Remi

“ Remi is a masterpiece of the eleventh century, and was still, when last I saw it, a work of splendour and significance in spite of having suffered at the hands of French architects worse things than it is likely to have suffered from German gunners.
It is a mistake for the English upper classes to assure the world that they prize a work of art above a victory; the world knows better. Are not these the people who were telling us just now that this was no time for art? Is it seemly in them, is it prudent even, to revile their own class in Germany for caring as little about art as themselves? ”

“ Thus runs the legend of Saint Remi as it was told by churchmen. In those days the pious [Pg i.50] hermit Montan, who lived in the country of Laon, beheld a choir of angels and an assembly of saints; and he heard a voice full and sweet saying: "The Lord hath looked down upon the earth. That he might hear the groans of them that are in fetters: that he might release the children of the slain: that they may declare the name of the Lord in Sion: and his praise in Jerusalem. When the people assemble together, and kings to serve the Lord. ”

“ Perhaps he had persuaded himself that, if Rémi had at last found Odette in some café, where she was waiting for him still, then his night of misery was already obliterated by the realisation, begun already in his mind, of a night of joy, and that there was no need for him to hasten towards the attainment of a happiness already captured and held in a safe place, which would not escape his grasp again. ”

“ Remi rose at the same time, a Boche bayonet pressing against his stomach.
"When the German sentinel discovered that the 'man' confronting him was only a child, he threw back his head and laughed silently, his bulky form shaking with merriment. ”

“ The runabout had stopped before the piazza steps, but Lillian sat still a moment, frowning faintly.
“When I said ‘fine,’” she answered, “I didn’t mean fine finish, cultivation, which is a surface thing, but I meant fine fiber, which goes deep and counts in every way with everything. One judges the big things by the small ones,” she said, as Wallie handed her out, “and remembering mother, and the way we were brought up to feel and understand, I think you will presently agree with me that Miss Remi is hardly—fine.” ”

“ Remi; on the second, St. Remi, as a child, restores sight to Montanus and, as a man, exorcises the demons who had set fire to Rheims; on the third, the story of Job; on the fourth, the restoring to life of a young Toulouse girl, and the miracle of the cask filled with wine by St. Remi; on the fifth, Christ between two angels.
[44] LEFT-HAND DOOR OF THE NORTHERN TRANSEPT: THE LAST JUDGMENT
The dead rise from their graves. The Left-Hand Door of the Northern Transept
This door, which has long been walled up, is called The Doorway of the Last Judgment, on account of the carving on the tympanum. ”

“ RICHERUS, monk of St Remi at Reims, and a chronicler of the 10th century, son of Rodulf, a trusty councillor and captain of Louis IV. He studied at Reims under Gerbert, afterwards Pope Silvester II., who taught him mathematics, history, letters and eloquence. He was also well versed in the medical science of his time, and in 991 travelled to Chartres to consult the medical MSS. there. ”

“ I was so possessed by the fact that I was a foundling, that I thought that if I had to leave immediately it was because my master had told them about my birth.
Upon entering Mrs. Milligan's apartment I found Arthur in tears and his mother bending over him.
"You won't go, Remi! Oh, Remi, tell me you won't go," he sobbed.
I could not speak. Mrs. Milligan replied for me, telling Arthur that I had to do as I was told.
"Signor Vitalis would not consent to let us have you," said Mrs. Milligan in a voice so sad.
"He's a wicked man!" cried Arthur.
"No, he is not a wicked man," continued Mrs. ”

“ We do not know; and it is a mystery which will never be solved. The judges at Rouen thought they knew that she received letters from Saint Michael. [90] It is possible that her simplicity was sometimes taken advantage of. We have reason for believing that the march to Reims was not suggested to her in France; but there is no doubt that the Chancellor of the kingdom, Messire Regnault de Chartres, Archbishop of Reims, eagerly desired his restoration to the see of the Blessed Saint Remi and the enjoyment of his benefices. ”

“ Astra's light form being quickly lost behind the intervening foliage, Doctor Remy turned slowly and meditatively toward his office; which, inasmuch as it had been built for the use and behoof of the late Doctor Lyte, possessed its own door of convenient communication with the garden.
Given opportunity, social equality, and a fine, unremitting tact, and it would seem that any man can marry any woman, whose affections are free. Else, it would be hard to understand how Doctor Remy could have found his way into the heart of Astra Lyte ”

“ At all events, Doctor Remy is a wonderfully talented fellow. He seems to keep not only abreast of medical science, but in advance of it. That very suggestion of his, which proved most valuable to us, was mentioned in my last medical review, as the latest discovery at Paris. There is something about his bold, yet scientific mode of reasoning which reminds me strangely of an old fellow-student. But Doctor Remy, I hope, is a better fellow than he was. By the way," he added, turning to Bergan, "I came near forgetting that I have brought you a letter from him, as I judge from the handwriting." ”

“ Her new novel, ‘Count Reminy,’ is, perhaps, the brightest of her many works of fiction. It relates the story of a girl engaged to a man who cares only for her fortune; how she meets and falls in love with another man, and how her fiancé is mysteriously murdered. ”

“ At length I asked if he knew any thing of Remy.
"You may see him any day up the Champs Elysiens," said the abbé. "Ah, mon ami, there are many such. Poverty and shame may not come on him again; wealth may pamper him, and he may fatten on the world's smiles; but there is a time coming—it is coming, mon cher, when he will go away—where God judgeth, and not man."
Our dinner was ended. The abbé and myself took a voiture to go to Pere la Chaise. Just within the gateway, a little to the right of the carriage-track, were two tablets, side by side—one was older than the other. ”

“ Doctor Remy was cold, selfish, austere, without reverential sentiment, and, in matters of faith, an utter sceptic. But these traits need not be supposed to have exhibited themselves to Astra in their naked unloveliness. To her imagination, doubtless, they took the fairer form of a calm temperament, and great force and firmness of character, allied to a keen and critical intellect; which last must needs be allowed to take its own appropriate time and road to belief (except as it seemed willing to owe something to her loving guidance) . ”

“ But to you,—a body without a soul, an intellect without a heart, a will without a faith, a kind of human beast of prey, intent on nothing but the gratification of his own selfish ends,—to you I was never pledged. I would as soon have bound myself to a corpse, or a calculating machine."
"This is plain talk, Astra," said Dr. Remy, growing pale with anger and mortification. "If you were not a woman, it would be easier to answer it." ”

“ Saint Remy was brave—with the bravery of the head, if we may so express it, which, through anger or vanity, causes one to face a duel; but vile and corrupted, he had not that courage of the heart which triumphs over evil propensities, or which at least gives one the energy to escape infamy by a voluntary death.
Furious at the sovereign contempt of the duchess, thinking he saw a successor in the young duke, Saint Remy resolved to match the insolence of Clotilde, and, if it was necessary, to select a quarrel with Conrad. The duchess, irritated at the audacity of Florestan, did not look at him ”

“ And it must be confessed that all three of us let ourselves be captured; the same smile widens our features.
The door-bell rings.... Yes, it rang.
The triple peal sends our heads apart. Rémy rises, hostile and resigned. He is always the one to open the door.
Waiting in every circumstance, even when nothing is at stake, is painful. The spirit recoils and contracts, and space is left for thoughts of an inevitable misfortune and for the twinkling vision of the things which disappear. In a single instant life can completely change its aspect.... ”

“ As I go down the stairs the fidgety advice repeated a hundred times, which Rémy hurls at me over the banisters every Friday, descends upon my head. "Don't walk so fast, look where you're going." The last scraps of warning roll like billiard balls. Rémy, old friend, have no fear, go in again. I am carrying away an immense wonder. It is hurrying me along in its round. I want to dance, to cry.... ”

“ Griffon to the count with a triumphant air, "what do you think of my hospital?"
"In truth," answered Saint Rémy, "I do not know why I have yielded to your desire; nothing is more heart-rending than the aspect of these wards filled with sick. Since my entrance here my feelings quite overcome me."
"Bah! bah! in fifteen minutes you will think no more about it; you, who are a philosopher, will find ample matter for observation: and then it would have been a shame that you, one of my oldest friends, should not visit the theater of my labors—of my glory, that you should not see me at my work. ”

“ Lili, white as death, drew closer to him.
"My René, your heart has chosen," she murmured through her dry and quivering lips. "You cannot buy honour by a fraud."
René lifted his head and looked straight in the eyes of the man who held the scales of his fate, and could weigh out for his whole life's portion either fame and fortune or obscurity and famine.
"Sir," he said slowly, with a bitter tranquil smile about his month, "my garret is empty, but it is clean. ”

“ I watched René long and often. He was handsome, he suffered much; and when the night was far spent he would come to his hole in the gable and gaze with tender, dreaming eyes, my pale foliage to the face of Lili. I grew to care for him, and I disbelieved the prophecy of the vine; and I promised myself that one summer or another, near or far, the swallows, when they came from the tawny African world to build in the eaves of the city, would find their old friend flown and living no more in a garret, but in some art-palace where men knew his fame. ”

“ The Major raised his eyebrows, and leaning forward, fixed his eyes on Doctor Remy, as if he had found a new and interesting subject of study.
"Do you mean to say," he asked, gravely, "that you would rather have Carice without Bergan Hall than with it?"
"Decidedly," replied Doctor Remy. "I prefer an equal match to an unequal one. I prefer to be credited with honorable motives, rather than mercenary ones. I don't want to be a pensioner on my wife's bounty. It is doubtful if I could ever make up my mind to address the heiress of Bergan Hall. ”

“ At one moment, she seemed to behold them afar off, as it were, in a sphere of their own, whither she had neither the right nor the ability to follow them; at another, she felt herself standing between them, barring their way to a free and satisfactory interchange of thought and feeling; and again, she believed that Doctor Remy alone was responsible for her discomfort, interrupting, by his presence, the cordial flow of sympathy between Astra and herself. At any rate, it would be a relief to escape from so oppressive an atmosphere ”

“ Mr. Rémy yielded at last to the necessity of self-preservation, and permitted his wife to remove his frogged overcoat, and to unwind him from a system of silk wraps to which the Gordian knot was a slip-noose. This done, he sat down before the dressing-case, and Mme. Rémy, after tying a bib around his neck, proceeded to dress his hair and put brilliantine on his moustache. Her husband enlivened the operation by reading from the pinky paper. ”

“ Strangely enough, — and here I recognized either a wound in Dreeme’s life or a want in his character, — there was not one scene of love — that is, the love Cupid manages — in the collection. Not one scene where lovers, happy or hapless, figured. No pretty picture of consent and fondness. Not one of passion and fervor.
Now, a young man or a young maiden, in the early twenties, in whose mind love is not the primal thought, is a monstrosity, and must be studied and analyzed with a view to cure. ”

“ In my laboratory, at my task of splitting atoms and unbraiding gases, I learnt from the exquisite order and proportion that Nature never forgets in her combinations to require the same of men. I found it in Dreeme. His genius in art was not of the ill-regulated, splashy, blotchy, boisterous class. ”

“ Saint-Remy shuddered.
"For the one poor time we are going out together," continued the duke, "you might have done us the honour to wear your diamonds. The duchess's diamonds are particularly fine. Did you ever see them, Saint-Remy?"
"Yes, he knows them well enough!" said Clotilde; and then she added, "Your arm, Conrad."
M. de Lucenay followed the duchess with Saint-Remy, who could scarcely repress his anger. ”

“ And who can yet say whether it was well and wisely done?”
“Well and wisely!” said Churm. “You are saved, and the tempter is dead.”
“Ah!” Dreeme sighed, “what desolate days I passed in my prison in Chrysalis! I felt like one dead, as the world supposed me, — like one murdered, — one walled up in a living grave; and I gave myself no thought of ever emerging into life again. Why should I love daylight? What was there for me there? Only treachery. Who? Only traitors. I had no one in the world to trust. I dwelt alone with God.” ”