Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

“ This man has the soul greater than his vast body; we have discussed life, death, in short, the Infinite, we three, Jambon and Jacques and I. He has a father—both have fathers! it is the course of nature. The father of D'Arthenay here is a prince, a diamond of the old rock; ah! if our father of sainted memory could have known M. D'Arthenay père, Valerie, he would have known the brother of his soul, as their sons know each other. Not so, Jacques? But le père Bellefort, Valerie, he is gigantesque, like his son. ”

“ Mademoiselle Valerie cried out upon my cleverness. "But, you can then do anything you choose, monsieur?" she said. "To play the violin, to save a life, to mend a shoe,—do they teach all these things in your country? and to what wonderful school did you go?"
I said, to none more wonderful than a village school; and that this I had indeed learned well, but on the cobbler's bench. "Surely Yvon has told you, mademoiselle, of our good shoemaker, and how he taught me his trade, that I might practise it at times when there is no fiddling needed?" ”

“ I could never let my poor father hear me play; it was a knife in his heart even to see the Lady; and these hours on the beach were my comfort, and kept [27] the spirit alive in me. Looking out to sea, I could still feel my mother Marie beside me, still hear her voice singing, so gay, so sad,—singing all ways, as the wind blows. She had no voice like yours, Melody, my dear, but it was small and sweet as a bird's; sweet as a bird's! It was there, on the yellow sand beach, that I first met Father L'Homme-Dieu, the priest. ”

“ HERE ends, my dear child, the romance of your old friend's life; if by the word romance we may rightly understand that which, even if not lasting itself, throws a brightness over all that may come after it. I never saw that fair country of France again, and since then I have lived sixty years and more; but what I brought away with me that sorrowful night has sweetened all the years. I had the honour of loving as sweet a lady as ever stepped from heaven to earth; and I had the thought that, if right had permitted, and the world been other than it was, I could have won her. ”

“ Dancing, as I have pointed out to you many times, may be considered in two ways: first, as the mere fling of high spirits, young animals skipping and leaping, as kids in a meadow, and with no thought save to leap the highest, and prance the furthest; but second, and more truly, I must think, to show to advantage the grace (if any) and perfection of the human body, which we take to be the work of a divine hand, and the beauty of motion in accord with music. ”

“ And I trust to say nothing that you may not with propriety hear, my dear.
When I had been a month at Château Claire, then, a new thing began to come slowly upon me. From the first I had felt that this young lady was the fairest and the sweetest creature my eyes had seen; like a drop of morning dew on a rose, nothing less. I dwelt upon the grace of her motions, and the way the colour melted in her cheek, as I would dwell upon the fairest picture; and I listened to her voice because it was sweeter than my violin, or even the note of the hermit-thrush. ”

“ I learned a little more; but indeed, I should justly say that my lessons were begun by Yvon de Ste. Valerie. It was from him I learned, my dear, that nothing in this world of God's is dull or common, unless we bring dull hearts and dim eyes to look at it. It is the vision, the vision, that makes the life; that vision which you, my child, with your sightless eyes, have more clearly than almost any one I have known. ”

“ An old beau enough now, my little girl; eighty years old your Rosin will be, if he lives till next September. I took to playing the air whenever I entered a room; it made a little effect, a little stir,—I was young and foolish, and it took little to please me in those days. But I have always thought, and think still, that a man, as well as a woman, should make the best of the mortal part of him; and I do not know why we should not be thankful for a well-looking body as for a well-ordered mind. ”

“ She is light, young, and very graceful; beauty seems to flow from her face in a kind of dark brightness, if I may use such an expression; her eyes are soft and deep. I have seen no other eyes like my mother Marie's. She taps the violin with the bow; then she taps me under the chin.
"Dis 'Bon jour!' petit Jacques!" and I say "Bo' zour!" as well as I can, and duck my head, for a bow is expected of me. No bow, no music, and I am quivering with eagerness for the music. Now she [9] draws the bow across the strings, softly, smoothly,—ah, my dear, you have heard only me play, all your life ”

“ P'tit Jacques, thou hast not seen caps, because here they have not the understanding. But! white, like snow in ze sun; the muslin clear, you understand, and stiff that it cracks,—ah! of a beauty! and standing out like wings here, and here—you do not listen! you make not attention, bad children that you are! Go! I tell you no more!"
It was true, Melody, my dear, that Petie and I did not care so much about the descriptions of dress as if we had been little girls; my mother was never weary of telling about the caps and earrings; I think she often longed for them, poor little Mother Marie! ”

“ But no girl in the village could think herself for a moment the favoured maiden; for if one had the loveliest eyes in the world, the next had a cheek of roses and velvet, and the third walked like a goddess, and the fourth charmed his soul out of his body every time she opened her lips. And so it went on, till all understood it for play, and the pleasantest play they ever saw. But he vowed from the first that he would marry Abby Rock, and no other living woman. Abby always said yes, she would marry him the first Sunday that came in the middle of the week ”

“ One day, I remember, we talked of life, as young men love to talk. We said nothing that had not been said by young men since Abel's time, I do suppose, but it was all new to us; and indeed, my two companions had fresh ways of putting things that seemed to make them their own in a manner. Yvon [59] maintained that gaiety was the best that life had to give; that the butterfly being the type of the human soul, the nearer man could come to his prototype, the better for him and for all. ”

“ The world may be small and wretched, as some tell him, or great and golden, according to the speech of others; he believes neither one nor the other, he must see it with his own eyes. So this grew upon me, and I brooded over it, till my life was full of voices calling, and hands pointing across the sea, to the place which is Somewhere Else. I talked with Father L'Homme-Dieu, and he bade me go, and gave me his blessing; he had no doubt it was my pleasure, and might be my duty, in the way of making all that might be made of my life. I talked with Abby ”

“ But now came the tap of a stick on the stone, and Mme. de Lalange came hobbling out. "What is this?" she cried, seeing me standing so, pale, it may be, with the young lady holding my blackened hands still in hers.
"What is the meaning of this scene?"
"Its meaning?" cried Mlle. Valerie; and it was Yvon's self that flashed upon her aunt.
"The meaning is that this gentleman has saved my life. Yes, my aunt! Look as you please; if he had not been here, and a hero,—a hero,—I should be devoured by the flames. Look!" and she pointed to the fragments of muslin, which were floating off in black rags. ”

“ I have met with rare kindness; no man of my generation, I would wager, has the number of friends I can boast, and all kind, all hearty, all ready with a "welcome to Rosin the Beau." And now here, at your aunts' kind wish and your prayer, my dearest Melody, dear as any child of my own could be, I am come to spend [120] my last days under your roof; and what more could mortal man ask than this, I truly know not. My violin and your voice, Melody; they were made for each other; everybody says that, my dear, and neither you nor I would deny it. ”

“ If M. D'Arthenay will follow me into my salon, I will see to these injured hands."
How a cold touch can take the colour out of life. An instant before I was a hero, not in my own eyes, but surely in those tender blue ones that now shone through angry tears, and—I knew not what sweet folly was springing up in me while she held my hands in hers. Now, I was only a young man with dirty and blackened fingers, standing in a constrained position, and, I make no doubt, looking a great fool. The young lady vanished, and I followed madame into the little room. ”

“ Belfort."
"I want to know!" said Ham. "Darned pleased to meet you!" He laboured for a moment, casting a glance of appeal at the oxen, who showed no disposition to assist him; then added, "You're slim-appearin' for a Belfort; they run consid'able large in these parts."
"Truly, yes!" cried the marquis, laughing delightedly. "You desire to show the world that there are still giants. What pleasure, what rapture, to go through the crowd of small persons, as myself, as D'Arthenay here, and exhibit the person of Samson, of Goliath!" ”

“ I remember the day, Melody, when a young man said to me with feeling, "I cannot bear to see a man take off his hat to a woman. It makes me sick!" To-day, if a man, young or old, should fail in this common courtesy, it would be asked what cave of the woods he came from. ”

“ I am a plain farmer; my son has learned the [50] trade of shoemaking, though he also has some skill with the fiddle, I am told. Nothing compared to his mother, but still some skill."
Ste. Valerie looked from one of us to the other. "A farmer,—a shoemaker!" he said, slowly. "Strange country, this! And while your vieille noblesse make shoes and till the soil, who are these, monsieur, who live in some of the palaces that I have seen in your cities? In many, truly, persons of real nobility also, gentlemen, whether hunting of race or of Nature's own. ”

“ It was the same with the hills, which Yvon bade me see here and there; little risings, that would not check the breath in a running man. For all that, the country was a fine country, and I praised it honestly, though knowing in my heart that it was but a poor patch beside our own. I was thinking this, when the young lady turned to me, and asked, in her gracious way, would I be coming back, I and my people, to rebuild Château D'Arthenay? ”

“ I told her it was nothing, and less than nothing, that I had done, and I thought there had been far too much said about it already. I was deeply thankful [90] that no harm had come to Mlle. de Ste. Valerie, but I could claim no merit, beyond that of having my eyes open, and my wits about me.
She bowed in assent. "Your wits about you!" she said. "But that in itself is no small matter, M. D'Arthenay, I assure you. It is not every young man who can say as much. Your eyes open, and your wits about you? You are fortunate, believe me." ”

“ I was no longer alone; the world was full of new light, new interest. I felt that it was good to be alive; and when my companion began to sing in very lightness of heart, I joined in, and sang with right good will. ”

“ Such feelings as these, my dear, keep a man's heart set on high things, however lowly his lot may be.
I came back to my village. My own home was empty, but every house was open to me; and not a man or a woman there but offered me a home for as long as I would take it. My good friend Ham Belfort would have me come to be a son to him, he having no children. But my duty, as he clearly saw when I pointed it out, was to Abby Rock; and Abby and I were not to part for many years. Her health was never the same after my father's death ”

“ For myself, I am no noble, though there is good blood in my veins. I am a plain man, the son of a peasant. But God, madam, who sees your heart and mine, created, I make bold to remind you, both noble and peasant; and as that God is above us, you have done bitter wrong to an honest man. ”

“ I have told you a great deal about this good man, Melody. He came of old French stock, like ourselves,—like most of the people in our village; only his people had always been Catholics. His village, where he had a little wooden church, was ten or twelve miles from ours, but he was the only priest for twenty miles round, and he rode or walked long distances, visiting the scattered families that belonged to his following. He chanced to come to the beach one day when I was there, and stayed to hear me play. ”

“ When Yvon came rushing in a few minutes later,—he had heard the story from his sister, and was for falling on my neck, and calling me his brother, the saviour of his cherished sister,—I know not what wild nonsense,—Mme. de Lalange cut his expressions short. "M. le Marquis," she said, and she put a curious emphasis on the title, I thought; "M. le Marquis, it will be well, believe me, for you to leave this gentleman with me for a short time. He has suffered a shock, more violent than he yet realises. ”