent in her demurely worn laurels, she startles Philip 
 and the Montana maiden by drawing a chair beside them. 
 
 She hands the page a card with a penciled line to the prince 
 and bids him hand it to the august personage in the next 
 room with Bella. Amanda begins a glowing account of the 
 condescensions of the great people, when Theo, spying the 
 prince looking about in perplexity, rises and slips over to 
 his side. She says something in a low tone. Monseigneur s 
 eyes sparkle and he laughs consumedly, devouring his men 
 tor with admiring glances that it was perhaps quite as well 
 all the world could not see. He came over to the lone 
 Amanda, deserted in this scene of parental splendor, and 
 dropping into Philip s vacated place, protests that mademoi 
 selle has been treating him cruelly. She has been hiding 
 herself the whole evening, while she knew that he was covet 
 ing the pleasure of a dance. Amanda can only gasp her 
 innocence of such turpitude, when monseigneur vows that 
 she can only prove her sinlessness by honoring him with the 
 next dance. Suffused with glory and blushes, Amanda sig 
 nifies her readiness, and offering his arm with the ceremonious 
 deference he would have shown the Empress, the heir of a 
 principality and the heiress of Yahoo Gulch edify the ad 
 miring throng in the lively measures of the polka-mazourka. 
 
 The proud mother, bustling about to see that the lackeys 
 neglected none of the great personages, caught sight of 
 Amanda s blazing chignon bestowed upon the only available 
 spot on the princely shoulders, free from decoration, and 
 her heart fluttered in the ennobling sight. " Why shouldn t 
 her Manda catch a prince? She was not so sightly," the 
 proud mother admitted with a little sigh, " as Bella or Theo, 
 but her eyes were better than that all-conquering young 
 person s. She didn t talk so much, either, and Jep was 
 always saying men liked women who held their tongues ! 
 Manda can beat a muley cow at that if she ain t a 
 
THE AMBER EL VES. 307 
 
 beauty," she added in self-consolation as she watched the 
 darling. 
 
 " Yahoo mayn t be like Rome," she said the next day, 
 recounting to the husband of her bosom, as proud wives do, 
 the various stages of the previous day s bliss, " all roads don t 
 lead to the Gulch, but it gives those that know how to leave 
 it, means of getting on every road that s worth traveling. 
 Now own up, Jep, you never expected to see a daughter of 
 yours whirling around in a palace that your money paid for, 
 in the arms of a real prince ! " 
 
 Jeptha, whose knowledge of the fete and ball ended with 
 a confused bow to the guests, allowed that he hadn t " cal 
 culated " on such luck for Amanda, nor did his manner indi 
 cate that cordial sympathy in the remarkable event his wife 
 justly counted on. He had, indeed, as the plain-spoken 
 woman declared, stuck himself up-stairs with that " simper 
 ing old stuck-in-the-mud," the " Minister," as the American 
 abroad is in the habit of vaguely alluding to the representa 
 tive of the sovereign people, and they had occupied the 
 whole night making a spectacle of themselves over the mys 
 teries of that American diversion, which the Frenchmen call 
 "le pokaire. " "Come now, Jep, just own that you think I 
 play my cards pretty well considerm ? " 
 
 But instead of seizing this proffer of ready placation, the 
 graceless husband remarked with the indifference that has 
 been known to excite the most docile wives, " Why, as to 
 them princes, Meda, ef you think so much of that sort of 
 thing, I can get you a king or two to dance Manda around 
 at the next ball. They re not exactly cheap, but money ll 
 fetch em every time. Why, this banker feller, Rothschild, 
 had the Emperor and Empress out here a year ago but it 
 cost him a pot of gold." 
 
 Shocked by such coarse estimate of the great, and enraged 
 by his indifference to the proudest triumph of her life, the 
 outraged woman fell back upon her primitive weapons, tears 
 and remonstrances, an armory that the experienced wife 
 
308 TRAJAN. 
 
 never draws on in vain in such encounters : " You didn t 
 always think me a fool " sob, sob 
 
 " I tell you what it is, Meda, what s the use making a fuss 
 over such rot, there isn t a prince, or duke, or, or " but 
 here his command of titles ran short, " that you couldn t get 
 to dance with a squaw in the fixins of the Gulch, or marry 
 one either, if what they call the dot were big enough. Man- 
 da s made a show of us once already. She hasn t much sense 
 at best. Don t go putting any more fool notions in her 
 thick head than she s got. It s too hard getting them out, 
 and there s enough there already. I won t knuckle down 
 one five-cent piece to the longest name that asks to marry 
 her. Ef she marries one o them tarnal humbugs, he ll have 
 to be satisfied with the gold in her hair, that the painter 
 chap used to talk like a Tom-fool about." 
 
 This unfeeling taunt stopped the sobs and drew on the 
 reminiscences : 
 
 " Jeptha Grovel, you always stood in the light of your 
 family. Where would you be to-day, I d like to know, ef it 
 hadn t been for me ? Shifting sand in Shawmut Run at a 
 dollar and a half a day. Just tell me wasn t it a due bill 
 to me for six months board and washing from Jim Houk 
 that gave you a seventh interest in the Ivanhoe, and didn t 
 you draw two million out of the lode inside a year ? " 
 
 " There s no denying you re a brick, Meda, when you 
 stick to your own tools. But among these beats, don t 
 you see they re only laughing at us ? It s all the same to 
 me ef you like the thing, so long as Manda isn t made a 
 dunce of a second time." 
 
 But all this was after the ball, and unforeseen by the fond 
 matron as she feasted her eyes on her darling s triumph. Not 
 when she had herself opened the ball on the Baron Roths 
 child s arm, with the Baronne as her vis-a-vis, did the proud 
 woman enjoy a more delicious thrill of rapture. It is true 
 her joy was clouded by the obstinate refusal of Jeptha to 
 assume his place as head of the house beside La Baronne. 
 
THE AMBER EL VES. 309 
 
 Jeptha was no devotee of the gay Terpsichore. He had 
 retired to an upper chamber where, as the Vicomte Belle- 
 chasse declared, the American Minister, a Paris banker from 
 New York, and a silver nabob from Arizona sat as silent as 
 conspirators, immersed in " le pokaire," a surprising "jeu 
 de cartes " which did not stimulate conversation ! 
 
 Amanda, silent and almost tearful in her bliss, was depos 
 ited in the arms of mamma, who rewarded the affable noble 
 man with such a regard of triumph as would have repaid a 
 greater heroism. She would, I believe, have embraced the 
 astonished prince, if Theo had not come up and given her 
 a warning glance. 
 
 " Mademoiselle dances like a sylph," he said, bowing gra 
 ciously. " I must beg the favor of one more dance, at least, 
 before this charming fete comes to an end," and taking 
 Manda s almost blank card, he traced characters that a 
 thousand admiring eyes since, called upon to read, have 
 found it difficult to construe into " D Amboise." For in 
 France, where bad penmanship is an art, the noblesse carry 
 off all the honors in illegibility. You may see the famous 
 scrawl on the Malachite mantel of the Grovel mansion to 
 this day, where, framed in gold, it is cherished as the devout 
 in Spain guard relics known and admired by the fiercest 
 democrat in the imperial territory of Montana. It was at 
 this stage of the ball that the big Antoine, having slept off 
 the excesses of the early evening, reappeared on the scene. 
 He was savage and impatient to find Amanda, the object 
 of the prince s adoration, and as the magnate moved off 
 with Bella, he shrugged his shoulders significantly. 
 
 " It would make a famous match, if the prince could win 
 such a divine creature," remarked young Bellechasse, sigh 
 ing sentimentally. 
 
 " Win her," said Antoine with a savage sneer, " that proud 
 coquette has done nothing but make fine eyes at my lord 
 prince since he came here. She would take him on any 
 terms." 
 
310 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Monsieur de Pleinevide, the lady you insult by your 
 insinuations is my kinswoman ; I hold you responsible for 
 language no gentleman would use in the house of the lady s 
 friends," and as he spoke Philip handed the astonished 
 guardsman his card. " I shall have to ask the name of your 
 friends to whom I may send mine." 
 
 " Tres Men, monsieur, I am immediately at your service," 
 with a self-possession that showed he was not wholly taken 
 by surprise the fact being that Theo had prepossessed 
 him against Philip, without dreaming of a quarrel breaking 
 out so soon or until she gave the signal. Shortly after day 
 light, Elliot lingering in the grounds after the rest had gone 
 in, was surprised at the apparition of a cab, coming slowly 
 up to the side entrance of the chateau, as if to evade notice. 
 It stopped near the steps, and Claridge leaped out, followed 
 by the Crecy doctor, and last of all Philip, with his arm band 
 aged and looking very pale. 
 
 " What in Heaven s name does this mean ? " cried Elliot, 
 confronting the conspirators. 
 
 "Oh, nothing serious," said Philip tranquilly. "That 
 hussar kinsman of the Carnots indulged -in some of his 
 French blackguardism at our family s expense, and I gave 
 him the choice of weapons. I must say he shoots well," he 
 added a little ruefully as he nursed his arm. 
 
 Claridge explained the encounter as they helped Philip 
 into the house. " It is not a bad wound. Two shots were 
 fired by each. Pleinevide is a practiced duelist. Philip is 
 shot in the arm and leg, and has lost a good deal of blood. 
 Nothing serious but I couldn t stay at the Grovels." 
 
 "He wanted to go to the Crecy Inn," the doctor added, 
 "but it was full, and I thought it was better under all 
 circumstances to bring him to the chateau, as sooner or 
 later your family must have heard of the duel, though of 
 course the cause need not be known." 
 
 Theo was not so wildly astray as Jules fancied to him 
 self, in trusting the unexpected to lead Clare to the arms of 
 
THE AMBER ELVES. 311 
 
 her unconscious suitor. Had the project of a marriage 
 between herself and the scion of Yahoo Gulch been baldly 
 put to Clare, she would have frozen the audacious match 
 maker with a scorn, not the less biting because silent. 
 
 Love, or the thought of it, had passed from the horizon of 
 her life, when she buried the memory of the faithless 
 Philip Kent. Nor was Theo fatuously sanguine in count 
 ing on the match she had set her heart upon. She 
 knew her sister s nature, and believed that she would 
 finally accept the young man s proposals, to escape the 
 constant denial of them. Her very indifference to the ends 
 that most women seek, in part at least, in marriage, was just 
 as likely to lead her to a passionless assent, as to render her 
 obstinate. In this the strategist reasoned with a marvel- 
 ously profound insight into human nature, or at all events 
 into her sister s nature, for it was the very instinct of repose 
 that in the end led Clare to the decisive parting where two 
 ways meet in every life. It was chance, however, rather 
 than the prearranged scheme, that in the end seemed to jus 
 tify Theo s rash confidence in this grotesque business. 
 Chance, which we have seen dispersing her battalions before 
 they had time to strike a blow in this diversion, at last 
 came to her aid and gave to her arms a brilliant, though 
 premature, triumph. 
 
 Clare s indifference to people had grown into confirmed 
 habit through her long seclusion in her new life. She found 
 it impossible to interest herself in new faces. She shrank 
 from all approaches, and repulsed by mere inanition rather 
 than by studied coldness or repellence. When she returned 
 to Crecy after the /<?/<? she would play for hours with the chil 
 dren, and it was through these rather than living in the same 
 house or any of the influences on which Theo. had calcu 
 lated that she lost her shyness and reserve with Lafayette. 
 
 That freakful Lochinvar was the idol of his small brother 
 and sister. He spent half his time imparting his mastery of 
 horses to the boy and inventing pleasures for Sophronia. 
 
3T2 TRAJAN. 
 
 Recognizing a kindred spirit in Clare, the children 
 doubled their joys by inviting their big brother and the 
 gentle, sad-eyed Clare to these sports. The two were soon 
 on very friendly terms indeed, Clare was more responsive 
 in this new companionship than with Theo or Jules. She 
 no longer saw the risible in Lafayette s rough western fro- 
 wardness, or his unpolished manners. His tenderness and 
 gayety with his young brother and sister put him on an equal 
 footing and made these relations in some sort congenial. 
 
 Nor was Clare s tireless interest in the little folks the least 
 of her charms to the young man. He felt, without being 
 able to describe, a difference in her treatment of him in 
 contrast with that of other young women whom he met. 
 She did not hide a covert sneer or suggest ridicule in her 
 dealings with him. Others he felt to be continually goading 
 him on to the more fantastic impulses in his nature. Their 
 very bearing was a challenge to him to prank and play the 
 fool. He could no more resist the bedeviling invitation 
 than a manikin to perform its antics when the string is pulled. 
 
 To his own surprise he began to disrelish Theo and 
 the society of other women, and to find an inexpressible 
 pleasure in listening to the calm, high-bred Clare prattling 
 fairy stories to the big-eyed boy and girl, whose infantile 
 imagination had been fed upon the legends of Yahoo Gulch 
 and the American civil war. Robinson Crusoe and the 
 enchanting Friday were as new to them as real, while the 
 Arabian Nights filled their days with joy and their nights 
 with dreams of crystal domes, magic carpets, lovely sultanas 
 and terrible giants with curling cimeters and dazzling tur 
 bans ! Nor were the tales lost on the honest Lafayette himself. 
 
 His youth and boyhood were passed among the rough 
 miners, where fairy lore had but little vogue, and to Clare s 
 amusement his were not the smallest of the wondering eyes 
 that heard of this new world, the charm of childhood and 
 its solace in after years. Marion made Clare the confidant 
 of all his projects. He was a naturalist in a small way and 
 
THE AMBER EL VES. 3 1 3 
 
 about this time his heart was set on some rare turtle eggs, 
 that the son of the Crecy physician showed him. They 
 came from a wonderful island in the Marne, ten or twelve 
 miles from Crecy, Theo. had told him, and the boy was so 
 earnest in the quest that Clare promised that he should go 
 with Lafayette and herself some day when the heads of the 
 mustangs were set in that direction. The maternal heart 
 swelled with complacency as the three rode out of the park 
 one afternoon at Theo s suggestion, after a week s rain had 
 held every body prisoner a sort of a summer equinoctial 
 that often disturbs the French farmer near the great water 
 ways of the Marne and Seine. 
 
 Twas the omniscient Theo. who had encouraged the small 
 Marion to seek his coveted object on the Marne Island, and 
 it was she who suggested that the time was promising when 
 the party set out. It was the day before the great f$te. 
 When at midnight no sign of the riders was seen at the Duclos 
 chateau, Mrs. Grovel was by no means disturbed, as she 
 supposed Lafe. had stopped at Les Charrnettes. The next 
 day at noon, in the glories of the/^/<?, Theo. received a tele 
 gram from Paris which caused her eyes to snap with triumph. 
 
 Later, she received a note from Clare reciting how 
 the party had gone to the island ; how, as darkness fell, 
 they had lost their boat ; how, the miller being away at 
 Meaux and the locks breaking loose, the island was inun 
 dated ; how Lafayette had done all in mortal power to 
 rescue her, and even leaped into the angry waters to swim 
 ashore that she might not be compromised ; and how, hav 
 ing spent the night the three on the sloping roof of a half- 
 submerged summer-house they were rescued in the morn 
 ing, and, arriving in Paris, were married in St. Philip du 
 Roule by Pere Barodet. It was this prodigious realization 
 of her hopes that had filled Theo with such aplomb all the 
 hours of Mrs. Grovel s feast. Great was the amazement of 
 the Grovels when Lafayette s announcement came. Theo, of 
 course, shared it, but skillfully concealed that the event, though 
 
314 TRAJAN. 
 
 thus forced, was only anticipated. Jules looked at her 
 curiously as she felicitated Mrs. Grovel, and retired to the 
 grove to give vent to his emotions ! 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 
 
 prince did not quit Crecy the day after the ball as 
 1 he had contemplated. He was neither warrior nor 
 statesman, and the crisis in affairs did not concern him 
 greatly. His House was Bourbon in sympathy, and his heart 
 beat for France only when he thought of her legitimate 
 sovereign, Henri V., holding his mock Court in the rollicking 
 burg of Gratz, under the shadows of the Austrian Alps. 
 The prince had never taken any part in the political schemes 
 of his party. He recognized accomplished facts and min 
 gled in the pageants of the empire as he would have 
 attended the levees of the " Irreconcilable " Gambetta, had 
 he been Chief of the State. He was confident that sooner 
 or later France would come back penitently to her ancient 
 princes, holding out piteous hands for the old manacles 
 that the fires of 1793 had melted. Until the dawn of that 
 returning reason, he saw no need of brooding in his chateau 
 like so many of his kinsmen and compeers. He had been 
 born to a great heritage, but until the Bourbon returned, 
 it was for the most part titulary. Parental waste had mate 
 rially lessened the revenues of his dukedom. His title of 
 prince was from the Holy Roman empire and brought noth 
 ing material in France, where his rank was really inferior to 
 that* of the Bourbon, Orleans, and Napoleonic dukes. 
 Unlike the De Broglie, Rohan and Valois, he bore the 
 princely title in preference to his ducal name, though in an 
 assemblage of his own rank he gave precedence to a score or 
 more titles of a creation not anterior to his own. He was 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 315 
 
 much more a man of the world than his aristocratic compa 
 triots. He had lived in England and America and realized 
 the potency that commercial rank gives contemporary man 
 hood. He declared that if Henri V. were restored to the 
 throne of his fathers, it would be through the plutocracy and 
 not the idle dreamers of the noblesse, and he would have 
 named a ministry from the great bankers and capitalists 
 whose interests alone upheld the empire. It was the dream 
 of the Empress to unite the prince with the heiress of some 
 great Bonapartist Crcesus, and the young Sybarite had 
 encouraged the notion but had never seriously engaged in 
 the quest. He was beyond the age of romantic attachment 
 and meant to make marriage a finality in his ambitious proj 
 ects. 
 
 He meant, however, that his princess should be equal 
 to the great part he proposed playing, by the posses 
 sion of beauty, wit, and grace, as well as the money that was 
 essential to restore the splendors of his patrimony. Unlike 
 most Frenchmen he dreamed of making his princess his wife 
 and companion, rather than his banker and sultana. 
 
 He had tasted all the jading pleasures of his epoch ; he had 
 wasted his substance on the ephemeral amours of a riotous 
 jeunesse, but he had settled down to reform, not repentance, 
 in a spirit of satiety, rather than the Prodigal s self-reproach 
 and filial yearning. Marriage was necessary to him now to 
 perpetuate his name and mend his fortunes, but, if he must 
 make a choice between grace, beauty, accomplishments and 
 mere sordid affluence without these, he was determined that 
 his race should be perpetuated through an alliance with the 
 former rather than the latter. He was not without educa 
 tion and great capacities, and he saw no reason why he 
 should not when the time came revive the glories of a Riche 
 lieu or a Mazarin. Italian blood was part of his heritage, 
 and the restless ambition of that subtle and pre-eminently 
 political race sustained his more serious purposes, even when 
 he was most immersed in the wasting excesses of his youth. 
 
316 TRAJAN. 
 
 He was now thirty-five and past the turbulent impulses of 
 the idle and irresponsible. He saw things as they were with a 
 clear eye and unclouded understanding. Life had lost a 
 young man s illusions. He was so impartial in estimating 
 the men and events of his time, that he had scandalized his 
 legitimist associates, in pronouncing Louis Bonaparte the 
 profoundest statesman and publicist since Henri IV. 
 
 " A vain egotist, like his great uncle," he used to say, 
 "made the mistake of marrying into a reigning house, the 
 proudest in Europe where his intrusion was resented as 
 an offense. Louis, on the contrary, sagaciously took his 
 empress from among his own rank, wounding no suscepti 
 bilities and continuing the democratic character of his 
 regime. His choice of Eugenie, French by descent and 
 Bonapartist by tradition, was the master-stroke of his reign." 
 He vaguely counted on something of the same sort in his 
 own scheme of marriage. 
 
 It was the knowledge of this that dictated Theo s con 
 duct. She knew that the reflective and ambitious prince was 
 as likely to ask her to share his future as any of the women 
 whose chances seemed better ; in fact he had as good as 
 done it already, though not in terms. She felt that she 
 could aid him in the ulterior purposes of his ambition, and 
 though he was not rich in the English or American estimate 
 of wealth, she felt equal to the restoration of his fortunes, 
 should her hope of sharing the Grovel millions, or the secret 
 of making others, succeed. Now that the first was an 
 accomplished fact, she felt the importance of withdrawing 
 the prince from the dangerous temptation of Bella s pres 
 ence. She would have been willing to see him married to 
 the girl s millions, had her plan for securing Lafayette failed. 
 With characteristic feminine inconsistency, she rejected the 
 idea of uniting Jules to Amanda. Her pride revolted from 
 what she held a sacrifice of her brother s possibilities. 
 
 A woman might attain her husband s rank, but a man 
 could never rise beyond the wife s, unless he had birth and 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 317 
 
 wealth. She was willing, though not eager, to have Jules 
 marry Bella, before she had made sure of Clare s consent to 
 accept Lafayette. Now that the marriage was secured, she 
 began to dream of a noble alliance for her brother which 
 should give him rank, and title at the Imperial Court. The 
 Emperor had shown himself keenly appreciative of such sup 
 port to his dynasty, and she felt sure of the necessary influ 
 ence to obtain Jules the patent of such a title as a noble 
 marriage would give him the right to claim. 
 
 These were some of the thoughts that passed through her 
 busy brain on reading Clare s note. She kept them from 
 her brother, however, for she did not wholly trust his discre 
 tion, in the more delicate machinery of the motives guiding 
 her masculine handiwork. There was plenty of time before 
 maturing her plans to lead Jules insensibly to the part she 
 had marked for him in her imposing edifice of family 
 aggrandizement. When she heard of the duel, therefore, 
 she accepted the event as another sign that the machinery 
 of chance had turned entirely in her favor. Bella would be 
 forced to break off for the time being with the prince to 
 devote herself to her guest,%nd the danger of an impulsive 
 proposal from the prince during Theo s absence in Paris 
 would be averted. While she was in the field, she felt no 
 apprehension. 
 
 She possessed the clews to the prince s as yet inchoate 
 purpose and she felt sure of being able to turn his pref 
 erence to herself when she revealed the new possibilities 
 of her future to him. Of his admiration of her address and 
 partiality for her society she had so many evidences that she 
 felt assured that surprising him into a proposal was easily in 
 her power. She was quick at reading men s minds and 
 apparently only intent on amusing him by her wit and daz 
 zling him by the readiness of her repartee; she was really divin 
 ing the undercurrent of sober wonder and half resolution, that 
 lay underneath her admirer s pretended indifference to any 
 serious intention. She knew as well as if she had been lis- 
 
3l3 TRAJAN. 
 
 tening to the prince s monologues, that he had debated the 
 project of making her his princess weighing her incompar 
 able cleverness and amazing adroitness in using the grand 
 personages of the court for her own ends, with the dubita- 
 ble advantages of a bride from his own rank who would 
 be merely an ornament, like his regalia. S .ie felt sure that 
 the Grovel millions would turn the scale in her favor, and she 
 meant to make ample use of them so soon as Clare s settle 
 ments were secure. 
 
 Trajan in these eventful days was mending swiftly his 
 body, which, as Elliot said, looked like a " Fourth of July, 
 or militia target," had almost wholly healed in the third week 
 after the encounter. Elliot, indeed, rallied the victim inces 
 santly, addressing him as " matador," "picadore," and 
 "caballero," and advising him to transfer his accomplish 
 ments to the bull ring of Seville. Now that the wounds 
 were healed the invalid was seated every morning by the 
 broad bay window, where he could watch the players at ten 
 nis and study the soothing foliage of the park. 
 
 Through an opening here and there, Crecy contributed its 
 panorama of Norman angles, roffnd steeples, airy donjons, 
 and the wondrous interlaced gargoyles and arcs-boutants of 
 the ancient parish church of Saint Pierre, where of a Sunday 
 Elliot had for a time sat under the good cure s ministra 
 tion with the devout Theo. But the irruption of Catholics 
 in the Grovel household had destroyed the charm of the 
 inspiring old place, and the prince had of late replaced 
 Elliot as Theo s attendant. In churchly conduct, the diplo- 
 mate was the most exemplary of devotees. She had not 
 been in Crecy a fortnight when the cure and congregation 
 were devoted to her. Of an afternoon she often entered the 
 choir and played the organ for the choristers, and one mem 
 orable Sunday, when the soprano was detained by an 
 ailing child, she had thrilled the congregation by her rich 
 and well-trained voice. For Bella, too, the church had a 
 powerful, an irresistible fascination. She had been there 
 
PRINCE CHARM ING S WOOING. 319 
 
 regularly, many Sundays, before Elliot discovered her 
 attendance. He was leaving the porch after high mass, 
 when the beadle, approaching him respectfully, held out a 
 diamond-set locket, which he instantly recognized as one he 
 had given Bella two years before on her birthday. The 
 inscription being in English, the cure to whom it had been 
 taken concluded that it was Theo s, and sent it at once to 
 her as she was quitting the church. Elliot was confounded. 
 Could it be possible Bella had been in the church ? He 
 asked Theo, but she could not answer. He waited until 
 all the congregation had passed out, but there was no sign 
 of his cousin. On reaching home he took the jewel to his 
 cousin s room, but she was not there, nor could she be found 
 in the house. At luncheon he handed her the token, enjoy 
 ing her surprise and, he fancied, vexation. 
 
 "I lost it this morning where did you find it?" she said, 
 averting her eyes. 
 
 " I found it in the hands of the beadle of Saint Pierre s, 
 after the mass were you there ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Since when have you become a devotee of that faith ? " 
 
 " What faith ? " 
 
 " Saint Pierre s." 
 
 " My conversion is coincident with yours." 
 
 " What do you mean by that ? I don t understand 
 you." 
 
 " It is like all questions in theology, susceptible of two 
 interpretations amuse your leisure by finding both, and 
 then like a devout proselyte accept the most agreeable on 
 faith." 
 
 Pon my word, Be.lla, your profundity not to say 
 Germanesque mysticism, is beyond my poor powers don t let 
 me burst in ignorance of the occult meaning, which doubt 
 less conveys a lesson of value to the race." 
 
 " No people who make mysteries should be apt at solv 
 ing enigmas riddles are read only by those who believe in 
 
320 TRAJAN. 
 
 the oracle, and orphics, like love, permit no divided 
 mind ! " 
 
 Elliot blushed and looked intently at his tormentor. 
 "Well, I own that you are talking in Greek tome, with your 
 orphics, enigmas, and what not. Who is the Sibyl, if these 
 are orphics you, I, or the church ?" 
 
 " There again my rule holds good you can solve all 
 these by constancy to the Sibyl, when you have given her 
 your faith." 
 
 " But what have I to do with Sibyls and faith ? " 
 
 " This is one of the instances where the doctrine of the 
 sophists holds good, where truth would be. unkind and 
 therefore inartistic." 
 
 " Pray, explain, either or both of you," broke in Edith, 
 impatiently, "what this academic talk all means. I have heard 
 Philip and Elliot talk in this darkly learned fashion before 
 now, but I didn t know you were up to it, Bella ! " 
 
 " Perhaps Bella would be more puzzled to define what 
 she means, than to continue- what the boys at school used 
 to call highfalutin, " explained Elliot, still smarting from 
 the pundit s thrusts, though he didn t know exactly why. 
 
 "Yes, it s rather common for even learned people to 
 make phrases they would be as much embarrassed to define, 
 as grammarians to practice their own rules," said Bella, sen- 
 tentiously, holding up a very rosy peach to admire its fluffy 
 coating. 
 
 " My ambition, I am not unduly proud to say, is not in 
 that direction I believe in saying what I mean in such a 
 simple way that there is no danger of running on rules or 
 breaking them. Besides, rules are like laws, they are made 
 only for those who break them. My ambition being modest 
 keeps me from the criminal dock, either judicial or 
 syntactical " 
 
 " That s a safe attitude at all events, and falls in with the 
 doctrine of original sin, to which, as a son of the House of 
 Arden, you dutifully subscribe 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 321 
 
 " Come, come, Bella, you are really becoming irritating 
 with your perverseness," remonstrated her mother. " Elliot 
 was talking nonsense, and his words didn t have the remotest 
 reference to original sin," she added, construing Bella s 
 covert sarcasm literally. 
 
 " There, Elliot, you have ample revenge, for the remem 
 bering happier things is not a heavier crown of sorrow than 
 one s jokes taken au serieux" 
 
 " I must own that your joking has a sardonic essence 
 to-day, if the fancies you have been putting into words were 
 intended as playful ! " 
 
 " What is your ambition ? " asked Miss McNair, who 
 had listened attentively to what she afterward humorously 
 described as the " spat " between the cousins. 
 
 " A young man with so little behind him, and so clear a 
 field before him, should do more than dream dreams, and 
 regulate his life to the maintenance of a regiment of unlineal 
 relations, through Adam, called servants which is all that 
 people who have a great deal of money do in this world ! " 
 
 " There is too much solid fact in that remark, Miss 
 Kate," said Elliot, laughing, " to let one relish its humor. 
 But I really have an ambition beyond promoting myself to 
 the post of paymaster-general to the small army that serves 
 under the Arden banners whom you put in the place of 
 poor relations. My ambition, then, is a devouring one I 
 mean to master " 
 
 " Your inconsequence ? " (Bella.) 
 
 " Your temper ? " (Edith.) 
 
 " Your avarice ? " (Mrs. Arden.) 
 
 " Your family ? " (Mrs. Briscoe.) 
 
 " Your mother-in-law ? " (Kate.) 
 
 " No greater than all these " cries Elliot. 
 
 " The English language ? " (Bella.) 
 
 "The rule of three ?" (Edith.) 
 
 " Your accounts ? " (Mrs. Arden.) 
 
 " Your vices ? " (Mrs, Briscoe.) 
 21 
 
322 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Yourself ? " (Kate.) 
 
 "You ve hit it. I always did say that for real apprecia 
 tion a man had to go outside of his own family." 
 
 "And for a mother-in-law, too," observed Mistress Kate, 
 glancing by the merest motion of her sharp eyes at 
 Bella. 
 
 "Come, come, Kate," protested Mrs. Briscoe, "you 
 forget that we must be mothers-in-law sooner or later." 
 
 " Then you may as well be getting candles lighted and 
 the bells ready, with all the wares in the home market and 
 the stalls filled with buyers," gibed the incorrigible spinster. 
 
 " That must be meant for you, Edith," said the uncon 
 scious Mrs. Briscoe whereat, Bella and Elliot, whose eyes 
 met, burst into a merry laugh, which but poorly hid the 
 startled Edith s confusion and blushes. 
 
 "It was in Benjamin s sack the cup was found, you 
 recollect," said the determined Kate, "and it was his 
 wicked brothers who put it there. Hac fabula docet, as 
 ^Esop says." 
 
 " And to confirm your words, the wicked brother and 
 cousin are blushing as Joseph s kin when the trick was 
 found out. I fancy, Kate, you are a magnet for drawing 
 the truth from the guilty," insinuated Mrs. Briscoe. 
 
 "Yes, as was said of Madame de Sevigne ; she loved 
 verses, she praised verses, and she caused verses to be writ 
 ten. I love the truth, I praise it, I cause it to be told, and 
 when it will make my enemies uncomfortable, I tell it my 
 self." 
 
 Under this characteristic sally, the dinner broke up, 
 two of the feasters not sorry to escape further inroads from 
 the audacious and observant cynic. But relieved as 
 Bella and Elliot were to escape further badinage, I doubt, 
 if the question had been asked them, if they could have 
 replied what it was that they both feared to have said. 
 Elliot was conscious that the charm of Theo s satiric 
 and cynical prattle had grown very seductive. He was 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 323 
 
 happy when she was about. He made pretext for bringing 
 her near him, rather than going to her. He did not think 
 her beautiful, nor would he have said, if analyzing his senti 
 ments, that she was dear to him as Edith. She was not for 
 a moment to be compared with Bella. Her beauty was 
 incomparable to him. But he felt about Bella that she was 
 part of his daily life, and that the time would never come 
 when she could be any thing else. There had been times in 
 the past when his passionate unrest had led him into tender 
 evidences of his fondness, which Bella had good-humoredly 
 rallied, or serenely ignored. He had fallen into a conviction 
 that they were to go on forever, each filled with the passive 
 forces of unspoken passion not perhaps all the world to 
 each other, but essential to each other, like the vestals of 
 Persephone, joined only by the sense of a common ministry. 
 
 I do not pretend to explain this curious relation on Elliot s 
 part further than by pointing out the obvious reflection. 
 Man is the first of all egoists. What he can not get he covets, 
 not as a gift, or reward, but as a right. What he gets with 
 out the play of this master instinct, he undervalues or does 
 not value at all. Let the most obvious of truisms illustrate 
 this. Water and air are vital to the frame, but who in mil 
 lions ever stops to estimate them at their true valuation ? 
 Needful as they are, they are not less the sources of the 
 most perfect gratification of the senses. There never was a 
 dolt, however dull, that did not feel the beauty of a fine 
 landscape, yet without the air there could be no pleasure in 
 the landscape, supposing that there could be life, and minus 
 water a landscape is but an etching compared with a von 
 Ruisdael or a Claude ! 
 
 Elliot thought of Bella much as he thought of Edith or 
 his mother, an imprescriptible part of himself, for whose 
 possession he was called upon to make no claim. It was 
 the vague proprietorship that for the moment held in check 
 what may have been dormant passion. So soon as his 
 egoism met a shock of disputation in possession, he would 
 
324 TRAJAN. 
 
 burn with passionate desire for the overt signs of preference. 
 This was the secret of his gay indifferentism, but it was a 
 secret, in part at least, only to himself Bella penetrated the 
 casuistry and it filled her with hot wrath and an impotent 
 desire to teach the complacent lover a lesson, without reveal 
 ing either design or handiwork in the operation. I do not 
 think that she was possessed by a devouring passion for her 
 cousin. She could not resist his caressing manners, his gay 
 sallies, his sometimes profound tenderness, and at such 
 moments she could have wished the sun of her dreams to 
 stand still on the mountain of her content, the moon of her 
 aspiration to rest on the vale of her dimly discerned felicity. 
 A shock to his tranquil sense of security in Bella s heart 
 would arouse Elliot to the expression of his passion, she felt, 
 but whether she cared enough for the exhibition she was 
 herself uncertain. 
 
 Kate McNair, who was as observant as she was caustic, or 
 caustic because she was observant, as science learns its 
 potent secrets only by vivisection, was not in the dark as to 
 the real meaning of the comedy going on in the chateau, 
 though its action was veiled by every day conventions. 
 She hinted this solution to Edith one day, as the latter, 
 mourning her brother s infatuation for the antipathetic 
 Theo, allowed an expression of disparagement to escape her. 
 
 Edith, however, resented any thing like egoism in her 
 brother, not quite understanding the objective sense in 
 which the term was used. For nothing could be more out 
 of the line of fact than to confuse Elliot s unconscious idea 
 of right of possession in Bella, with the coarse selfishness of 
 male complacency. The spirit that pervaded him was 
 rather the delight of undisputed precedence in the object of 
 his love than the self assertion of a right due himself. He 
 was not, in fact, altogether sure that he cared for the exclu 
 sive right to Bella s heart, because such an idea as any one 
 else supplanting him had never presented itself to him. 
 
 Never was there a darling of family and fortune less spoiled 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 325 
 
 by the tarnishing influences that these conditions almost 
 invariably bring. He was not self-indulgent, vainglorious, 
 or meanly exultant over the merely sordid advantages he 
 possessed. He was, in short, no snob. He had no admira 
 tion for mean things, and chose a kind way out of any 
 embarrassing dilemma by preference in every case rather 
 than an unkindly one. Though imprudent and indecisive, 
 as his mother often regretfully declared, Elliot ought to 
 have been born in an heroic age, when chivalrous acts and 
 knight-errantry were not ridiculous, and sentimentalism not 
 a sign of effeminacy. 
 
 Monseigneur the prince, riding away from the chateau 
 with Bella the next day, remarked Elliot galloping ahead 
 with Theo. " Monsieur your cousin is a beau cavalier, a 
 very handsome young man, with manners tres distingue." 
 
 Bella nodded, but did not respond. 
 
 " They make a charming couple, the cavalier and the 
 spirituelle Theo," continued Arnboise, as if bent upon 
 extracting some sort of admission from the lady. But Bella 
 shot a little ahead and made no- answer. Reaching her side, 
 the prince continued, as the pretty picture of Theo became 
 indistinct in a bend of the roud. " Miss Carnot is a phe 
 nomenal spirit ; she is the readiest wit I ever encountered 
 I envy your kinsman his conquest." 
 
 " When we can afford to envy conquests, they don t 
 affect us much. What we really hold for conquest, we are 
 stimulated to win, or strive to dispute on the part of 
 others. Envy is the Platonic sentiment of ambition, men 
 never envy what they really covet I mean, that if you 
 thought my cousin to be envied, you would not yield the 
 prize that makes him enviable." 
 
 " Mademoiselle, you take our French manner of speaking 
 too seriously ; you make abstractions of points one is content 
 to generalize on. I ve no doubt you are right, but a man 
 can really envy the possession to another of what he relin 
 quishes in the hope of something more desirable," and the 
 
326 TRAJAN. 
 
 prince came closer and tried to catch his companion s 
 eye. 
 
 " We have a homely proverb, for which I remember no 
 equivalent in French: a bird in the hand is worth two in 
 the bush." 
 
 " Yes, our tongue has two or three covering the same 
 thought and quite as cleverly said, but the phrase does not 
 fit my case ; I didn t mean to imply that I felt confident that 
 I could win Miss Carnot from her knight, even if I were 
 disposed." 
 
 " Let us amend the adage then : birds in the bush wait 
 for the hand of a prince," and Bella, touching her horse, 
 swept out of hearing of the prince s rejoinder. I am afraid 
 Bella would have repented the speech had she caught the 
 expression that followed. 
 
 " Quel aplomb, quelle coquette" as the astonished prince 
 hastened to come up with the flying " coquette," but even 
 had he desired to pursue the previous conversation, she 
 showed that it no longer interested her. When an hour or 
 two later he touched his hat to the young lady after giving 
 his hand to her to dismount at Les Charmettes, he rode away 
 convinced that she* was won, and that to make her his 
 princess he had but to go through the prescribed forms of 
 his country. 
 
 The same evening the prince s secretary arrived as special 
 embassador to the court of beauty, with a document for 
 " Madame, Veuve Briscoe," emblazoned with the crest of the 
 House of Amboise, an eagle and griffin, bearing a serpent 
 in their claws. In this protocol Eugene Amedee Frangois 
 Pierre Frederic de Grimaldi-Vintimille Prince d Amboise, 
 Duke de Charlroi, Marquis de Quatrelieus and Comte de 
 Rire, had the honor of requesting an interview with 
 Madame, Veuve Briscoe upon matters deeply concerning 
 the interests of madame s and his own family, and that, 
 meanwhile, he was of madame, with the expression of his 
 consideration and homages, the most faithful and obedient 
 servant " Franois d Amboise." 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 327 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe read this elaborate pour-paries in speechless 
 astonishment. She had barely spoken to the great person 
 age, and not familiar with French usages, she had only a 
 dim notion of what it implied. That it had something to do 
 with Bella, she was certain, but, basing her reasoning upon 
 American methods, she assumed that her daughter must 
 have given the suitor permission to speak. This surprised 
 her, for the confidence between mother and daughter was 
 close. There had never been any secrets between them, so 
 far as she knew. She had set her heart upon a different 
 fate for Bella, but had been careful to let no sign of her 
 desire escape her in Bella s presence. She gave the secre 
 tary a note informing the prince that she would receive him 
 at noon the next day, and hastened to her sister to discuss 
 the extraordinary event. 
 
 Mrs. Arden was a good deal startled. Immersed in the 
 care of her invalid guests, she had seen nothing of the 
 current that had set in about the personages of the 
 drama going on about her. She was familiar enough with 
 French usages to divine the meaning of the request, but not 
 knowing how much Bella and the prince had been together, 
 was puzzled at its unexpected promptness. She knew that 
 matters of this sort were very formal and very deliberate, and 
 she could not comprehend the prince s precipitancy. "But," 
 she added, after the strange event had been talked over, 
 " there is nothing to do but to find out what Bella wants done. 
 She has probably authorized the prince to act. Put the affair 
 in her hands." This was Mrs. Briscoe s idea from the first, 
 and she hastened to find her daughter. But Bella had dis 
 appeared. The maid said she had gone to ride with 
 the Vicomte de Bellechasse, and did not know when she would 
 be back. 
 
 When Bella returned late in the afternoon she was strangely 
 agitated, and when her mother entered her room she was 
 lying down, her face buried in the pillows. Greatly alarmed, 
 Mrs. Briscoe raised her head. Her eyes were red, and 
 
328 TRAJAN. 
 
 there were signs of tears in them. To her mother s agitated 
 inquiries the girl made no response, save to beg that she 
 would not pursue the subject. She had been very wicked, 
 she sobbed, and must endure the punishment she had 
 brought upon herself. It was in this frame of mind she 
 learned the request of the Prince d Amboise. She paled to 
 a deadly whiteness as her mother read the note, and flung 
 herself in a paroxysm of despair upon the bed. Her 
 mother, unable to comprehend the situation, sat down, 
 exhausting all her resources in soothing the inexplicable 
 outburst. Wisely giving up all attempts at forcing an 
 explanation, the mother sat silent, waiting for the emotion 
 to settle into quiet. But when the dinner hour came Bella 
 gave no sign of going down. Her sobs had ceased, and as 
 her mother moved about preparing to go, she said without 
 looking up : 
 
 " I shall not go to dinner. My head is bursting and I 
 could not eat." The mother sighed, but made no answer. 
 When she had gone from the room, Bella got up and sank 
 into a seat by the window. The tears had left their traces 
 on face and eyes. She was composed enough now, but 
 there was a weary frightened look in the eyes. She clasped 
 her hands and wrung them in the penitence of a guiltless 
 Magdalen. The years of her life passed in swift procession 
 before her, all joyous and unbroken by grief until now. She 
 repented bitterly excluding Edith from her confidence. 
 
 Her impulsive directness would have withheld her from the 
 wicked course she had been following. She would have 
 kept her from the crime of wrecking the hearts of two men, 
 the ghosts of whose ruined happiness she felt with a shud 
 der of horror, would haunt her the rest of her years. She 
 had only meant to publish her indifference to the fickle 
 trifler who had declared himself a thousand times and then 
 abandoned the pursuit, without giving her a chance to ques 
 tion her own heart. In the swirl of the passions tearing her 
 heart-strings, she held Elliot innocent, for she had willfully 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 329 
 
 held him at arm s length, and if he finally took her at her word 
 her own persistent action implied, and had set out in search 
 of another, he was blameless in the matter. But her own 
 misery was now redoubled, for in her silly desire to con 
 vince him that she had never claimed him, she had gone so 
 far that first Bellechasse, and now the prince, held her to a 
 reckoning. 
 
 For her agitation on returning from the ride was the result 
 of a declaration the young vicomte had made her, in 
 which, with great modesty and good sense, he had told her 
 that, making all allowance for the wider freedom accorded 
 American young ladies, he had thought himself justified in 
 believing that Miss Briscoe s evident pleasure in his com 
 pany warranted him in construing his suit as acceptable to 
 her. The young fellow intimated, with amusing frankness, 
 that he had begun his pursuit, like most Frenchmen, think 
 ing most of the dazzling fortune of the girl, but Bella s 
 beauty had in a very short time turned the suit into pas 
 sionate adoration. Had she been poor as one of his old 
 flames, the grisettes of the Latin Quarter, he would have 
 still counted her hand the perfect joy of his life. Indeed it 
 was not possible to come within the orbit of the girl and not 
 surrender to her rare charm ! 
 
 I have purposely refrained from the attempt to set forth 
 the fascinations of her mind and person. Anti-typical to 
 Theo in every thing, Bella shared her rare wit, only it was of 
 a more queenly expression. Where Theo flattered the 
 amour propre of those she set out to captivate, Bella exacted 
 homage by a conscious, but subtly unobtrusive, subordinated 
 imperiousness, like a sovereign who looks the command she 
 has no need to utter. Theo won the devotion of men and 
 the admiration of women by an insensible deference to their 
 egotisms, Bella by a profound indifference to them. The 
 prince, for example, found Theo s sparkling epigrams irre 
 sistible, because, however audacious, they implied a defer 
 ence to his superior insight and commanding intellect, 
 
33 TRAJAN. 
 
 based upon that strongest appeal that can be made to man, 
 the confession of a knowledge of his nature and the study 
 of its working. Theo s most thoughtless levities left the 
 impression that she had penetrated the deeps of the nature 
 she satirized, and found so much there beyond her power to 
 appropriate, that in despair she was forced to bring away 
 only the lightness and inconsequence. 
 
 Bella, on the contrary, gave the impression of looking to 
 the depths and coming away indifferent to the revelations 
 her comprehensive glances had mastered. But with all this 
 there was no suggestion of blue-stockingism in her manner 
 with strangers. It was only in her own family that Bella 
 played the part of Bohemian Queen, and let her speech run 
 away with her in the shallow abstrusities that lingered in 
 her mind from her readings of philosophical novels and the 
 insipid psychological studies of the German school. She 
 had no suspicion that her somewhat didactic union with 
 the vicomte could put such a thing as love in his mind any 
 more than the volatile nothings she had interchanged with 
 the prince. 
 
 Her state of mind was the complement to that of Elliot s 
 in his pursuit of Theo. She had come to regard his 
 court to herself as so natural and irreversible, that, with 
 out making a sign for its continuance or even admitting 
 the pleasure of it, she had come to regard it as her right 
 as a queen looks upon the bent knee when her courtiers 
 come before her. The transfer of this allegiance to Theo, 
 at first puzzled, then angered, and then grieved her. 
 Pride restrained her from any sign that might have 
 warned Elliot, who was both blind and unconscious until he 
 had lost all memory of any thing but the delight of walk 
 ing, talking and studying the bizarre nature of the enchan 
 tress, alternately piqued by her studied indifference and her 
 seductive confidences. That Elliot was lost to her, Bella 
 owned in her heart, with anguish that made her shrink from 
 herself in a sense of loathing and abasement. 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 331 
 
 There was no comfort in the sophistication that she had 
 sedulously repulsed his tenderness in the old days when she 
 had lulled her heart by the delusion that she had no need of 
 love, or if she must love, she would wait for some heroic 
 knight to win her hand by some romantic prowess a union 
 which should take her destiny quite out of the common 
 place. She knew, though nothing had ever been said to her 
 on the .subject, that her mother and Mrs. Arden had set 
 their hearts on the marriage, and the knowledge had ruled 
 her conduct for years. She had resented the disposal of 
 her heart in this pragmatic sanction. It was the little maid 
 Edith herself, who adored Bella only in a degree second to 
 her brother, who had incited this revolt against the very end 
 she cherished. For she knew Elliot s mind and his dream 
 of winning Bella. The late infatuation for Theo had 
 estranged the two girls. They no longer talked over the 
 events of the day in their chamber, as they had been in the 
 habit of doing. Both pretended to attribute this to the 
 abnormal condition of affairs in the chateau, where the care 
 of the invalids naturally fell upon them, as members of the 
 family. Bella herself felt it a duty to devote her time to 
 Trajan, whose conduct had won her affection, and Edith, in 
 her timid soul, sometimes thought her heart. For this was 
 the very knight-errantry that Bella had always babbled of in 
 her confidence to her cousin. 
 
 Nothing was said at the dinner table about the impending 
 proposal. 
 
 Elliot regretted that the vicomte, whom he had met en 
 route to the station, was summoned to join his general, who 
 was to command the advance division of the army already 
 at Saarbrucken, near the Rhine. He wondered that the 
 prince, who was known to be ambitious, and \vhose family 
 had given marshals to France, did not set off with his com 
 rades, but supposed he, too, would be on the inarch before 
 the combat was joined. As for himself, he felt half inclined 
 to agree with Trajan and take up a musket, and to the shriek 
 
332 TRAJAN. 
 
 of reproachful protest that followed, he gravely argued his 
 duty in the matter, unblushingly reiterating the arguments 
 he had contested when uttered by the invalid up stairs ! To 
 which he added the sage reflection that his own country 
 might some time need his services, and an experience gained 
 in the foremost army of Europe would be of value. 
 
 The mother and aunt resumed the discussion of the 
 prince s proposal, when the family dispersed from the din 
 ner table. Mrs. Arden was overwhelmed when her sister 
 revealed Bella s manner of receiving the news. She could 
 not conceive the prince venturing to propose formally for 
 the girl s hand without letting Bella know of his purpose. 
 It was agreed that she should join her sister and find out 
 the facts. Bella was sitting in the embrasure of the window, 
 her eyes fixed on the trees without, where the twilight was 
 veiling them in transparent mist. Her aunt kissed her ten 
 derly, and was a good deal startled at her white face and 
 tell-tale eyes. 
 
 " You ve had nothing to eat, child ; I sent your dinner up, 
 hoping you could eat something," she said, glancing at the 
 untouched tray on the table. 
 
 " No ; I m nervous, and don t feel at all like eating," said 
 Bella, in a constrained weary voice. 
 
 The little group sat a good while in silence. The dark 
 ness fell, and when Mrs. Briscoe got up to ring for lights 
 Bella asked that they should not come until bedtime. Then 
 Mrs. Arden nervously spoke of the prince s letter, and the 
 necessity of accepting or refusing the proposal he was 
 plainly about to make. Bella shivered a little as her aunt 
 began to talk, but when she finished there was no response. 
 
 " You know, Bella, Frenchmen are very punctilious in 
 these affairs, and though you may have accepted him your 
 self" 
 
 " I never accepted him ! I never " broke out the girl 
 .vehemently, and then stopped, suddenly conscious that she 
 had fallen into the very trap laid under her eyes. Now, the 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 333 
 
 amazing state of the girl s mind was her indecision as to the 
 answer the prince should receive. She had never for a 
 moment dreamed that he had any other motive in seeking 
 her than pastime : in fact, she had never thought of his 
 motive. She accepted his devotions hardly conscious that 
 they were marked, and certainly unconscious that they were 
 significant. She would have looked upon a proposal rather 
 as an amusing diversion, had the blank face and sad eyes 
 of the vicomte not risen in her mind as a perpetual reminder 
 of her guilty trifling. During the long hours of anguish 
 since she learned of the prince s purpose she had reflected 
 on the miserable dilemma her own heedlessness and folly 
 had brought about. As to loving him, or being his wife, the 
 very suggestion was horrible ; for Bella, with all her book- 
 knowledge, was naively ignorant in things that any shal 
 low fashionable girl could have instructed her in. 
 
 She, as you see, believed, like a simpleton, that marriage im 
 plied love. When she first thought of the prince in the light 
 of a pretender for her hand a few hours before, the very sug 
 gestion was repulsive. But with the hours of reflection a 
 new image had replaced the first. He was not in the prime 
 of his first youth, like Elliot. He was not so attractive in 
 face, figure, or carriage as the man she had refused a few 
 hours before, but he was a handsome and imposing man. 
 
 She began vaguely to fancy that it would be a heroic 
 resolve to force herself to love this great nobleman, who was 
 about to fling aside family traditions and the practices of his 
 station and ask her to become his princess. She wondered 
 if he would pain her as the poor vicomte had pained her by 
 the mute reproach of his wounded love, the half sob in his 
 voice, as he said simply : 
 
 " Mademoiselle, you must pardon the presumptuous error 
 of one who, loving you, and not fully understanding the man 
 ners of your country, misconstrued your kind and frank wel 
 come for a deeper feeling. It is all my own fault, and you 
 have nothing to reproach yourself with. I shall always love 
 you, but I shall see you no more." 
 
334 TRAJAN. 
 
 She had been smitten with a choking of guilt and pity. 
 What would not she have given to be able to believe that 
 the generous lad spoke the truth ; that her coquetry had not 
 warranted his heart in opening into love. Would the prince 
 have the same reproach to make ? She thought over all that 
 had passed between them, and she groaned in an abandon 
 ment of perplexity, because she had allowed herself a gayer 
 liberty with him than with the other. 
 
 Such a thing as a serious purpose on his part she would 
 have scouted twenty-four hours before. Bringing conscience, 
 quick with the sins committed against the vicomte, to bear, 
 she felt, with the shrinking horror of the martyr, that she was 
 called upon to immolate herself upon the pyre her thought 
 lessness and guilt had upreared. This was the confused 
 state in which her mother and Mrs. Arden found her. But 
 the resolution which was easy to caress in fancy, was a far 
 more formidable thing when she was called upon to act. 
 She must now say yes, or no, as decisively as if the prince 
 was before her, and all the doubt and trembling of the past 
 three hours condensed and intensified themselves in a lurid 
 specter, that hovered, shadowy and dreadful, in the rosy hor 
 izon of that future which had been her dream by night, her 
 vision by day. 
 
 "You know, my child, that I must have your answer 
 before I can meet the prince," said her mother, taking the 
 troubled head in her hands, and kissing the feverish fore 
 head. " I declare, Bella, you are really ill ; you must 
 go to bed, and, above all, you must eat something," the two 
 panaceas that occur to woman s mind as spontaneously, 
 in whatever crisis, as leeching to the practitioners of 
 other days. The girl got up wearily and threw herself on 
 the bed, while Mrs. Arden, rising, ventured a little joke 
 about "no crown coming without its cross." But Bella 
 had no repartee for what under ordinary circumstances 
 would have excited a nimble dart. The crown she thought 
 of with a shudder, for it would encircle a brow unworthy to 
 
PRINCE CHARM ING S WOOING. 335 
 
 wear it, the heart not going with it. Whimsically enough, 
 this chance suggestion reminded her of something she had 
 left out of her previous troubled gropings. She would be a 
 princess ; she would wear an imperial coronet, the ducal 
 crown of the Grimaldi, the tiara of a marquisate. A throb 
 of exultation sent the blood in a rush through her veins. 
 She should take precedence of the greatest. At court she 
 would be only a remove from royalty. She could by a word 
 be the proudest dame in France an individuality among 
 the noblesse of the continent. 
 
 " Mamma," she said suddenly, her eyes gleaming in -the 
 darkness, "let this question rest until morning. I will 
 tell you what to say then. I want the night to think it 
 over." 
 
 " Bella, dear, in a matter of this sort, reflection is destruc 
 tion. Love or marriage is not a question that is aided by 
 counsel. You either do, or do not love the prince ; if you 
 love him, it will be a crime against yourself to refuse him ; 
 if you do not love him, it will be a crime against him, a sin 
 of the most guilty sort, to accept him," and the mother took 
 the troubled head on her breast. 
 
 " Ah, mamma, you don t know how wicked I have been ; 
 I must punish myself and make atonement, and I think I 
 shall be equal to it in the morning. I am weak to-night. 
 Ah, my poor mother, if you knew how wicked I have been, 
 you % would command me to do some fearful penance." 
 
 " I can imagine how wicked you have been, my darling ; 
 I think I comprehend it. You have made Elliot miserable ? 
 Well, he is a man and must bear his grief." 
 
 " Why, mamma, what can you mean ? " cried Bella, rising 
 and turning to see her mother s face in the darkness. 
 " Elliot ! What have I done to him ? " 
 
 " You certainly must have seen, my daughter, that your 
 cousin adores you, and and 
 
 " Why, mother, you are dreaming ; Elliot is at this moment 
 infatuated with Miss Carnot very likely engaged ! " 
 
33^ TRAJAN. 
 
 Mrs. Briscoe was thunderstruck. Elliot s union with 
 Bella she had regarded as a settled thing. His looks had 
 told the story any time for a year or more. When her 
 daughter reproached herself with wickedness she took it for 
 granted that it was her capricious treatment of her cousin s 
 love. The mother at this new complication grew seriously 
 alarmed. What did Bella mean ? What wickedness could 
 she have upon her mind, if Elliot were not the victim ? 
 
 "What do you mean, Bella, by being wicked ? I thought 
 you were reproaching yourself for wounding Elliot. I can 
 not allow you to talk in this careless way ; tell me all, my 
 child. Your mother alone can aid you if sinless, and com 
 fort you if in fault." Bella began at the beginning, blush 
 ing scarlet as she was forced in justification to make more or 
 less apparent the wounded love that had driven her to her 
 idle coquetry. When the tale, which was told with many 
 tears and prayers for pardon, was done, Mrs. Briscoe kissed 
 the facile sinner, and said, with a sigh of relief : 
 
 "You have acted with imprudence almost heartlessness. 
 I am afraid you have driven Elliot into an engagement that 
 can only result in bitterness and misery for him and his 
 family. But you have not been wicked. You must refus-e 
 the prince s offer, unless you are certain that he can inspire 
 you with a genuine love. Do not make the awful mistake 
 of confusing rank with love. He may be honestly in love 
 with you. If he is, you will soon discover it. You can 
 refuse to engage yourself until you have examined yourself 
 and studied him. If he loves you, he will be better satisfied 
 to have you deal frankly with him. If he does not, you will 
 be saved from a wreck compared to which the most trying 
 vicissitudes of life are a mere May shower." And so Bella, 
 greatly comforted in her troubled mind, slept the dream 
 less sleep of the repentant and forgiven that night, and the 
 next morning the prince received the answer which the 
 prudence pf mamma suggested. The great man was inex 
 pressibly astonished. It required all the breeding and 
 
PRINCE CHARMING S WOOING. 337 
 
 savoir faire of his rank to enable him to comprehend 
 that he, the descendant of ten centuries of kings and 
 princes, who had been angled for by court belles 
 ladies of his own rank, should be put on probation like a 
 mere adventurer or parvenu bourgeois. There was consid 
 erably less languor in the princely figure, less indifference in 
 the high-bred drawl, as he replied with irreproachable polite 
 ness, " Madame is right. I have been too precipitate. Make 
 my homages to mademoiselle your daughter," and bowing 
 with grave dignity, he quit the room. 
 
 "What in the world is the prince doing here this time of 
 day ? " said Elliot as, standing at Trajan s window, he caught 
 sight of the suitor getting into his vehicle. 
 
 " He came by arrangement to ask your aunt for your 
 cousin Bella in marriage," said his mother calmly, moving 
 to the mantel-shelf. The young man dropped into a seat as 
 if shot. 
 
 " And he he has been accepted ?" 
 
 u And he has been refused ! " 
 
 Had the far-seeing Theo arranged the complexity to keep 
 Elliot still uncertain, she could not have wrought to better 
 purpose ; if Bella had not accepted the prince, she was to 
 be had for the effort, whenever, if ever, he saw fit to make 
 it. Possession is not only nine points of the law, in life it 
 is the pretext of a good deal of the folly men commit in 
 love. 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 " TO BE WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE DOTH WORK LIKE MAD 
 NESS IN THE BRAIN." 
 
 PHILIP S disaster had divided the family forces at Les 
 I Charmettes. Before that misfortune Trajan s room 
 had become a sort of general rendezvous. So soon as his 
 wounds would bear it, he was put in a chair and wheeled to 
 22 
 
33 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 the open window, where reclining in enfeebled animation, 
 he listened, without taking part in the family confidences. 
 For the young man had become tacitly a member of the 
 family. Mrs. Briscoe, to her own no small surprise, found 
 herself addressing her charge, for it was she who asserted a 
 motherly responsibility in him, as Trajan quite as naturally 
 as she called her nephew by his given name. From this in 
 fraction of the ceremonious to a general disregard there was 
 but a short term, and when the young man was able to move 
 about, Trajan was the name by which the whole family ad 
 dressed him. The habit had a humanizing and potent effect 
 on the homeless youth. He heard it with something of the 
 grateful joy a man feels, who, traveling for seasons in a 
 strange land, comes suddenly upon a group who speaks his 
 own tongue. 
 
 As once upon a time journeying in Morocco this histo 
 rian, abandoned for two months to the meager linguistic 
 acquirements of Arabs, Spaniards, and Moors, came one 
 day in the prophet s mountains, over against the sacred 
 city of Tetaun, upon a company of his Yankee countrymen, 
 whose voices sounded sweeter than marriage bells, whose 
 artless and comminatory criticisms of the land, its manners, 
 and people, seemed as profoundly sententious as the studies 
 of La Bruyere, or the maxims of La Rochefoucauld. Bella, 
 thus addressing her hero for the first time, by pure accident, 
 blushed bewitchingly and then explained, that she felt quite 
 like a Roman, in the days of the Caesars, the name revived 
 so much of the classic. 
 
 " It s a sad burden for such a commonplace fellow as I 
 am," said Trajan smiling, " but my poor father, who 
 frightened my mother into it by a more trying alternative, 
 1 Aurelian, fondly hoped that it would inspire me to 
 great deeds. He lived in the past and thought that mod 
 ern men were in every way inferior to the Romans. 
 
 " Among his papers we found a plan for the naming of his 
 children. The boys were to be Trajan, Aurelian, Terence, 
 
"TO BE WROTH WITH ONE W r E LOVE" 339 
 
 Ovid, Thucydides, Tiberius, Haphaestion, Antinous fancy 
 a red-haired, frowsy Antrim lad, struggling all his life under 
 such a name as Antinous" and the young man s gored torso 
 shook till he coughed with pain. " My father s great purpose 
 was to reconstruct the characters of the classic reprobates. 
 He had a theory that Nero, Caligula, Caracalla, and Tiberius 
 were grossly wronged by the partisan writers of the day. 
 
 " They were to these enemies what a Whig was to Claren 
 don, or a Tory to Macaulay. Clarendon s testimony would 
 make Hampden, or Cromwell, a Claudius or a Caligula, while 
 Burnett or Macaulay leave little to choose betwixt the 
 Stuarts and the Antonines, Mary of Scotland and Mess- 
 alina. I found my classic cognomen a heavy burden at 
 school, where the small satirists who had pushed far enough 
 in Latin to know the exploits of the emperor, were forever 
 drawing sprawling arches, fabricated of potatoes and turf, or 
 columns of onions and grog bottles, in delicate allusion to 
 my Irish nativity and the staples of my ancestral fields. 
 
 " The favorite caricature was an emigrant ship landed at 
 Castle Garden with an unkempt youth carrying a hod and in 
 the distance the City Hall in the back-ground broken heads 
 and swinging shillalahs, marked * Trajan s Way. These 
 exuberances of boyish wit sometimes resulted in punched 
 heads and the heavens were hung in black for the most auda 
 cious of the young rogues but I came in time to bear it 
 all with good humor, and then the merry lads teased me no 
 more. The spirit of caricature is rarely malignant, and a 
 laugh, which is its purpose, placates the satirist and saves 
 the victim." 
 
 " Hech ! " exclaimed the unmollifying Miss McNair ; 
 " there s no equaling the deviltry of small bodies, when the 
 will-o -the-wisp of tantalizing gets into their daft heads. 
 They made my life a burden at school. Callow pates that 
 never had a lesson would seem crammed with all the classics 
 that bore on the Scotch. I would find extracts from John 
 son s Dixionary defining oats, as food for horses in England 
 
340 TRAJAN. 
 
 and men in Scotland, in my recitation books, and drawings 
 of Caledonian heads undergoing trepanning to insert jokes. 
 I had a good stout arm in those days," she added dryly, 
 " and I put something else than jokes in their silly noddles. 
 
 Then in my spelling book when I went to class I found 
 pan-cakes, in all the colors of the rainbow, sprawled over the 
 pages, a delicate allusion to the national food, or a bagpipe 
 scrawled on my music. But I soon boxed the compass of 
 this idiotic," Kate, when excited fell into her national ac 
 cent and said " eejiotic" " fulery. 1 became teacher in the 
 same school afterward and I think there was less friskiness 
 among the idle chatterboxes." Everybody laughed, begging 
 Kate to continue her reminiscences of her drastic 
 regime but she shook her head. " I m no telling this to 
 amuse ye, triflers that ye are it s to warn ye agin the day 
 ye ll ha bairns o yer ain " she had quite dropped into 
 broad Scotch by this time, stimulated by the ill-concealed 
 merriment of the circle. 
 
 " Let us hope for better things, Kate," suggested Mrs. 
 Arden, mildly. 
 
 "What than bairns? I say ay, with all my heart, 
 ma am," returned the spinster with vivacity. 
 
 "No, I didn t mean that," said Mrs. Arden laughing. "I 
 have had great comfort with my bairns, " and she looked 
 with tranquil tenderness at Elliot and Edith, the one trying 
 to follow a joke in Figaro, the other busy with some com 
 plicated floral needle-work of varied colors and silken tex 
 ture. 
 
 " Kate, if you disapprove of bairns so strongly, how is it 
 I see you giving bonbons to the small Cre"cy urchins of an 
 afternoon, when their parents are fishing in the canal ? " 
 asked Elliot mischievously. 
 
 "And why do you disturb the cotton market buying 
 whole pieces of calico to clothe the little girls of Saint 
 Pierre ? " asked Edith slyly. 
 
 "You wouldn t have the brats goin about a fine land- 
 
"TO E WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE." 341 
 
 scape like this in their pelts, like Sawney s bairns at the 
 Firth," retorted the stout hypocrite parrying the last stroke 
 first. " As for the sweets, ye meddlesome young villain, 
 would ye have me go crazy with the noise of the wee 
 plagues, when I can put them quiet by a handful of sugar 
 plums ? " 
 
 " But, Kate, even that justifiable corruption does not ex 
 plain your taking them off to the woods in a carry-all, as 
 I saw you do with my own eyes the other day. Surely that 
 wasn t to keep them quiet while you gave your philosophic 
 mind to admiring the landscape," said Bella gravely, pre 
 tending to be curious rather than contributing to these evi 
 dences of the spinster s duplicity. 
 
 " And Kate, you humbug, what were you doing the other 
 day when the little boy fell into the water? If my eyes 
 didn t deceive me you were covering him with your shawl, 
 that precious white crepe," insinuated Mrs. Arden, as her 
 evidence in the case of Kate vs. Kate. 
 
 Still unabashed by this array of witnesses to her turpi 
 tude, the gentle cynic changed the action to an offensive 
 one, exclaiming with intention : " And if I were minded to 
 tell what I ve seen going on what would ye ha to say for 
 yersels my jaunty lads and lasses ? D ye mind whaur ye 
 waur o Saturday last, Maister Elliot, my fine fellow yes 
 well ye may grow rid in the gills. I ll no follow yer example 
 in telling tales but ithers ha seen as well as yersel, and I 
 culd mak the mithers wonder, too, if I tould all I saw cer 
 tain lassies carryin on but I ll spare ye for ye ll. grow 
 older," and as Edith sent up danger signals, the tor 
 mentor got up, pinched her ear, and kissed her Elliot 
 laughing and looking uncommonly wise, while his mother 
 displayed some uneasiness and the others curiosity. 
 
 " Why do you spare Trajan and Bella? " asked Elliot impu 
 dently " are they perfect, that you have no railing for 
 them, Timon of Crecy ? " 
 
 " Hech ! as for that, they re as daft as any o ye, give 
 
342 TRAJAN. 
 
 them time," and the sharp eye softened as it caught the eye 
 of the invalid fixed in alarm on her. " There s no need o 
 wasting words over a lad that knows no better use for his 
 limbs than wrestling wi Rothschild s animals. As for Bella 
 she s old enough to have sense but I doubt she has," she 
 added reflectively. 
 
 " There s no danger of self-esteem taking strong root in 
 this family, gentle Kate," said Elliot, as she relapsed into 
 silence. 
 
 " Ah, young man self-esteem has a gourd s growth and 
 a hussy s craft, it s like water in a sponge, always ready to be 
 squeezed out o ye when ye fall into crafty hands. There s 
 no danger o any o ye ye have enough o it and to spare, 
 too, I ll warrant." 
 
 Conversation like this kept up the tonic quality of the life 
 of the chateau during these long weeks of tranquil repose, 
 varied by sharp encounters with Theo in the drawing- 
 room when that counter-irritant to Kate came over to 
 call. The two were old friends or old enemies rather, for 
 the Scot had no love for the clever American. Kate had 
 known Theo when she first came to Paris ; she had met her 
 in various salons of the " Colony ;" she had read of her 
 unholy triumphs at court as she called them ; she had sniffed at 
 the common rumors of the likelihood of her marriage with 
 this and that great person. Her chief cause of hostility, how 
 ever, was the Godless conversions, or as Kate called them, 
 perversions, of the saints to "Romanism." Under her very 
 eye, in the azure stream, as it were, of the very blood of 
 Knox, the intrepid little propagandist had carried off con 
 quests to " idolatry," as Kate vigorously stigmatized the 
 faith of Rome. There was hardly a painter or student, 
 susceptible of faith of any kind, that Theo had not wholly 
 or half won into active apostleship in the hated faith. 
 
 The battles between the two were fierce and relentless, 
 but the younger was always the victor, her keen sense of 
 humor supplying weapons too strong for Kate s impatience 
 
"TO BR WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE." 343 
 
 and dogmatic sincerity. When the prince s attentions to 
 Bella attracted the spinster s wrath and she marked 
 them from the first, she was convinced that it was an un 
 holy plot on Theo s part to entrap the heiress into Roman 
 ism and her fortune into the coffers of the Jesuits. She groaned 
 in spirit over the blindness of the family to these transparent 
 artifices of Jezebel, as she called Theo, but bold as she was, 
 she dared not break ground openly to counteract the scheme. 
 
 She had known the prince in Paris. He had been lavish 
 of his presence in the American colony, and it was gen 
 erally understood that he was looking out for a lady 
 with millions who should restore the grandeurs of his de 
 cayed chateaux and enable him to lead in wealth, as he 
 eclipsed in rank, all the personages of the Imperial court. 
 She had watched Theo s maneuvers with him, and believed 
 that it was her intention to marry him if she could. But 
 the new move at Crecy convinced her she was wrong, and 
 that it was to secure Bella and her fortune for the Church 
 the arch schemer was intent. 
 
 Kate racked her brain for a weapon to avert this impend 
 ing disaster, but the fates themselves seemed to work in 
 Theo s favor. The proposal, which she heard from Mrs. 
 Arden, was a stunning blow to her. She was silent and 
 peevish for the whole day and quite surprised Elliot by the 
 almost venomous acridity of the remarks she rapped out at 
 him in response to his casual pleasantries. She was in the 
 room when Elliot learned the purpose of the prince s visit, 
 and she understood the equivoque in Mrs. Arden s reply. 
 
 She knew that the prince, though not accepted, had not 
 been refused, and she meant to move heaven and earth to 
 make the final answer a negative. But how ? Mrs. Briscoe s 
 single weakness was a love of rank not as pushing, or self- 
 seeking, but a traditional esteem of birth and what was 
 known in her New England home as gentility and culture. 
 She knew that such rank as was offered her daughter would 
 be sure to win the mother in the end, whatever her senti- 
 
344 TRAJAN. 
 
 mental notions of joining the cousins in marriage. Nor was 
 the shrewd plotter deceived by Bella s apparent indifference 
 to Elliot. 
 
 She had watched the two for a year, and she knew that it 
 needed but a spark to set the fire that lay unkindled in 
 both, into a flame. She had never regarded Elliot s diver 
 sion with Theo as any thing more than a caprice the aber 
 ration of a spoiled darling too confident of his powers to 
 bring to pass whatsoever he set his mind upon with conviction. 
 
 She had, while distrusting the intimacy, felt little fear, 
 because she knew Theo s consuming ambition and preter 
 natural adroitness in bringing to pass whatever she set her 
 cold heart upon. It was from Edith s troubled hints that 
 she first learned of Elliot s serious danger. She watched 
 the two closely and became convinced that Theo had relin 
 quished the rank of the prince for the Arden millions. 
 
 She knew the futility of openly opposing the infatuation, 
 hoping for some chance weapon that might fall into her hand 
 and enable her to strike a decisive blow. It never occurred 
 to her to think of Trajan as an ally, though the enmeshing 
 of his friend in the fowler s snare was daily, hourly anguish 
 to that silent and helpless sufferer. He, too, learned from 
 Edith s hints the state of the case, and he was plunged 
 into despair. He was cruelly embarrassed. He shrank 
 from warring upon a woman, and that woman the one to 
 whom he had given his whole heart. He indeed doubted 
 very much whether the conduct of the girl, which seemed to 
 him odious and wicked as well as heartless, would strike the 
 tolerant and easy-going Elliot in such hideous colors as he 
 saw it. He could not reveal the smuggling episode, for that 
 had been confided to him in honorable confidence, and how 
 ever he himself might abhor such enterprises he knew that 
 Americans did not take a very severe view of the traffic. 
 
 Elliot had never mentioned Theo s name of late, and 
 Trajan could not obtrude his opinions unless asked for them, 
 and perhaps not then. At one moment he resolved to con- 
 
" TO BE WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE." 345 
 
 fide the whole story to Mrs. Arden, then repented of it as 
 cowardly to the miserable girl, and disloyal to Elliot. Twenty 
 times he was on the point of laying his perplexities before 
 Edith, whose fidelity he trusted implicitly but could not 
 bring himself to weight that pure conscience with so miser 
 able a burden. He had vaguely supposed, without really 
 dwelling on the subject, that Elliot s heart was given up to 
 the worship of his beautiful cousin. Something, indeed, that 
 the young man himself said suggested it, and his conduct 
 until Theo. came upon the scene, confirmed it. 
 
 Elliot s agitation when the prince s mission was told hirn^ 
 startled Trajan, who was looking at him closely. He became 
 very pale and his mother leaving the room, as she made the 
 answer perfectly equivocal, he sank into a chair trembling 
 and silent. He felt Trajan s eyes on him, got up and began 
 walking the room then, as if possessed of the solution of a 
 problem he had been debating, shot out of the door along 
 the hallway to the landing, and calling Pierre, who was stand 
 ing in the lower hall, asked him if Miss Briscoe were in the 
 house. Pierre did not know, but would go and see. 
 
 " Tell her that I am waiting in the library, and beg that she 
 will give me ten minutes." He strode into the roomy apart 
 ment, looking idly at the back of the books when Pierre 
 returned with the answer that mademoiselle was not in her 
 room and her mother thought she was in the park. But she 
 was nowhere to be found in the grounds, and the young man 
 entered a sylvan arbor and resumed his reflections. 
 
 Upon what trifling chances our woes and joys depend. A 
 half-hour earlier would have saved him the path of many 
 pains, the companionship of much misery, the discovery of 
 vile treasons, the falsehood of a wicked woman. It was not 
 to be, and he sat in the shade, the cat-bird calling and the 
 lark s song falling downward like the symphony of silver 
 chords from an aerial orchestra. The repose of the place 
 restored to him the rationale of the situation. He had sent 
 for Bella, with the purpose of upbraiding and renouncing her 
 
34<5 TRAJAN. 
 
 if it were true that she had encouraged this absurd offer 
 from the prince. It was less egotism than trust in his 
 cousin, that made him confident of his power of supplanting 
 the prince, with lover-like inconsequence losing sight of the 
 moral question involved in Bella s possible plighted word 
 and his own compromising absorption in Theo. He had 
 solved all the perplexities of the complications quite to his 
 satisfaction, and resumed the happy serenity natural to him, 
 when whom should he spy, sauntering toward his retreat, 
 but the fascinating Theo herself, bewildering in fluffy 
 draperies and elastic in step as a fairy. 
 
 " By George, what an adorable witch it is ! " he said, half 
 aloud, as the vision came nearer. He called out as she 
 reached the door : 
 
 " Where away, Titania ? are you going to, or coming from 
 a fairy revel disputing or conceding Queen Mab s domin 
 ion ?" 
 
 She stopped, recognizing the voice, but Elliot had slipped 
 behind the thick trellis of vines ; then peeping in the door 
 way pretended to see nothing and saying as if to herself : 
 
 " I could have sworn a voice I recognized as Caliban s. 
 Come forth, foul monster your queen commands ; Mab, 
 the mistress of the acorn throne, drawn by tandem dragon- 
 flies ; her cohorts atomies in lily liveries ; her guards long- 
 legged spiders ; her trumpets hare-bells ; her scepter a rose ; 
 her orb a lily s petal with dew drops glistening at each end ; 
 her crown a sunbeam stolen from the violet s heart and tinc 
 tured with its purple ; her mantle a mosaic of the lady-bug s 
 hood, the daffodil s vest and the lizard s scale ; her lamps the 
 firefly s coal ; her army trains of eager ants ; her courtiers 
 all the winged world that mock the wild wood in color ; her 
 subjects all manner of living and loving things ; her sword of 
 state a hornet s sting ; her canopy a marigold " 
 
 " There don t go any further, or I shall really believe you 
 Queen Mab in the fairy flesh and fly your supernatural 
 witcheries. I didn t know you were a poet as well as phil- 
 
" TO BE WROTH IV IT PI ONE WE LOVE. 347 
 
 
 
 osopher," said Elliot, coming from behind the covert of 
 clematis and Virginia creeper. 
 
 " Not an original poet. I am merely borrowing from 
 Shakespeare," said Theo, coming into the shady coolness 
 and sitting down. "Why are you here in eremite medita 
 tion ? I ll wager the seriousness on your brow means some 
 thing losses by flood or field, or crosses in love ? " she 
 asked with irresistible impertinence. 
 
 The charm of her subtle beauty was upon him, the enchant 
 ment of her manner, the defiance and yet deference of her 
 glance provoked him. Under that spell, he forgot every 
 thing forgot his pledge of the morning, the shrine of his 
 life s devotions his unspoken, but none the less plighted 
 faith to Bella. He broke into a vehement protest of devo 
 tion of a love that mastered his reason and without which 
 his life would be a blank, and very much more of the same 
 passionate and plausible nature, all the more passionate, fluent 
 and plausible, I believe, on my faith, because his heart held 
 another image and his eye saw another form than the siren 
 before him. 
 
 He had taken both her hands while speaking and tried 
 to look into her eyes. But she never for a moment lost 
 her self-possession. She met the glance calmly during 
 the outburst and then looked over his head in a dreamy, 
 repressed exultation. He bent closer as his words became 
 more eager, but as his face neared hers she swayed back 
 ward with a willowy movement of indescribable grace. She 
 made no effort to release her hands ; on the contrary, she 
 clasped Elliot s firmly, as if by instinct aware that she thus 
 kept the power of controlling him in her own hands. In 
 this attitude, with a pulse at its normal beat and the shifty 
 eyes as serene as if adjusting her robe, she looked the foolish 
 fellow in the face and maddened him with a deliberate lie : 
 
 " Elliot, I never dreamed of this had I supposed you 
 were free, I I " 
 
 "But I love you I love you will you be my wife ? " 
 
TRAJAN. 
 
 
 " You must give me time I can not answer you I dare 
 not answer you " 
 
 "What do you mean ? " he broke out impetuously. " You 
 dare not are you a child tied up by French conventions ? " 
 
 He strove to draw his hands from her. But she held them 
 firmly, and his eyes remained fixed upon her face. She 
 made a little movement like a shrug, and continued : 
 
 " I dare not answer you, for I am the promised wife of 
 another whom I do not love." 
 
 u Then you do love me say that you can surely say 
 that," and he strove to release his hands to clasp her to his 
 heart. But a strength hardly inferior to his own responded 
 to his efforts. He was still kept at arm s length. He looked 
 at her in amazement. The gleam of amber in her strangely 
 bright eyes, with an inexpressible thrill recalled to him the 
 saffron demons reflected in the brackish waters of the pool ! 
 
 She relinquished his hands and sank back in the rustic seat 
 trembling, her eyes fixed on the doorway. Elliot turned. 
 Trajan Gray, tall as a specter through emaciation, and pale 
 as the linen that swathed his neck, stood under the blooming 
 canopy that framed him. He was leaning on the arms of 
 Kate and Edith. His eye was fixed with an expression of 
 yearning then scorn as he glanced upon the cowering 
 figure in the seat. He turned gently to Elliot and spoke : 
 
 " She is telling you an untruth ; she does not love you. 
 She dares not ; she is the unpromised wife of a man, whom 
 she does love." 
 
 " Gray, how dare you this is cowardly, vile. By Heaven ! 
 if you were not a cripple 
 
 " Oh, Elliot you forget you forget what we owe Mr. 
 Gray," cried Edith, trying to clasp his arms. He shook her 
 off savagely. 
 
 " I forget nothing I know that he dares to come into the 
 presence of the woman I love and say what no manor woman 
 shall say, while I have an arm. I say that I am in my senses 
 when I declare that he must answer for this atrocious coward- 
 
" TO BE WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE" 349 
 
 ice. That I shall hale him before all men and proclaim him 
 a coward and calumniator." 
 
 While speaking he had gone to Theo, sitting stony and 
 rigid under the trumpet flowers and partly veiled by them. 
 He put his arms tenderly about her and drew her head upon 
 his breast. 
 
 "You infamous coward," he cried, " there s my answer 
 my defiance whether my wife or another s this arm is ready 
 to defend her, shelter her ! " 
 
 Trajan had sunk under the shock of these dreadful words. 
 
 A servant with a wheel chair had come from the chateau 
 behind him as he walked feebly through the grounds, and 
 Kate ran and wheeled it behind him, ordering the servant to 
 wait at some distance. Sinking into this Trajan listened to 
 the intemperate outbreak of the man he adored, as a mother 
 adores a son, or some brothers do their brothers. Then 
 when the passion of the other calmed into the last bitter 
 speech he fixed his eyes on the now reassured Theo, who 
 did not look at him. 
 
 " Theo," and his voice trembled as he pronounced the 
 name "You must have some of the feelings of your sex ; 
 you can not be wholly heartless ; you must be human. Have 
 pity on the man beside you. He never harmed you he 
 never did wrong to a human being. He wrongs me now, 
 but he is not himself. Have patience," he cried, as Elliot 
 started to speak ; " you will have the future to think over 
 what you have said, when I m far from you. Theo, think 
 of your mother think of your girlhood, before this craze 
 came upon you remember that you brought one man to 
 madness, God forgive him, nearly to crime. The man beside 
 you averted that crime and the man he saved is resolved to 
 avert another at whatever sacrifice. Be human tell him 
 the truth or I will." 
 
 Even Elliot was staggered by this implied previous bond 
 between the man he had reviled and the woman he thought 
 he loved. He recalled certain snatches of anguish during 
 
350 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan s delirium but come what might, he resolved not to 
 desert the woman he saw his own now, beyond recall. 
 
 He drew her closer to him and pressed her hand confidingly. 
 Strengthened by this noble devotion, inspired by this im 
 measurable evidence of her power, all the devil in the wicked 
 creature s nature came into play to defy and extricate her 
 self from irremediable disaster. She rose with Elliot s 
 hand clasped in her own. She faced the man she had 
 cruelly wronged, the man she loved, and recklessly, sneer- 
 ingly measured out these terrible words : 
 
 " Mr. Trajan Gray, I m at a loss to understand the right 
 it gives a man to insult a woman and traduce her, because 
 he has wearied her, until life was a burden, with his love. 
 Admit that you loved me, admit that you declared it, admit 
 that I frankly told you I could not afford to marry you 
 admit that I gave no other reason ! Does that justify you 
 in playing the odious part of eavesdropper and traducer ? 
 I give you full liberty to tell all you know of me ; that you 
 saved my life, that I was fond of you that I refused you ! 
 What then ? Must a woman marry every adventurer who 
 lies in wait until chance puts her in peril of her life and he 
 rescues her in cheap heroic attitudes ? Mr. Arden has 
 measured your conduct precisely as it deserves ; but its pun 
 ishment does not fall to him. My brother will hold you to 
 account for this vile, this uncalled-for, this incomprehensi 
 ble attack. Mr. Arden, may I trouble you to take me out 
 of this place ! " 
 
 As Kate began to push the chair back Trajan stopped her 
 by a gesture, and looking at Elliot frankly and kindly mur 
 mured, " Stay," then gathering his feeble strength, he said in 
 low, distinct tones : 
 
 " Are you satisfied with this explanation ? Do you take 
 that that " he hesitated and Elliot made a threatening 
 move " that wicked woman s word," he continued, smiling 
 at the threat " before mine ? Reflect a moment don t 
 answer in your anger more than you know depends upon 
 
" TO BE WROTH WITH ONE WE LOVE." 351 
 
 your response remember the past remember what you 
 know of me don t look in her eyes look in mine, or still 
 better look in these," and he pointed to Edith, trembling 
 and breathless, beside him. 
 
 Elliot s eyes were fixed on Theo s ; his hand was clasped 
 in hers ; her breath was in his face, her matchless witchery 
 was on him like a spell. He turned deliberately and with 
 scornful emphasis said : 
 
 " I have already expressed my opinion of you ; if I were 
 called upon to repeat it I should be at a loss for words 
 adequate to convey the loathing I feel for a man who takes 
 advantage of his condition to insult the weak and restrain 
 the strong. Unless your prudence fails you as your senses 
 seem to have done to-day, you will be wiser to keep out of 
 the reach of a decent man s arm, when 
 
 " Ah Elliot Elliot, you are mad. Mr. Gray, forgive 
 him pity him !" Edith spoke and turned to implore 
 Trajan, but her words did not reach him. The strain had 
 been too much. His head had fallen limply on his breast. 
 He had reeled into unconsciousness. 
 
 * For my part, Meester Elliot," Kate s Scotch coming out 
 strong in her anger and terror " I think ye ve made a grand 
 conquest th day. Ye ve stabbed the best friend and af 
 fronted the best man in a the world, and I wish ye much joy 
 of what ye ve got in return," and she threw a withering look 
 of scorn upon Theo, as, perfectly calm, confident and vic 
 torious, she passed the helpless victim she had twice brought 
 to death s door. 
 
 Trajan s, timely or untimely, appearance upon the 
 scene was not, as the reader may suppose, the work of 
 chance. The energetic Kate, with the thought of Bella s 
 misery in her mind, had gone out in the park to reflect upon 
 the complexities that were tangling the feet of the lovers. 
 She met Edith, likewise brooding upon Elliot s perverseness, 
 and with both minds charged with doubts there was a fuller 
 expression than ever before. Edith, too, had heard some of 
 
35 2 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan s ravings and her suspicions had been confirmed by 
 the singular episode of the flowers, as well as the strong words 
 Trajan had used in the Ravine of Reveche when he had 
 alluded to the woman who had wronged him. Kate was not 
 slow in putting all these fragments together. There was 
 nothing evil that she was not prepared to believe of Theo. 
 As they were conspiring they saw Elliot enter the arbor 
 and they saw Theo follow him. Kate s decision was 
 instantly taken. It was not too late to cure him and 
 cure him decisively. She was deaf to Edith s timid 
 protests of the ill effects that might come to Trajan from 
 the revival of such a disaster in his present weak state. 
 The spinster was, however, inflexible. The cause of honesty, 
 was, she declared, at stake, though I m afraid, that if she 
 had been put on oath she would have had to own that the desire 
 to trip the evangel of Rome was not the least in the 
 motives that impelled her decisive maneuver. 
 
 " Your brother and Gray are sworn friends," she argued, 
 "and the one would lay down his life for the other or they 
 believe they would," she added dryly. " It s the least one 
 can do for the other to risk a relapse and thereby save him 
 from the clutches of an evil woman." 
 
 Edith was frightened at the vehemence and exaggeration 
 of her unexpected ally. She did not like Theo, but she 
 would not, even to herself, call her evil. " We may not like 
 Miss Carnot," she said modestly to the enthusiastic Kate, 
 " but we should not call her bad names. That doesn t help 
 us, you know," she added, apologetically, as the other 
 shrugged her shoulders disdainfully, " nor does it help Elliot 
 back to reason," and she sighed tearfully. Luckily for the 
 intriguers Mesdames Arden and Briscoe were not with the 
 invalid, when Kate, fearlessly taking the mission on herself, 
 entered the room where Trajan sat idly sketching, his sheet 
 supported by a cushion on his knee. Kate told the story 
 rapidly, sparing nothing. She wound up by telling the aston 
 ished Trajan that he now had an opportunity, such as comes 
 
AN ESS A Y IN ^SOP. 353 
 
 to a real friend but once in a lifetime to prove his interest 
 in Arden. This was enough. Leaning on the resolute 
 woman s arm and directing the valet to take the wheeled 
 chair out by the rear entrance, he hurried feverishly to the 
 fatal tryst. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 AN ESSAY IN 
 
 YOU are called upon to admire the consummate address 
 of the wolf at this stage of the comedy. What out of 
 ^Esop could be finer than that last sally ? The admirable 
 manner in which the teeth and claws were not only hid, but 
 their ugly nakedness made to protrude from the tender 
 lamb come to the rescue of his kin ! The fox family are 
 noted in Mr. ^Esop s histories for the ingenuity of their 
 dealings with the lambs, but it will be admitted that the wolf 
 is really the master wit of the two. While the fox is content 
 to carry alarm into the fowl family, his triumphs are sordid 
 at best a cackling pullet or a tough old hen no longer of 
 much use for the pot or the spit. But wolf, not content 
 with carrying off the lamb, by his own consent throws a 
 firebrand into the lamb family, which is bound to disintegrate 
 and break it up, so that in future incursions each member 
 may be carried off with impunity. Anger, shame and re 
 morse, guests never before known to the lamb cot, are now 
 to lurk constantly among its members, leaving them all help 
 less prey to the family of the foxes and wolves, who for 
 spoil always affect an entente cordiale. 
 
 From which, indignant, gentle, captious, disgusted, sym 
 pathetic, or whatsoever character of reader you may be, 
 you will observe that the most grievous trials in life 
 are put upon us as often by those who love us 
 as by those who hate us ; that the eagle supplying 
 23 
 
354 TRAJAN. 
 
 the feather to guide the dart that goes to his own 
 heart, is not altogether a fanciful conceit. I think it very 
 likely indeed that Trajan s words in the arbor, uttered by 
 any one else, would not have thrown Elliot into such a 
 frenzy of passionate wrath nor if Elliot were really so 
 deeply in love with Theo as he tried to make himself 
 believe, would Trajan s denunciation have been so fiercely 
 resented. Had Elliot in his soul been certain of blameless- 
 ness, it would have been his endeavor to convince the friend 
 he loved that he was misjudging and wronging the purest 
 and best of women. Indeed, I am afraid I must own that 
 Elliot was trying to bolster up a bad and foolish cause by 
 creating a worse condition of things which should overshadow 
 it. We are prone to boisterous buffoonery of this sort in the 
 serious broils of life we have a sort of octopus instinct, 
 which incites us to relinquish a foolish prey or belittle a losing 
 game by a thick cloud of misunderstanding or falsely 
 assumed anger. 
 
 Now, specious as were the words and brilliant the coup by 
 which Theo plucked safety from the nettle danger confront 
 ing her in Trajan s unexpected and startling intervention, 
 Elliot, had he been a wise lad, would have detected the 
 discordance in her tone, would have seen the shining truth 
 in Trajan s eyes, compared to which Theo s theatric though 
 plausible half-truths would have stood out for what they 
 were. Elliot was by nature truthful to the core ; he hated 
 lies and was so little familiar with them that he did not recog 
 nize one when told him. The fact is a lie is always more 
 likely to succeed than the truth, for a lie is meant to please, 
 to carry out a certain end, whereas the truth has but one 
 purpose to fill, one part to play. The protean lie humors 
 all whims ; it enlivens when we are gay; inspirits when sad ; 
 and turns the dark roseate, when we have glided into the 
 black ways of wrong-doing. Admitting all this, and granting 
 the paradoxes, the scene does not leave much in the young 
 man s favor, I admit but remember that he was in that 
 most trying sort of love the unwilling. 
 
AN ESS A Y IN ^SOP. 355 
 
 So far as the pure current which sets in with a man s 
 prime may be gauged he loved Bella ; so far as that abnor 
 mal caprice which masters reason, without satisfying it, may 
 be called love, he was wrapped up in Theo. With this 
 difference, the one rendered him tranquilly happy, congenial 
 with all his surroundings and increasing tenfold his confi 
 dence and trust in his family and friends, while the other 
 rilled him with unrest, colored his conduct with a quality of 
 the surreptitious, and, as we have seen, had just forced him 
 into a vulgar arid brutal brawl with a man to whose love for 
 him that of a brother was but a feeble comparison. 
 
 "The higher the mountain, the deeper the valley," is a 
 homely German proverb ; so the truer the affection, the more 
 tender the bonds, the fiercer the anger required to heat the 
 temper to the wounding point. It was the very intensity of 
 his love for Trajan that influenced Elliot to the cruel words 
 he uttered, .quite as much as the insidious influence of the evil 
 woman who had come between them. With Edith s tearful 
 eyes and Kate s calm scorn searching him, he felt capable 
 even of striking the>man whose presence without a word told 
 him that he was doing wrong. He felt instinctively that no 
 motive other than his own happiness could have impelled 
 the chivalrous, self-sacrificing Trajan to appear in the arbor 
 a very mask of death come from the grave to shield and 
 protect him. 
 
 If Mrs. Briscoe s astonishment had been great on entering 
 Trajan s room and finding him gone, her horror may be 
 imagined when he was carried in later, as she believed a 
 corpse. Kate took the whole responsibility upon herself 
 curtly explaining that she had a "fool notion" the air and 
 flowers would better him. That an accident had happened, 
 and that he had lost consciousness. He was restored in 
 time, and on a hint from Kate made light of the adventure, 
 but Mrs. Briscoe declared that no one but herself should be 
 trusted with his movements again. His strength seemed 
 miraculously revived by the shock, and to Mrs, Briscoe s 
 
356 TRAJAN. 
 
 terror he was up and dressed when she came up from 
 dinner. 
 
 It had been a melancholy feast. Elliot did not appear, and 
 Edith was up stairs with a nervous headache. Bella had 
 her dinner served in her room. All allusion to domestic 
 affairs was repressed by the presence of Claridge and the 
 Countess Pleinevide, who came over to say that Elliot was 
 dining at the Duclos Chateau. Edith s headache seemed 
 to have left her so soon as her mother went to dinner, for 
 she presently stole along the hall and as she saw a servant 
 entering Trajan s room she bade him wait in the ante-room 
 and. went in herself. The invalid was up and sitting at the 
 window a pen in his hand and paper spread before him. 
 He did not hear the light foot-step, and did not turn his 
 head. She went up quite to him and said softly : 
 
 " Oh Trajan I m so glad to see you up again I feared 
 that that " 
 
 : That I was done for. Oh no," he said gayly, " I m just 
 in trim for a tramp. Do you know I was just writing to you, 
 and you ll laugh, but I have been puzzling ten minutes 
 whether I should say * Dear Miss Edith or, Dear Edith 
 which would you have written ?" 
 
 " I should have said Dear Edith," she replied with delicious 
 naivete. 
 
 " Well then I will just write that D-e-a-r E-d-i-t-h 
 Look how firm the hand is not much of sick man in 
 those Gothic curves, is there ? That would pass for copper 
 plate any where there s copper-plate and copper-plate, you 
 know. Now I have written Dear Edith dear me, how 
 pretty that sounds did it ever strike you the charm of 
 those two d s? I protest the name should always be spoken 
 that way dear Edith I like to hear myself say it, do you ? " 
 
 " Yes you say it very nicely you must have been prac 
 ticing it it never sounded so nicely to my ears before 
 except from Elliot," she halted in confusion, then started 
 guiltily and blushed at the malapropos allusion. 
 
AN ESSAY IN ^SOP. 357 
 
 But Trajan pretending not to remark the name, replied 
 gayly 
 
 " Oh, he has had more practice than I. In time I shall have 
 attained his melodious intonation. Let me see dear Edith 
 It s curious, before you came I had it all on the end of my pen 
 what I was going to say I mean and now you have 
 quite driven it away." 
 
 " Have I ! How unfortunate. Perhaps it will come back 
 when I m gone ? What could you have been going to say ? It 
 must have been something important, as you knew I would be 
 here after dinner. Perhaps I d better go and it may come 
 back." 
 
 " Oh, dear me, no, not for the world. But what a head you 
 have got well I ve reached dear Edith, and do you know, 
 I don t like to go any further for fear of spoiling that. I 
 hold that line a credit to any sick man in Christendom. 
 Don t you ? " 
 
 " Yes, it s very well written," assents Edith, perplexed by 
 the whimsical gayety of the invalid. " Suppose you try to 
 think what you were going to say ? " 
 
 " But do you know that while you re here I can t think of 
 a word of it." 
 
 " Oh, very well, I ll go and come back presently ; " turning 
 to go. 
 
 " On no account ! You must help me to write ; without 
 you I see now it would be impossible. Now, I ll resume. 
 Here goes." He scratched a few lines perhaps three, and 
 looked at her. 
 
 " Now what have you written ? How can I help you un 
 less you say each word as you are about to write it ? " 
 
 " Sure enough : well now, listen ; for completeness 
 sake I will begin at the beginning : 
 " DEAR EDITH ; 
 
 * Perhaps it would be wiser for me to leave unsaid what I 
 feel impelled to say now, as I am going from the dear roof 
 that shelters your dear head ! " 
 
35 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 Edith started up, " No no no, that isn t at all proper, 
 you mustn t say that, it s wicked I won t listen to any thing 
 so so cruel." 
 
 " Well, what would you substitute ? let me hear. I really 
 don t want to add a new wickedness to my other monstrosi 
 ties. You dictate and I ll write ! " 
 
 "Will you though ?" 
 
 Trajan gravely took another sheet, laid it over the first 
 and asked innocently : 
 
 " How shall I begin ? " 
 
 " Why Dear Edith, of course how forgetful you 
 are ! " 
 
 " D-e-a-r E-d-i-t-h," he wrote. " That s even better than 
 the first. Now what ? " 
 
 " A silly idea came into my head, that I wanted to go away, 
 because because -be 
 
 " Why three becauses ? that s an error in style ; the rule 
 is for strong emotion, repeat once, but never twice, that 
 turns pathos to bathos." 
 
 " I believe you are only teasing me. I won t write another 
 word. You re a wicked fellow ! " 
 
 " J believe I am, but you know you haven t written a word 
 yet. I have done the writing. Now continue, and don t 
 repeat unless you want to surprise the reader by an unex 
 pected situation." 
 
 " Well, scratch out one because, and then say, / know that 
 every one in this house would feel miserable, if I should" 
 [long pause, pen in air, voice all of a tremble, and a second 
 " should " almost launched, and then the resumption] " seem 
 so unmindful [score that and while I think of it, score silly\ 
 I know love me and would be so grieved, [score those two] 
 if I were to let the the stupid words of a foolish boy [score 
 foolish boy\ break up the most charming [ah ah, don t put 
 that down] Oh let us use a French word, [don t write that], 
 that ever was" 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
AN ESSA Y IN sESOP. 359 
 
 " No, you must put the signature, you know, with your 
 sentiments," 
 
 " Will you express them for me as they ought to be writ 
 ten ?" 
 
 " Yes, it does sound abruptly ; you had better end " but 
 above all, dear Edith, I do this because I know it would 
 would [ah ah] [don t put ah in, please] cause you so much 
 misery to think that that one you so tenderly love has been 
 the means of depriving you of another that you [ah ah] so 
 much like." Faithfully and lo [I mean] affectionately your 
 friend, till death, Trajan Gray. Now read it." 
 
 Trajan reads it aloud, omitting all the intercalary outbursts. 
 
 " It s horribly mixed, but the sentiments are sound, don t 
 you think so ? " she asks in the most charming perplexity. 
 
 " Irreproachable ; they would do credit to Miss Goodman s 
 academic head and heart." 
 
 " Well, now you may seal it and send it to my room by 
 Pierre who is in the dressing-room." 
 
 " Yes, but you know you were going to help me write my 
 letter." 
 
 " What an ingrate ! that s your letter, and I shall not help 
 you any more. I m sure your satirizing me. I won t en 
 dure it." 
 
 " What won t you endure, Edith ? " It was Bella s voice 
 surprised and curious. She had entered the open door 
 unperceived. 
 
 " This preposterous young man thinks he knows better 
 what is good for him than I do, and he has been jeering at 
 me in the most heartless fashion. I wish you would take 
 him in hand, Bella, and administer to him as you do to 
 Elliot, when he s unruly," and the engaging dissembler 
 faced the enemy with only a tell-tale blush to denote her 
 trepidation. But Bella, laughing, said she had no doubt 
 Edith could manage a more unruly patient than Trajan 
 seemed to be, and the talk rippled on in a gay strain until the 
 rest of the family appeared, the two mothers not a little sur- 
 
360 TRAJAN. 
 
 prised to find the two daughters so suddenly recovered from 
 the nervous headaches of the dinner-hour ailments which, 
 by the way, they had entirely forgotten. 
 
 When Elliot entered at a little after ten there was a light 
 burning in Trajan s room, separated from his own only by 
 the small dressing closet. He was surprised to find the door 
 closed, and on turning the handle still more surprised to find 
 it locked. He fell into a chair, for the first time realizing 
 poignantly the gulf which the day s unhappy events had made 
 between them. It had been his habit, not only during 
 Trajan s illness, but before it, to pass an hour or two before 
 going to bed in his friend s room. Now this pleasant season 
 of expansion was at an end. About the same age, the young 
 men were on closer terms than Elliot was with his cousin 
 Philip. It never occurred to him to go over to the latter s 
 room. He would not have gone into Trajan s presence now 
 had -the door been open, but he recognized with a sort of 
 shock the effects of the words he had spoken in the morning. 
 What those words were then he had at the moment of utter 
 ing them but a very faint idea. 
 
 I doubt if he fully c6mprehended them, for a certain form 
 of speech is like champagne, it inebriates the senses without 
 affecting the brain. We become exuberant in using them ; 
 exuberant either in angr or hilarity. 
 
 Elliot never remembered to have spoken harshly in his 
 life. The novelty intoxicated him. The words seduced 
 him further and further, and in the end it was an almost 
 heteronomic disparity that existed between the things he said 
 and the things he meant. If he had at the moment of his 
 most scathing reproach in the arbor found himself cool 
 enough or logical enough to synthesize his sensations, I sus 
 pect they would have been something like this : I have been 
 acting like a simpleton ; vanity, egotism and fretfulness 
 have involved me in a false position. I have used the most 
 sacred forms to describe my feelings for this woman, whom, 
 after all, I suspect I do not love honestly and loyally. 
 
AN ESSA Y LV ^SOP. 36 1 
 
 The sense of a certain falseness in my protestation to her 
 makes it necessary that I should convince her of my integ 
 rity. How can I do that better than by affronting and 
 degrading a man whom she knows I love and admire. 
 
 As a lie can only be protected by a lie, so one false posi 
 tion must be bolstered by others, and so on to the end of the 
 chapter. He had gone too far to retreat. His walk home 
 ward with Theo did not result in putting their relations 
 more definitely than when she had uttered the lying evasion 
 in the arbor, but by an instant meeting of the lips when the 
 burning mouths met in a lingering kiss, the girl pressed 
 closely to his bosom, Elliot conceived that they were pledged, 
 and that when the loveless bond that bound her to that 
 other should be broken, she would be his wife. Beyond 
 this there was no pledge on her part. He had no claim 
 upon her. She had never hinted even that she shared his 
 love, such as it was. 
 
 But now, in the silence of the night, with the light burn 
 ing in the sick-room yonder, he was touched by a cruel 
 remorse. His windows were open. The moon was at the 
 full, but as it was square above the chateau, the gables 
 threw the fagades into deep shadow. He longed to see with 
 his own eyes how Trajan had borne the dastard blow. He 
 slipped his shoes off, and putting on a pair of soft slippers 
 let himself out on the narrow balcony before the window. 
 
 A wide esplanade shelf ran along the whole front of the 
 chateau, which an agile athlete alone might make a footway 
 by clutching the projections of the windows and pilasters. It 
 was, however, at best a perilous passage. Elliot gave the 
 peril no thought, but boldly set out on the precarious path 
 way. In two minutes he was at the window of Trajan s 
 room and on the little balcony. 
 
 The curtain concealed his figure, even had the other been 
 at the embrasure. He was not, however. He sat at the 
 writing table, absorbed in thought. As Elliot cautiously 
 adjusted the curtain to enable him to look into the room, 
 
362 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan started and looked about him. He had heard 
 nothing. There was no sound, but the bond between the 
 two men must have vibrated, a sensation we often experience 
 when we feel that eyes are upon us without realizing the 
 actual presence of the gazer. He seated himself again 
 and fell to writing, swiftly, eagerly as if afraid to lose the 
 impulse if he gave himself time to ponder over the words. 
 
 He sighed, but not wearily, and as he folded the sheets 
 he began to speak aloud, and Elliot quietly withdrew, 
 shrinking from confidences that he felt he had no right 
 to hear. He sank wearily into a chair as he reached his 
 chamber, wondering where the miserable business was to 
 end, and feebly incapable of any definite resolution. 
 
 When the yellow sunlight poured into the room in the 
 morning, Edith entered and found him there, his hand 
 resting on the curve of the chair, the sunlight playing 
 with the golden clusters of his hair. She had been, since 
 his return from college, the first to come to him in the 
 morning to lay out his apparel and prattle with him as 
 he dressed. She did not at first comprehend the situa 
 tion. She fancied he had arisen earlier than usual, but 
 the truth flashed upon her at a glance. Laying her hand 
 lightly on the head, she said, tenderly : 
 
 " Elliot." 
 
 He opened his eyes, dazed and heavy. He looked around 
 him bewildered. Then it all flashed on him. He kissed 
 the head leaning on his breast, then, putting his sister gently 
 away, arose and walked to the window. The candles had 
 burned down to the sockets. It was eight o clock. He must 
 have slept the whole night, but he did not feel refreshed. 
 Edith, refraining from all mention of the previous day, 
 moved about the room, laying out his dressing cases and 
 linen. While thus occupied, the door was flung open and 
 Mrs. Briscoe, trembling and pale, came in, holding a letter 
 in her hand. 
 
 "Oh, Elliot, Edith! What has become of Trajan ? I 
 
AN ESS A Y IN sESOP. 363 
 
 found this letter for Edith on his night-table, his clothes all 
 set out and addressed, and his knapsack gone. What does 
 it mean ? There is some dreadful mistake or mystery, for 
 last night he was gayer than I ever saw him. What does the 
 note say, Edith ? " 
 
 It was with swimming eyes and heaving bosom that Edith 
 read the note, the beginning of which she remembered so 
 well : 
 " DEAR EDITH : 
 
 " Perhaps it would be wiser for me to leave unsaid what I 
 feel impelled to say, now that circumstances compel me to 
 leave this dear roof that shelters your dear head [here the 
 hand changed strangely] After the events of to-day it would 
 be gross intrusion for me to remain another night. But I 
 can not go without telling you that your sweetness, kindness 
 and devotion have given me an insight into love as I fancy 
 the redeemed see it. I once thought I loved. The memory 
 rises as an infinite mockery when I realize your purity, 
 candor and goodness. Then I longed for possession. Now 
 all the world is in bloom to me, the sky radiant, my heart 
 light, the future a dream, in the simple saying to myself I 
 love her I love her I love her. I could write this a mil 
 lion times and then set to writing it again and make myself 
 drunk with joy at the mere thought that I dare do it and 
 that the daring will not offend you. I honestly own that I 
 do not understand it. I am leaving you with the joy of the 
 bridegroom going to the altar, for I feel that I am not 
 going unblessed by the benediction of a pure and sustaining 
 love. But wonderful most wonderful, my beloved, (an 
 other s I know you can never be) if I felt that we should 
 never meet again, that the lips I never have touched, I never 
 should touch, I should yet be filled with a joy so sober and 
 sustained that I should not despair or ever become sad. You 
 have sent the sunshine of a sublime confidence into every 
 fiber of me, and I feel that I can confront every fate 
 the world may have in store for me. I humbly, devoutly 
 
364 TRAJAN. 
 
 take God to witness that this feeling grew in spite of un 
 ceasing protests against my own immeasurable unworthi- 
 ness. What the hand of God, and the hand of God 
 alone, has brought about, I dedicate myself to consecrat 
 ing into a passion worthy not only of your priceless love, 
 but the miracle of its grace. Is this extravagant and 
 mawkish? I don t think you will so regard it,. and as no 
 other eye than yours shall ever see it, I am content if it 
 be tenfold more extravagant, provided it gives you an 
 idea of the exaltation into which this first glow of my love 
 for you throws me. I am about to pass out of your life 
 out of its daily circle but such is the inspiration I 
 feel that I am content to wait, for I do not go out of that 
 heart, tenderer, nobler, than heaven ever consented before 
 to let be in human form. But if I wrote all night, and 
 then wrote again, I should say these same things, as the 
 roses repeat their bloom and the lilies rise in the same purity 
 and the birds sing the same note. I love you I love you 
 I love you ; and I am, by the fountain s pledge, your friend 
 for life, and by the grace of God, 
 
 " Your true lover always, 
 
 " TRAJAN GRAY." 
 
 Elliot had gone to the window and was looking out im 
 patiently, while Mrs. Briscoe sank into the chair that had 
 served Elliot for a couch. She broke out almost angrily : 
 
 " What does he say ? Why don t you read it aloud ? " 
 
 But Edith continued to the end, and when she had folded 
 the sheet and put it in her pocket, there was an almost bird- 
 like gladness in her voice as she said : 
 
 " He has gone back to Paris, and Elliot will explain 
 why." 
 
 But Elliot was not called upon to explain. Mrs. Arden 
 entered the room with an open letter and handed it to Mrs. 
 Briscoe. It was from Trajan, evidently an after-thought, in 
 which, expressing his profound recognition of the more than pa 
 rental tenderness he had been honored with, he explained thaf 
 
AN ESSA Y IN sESOP. 365 
 
 a disagreement between himself and Elliot made it impossible 
 for him to remain for a night, even, under the roof which he 
 could only associate with graciousness, amity, and consider 
 ation. He begged as a crowning favor that the subject 
 might never be alluded to in Elliot s presence, and, above 
 all, no explanation asked him. In good time all would come 
 out right ; that it was not for him to remind Mrs. Arden, 
 that she had a son so kind, so honest, so manly, so tender 
 and just, that if he had a failing it would be counted a shin 
 ing virtue in most others, and among the most precious 
 privileges of his life was the right to lay the homage of as 
 true love as man ever bore to man, beside that of his dear 
 friend s mother. 
 
 " Oh, Elliot, Elliot, what madness is this that has wounded 
 a heart so tender, that noble, true and self-sacrificing boy," 
 sobbed Mrs. Briscoe as the letter fell to the floor. 
 
 " Shall I read it, mother ? " asked Elliot, picking up the 
 letter. 
 
 " Not if you have done him wrong, my child," said the 
 mother, drawing him to her and looking in his eyes ; " no, 
 you can not have wronged him ; read the letter." 
 
 Elliot still hesitated, and laughed a feverish, dry laugh 
 that grated harshly on his listeners ears. 
 
 " You had better read it, Elliot. It will show you the 
 friend you have lost," said his aunt, bitterly. 
 
 " Oh, then I don t care to read it," and he flung it on the 
 table. " Friends we lose are not worth wasting time over. 
 One has enough to do to manager those one keeps." 
 
 " Indeed, Elliot, if you talk like that I shall be forced to 
 believe you have done this young man some grievous wrong; 
 for the innocent only are forgiving and contrite, the guilty 
 harsh and stiff-necked. I never heard you utter such a 
 sentence as that before. It is unnatural and unlike you." 
 
 She took the letter from Edith s hands and, presenting it 
 to her son, added : 
 
 " Read the letter and tell us what it means." 
 
366 TRAJAN. 
 
 He took it and walking over to the window, with his back 
 to the rest, read the lines Trajan had written, without a 
 word. While he read, Bella and Kate entered, like the 
 rest, alarmed. 
 
 "What is this about Trajan ? Pierre says he has gone 
 what does it mean ? He was in no condition to travel and 
 gave no hint of such a purpose yesterday. What can have 
 happened ? " asked Bella, anxiously looking from one to 
 another of the melancholy group. 
 
 Her mother groaned : " It is true he has gone nobody 
 knows where, or why unless it be Elliot ask him." 
 
 " It s my opinion that if ye wait for him to tell, ye ll be 
 as wise in yer coffins as ye are now," muttered Kate signifi 
 cantly, in a tone audible only to Bella and her mother. 
 Elliot finished the letter without a word, folded it and 
 handed it over to his mother, saying simply : 
 
 " I have nothing to add to that. The explanation seems 
 to me ample. He s gone and nothing can be done to change 
 the situation. Let the matter be dismissed, and forget you 
 ever knew him." 
 
 Bella, who had taken the letter from Mrs. Arden, spoke a 
 little imperiously : 
 
 " I don t agree with you at all you may hold Trajan s 
 heroism lightly, we are apt to ignore what we can not 
 emulate, but my mother and myself owe this man a debt 
 that the ordinary tokens of life can but poorly repay. I m 
 convinced from what I have seen of Trajan s character, 
 that he is incapable of even the thought of disloyalty or 
 baseness. I am sure that if the facts were known, he has 
 been cruelly outraged. I mean to know the facts and it 
 will not be long before I shall." She spoke in a tone of 
 suppressed anger and with a defiant look at Elliot as though 
 warning him that she held him culpable. Edith, who had 
 been standing in the window with her hand fastened upon 
 the treasure in her pocket, stole to her cousin s side during 
 the excited address, and fondling her in a pleading way, 
 
AN ESSA Y IN ^SOP. 367 
 
 whispered something in her ear. Elliot affected not to 
 hear his cousin s accusatory speech. The party descended to 
 breakfast and the incident was not alluded to again in the 
 family circle. During the morning Kate had a long talk 
 with Mrs. Briscoe, and Edith with Bella, which resulted in the 
 latter seeking out her cousin and apologizing for her words. 
 
 " That s just like you, Cara Bella tell the truth in anger 
 and gloze it away in repentance." 
 
 " It s a family faiblesse, isn t it?" she rejoined. "Here 
 you are having done something as unpleasant to you as pork- 
 eating to a Hebrew, and as unwilling to avow the fault 
 and mend it as royalty that can do no wrong. However, I 
 promised not to renew the subject but like Webster, sup 
 port my country that is my kinsman right or wrong." 
 
 " That is immensely kind, but hardly flattering 
 
 " Love, faith and folly are born blind. Let that content 
 you." 
 
 " I should be well satisfied with the first blind or other 
 wise," and the young man arose, trembling and eager. 
 
 " I think Theo. will have no difficulty in satisfying you 
 then if love is enough, and all the rest thrown aside if 
 
 " What do you mean ? I don t understand you love is 
 enough I own, but I was not alluding to Theo. I " 
 
 " You have no right to allude to any one else," and Bella 
 with a little toss of the head left him as he sank into a chair, 
 muttering, " What an infernal jackass I am ! " Yes, it had 
 come to this. He had shown the wolf yesterday ; he had 
 shown the fox to-day. Moral blindness was following sen 
 sual impulse. Manifestly the serpent s trail was misleading 
 the seed of the woman, whose heel was no longer raised to 
 crush the crested head ! 
 
 It was Edith who after breakfast undertook the care of 
 Trajan s effects. She was singularly buoyant and cheery for 
 a young person who had been part of such trying crises as 
 had befallen the family during the past six weeks. Why 
 she should lock herself in the deserted room and set about 
 
368 TRAJAN. 
 
 packing the young man s effects with her own hand, and 
 this with the air of a priestess serenely conscious of the 
 acceptance of her devotions, I am at a loss to explain. 
 
 It was perhaps laudable curiosity that impelled her to open 
 the portfolio and abstract two half-finished sketches one 
 of herself, the other of Elliot. It may have been the thrifty 
 spirit inherent in every genuine woman that sustained her 
 courage to take from the wardrobe the torn and bloody 
 waistcoat that had been stripped from Trajan s riddled body 
 on the day of the disaster. It may have been fear that it 
 would soil her person that suggested the tenderness with 
 which she handled it, but I do not remember, save in 
 dealing with saintly relics, to have ever heard of touching 
 the lips to a blood-stained vest, as this pious maiden did on 
 taking down the famous garment in which Trajan had 
 encountered the bull. Nor can the value of the object 
 account for her seizing with a little gulp of joy a dark and 
 withered flower that fell from the watch pocket of the garment 
 as the maiden carefully folded it and laid it in a packet by 
 itself. 
 
 The folded flower was a marguerite, and Edith s mind, 
 though intent upon her work, roved back to that memorable 
 day a month or more before when she had plucked and given 
 it to the young man, Avho had no suspicion of being observed 
 when he thrust it furtively into his bosom. She held it in the 
 palm of her hand and sank down in a dreamy reverie. 
 
 The images therein must have been very agreeable, for she 
 smiled and smiled, and in pure absence of mind pressed the 
 discarded flower to her lips, though within reach on the 
 balcony there were clumps of glowing blossoms, fragrant 
 and gay some of them red as the blood when it first crim 
 soned the white leaves of the withered flower that she gazed 
 at so fondly in the palm of her little pink hand. Then, I don t 
 know by what whimsical association of ideas she was moved, 
 she drew from her bosom the letter which we saw thrust 
 into her pocket a few hours before, and as if she had never 
 
AN ESSA Y IN &SOP. 369 
 
 read a line, eagerly devoured every word of it, and then 
 like the flower, pressed it to her lips, and as if ashamed, 
 held it open, covering her bright face. Then she rose and 
 going to the table picked up the pen, examined it with 
 tender scrutiny put the point to her lips to test the 
 quality of the ink, I suppose though that was dry as the 
 blood on the marguerite. Then pen, flower, and letter were 
 all put in the envelope, and the pocket probably being other 
 wise occupied, the package was restored to her bosom. 
 When Pierre came to the room an hour afterward the bag 
 gage was all in order to ship to the Rue Dragon but the 
 old fellow had to go to Elliot s room for ink and pens to 
 make the inventory for the agent ! 
 
 A cloudy quiet settled down upon the chateau. Philip s 
 room became the daily rendezvous, and that jocose philoso 
 pher soon restored the light current of humor to the con 
 versation of the various members of the family group. Philip 
 had been told casually of Trajan s departure, and though 
 suspecting that there was something in it more than was 
 divulged, he did not seek to penetrate the mystery. Gay 
 cheer was still kept up at the Duclos Chateau, where of all 
 the guests only the Prince, La Baronne, the Rossitors and 
 Theo. remained. Jules., she gave out, had been summoned to 
 Paris by his patron De Grammont, and expected every hour 
 to set out in the suite of Prince Jerome, who was going on a 
 mission to Florence to negotiate an alliance with his father- 
 in-law, Victor Emanuel which would give the Emperor 
 one hundred thousand men after the first victory on the 
 Rhine. 
 
 24 
 
370 TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 
 
 IT was near midnight when Trajan finished writing, packed 
 a few needed articles in his knapsack, put out the lights^ 
 and descended the broad staircase of the chateau for the 
 last time. A night lamp threw a dim wavering light over the 
 hallway, but he had no trouble letting himself out. He 
 wrapped the key in a sheet of "paper and taking it to the serv 
 ants door fastened it to the knob. Then slinging his knap 
 sack lightly on his broad shoulder he set out on the graveled 
 walk, looking his last on the charming scene he knew so 
 well and was so strangely quitting. The full moon was 
 directly overhead and revealed every object with a clear 
 twilight distinctness. At the bend in the curving roadway 
 where clumps of bushes cut off the view, he turned and cast 
 a glance upon the peaceful house. Lights were still burning 
 in Elliot s and Bella s rooms. He sighed softly with a 
 kind " God bless her, God bless them all," turned and struck 
 out with long strides down the dark highway under the trees. 
 Two hours later he was at the Esbly station, and in time 
 for the mail to Paris. He slept a good part of the way, and 
 at five o clock when he entered the friendly studio in the Rue 
 Dragon, he was less jaded than he had feared. He was a good 
 deal pulled down, however. As his eye rested on familiar 
 objects, he put his hand to his head, not quite sure whether 
 he was dreaming, and the dim morning light the atmosphere 
 of a vision. But his pictures, models and other objects, 
 carefully covered by the thoughtful Madame Agay, were real 
 to the touch, and he knew that another page had been turned 
 in the book of his life. Dressed as he was, he threw himself on 
 the sheetless bed and slept the sleep of exhaustion until mid 
 day. Great was the bedazement of Madame Agay when the 
 having informed her that the artist had come back, she 
 
TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 371 
 
 hastened up to present Trajan his family, Madame Betty, 
 Trip, and the little Amedee. Madame Agay was de sole at 
 the worn-out figure of her lodger, but said cheerily : 
 
 " Attends for a few days and you will be like the stalled 
 ox of the carnival. Ah, I know how to put flesh on the bones 
 of fine fellows." 
 
 Trajan was in high good-humor. He fondled and pinched 
 the ear of the delighted small boy, idly wondering if a cer 
 tain somebody would adopt this diversely assorted family, if 
 she ever consented to adopt their guardian ? Madame Betty s 
 fleecy fur seemed to have grown longer, her manner more 
 languid, her gaze more dreamy and exoteric. She rubbed her 
 soiled and rather disreputable head against her master s limbs 
 in a furtive way, as if she dreaded being called to account for 
 sundry diversions, during her friend s absence. Her eye was 
 bleary and dissolute, and it was plain from the reserve 
 with which Trip received her advances, that he could, had he 
 been minded to forget the immemorial chivalry of his race, 
 have revealed doings on the part of Mistress Betty which 
 would have shaken the confidence of the most indulgent 
 master. 
 
 Madame Agay, however, was constrained by no such 
 tradition. She narrated the history of the three since 
 Trajan s departure, and dwelt with much humorous ani 
 mation upon Madame Betty s unseemly diversions on the 
 neighboring roofs and the small progeny she had guiltily de 
 posited under the salon divan. Trajan s reproaches to the 
 abandoned Bett elicited a frantic emission of purrs, an elon 
 gation of the back, and a spasmodic mew, which said in the 
 plainest language " What would you have ? If one is 
 deserted to one s own devices one can t immure one s self 
 from the attention of one s kind, and would you have the 
 race of cats die out ? " But Trip had been most exemplary. 
 He had guarded Amedee in all his sallies in the neighbor 
 ing groups of infantile hostiles and always brought him off 
 in triumph, content with the commendation of Madame 
 
372 TRAJAN. 
 
 Agay and the idolatry of the small Amedee, of whom he re 
 garded himself as the special protector in Trajan s absence. 
 
 All the old whimsicalities came back to the young man with 
 a delightful sense of fatherly responsibility. He romped with 
 the little boy, discoursed with Trip and Betty, and quite 
 forgot the interval of eventful weeks that had separated 
 them. That day honest Madame Bonjean made a little fete 
 at the Maison Aitx Artists in honor of the prodigal. A score 
 of the Beaiix Arts lads were there, and you may be sure that 
 delectable Beaune wine that made the Maison the joy of the 
 quarter was not stinted. Smug, who had taken the second 
 prize in the salon, insisted that Old Gray should share a 
 bumper of the vin du champagne, and I suspect that there were 
 a great many bottles sacrificed over the return of the wan. 
 derer. 
 
 It was in the humor that this merry tipple inspired that 
 the young Drake, who aimed at sharing Piloty s " touch," 
 hinted that Trajan s friends were dying to know of his good 
 fortune ; that Belcour had darkly hinted at a princess "Bo 
 nanza, of course," rescued by the intrepid camarade from the 
 jaws of death. But he had left the story at the point where 
 prince Croesus, with the dowager princess Croesus, had set 
 the caskets before the hero to choose that which contained 
 the ivory miniature of the charmer and the title-deeds to the 
 treasure of Gumguz." So every body demanded a speech 
 from Gray recounting his adventures. But Trajan with 
 some difficulty begged off, making known the insidious and 
 romantic nature of Belcour s genius. He had fallen in favor 
 with no princess, and his adventure was of the most common 
 place description, not even material for a genre picture ! 
 
 He missed many of the kind faces of the Beaux Arts and 
 learned that sixty had joined in one company for the campaign 
 and that sixty more were going to enroll themselves within the 
 week, and he was urged to lead them. It was the very wish most 
 in his thought, but he said nothing to the lads of his purpose. 
 From the Maison of Madame Bonjean the friends adjourned 
 
TRAJAN 1 GOES TO COURT. 373 
 
 to the Cafe Procope. Gambetta and Reclus, the great geo 
 grapher, were already present, when the friends arrived. 
 There was a burst of applause as the Fine Arts Delegation 
 entered, and the patriot Gambetta left his place to come 
 over to the corner of the new comers and shake Trajan s 
 hand. He led him apart and asked where he had been, why 
 he looked so pale, and what he had been doing for the good 
 cause, adding : 
 
 " You know that at the first moment we are going to 
 declare the Republic. Our agents in the army report that it 
 can not muster two hundred thousand men. The Germans 
 have a million already on the Rhine, and we expect every 
 day to hear that Bonaparte has committed suicide or abdica 
 ted. They will try to proclaim the Prince Imperial, but we 
 have three hundred thousand men enrolled in the capital 
 and we are devising means to get arms. Do you think we 
 could get any in the United States ? We want to send some 
 one to the German headquarters to find out whether they are 
 willing to recognize the Republic, or whether they mean to 
 uphold Bonaparte. I have suggested you, because you under 
 stand German. You must hold yourself in readiness to set 
 out at a moment s notice. You are peculiarly adapted for 
 such a mission. You are an American, and if the worst 
 comes to the worst would never be suspected." 
 
 " But is there really no hope of the Imperial armies 
 beating the Germans ? You know it would be fatal to the 
 Republic to owe its existence to the ruin of its armies. I 
 own that I would rather beat the Germans first, for vile as 
 Bonaparte is, and dolt as he was, to be trapped into this war, 
 he is an angel of honest dealing compared with Bismarck 
 and that sanctimonious old driveler, King William. Bad as 
 the Bonapartes are, they do not represent a race of lineal 
 robbers, perjurers and ruffians as the Prussian oligarchy does. 
 I own I would bear a half century of Bonapartism to see that 
 national sneak-thief, Prussia, put back to its original condition 
 of a beggarly duchy, made up of lawless freebooters." 
 
374 TRAJAN. 
 
 "That is pure sentimentalism," said Gambetta, laughing. 
 " Let us but once make the conservative Republic modeled 
 on the American plan, march, and all these Hohenzollern 
 puppets and Bismarck reactionaries will be swept away. But 
 while they are able to hood-wink the German people, an 
 intelligent, over-cultivated, politically inept race, into the 
 roaring farce of divine right, we must make use of them. 
 
 " If we can make them see their own interest in a solid 
 Republic here we need not concern ourselves about their 
 objects. The Germans have shown in the past that they 
 need only a spark to kindle into enlightenment. That will 
 come, and all the better that their rulers are identified with 
 knavery and ignoble thefts." Then he added cautiously, 
 " Yonder is a spy of Pietri s. Be careful that all that is said 
 is inconsequent. We meet at Belleville, Sunday, and I will 
 have something to tell you." 
 
 Who should enter at this moment but Jules Carnot. 
 He flushed on catching sight of Trajan, returned the dis 
 tant nod of Gambetta, and came over and shook hands. 
 
 " I thought you were still at Crecy ? " he said inquiringly. 
 " When did you come back ? You are here to help the 
 cause, I suppose ? " 
 
 " I came back last night, and I do feel like doing all I can 
 to defeat the enemies of France." Trajan spoke with some 
 constraint, which was not lost on the other. 
 
 " Well, there are plenty of them the Germans are known 
 to be a million strong, and, doing its best, the empire, ten 
 days after the declaration of war, has not been able to get 
 one hundred thousand men near the Rhine." 
 
 " A million can be gotten, if we all go that is if all 
 Frenchmen feel as I feel that humanity is interested in 
 dispersing the hordes willing to fight under such leadership 
 and traditions as the robber race of Prussia." 
 
 " I wish to God, all Frenchmen felt as you talk," said the 
 other, gazing with curious wistfulness into Trajan s eyes, 
 as if for a moment on the point of saying something which 
 
TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 375 
 
 on second thought he withheld. Trajan knew what Jules 
 was thinking but gave no sign. He added, however, 
 frankly 
 
 " I don t like the emperor, as you know, and despise the 
 empire, but I will uphold him loyally in combating those 
 banded robbers, the Prussians." 
 
 Jules looked about carefully, and seeing no one near said 
 in an undertone, "Then you re just the man needed at this 
 moment. The regent wants some trustworthy person to send 
 to the emperor with private despatches. She can t confide 
 in those about her, for she knows very well that in case of 
 reverse a Frenchman, specially of the court party, having 
 every thing to expect from the other side, will betray her or 
 the emperor, to gain favor. Would you undertake a mission 
 to Napoleon^? He is now en route to Metz, and will be with 
 Froissard at Saarbriicken by Wednesday next, when the cam 
 paign will begin, unless the Germans assume the offensive 
 meanwhile." As Trajan remained silent, he added : 
 
 " To tell the .truth, the leading friends of the empress 
 foresee peril for her in case of disaster no one now expects 
 a march to Berlin but Pietri declares that Lebceuf has let 
 the army get into such ruts that he expects, as the very best 
 issue, a disgraceful peace, perhaps the cession of Strasbourg. 
 Such news would bring a mad rabble on the empress. By 
 some means Pietri has got your name as a friend of the poor 
 lady. He showed her the report of a speech you made 
 before the Treize, and your name has been put down with 
 that of three other foreigners. Strangers could do what 
 people who are identified with Bonapartism couldtiot carry 
 the empress off without suspicion." 
 
 Trajan mused as he recalled his dispute with Ferre and 
 the miraculous agencies of the empire not less than the 
 whimsically tragic destiny that was to make the words spoken 
 at random, bring about what he had never foreseen. 
 
 " Why don t you go ? The emperor can trust you," said 
 Trajan suspiciously. 
 
37 6 TRAJAN. 
 
 " I leave Paris with Plon-Plon to-morrow or next day or 
 I should do it with pleasure." 
 
 " If the regent, in the interests of the state, commands my 
 services, I shall obey her ; but it must not be concealed from 
 her that I am a Republican. I am for France first and the 
 Republic, when France asks it. If with this understanding 
 I am commanded to serve, I will do my best, and do it 
 loyally." 
 
 " It was the conviction of it that prompted me to speak. 
 I, like you, am a Republican," said Jules, darting his eye to 
 the corner where Pietri s agent sat loudly applauding some 
 thing Gambetta was saying, " and like you I believe in France 
 first." 
 
 " I shall make no secret of my purpose, if I go, to my 
 friends here," said Trajan as Jules moved off. * J will betray 
 no confidence, but I won t play a double part." 
 
 " Ah, as to that use your own judgment," replied Jules 
 indifferently. " I should advise you to say as little as pos 
 sible but in any event, my name is not to appear in the 
 negotiation." 
 
 Trajan s mind was still perplexed by this extraordinary 
 contingency when he received a piteous letter from Mrs. 
 Briscoe, telling of a dangerous wound Philip had received 
 in a skirmish of outposts. He had not written of it himself, 
 but General Vinoy had sent to inform the family that he 
 would do all he could for the young volunteer. " I dread 
 the thought of his lying in hospital or prison, and I write to 
 ask you, if you will add to burdens I am under to you by 
 visiting my* poor boy for he is a son to me, if you should, 
 as you once said, go into the army. I can not tell you my 
 anguish, the keener that I dare not let Elliot know, as he 
 would add to our misfortunes by flying to the army himself. 
 I do not ask you to go, dear Trajan I m not so selfish as 
 that, but if you do go, will you not comfort my darling by 
 your presence and rescue him if he be in danger." 
 
 So strange are the controlling circumstances of a man s 
 
TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 377 
 
 destiny this poor mother s plea helped the wavering sol 
 dier of democracy to become the champion of an empire 
 and a dynasty that he hated. 
 
 The next day Trajan received a note from Pietri, the 
 prefect of police, begging him to appear at the Hotel de 
 Ville at four o clock and providing him with a card which 
 would assure him instant admission. He at once took a 
 cab and drove to the law office of Cre mieux, the great advo 
 cate, where he expected to find Gambetta. The deputy was 
 not there, but a clerk directed him to an office where he 
 could learn his movements. After many disappointments 
 Gambetta was found in an obscure lodging in Montmartre. 
 He had learned of the purpose of the government to seize 
 all the opposition leaders, and for prudence he changed his 
 lodgings every day. Trajan then laid Jules proposal before 
 the Republican chief, without mentioning Jules name. He 
 wound up by showing him Pietri s note, and asked him what 
 he should do in case he was proffered a mission to army 
 headquarters ! 
 
 " Accept, of course ; you can be perfectly loyal to the 
 mission without compromising yourself with the cause. At 
 the headquarters you can be of service to France. You will 
 not be long there. What if in returning you were taken 
 prisoner by the Prussians ? Your ingenuity would suggest 
 some means of attaching yourself for a time to the Bismarck 
 cabinet. He will need people who know France and the 
 French language, what more natural than that he should 
 give you a trial ? During that time you could learn his pur 
 poses as to the empire and the chance the Republic would 
 have, in making a lasting and just peace. There would be 
 nothing in this to compromise the most sensitive honor. It 
 is a miracle for us. You must go." 
 
 Pietri, a dark-faced, sharp-eyed Corsican, with the craft of 
 his Italian origin outlined in every feature, questioned the 
 young man closely. He did not seem displeased with his 
 avowal of Republican sympathies, remarking paternally, 
 
37 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 " We all have generous dreams like these when we are 
 young. The Cross of the Legion on your breast will banish 
 folly of that sort." He concluded the interview, bidding 
 the young man be in readiness for an instant summons at 
 any hour, and dismissed him. As Trajan came out of the 
 prefect s office, Ferre, with two companions belonging to the 
 secret Republican club, were passing into one of the city 
 bureaus. The Republicans looked at Trajan in suspicious 
 surprise, but he had no time to explain his presence in that 
 compromising neighborhood. 
 
 Meanwhile little Amedee must be provided for. The 
 mysterious letter in the wallet still lay unread. Before 
 breaking the seal, Trajan passed a whole morning in a 
 city library examining the files since the day he had come 
 into possession of the treasure. There was no allusion 
 to the loss. He went to the district police office where 
 records and notices were made of matters of that sort. He 
 even stated a supposititious case to the official, resembling as 
 nearly as he dared make it the actual affair. The function 
 ary examined the records carefully, incited by a liberal fee. 
 
 There was no trace. One entry struck Trajan as possibly 
 having something to do with his protfgJ. His eye caught 
 the word " suicide." The date was a fortnight after he had 
 picked the child up in the streets. A woman had visited the 
 bureau every day inquiring despairingly for a lost or stolen 
 child. It had been entrusted to the guardianship of a wash 
 erwoman in the Rue St. Etienne. The police could get 
 no clue to the lost boy, and the last line of the entry recorded 
 the woman s suicide by charcoal in the Rue de Blois. Trajan 
 copied this and asked the man if he remembered the cir 
 cumstances. He did perfectly. " The woman was mad. The 
 boy was without a father. She raved of his being a great 
 nobleman and told us to seek him under the lilac where the 
 nightingales sang. The case would have been dropped as a 
 mad woman s fad, if on making inquiries in the Rue Etienne 
 the loss of the child had not been verified. The woman, 
 
TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 379 
 
 who was honest, declared that the boy had been put to 
 board with her by a servant. That a woman at intervals 
 came to see it. She always came on foot and was constantly 
 crazed with the idea that she was followed by the mad-house 
 keeper." 
 
 " In taking the child one day on her rounds to gather the 
 wash, the guardian lost him near the Hotel de Ville. She 
 traced him as far as the Tuileries, but there at ten o clock 
 at night, she lost all signs of him. The woman came to take 
 the child the next day, saying she was going on a journey. 
 She fell into raging madness at first when she learned 
 that he. could not be found. She persisted in declar 
 ing that they had taken him and would keep him in the 
 mad-house. She appeared here every night for ten days or 
 two weeks, when we identified her with the suicide in the 
 Rue de Blois. Her relations, or friends, denied any knowl 
 edge of the child, declaring that it had no claims upon them 
 as the mother had never been married." Trajan went to the 
 Rue Dragon morally certain that the lost child was Amedee, 
 and he resolved to seek the washerwoman the next day. The 
 letter, unaddressed, he felt that he had a right to read, as 
 the surest way to lead to the restoration of the money. The 
 envelope inclosed two notes. The first he opened held 
 these words, in a woman s hand, and written with a lead 
 pencil : 
 
 " I see your return in the journals. I am no longer respon 
 sible for my acts ; the police are on my track ; the people 
 about me suspect vou ;. I can not speak to a stranger ; I can 
 not go to the post ; I can not receive a letter. If I leave my 
 room a minute I can see on returning that the spy has been 
 here. I can live so no longer ; I will fly to some strange 
 country ; give me money and I will quit Paris France. 
 The child is a healthy, robust little fellow ; he is your image. 
 I dare not go to your quarters, nor dare I receive a messenger 
 from you. Here is what I propose : Provide me with twenty- 
 five thousand francs and I will take the boy and fly to England, 
 
TRAJAN. 
 
 from there to New Orleans to my kindred. It would be 
 useless to put this money in my hands, as they would in 
 stantly seize it. I am allowed to walk every evening after 
 dark in the Luxembourg. I have for old-times sake chosen 
 the spot you know under the lilac branch where the letters 
 used to be placed. Make up a packet and tie it to the 
 branch between half-past eight and nine. I can, under cover 
 of drawing the branch down to inhale the blossoms, cut the 
 cord and slip the letter in my clothes. I see no other way 
 of ending this vile bondage ; I know that my going will be a 
 relief to you. 
 
 " With the amount of money I name I shall be outof want. 
 In New Orleans I can find means to live, if that gives out 
 before the hate of these fiends. I say not a word about 
 the past ; it is dead for me, as it has long been for you. I 
 am writing this in the bath and he is in the next room. I 
 shall send it by the wash girl and I shall look in the lilac 
 bush every evening for a week for an answer ; I know it will 
 be there. Destroy, or, still better, return this letter ; my last 
 experience warns me that the most harmless may compro 
 mise me. Finally, as it would not be safe to leave such a 
 large sum unguarded, direct some one in whom you can con 
 fide to keep the place in sight and let no one molest it, who 
 does not answer my description. I shall be dressed as when 
 you saw me the last time. The person set to watch should 
 not, of course, know that there is money. Send Francois, 
 but let him disguise himself, for they would recognize him 
 at once. Frangois will think that it .is a renewal of the old 
 intrigue." 
 
 The second inclosure was but a few lines in a disguised 
 hand, but not sufficiently so to conceal its business-like 
 illegibility : 
 
 " I am greatly relieved to have you at last so reasonable. 
 I very willingly deposit the sum you name, for the end you 
 have in view. Any other use of it will involve you in worse 
 than you have escaped, for I can no longer afford the scenes 
 
TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 381 
 
 of two years ago. Furthermore, supposing all else going 
 well, you can never be secure with that hanging over you." 
 
 Trajan puzzled over the mystery of rehabilitating the two 
 writers. What had befallen the wretched woman coming to 
 the lilacs that night long ago and finding nothing ? and 
 the next and many more, until she despaired and ended the 
 weary suspense in desperation perhaps. And he ! What 
 share of responsibility had he in this cruel comedy of woe ? 
 
 He remembered that the wallet was on the ground, or 
 dropped upon him as he fell over the back of the bench. Had he 
 found it tied on the limb, as the letter directed, he wondered 
 whether he would have touched it? Probably not, for he 
 would* have realized that it was placed there by agreement. 
 But even then, the destined owner would not have gotten it, 
 for he certainly would have remained to see what befell, and 
 the poor morbid wretch, crazed with the notion that every 
 one was put upon her as a spy, would have refused to touch 
 it ! No, the game begun in human guile had ended in provi 
 dential interposition. 
 
 The same day he set out to discover the clue to Amedee. 
 The washerwoman on the Rue St. Etienne could not be found. 
 She had occupied a fifth floor, had quarreled with her lover, 
 to whom she was not married, and had gone to another 
 quarter of Paris to live. She had, of course, left no address, 
 not caring to be plagued by the old love while on with the 
 new. In the Rue de Blois the result was the same. Madame 
 Dreze, who received the young man, did not attempt to con 
 ceal her hostility so soon as his errand was made known. 
 
 " Manifestly," he muttered, "Amedee is to be left to my 
 care," and the thought gave him anew importance to himself. 
 He would in future have another existence to provide for. He 
 would rear the child on a perfect model. He should be the 
 most learned, the most virtuous, the most manly little chap 
 in all France, and when educated he should go home with 
 him to New York and illustrate perfect manhood to the 
 Manhattan sybarites ! Then as the fabric grew and grew, he 
 
382 TRAJAN. 
 
 bethought himself of the old saw about bachelors and old 
 maids babies. But as this thought dampened his ardor? 
 another, that made his step quicken and his eyes glisten, 
 succeeded possibly the reader suspects what it was. 
 Edith would, had she been any where near him, I think ! 
 
 That very day two thousand five hundred francs out of 
 the twenty-five thousand were invested for the use of the 
 boy, Trajan holding himself a guardian appointed by Provi 
 dence, and the means a trust to enable him to carry out his 
 role. He boldly christened the little man Dreze, and 
 placed him in the infants convent of St. Sulpice, until his 
 own fortunes should be more settled. The little man howled 
 lustily when Trajan got up to go. He clung to him scream 
 ing his little piteous plaints in the touching baby talk in which 
 the French tongue is so copious, and it was only by lying 
 down with the child, his arms clasped tightly about his neck 
 until he slept, that Trajan finally managed to relinquish him 
 to the kind fathers, whom he charged to be very tender and 
 considerate towards the motherless child. 
 
 It was late in the afternoon of August 4th that, on 
 returning to the Rue Dragon, Trajan found a man wait 
 ing for him in the little office of Madame Agay. He 
 might have been the head clerk of a well-to-do notary 
 or confidential agent of a banker. He bowed gravely 
 as Madame Agay presented him to the young artist, and 
 handed him a note, which he found on opening contained a 
 line telling him that the bearer was instructed to conduct 
 him to the presence of the empress-regent. In a few 
 minutes Trajan was ready to accompany the austerely dis 
 creet guide, who called a cab and gave the coachman the 
 order to drive to the Place Du Carrousel. Arrived there he 
 dismissed the vehicle, waited until the man had driven off, 
 then walked rapidly to the corner of the Tuileries known as 
 the Pavilion de Flore. He seemed to be known by the guard 
 at the door by some occult signal, and passed into the vesti 
 bule. In the ante-room, the lackey on duty gave him access 
 
TRAJAN GOES TO COURT. 383 
 
 to the reception room. Here he left Trajan, telling him 
 that he would be summoned in a few minutes. It was the 
 wing of the palace occupied by the empress. There were a 
 dozen or more seated on the settees, waiting their turn 
 some in uniforms and some civilians. 
 
 It was fully a half hour before the door opened and a 
 page approaching Trajan, said in a low tone : " Will mon 
 sieur give himself the trouble to follow me ? " They passed 
 through a suite of sumptuous drawing-rooms, where on occa 
 sion of fetes the empress received her guests. Finally he 
 was shown to a seat in a boudoir-like apartment furnished in 
 rosewood paneling with Japanese decorations on the walls 
 and doors. He had been seated but a moment, when the 
 curtains to the next room were drawn aside by two pages, 
 who held them apart as a lady, whom Trajan instantly recog 
 nized as the empress, entered. She turned and made a sign 
 to the pages, and they disappeared. Trajan had arisen and 
 stood in a respectful attitude waiting the sovereign s com 
 mands. As Eugenie advanced and fixed her eyes upon the 
 young man, she started, with a puzzled expression, passed 
 her hand over her eyes, as if trying to recall something but 
 gave it up. Then in a voice of rare sweetness and purity of 
 tone, said : 
 
 "I seem to know your face, monsieur but it is probably 
 a fancy you do not come to court ? " 
 
 " No, madame, I have never been at court ! " 
 
 " Nor, if I am correctly informed, do you believe in 
 courts," she continued with a smile. " That, however, your 
 manner tells. You, no doubt, wonder that your services are 
 needed by our house. If you knew more of courts it would 
 be no mystery to you. Kings are not served from conviction 
 as Republics are. I am told that I may rely implicitly upon 
 your devotion to our house so long as it represents France. 
 That is all 1 ask. The emperor is surrounded by spies and 
 enemies, some of them known, some only suspected, more 
 unknown. The consequence is that every line sent him 
 
384 TRAJAN. 
 
 from Paris is read in the Prussian headquarters, before he 
 sees it himself. It has been of no use to send high officials 
 of state, and now we have few to spare. 1 have documents 
 of vital interest that must be in the emperor s hands before 
 he engages the enemy. Perhaps it may stimulate you to 
 your best endeavors if I let you know this much." 
 
 She paused, breathing rapidly, and just a shade of pallor 
 on the fine lines of her lovely face. " The safety or destruc 
 tion of Froissard s and MacMahon s armies depends upon the 
 emperor s receiving certain ciphers I am about to entrust you, 
 before the 6th that is the day after to-morrow. To reach 
 him you must quit Paris within two hours, and as you can 
 have no official character it will depend upon your ingenuity 
 and resolution to arrive at the emperor s person. You will 
 receive certain verbal instructions from the agent who brought 
 you here. Beyond that you will be without any means of 
 making your mission a success. Do you consent, mon 
 
 sieur 
 
 Inclining deferentially, Trajan said in a clear voice : 
 
 " I accept, madame, and I engage, if my life is spared, 
 that whatever papers you entrust to me shall be seen by no 
 eyes nor known to any human soul through my instrumen 
 tality, until the sovereign of France has them in his own 
 hands." 
 
 The empress hesitated a moment, studied the frank face 
 before her, and said rapidly as she drew a packet from her 
 bosom : 
 
 " It must be I dare trust nobody else. But two people 
 in France know the contents of these papers, myself and 
 one who is faithful to death. You are a Republican, as 
 Barnave was when he put his devotion to France at the serv 
 ice of Marie Antoinette. Your service will hardly put you 
 in the same peril, but it will make all France your debtor. 
 It will save the lives of hundreds of thousands of men." 
 
 She placed the packet in the young man s hand, her eyes 
 lingering on his face with an expression of solicitude. 
 
CESAR S FORTUNES. 385 
 
 Trajan bent very low as he received the trust, and answered 
 firmly : 
 
 " You may consider the service done as you have ordered, 
 if it be in the power of mortal to accomplish it." 
 
 The empress inclined her head slightly, made a gesture 
 signifying that he should wait, and disappeared through the 
 arras. A moment later, the discreet agent entered and 
 handed the young man orders for the railway transportation, 
 and a sum of money to procure horses where the rail was 
 inaccessible or unavailable. 
 
 " In case you are stopped in the .immediate circle of the 
 emperor you can open all doors by this signal." 
 
 He tapped his forehead with the flat of his left hand. 
 
 " Then the other will say, * Business with the emperor ? 
 and you will respond, By his Majesty s wish. Do not say 
 command, for you will be repulsed." 
 
 He again showed him the signal and repeated the words. 
 
 " While you are talking with the person, as you utter the 
 word majesty, change this ring," and he handed him a ring 
 of gold, made of a coiled serpent, " from the left to the 
 right second finger. The same tokens will give you access 
 here, for a month, when they are useless, as others replace 
 them." 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 CAESAR S FORTUNES. 
 
 IT is, as I think I have already remarked in the progress 
 of this history, the unexpected, the unforeseen that rules 
 our lives. It is rarely our first love we marry ; our first 
 faith the one we live or die in ; the calling we sigh for in 
 youth does not absorb us in manhood ; the pleasure houses 
 we build in our dreams never open a veritable door to us ; 
 the beatitude that vve most admire does not always rule our 
 
386 TRAJAN. 
 
 conduct ; the proverbs we most relish do not govern our 
 actions. We are always turning to the right hand and the 
 left, more intent on the surprises of our journey, than the 
 prescribed courses we have marked out for our feet. It is 
 not our favorite author we most diligently read, nor the 
 political conviction that aroused our young enthusiasm we 
 sustain. We grow in action and conduct as in body and mind. 
 
 The moral physiognomy changes as visibly as the physical. 
 We are not even the dim echoes of our mental past, any 
 more than the bodily likeness of our younger years. What 
 a world it would be, if we did not suffer this subtle change ? 
 Sometimes insensible, sometimes revolutionary ! Many of us 
 advance in the unknown stream, oblivious as the rower, who 
 to go on now, must sit with hisback to the point of direction 
 the bark of life is thus propelled hope at the helm and 
 ignorance at the oars ! Or, if we take the figure of the 
 poets with Time as the tamer, holding the bits in our 
 mouths, as we curvet over the hills and vales, how helpless 
 we are in the course, curbed in by invisible lines, environed 
 by intangible barriers. Chance, the jockey of Time, pushes 
 us on by whip and spur. When the steed is caparisoned 
 for the arena, the lance side is blindfolded to shut out the 
 vision of the bull plunging to the encounter with swelling 
 neck and lowered head, it is not until his side is torn by the 
 cruel horns that the impatient charger comprehends the 
 danger. 
 
 It is thus that Fate, kindly or cruelly, sends us to 
 our encounters, conscious only of combat and difficulty, 
 blinded to the acutest of our dangers. How many duels 
 would be fought, if the duelist could foresee the end ? How 
 many wars would be declared, if clairvoyance were part of 
 the science of diplomacy ? Before the gods were exiled by 
 the conquering processes of Christianity, it was by equivo 
 cation that the oracles involved their dupes in warfare. 
 When Croesus set out against Darius he was inveigled into 
 the enterprise by the deluding Python s declaration that 
 
CESAR S FOR TUNES. 387 
 
 " A great empire would be brought to an end by his decis 
 ion," but he did not suspect, until his army was swept 
 away, that it was his own empire that was to go down in 
 the battle, and make good the prophecy ! 
 
 There is a certain ideal purpose around which the gen 
 erous impulses of every life move during the ripening pro 
 cesses of the mind. Though shadowy and undefined, we 
 make this the pivot of our aspirations, motives, yearn 
 ings, as the starry system has its central orbit. Trajan s 
 intellectual existence up to this stage had been more sub 
 jective than objective. He lived more in the ideal than 
 in the imaginary. He confused life with its abstractions. 
 
 He saw nothing compromising to the principle he held 
 essential for the realization of his ideal estate, in serving 
 heartily and loyally the instruments of an order of things 
 totally opposed to his own profoundest conviction. He 
 was like a Mussulman who takes service under the hated 
 Gaiour to save Islam from a more threatening heretic, 
 firmly confident that Allah and the prophet will in their- 
 own good time rescue the crescent from the cross. Some 
 such thoughts as these passed through his mind as he 
 hastened from the Tuileries to the Rue Dragon. There, 
 was short time for reflection, however. He stopped on 
 his way at the rendezvous in the Rue Jacob, where by a 
 fortunate chance he encountered Belcour. 
 
 That fantastic patriot had been transformed into a war 
 rior since his last appearance, and informed Trajan with airy 
 conviction that he was to set out next day on the march to 
 Berlin. All the students had been accepted as volunteers 
 in regiments of their choice, the authorities distrustingly 
 declining their proffer to serve as an independent battalion. 
 
 Though deeply affronted by the suspicion involved in this 
 dispersion, their patriotism was too sincere to admit of 
 drawing back. Trajan was greatly relieved at this intel 
 ligence, for he, too, was in honor bound to join the corps 
 had it been accepted independently. The event simplified 
 
388 TRAJAN. 
 
 his situation immensely, and, begging his comrade to ac 
 company him, he explained his present mission as far as he 
 dared, and charged him to remit a written statement which 
 he had prepared to Gambetta, who was the titular chief of 
 the Republican Club. Belcour was puzzled, but his confi 
 dence in his friend was so strong that he would have 
 trusted him had he put the badge of the Bonapartes on his 
 sleeve. 
 
 " I shall expect to meet you in Berlin," he said, as he took 
 leave of Trajan at the Rue de Dragon, " and I shall keep 
 notes of all I see, that you may electrify your countrymen 
 by the most brilliant and exact feuilletons from the cam 
 paign " for he suspected that the American s demarche, as 
 "he confided to the camarades, was entirely in the interest of 
 the New York journal to which he sent occasional letters. 
 
 Greatly relieved by this meeting with Belcour, Trajan 
 mounted to his studio. There were two letters awaiting him 
 on the mantel, superscribed in hands he did not recognize. 
 The post-mark Crecy threw him into a delicious agitation. 
 He suspected who had written one of them but, strange to 
 say, did not hasten to open it. His mission, the pressing 
 urgency of the empress, every thing passed from his mind. 
 He sank luxuriously in the cushions of the divan where the 
 afternoon sun streamed, conjuring all sorts of fairy forms 
 on the tapestries. He looked guiltily around the room as 
 he pressed the envelope to his lips, and then, slipping the 
 talisman in his vest, broke the seal of the second letter. The 
 signature was Kate s, and it merely said that all was going 
 well at Crecy, save Aunt Briscoe, who was aghast over very 
 bad news she refused to explain. Kate promised him some 
 interesting gossip before long, and meanwhile encouraged 
 him to expect an event which would "open that lad" 
 Elliot s blind eyes to the folly he was perpetrating. 
 
 Trajan could not imagine what his eager partisan meant, 
 but he laughed as he figured to himself a contest of 
 wits between the astute Theo and this alert enemy. The 
 
S FOR T UNES. 389 
 
 signature at the end of the second letter, which was longer, 
 was not a surprise. 
 
 " I write you, dear Trajan," the latter said, " on the sug 
 gestion of mamma and Aunt Caroline, to say that you acted 
 very, very foolishly. Bella was so indignant when she found 
 you were gone that she gave orders at once for the carriage 
 to take her mother and herself to the station. She declared 
 that if it had been made so disagreeable for you here that 
 you could not remain, it was her duty to follow you to Paris 
 and prove to you that you had one devoted friend who knew 
 what noble conduct is. Somebody was very indignant when 
 she heard Bella talking like that, and if Aunt Caroline had 
 not called Bella away and persuaded her into silence, it 
 would not have been Bella nor her mother that had taken 
 the next train for Paris ! " 
 
 Betty, aroused from her afternoon nap, had been vainly 
 endeavoring to secure her favorite place on her master s 
 .knee, but, scandalized by his conduct, withdrew and sat on 
 the rug at some distance, pretending that the operation of 
 washing her face for the moment prevented her accustomed 
 attentions to the master. It was the rapturous pressing 
 of the sheet to his lips which surprised the circumspect 
 Betty, who had never seen an artist indulge in this ridicu 
 lous pantomime before, and didn t know what to make of it. 
 
 " Though no explanations have been made," the letter 
 continued, " every body knows that Somebody has added mar 
 tyrdom to heroism. For the present an evil power is over 
 
 E . He is blinded by the wiles of a wicked person. 
 
 But he is an angel, and he will soon see the wrong he has 
 done, and then, being the noblest and best, or next to the 
 noblest and best man in the world, he will efface his cruel 
 conduct by the most perfect repentance. Somebody keeps a 
 certain letter always near her heart and thinks day and night 
 of the dear writer, and sighs for the time when she can look 
 into his dear eyes and tell him ever so much that she dare 
 not write." 
 
390 TRAJAN. 
 
 And so runs the heart s overflow in these foolish, sacred 
 prattlings, which, like a prayer, I protest I can not profane 
 by setting down here, in the nakedness of type. As 
 I read the yellow, faded lines and look yonder at a pair of 
 tranquil blue eyes, the larks sing over the meadow, the brook 
 purls its restful drone under the alders, and the valley of 
 my youth swims blooming and odorous in the mists that 
 blind my drooling eyes. Perhaps there were tears, too, in 
 Trajan s eyes as he read the tender tale. But they were not 
 bitter or salty. There was a roseate color in the atmos 
 phere as he reluctantly folded the sheets and laid them 
 carefully in his treasure-box, where the pulsations of the 
 heart might keep the words alive. The clock on the mantel 
 warned him that he had no time, even for the delicious 
 reverie he felt in the mood to indulge. He must be at the 
 Northern Station at six, and it was now five o clock. His 
 few preparations were soon finished, and commending 
 Betty and Trip to Madame Agay s good offices, he set out 
 buoyantly for the wars. 
 
 There is no time to embalm in this history the adventures 
 of the next four weeks, wherein Trajan actually became the 
 confidant of the helpless and betrayed emperor, nor the 
 stirring scene near Metz where Trajan s knowledge of the 
 German tongue enabled him to snatch the imperial unfor 
 tunate from the very hands of a German picket that had 
 unknowingly surprised and surrounded the emperor and his 
 suite. It was not until Napoleon s destiny was settled at 
 Sedan that Trajan quit him, bearing a note to the empress 
 bidding her trust implicitly in the young American, in the 
 event of serious danger to herself. 
 
 Early on the evening of September 3d, Trajan reached 
 Paris again, where the news of the surrender at Sedan 
 seemed not to be known. He made straight for the Tuiler- 
 ies, where, though no one seemed to know the event, the 
 spirit of disaster filled the air. By means of a peculiar sign 
 entrusted him at the last moment by the emperor, Trajan 
 
CESAR S FORTUNES. 391 
 
 penetrated to the white drawing-room adjoining the boudoir 
 of the empress. The sesame was a red card, inclosed in an 
 oval glass medallion, upon which there was no word written 
 merely a wide open eye engraved. When this was shown, 
 the guards, lackeys and functionaries fell back in respectful 
 awe. 
 
 The grand apartment was not lighted, but the glow 
 of the sunset filled the place with a soft, luxuriant radiance. 
 The curtains he remembered so well were raised, and a slim 
 figure in a plain black dress came into the room with an 
 eager but weary step. Trajan looked at her curiously, won 
 dering why the empress had sent a stranger to see a messen 
 ger who was the last to hold personal intercourse with the 
 emperor. The woman s form was strangely familiar. Hep 
 hair was almost white, the face was haggard, deep lines were 
 under the large, heavy eyes. The dress was a plain black 
 cashmere. Trajan started and bent his knee with irrestrain- 
 able reverence. He detected in the sad smile that the plain, 
 grief-worn figure before him was the beautiful empress he 
 left in the same room four weeks before such a vision as 
 Burke saw when his eyes rested on Marie Antoinette at 
 Versailles, transformed to the widowed queen, who laid her 
 white hair and haggard face on the block five years later. 
 
 " Oh madame your Majesty " Trajan had never given 
 her the reverential title before ; he had avoided using it to 
 her husband " I I did not recognize you " 
 
 "You are from the emperor is it really true? Were you 
 at Sedan ! Say that it is a tale of our enemies say that he 
 is dead that he died at the head of the guards God for 
 give me, I could bear that ! Say he did not hand his sword 
 to that odious Prussian Tartuffe ! " 
 
 Trajan begged the unhappy lady to be seated and receive 
 the emperor s message. He gave her the letter, which had 
 been sewed in his sleeve, written at Mezieres by the emperor. 
 It was but a few lines. The poor woman pressed it to her 
 lips and sobbed silently. Trajan then related all that he 
 
392 TRAJAN. 
 
 had seen and done since his departure on the 4th of August, 
 a month before. He touched upon the emperor s unhappy 
 and anomalous position after the delegation of the command 
 to Bazaine his mortal agony when his judgment had been 
 overruled in Paris his pathetic resignation and chivalrous 
 conduct on the march and during the trying encounter with 
 the Uhlans in the flight to Verdun. It was quite dark in 
 the apartment when the singular narrative had come to an 
 end. The empress sat a long time silent. The entrance 
 of a lady of the suite, Madame Carctte, aroused the 
 regent. She turned to the lady and said in a calm, sad 
 tone : 
 
 " The dreadful news is true ; here is a messenger from the 
 emperor. I have a note written on the 3ist, telling of his 
 purpose to put himself in the way of death the next day, 
 knowing that the battle must be lost. The guard which he 
 commanded in person has been cut to pieces, but he could 
 not die. Oh my God my God have we sinned so 
 deeply could our punishment not come in some other 
 form ! " 
 
 She broke into a paroxysm of sobs. Madame Carette 
 wound her arms tenderly about the stricken woman and 
 soothed her like a child. She brushed her eyes, suddenly, 
 and rising said bitterly : 
 
 " Here is a Republican who has gone through fire and 
 danger for the emperor and for me what do you think of 
 that ? He is a Republican. He belongs to the " Treize " 
 who have sworn to establish the Republic. He rescued the 
 emperor from a Prussian patrol near Metz. He has pushed 
 through the Prussian lines and has been a month at our 
 services. Madame Carette, I wish all France were Republi 
 can, if this hero is a type of that faith." Then going over to 
 Trajan she asked excitedly : " What now ? Do you go to 
 proclaim the Republic ? Have you ended allegiance to the 
 unfortunate? Can we no longer trust to your courage and 
 devotion, now that we need it more than ever? " 
 
CESAR S FORTUNES. 393 
 
 " Madame, my word is pledged to the emperor that no 
 harm shall come to you. I now repeat that pledge. What 
 ever befalls you, all that I am, all that I can do, is at your 
 command." 
 
 " Tre s bien; listen ! this news is not known beyond General 
 Montauban and myself. I have his promise to withhold it 
 forty-eight hours. I dare not trust my countrymen if the 
 worst comes to the worst. I have already four friends, 
 foreigners, sworn to protect me, if if the worst should hap 
 pen. Madame Carette will put you into relation with the 
 one I most trust, a young Englishman, who has secured 
 quarters in case I am compelled to leave here for I am 
 determined that not a drop of French blood shall be shed 
 for me or mine. Monsieur, are you willing to co-operate 
 with the dynasty to that extent ? " She held out the hand 
 that two months before the proudest potentate would have 
 felt honored to touch. Trajan pressed his lips to it and 
 said gently, " Madame, your own son could not promise 
 with a sincerer heart." 
 
 She sighed, turned, and withdrew. Madame Carette, tak 
 ing up the conversation as if the empress had just finished, 
 said : 
 
 " The Englishman her majesty refers to is lodging just 
 across the Rue Rivoli at the Hotel Wagram. Go to him at 
 once. Take up your quarters there. I will give you a note 
 of presentation. He will put you an courant with the situa 
 tion. Should the empress summon you again, be discreet. 
 She does not realize her danger. Half the bad news from 
 the army is kept from her. She does not know that even 
 Count Palikao has been deceiving her and is deceiving her 
 now. Trochu, too, is playing double. It may be necessary 
 for her to fly from the palace to-night. You must be near 
 Mr. Rawdon (that is our English ally) knows the signal." 
 
 She sat down as she spoke and wrote a few lines on a card. 
 
 "This will be all you need. Above all, do not spread the 
 report of the surrender to-night, until measures have been 
 
394 TRAJAN. 
 
 taken to get the garrison in from Vincennes to protect the 
 palace." 
 
 She rose, bowed ceremoniously, and retired through the 
 same curtained entrance. Stunned by the evidences of a 
 collapse, illustrating as he never realized it before, the hollow- 
 ness and vanity of human greatness, Trajan walked to the 
 window and looked out. The streets were filled with uneasy 
 crowds. The lights were flashing along the quais. Restarted 
 with a sharp pang. He was just above the Sphinx, before 
 which he had seen Caesar pass three months before when 
 the court withdrew for the summer to St. Cloud. Then a 
 word from the radiant empress would have been law to all 
 France; now it was to him that she uttered the prayer of the 
 helpless. 
 
 Mistakes in life are like mile-stones on the highway one 
 can make no use of them until we are abreast of or pass 
 them. Trajan thought of this as he meditated on the fabric 
 he saw tottering about him. He wondered if the emperor, 
 like the poet, was musing over his perverted manhood and 
 wayward youth, seeking in vain in all his career for any evi 
 dence of his past conduct based on truth. His wild excesses, 
 stupendous successes, deep draughts of every bowl that 
 the reveler holds to be joy ; the fever of youth cooled in 
 the ample glories of wizard might ; chivalrous impulses and 
 magnanimous enterprises, Italy redeemed and revived the 
 protection of England in her political paralysis ; the strong 
 rock of the feeble states, the despot of his own a foul man 
 hood resurrected from ignoble debauchery by one colossal 
 crime the theft of his countrymen s liberty. Paris bedi- 
 zined, the Circean cave of the world, where the senses were 
 imbruted and the virtues stupefied ; all this the past of 
 Bonaparte, Trajan conjured as he hurried on his new 
 mission. 
 
 He arrived at the Hotel Wagram and in a few minutes 
 was shown into Mr. Rawdon s presence. He was a stout 
 florid young fellow of the ordinary beefy English type, 
 
CM SA & S FOR T UNES. 395 
 
 large honest blue eyes, with white lashes and curly sunny 
 hair. He could not have been more than twenty-five, though 
 his stature, six feet or more, gave him an older look. 
 
 " I see," he said in the frank tone of a Briton, " from 
 Madame Carette s note that you have been enlisted in the 
 good cause. I think we shall have desperate work to rescue 
 the empress. Poor woman, she has no idea of how critically 
 she is fixed. Since VVoerth and Gravelotte she has been in 
 constant danger of her life. At first it was thought the fel 
 lows made rich by the eighteen years pillage of the empire 
 would stand up to her. But when the Reds made the attack 
 at La Villette on the i3th, they fled to hiding like so many 
 rabbits. One set of them actually proposed an abdication, 
 and a substitution of that disreputable sneak, Plon-Plon. It 
 was all arranged, when Pietri who alone resists the rule 
 of the ingrate, put the whole affair in the hands of Palikao, 
 the prime minister. The dastardly business was kept from 
 the empress, and on the very next day, the i4th, when news 
 came that Bazaine had driven the Prussians across the 
 Moselle, these sneaks crowded the Tuileries to pay court 
 to the star for a moment emerged from eclipse." 
 
 " You don t mean to say that the head of the government 
 was kept in the dark as to events going on in the capital as 
 well as to the defeats of the army ? for the action of the 
 1 4th was the fatal one that cut off Bazaine from Verdun." 
 
 " That s just what I mean. Most of the news she has 
 received has been by way of London, where she has very 
 warm friends. That luckless morning of the i4Jth I was 
 in the palace officially. Imagine my surprise as I stood in 
 the guard-room when I saw the empress enter among 
 the soldiers, some of them with their coats off, others clean 
 ing their arms, others lying in their cots. Her hair was 
 hanging down in disorder. She waved a telegram triumph 
 antly and cried out, her voice broken with emotion " Sol 
 diers, the Prussians are defeated. They have been driven 
 into the quarries of Jaumont." She was half mad with joy, 
 
39^ TRAJAN. 
 
 for since her return trom St. Cloud on the 7th, her mind had 
 been filled with forebodings. She was swayed alternately 
 with a feverish desire to fly and join the emperor and her 
 son, or enter a convent. 
 
 " I have been on confidential terms with the Duke de Per- 
 signy for some years and acted as his secretary in English 
 affairs. So soon as news came of the first defeats, he saw 
 the game was ended, and the first thing he did was to drive 
 with me to the Tuileries to get Conti, the emperor s secre 
 tary, to extract some compromising papers from the Interior 
 Office. Conti, too, knew what was coming. For four weeks 
 he has been getting rid of tell-tale documents. But it is 
 no easy job. Had they been carried off in carts, the 
 sharp-eyed opposition would have set up an outcry. If 
 they had been burned, there would have been clouds of 
 smoke revealing the work. 
 
 " I have been with him for days at a time under lock and 
 key. We have torn up heaps of letters the accumulations of 
 twenty years with incriminating documents, which would 
 put some of the Republican chiefs in a very compromising 
 plight, particularly that old humbug Thiers, who has re 
 peatedly offered his services to the emperor as minister. 
 Oh, they are a nice lot, these Frenchmen ! There isn t an 
 Imperialist that wouldn t turn Terrorist to-morrow nor a 
 Red that wouldn t swear on the Bonaparte bees for a port 
 folio ! " 
 
 Trajan smiled. " You have a poor opinion of the people 
 who have given the world the doctrine of liberty, which 
 they have not learned to practice themselves." 
 
 " Ho, ho ! So you are a Republican ? " He laughed 
 uproariously. " By Jove, it is odd. I incline that way, and 
 all the people in the emperor s confidence are touched with 
 the craze. You know the admiration of Eugenie for 
 Marie Antoinette, and the jokes of the Bonaparte family who 
 hate her, that she s a Legitimist at heart ? Well, she has 
 gotten into her head that she is to be torn in pieces by the 
 
CsESARS FORTUNES. 397 
 
 mob. She shifts between a mad purpose to cut stick and 
 a sanguinary plot to arrest all the opposition and have 
 them shot, as the city is under martial law. But Lord bless 
 you ! She wouldn t lift her neck from the guillotine if the 
 doing it would bring a soul to jeopard. I was sent for the 
 day of the second defeat at Gravelotte. I found her in 
 deep black all the court, down to the flunkies, have been in 
 black since Woerth. She was in tears, poring over the chap 
 ter in Thiers, where the massacre of the Swiss at the palace 
 doors is described. The night of the i4th the last State 
 reception was to be held. The empress was clad in black, 
 from a jet coronet on her head to black stockings and 
 shoes. 
 
 " The Ministers, as I say, had doctored the news and 
 made the Rezonville and Bar le Due affairs a great victory, 
 instead of a mere repulse of the Prussian vanguard. The 
 buzzards were all out in force. The gayety was sober but 
 sustained. I am glad I saw the poor creature that night. 
 When I saw her again the glorious auburn hair was silvered, 
 the eyes were shrunken, the peachy complexion was wan 
 and the face haggard. She was thrown into spasms by 
 remarking sinister eyes continually watching the palace 
 windows. Pietri soon put an end to that. Five hundred 
 guards in civilians uniforms constantly patrol the palace. 
 
 "They have signs and pass-words like a secret society, and 
 suspicious personages are dogged in every movement. But 
 some of these shady protectors are themselves suspected, 
 and the foreign band, of whom you and I are part, are 
 chosen to risk all when the situation becomes desperate. I 
 will show you one means of communication." He arose 
 and went to the window, pulled the shade half aside 
 twice, then drew it all the way up. " Now watch the third 
 window from the river facing on the garden. Do you 
 see ? " 
 
 "Yes, the shade moves aside once, twice, three times; 
 now it flies up," said Trajan. "What does that imply? " 
 
39 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 " All is well and wait. When it is daylight the signal is 
 replaced by a flag, though that is regarded as risky. The 
 men whom the empress relies on most unquestionably are 
 the Corsicans, of whom there are fifty under Pietri, but 
 they are hard to use, as their dark features betray them. 
 Now I will apprise you of the work entrusted us, and then 1 
 have done. Rooms have been prepared at the Convent Des 
 Abeilles, Rue Picpus, far out in the environs near the wood 
 of Vincennes. I am charged with that. The Mother 
 Superior has given me keys to the establishment and I can 
 slip the empress in there at a moment s notice. The con 
 vent takes up two sides of a square. An old postern that 
 has not been opened for a century has been masked up ; I m 
 a bit of a carpenter myself and I did the work one dark 
 night. 
 
 "In case of pursuit we can slip into the alley, and 
 the empress will disappear before any one dreams of the 
 means. Twenty horses have been taken from the imperial 
 stables, the fastest of all the stud. They stand harnessed 
 night and day to common street cabs within two minutes 
 walk of the Louvre and the Tuileries. At the Hotel du 
 Louvre a friend of mine is stationed just as I am here. His 
 signal is a card in his window answered by another in the 
 Louvre Library. Enfin you are just in time. There will be 
 trouble to-night, I fear. We will relieve each other in watch 
 ing. You take up your beat under the colonnade of the 
 Louvre, I will walk this end. You will see others near 
 you, but make no sign." 
 
 " I shall have to take a mouthful to eat first," said 
 Trajan, " as I have, I may say, not dined for a month." A 
 dinner was soon brought to the room, the young English 
 man keeping an eye at the window on the garden opposite. 
 It was eight o clock when Trajan began his novel function. 
 He paced up and down the gay colonnades of the Rue de 
 Rivoli, crossing over occasionally to note his fellow com 
 panion s presence in the window. He was obviously a poor 
 
CAESAR S FORTUNES. 399 
 
 hand at the work, for he noticed that by ten o clock several 
 suspicious looking persons were scrutinizing him. He had 
 marched down leisurely as far as the lower end of the 
 Louvre for perhaps the twentieth time, when two men 
 hustled against him. A low voice whispered in his ear: 
 " Make no noise. Stir but a hand and you are a dead 
 man." 
 
 A cab was standing ten feet off ; he was hurried into it and 
 driven to the cabinet of the chief of police. Pietri was not 
 in, but his deputy was on duty. Trajan was questioned as 
 to his movements, and suddenly recalling the imperial talis 
 man, exhibited it to the deputy. -The effect was grotesque. 
 The functionary, hitherto seated and impassive, arose defer 
 entially, apologized in a frightened sort of way, and ordered 
 the officers to conduct him back to his station. When 
 Trajan resumed his vigils, he was joined by the Englishman, 
 who laughed heartily at the incident and related experiences 
 of his own not unlike it. 
 
 " The regular detectives, spies, guards, or whatever you 
 choose to call them, are jealous and suspicious. They no 
 doubt gave you all the signals as they remarked you on duty, 
 and finding you ignorant took you for an interloper bent on 
 mischief. I sincerely pity that poor woman yonder," he 
 said, pointing over his shoulder. 
 
 " Do you know that while we have been reducing tons of 
 documents to pulp and making way with them, she has not 
 sent a pennyworth away, such is her absurd confidence ! 
 She has the richest wardrobe in Europe. Her personal 
 allowance is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a 
 year and she spends every penny of it in dress and 
 charities. Not that she cares so much for the dresses, 
 but it keeps business brisk. She has indirectly given 
 work to thousands of seamstresses, and by her exam 
 ple made a hundred-fold more. Her bills at Worth s alone, 
 some of which I came across in my work in the Cabinet, ran 
 up to five hundred pounds a month. Her charities last 
 
400 TRAJAN. 
 
 year were twenty-five thousand pounds ! Much of the 
 emperor s valuables have been sent away in small packets. 
 
 " Every body that Conti can trust takes a package of letters 
 and papers out of the palace as often as he or she has 
 occasion to visit it. But it would require six months work 
 and ten hours a day to assort and take away the valuable 
 papers. What a life that poor woman has led since she 
 came back from St. Cloud ! I am with Conti every morn 
 ing at six. At seven the empress in a simple black gown, 
 such as my governess used to wear, sits down to coffee with 
 Madame Le Breton, Bourbaki s sister and Madame Carette. 
 
 " Sitting there with her white cuffs and white collar, she 
 looks like a prim housekeeper. At half-past seven her almoner 
 Monseigneur Boner, a remarkable preacher, says mass in 
 the private chapel, the empress kneeling during the entire 
 ceremony. Madame Carette is the most brilliant woman I 
 ever heard talk. She strives to keep her little circle gay, 
 but her sallies often bring tears rather than mirth to her 
 mistress eyes. After mass she devotes herself to business, 
 and even Bismarck would shrink from the labors that poor 
 little woman sits out from day to day. I have been there 
 from eight o clock in the morning until seven in the evening, 
 and beyond swallowing a cup of coffee she has never 
 budged." 
 
 " But what business can she do where are the ministers ? " 
 
 " Ah the present ministry is a mere sham. Palikao is an 
 honest, rough old fellow who hasn t an idea of business. 
 He merely signs papers presented by the secretaries, and 
 nice work he has given his sign manual to." 
 
 At this moment, Rawdon stopped and looked at the win 
 dow of the Pavilion. 
 
 " There is the signal," he said breathlessly. " Now for 
 work. You may be sure something is up, or it would not be 
 there, for it is now past eleven. Come." 
 
 They passed in through the garden gates. Crowds of idle 
 preoccupied people were coming and going. Ministers car- 
 
CsE SAX S FORTUNES. 401 
 
 riages stood deep in the square of the Carrousel. A display 
 of their secret tokens carried the two young men through 
 the lines of weary and sleepy lackeys. They reached the 
 Pavilion de Flore, the empress apartments, and mingled 
 with the throng. Ministers, generals and officials of all 
 grades were lolling about talking in whispers. The news 
 from Sedan, though not officially promulgated, was mysteri 
 ously known. Madame Le Breton appeared in the room as 
 if searching for some one. Rawdon walked over to her, and 
 in a moment nodded to Trajan to follow him. They en 
 tered the boudoir finished in panels whereon the loves of the 
 roses and violets were painted in exquisite tints by Chaplin. 
 The apartment was deserted. The Venetian windows lead 
 ing to the balcony were open, and the shadow of a figure in 
 black could be discerned leaning against the rail. 
 
 Madame Le Breton went out and returning in a moment 
 beckoned to the young men to follow. 
 
 The empress did not turn, and they stood perfectly still. 
 The city was profoundly quiet. The gardens echoed only 
 to the soft plash of the fountains ; the Champs Elysees 
 stretched like a broad causeway of cloud between the double 
 lines of flaming jets to the dim shadow of the great arch of 
 the stars at the other end. The river flowed peacefully by, 
 its ridged ripples crossed by long rays of light thrown from 
 the lamps on its banks. The regular footfall of the sentries 
 as they paced up and down under the balcony was the only 
 sign of life in the restful atmosphere. 
 
 The miserable mistress of all this grandeur turned suddenly 
 to the young men, and said in a broken, husky voice : 
 
 " They tell me that this chateau can be defended against 
 all the rabble of Paris. You are foreigners you can look 
 on from the outside would you do it ? Would you defend 
 what is not worth defending, if it must be held at the cost 
 of blood ? " She waited a moment, then added, a tinge of 
 bitterness in the broken voice : " Have you become courtiers 
 too ? Is it then true that rulers can never learn the truth 
 26 
 
402 TRAJAN. 
 
 until it is too late ? If we had known in July what we know 
 now, do you suppose we should ever have fallen into M. de 
 Bismarck s trap ? But he knew he knew Oh, my God, 
 every body knew but those who should have known first ! " 
 She looked off over the city toward the threatening towers 
 of the prison across the water, where Marie Antoinette had 
 wasted her widowhood in squalor. She shuddered and 
 hastily entered the room. The young men followed. Raw- 
 don, raising his voice, said gently : 
 
 " Your majesty, the truth is easily told. When the news 
 from Sedan is confirmed to-morrow to the city, which 
 already knows it vaguely you can remain here only by 
 girdling your power with bayonets and forcing truce with 
 shrapnel." 
 
 "Ah Mon Dieu Mon Dieu ! I can never do that. But," 
 she added suddenly, as if for the first time realizing the 
 fact, " you are Republicans you desire our overthrow you 
 would not join such a movement, why then should you fancy 
 your friends would attack?" 
 
 "Your majesty forgets that at such times it is not the 
 theorists like myself and monsieur here who control ; it is the 
 mob, who have but a brutal instinct and know no way but 
 force to bring about their wishes. I think I can speak for 
 my friend," he added, nodding to Trajan, who assented, 
 " when I say that we would overturn the empire, but we 
 should do it by votes, never otherwise, because there is no 
 stability in any other form. That is why I venture to re 
 mind your majesty that the empire saved by bayonets would 
 be as insecure the day after as it is to-day." 
 
 " But I will ride out at the head of the troops in the morn 
 ing. I will go in person to the Legislature and dismiss it. 
 I will institute a new Council of Regency under Thiers 
 whom I despise I will but this is not what I begged your 
 attendance for. I have frightful forebodings, and I ask you 
 to remain in the palace to-night. I shall decide in the morn 
 ing what to do. No matter who comes, or what happens, I 
 
CESAR S FORTUNES. 403 
 
 request that one or the other of you will be within hearing 
 of my voice, that one at least of you never lose sight of my 
 person." 
 
 At that moment Pietri entered unannounced. He walked 
 straight to the empress and asked a question in alow voice. 
 She shook her head. The empress requested all to be seated 
 and then said aloud : 
 
 " Monsieur Pietri, speak freely before these gentlemen. 
 They are true friends, they have been tested." 
 
 Pietri, covering his face from the light, answered in a low 
 voice : " There is not much to be said. You sent orders 
 to Trochu to attend you here. Your first messenger was 
 told that he was out. The second, that he had retired and 
 was not to be disturbed for any body. When those messages 
 came, Trochu was in consultation with Thiers and that 
 group. It was decided that Thiers would accept the presi 
 dency of the council, if the emperor abdicated in favor 
 of the prince imperial and the Legislature were dissolved. 
 Orders were written early in the evening to Marshal Bar- 
 aguy d Hilliers to have the garrison of Paris in the Champs 
 Elysee and the gardens at daylight. The orders have not 
 reached him, and if sent now they could not be carried out 
 because Trochu would not countersign them." 
 
 " Then I am at the mercy of the mob in the morning ! " 
 exclaimed the empress starting up. 
 
 " Your majesty is at the mercy of your enemies, should 
 the arms and resources of your friends fail," answered the 
 Corsican bluntly. 
 
 The regent rose and paced the room in weary abstrac 
 tion. The coming and going in the outer rooms sounded 
 faintly in this solemn chamber. Madame Le Breton, worn 
 out with fatigue, was sleeping tranquilly in her chair. Pietri 
 got up and drew back the curtains to the outer salon. The 
 apartments were still filled. Senators and officers were 
 stretched upon every available bit of furniture, dozing or 
 lost in panic. Lackeys leaned against the walls sound 
 
404 TRAJAN. 
 
 asleep. The chill night air came in fitful gusts through the 
 long windows, breathing the lingering perfumes of the 
 orange trees. Messengers came and went incessantly 
 from the office of the secretary, who occasionally rose to 
 hand a despatch to his mistress. The night wore on. The 
 empress, too anxious to sleep, either walked the room or 
 cooled her fever on the balcony. It was a little after six 
 in the morning when Pietri had gone, that Emile Girardin, 
 the journalist and senator, was announced. He demanded 
 a word with the regent. 
 
 "Ah," said she bitterly, "the grave-digger of dynasties," 
 alluding to Girardin s appearance at the Tuileries in the 
 self-same way on the morning in 1848 when Louis Philippe 
 was packing his bag to fly as John Smith. The empress 
 had guessed correctly. Girardin, with his professor s face, 
 his scrupulous attire, his rosette of the Legion in his but 
 ton-hole, came forward, dapper, cheery, confident, his 
 smooth-shaven, young face as serene as if he had just pock 
 eted his last great haul in a profligate s speculation. He came 
 to tell the empress Thiers proposition. 
 
 She laughed sadly, and said with a flash of her old spirit : 
 " Thiers is a trump you always hold in your hand to play in 
 a risky game." Girardin, a man of wit, was not discon 
 certed at this sally, and proceeded to expound the judicious 
 ness of bringing the malcontents into the government and 
 inviting France to repel the invaders. " Do this at once," 
 he continued ; " put yourself at the head of the troops, ride 
 like the heroine you are, to the Corps Legislatif, dissolve 
 that body of dolts that every one despises, and all France 
 will rally around you as the Hungarians rallied around the 
 Austrian empire, when they swore to defend their woman- 
 king, Maria Theresa." 
 
 The heavy eyes of the poor lady brightened. She liked 
 the counsel. She would do it. Girardin rising to go, 
 added : " If your majesty appears on horseback, like the 
 chivalric Austrian, or Bess of England, fearlessly among the 
 
CESAR S FORTUNES. 405 
 
 people of Paris, you may count on their enthusiasm and loy 
 alty. But," he added, coming back, " you must first take a 
 sleeping potion and gain a few hours rest, for Paris knows 
 its empress as the queen of beauty first, and the sovereign 
 afterward. Do this, and my word for it all will go well." 
 
 He left the room, and the empress with an almost radiant 
 smile sat quite still watching the door where he had disap 
 peared, lost in reverie. She was trembling with the tension 
 of the night. But she could not lie down. She rose and 
 touched Madame Le Breton lightly, but that jaded woman 
 was in such a sound and refreshing sleep that she had not 
 the heart to disturb her. She glanced at the two young men 
 seated by the window, and said almost gayly : 
 
 " Come, messieurs, I must make use of you for my new 
 role. Come and help me select a costume." She led them 
 into her wardrobe and asked them to help her take down the 
 gowns hanging on the outer rows. She worked diligently at 
 this for twenty minutes or more, but the garments she wanted 
 were not there. A few days before there had been a general 
 stampede of servants, who had gone off carrying great quan 
 tities of imperial property. Probably the dark riding dress 
 she was seeking had been among the spoils of her domestics. 
 
 The only gown that appeared suitable was of green cloth, 
 trimmed with gold, but in laying it over a chair she decided 
 that it would be too theatrical for such a solemn pageant. 
 It had been her riding robe in her last fetes at Fon- 
 tainebleau, and accorded incongruously with such solemn 
 work as was before her. The young men were not adepts 
 in finery and could give the royal lady no advice. What 
 grotesque mischances mar great destinies and shift potent 
 purposes. No robe suitable for the Jeanne d Arc enterprise 
 could be found among the rifled finery of the most lavish 
 wardrobe in Europe. The lack of a petticoat on the 
 testimony of Thiers himself, who spoke of it afterward, 
 brought about the expulsion of the dynasty for had the 
 woman, pathetic in her misfortune, ridden out among the 
 
406 TRAJAN. 
 
 multitude, like Elizabeth, to Tilbury fort, the chivalrous 
 sentiment of Paris would have acclaimed her, and the his 
 tory of a people would have been written in less lurid colors. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 
 
 THAT somber night and sinister morning movement 
 filled the mind of the young and ardent Trajan with 
 conflicting emotions. The prepossessions of his life were 
 not a whit altered or shaken by the spectacle of helpless roy 
 alty amid the wreck of its grandeur. If he thought of the 
 political aspect of the matter at all, it was with a sense of its 
 remoteness to the conditions before him. Here, all that he 
 realized was the peril of a helpless woman : the madness of 
 a blinded people. He forgot during that night of trial and 
 miserable uncertainty, that he was in the very sanctuary of 
 imperialism ; that he was assisting at the vicarious passion 
 and expiation of a great crime. Unconscious of the influ 
 ence the episode was to have on his own future, he played 
 his part as a spectator, impotent to avert the looming catas 
 trophe, resolute only to circumscribe its horror, if mortal 
 courage could do it. He returned with Rawdon and the 
 empress to the apartment, now beginning to look garish and 
 slovenly as the sunshine streamed in. The debris of a 
 week s occupation was on the tables, the furniture, the floors ; 
 for, characteristically, even the domestics, sniffing the coming 
 change, had been for ten days deserting their posts, and the 
 service of the palace had fallen into suggestive desuetude. 
 As Madame Le Breton arose, refreshed from her timely 
 nap, chocolate was brought in, and the four singularly united 
 relics of a great dynasty drank in silence from the pretty 
 Sevres cups, that in happier days a Merimee had immortal 
 ized in verse, a Gauthier had embalmed in fanciful comedy. 
 
AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 407 
 
 After the apparition of Girardin there was a singular calm ; 
 even the movement of the worn and sleepy lackeys ceased. 
 The regent s secretary alone continued his offices silently, 
 decorously, faithfully. The poor lady at last said, as he 
 came in to lay some papers for her hand to sign : 
 
 " Monsieur, you must be worn out, take some rest. These 
 gentlemen will replace you for a few hours if there is any 
 thing that must be done." He bowed with deep emotion 
 and shook his head. He needed no rest, he said, he would 
 remain at his post while majesty refused to retire. Pres 
 ently the ladies of the court came in. Mass was said in the 
 chapel, the two Protestants kneeling reverently while the 
 slim figure in black remained as if transfixed on the prie 
 dieu, during the short ceremony. Trajan returning to the 
 window stepped out upon the balcony. It was eight o clock. 
 
 The streets were in their usual morning bustle. No sign of 
 danger yet. Then his mind returned to the whimsical inci 
 dent of the robe the royal lady had sought. Was it a fatality 
 that out of three hundred and sixty costumes, the needed 
 one was not to be found ! His mind recalled the grotesque 
 chances that turn great events out of their ordained courses. 
 Would the dark robe the empress had fixed her mind upon, 
 have spared Paris the anarchy and desecration of impotent 
 revolution and perhaps anarchy ? He thought over the 
 same thing many a time afterward, when the first intoxicat 
 ing draught of its power had led the mob to the saturnalia 
 of crime that set the world shuddering. The vision of 
 faded loveliness the imperial lady still presented would it 
 have touched the generous, mercurial Parisians and held 
 them to their allegiance ? Was this trifle, after all, to be as 
 potent as the lost battles of the month in bringing on imper 
 ial dissolution ? 
 
 Meanwhile the life of the court, or a ghastly shadow of 
 it, began again. Ministers, gloomy, furtive, reticent, came 
 in perfunctorily, transacted business briefly, and withdrew. 
 Veterans of the Crimea and Italy came to protest their 
 
408 TRAjAtf. 
 
 devotion and plead for a chance to attest their valor, 
 though crippled and worn. Envoys from Thiers and Gam- 
 betta came with warnings that the regent s friends should 
 prepare for the worst. Trochu had sullenly refused to attend 
 his imperial mistress. The soldiers ordered into the Place 
 de la Concorde do not appear. By noon the gardens in 
 front of the palace are filled with a vast multitude, who 
 move about talking, talking, always talking, the ominous chat 
 ter that precedes the thought simmering in the hot-head of 
 the Parisian. Word comes that even De Palikao has broken 
 faith. 
 
 He had plighted his word to say nothing in the Corps 
 Legislatif of the surrender at Sedan, until the regent could 
 devise measures. He had told all. The dechfancc of the 
 dynasty had been declared. The news of it was now in the 
 streets. The fire was on the straggling grains ; in a moment 
 it would reach the mountain of powder. At one o clock the 
 empress, colorless, haggard, tearless, dragged herself to the 
 window, Trajan trying vainly to dissuade her. She waved 
 him back, saying in English : " Have no fear, I m not 
 going to commit any Gallic folly. I shall go mad with this 
 suspense." Her eye fell upon the gardens and the miles 
 thence westward to the arch along the Champs Elyse"e. 
 
 She gasped, uttered a low moan, and would have fallen if 
 Madam La Breton had not caught her. She refused to quit 
 the window, fascinated by the horror the spectacle sug 
 gested. Two square miles packed with people lay at her 
 feet, under her window, surging and waving, to the great 
 square, across the bridges, along the river, along the Rue 
 de Rivoli. Not a soldier to be seen save at the gates, where 
 the guards of the line were jostled aside and companies 
 of the new National Guard Republicans were installed 
 in their stead. Trajan with gentle force drew the curtains, 
 and by an imploring gesture to Madam Le Breton forced her 
 away from the sinister spectacle. At this moment there was 
 a clamor in the outer apartment. Two men entered, one 
 
AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 409 
 
 was Pietri, and Trajan with surprise recognized Jules in the 
 second. Pietri spoke rapidly and in agitation. The expul 
 sion of the dynasty had been proposed and would be voted 
 so soon as the question was put. The soldiers were every 
 where fraternizing with the revolutionists. Rochefort had 
 been taken out of prison. Then in a low tone " Your 
 majesty is no longer safe. Crowds are already before the 
 guard room and in the Place du Carrousel. The Count de 
 Cosse-Brisac is acting like a madman with a group of young 
 noblemen in the hallway. They are flourishing pistols and 
 threatening to provoke bloodshed 
 
 " That must be instantly stopped. Go to them and say 
 for me, that I beseech them to make no sign of hostility, to 
 shed blood under no provocation." Going to a cabinet, she 
 opened a drawer and took out an opera glass. With this 
 she swept the sea of faces stretching far under the trees to 
 the Place de la Concorde. She uttered a cry of indignation 
 and loathing, pointing to a group near the statuary a few 
 steps from the fountain. Trajan looked and saw a tall 
 figure, armed and resolute, parleying with the crowd. 
 
 " It is Vardou, the dramatist," said Rawdon. 
 
 "It is an ingrate," said the empress passionately. 
 
 " You may be sure, madame, that Vardou is pacifying the 
 mob, not inciting it," said Madame Le Breton. " I know 
 him too well to believe him capable of such baseness." Long 
 afterward Trajan learned that the intrepid author had saved 
 the woman who distrusted him. It was his firmness that 
 checked the mad cry to advance on the palace. Still the 
 strain of uncertainty continued. The vague noises in the 
 ante-chamber rose and fell ; clamors broke out under the 
 windows. No one knew what to expect. Trajan wondered 
 why some friend did not warn the empress that precious 
 time was wasting. The wan group with glasses in hand 
 scanned the Place de la Concorde. There was yet a possi 
 bility of quelling anarchy. Even Trajan recoiled aghast at 
 the spectacle. Not less than one hundred and fifty 
 
4*o TRAJAN. 
 
 thousand white-faced, fierce-eyed people crowded the great 
 square. 
 
 Frightful cries came in blood-curdling echoes from thou 
 sands of throats. " Down with the empire down with 
 Bonaparte death to the Man of December ! " The soldiers, 
 however, were there. Serried ranks of blue jackets and 
 silver corslets, the cuirassiers of the guard ; they formed a 
 line of scarlet and blue, between the, as yet, unmolten passion 
 of this dense mass of destruction, and the hall of the Legis 
 lators. The alert, fierce swords gleamed in reassuring men 
 ace, the chassepots of the infantry were at the touch. 
 Would the undisciplined mob, or the educated host of order 
 give way? The empress watches the deadly dumb show, 
 dumb herself as the sphinx below her. The soldiers, reso 
 lute, statue-like, wait in silence. The swaying horde, 
 equally resolute, but surging as the sea surges when the first 
 impulse of the simoon is upon it, waits. The clamor rises 
 louder and louder. A single act, a touch, and the guns will 
 vomit death into the packed mass, unarmed, save by the 
 mysterious paralyzing potency of numbers. 
 
 " Great God forbid them to fire ! " cries the empress, 
 choking, and sinks back on the seat behind her. 
 
 Hark silence a sullen roar, swelling until the very walls 
 seem to reel ; the soldiers close up impassively ; the move 
 ment makes a wave of flashing steely brightness, like 
 lightning playing on the edges of a cloud. Silence again, 
 ominous and profound. 
 
 11 To the lantern with the Bonapartes ! " the guns are raised, 
 the guns are pointed ; " Banishment for the emperor ! " the 
 guns are aimed ; the ranks close in once more, until the red 
 seems like a vast liberty cap, covering the hundred and 
 fifty thousand heads. 
 
 " Vive la Nation " " Vive la France ;" " To arms for the 
 patrie in danger ;" " Vive La Republique, one and indivisible." 
 The arms are lowered and reversed ; the flash of the swords 
 glints out an instant and all is dark. The people surround 
 
AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 411 
 
 the soldiers ; they embrace. The evil empire of fraud and 
 sham is at an end throttled by the people s hands even in 
 the stronghold of its strength. 
 
 It was two o clock. A tall man, black almost as an 
 African, sauntered carelessly into the apartment. The 
 empress started up. It was the Italian ambassador, de Nigra. 
 He scrutinized the anxious silent group, and then approach 
 ing the empress, said : 
 
 " You have not an instant to lose ; the revolutionists are 
 marching in the palace. They are entering by the Carrousel. 
 You must fly and with as few people as possible." 
 
 For the first time the courage maintained through the 
 long ordeal wavered. The slender frame shuddered ; the 
 voice refused to respond to the horrifying impulse of 
 abandonment. She looked around helplessly ; at sight of 
 the calm, courageous faces of the three men she steadies 
 her trembling limbs and the haggard eye illuminates with a 
 new impulse. Then a hoarse roar, menacing, confused, 
 penetrates the massive walls. She mastered the sensation, 
 gave her hand with a melancholy flash of her old imperial 
 face to the ambassador, and said calmly : 
 
 "I will take leave of our friends." De Nigra led her to 
 the door opening into the salon. The apartment was 
 crowded with the remnant of the families of the friends of the 
 dynasty. Prince Metternich was just about to enter ; he 
 halts at her side as she stands a moment like a vision of woe 
 seen dimly through the tears of the assembly; she bowed with 
 kindly dignity, and was gently forced back by the prince. 
 
 A hand-bag is hastily packed by Madame Le Breton, and as 
 it is finished Count de Lesseps enters the room. The crowd 
 was already in the ante-chamber, parleying with the guard. 
 Every thing had been arranged outside. The party must fly 
 through the palace wing that runs along the river and make 
 its exit through the Louvre, where at the moment there was 
 no tumult. Metternich and all save Lesseps, Trajan, and 
 Rawdon were to remain and keep the invaders at this 
 
TRAJAN. 
 
 point, until the flight of the empress was secured. She had 
 wrapped herself in a plain water-proof and drawn a veil 
 over her face. The route to be traversed runs along the 
 Seine side of the palace, a distance of a third of a mile. At 
 the iron doorway dividing the picture galleries from the 
 Pavilion de Flore, the empress quarters, the party were 
 brought to a halt. Heavens the strong doors are locked. 
 The warden had disappeared days before. The miserable 
 victim is caught in a trap. Trajan looked about for a 
 weapon. There was none. Madame Le Breton cried out 
 to wait, and hurried back along the passage. The empress 
 sank exhausted on one of the red velvet banquettes used by 
 the door-keeper. Trajan looked out on the river bank. 
 The street was packed with people howling and gesticulat 
 ing. As some one in the crowd caught sight of him, a fierce 
 cry broke out : 
 
 " Down with Bonaparte Vive la Republic ! " In the 
 brief glance Trajan caught sight of two sinister, lurid eyes 
 transfixing him ; he looked again. It was Ferre, the Com 
 munard, who had sworn to wreak vengeance on Bonaparte 
 and his family. A pebble struck the glass as Trajan hastily 
 withdrew from the deep embrasure. In a few minutes, 
 which seemed an hour, Madame Le Breton returned, her 
 eyes sparkling. The key was on the rack numbered and 
 labeled, and she had no difficulty in snatching it unseen. 
 The great doors swung open with a sound that seemed 
 to encourage the forlorn hope. Through the magnificent 
 galleries, hung with the master-pieces of Rubens, Van 
 Dyke, Leonardo, Poussin, Claude, and the imperish 
 able dynasties of art, the group fled, their steps sound 
 ing like the tramp of a regiment on the polished marquetry 
 floors. The square of St. Germain L Auxerrois was empty. 
 A cab stood by the curb. Trajan, sent out to reconnoi- 
 ter, signaled that the coast was clear. The veiled empress 
 and Madame Le Breton passed swiftly over the tesselated 
 pavement and entered the cab. As she sank back she 
 
AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 413 
 
 raised her veil an instant to catch a last glimpse of the 
 Louvre. As her eye rested on the fatal colonnade, where 
 Catherine de Medici and the king had stood on the night of 
 St. Bartholomew, a little ragamuffin, seated on the edge of 
 the stone support of the golden railing, started up shouting : 
 
 " Ah, ha there is Madame Bonaparte ! " A group of 
 artisans, lounging at the corner, vaguely caught the cry 
 and came forward. Count de Lesseps, with admirable 
 presence of mind, caught the urchin, whirled him round 
 and sent him sprawling in the roadway, saying furiously : 
 
 " That 11 teach you to hurrah for the Bonapartes, when 
 the Republic is proclaimed." The group on the sidewalk 
 approved this laudable sentiment. 
 
 Count de Lesseps got inside with the empress. The cab 
 drove off at a rapid pace. Rawdon bidding Trajan hasten, 
 hurried to the narrow street behind the church where another 
 cab was waiting, got in, and the driver apparently knowing 
 what to do drove off in the direction taken by the first cab. 
 As they turned into the Rue Faubourg St. Honore, the cab 
 was just ahead of them. The carriage with the empress had 
 just turned into the narrow Rue de 1 Arbre Sec when Tra 
 jan, glancing back uneasily, caught a glimpse of Ferre run 
 ning toward them from the river side, accompanied by a 
 shouting group, whom he was urging onward. At regular 
 distances signals were exchanged with men standing at 
 street corners. Rawdon explained that this was to apprise 
 the coachmen that the coast was clear. The driver of 
 the empress was the famous Gambier, the deputy master 
 of the Imperial horse, who had been with Napoleon in 
 exile in London in 1847. 
 
 " The man driving our cab," he added, " is a viscount 
 and colonel in the emperor s guard both are armed to the 
 teeth and the box bristles with revolvers." Happily the 
 misery of exile was not to be embittered by bloodshed. The 
 fugitives arrived safely at the house of an American in the 
 quietest quarter of the Champs Elysees, a mile or more from 
 
414 TRAJAN. 
 
 the Tuileries, where the exhausted empress was carried in 
 and secluded. She fell into a lethargic sleep a sleep that the 
 physicians forbade to be disturbed for ten hours, if it could 
 be made to last so long. But the pre-arranged plan did not 
 admit of such delay, nor was the poor woman given much 
 choice. 
 
 Count Keratry, who had been installed head of the 
 police at noon, who was not ignorant of the efforts in behalf 
 of his former sovereign, had sent Lesseps word that the 
 safety of the empress could only be secured by instant 
 flight from the city even if she had to be carried in a chest 
 that the project of secreting her in the convent would be 
 madness. A council was at once held. Trajan, Rawdon, 
 and Lesseps were despatched to the northern station to post 
 a force of detectives in the waiting-room and keep the coast 
 clear for the evening train. A little before eight o clock, 
 Trajan, waiting at the door, recognized Gambier as the cab 
 rolled up. The empress, veiled in an ordinary traveling 
 costume, came forward with Madame Le Breton. 
 
 She took Trajan s arm, entered the waiting-room, and 
 talked quietly with her companion while Rawdon bought 
 the tickets for Maubeuge. When the train drew out 
 of the station, beside the foreign legion guarding the 
 exile there were a score of devoted adherents scattered 
 through the various compartments, well armed and ready 
 in the event of disaster. But the empress had no knowledge 
 of it. Strangers were entrusted with the immediate care of 
 the fugitive, lest suspicion should be aroused by the presence 
 of any of the well-known friends of the empire. On Wednes 
 day, the yth, after a detour in Belgium toward off suspicion, 
 the party reached Deuville on the Norman coast, fearing to 
 venture on any of the regular lines across the channel. At 
 the little town, the escort locked in vain for a bark to 
 carry the remnants of Caesar to safety. By the merest chance 
 an English nobleman had his yacht in port awaiting the 
 arrival of his wife from Italy. When the situation had been 
 
AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 415 
 
 cautiously confided to him he made every preparation for 
 receiving the hunted relic of a great reign. On the evening 
 of the yth, Trajan took his leave of the empress. She 
 grasped his hand with grateful fervor and in a broken tone 
 said : 
 
 " Monsieur, you have kept your pledge ; if those whose 
 fortune and indulgence in our days of power we are 
 held to blame for had been half as true yqur Repub 
 lic would not even have the short term to which it 
 is destined but this sounds ungrateful " and she smiled 
 sadly " I can only give you the thanks of an exile. If 
 happier times should ever come remember that they will 
 be made still happier by the presence of one who has been 
 the friend of the betrayed and abandoned. God bless^you 
 adieu ! " 
 
 Trajan bent over the hand that held his own, and 
 touched his lips to it in painful emotion. A moment later 
 she was gone. He stood on the sandy beach, watching the 
 yacht as she steamed out into the darkness and the rising 
 waves. As befitted such an event, the wind rose in fury, the 
 little vessel was whipped and tossed, and many a time the 
 wretched fugitives fell on their knees, believing that the hand 
 of God, like the hate of men, had determined on their 
 extinction. Trajan learned of the terrors of the passage 
 afterward through a note written him by order of the empress 
 in London, where with the poor little prince, her son, she 
 waited many a weary day in anguish a recall to her regent s 
 duties in the cruel capital she loved so well. After a night 
 of tempest the refugees landed at Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, 
 not far from that stately villa of her royal cousin Victoria 
 Osborne, where in other days she had come as the guest of 
 England. A few hours later her alarm and anguish 
 were forgotten in the arms of her son at the little town of 
 Hastings where eight hundred years before another French 
 prince had landed, who changed the course of British history 
 and the destiny of a people. 
 
416 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan stood on the beach in the edge of the storm that 
 settled on the sea, and watched the gleaming light of the 
 little vessel, until darkness, thick, impenetrable, sinister, fell 
 like a curtain and shut out all but the spectral outlines of the 
 tumbling sea. He was penetrated by an indefinable sadness. 
 Certainly with his convictions, his inexpugnable faith in the 
 rights of man and the sanctity of the social contract, he could 
 not regret -^he end of the December crime, nor the punish 
 ment of the coup d etat criminals. He went to his room in 
 the pretty hostel, and it was long after midnight when he 
 sealed the letter to Somebody, wherefrom I have taken the 
 details recorded in the foregoing chapters. 
 
 On certain other things said in that voluminous narrative 
 I do ot think it needful to dwell. Even warriors in love 
 fall into the fond follies that most of us look back upon 
 with a blush and a sigh. Trajan was no wiser nor more con 
 tained than the rest of us. At that particular epoch, he 
 was indeed in such a state of exaltation that his dithyram- 
 bics would, in the sober realities of the present, sound 
 bumptious and perhaps ridiculous. It is the business of the 
 biographer to veil his hero s humanities, when they take on 
 the hue and tenor of the commonplace or the paradoxical. 
 A concluding passage in the letter will enable us to under 
 stand his mental atmosphere however. 
 
 " You may imagine," he wrote, " the whirl in which these 
 strange scenes have left me. I can not realize that I 
 have been for a month the near companion, almost 
 confidant, of the family I have been accustomed to associate 
 with all that is criminal, self-seeking and debasing. I look 
 back upon the tragic episodes, with the same feeling that one 
 has in rising from a play of Shakespeare s in the action of 
 which he has for a few hours identified himself. I m ashamed 
 to say that there were moments when, had the decision rested 
 with me, I should have confirmed Bonaparte on the throne that 
 he snatched by fraud and lost by blunders that would be 
 grotesque if they were not humiliation and ruin to a generous 
 
AN IMPERIAL VICTIM. 417 
 
 and chivalrous people. When I recall the unfortunate 
 empress, the beauty that conquered Europe, faded, the wit 
 that delighted Merimee, the pundit of the press, a tuneless 
 echo of a remembered melody, lean find it in my heart to take 
 a vow as the troubadours and knights of old, to make her 
 famous by my pen and glorious by my sword. She has 
 learned a bitter lesson, poor woman. What more pathetic 
 than the humiliating necessity of calling on foreigners and 
 political foes to save her from the ruin in which the treachery, 
 incapacity, and greed of courtiers had involved her. 
 
 " To the last she displayed more spirit and courage than 
 the whole body of her ministers. It was she who proposed 
 quitting Paris, retiring to the Loire, and summoning all 
 France to repel the Germans, indifferent to the form of 
 government that should emerge from the certain success 
 following such a heroic measure. It was to put this in 
 execution that she asked old Palikao to hold back the news 
 from Sedan for twenty-four hours. He kissed her hand and 
 pledged his honor to do it ; just before midnight, on the 3d, 
 word came that he had told the story to the Corps Legislatif. 
 
 " She turned pale, took a signet from her finger, and sent 
 it by a page to the recreant minister. De Palikao never came 
 near her afterward. It is all over now, and somehow I feel 
 as if every thing were come to an end for me. I have no 
 heart to go on, and this, too, at the moment when the dream 
 of years is realizing itself, without crime, mob law, or any of 
 the repulsive violence that usually marks change, however 
 wholesome." 
 
 Somebody, I have no doubt, found other parts of 
 this epistle a good deal more interesting than those I have set 
 forth, for while this page is clear, the others are dim and 
 faded in big blotches, as though steeped in some chemical 
 with an ingredient of salt in the solution ! 
 
 The next night Trajan was installed in the Rue Dragon. 
 He tried to resume his long-neglected painting, but the 
 hand that is not the instrument of the mind finds no 
 
41 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 alembic dyes on the pallet. He gave up the attempt in 
 disgust and fell to reading. Even this resource failed him. 
 His mind wandered riotously. A pair of blue eyes were 
 constantly on the page, tantalizing and distracting him. The 
 atmosphere of the city, too, was not calculated to inspire 
 the repose needed for artistic effort. His friend Gambetta 
 was now minister. The new government was at work like 
 Titans to stay the avalanche let loose by the falling away of 
 the imperial props. It was fully a week after his return 
 when a note reached Trajan in Gambetta s gnarled jerky 
 hand. He was too busy to be glad that his comrade had 
 escaped the dangers of the campaign, and had only time to 
 tell him to repair at once to the cabinet of Jules Favre, the 
 foreign minister, who had need of such services as Trajan 
 aloae could render. He, Gambetta, had talked to his 
 colleague of the young man, and he might expect a " most 
 sympathetic welcome." 
 
 At the ostentatious palace of the quai D Orsai he was 
 forced to wait the entire forenoon before he could reach th< 
 minister. 
 
 Jules Favre, long the leader of the French bar, who 
 could, by the incomparable music of his voice and the florid 
 play of his fancy, move judges and juries to tears and anger, 
 sat in the gorgeous bureau of De Morny and his princely 
 predecessors, the simple avocat, immersed in the heart 
 breaking work put upon him by his countrymen. His shock 
 of iron-gray hair almost touched the mass of papers he was 
 annotating, as Trajan, after five hours waiting, was shown 
 into the room. He pushed back his chair as Trajan came 
 quite up to him, and pointed to a seat. Then turning to 
 his secretaries, commanded them to return in ten minutes. 
 When the two were alone, he began to talk, rather as if 
 resuming a subject than introducing one : 
 
 " You were at the Prussian headquarters two days ; you 
 saw the king when he received Bonaparte s surrender ; you 
 heard the talk of the camp and the courtiers ; can you give 
 
A N IMPERIA L VIC TIM. 4 1 9 
 
 us an idea of the Prussian purpose ? Narrate in the minutest 
 detail every thing you saw there. Spare nothing, for we 
 may seize from the most inconsequent trifle something that 
 will give us a hint for the work we have to do." 
 
 Trajan began at the very beginning and set forth every 
 thing he had seen and heard. The secretaries appearing 
 before he was half done, Favre impatiently dismissed them 
 with an order to wait till he rang. He listened with pro 
 found attention, breaking in frequently with exclamations 
 as the narration went on. 
 
 " And so you saved Bonaparte s life ? " he said, coming to 
 the young man, and laying his hand on his shoulder impet 
 uously. " Grand Dieu ! Grand Dieu ! what a complicated 
 game we are in ! Do you realize, cold-blooded young 
 Saxon, that you, that you alone, have made the Republic 
 possible ? Do you realize that Bonaparte killed, or even 
 captured in fight, would have touched the sympathies of 
 our emotional French natures, and that the country would 
 have joined as a man to console his widow and affirm his 
 dynasty ? It was only through the proof of his selfishness 
 and ignoble nature at Sedan that France could be convinced 
 of his foul, self-seeking and incorrigible baseness. I salute 
 you, young man I embrace you," and to Trajan s con 
 fusion, the big-bearded man lifted him from the chair and 
 kissed both cheeks. " Ah, mon Dieu ! the Bonaparte little 
 dreamed when he flattered you that night at the mill, sur 
 rounded by the Prussians, that you were the instrument of 
 Providence to enable France to rouse from her stupor. 
 
 " But the Republic has more work for you, and I exact your 
 inviolable secrecy in all that I confide to you. Not even Gam- 
 betta, not one of the club, not even your sweetheart," and 
 the big man smiled kindly, " must know of what you are 
 about to do. Here it is in brief. I believe that peace can 
 be made with the Prussians now that Bonaparte is gone. It 
 was against him they professed to make war. Now I am 
 going to ask an immense service of you one, in fact, that 
 
420 TRAJAN. 
 
 imperils your life and mine. You must go to the king s 
 quarters. You must get speech with Bismarck ; you must 
 lay before him the points of a memorandum, which I shall 
 read to you, but which I dare not allow out of my posses 
 sion. If it were known to my colleagues or suspected in 
 Paris, I should be butchered as a Prussian sympathizer. 
 
 " If you were suspected to even know of such a thing, the 
 Garde Mobile would burn you alive. I leave all the details of 
 the business to you. Such resources as you displayed at Metz 
 and Sedan will conquer every thing. I promise you no 
 reward. I would not thus insult you ; but there must come 
 a time when the country will be made to know your heroism 
 and devotion. Come to me again this evening, and I will 
 have the plan of action prepared." He rang a bell. A lackey 
 entered. Send Monsieur Carnot to me," and, to Trajan s 
 ungovernable surprise, that devoted pillar of imperialism 
 came forward from the adjoining cabinet, as if it were his 
 old patron, Duke Grammont, the imperial minister, instead 
 of the abhorred Republican that ruled the place. 
 
 " Monsieur Carnot, you will be good enough to see that 
 Monsieur Gray is admitted to me at all times, no matter 
 what may intervene. He is an attache of the conseil du mi?i- 
 istere" Jules bowed, without a sign of surprise or discom 
 posure, and led Trajan with serene gravity to the apartment 
 occupied by the body the minister had named. He explained, 
 when they were alone, that as an attache of the late minister, 
 Grammont, Favre had begged him to remain in place, 
 and as his allegiance was to France before the dynasty, he 
 had promptly accepted the post. He essayed to learn the 
 functions his quondam comrade was to fill, but Trajan dryly 
 turned the conversation to other matters, and speedily 
 brought the interview to a close. Three days later, master 
 of Favre s purpose, he set out for the Prussian headquar 
 ters, the army being on its way to Paris, but where was not 
 exactly known. 
 
A TANGLED WEB. 4 21 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A TANGLED WEB. 
 
 TIME did not bring content to Elliot. Though the sub 
 ject of Trajan s flight was never mentioned at Crecy, 
 he felt every day more keenly the truth that " To be 
 wroth with one we love doth work like madness in the 
 brain." He had tried vainly to make himself believe that 
 the cruel words he had flung at his friend were the expres 
 sion of such anger as Paul tacitly justifies in his lustier days. 
 The scene in the arbor tormented him. 
 
 He strove in vain to justify himself to himself a tribunal 
 that pronounces the surest verdicts, but is not always, 
 unhappily, equal to enforcing them. To the calm judgment 
 of this court he valorously plead the most sophistical grounds 
 of extenuation. To have parleyed or equivocated, in the 
 face of Trajan s sweeping charge, would have been to admit 
 a doubt of the sincerity of his own devotion, at the very 
 moment when the proof of that devotiou could alone win 
 its object. 
 
 Had he been sure of Theo s love, nay, had he been 
 sure of his own, he would have heard the doubt cast 
 upon her integrity with derisive good-humor. In this plea 
 to the court, he had no opposing attorney to puncture the 
 weak point in this chain of reasoning, marred by numerous 
 lost links, as we know, and he didn t. He lost sight of the 
 basis of all his monologuing that it was to convince him 
 self and not others that he had borrowed the language of 
 outraged love. It was himself who doubted the reality of 
 the impulse that had, in spite of himself, impelled him to 
 offer Theo a heart that was not his to give. Had he been 
 sure of his feeling for the bewildering coquette who ruled 
 his mind, not his heart, he would have laughed at Trajan s 
 bizarre and theatrical entree en scene. He would have bur- 
 
422 TRAJAN. 
 
 lesqued the two, Kate and Trajan, as they stood at the 
 door of the arbor Satyrs mocking the Loves. 
 
 He would have listened to Trajan s overwrought warn 
 ing, if not as the debilitation of a sick man, at most 
 as the officious interference of a misguided friendship. 
 While he might lament the disaster that had soured 
 his friend, in the loss of his sweetheart, he would have 
 regarded his own better fortune as a tribute to his own 
 superior love-making for the lover is selfish as the sea, that 
 not only feeds upon all the springs of the earth, but swirls 
 in the evaporation of the system that maintains it. It would 
 have stimulated his dormant complacency to see that Theo, 
 with a fine fellow like Trajan at her feet, had waited to find 
 her fate in him. Victory is the breath of our life, and it is 
 rather sweeter when won from those who wear the garland 
 of our own admiration. What flattery so subtle as the 
 admission that we have unhorsed a valiant friend in the lists 
 of love ? that the rose on the lip and the light in the eye 
 have been given us as the guerdon of our prowess ? 
 
 Here was the rub. Elliot could not determine whether 
 he was the victor, nor whether, being victor, he felt 
 happier in holding the token. His swift infatuation had 
 lost none of its tantalizing force. He was still happy in 
 the flash of her amber eye ; he forgot every thing in the 
 sparkling sallies of her wit. His passion was fed by just 
 enough of uncertainty to make the pursuit a sensation. 
 Much as he had seen of Theo and they rode together 
 daily she was still a profound mystery to him. She was 
 the frankest and most outspoken woman he had ever met, 
 but he thought over all her sayings, and was puzzled to gain 
 any thing really indicative of her nature from the sum. She 
 was never reticent, but he felt that while she covered every 
 topic, and covered it well, it was he who had contributed 
 the intimacies, those little personal revelations that bind 
 kindred natures. He had gone to her a hundred times, 
 resolved to lead her into talking of herself and giving him 
 
A TANGLED WEB, 423 
 
 the glimpses that weld love into enduring assimilation. She 
 never resisted these advances. She never remained silent, 
 but somehow when he thought it all over afterward, he only 
 knew that she had been keenly critical, gay and expansive 
 upon things that the whole world might have heard. She 
 never avoided talking of Trajan, lauding his noble nature, 
 his manly impulses, but insensibly worked the topic around 
 until she succeeded in making him monomaniacal and 
 absurd. 
 
 In his reflective moments he contrasted this effusive reti 
 cence with Bella s. She, too, had the gift of talking a sub 
 ject away from itself, and concealing by an apparent frank 
 ness the thought her interlocutor was bent upon uncovering. 
 Her spirit was as keen as Theo s, but less placative. She 
 had nothing of the coquetry of egoism in her arts. She 
 resented the exclusion of woman from the domain of collo 
 quial empire that home society concedes to men. She loved 
 to shine at the dinner-table, not to gain personal devotion, 
 but to uphold an equality of intellectual prowess with her 
 neighbors. Bella could talk during an entire evening, and 
 no dreg of scandal, ill-nature or mischief-making could be 
 detected in the sparklmg outflow. If she satirized the fol 
 lies of her sex, it was subjectively, and no woman who heard 
 her carried away the slightest rankling of the venom that 
 often lingers after women s wit. She was like a physician 
 whom long practice and mingling with all ranks has made a 
 man of the world. She could talk with all grades of intel 
 ligence without once suggesting the impression to any of 
 them that she was conscious of knowing more, or being bet 
 ter informed. 
 
 In this she was far cleverer than her rival, whose quick 
 wit sometimes betrayed her into an insensible exhibition 
 of conscious superiority. There was another difference. 
 Bella s reticence was the result of breeding as well as 
 study ; she never, therefore, led her friends into that dan 
 gerous expansiveness that makes us feel like cutting our 
 
4 2 4 TRAJAN. 
 
 tongues out, when, in the elation of sudden sympathy, we 
 unburden things that we have no right to breathe. Bella 
 never permitted such self-immolation on the altar of confi 
 dence. Theo, on the contrary, held every human being by 
 a chain of self-forged serfdom. The victim of her wiles, 
 vaguely impressed with the belief that the artful diplomate 
 had opened the secrets of her cabinet, blurted out things 
 long buried from the censorious eyes of the world. Both 
 Bella and Theo were alike in avoiding the obtrusive reti 
 cence which incites the most indifferent. They never came 
 into a group, looking wise and smiling significantly when 
 people and events were mentioned, as though challenging 
 some one to give them provocation to reveal the un reveal- 
 able. It was the possession of these curious qualities by the 
 two women which led Elliot into the Iliad of woes I am now 
 describing. Had Bella been the ordinary sort of woman, 
 Elliot would have been her accepted lover from the first, 
 Theo never could have made her sinister diversion, and half 
 the incidents of this history would have been a dreamer s 
 dream. 
 
 With the continued startling news from the army, the 
 Grovels began to discuss flight. Tl;e head of the family 
 had interests that could be attended to only in Paris. At 
 that time there was no thought of the total collapse of the 
 French armies. The crisis was not without its significance 
 to Theo. Her. revenues would now come to an end, as Ameri 
 cans would hardly come to Paris to get the fashions, and she 
 must come to a resolution as to her future. The absence of 
 Jules tormented her. She had set her heart on his marrying 
 Bella, quite unconcerned as to the entanglement of the 
 prince, which she felt confident she could cut when the time 
 came. She would have preferred remaining at Crecy some 
 time longer, and hinted as much to Mrs. Arden one day 
 when the Grovels preparations for departure were nearly 
 ended. 
 
 But Mrs. Arden, without having discussed the matter, 
 
A TANGLED WEB. 425 
 
 knew that Theo was not liked by her daughter or Bella. 
 For herself, she would not have objected to the young 
 lady s presence ; indeed, she would have been rather glad, 
 for she was fond of visitors, and thought Theo. a most 
 agreeable guest. To Theo s careless expression of dislike 
 to returning to the turmoil of the city, distracted as it was 
 by war and revolution, she answered that her family, too, 
 would be obliged to make a move, as every thing was unset 
 tled, and they must be where Elliot could attend their 
 interests in America. The discomfited schemer said no 
 more, but, riding out that evening, she asked Elliot if the 
 inn at Crecy was habitable for a lady ! She added that it 
 might be necessary for her to take rooms there with her 
 kinswoman La Baronne, who had received word from Meaux 
 that the Prussians would be there within a few days. 
 
 " But why not come to us ? My mother will be enchanted 
 to receive you," cried the young man delightedly. 
 
 " That would be charming," she replied quietly, and 
 dropped the subject. That night Elliot hastened to his 
 mother s room to inform her of Theo s embarrassment, and 
 suggested that she should be invited to stay at Les Char- 
 mettes. Edith, who. was present and came behind her 
 brother, stood with her arms around his neck, brushing her 
 cheek against the shadowy down that gave promise of future 
 hirsute glory, looked up suddenly, and catching her mother s 
 eye, shook her head, unseen by the victim of her caressing 
 duplicity. 
 
 " My dear, we can t very well receive Miss Carnot now ; 
 as you said yesterday, there s no telling how soon we may 
 have to quit the chateau. Just now none of us feel equal 
 to entertaining strangers." 
 
 " But she might come and stay while we stay. I see no 
 inconvenience in that." 
 
 " I d rather you wouldn t ask it, Elliot," said Mrs. Arden 
 doubtingly. " You say I m the tyrant of the household, 
 indulge me in this rare exhibition of inhospitality." 
 
426 TRAJAN. 
 
 1 But really, Madame Nero, there is a time when tyranni 
 cide is a sacred duty. I will swear Edith and Bella into a 
 conspiracy to depose you, if you persist in driving the home 
 less from your door." 
 
 " Very well, if you can gain those two powers I will not 
 provoke insurrection." 
 
 " What do you say, Edy what your brother wants you 
 want ; isn t it so ? Faithful alone among the faithless, 
 speak, and shame the domestic tyrant." 
 
 Edith, redoubling her caresses, planted herself on the 
 victim s knee, and from this vantage-ground said : 
 
 " Do you remember the story you told me once illustrating 
 the charm of French manners ? " 
 
 " I can t say that I recall any particular lesson from among 
 the innumerable maxims I have made it a parental duty to 
 expound to you." 
 
 "You once said that the incident of the old Duke de la 
 Rochefoucauld, descending the stairs from a grand reception 
 and meeting a boyish young noble bounding up, should be 
 framed in gold and hung in every household where there 
 are young people. The old duke had descended four stairs, 
 the lad, glittering in orders and court braveries, reached 
 the step beneath. Both stopped. The duke, a model of 
 last century grace and politeness, mindful of all the little 
 elegancies that Renan laments so beautifully, backed against 
 the wall. The boy backed against the banister, both bow 
 ing low. Pass, said the duke. Never, said the lad. I 
 beg of you, cried the duke. Then, as you said in your droll 
 way, the sticklers might have been there to all time, like 
 Moliere in the presence of Louis XIV. on the wall at Ver 
 sailles, if the gallant youth had not been inspired. You 
 remember what he said ? " 
 
 " What did he say, traitress ? " 
 
 " Bowing until his head was on a level with the old duke s 
 feet, he cried gallantly, It is the duty of youth to obey, 
 and passed up." 
 
A TANGLED WEB. 427 
 
 " And this fable teaches " 
 
 " That it is the duty of this youth to obey his mamma, 
 who never commands any thing she hasn t good reasons 
 for," and the artful rogue fell to kissing the astonished 
 youth, fairly smothering his protests. 
 
 " I never gave you credit for such consummate duplicity," 
 he at last rescued himself to say, as he studied the demure 
 face with fretful surprise. He had never seen the maiden 
 fortified by such motives. The very thought of Theo under 
 the roof from which she had driven Trajan was enough to 
 inspire her to all the arts of feminine resistance, of which 
 poor Elliot little dreamed. He realized in a hazy sort of 
 way the cause of the sudden inhospitality of his mother and 
 sister and dropped the point. He never alluded to the sub 
 ject to Theo, and she was wise enough to make no reference 
 to a further sojourn in the place. It was arranged by the 
 kind-hearted Mrs. Grovel that La Baronne should share her 
 house in Paris until the uncertainties of the campaign were 
 over, and presently, greatly to Edith s relief, the Duclos 
 chateau was closed and the major-domo of the owner rein 
 stalled. The prince took leave of Les Charmettes in state. 
 
 He was to go to Paris to place himself at the command of 
 the government, for, as he explained, the legitimate monarch 
 would very soon reign in the palace of his ancestors. He 
 trusted to see his new friends in Paris, and hinted that delay 
 would suit him very well in the alliance he had proposed. 
 Bella bade her suitor adieu with good feeling, but not a sign 
 of embarrassment or emotion. Theo, who was present, 
 owned that her conduct was " perfect," that a born princess 
 could not have carried out her role more charmingly. And 
 the prince seemed very well pleased to hear all this. He 
 was proud to think that in any event the world could not 
 accuse him of contemplating a vulgar mesalliance. 
 
 Theo s departure gave secret but none the less deep joy 
 to three members of the household at Les Charmettes. Kate 
 sinfully ejaculated a devout thanksgiving that Jezebel had 
 
428 TRAJAN. 
 
 gone before doing more mischief, as she stood at the upper 
 window where Edith, equally delighted, but less emphatic, 
 ran up to confide her satisfaction. 
 
 " But, Kate dear, if my poor Elliot should persist and 
 marry oh, what should we do ? I could never even see her 
 without a nervous spasm. She affects me like like I don t 
 know what," she added, repenting the harsh word that came 
 to her tongue. , 
 
 "Why don t you out with it and say what ye mean. It s 
 just a snake and nothing else," her wrath throwing Kate s 
 vowels into their Scotch broadness. "Ye need have na fear 
 o th lad goin that length. Tho there s nofrecklike a lad s 
 folly when a hussy o th like o that s at his chin to wheedle 
 th teeth out of his head. But I ve a way of loos nin Jeze 
 bel s grip, and ye need give yersel no fear. I ve ta n the 
 measure o that un," she added with a grim smile, "and I ll 
 lay my head to a wraith s kirtle that I beat her where she 
 counts on shearing the thickest wool." 
 
 " Kate, you re a dreadful creature. What do you mean 
 by such uncanny hints and vows ? I declare I m afraid of 
 you," and womanlike, to prove it, she wound her arms around 
 the spinster s neck and hugged her with vehemence. 
 
 " Ye re a puir witless bairn yersel ," was the reward, given 
 with placid resignation by the wicked plotter, " or ye d never 
 let the boy fall intil her claws. But ye may mend all now 
 by doin as I tell ye and mindin what I say." 
 
 "I m your slave, your Friday, your lamp rub me and all 
 you dream shall come to pass." 
 
 " It isn t dreams I want, it s facts, and you must get them 
 and ask me no questions. Here s what ye ll have to do. Bring 
 me th lists o stocks, funds and all sorts of investments that 
 yer faether left yer brither s fortune in. Get at th same 
 time a statement of Bella s. Get me the whole with the 
 addresses and th like, and never open ye r mouth til ony- 
 body. Now ask me no questions," she added, fondling the 
 blonde head, as the large eyes presaged the volley of 
 
A TANGLED WEB. 429 
 
 questions these extraordinary interrogatories suggested. 
 " Give me all these facts within three days, and I ll play the 
 bagpipes at Jezebel s marriage and dance, into the bargain," 
 with which confusing sentiment she brought the cabal to a 
 close. 
 
 On the very afternoon of Theo s departure who should 
 come walking in, bringing a shock of electric joy, but the 
 warrior Philip. He had been taken to Heidelberg, and in 
 his quality of American, had been treated with lenity. Gen 
 eral Kamecke, the real leader of the army, supposed to be 
 commanded by prince Fritz, had been appealed to by letter. 
 He knew Philip and permission had been given him to retire as 
 anon-combatant, with a hint that further participation on the 
 French side would subject him to disagreeable consequences. 
 He considered himself on parole and would so write to his 
 friend Vinoy. His wound had not been severe the blow 
 of a clubbed musket on the shoulder and neck. He had 
 returned through Belgium and found no difficulty in getting 
 to Crecy. He would not dare remain there himself, for the 
 Germans were within march of it that very day. 
 
 Elliot ridiculed all idea of danger, but it was agreed that if 
 the place was likely to be long within the invading lines the 
 family would be better off in England. Towards dark the 
 cousins sauntered down to the village to read the war bulletins, 
 for there were no longer any journals distributed from Paris. 
 In the pretty town the frightened people had been in a fever 
 for weeks. The first stunning blow, a month or six weeks 
 before, found them with every thing prepared for a grand 
 celebration of the passage of the Rhine and a decisive 
 defeat of the king s armies in the Palatinate. The garlands, 
 tarnished and withered, had been thrown aside and 
 the little spasm over the founding of the Republic two weeks 
 before had been celebrated in decorous acclamation nobody 
 imagining that a government born in such a tumult was to 
 continue, and in the future avenge by years of peace, good 
 order, and wisdom the humiliation through which alone it 
 
43 TRAJAN. 
 
 had been made possible. It was the i5th of September, and 
 the terrified populace stood mute before the curt phrase 
 which announced the arrival of the Prussians before the 
 Northern outposts of Paris. King William and the head 
 quarters were at Meaux, only ten miles distant. The Uhlans 
 had been seen near Crecy early in the day and the maire 
 had sent out a delegation to secure a peaceful occupation of 
 the town. The shops were closed. All the residents with 
 available means had quit the town, leaving the maire guar 
 dian of their property. Every body understood, that the 
 Prussians were cruel, rapacious, and revengeful in the occu 
 pation of the defenseless towns. But some one must stay, 
 and the unfortunates having buried all portable values 
 awaited the despoilers in speechless terror. As the advent 
 of the invaders had been the subject of discussion at Les 
 Charmettes, and it had been decided that their occupation 
 of this obscure corner would be but temporary, it had been 
 decided to remain. The young men were curious to see the 
 famous conquerors of Sadowa and Sedan, and an hour 
 later, a company was installed in Les Charmettes. Philip 
 was in a fever of apprehension as he saw Elliot s anger 
 sternly flaming in his eyes as the Prussians made themselves 
 masters of the treasures of the chateau. He could have 
 borne this, had the captain been content with mere pillage, 
 but when in tipsy arrogance the German commanded the 
 appearance of the ladies, Elliot could contain himself no 
 longer, and stigmatizing the Herr Baron and captain of 
 Uhlans as a coward and robber, the young man was 
 promptly sent under guard to Meaux, to answer the serious 
 offense of spy and insulter of Prussian majesty. 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 43 * 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 A MISSION TO THE KING. 
 
 O EFORE leaving Paris Trajan learned through the English 
 D journals that the German headquarters were at Reims 
 on the 1 2th, but were to advance to Meaux in the wake of 
 the army then pushing on through Chalons and Chateau 
 Thierry, where the last feeble efforts of the Mobiles had not 
 checked the advance an instant. Trajan arrived in Meaux, a 
 town with which he was very familiar, as it is the center of 
 the pretty country in which the Beaux Arts students are 
 sent to study landscape. The city is thirty miles in an air 
 line from Paris. He reached the town on the morning of the 
 1 2th, and though headquarters had not yet arrived, the 
 king was expected at noon. He had picked his way through 
 the Prussian videttes and, to prevent trouble in case of cap 
 ture, had somewhat changed his appearance. His flowing 
 hair was cropped short, as much for convenience and clean 
 liness as disguise, and he wore an English suit of loud 
 checked stripes. It would have been difficult for any one 
 but an acquaintance to recognize him. He was not sanguine 
 of the success of the mission Tavre had set such store on, 
 which was nothing less than peace, purchased by an alliance 
 with Prussia with the sole condition of territorial integrity 
 for the Republic and any indemnity the conqueror saw fit to 
 exact in mony. He secured lodgings in a quiet street 
 where he had lodged years before and waited patiently 
 for the formidable business he had in hand formidable, 
 because he realized that in the event of failure or dis 
 aster, he was to be sacrificed by a prompt disavowal, as 
 Favre had frankly told him. But his thoughts were far from 
 his mission. 
 
 In a direct line, Somebody, from whom he had not heard 
 for a month was but eight miles from him, and there came 
 
43 2 TRAJAN. 
 
 moments of maddening impulse to desert his duty and fly to 
 her presence, if only for the rapturous instant of an 
 embrace. The house next him was occupied by a provost 
 corps of Saxons, who guarded such non-military prisoners 
 as were detained for examination or transportation to Ger 
 man prisons. He knew the Saxons very well. He had lived 
 among them in Dresden, and in foot tours in the Saxon 
 Switzerland, as the beautiful region of the Saxon upper Elbe 
 is called, he had made many warm friendships among that 
 honest and friendly race. The lieutenant of the guard had 
 been in the Polytechnic in Dresden, and after a bit Trajan 
 found that they had many friends in common. 
 
 Some of them, he learned, had gone to America to escape 
 the war, which was not entered upon enthusiastically at first 
 by the proud little kingdom, which hates the Prussians with a 
 hearty hatred. The honest lieutenant confided to his 
 American friend that he, too, intended to quit the fatherland 
 for America, where the family of his sweetheart had gone 
 the year before and was settled in Milwaukee about which 
 he was eager to hear all that Trajan knew. His eyes 
 sparkled at the description of the stately metropolis of Wis 
 consin, and nothing would satisfy him but copious potations 
 of Strasbourg beer in the neighboring cabaret. Trajan 
 was not at all unresponsive to the advances of the guileless 
 lieutenant, as he reflected that he might prove of use to 
 him in the emergencies that might arise. At five o clock, as 
 he was discussing poetry in the English tongue, which his 
 friend besought him to employ, as he wanted to be ready to 
 speak when he rejoined his " Schatz in Amerika " there was 
 a great clatter in the main street leading to Bossuet s palace. 
 
 They set out to see what it meant. Rousing cheers filled 
 the whole town. The king was driving down the street 
 under the double rows of chestnuts to the palace. " Hoch 
 hack s " in every cadence accompanied the cortege as the 
 royal -traveling carriage, preceded and followed by a retinue 
 as large as a regiment, whirled swiftly by, Neither Bismarck 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 433 
 
 nor Moltke formed part of the train. The latter had ridden 
 forward by another route through the city and taken up his 
 quarters in the commandant s house. Bismarck had driven 
 straight to the residence of the Count de la Malte in the Rue 
 Tronchon, not a stone s throw from Trajan s lodging. 
 
 As the chancellor would probably be fatigued, Trajan simply 
 wrote a note outlining the purpose of his visit, and begging 
 to know when it would be convenient for the count to admit 
 him. To his no small surprise a messenger was with him in 
 twenty minutes, and he was conducted to the statesman s 
 presence. Bismarck was in undress with the short frock 
 of the trooper, and high military boots, but without arms. 
 
 Two secretaries were busy at a table piled with newspapers. 
 Busch, the factotum, was reading aloud a leader from the 
 London Times counseling the conquerors to forbearance 
 and hinting England s interest in a cessation of the conflict. 
 As Trajan entered the reading did not come to an end, but 
 the secretaries went on impassively, apparently indifferent 
 to the new comer. Bismarck, turning from the table where 
 a bottle of champagne stood in a silver cooler and a glass of 
 mixed beer and wine remained half empty, scrutinized the 
 young man then looked puzzled as if striving to recollect 
 something which evaded him. Nodding to the reader to 
 .cease, he turned to Trajan and said curtly : 
 
 " You are from those people who think they govern France 
 the Republican chaps," he said with a half-curious, half- 
 contemptuous interest. " When I saw you last you were 
 from the gentleman at Sedan. Isn t it so ? " 
 
 Trajan colored ; he had hoped that the inscrutable poten 
 tate of the world s destinies would have forgotten his face. 
 He was not, however, embarrassed. He replied deferent 
 ially, but firmly : 
 
 " Your excellency will remember that I then told you I 
 came to you as a Republican, and merely carried you a mes 
 sage which the then sovereign of France dared not confide 
 to any of his own subjects. I was also instructed to ask 
 
434 TRAJAN. 
 
 your excellency if a Republican government might hope to 
 make terms ; in which event, as I understood, Bonaparte was 
 willing to abdicate and withdraw. I now come to ask your 
 excellency if, having achieved your purpose and driven 
 Bonaparte out, you are willing to make peace and an alliance 
 with the Republic. If you are so disposed. I am directed to 
 send a verbal message to Paris by a French citizen and await 
 Minister Favre, who will have the honor of laying the whole 
 matter before you." 
 
 " Why such roundabout proceedings ? Why send a a 
 stranger like you on such business ? Why no credentials ? 
 this is simply preposterous ! How do I know you are not a 
 spy ? " asked the chancellor, shading his eye with his hand, 
 as he set down the replenished glass which he had gulped 
 at a draught. 
 
 " If your excellency will permit me, I will answer each 
 question in order. This informal method of preliminary was 
 adopted by Minister Favre because a suspicion in Paris that 
 he even meditated treating would not only ruin him but 
 involve the government. I was selected, because Gambetta, 
 whom I know very well and have known for some years, 
 recommended me as likely to be more easily disavowed than 
 a Frenchman, who would of course stand in peril of his life, 
 while as for me, I return to my own country when my studies 
 are ended. Your excellency knows I am not a spy, because 
 my passport shows I am American, and there would be 
 little gained by spying an army that outnumbers its 
 adversaries six to one, yes, ten to one. I can readily 
 understand that your excellency, accustomed to see national 
 affairs entrusted to those only who hold titles, finds it diffi 
 cult to comprehend that a great people ruling themselves, 
 make use of the first available instrument that comes to 
 hand." 
 
 The big chancellor, having swallowed another bumper of 
 beer and champagne, emitted a sort of satisfied grunt, as he 
 said dryly : 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 435 
 
 " Ah, your Republics never lack instruments that I 
 own, they only lack sense. Upon my soul, I avow I am 
 puzzled by this new freak in diplomacy. I can give you no 
 answer now. I will see you again in the morning ; Doctor," 
 he added, turning to the spectacled hedge-hog scratching 
 away at the desk, " accompany this gentleman " The con 
 versation had been carried on in French, Trajan not wish 
 ing to reveal his familiarity with German. "Accompany 
 this gentleman to his lodging and let him lay all the matter 
 he has in hand before you, that you may make a memoran 
 dum for the king." 
 
 Trajan was greatly perplexed by this maneuver. He had 
 no idea of stating more to Busch than he had already outlined to 
 the chancellor. The garrulous Saxon, however, relieved him of 
 all embarrassment. He grew amazingly communicative by 
 the time he reached the young man s apartment. Trajan, 
 with dim notions of the feints and falsehoods of diplomacy, 
 was at a loss to penetrate the purpose of all this garrulity. 
 Busch adored Bismarck. His idolatry was the joke of the 
 headquarters. Caricatures of the supple Bozzy were already 
 circulated in the army. It was about this stage of the cam 
 paign that the famous feud between the princes and Bis 
 marck arose. 
 
 The king s familiars, all of them princes or person 
 ages of higher rank, resented the prominence given Bis 
 marck s name in the glories of Prussia. They began stu 
 diously to ignore him ; they prevailed on the king to establish 
 the same rule in diplomacy that existed in the army, 
 namely, that the royal mind alone, or a delegated prince, 
 regulated the diplomacy of the kingdom. Bismarck should 
 be conceded the same relative rank as Von Moltke, Stein- 
 metz, Von Blumenthal, Kamecke, Manteuffel and others, who 
 though really commanding the armies, devising and ordering 
 every detail, were known to the world simply as adjutants, 
 chiefs of staff and the like. To Trajan s immeasurable 
 astonishment, Busch made him the confidant of all this court 
 
436 TRAJAN. 
 
 heartburning, declaring that his venerated chief, as he called 
 Bismarck, was half resolved to throw up his anomalous post 
 and retire to his estates, to teach these meddlesome interlop 
 ers that he and not the king or princes was the inspiring 
 source of all Prussian greatness. The genial old gossip, who 
 for some reason took Trajan for an English correspondent, 
 hinted the benefit to the fatherland of making the situation 
 known delicately in the English press, whence being copied 
 back into the German organs of public opinion, the foolish 
 old king would see that Bismarck could not be overshadowed 
 like Von Moltke, who didn t care a groschen who got the 
 credit, so that he was permitted to carry out his work unmo 
 lested. 
 
 The talk was a riddle to the diplomatic neophyte, and 
 I am afraid the disingenuous devotee of Bismarck thought 
 the young fellow uncommonly dull and unenterprising. In 
 hints not half so tangible he was accustomed to inspiring 
 rhapsodies volumes in length in the home and American 
 journals. He left the young man after an hour and a half 
 of this sprightly mystifying, and it was only two days later 
 when the London journals reached headquarters that Trajan 
 imagined he had the clue. It was stated there, in the well- 
 known phraseology dictated by Bismarck, that " a man had 
 arrived at Meaux from Paris, bearing a flag of truce. 
 
 " The chancellor s secretary was sent out to communicate 
 with him, and found a thin, dark-haired young fellow standing 
 in the court of the chancellor s house. From his talk it was 
 learned that he was an Englishman." Trajan breathed freely 
 at the last sentence. If the journal should reach Paris, 
 the paragraph was too vague to excite suspicion, or if it did, 
 to identify him with the truce-bearer. He spent the evening 
 with his friend, the lieutenant of the provost, after Busch s 
 departure, who announced to him that a dangerous French 
 spy had been brought in from the outposts. He had been 
 sent from Paris early in the campaign to assassinate Bis 
 marck, and two or three times the German army detectives 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 437 
 
 had fallen upon his tracks. There had been four attempts to 
 assassinate Bismarck since the campaign opened, and now he 
 never stirred without a guard of detectives in military uni 
 form. 
 
 Trajan was diverted, but not interested, by the gossip 
 of the lieutenant. He was thinking of a noble mansion to 
 the south of him a few miles, and wondering how it was far 
 ing with the kind friends he had left there, and what a little 
 maiden was doing with a part of himSelf that he had left 
 with her and never cared to get back. All the next morning 
 he waited an intimation from Busch that the chancellor had 
 come to a conclusion. Toward noon he sauntered into the 
 promenade filled with loitering soldiers and townfolk. It 
 was a day of perfect autumn weather. The purple sweeps of 
 the Marne spread in roseate mirage to the dim canopy of 
 smoke that defined the site of the German goal, Paris. The 
 streets were full of the stirring life of the camp. A great blare 
 of trumpets announced from time to time the arrival at the 
 palace gates beyond of a prince or potentate coming to do 
 homage to the aged conqueror, housed in the charming pal 
 ace where Bishop Bossuet wrote those famous homilies 
 that moved the well-beloved Louis from frivolity or wanton 
 ness. 
 
 Bismarck appeared, sitting his charger like the god of 
 war, and loud were the hoch hoctis as he passed, absently 
 gazing at the spectacle. Trajan s eyes casually fell upon a 
 carriage driven slowly towards him. Beside the driver sat a 
 soldier in Prussian uniform dark blue and yellow facings, 
 in this instance. The vehicle had a singularly familiar look. 
 Yes, could he believe his eyes ? There was Bernard, Mrs. 
 Arden s coachman. In the over-mastering delight of the 
 moment, he started up and in two minutes stood beside the 
 carriage. Bernard stopped the horses, without waiting to be 
 told. As he did so, Mrs. Arden, agitated and anxious, looked 
 out where Trajan stood but did not recognize him, as she 
 asked the coachman why he halted. 
 
43$ TRAJAN. 
 
 " Mrs. Arden, don t you know me ? " 
 
 Her glance had not rested on him an instant, but so soon 
 as he spoke a joyous smile of recognition and relief drove 
 away the look of subdued anguish. She held out her hand 
 with impulsive joy, mingled with thanksgiving, and said 
 fervently : 
 
 " I never saw a human face with more delight than yours, 
 Mr. Gray. Trajan, we re in miserable distress. Elliot was 
 arrested last night as a spy. He was lodged at Crecy, we 
 were told by a dreadful officer who made Les Charmettes his 
 headquarters, until this morning, when he marched away. 
 We were not permitted to leave our rooms until the ruffian 
 left. On going to the guard left in Crecy we learned that 
 Elliot had been sent here now can you help us ? I know 
 there s nothing you can t do for I ve heard of your adven 
 tures at Metz and Sedan." 
 
 Now, madame, or sir, as the case may be, if you are 
 interested in the doings of the absurd Trajan, figure the 
 scene to yourself ! The carriage had drawn in to the outer 
 edge of the grass plat that makes a quadruple roadway 
 along the Boulevard Bossuet. The stickler for topographi 
 cal exactness may stand on the very spot, the next time he 
 or she is in Meaux visiting the good bishop s souvenirs, by 
 halting at the round turn where the Rue Bossuet enters the 
 boulevard, debouching from the cathedral and palace. 
 Under the leafy recesses the carriage drew up, and while 
 Mrs. Arden failed to recognize Trajan, I am ashamed to 
 say that he was quite oblivious of her presence, for there 
 was a little scream, ever so soft and startled ; a quick 
 gleam of passing gold from the back seat to the front, as 
 " Somebody " flew to the window facing mamma and thrust 
 out the most bewitching hand that ever was seen, though it 
 trembled like a poor little bird. It was probably to stay 
 its trembling that the staring young man, listening to the 
 mother and devouring the daughter, retained it in his two 
 tenacious fists, quite as a matter of course and unconscious 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 439 
 
 of the curious and admiring glances of the soldiers who had 
 also caught sight of the flash of gold. 
 
 A second later Trajan was in the carnage, seated next to 
 the golden-haired and listening the more intently because 
 of a divided mind to the particulars of the mishaps at Les 
 Charmettes. Elliot s conduct he comprehended perfectly. 
 Generous, impetuous, ignorant of the absolute lawlessness 
 and unaccountability of men and officers in war, he could 
 understand how he had indulged in the folly of resenting the 
 German s brutality. He did not believe that Mrs. Arden 
 could do any thing with the headquarters people, without 
 appealing to the American minister, who stood well with 
 Bismarck, and was entrusted with the interests of German 
 citizens in France during the war. The utmost to be hoped 
 would be a safe conduct for the family to Paris, as it was 
 manifest that Crecy was no longer a refuge, subject as it was 
 to daily incursions of the sort that had caused the 
 catastrophe. 
 
 " But come to my hotel and we will advise over the matter." 
 So to the trim little inn the three went, the soldier remain 
 ing rigidly on duty 1 as he had been ordered to take orders 
 concerning the ladies, only from superiors at headquarters. 
 He showed Trajan his written authority which said simply: 
 " Pass the bearer through all posts of the Marne, until 2oth 
 September." Trajan took care to have the man well 
 bestowed, himself stopping to drink briiderschaft in a big 
 pot of beer, while the ladies were removing their wraps. 
 Somehow the trouble seemed a small matter as it was retold 
 to Trajan. He listened with such a dreamy air of serenity, 
 that the tears which had glistened in Mrs. Arden s kind eyes 
 dissolved insensibly. While, as for Edith, a stranger would 
 have accused her of an indifference verging on inhumanity 
 as to the fate of her brother. 
 
 When every thing had been told, Trajan said tranquilly, 
 " It would be wrong to deceive you as to Elliot s peril, but 
 it is not beyond remedy. I have a suspicion that the poor 
 
440 TRAJAN. 
 
 fellow is in the next house to my lodgings, which has been, 
 since the Germans came, the prison of the provost guard, 
 where political culprits are detained, until sent to Germany." 
 
 He then related the conversation of the lieutenant, 
 and Mrs. Arden agreed that the circumstances tallied 
 with the event. " Now," continued Trajan, " we have 
 but small choice of alternatives. I am to see Bismarck, 
 I don t know what moment. I will lay the case before him 
 and learn what he advises, for you know that a procedure 
 once begun in a Prussian court or camp, no power, not even 
 the king, can arrest it. I will meanwhile write out your nar 
 rative, which I am sorry to say is of little value without 
 Philip as witness to attest it. 1 will write it out all the 
 same, with a statement of my own vouching for Elliot s 
 guiltlessness of the charge of spying. This done, we must 
 trust in Providence." But he was not destined to act as 
 Mrs. Arden s amanuensis. He had barely sat down to his 
 work, in which he seemed to be helplessly dependent upon 
 the services of Edith in divers silly details, when a mes 
 senger whom he recognized as Busch s, saluting with stiff 
 precision said : 
 
 " Herr Doctor Busch wishes you to attend at the Count s 
 Bureau at once." 
 
 " You must write out the facts, and if I can I will 
 send for them, in case there seems to be time enough for 
 you to have "written them. What a misfortune that we didn t 
 do that first for papers have poor chance at headquarters 
 in war, when the fever of battle makes even the most rigid 
 officers indifferent to routine." Busch received the impro 
 vised diplomate at the door, whispering confidentially : 
 
 " The chief is in superb humor, he has just seen Favre s 
 announcemept to foreign courts of the attitude of the 
 Republic, and he will incline to treat, but you must have 
 no reserves." 
 
 All this was incomprehensible to Trajan, who had no idea 
 that he was distrusted by Bismarck, who had been unable to 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 441 
 
 believe such an envoy real. But as he afterward learned, 
 Favre, not less ruse than his antagonist, had taken precau 
 tion soon after Trajan s departure to apprise Bismarck 
 through the American minister that the man arriving at 
 Meaux on the i5th might be trusted. It was that message 
 that gained the envoy his second interview, and a markedly 
 more considerate treatment. Bismarck, who seemed fond 
 of costumes as a subaltern in a garrison town, was resplend 
 ent in the white uniform of the cuirassiers. He had substi 
 tuted cigars for champagne, and a mass of volumes whose 
 place was marked by gaps in the Count de la Malte s 
 shelves, indicated that war and statecraft did not wholly 
 occupy that colossal mind. He held in his hand as Trajan 
 neared him, a thick volume, whose title, conspicuous on the 
 back, struck the visitor with surprise : " Daily watchwords 
 and texts of the Moravian Brethren" while open on the 
 table, with a penknife as a mark lay, " Daily Refreshment, 
 for Believing Christians." The incident struck the young 
 man with a thrill of loathing that he feared would appear in 
 his face. 
 
 " This arch hypocrite," as he wrote afterward, " who 
 uses truth as another uses falsehood, whose youth had 
 been one prolonged, brutal debauch, whose political primacy 
 had been won by the denial of every right of the people, 
 whose policy was honey-combed with such craft as the first 
 Bonaparte himself would have shrunk from ; this minister 
 who had never kept an oath, this diplomate who had never 
 kept faith ; this man who had never shrunk from treachery 
 public or private, sat calmly before him, with works of relig 
 ion spread out to make the credulous believe that there was 
 some groundwork of morality in his cynical depravity." 
 
 These reflections could, of course, only occur to a wild 
 young visionary like Trajan, fascinated by the old-fashioned 
 theories that rule men and women but they were, I fear, 
 written on his face distinctly, for the chancellor suddenly 
 catching the young man s eye, actually changed color if a 
 
44 2 TRAJAN. 
 
 front of bronze can change color, and said with an impera 
 tive ratchety growl : 
 
 " You may say to Favre that the king authorizes me to 
 receive his propositions. A flag of truce goes in at mid 
 night, to-morrow ; you can send your messenger with the 
 party. A safe conduct will be supplied you." Saying this 
 he turned to mark the interview at an end, and resumed the 
 religious works cast aside for the moment, as if to reprove 
 the skeptic for doubting the sincerity of his occupation. But 
 for Trajan, there was another clause in the protocol, that to 
 him far outweighed the Republic, I m forced to own, for I 
 should like to make the young man appear consistent, a sort 
 of ideal Brutus, willing, nay anxious, to immolate his affec 
 tions and other objects to the cause of universal ameliora 
 tion, embodied in the beatitudes of his non-militant social 
 ism. His voice trembled a little as he asked his excel 
 lency s permission to call his attention to a very grave 
 complication in the rights of neutrals. 
 
 " What Pottstousand) you give yourself the airs of an 
 accredited ambassador Donnerwetter, but this is as good 
 as a play of Lessing. Ach ac/i," and the big warrior, 
 ignoring the role of devotee he had been posing in, burst 
 into a shout of not wholly hilarious laughter pausing 
 capriciously as you have seen a mastiff baying at a tantaliz 
 ing enemy and breaking into suppressed growl and whine 
 he said with mock ceremony: " Eh bien monsieur ram- 
 bassadeur give yourself the trouble to acquaint us of the 
 fonds of your inclination, and believe in our benevolent 
 disposition to comply with your demand," and he leaned 
 back in the large arm-chair choking with his own facetious- 
 ness. But as Trajan modestly and succinctly narrated the 
 outrage at Les Charmettes and wound up by a respectful and 
 eloquent plea to the chancellor to remember that the vic 
 tims were the countrymen of the minister, who at the 
 expense of much obloquy and the risk of a good deal more 
 than mere discomfort, was protecting oppressed Germans in 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 443 
 
 Paris, the early scorn and malevolent humor disappeared 
 from the strong and inspiring face. 
 
 " This is all true ? " he asked, rising and walking the floor 
 in very real perturbation. 
 
 " Yes, your excellency, if you will deign to send for the 
 mother and sister of the young man they will repeat it 
 to you." 
 
 " But they were not present, you tell me, at the en 
 counter? " 
 
 " No, your excellency." 
 
 " Then to see them will be but wasting time. Where is 
 the cousin, the young man ? If you can produce him the 
 affair may be adjusted otherwise the king himself can not 
 stop the proceedings." 
 
 " I m afraid the young man has fled to Paris " Trajan 
 had not dared relate Philip s exploit. 
 
 " Then I give you no assurance. I will have the papers 
 of accusation examined and apprise you of the result. 
 Meanwhile, I must say to you that the case is serious. 
 Several of the same sort have arisen since we entered 
 Lorraine. People pretending to be English, but really 
 French subjects, have maltreated and insulted our officers, 
 and a month ago very stringent orders were issued that all 
 such cases should be referred to a special tribunal com 
 posed of military advocates, and with powers of life and 
 death. If your friend can bring no ocular witnesses, the 
 court is bound to take the accuser s statement and sentence 
 accordingly." 
 
 lie turned his back, and understanding the dismissal, 
 Trajan withdrew, groaning : " Oh, Philip, Philip, what 
 madness impelled you to deprive us of the only means 
 of rescuing the victim ?" The papers were completed when 
 lie re-entered the room at the inn, and, though not hoping 
 much from them, they were despatched to Busch, with a 
 prayer to lay them before the chancellor at the first favor 
 able opportunity. As may be imagined, the mother and 
 
444 TRAJAN. 
 
 sister were not inspirited by the tale Trajan had to tell, 
 though he softened and colored it as much as he dared. 
 
 "But did he give us permission to see Elliot?" asked the 
 mother anxiously as the story came to an end. Trajan 
 started guiltily. He had entirely forgotten that. He would 
 run back and make the request. But when lie got to the 
 door access was denied him. The count, he was informed, 
 was occupied in affairs of state, and had given orders to 
 admit no one. Reproaching himself bitterly for his shame 
 ful forgetfulness, he hastened to his friend the lieutenant of 
 the provost. That cordial Saxon s eyes lighted with pleas 
 ure. He instantly proposed chess and beer. Though burn 
 ing with impatience, Trajan saw no other way of getting at 
 what he wanted. He was strong at chess and had discom 
 fited the Saxon in several previous encounters, but, absorbed 
 in his project, he was hardly over the first gambit, his knight 
 wandering helplessly among pawns and bishops, when with 
 a shout of exultation the delighted lieutenant routed him with 
 pawn and bishop, only less ignominiously than by the " fool s 
 mate." This put him in beaming humor, and he confided 
 to his vanquished friend that he had been playing with the 
 spy. 
 
 " The spy ? " echoed Trajan innocently. " What spy ? " 
 
 " Why, the fellow that was brought in last night. He 
 says he s an American, by the way. Perhaps you may 
 know him. His name is Arden." 
 
 " Mate," said Trajan, closing in on the king with a pawn, 
 and uncovering queen and knight bearing on the king. 
 
 " Adi, blitzen ! how sly you are! Another game," he 
 pleaded, as Trajan arose ; " that s a good fellow, just one." 
 Trajan, protesting that he must be away at once, sat down 
 to the rubber, and after just enough contest to make the 
 victory worth while, he rose as the enraptured Saxon cried, 
 " Mate ! " Hurrying back to the Rue Tronchon, Trajan 
 scribbled a line to Busch begging him for a moment s 
 speech. The Herr doctor, beaming in the effulgence of a 
 
A MISSION TO THE KING. 445 
 
 recent ray of the chancellor s sunshine, came to the young 
 man, confiding to him that there was no angel in the heav 
 enly hierarchy so good, so great, so perfect, " so ivunder- 
 bar and prachtvoll " as the dear, the adored chief. When 
 Trajan had succeeded in arousing him to actual things, he 
 appealed to his kind heart to aid a wretched mother and 
 sister to get speech of the son and brother detained at the 
 provost guard. The sentimental doctor was visibly moved, 
 as much by the delicate flattery in which Trajan had man 
 aged to insinuate his potency, as by the pathetic flight of the 
 wretched family. 
 
 " Ach Gott, Ach Gott, das ist aber Schadlich es ist but I 
 will see I will see if it can be managed. The chief doesn t 
 like to meddle in Moltke s matters, but as this is more civil 
 than military I will do what I can wait ! " He shambled 
 into the count s apartment, rubbing his spectacles, on which 
 there was a suspicious moisture visible. Five minutes 
 passed ; a half hour Trajan s heart swelled with sickening 
 suspense. The guard was changed as he sat distractedly 
 on the stone bench ; couriers passed in and out ; great 
 personages, whose appearance brought the whole detail to 
 alignment and salute, came, entered and disappeared. The 
 clock of the cathedral was booming five from its brazen but 
 melodiously reverberating tongue, as the Herr doctor, his 
 hedge-hog but kindly face beaming with delight, appeared 
 waving a paper in triumph. 
 
 " There, isn t our glorious chief an archangel of mercy as 
 well as wisdom ? Give that to the arme mutterchen und 
 schwesterchen odious language the French that has no 
 equivalent for those two gemuthlich and leiblich words. 
 Take that and rejoice their traurige herzen, stolid English 
 man that you are, who can not comprehend our machtvoll 
 chief, nor even look grateful for such God-like condescen 
 sion," and he pushed Trajan away with good-humored 
 impatience. " Dummer kopf, I have a great mind to carry 
 the message myself ; you take it so coolly as though the 
 
446 TRAJAN. 
 
 chancellor s sign manual were such an every day affair. 
 
 But Trajan, aghast at the thought of the good doctor s 
 appearance before the bewildered ladies, fled like a shot, the 
 doctor s grunts of laughter sounding after him. When he 
 was safe from observation he opened the paper and found 
 that it was a permit for the Frau and Frdulein Arden to see 
 the prisoner Arden in the presence of a provost guard for a 
 half hour, and signed " Bismarck, Chancellor." 
 
 Discouraged by Trajan s long absence and dreading some 
 new calamity, Mrs. Arden was stretched dejectedly on the 
 stiff sofa, while Edith with swollen eyes sat beside her 
 caressing and comforting her. Trajan s face was like a 
 burst of sunshine when a curtained window is thrown open. 
 It brought an almost ludicrous revival to the anxious group. 
 Mrs. Arden was so nimble in resuming wrap and bonnet 
 that when Edith (who had by some mischance lost her hand 
 in Trajan s and found herself too trembling to withdraw it 
 from his lips) looked up, there was nothing to be done in 
 the way of filial duty. 
 
 Trajan was to show them the entrance, but was not himself 
 to appear. Furthermore he charged them, as they hoped 
 for Elliot s liberation, not to breathe a syllable of his pres 
 ence in Meaux, because every word would be heard by the 
 lieutenant. Edith was to mark with minute attention the 
 exact location of Elliot s apartment and every thing that 
 would help guide an outsider in case a rescue were the only 
 means of relieving the prisoner. Thus instructed the two 
 ladies sallied out buoyantly, and Trajan showing them the 
 doorway marked by a sentinel, sauntered across the street 
 to keep an eye on the expedition. He saw the ladies stop 
 timidly and speak to the sentinel, who called to the corporal, 
 who, shown the paper, touched his cap deferentially and the 
 ladies disappeared. Mrs. Arden would have been shocked, 
 I m sure, if she had known the thoughts that were passing 
 in Trajan s mind during that memorable half hour. 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PA WN. 447 
 
 She sat with Elliot s hand in hers, while Edith by fits and 
 starts wandered from corner to corner, alternately fondling 
 the prisoner and chattering with the admiring lieutenant, 
 who did his disagreeable duty with all the delicacy of a 
 young fellow dazzled by such innocence and beauty, and re 
 minded by it of his blue-eyed Wilhelmina, among strangers 
 by the great waters of the schone inland meer that Trajan 
 had so picturesquely described. Elliot supposed Philip to 
 be with his mother and sister, and they did not undeceive 
 him. When the time came for parting, Elliot whispered in 
 English to Edith that she had made a conquest of the guard 
 and might prevail upon that sentimental youth to wink at 
 his escape. The lieutenant s eyes met Edith s as she looked 
 up blushing. She was sure that he had not only heard the 
 playful speech, but understood it. She was not left in 
 doubt on the point, for as they came out into the office he 
 said with respectful tenderness : 
 
 " I, too, have a mother and sister, Fraulein, and you may 
 be sure that if it in any way depended on me your brother 
 would be a free man this instant and and I should be re 
 warded by a sweet girl I love in your country." The 
 mother and daughter gave the honest lad their hands, and 
 there were tears in other than the ladies eyes as they left 
 Elliot to uncertainty, consoled by the thought that he had 
 so humane a jailer. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PAWN. 
 
 THERE is a consecutiveness in the incidents forced upon 
 us in life which fairly palsies the doctrines of chance. 
 When we depart from our normal duties and occupations, 
 in no matter what sphere, the first adventure in the under 
 taking inevitably involves a sequence of the unexpected, 
 which, when we read, we set down as the fabric of the 
 
44$ TRAJAN, 
 
 poets vision. Read any biography your eye may light on 
 in your well-stored shelves, from Plutarch and Pliny to 
 Boswell and Trevelyan, and you will be struck by the truth 
 of this and forced to own its application. Did you ever 
 study the maneuvers of the ant, separated by chance from 
 the home highway ? How he encounters the ambuscaded 
 sparrow, how warily he circumvailates every dubious 
 debouch from the path he has set himself, how he invents 
 defense and overcomes prodigies, until finally arriving at 
 the common camp and finding the guards set and the por 
 tals closed, he intrenches himself under a neighboring mound, 
 with every inlet sealed, to await the morning sally of his 
 comrades ? I have before now watched with wonder and 
 delight a common spider, taken by curiosity, or malevolent 
 higher power of the human sort, and set upon a miniature 
 island in a miniature lakelet. I have seen the undaunted 
 little architect set out philosophically on a tour of inspection 
 around the entire coast of the tiny land. I have seen him, 
 without a single appliance of meteorological science, gauge 
 the wind, secure a stray leaf and set his argonaut sail for 
 the mainland, and arrive there as composedly as Columbus 
 at Santa Cruz. More persevering students tell of the little 
 wizard thrown Crusoe-like on an island, studying the wind, 
 measuring the strait and fastening one end of his web to an 
 eminence, launching himself in a web-woven balloon and 
 carried by the wind to terra firma. An exploit is like a lie 
 to make exigencies come to a sane conclusion, a dozen 
 more must be invented to support it. 
 
 Trajan had nothing of the adventurous in him. He was 
 not even a romanticist in literature or art. He was a realist. 
 The monotone of Corot was his ideal of contemporary paint 
 ing, the early prose of George Elliot his highest admiration 
 in romance. Dickens, with his hair-breadth escapes and 
 invraisemblable episodes, he abhorred. Thackeray he delighted 
 in, but more as a master wit than novelist. So it may be 
 readily inferred that his present anomalous situation was 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PA WN. 449 
 
 neither congenial nor natural. He did rot shrink from 
 peril, but he held all sorts of compromise of man s personal 
 safety, as a proof of recklessness or wanton disregard of the 
 humanities that rule well-regulated lives. He summed up 
 the predicament humorously, as one where adventures had 
 been thrust upon him, by no seeking of his own. But if he 
 had reflected a moment he would have seen that the very 
 air he breathed was full of the exciting and unexpected. 
 How little had the dull king, lolling in his episcopal grace s 
 cushions yonder, imagined two months before that, ere the 
 crimson of autumn had dyed the vernal tresses of summer, 
 he should be virtual lord of France, with his girdle of iron 
 and his scepter of death around the walls of Paris ! 
 
 Trajan had secured his courier to Jules Favre, who bore 
 the message agreed upon. He was despatched so soon as 
 the chancellor had made known his disposition, and now he 
 was free to devote himself for the time being to Elliot. 
 Edith had taken note of the room her brother occupied. 
 She drew a plan, which gave Trajan the interior. His next 
 business was to reconnoiter the approaches from the outside, 
 like a prudent commander taking every contingency into 
 account. He did not confide his projects to Mrs. Arden or 
 Edith, though the latter conjectured the purpose of the 
 room plan. Late that night Busch sent for the young man, 
 and with a very serious and pitying expression, told him that 
 Elliot s case was very grave ; that the officer had made his 
 charges in due form attested by two witnesses, and that 
 without a miracle in his favor, the youth would, at the 
 very least, be sent to the prison of Spandau, until the close 
 of the war. " All that can be done," he added, " is for 
 Madame Arden to go at once to Paris and lay the matter 
 before the American minister. He may be able to get the 
 king to interfere. The chancellor can not and does not 
 feel like urging, because, as.it is, the king feels restive under 
 the dominating sway of the minister. I have procured a 
 safe conduct for the ladies to go to Paris," 
 
45 TRAJAN. 
 
 " And the prisoner what is to become of him ? " asked 
 Trajan, striving to speak calmly. 
 
 " He will be forwarded to Cologne to-morrow. The order 
 is already issued. But you need have no fear ; he will be 
 well treated." Grasping the kind doctor s hand, Trajan 
 thanked him with an emotion that he never thought he 
 should feel for an agent of the man of blood and iron. 
 
 He waited until dinner was ended before distressing the 
 ladies with the sinister news. He modified the danger as much 
 as he could, and spoke hopefully of the intervention of the 
 American minister, who was a warm friend of Mrs. Arden. 
 They were to set out at midnight, and Trajan advised that 
 they should stop at Crecy en route, take Mrs. Briscoe, Bella, 
 and Kate, and order their household furnishing and the like 
 packed, and leave the house in the care of the maire. It was 
 then eight o clock ; by nine they could reach Crecy, and at 
 midnight join* the convoy as it passed through the village of 
 St. Germain on the road to Paris. 
 
 " But surely you will accompany us ? " asked Mrs. Arden 
 anxiously. 
 
 * No. I am compelled to remain here. I shall not quit 
 the place until I learn what befalls Elliot." He glanced 
 at Edith as he spoke, and she, putting her arms around her 
 mother s neck, said cheerfully : 
 
 " Of course, mamma, Trajan must stay while we go to 
 work for the release at the other end of the line." 
 
 A half hour later the carriage with the German guard 
 sharing the seat with Bernard drove rapidly away in the 
 darkness, laden with heavy hearts, and leaving one at least, 
 not light, though there was love-light in the eye that fol 
 lowed the vehicle and caught the last glimpse of the pallid 
 face leaning out of the window. By nine o clock the town 
 was profoundly quiet. Save the regular tramp of the 
 sentries before the public buildings, there were only occa 
 sional steps heard on the pavement. The cathedral clock 
 Struck nine as Trajan went to his room. Unlocking a closet 
 
s KX1GHT TAKES THE KING S PA WN. 451 
 
 he took out a pair of common cotton trowsers, a dark gray 
 blouse, and a peasant s hat, and a pair of wooden shoes. He 
 took a revolver from a drawer, slipped it with a small supply 
 of cartridges into the capacious pocket of the blouse and tied 
 the whole together in a bundle. Opening the door into the 
 hall, and finding the coast clear, he stole cautiously up 
 another flight of stairs, and then, by means of a ladder, to 
 the roof. In a few minutes he was on the low mansard 
 under which Elliot lay imprisoned. Taking a slender but 
 stout cord from his pocket he fastened it to the bundle, and 
 leaning over the water trough, lowered it almost to the 
 ground. Then, tying the cord to the lead projection of the 
 water-spout, he slipped back to his own room, blew out the 
 light, and ran down the stairs noisily to the street. 
 
 An instant later he was cordially welcomed by the lieuten 
 ant, who was radiant at the prospect of his beloved game. 
 Trajan affirmed gayly that he was just in the humor to play 
 and meant to vanquish the best in five games if it took till 
 morning. The delighted lieutenant agreed with all his heart. 
 The games went on silently, interrupted only by copious 
 potations of beer, which Trajan insisted on sharing with the 
 guards, a breach of discipline which the lieutenant good-natur 
 edly permitted in return for the bliss of a night s unbroken 
 schach spiel. The clanging tongue of St. Etienne s bell 
 droned out midnight. The fifth game had been played, and 
 Trajan had won three when he suggested that as he was 
 dead tired and sleepy he would lie down for twenty minutes 
 and be ready to renew the wager. The lieutenant hailed 
 the suggestion with delight, and conducted Trajan into a 
 hallway at right angles with the bureau. " Here is my cot. 
 I will allow you twenty-five minutes. So make the best of 
 your time." 
 
 Trajan uttered a loud and prolonged yawn. 
 
 " Sh sh " said the Saxon. " It s bad enough to be con 
 fined without being kept awake. Have some sympathy for 
 the unfortunate. The American is next door," 
 
452 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan, laughing, threw himself on the cot and his host with 
 drew. No sooner had his steps sounded on the floor of the 
 outer room than Trajan, rising, groped softly, unshod, to the 
 open door. The hall was in profound darkness. Cautiously 
 feeling his way, he reached the door of the room in which 
 Elliot was confined. Edith had described it as bolted on 
 the outside, and in an instant he had slipped back the bolt. 
 He grew weak with anguish, when, having turned the handle, 
 the door remained immovable. He ran his hand down 
 possibly another bolt no but nearly up to his breast, a 
 key was in the lock. He turns it softly. Now the door 
 swings out, toward him. The room is dark as the hall, but 
 he can tell by a gentle breathing where the cot is, and has the 
 plan of the room sketched by Edith vividly in his mind. 
 
 He bends over the sleeper and gently shakes him, whisper 
 ing in his ear distinctly, but not above his breath, " Don t 
 speak ; make no noise ; be ready ; sh Elliot startled, for 
 tunately does not cry out. He starts in wonder and in a thrill 
 ing of suspense, waits. Trajan reaches the window, which is 
 guarded by horizontal bars, but wide enough apart to enable 
 him to haul the bundle through. He opens it as he returns 
 to Elliot, puts his mouth to his ear, and whispers, " Dress 
 quickly." By Trajan s help, Elliot is in the clothes within two 
 minutes. " Now I ll go ahead. Carry your shoes in your 
 hand. When we reach the angle leading to the bureau, I 
 will enter, and when you see the light go out, push boldly to 
 the doorway. I will distract the guards from seeing you." 
 
 "Who is it? who is it befriending me?" exclaimed 
 Elliot, gluing his lips to Trajan s ear. 
 
 "Sh ! follow me." He closed the door as they emerged, 
 and taking Elliot s hand led him to the lieutenant s cham 
 ber. " Now," he continued as he slipped his own shoes on, 
 " stay here till I disappear around the corner of the wall. 
 Then follow and stand there until you see the lights go out ; 
 then go to your left, to the railway, and follow that to the 
 canal. Avoid the German pickets keep due west until you 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PAWN. 453 
 
 reach Paris ; there let the French pickets capture you." 
 Steps were heard in the bureau. Both stood in breathless 
 suspense. The steps receded and an echo could be heard 
 on the pavement outside. 
 
 " Now be ready be cool, keep your wits about you, and 
 don t use your pistol with soldiers in any event." Saying this 
 Trajan passed noiselessly through the hallway, turned the 
 corner and entered the bureau. The lieutenant was not to 
 be seen. Taking out a cigar, Trajan offered one to the 
 guard who stood sleepily leaning against the door. He 
 came forward to get it and as he did so Trajan dropped into 
 the chair. 
 
 " I m too lazy to get up for a light," he said yawning, 
 " give me the candle." As the soldier came toward him with 
 it, Trajan tipped the chair backward in the favorite attitude 
 of his compatriots and the soldier had to pass to his side to 
 hand him the light. It was barely in Trajan s hand when 
 the chair slipped, and as he fell backward the light was 
 adroitly quenched, while with a laugh he seized the soldier 
 to aid him to arise. But he was unaccountably clumsy and 
 managed in his struggles to take up a minute or more. It 
 took another for the soldier to find the candle, which proved 
 to have been broken beyond use. 
 
 " Ach Gott" exclaimed the soldier impatiently, " there s 
 plenty in the cupboard." One was soon found and lighted. 
 Trajan looked anxiously toward the passage and then went 
 to the door. The street was perfectly tranquil. He asked 
 for the lieutenant, and the soldier with a wink said he had 
 been invited for a walk. 
 
 " In that case I will go home and turn in ; tell him he can 
 have his revenge by coming to my room if he feels disposed." 
 With this Trajan in devout gratitude for the chances which 
 had aided his ruse, and the lieutenant s sudden exit, not the 
 least among them, returned to his lodging. Leaving his 
 shoes at his door he stole to the roof and secured the tell 
 tale cord, which on reaching his room he cut up into bits and 
 
454 TKAJAX. 
 
 disposed of by wrapping around a rickety bedstead and in 
 other fragmentary ways to mislead investigation should sus 
 picion be directed toward him. He had been in bed an 
 hour or more and fallen into a doze when he was aroused by 
 a loud knock at the door. He struck a match and throwing 
 the door open, the lieutenant stood before him leering and 
 half tipsy. 
 
 "You deserve to have a week s katzenjammer" he said 
 unsteadily, " for de&erting your post. But I m bound to 
 finish the game." He had the board and chessmen and 
 Trajan, nothing loth, sat down with the young enthusiast. 
 But he was not in condition to play. His moves were wild 
 and haphazard. He was disastrously mated. Rising, he 
 threw himself on Trajan s bed and was soon fast asleep. 
 Trajan sat at the open window and dozed fitfully until the 
 hot sun shining in aroused him. The lieutenant was sleep 
 ing peacefully. Trajan dressed himself noiselessly, mean 
 ing to go out and leave the sleeper undisturbed but he 
 opened his eyes, rubbed them, and not comprehending the 
 strange surroundings, looked in puzzled uncertainty at 
 Trajan. 
 
 <c Have you slept off your spree, or are you \nkatzenjammer 
 condition ? " asked the latter, as the officer rose to a sitting 
 posture. He realized all, and with a conscience-stricken 
 exclamation asked tragi-comically " How could you let me 
 remain here all night ? " 
 
 " No harm done, old fellow ; nobody will be any the 
 wiser." 
 
 " But there is harm ; if it should be found out I should 
 be disgraced and cashiered." 
 
 " Oh, it won t be found out, no one will know of it but 
 your own guards, and you can 
 
 A tramping of heavy feet was heard coming to the door. 
 There was a loud knock and it was pushed open before 
 Trajan could bid the intruder enter. It was the landlord, 
 with one of the lieutenant s guards, groaning and quavering. 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PA WN. 455 
 
 " What in God s name has happened ? Why are you 
 here are you an idiot ? Speak ! " cried the enraged 
 officer. 
 
 "Ac/i Gott, Ach Gott!" groaned the soldier. " He is 
 gone the spy has escaped." 
 
 With a moan, that was almost a shriek, the terrified lieu 
 tenant pushed the trembling soldier aside, nearly overturn 
 ing the gaping landlord, who, ignorant of German, thought 
 his company had gone crazy. Trajan told him the trouble 
 and there was no consternation on the Gaul s face as the 
 other turned away to conceal his own sentiment. 
 
 " When did he get away, and how ? " he asked the soldier, 
 who stood dazed, not knowing whether to go or stay. 
 
 " Ach Gott, bewahr I know not. It was five o clock 
 when I knocked at the door to give him his coffee. The 
 bolt was firm, but the key was not in the door. There was 
 no answer from the inside, and I called the corporal, who 
 was just relieving the guard. The door was broken open ; 
 the spy s clothes were on the floor, but he was nowhere 
 to be seen. Ach Gott, what will happen ? We shall be 
 shot we shall be imprisoned." 
 
 Trajan pacified the poor fellow, and found the effort not 
 at all difficult. It s wonderful the eloquent reserves of con 
 solation we find to mitigate the misfortunes of others, that 
 we are conscious of having a share in bringing about. 
 Trajan felt that he could have exhorted with an angel s 
 tongue, if the whole Prussian army instead of the poor out 
 witted guard had been bemoaning the same or a similar 
 event. He sent the poor fellow away with money to get 
 beer, and began to reflect on his own situation. Should the 
 details of the night reach Bismarck s ears, he had no hope 
 of hoodwinking that penetrating intelligence, but he 
 counted on the fact of the escape not reaching him, 
 since the incident was not within his immediate jurisdic 
 tion to investigate. At noon he received a message from 
 Busch to come to him. The old doctor scrutinized 
 
45 6 TRAJAtf. 
 
 him sharply, as he asked dryly if he had heard of the 
 escape. 
 
 Yes, he had heard. How did it happen ? But the doctor 
 retorted crossly that he couldn t be expected to know. He 
 had great news for him, however. Jules Favre would be at 
 Meaux at five o clock, and had asked that he, Trajan, 
 be permitted to join him ; and here ends Trajan s diplo 
 matic exploits. Jules Favre s fruitless mission to Ferrieres, 
 where Bismarck forced him to follow on a ridiculous game of 
 hide and seek, is part of the bouffe history of that sad time, 
 but as it did not concern any of the persons whose destiny 
 forms the woof of this record, I leave Bismarck and the 
 honest Busch, bombastic, egotistic, cruel at times, but in the 
 main softened by much of that gemiithlichkeit, the absence 
 of which he so vigorously laments, in that edifying master- 
 work in which he apotheosizes his divinity of blood and iron. 
 
 While Paris was opening its eyes to the unwonted 
 experiences of imprisonment, the next morning, Trajan, 
 with the unhappy Favre, passed secretly, by connivance of 
 the military, into the northern gate, and an hour later he was 
 again in the Rue Dragon, affording infinite comfort to Betty 
 and Trip. But impatient to learn the fate of the Ardens, 
 so soon as he had bathed and dressed, he drove to the Rue 
 Chaillot to learn their whereabouts. The benignant face of 
 the minister was well known to the young man, and his im 
 patience was soon satisfied by learning that the Ardens, Mrs. 
 Briscoe with Philip and Kate were at their home in the Rue 
 Fran9ois Premier. Trajan was not a model of the repose 
 that marks the caste of the Vere de Vere, as he told the serv 
 ant to make known that he was come. In the great drawing- 
 room, not yet relieved of its summer mufflings of brown 
 holland, he recalled the suspensive state of his faculties on 
 that May day five months before, when Elliot, eager in his 
 romantic constancy and boyish devotion, presented him to 
 the friends who had since so completely changed the turbid 
 current of his life. 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KINCS PA WN. 457 
 
 He was in the humor now with new hope at heart to smile 
 at the odd mingling of the comic and tragic in the topsy 
 turvy drama. He was in such high spirits, so buoyantly 
 confident of the future, so radiantly content with the 
 present, that he contemplated Theo s whimsical handiwork 
 in bringing him to Elliot and then alienating him, with 
 humorous wonder, rather than hatred. Had the siren come 
 within his reach, he would, perhaps, have made recondite 
 jokes on the hegira of Ulysses and his escape from the 
 Circean spell. His reflections were at that moment inter 
 rupted by exclamations ; both his hands were snatched by 
 Miss McNair, and I verily believe she would have given him 
 a vicarious hug if the depressing Philip had not been among 
 the chattering group. They were all there, and every one 
 had a question to ask, either by word of mouth or the im 
 perative interrogatory of the eye. His tale, so far as pru 
 dent, was soon told, and then looking about him he asked : 
 
 " Where s Elliot ? " 
 
 " Where is Elliot ? " echoed Mrs. Arden blankly, sinking 
 into a mountain of rustling Holland. " Why, haven t you 
 brought him with you ? You didn t leave him in in 
 prison - 
 
 Trajan recounted the events of the famous chess tourna 
 ment and the check to the king, as he picturesquely styled 
 Elliot s flight under the nose of the guard. "But," he con 
 tinued, "there s no cause to worry. Meaux is thirty miles 
 from here. Elliot will be compelled to lie quiet during the 
 day and make his way at night, when the camp fires will 
 warn him from Prussian outposts. It will take him at least 
 three nights, unaccustomed as he is to woods and fields. It 
 will perhaps be a week before we get track of him, for we 
 must count on detentions at the French outposts, and 
 indeed you need not be surprised if he is refused admission 
 to Paris at all ; Had you not been sent under flag of truce, 
 by the intermediation of the American minister, you would 
 not have been admitted." 
 
45 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 " I can affirm that," said Philip eagerly. " It was only by 
 invoking the American minister, through the timely pres 
 ence of Trochu at the outer forts, that I got in. I was 
 regarded alternately as a Prussian spy and a Bonapartist 
 and treated very cavalierly by the Mobiles, whose patriotism 
 exceeds their sense of subordination or proficiency in dis 
 cipline." 
 
 " But tell me, Kent you who pose as a sage and some 
 times cynic, how in the world came you to play such a blue- 
 fire scene with the German ? I can understand Elliot giv 
 ing way to his indignation, ignorant as he is of the arbitrary 
 and lawless methods of a conquering army, but you a 
 soldier and a sage the affair is beyond me." 
 
 Philip laughed and reddened. " Now that all has turned 
 out well, I confess to some surprise myself," he said. " But 
 you have no idea of the intolerable and insulting conduct 
 of that ruffian, Rauberkeller was there ever an apter 
 name ? I can readily imagine him robbing cellars, as his 
 name implies, all his life. I was exasperated beyond endur 
 ance, and I thought an outbreak would be more likely to 
 teach the fellow that he had no longer a timid and brow 
 beaten Frenchman to deal with. I knew perfectly well that 
 his words would have caused his dismissal by any court in 
 the army, and I fancied that the exhibition of this knowl 
 edge would terrify him, for there s nothing so craven as the 
 cowardice of German officials in dealing with their superiors. 
 
 " I realized so soon as he came to Les Charmettes that 
 there would be trouble, for I have followed the accounts in 
 the English press, revealing the unheard-of tyranny of the 
 invaders in their exactions upon the inhabitants, natives 
 and foreigners alike. I knew that the family had nothing 
 to fear from the soldiers, nor the officers, while sober ; and 
 convinced that Elliot could only be saved from annoy 
 ance and perhaps imprisonment in a Prussian fortress, I 
 determined, the moment he was hurried away, to fly to Paris 
 that night. I easily evaded the German pickets, but had 
 
TRAJAN S K NIGH T TAKES THE KING S PA WN. 459 
 
 considerable difficulty with the French, and was really a 
 prisoner until, at the legation, the minister undertook to be 
 responsible for me ! " 
 
 "It is from the legation we shall get our first news of 
 Elliot, then," said Mrs. Arden, with a sigh of relief. " The 
 minister will think us mad people, for at my prayer he is 
 already negotiating for Elliot s release." 
 
 " For a modest family," remarked Bella, " we certainly 
 have been the cause of a good deal of turmoil, and I should 
 think, Trajan, you would fly us as you would the plague." 
 
 " Folks sometimes do not mind plagues," responded the 
 arch deceiver, slyly looking at Bella and blushing fool 
 ishly. 
 
 " If it took such a form as this willful young woman, a 
 wise man would mind it a good deal," Philip felt called 
 upon to aver as he bowed to Bella. 
 
 " Plagues not unlike that in form I could make up my 
 mind to endure very philosophically," insinuated Trajan, 
 artlessly, while his eye wandered to where " Somebody," 
 blushing violently, made him warning signs to change the 
 topic. 
 
 Bella pretended not to understand that the words were 
 not an homage to herself, and, like a tried social tactician, 
 flouted the Holland from the piano and covered Edith s con 
 fusion in a crash from which emerged the brilliant opening 
 notes of " Richard, O, Mon Roi." 
 
 To the group there, wrapt in harmony, and with minds 
 diversely busy in reflection, serene, troubled, happy, wise, 
 and otherwise, came, with jaunty confidence arid the atmos 
 phere of inextinguishable gayety, Theo in the company of 
 that great personage, the prince. 
 
 " We learned at the legation that, like the prophet s peo 
 ple, you had repented at the last moment, fled from the 
 Amalekites and entered the walls of Jericho ; but where s 
 the prince of the House of David ? " she added, as in the 
 course of her salutation Elliot s absence struck her. 
 
460 TRAJAN. 
 
 "He s tarrying out of Jericho till his beard be grown," 
 cried the inveterate Kate, unable to resist a dart. 
 
 But Theo was not in the mood to risk an encounter then 
 and there. She looked her inquiry at Mrs. Arden. When 
 the story was told her she was a good deal subdued, and 
 asked sympathetically if something could not be done to 
 facilitate the wanderer s return. Informed that Trajan 
 made no doubt of Elliot s safety, she turned with regained 
 composure to that personage and asked, looking at him un- 
 winkingly : 
 
 " Pray, tell us your adventures with the Prussians. Jules 
 gives hints of wonders that you did at Metz and Sedan. The 
 colony is full of it, and I am told that the men have deter 
 mined that you shall make the speech at the Thanksgiving 
 dinner, if there s enough left to eat in Paris, when Thanks 
 giving comes." 
 
 " Oh, I shall put the story in the form of an Iliad and 
 publish as George Sand and Alfred de Musset retold their 
 lives," Trajan answered, lightly. 
 
 Theo and the prince were retained for dinner, to the 
 great discomfiture of two or three who shared the feast. But 
 the evening was a revival of old times, and the prince went 
 away declaring that Bella was " adorable " quite wearying 
 his companion with his prolix raptures. Elliot s absence at 
 this juncture frightened her. He was the pivotal piece in 
 the mechanism of her aims. Through him the Arden house 
 hold was open to her in an intimate way, indispensable for. 
 the regulation of the march of events a hundredfold more 
 necessary now that his absence left Trajan free to make him 
 self an element of mischief. 
 
 The prince s raptures over Bella did not trouble her. She 
 knew the French nature well, and she knew the time and the 
 weapon to employ which should dissolve the simulated pas 
 sion, as a dab of the dish-clout effaces the mist-made picture 
 upon a window-pane. Jules must set seriously to winning 
 Bella for, in spite of her penetrating intelligence, Theo fell 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KING S PA WN. 461 
 
 into the Frenchman s theory perhaps from the universality 
 of the exemplification about her, that any woman was to be 
 won by any man who seriously set himself about it. 
 
 She saw it done every day ; she had Clare s case in her own 
 household ; in fact, she knew no instance where it had failed 
 save in her own. But that, she would have said had she been 
 confronted with it, merely made the exception proving the 
 rule ; and she would have been more firmly convinced in her 
 belief, knowing that Trajan might have won the day by a 
 little persistence. Indeed, here the contradiction of this 
 curious character presents the strangest perplexity. There 
 were moments, mad moments, when she turned with unutter 
 able delight to the memory of the young fellow s chivalric 
 courtship. That all the heart she had to give was his she 
 knew from the first, and fought against the seductive dan 
 ger. But there came a passionate yearning to be again the 
 object of that tumultuous, self-forgetting, absorbing passion. 
 
 She had no idea that it had lessened a single degree in 
 Trajan ; a woman s wickedness is never so entirely black that 
 she can believe in the permanent alienation of her lover s 
 love. It is an inner conviction that coldness, cruelty, what 
 you will, can not shake, for it comes from the one divine 
 spark, that abides in the most abandoned of us ; it is 
 conviction that where a woman s love is given it clings, in 
 spite of all the destructive agencies of man s more selfish 
 nature, diverse occupations and pleasures. It was this 
 unshaken faith that made Trajan, as he stood in the summer- 
 house denouncing her, far dearer to her than when he had 
 pled his cause and asked her hand. She believed his inter 
 position the mad impulse of jealousy, and the harshness of 
 his words secretly fed the fires of her egotism and, so to 
 speak, sensual vanity. There were dreary hours of relaxing 
 ambition, abhorrence of every thing visible and attainable, 
 when she was ready to abandon the purpose to which she 
 had dedicated herself. These impulses grew upon her after 
 Clare s princely marriage, though Lafayette had not turned 
 
462 TRAJAN. 
 
 out the facile dupe she had counted upon. When the ques 
 tion of the dot was delicately suggested by Jules, he had 
 answered promptly that he " reckoned that his wife was an 
 American ; that American ways were good enough for his 
 mother and family and they must satisfy Clare s." 
 
 It was a severe shock after all her scheming, but she bore 
 it good-humoredly, telling Jules that he would have to 
 be on his good behavior with his brother-in-law, as a means 
 of aiding his fortunes in an emergency. But Jules was greatly 
 irritated. He reproached Theo for permitting the marriage, 
 as, unless the family gained in visible splendor by it, the 
 whole town would laugh at them for a vulgar mesalliance , 
 unredeemed by the affluence which alone excuses such 
 freaks. 
 
 After the visit to the Ardens , Jules was advised of his 
 opportunity, in Elliot s absence, to gain the ear of Bella, who 
 had always shown a preference for him. It thus came to 
 pass that the young man was a frequent guest in the Rue 
 Frangois I. He rode admirably, and Bella never refused a 
 gallop to the Bois, her two adorers escorting her. Social 
 observances had almost ended in the besieged city and such 
 persistence naturally took an intimate informality. 
 
 An event that happened one day, as the party were re 
 turning from the Bois de Boulogne, gave Jules still better 
 standing in Bella s eyes. As the three dashed out into the 
 broad roadway of the avenue, a drunken Mobile suddenly 
 lurched from behind a tree and, whether by accident or de 
 sign, fired his musket under the nose of Bella s horse. The 
 terrified beast threw himself back on his haunches, then, 
 with a sideward leap, shot back toward the park, into it 
 and through the broad main road directly toward the lake. 
 Jules, with admirable presence of mind, flew after the 
 beast, which was beyond Bella s management. 
 
 Darting into a cross path that would head the flying 
 horse just at the edge of the water, he tore through the 
 wounding branches and emerged from the thicket at the 
 
TRAJAN S KNIGHT TAKES THE KINGS PA WN. 4 6 3 
 
 instant Bella s horse reached the steep edge of the bank. 
 By a surprising quickness of movement he reached out, as 
 the horse attempted to leap past, caught the bridle and slid 
 to the ground, all at the same time halting the vicious 
 beast almost on the edge of the road. 
 
 " Handsomely done ; I make you my felicitation," ex 
 claimed the prince who had followed Bella s horse. 
 
 Bella was not much discomposed, though she realized 
 the peril. 
 
 " You have saved me from a disagreeable drenching if not 
 a broken neck, Mr. Carnot," she said, as the grooms of 
 the Rocher Restaurant led the horses away. 
 
 Bella, as we have seen, lived much in books. Her ad 
 miration for Tito, expressed to Elliot, was based solely 
 upon the fanciful conditions of his life. His cowardice, 
 perversity, and ingratitude she lost sight of. One single 
 evidence of heroism would have completely redeemed him. 
 I think that at Crecy she was in danger of idealizing Trajan 
 into the heroic figure of her dreams. Had Elliot s fortune 
 led him into some striking act of daring, the love that she 
 strove to repress would have been too overmastering for the 
 restraints of her pride and waywardness. I think she would 
 have relished better the vigorous courtship of the Norman 
 duke who drew his indifferent princess from her horse and 
 dragged her in the mud, rather than the tranquil right-of- 
 possession sort of love that had irritated her in Elliot, until 
 his capture by Theo showed her that the lover was right ; 
 that her heart was his, whatever rebellion the head made. 
 The preference of the prince was small compensation for 
 what, she felt with despair, she had deliberately trifled away. 
 There were moments of anguish and self-reproach when she 
 would have abased herself to letting Elliot see her repent 
 ance, but torments like these were in the silence of the night 
 when the distractions of nature could not save her from the 
 brooding thought of her folly. 
 
 Though she encouraged Jules friendliness, she did it 
 
464 TRAJAN. 
 
 without dreaming of his purpose. Indeed, the very absence 
 of such a suspicion made her intercourse more kindly, and 
 encouraged Jules into the unwarranted belief that he was 
 gaining his end. Much of the old assertion had left Bella 
 since the early Crecy days, and the growing anxiety at 
 Elliot s silence, while an affliction to the family, was a misery 
 to her that only one other in the household suspected. Kate 
 had never been deceived. She had watched Bella from 
 babyhood and learned her nature, better even than the 
 mother. She knew that the cousins were lovers almost from 
 the hour they met after childhood. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 A MASQUE OF CUPID. 
 
 NOW sunshine bathes mountain and valley ; our banners 
 are flung to summer breezes ; joy is our herald and 
 contentment our arbiter ; the heavens of our friends are 
 hung in rose and amethyst ; the bulbul chants on the house 
 hold lintel ; Aphrodite leads in the lunar group that dots the 
 canopy ; we are pavilioned in peace, and gladness is the one 
 chord in the harp of life. That is to say, our little stage is set 
 for a feast ; our various players, harbored in happiness, for the 
 present, at least, echo only the jocund strains of life s gamut. 
 On a fine morning, before the filmy frosts of the early Octo 
 ber were drunken by the thirsty sunbeams, Trajan, eager and 
 triumphant, sounded a lusty peal at the mansion in the Rue 
 Fran9ois I. Mrs. Arden, pale, wan and despairing, met 
 him in the drawing-room with a little scream of wonder, 
 not wholly terror, as he held out a letter addressed in a well" 
 known hand to herself ; but, too impatient to let her learn 
 from the sheet, Trajan anticipated the contents ; " Elliot is 
 in London," and he threw up his hat and moved his avail 
 able glove, quite as if he were alone the recipient of the 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 465 
 
 joyful assurance. The poor mother s eyes were dim, and 
 she couldn t for a moment do any thing but look tremu 
 lously at the characters on the letter. 
 
 "Call Edith, Trajan, please," she cried, and fluttered into 
 a corner to hug the precious sheets as she opened them. 
 " Dear me, what a long letter ! I can never get through it." 
 But she was making great progress when the startled Edith, 
 presently followed by Bella, Kate, and last of all Mrs. Bris- 
 coe, came in arrayed in the peignoirs that ladies adorn 
 themselves in of a morning. The good news told itself on 
 the faces of Trajan and Mrs. Arden, and the volleys of 
 questions were suspended, while Edith, with a passing smile 
 at Trajan which finished the remaining sense of decorum in 
 that young man s possession at the moment, gently but im 
 periously took the precious letter, and beginning at the, 
 " Dearest Mother," read the closely-written pages through. 
 He had arrived in London that night, and hastened to relieve 
 the anxiety they must feel. He feared he could get no word 
 to them, but had been assured that the British Minister 
 would forward the letter from Versailles to Paris by a flag 
 of truce to Crecy. Then, after a vigorous summing up of 
 the scenes at Les Charmettes, and his arrest and imprison 
 ment in Meaux, he told of the startling event in the Meaux 
 prison how some one had slipped in, given him a peasant s 
 suit, put him at the threshold of freedom and disappeared ; 
 that, as the unknown had spoken in the German tongue, he 
 could think of no one but Jules Carnot risking so much for 
 him at which point there was an indignant toss of Some 
 body s head and a general murmur of amusement. 
 
 " I got on the train at Colombes, a little station not eight 
 miles north of the city, and here I am, sound and safe, and 
 in such good spirits as a man can be who is kept from his 
 mother, his Edith, and his other valued friends and kin. 
 Now as I dare not go back to Crecy and you can not get to 
 Paris, I suggest that you pack up at once and come to me 
 here. There s no telling how long the siege will last. We 
 
466 TRAJAN. 
 
 can go to Rome for the winter and wait events. Don t fail 
 to let me know the name of the chap that got me out of the 
 Prussian claws. 
 
 " If you love me, and I sometimes flatter myself you do, 
 you will do him such homage as such intrepidity deserves, no 
 matter what his rank, surroundings, or previous condition of 
 servitude. I ll stake my head it was Carnot, who is brave 
 as a lion, and I shall not be sorry to learn that it is to him I 
 owe my life, for from what I see in the daily journals these 
 Prussians are reviving the fine old methods that the first 
 Bonaparte broke up, in the days of that political abomina 
 tion, the Holy Roman Empire, and I should have been either 
 shot, or sent like Silvio Pellico and Lafayette, to a German 
 cachot, to wait the good pleasure of fellows whose pleasure 
 is mankind s pain. This sentiment would delight the heart 
 of that noblest Roman of them all, Trajan, whom I see in 
 my mind s eye carrying a musket and raging like the lion he 
 is over the defeats of his beloved French, partly consoled, 
 I ve no doubt, by the gourd-like Republic that has arisen in 
 the nation s night, to wither with the rise of its sun. My 
 love to him, with grace, penitence and peace." 
 
 There were tender afterthoughts which need not be 
 repeated. They gave great comfort to the family, who were 
 for the first time made acquainted with Trajan s startling 
 strategy in the liberation of the prisoner. He had allowed 
 them to suppose that it was effected by a diplomatic ruse. 
 Edith, you may be sure, was very proud and happy when 
 Mrs. Arden, going over to the abashed hero, drew his hand 
 some face up and kissed him sweetly, leaving the mother s 
 benediction to tell what the grateful mother s lips did not 
 .dare trust themselves to say. 
 
 " You are henceforth my son, our home is your home, 
 if you will have it so. The feeling has long been in my 
 heart. I think this justifies me in saying it. Let a happy 
 mother feel that such devotion as yours is not wholly beyond 
 her power to answer in kind, be it ever so small." 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 467 
 
 Trajan s eyes, which were noted for looking the person 
 addressing him in the face, were averted, and by a strange 
 chance, as they wandered over Mrs. Arden s shoulder fell 
 upon two bright eyes, swimming in tears. By a monstrous 
 perversion of conversational equity, it was to these eyes he 
 seemed to speak when he said, with a totally gratuitous 
 vagueness : 
 
 " Elliot is dearer to me than the life he saved, and your 
 over-appreciation robs me of the only merit of a duty gladly 
 done. I I but don t let us talk about that." 
 
 " And pray, Mr. Modesty, do our similar sentiments, 
 almost similarly expressed, rob you of your transcendental 
 reward in saving my life ? You must take into account that 
 you have been doing the rescue by wholesale in the Arden 
 family, and that in our miserable opulence we can t get the 
 chance to play Bayards to our friends." 
 
 " But who knows how soon you may prove a Jeanne d Arc, 
 Bella," retorted Trajan, giving her a glance of gratitude 
 for the timely diversion. 
 
 " Very good, but there s no Talbot for me to conquer, no 
 king to crown, no 
 
 " Why not take the prince ? " asked Kate maliciously. 
 " He is of the lineal caste." 
 
 " I think, Kate, you must have been born with venom on 
 your tongue, as the Plantagenet was with teeth in his jaws. 
 Your contributions to current conversation are like the 
 alkalies in a crucible, both dissolvent and astringent," and 
 Bella looked half angry, half abashed, at the imperturbable 
 spinster. 
 
 " If you can tell a man by the books he reads, I can tell 
 the last volume Bella s been browsing in without looking at 
 the Bunsen lying on her table," and Kate laughed compla 
 cently as one who has drawn the enemy s last shot and has 
 a reserve still. 
 
 "Well, Trajan, it s settled that you are to be the protector 
 of this bereaved family until the outlawed prince comes to 
 
468 TRAJAN, 
 
 his own," interposed Mrs. Briscoe, dreading Bella s sharp 
 sallies under Kate s pungent teasing. 
 
 "Which prince? as one should say under which king, 
 Bezonian," asked Kate, as if determined to continue the 
 dangerous theme. 
 
 " You are an unbearable mischief-maker, Kate dear," Mrs. 
 Arden remonstrated placidly. " Do let Bella enjoy her 
 science and her vagaries ; what harm is there in them ? I m 
 sure I wish the indolent Edith would take half the trouble 
 to store her mind," and she looked any thing but discon 
 tented as that traduced young person smiled in agree 
 able deprecation at Trajan, who had taken his place at the 
 piano, where presently Edith, intent upon convincing him of 
 the superior beauty of a melody of Ambroise Thomas s to 
 his favorite Lohengrin, found the greatest difficulty in lay 
 ing her hand on the sheet, which she was positive she had 
 been practicing the last thing the evening before. Both of 
 them blushed with guilty consciousness when Bella, coming 
 over, laid her hand on the music, lying almost the first in 
 the book. 
 
 " Trajan, you will stay to breakfast ; and remember we 
 shall be much mortified if you make the slightest pretense 
 of acting as a stranger in this house." Saying this, Mrs. 
 Arden left the room, taking Elliot s letter, to read by her 
 self, as fond mothers are in the habit of doing, over and 
 over again, until the fragile pages grow dim under the secret 
 tears and rapture. I venture to believe she found as much 
 joy in those boyish exuberances as two of the people in the 
 drawing-room who sillily thought the whole world came 
 to an apex, and the point of it was under their feet, giving 
 them the ambrosial clouds to breathe in, as we are told 
 Jupiter of old entertained his newest love before Christianity 
 had come to decree the exile of the gods. Never did the 
 tide of love run so smoothly. Trajan was terrified, with 
 something of the fatalistic creed of the Persian lingering in 
 him, " When the house is finished, Death comes to occupy it." 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 469 
 
 He didn t know whether Mrs. Arden suspected the tie that 
 had knotted the two hearts. He knew that Bella was aware 
 of his rapture, and he could not fail to see that Kate not 
 only knew, but was a strong partisan. He was not ready yet 
 to speak, for he hoped to win name and fame before asking 
 the consent of the family. Edith s had been given already. 
 
 It is simply miraculous how these opportunities occur. In 
 the memoranda from which this history is traced, I find no 
 mention of the formal declaration. To be sure the letter 
 left at Les Charmettes told the story, but I come across 
 nothing in which Edith says any thing on the subject. The 
 fortnight of uncertainty enveloping Elliot s existence would 
 be, it seems to me, too anxious a time to talk of love, but 
 Kate, when asked about it, replied with unnecessary 
 asperity : 
 
 " Ye must be a puir daft auld body not to know that there s 
 no much talk and yeaing and naying in matters of that sort. 
 Why, mon, the lass just adored th brave lad fra th day her 
 brither tould the goold in him. It s no th word that 
 tells sic thing as luv no more than bletherin prayers that 
 maks the Christian comfortable." 
 
 While the trio stood at the piano a messenger arrived from 
 the ministry with a packet for Mrs. Arden. It was like 
 wise in Elliot s hand, and contained letters addressed to 
 Theo, Bella and Edith. 
 
 " Jezebel ill find cauld comfort in the news," cried Kate as 
 the letters were laid out and Theo s despatched by a servant. 
 " She ll ha her papist dukes and counts to console her, an 
 she ll no miss him long, I ll warrant." 
 
 An hour or two later Theo came with her letter, not 
 knowing whether the family had received the news. She 
 took out the epistle and Kate remarked that it filled but 
 three note sheets. She smiled grimly at the discovery. 
 
 " Who could his unknown friend be ? " asked Theo when 
 she found her news known. " I suppose some one sent by 
 the minister. Such daring deserves boundless admiration." 
 
47 TRAJAN. 
 
 " I think the man has gotten the reward that men of a 
 certain sort hold best," insinuated Bella, glancing casually 
 at Trajan. " Indeed, Theo, " she added solemnly, " I think 
 that, manlike, he had exatted his reward in advance." 
 
 " What an ignoble fellow. I m just as glad not to know 
 such a creature," said Theo, shocked at the baseness of 
 the mercenary unknown. " It will please Elliot all the 
 better, for to such an one the obligation is discharged 
 with ready money ; while had it been a gentleman, a life 
 time could not have given opportunities to attest his feel 
 ing." And Theo regarded the group with such an air as 
 Chrysostom might have worn when he illustrated the true 
 life by revealing his own constancy and abnegation. 
 
 Trajan coincided very gravely in Theo s homily, to the 
 no small amusement of the audience, who had been 
 charged by that diplomate to make no mention of his 
 handiwork in the rescue of Elliot. Theo felt that she had 
 committed an error, by the thinly-concealed jocosity with 
 which her sally had been received, though far from suspect 
 ing the cause. Her senses were quick as a dormouse to the 
 mere vibration of doubt or hostility in the air, and realizing 
 that she was the victim of some mystification, like a cau 
 tious mariner in an unknown channel, she drew in sail 
 and dropped her anchor in the waters of silence. Mrs. 
 Arden could not understand Trajan s motive for preserving 
 secrecy on the subject, but Edith and Kate were by no 
 means in the dark. He did not mean to-exact from Elliot s 
 gratitude what he knew must come sooner or later through 
 repentance and contrition. 
 
 At the dejeuner a la fourchette, Mrs. Arden, who had again 
 read Elliot s anabasis, as Bella christened the letter in her 
 merry pedantry, and who secretly thought the adventures 
 more wonderful than Xenophon s story, returned to her hos 
 pitable intent concerning Trajan. He must join Philip in 
 guarding the family deprived of its natural protector, and 
 should use a room in the house to paint, instead of hiding 
 
A MASQUE OF CUP ID. 471 
 
 himself from them in the Latin Quarter at least until they 
 could make the necessary preparations to rejoin Elliot in Lon 
 don, whither he was cordially urged to accompany them and 
 thence to Rome for the winter; But Trajan declined to 
 quit his garret, where, as he said humorously, his family were 
 already in a state of revolt at his frequent absences. Where 
 upon the invitation was extended to Madame Betty and the 
 frisky Trip. 
 
 But protesting that his ties were too intimate and ten 
 der to permit of removing wholly from the Rue Dragon, 
 Trajan compromised with the kind lady, by binding himself 
 to renew the life begun at Crecy and disastrously interrupted 
 almost so soon as begun. It happened to be Saturday, and 
 the young ladies, desirous of penetrating the mysteries of 
 the studio, old and young set out for that aerial temple, 
 thereby depriving Jules of his accustomed tete-a-tete and 
 ride with the coveted heiress, and as a consequence arousing 
 Theo to the execution of more decisive measures in that 
 game in which, though she knew she held all the arms 
 against helpless adversaries, she distrusted time and delay as 
 her secret antagonists. Trajan had arranged with the head 
 of Amedee s school that the small boy should spend every 
 Saturday afternoon either with himself or Madame Agay. 
 
 It was while his visitors were in the studio that the child 
 was brought in and with a cry of joy leaped into the arms of 
 his blushing and embarrassed guardian. They all admired 
 the little fellow s charming face and fondling, pretty ways, 
 and learned his story with interest. The impulsive Edith 
 proposed that he should be taken home, instead of languish 
 ing with strangers, and Trajan thought the idea an excellent 
 one. It was agreed that he should make a holiday visit only 
 for the present, and when the ladies drove home the happy 
 child sobbed with joy and wound his little arms around 
 Edith s neck, being assured that he should go only a short 
 time longer to the grim tabernacle of learning where he had 
 been miserable and lonely. 
 
472 TRAJAN. 
 
 All the world loves a lover ; never were the fellows in the 
 Beaux Arts so drawn to Trajan as in these halcyon days. 
 Eyes far less keen and hearts far less kindly than the merry 
 godless rogues of the quarter could have read the lad s secret. 
 He was joked now and then on his felicity, but never to the 
 extent of embarrassing him. Many a flowing bumper of the 
 liquid sunshine of the valleys of Champaigne was employed 
 to divert the merry company at Madame Bonjean s from the 
 delicate topic. The little hostel became the rendezvous of 
 the foreigners in the university during the first months of 
 the siege, when food daily grew dearer in the more fashion 
 able quarters. For, conservative in every thing, prices 
 remained in the Latin Pays as primitive as the architecture and 
 the life. 
 
 There was an incredible expansiveness in Trajan, under 
 the benign radiance of his new love. That droll wag 
 Malloy, the wit of the ateliers, declared that the " black 
 divil had faded out of Gray s oies and the merry brown of 
 the thrue lover had taken its pleece," and odd as it was, it 
 seemed to be true. The eye is like the color in plants ; it 
 changes under differing conditions. The lack-luster black 
 of the big orbs had suffered a change into something soft 
 and genial, and you would never recognize the hilarious 
 rogue sharing the witticisms among the Beaux Arts fellows, 
 during those ambrosial October days, as the almost sinister 
 young Werther we studied so curiously that day long ago, 
 when love laid down the harp of life, and the heart strings 
 cracked with impulsive despair, while the bells of reason 
 jangled out of tune ! Rarely had he done such good work 
 the fellows declared. His " composition " was the wonder 
 of his comrades and his execution the delight of the masters. 
 
 He had painted a prodigious canvas for the Grovels, of 
 the lawn and brook at Crecy, to be hung up in the mansion 
 at Yahoo Gulch, to commemorate that episode of the family 
 grandeur. He had orders that turned the hearts of the mas 
 ters en vogue, green .with envy. His portraits of the favored 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 473 
 
 few in the " colony " who had precedence in time, were com 
 pared to Bonnat s. It was from some exquisite miniature 
 sketches of the combats about Metz, that the celebrated De 
 Neuville caught the idea of the surprising series of canvases 
 that almost consoles the bleeding hearts of the French peo 
 ple for their awful disasters embalming as they do the his 
 toric courage of that gallant nation. Under the stimulus of 
 his new mood, the sketch we once saw in surreptitious exe 
 cution at Crecy, grew into a thing of such beauty that the 
 enchanted lover, like another Parrhassius, kept the wondrous 
 vision curtained in the studio many a day after it was ready 
 for the surprise he meditated. That canvas, you may be 
 sure, was never shown the fellows. Beyond Betty, Trip and 
 Amedee, who wouldn t forego his Saturday visits to his three 
 friends, the blue eyes on that bit of canvas were never seen, 
 until on a certain day, Kate and Edith coming unexpectedly 
 while the painter was out of the room, caught the radiant 
 vision filling the dreamy atmosphere with the perfume of 
 its beauty the subtle odor of its love lines. 
 
 When the culprit entered and found " Somebody " face to 
 face with a rival who had been sharing the traitor s heart 
 there was the prettiest little scene of jealous indignation ever 
 seen. Betty blinked in surprise at the dmouement, for there 
 was the absurdest little gurgle of rapture and then such silly 
 kissing as made Kate quite speechless. Betty purred in vig 
 orous denunciation and Trip yelped with irrepressible aston 
 ishment and disapproval at such desecration of the Platonic 
 ministrations of that sanctuary. This, however, was one of 
 the mischiefs easily mended, and on agreeing that the picture 
 should instantly be sent to the Rue Franois I., Edith 
 promised entire forgiveness, ostentatiously sealing the self- 
 imposed and self-ratified compact with another kiss, which 
 wholly exhausted Kate s patience ; who expressed her sur 
 prise that " the addle-headed fellow had a grain of sense 
 left with such goings on ; " and Trajan quite agreed with her, 
 declaring it an ungenerous advantage to take of him. 
 
474 TRAJAN. 
 
 " What do you mean by that, sir ? " Edith asked with 
 arching eyebrows and the most adorable pout in the world. 
 
 " Kissing goes by favor, mademoiselle, and here you ve 
 despoiled me of all that makes the atelier habitable, and pay 
 me in what after all is really my due." 
 
 " Presumptuous ingrate, you shall never never " 
 
 " There don t make a simpleton o yer sels, ye ll be cooing 
 at him in two minutes again and daring him to do what ye 
 know verra weel ye re always ready to do, so keep ye re little 
 silly play-acting for yer two silly sel s, and let me think I m 
 in the company of sane folk, not ejiots," and Kate made 
 ready to quit the scene of such frivolous behaviors. There 
 upon " Somebody " declared laughing that Kate was jealous 
 because her face had not been found on the easel, and Tra 
 jan, to mollify her, promised that he would paint her with 
 John Knox in the background, hurling anathemas at the 
 wicked queen of Scots. 
 
 " Yer a graceless set ye have no river nce for any thing 
 sacred," cried the spinster. 
 
 " Cats may look at kings and painters do put saints on 
 canvas, Kate, so I don t desecrate in touching up even that 
 sacred visage," said Trajan, as though taking the protest in 
 earnest. But Kate had exhausted her wrath, and the two 
 tyrants besetting the reluctant lover, the portrait was carried 
 down to the carriage and the painter led in triumph with 
 his master-piece to the Rue Franois I. The work was not 
 a complete surprise to the household. Bella let fall certain 
 notes of admiration which indicated that she had suspected 
 the progress of the plot. Mrs. Arden, however, was grati- 
 fyingly astonished and lamented the absence of Elliot s criti 
 cal judgment to pronounce the receptive benediction. 
 
 The gentle mother looked from the painter to her daughter 
 in benign wonder, and for the first time a suspicion of the 
 relations of the two dawned on her. It would have needed 
 no sharp powers of divination to tell the secret that gave 
 the eyes of the real Edith a certain expression which all the 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 475 
 
 painter s art could not catch. With a gentle flutter, the 
 daughter threw herself into the maternal arms, and the 
 painter, a little surprised, recompensed himself by gazing 
 into the tender counterfeits of the eyes buried on mamma s 
 bosom. In the mute maternal acknowledgment, he was 
 smitten with the vague doubt of too complete, too perfect 
 happiness. 
 
 He held his breath wondering what form fate would take 
 to halt his step upon the threshold of his Paradise. " Who 
 enters here leaves hope behind," was a sentiment that shad 
 owed his effort, since he could remember. That he should 
 have strayed along a pleasant path, reached out and plucked 
 this rare blossom, filled him with a nameless terror. I doubt 
 whether the man ever existed who really believed any thing 
 he desired too good for him ; it could not therefore be the 
 sentiment of unworthiness that filled the young man s heart 
 with uneasiness and distrust. It was rather the feeling of a 
 kingly heir, who suddenly sees, by a succession of deaths, 
 not only rank and riches, but great crowns, descending upon 
 him and until he possesses them, dim, dreadful, threatening 
 as the air-drawn daggers of the usurper s frenzy.- Relatively 
 Trajan knew that he had no deserving in the crown awarded 
 him. It was an obtrusion of the fatalist doubt, rather than 
 the moralist spirit, upon which his dread was based. 
 
 It was while the picture stood on the easel, the center of 
 the family devotions, that Theo, who " ran in " familiarly 
 every day, on one pretext or another, came to join the wor 
 shipers. She looked with arch good-humor at Edith, as 
 the wonderful canvas was presented, and declared that the 
 artist in producing a chef fauvre had wisely attempted no 
 flattery. " Now in my case," she continued with engaging 
 frankness, " while I admit that Mr. Gray produced a work fit 
 for the Louvre, I am not silly enough to suppose that the 
 portrait is not purely ideal. Confess, Mr. Gray. Isn t it 
 true ? " 
 
 Trajan laughed : " I was in the clouds about that time 
 
47 6 TRAJAtf. 
 
 but Miss Carnot needs no idealism to make her portrait a 
 very striking one, and if I had it to do over again while in 
 some respects it might be modified I think I could give it 
 certain touches which would make it more faithful to the 
 original ! 
 
 "Fie, Mr. Gray," spoke up Bella, "you should never be 
 caught in so shallow a trap as that. No woman ever found 
 flattery painted or spoken a blemish. Tell an old woman she 
 is young, and though you may not be believed, you will be 
 adored ; tell an ugly one she is pretty, with the reservation 
 that she is not wise, and she will give you reputation as a 
 man of discernment ; tell a wicked, silly, heartless gad 
 about, that she is all these, but that her form is perfect, her 
 face fair, and she will enshrine you." 
 
 " And pray, Bella to gain your good graces you, who 
 are beautiful, wise, fine in form and all that it does not need 
 the fancy to create, what must a man say to you to win your 
 favor, for I know one that would give much for the secret," 
 said Theo, turning Bella s commonplaces to dextrous 
 account. 
 
 Bella laughed and blushed. " That s a secret ; when the 
 right one comes he will find out for himself." 
 
 " But if your theory be the true one," said Trajan reflect 
 ively, "women are won by lies." 
 
 " That s very like th sense o it," interjected Kate plumply. 
 
 " Well the Persian proverb holds, clouds lighter than snow, 
 wind lighter than air, the air lighter than a feather, and 
 women lighter than all ; why not a lie, the lightest of the 
 things of the breath, the most potent with such beings "- 
 Philip asked, seeming to expect an answer from the portrait, 
 at which he stared very hard. 
 
 " Every nation makes proverbs according to its kind, sir. 
 Persian women may have justified that summing up of the 
 collective wisdom of their men, but the sentiment is too 
 Pagan to apply to that part of the modern world which alone 
 holds man from his barbarian instincts." 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 477 
 
 This was Theo s contribution to the discussion, which was 
 brought to an end by the entrance of Jules, who had great 
 news to tell. Thiers had gone on a mission to the foreign 
 courts and it was believed at the minister s that England was 
 about to intervene and bring the invasion to a close. Gam- 
 betta was to set out for Tours the next day by balloon and aid 
 in arming and organizing the departments, and the Germans 
 had refused to permit any more exits from the beleaguered 
 city, hoping by detaining non-combatants to starve Paris into 
 surrender before the foreign powers could be talked over by 
 the golden-tongued old emissary. Furthermore, he informed 
 Trajan that by Favre s direction he had written him, Trajan, 
 a note two hours before and sent it to the studio, requesting 
 him to attend at the Quai d Orsai where the minister had 
 something to propose to the young attache. Jules had no idea 
 of the nature of the service, but every body begged the young 
 man not to undertake any more adventures. Trajan, a good 
 deal disconcerted, quit the room and as he reached the vesti 
 bule, Edith, who had slipped out by another door when 
 his intention of going became apparent, fluttered to him with 
 swimming eyes and a little appealing cry. The sagacious 
 Pierre, lingering casually in the vestibule, found instant 
 occasion to visit the dining room and the lovers were 
 alone. 
 
 " Promise me " " Somebody " said, with lips almost too 
 near certain other lips which, in fact, they had just quit. 
 " Promise me, that you won t go from the city, you won t 
 risk your life any more for these stranger people 
 
 " But what difference would it make who d care ? " asked 
 the young hypocrite shamelessly, and strange enough, though 
 there wasn t a syllable in reply, as Madelaine at the crack of 
 the door could have sworn, the doubts of the questioner 
 seemed satisfied, for he made answer : 
 
 " By these lips I promise not to leave Paris, by the over 
 head or underground route, and as for any other foolish 
 maiden, I couldn t if I would ! " 
 
47 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 Love must be inconsistent with the delicacies of diplo 
 macy, for Favre, who had formed a very high estimate of 
 his protege s intelligence, found him singularly dense and 
 unreceptive, and after unfolding various projects that were 
 to render his name immortal, dismissed him with some 
 impatience, informing him that it was his colleague the dep 
 uty of war, Gambetta, that wanted to see him. That busy 
 statesman was in the war office in the Rue Dominic the 
 great palace of the war minister, where in other days only the 
 elite of the military hierarchy found reception, and like 
 every thing else curiously changed in aspect under the demo 
 cratic regime of revolution. The wide corridors were 
 crowded with flying figures, the bureaus packed with vocif 
 erating officials. Even the " Cabinet" of the ministers was 
 invaded by the Cromvvells, guiltless of their country s blood, 
 imploring a hearing for vast projects that were to dissolve 
 the beleaguering hosts of the Germans into thin air. 
 
 Trajan recognized only the specter of the leonine orator of 
 the quarter in his old friend, when after infinite delays he pen 
 etrated to the desk where Gambetta sat signing papers, listen 
 ing to reports, deciding questions and dismissing agents, 
 with all the precision and swiftness of a man reared in 
 affairs. He retired with the American to an inner closet, 
 and spoke rapidly. The services Trajan had rendered, and 
 his daring in critical crises, had inspired a wish to have 
 him at Tours, where armies were to be raised. But he 
 didn t dare to risk too many in the balloon. It would be 
 necessary to communicate with Paris from time to time. It 
 was a perilous work, and would become still more dangerous 
 as the German investment drew closer. He had pledged 
 himself that Trajan would act as a confidential messenger to 
 Tours after his, Gambetta s, departure. It might not be for 
 a week, a fortnight, or a month, but he would feel secure if 
 Trajan agreed to undertake the journey ! Under such cir 
 cumstances, though hampered by his promise, Trajan as 
 sented, and the next day he was the last that shook the Die- 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 479 
 
 tator s hand as the minister stepped into the balloon, to set 
 out on the venturesome voyage over the heads of the enemy 
 to his distant post. Love has a timorous skepticism of its 
 own f or when Trajan returned to the Ardens, an eager face 
 was at the window and a glad voice instead of Pierre s spoke 
 to him at the head of the stairs, and there were little signs 
 and tokens exchanged which indicated that "Somebody" 
 was greatly relieved, though there was nothing said to reveal 
 the doubt that had troubled " Somebody s" little timorous 
 soul during the few hours absence. 
 
 During the first six weeks of the siege, that is, till toward 
 the beginning of November, Paris did not present the aspect 
 of a besieged city. The theaters were closed, but the open 
 air concerts were all the more crowded. Gayety, though 
 somewhat subdued, was still the watchword. Food was 
 scarce and not of the luxurious variety for which the Paris 
 ian cuisines are famed. But life with sunshine and move 
 ment and expectation was far from unbearable. Among the 
 well-to-do, there were continuous little fetes en famille, and 
 for the first time in their lives the volatile gadabouts of the 
 richer quarters learned the resources of an interior, for 
 social joys were hitherto exclusively associated with public 
 entertainments. Wine was always abundant ; bread, until 
 the last dreadful days of the ordeal, was plenty, and the 
 gourmets realized with wonder how truly the latter was the 
 staff of life. Under such a test the culinary dexterities of 
 the people shone to advantage never wasteful or lavish, the 
 dinners became marvels of invention. The dearth of vege 
 tables and the scanty nurture of the cattle, however, soon 
 told on the young and infirm. Disease set in with frightful 
 ravages. 
 
 The delicately reared were the first to suffer. The phy 
 sicians called into the field could not attend their patients, 
 and the evils became almost epidemic. Foreigners were 
 naturally the first to suffer, as the drainage and household 
 appliances are in Paris so unlike the cleanly and varied 
 
480 TRAJAN. 
 
 methods of other countries. Mrs. Arden first, then her sister, 
 were attacked with gastric fever, and the negotiations for the 
 family liberation were as a consequence suspended at the 
 very moment when leave had been granted for the journey 
 of the feminine members of the Ardens to England. Hence 
 forth, the splendid house was transformed into a hospital for 
 little Amedee, too, was taken ill Kate, Bella, and Edith each 
 took upon herself an invalid. Straw was laid on the street 
 and on the court-yard, and no one was admitted but the 
 intimate friends of the family. 
 
 Theo came daily, but she was out of her element in a scene 
 like this and her visits were not prolonged to the no small 
 satisfaction of Kate, who grimly commented on this phase of 
 the little diplomate s character. Theo s own cheery apart 
 ments in the Rue Galilee became the rendezvous of the 
 colony. When no one else could get eatables or fresh meat, 
 this dauntless little steward managed to set these unex 
 pected dainties on the table at the select little dinners 
 preceding the nightly receptions. It was wickedly said 
 that her brother-in-law s purse was the secret of this amaz 
 ing abundance, but few who shared in the symposiae gave 
 much thought to the source of these entertainments, so long 
 as they were invited to the feast. Clare, who had brought 
 her husband home, that she might not be separated from 
 her father, didn t always appear among Theo s guests. 
 
 She had lost something of the dreamy listlessness that used 
 to check all approach, and she received the effusive demon 
 strations of the happy husband with an affectionate patience, 
 that quite won the hearts of the men. The women were 
 greatly mystified by the incongruous couple. It was plain 
 that calculation or mercenary motives had not entered into 
 Clare s conduct, for she was as simple in manner and plain 
 in attire as when Theo s precarious exchequer had been the 
 source of her income. Most of her day was given to her 
 adoring young kinsfolk, Marion and Sophronia with whom 
 came the pensive Amanda in these times of social eclipse, 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 481 
 
 when great personages were no more to be captured by the 
 family splendors, in the avenue de Roi de Rome ; nor did 
 Lafayette as Darby lose his relish for the fairy lore that 
 had captured him at Crecy. He had become as much of a 
 child as his small brother, and listened with as much raptur 
 ous interest to Crusoe s exploits, or Ali-Baba s misadven 
 tures, as the big-eyed boy at full length on the floor, his 
 fat hands supporting his red cheeks and his elbows pillowed 
 on a mat rolled up to soften the resting-place. 
 
 To Theo the sight of her big brother-in-law immersed in 
 these revivals of childish romances, inspired a sort of terma 
 gant virulence of sarcasm that fairly frightened the light- 
 hearted Benedick. He conceived a mortal dread of her 
 malicious sneer and critical eye, and it was in secret that 
 the conspirators snatched the perfervid joys of romantic 
 and fairy lore. Theo had begun early to insinuate to Clare 
 the necessity of liberal provision for the family. But Mrs. 
 Lafayette had not encouraged the conversation or given any 
 signal of assent. The indifference of Clare arose from an 
 extraordinary circumstance. The Grovel butler was uncle 
 to the Carnot chamber-maid. This girl had been with the fam 
 ily since its first arrival in Paris. Celeste adored Clare, and 
 abhorred Theo. That decisive manager had cut off her per 
 quisites in scores of little ways, perquisites which no French 
 servant pretends to intermit in well-to-do families. Theo had 
 found that the systematic fleecing carried on by the domes 
 tics, leagued against the masters, brought food and provis 
 ions to ten per cent, higher rates than the ruling prices. 
 
 On investigating the matter, she was more amused and 
 enlightened than horrified, for the methods thus discovered 
 enabled her to attain a proficiency in her own subsequent 
 operations, which extracted thousands from her victims, where 
 other and less adroit agents were content with hundreds of dol 
 lars. Celeste s kinsman, the Grovel butler, was silent partner 
 with the butcher, baker, coalman, oil man and what not, 
 whose wares enter into household consumption, By certain 
 
482 TRAJAN. 
 
 masonic symbols, an entente was established among the domes 
 tics of all stranger families residing in the capital. The cook 
 had her percentage for miss-weighing for the butcher and 
 grocer ; the butler for miss-measuring coal and general sup 
 plies ; the chamber-maid for holding her tongue, and the 
 waiters for the same reticence. The Carnots of course never 
 kept a major-domo, but so soon as Theo began to overhaul 
 accounts, she saw the system of leaks that had been wast 
 ing the family income. Not a servant under the old regime 
 save Celeste was retained. She told her laughingly that 
 henceforth she should have her own and Clare s cast off 
 dresses once a year, a little fete present on her birthday, 
 but not a sou s stealage. Celeste turned very red at this 
 ugly word used in the most jocose good humor by the new 
 mistress of the family destiny. She declared that she was 
 an honest girl and that she wouldn t stay where she was 
 suspected of evil doing. She had never been accustomed 
 to such treatment among the noblesse where her aptitudes, 
 which were so highly valued, had been learned. 
 
 Theo listened to this outbreak with a bland affectation 
 of belief, remarking that honesty after all was a relative 
 sort of question and that Celeste in following the practices of 
 her companions, perhaps did not realize that she was doing 
 wrong. But, she went on, in a tranquil, decisive way that 
 amazed the Frenchwoman : "We can t afford to support the 
 society of cooks and domestics ; we can t afford to pay for a 
 ton of coal when only a half ton is delivered and receipted 
 for ; we can t afford to pay the butcher for twenty-five pounds 
 of meat a week when only ten have been received. In short, 
 Celeste, we are in future going to pay only for what we get, 
 and we are going to measure and weigh every thing our 
 selves." 
 
 Celeste, outraged by such an onslaught, at once sought 
 her kinsman the butler. He was a man of sagacious 
 deliberation, and he counseled the angry Abigail to rest 
 quietly where she was, remarking with the profound insight 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 483 
 
 that is to be met with in the despots of the servants hall, 
 when it is notoriously wanting in the drawing-room : 
 
 " You must remain with this roturicre at least for a 
 time. It won t do to quit the stranger. Such a move 
 would only make talk, for what happens in one family of 
 Americans is known immediately in others and our society 
 would be weakened by dismissals and dissensions. These 
 Americans for the most part don t object to liberal allow 
 ances, in their way, if we are silent. Return to the demoi 
 selle Carnot and quit only when it will embete them to have 
 you leave." 
 
 Celeste returned and never made any sign of the hatred 
 she nourished toward the reformer. Indeed, in time it grew 
 into a feeling of something like admiration for Theo s clever 
 ness. A French woman respects the possession of faculty, 
 even though it forces her to extra armaments for the en 
 counter. She kept an eye on Theo, however, and it was 
 partly in spite, partly in admiration, that she one day told 
 Clare that she should give Theo credit for the master-stroke 
 that gained her such a charming parti as " Monsieur 
 Grovel." 
 
 Clare, very much surprised, asked what she meant. With 
 much laughing and shrugging Celeste told how it was on dit 
 that Theo and Jules had arranged the island enterprise, and 
 had isolated the couple by first making way with the boat 
 and then opening the mill gates that But, speechless 
 with indignation, Clare ordered the malicious vixen from her 
 sight and sat in a stupor of doubt and terror until Theo, 
 returning from a drive, started as she saw her sister the very 
 picture of the old time when her heart seemed dead. 
 
 " Theo ! come here look me in the eye tell me " and 
 Clare rose to transfix the astonished culprit. " Is it true oh 
 my God ! is it true did you did Jules open the gates that 
 hideous night at the Mirabel mill ? I have just heard that 
 you did don t deceive me." 
 
 " What meddler has come to you with such a farrago ? I m 
 
484 TRAJAN. 
 
 astonished, Clare, that you can be tormented by such twad 
 dle." 
 
 " Is it, or is it not true look me in the face tell me ? I 
 won t be played with, I won t give way to you in this. You 
 may play with men s hearts and your own honor, you shall 
 not play with mine." 
 
 " What do you mean, Clare. Even if Jules and I did play 
 the trick, what harm was there in it ? V^ou have the most 
 devoted husband in the world, and any one can see that you 
 love him, I am " 
 
 "That s enough, Theo, I am answered. Oh, Theo, 
 Theo, thank God, your infamy did not ruin the life of a 
 kind and tender soul." She drew back shuddering as Theo 
 made a movement to touch her. " Oh no no I can t 
 just yet. You are terrible, Theo you make me thrill with 
 horror, when I think that you are my sister and with so fair 
 a face and so young so depraved and heartless " 
 
 " But I haven t said I sent the boat away, or cut the chain 
 of the mill gates you ve only the gossip of some simple 
 ton " 
 
 " Oh, Theo ! Theo ! you are a wicked girl ; you have not 
 denied it, you can not deny it ; an honest woman would faint 
 under the very suspicion, and you you Theo, your eyes 
 laughed when I asked you, hoping against hope that it was a 
 calumny and that, heartless, mercenary, absorbed as you have 
 grown for money, you still retained natural feelings for me, 
 your sister, and the sentiment of honor that should mark 
 our family." 
 
 Clare walked the room in agitation. Theo sank upon a 
 chintz covered sofa, burying her face in the fluffy folds of 
 its pillows. " Oh, my God, my God, that my own sister 
 that the child grown up like my very own, should consent to 
 such atrocious, such heartless, such vile complotting. You 
 will say that it was for my sake you did the villainy. That 
 this rich man was too valuable a prey to pass by ; that by 
 fair means I could never have been brought to consent." 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 485 
 
 She stopped, and looking at the crouching figure, con 
 tinued : 
 
 " Ah, Theo, Theo, you have gone far from me. You 
 have set up an altar whose worship I do not understand ; 
 whose very accents are unknown to me. Where did you get 
 such views of life ? You never learned them from me. For 
 God knows that even in my days of dreams and ambition I 
 thought only of rank and love, never of the sordid realities 
 of money ! " 
 
 Theo, with white face and eyes that glittered under a 
 humid veil, said, in a cold, hard voice : 
 
 " I came by my traits legitimately look at our kinswoman, 
 La Baronne. If I m a reprobate it was you that made me 
 so ; it was you " 
 
 " I I " gasped Clare, sinking in a chair. 
 
 " Yes, it was the sight of you that day in the old home and 
 every day thereafter for years, that made me meditate by 
 day and dream by night of revenge on that coward Kent 
 and his arrogant mother. It was your mute plea for redress, 
 your folded hands, clasped in passive protest ; your wrecked 
 life and helpless drift into moral Nihilism, that filled me, 
 since I can remember, with one purpose, an equality in all 
 that the world holds in awe with the Ardens. Wicked I 
 may be, and dead to the nicer refinements that guide girls 
 reared in the serener grades of life but you are the last one 
 to accuse me of heartlessness. Tell me a time since child 
 hood that your will hasn t been my law ; that your needs 
 haven t been studied before any body s else, that every dis 
 turbing influence, every hateful thing in the cares of the day 
 have not been kept from you " 
 
 " Ah Theo, child all this makes the matter worse. 
 There s no wickedness so baleful as that to which one gives 
 some sort of a color of righteousness. My child, forego all 
 these useless dreams. We are now secure from want. Come 
 to the mountains. Live with us ; get out of this dreadful 
 fever of Paris. These odious men that visit us are intoler- 
 
486 TRAJAN. 
 
 able to me. Lafayette tells me that this Prince d Amboise 
 is little better than a murderer ; he broke the heart of a 
 noble woman and deserted her a maniac. They are all alike, 
 Theo. It is mingling with them that dissipates your con 
 science and makes it impossible for you to see the horror of 
 the position you have placed me in." 
 
 " What have you to do with your position ? Even suppos 
 ing that the ruse was played in a spirit of fun you had no 
 knowledge of it ; not a soul knew it. The miller was drunk, 
 and as for any human handiwork, it is only wild conjec 
 ture." 
 
 "I have this much to do with the scandal, Theo, that I 
 shall instantly tell the facts to my husband. I can not afford 
 to let this stain rest upon my honor as his wife. I must have 
 his respect, as I give him mine. How could I expect it if 
 he identified me with an ignoble, shameless plot to entrap 
 him into marriage ? " 
 
 " But he would have married you in any event." 
 
 " No, he would never have married me if the that ter 
 rible incident had not compelled it. I did not deceive him- 
 He knows that he is not loved. But his sense of honor and 
 my fear of ruining your prospects, induced me to accept 
 marriage as the only way out of the miserable complication. 
 He would never have married me, for I should never have 
 consented ! It is not your fault that two lives have not been 
 made bitter and wretched. His unsuspicious, happy nature 
 makes my task easy ; but what do you suppose would be 
 the result of such a revelation as this to him from any one 
 else than myself ? He is uneducated and rash. His facul 
 ties when trained are admirable, but he could never reason 
 out my innocence in this vile intrigue. It humiliates me to 
 be forced to put my sister in such an attitude, but his happi 
 ness is in my care and I must protect it by arming him with 
 the truth." 
 
 Theo meanwhile had arisen and was pacing the floor, her 
 two hands clasped on the back of her head, the elbows pro- 
 
A MASQUE OF CUPID. 487 
 
 truding akimbo. Without stopping in the walk, which grew 
 more nervous, as she gave herself up to the passionate 
 thought which, her eyes told, was shaping itself in her 
 brain, she asked almost indifferently, " Where did you hear 
 this farrago, Clare ? " 
 
 " Celeste heard it in the butler s hall at the Grovels." 
 
 " Well, if you are determined to govern yourself by the 
 appreciations of the servants hall, all I can say is that Jules 
 and myself will oppose a positive denial to this preposterous 
 story. We can prove that we were both at the Duclos 
 Chateau when you and Lafayette rode out, and that your 
 disappearance was as great a shock to us as to the rest. I 
 will furthermore dismiss Celeste for this impertinence, and I 
 shall myself go to your father-in-law, relate this whole re 
 volting business, and ask him to dismiss the servants that 
 have set such stories on foot," and so from the nettle danger 
 Theo set forth to pluck not only the flower safety, but a 
 sort of moral Coronal. When she told Lafayette the story, 
 in her own vivacious way, her eyes dim with tears and her 
 pretty hand busy with the lace that repressed, while it did 
 not hide, the pearly drops, that good natured prince of the 
 prairie roared with laughter. 
 
 * Pon my soul, Theo, I wish you had done it three weeks 
 sooner, I would have been that much ahead in happiness." 
 
 " But don t I tell you it s a calumny, Lafayette, and you 
 must not let it be said." 
 
 " All right, Theo dear, you re a brick I beg pardon, I 
 mean you re, you re a gold lode that s it I don t care a red 
 pippin how Clare and I became one. I m the happiest 
 Jake in creation, and so long as Clare don t mind, why let 
 em say what they please." But there was dismay in the 
 butler s domain that same day. 
 
488 TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND IS SHORN. 
 
 CLARE S words had sunk far deeper into the sober sense 
 df her sister than either of them realized at the time. 
 There was a look of haggard care on the small piquant 
 face, giving it the appearance of an unseemly mask, as 
 Theo locked herself in her room after the confession to 
 Lafayette. Never since she could remember had her elder 
 sister spoken in such a tone. Until her own better capacity 
 for managing had put her at the head of the household, 
 Clare had been a mother as well as sister to Jules and Theo. 
 
 Though the disparity in years was but slight, Clare s brood 
 ing life had given her a sobriety that seemed proper to an 
 older person. It was partly this appearance of age, or at 
 any rate the gravity of age, if not years, as well as the dif 
 ference in natures, that left both girls in almost complete 
 ignorance of the nature of each other. Clare never dreamed 
 that she did not know Theo, profoundly, to the utmost con 
 volution of her brain tissue. Theo, while not so certain of 
 the extent of her knowledge of her sister, let no speculation 
 go astray, up to a certain point. There had been few secrets 
 between them. There were the reserves that must always 
 subsist between natures that are in the slightest degree dis 
 similar. Clare, mother-like, was confident she knew the 
 nature of her sister, whereas it was as impenetrable to her 
 as the dialect of the lost tribes. As it is a false key that 
 opens all doors, so it is a false nature which, suspecting 
 others, is keenest and surest in measuring the false in others. 
 
 While Theo was a dead secret to her sister, Clare s heart 
 was an open tablet, or she thought it was. Now, though 
 familiarly confiding with her elder, Theo always held back 
 the strong impulses and coloring processes of her life. She 
 vaguely imagined that Clare was in cordial sympathy with 
 
JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND IS SHORN. 489 
 
 her ; that speech was not essential in all things. If she had 
 even asked herself the question why Clare left the schemes 
 and battle of life to her junior, Theo would have answered it 
 with entirely just complacency, that it was her superior fit 
 ness for the post that gave her the sword and shield. 
 
 In the scheme of her life it was Jules future and Clare s 
 ease she had most at heart. The Grovel marriage was 
 to make Jules potential to gain him Bella. 
 
 In pushing Clare into marriage with Grovel, Theo believed 
 herself to be doing not only a master-stroke in social 
 diplomacy, but by breaking in upon the inertia of the melan 
 choly dreamer had forced her into a new life which would 
 restore her to her ancient spirit and gayety. Her amazement 
 was not less than her despair, when Clare denounced the plot 
 of which she and Grovel had been made the victims. She had 
 never thought it necessary to make known to Clare that a 
 union with Yahoo Gulch would be a great step toward the 
 re-establishment of the family fortunes. Had she done so 
 Clare would have fled in consternation ; but now that the 
 battle had been set, and the adversary squarely beaten, why 
 should she be set upon as a Sycorax, peopling the family 
 halls with monsters ! There are few of us who can resist a 
 gentle filmy sort of hypocrisy with ourselves. Debating the 
 purposes agitating her breast, Theo felt convinced that her 
 conduct, instead of denunciation or disparagement, was 
 deserving of warm praise. Had she not for the sake of her 
 family sacrificed her heart, in refusing the man she loved ; 
 the only man she should ever love ? What ! wicked to put 
 the cup from her lips and take hyssop and hemlock ? What ! 
 she, with her mind alive to all the amenities of seclusion, 
 and her soul responsive to love, denying herself all this for 
 the reconquest of the family glory, reviled as wicked, un 
 principled, debased, almost vile ? She clenched her hand 
 so fiercely upon her bosom that a stray pin struck to the 
 bone. She hardly felt it until a little purple spray of blood 
 oozing out trickled softly down upon her face as she clasped 
 
49 TRAJAN. 
 
 her hands above her forehead, a favorite trick with Theo in 
 excitement. She caught sight of the wound in the mirror 
 before she felt it, and arose with a faint scream to wash it 
 away ; for, like most strong natures, Theo became faint at 
 sight of blood. 
 
 Before she reached the basin in the dressing-room a loud 
 knock, which she recognized as Jules , startled her. He was 
 hardly less startled when he saw her gory face. As she ex 
 plained the cause he fell into a chair with a heavy sigh. 
 She came back to the dresser, anointed the finger, and 
 conjured the vision of blood by a dab of rice powder. She 
 came softly behind Jules and putting her two hands under 
 his chin drew his handsome head back, planting a tender 
 lingering kiss on the forehead, the eyelids, and then with a 
 most passionate accession of love, full upon the shapely mouth. 
 
 " You are unhappy, Jules. Tell me, what is it money ? 
 You ve not been gaming again you promised me, you know 
 you must postpone luxuries like that until you have a bank 
 account." 
 
 " No damnation. Theo don t always harp on that 
 devilish theme. Oh, God eternal and omnipotent, would 
 that such hateful stuff as gold never had been invented. What 
 is it ? why seek it ? why better with than without it ? why 
 should I, who know more than half the infernal young 
 noodles of the Faubourg, lie and cringe and sneak, to con 
 ceal my empty purse ? Why should I plot and scheme, and 
 let you plot and scheme, for what ? To have what can t 
 give our new relations, the Grovels, the respect of the most 
 beggarly patrician in the Faubourg. Our brother-in-law, 
 Lafayette, is worth five millions it is said. He couldn t 
 enter as a lackey where I go as a welcome guest. Ton my 
 faith, Theo, I think I could be an honest fellow. I think 
 I could be with the woman I love. Oh, Theo ! " 
 
 She had gently pushed him back upon the sofa, and 
 kneeling on the floor looked into his eyes. He bent down 
 blushing and kissed her. 
 
JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND IS SHORN. 491 
 
 " Did you think I didn t know it, dear. I don t blame 
 you. You love her and she shall love you." 
 
 " Oh, Theo, I can t understand it. When she looks at 
 me I have no speech ; when I am near her my whole body 
 is in a tremble ; I dare not breathe sometimes. I thought 
 it such an easy thing to make the test of winning her. I 
 didn t much care, but thought it would help your plans. 
 My God, my God, Theo, all the devil in me is evaporated, 
 I have no daring ; all my old ambitions seem degrading and 
 shallow ; if she looks at flower or leaf, or twig or bough, in 
 the bois, I can t sleep until I have gone those weary miles 
 to get them at the risk of arrest by the gendarmes. If she 
 passes an urchin on the street and pats his head, I find my 
 self moping there afterward just to see the happy brat again. 
 The jockeys in the stables think me an imbecile for caress 
 ing her beast. Oh, Theo, Theo, you have lost an ally 
 you have lost a brother : what she loves I love ; what she 
 wishes I wish ; what she commands I will do, or die in 
 doing." 
 
 " I am told she loves the prince do you love him ? " 
 
 " Tush, she doesn t care that for the prince," and Jules 
 snapped his finger lightly. 
 
 " Does she care for you ? " 
 
 Jules rose and walked to the window and answered in a 
 low sad tone : 
 
 " No ; she is in love with Gray, and Gray doesn t know 
 it" 
 
 Theo was at his side in a flash. Thrusting herself between 
 him and the window, she searched his face with wild 
 startled eyes : 
 
 "Gray, did you say Gray, Jules? You don t mean it," 
 she asked. 
 
 "Yes," Jules answered. "I know the light that comes 
 in her eye when Gray is near ; I know the signs, I suffer 
 them every hour in the day ; I sometimes think they are 
 with me in my sleep. Oh, Theo, Theo, you are so clever. 
 
492 TRAJAN. 
 
 Give me this ; make this sweet girl love me. But what a 
 simpleton I am. I know from what I feel myself, that this 
 can not be. I am a fool, and no wonder I am talking like 
 one. But I have got so used to looking to a thing as done 
 when you promise it, that I came over here eager and san 
 guine, as I used to when I had sacked my month s supplies 
 and came to you knowing that you had a wizard rod to 
 transmute my I. O. U. s into Napoleons." 
 
 Theo, seating herself, motioned Jules to sit also. She 
 put her hands up, clasping them behind her head, and 
 studied the young man with a dreamy sort of abstraction. 
 
 " You feel confident Bella has idealized Trajan into a 
 lover ? " 
 
 "Oh, no, no ! I didn t say that. Trajan is passionately 
 attached to Edith, and doesn t dream of Bella s preference." 
 
 " You think Trajan really cares for Edith ? " Theo asked, 
 taking down her hands suddenly. 
 
 " Think ; why it s plain enough haven t you seen it ? 
 The very servants treat him as ajia/ict ." 
 
 " I thought he was fond of her ; but I am sure he does 
 not love her, on the very same ground sthat you claim that 
 Bella s love could never come to you." 
 
 " What in Heaven s name do you mean, Theo ? I don t 
 understand you ; but I believe that you think you can gain 
 me this salvation." 
 
 " If you tell me truly that Bella loves Trajan Gray, I will 
 stake my head that you have the promise of her hand in 
 marriage before the spring buds bloom in the Champs 
 Elysees." 
 
 " Theo, you are a witch, your guiles are infinite, your 
 address something diabolic, but, my child, your love for me 
 blinds you here. It s only in romance that devoted sisters 
 and pious mothers win rich and obdurate maidens to love 
 repentant and plausible young men. I know you re capable 
 of a good deal. I m not sure," he added, looking at her 
 strangely, " that you would hesitate at the Italian arts " she 
 
JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND IS SHORN. 493 
 
 started " and I declare I shall warn Gray to look out for his 
 liquors when you are about, for I know you well enough to 
 know that whatever stands in my way you will remove, if it 
 takes dynamite or Prussic acid to do it ! But it s of no use, 
 Theo, I own that for the moment I am completely useless. 
 I have drifted as completely from the objects, aspirations 
 and purposes of the last few years as though I had been 
 landed in the Happy Valley and the indolence of rest had 
 taken possession of me. The lotos eater s song is in my 
 brain, the poppies of Cathay in my blood. I am for the 
 moment made as pure and innocent, by love, as a saint by 
 religion. The merest rope of sand, spun from a melting 
 beach, holds me to the life you have taught me was to be 
 mine. If you want to get me back, you ll have to forge a 
 chain of love." 
 
 "Well, I ll be Azrael to one at least of these lovers. 
 Foolish boy ; keep your counsel. Be all things to all the 
 moods of this proud beauty. Melt her heart by timid 
 obeisance, but if you could seize some opportunity for a 
 daring rescue if it were only a dog it would thrill her. 
 I ve caught her crying like a watering trough over such 
 flimsy stuff as that Tulliver girl in 4 The Mill on the Floss. 
 You ll have no difficulty in replacing Gray if he be her 
 hero for she was won to him by that gratuitous piece of 
 blood and thunder I always suspected he invented for his 
 own purposes." 
 
 "But how account for his late exploits at Metz and 
 Sedan?" 
 
 " I don t deny he s brave " and there was a peculiar light 
 in Theo s eyes "but even a hero is justified in setting his 
 scene to show his parts to the best advantage. Depend 
 upon it, Bella s airy fancies have given Trajan s valor a local 
 habitation. Let her once be rid of her regard for him do 
 you think you could win her ? " 
 
 "I m sure of it." 
 
 " Trls bien, give me six weeks and I ll engage that 
 
494 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan Gray is not on speaking terms with a single member 
 of the Arden family." 
 
 " What in God s name do you mean ? " 
 
 u You have just told me that you are held to the past by 
 a rope of rainbow texture. I can t trust you ; therefore, 
 all you have to consider is the question of entering a breach, 
 when another arm has battered the guns away." 
 
 Can it be that those merry jokers, the scientists, who are 
 gradually clearing away all the baggage of romance and the 
 masks of history, can it be that they tell us truly in those 
 wonderful chapters on air-waves and spiritual interpenetra- 
 tion magnetic and otherwise ? I am not superstitious ; 
 I never knew a seventh son of a seventh son who could see 
 further through a stone wall than a third or a second, but I 
 am forced to record a curious coincidence, for as sure as 
 you, reader, are wise and learned (and you can t contain all 
 that is in this history without being that), acute, critical and 
 far-seeing, it was during this very time that Trajan, seated 
 in the Arden drawing-room, intent upon a visual acquaint 
 ance with the blue deeps in " Somebody s " eyes, felt a 
 strange sinking sensation and a sudden clamor of dread, as 
 you may have felt in your younger years on suddenly look 
 ing over your left shoulder and seeing the new moon, in the 
 days before you had delivered yourself from this old 
 grandam fable ! His spirit darkened suddenly, unaccount 
 ably ; all the rest of the day he remained in depression that 
 deepened to gloom. The shadow of a presentiment, vague, 
 flitting, intangible, hung over him, until the kindly conjurer, 
 sleep, exorcised the spirit of dread in the nepenthe of 
 dreams. 
 
 Jules left his sister frightened rather than comforted. 
 He had no doubt of Theo s inexpugnable purpose. Her 
 inscrutable methods, too, did much to awe the young man. 
 He admired her cleverness, her matchless faculty for seiz 
 ing and adjusting things to suit her purposes. But what 
 did she mean to do to alienate the Ardens from Trajan, who 
 
JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND IS SHORN, 495 
 
 was regarded as a sort of demi-god by the four women ? 
 He couldn t imagine what Theo relied on so confidently ; 
 that she was confident her calmness and conviction left no 
 room to doubt. Whatever was to be done, he resolved to 
 take no part in the plot, open or ulterior. He knew that if 
 he were ever to gain Bella s confidence, it must be by an 
 open deportment and the observance of the things that men 
 of honor hold absolute. He was not in any sense converted 
 or contrite ; far from it. Conviction of any kind made but 
 light hold on Jules volatile consciousness. For the moment 
 the aristocratic pose and stately beauty of Bella seemed 
 more desirable than the court dames and rank he had made 
 the crown of his destiny. The court dames and titles would 
 have required another form of wooing. He would have 
 adopted the lighter and more congenial form with greater 
 readiness. Jules was a fellow of bright wit. He was 
 Theo s counterpart in repartee, and he was adored by the 
 fragile beauties of the court and coulisses. 
 
 But what could Theo mean by assuring Jules of the exile 
 of Trajan from the friends that adored him ? My own 
 impression is that she counted at first on recapturing Trajan, 
 by arts that she alone knew how to employ ! By such a 
 stroke she would destroy the fabric of Trajan s credit with 
 all the Ardens. He would be odious to Edith for his infi 
 delity ; hateful to Elliot for his interference in that young 
 man s passing whim, and antipathetic to Mrs. Arden, her 
 sister and Bella because of his inconstancy, instability and 
 faithlessness. Now to have done this, would have been a 
 masterpiece of plotting. It would have been the dramatic 
 and emotionally stimulating device to adopt, were this 
 merely a romance invented for the puzzlement of the reader. 
 
 To have Theo bring Trajan back to her feet by the most 
 charming confession of her baseness, her vow of repentance 
 and dedication to the beatitudes, would be one of the most 
 striking situations in fiction. It would be a peculiarly felic 
 itous means of rehabilitating Theo in the character of a 
 
496 TRAJAN. 
 
 heroine, and give her what her cleverness demands, the 
 first place in these pages for such is the depravity of the 
 race, that those who have gone over these pages admire the 
 wicked- Delilah preferring her with all her works and 
 pomps, to the magnificent Bella and the sweet nymph 
 Edith. I own twould be an edifying tableau to close 
 the volume with, the repentant Theo in tears at Trajan s 
 feet, begging for the love she had scorned, the heart she 
 had broken. But the energetic Theo had no such project 
 of moral rehabilitation in her mind. Her plans for carrying 
 out her purpose were of a sort more in keeping with the 
 audacity of her nature and the originality of her methods. 
 Hence the reader will bear in mind that the neglect of this 
 opportunity for a dazzling stroke of dramatic poetic justice 
 is no more the writer s fault than the events that led to 
 Iphigenia s unpleasant dilemma, or Briseis wretched fate, 
 were ascribable to Homer. 
 
 We know Theo well enough to take her word for it, that 
 what she promises Jules she means to carry out. How then 
 is she to bring this catastrophe to pass ? She spoke with such 
 confidence when she looked Jules in the eye, that he knew 
 she had something to base it on. Possibly Trajan might 
 have heard the threat with scorn. What, the blue eyes, into 
 whose deeps he never tired gazing, turned from him ? what, 
 his body still red with scars suffered defending Arden lives, 
 looked upon coldly by the tender ladies, who had taken him 
 to their hearts ? Trajan would have laughed at such a comic 
 suggestion. The Ardens were made of metal not so easily 
 molded. 
 
 Theo, meanwhile, had not forgotten Celeste s offense. 
 She had never deceived herself as to that young person s 
 sullen dislike to the new regime in the Rue Galilee. Inter 
 est alone had kept her in the family. Clare was very gentle 
 and kind with her, and Theo was so much away in the grand 
 world, that the girl rather regarded herself as mistress. 
 Good fortune too, had somewhat relaxed Theo s watchful 
 
JULES GOES OUT TO SHEAR AND IS SHORN. 497 
 
 ness, and Celeste found many a chance to pocket a passing 
 penny. When, therefore, one day she was summoned to 
 her mistress late in the afternoon, and was informed that 
 her month s wages were ready and she should quit the house 
 on the instant, there was a scene almost as affecting as that 
 which we read of when the king dismisses a prime minister. 
 Celeste implored pardon ; she would be the slave, the angel 
 of the household if she might be spared this escalandre. 
 Theo was obdurate. She was smiling the while but as 
 firm as flint. Celeste got up from the floor where she had 
 fallen in piteous abasement, and there was a strange gleam 
 in her eye as she asked submissively if mademoiselle would 
 give her commendation in her carnet, that she might get 
 another post.* 
 
 No, the indignant mistress could not take it upon her 
 conscience to introduce so faithless a servant into an honest 
 family. All that she could promise was to say nothing 
 unless compelled. I think that if Theo could have seen 
 the face of the dismissed and disgraced maid as she stole 
 out a half hour later, she would have overlooked the bab 
 bling that had aroused Clare to protest. For as she closed 
 the door leading to the escalier de service, she left her pack 
 ages on the floor long enough to shake her fist menacingly 
 toward Theo s room, whispering between her lips : " You 
 shall go down on your knees to get me back, and even then, 
 perhaps, I sha n t come." But who ever saw a dismissed 
 aid in any of the industries of life, from a conged premier to 
 an expropriated cook, who didn t take themselves off breath 
 ing rage and filled with dire foretellings ? 
 
 * Garnet is a small memorandum book that French servants are com 
 pelled by law to deposit at the police bureau for the inspection of those 
 who hi re them. 
 
49 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD. 
 
 EXILED in London, Elliot hungered for the friends on 
 the Seine, little imagining the stress in which his family 
 were placed. His mind was, it must be owned, more occu 
 pied with dreams of Theo than the group on the Rue Fran- 
 ois I. He passed much of his time with Armitage, whom 
 he had known in Paris, and that amiable Briton diverted him 
 a good deal. His home letters were rare and brief, as com 
 munication could only be carried on in the diplomatic mail- 
 bag and this was heavily burdened. 
 
 Theo sent him infinitely amusing accounts of life during 
 the siege. Of the shift for food. How she went to market 
 daily in a disguise which left her a cross between the fairy 
 godmother and Cinderella ; how it required profound skill 
 in animal anatomy to say whether she was paying three dol 
 lars a pound for rabbit or cat meat, but that to the taste 
 both were one ; how that on the altar of starvation all viands 
 gave the same odor and took the same taste. She kept him 
 au courant of her triumphs in the Faubourg, describing with 
 enchanting drollery the forays of the dowagers upon the 
 young men she had accepted as her body guard, so to speak. 
 She recalled just enough coquetry and naive disregard of his 
 own pretension to madden the otherwise equable lover with 
 outbreaks of passionate rage and despair. 
 
 " The infernal little flirt was there ever such a shame 
 lessly unprincipled minx absolutely calling me in to witness 
 her artifices, as though, having baited me, there is no further 
 need of wasting her deceptions on me." 
 
 The aftermath of his wayward passion was a long dissipa 
 tion in the roystering life of the London clubs, where his 
 relationship to a family of high rank gave him great vogue. 
 He met Armitage often, and during the expansions of club 
 
LIKE A TALE THA T IS TOLD. 499 
 
 revelry he .learned of Theo s meeting with Trajan and 
 her identification with the smugglers. The dismal story, 
 added to a winter of dissipation, threw him into a mental 
 breakdown, which in the end became a physical collapse. 
 
 The weeks of fever that followed his Sardanapalian 
 excesses and repentance were kept from the mother and 
 sister, though Armitage wrote Trajan, leaving it to his dis 
 cretion whether to make known the danger or not. Instead 
 of doing this Trajan confided the bad news to Kate, and 
 it was agreed that she should go over to London on a 
 plausible pretext, to nurse the lad to convalescence before 
 any hint of his true condition should reach the household. 
 The home invalids were recovering slowly and the shock 
 of Elliot s danger might bring on a relapse. 
 
 It thus happened that Kate found herself installed in the 
 pretty villa at Denmark Hill, where Armitage had conveyed 
 the reprobate, so soon as the physician pronounced his illness 
 serious. Kate wrote letters of buoyant flippancy to the anx 
 ious friends in Paris, intrepidly representing that the lad had 
 broken his leg, which was mending slowly ; or that he had 
 suffered a relapse, through risking his limb in the street. 
 Indeed, Kate for a month demonstrated capacities in cir 
 cumstantial fiction that would have made her invaluable in 
 politics or journalism ! 
 
 Elliot s system, though shaken, was unimpaired, and Kate s 
 assiduous nursing finally routed the beleaguering ills that 
 assailed the hapless exile. When the sharp east winds came 
 whistling through the wide reaches of Denmark Hill, lifting 
 the fogs that smother the London end of the British isles, 
 he was able to be up and breathe a new breath of life. He 
 was still languid and inert, but with the spring sunshine began 
 to recover his fine color and the roseate tinge that served 
 as a barometer to the healthfulness of his blood. He had 
 gone through an ordeal hardly less painful than bitter. In 
 the delirious wanderings of his first ten days fever Kate had 
 been appalled by the glimpses she gathered of the lad s mis- 
 
500 TRAJAN. 
 
 erable follies. She saw, almost to the last detail, the mental 
 and moral maelstrom through which his heart and con 
 science had been swirled in the reaction brought about by 
 the discovery of Theo s systematic perfidy. But when he 
 came to himself she gave no signs of the secrets divulged in 
 his wanderings. When the lad s astonished eyes rested on 
 her in his first moments of consciousness, she remarked 
 blandly that he had been like a log during her nursing. He 
 recovered his sane faculties slowly, and had no notion of the 
 crisis through which he had passed. 
 
 Armitage had been constant and devoted during his 
 friend s illness. He resented the spinster s intrusion and 
 attempted to debar her the dangerous post of nurse during 
 the compromising outbursts of fever. But the Scot had 
 held her own grimly, and when the final struggle came, 
 routed the enemy with such decisive vigor that he made the 
 story the capsheaf of his grist when particularly expansive 
 with his cronies. 
 
 " An de ye think I ll leave my bairn to your clumsy doits 
 whan ye vc fetched him to this pass ? " she asked with indig 
 nant scorn as she confronted him when the struggle came ; 
 " after yer leadin him into all his diviltries ; tush, mon ; ye 
 need na glower on me at all, I m no afeard of the likes of 
 ye, for a yer flesh and brawn," and she retired, closing the 
 door in the discomfited champion s face, and would only 
 let him come to the ante-chamber until the danger was over. 
 Elliot, either by a dim association of ideas, or a hint from 
 Armitage, became conscious of his old friend s knowledge of 
 his woeful story the extent of his miserable and mad ex 
 cesses. The sense of it filled him with a new agony. Shame 
 was added to remorse, and for the first time in his life he 
 was ashamed to look any one in the face. She instantly 
 detected the change from his old-fashioned frank way, and 
 she was cruelly hurt by it. 
 
 She yearned to have the hateful shadow exorcised, but she 
 would have been torn by wild horses sooner than pain him 
 
LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD. 501 
 
 by first alluding to it. One day, however, letters from his 
 mother, Edith and Bella, let loose the fountains of the cul 
 prit s heart. He felt miserably guilty and unworthy as the 
 sacred confidences of his kin fell like mingled balm and . 
 gall upon his conscience. In an irrepressible burst of 
 anguish he poured out the wretched story of his weakness 
 and wickedness" in the ears of the sobbing spinster. She 
 soothed him, but did not dwell on it, or make light of it. 
 The lesson had been bitter, she thought to herself cautiously, 
 and she would not impair its effects by weak extenuation. 
 She soothed him as she had seen his mother many a time 
 when he was a " wee bairn " snuggling at her knees in his 
 boyish troubles. She could not, however, forbear to remind 
 him of the baleful influences of an unholy passion, and 
 though she didn t mention Theo s name, he understood her. 
 But he colored at the allusion and became silent. Kate was 
 too keen an observer and too familiar with young people to 
 mistake from the first the nature of Elliot s infatuation for 
 Theo. 
 
 She knew that there was none of the sanctity of hallowed 
 love in it ; none of the impulse that binds hearts, as well as 
 hands, in a wholesome and purifying union. But she felt 
 that some of the danger was past and she left him to medi 
 tate, fearing that her zeal might lead her to say something 
 that would arrest the current of repentance and bring about 
 a reaction. The invalid continued to improve and the phy 
 sicians promised that he might set out in safety to join his 
 family within a week, when the morning after brought a 
 mandate he regarded as more imperative. With letters from 
 the family came a note in an unknown hand : 
 
 " If Monsieur Arden wishes to rescue his sister from an 
 adventurer and libertine, he will instantly return to Paris, 
 and by inquiring for Madelaine Tarbes, No. 70 Rue des 
 Blancs Manteaux, he will learn what this word of warning 
 means." 
 
 There was no signature nothing to indicate the source, 
 
502 TRAJAN. 
 
 but Elliot instantly resolved that he would heed it. The 
 protests of the medical men fell on obdurate ears. Kate did 
 not attempt to dissuade him. He did not confide the anony 
 mous message to her, and she had painful misgivings that 
 Jezebel was at the bottom of the mystery whatever it was. 
 They were to set out by the tidal train, by Dover and Calais, 
 at seven o clock. All the afternoon Kate was in town, and 
 when she returned there was an expression of satisfaction on 
 her face which indicated some decisive measure taken greatly 
 comforting to her. It was now possible to return to Paris, 
 as the armistice made the city free to all who had business 
 and could show need of entrance. 
 
 As the family sat at the breakfast table the next noon, the 
 wanderer walked in quite as though he had not missed the 
 reunion a day. Edith saw him first and rose with a little 
 scream of joy. The subsequent tableau, every body familiar 
 with the story of the prodigal and the foolish emotional 
 nature of mothers and sisters can imagine much better than 
 a grave historical pen can waste time in describing. There 
 was fully an hour of the most absurd and disjointed narrative, 
 begun at one end of the table, taken up in the middle, and 
 hopelessly muddled at the other end. Then questions answered 
 by others, and such a medley that Kate declared it was 
 enough to drive the lad back into fever. 
 
 " Fever ! why what do you mean, Kate ? Has Elliot been 
 in fever ?" 
 
 " Well, as you may say," stammered the luckless culprit, 
 " a fever of impatience, you know." 
 
 But the keen mother s eye was not to be deceived. She 
 did not suspect the truth, but she knew that her darling had 
 been dangerously ill, and she looked reproachfully at Kate, 
 as any fond mother would do, for depriving her of the right 
 to nurse him back to life. 
 
 I am confident that he looked ill enough to justify her in 
 putting him to bed, that she might have the joy of minister 
 ing to him. He laughed the suggestion to scorn ; he had 
 
LIKE A TALE THA 7" IS TOLD. 503 
 
 scores of things to do, and after a day s rest he would begin 
 in the morning. His arm was around Edith s waist as he 
 spoke and he wondered what devouring monster it was that 
 threatened the perils at which his anonymous informer 
 hinted. He felt measurably easy in his mind so long as he 
 was near the little maiden, and astonished that young person 
 very much by the uneasiness he manifested whenever she 
 quit his sight for a moment. The Prince d Amboise and 
 Jules were, he learned, the only gentlemen visiting the house 
 regularly. 
 
 Philip, engaged on his staff duties, was at Versailles, and 
 Elliot was lost in wonder over the probable wolf sharpening 
 his teeth for the victim. 
 
 The incoherent retrospect, a mosaic of Bella s, Edith s 
 and his mother s reminiscences, since the disastrous night at 
 Crecy was still in the most inextricable confusion, when 
 Theo and Jules were announced. Kate almost fell on her 
 knees in devout delight when Elliot, with a shade of annoy 
 ance, asked his mother to make his excuses. He was not 
 equal to seeing any one, and forthwith stretched himself on 
 the sofa with an air of invalid-like exhaustion that threw 
 Kate into a spasm of badly-contained hilarity. Edith looked 
 on her with large eyes of solemn reproach at such unseemly 
 and unfeeling levity, and refused to be placated when the 
 penitent came up and put her arms around her indignant 
 neck. The call was very short. So soon as Elliot s arrival 
 and fatigue were made known, Theo arose, saying : 
 
 " I know you grudge every instant, and I shall not let 
 myself be associated in your mind with such a deprivation. 
 Come, Jules ; a house of joy, like a house of mourning, is 
 no place for the stranger. We shall hope to see Elliot 
 entirely restored to morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Arden, touched by the girl s thoughtfulness, kissed 
 her affectionately as she passed out, and Jules, stealing a 
 rueful glance at Bella, followed her with a reluctance that 
 left a gentle pang, not altogether devoid of pleasure, in that 
 
$04 TRAjAtf. 
 
 young person s wayward heart. Had Jules but known it, 
 that trifling episode brought him nearer to the object of his 
 dreams and hopes than all the brilliancies and gallantries of 
 weeks of devotion. But who shall fathom the soul of a 
 woman, or say when and how she solves the mystic riddle of 
 her own perplexing heart ? Is the sphinx part of their 
 mother nature an inevitable inheritance, and must the love 
 that solves the triple enigma always bear the CEdipus destiny 
 of woe ? 
 
 When the personages of the household were again gath 
 ered about the reclining hero, and his anabasis in the Ger 
 man lines came up in the exciting retrospect, Elliot was 
 reminded to ask if his unknown ally had declared himself. 
 If Trajan attached any importance to the preservation of 
 the secret, it was a stroke of luck that Edith sate at the head 
 of the couch, as her radiant face "and tell-tale eyes would 
 have instantly given the inquirer the clue. 
 
 "Surely you must have recognized the voice," said Bella, 
 with a disingenuous evasion of direct assertion that would 
 have delighted that mistress of the finesse of suggestio falsi^ 
 Theo. 
 
 " That s the incomprehensible part of it. Naturally, in 
 the agitation and wonder of the affair, I didn t think much 
 of the agency ; but thinking it over afterward, the voice, as 
 it reached me from the guard-room, though in the soft, thick 
 South German accent, sounded familiar as though I had 
 heard it all my life ; the whispered French he spoke to me 
 had no more tone or cadence by which to identify it, than a 
 piano- string muffled by cotton. The figure was familiar, 
 and, in spite of his denial, I am convinced it was Jules ; he 
 was in that vicinity, but how he could be on such terms with 
 the Saxon lieutenant puzzles me ! Have you asked him ?" 
 
 " Yes, and he not only denies it, but has established an 
 alibi," replied Mrs. Arden, dissatisfied with the part she was 
 playing. 
 
 "Then it must have been one of my Heidelberg chums 
 
LIKK A TALE THA T IS TOLD. 505 
 
 who recognized me, and he will clear the mystery after all 
 danger is over," said Elliot, musingly. " By George ! but 
 it was an intrepid and beautifully managed trick. It would 
 bring the author to a drum-head if it were ever found out. 
 Trembling as I was lest some unlucky chance should balk 
 me, I couldn t help laughing at the guard as he fell over the 
 plotter when the light went out." And as he recalled the 
 comedy, Elliot laughed outright. " We owe him some 
 money, too," he added. " I found six hundred francs in the 
 pocket of the blouse which I never doubted you had given 
 for the purpose," he added, scrutinizing the changing face 
 of his mother. 
 
 " No," she said, glad to be able to assert the point unequiv 
 ocally ; "your letter was the first intimation I had of the 
 money or the details of your rescue." 
 
 The urgent business that the prodigal had hinted was not 
 undertaken the next day. The warning of the doctors was 
 verified. He was quite prostrated for days after the excite 
 ment of the sudden journey, and the family, ignorant of its 
 motive, supposed the relapse the result of over-exertion. 
 Philip came in from Versailles when he heard of Elliot s safe 
 return, and gave a gloomy account of the political situation. 
 Thiers and Simon were moving mountains to get money to 
 pay the first installment of the indemnity. Partisanship had 
 begun to cripple the chief of the executive. The Radicals 
 were demanding unheard innovations in local legislation, 
 and with the foolish arrogance of the accidental majority 
 of Monarchists in the Assembly, the prospects of France 
 were gloomy, if not threatening. A German army corps 
 still garrisoned the forts and virtually held the city in a state 
 of siege. 
 
 This enabled the agitators, for the most part char 
 acterless Poles, Italians, Americans, and what not of a 
 nomadic sort, to keep up a clamorous contention with the 
 Assembly government, which it rancorously identified with 
 the invaders, claiming that the peace had been made for a 
 
506 TRAJAN. 
 
 price, in order that a monarch of the House of Orleans or 
 Bourbon might set up a throne under the protection of Bis 
 marck s venal bayonets. " The worst of it," Philip con 
 tinued, " is, that Gambetta, who alone has influence with the 
 better class and the thinking groups of irreconcilables, has 
 been snubbed and vilified by Thiers and his familiars, and 
 holds aloof from all parties. His presence in Paris at this 
 hour would insure peaceful methods on the part of the rev 
 olutionists ; for they know, however much they may resent 
 his conservatism, that he is loyally democratic. I am greatly 
 in hopes that Trajan, who has the commission of the old 
 Radical guard, will prevail upon the Dictator to come back ; 
 for, unless he does, the folly of the Monarchists and the 
 passion of the mob will bring about a collision. If Aunt 
 Cordelia were able to bear the journey, I should advise quit 
 ting Paris for the present." 
 
 "But she is not in condition to be moved, and the phy 
 sicians give no hopes of it under a month, if then," said 
 Elliot, in an undertone. 
 
 " The best thing to be done, then, is to move out as little 
 as may be in the streets, and wait until the municipal gov 
 ernment is rescued from the domination of these turbulent 
 National Guards." 
 
 When Elliot, a few days later, visited the address given 
 in the anonymous letter, he was met with ingratiating 
 deference by the duenna Madelaine Tarbes who held 
 the clue to Trajan s alleged transgressions. A tale of 
 Trajan s turpitude was told him by this artless old lady 
 that fairly froze the genial current of Elliot s liberal soul. 
 It was set forth with a minute circumstantiality that left no 
 hope of mistaken identity possible; and Elliot returned with 
 a new burden upon him. Trajan must be denied the house 
 hold, and Edith must be rescued from the hideous pitfall 
 opening before her innocent steps. The extraordinary story 
 he had heard bewildered him. It was unlike any conduct 
 of which he believed Trajan capable. He would have dis- 
 
LIKE A TALE THA T IS TOLD. 507 
 
 credited it with contempt, had it not been that the boy 
 Amedee was with Trajan. He had seen him and had marked 
 Trajan s confusion when the little fellow came into the 
 studio on that May day long ago, when he visited him for 
 the first time. He would not, however, wholly condemn 
 him until he had verified every detail. But until the ques 
 tion was resolved it was plain that Edith should be kept 
 from companionship with her lover. This seemed to him a 
 duty. He was sadly perplexed about its performance. 
 
 His sober face was a signal for a chorus of questions from 
 the domestic circle so soon as he appeared, but he evaded 
 all the hints directed at him and plunged into the common 
 places of the day. His preoccupation was too transparent 
 to deceive any of the wondering group, and the company 
 fell into silence, broken at last by Pierre s entrance to 
 announce Jules. It was nearly the dinner hour when the 
 visitor arose to go, but being urged to remain, he con 
 sented with very evident pleasure. The young men having 
 gone into Elliot s dressing-room to prepare for the table, he 
 led the conversation to Trajan without apparent design, and 
 learned that he was expected in Paris the next day from St. 
 Sebastian, where he had left Gambetta, unable to persuade 
 him to come back to Paris. 
 
 " By the way, speaking of Gray, how long have you known 
 him ! " 
 
 " I have known of him any time for the last seven years, 
 I think, but I met him first about two years ago." 
 
 As these dates didn t cover the event upon which Elliot 
 was seeking light, he dismissed the topic by saying care 
 lessly : 
 
 "He has certainly become wonderfully identified with men 
 and parties in so short a time." 
 
 " Yes ; if Gray were a Frenchman he could be minister 
 before ten years are over," assented Jules. 
 
 Elliot read confirmation of Jules news of Trajan s 
 expected return in Edith s eyes as she came to the table, 
 
508 TRAJAN. 
 
 at which Elliot was strangely silent and gloomy, affecting 
 every one by this unwonted humor. It was a relief when 
 the meal came to an end and Elliot, alleging business at the 
 Embassy, went out for the evening. He set off toward the 
 Champs Elysee, which still bore traces of the winter s siege. 
 Though it was late in March, the gardens, usually lighted, 
 were dark and gloomy, and the few gas jets gave but a pale 
 glimmer of the old-time radiance of this broad way of light 
 and life. His mind was working in a violent turmoil. A 
 mad desire to see and speak with Theo, whom, on one pre 
 text or another, he had avoided since his return, possessed 
 him now that he knew she had been wronged by the asper 
 sions of Trajan. He had resolved to renounce her fatal 
 charms in the fervor of repentance that followed his recov 
 ery, when he thought her an ignoble adventuress, playing 
 with honest love while seeking riches and station only. 
 
 Did he not owe her amends for his treason ! Had he not 
 blindly believed in her guilt, without giving her a chance to 
 deny or disprove ? Didn t the revelations of Madam Tarbes 
 carry out her defiance to Trajan in the summer-house ? Had 
 she not shown angelic magnanimity in refusing to expose and 
 discredit her maligner under a cruel provocation ? What 
 must she think of his baseness in holding her at arm s length 
 since his return ? He resolved instantly to make amends. 
 In a moment he was in a cab rolling toward the Arch. As 
 he turned into the Rue Galilee, the Carnot apartments were 
 a blaze of light. Could it be a fete ? Never mind, his 
 repentance would make him welcome. As he reached the 
 top of the last flight of stairs, a maid passed him swiftly with 
 something in her hands. He found the door open, but punc 
 tiliously rang the bell. He waited, but no one came to 
 answer. 
 
 Entering the vestibule, he spied Marion Grovel tumbling 
 a cat at the end of the passage-way. Calling the boy, 
 he asked if Theo was at home. Yes, she was in the 
 salon " Walk right in," and the boy pulled back the por- 
 
LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD. 509 
 
 ttere, with his back to the interior. The door was ajar, and 
 near the mantel, laden with rare flowers, Elliot s transfixed 
 glance saw this spectacle : the Prince d Amboise, with his 
 arms around Theo s waist, looking down into her eyes, 
 which could be seen in the mirror upturned to his, flaming 
 in passionate response to those above her. As Elliot started 
 in amazement, the prince bent and planted his mouth full 
 upon the pouting lips. Marion, wondering at the visitor s 
 stare, dropped the curtain as the cat, trying to evade him, 
 made a dash to enter. He followed it into the room, and 
 Elliot could hear him through the drapery 
 
 " Aunt Theo, Mr. Arden wants to see you." 
 
 " Where is he? " It was Theo s voice. 
 
 " At the door ; I opened it for him, but he won t come in. 
 He wants you to ask him most likely." 
 
 In a moment the door was swung back, the curtain raised 
 and Theo, flushed and enchanting, stood under the half 
 lifted curtain. 
 
 Elliot had moved back to the hat rack, and, reassured by 
 this, she came forward, holding out both hands. Elliot 
 would have been unable to conceal his knowledge of the 
 scene in the salon if the maid had not entered the vestibule 
 door at the moment. He took one hand decorously, but 
 made no response to the ardent pressure of the unabashed 
 witch. 
 
 " So you have remembered the old love at last ? " she 
 said, in tender reproach. 
 
 " But I m in time before you re on with the new ? " 
 
 " I have a great mind to make you do penance for your 
 shameless neglect." 
 
 " I have already done penance ; it is absolution I need 
 now." 
 
 " Ah I shall prescribe conditions first." 
 
 " The conqueror it is who imposes terms ? " 
 
 " Then prepare for Prussian exactions ; but come, there 
 is an old friend in the salon guess who ? " 
 
510 TRAJAN. 
 
 " If the empire were not abolished I should say Napoleon 
 as the empire is gone, perhaps Gambetta." 
 
 " You saucy fellow ; my king is not of that sort," and she 
 threw a bewildering glance from the flashing, parti-colored 
 eyes. 
 
 " Monsieur d Amboise," she continued, " here is the 
 heroic exile, returned from the Valley of Death." 
 
 " A thousand welcomes, then, Monsieur Arden ; alas, the 
 Valley of Death it is Paris, in the hands of the vile Prus 
 sians," said the prince, as he held out both hands with the 
 fervor of his race. 
 
 Elliot was afraid he was going to add the kiss with which 
 that demonstrative race mark their cordiality, and kept his 
 arms quite rigid, as a barrier against this embarrassing 
 token. 
 
 " Ah, cher Monsieur, we have not met since the great 
 malheur. I have never smiled since Sedan I assure you 
 my heart is buried with the glories of France. The world 
 has lost all charms for me," and the hapless patriot clasped 
 his hands, while his loyal bosom burst with a profound 
 sigh. 
 
 " But there ought to be charms left in a world like this, 
 filled with adorable consolers, whose eyes and lips should 
 make a man see roses on the gates of Hades," and Elliot 
 glanced gallantly at Theo, who blushed in the demurest way 
 imaginable, as the innocent Chloe when Philander becomes 
 too ardent in the Sylvan groves. 
 
 " Ah, cher Monsieur, but you others you can not under 
 stand the love a Frenchman bears the patrie. Other peo 
 ple are the citizens of a country, we are the children of the 
 patrie. Read our ballads, read our legends, it is as a fond 
 mother, a mistress, that France is idealized and adored. 
 Her sons decorate her with the garlands of glory and die 
 with joy rather than let her bosom bear a scar, her honor 
 receive a tarnish. You cold-blooded, passionless Saxons, 
 you can not figure this to yourselves. Your country is a 
 
LIKE A TALE THA T IS TOLD. 5 1 1 
 
 vast wilderness, your compatriots a melange. There is no 
 brotherhood in the tie that binds you. In France we are 
 children spoiled children, perhaps. It is this which ex 
 plains the tumult of the masses, the caprice of the rich, the 
 languor of the noblesse. We love to break into the excesses 
 of the prodigal, and when we have run riot return to good 
 order and be petted as the spoiled darlings of the race. 
 Even in our abasement, we are the pride and wonder of the 
 world," and, lighting up with the consolation of this pleasant 
 conviction, the melancholy prince stroked his mustache and 
 looked about him as a prophet who has castigated the sins 
 of his people and then healed the wounds with a holy balm. 
 
 " You are certainly a wonderful race," assented Elliot, 
 cautiously ; " but what is this we hear of a civic outbreak 
 against the Versailles government ? " 
 
 " Oh, the blague of a few feather-heads. MacMahon is 
 now at the head of the army, and he will quell the unquiet 
 by his very name " 
 
 " I trust so, I m sure, for I shouldn t like to be in the city 
 if the Reds took the notion to test the defenses made by Na 
 poleon against internal enemies." 
 
 Theo arose as he spoke and met a group of ladies at the 
 door. Some of them Elliot knew, and the conversation fell 
 off into topics of the day. Presently some one asked for 
 music, and the prince politely escorted Theo to the piano. 
 Her voice was an agreeable one, and she sang the airs in 
 vogue with charming expression. After a time she rose, 
 asking one of the company to sing, and relinquished her 
 place at the instrument. 
 
 Elliot had walked out and was seated on the balcony, 
 where presently, the prince still officiating at the piano, Theo 
 joined him. 
 
 " You have really been very ill, bien aime. I see it in 
 your face. I can tell it in your manner " she slipped her 
 hand gently into his " why didn t you write me a word 
 you knew how I suffered " 
 
512 TRAJAN. 
 
 " You suffered ? " he said, breathing hard and tightening 
 the clasp on her hand until she uttered a little cry of pain ; 
 " why did you suffer, you couldn t doubt the fidelity of real 
 love ? " 
 
 "Ah but I didn t know what was befalling you. At the 
 Rue Francois Premier, no one would talk of you but your 
 mother. Kate and Edith are partisans of Trajan and he, as 
 you know, bears me no good will." 
 
 Elliot started ; he turned and looked at her, as the soft 
 lights from within fell on her round lovely face. Had he 
 been dreaming ? Surely, that guileless face could not be the 
 mask of such odious treason as he had witnessed but a half 
 hour before. And Trajan, too, she had spoken of him fear 
 lessly. There could be no guilt in such confidence and 
 candor. 
 
 " You told me once that you would reveal the cause of 
 your repulsion to Trajan tell me now. There is an im 
 portant reason, or I wouldn t ask." 
 
 The green in the eyes intensified to blackness a gleam of 
 intelligence, as of a doubt suddenly dissolved, an end won, 
 glanced for a moment in the shining orbs and then, in a low 
 tone, she made answer : 
 
 " No, Elliot, I have often thought of my promise since. If 
 Trajan can make his way and be happy, I have no right to 
 put an obstacle in his path ; no, dearest, you must not ask 
 me. I can tell you no more." 
 
 " You have told me enough," he murmured, sorely 
 troubled by the web in which he dimly realized he was 
 floundering. " Let us talk no more of him. How does the 
 prince s suit prosper with Bella ? " 
 
 She tried to read his face before answering, but it was in 
 the shade and she could only catch the profile as he bent 
 over her in the shadow of the curtain. 
 
 "Your aunt s illness has kept Bella so occupied that the 
 prince has but rarely seen her since she returned to Paris. I 
 think he is making up his mind to lose her. He declares 
 that she is fyris of Trajan." 
 
LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD. 513 
 
 " What ! " 
 
 " The prince declares that Bella loves Trajan wildly." 
 
 " The scoundrel ! How dare he I will " 
 
 Elliot s voice had become so loud and hoarse that Theo 
 rose in alarm and put her hands on his lips. 
 
 " Hush for Heaven s sake don t make a scene! Remem 
 ber he is a jealous man and construes Bella s American free 
 dom with a young man received as one of the family, as any 
 Frenchman would who doesn t understand our liberal ideas 
 of propriety." 
 
 " But from the way you repeated the prince, I inferred 
 that you too believed the scandal." said Elliot, chafing in 
 unaccountable rage. 
 
 " Why a scandal ? I m sure I loved Trajan once, until 
 until " 
 
 " Until you found him an adventurer ? " 
 
 " I declare, you are in an emphatic mood to-night. I m 
 afraid to open my lips lest I shall come in for some of your 
 emphatic testimonials ; but, if you ask my opinion, I do 
 think that Bella is in love with Trajan. Think it over your 
 self, and see the string of probabilities outside of the evi 
 dences she gave when I saw them together " 
 
 " What evidences ? " gasped Elliot, hoarsely. 
 
 u Who can put in words the thousand trifles that go to 
 mark a woman s joy in the nearness of the man she loves ; 
 how put in the bald and meaningless fabric of words the 
 change in the manner, the varying hues of color, the trem 
 ulous shade of the shadow of tone, the elastic step, the pre 
 texts found to touch, if only the glove, or cane, of the object 
 of this mute idolatry tenfold more devouring, that it can not 
 be spoken the roseate life of lip and cheek ? How tell all 
 these and make them comprehensible to an indulged Adonis 
 like you, who only believe you are loved, when your slaves 
 put their neck under your lordly feet ? " 
 
 " You have seen all this in Bella ? " 
 
 " I have seen all this ; and when I add Bella s transcen- 
 33 
 
5 I4 TRAJAN. 
 
 dental notions, her enthusiasm for the bizarre and heroic, 
 her sense of gratitude to Trajan for that superb contest 
 in which her life was the stake I can not wonder that 
 she should love him. Remember what you once told me 
 of her penchant for the declasse heroes like Tito and Lord 
 Kew, and you surely can not wonder that Trajan has 
 taken hold of her imagination ? " 
 
 " Does Trajan share does Trajan know does he love 
 her ? " 
 
 Theo mused a moment for all the world like one who 
 has arranged a dialogue beforehand and, when it comes to 
 pass, forgets the alternative sequiter. Her mind was invent 
 ive, not logical, and she couldn t decide whether yes or no 
 would better further her purpose. 
 
 " I sometimes think he does, but I have seen him so little 
 that I really should not say." 
 
 She sat silent, waiting for a reply, but none came. The 
 music had ceased in the salon, and she rose, urging her 
 duty as hostess. 
 
 " I will follow you presently and make my adieux. I don t 
 feel equal to the insipidities of a conversazione now. Come 
 in to-morrow with Jules and see Aunt Caroline ; she is now 
 able to lie on the sofa." 
 
 She stood so near him that he could have kissed her lips 
 as she put her hand out. He looked away as he pressed it, 
 and, almost snatching it from him, with a rustle of silk and 
 gleam of jewels she vanished. He sate for a long time with 
 his head buried in his hands, lost in the maze the sorceress 
 had set for him. 
 
 Trajan, Bella, Theo all unfaithful could he trust any 
 one ? Would Edith, too, take a pull at his heart strings ? 
 There was a long hush in the gabble of the salon. He looked 
 in. The room was deserted. Rising, he slipped quietly 
 through to the vestibule, as the voices of the party resounded 
 from the salle a manger. 
 
 On entering the house on the Rue Frangois Premier, he 
 
LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD. 515 
 
 directed Pierre to see if Edith was still up and, if she were, 
 to send her to him. He had barely time to put on his slip 
 pers and dressing robe, when the well known tap was heard 
 at the door. 
 
 Edith tripped in, beaming. There was but one joy to her 
 equal to that of hugging and spoiling this adored brother. 
 His heart grew lighter at sight of her. He took her face 
 between his two hands as she kneeled on the cushion at his 
 feet. The odious atmosphere of deceit lifted from him 
 and he saw with something of his natural boyish trustful 
 ness serene in conscious honor. 
 
 " Neddy, girl, you never tell lies, do you ? " 
 
 " What a question ? " 
 
 "But answer it, I command you," and he looked love and 
 confidence in the startled blue eyes. 
 
 " Of course I don t that is I did tell Kate a fib once, but 
 it was to save somebody annoyance," and she blushed, 
 guiltily. 
 
 " A fib isn t a lie," said the mentor, with an easy indiffer 
 ence to the moralities ; "you don t tell lies that s enough. 
 Now answer me : Does Bella love the Prince d Amboise ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Sure?" 
 
 "Positive." 
 
 " Does she love any one ?" 
 
 " Ah, that wouldn t be fair ; you couldn t expect me to 
 answer that." 
 
 " But I do, and you must. Whom does Bella love? " 
 
 " She never told me." 
 
 " Did you ever ask her ? " 
 
 " No ; I never did. I never asked you, but I know whom 
 you love, or," she added, turning crimson, "whom you did 
 love once." 
 
 " And whom did I love once, Ned ? " 
 
 " Bella." 
 
 "When?" 
 
516 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Before before we went to Crecy." 
 
 " Are you sure ? How do you know ? What did you 
 judge by ? " 
 
 " I am sure, we all knew it Bella knew it. I can tell, 
 because I have seen somebody do just as you used 
 to do." 
 
 " Have you seen any * somebody do as I used to do 
 when Bella is absent, since Crecy ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Elliot started, and the next question was in the voice of 
 quite another person a person in mortal dread shrinking, 
 yet forced to confront some dreaded thing. 
 
 " Who have you seen giving these signs of love for Bella ? " 
 
 " Jules Carnot ; he adores her." 
 
 Edith felt her brother s frame collapse as if from a mighty 
 tension. He held up her chin and looked intently into the 
 wondering eyes, then with a sigh of ineffable satisfaction he 
 asked : 
 
 " Does Bella know of Jules love ? " 
 
 " Did any woman ever meet a man twice who loved her 
 and remain ignorant ? " 
 
 " Yes ; you let a man propose to you once and never 
 dreamed that he thought any thing more of you than he did 
 of me." 
 
 " But I was a child then. How should I know ? " 
 
 " That, however, proves that your rule has exceptions. 
 Does Bella encourage Jules love ? in other words does she 
 love him ? " 
 
 " She doesn t as yet, but she pities him, and if if " 
 
 " If what ? " 
 
 " If somebody were to marry somebody else, she would 
 not refuse Jules, and I fancy but one can t tell these 
 things." 
 
 " Who is the somebody ? " For answer she stretched up 
 her arms, and drawing his head down kissed him into 
 silence, 
 
LIKE A TALE THAT IS TOLD. 517 
 
 " Do you believe it ? " 
 
 " I know it." He leaned back in the deep chair, and 
 she, folding her arms on his knee, as she had done when 
 she was a small maid in pinafores, presented the picture of 
 the Raphael cherub strayed from its companion angel. He 
 had called her in with the determination to command her to 
 see Trajan no more. He had not meant to divulge the 
 cause, simply warning her that love between them was 
 impossible, marriage out of the question. But the avowal 
 he had so dextrously extracted, revealing the chance he 
 still held to win Bella, filled him with such joy that the 
 Draconian edict was too much for him to pronounce. 
 
 Misery courts company, even in love, you will observe. 
 This young gentleman, who had hovered about the object 
 of his devotions all his life ; who grew, if not indifferent, at 
 all events, over-confident ; who had gone after the woman 
 whose feet, according to the book, lead to hell, would have 
 held the black draught to these innocent lips, which had 
 just prattled life to his hope, without a commiserating pang, 
 had it been death she had announced to his hope ! 
 
 Truly, indeed, when we see through a glass darkly, the mind 
 takes the line of the vision. He had come from lips that 
 insinuated disloyalty and deceit, and his soul was filled 
 with unbelief. He had looked in this pure well of undefiled 
 innocence, and he hated himself for the burden he bore, and 
 shrank from clouding the azure of her horizon with the 
 black cloud that for the moment had discolored the firma 
 ment to his own vision. His perplexity grew into anguish, 
 and that anguish touched the spring of tears as he looked 
 down into the trustful eyes watching the play of his 
 features. Her utter unconsciousness of the coming blow 
 terrified him. How should.it be broken to her? Who 
 should wither her spotless purity with this baleful blast of 
 iniquity ? He started angrily to his feet, hardly noticing the 
 disturbed figure, and swore to himself that he would bury 
 the secret rather than this angel should be made wretched. 
 
518 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan had grown older since this foul crime. He knew 
 the ways of young men ; he knew how few resist tempta 
 tion. Indeed, could he claim to be unspotted from the 
 world ? He thought of his immediate past with a guilty 
 shock as the relapses of the winter suddenly rose up in 
 lurid judgment before him. He had repented in shame 
 unutterable ; his punishment was with him every hour of 
 the day as he met the trustful eyes of his mother. Trajan, 
 too might he not have done bitter penance for his sin ? 
 
 Was it in expiation of that he had determined on a sui 
 cide s ignoble end ? Providence had made him, Elliot, the 
 instrument to save him ; was it the part assigned by Provi 
 dence to finish that work by denying him a chance to prove 
 his purpose to be an honest man ? All he had seen of 
 Trajan pleaded for indulgence. His nature was noble, in 
 spite of the hideous aberration of his youth. What man of 
 sensibility of heart could fall under the angelic witchery of 
 Edith without purification and strength to do better and 
 manlier things ? In any event, he was not in the frame of 
 mind to deal with the problem now. He would, perhaps, 
 take Kate into his confidence, or, perhaps, Philip yes, 
 Philip s coolness and knowledge of the world would help 
 him out of the difficulty. This solution gave him some 
 comfort, and he then bethought him of the poor child 
 watching him in large-eyed wonder. When the brother and 
 sister kissed the good-night parting, both felt nearer than 
 they had been since the wicked shadow of Theo had dark 
 ened the doorway of their intimacy. 
 
HORROR S HEAD. 519 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 HORROR S HEAD. 
 
 OARIS meanwhile had plunged with brute ferocity into 
 1 a frenzy of colossal combat. Buried in the aristo 
 cratic seclusion of their quarter, most unlike any of the 
 segments of the vast circle that embraces the inveterately 
 unruly of a schwarmerei, that thinks, resolves, acts for a 
 whole nation, the Ardens had only a confused sense of the 
 lurid flames that lighted the horizon about them. Even the 
 Attila incursion of the northern hordes on the first of 
 March came to their ears through the exaggerated reports 
 of Pierre and the domestics, who had slipped out to 
 the Champs Elysees to fix basilisk eyes upon the conquer 
 ing columns as they glittered by in the glorious sunshine of 
 that fatal day. They knew that uneasiness was thick in the 
 atmosphere, that many of their timid neighbors had locked 
 their palaces and fled, until the uncertainty should be 
 brought to an end. The daily journals, conscious of the 
 dragon crop sown during the siege, told only half truths 
 during the weeks the hell broth of social rapine was stewing 
 in the fetid purlieus of the malefactors. It was knowledge 
 of the direful mischief brewing that impelled Trajan to risk 
 the lives of those he loved, in the fruitless mission to 
 Gambetta. The Republican Autochthon was not sulking, 
 Achilles-like, in his Pyrenean retreat. He was really ill. 
 Trajan found the man who for five months held the purse 
 of France, through whose hands millions had passed sub 
 ject to his own account alone, buried in two little rooms 
 over a grocer s shop in St. Sebastian. He listened to the 
 young man s story of the dangerous drift of the Mobiles 
 and Nationals, but shook his head when he wound up by 
 imploring him to come to the rescue of law and order ; 
 the rescue of the Republic, reeling into the abyss of 
 anarchy. 
 
526 TRAJAN. 
 
 " No," he said, " Thiers brands me as a * furious mad 
 man ; Grevy declares before the Assembly that I shall die 
 in the skin of a revoltee. I shall take care to keep clear of 
 all factions, until France recovers from her present shock. 
 Have no fear for the Republic. After Sedan Imperialism is 
 forever at an end ; the robber gang of Orleans are barred 
 by the memory of that skinflint pilferer, the royal Macaire, 
 Louis Philippe ; there is but one Bourbon, the Count de 
 Chambord. He is an imbecile like all his race, and France 
 need not fear him. Within two years I shall be at the 
 head of a party which will lead France to the rational 
 system your great Jefferson implanted in America. Besides," 
 he added gloomily, " the committee is mistaken. I should 
 have no influence in Paris at this time. The revoltees 
 would not heed me, and the men of principle could not 
 help me. The disease is in the blood of Paris, sweltered 
 into venom by twenty years of quackery. It must come 
 out before it can be treated. This is as good a time as any. 
 Let the Assembly incapables and their tools, the ministry, 
 experiment. They will soon learn that ruling and plotting 
 are two different metiers. I have no concern about France 
 or myself. My time will come." 
 
 No pleading could shake this resolution, re-enforced by 
 the physician s peremptory assertion, that without rest the 
 ex-dictator would collapse within a week, and that he could 
 not guarantee his restoration even with rest. With gloomy 
 forebodings Trajan laid the result of his mission before a 
 committee consisting wholly of the men then and afterward 
 most intimately identified with Gambetta. They heard it 
 with despair, for even then, (it was the morning of the i8th 
 of March) the city was virtually in the hands of the male 
 factors. The government troops had been defeated in an 
 attempt to carry off the cannon on Montmartre, almost in 
 the heart of the most populous quarter, and the regulars of 
 the line were deserting en masse to join their brethren under 
 the red flag of the Commune. The generals Clement, 
 
HORROR* S HEAD. 5 2 1 
 
 Thomas and Lecompte had been seized and were to be tried 
 before a military court the next day. The adventurers had 
 formed a central committee, omnipotent in the quarters. 
 Rothschild and the Bank of France had been forced to 
 supply funds an advance of five millions under penalty of 
 pillage. Proclamations had been sent out to the provinces, 
 inviting a federal union of communes and the decentraliza 
 tion of power. Decrees had been issued forbidding egress 
 from the city on any pretext, and another subjecting every 
 able-bodied male to conscription in the ranks of the national 
 guard. But the law of brute reprisal did not end there. 
 Every male, wheresoever found, must show a badge indi 
 cating his company and regiment. Any impulsive patriot 
 in the street was empowered to demand the badge, and a 
 failure to produce it was followed by a march to the nearest 
 court. 
 
 Men were plenty. The masters of the imperial city, 
 suddenly transformed from the modest functions of butch 
 ers, tinkers, joiners and shoemakers, saw the lamps of 
 the new destinies of the race lighted by the tinsel they had 
 so lately abhorred. Texas is not more lavish in titles of a 
 warlike sort. Though the title of general had been abol 
 ished by the Spartans of the committee, brigadiers insignia 
 decorated every third man met. While the Draconian code 
 was promulgated in one breath, the nicest problems of 
 ethics were resolved with a Platonic lucidity that entitle the 
 thinkers to a place in the Pantheon of the legists. 
 
 Any woman proving an intimate amour with a thoughtless 
 Lothario, was by her own mere say-so accepted into the new 
 dispensation as a legitimate wife. Any castaway, whatever 
 the ceremonial discrepancies existing at his birth, was 
 declared loin and limb, heir and hope of the astonished 
 author of his or her birth. Never, indeed, was a world made 
 virtuous, if not sinless, with such facility. The title deeds 
 of all property were ordered to be burned, that the brother 
 hood of man might begin on truly equal terms. Tragedy 
 
522 TRAJAN. 
 
 sullen, stupendous and vague, took on the mask of laughter, 
 holding both her sides. Passion exhaling monstrosities that 
 invested pigmies with great powers ; hate searching victims, 
 cupidity turning gullibility and timidity to treason a 
 jocund, terrible madness epidemic, brooding like a colossal 
 devil-fish, its antennae reaching into every crevice of human 
 activity and collapsing to gorge itself under cover of blind 
 ing showers of blood. 
 
 Apparitions ghosts of men and laws, and forms, and cus 
 toms of things that were neither might, nor right, regnant ; 
 the fool s cap on the fool s crown, and the blood of the inno 
 cent and guilty alike in the maddening cup. Incessant 
 aberration of sidereal flame. Life a joke, death a mock 
 ery, religion a legend, love a travesty. Traffic stilled, yet 
 human want rampant ; the ancient reign of night, unbroken 
 by a gleam of the light of sixty centuries of mind ; the 
 light chariot wheels of vanity replaced by the Juggernaut of 
 Maniacy, bearing to the baying canon the mocking satyrs of 
 godless frenzy ; misery, squalor, crime, panoplied in the 
 splendor of state, no longer prowling night birds, shunned 
 and obscene, but masters of the tabernacles of all the holies 
 of life. 
 
 A season of stertorous breath and piteous comedy ; 
 of strutting manikins and dismal imbecilities, not solemn 
 ized into the tragic by even the Satanic unction of blood. 
 Open putrefactions and escaping social vapors of the dankest 
 and unseemliest smell and form. Men dying gayly and 
 sadly ; women dying vauntingly and pathetically ; babes 
 born into a cataclysm of the horrible, the unnatural. 
 
 A prodigious vat of fermenting hates, revenges, loves, despair 
 and, grotesque enough, sublunary ambition. All the city 
 houseless, for doors were barred in vain. Terror was the 
 sesame that turned every lock, made the blind to see, the 
 lame to fly, the cripple to stand erect. Sorrow and fear 
 and hope there were, but masked in a bleary joyfulness ; 
 prayer, devotion and truth, but clothed in profanity, treason 
 
HORROR S HE A D. 523 
 
 and profligacy ; where theft was the law, vice was no longer 
 secretive or coward ; where the lusts of the flesh were the 
 rule, hypocrisy held her hands idle. The rights of man were 
 riot, pillage, violence, rapine, murder, and its weapon the law of 
 the suspect. 
 
 A whisper was an indictment, a hearing a sentence, 
 a sentence, death. Two million people, three-fourths guilt 
 less, ruled by one-fourth sinless, too, for since there 
 was no law there could be no crime ! Two millions of 
 people huddled on a patch of ground, divided from each 
 other by walls of brick and streets and a river, but never for 
 a moment out of each other s sight bound indissolubly 
 by the hideous fetters of common complicity and common 
 fear. 
 
 Under the reign of this primeval law, as there was no 
 crime there were no prisons ; and the malefactor was the 
 equal of the social tyrant who, under the suspension of this 
 new code, had sentenced him to seclusion. The first right of 
 man being the right to slaughter, the guillotine is solemnly 
 burned in the public street, as the godless memorial of patri 
 arch genuflexion in the anger of the elect. Precedent was 
 a superstition precedent was abolished ; habit a slavery 
 the million were manumitted from it. Privacy a treason it 
 was declared suspect ; non-citizenship an evasion it was dis 
 regarded. Were not all men equal ? What matter, then, if 
 born in Siberia or Patagonia, under the reign of liberty, 
 equality and fraternity all were children of the one mother, 
 Paris. 
 
 This, in a word, was the political and social existence of 
 Paris from March 2oth to May 24th, when a climax came, 
 to which the foregoing summary is as a holiday parade to 
 actual war. The ten weeks not only dealt discomfiture 
 to the carefully prepared triumphs of our charming Theo, 
 but wrought her disaster, which I am sure the magnani 
 mous reader will regard as abundant expiation for the 
 ungenerous use she has thus far made of her matchless 
 
524 TRAJAN. 
 
 penetration, beauty and cleverness. If our pleasant vices 
 return to plague us, our sins come back to punish, and there 
 fore let us be grateful that we are not gifted let us be con 
 tent that we are only hum-drum. That a tender smile from 
 Joan or Darby fills us with joy, that a glimpse now and then 
 of the luxuries of this world, in the grand palace of our 
 neighbor Croesus, does not make us discontented with our 
 two-story brick, the shabby hall, the stuffy parlor and the 
 third appearance of Sunday s roast in the middle of the 
 week ! For what shall it profit you repining for a gig, a 
 summer villa, a Paisley shawl, or any other form or 
 species of gimcrack, if to get and to hold, you are dragged 
 into ways and means that give the world a right to hale you 
 before the high court of public opinion, where the proud 
 man s scorn and the whips and scorpions of envy have a 
 right to fall upon and lash you ? 
 
 Never was Theo so satisfied with her ministry of deceit 
 and craft as when she quitted Elliot on the balcony of the 
 Rue Galilee that March night. She had molded his 
 ductile nature into the very grooves she herself had fash 
 ioned. She had by a sublimity of artifice confirmed Elliot s 
 suspicions of his friend, and had added an incentive to his 
 anger which would confirm him in driving the reprobate 
 from his sister s presence. She dared not confide her un 
 scrupulous maneuvers to Jules, not that she doubted his 
 approval, but rather distrusted his skill in helping her to 
 achieve them. She preferred, too, in an imperial spirit of 
 self-confidence, to do the work alone. She held that a 
 secret once divulged was no longer a secret ; furthermore, 
 with such an ally as Elliot, doubly her minion, there was no 
 need of even remotely compromising the future husband of 
 Bella. 
 
 When she called at the Ardens the next day and 
 found Trajan in the drawing-room with Edith, she was 
 startled, but not disconcerted. Elliot, she made up her 
 mind, was waiting to test the double perfidy of his quondam 
 
HORROR S HEAD. 525 
 
 friend. When, however, she learned from Edith that her 
 brother had gone to Versailles to visit Philip on urgent fam 
 ily business she was not so well satisfied. He might be 
 gone a day or two he might be back in the evening. It 
 depended on the affairs in question and the presence of a 
 certain officer of the cabinet, who might not have returned 
 from Bordeaux yet. Trajan expressed his surprise that 
 Theo ventured in the streets at such a time. 
 
 " Oh, Jules is protection enough ; he is covered by the 
 shield of Jules Favre, and the new government, even if it be 
 permitted to establish itself, can find no fault with his 
 patriotism." 
 
 " I m not sure of that. I heard the mob at the Hotel de 
 Ville denouncing death to Gambetta, and certainly he can t 
 be accused of lack of Republicanism or patriotism. I 
 myself have been denounced, and if I were found in the city 
 it would go hard with me." 
 
 Jules looked grave at this, but said nothing. Trajan 
 taking his departure a little later made Jules a sign to 
 follow him. 
 
 " I only wanted to warn you that there is danger for all 
 of us for me as well as you. I was at a meeting of the 
 club this morning and it is known that the Central Com 
 mittee mean mischief, so soon as the city is entirely under 
 their control. Elliot s mission to Versailles is to get money 
 and passports for the family, as it is clearly unsafe to remain. 
 They will go to England just as soon as he gets back." 
 
 " But you are a Republican and have influence with the 
 Reds won t your word protect us in case of danger ?" 
 asked Jules anxiously, thinking of the separation from 
 Bella. 
 
 " I shall be lucky if I can save my own neck. As a 
 friend of Gambetta s I should stand little favor with the 
 chaps parading under the name of Communists of which 
 they understand as much as a Malay the doctrines of 
 Confucius ! That miserable wretch, Ferre, has circulated 
 
526 TRAJAN. 
 
 the report of my handiwork in the escape of the empress, 
 and my presence with Napoleon at Metz and Sedan. I 
 would be shot on sight." 
 
 " Then you advise me to send my family from Paris ? " 
 " I certainly advise it for the present. Just look at the 
 situation. There isn t a single policeman in Paris ; there 
 isn t a court open ; there isn t a vestige of legal authority of 
 any kind. Suppose a ruffian takes it into his head to enter 
 this house ? What s to prevent him ? The servants ? Who 
 knows but they are plotting this moment to carry off the 
 silver and valuables ? Should we meet a band of plunder 
 ers at this moment, what would resistance mean ? Treason 
 to the new order of things which so soon as the mask is 
 thrown off will declare the right of equal division in prop 
 erty pretending that Communism means that ! " 
 " My God, Gray, you terrify me. What shall I do ? " 
 " Get what money you can and leave the city go no 
 matter where, but get out of this reign of burlesque, that 
 may turn to terror unless the Versailles folks show more 
 energy than they have thus far practiced ; but go back to 
 the salon and don t breathe a word of this to the family." 
 Jules returned to the rest, full of apprehension. He 
 had counted on a coming crisis, but he had hoped that the 
 interest he had made with the revolutionists in other days 
 would save himself and family from serious jeopardy. Theo 
 detected the solicitude in his manner the instant he came 
 in, but attributed it to another and perhaps to her more 
 alarming business. Had Trajan been informed of the mesh 
 woven about his feet and had he suspected her handiwork ? 
 She couldn t restrain the horrible impatience burning her. 
 Refusing the pressing invitation to spend the day she pleaded 
 a violent headache, and much to her brother s chagrin, who 
 was loth to quit Bella, hurried out. She couldn t wait to 
 get into the cab to ask the question : 
 
 " Trajan has been telling you something serious I see it 
 in your face. What is it ? " 
 
HORRORS HEAD. 527 
 
 He had not meant to disturb her with his alarm, but he 
 knew her too well to attempt to evade the truth and told 
 her frankly the subject of the interview. He was astonished 
 at her sigh of relief when the menacing danger they were in 
 was revealed, and asked in surprise : 
 
 " Did you apprehend worse than this ? " 
 
 "I didn t know what to think," she returned evasively. 
 "Just now I am suspicious of Gray ; his intimacy with the 
 Ardens keeps us at a distance. I really believe that he is 
 capable of going over to Bella. She is far more fitted to a 
 man of his intellect than her little cousin, who is nothing 
 but pretty. You needn t tell me that Trajan really loves 
 Edith. If he does it s a mere caprice. Men are never constant 
 to women whom they win without effort, and nobody could 
 fail to see that Edith adored him long before he gave her a 
 thought. She s a sly little puss, too. He hadn t been at 
 Crecy two days before she had him at her side every 
 moment, on pretexts that would have put an old stager like 
 you on your guard." 
 
 " On my mettle, you mean. I m free to say I should not 
 make much resistance to such eyes as hers, and then the 
 Arden fortune- that would be an argument that a poor 
 devil like me couldn t resist." 
 
 " What shall we do quit Paris ? " 
 
 " That s the only thing I see to be done." 
 
 " That means separation from Bella and all the work over 
 again ! " 
 
 " If it were not for that I should be only too glad to leave 
 the place." 
 
 "But why not go with the Ardens? " 
 
 " How ? They won t invite us and we can t thrust 
 ourselves on them." 
 
 " Learn where they mean to go and find yourself in 
 the same haven nothing simpler." 
 
 " And you what will become of you and the father ? 
 Lafayette can take care of Clare." 
 
528 TRAJAN. 
 
 " I don t know what I shall do just yet, until I have seen 
 Elliot. All depends on him." 
 
 When they reached home Trajan s warning was empha 
 sized by Papa Carnot, who had been to the American 
 Embassy. The minister warned him, as well as others of 
 his countrymen, come to him for advice, that every thing was 
 in such confusion he could promise no security. He advised 
 every one to quit Paris. There was a scene of rage and 
 lamentation when the minister concluded. Not a foreign 
 family in Paris had means to get away. Five months of 
 siege with every commodity of life at fabulous prices had 
 emptied the fullest purses. There were not a score of peo 
 ple in the city who had a penny s balance at the banker s. 
 
 Nor if they had would it be of any avail, as all business 
 having been suspended, the banks were virtually closed when 
 the siege came to an end. Nor had the threatening shape of 
 affairs from March ist encouraged alacrity in resuming 
 operations. Lafayette must be consulted, Theo declared. 
 
 Nothing could be done until the state of his finances was 
 known. Jules set out at once to see the millionaire, who 
 was occupying the palace of the parental Grovels they hav 
 ing fled to London when the city was about being invested 
 leaving Marion to comfort Aunt Clare, as he persisted 
 in calling his brother s wife. Lafayette, with true western 
 disdain for danger, scouted the proposal to fly. 
 
 " No ; if there were fun in the wind he meant to take a full 
 hand. Let Theo and the old man turn in here with us- 
 There s lots of room and the women folks will be company for 
 each other. I m not sure that I could command funds at 
 such short notice ; beside, there s a heap of money due us here 
 and I m charged by the syndicate to see to its collection. 
 Lock up the ranch door there," he added jovially, nodding 
 toward the Rue Galilee, " and bring all your traps over 
 here. We ve got a whole brigade of servants, and they will 
 be all the better with a house full to keep their hands in." 
 
 " I m afraid that these very servants will prove the great- 
 
HORR OR S HE A D. 529 
 
 est danger," said Jules gloomily. " They are spies and sneaks 
 at best, and if things arrive at the pass every thing now 
 points to, they will join the pillagers against us." As Jules 
 left the room Lafayette followed him. " There s another 
 reason that prevents our going. Clare will soon be a mother. 
 She must be kept quiet for a month. She s very happy with 
 the children, and a move would only upset her." 
 
 Thus it seemed that fate itself had entered the lists against 
 Theo as well as France, and that obstacles no foresight 
 could have provided against were arraying themselves irre 
 sistibly in the path of her well-conceived project. 
 
 Trajan s uneasiness was great the next day, when he found 
 that Elliot had not come back. Communication with Ver 
 sailles threatened hourly to be cut off. The ministers, who 
 had lingered in the city in the vain hope of preserving the 
 appearance of a national regime, had been obliged to fly the 
 night before. The last of the Assembly s troops, can 
 toned in the gardens of the Luxembourg, had passed within 
 sight of the Arden windows that morning, hooted and exe 
 crated by the mobs, when they found the cajoleries of the 
 female patriots thrown away upon them. Wherever the 
 troops had met the mob hitherto, the tears and embraces of 
 the women had shaken their constancy, and when ordered to 
 fire, they had thrown down their arms, refusing to massacre 
 women and children. It was by this artifice that the entire 
 garrison of the city had been seduced and had compelled the 
 cabinet of Thiers to fly. The city was now completely in 
 the hands of the turbulents, and the mask was at once 
 thrown off. 
 
 The walls of every quarter flamed with proclamations 
 defining the extraordinary evolution from law to lawless 
 ness. Those who could afford it at once engaged private 
 guards for their homes and property. But even this 
 was soon deprived them, by the drunken patrols of the 
 Communards marching through the streets, prying into court 
 yards and forcing off all who were able-bodied. 
 34 
 
53 TRAJAN. 
 
 Trajan had secured a guard for the Rue Francois 
 Premier the night of Elliot s departure, but was not much 
 surprised when the frightened concierge informed him that 
 she had seen the red-sashed myrmidons of the Central 
 Committee force the protesting patriots to join them. 
 
 Realizing the uselessness of entrusting the duty to a stranger, 
 Trajan secured a mansard directly facing the Arden win 
 dows and took up his post there until Elliot should return. 
 He cautioned the concierge to keep the American flag 
 displayed just inside the door, and to explain the fact 
 that the Ardens were Americans to any intruding patrols 
 of patriots. 
 
 He watched the house all day and saw three bands 
 enter the portals, tarry awhile and come out laden with 
 bottles and food. Under cover of early darkness, he 
 hastened over, resolved to confide the danger to Bella, in 
 order that a night incursion might not unduly alarm the 
 family or find them all unprepared. The mother and 
 sister were disappointed but not alarmed by Elliot s pro 
 longed stay at Versailles. They had been busy preparing 
 for the contemplated flight. All their valuables were 
 securely packed, and there need not be an hour s delay 
 after Elliot came. Mrs. Briscoe, though very weak, was 
 equal to the journey by slow stages. Seizing a moment 
 when Edith and her mother were busied elsewhere, Trajan 
 confided the dangers of the family to Bella, informed her 
 of the precautions he had taken, and counseled her to 
 gradually accustom the others to the situation, without alarm 
 ing them. 
 
 He would meanwhile endeavor to get some protection 
 from the American minister. As he could not ven 
 ture in the street during the day, lest he should be 
 snapped up by the patrols and marched off to fight, he 
 could come to them only after dark. By a signal in the 
 window, however, she could at any time call him. Ten 
 days wore on in this suspense, which grew into heart-break- 
 
HORR OR S HE A D. 531 
 
 ing anguish, as the brother gave no sign. It was a constant 
 terror by day and anguish by night. Trajan himself had 
 dreadful forebodings of Elliot s fate. He gave the Ameri 
 can minister no peace, imploring him to send an emissary to 
 Versailles to make inquiry for the missing Elliot. But the 
 era of reprisals had set in, and the Commune obstinately 
 refused to permit any communication with the " Prussians 
 of Versailles," as the Thiers government was called. 
 
 Not daring to leave the family without a protector, Trajan 
 was tied to his post. A score of times he had narrowly 
 missed discovery. Three nights he had been forced to 
 lurk on the roofs of the many-gabled mansards. When he 
 visited the family it was in disguise, for even the domes 
 tics could not be trusted. He had urged the minister to 
 receive the ladies in the embassy, but that refuge was 
 crowded with terrified women, to whose misfortune poverty 
 was added. Bella had held up the hopes of the mother and 
 sister with sustained discretion, though "her own heart was 
 cruelly torn by the dreadful uncertainty. The Carnots had 
 not been seen since Trajan s warning. Lafayette thought 
 lessly exposing himself in the street and trusting to his 
 American citizenship, had been arrested and put into one 
 of the national guard companies. Jules had managed to fly 
 to Versailles, and Papa Carnot s age was a present exemp 
 tion from molestation, though he was informed that when 
 the patrie was in danger, age would not excuse him from 
 taking his place at the barricades. 
 
 Misfortune had fallen heavily upon the house in the Rue 
 Galilee. Papa Carnot had left the household treasures 
 under the concierge s guard. One morning her little girl 
 came over and reported the Communards pillaging the 
 rooms. He hastened over and sure enough Theo s exqui 
 site collections were the prey of the vandals. In the salon 
 he found a squad of Amazons in short petticoats, scarlet 
 jackets and jaunty red liberty caps, heaping the spoil of 
 the apartments upon sheets stretched upon the floor. They 
 
S3 2 TRAJAN. 
 
 were armed with pistols and short cutlasses, and saluted 
 him with mock gravity as he tottered into his deserted 
 home. 
 
 " What is the meaning of this robbery ? " he asked, trem 
 bling with anger. " I am a foreigner." 
 
 " Ho-ho ! It is the Pere Carnot," said one of the Amazons 
 with decisive emphasis, appearing in the door of l^heo s 
 chamber, her hands filled with letters, which she had tied 
 in a package. " This is the father of the female aristo 
 crat, who ruins honest work-folk by robbing them of their 
 characters. Ah, Papa Carnot, it is the turn of the serfs now. 
 We shall have a fine dance for your grande young demoi 
 selle one of these days." 
 
 Papa Carnot sank helplessly into a seat. The voice was 
 the voice of Celeste, the dismissed and disgraced bonne. 
 The rest of the band, paying no heed to the old man, tum 
 bled cloaks, ornaments, vases, rugs, every thing portable, into 
 the sheets and table-cloths spread on the floor, and tying 
 them into stout bundles, dragged them to the door, each 
 marking her own spoil with initials in red. Celeste, who 
 had disappeared after her explanation, soon returned laden 
 with silver and dresses. The old gentleman rose and en 
 tered the dining-room. It was completely denuded ; the 
 chambers were stripped of every thing, the curtains, rugs 
 and draperies, down to the bolsters. He turned, speechless 
 with impotent fury, and made for the door. 
 
 " Ah no, cher pere Carnot. You would not be so impolite 
 as to desert these charming ladies when they have taken so 
 much pains to call on you. You have offered us no refresh 
 ments. Citoyenne Leflo, some burgundy no some cham 
 pagne ; the People, in possession of their property, do not 
 refuse to divide like the selfish bourgeoisie," and Celeste, 
 extracting glasses from one of the bursting sacks of loot, 
 gayly set them on the dainty gueridon, which was spared 
 only because inconvenient to bestow in the extemporized 
 packing cases. 
 
HORRORS HEAD. $33 
 
 " Le void" laughed a comrade, producing the champagne. 
 When the glasses were filled Celeste, casually girding on 
 her revolver belt, pointed to one of the glasses, saying with 
 droll gravity : " Help yourself, Pere Carnot, and serve the 
 ladies ; the tyranny of servitude being abolished, it is by 
 politeness only that equals serve equals." 
 
 A roar of laughter followed this humorous assertion of 
 the workings of equal rights. Papa Carnot looked in terror 
 from one to i^e other of the rollicking furies. He saw that 
 they were not to be trifled with, and with trembling hands 
 proffered each in turn the foaming cups of crystal. 
 
 " Charming ! You shall be a city father. You take nat 
 urally to the doctrines of the People," and Celeste, raising 
 the glass gave the toast, " A votre sante", and long life to the 
 Commune." All the glasses were raised and clinked against 
 the cup in the shaking hands of the reluctant convive. 
 
 " Now, Papa Carnot, remain here and see that no evil- 
 disposed aristocrat comes to disturb your treasures. We 
 will relieve you of this useless baggage, which would only 
 be a temptation to the patriots. Say to mademoiselle, your 
 aristocrat daughter, that she will receive a visit from me 
 before long. She must be tired of princes and millionaires 
 by this time, and will be glad to see a representative of the 
 People." 
 
 Celeste laughed grimly, as with her howling cortege she 
 passed out, dragging her spoil, as did the others. The poor 
 gentleman sat helplessly where they had left him. He heard 
 them close the hall door and turn the key. He ran to the 
 window and watched for their appearance on the street below. 
 There was a tumbril waiting. Presently they appeared, the 
 sacks were laden on this, and spying him leaning over the 
 balcony rail, the Amazons kissed their hands gayly and drove 
 off. It was an hour or more before the concierge rescued 
 the prisoner. She had been charged on penalty of impris 
 onment to detain him an hour, but it was plain from the 
 greedy look in her eyes, that if she had not been in league 
 
534 TRAJAN. 
 
 with the robbers, her sympathies were not wholly against 
 them. Theo s rage and terror when she heard of the inva 
 sion and sack of the house threw her into a fever. She bore 
 up with resignation until she heard of Celeste s abstraction 
 of the letters. When that was told her, she turned ghastly 
 and sank, as if shot, upon the sofa, moaning and wringing 
 her hands. 
 
 " Can nothing be done to arrest that fiend ? Ah ! we 
 shall be ruined we shall be ruined ! " she^cried. " Why 
 did Jules go and leave us to these furies?" It was a very 
 different Theo from the masterful spirit we have seen here 
 tofore in these pages. But she was not to be put down with 
 out an effort. A half-hour later she handed her father three 
 notes, addressed to Elliot, Lafayette, and her former copar 
 cener in the Rue Scribe. 
 
 " Let no human being get hold of these. Deliver them 
 yourself into the hands of each person named, and don t 
 give up if you have to wait all night." 
 
 In the letter to her brother-in-law, Theo warned him 
 that unless the letters were gotten from Celeste, the heads 
 of the family would be in danger in case the revengeful 
 maid laid them before the Revolutionists. They contained, 
 among others, Pietri s correspondence with Jules while he 
 was an aid to Grammont. It was long after midnight 
 when Lafayette himself came in agitated and fatigued. He 
 had, so soon as receiving the note, set out with Gibson, an 
 Englishman, like himself impressed into the commune. He 
 had ascended to Celeste s room and demanded the letters, 
 while Gibson kept watch at the door below. At first the 
 girl denied the theft, but when Lafayette resolutely pushed 
 her aside, she fled to the bedroom and taking them from 
 a place of concealment, handed them to her lover, a strap 
 ping soldier. He made for the escalier du service, and Lafay 
 ette, running to the window, warned Gibson to seize the 
 man and get the package. Celeste and her mother set upon 
 Lafayette and detained him for some time. When he reached 
 
HORROR S HEAD. 535 
 
 the street the soldier was lying on the pavement moaning, 
 and Gibson was nowhere to be seen. Lafayette had gone 
 back to the barrack, but during his absence his troop had 
 been sent to the Mazas prison, and to save himself from 
 suspicion, he had joined another command and gained a 
 five-hour furlough to relieve Clare s anxiety. Theo breathed 
 a sigh of relief. At all events, the letters were no longer in 
 the hands of her energetic enemy. Gibson she knew as an 
 English resident and a man of honor. He would take the 
 first opportunity to send them to Lafayette. 
 
 " Now," said Lafayette, "the first thing you must count 
 on is a visit from Celeste at the head of her troop. If she 
 finds you here, your life won t be worth a prayer." 
 
 " I have thought of that," said Theo in some agitation. 
 " But she can be evaded until things are settled. The Belle- 
 chasses have asked me to stay with them as they are quite 
 alone. I will play the part of governess. None of their old 
 servants are with them and I shall not be recognized. 
 Beside, their house is in a deep garden and we can have 
 warning before the bandits reach the house. Under the 
 old part of the chateau there are subterraneous retreats, 
 used by the conspirators against Richelieu, in which one can 
 be secure for months. Celeste will not molest Clare, she 
 adores her. I ll go at once and you must take me, as with 
 your uniform no one will suspect us." 
 
 So Theo played the part of governess in the halls of the 
 Bellechasse, and a very merry time she made of the siege, 
 enlivening the sad hearts of the household waiting in terror 
 to hear from the young count at Versailles. 
 
TRAJAtf. 
 CHAPTER XXXI V. 
 
 TRAJAN PLAYS A NEW ROLE. 
 
 QUSPENSE had turned the circle in the Rue Franois 1. 
 O into a house of mourning. Mrs. Arden had worn herself 
 out in journeys and supplications to the minister. She had 
 even gone to the Hotel de Ville against Trajan s imploring 
 remonstrances. No trace of Elliot could be obtained. The 
 chief of the committee had answered her gruffly that a man 
 who had left the city in the crisis was unworthy seeking, and 
 advised her to regard his loss with the patriotic philosophy 
 of Brutus sacrificing his unworthy son on the altar of the 
 Roman Commune. If he did turn up the patrie would deal 
 with him. The servants had been offered sums that would 
 have given them luxury for life, to keep them faithful. But 
 terror of the swarming spies of the central oligarchy, if 
 not secret sympathy, as well as the open profession, which 
 every one women as well as men were forced to make, kept 
 them from the dangerous mission of seeking their master. 
 
 Trajan heard with terror that the chief had taken down 
 Elliot s name, and Philip s as Mrs. Arden supposed to aid 
 in their return, but as he knew very well, to enable the 
 commune to lay hands on them, should they appear in Paris. 
 
 A straggler found between the lines during the week had 
 been publicly shot, and the ferocious journals of the Anar 
 chists called for instant execution upon any one giving the 
 least symptoms of being a " suspect." The rich who refused 
 to give to hand over their jewelry and valuables realizable 
 in cash, should be considered " suspect." The citizens who 
 had feasted upon Paris in the days of its fleshly lust, should 
 be considered " suspect," if they tried to evade the duty to 
 humanity embodied in the cause of the commune. Mrs. 
 Arden had given lavishly. She had furnished bales of lint 
 for the wounded. She had supplied rations for the troops of 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE, 537 
 
 the quarter, and thanks to her profusion the house had 
 escaped the sinister stigma of " suspect." The night of 
 Theo s flight from Celeste, as Bella sat in the library trying 
 to read, she heard a loud wrangling at the street door. 
 Going cautiously to the vestibule landing she heard the 
 concierge, speaking sharply : 
 
 " But I tell you, citoyenne, Monsieur Arden has not been in 
 Paris for a fortnight. He left before the People became 
 their own masters. I assure you I speak the truth. There is 
 sickness in the house dangerous fever," she added, with a 
 Frenchwoman s ready wit, " which prevents us from going 
 into the apartments. The physician forbids every one 
 entering." 
 
 " Are the young demoiselles still here ? " 
 " They are, but both are down with the malady, and as 
 red as boiled lobsters with the disgusting fever blotches. I 
 assure you, citoyenne, the doctor himself fears to go near 
 them." 
 
 " Trh bien. It is as a friend of the family I am come. 
 I will write mademoiselle, the cousin of Citoyen Arden 
 presently. Tell her I have been here and that she will 
 hear from me before long. I am the Citoyenne Voyon of 
 the Garde Amazone, Lorette." 
 "Good night, citoyenne." 
 " Au revoir, citoyenne." 
 
 Bella heard the heavy door swing back, then closed, the 
 chains put up and the bolts pushed into their sockets. Then 
 the concierge muttering to her daughter : 
 
 " I shan t tell the family a word of this, but if I am not 
 about and this brazen hussy should get in, run and warn the 
 demoiselles to paint their faces and hands with blotches 
 that will keep the trollope at a respectful distance, for she 
 has a sort of beauty, and no woman will risk that even for 
 robbery or revenge. What on earth can she want of the 
 young monsieur ? He is not one to have a liaison with such 
 as that." 
 
53 8 TRAJAN, 
 
 Bella had heard enough, and softly closing the door, sat 
 down to reflect on what she should do. She determined that 
 it would be safer to put Trajan on his guard in the new 
 difficulty. He had almost ceased coining to the house as it 
 was dangerous to attract attention, and both distrusted the 
 fidelity of the servants. But the conduct of the concierge 
 left no doubt of her trustworthiness. A signal had been 
 arranged to meet the new exigencies, and she straightway sat 
 down and wrote word for word what she had heard. Going 
 to the last window of the dining-room she passed a lamp 
 three times before the drawn curtains, then turning the 
 flame so that the room was left almost in darkness, she drew 
 back the shade and looked up at the mansard opposite. 
 
 A light burning inside was suddenly extinguished and she 
 knew her signal had been seen. Putting the note in a small 
 reticule to which a string was attached, she waited perhaps 
 twenty minutes, then softly opened the glass, which as in all 
 French houses moved on hinges, and held the reticule in her 
 hand. The figure of a man came slowly along close to the 
 walls of the house. As it arrived within sight of the window, 
 the hat was raised carelessly and the hair stroked, as if in 
 reflection or fatigue. By this sign she knew it was Trajan 
 and let the note down. In an instant a jerk warned her that 
 he had the note. Immensely relieved, she returned to her 
 book, vainly trying to fix her mind on the girlish miseries of 
 Maggie Tulliver. Edith had gone to sit with her mother 
 and Mrs. Briscoe, while Kate, exhausted by the strain of the 
 last miserable days, was fairly ill and in bed. 
 
 An hour had passed, it was not yet ten o clock, when she 
 heard the concierge s bell jingle very lightly. She got up in 
 great dread and opened the vestibule door and passed quite to 
 the corridor in her excitement. The voice of the concierge 
 was heard asking through the wicket "Who s there?" The 
 response could not be heard, but after an instant the little 
 panel was shot back and the concierge came up the stairs. 
 Bella had hardly time to enter and close the door when a 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 539 
 
 light tap came. When she opened the door the concierge 
 held a note toward her, saying with a smile, " Good news I 
 hope, mademoiselle, it is from Monsieur Trajan. Bon svir." 
 
 " Bon soir, " she answered smiling kindly and confidingly 
 on the honest woman, whose loyalty had been so well proven. 
 " Have you every thing you need wouldn t Amalie like 
 some bon-bons ? I have some I forgot to give her." 
 
 " Oh, mademoiselle, how kind you always are to us. May 
 the bon Dieu be your guardian," she exclaimed fervently, as 
 Bella returned with a box of bon-bons into which she had 
 slipped two gold pieces. Trajan s note simply said : 
 
 " Have no uneasiness about the woman. She knows me ; 
 she saw me at the Carnots but beyond that, there is, I 
 think, no danger, unless she should see Edith or the family. 
 She can do no mischief. She can not know any thing that will 
 compromise us now. Be doubly careful, however, to keep 
 Edith in the dark. I know it is cruel duplicity to put on you. 
 It is, however, kindness to her. I will prove to you in the 
 future that you have not carried this burden so heroically, 
 in vain. I have a plan that will soon extricate you from this 
 ordeal. Be careful in using the signal. I think we are 
 suspected in a certain quarter. 
 
 "TRAJAN." 
 
 " P. S. I am going to come in about noon, when we can 
 arrange to extricate ourselves from this intolerable suspense." 
 
 Edith entered as she finished the note, which Bella thrust 
 hastily into her pocket. 
 
 * Mamma is asleep at last," she said wearily. "Oh, Bella, 
 what are we going to do ? Some one should go to Versailles 
 and look for Elliot. I m sure he s ill. He certainly would 
 have found some way to send us word, if he were well what 
 can that be ? " The concierge s bell was ringing a peal loud 
 enough to wake the sleepers in the mansard. Bella rose in 
 agitation. A second peal louder and more peremptory than 
 before rang through the lower corridor. 
 
 " Go and tranquillize mother and aunty," exclaimed Bella 
 
54 TRAJAN. 
 
 calmly. " I will go to the door and see what the ringing 
 means." Reaching the landing she could hear the concierge 
 opening her own door. Then the wicket slipped back cau 
 tiously. A sharp " Who s there and what s wanted ? " a little 
 cry, half screech and half gulp and the rattling of chains with 
 a simultaneous rush of bolts, creaking of hinges, then a fig 
 ure rushing up the stairs three at a bound, then her con 
 sciousness gone, a pair of stout arms around her, a mus- 
 tached mouth devouring her lips, and the vague vision of a 
 second, but more deliberate figure coming up the stairs. 
 
 Oh ! Elliot Elliot ! and Philip ! ah ah ah kiss- 
 kiss kiss. 
 
 There is no telling how long this selfish silliness would 
 have continued, had a flying robe not appeared in the hall 
 within, then a little gurgling shriek, and then a collapse into 
 kisses, rapture and the joy that words have no business to try 
 to tell. Then a joyous cavalcade to mamma s bedside, where 
 more and devouter raptures forbid intrusion, and then a 
 clearing out to give the two glad mammas and Kate time to 
 appear before the two restored wanderers. The prodigals were 
 in the guise of workmen. Their story was not remarkable. 
 
 First, the Versailles authorities would give Elliot no safe 
 conduct. They had taken letters which he had sent to an 
 nounce his detention, but he had, of course, received no 
 response, since they had never been received. He had heard 
 through an attaMvi the legation once, about a week before, 
 that ^all were well and anxious about him, which was the 
 first hint that his messages had not been delivered. Then 
 Philip had tried to get a detail to bring him to Paris and had 
 only succeeded that very morning. They had sneaked through 
 to the Mount Valerian outposts and waited their chance to 
 mix with the mob of the Commune, parading the fields near 
 Meudon. They had been set to work on Fort Issy, and only 
 escaped in the darkness. Since then they had been walking 
 incessantly, not knowing the road, and finally had caught a 
 " bus " at theChaillot gate, which brought them almost to the 
 
TRAJAN PL A YS A NEW ROLE. 541 
 
 door. Neither of them would have been recognized, save by 
 the eyes of love. But they were very happy, as you may 
 imagine, so happy that the hours of the night passed and day 
 was breaking when they separated to get some rest. 
 
 There was a cloud on their happiness ; Elliot had gone 
 to Versailles to negotiate for money, but had failed. He 
 couldn t understand why ; but Kate who heard him turned 
 quite ashen and collapsed in her seat. 
 
 It was not until she had reached her own chamber, that 
 Bella thought of Trajan. She looked out of the window. 
 It was too light to make use of the signal, even had she been 
 sure that the faithful watcher was at his post. She was per 
 plexed and discomfited. She knew Trajan didn t want to 
 meet Elliot and yet how to prevent it ? A thought struck 
 her. Going to Elliot s door, she knocked lightly. He 
 opened it himself, but as she entered Edith was there and 
 she didn t want to speak before her. She must, however, 
 say something, and broke out rather inconsequently : 
 
 " You never said a word about our prospects. Are we to 
 get away ? I m afraid mamma can t stand the confinement, she 
 needs open air drives." Elliot had led her to the sofa as she 
 spoke, where Edith was sitting. He shook his head. " I m 
 afraid we re caught in a trap here. There is no human pos 
 sibility of getting out of the city. Even the ambassadors 
 have no consideration from these wretches of the Commune. 
 Only last week they shot an attache of the Belgian Embassy, 
 suspected of carrying intelligence to the Versailles fol^s." 
 
 " Well it was selfish in me to come to disturb you," she 
 s.iid, concealing her face guiltily with her handkerchief ; 
 " we ll talk it all over to-morrow. I want to see you the very 
 first thing. Come, selfish sister, let the fugitive get some 
 rest." 
 
 But the young man seemed in no hurry to lie down. 
 After luxuriating interminably in the, for some time, unaccus 
 tomed joy of the bath, he put on his slippers and wrapper. 
 As he passed the sofa where Bella and Edith had sat, his eye 
 
542 TRAJAN. 
 
 fell upon an open sheet. He picked it up carelessly, his eye 
 catching the line of the note Trajan had written Bella : 
 " Have no uneasiness about the woman." He started and 
 changed color, throwing the paper on the floor far from him. 
 All his suspicions, so subtly excited by Theo, came back in 
 a black legion, rousing horror and hatred of the wretched 
 man who was playing with his sister s heart. " Have no 
 uneasiness about the woman ? " What woman ? Had he 
 learned that Madelaine Tarbes had exposed his odious con 
 duct ? He got up and looked at the paper lying at his feet. 
 
 Why should he hesitate to read it ? It was the evidence 
 of a vile treason, which was to wreck his sister s life, to 
 say nothing of befouling the woman he himself loved. He 
 picked it up, holding it as one holds a thing tainted and in 
 fected. The name " Trajan " at the bottom infuriated him. 
 It bore no date. Was it fresh or was it a relic of the early 
 part of the intrigue. He would read it. The first obligation 
 of a brother was the protection of his family honor. He read 
 it. Every line glimmered out like the dancing demons in the 
 pool, reflected from the loathsome serpent s scales. That 
 Bella could be such a wanton, was the thought uppermost in 
 his mind. Edith had but just told him that Trajan had 
 ceased visiting the house lest it might bring suspicion and 
 danger upon the family. This, as the note showed, was a 
 pretext to get rid of her. He had grown weary of simulating 
 a love he no longer felt. 
 
 " He is coming in at noon, the scoundrel, but he comes 
 into a house no longer at the mercy of the adventurer," and 
 Elliot ground his teeth in anticipation of the exquisite 
 revenge he was about to take. Was ever such despicable 
 treason heard of ! Love might blind a man to desperate expe 
 dients, but to invade the house of calamity, to seek the 
 moment when terror and death hung over it for hadn t 
 Edith and his mother said, they feared he was dead ? To 
 take advantage of such a time ! Ah, it was base beyond the 
 power of words to speak or vengeance to repay ! Should 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 543 
 
 he summon the household, servants and all, to make his 
 ignominious expulsion more emphatic ? Expulsion ! He 
 would have the scullion baste him out with dish clouts, and 
 the porter to hale him into the street with the placard, 
 "ingrate and sn^ak," affixed on his breast as nearest the 
 basest part of him the heart. 
 
 And the longer he kept up these genial reflections, the 
 more vigorous became his muttered expressions of the scorn 
 and fury he was going to heap upon the unconscious victim, 
 who, at that very moment, was holding haggard vigil across 
 the street, his heart torn with anguish as the perils that 
 encompassed his angel and her kin weighed heavily and 
 more heavily on him, while he realized his powerlessness to 
 rescue all of them. I don t know whether Theo would 
 have considered the situation a compliment or not could she 
 have looked into Elliot s heart, festering with wounded self- 
 love, hatred and despair for after all it must be borne in 
 mind that Elliot s estimate of Trajan s treason had varied, 
 as the influence of the young man on Bella s affections 
 appeared certain or problematical. I think we rather enjoy 
 the sins of our neighbors when they don t touch our pockets 
 and our pride ! At least, I know no temple where the ewes 
 of righteousness and the rams of iniquity are divided by 
 perceptible barriers. There was no sleep for the avenger 
 that morning. He walked the floor in a fury, which, by eight 
 o clock had so exhausted him, that throwing himself on the 
 lounge, he dozed feverishly until eleven. He was nearly 
 dressed when Edith s tap at the door warned him to com 
 pose his countenance. She must know nothing of the com 
 ing scene. 
 
 " Mamma is as cheery as a maid in vacation, and demands 
 your immediate presence in the breakfast-room why, Elliot, 
 you haven t been in bed ! " she exclaimed, as she caught 
 sight of the undisturbed counterpane through the open 
 door. 
 
 " No, I napped on the lounge. I was too excited to go to 
 
544 TRAJAN. 
 
 bed. Come, I m ready." He hurried her out to avoid say 
 ing anything that might betray him, or hear any thing which 
 might further excite his rage, or possibly for fear the cruel 
 blow coming to her might shake his resolution. He left 
 her at the breakfast-room door, and going into the hall, 
 where the astonished Pierre nearly embraced him in his 
 ecstasy, Elliot said, huskily : 
 
 " Mr. Gray, if he comes, is to be shown into the library, 
 instead of the breakfast-room." 
 
 The breakfast was a tumult of jubilant reunion. Bella 
 was scintillant with old time pedantries. Mrs. Briscoe, 
 who appeared for the first time in months in her accustomed 
 place, as Kate said, to " honor the fatted calves," was forced 
 to go back to the sofa to explode more at her ease in 
 laughter. The meal was well over when a ring at the door 
 admonished Elliot that the great moment had come. He 
 rose a little nervously as the solemnity of his office of 
 avenger of outraged family honor, impressed itself on him, 
 and went into the hall-way. 
 
 " Mr. Gray is in the library, monsieur," Pierre said, beam 
 ing with joy, as Elliot held him outside the door. 
 
 " Phil," called Elliot, "won t you come with me, I want 
 you a moment." 
 
 Every body looked in surprise. Elliot was deadly pale 
 and his voice was hoarse. The hand that held the portiere 
 trembled. Trajan stood looking out of the window and did 
 not hear the steps of the two as they entered the room 
 behind him. Laying his hand on Philip s arm to check his 
 sudden movement toward Trajan, Elliot spoke in a voice of 
 suppressed excitement. 
 
 "Mr. Trajan Gray, when I tell you that I know your 
 entire history as well as your recent treachery, it will not be 
 necessary for me to add that this house is no place for 
 you." 
 
 He stopped, not that he had said half that he intended, 
 but because his excitement made him powerless to articulate 
 
TRAJAN PL A YS A NEW ROLE. 545 
 
 more. If Philip had not held him, he might even have fallen. 
 Trajan had turned eagerly at the first sound of Elliot s 
 voice. He had learned from the concierge the good news 
 of the arrival, and when Pierre had sent him to the library 
 he felt that Elliot had learned the wrong he had done him 
 and was going to fall on his neck in repentance. He fairly 
 staggered as the graceless, wrong-headed boy spat out these 
 brutal words. For a moment- he doubted his ears. 
 
 He went close to his accuser, scrutinizing his face with 
 wonder and despair, then realizing that he had heard aright, 
 covered his face with his hands. The gesture smote Elliot. 
 He recalled the same piteous action under the lilacs that May 
 day, when his Quixotic impulse had involved him in all this 
 misery. But as the executor of duty, the avenger of out 
 raged morals, he could not let sentimental weaknesses of 
 this sort intervene. His indignation had, however, fallen 
 from the high pressure stage. When he resumed, all his 
 rhetorical flourishes of contempt and scorn were lost in the 
 conflicting emotions of the scene. 
 
 " I repeat and emphasize what I said to you at Cre"cy. 
 The same roof can never cover you and me, nor you and 
 mine. I request you to leave this house ; I forbid you to 
 ever speak or write to any member of my family. I will do 
 you the mercy of keeping from the world what I know of 
 you, and by that tacit compact with vileness, I repay all the 
 offices you have ever rendered me or mine." 
 
 " But, I say, Elliot, of what do you accuse Gray ? This is 
 certainly a summary way of treating a man," cried Philip, 
 looking in doubt from one to the other. 
 
 " He Elliot couldn t use the name for hatred. " He 
 knows what I mean and he appreciates, if there is such a 
 thing as recognition in a nature so base, the merciful silence 
 in which his conduct is buried. Come I can t have you 
 remain in this house ; it is a desecration to every thing of 
 purity in it I can t risk the innocent and betrayed again." 
 
 As he was falling into the fine full swing of the invective 
 35 
 
546 TRAJAN. 
 
 that had boiled in him through a night, like " sweltered 
 venom sleeping got " a diversion of a very striking sort 
 made this tragi-comedy a mere prelude to the drama. In the 
 excitement of the episode, none of the three had marked the 
 ringing of the bell, a short parley in the hall, the agitated 
 rustle of skirts, until all the family came into the room with 
 frightened faces, followed by four bleary patriots trapped 
 out in such faded effulgence as left the spectators in doubt 
 whether they were begrimed marshals of the empire or 
 clowns from the bouffe theater. Ranging themselves in a 
 row before the door, one of them, constituting himself 
 spokesman, read the terms of several decrees of the execu 
 tive committee of the commune not a word of which was 
 understood by any one save Trajan who knew, alas, before 
 the man opened his mouth what the incursion meant. 
 
 " Therefore, in virtue of this decree, we arrest the citizen 
 Philip Kent and the citizen Elliot Arden, in obedience to 
 the general committee s mandate." 
 
 "Which is the citizen Kent?" asked the voice, majesti 
 cally. 
 
 Philip stepped forward and was taken between the first 
 two of the four gorgeous functionaries. 
 
 " C cst tres bien fd t joli garfon tout de me me, mats allons^ 
 aliens." 
 
 " Now which is " and he referred to his list with jaunty 
 deliberation. "Which is the citizen Elliot Arden." He 
 looked from Trajan to Elliot, and from Elliot fastened his 
 eyes on Trajan as the most likely to be the monster 
 denounced in the charge. 
 
 " I am Elliot Arden," said Trajan calmly, stepping for 
 ward and placing himself between the two remaining effigies 
 of egalitf. 
 
 " Mais cest encore fort bien fa maintenant nous sonnies 
 au complet : marchons ! mesdames,je vous salue nom de nom 
 quelle est belle quellcs sont belles tous deux mats ces sont 
 dcs anges" 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 547 
 
 All this time the spectators of this grotesque tragedy 
 stood speechlessly dazed. Edith was mercifully but half aware 
 of its tragic meaning. Bella, who knew it perfectly, lost the 
 sense of its horror in the divine abnegation of the man who, 
 in the amazement of measureless wrong, had made answer to 
 calumny by contemptuously giving the calumniator his life. 
 Bella had heard part of Elliot s hideous apostrophe, for sus 
 pecting something dire, but of another sort, when Elliot s 
 pale face startled the breakfast-room, she had gone into the 
 hall to ask Pierre who was in the library ; she was passing 
 back to the drawing-room uneasy and half tempted to enter, 
 when the guards appeared. The most miserable culprit, 
 conscious of guilt, who ever received reprieve at the last 
 second of the eleventh hour, never endured the life-time of 
 self-detestation, despair and shame that paralyzed Elliot s 
 faculties as his bitter and terrible gibes were so curtly 
 refuted. He strove to speak, and as Trajan saw what he 
 was about, he interposed, speaking in the English tongue. 
 
 " It s useless for you to avow yourself, it would only 
 involve the three of us. Feeling as you feel, believing as 
 you believe, the only protection of these defenseless women 
 is yourself. Edith, for my sake, make him listen to reason. 
 Bella, you have a kind feeling for me I know, be a mother 
 to my darling." But he could not keep up this composed 
 tone. Even the Spartan control that a life-time of bitter 
 ingratitudes and undeserved misconstruction taught him, 
 broke down before the frightened and incredulous glance of 
 the being he loved. 
 
 " Oh, Trajan, Trajan, what does it all mean ? Elliot, 
 Elliot, speak ; say you are Elliot, don t let Trajan go 
 Shame Bella, on an imploring gesture from Trajan, seized 
 her and by force dragged her back, whispering hurriedly : 
 
 " It is only for a little time. Trajan can escape, Elliot 
 couldn t. Trajan has friends in the commune for God s 
 sake, Edith, do not expose the ruse aunty mother, come 
 to her." But there was no longer any fear of exposure. A 
 
548 TRAJAN. 
 
 kinder hand than kin intervened and the troubled little brain 
 was in the grateful rest of unconsciousness. 
 
 " Monsieur," Trajan began. 
 
 " Citizen Arden, you pain me there is no more of mon 
 sieur in the noble reign of the commune." 
 
 " Ah true a slip into the superstition of the past. I am 
 about to ask you, citizen, if you would not permit me to 
 embrace the citoyenne she is my fiancee" 
 
 u Mais certainement what do you take us for ? Kiss all 
 round and we will turn our backs that is more than is 
 prescribed in the regulations you can t ask a soldier to bear 
 every thing. What ! look at other lips kissing such divinities 
 as these. Ah, that I were in your lucky shoes coquin that 
 you are ! " 
 
 Trajan kneeled beside the gracious figure lying on the 
 mother s bosom and reverently pressed the open lips. He 
 clasped the slender form, undulating like a crushed vine in 
 his strong arms and his tears flowed over the lovely face 
 " Tell her that her love was as the benediction of God to 
 me tell her that since I have known her, she has never 
 been out of my thoughts by day, nor my dreams by night 
 tell her that she is not to mourn for me, but when some 
 honest fellow comes, make his life the Heaven she has made 
 mine tell her 
 
 " But I say, citizen, you know one can t eternize one s 
 self-denials come, we must go " 
 
 Elliot started, crying : " No stay I have something to 
 say, citizen I " 
 
 " Citizen, pay no heed to that unhappy young man. He 
 is insane," said Trajan, without lookmg at him. 
 
 " Oh, Elliot, Elliot, for my sake I shall die, if you go 
 I, oh aunty command him to save himself and save us " 
 and Bella caught him imploringly. 
 
 " Marchons en avant houp-la" 
 
 Elliot half dragging his mother and Bella, made for the 
 departing cortege. " Phil, in God s name speak and don t 
 
TRAJAN PL A YS A NEW ROLE. 549 
 
 let me be disgraced Phil I say soldiers, I am Elliot 
 Arden the man you have is an impostor I command you 
 arrest me I ah mother Bella how can you connive 
 at my dishonor my ignoble baseness ? let me go, I say 
 what is life worth at such a price what He had freed 
 himself from the pleading, hampering arms, but at the door 
 Kate stood grim and terrible. 
 
 " Ye ve played th fule long eno for a grown man have 
 some sense while it s no too late ; th man ye ve reviled s too 
 good to be in the world wi th likes o ye , let him go, where 
 Jezebel can t cross his blameless life." 
 
 With an angry wrench, he whirled Cerberus from the door 
 and was in the vestibule the sound of the soldiers steps 
 had died out. He seized the door, arid though he pulled 
 with the force of madness, it did not yield. Trajan had 
 caused the soldiers to lock it on the outside, fearing the 
 " madman " might attempt to follow. Elliot began to believe 
 himself that he was a madman. What, the basest of man 
 kind had as coolly as though changing a glove from one 
 hand to the other, stepped forward, while he was thinking 
 only of himself, and placed his neck in the halter ! 
 
 Yes, he must be mad. He fell upon the sofa near the hat- 
 rack and as the sobbing women gathered about him, gazed 
 fjxedly at each in turn. Yes, it was his mother. It was 
 Bella, it was Kate and there too, frightened and bewildered, 
 the kind old face of Pierre. What did it mean ? Had his 
 suffering and suspense during the last weeks turned his 
 brain, as Trajan, with the cold emphasis of an examining 
 specialist had said ? 
 
 Yes, he must be a chattering madman ; if not, how could he 
 have been so misled. He exulted in the thought. Pie was not 
 a weak, credulous dolt, the plaything of a cruel and wicked 
 devil yes yes he whispered to himself, staring vacantly 
 at the sobbing trio insane God be praised, insane and not 
 the hateful wretch he thought, when Trajan with never a 
 look or thought for Bella or any one else whatsoever in the 
 
55 TRAJAN. 
 
 world he was giving up to let him live, had caressed the 
 lifeless form of Edith. But where was Edith. He started 
 surely every body in this fatal house was insane. 
 
 He flew to where the child still lay prone upon the floor 
 forgotten no Mrs. Briscoe was holding the fair head and 
 the bonne stood weeping by her side. She was opening her 
 violet eyes. She saw her brother s face and smiled. She tried 
 to raise herself, but the effort was beyond her. She was in 
 his arms now, and he kissed her fondly, much as her mother 
 might, whispering to himself " Insane insane. God be 
 praised, insane." But a sudden thought gave quick strength 
 to Edith. She unlocked her arms and looking up in her 
 mother s face asked confidingly ; 
 
 " Mamma, invite Trajan to come in, Elliot is sorry that 
 he was cruel to him Elliot wants me to ask forgiveness of 
 him for the great wrong " 
 
 Elliot rose like a flash. " My God, mother, am I mad, or 
 am I in a dream for God s sake tell me ? " 
 
 " My son, you have gone through a most painful ordeal. 
 You have given life and happiness to all of us ; you have 
 done under most grievous temptation the sublimest duty a 
 man can do. You have made a noble sacrifice of self to 
 save your sister s, your mother s and Bella s happiness, per 
 haps life." She folded him in her arms as she spoke. His 
 head fell upon her shoulder and there was a solemn silence 
 in the room. Bella had replaced her mother by Edith s 
 side, who sat staring in wonder at the mother and son. 
 
 " Where is Trajan," she asked quite composedly. 
 
 No one knew what to answer. Bella kissed her, but she 
 pushed her head gently aside and looked square at Elliot. 
 
 " Neddy, where is Trajan, I m sure he was here a moment 
 since, where did he go. Please tell him I want him ! " 
 
 Elliot put his mother softly from him and coming over to 
 his sister, picked her up bodily and carried her to her room. 
 He asked his mother to watch over her, and touching her 
 forehead with his lips, said tenderly : 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 551 
 
 " Trajan shall come to you I promise you. Bella, will 
 you come with me ? " and as the others who had followed 
 silently looked in anguish after him, he added: " Have no 
 fear. I shall not quit the house to-day." When he had 
 reached the library again, and Bella stood beside him, he 
 took Trajan s crumpled note from his pocket and handing it 
 to her said : 
 
 " Bella, what does this mean ? " 
 
 She looked at the note, then at her interrogator in .bewilder 
 ment. 
 
 " Where did you get that ? " 
 
 " I found it where you were sitting in my room last night, 
 or rather this morning ; explain it ! " 
 
 " That s easy enough, I declare I don t see how it needs 
 explanation. It was written in answer to one from me last 
 night, and alluded to a dreadful creature that came here 
 inquiring for you." As she said this, for the first time a 
 suspicion of the concierge s inference that there might have 
 been something between Elliot and the woman came into 
 her mind. At this humiliating thought she glanced away 
 from him and sank limply into a chair. He followed her, 
 piercing her with his blue eyes all steel, now that Bella s 
 confusion confirmed his worst suspicions. 
 
 " But what does it mean about signals and suspense, and 
 keeping Edith in the dark ?" 
 
 Still unsuspicious of the intent of his queries she narrated 
 all that had happened since his departure. Trajan s solicitude 
 by night and day. His efforts to get news to Versailles or 
 from there. His tender thoughtfulness that the danger of 
 their situation might not be suspected by Edith, her mother 
 or Mrs. Arden. His watch from the mansard by night and 
 day. His final note announcing that he had perfected a plan 
 of escape. 
 
 " Oh, Bella, what a miserable driveling fool I ve been. 
 Do you know that I ordered that man out of this house in 
 terms that would have made a monk a murderer." 
 
552 TRAJAN. 
 
 " What ! The man who risked his life to get you from 
 danger at Meaux ? The man who bore with patience the 
 calumnious innuendoes of of a heartless woman at Crecy ? 
 Ah, Elliot, I am ashamed to see you living before me, and 
 an hour ago I thought I could not live to see you in danger 
 of death." 
 
 She shrunk from him even pushing the chair to put a 
 greater distance between them. He made no attempt to 
 follow. He fell into an abstraction incoherent vapid. 
 He had no longer a faculty of thinking left. He had arrived 
 at that most pitiable of all mental crises when a man 
 shrinks from looking at his own mind. He realized in a 
 sort of exoteric way that his intellect no longer served him. 
 That he couldn t trust it. 
 
 " And knowing all this, you let me go on blindly in the 
 dark, forcing myself to hate a man I loved ? Oh Bella 
 Bella" 
 
 " Knowing all what ? That you were misreading a chival 
 rous nature born generations too late to be understood ? 
 That you were taking the malicious hints of an unfeeling 
 coquette, rather than the evidences of your own eyes and 
 ears ? Could a man whose soul was not sanctified by the love 
 of truth, whose heart was not brave with the courage of 
 purity, endure what he endured at Crecy stand in utter 
 forgetfulness of self to save a woman he hardly even knew, 
 while the woman he adored kneeled fainting in sight of him ? 
 If the love of the wicked woman leads the -feet to hell, it 
 steeps the brain in a deadening potion. And you didn t 
 even have the generosity to know the hand that cut your 
 cords in the prison at Meaux ? No congenial instinct told 
 you on reading that note, that this martyr was risking his 
 life day and night, that no knowledge of danger might come 
 to you and yours ?" 
 
 She had risen as these impetuous and withering reproaches 
 poured from her lips, her eyes blazing, her nostrils quivering ! 
 " Oh, Elliot my kinsman if you are not as wicked as you 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 553 
 
 are weak you will now act like a man. You will place 
 Edith, my mother, yours and Kate in security and you will 
 join me in saving the life of this man among dolts. But 
 aside from the vindication of your own compromised man 
 hood, his death will kill Edith. You must save his life to 
 save hers." 
 
 Elliot, who had sat listlessly, as if only half conscious of 
 this frank analysis of his claims to manliness, rose quite 
 deliberately and taking Bella s hands in both his own asked 
 in the most tranquil voice in the world : 
 
 " Bella, do you love Trajan Gray ? " 
 
 She looked him straight in the eye, her head imperiously 
 erect, her dark eyes scintillating with almost arrogant 
 triumph. 
 
 u I adore Trajan Gray ; I have adored him since the 
 moment, half dead, torn and bleeding, ignoring me as if I 
 had been a clod, he endured the agonies of the stake to 
 assure himself that the woman he loved was safe. I have 
 adored him each hour that I saw him consecrating every 
 thought of his life, every dream of his future to the woman 
 he loved. I adore him more than ever now as I see him 
 standing there, the scar of your intolerable wrong upon his 
 pure heart, and giving up his own life that the woman he 
 loved might keep her brother, her mother and her cousin in 
 unity. I adore him as I adore a divine creature that an 
 earthly heart may not dream of possessing." 
 
 " Does Trajan know this ? " 
 
 " Does the sun know that mankind delights in it ? No I 
 have never by word, look or sign given him a hint of this 
 idolatry. An idolatry as far removed from the passion of 
 love, as the instinct of religion from the sham of worship. 
 I feel purified and ennobled in the thought that I have read 
 him aright. I have been educated in every virtue in watch 
 ing the outgrowth of his pure, tender, immeasurable love 
 for the woman of all women fitted to mate with him. The 
 happiness in store for Edith was only less joy to me than to 
 
554 TRAJAN. 
 
 her. I would willingly sacrifice all that is dearest to me to 
 see them standing at the altar." She came close to him as 
 she added, " You don t understand this. You think that a 
 woman s heart is so small a vessel that it can contain but 
 one process of action ? I should adore Trajan Gray all my 
 life if he lived, I shall worship his memory all my life but 
 if he were here and heart-free, I could never love him with 
 the love I mean to give my husband." 
 
 " And who is that husband to be ? " Elliot asked, still in 
 the curious calm in which he had inaugurated this extraordi 
 nary courtship. Bella s eyes fell ; all her imperiousness was 
 gone. She was gentle as Edith, and even more timid. She 
 strove to release the two hands held imprisoned. 
 
 " That s a very unusual question for any one but a mother 
 to ask." 
 
 " You are an unusual girl and I want you to answer." 
 
 " Suppose I say I don t know ? " 
 
 " Then I shall know you are not telling the truth." 
 
 But the truth, whatever it waste be, lay hidden at the bot 
 tom of the well, which the future only was to bring to the 
 surface ; for while Bella s eye was resuming its imperious 
 gleam, Kate appeared. 
 
 " Here s a letter for you, Elliot. The messenger won t go 
 without your receipt for it written in your own hand and in 
 his presence. He is waiting at the concierge s desk." 
 
 When Elliot had gone from the room Kate, looking at 
 Bella keenly, said sententiously, as though the remark were 
 the corollary of a preceding series of propositions. 
 
 " She ll die if harm comes to Trajan. It s a love, not of 
 the sort you masterfu young women feel all her soul and 
 heart are in it. It s part o her religion. Are ye goin to 
 tie Elliot to yer futstool while the poor lad is going till his 
 death yonder ? " 
 
 " I have given Elliot to understand that Trajan s death 
 will outlaw him from even his mother s heart. God forgive 
 me, I think I have been as harsh and cruel to him as he has 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 555 
 
 beeft brutal and unjust to Trajan but Kate you must not 
 blame the poor fellow too much ; he he heard, that is he 
 believed he thought that that Trajan was in love with 
 me and that I knew it and shared it." 
 
 "Th bletherin eejiot," was Kate s expository comment. 
 
 " Don t be too hard on the poor fellow ; he was made to 
 believe it by some one who we can guess." 
 
 "Ay, I can well guess, that lineal rib of Endor th 
 bane o this house, sencethe first moment her idolatrous heel 
 rested on its threshold ! And let me say sin I m dealing in 
 th truth for th time ye re no without shame yersel in this 
 braw business. Yer foolish pride and canniness held th 
 lad awa frae ye and gave his claymore in th hands o Jezebel. 
 If ye had let him see, what a th rest of us saw what Jezebel 
 herself saw he would never ha given himsel to her wicked 
 tricks. But he s been well workit for it, though his sins be 
 heavy, and worse than all, his punishment touches the inno 
 cent and leal. Ye maun brace him to do a mon s 
 duty, for his own sake, his sister s sake and ye re ain for 
 ye d no prize a mon that gave his best friend over to th 
 headsman, or ye re never the noble spirit I ve held ye." 
 
 " Kate, you are a creature of diabolical prejudices. Elliot 
 has been greatly misguided, but," forgetting her own recent 
 vehemence with delicious inconsequence, " he is neither 
 weak nor frivolous. He has not been the dupe of the de 
 signing person you allude to. I ve no doubt her preference 
 flattered him and he thought himself bound to respond. How 
 could any girl help loving a nature so frank, a soul so loyal 
 as Elliot s ? Have you ever seen a man that could be com 
 pared with him ? He hasn t Trajan s saint-like patience, nor 
 his penetration; his very faults emphasize the winning graces 
 of his character ; all truth and directness himself, he is 
 made the victim of every indirection practiced upon him, 
 simply because he is incapable of imagining the foulness of 
 the ignoble, or the false in others. You will see him redeem 
 his errors now I pledge myself for it ! " 
 
556 TRAJAN. 
 
 " I shall believe it when I see it and not till then,"*said 
 Kate, a little skeptically. " I ve heard his pledges before. 
 He swore to me in London when his wickedness had 
 set him under th very clods of th grave, that 
 he d be a different man and see Jezebel no more. How 
 long did he hold th oath ? Th first minute he was able to 
 stir out he was at her side and came home like a maniac 
 blazing with new diviltries, sh d put him up to. I ll believe 
 in his sense when I see him well married to some girl that 
 has head enough for twa. I m no sayin it s heart th lad 
 wants. He has eno for a dozen, but he s prone to th first 
 fool counsel that falls on his ear." 
 
 " Not a flattering character, that, Kate ; who is the luckless 
 victim ? " said Elliot, entering from the sleeping room. 
 
 " A lad in a fairy story I once read, to whom his fairy 
 godmother gave all th gifts, but judgment. He ruled a 
 kingdom of adoring fules, and took hawks, bats and blind 
 men for his councilors." 
 
 " And did he reign long ? " 
 
 " No, the bats and birds of prey drove off or devoured all 
 th true friends, and whoever loved or trusted him were 
 beheaded or alienated, and he was devoured by th hawks 
 when he no longer had leal friends to defend him." 
 
 "A lugrubrious fable, Kate ; what does it teach ?" 
 
 " The danger of doves taking counsel of hawks ; of lambs 
 bleating th howl of th wolf ; of truth blindin its e en and 
 letting craft lead it." 
 
 " Kate, you rival Lafontaine ; he made animals talk, but 
 you make them preach Fables of the Conventicle as it 
 were. But we must be at more important work just now. 
 Trajan and Philip must be snatched from the jaws of the 
 monster, and I must do it." He looked at Bella with a curi 
 ous sort of implicitness, as if he had some assurance that this 
 self-devotion was to have the reward of her love. She had 
 not said it. He had not asked it. Was it really true ? Had 
 they come to the end of parting and caprice ? Had Bella 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 557 
 
 come to the end of her wild strange ways and was the real 
 to replace the ideal in her wayward heart ? Ah, satiric imp, 
 that sits the saddle, riding our hearts whither you list, did 
 you laugh or weep at this incongruous picture ? Were the 
 reins fallen from your trembling hands and were the steeds 
 of these two natures running whither they listed ? Were 
 they to canter over green fields and by purling brooks and 
 find blooming pasture and untroubled life ? 
 
 And as the " adored " Trajan tramped silently along 
 with Philip under the mild April sunshine, through 
 ranks of jeering patriots, buffeting, striking and spitting 
 the hatred of the elect upon the defiled foe to the 
 altar of the people s sacrifice, the tabernacle of vengeance 
 and blood, the prison of the Grand Roquette, whose min 
 istering furies eagerly waited the sacrificial tokens ; and 
 while his sweetheart lay delirious in the darkened cham 
 ber yonder, was the course of this true love to be long 
 clogged, darkened, and its trace often wholly lost like the 
 mysterious stream that " ran measureless to man down to a 
 sunless sea," or to flow, broad, uninterrupted and serene in 
 the sunlight and under the stars never again to be broken or 
 checkered by ripple or cloud ? Why not ? The bells that 
 ring in the orange odors, or the babe that s born, sound as 
 well for the clay that is carrying to the narrow pit, there; the 
 tears of joy and the tears of woe spring from the same source ! 
 
 Why should it seem sinister that Trajan s death sentence 
 should be the signal of his friend s felicity ? Don t we see 
 these conditions daily ?" Pray, madame, rustling in your silks 
 and laces, did it make you any less proud and imperious the 
 other night when you received that glorious robe of lace and 
 China silk, to see the sunken eye and pallid cheek of Susan 
 the seamstress, who fell dead on your kitchen stair, with a 
 few dollars, the price of weeks of toil, jingling in her tightly 
 clutching fingers ? Or, sir, with your millions, do you drink a 
 single drop less of the cup of adulation, that the water in 
 your stock drowned a score of widows and drove helpless 
 
558 TRAJAN. 
 
 men to the pistol ? And why blame or even moralize ? Is not 
 the passion of mating the strongest in us ? Why then break 
 the golden bowl, because one lip the less is to drink the 
 potion ? At sea when hunger overtakes the castaway in the 
 long boat, lot makes a man s friend his food. Some must 
 die ! Some must live ! 
 
 Elliot, however, felt deeply the anguish of his situation. 
 He had gained no promise ; but he had gained the force of 
 a great impulse. He owned with a sense of inexpiable guilt, 
 that he was coming to his own with a fratricidal hand and 
 not by the natural laws of selection or heredity. He shrank 
 from thinking at all, as he saw the vision of his happiness, 
 over the dead body of his wronged friend. If he did not 
 snatch him from self-imposed death, he would expiate his 
 wrong by dying with him, if he could not die for him. He 
 thought of the strange destiny that had first brought them 
 face to face ; he had saved him from self-death, only to 
 drive him to suicide in the end. 
 
 If we had not followed this young man s mental processes 
 before and seen his fine resolutions dissolved like wafers in 
 the wine, we might look forward to heroic work, to cap the 
 climax of all we have thus far seen. But we are justified in 
 skepticism when we recall the wondrous potency of those 
 emerald eyes, the irresistible seduction of the wit that Theo 
 never exerted in vain. Now the realities before the lovers 
 were of the sternest sort. The summary decree of the com 
 mune had called for Arden as a spy, an accomplice of Philip 
 Kent, an emissary of the Prussian allies at Versailles. Even 
 had they been indifferent to Trajan s fate, his taking off 
 would not secure Elliot s safety. The first thing to be done 
 was to warn the servants that Elliot Arden was no longer to 
 be spoken of as existing. The next to devise means to 
 secure the family from visitations of the agents of the com 
 mune. Then Elliot would be free to devise Trajan s rescue. 
 
 He was not much known in the quarter, as he had always 
 kept rooms over the river. He prudently colored his blonde 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 559 
 
 locks as near black as the most powerful dyes could make 
 them, stained his face to a Nubian brown, changed the 
 elegance of his apparel for a more student-like carelessness, 
 and reappeared in the family group, an ebon shade of his 
 golden self. Kate only was taken into the lovers confi 
 dence, as from certain twitches about that sly person s 
 mouth, when the young people met her in leaving the library, 
 Bella conjectured that hers was the rustle that rescued her 
 from the embarrassment of an answer. Edith was still hap 
 pily but half conscious of the bolt that had struck her, and 
 the anxious ministry had the night before them to prepare a 
 plan of operations. Bella proved the most inventive of the 
 three. Her florid imagination had the quality of concen 
 trating when she came to devise action, and when the trio 
 separated, Elliot felt equal to the work assigned him by 
 his colleagues. 
 
 While these perverse symptoms were fermenting in the 
 people we have been studying in these pages, belying all 
 our preconceptions of them, where were Trajan and the luck 
 less Philip ? Were they too taking on the color and break 
 ing put in the mental rash, that seems to have affected all 
 who came within the scope of this social and political 
 euthanasia ? Had terror transformed the contained doctrin 
 aire of the rights of man, as remorse had metamorphosed 
 his whimsical friend ? Was he like Theo prey to the 
 tortures that self-confessed maladroitness had reduced the 
 most inveterate self-confidence and faculty to ? 
 
 Is there really a reserve of strength to support the spirit of 
 the just doer in adversity ? If so, why do we see the purest 
 and most spotless of her sex stretched broken in heart and 
 mind in the cloistered splendor of the Ardens, while the 
 dismal salon of the Bellechasse is agog with the impish 
 spirit of Theo s babbling gayety ? I firmly believe that true 
 conscious honor is a coat of gauze, wherethrough every 
 arrow of meanness and malignity penetrates, while impu 
 dence, selfishness, greed and all unloveliness, uncleanness 
 
560 TRAJAN. 
 
 and baseness, are panoplied in the triple armor of the mail of 
 indifference, impenetrable to the law of justice, ideal or 
 actual. 
 
 Elliot, who certainly sins through impulse and wrongs 
 through skillfully fed prejudice, can think of lovemaking 
 while the ghastly figure of death to those near and 
 dear to him almost jostles the clothes of the grave about 
 him ! Theo, in the wreck of her far-reaching schemes, 
 claps on the cap and bells and makes merry in the great 
 house yonder. While Trajan, guiltless in every thing but a 
 dog-like devotion to the three or four people he has 
 enshrined in his foolish heart, is buffeted in the streets and 
 maltreated in the temples of the gods he had himself 
 invoked, and thinks only of how he may make his sacrifice a 
 redemption for those in peril ! 
 
 Indeed, as I have told you from the first, there would be 
 no occasion to write this history, had Trajan been a young 
 man of well ordered circumspection. He held that society 
 needed reconstruction ! And so here the reconstruction was 
 come and he was the first to find himself discarded from the 
 new life. He had preached the communism of equal politi 
 cal duties ! His acolytes had carried the doctrine to the 
 buccaneer principle of equal division of property. He had 
 maintained the right of the majority to rule ! His pupils had 
 enforced its right to misrule. He had plead the wrong, the 
 iniquity of human execution, by the individual or the state ! 
 His disciples were enforcing a lex talionis more sweeping 
 than the absolutism of all the divinely anointed slaughterers 
 from Dionysius to Bonaparte. 
 
 The prisoners were first halted in the barracks of the Car 
 rousel, where the guards, falling into drink, forgot them a 
 whole day. The companies being ordered to the forts, the 
 captors made another start, but meeting cronies in the Rue 
 de Rivoli, they locked the " bandits " in a neighboring 
 prefecture and indulged in another spree. Trajan indulged 
 hopes of slipping from these easy-going patriots, when on 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 561 
 
 the third day, they were summoned to go to the Hotel de 
 Ville to confront the Committee of Public Safety. 
 
 Trajan kept up his spirits to encourage Philip and even went 
 to the extent of making merry over his own plight in the 
 revolution he had preached since he knew Paris. Nor did he 
 admit regret for his undisciplined enthusiasm, as the gaudy 
 guardsmen hurried them through clamoring citoyens and 
 citoyennes to the Hotel de Ville, where the Central Com 
 mittee were to adjudge their guilt. The guards were far 
 kinder than the patriots who ran in groups to see the " ban 
 dits of Thiers " pass. Many a time the wretched prisoners 
 were seized and dragged from their protecting captors, 
 before, almost in tatters, their faces bleeding and their bodies 
 bruised, they were hurried toward the great court of the Hotel 
 de Ville. The bloody ordeal was not, however, without a 
 compensating chance. At the corner of the Boulevard 
 Sebastopol, where they came upon a dense mass of the male 
 and female soldiery of the patriots, an onset by an Amazon 
 group, attracted an officer of the general staff riding toward 
 the Hotel de Ville. In spite of his profuse trappings and 
 theatrical plumes, Trajan recognized him, and as a large 
 limbed vengeresse of the People fairly twisted his neck awry, 
 with the vigorous wrench she gave his hair, he succeeded in 
 giving the astonished officer the old society signal. Drawing 
 his sword, he rode into the mette, scattering the shrieking 
 demi-reps right and left. 
 
 " Norn de Dieu Mon ami, what does this mean ? " It was 
 Belcour, and he recognized Trajan through the blood and 
 tatters. 
 
 " Can you not come to the hearing ? We are going to the 
 executive committee I will explain after we get out of the 
 clutches of these furies." Rene nodded. Then standing 
 up in his stirrups, he shouted : 
 
 " Mes concitoyens, you are wronging one of the first 
 patriots of the patrie the destroyer of Bonaparte one of 
 the Treize-Treize." 
 
 36 
 
562 TRAJAN. 
 
 The crowd fell away hurrahing and the group moved on. 
 Before reaching the door, Rene who had dismounted, was 
 apprised of all Trajan thought prudent to tell. He gave 
 little hope of being able to extricate his old friend from 
 the peril, but pressing his hand as he mounted and rode on 
 ahead, he protested his devotion. To Trajan s great surprise 
 Rene met the guard at the door, with a group of cavalrymen. 
 He was himself quite transformed in the few minutes he 
 had been in the building. The conducting party were halted 
 at the general office on the ground floor, where Rene himself 
 coming forward, asked : 
 
 " Citoyen, who are these ? " 
 
 " Spies arrested by order of the Committee of Public 
 Safety." 
 
 " The papers ? " 
 
 " Here they are void the spy Kent, this man and the 
 spy Arden, this man." 
 
 " Citoyen, you have done well, you may return to your 
 quarter, the committee shall know your service." 
 
 Rene disappeared in the bureau, directing the cavalrymen 
 to guard the prisoners. He returned in a few minutes, and 
 beckoning an orderly, gave him a written order, with which 
 the man disappeared into one of the rear courts. The first 
 captors had marched off, evidently very glad to be quit of 
 their detail, and when the orderly presently reappeared with 
 a squad of six infantrymen, Trajan, Philip and Rene were 
 left alone in the court, the cavalrymen dispersed in chatter 
 ing groups by the doorway, watching the evolutions of the 
 Amazons in the " Place." 
 
 14 Caporal" said Rene, addressing the leader of the squad, 
 " these are the suspects, Malfoy and Legare," and he looked 
 meaningly at each prisoner as he pronounced these names. 
 " They are to be detained at La Grande Roquette until their 
 crimes can be examined." He handed the corporal the 
 papers, and with a gleam of encouragement in his eye turned 
 and entered the bureau again. 
 
TRAJAN PL A YS A NEW ROLE. 563 
 
 " What does this mean ? " asked Philip, gloomily. " Ro- 
 quette is the dfyot des condamnes ; are we to be butchered 
 without even the farce of a trial ? " 
 
 " It is just to evade the farce of a trial Rene has managed 
 this clever device. Don t you see we enter the prison under 
 names against which no one has made complaint ? We may 
 lie there until this infernal business is brought to an end, but 
 the danger of a charge against us is removed. Don t forget, 
 you are citizen Malfoy and I am citizen Legare. What a trump 
 the small Rene is ; I never would have credited him with so 
 ready a resource. By George, he s worth a dozen of his 
 mad-headed compatriots. I despair of ever comprehending 
 French character. Here is this Rene, rattle-head, mercurial ; 
 lazy as dead water, as he himself would put it, forever 
 knocking around the quarter, turning out bits of color in a 
 morning that would madden Fortuny or Diaz ; dancing all 
 night with fragile camarades at the Bal Bullier, the most 
 vehement in the political clubs, living only for pleasure. 
 Yet you can see him here managing this affair with the in 
 spiration and audacity of a mouchard ! " 
 
 Philip wasn t in the mood of this sort of abstraction, and the 
 two marched rapidly, better protected by the more numerous 
 guards. In the Place de la Bastille, whose great octagonal 
 limits bristled like a fortress, the sans culottes of the St. 
 Antoine quarter were holding &fete. A group of wretched 
 priests were in the center of a ring, baited by jeering women 
 and small boys in indescribable costume. A burly tambour- 
 iniere, striking up a carmagnole, the priests were bidden 
 to dance. Refusing, the women darted upon them with 
 knives, scissors, bodkins jabbing their bared heads and 
 through the rents of their torn soutanes. Finding it impos 
 sible to move their tormentors to pity, the priests fell upon 
 their knees resignedly, and clasping their hands before their 
 eyes, their lips could be seen moving in prayer. 
 
 Unmoved by this saintly resignation, the demi-reps flung 
 themselves upon them ; the last that Trajan saw of the scene 
 
5 6 4 TRAJAN. 
 
 reminding him of a sacred Laocoon writhing in the torments 
 of a score of demoniac hydra. Both prisoners shuddered as the 
 cortege drew up in the court of La Roquette the de pdt des 
 condamnes in time of order. The prison is separated into two 
 parts by the Rue de la Roquette, the frowning mass on the 
 left devoted to boy convicts and that on the right to those 
 sentenced to the guillotine, or the hulks. After a short for 
 mality the prisoners were received by the gaoler, Le Fran- 
 ais, under their new names and marched through the mas 
 sive walls into a circular court. Here a group of turnkeys 
 came forward, and the numbers of their cells being called 
 out the prisoners were marched up a broad stairway, impen 
 etrable walls frowning upon four sides of them. 
 
 At the top of the wide staircase they came into a great 
 corridor with iron grated cells on either hand. The 
 place was well lighted from above. At the opposite 
 end a cylinder stairway led down to the interior of a 
 separate court where the condemned were led to make 
 the toilette de la mort. Most of the cage-like compart 
 ments were already occupied, the newcomers receiving 
 pitying glances from hollow eyes, deep-set in pallid faces. 
 On the first landing Trajan and Philip were committed 
 to a gray-haired, not unkindly man, who, taking two keys 
 from the board hanging on the wall, led his new guests down 
 the passage to cells 23 and 25. An iron bedstead fastened 
 to the wall, a single stool and a small round table with the 
 surface of a breakfast tray, were the only furniture of the 
 apartment. Both men were worn out and slept with a rest- 
 fulness only known to the exhausted, for twelve hours. 
 
 The lights were glimmering dimly in the corridor when 
 Trajan awoke, puzzled by his surroundings. The measured 
 tramp of the guard brought him back to the reality, and he 
 started to count the chances of escape. They were far from 
 inviting. Deep upon deep of solid frowning masonry bare of 
 iron, nothing in the remotest degree suggestive of a tool or 
 weapon. He followed the movements of the sentinel mechan- 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 565 
 
 ically, and then resolving to let no detail evade him, gave 
 his mind to studying the internal economy of the place. In 
 the morning at 5:30 wine and bread were brought in wooden 
 bowls. At noon a wholesome broth, with vegetables and a 
 morsel of bread. The guard, he remarked, was changed 
 every hour, and once in each twelve hours there was a sort 
 of liberation ; some of the prisoners marching off with a 
 lightness of step denoting belief in freedom. 
 
 Others were liberated, but it could be seen that none of the 
 elation of hope buoyed their trembling steps, while muffled 
 sounds of musketry inside the walls told but too plainly the 
 liberty that had been given them. Even the poor comfort of 
 talking with Philip, save during the short liberation of an 
 hour each day, was denied him. News from the troubled city 
 was vague and contradictory. One guard, in enthusiasm, 
 would announce a great triumph of the patriots and the im 
 mediate capture of Versailles, with ferocious threats of a 
 general massacre to signalize this crowning evidence of the 
 People s prowess. But the old guardian of the corridor 
 passing along took care to make known that the army of 
 MacMahon was girdling the city closer and closer and rout 
 ing Dombrowski s tatterdemalions in every encounter. 
 
 The third day of the ordeal brought a great influx to the 
 dungeons. The cell of Mazas had been emptied and the 
 unfortunate wretches sent to La Roquette to be shot for 
 communards in the hands of the " bandits." As the cells 
 were unequal to the arrivals the prisoners were, in some 
 instances, doubled. Trajan, to whose lot it fell to have a 
 companion thrupt upon him, asked the new guard if he 
 might not be put in 25 with his compatriot. " We are 
 Americans," he said, " and the patrie can not suffer in 
 gratifying this demand." 
 
 " By Jove," said a voice in English. "Americans are you ; 
 well, I thought I had hard lines, but I see I m in luck. I ll 
 see what I can do." 
 
 Gibson, for it was he, went to the person in command, and 
 
566 TRAJAN. 
 
 his statement was listened to with favor, for Trajan saw the 
 old guardian coming forward with the new friend. It was 
 almost like liberty to be with Philip, and for the rest of the 
 day the two friends were content and even happy. The 
 Englishman seized the chance to tell them that it looked bad 
 for the commune. MacMahon had carried all the outer 
 forts, and unless very unlucky, must make a breach in the 
 walls soon. Animated by this news, at once good and bad, 
 the prisoners almost cheered the stout Englishman, who 
 moved off in great terror. The next morning Trajan got 
 further chance of talking with him and learned of his encoun 
 ter with Grovel. 
 
 "What ! Lafayette in the ranks ?" he exclaimed. 
 
 " You know him ? " asked Gibson in delight. " Tell me 
 where he lives ; I have a confounded packet for him that 
 has worried my life out, since it is more precious than gold 
 to the family." 
 
 Trajan gave him the address, and when he rejoined Philip 
 told him of the singular chance that had thrown the whilom 
 companion of Lafayette into their way. It was just after the 
 supper had been served that a commotion was heard at the 
 end of the hall. Two officers with the broad red sash of the 
 commune were coming along the corridor with the old 
 guardian. The hearts of many a poor wretch sank at the 
 sight. To the horror of our two friends, the group came to 
 a halt before 25. The key grated harshly in the lock. 
 
 " The citizens Malfoy and Legare will step forth," said 
 one of the sashed figures. Trajan, who was nearest, came 
 out first, pale, but collected. Philip followed as firmly, but 
 not less pale. 
 
 " Citizen patriots," resumed the red sash, a boy of twenty- 
 three or four, " I felicitate you. The member of the Com 
 mittee of Public Safety, Belcour, vouches for your patriotism 
 and has laid the proofs before the committee that you are 
 calumniated. The patrie gives you liberty and assigns you 
 to staff duty with the General Roesel. I salute you. Here 
 
TRAJAN PLA YS A NEW ROLE. 567 
 
 are your commissions, you will get an order for uniforms at 
 the general staff, Place Vendome." 
 
 Free ! rescued ! Not death, but life. The Saxons edi 
 fied the Gaul by a simultaneous impulse. They gave each 
 other a hug, perhaps as much to save the need of speech as 
 to demonstrate their grateful, devout thanksgiving. But in 
 the intoxication of this sudden release they were betrayed 
 into a blunder which, had the young patriots been keener or 
 more suspicious, would have undone the fine work of Rene. 
 They addressed each other as Philip and Trajan. No one 
 noticed the exclamation save Gibson, to whom, of course, 
 the English accents were more intelligible than to theothers. 
 
 Trajan was just about to thank the Englishman for his good- 
 fellowship when he remembered the danger and walked on 
 with only a glance of recognition. Philip, not so prudent, 
 lingered to shake his hand, but instead Gibson slipped the 
 packet of letters into it and whispered to give it to Grovel. 
 None saw the maneuver but the eager spectators in 
 the cells, and they were to be depended on as against the 
 patriots. The soft April night was like May as the strangely 
 liberated pair passed down the gloomy stairs, under the 
 frowning granite walls of the quadrangle, where a long line 
 of miserable, haggard victims stood in the ordeal they had 
 so recently endured. There was another embrace, heartier 
 than the first, when they stood on the dim street, the high 
 walls of the prison on either hand. 
 
 They had been ordered to present themselves at once in 
 the staff office, and warned that they were in danger so long 
 as they were not uniformed. This they discovered before 
 they had gone a quarter of a mile. As they emerged under 
 the lights in the Place de la Bastille a demonstrative patrol 
 brought them to a halt, and it was only upon explaining 
 their role and displaying their commission, printed in 
 blood-red ink with a lurid goddess in the corner, that they 
 were grumblingly permitted to pursue their venturesome 
 way. They avoided danger thereafter by walking in the 
 
568 TRAJAN: 
 
 middle of the streets, crowded with picturesquely-clad vivan- 
 dieres, soldiers and ragamuffins, dancing, shouting and revel 
 ing in a wild orgie of delirious joy for it was reported that 
 MacMahon was a prisoner and would be shot at LaRoquette 
 in the morning. When they came to barricades, of which 
 there were scores in the Bastille quarter, built with the sol 
 idity and precision of earthworks, they were obliged to pass 
 the guards, but their red commission carried them through 
 in safety. 
 
 In the Place Vendome they found Roesel, the new general- 
 in-chief, a pale, handsome, poet-like lad not thirty. He was 
 surrouiided by a gesticulating group of bedizened person 
 ages screaming and imploring instant compliance with their 
 demands. One wanted an order for re-enforcements ; another 
 couldn t answer for his post unless he had five thousand 
 troops ; another had no food, the commissariat having sold 
 his rations to the speculators. It was two hours before the 
 tortured chieftain could look at the two strangers assigned 
 him as staff officers. 
 
 His face flushed with pleasure as he saw that they were of 
 a different stamp from the wild and ignorant cattle assigned 
 his predecessor. 
 
 " Citizens, I welcome you with pleasure. It is no light 
 duty devolves upon you. Have you ever served before ? " 
 Both young men bowed. 
 
 "A la bonne heure that is something like it. Which is 
 the citizen Malfoy ? " Philip bowed " Trh bien citizen, 
 you shall remount and direct the formation of the cavalry of 
 which we are badly in need, and you, citizen Le"gare you 
 shall be my adjutant." He rang a bell. An orderly ap 
 proached the desk and the citizen delegate for war ordered 
 him to conduct the citizen to the store house, handing him at 
 the same time a written order. " Citizen, there isn t a 
 moment to lose. You must be prepared to aid me all night 
 in disposing of these documents. We mean now to show 
 the enemy scientific war." 
 
TRAJAN PLA Y3 A NEW R&LE. 569 
 
 " He s no fool, that/ said Philip " if the commune had 
 made use of such material from the first, Thiers would now 
 find himself behind the Loire where, as it is, with dun 
 derheads and maniacs in control here, he was half determ 
 ined to go when the storm burst in March." 
 
 " Who is Roesel ? " 
 
 " He is an ex-officer in the army, one of the most accom 
 plished graduates of the Polytechnique. Served with dis 
 tinction in Algiers, and like yourself indulged in theories 
 which don t work well in practice." 
 
 " It s not my theories, oh, graceless Philistine, that are 
 working here, but the perversion of them. You might as 
 well call the gentle creed of the Nazarene bloody and cruel 
 because of St. Bartholomew, of Alva, of Wallenstein, of the 
 Thirty-Years war, of the Inquisition, of deluged England, 
 as to say these maniacs, who borrow the most generous and 
 pacific doctrines, represent the glorious creed of common 
 rights, common responsibilities, common destinies for that 
 is the crime of communism." 
 
 " Well, Gray, I m prepared to take the doctrines on trust, 
 but I decline to be an apostle." 
 
 " Yes, that s the -pusillanimity that subjects society to 
 these shoals, and this is only the preliminary one, let me tell 
 you for the work that the educated shrink from, the masses 
 are bound to undertake, and lacking knowledge and har 
 mony, they stumble blindly, commit woeful blunders, but 
 they succeed in the end witness the liberty given the world 
 by the horrors of 93 ! " 
 
 " Well, well, have it so like Gambetta, you were born to 
 die in the skin of a revoltce but I own that I am not easy 
 in my mind in this business. I am an aid on L Admir- 
 ault s staff and when the other side get the upper hand, as 
 they are bound to, I shall be shot." 
 
 " You can readily prove that you had no choice and 
 then you may find a chance to escape. I think, we are the 
 children of miracle, as the Legitimists call the Count de 
 
57 TRAJAN. 
 
 Chambord, and for my part I never was so little disposed to 
 look awry at fortune. All that worries me now is to get a 
 chance to send a message to the Rue Frangois Premier, 
 where they are giving you up as dead, I fear." 
 
 " They would not be so much troubled about me, if they 
 thought you safe " 
 
 "Oh, Kent, that s not generous it s damnably cruel you 
 have no business to talk that way even in joke," and Trajan 
 with quite unnecessary wrath dropped his companion s arm. 
 
 " By the Lord, Gray, you re a fine fellow you misappre 
 hend me. Do you suppose Elliot can feel very happy, 
 knowing that you gave yourself into the lion s jaws, just at 
 the moment, too, when he was acting like an infernal dunce 
 and ingrate ? By heavens, I don t understand how you 
 resisted knocking his stupid head off.- I should have done 
 it. I couldn t imagine what he was driving at, for I never 
 understood your quarrel, and I didn t recall that he was 
 ignorant of the part you played in his escape from Meaux." 
 
 " I didn t have the slightest disposition to lay a hand on 
 the misguided lad ; first, because I love him ; second, be 
 cause some one else loves him with a love far surpassing the 
 love sisters give brothers ; third, because, though the voice 
 was the voice of Elliot, the words were the words of a 
 revengeful, heartless woman." 
 
 The orderly begged the citizens to go to the depot at this 
 point. They entered a great magazine, where hundreds of 
 clerks were busy filling orders for raiment, which could 
 hardly be called uniforms. Not till the orderly had gone 
 back twice and finally returned with a peremptory command 
 were the civilians transformed into such militaires as we are 
 accustomed to see in the antics of General Bourn in the 
 piebald army of La Grande Duchesse. The sun was shin 
 ing into the litter of the headquarters, revealing a scene of 
 characteristic disorder, when the young general, dead tired, 
 bade his aids seek a few hours rest and be with him at ten 
 o clock. But there was no rest for the overjoyed aids. 
 
IN THE L ION S MO UTff. 571 
 
 In ten minutes they were hurrying across the Place de la 
 Concorde a scene of wreck and destruction towards the 
 stately alles of the Champs Elysees a-bloom in early May, 
 green, musical with the chirp of the robins, and tranquil 
 as the river that flowed from the shambles above to the 
 shambles below. At last, with an eagerness that almost 
 stopped the beating of their hearts they stood before the 
 heavy doors guarding all they both loved best in the world. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 IN THE LION S MOUTH. 
 
 ELLIOT set about his campaign with all the attention 
 to detail that marks the inspired amateur in the serious 
 affairs of life. Since he was no longer Arden, his first 
 sagacious move, as I have said, was to color his blonde pate 
 a dingy black. His skin even was darkened, and when he 
 appeared before his solicitous conspirators, they owned 
 that he never would be identified as the glorious Saxon 
 the world knew him. He proposed, first of all, finding the 
 whereabouts of the prisoners and then, if he could not 
 invoke the interposition of some of Trajan s old club 
 friends in the quarter, compel the aid of the United 
 States minister. If all else failed, he would go before 
 the Executive Committee with the minister and avow the 
 substitution of Gray for himself. This last resolution, how 
 ever, he did not confide to the other plotters, who staked all 
 on his persuasive powers with the Draconian Committee. 
 
 But before he had taken a step in this promising programme 
 an ominous event happened. " He had received a letter from 
 an unknown (to him) citoyen, signed Celeste Voyon, in which 
 this patriot informed him that, as soon as her duties in the 
 field gave her the leisure, she would do herself the honor to 
 call and make him acquainted with a matter of the first im- 
 
57* TRAJAN*. 
 
 portance to his family. He had heedlessly signed the 
 receipt for the letter and thereby given his identity into the 
 hands of one of the children of the People. What was to be 
 done ? 
 
 The next morning Elliot set out, cautioning the anxious 
 family to have no fears if he did not return at night ; per 
 haps, indeed, he might be forced to remain away several 
 days, as he was going to persist, by himself, if the minister 
 had not traced the victims. At the legation he was solemnly 
 assured that no prisoners Kent or Arden were in possession 
 of the commune. Knowing the impossibility of the French 
 to pronounce Saxon names, agents had been sent to the 
 prisons where all suspects, or hostages, were confined, but 
 no names, even remotely resembling those he sought, were 
 to be found. 
 
 They must either have escaped en route the day of 
 their arrest, or they were dead. This was the conclu 
 sion of the official, to whom Elliot had given carte blanche 
 as to funds in tracing his friends. His high hopes were 
 dashed, for, like impulsive natures, the rebound from hope 
 carried him far from the alternative of escape suggested 
 by the official. What should he do now ? he asked himself 
 despairingly. Sullenly resolved to keep away from home 
 until the worst or best was known, he drove to the prison 
 Mazas. Naturally, without an order of any kind, he was 
 refused admission. Hurrying back to the legation he got a 
 letter to Raoul Rigault, the head of the Safety Committee 
 and chief of police, made out in the name of Trajan re 
 solved that, if he found him, he would give him the order and 
 let him pass out, risking his chance to liberate himself and 
 Philip. Absolutely, the madness in the air from which no 
 one in the city seems to have been preserved during those 
 nine crazy, tumultuous weeks possessed him. The absurd 
 ity of his scheme never even suggested itself to him as he 
 tore off like a maniac to thrust his head into the jaws of the 
 wild beast, that no one came near during the horrid revel 
 
IN THE LION S MOUTH. 573 
 
 without losing blood or head. It was late in the afternoon, 
 when he at last got track of the " Delegate of Public Safety " 
 as the arch-butcher in the tragedy was magniloquently 
 styled in the flamboyant literature of this saturnalia. 
 
 His headquarters were in the long low range of medieval 
 gables which used to be the wonder and delight of the medi 
 tative sightseer on the banks of the Seine. Elliot could hardly 
 reconcile this peaceful bit of Nuremburg-like gables and 
 flying dormers with the bloody lair of the chief of the assas 
 sins. After a moment s wait, the messenger who had taken 
 his letter beckoned him to follow, and, entering a vestibule 
 crowded with tearful expectants, he was led past them all 
 into an inner department where two boyish-looking men sat 
 noting names on a list. 
 
 They were clad in the impossible costumes that enlivened 
 the streets, with an extra breadth of red in the civic sash, 
 denoting their rank. Neither was more than twenty-five 
 thoroughly French of the boulevardier-Bohemian type, 
 dark hair, pale to sickliness, and the pince-nez, or spec 
 tacles, lending a student look to countenances whose ex 
 pression did not belie the incredible ferocity of their 
 natures. The elder of the two, though there was only a 
 year s difference in age, was Raoul Rigault ; the younger 
 was Theophile Ferre, his ultimate and appropriate successor 
 in the Walpurgis night of massacre that ended the com 
 mune. Both looked up as the orderly, showing Elliot in, 
 withdrew. 
 
 " I thought Gray was sent for," said Ferre, looking over 
 his shoulder at Elliot. 
 
 " So he was that imbecile hasn t sense enough to pluck a 
 thistle," and Rigault touched a bell sharply, paying no more 
 attention to the presence of Elliot than if he had been a chair 
 set down in the room. 
 
 " Gregoire, you are intolerable ; it was the person who 
 gave this letter I ordered you to bring the citizen Gray 
 where is he? Let this man wait and bring him to me." 
 
574 TRAJAN. 
 
 " But, Citizen Delegate, this is the man who gave the 
 letter ; see, here is his number and the time he entered," 
 and the man took the card from Elliot s trembling hand. 
 
 Ferre had gotten up and was staring at the confounded 
 victim of his own rashness. 
 
 " You are not the citizen Gray. I know him very well ; 
 we belonged to the same club. What is the meaning of 
 this masquerade ? " 
 
 " Yes, young man ; what is the meaning of this imposi 
 tion explain and be brief." 
 
 Elliot saw that he was lost. But he could still save Tra 
 jan. The thought restored all his serenity. He was not after 
 all to be unworthy of some of that adoration Bella had so 
 glowingly avowed for the captive. He told the story in a few 
 words. Describing Trajan s substitution and his own desire 
 to prevent it, with the obstacles thrown in his way by his 
 mother and sister. The two listened without a scintilla of 
 emotion in their contemptuously malevolent faces. 
 
 " A charming feullleton indeed, citoyen spy we have 
 seen numbers like you." 
 
 " But you can prove it by the guards 
 
 " I don t need to be instructed in my duty to the pa- 
 trie r 
 
 He touched the bell. 
 
 When Gregoire appeared he nodded toward Elliot. Em 
 ploying four terrible and decisive words, " La Roquette, spy, 
 confessed." 
 
 It was with something of a sense of triumph the luckless 
 victim fell in between the guards that were to conduct him 
 to the prison that he knew was to be his death. He knew it 
 as well as if the guns were pointed at him. 
 
 As the heavy vehicle rolled along the quiet waters of the 
 Seine to the bridge of Sebastopol, he remembered his past 
 life in the rollicking quarter beyond ; he thought of the 
 meeting in the Luxembourg Garden and the strange chaos 
 of .events which had made Trajan twice his saviour and now 
 
IN THE LION S MOUTH. 575 
 
 by his own imprudence his executioner. Two hours after 
 Trajan and Philip quit cell 25, Elliot entered it fate has at 
 last played its most fantastic freak, let us hope ! 
 
 Early as it was on that glorious May morning, Bella and 
 her mother heard the untimely ring and were waiting inside 
 the door for Elliot. But when Philip and Trajan burst in, 
 there was such a clamor of joy as speedily brought the 
 whole family to the spot. Somebody s cheeks were a per 
 fect garden of roses and her eyes two sparkling Kohinoors. 
 
 " But where is Elliot ? " asked Bella. 
 
 " Isn t he here ? " exclaimed both the young men in a 
 breath. 
 
 When it was explained that he had gone out the morning 
 before, not to return unless accompanied by the prisoners, 
 Trajan sank helplessly into a seat, looking at Philip in con 
 sternation. 
 
 " He told me not to be alarmed in case he did not return 
 for one, two, three days," said Bella, trying to appear con 
 fident. 
 
 Trajan avoided the glance fixed upon him by mother and 
 cousin, but he could not deceive these penetrating eyes. 
 They saw his alarm and shared it. 
 
 " Where did he go first ? " he asked quietly. 
 
 " To the Legation." 
 
 " Philip, you wait here ; I ll be back in an hour." His 
 worst fears were confirmed when he heard of the letter, and 
 the madness of using his own name. Hurrying back to the 
 Rue Frangois Premier, he assumed a confidence he was far 
 from feeling ; and announced that he had gained a clue all 
 would yet be well. Under pretext of their duty with the 
 general, Philip, on a signal from Trajan, hurried with him 
 from the saddened circle, and as they reached the street he 
 said : 
 
 " I m afraid Elliot has done a fatal thing. Rigault, to 
 whom he took a letter, knows me. If he didn t, his familiar 
 Ferre does. He hates me because I reprimanded some 
 
576 TRAJAN. 
 
 dishonesties he practiced with the funds of the club. Now 
 we must manage to find out what has happened. We can do 
 this at the headquarters, by sending an orderly to look over 
 the list of prisoners sent from the prefecture yesterday." 
 
 Before ten o clock they had found out the frightful trap 
 into which the poor boy had fallen. 
 
 " Our only hope now is to get an immediate order from 
 Roesel fixing a trial. Then delay under some other pretext 
 until the commune falls, or we can invent a rescue. I own 
 that I m not sanguine, Ferre being in the affair. Roesel is 
 kind-hearted, and will not refuse delay. He dare not do 
 more." 
 
 Trajan was over-confident in counting Roesel kind. He 
 was the incarnation of ferocity. It was his hand that had 
 drawn up the most vengeful parts of the bloody code, wast 
 ing the populace of the terrified city. But he had a fantastic 
 sort of justice, and he readily gave the order to bring Elliot 
 to trial, and promised to permit one of his friends to testify, 
 but he warned them to expect no mercy. The patriots were 
 aroused, and he quite approved of their determination to 
 make the shortest sort of work with the suspects, without 
 whom the Versaillaise couldn t have maintained the contest 
 a week. But this was something to enable Philip to comfort 
 the despairing, and he set off at once to give them such solace 
 as it suggested. Here he found direful confusion. The 
 great hall on the street floor was transformed into a gipsy 
 camp. A squad of twenty or more Amazons had taken 
 possession of the place. The concierge, shrieking and sup 
 plicating, stood inside the glass door of her little sitting" 
 room praying the bonnes et cheres citoyennes to liberate 
 her, that she was the best of patriots ; that her son was 
 marechel des logis in the Spartan band of Paris avengers. Nor 
 did Philip s sudden entrance quell the tumult. Costumes 
 were so varied, each patriot assuming any stage rag he was 
 minded to, that the modest gray of the staff did not carry 
 much weight 
 
IN THE L ION S MO U TH. 577 
 
 "What is the meaning of this meleel" Philip asked, 
 as he pushed through the chattering dames, beplumed and 
 armed to the teeth. 
 
 Through the confusion he couldn t catch a word of the 
 concierge s answer, but her frantic wave of the hand toward 
 the. rooms above sent him bounding up stairs like a shot, 
 knocking the astonished patriots right and left in his violent 
 onset. In the vestibule were a terrified and threatening group. 
 The gay Celeste, her arms working wildly, and chattering 
 with the volubility possible only to a French woman who 
 knows she has the advantage, with her admiring lover look 
 ing on, Kate holding the door to the salon and Bella con 
 fronting the virago. 
 
 " It was a villainy, it was a canaillerie to deceive her as the 
 . Citizen Arden had done. Unless the check were instantly 
 exchanged for money the brave women of the Amazons 
 would make its value good in the belongings of the apart 
 ment. You are all dishonest, you Americans ; you have 
 ruined Paris by making it cost so much that its own citizens 
 can not exist, and you turn a poor girl to madness bf a pre 
 tended munificence that proves a fraud ; you are " 
 
 " What do you want, woman how dare you come here ? " 
 and Philip, whose entrance the demi-rep had not seen, caught 
 her by the shoulder and gave her a whirl hallward that 
 would have sent her sprawling had the agile Auguste not 
 caught her. In an instant her carbine was unslung, and 
 she turned with a hoarse screech of rage to confront her 
 audacious assailant. But Philip s uniform checked her mar 
 tial fury. Her insolence vanished as she recognized the 
 sash of the superior hierarchy of the commune, and she 
 vociferated confusedly : 
 
 " It is a joke, you know. These Pekins tried to trick us 
 out of money due us, and we were playing a little comedy 
 to them." 
 
 "Citizen soldier," said Philip sternly, "disarm that thief 
 and take her to St, Pelagic. I will send the charges. Re- 
 37 
 
57 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 port to the Delegate for War, General Roesel, Place Ven- 
 dome." 
 
 Celeste was now thoroughly frightened, for she knew that 
 the small ceremony the patrie showed the helpless, was ready 
 for its own culprits. She fell on her knees protesting her 
 innocence. She implored Kate to intercede for her ; she 
 crawled to Bella and arrested her frightened movement in 
 retreat by clutching her skirt, in the abandonment of her 
 fear. 
 
 " Citizen soldier, do you mean to obey, or shall I send 
 for a platoon to have you shot on the spot for insubordina 
 tion ? " 
 
 Auguste turned livid ; he knew that the words were no 
 idle menace. He had seen his comrades shot down in the 
 open street for resisting or refusing to obey the decisive 
 young chief who had now assumed charge of the commune 
 war. He looked sulkily at the officer, who stood writing 
 the charge in his note-book. When it was finished he held 
 it towards the soldier. Auguste took it, but unable to read, 
 handec^it to his mistress, who had risen to her feet and was 
 bewailing her fate in gulps and screeches. When her 
 eyes took note of the charge, written in the significant 
 phraseology of the new order of things, she fell upon the 
 floor in convulsions. 
 
 "Come," said Philip, "lay down your arms and march." 
 
 Celeste was bunglingly stripped of her carbine, pistols 
 and dagger, and under the support of Auguste staggered 
 into the hall. Philip followed to the foot of the stairs. The 
 astonished Amazons came in a noisy swoop about the 
 group, enraged but cowed. 
 
 " Citoyennes, you have laid yourselves liable to the tenth 
 article of the people s decree. You have been caught pil 
 laging the domicile of a citizen ; the penalty is death. You 
 will march to your quarters and await the justice of the 
 Committee of Safety." 
 
 There wasn t a woman among them that had not heard of 
 
IN THE LION S MOUTH. 579 
 
 the summary methods of this bloody tribunal, and in an 
 instant there was a dispersion that from that day forth 
 robbed the patrie of the arms of these stout defenders as 
 Philip foresaw that it would. 
 
 "What on earth did the creature mean?" he asked, 
 returning to the apartment. 
 
 " Elliot gave her a check for two thousand francs, pay 
 able after the peace, whenever it comes," explained Bella. 
 " She took it to the American banker, though it is drawn on 
 Rothschild. The banker informed her that it was waste 
 paper, and she declared, showed letters from a London 
 correspondent proving that Aunt Arden s fortune had 
 been swept away by failures and depression of stocks in 
 America. I don t know what to make of it. We are no 
 sooner clear of one calamity than another falls upon us. 
 If aunty s fortune is gone, ours, I suppose, is lost too, as 
 both were in the hands of the same agents." 
 
 Philip turned ghastly. Cramped for means, Elliot s 
 plight became worse than ever. His own fortune, too, was 
 very likely involved. He must go at once and learn the 
 worst. As he announced this purpose Kate, who had been 
 moving about restlessly, beckoned to him to go with her. 
 Wondering what new calamity impended, he followed her 
 passively into the library. She shut the door carefully, and 
 coming over very close to him broke out in a guilty whisper 
 of rage and contrition : 
 
 " An this is my doin . I was afeard Bella would be daz 
 zled by that prince body, or that Jezebel s brother would 
 prevail with her, and when I was in London I just cal- 
 logued wi my banker to send the rumor here, to that Rue 
 Scribe fellow, that the Arden and Briscoe fortunes were lost. 
 I thought it would shut us from the untoward thing that 
 threatened, but it has worked sore mischief, I m afeard." 
 
 Philip laughed. A great burden had been lifted from 
 him. 
 
 " It will be a lesson for you, Kate dear, not to wage tricks 
 
580 TRAJAN. 
 
 with Theo. She is more than a match for you, or the whole 
 of us together. However, there is no great harm done. 
 The effect will be only temporary. It will cripple us in funds 
 and perhaps compel my aunt to leave this costly apartment." 
 
 He would not add to the poor spinster s wretchedness by 
 hinting that the lack of money might destroy the last chance 
 to rescue Elliot. He had learned of the traffic going on among 
 the officials of the Committee, the buying off of con 
 demned hostages for round sums of money, and from the 
 first he had looked with something like confidence to this 
 dangerous resource. At the Rue Scribe the tale was not 
 only confirmed, but so well had Kate s agent obeyed his 
 instructions, all the fortunes of the family were represented 
 as ruined, Philip sharing in the disaster. The wily banker, 
 who had bent double before the rich Arden family in other 
 days, could hardly find time to tell the story, and dismissed 
 the young man as if he had been a porter. The Ardens 
 had done him the double wrong of banking with a Parisian 
 house, and civilly declining the profuse hospitalities of his 
 toady table in the prince s quarter of the city. He had been 
 many years building up a certain prestige in the nomad 
 society of the capital and he had a long memory for the 
 Americans venturesome enough to dispute the pas with him. 
 
 The Ardens had not disputed it ; they had simply ignored 
 the pretensions of their compatriot. Neither his manners, nor 
 his whimsical affectation of aesthetic culture and Mecaenas 
 patronage of the art celebrities of the day attracted them 
 to his politic salons. He took good care to make known 
 the humiliation of the arrogant family, and though society 
 no longer existed there was not an American in the city 
 who had not heard the news before it had been known two 
 days in the Rue Scribe in official shape. Trajan did not 
 regard the matter so seriously. He had been gathering all 
 accessible information about the course that the Committee 
 of Safety was to take with Elliot. He was to be given a 
 hearing two days later. By a disheartening stroke of ill 
 
IN THE LION S MOUTH. 581 
 
 luck Trajan was sent to Fort Issy, then in the last throes of 
 resistance. Roesel himself conducted the first part of the 
 operations and only waited the assembling of a force of 
 twelve thousand men to turn the defense into a sortie. 
 
 His genius for war might have worked the miracle looked 
 for by the absurd incapables of the Central Committee, but 
 with the bungling and confusion that marked their hideous 
 travesty, only seven thousand men appeared to undertake 
 the decisive action. But the delay had kept Trajan a week 
 from the Rue Vendome, whence he had received word 
 that Elliot had been brought before Ferre, that he had 
 demanded an instant sentence of death, but on a vote of 
 two to his one he had been remanded as " suspect " to be 
 kept in La Roquette, to be shot in his turn, to avenge exe 
 cutions certified from Versailles. Trajan learned further 
 more that Roesel had resigned, and sure enough, when the 
 discomfited delegate for war returned to the Place Ven 
 dome his successor, Dombrowski, was waiting to take his 
 place. Dombrowski was a Pole, a man of fine presence and 
 a very capable officer. He saluted his predecessor, who 
 might have been his son, and asked politely what his 
 address would be ? 
 
 " The prison Mazas," responded Roesel quietly, and 
 recommending his aids to the new delegate, he shook hands 
 cordially with all present, and requesting Dombrowski to 
 sign his commitment, placed himself at the disposal of the 
 guard and withdrew as composedly as though setting out to 
 breakfast ! It was his own decree he was obeying, for his 
 was the hand that had drawn up the law condemning unsuc 
 cessful generals to prison, and if inefficiency could be 
 proven, death. From his cell in Mazas Paris read the next 
 day in the newspapers his excoriation of the greed, ignor 
 ance and helplessness of the commune, and when he died 
 a few days after by his own resolute hand, it was suspected 
 that his fellow conspirators had made way with him. 
 
 Roesel s taking off made a change for the worse in the 
 
582 TRAJAN. 
 
 fortunes of his two aids. Dombrowski, who was venal as 
 he was adroit, had tools of his own that he wanted near 
 him. The young men were curtly relegated to the ranks of 
 a regiment known as Avengers of Flourens, and directed to 
 report at once for duty. They found the rendezvous in the 
 Caserne Chateau d Eau, and to Trajan s great relief, not far 
 from La Roquette. They were received with fraternal 
 embraces and given an order for the Avengers uniform, 
 which they had to walk three miles to obtain in the depot 
 of clothing, Quai d Orsay. The dress threw the two con 
 scripts into an unseemly merriment, that would have gone 
 hard with them had the patriots suspected the cause of their 
 levity. It gave them the appearance of the huzzars we see 
 in provincial opera troups, and Philip shook with laughter 
 till tears filled his eyes at the ludicrous spectacle Trajan 
 presented, with a dark blue jacket profusely frogged 
 with red, overalls of fiery red, like the regular army trowsers, 
 a kepi of red, a long cutlass-like sword, a carbine and revol 
 vers, for they had been ordered to serve mounted, so soon 
 as it was known that they were Saxons, who were all sup 
 posed to ride, while few Frenchmen are masters of that 
 hardy exercise. 
 
 The routine of the barracks was re veil at half-past four 
 in the morning, horse-cleaning at five, roll-call at seven, and 
 breakfast at nine. But though these were the regulations 
 they found that no one lived up to them. In spite of very 
 severe penalties prescribed the men went and came as they 
 pleased, those living in Paris going home to sleep on com 
 fortable beds at night, instead of the wisps of straw on the 
 barrack bunks. The latitude was soon understood by 
 Philip and Elliot, and during the detention here one or the 
 other spent four or five hours out of each twenty-four in the 
 Rue Franois Premier. The collapse of the wild struggle 
 was now in every body s mind, and had the Thiers cabinet 
 acted humanely, or even with politic prudence, the great 
 city would have been spared the final awful convulsion of 
 
IN THE LION S MOUTH. 583 
 
 fire and massacre. The adherents of the mad rulers were 
 falling away, gorged with plunder, secreting themselves in 
 every quarter. 
 
 Desperation alone chained the fighting mobs to the 
 jolting car of destruction. On the night of Saturday, 
 May 2oth, bedlam turned to Pandemonium. The streets 
 swarmed with drunken men and maniacal women. The cry 
 of reaclionnaire was heard in stertorous breathings on every 
 side. The luckless wretch caught in the street without 
 uniform or letters patent of loyalty, made swift acquaintance 
 with the chassepot or the lanterne. Monday, May 22d, it 
 was known that MacMahon had carried the walls on the 
 south west, and that his army was in the Bois de Boulogne. 
 Then the carnival of despair and extremity set in. 
 
 All the murder, pillage, lawlessness that had gone before 
 were mere grotesque specters of terror, compared to the 
 horrors on horrors head ghastly piled during the stupendous 
 frenzy of the days that were come. All the barracks in the 
 center of the city were emptied and the pallid conscripts 
 hurried to the entrenched fortress formed by the barricades 
 in the Place de la Bastille. It was noon and the May sun hot 
 as August, scorched the nondescript warriors swarming in 
 the disorderly inclosure. Long lines of victims came con 
 stantly up from the lower prisons. Priests predominated, 
 and the sight of them kindled the dying fury of the patriots. 
 
 As Trajan lay baking in the sun under the column of July, 
 girdled far up to the crown in broad red bands, a melancholy 
 procession entered from the Boulevard Chateau d Eau ; 
 fifteen hundred suspects from the prisons of the outer 
 boulevards. Whenever priests were discovered the women set 
 upon them, tearing off their broad hats and using them as 
 clouts to beat them in the face. Their soutanes were torn 
 off bodily and made into strips to tie the helpless groups 
 two by two. The obscenity and curses of these unsexed 
 monsters shamed the very men at work with them. All the 
 afternoon this hideous work went on. In the cool of the 
 
584 TRAJAN. 
 
 evening a horrifying clamor was heard outside the barri 
 cades. Streams of women, disheveled and bloody, came 
 pouring in. Indescribable outbreak filled the air. A group 
 of six or eight persons, mostly in clerical garb, were hustled 
 along, the feeble guard, even if disposed, unable to give 
 them protection. 
 
 " It is the bandit Darboy, late archbishop of the so-called 
 God, who thought to starve the people by hiding millions 
 worth of stores from the commune. He will need no food 
 when the patrie has done with him." This was said at 
 Trajan s elbow by a gentle boyish-looking patriot, who 
 passed most of the day playing ecarte. Rising and pressing 
 forward to witness this impious comedy Trajan was carried 
 to the La Roquette barrier. The crowd pressing fiercely 
 trampled down one of the guards, and Trajan quickly 
 seizing the chance snatched the falling musket and placed 
 himself with the maltreated group. He could do little to 
 protect the venerable bishop, but by good natured banter 
 set those nearest laughing, and when a Paris crowd laughs 
 the mischief is over. The miserable train proceeded com 
 paratively unmolested to the somber entrance of La Ro 
 quette. 
 
 Trajan as guard accompanied the priests into the well- 
 remembered court, up the great stairway, and was the last 
 to whisper a word of comfort to the dazed archbishop 
 as the door of cell nineteen clanged into its socket, like 
 the report of the muskets there to open the door of another 
 life a few days later. Deeply as he was touched by the 
 prelate s agony, Trajan s feverish body was all a-tremble to 
 catch a glimpse of the imprisoned Elliot. 
 
 The very first face his startled eye rested on was the one 
 he was in search of. He had turned mechanically to cell 
 25, where he had endured the horror of suspense with Philip. 
 There stood Elliot gazing with pensive sympathy at the 
 bars inclosing the archbishop. Even had he not heard of 
 Elliot s disguise, Trajan would have recognized the lustrous 
 
IN THE LION S MOUTH. 585 
 
 blue eyes, the round winning mouth, the charming profile. 
 Elliot glanced at him, but disguised in the motley of the 
 " Avengers " discovered nothing familiar in the other. En 
 couraged by the success of his scheme .thus far, Trajan 
 .went below with his fellow guards, to gain all the points 
 possible as to the resources for concealment on the ground 
 floor. He could get no opportunity to inspect the strongly 
 barred portals, or follow the windings of the circular pas 
 sage that ran like a great cavern between the body of the 
 prison and its circumvallating walls. No hope of breaking 
 through or in any manner whatever puncturing these mas 
 sive bulwarks. 
 
 Rescued Elliot must be, and that night, for death was not 
 only on the lips of the drunken mob, but its sinister shadow 
 stood out in the preparations he had noted in the court. 
 The "Attila hordes of Thiers," might reach the place now 
 any hour and they must meet the weltering bodies of their 
 allies ! In his character of guard, Trajan had the run of the 
 place such a thing as discipline being long since dismissed. 
 Crowds of ranting patriots piled up the stairs for a last sight 
 and last count, to the group of notables that were to die with 
 the archbishop. The poor old man was discovered talking 
 with the Chief Justice Bonjean, through the narrow interstice 
 in the end of his cell where the division wall, reaching the 
 window, left space enough for the unhappy prisoners to 
 touch hands as well as talk. A great cry was raised, the 
 turnkey was called and the archbishop hustled out and thrust 
 into cell 23 where Trajan had been lodged. The crowd 
 pressed in a vociferating mass upon the keeper and pushed 
 him away from the cell before he could take the key from 
 the open door. Favored by the dim light, for the keeper s 
 lantern alone illuminated the gloomy waste of stone, iron 
 and mortar, Trajan snatched the key and slipped it in his 
 pocket. 
 
 During the long night he walked the corridor at inter 
 vals, but there was always some one too near to give 
 
586 TRAJAN. 
 
 him a chance to speak to Elliot. Before daylight the cells 
 were opened and the prisoners marched down to the court 
 yard. At first all supposed that it was for the final tragedy, 
 but passing the gaoler Le Franais, Trajan heard that face 
 tious patriot confiding to a crony, that it was only a false, 
 alarm, as the execution could not take place until Ferre 
 came, and that would not be before night. Assured that 
 Elliot was in no danger, Trajan hurried to the empty cell, 
 snatched the key from the lock and laid the one he had 
 seized the night before from the archbishop s abandoned 
 cell, carelessly on the pavement a little distance from the 
 door. He entered the cell, stripped himself of his uniform 
 and crawled under the low bedstead. A half hour later the 
 prisoners returned. Elliot s door was banged violently and 
 then there was a pause. A key was fitted in the lock and 
 then another and another, and finally, making no sign, the 
 perplexed keeper, giving no hint to the prisoner, continued 
 onward to finish reinstalling the inmates. Elliot, on enter 
 ing the cell, threw himself on the bed. The uniform placed 
 in a heap under the sheet at once attracted his notice. 
 
 The froggings, high boots, sword, and pistols, told the 
 story plainly enough. Where had they come from ? - Evi 
 dently an unknown friend was succoring him. Throwing 
 off his own clothes he was instantly in the uniform. Grop 
 ing in the cot for the sword, it fell between the wall and the 
 bed. To his astonishment, it made no noise, and supposing 
 it caught in the clothes, thrust his arm down to regain it. 
 He almost cried out, as his hand came in contact with a 
 warm body. He stood an instant astouneded ! Who was 
 it ? Who but one man in all the world was capable of this 
 sublime folly. 
 
 " Trajan," he whispered, huskily, " it won t do, you are 
 right in thinking me capable of this dastard selfishness, after 
 all the folly you have seen me commit ; but I swear to God, 
 I swear by my mother s love, I swear, that I will never leave 
 this place, unless you are 
 
7,V THE LION S MOUTH. 587 
 
 He halted suddenly on a warning from Trajan. The 
 steps of the keeper were heard clanking down the pave 
 ment. 
 
 " Slip into the bed," whispered Trajan. 
 
 Barely was the uniformed figure under the clothes, than 
 the keeper stopped at the cell, inserted a key, peered in and 
 seeing Elliot looking at him, remarked pleasantly, that he 
 was afraid the citizen would take cold with an unlocked 
 door and laughing softly to himself, walked away. In a 
 moment Trajan was out from under the cot, whispering to 
 the occupant to lie still. Bending over him that his whisper 
 might not penetrate the walls, he breathed in the ear of 
 Elliot : 
 
 " You are crowning all your folly by this stupid perversity. 
 What difference can it make whether I am shot or not. A 
 year ago this very month, I waited twelve hours for darkness 
 to leap into the Seine. My death will l.eave no mark, yours 
 will. Bella is waiting for you, and and Edith and your 
 mother. You will break their hearts. As for me, Edith is 
 very young and she will soon forget the the absent. I 
 implore you in God s name, don t delay. Every minute* is 
 vital. Get up and go and don t bring danger by speaking." 
 He fairly dragged the young man to his feet, but he was not 
 moved by this despairing plea. 
 
 11 1 should never look an honest man in the face again, if 
 I did this cowardly thing. Beside," he added, " you seem 
 to forget that the door is locked and that you have put your 
 life in jeopard, and that we are both doomed." 
 
 For answer, Trajan rose and looking down through the 
 gloomy waste of darkness, could see the zone of the circle 
 of light, that fell from the keeper s lamp. Taking the key 
 he had secreted, he thrust his slim wrist through the cross 
 bars, inserted it in the lock and turning it the door was 
 open. 
 
 " There you are free, go. I shall find means to get away, 
 I swear it." 
 
588 TRAJAN. 
 
 " You may swear until you are petrified. Stir from this 
 place I will not, until you have first left it." 
 
 Trajan could hear the obstinate lad stripping himself of 
 the uniform. His brain became confused ; his body numb. 
 Was ever such a chance thrown away with such childlike 
 heedlessness ? He could have strangled the ingrate, as he 
 heard the garments, one after the other, laid on the bed. 
 What in God s name was to be done. He had himself put 
 on Elliot s clothes. If he could not be saved one way he 
 could another. He got up and looked out into the yawn 
 ing darkness, and opening the door suddenly he said 
 decisively : 
 
 " The roll will be called in half an hour, the clocks have 
 just struck four. If you are not in the court to answer the 
 name Legare, all will be lost good-by." Closing the door 
 he slipped back toward the circular stairway. Thunder 
 struck by this unexpected solution of the problem, Elliot 
 sank upon the bed in despair. Was he to be the evil genius 
 of this extraordinary man after all ? After he had put earth 
 and hope behind him, secretly supported by the thought of 
 the figure his expiation would make in Bella s eyes, was he 
 to return and tell her that he had been outwitted into his 
 old impuissance and egotistic incapacity ! If he put on the 
 uniform, he might yet undo the mischief. He would follow 
 Trajan. He would drag him before the keeper and disclose 
 the trick by which he had been trapped into the uniform. 
 Now he put it on feverishly enough. He was a soldier in a 
 minute. He recalled Trajan s warning about the roll-call. 
 He looked out to reconnoiter. Guards were walking about 
 in the darkness, some of them sprawling on the floor where 
 they had spread their blankets on coming up with the 
 prisoners. He slipped out softly and turning to lock the 
 door, found the key gone. What matter. The keeper would 
 discover the flight within an hour any way. He set off down 
 the wide chamber and laid down by a group of guards still 
 snoring peacefully. The rataplan from the head of the 
 
THEO PLA YS HER LAST CARD. 589 
 
 stairs aroused them and with the rest, he fell into line in the 
 court and answered with a great tremor, when the citoyen 
 Le*gare s name was called in the roll. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THEO PLAYS HER LAST CARD. 
 
 T^HERE is no female reader of this history, I feel with a 
 1 due sense of guilt, who does not cry out against the 
 further ignoring of our fascinating Theo ! What are the 
 perils and mishaps of these hulking, addle-headed young men, 
 to the lightest act of this masterful little adept ? You don t 
 catch her mooning about, prey to the devouring patriots. 
 What business she had with them she did in her decisive 
 piquant way, and having done it, she retires discreetly, to 
 wait until the conditions are restored when she can reign and 
 shine and lead the tender lambs in her own well devised 
 gambols about her. Madame de Bellechasse declared that 
 it was worth the perils of the culotte fracas to have been per 
 mitted to become intime with such esprit, such aplomb, such 
 diablesse enchantant, and never had the Bellechasse table 
 groaned with such plenty. The long purse of Lafayette 
 reached the hearts and hastened the hands of the thrifty 
 patriots, and you may be sure that Theo knowing her milieu 
 did not stint the supplies from her lavish kinsman s kitchen. 
 Annette and the old marquis prayed that the magician might 
 long remain the witch of the domestic board. Never had the 
 poor old fellow indulged in such capons, such dindon, 
 such Beaune or such cuts of beef. Whence it came, Madame 
 de Bellechasse declared with uplifted eyes was a mystery 
 for love or money she was unable to procure such abundance 
 and such rarities. Theo remarked afterward, that the 
 countess had employed the love and money in the wrong 
 
59 TRAJAN. 
 
 proportion ; enough money, even without the love, she said 
 wickedly, was sure to bring whatever was much desired in 
 this world, and the honest Lafayette, proud of his brilliant 
 little sister-in-law s wit and spirit, roared again at the picture 
 of noble niggardliness portrayed in Theo s vivacious colors. 
 
 Her mind set at rest as to the letters, the restless soul made 
 frequent sallies about the less turbulent quarters of the city, 
 returning with budgets of observation that kept the house 
 hold in an uproar. Once deeply veiled she had penetrated 
 to the Rue Franois Premier, but dared not enter lest 
 Celeste s spies should be on the watch. The next day she 
 wrote to Elliot, but the letter was handed back to the mes 
 senger, with the information that Elliot was in prison. This 
 was the time that the young Fouche was combining the great 
 plot for Trajan s rescue. She could not for a moment 
 credit Elliot s incarceration, and she made up her mind 
 that Bella had reconquered her cousin s vagrant affec 
 tion. She laughed softly to herself as she fancied him doing 
 penance and pleading her own love as justification, "As if," 
 she murmured half aloud, " I could love that doll-faced 
 booby in the same world that Trajan walks in." She laughed 
 too, as she recalled his implicit trust in her mere signs for 
 she had never spoken a word that meant love. She had let 
 him kiss her, much as she would have let Lafayette s spaniel 
 lick her hand. 
 
 One day Lafayette came with great news. He had met 
 Gibson on the boulevards marching to the sorely beleaguered 
 Fort Vanves. He had carried off the letters all right and 
 had given them to a friend of the family, Gray, who was 
 imprisoned in La Roquette as Legare. 
 
 The blood curdled in an icy stream on Theo s heart when 
 this appalling mischance came to her ears. What, in his 
 hands ! The evidence of her double perfidy ; the evidence 
 too of treasons that would make her odious forever to all she 
 looked upon as her dependence in the great career she had 
 marked out for herself ! Worst of all she dared not invoke 
 
THE PL A YS HER LA S T CA RD. 5 9 1 
 
 Lafayette s aid to extricate the damning letters from Trajan, 
 for she could not explain to him the reasons that made his 
 holding them a hundred-fold more perilous than Celeste. 
 
 She stormed finely, when flying to her chamber after 
 Lafayette s departure, swelling with satisfaction over the 
 good news, as he thought it, he had brought to comfort his 
 pretty relative. She couldn t mingle hearty curses with her 
 bitter bewailings and self-reproaches, as the luckless Elliot, 
 with man s privilege in profanity, did ; all she could do was 
 to bemoan the foray upon Celeste which at peril of life had 
 only resulted in placing the fatal packet in the last hands 
 in the world she would have had them reach. What could 
 be done ? She knew Trajan too well to dream that he would 
 open them under ordinary circumstances. But if, as she 
 knew was inevitable, Elliot ever broached the charges he had 
 gathered from Madelaine Tarbes, the packet would be called 
 into play and the secret of the denunciation and her own 
 ulterior agency discovered. She must first of all placate 
 Celeste at any price. That was a desperate and instant 
 necessity. 
 
 She was quick to act, this inveterate campaigner, and 
 within an hour a discreet matron, faithful to the house 
 of Bellechasse and an inordinate admirer of the American 
 guest, was despatched to the Rue d Auvergne with a cautious 
 message appointing a rendezvous in the Rue Galilee, where 
 Theo took precautions to have herself guarded. She held 
 out a tempting bait. An immediate dot and the installation 
 of herself and Auguste on the lands of the Prince d Amboise 
 in Touraine, so soon as peace came. There was a strange 
 look in Theo s eyes when she learned that Celeste had been 
 consigned to Mazas, and from Mazas had been sent to La 
 Roquette. Both in the same prison ? The only two people 
 on earth who knew any thing detrimental to her honor ? her 
 utmost pretension ? Her heart beat till she put both hands 
 to her side to check the fierce action. What if it should 
 happen ; what if one stroke took both from the radiant sun- 
 
59 2 TRAJAN. 
 
 shine of her life ? Why did she shake as if in mortal ague ? 
 Why did she fly and bury her face deep in the pillows ? Why 
 did she cover her eyes as if to shut out some horrid specta 
 cle ? In La Roquette /? depdt des condamn es the guar 
 dian temple of Mere Guillotine ! Trajan, the young, the 
 brilliant, the masterful, the chivalrous, the medieval knight, 
 stripped of the golden harness of the troubadour and set 
 down in a world whose speech even was ajar with his com 
 promising blunders ! That noble head dropped trunkless, 
 into the same basket that had held the malefactor Trop- 
 mann s ? But why should she tremble and quake ? She had 
 no hand in his trapping ; she had done him no injury. The 
 ruse to alienate him from the Ardens was a fair stroke in the 
 campaign of life. She couldn t help him to escape, even if 
 her head like her heart were his. And Celeste too ; that 
 vicious termagant, who had pried into her secrets, who had 
 watched her leading and misleading Trajan to that final 
 declaration ! Her prating tongue would cease its mischiev 
 ous chattering. Perhaps her head would lie in the basket 
 with Trajan s and her dead lips hiss out her hate and 
 revelation ? 
 
 But she was safe ; that was the exulting final thought. 
 Safe, to do and plan and conquer. What were a hecatomb 
 of Celestes and Trajans to the grand destiny she was on the 
 verge of entering. A princess of Amboise could not stop 
 to mourn such obscurities, even tho her heart lay buried 
 with the victim of Mere Guillotine. When she descended 
 to dinner that day madame congratulated her on the limpid 
 sparkle in her eye ; the old marquis kissed her hand gal 
 lantly as he handed her to the episcopal throne next him, 
 and Annette made her so many and such pretty compliments 
 on her ravishing beauty, that our little Theo imagined for 
 a moment she was installed in her princely halls near 
 Blois. 
 
 Even better fortune came the day following Sunday. The 
 army had captured the walls so painfully reared by Thiers 
 
THEO PLA YS HER LAST CARD. 593 
 
 in 1848 ; they held the Bois de Boulogne and the skirmishers 
 extended far into the Elysee quarter. It was dark when a 
 great clatter was heard in the narrow Rue de 1 Universite. 
 Then a military step on the stairs certainly no communard 
 ever came with such martial distinction as that. Theo saw 
 a gleam of gold buttons, glinting steel scabbards and she 
 was in her brother s arms. With him came the Viscount 
 Bellechasse, and great was the felicity in the ancient hotel 
 of the family. When the rapture of the news was working 
 at its most expansive effervescence, Jules carried his sister 
 off to the corridor to tell her that the prince was home wait 
 ing for her, and that the soldiery having the place under 
 their guns there was no longer any danger there for her. 
 
 She was aflame in an instant. She would be ready while 
 he was explaining, and when she returned and found the 
 recent rapture clouded by the news of her purpose, she could 
 hardly restrain a laugh. The poor old marquis let fall warm 
 tears from his dim old eyes, and Annette whispered that she 
 would come often and visit her chere Theo. On the way 
 home there was time to tell all that had befallen. Theo 
 dwelt in delicate lines upon the Celeste adventure, remind 
 ing Jules to see that guards were set on the house in the 
 Rue d Auvergne, so soon as that quarter was recovered, 
 to secure the plate and linen stowed in Celeste s room. 
 
 u But that may be a week yet ; we have only begun the 
 work. The communards are now fighting like Titans by 
 George, half the valor they showed on the breastworks yes 
 terday and this morning would have ruined us three weeks 
 ago for our own soldiers have been shaky from the first." 
 
 " Where is the prison La Roquette ?" asked Theo, with 
 only a passing curiosity of tone. 
 
 " That is four miles from our advance line. It will be 
 about the last place we shall reach ; the more s the pity. 
 Archbishop Darboy is there, with Judge Bonjean, the cure 
 of the Madelaine and your old friend Pere Barodet and De 
 Marsay." 
 
594 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Is there no chance of of rescuing the prisoners there 
 will no special effort be made ? " 
 
 " I fear there is no chance. If the monsters of the execu 
 tive committee keep their threat, and there isn t much doubt 
 but they will, all we shall ever see of the poor wretches there 
 will be their bones, if even they are not thrown into the 
 street." 
 
 Theo s step became more and more elastic Jules observed 
 with surprise, as they pushed on over the now deserted 
 streets. She did not mention Trajan s presence in La Ro- 
 quette to Jules, but when she sat with the prince in Lafayette s 
 gorgeous library an hour later, she said suddenly, as if just 
 reminded of it : " You remember that fiery communard, 
 Gray ? " 
 
 "Very well, the young man who preached the right of the 
 township to govern and the union of all townships as the 
 ideal of political force. A silly doctrine, which I trust the 
 present experiment will cure him of, for otherwise he is a 
 remarkably agreeable man." 
 
 " You mustn t mention it to Jules, for there s no telling 
 what foolish complication he might make to rescue the man ; 
 he is in La Roquette among the hostages. It seems that 
 he was crowding some of the less capable leaders and thrust 
 into the list as a suspect. " 
 
 " Such men are a menace to society, far more dangerous 
 than the canaille, and it is just as well he should be relieved 
 from the responsibilities he thinks himself under to educate 
 the world in his monstrous doctrines," and the prince raised 
 his arm as if addressing that assembly where he now saw 
 himself Prime Minister, under the last of the Bourbons. 
 Theo s bosom heaved. 
 
 " Ah, why has France been mad enough to keep such 
 men as you from directing her destinies ! It is the Athen 
 ians and Aristides over again. You are too great in mind, 
 too just in principle, too noble in impulse, for these poor 
 sordid e very-day people." 
 
THEO PLA YS HER LAS T CARD. 595 
 
 The prince arose, swelling responsive to this delicious 
 adulation. He walked the floors, his spurs sinking into the 
 rich Turkey rugs, and his blue and gold uniform in odd 
 contrast to the dark panelings and sober color of the 
 volumes. 
 
 " Yes, Theo, ma cherc, and to you I owe the inspiration, 
 the resolve, the recognition, of the mandate my birth con 
 fers upon me ! To you, born in a Republic, but the most 
 princely of women ! " He came over and kneeled gallantly 
 before her, kissing her hands in a proudly chivalrous 
 fashion that stripped the act of burlesque. " You shall be 
 my Pucelle ; you shall be the Pucelle of the restored mon 
 archy ; not the simple shepherdess prey to the schemers, 
 but a Medici in managing men and a Lucrece in wifely 
 fidelity." 
 
 It is not fit, however, that plebeian eyes should penetrate 
 too closely in princely love-making. Beside, the prince s 
 love had long ago been made. The scene we have decor 
 ously withdrawn our desecrating eyes from, was but an 
 episode in our matchless Theo s felicity a hint to the fair 
 that mind is sometimes a motor even in princely passions ! 
 
 The banner of good fortune once more unfurled, Theo 
 was made happy by Lafayette s restoration in the morning. 
 He had been wise enough to secrete himself in a thicket in 
 the Bois and had no difficulty in making out his status to 
 the conquering army, which had not yet begun that atrocious 
 system of universal slaughter which made the worst excesses 
 of the commune deeds of grace and holiness in comparison. 
 
 "War s a good deal like dancing or love-making," the 
 warrior confided to Jules ; " a fellow prefers to select his 
 partner. Not that I have a word of fault to find with my 
 comrades. They were all first-rate good fellows and my 
 heart aches to think of the fix they ve got themselves in. 
 Poor devils they re like them fool Sioux, led by the nose 
 by their chiefs and driven to madness by them beats of mis 
 sionaries, post-traders and land-claim jumpers. By the 
 
59 6 TRAJAN. 
 
 great Hickory ! I agree with them commune fellars when 
 they know what they do agree on," he added, as a little 
 self-remonstrance against this candid declaration of faith. 
 " They hold that society has a duty to itself before any thing 
 else ; that war and cabinets and ministers and all the show 
 of kings and what not are only strings to the fiddle ; that 
 the township should be like the family, taking care of its 
 own, but refusing to levy taxes for war and general enter 
 prises. Now I believe in that doctrine, pon my soul I 
 do," he added earnestly, as Theo and Jules smiled 
 incredulously. 
 
 "And you are willing to share your money and divide 
 your property in equal proportions with all your neighbors 
 in Napoleonville ? " asked Jules laughingly. 
 
 " Now I ve found that s no more the real communist 
 doctrine than Peter s pence is the doctrine of the Church of 
 Rome. You might as well charge property division on the 
 New Testament, for that certainly does command a man to 
 divide with the poor. I have talked with hundreds of these 
 communists and they repudiate that sentiment in toto. It 
 may follow in practice, as extortion follows in the best 
 schemes of taxation, but it does not lead in the real doc 
 trine of communism, which is simply a principle of 
 democracy applied to the township as a basis ! " 
 
 " You will put yourself upon that platform to run for 
 Congress when Montana is admitted to the Union?" and 
 Jules laughed uproariously. 
 
 " By thunder, I ll do it ! You talk about communism 
 being confiscation. Why, what is it compared with the tariff 
 those Eastern knaves and idiots have saddled upon us ? If 
 that isn tcommunism as you define it, I d like to know what is. 
 It enforces division of property down to the five-cent piece in 
 the bricklayer s pocket ; it robs the million rich to make the 
 hundred rich richer and cheats the million poor, while it 
 drives the thousands into the almshouse or beggary ! " 
 
 " I declare, Lafayette, what these Frenchmen* say about 
 
THEO PLA YS HER LAST CARD. 597 
 
 all Americans being born politicians is literally true. Here 
 are you a man of pleasure falling into the dryest discussion 
 with as much eagerness as a Parisian into the last scandal," 
 and Theo got up to indicate that political economy was 
 not in the rounded circle of her accomplishments. 
 
 The grand mansion on the Roi de Rome became the 
 quartier general of the triumphant Versaillaise, and the 
 prince beheld with complacency the havoc his fiancee made 
 upon the brilliant aides of General Vinoy, upon whose staff 
 he had been serving. As yet the army held only the prince s 
 quarter of the city, and Theo made the most of her oppor 
 tunities to give her name and her brother-in-law s opulence 
 renomee among the noblemen who crowded the royal salons. 
 Full table and open house were maintained from the day 
 after her return until long after the commune s resistance 
 had been crushed and the hapless thirty thousand, most of 
 them innocent, were offered as a holocaust to the cowardly 
 ferocity of the agents of law and order ! But the sound of 
 these surpassing gayeties did not penetrate the splendid 
 misery in the Rue Frangois Premier. Only a message had 
 been received through a kind-hearted comrade remaining on 
 Dombrowski s staff the day after Philip and Trajan had been 
 degraded to the ranks. It was not known what had become 
 of them, and with their eclipse the feeble hope of Elliot s 
 rescue waned. But curiously enough, as the hearts of the 
 rest grew heavy Edith assumed a surprising confidence. 
 
 She spoke in accents of the strongest sincerity of her 
 faith in Trajan s cleverness to rescue her brother. As to 
 himself she made no doubt that he would come back in good 
 time. The appearance of the army down as far as the 
 Rond Point on the Champs Elysee had lessened their 
 personal danger, while the closing in on the center of the 
 city added to the danger of Elliot and his friends, as 
 the missiles of the rescuing army were a new danger. 
 
 So soon as communication was safe, Theo with Jules has 
 tened to the Ardens. They were appalled at the dreadful 
 
59 8 TRAJAN. 
 
 situation of the family at least Jules was. He saw with 
 despair the ravages wrought upon Bella by her cousin s peril, 
 and he did not attempt to deceive himself by misreading the 
 meaning. He promised that every care should be taken to save 
 the lives of the victims, should they fall into the hands of the 
 army, but he refrained from adding to the anguish of the 
 family, by informing them that there were tacitly understood 
 orders that no prisoners should be taken that the business 
 of the soldiers in the rest of Paris was massacre. 
 
 Theo was reassured by the reception she met. A lingering 
 fear had haunted her that Celeste might, in her desperation, 
 have gone to the Ardens and railed against her. She did not 
 know much, unless she had read the letters, and even then 
 without circumstances which Elliot and Trajan could alone 
 fill in, the story would be too wild for belief. Kate, it is 
 true, had left the room without even bowing when she 
 entered. But the Scotch woman had never shown her 
 much consideration, and she rather enjoyed her discomfited 
 enemy s retreat. Edith was no more nor less cordial than 
 she had ever been while Bella, who always delighted in 
 Theo s wit, was quite as cordial as usual. As she was a 
 favorite with Mrs. Arden and Mrs. Briscoe, the disdain of 
 Kate and the indifference of Edith did not check her high 
 spirits. She remained to breakfast, and when she departed 
 with Jules, that young gentleman was the only drawback 
 to her gayety. His melancholy had not escaped the watch 
 ful sister, nor its cause. 
 
 " Jules, you are really as much of a gaby as Elliot. I tell 
 you that the man Bella is mourning is not Elliot it is Gray. 
 Did you see her eyes kindle as her mother told of Trajan s 
 characteristic devotion, when he slipped into the clutches of 
 the commune to save Elliot ? Trust me, I know what a 
 woman s heart is, when there is an imagination to lead it. 
 Bella is all imagination. Elliot is a commonplace to her. 
 She thinks of him, much as I think of you as a weak fel 
 low to be guided and held up," and she hugged his arm and 
 
THEO PL A YS PIER LAS T CARD. 599 
 
 looked up with irresistible witchery into his gloomy face. 
 " Let Mere Guillotine take her own to her bosom, or rather 
 let the commune bullets find the hearts of all the hostages 
 in La Roquette, and you will be leading Bella to the altar 
 before the house of Amboise has an heir." 
 
 " God Theo, you don t mean that you are counting on 
 Gray s death on his massacre rather oh, Theo, Theo, 
 I m afraid of you," and he stopped in the street, the Cours 
 de la Reine, and looked out over the shining waters of the 
 Seine. He was not quick in perception of the infraction of 
 the moral unities, but he had come under the force of the 
 light that shines in the darkest soul, when its recesses are 
 penetrated by a pure and real love. As he shrank from 
 any act that would give the sort of people he most prized 
 the balance of scandal or reproach against him, so he 
 recoiled in mental disgust from the apparition of his sister, 
 of whom he was so fond and proud, embodying tendencies 
 that he associated with the lowest sort of criminal method. 
 Theo divined something of the bent of her brother s 
 thought. 
 
 " I m counting on nothing, silly fellow. I have remarked 
 that love takes all enterprise and motive from a man. 
 You re not half the creature of help and wit and force you 
 were last year. You re getting more useless every day. 
 You will neither suggest ways or means yourself, nor approve 
 those I advise. 
 
 " You turn on me in melodramatic rolling of the eyes and 
 the old tiresome platitudes of the hypocrites who prate virtues 
 they are last to practice I tell you what, Jules, people who 
 have time to criticise others sins, have not gained it by doing 
 virtuous things themselves. I m never afraid of people who 
 malign, for I know they are merely looking in upon them 
 selves and taking what poor comfort they can by fouling the 
 first comer with washings of their own wickedness. 
 
 " Your really virtuous people have no time to know that their 
 neighbors sin ; they don t know sin when they see it. Look 
 
600 TRAJAN. 
 
 at that saint Clare, or that even saintlier Mrs. Arden. They 
 are the only people in Paris who have never glozed me in 
 the swell mob of darkness, with innuendoes, and yet, if the 
 recording angel were standing on that parapet assigning 
 places to the quick and dead, the sinlessness of these two 
 people would be spotless enough to save the whole city, and 
 goodness knows there has been nothing left the future to 
 invent in the way of wickedness after we go." 
 
 " You know well enough, Theo, I m not squeamish in the 
 fair rules of the game, but it frightens me, it humiliates me, 
 to think of my sister counting on an innocent man s murder 
 to gain an end. It has a repulsive melodrama sound that 
 shocks me. It recalls the coarse female heroines of the blood 
 and thunder school of novels. It degrades us to adventurers 
 of a type the police journals illustrate. I hate being poor, 
 but I would rather be poor than even passively criminal." 
 
 " You re silly, morbid and unreasonable ; the shadow on 
 the brow of your love throws its penumbra over all your eye 
 rests upon. I promised that since you were so mad as to 
 count on love with wealth, Trajan should be no obstacle. I 
 had two perfectly fair means for removing him from your 
 way ; one was in operation and sure to succeed," and she 
 laughed softly as she thought of the artless Elliot s trans 
 parent inquiries that last night in the Rue Galilee " fate 
 obtrudes an agency devised by Trajan himself and makes 
 my promise good in another and tragical way. Voila 
 tout: 
 
 But Jules declined to fall into her wheedling moral laxities, 
 as was his amiable habitude, and the two walked homeward 
 along the deserted streets silent and thoughtful. Jules 
 grew more and more morose as he thought of the light spirit 
 beside him, his own sister, of whose wit and clever faculty 
 every one made boast, and of which he was so proud. It 
 terrified him to think of her so gay and heartless, trafficking 
 even passively in such diabolism. He knew that the last few 
 years of her life had been steeped in the atmosphere of 
 
THEO PL A YS HER LAST CARD. 6ot 
 
 intrigue, and though he had never followed minutely her 
 machinations, he had not had a word of fault to find 
 so long as they were confined to artifices against which 
 all the world was born armed and, if overcome, it was by 
 their own stupidity or over-confidence. This cold-blooded 
 open-eyed speculation on the slaughter of an innocent man, 
 even by remote and stranger agencies, filled him with 
 horror. 
 
 He watched her with beating heart as she recounted to the 
 prince on re-entering, the painful comedy the Ardens had 
 gone through during the eight weeks of anarchy in the city. 
 He was too much immersed in his forebodings of the hope 
 lessness of his passion to mark the insidious venom of the 
 figure she made of Trajan in the story. But the effect was 
 to leave upon the shuddering nobleman and the half-dozen 
 staff officers, the impression that Trajan had been responsi 
 ble for a good deal in the trials of the family. Nor did the 
 duplicity end here. 
 
 An amorous young vicomte, captain under General 
 Douay, who was to have the glory of rescuing the hostages 
 in Roquette, came in to tell of his mission, as Theo insinu 
 ated Trajan s turpitude to the group. When the danger of 
 the young man s post was dwelt on, she warned him against 
 the communard Gray Jules having left the room and gave 
 such a lurid sketch of his life and doctrines, that the officers 
 declared to a man that society would never be safe with 
 such a monster at large. 
 
 " This miserable is at La Roquette, you say, mademoi 
 selle ? " the young captain asked eagerly as Theo went over 
 to the piano. 
 
 " Yes, he seems to have made enemies among his fellow 
 patriots, and was thrust in there some time ago ; but he will 
 probably appear as a victim of the commune when your 
 rescuing band enters the prison, and soldiers being magnan 
 imous, he will soon be teaching his favorite doctrines 
 again." 
 
602 TRAJAN. 
 
 " It will be in the spirit, then, I promise you ! " cried the 
 indignant preserver of society. " 1 wish I knew his face." 
 
 Theo, leaving the instrument, went to a little writing- 
 desk and came back to the warrior with a cabinet photo 
 graph which she handed him, saying carelessly : 
 
 " He is a rather handsome fellow, don t you think ? " 
 
 The captain looked at the fine face with a puzzled ex 
 pression, turned the card over and read: " Nadar, 1868," 
 and tried to make out a written inscription which had been 
 removed. He held it up to Theo mutely as she turned the 
 music over. She glanced at it indifferently and said without 
 wincing : 
 
 " He was a friend of my brother s in the Latin quarter in 
 those days but we have seen little of him since the old 
 times." 
 
 "A tres jolt gar gon tout de meme, it is a pity he is so mis 
 led." 
 
 " Rather a pity that he is so able to mislead others," 
 amended Theo, thrumming the keys softly. 
 
 When the captain arose to go late in the evening, Theo 
 pinned her colors on his lappel, to preserve him in the des 
 perate dangers that every body looked forward to on the 
 morrow, for the final push for the communist citadel was 
 ordered. She gave him a bewildering smile as she shook 
 hands at the door, from which he bore not only her colors, 
 but the photograph Trajan had given her in the days when 
 she was the goddess pure and free for him. 
 
 "What a superb petite diable it is!" murmured the in 
 toxicated hero, as he passed under the opening blossoms that 
 bathed the soft May night with perfume. He strode along, 
 touching the odorous magnolias, released from hot-house 
 hostage, thinking of that human magnolia within, filling his 
 heart with a perfume that was already becoming pain. 
 
 "Why does she want this handsome communard killed? 
 Is it a youthful amour that has become un ennuie? Well, 
 if a man hasn t sense enough to get rid of himself when a 
 
THEO PL A YS HER LAST CARD. 603 
 
 pretty woman tires of him, it s part of the duty of the soldier 
 of law and order to give him riddance ! It will end the 
 liaison convenably," he muttered, as he slipped the photo 
 graph into his breast pocket, " and in love as in war, death 
 brings promotion to the deserving ! " 
 
 Early that very morning the anxious hearts in the Rue 
 Frangois Premier were gladdened by a substantial gleam of 
 joy. Philip, a goblin from the damned, dragged his black 
 ened, bloody figure into the hallway, just as the concierge was 
 opening the doors. She screamed at sight of him. His head, 
 hatless, was a mass of blood; his right arm hung limp, partly 
 supported by the sleeve pinned to the bosom. His face 
 powder-stained and unrecognizable. He had barely strength 
 to gasp : 
 
 " It is I Kent ! " when he fell on his knees against the 
 low stone-work of the concierge s lodge. She understood 
 the words, but losing her head, fled to the family crying out 
 dolorously that monsieur was below dying. In spite of the 
 shock, or because of it, Bella and Mrs. Arden kept their 
 heads cool. Neither gave a sign of the anguish of disap 
 pointment that overwhelmed them when it turned out to be 
 Philip instead of Elliot. It was midday before he recovered 
 sufficiently to give them the narrative of the last few days. 
 
 He had not seen Trajan since the night of the 2ist it was 
 then noon of the 24th. He had been swept away with a 
 crowd of hostages from the barricades in the Place de la 
 Bastille. Searching for him, he, Philip, had pushed far from 
 his battalion. Learning from stragglers that the army held 
 the Elysee quarter, he had concealed himself by day and 
 crawled on his hands and knees by night, down to the Rue 
 de Rivoli, down the quais, to the barricades in the Place de 
 la Concorde. Then making a final break the night before, 
 he had been recaptured and dragged back into the Tuileries 
 garden. He was flung into one of the huts, left since the 
 siege. 
 
 He had managed to purloin a pistol and saber, and 
 
604 TRAJAN. 
 
 while the guards, who were not at all vigilant, were empty 
 ing a cask of wine and sticking pine torches in barrels of 
 petroleum, he had crawled to the river ; had plunged in and 
 swam as far as his strength would let him ; had then gone to 
 the shore on the side of the Invalides and was exulting in his 
 escape, when three furies broke upon him, below the bridge 
 of the Alma. He made vigorous use of his saber, but they 
 had shot him through the arm twice, had cut his head in a 
 dozen places, and would have conquered him had a body 
 of cavalry not been heard galloping down from the Champ 
 de Mars. Fearing the soldiers almost as much as the com 
 munists, he had concealed himself until they passed and then 
 dragged himself thither. 
 
 There wasn t much to make the most sanguine hopeful of 
 the return of the other two. Philip, however, seemed to 
 think it probable. 
 
 " You may be sure that if there is any thing that presence 
 of mind, fertile resource and daring can do to rescue Elliot, 
 Gray will bring him home. Such a spirit I never met. He 
 handled his patriot comrades like a master with his school 
 about him. He kept them in good humor, told the drollest 
 stories, and I believe if he had asked our immediate com 
 panions to accept his leadership and attempt the storming of 
 Roquette, he would have got a hundred to volunteer. I ll 
 stake my head that he is with Elliot at this moment ; and I ll 
 lay my sound arm against a rabbit that they ll both be in this 
 house before the week s out." 
 
 The invalid endured with great composure the siege of hys 
 terical hugs this stout faith elicited from two pairs of white 
 arms, while the hardly less agitated mother and Kate soothed 
 him with less demonstrative caresses. Theo came in with 
 the great news of the decisive movement of the day that was 
 going to bring the crisis to a climax. Philip listened to the 
 plan of operations, and asked the doctor ruefully if he 
 could not patch him together long enough to enable him to 
 go to the rescue of his friends in double peril from com- 
 
THEO PLA YS HER LAST CARD. 605 
 
 munist rage and Versaillaise vengeance. The medical man 
 pronounced such a thing simple suicide. He could not 
 hold out to ride a square. 
 
 " But I might hold out in a cab." 
 
 " You would be quite useless, you would be in a dead 
 faint from concussion, and could not recognize your 
 friends." 
 
 Philip closed his eyes hopelessly. But when the tyrant 
 had gone he whispered to Bella to find out from Theo the 
 place of operations, and to come to him alone to combine a 
 last effort to snatch the young men from their complicated 
 perils. As Bella looked from the windows the sound of 
 musketry came in crackling volleys from the direction of 
 the Place de la Concorde, broken by the harsh grating of 
 mitrailleuse. In the intervals loud salvos of cannon shook 
 the window panes, till they rattled like thick paper. Heavy 
 clouds of smoke fell from over head, as if the demons of 
 earth had taken to the air and were making a battle-ground 
 of these sulphurous vapors. Theo was full of the impend 
 ing carnage, and she had the whole audience to herself. 
 
 Jules came in during her animated narrative, and seizing 
 an opportunity unseen by his sister, Bella beckoned him into 
 an alcove, where she had been watching the troops passing 
 the end of the street below. She gave the young man her 
 hand, which was hot and trembling, and looking in his eyes 
 beseechingly, spoke, keeping her voice at a pitch which should 
 not attract Theo ; for though I can not pretend to explain it, 
 I think she had a suspicion of the girl s monstrous indiffer 
 ence, if not worse, to the perils of Elliot and Trajan. 
 Kate, perhaps, had given the germ of it to her mind, for 
 that acute physiognomist had roundly declared that Jezebel 
 seemed to gloat in the deadly danger after she learned that 
 Celeste was in prison. 
 
 " Jules, you feel kindly toward me, I know. I can t pre 
 tend not to know it ; you would do something generous for 
 me, wouldn t you if if I asked you ? " 
 
606 TRAJAN. 
 
 " I would die for you, Bella, if you could ask it and it 
 would bring you happiness I I " 
 
 " Oh, Jules, you must not hope in that sense, you know 
 that can never be. I told you that long ago. I can be 
 a friend, but out don t talk of this now, it seems such 
 wickedness, when all I hold dear are in such deadly danger. 
 You are Trajan s friend the noblest of men ; you are 
 Elliot s oldest friend in Paris. Pledge me to be the first in 
 La Roquette, pledge me to see that if they escape the com 
 mune they shall be saved from the rage of the army." 
 
 Jules breathed hard ; Theo was right, it was Trajan that 
 Bella s heart beat for. She had named him first. It was 
 plain that it was love for him and not Elliot that prompted 
 this despairing appeal. All his old confidence in Theo s 
 arts came back with a rush of penitent hope. Trajan liv 
 ing would be no impediment. Theo, whose quick eye had 
 detected the relation, would be equal to keeping the two 
 apart and he would be all the stronger with Bella by acting 
 the part of heroic evangel. 
 
 " Whatever a man can do to bring Trajan and Elliot safe 
 to this house, I will do, have no fear. I promise you to 
 neither rest nor sleep until I am in the prison with the 
 soldiers at my back." 
 
 She looked in his eyes, her own brimming with tears, 
 and lifted his hand to her lips, murmuring : 
 
 " God bless you for that assurance ; it is given as I knew 
 you would give it. Pray lose no time ; our hearts are torn 
 every instant these guns sound, lest harm should be coming 
 to those we love." She went to a table where blooming lilacs 
 had been placed in vases, and plucking a spray, to which a 
 dainty sprig of lily of the valley and pink mignonette were 
 added, she tied them together, and fastening them in his 
 lappel, said with a sad smile : 
 
 "There, Sir Knight, are your lady s colors, see that they 
 are not dishonored." 
 
 Theo had lost none of this by-play ; she had a dim com- 
 
THEO PL A YS HER LAST CARD. 607 
 
 prehension of its meaning, and as Jules was leaving the room 
 she ran after him. 
 
 " You have made a breach the fort is to surrender you 
 are decorated with the sign of victory, the tri-color, love s 
 gage, and your country s flag." 
 
 Jules looked at her. " No, Theo, it is not love s badge 
 just yet, but I mean to make it that. You were right about 
 Bella ; it is Trajan she loves, and she has sent me to his res 
 cue, and I am going to do it or die." 
 
 She looked at him in triumphant admiration. Even *on 
 the brink of the abyss that his purpose opened to her 
 future, she swelled in proud adoration. There was no 
 treason in his devotion. He went willingly to the burial of 
 his own hopes and the ruin of her projects. 
 
 " You are a grand fellow, Jules. I worship you." 
 
 He embraced her passionately, and as the tears rushed to 
 his eyes he said chokingly : 
 
 " Thank God, Theo, I go with this comfort in my heart. 
 I was afraid that that 
 
 " That I would dissuade you from acting like a man and 
 a friend. Oh, Jules, how could you misjudge me so shame 
 fully ? " 
 
 " Thank God, it was misjudgment, little woman. Let us 
 never speak of it again." 
 
 They were in the street and he couldn t let her go home 
 alone among marching men and the scurrying cavalry. 
 
 " Wouldn t it be better for you to remain with the Ardens 
 and try to comfort them ?" he asked, looking about uneasily. 
 " I shall be losing precious time going so far as the house." 
 
 " No, come with me a few squares, perhaps we shall meet 
 some of our friends and I can get some one of them to escort 
 me ; at any rate when we reach the river I shall have no 
 fears." 
 
 A horrible doubt of her sincerity again came in his mind 
 as they hurried forward, but he said nothing. As they 
 advanced the soldiers diminished, and when they emerged 
 
608 TRAJAN. 
 
 under the snowy blossoms of the Cours de la Reine, groups 
 of the staff were loitering under the trees. 
 
 " Ah, there is Captain Allard, he will relieve you, Jules. I 
 can depend on him for an escort. Call him." 
 
 The captain, with Theo s colors conspicuous among his 
 military decorations, came forward with alacrity. 
 
 Jules had no sooner confided his sister to the adoring 
 Mars, than with a hasty kiss he hurried down the river bank 
 to the Place de la Concorde, where a bedlam of firing was 
 heard. 
 
 " He s a silly fellow, that cher frere of mine," Theo said, 
 dazzling the young officer by a bewildering glance. " Do 
 you know that he has allowed the tears and prayers of a 
 desolate demoiselle to exact his promise to rescue our com 
 munard friend. I am in terror lest his rashness may lead 
 him into a scrape. Will you not see that he is guarded 
 when when La Roquette is reached ? " and she squeezed a 
 tear from the corner of each enchanting eye. 
 
 " Ah, mademoiselle, you humiliate me by those tears. All 
 who are dear to you shall be guarded. Be sure Monsieur 
 Jules will not be permitted to rush into danger until the 
 vengeance of order is complete." He was rewarded by the 
 most bewitching little glance of pensive reassurance and 
 declared that he was desole that duty deprived him of the 
 joy of accompanying the distressed sister home. She turned 
 and saw him waving his plumes as she passed out of sight, 
 under escort of a tall orderly clanking along behind her. 
 
 She tripped homeward buoyant and light of heart. The 
 cannon boomed from the Palais Bourbon. She could see the 
 red glare as the guns spat out their Tartarean fires ; it was 
 a salvo to her coming glory ; screeching shells, curved 
 in misty parabolic flight over the trees and the river 
 and fell in the Place de la Concorde ; it was the aureole in the 
 horizon of her triumph ; harsh, ratcheting, scraping, as of 
 all the mills in Hades grating against grinding frag 
 ments of iron, the symphony of the mitrailleuse ; this she 
 
IN LA ROQUETTE. 609 
 
 could not reconcile in the roseate picture, and she stopped 
 to shudder. 
 
 The boom of the guns, the spasmodic crackling of mus 
 ketry, the appalling grind of the mitrailleuse sounded all 
 day from the same demon-contested spot ; the night came in 
 with all the banners of hate, rage, revenge, despair 
 and massacre flung in blood red flame across the heavens. 
 Pillars of crimson fire uprose like giant figures of wrath 
 from three-quarters of the doomed city. The furies had 
 mounted the battlements and hate held them in her bloody 
 hand. Death stood as arbiter claiming the repentant as well 
 as the resistant, consigning each mangled and desecrated to 
 the same limbo of ignoble oblivion. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 IN LA ROQUETTE. 
 
 TORTURED by the burden of his fear that Elliot in his 
 new madness would destroy the chance fortune had 
 given him, Trajan crouched in the darkness, uncertain 
 whether to make an effort for his own life or not. If Elliot 
 persisted in his purpose and came back to the cell, all chance 
 for either of them would be gone. But for Elliot s safety 
 some one must be in the cell when the keeper opened it 
 an hour later. Elliot s change from blonde to brunette made 
 it possible for him to deceive any thing but close scrutiny. 
 The two were nearly the same stature, and in such confu 
 sion as marked the last days of the patriots administration, 
 the light eyes of Arden would not be remarked or the 
 sudden change to black. Provided Elliot did not persist in 
 his marplot purpose, the key in his possession might give 
 him an opportunity to escape. At any rate to return to the 
 cell was the only present safety. He could denounce Elliot 
 as a madman if he came to undo the work he had begun, 
 39 
 
6 10 TRAJAN. 
 
 He breathed with a sort of tranquil satisfaction as he sank 
 down on the cot where Elliot had passed a day and night of 
 terror. 
 
 Worn out by the fatigue of the days he had endured with 
 out rest, he did not awake until the turnkey passed on his 
 second tour ten o clock in the morning. He confronted 
 the official fearlessly now, for he had not seen him before 
 and suspected that he was a new comer. Trajan wonder 
 ing why he had been allowed to sleep so long, asked the 
 keeper if there was no breakfast for him. The man laughed, 
 answering significantly : 
 
 " You will be let out soon, don t give yourself any uneasi 
 ness about food. The patriots have none to spare now since 
 the Versaillaise have entered the city ! " 
 
 This explained the change in the routine, and Trajan didn t 
 know whether to rejoice or fear. He knew what the " letting 
 out" meant. It was the hideous buffoonery of the assassins, 
 signifying shooting. He had seen scores, happy in the 
 delusion of liberation thus announced to them, marched 
 upon ambuscades of musketry and drawn bayonets. 
 
 The glowing sunshine of the 24th of May stole in through 
 the long narrow slits far above the dungeon. The priests in 
 the cells opposite were absorbed in devotion. The gray hair 
 of the poor old archbishop could be seen, like the pale shade 
 of a martyr s crown, as he kneeled by his miserable cot. For 
 a half hour during the afternoon the priests and Judge 
 Bonjean were taken out and permitted to descend to the 
 prison garden for air and recreation. It was a touching 
 spectacle, as the six, whom every one knew were doomed, 
 walked calmly down the great corridor, the guards insulting 
 and berating them. They bore the curses and even blows 
 with saintly meekness one of them, a handsome young 
 priest, provoking the buffets upon himself, that the sacred 
 person of the prelate might be spared. 
 
 The prison shook at times with the explosions that seemed 
 to come from a" not distant quarter. Every one realized that 
 
IN LA RO QUETTE. 6il 
 
 a decisive movement was at hand. The chance of Elliot s 
 doing any thing desperate diminished with every hour, and 
 Trajan began to think of a means of flying to the succor he 
 knew to be near. If he could have seen or signaled the 
 old keeper, whom he knew to be a foe to the commune at 
 heart, he would have asked him to lend him assistance. But 
 the man was nowhere to be seen. The corridors began to 
 fill with unfamiliar uniforms. At seven o clock, when the 
 first friendly dimness was settling over the gloomy towers, a 
 loud shouting was heard at the end of the prison, toward 
 the stairs. 
 
 A group of scarlet-sashed personages tramped in, and 
 behind them a mob of reeling gesticulating figures. Trajan s 
 heart leaped to his throat ; among them he saw a dozen not 
 in uniform. He was saved. He could when the friendly 
 darkness became thick enough, mingle with these and take 
 his chances for flying to the soldiers. He could not contain 
 his impatience. Had he the key ? Yes, safe. Would it 
 work ? His hands shook with excitement. He dared not 
 try it in the lock. He listened eagerly. A great glare of 
 light suddenly came in wavering streaks from the direction 
 of the vestibule. Heavy steps sounded nearer and nearer 
 and nearer. Heavens, could it be Elliot coming to bring 
 ruin, now that release was in sight ? Under the over-master 
 ing fear of it, he thrust his hand through the bars, resolved 
 to fly and be himself shot down before the foolish fellow 
 could compromise himself. A voice in the next cell arrested 
 his movement. 
 
 " My God, it is Ferre ! The priests will be slaughtered ! " 
 The marching group had now come in direct range of 
 Trajan s cell. Sure enough ! There was the young miscreant 
 he had exposed as a thief in the club. His glasses were still 
 on his eyes, secured by a gold chain, instead of the paper cord 
 he had worn in his student days. His slim body was gor 
 geous in a closely fitting Prince Albert of white cloth ; the 
 scarlet insignia of his office passed diagonally over his 
 
612 TRAJAN. 
 
 shoulder. He was flanked by fellow dignitaries, and with 
 these again crowded by a howling bedlam of guards of all 
 descriptions drunk with madness or liquor probably both 
 insatiable now for blood, as the dream of pillage drew to 
 a term. Ranging themselves midway between Trajan s and 
 the priests cells, Ferre commanded silence, and holding a 
 paper lavishly blotched with red ink, called out as the turn 
 key threw the doors open. 
 
 " Georges Darboy, calling himself servant of a person 
 named God ! " He paused. 
 
 From cell 23, the aged archbishop came out into the 
 hideous mass of anarchy, for a moment silent. His purple 
 soutane covered his emaciated figure. His hands hung 
 beside him. He came quite forward to his assassins and 
 bowing his head meekly waited ! Shading his eyes with the 
 paper, held as a screen, Ferre gave the pathetic figure a 
 verifying glance and then resumed the fearful roll call. 
 
 " Gaspard Deguerrey, soi disant serviteur d un nomme* 
 Dieu/" the voice tranquil, decisive and egotistically pro 
 longed, as if the assassin called the mob to remark the con 
 fidence with which he swept these instruments of superstition 
 from the path of the people. 
 
 At the call, an aged man, past his eightieth year, dragged 
 his poor old limbs tremblingly forward, and, like the bishop, 
 answered simply and meekly : 
 
 " Here." 
 
 Then came the nommJ Leon De Coudray a large fine- 
 looking man in middle life, rector of the School of St. Gene- 
 vieve, and a Jesuit. There was no meekness in the resonant 
 " me void" with which he answered his name, nor quail 
 ing in the glance of derisive contempt with which he swept 
 the tatterdemalion mob, whose eyes flamed in impatient 
 ferocity for his audacious blood. 
 
 Alexis Clerc, a brother Jesuit, hastened from his cell, with 
 a buoyant step and sparkling eye. He was still a mere boy 
 having but just attained orders, He had coveted martyr- 
 
IN LA ROQUETTE. 613 
 
 dom since his novitiate, and now that the crown was in his 
 sight he was joyous as the lover before the rose garlands of 
 the marriage feast. A murmur ran through the reeking 
 mass of lust and murder as the young handsome face became 
 visible ; but Ferre, repressing the outbreak by a terrible 
 " Silence, citoyens ! " proceeded to the end of the list 
 marked for sacrifice. 
 
 The last of the five names called was Louis Bonjean, pres 
 ident of the " Cour de Cassation," a man in vigorous old 
 age, who was put among the hostages through private spite 
 of lawyers in the commune against whom he had made de 
 cisions in other years. The list complete, Ferre gave the 
 order to march the victims, two by two, and the archbishop, 
 leaning on the arm of the judge, was last in the line. 
 
 To Trajan s unspeakable surprise, instead of retracing the 
 way they had come, Ferre led the soldiers toward the nar 
 row cylinder staircase, within a few yards of the scene that 
 had just passed: Now, if ever, was the time for him to 
 make use of the key. The flaming torches of petroleum 
 passed to the front, on a call from Ferre, to light the dark 
 stairs. 
 
 In the friendly gloom thus flung over the corridor, the 
 door was softly opened and in two minutes Trajan was ming 
 ling with the mob, pushing and jostling down the narrow 
 corkscrew stairs. When pressed forward by the eager 
 throng behind, he reached the landing on the second floor, 
 Ferre was enforcing order and selecting the firing party. 
 The first spot selected was found to be in full view of the 
 invalids in the infirmary, whose heads were thrust against 
 the grating ; for some reason the place was deemed inappro 
 priate and the cortege, retracing its steps, came out in the 
 broad court of the prison. While some one went forward to 
 unlock the iron gates leading to a smaller paved court, the 
 archbishop leaned wearily against the railings. It was a 
 sepulchral spectacle. What with the darkness of the night and 
 the thick blackness of the smoke settling in fantastic shapes 
 
614 TRAJAN. 
 
 over the awful work, the deed and its surroundings were in 
 ghastly sympathy. The flaming torches threw just enough 
 light to give the scene diabolic outline and atmosphere. At 
 the bend in the wide avenue running around the interior 
 building the party came to a fin%l halt. 
 
 In all the horror of his own critical position, Trajan felt 
 an instinctive sense of guilt in being one, even involuntarily, 
 of this sacrilegious massacre. He had only escaped Ferre s 
 clutches by causing his friends in the " Treize " to circulate 
 the rumor that Gray was still in Spain with Gambetta. 
 Ferre had denounced him to the Committee of Public 
 Safety and he had been declared hors la A?/, any patriot 
 bringing his head to the committee would be rewarded by 
 the patrie. His mind was divided between the nearness of 
 his own and Elliot s danger and the anguish of the scene. 
 He scrutinized as closely as he dared the hideous faces 
 about him in search of Elliot, dreading an imprudent ex 
 clamation on the latter s part should he suddenly recognize 
 his rescuer. 
 
 The prisoners were placed in a row, their backs against 
 the wall. As the bishop was hustled roughly into place, 
 with a gentle movement he arrested the steps of his guards, 
 and, turning to the group, now motionless, said, with an 
 accent of sincerity that drew tears on many an eye : 
 
 " My children ! I freely forgive you. If the cause of 
 my Master can be served in this sacrifice, I surrender my 
 short remaining space of life as gladly as I have devoted 
 fifty years to his sublime ministry. But my heart aches for 
 you I know you do not know what you do, and I pray the 
 good God that this may not be visited upon you I 
 
 But here, with a brutal curse, Ferre" ordered the crowd to 
 clamor the benignant voice into silence. At this, moved 
 beyond resistance, two of the guards fell on their knees im 
 ploring the martyr s blessing. 
 
 Outraged by such pusillanimity and surrender to the 
 superstition of the nommc God, the mob of guards, with 
 
. TN LA ROQUETTE 615 
 
 Ferre at their head, seized the recalcitrants and whisked them 
 away under a volley of such frightful blasphemy as the 
 French language alone seems the fit vehicle for. 
 
 Trajan could not believe that the scene was real. The fig 
 ures swam before his eyes. The savage guards, the revolt 
 ing jests and scurrilities, the priests ranged in line along 
 the wall. Surely, it was a phantom horror that was 
 pranking in this devil s comedy before him ! No ! The 
 victims stand erect ; the priests, with clasped hands, are 
 praying ; the glistening barrels are raised on a line ; the 
 hoarse clamor is hushed ; the figure of Ferre, rigid, satanic, 
 jocose, looms up under the spluttering flame 
 
 " Make ready fire ! " 
 
 A cry of horror, a confused gurgling of insatiable execra- 
 ation, a demon chorus of exultant joy, possible to no human 
 throats, and the figures at the wall lie a confused mass. 
 But they have not met the mercy of swift death. There is 
 a gasping movement in the tortured heap another volley is 
 fired, then straggling shots, as if to prolong the delights of it ; 
 and then Ferre himself, to mark his place in the tragedy, 
 runs to the mass, and planting his pistol on the gray hairs of 
 the bishop, fires the last shot. 
 
 Some ran shrieking from the scene, others moved solemnly 
 away. The guards were formed in confused order the mob 
 was driven before them, and the place left in darkness 
 Cimmerian terrifying. Horror was in the air, thick, chok 
 ing, blinding. The guilty mob fled, and Trajan was borne 
 with them, through the wide roadway, through the gloomy 
 passages, into the great court, where the first-comers looked 
 back in dread, as if they expected to see the bloody corpses, 
 with the whips and scorpions of vengeance upborn in their 
 dead hands. Trajan knew that his own, perhaps Elliot s, 
 escape depended on preserving his sanity in this phantasmal 
 place of horror. He set about the quest for the missing. 
 
 But the confusion made his task a slow one. It was mid 
 night and he had not seen the figure in the uniform he knew 
 
616 TRAJAN. 
 
 so well. There was no longer even the semblance of discipline 
 in the place. A howling mob, drunken and brutal, passed 
 along the cells, firing pistols at random in the darkness. 
 
 From time to time Lefran9ais, the gaoler, received des 
 patches which he read with imprecations so dire that those 
 near him shrank back, the satyr leer fading into fear. 
 Twice patriots ran along the corridors, bidding the miserable 
 prisoners make ready to come forth, but they were not 
 molested. It was just after the stroke of midnight that a 
 rush was made toward the central gate. The wan and 
 haggard throng pressed toward a hurdle which left a stream 
 of crimson on the stones as the carriers jolted it savagely 
 along, shouting impious snatch and ribald gibes. A fold of 
 rich shining purple fell over the rough handles of the frame, 
 dragging its golden bullion fringe on the floor. The mangled 
 bodies were going to Pere La Chaise, to be flung in a con 
 fused heap for sepulture, where, four days later, reverent 
 hands uncovered them for burial amid lamentation and 
 tears. 
 
 Morning came, but still no sign of Elliot, and Trajan 
 began to count on an effort to break from the place. He 
 had purloined from sleeping patriots a military jacket, a 
 kepi and sword, and felt tolerably secure. He dreaded 
 assignment to such duty as he had seen done by some of the 
 men with a reluctance that had brought upon them blows 
 from the outraged patriots. Surely Elliot must have escaped. 
 
 He would not, with all his generous heedlessness, have 
 lingered in this death-trap, possible as it was by a ready bit 
 of invention to take advantage of the lax discipline to pass 
 out. He watched the entrance, resolving to seize the first 
 pretext to slip away. But the laxity prevailing inside did not 
 rule at the gates. Here a company of Algerian soldiers, 
 fidelity itself to an order once given, savagely thrust every 
 one back who came without written evidence of liberty to go 
 out. Faint with hungers-nothing had been distributed for 
 twenty-four hours he could barely drag his weary limbs 
 
IN LA ROQUETTE. 617 
 
 along the cold pavement. Noon came, and still no sign ; 
 bedlam surging about him. Darkness fell ; he lay on the 
 floor in a stupor ; his mind wandered. How long he lay 
 thus he could not tell : when his eyes opened it was daylight? 
 and he was in a soft, luxurious bed. " It is a dream," he 
 murmured, and closed his eyes. Faint whispers sounded 
 like music in his ears. " Somebody " stood bending over 
 him. 
 
 " Somebody s" lips were on his forehead. " Somebody s" 
 hands were smoothing back his hair. Wonderful dream ! He 
 dared not move he dared not breathe it would break 
 the spell. But " Somebody," in most undreamlike and cor 
 poreal might, was forcing his lips open and pouring an 
 undreamlike and unambrosial fluid down his throat. Even 
 a dream has its amenities, and he caught the bodily hand 
 and staring with all liis might, saw that it was no dream, and 
 that Edith was really beside him. If you can not guess the 
 ocular demonstrations he pretended were needed to con 
 vince him that she was not a blessed ghost, you have not the 
 susceptibilities needed to realize episodes like this, and I 
 haven t the patience to waste time on you. I will say, how 
 ever, that I never knew of a dialogue carried on so long in 
 the dumb but eloquent language of lips without words. But 
 it came to an end at last, and as the dreamer realized the 
 scene, there was such a tableau as he had never expected to 
 see again. 
 
 Who should be standing at the foot of the bed but Elliot, 
 behind him Philip, and seated in great composure, as though 
 scenes of this sort were incidents of their daily existence, 
 Mrs. Arden, rosy, placid and smiling as ever ; Mrs. Briscoe, 
 with a lap filled with letters, which she seemed in no hurry 
 to read ; Kate, gazing at the astonished dreamer in a way to 
 make him blush. Bella was invisible only because Trajan 
 was not gifted with eyes in the top of his head like a polypus 
 the earth and not the sky being the scene of his endeavors. 
 Bella had been holding the invalid s head, while " Some- 
 
618 TRAJAN. 
 
 body" had inserted the silver spoon with the unnnectar-like 
 flavor. Trajan fell back and closed his eyes. 
 
 "Come, now, old fellow, that s possum you needn t 
 expect any more baby-feeding. Own up, like a man you 
 are as well as you ever were." And Elliot s voice confirmed 
 the realism of the scene. 
 
 " It was fear that you would all vanish," replied the cul 
 prit, apologetically ; whereat there was a great shout of 
 laughter. "But explain it all." 
 
 "Not just yet, Mr. Absolute ; the doctor says you are to 
 do nothing but eat for a week." 
 
 " Then I shall fly back to Roquette, for I have a horror 
 of being fat. That s a good fellow, Elliot, tell me how- 
 how " 
 
 " How we got out of that pit of Hell ? Bella is shaking 
 her head like an aspen in a gale of wind ; but I will 
 relieve your anxiety, as I am told that an anxious spirit 
 preys upon the health, and merely in the doctor s interest I 
 will tell you. First, sir, every member of this family agrees 
 that you acted like a a wretch in forcing the brand of 
 caitiff upon the head of the Ardens." (Wild exclamations 
 of indignant denial, and a squeeze from a certain hand.) 
 "Applause from the audience over a sentiment striking as 
 true," continued Elliot, narrating : 
 
 " When the head of the Ardens found himself thrown 
 out of the patrimonial halls that is to say, the patriot s cell 
 his heart, like his head, was filled with remorse, shame, 
 anguish, and the resolve to make two people die where one 
 would have satisfied the holy cause of \\~\e patrie f 
 
 " He was, however, still strong enough in the canny virtues 
 of his kinswoman, the immortal Kate McNair whom void" 
 and he bowed to that crimson relic of the blood of Knox 
 "he the Arden mingled in patriotic joviality with his 
 camarades of the Avengers of Flourens, and was by rank 
 and circumstances given a chief place in the roll-call, answer 
 ing with sonorous vehemence to the name of Legare ; deter- 
 
IN LA ROQUETTE. 619 
 
 mined to seize the real L6gare by the collar so soon as he 
 appeared, and thrust him incontinently from the hospitable, 
 though confining walls put at his disposal by the patrie. 
 
 " Various duties, however, obtruded to make it impossible 
 to keep as diligent watch for the recreant Legare as the 
 urgency of the case demanded. The Arden was denied the 
 ancestral right of inspecting the interior of his domains. It 
 was late in the evening when, near the outer gate, he heard a 
 great clamor. A group of the foes of the people had just 
 passed out of the gate under some Satanic pretext. The 
 son of Arden, knowing the slippery methods of Legare, felt 
 at once that he was among this scandalous party four of 
 them, he learned from the guard, who for the moment was 
 alone at the gate. 
 
 " In an instant, the Arden was in pursuit, with two other 
 patriots besides. The four runaways were caught, not by 
 the guards, but by intelligent people who knew that no well- 
 behaved citizen should run at such a time. But among the 
 wretched fellows no Legare was found. Taken back to the 
 prison by some unaccountable stupidity Arden s prisoner es 
 caped, and with him a note addressed to any friendly hand 
 that it might fall into in the Rue Fran9ois Premier, to send 
 succor, if that were possible, to La Roquette. But the good 
 intentions of Arden were taken at high value, and he was 
 placed on guard at the door. Here he overheard Ferre, the 
 host, in a sense, of Roquette, confide to his slave Lefrancais 
 that it was all up with the game, that Attila s forces were 
 near the Hotel de Ville, that a last blow alone remained, and 
 that the drama was to be made heroic, sublime, he said, by 
 shooting the six hostages that night. If the army were at the 
 Hotel de Ville, it was within a few minutes march of Ro 
 quette. A cordon had been stretched across the inner court, 
 at the foot of the grand stairway, with charge to let no one 
 pass but the chiefs of Communes -girt in their sanguinary 
 insignia. 
 
 " Here was an assurance that the delinquent Legare was 
 
620 TRAJAN. 
 
 measurably secure, and when, at midnight, his compatriot 
 came to relieve him, the son of Arden was gone. A dozen 
 times as he dodged his way down the Rue St. Antoine and 
 made a great detour to the river to avoid the barricaded 
 center of action, the Bastille, his heart misgave him and he 
 repented the wild security of Roquette. He was jostled by 
 patriots and challenged by them, and blinded by the explo 
 sions of petroleum, which was just then the beverage of the 
 ladies he met. Lines of fire girded him ; the horizon was a 
 series of bursting Vesuvii in the direction of the east and 
 south. 
 
 " As he pushed onward shells fell in hurtling splinters, 
 knocking walls and balconies, and even bodies, into the 
 street. The Hotel de Ville was spitting out tongues of flame 
 as he passed it ; mysterious figures with little casks were 
 moving in and out among its stately arches ; more of them 
 were flitting about the colonnades of the Louvre. It was 
 broad daylight now, and the Arden was seized by a patrol and 
 set to defend a barrier in the Rue St. Antoine. The Arden 
 didn t fight with the hearty good will of his comrades, and 
 when the cry came that the barricade was turned, he fled 
 toward the enemy instead of from them. But the enemy 
 were nowhere visible, and flying into the maze of winding 
 streets in the Marais, it was late in the afternoon before he 
 recognized the locality in the neighborhood of the Bourse. 
 
 " Heaps of dead lay on all sides most of them bayoneted. 
 Coming out in the Place Vendome, he was among troops of 
 the line. He had thrown away the picturesque but obtrusive 
 raiment thrust upon him by Legare in the cell of La 
 Roquette, and his shirt sleeves enabled him to mingle among 
 the " saviours," as he heard the grimy, blood-stained veterans 
 endearingly called, by the crowds that would have burned them 
 in petroleum the day before, and boiled any one who mourned 
 them in tears. A woman, clad in the picturesque costume 
 of the Amazons of the Seine beautiful, as she devils can 
 sometimes be, was dragged forward from the Palais de Jus- 
 
IN LA KOQ UE TTE. 621 
 
 tice, where she had been secreted. She faced the jeering 
 cowards with dauntless courage. Men pricked her body 
 with the tips of bayonets ; women, who had probably 
 admired, envied and cheered her the day before, spat in her 
 handsome, daring face. Officers stood by commenting criti 
 cally on her fine points, but never offered to interfere. 
 
 " One ruffian in uniform came up and woman-like spat at 
 her ; quick as lightning, she seized a bayonet and thrust it 
 deep into the wretch s neck. In an instant twenty bullets 
 were in her body, and she sank in a heap to the pavement. 
 
 " Twenty encouraging scenes like this came under these 
 eyes, revealing the cowardice, cruelty, ferocity of the law and 
 order mob, which has vanquished the lawless and disorderly 
 mob. But as you are -impatient, Monsieur Legare for we 
 citizen each other no more I will pass over details, which I 
 mean to give you in the form of affidavits, to publish in your 
 great work on the commune, proving the equal criminality of 
 the two mobs the Versaillaise and the commune. With this 
 difference, we, the citoyens, slaughtered for an idea, the Attilas 
 for revenge one for a principle, the other for concealment 
 for since you last looked on Paris, Citizen Legare, thirty 
 thousand men, women and children have gone where the 
 love of humanity is no crime. 
 
 " The Arden, sick to his soul of this monstrous epilogue of 
 horror, inquired for the quarters of General Vinoy. It 
 was in the Rue Gabrielle, but the devils still held the Made- 
 laine. Passing on through the Boulevard des Capucines, 
 the firing was still going on. Near the Grand Hotel a dead 
 soldier lay with his coat over his body ; to secure himself 
 from molestation, Arden donned it and made his way more 
 confidently. The " devils " had been driven from the Rue 
 Royal into the church. Curiosity led Arden inside as the 
 soldiers closed in, for he heard with amazement volleys from 
 the sacred interior, where for fifty years aristocratic Paris 
 has been married and given in marriage, christened and sent 
 to the tomb. 
 
622 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Tongue refuses to tell the grisly horror that desecrated 
 this majestic temple perhaps three hundred wretched 
 fugitives had fled thither for refuge, trusting the holy 
 limits for immunity. Then began a chase and butchery 
 the tongue revolts to outline. A group of women, some gray- 
 haired, but all of them women, fell before the grand 
 altar supplicating mercy. The bayonet and the bullet 
 answered them. In their fury the soldiers shot their own 
 comrades, as the cowering victims dragged themselves bleed 
 ing to their butchers feet. On the grand altar a little curly 
 headed child in happier times one would have taken it for 
 one of the strayed cherubim was pinned to the chalice 
 sanctuary with a sword bayonet, its little arms stretching 
 toward the murdering monster like -two pinionless wings. 
 
 " The floor marble, as you remember ran in gore. There 
 was not a living person left but the soldiers when I ran down 
 the wide stone stairs clotted with blood. Well, let this and 
 a thousand fold more as bad, pass, until the time comes to 
 tell it. I reached Vinoy. He knew me as Philip s kinsman, 
 and put me in communication with Captain Allard, of 
 Douay s staff, who was to take charge of La Roquette so soon 
 as rescued. This was a trying point for the constancy of 
 the son of Arden" and as he said this, Bella stole to his side 
 " for he could now have been in the Rue Frai^ois Pre 
 mier in ten minutes but he remembered he had not left his 
 card with the citizen Legare. He sent a messenger to this 
 mansion, and I am told there was as much joy over the return 
 of this one sinner as all Paris has shown at an army of 
 them ! 
 
 " When I informed Captain Allard of the project to murder 
 the archbishop, instant orders were issued to advance on 
 La Roquette. We got there too late. It was night. All 
 the cells were open. To my amazement, the very first thing 
 Allard did was to call for the register. He looked through 
 the names, but not finding what he seemed in search of, he 
 called the old keeper, you remember, who had been in the 
 
IN LA ROQUET TE. 623 
 
 place for years. He had secreted himself before the shoot 
 ing of the hostages, and only reappeared with the army. 
 
 " Gray the Communard what became of him ? asked 
 Allard. 
 
 " I know of no such name 
 
 " Oh, I can explain, and I told him the good turn Rene* 
 had done you, and that you were the very Legare I was in 
 search of. Allard looked at me very hard and asked : Do 
 you know, monsieur, that this Gray is one of the most infa 
 mous and most murderous of this vile horde ? 
 
 " I allowed with some natural emphasis, considering certain 
 things that I knew, that Gray was any thing but the monster 
 the gallant captain had been made to believe him. But 
 the hero was not to be convinced ; he gave orders that the 
 odious Legare was to be shot on sight, and bade the keeper, 
 who alone knew him, to search every nook and corner for 
 him. 
 
 " He even had a photograph of you, so dangerous are 
 you to society, and with this in his hand scrutinized a 
 hundred of the released prisoners. But you were not among 
 them. Jules Carnot, who had entered with us, set out on a 
 quest of his own. The keepers on the lower floor informed 
 him that there were a score of madmen confined in the 
 office, as there had been no place in the cells, crowded 
 with fifteen hundred prisoners. Among these madmen 
 Jules found the citizen Legare, babbling soft nothings to a 
 poor old man, who had lost daughter and son, one in the 
 Prussian siege, one on the barricades serving as an Amazon. 
 Jules rushed to the son of Arden, who was wildly ransack 
 ing the habiliments of the rejoicing crowd, and shouted : 
 I have found him; Trajan s here safe. Found 
 whom ? asked Allard eagerly, as he came with the picture 
 in his hand, comparing it*with the woe-begone faces 
 passing before him. 
 
 " My servant, captain, responded the unabashed Arden, 
 looking that suspicious officer in the eye. Let me go for 
 
624 TRAJAN. 
 
 him, Arden whispered, as Jules in astonishment looked 
 from one to the other. When the matter was explained to 
 Jules he trembled and turned ghastly. I declare I never 
 dreamed he was so sensitive, or thought so much of you"- 
 and he looked slyly at Bella as he said this. " A quite harm 
 less madman who was indifferent to the name put upon him 
 satisfied the captain s scrutiny, and a half hour later Jules 
 managed to get you out into a hastily cobbled litter, and 
 like the Spartan brothers Josephus speaks of, we two 
 might have been seen for the next three mortal hours toiling 
 under the burden of your 150 pounds. 
 
 " There, so far as the historical part goes, is the story in 
 brief of your rescue, by other hands than the Arden s. There 
 are numerous touches, which I have not ventured to stop to 
 paint. But I mean to write my experiences one of these 
 days and then you shall have the psychological history of 
 these exciting nights and days in the best manner of the 
 new-fashioned mental anatomists." 
 
 " And so, after all, Elliot, the story ends the same way. I 
 owe my life to your heroism now, as I owed it to your senti 
 mental impulse a year ago." Trajan stretched out his 
 feeble hand. 
 
 Six people may all talk at once and manage to make the 
 babel passably entertaining, if only as an exercise of the 
 lungs, but the most stenographic pen, or myriad-minded 
 writer, is unable to reproduce, even phonetically, what 
 would seem of coherent interest to the reader. 
 
 First, Trajan s allusion had enlivened unextinguishable 
 curiosity in two busy bra ::.!, and Edith, besetting the 
 invalid, extorted a whispered promise to tell all about it, while 
 Bella, with an imperative gesture, indicated her will to be 
 instantly apprised of the true intent of the mysterious 
 speech. When the little tale was told over in the corner, 
 quite secure from the other by no means prying eyes, with 
 much soft embracing and gentle gurgles of delight, the 
 largest share of the " adoration " kept in the sentimental 
 
/, V LA ROQ UE T TE. 625 
 
 corner of Bella s heart, was instantly transferred to Elliot, 
 with a feminine indifference to consistency which charmed, 
 while it amazed the rapturously enshrined idol. Mrs. 
 Arden, confident that the artless Edith would keep no 
 secret from her mother, repressed her natural impatience. 
 
 " I say, Trajan, even at your own gauge I m still in your 
 debt a life or two ; I should have been shot at Meaux if you 
 hadn t gulled that good-natured Saxon whom, by the way, 
 I mean to remember one of these days, in a way that will 
 delight his schdtzchen then again in La Roquette ; beside 
 the burden on me as head of the Ardens in denying the 
 Rothschild bull the gory pleasure of stamping out Bella ! I 
 think you will call it quits if I give you a mother-in-law, and 
 and " 
 
 " Elliot for shame ! Have you lost all sense of delicacy ? " 
 reproved his mother, with a placid tone that deprived the 
 reprimand of its efficacy. 
 
 " You mean that your consent has not been asked. Inno 
 cent Arden that you are ! Don t you know that this san 
 guinary person, lying so peacefully in my bed, is a commun 
 ist ; that his creed decrees the equal partition of treasure ? 
 Well, we are your treasures ; I represent the Kohinoor 
 diamond." 
 
 "Or the Pitt," suggested Philip. 
 
 " Either will cover the case. Edith represents well she 
 represents some great Indian pearl, let us say 
 
 " Hence aunt Cordelia is mother of pearl," amended 
 Philip. 
 
 "Well no Phil, that s most too attenuated even for 
 sick-room wit. Well, as I was explaining, Trajan takes half 
 your treasure and leaves me as the least valuable of the 
 spoil." 
 
 And so it was from grave to gay, and every body got ready 
 
 to quit the scene of so much that was sinister even in this 
 
 joy. Twas Bella who had the last pang to bear, that comes 
 
 under the cognizance of this historian. While every thing 
 
 40 
 
626 TRAJAN. 
 
 was in the confusion of packing Jules called and asked for 
 Bella. She went into the library and received him with gentle 
 affection. She knew what he was going to say, and he, poor 
 fellow, knew what she was going to answer. He had redeemed 
 not only his own but Theo s past, in her eyes, by his loyalty 
 at Roquette ; and all that his conduct meant there she was 
 never to know. But suspecting much of other things, she 
 was deeply moved by his manfully-controlled grief, and told 
 him as tenderly as a " no " to a lover can be told, that she had 
 loved her cousin since she was a child. That she had some 
 times misunderstood the force of that love, but that she 
 knew what it meant when it came to peril. They, she and 
 Jules, should meet again across the water, when he had 
 happily given some worthy girl his true and noble heart. 
 And so they parted, and as Elliot saw her moistened eye 
 when she returned to the family group he did not need to 
 be told poor Jules errand. 
 
 As she left the room again for the library he followed her. 
 
 " Bella, you remember what you said to me the other day ? " 
 
 " Among the many wise sayings I am called upon to lavish 
 on you I don t recollect any particular saying, at the instant, 
 that is more worthy than another of remembrance." 
 
 " Bella," his voice trembled now at her affected levity ; 
 " you told me you adored Trajan." 
 
 " And I told the truth ; don t you ? " 
 
 He took her two hands and held them, as she stood passive 
 and blushing now. 
 
 " You are half engaged to so many people, adoring and 
 dismissing admirers, that I have resolved to ask you a ques 
 tion : Suppose I should ask you whom you mean to marry, 
 what would you say ? " 
 
 " Suppose I should say the first man that asks me." 
 
 " Then I should say, Bella, dearest, can you give me a 
 chance to show you that I am not the dolt I seem, and say 
 you will be my wife ? " 
 
 It is difficult to say what the ready-witted Bella would 
 
IN LA ROQUET TE. 627 
 
 have said to this, For the truth was, she couldn t very well 
 say any thing, since two lips, however flexible, are unable to 
 even murmur when two other lips press them too closely. 
 How long this curious pantomime might have continued I 
 should, in the interests of philosophy, like to know ; but a 
 rustle as of some one retreating hastily from the door recalled 
 the lovers to their senses or to the possibility of speech ; 
 and then, if the rustler were not too far off, she might have 
 heard : 
 
 " My darling ! " followed by smirking sounds tediously 
 prolonged. 
 
 " You silly fellow ! " then smirk, smirk, smirk again. 
 
 Trajan, too, was to return to his native land. Paris would 
 never be the home of art to him again. The things he had 
 seen and the memories of them would paralyze his pencil. 
 The very moment Bella was laying down her arms, Trajan, 
 ready to set out for the studio, was overtaken by Edith at 
 the door, who found that she had an errand at the Bon 
 Marche that would take her past the Rue Dragon, As the 
 cab crawled over the streets, still filled with the wreck of the 
 two sieges, Trajan said suddenly : 
 
 " If we could only get a marguerite now, I could fulfill the 
 conditions you prescribed at the Lovers Well. Couldn t you 
 teach me the words without the flower ? " 
 
 " What a simpleton ! of course not. But would you really 
 like to learn it ? " 
 
 " Rapture would be no name for the joy of initiation. 
 Can t we drive to the market and get some marguerites ?" 
 
 " Well, since you re really sincere and not teasing, perhaps 
 I ll gratify you, but you don t deserve such indulgence, for 
 I m sure you re laughing ; aren t you ? " 
 
 "I assure you the sphinxes yonder do you see them with 
 staring eyes ? couldn t serve as models for such solemnity 
 as mine." 
 
 " Then I ll gratify you ; though I never meant to, you were 
 so horrid and stupid that day at Cre"cy." 
 
628 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Why at Cre"cy ? I supposed that I was always stupid, but 
 flattered myself I was not horrid ! " 
 
 Edith, skeptically " I believe you re laughing. If I 
 thought you were, you should never see something I ve got." 
 
 Trajan, woebegone as to countenance " Belisarius at the 
 gate never felt the wretchedness I now feel ; be merciful. 
 
 " You have really caught the tricks of my good-for-nothing 
 brother and I shan t open my mouth again no I shan t 
 I won t be trifled with." 
 
 " Then I must ask Madame Agay to teach me the mar 
 guerite mystery. She always has a pot of them in her window. 
 I wonder if she consults them every day ? " 
 
 " Of course not ; she s married. It s only when one s in 
 love one asks the marguerite if one is to be lucky." 
 
 " Then I ll not rest until I ve consulted the flower ; driver, 
 please hasten." 
 
 At this " Somebody " laughing and turning all sorts of 
 colors, takes a little silken thing from a receptacle mysteri 
 ously hidden above her waist, and opening it, brings forth a 
 withered flower, quite sere and of no distinguishable color. 
 Belisarius regards it in comic wonder, but subdues the ex 
 pression to respectful curiosity, as " Somebody s " eyes look 
 into his questioningly : 
 
 " What is it, an amulet to exorcise evil persons and deeds ? " 
 
 " Do you think you would be here if it were ? " 
 
 " That s true. What is it then ? " 
 
 " Don t you recognize it. No, no ! You mustn t take it, 
 it would fall in pieces ! You put it in your pocket that day 
 at Crecy, to use when you found out the name of the girl 
 you wanted to marry." 
 
 " How lucky ! I need it now, for I found out that very 
 day. I wondered where it had gone. Perhaps you have 
 already asked it ? What did it say ? " 
 
 " Of course I didn t ask it, the lover must do that ? " 
 
 "Very well. Oh little faded, blood-stained flower, that has 
 nestled on the purest heart in all the world, what is the name 
 
IN LA COQUETTE. , 629 
 
 of the loveliest creature that ever made a painter abhor his 
 art, because it falls so far short of embodying her ? Answer 
 me, faded flower that grew in beauty in green fields, and 
 unlike the human, reached Heaven without changing form ! " 
 
 " How absurd of you ! " says " Somebody " with glistening 
 eyes. " The flower doesn t answer the question that way. 
 You must think of the name of the girl you love." 
 
 "I ve thought of nothing else for five months." 
 
 "Yes, but you must name the flower by her name." 
 
 " I did so long ago I called it Angel." 
 
 " What a plague you are her own very name, I mean." 
 
 "Well, let s call her " 
 
 " Stop, you mustn t tell, that is, not now think it." 
 
 " Very well, I m doing my best to recall it, but it s a 
 struggle. Don t keep me in suspense ! " 
 
 " Now I ll touch the leaves. I won t tear them out, be 
 cause when you ve found out whether she loves you or not, 
 you ll have to give her the flower." 
 
 " Very well, keep it ! " 
 
 il Je faime (mind, it s the girl the flower is talking for) 
 beaucoup / passionment pas de tout there the last leaf 
 on the last round tells the story, it says she loves you pas 
 sionately ! " 
 
 " I knew that." 
 
 " You egotistical fellow ! " 
 
 " I thought flowers told the marriage day. I don t think 
 much of it, do you ? " 
 
 " Yes, I think very much of it, for it told me something 
 when somebody himself didn t know it ! " 
 
 " What did it tell you ? " 
 
 "It told me that somebody loved me very much that 
 day at Cre"cy and it came true ! " 
 
 " Dear me, what a wonderful flower ! " Then the street 
 being narrow they were on the Rue Dragon there were 
 goings on that would have surprised the respectable bour 
 geoisie in any other quarter of the city. 
 
630 TRAJAN. 
 
 " Don t lose the flower, Edith, in case I should forget the 
 name," Trajan said, maliciously, as he alighted, flying before 
 the scornful young person who drove onward. 
 
 Madame Agay, who had not seen her lodger for a month, 
 was enchant & in the profusest form. She detained him an 
 hour with garrulities on the trials she had undergone from 
 ces animaux the communards. It was not until all these 
 woes were set forth that Trajan was given a chance to 
 ascend to his studio, where he was deep in the salutations of 
 Betty and Trip, when the stout guardian came breathlessly 
 to announce two visitors, who she said had been a dozen 
 times to see him during the week. They wouldn t give their 
 names, but declared that it was a matter of the utmost im 
 portance to Monsieur Gray ! Indeed, while she spoke, a 
 female voice at the door said : 
 
 " Monsieur Gray will find that he does well in seeing us," 
 and the speaker pushed the door open and entered. There 
 were two of them, women, evidently of the lower middle 
 rank, plainly but handsomely dressed. 
 
 " You don t recognize us, do you, Mr. Gray ? " 
 
 Trajan owned that he couldn t recall them. Requesting 
 him to favor them with a word alone, the women took chairs 
 and glanced at Madame Agay, who, with a defiant sniff, with 
 drew, fathomless meaning in the shrug of her fat shoulders. 
 
 " I am the woman whose own and whose baby s life you 
 saved on the steamer from Havre to New York." 
 
 "What, Madame Blaye?" 
 
 " Yes, monsieur ; I am come not to ennuie you with 
 empty thanks, but to warn you of an odious conspiracy 
 against you. I will be very brief. This is my sister. She 
 is a clerk in the office of Odeon arrondissement. She 
 lives in the Rue Auvergne. Among her friends is Celeste 
 who was fem?ne de chambre with the family Carnot on the 
 Rue Galilee. Celeste was dismissed for some petty fault 
 last February. She is a hot-headed, revengeful, wicked 
 girl ; but that s neither here nor there. She nursed her 
 
nV LA ROQUET TE. 631 
 
 revenge until her chance came. Under the commune she 
 was protected by a chief who was powerful during the first 
 few weeks. Knowing this, Celeste took a party of her 
 friends, and under pretext of pillaging aristocrats, robbed 
 the Carnot house. But it wasn t so much the robbery she 
 was bent on as securing some letters of Mademoiselle Theo, 
 some of which she had seen, before she left. These letters 
 mainly concern you ! " 
 
 " Me ! " exclaimed Trajan. " How can they concern 
 me ?" 
 
 " You, Monsieur Gray. My sister here was called in to 
 help read them, for Celeste is a poor hand at writing. The 
 letters showed that Mademoiselle Theo had paid a girl 
 named Nanette, to say that you had been married to her 
 when you first came to the quarter. That you had aban 
 doned her and her child " 
 
 " Why it was I who saved Nanette from the workhouse ! " 
 
 " Precisely. But what the letters proved you can see for 
 yourself. What my sister found in them was more impor 
 tant. It so happened that they gave her a clue to a mys 
 terious disappearance last year. A Monsieur Philip Kent 
 had married a young girl in the Church of St. Etienne in 
 1863. She was of the family of the Counts of Dreze in the 
 Rue de Blois. The marriage was kept secret. He lived 
 with her very happily for a year, when the Prince d Amboise 
 seduced her from him. He never knew the seducer, but 
 the police files show the record. So soon as the girl was 
 safely out of Monsieur Kent s reach, documents were for 
 warded him, showing that he had in ignorance of the French 
 law, made an illegal marriage. The girl herself wrote this to 
 him. He returned to America wild with remorse and shame, 
 after vain attempts to get his little boy. In time the prince, 
 tiring of the girl, deserted her. She went back to her sister 
 in the Rue Blois, but the doors were closed upon her. She 
 was taken up by a rich Bonapartist, but in time remorse and 
 shame drove her mad. She was sent to Bicetre by the man, 
 
632 TRAJAN. 
 
 but soon recovered the appearance of reason. She, how 
 ever, was a reproach to her sister, who had her watched and 
 thrust into the asylum whenever she could get a pretext. 
 Her son was placed en pension with a relative of Celeste s 
 sweetheart, in the Rue St. Etienne. 
 
 " One day the child was missing, and the police finding no 
 clue to him, the poor mother went raving mad. A body was 
 found in the Seine about the time that she disappeared, and 
 all trace of the tragedy ends there. This concerns you only 
 in the fact that you adopted a little boy about that time, and 
 from the letters Celeste stole, the plot was to convict you of 
 being its father, and destroy you with the family with whom 
 you are in such close rapport. Monsieur Arden has been 
 apprised of the facts. He was sent to the midwife, Madame 
 Tarbes, Rue des Blancs Manteaux. She has told me and my 
 sister the story, and declared that she was half inclined to 
 expose the conspiracy herself, as Monsieur Arden had paid 
 her more generously for being deceived than Mademoiselle 
 Carnot had paid her for carrying out the conspiracy. 
 Monsieur Gray, when you did that noble deed on the sea, I 
 prayed that I might some time have a chance to show you 
 that I could be grateful. I pray to the bon Dieu that I 
 am not too late ; that you have not been made to suffer ! " 
 
 " I have suffered, and I see why now, but you have not 
 come too late," said Trajan, in a strange calm. As the 
 women arose to go he asked : 
 
 " Did Mademoiselle Carnot learn Mr. Kent s relations to 
 this conspiracy ? " 
 
 " No ; that is a matter that my sister alone knows. All 
 the archives are in her hands in the bureau arrondissement, 
 where on an order from the prefect of police, you may 
 see them." 
 
VIA ALLEGRO. 
 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 VIA ALLEGRO. 
 
 TRAJAN left the studio after an hour s reflection, the idea 
 of preparing for departure driven from his mind. All 
 the skeins in the web had come to his hands in an instant. 
 The broken engagement of Philip in New York, of which he 
 had heard from Papa Carnot, was now explained. Theo s 
 diabolic purpose to humiliate the family ; her persistent 
 attempts to divide Elliot and himself. But what should he 
 do ? Bury the business as Elliot had evidently done and 
 never allude to it ? But if the boy were Philip s, could he 
 let the little man grow up ignorant of his parentage ? What 
 had become of the letters ? Into whose hands had they 
 fallen ? Celeste had been plundered of the packet, he now 
 recollected, for that was the object of Grovel s visit in the 
 Rue Fran9ois Premier. Obviously it was his duty to acquaint 
 Philip with what he had heard, and he could verify the 
 story and explain the discrepancies. Philip was in his own 
 room reading when Trajan knocked. 
 
 " Good heavens, Gray, you look more knocked up than 
 when we were marching as patriots under the Red Flag. 
 What is it ? Have you heard of a rival carrying off a prize 
 in your own best loved genre? " 
 
 " Kent, I m going to pain you, but I don t see how I can 
 help it. I think it the only way out of a sad business," and 
 he told him the story, with such additional circumstantial 
 incidents as had fallen to his own unconscious agency. 
 
 After the first violent shock, Philip listened with unmoved 
 face. He changed color when d Amboise s name came in, 
 but made no comment, until the tragic error of his youth 
 had been laid bare. He dropped his head between his 
 hands when the story was ended and waited a long time be 
 fore he made any reply. Then arising walked the room in 
 
634 TRAJAN. 
 
 agitation, as if to collect his thoughts before deciding on 
 something he was deliberating. 
 
 " I hope I have done wisely, Kent ? I believed it to be for 
 the best to let you know." 
 
 " You have acted wisely, and altogether for the best, 
 Gray, as you always do. No ; my silence was from a quite 
 different cause." 
 
 He walked the floor again, and then seating himself, and 
 looking away from Trajan he asked : 
 
 " You could get no confirmation of the woman s death in 
 the Rue de Blois ? " 
 
 " None. Madam Dreze treated me as if she suspected me 
 of having some hand in her sister s misleading and death." 
 
 " The letter you found in the lilac bushes was written by 
 my father s agent two years before. He was outraged by 
 the marriage and thought as I did that it was legal. It was 
 because we both thought this that I was forced to break off 
 my engagement with Miss Carnot, as there were several 
 people young men of my set who knew of my relations 
 with with Angelique. Her desertion cured me of my 
 infatuation but I held myself none the less legally married 
 to the poor girl. Had she not evaded me, I should have 
 procured a divorce before I returned to America. 
 
 " But believing woman-like that it was through passion I 
 was tracing her, she eluded all the efforts of the agents 
 set on her track, and it was through them that the matter 
 entered the police archives. My father also believed that 
 I was in danger of succumbing to her beauty she was 
 wondrously beautiful and kept constant espionage on 
 her, so far as he could trace her, and upon me. He found 
 out where she was, entered into correspondence, and to keep 
 her from falling in my way wrote her that cruel letter in my 
 name, giving her money to go to New Orleans. He told me 
 all so soon as the letter was sent, and I have had agents 
 there ever since, though I never believed that she had 
 gone to America. 
 
VIA ALLEGRO. 635 
 
 " She is dead. The boy, the little Amedee, you will give me 
 without saying any thing to the family. They need never 
 know more than that I adopt him and give him my name. You 
 can readily disprove the calumnies Elliot has been hearing 
 about yourself. I have the letters the woman speaks of ; 
 Gibson gave them to me to hand to Grovel, saying they con 
 tained political secrets. We will look them over and all that 
 are needed for your exoneration you may take ; that 
 incredible little she-devil Theo deserves no consideration. 
 It was lucky you came when you did ; I was going to drive 
 up there this afternoon and deliver them to Lafayette." 
 
 He unwound the tape and began the work of verifying the 
 story he had just heard. But they threw light on his own 
 episode by corroboration only. The evidence of Theo s 
 malignly adroit handiwork in so torturing Annette s admis 
 sions as to make them fit Trajan, unless investigated by 
 a court of law, was clear and complete. Letters of quite a 
 different character were mixed among these disastrous 
 memorials, but they were laid aside, so far as possible, un 
 read. The reading, however, decided Trajan to call Elliot 
 in and remove any doubts that he might have on the matter. 
 Philip too became convinced that for Amedee s sake twere 
 better his uncle should know the story of his birth, and 
 twould be as well, he said, to tell the family. Sent for, the 
 young man came in and colored as he saw the open letters 
 spread over the table. 
 
 The revelation did not, he said, surprise him greatly. He 
 had suspected that Madame Tarbes had made a mistake or 
 aggravated the circumstances. He had fancied that Trajan, 
 like many others he knew, had fallen into the hands of the 
 peculiar class of sharpers always lying in wait for young 
 foreigners and had been mystified into a mock ceremony. 
 But when Philip followed with his more painful story, 
 Elliot was surprised beyond words. He saw every thing. The 
 persistent plotting of Theo to shake his own allegiance to 
 Bella ; the duel forced upon Philip by her cousin the big 
 
636 TRAJAN. 
 
 guardsman ; even the masque at St. Cloud, and the harping 
 on Arden faithlessness two years before, when the intrigue 
 began, became plain parts of the resolute little fury s fabric 
 of artifice. And he had helped and fired each train, as 
 she put the torch in his hand. He grew sick with shame as 
 the past came back, all the specters grinning at him in 
 unveiled ghastliness. 
 
 " Great God, Trajan, to think of the figure I ve cut ! 
 Without my cursed vanity and heedlessness, all this might 
 have been spared you. Philip might even have made 
 amends to that unhappy victim Clare before that little 
 fiend entrapped her into marriage with Lafayette ! I ve 
 learned one lesson. I ll never make confidence of any thing 
 concerning my friends, and I ll never share a secret. Do 
 you know, sir, it was by making me believe that you were in 
 love with Bella, that she blinded me into the fury of accept 
 ing this odious farrago ? That too, while she as good as 
 said she would marry me, when some obstacle, she never 
 said what, should be removed ! The obstacle, I now see 
 from these letters, she was not sure whether to accept d Am- 
 boise or not." 
 
 He walked the room as Philip had done, his rage choking 
 him as the pitiful part he had been made to play grew 
 clearer and clearer. " And ah, Trajan, you implacable old 
 truepenny, to think that Philip owes the rescue of his boy 
 to our casual meeting that wonderful afternoon ! " 
 
 " The bread, Elliot, has returned after many days," says 
 Trajan with reverent tone that would have alienated his 
 commune co-disciples of the Treize. As he spoke, Edith 
 came in, looking very much disturbed. 
 
 " Theo is in the salon and asks to see you, Trajan ! " 
 
 " To see me," cries he trembling, "I won t see her. I won t 
 breathe the same air with her she is infect she " 
 
 " Oh, you must see her, Trajan ; you can t refuse, as she 
 knows you are in the house," cries Elliot. " Perhaps, after 
 all, it s better you should," he added significantly. 
 
VIA ALLEGRO. 637 
 
 " If I must, so be it. Edith, if you have any desire to 
 please me, don t go back to her ; keep from the contamina 
 tion of her odious presence; send a servant to show her into 
 the library, I will go in there ; stay, remain here, I will do 
 it myself," and he rose in a good deal more trepidation than 
 Philip had observed, when he was marched off in the rdle 
 of Elliot with the patriots. 
 
 Theo came rustling into the library, in all her old spirit, 
 in all her winning loveliness. Trajan did not go forward to 
 meet her. He merely placed a chair and stood by one of the 
 book-cases, where the light was behind him. Undaunted 
 by this significant reception she proffered her bewitchingly 
 gloved hand, which he barely touched and then withdrew 
 his own with a shudder. She was keenly alive to his manner 
 and penetrated him with her inscrutable eyes. " Is it 
 jealousy," she asked, "or anger? Whichever it be I have 
 not lost my power ; a man moved enough to be angry is a 
 man still in one s power. I can use him still and make 
 better use than with that egotistic coxcomb Elliot." 
 
 " You wonder at my asking for you, Mr. Gray Trajan 
 I love that name, that that it was once my privilege to " 
 
 " Let us forego reminiscences, if you please, Miss Carnot ; 
 you have some business with me ? " 
 
 " Oh, Trajan, this is not like the confiding, noble man I 
 knew I I" 
 
 " Miss Carnot, I assure you I can not consent to meet you 
 for such talk as this. I must beg you to avoid it. It is an 
 injustice to yourself and dishonor to me. There is no past 
 betwixt us ; no future upon which that past can have the 
 influence even of a cloud. It is as completely obliterated as 
 if it had never been ! " She laughed a low musical laugh, 
 shrugged her pretty shoulders until the lace buried the 
 lovely face in a Vandyke setting of dainty light and shade. 
 
 " Trh Men, obdurate ; void, my mission, my servant Celeste 
 stole a packet of letters, containing correspondence carried 
 on by Jules and my father with Pietri, relative to some 
 
638 TRAJAN. 
 
 scrape Jules had fallen into. That packet was recovered 
 by an Englishman impressed by the commune in the 
 same troop with my brother-in-law, a Mr. Gibson, who lost 
 sight of Lafayette. He tells me he gave you the packet in 
 Roquette. Have you them ? " 
 
 " I will send the man who has them to you ; they were 
 given to Philip, not to me." 
 
 " To Philip ! " with a palpitation of relief, as when a clap 
 of thunder startles one at an open window and he realizes 
 that the lightning ball has struck far off. 
 
 "Is this all?" and he moves toward the door. She rises 
 and comes to him. Her wicked sorceress eyes are searching 
 his face ; her breath, the incense of passion and seduction, 
 fills the narrow space with an odor of damnable desire. She 
 holds out the shapeliest little hand, a diamond glistening 
 like a star in the dim light of the room. 
 
 " It is the end, if you like, Trajan ; I had something else 
 to say to you if you wished it ; but it is too late now, 
 isn t it?" 
 
 " Yes, it is too late ; it was too late a year ago." 
 
 She starts and the brown and crimson turn to ghastliness 
 in her round cheeks ; for the first time in her career she 
 found her arts met with indifference, disdain. 
 
 " Then this is the end ?" she whispered. 
 
 " This is the end, good -by." He turned bowing, with no 
 proffer of the hand, and when Philip entered a minute later 
 she was looking out of the window, a lace handkerchief limp 
 and moist in her hand. 
 
 To the great surprise of the ladies Philip entering the 
 breakfast-room a half hour later, made Theo s apologies ; 
 she had seen her brother passing and had hastened to catch 
 him, without stopping to make her adieux. 
 
 " God be praised, that s the last of Jezebel," exclaimed 
 Kate, with startling fervor. 
 
 " Good Heavens, Kate, what an inveterate hater you are," 
 says Mrs. Arden, with benign surprise. " I m sure Theo is 
 
VIA ALLEGRO. 639 
 
 delightful. I don t know what we should have done without 
 her since we came to Paris." 
 
 " I think we might have managed to exist vera weel," 
 retorts the blood of Knox, slyly eying the abstracted Elliot, 
 reading to Bella with the book upside down, unless the 
 title on the back belied the letter-press within. 
 
 Here the manuscripts from which this writer has taken the 
 woof of this history come to an end. But from Kate, who 
 knows every thing, devoted as she is to the evangelizing of 
 the world, I am enabled to trace all the persons who have 
 helped or hurt the fortunes of our friends. Rene Belcour 
 is at the head of a penny journal with a million circulation 
 in Paris. He supported Gambetta in his victorious combat 
 with MacMahon in 1877, and refused the ministry of Public 
 Instruction when the dictator became Prime Minister. The 
 funds to buy the journal which has made the kind fellow 
 prosperous, were put at his disposition in a polite note from 
 the great Rothschild, who refused to divulge the name of 
 the unknown benefactor unless the enterprise proved a 
 success, and then Rene learned that he was co-proprietor 
 with Arden and Kent. La Baronne Pleinevide made such 
 an excellent impression on the impulsive lady of Yahoo 
 Gulch, that when Antoine came to them in London, covered 
 with glory and scars, she never gave Jeptha a moment s 
 peace until Amanda laid her large hands to the heart of 
 the big guardsman and stilled its tumult. They are settled 
 in Paris, near the Great House of the Grovels, now 
 inhabited by the Prince d Amboise and his charming princess 
 Theo, who dazzles Paris with her costumes and equipages. 
 
 Lafayette acted with western generosity, so soon as Jules 
 confided the situation to that impulsive kinsman. No ques 
 tion of money should stand between his little sister-in-law 
 and such an alliance. She was given the great house in the 
 
640 TRAJAN. 
 
 Rue de Roi Rome and a sixth interest in the Ivanhoe lode. 
 The prince also was made a partner in that mine of wealth 
 and elected on the Board of Directors to exploit it in Europe. 
 Theo s influence with the Bellechasse procured the prince 
 the proffer of the premiership in 1879, but the success of the 
 Republicans and the timidity of the marshal, warned him to 
 fly the failing cause of monarchy. Through Jules Carnot he 
 became the intimate of Gambetta, who proffered him the em 
 bassy to Russia, during his short lived ministry. 
 
 Theo, foreseeing Gambetta s brief tenure of power, pre 
 vailed upon him to refuse the distinction. He stood for one 
 of the royalist departments, where his family chateau stands, 
 and defeated the communist candidate in 1878, and is 
 regarded as the future premier, whenever the Count de Paris 
 comes to the throne. La Baronne lives in her chalet at 
 Meaux, where the honest Amanda often remains weeks at a 
 time with her little boy Antoine, very sad and tearful, 
 because the big Antoine passes all his time with opera 
 dancers or in the clubs, scattering the treasures of 
 Yahoo Gulch. The dowager consoles the poor foreign wife 
 in French fashion, and the sore heart of Amanda settles 
 itself on her little boy. Jules has become an under secre 
 tary of State and is thought to be growing rich. He is still 
 the favored in royalist as well as Republican salons, and it 
 is rumored he is to marry the rich Miss de la Fleche, who 
 has become reconciled to her ancient friend the Princess 
 d Amboise. 
 
 But it is of the little commune on the banks of the 
 Hudson that Kate loves to talk. Within a few hours of 
 New York the Ardens and Grays live in villa-like edifices, 
 which all who pass stop to admire. They were devised by 
 Trajan and executed by one of his old camarades in the 
 Beaux Arts. In Trajan s Villa, where Bella now Bella 
 Arden sometimes comes with the bonne and little Edith, 
 her daughter, there is a wonderful attic studio, so like the 
 Rue Dragon, that if it were not for the little boys and girls 
 
VIA ALLEGXO. 641 
 
 that share it as a playroom with Trip and Betty, you would 
 swear it was honest Madame Agay s cinquicme. When Bella 
 brings little Edith, Mistress Edith Gray compares Elliot s 
 first born with Trajan s black-eyed boy, and the two mothers 
 make their plans and tell how the baby Edith and baby 
 Trajan are to marry as their fathers did before them ! 
 
 Philip and his little boy Amedee abide in the pretty cot 
 tage you see in the Arden grounds. Madame Blaye is the 
 housekeeper and Kate is its mistress, devoting herself to erad 
 icating the seeds of idolatry from the young papist s mind, an 
 effort which, much to Philip s amusement, is not so success 
 ful as the descendant of Knox confidently imagines. For 
 Madame Blaye is as stout for mother church as Kate for the 
 conventicle, and the little Amedee passes many an hour with 
 the small Blayes in the seductive forms of the Roman, church 
 occasionally smuggled into the village chapel, when Kate 
 is off her guard. 
 
 Trajan has grown a little stouter and irremediably good 
 humored. In New York, one day, with Edith on his arm, 
 who should he come upon in the Central Park art -gallery 
 but the Princess Theo and her noble spouse. Theo saw 
 them first, and carrying the prince with her, came up 
 with gay recognition. The gentle Edith shrank away 
 trembling, but Trajan with humorous composure cordially 
 shook the proffered hand of the princess and her husband s. 
 They were on a tour through the country, to wind up with a 
 visit at Napoleonville, where the prince was to examine his 
 Gulch interests, she informed them in a rattling humorous 
 way that struck Mistress Edith dumb. The prince too was 
 affably cordial and declared to Trajan that he thought of 
 demanding a commission on his pictures in Paris, as Theo 
 had made him the vogue by giving the portrait he had 
 painted of her the place of honor in the palace on the Rue 
 de Roi de Rome, and talked of his genius so incessantly 
 that every one who bought pictures must possess a Gray in 
 the collection ! When the prince mentioned " commission," 
 
642 TRAJAN. 
 
 Theo blushed divinely, and the party separated with the 
 politest possible an revoir, Theo insisting that Edith must 
 call on her at the " Clarendon." 
 
 What more is there to tell ? If you were to ask Kate, she 
 would have as much again as you have read in these pages. 
 But the trials and uncertainties are done, and who has 
 patience to follow the tiresome felicities of Darby and Joan ? 
 Trajan is still a believer in the commune creed and is 
 engaged in a great work which is to open the eyes of the 
 world on that much abused system but Elliot laughs slyly 
 when he is asked to listen to the tumultuous rhetoric of the 
 enthusiast as he elaborates each chapter, and the last heard 
 of the manuscript, the first volume was encountering polite 
 refusals and inappreciation from those hard-hearted allies of 
 oligarchic greed, the publishers. 
 
 And so the curtain doesn t go down, but the scene fades 
 with the faint odor of orange blossoms and the echo of 
 the marriage bells that chime away the vicissitudes of the 
 strangely united destinies ; and as the shadowy forms that 
 have piped and played, danced and caroled, sighed and 
 wept, sinned and repented, fade into the busy world of 
 fancy, the author bids them a regretful good-by; he bespeaks 
 them indulgence from the gentle reader, whose patience they 
 have tried : those who have condemned as well as those who 
 have applauded and approved, their waywardness, weakness, 
 their virtues and constancy, and with this prayer he bids the 
 kind reader an affectionate farewell. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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