Part 6

Evening had scarcely arrived when the company returned to their homes; not dismissed by the impatience of the bridegroom, as wedding parties are sometimes broken up, but constrained solely by heavy sadness and forebodings of evil. Bertalda retired with her maidens, and the knight with his attendants, to undress; but there was no gay laughing company of bridesmaids and bridesmen at this mournful festival.

Bertalda wished to awake more cheerful thoughts: she ordered her maidens to spread before her a brilliant set of jewels, a present from Huldbrand, together with rich apparel and veils, that she might select from among them the brightest and most beautiful for her dress in the morning. The attendants rejoiced at this opportunity of pouring forth good wishes and promises of happiness to their young mistress, and failed not to extol the beauty of the bride with the most glowing eloquence. This went on for a long time, until Bertalda at last, looking in a mirror, said with a sigh:--

"Ah, but do you not see plainly how freckled I am growing? Look here on the side of my neck."

They looked at the place and found the freckles indeed, as their fair mistress had said; but they called them mere beauty-spots, the faintest touches of the sun, such as would only heighten the whiteness of her delicate complexion. Bertalda shook her head, and still viewed them as a blemish.

"And I could remove them," she said at last, sighing. "But the castle fountain is covered, from which I formerly used to have that precious water, so purifying to the skin. Oh, had I this evening only a single flask of it!"

"Is that all?" cried an alert waiting-maid, laughing as she glided out of the apartment.

"She will not be so foolish," said Bertalda, well pleased and surprised, "as to cause the stone cover of the fountain to be taken off this very evening?" That instant they heard the tread of men already passing along the court-yard, and could see from the window where the officious maiden was leading them directly up to the fountain, and that they carried levers and other instruments on their shoulders.

"It is certainly my will," said Bertalda with a smile, "if it does not take them too long." And pleased with the thought that a word from her was now sufficient to accomplish what had formerly been refused with a painful reproof, she looked down upon their operations in the bright moonlit castle court.

The men raised the enormous stone with an effort; some one of the number indeed would occasionally sigh, when he recollected that they were destroying the work of their former beloved mistress. Their labor, however, was much lighter than they had expected. It seemed as if some power from within the fountain itself aided them in raising the stone.

"It appears," said the workmen to one another in astonishment, "as if the confined water had become a springing fountain." And the stone rose more and more, and almost without the assistance of the workpeople, rolled slowly down upon the pavement with a hollow sound. But an appearance from the opening of the fountain filled them with awe, as it rose like a white column of water; at first they imagined it really to be a fountain, until they perceived the rising form to be a pale female, veiled in white. She wept bitterly, raised her hands above her head, wringing them sadly as with slow and solemn step she moved toward the castle. The servants shrank back, and fled from the spring, while the bride, pale and motionless with horror, stood with her maidens at the window. When the figure had now come close beneath their room, it looked up to them sobbing, and Bertalda thought she recognized through the veil the pale features of Undine. But the mourning form passed on, sad, reluctant, and lingering, as if going to the place of execution. Bertalda screamed to her maids to call the knight; not one of them dared to stir from her place; and even the bride herself became again mute, as if trembling at the sound of her own voice.

While they continued standing at the window, motionless as statues, the mysterious wanderer had entered the castle, ascended the well-known stairs, and traversed the well-known halls, in silent tears. Alas, how differently had she once passed through these rooms!

The knight had in the mean time dismissed his attendants. Half undressed and in deep dejection, he was standing before a large mirror; a wax taper burned dimly beside him. At this moment some one tapped at his door very, very softly. Undine had formerly tapped in this way, when she was playing some of her endearing wiles.

"It is all an illusion!" said he to himself. "I must to my nuptial bed."

"You must indeed, but to a cold one!" he heard a voice, choked with sobs, repeat from without; and then he saw in the mirror that the door of his room was slowly, slowly opened, and the white figure entered, and gently closed it behind her.

"They have opened the spring," said she in a low tone; "and now I am here, and you must die."

He felt in his failing breath that this must indeed be; but covering his eyes with his hands, he cried:--"Do not in my death-hour, do not make me mad with terror. If that veil conceals hideous features, do not lift it! Take my life, but let me not see you."

"Alas!" replied the pale figure, "will you not then look upon me once more? I am as fair now as when you wooed me on the island!"

"Oh, if it indeed were so," sighed Huldbrand, "and that I might die by a kiss from you!"

"Most willingly, my own love," said she. She threw back her veil; heavenly fair shone forth her pure countenance. Trembling with love and the awe of approaching death, the knight leant towards her. She kissed him with a holy kiss; but she relaxed not her hold, pressing him more closely in her arms, and weeping as if she would weep away her soul. Tears rushed into the knight's eyes, while a thrill both of bliss and agony shot through his heart, until he at last expired, sinking softly back from her fair arms upon the pillow of his couch a corpse.

"I have wept him to death!" said she to some domestics who met her in the ante-chamber; and passing through the terrified group, she went slowly out, and disappeared in the fountain.

SONG FROM 'MINSTREL LOVE'

Oh welcome, Sir Bolt, to me! And a welcome, Sir Arrow, to thee! But wherefore such pride In your swift airy ride? You're but splints of the ashen tree. When once on earth lying, There's an end of your flying! Lullaby! lullaby! lullaby! But we freshly will wing you And back again swing you, And teach you to wend To your Moorish friend.

Sir Bolt, you have oft been here; And Sir Arrow, you've often flown near; But still from pure haste All your courage would waste On the earth and the streamlet clear. What! over all leaping, In shame are you sleeping? Lullaby! lullaby! lullaby! Or if you smote one, 'Twas but darklingly done, As the grain that winds fling To the bird on the wing.

ANATOLE FRANCE

(1844-)

Anatole France, whose real name of Thibault is sunk in his literary signature, was born in Paris, April 16th, 1844. His father, a wealthy bookseller, seems to have been a thoughtful, meditative man, and his mother a woman of great refinement and tenderness. Their son shows the result of the double influence. Always fond of books, he early devoted himself to literary work, and made his debut as writer in 1868 in a biographical study of Alfred de Vigny. This was shortly followed by two volumes of poetry: 'Les Poemes Dores' (Golden Verses) and 'Les Noces Corintheennes' (Corinthian Revels). Since this work of his youth he has published at least twelve novels and romances, of which the most familiar are: 'Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard' (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard), 'Le Livre de Mon Ami' (My Friend's Book), 'Le Lys Rouge' (The Red Lily), and 'Les Desirs de Jean Servieu' (Jean Servieu's Wishes). Several volumes of essays, critical introductions to splendid editions of Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine, and Le Sage, of 'Manon Lescaut' and 'Paul and Virginia,' numberless studies of men and books for the reviews and journals,--these measure the tireless industry of an incessant worker. In 1876 M. France became an attache of the Library of the Senate. In December 1896 he was received as member of the French Academy, succeeding to the chair of Ferdinand de Lesseps, whose eulogy he pronounced with exquisite taste and grace.

Like Renan, whose disciple he is, this fine artist was formed in the clerical schools. His perfection of style, clear, distinguished, scintillating with wit and fancy, furnishes, as a distinguished French critic remarks, a strong contrast to the painful and heavy periods of the literary products of a State education. He is an enthusiastic humanist, a fervent Neo-Hellenist, delicately sensitive to the beauty of the antique, the magic of words, and the harmony of phrase.

Outside of France, his best known works are 'Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard' (crowned by the Academy) and 'Le Livre de Mon Ami.' The first of these expresses the author's Hellenism, sentiment, experience, love of form, and gentle pessimism. Into the character of Sylvestre Bonnard, that intelligent, contemplative, ironical, sweet-natured old philosopher, he has put most of himself. In 'Le Livre de Mon Ami' are reflected the childhood and youth of the author. It is a living book, made out of the impulses of the heart, holding the very essence of moral grace, written with exquisite irony absolutely free from bitterness.

It is to be regretted that in some of his later writings this charming writer has fallen short of the standard of these works, though the versatility of talent he displays is great and admirable. In 'Thais' he has painted the magnificent Alexandria of the Ptolemies; in 'Le Lys Rouge' the Florence of to-day. In 'La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque' (The Cook-Shop of the Queen Pedauque) and in 'Les Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard,' Gil Blas, Rabelais, Wilhelm Meister, and Montaigne seem to jostle each other. In 'Le Jardin d'Epicure' (The Garden of Epicurus) a modern Epicurus, discreet, indulgent, listless, listens to lively discussions between the shades of Plato, Origen, Augustine, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, while an Esquimaux refutes Bossuet, a Polynesian develops his theory of the soul, and Cicero and Cousin agree in their estimate of a future life.

In his own words, M. Anatole France has always been inclined to take life as a spectacle, offering no solution of its perplexities, proposing no remedies for its ills. His literary quality, as M. Jules Lemaitre observes, owes little or nothing to the spirit or literature of the North. His intelligence is the pure and extreme product of Greek and Latin tradition.

IN THE GARDENS

From 'The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard.' Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers

APRIL 16.

St. Droctoveus and the early abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres have been occupying me for the past forty years; but I do not know whether I shall be able to write their history before I go to join them. It is already quite a long time since I became an old man. One day last year, on the Pont des Arts, one of my fellow-members at the Institute was lamenting before me over the _ennui_ of becoming old.

"Still," Sainte-Beuve replied to him, "it is the only way that has yet been found of living a long time."

I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth. The trouble of it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him pass away--mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last we find that we have not loved,--we have only been embracing shadows. But how sweet some shadows are! If ever creature glided like a shadow through the life of a man, it was certainly that young girl whom I fell in love with when--incredible though it now seems--I was myself a youth.

A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula of imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned with time. It says:--"_Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre, may he die the last of his own people!_" In my capacity of archaeologist I have opened tombs and disturbed ashes, in order to collect the shreds of apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were mingled with those ashes. But I did it only through that scientific curiosity which does not exclude the feelings of reverence and of piety. May that malediction graven by some one of the first followers of the Apostles upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me! I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love.

But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man. Example proves it; and it is this which terrifies me. Am I sure that I have not myself already suffered this great loss? I should surely have felt it, but for the happy meeting which has rejuvenated me. Poets speak of the Fountain of Youth: it does exist; it gushes up from the earth at every step we take. And one passes by without drinking of it!

The young girl I loved, married of her own choice to a rival, passed, all gray-haired, into the eternal rest. I have found her daughter--so that my life, which before seemed to me without utility, now once more finds a purpose and a reason for being.

To-day I "take the sun," as they say in Provence; I take it on the terrace of the Luxembourg, at the foot of the statue of Marguerite de Navarre. It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine. I sit and dream. My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a bottle of beer. They are light, and their fizzing amuses me. I dream; such a pastime is certainly permissible to an old fellow who has published thirty volumes of texts, and contributed to the Journal des Savants for twenty-six years. I have the satisfaction of feeling that I performed my task as well as it was possible for me, and that I utilized to their fullest extent those mediocre faculties with which nature endowed me. My efforts were not all in vain, and I have contributed, in my own modest way, to that renaissance of historical labors which will remain the honor of this restless century. I shall certainly be counted among those ten or twelve who revealed to France her own literary antiquities. My publication of the poetical works of Gautier de Coincy inaugurated a judicious system and made a date. It is in the austere calm of old age that I decree to myself this deserved credit, and God, who sees my heart, knows whether pride or vanity have aught to do with this self-award of justice.

But I am tired; my eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an image of myself in those old men of Homer, whose weakness excluded them from the battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up their voices like crickets among the leaves.

So my thoughts were wandering, when three young men seated themselves near me. I do not know whether each one of them had come in three boats, like the monkey of La Fontaine, but the three certainly displayed themselves over the space of twelve chairs. I took pleasure in watching them, not because they had anything very extraordinary about them, but because I discerned in them that brave joyous manner which is natural to youth. They were from the schools. I was less assured of it by the books they were carrying than by the character of their physiognomy. For all who busy themselves with the things of the mind can be at once recognized by an indescribable something which is common to all of them. I am very fond of young people; and these pleased me, in spite of a certain provoking wild manner which recalled to me my own college days with marvelous vividness. But they did not wear velvet doublets and long hair, as we used to do; they did not walk about, as we used to do, with a death's-head; they did not cry out, as we used to do, "Hell and malediction!" They were quite properly dressed, and neither their costume nor their language had anything suggestive of the Middle Ages. I must also add that they paid considerable attention to the women passing on the terrace, and expressed their admiration of some of them in very animated language. But their reflections, even on this subject, were not of a character to oblige me to flee from my seat. Besides, so long as youth is studious, I think it has a right to its gayeties.

One of them having made some gallant pleasantry which I forget, the smallest and darkest of the three exclaimed, with a slight Gascon accent:--

"What a thing to say! Only physiologists like us have any right to occupy ourselves about living matter. As for you, Gelis, who only live in the past,--like all your fellow archivists and paleographers,--you will do better to confine yourself to those stone women over there, who are your contemporaries."

And he pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the terrace. This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know that the young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des Chartes. From the conversation which followed I was able to learn that his neighbor, blond and wan almost to diaphaneity, taciturn and sarcastic, was Boulmier, a fellow-student. Gelis and the future doctor (I hope he will become one some day) discoursed together with much fantasy and spirit. In the midst of the loftiest speculations they would play upon words, and make jokes after the peculiar fashion of really witty persons--that is to say, in a style of enormous absurdity. I need hardly say, I suppose, that they only deigned to maintain the most monstrous kind of paradoxes. They employed all their powers of imagination to make themselves as ludicrous as possible, and all their powers of reasoning to assert the contrary of common-sense. All the better for them! I do not like to see young folks too rational.

The student of medicine, after glancing at the title of the book that Boulmier held in his hand, exclaimed:--

"What!--you read Michelet--you?"

"Yes," replied Boulmier very gravely. "I like novels."

Gelis, who dominated both by his fine stature, imperious gestures, and ready wit, took the book, turned over a few pages rapidly, and said:--

"Michelet always had a great propensity to emotional tenderness. He wept sweet tears over Maillard, that nice little man who introduced _la paperasserie_ into the September massacres. But as emotional tenderness leads to fury, he becomes all at once furious against the victims. There is no help for it. It is the sentimentality of the age. The assassin is pitied, but the victim is considered quite unpardonable. In his later manner Michelet is more Michelet than ever before. There is no common-sense in it; it is simply wonderful! Neither art nor science, neither criticism nor narrative; only furies and fainting spells and epileptic fits over matters which he never deigns to explain. Childish outcries--_envies de femme grosse!_--and a style, my friends!--not a single finished phrase! It is astounding!"

And he handed the book back to his comrade. "This is amusing madness," I thought to myself, "and not quite so devoid of common-sense as it appears. This young man, though only playing, has sharply touched the defect in the cuirass."

But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into the old rut almost immediately afterwards.

After this judicious expression of opinion, the young physiologist went to join a party of passing friends. The two archivists, less well acquainted in the neighborhood of a garden so far from the Rue Paradis-aux-Marais, remained together, and began to chat about their studies. Gelis, who had completed his third class-year, was preparing a thesis, on the subject of which he expatiated with youthful enthusiasm. Indeed, I thought the subject a very good one, particularly because I had recently thought myself called upon to treat a notable part of it. It was the 'Monasticum Gallicanum.' The young erudite (I give him the name as a presage) wants to describe all the engravings made about 1690 for the work which Dom Michel Germain would have had printed, but for the one irremediable hindrance which is rarely foreseen and never avoided. Dom Michel Germain left his manuscript complete, however, and in good order when he died. Shall I be able to do as much with mine?--but that is not the present question. So far as I am able to understand, M. Gelis intends to devote a brief archaeological notice to each of the abbeys pictured by the humble engravers of Dom Michel Germain.

His friend asked him whether he was acquainted with all the manuscripts and printed documents relating to the subject. It was then that I pricked up my ears. They spoke at first of original sources; and I must confess they did so in a satisfactory manner, despite their innumerable and detestable puns. Then they began to speak about contemporary studies on the subject.

"Have you read," asked Boulmier, "the notice of Courajod?"

"Good!" I thought to myself.

"Yes," replied Gelis; "it is accurate."

"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the article by Tamisey de Larroque in the Revue des Questions Historiques?"

"Good!" I thought to myself, for the second time.

"Yes," replied Gelis, "it is full of things...."

"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the 'Tableau des Abbayes Benedictines en 1600,' by Sylvestre Bonnard?"

"Good!" I said to myself, for the third time.

"_Ma foi!_ no!" replied Gelis. "Bonnard is an idiot!"

Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of getting the rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence of those two young fellows!

"Well! well!" I said to myself as I got up. "Let this prattling fledgeling write his thesis, and sustain it! He will find my colleague Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to show him what an ignoramus he is. I consider him neither more nor less than a rascal; and really, now that I come to think of it, what he said about Michelet awhile ago was quite insufferable, outrageous! To talk in that way about an old master replete with genius! It was simply abominable!"

CHILD-LIFE

From 'The Book of My Friend'

Everything in immortal nature is a miracle to the little child.

I was happy. A thousand things at once familiar and mysterious filled my imagination, a thousand things which were nothing in themselves, but which made my life. It was very small, that life of mine; but it was a life--which is to say, the centre of all things, the kernel of the world. Do not smile at what I say,--or smile only in sympathy, and reflect: whoever lives, be it only a dog, is at the centre of all things.

Deciding to be a hermit and a saint, and to resign the good things of this world, I threw my toys out of the window.

"The child is a fool!" cried my father, closing the window. I felt anger and shame at hearing myself thus judged. But immediately I considered that my father, not being so holy as I, could never share with me the glory of the blessed, and this thought was for me a great consolation.