Fidele

“ The snow sank under our feet.
"'My God!' shrieked Fidèle.
"I held her convulsively. It happened in an instant, before one could leap aside. The bed of snow on which we were standing broke down into the crevasse it had bridged, and let us through to the depths.
"Will you believe what follows? Pinch your nose and open your mouth. You shall take the whole draught at a breath. The ice at the point where we entered was five hundred feet thick; and we fell to the very bottom of it.
"Ha! ha! Is it difficult to swallow? But it is true—it is quite true. ”

“ Such as he is, faid I, dif- mounting, a prince gave him to me, and fuch as he is I now give him to you, as a proof that I am your friend, and that I fliould not grudge you a few paltry piafters, if I had not been under a vow of poverty ; money is of no kind of value to me, and confequently not carried a- bout with me." The horfe was gladly received, though, as I was going to Sennaar, where no horfes are kept, the compliment was a cheap one on my part.
" How could you, Fidele, fays the Moullah in great fur- prife, have it in your heart to torment fuch a man as this ? ”

“ Their wives, at starting, had given each a golden apple.42 They go far away; but they find nothing. Tired at last, they stop in a beautiful city. They take each of them a wife, and they live according to their fancy. When Fidel saw that his brothers-in-law did not arrive, he said to his wife that he must go off; perhaps he might be able better to find the waters which his father wanted. He goes off without saying anything to the king, and travels on, and on, and on. ”

“ But they wish to make trial of it directly; they bring an old blind dog, and immediately he grows young again. Judge how pleased they were with their water of power. They set off to the king, and this water makes him become very young and gives him sight. The king wishes to have great rejoicings, and invites all his friends in the neighbourhood. Fidel arrives at home, and says nothing to his wife. When he hears that the king is going to have rejoicings, he sends his wife to ask the king if he would not like them to go there too ”

“ As the king had given her no money, when Fidel’s hair grew she went from time to time to the goldsmiths, who said to her that they had not money enough belonging to them to pay for the gold that she brought them. And they lived there very happily. [116]
One day Fidel heard that the king was engaged in a great war, and he told his wife to go to her father and tell him that he too wished to go to this war. This young lady goes to tell her father her husband’s commission. Her father says to her:
“What is the use of a young man like that who has never killed anything but mole-crickets? ”

“ He was light-minded and happy. He thought that his shore self would hardly know this Dave Herrick who walked the floe with Fidelia Netley. The boy, who had played with her in the ice caves, would know him; this David Herrick was that boy who now knew Fidelia much better. They had talked together a thousand things; and with each, Fidelia had more delighted him.
She said nothing profound; that was it! She never even tried to; the idea of being profound could not occur to her. She thought and said wholly natural, agreeable things, not like any one else. ”

“ Here was the place where the students lived, Fidelia recognized—ten or twenty girls together in one house and as many men rooming in the next.
They would prove to have come from everywhere and they would be no ordinary people; for each lighted window here must represent a separate and definite will and ambition of some one—at least of a parent or a brother or sister or friend for each some one up there on the other side of every window blind; each glow suggested a self-denial, a sacrifice and a determination of the various sorts with which Fidelia had become familiar. ”

“ But the real interest centred in the marriage of Fidel and Juana, which took place at six o'clock the following evening. Every one, including the native element, repaired to the new chapel to attend the wedding. Uncle Lance and his sister had rivaled each other as to whether man or maid should have the better outfit. Fidel was physically far above the average of the natives, slightly bow-legged, stolid, and the coolest person in the church. The bride was in quite a flutter, but having been coached and rehearsed daily by her mistress, managed to get through the ordeal. ”

“ She goes and takes this old witch and has her burnt. She goes to look for Fidel in a little house which was at the bottom of the garden, and she sees his head bare.41 It was shining like the sun, and she entirely lost her own head for it, and she said to him, that he must marry her. As she left him no peace, her father said to her:
“If you will marry him, do so; but I will not give you anything. You must go and live in a corner of the mountain with your husband; there is a house there, and there you must stop. You may come only one day a week to see me.” ”

“ Ferdinand. As how, my lord? I pray you name the thing!
I would climb up an ice-glaz'd precipice
To pluck a weed you fancied.
Osorio (with embarrassment and hesitation) . Why—that—lady—
Ferdinand. 'Tis now three years, my lord! since last I saw you. 15
Have you a son, my lord?
Osorio. O miserable! [Aside.
Ferdinand! you are a man, and know this world.
[536] I told you what I wish'd—now for the truth!
She lov'd the man you kill'd!
Ferdinand (looking as suddenly alarmed) . You jest, my lord?
Osorio. And till his death is proved, she will not wed me. 20
Ferdinand. ”

“ Yet, with her helplessness, she found herself amazingly without fear of Fidelia now. What a strange discovery to find her fear of Fidelia gone; for you can not fear one who no longer can hurt you; and Fidelia had taken away from Alice all that any one could. She had taken David and ended the meetings at the campus edge; ended their glances at each other, their sharing of plans, hopes, dreams; she had taken away the twenty-second of June, the wedding day! What a surprise to feel no fear of Fidelia! ”

“ David said. "Just sun and water and things like that made her happy. Sarah," he said, "she'll be the same."
"Sarah!" Alice repeated. "She's no Sarah, David. She's Fidelia, Fidelia! Every time you look at her, every time you hear her voice, you'll think it, and so will I. She's Fidelia! We'll say it, and call her Fidelia from now on."
"Alice, can you bear to?"
"Bear it, my boy!—Fidelia, the only Fidelia who ever could take you away from me, is gone, David; and Fidelia who will hold us together is come."
He closed his wife in his arms.
"No wife in the world could love her as you, Alice." ”

“ It must surely be a brave world that has such people in it.'
The king of Naples was almost as much astonished at the beauty and excellent graces of the young Miranda, as his son had been. 'Who is this maid?' said he; 'she seems the goddess that has parted us, and brought us thus together.' 'No, sir,' answered Ferdinand, smiling to find his father had fallen into the same mistake that he had done when he first saw Miranda, 'she is a mortal but by immortal Providence she is mine; I chose her when I could not ask you, my father, for your consent, not thinking you were alive. ”

“ The reason that I love your brother Ferdinand is that he is the living reproduction of our ancestor, Henry of Navarre. The 'ultras' are scandalized at his romance with the English girl. Well, we must beautify our life with illusion or we should become stone. I have kept my heart in its place always, even though I have been a wretched invalid. Not that I have given myself up to material joys. We become divine through that exaltation evoked by the presence of woman. The Countess is the intermediary between soul and faith,—faith in the beautiful. ”

“ And the voice of the enchanted chasm told Fidella of Alois’ true faith, of the enchanter and the water of forgetfulness, and of the youth’s journey to the court of the Kingdom of the Fields.
“Ah, me! Is there no way in which the spell may be broken?” said Fidella.
“In the wood beyond the world,” answered the torrent, “under trees which are older than the stars, the fountain of memory pours its crystal stream. If the youth shall drink a golden goblet of this water, the chain of the spell will break.” ”

“ The one who was left alive takes a blade of grass and touches the dead and rekindles his life.44 Fidel gathers this grass, and goes [118] off to this old woman. The old woman gives him two bottles, telling him that the one is for giving sight to the blind, and the other for making old men young; that he must not sell these waters for money, but must make an exchange of them for two golden apples which his brothers-in-law have in this very city, and that it is to them that he must give this water. ”

“ Fidelia said, "besides what I do."
"Are you ashamed of what you think?"
"It's what I think," she replied and she made her book safe by raising herself slightly and thrusting it under her thigh and resting her leg upon it.
So she lost the pity she had roused in him. He felt himself defied and he said: "Everything must be pleasant and easy for a man and his wife in these days. If God did not ordain that the giving of life be wholly convenient and cause no interruption in pleasure, so much the worse for God or at least for the sacred function of giving life. ”

“ Fidelia grew uneasy under his peculiarly persistent observation; she saw him once speak to Dorothy Hess and ask a question and then peer at her again. When he vanished, she had the feeling that he was watching her from behind. ”

“ Ferdinand is all I have, for I have passed my thirtieth year, and I have sacrificed to him what I should have kept unsullied—the honor of an aged man. The field is clear for you, you may yet love some other man more ardently than you can love to-day—this is my experience. Pauline, child, give him up, and you will learn what a devoted slave you will have in me! You will have more than a mother, more than a friend, you will have the unstinted help of a soul that is lost! ”

“ Upon the furniture, upon the curtains, upon the carpet, everywhere one looked closely were proofs of repeated repair and care for cheap, outworn things.
Fidelia's eyes filled. She put down her packages and one of her hands sought David's. As he felt her clasp, he hardened his hand within hers to oppose her pity for his people.
"They don't care whether they have things or not," he whispered almost fiercely in his pride. ”

“ There had been a mistake years ago about Bolton, who had had no such life as Fidelia, yet who was alive when people said he was dead. There was a mistake; and when David drove to the door and came up from the car with a child of four years in his arms, Alice knew the mistake for what it was. Fidelia lived but she was a child again.
She had clear, white skin and dark, red hair and large brown eyes and red lips and a lovely, provoking nose like Fidelia's; and, her arm about David's neck, she clung as only a child of Fidelia's could. She was vivid and warm and she loved life. ”

“ He banishes his sons-in-law with his two daughters to the same desert place where Fidel formerly lived. And Fidel and his wife lived much richer than the king was. His precious head gave him this power; and as they lived well they died well too.
Laurentine.
We have another version almost identical with the above, except at the commencement. Ezkabi really has the scab. On his journey, after leaving his home, he pays the debts of a poor man whose corpse is being beaten in front of the church, and buries him. There is nothing about a white mare. An old woman is the good genius of the tale. ”

“ Now, cost what it may, I will go to-morrow to Sverkoff's house in order to ask after Fidel, and if I have luck, to get hold of all the letters which Meggy has written to her.
November 12th.—To-day about two o'clock in the afternoon I started in order, by some means or other, to see Fidel and question her.
I cannot stand this smell of Sauerkraut which assails one's olfactory nerves from all the shops in Citizen Street. There also exhales such an odour from under each house door, that one must hold one's nose and pass by quickly. ”

“ PRESIDENT. Ay, if I desire the presence of my son, I must command it— Ferdinand, I have observed you for some time past, and find no longer that open vivacity of youth which once so delighted me. An unusual sorrow broods upon your features; you shun your father; you shun society. For shame, Ferdinand! At your age a thousand irregularities are easier forgiven than one instant of idle melancholy. Leave this to me, my son! Leave the care of your future happiness to my direction, and study only to co-operate with my designs—come, Ferdinand, embrace me! ”

“ Equally free from the coarse infidelity which leaves the passions of the barbarian without a control, — and from the grovelling superstition of Ferdinand, who humbled himself to the dust before the Supreme Being, while he haughtily trampled on his fellow-creature — in the height of his success he was ever a man and a Christian — in the height of his devotion, a king and a hero. ”

“ My dear, your letter from Rome made my flesh creep. You are nothing but a pair of children. Felipe is either a dissembling diplomat or else his love for you is the love a man might have for a courtesan, on whom he squanders his all, knowing all the time that she is false to him. ”

“ At the conclusion of the service, every one congratulated the happy couple, the women and girls in tears, the sterner sex without demonstration of feeling. When we were outside the chapel, and waiting for our sweethearts to dry their tears and join us, Uncle Lance came swaggering' over to John Cotton and me, and, slapping us both on the back, said:—
"Boys, that rascal of a Fidel has a splendid nerve. Did you notice how he faced the guns without a tremor; never batted an eye but took his medicine like a little man. I hope both of you boys will show equally good nerve when your turn comes. ”