Victorin

“ Victoria—you are to be pitied—I pity you. Victorin loved you—he was a worthy son—I also loved him. My beard has turned grey, and yet I found a delight in serving under that young man. He was the first captain of our age. None of us can replace him. He had but two vices—the taste for wine and, above all, the pest of profligacy. I often quarreled with him on that. I was right, you see it! Well, we must not quarrel with him now. He had a brave heart. I can say no more to you, Victoria. And what would it boot? A mother can not be consoled. ”

“ I, like so many other poor waifs, are good only to obey, to fight and to be killed. We are only meat for battles," replied the old blacksmith with an envious look and his lips slightly losing their color.
"Captain," I said to Marion, "I presume you wish to see Victorin and his mother?"
"Yes, I have a report to render to Victorin of a journey that my friend and I have just made."
"I followed you as a soldier," Eustace said; "the name of an obscure horseman must not be remembered before Victoria the Great." ”

“ Hardly a day goes by without Victoria's calling upon you. These are favors that many should envy."
"Have I ever sought to profit by these favors, Sampso? Have I not remained a simple horseman, ever declining to be an officer, and requesting the only favor of fighting at Victorin's side?"
"Whose life you have already twice saved when he was at the point of perishing under the blows of those barbarous Franks!"
"I did but my duty as a soldier and a Gaul. Should I not sacrifice my life to that of a man who is so necessary to our country?" ”

“ Victorin was thus engaged in unfolding to me his ably conceived plan of battle, when we saw several of the scouts, who were sent forward, running back to us at full gallop. One of these reined in his foaming steed and cried out to Victorin:
"The army of the Franks is advancing. It can be seen at a distance from the top of the hills. Their scouts approached the defile; they were all shot down by the arrows of our archers who were ambushed behind the shrubs. ”

“ You have no idea what diabolical snares lie hidden under those hoods—my friend Eustace would surely succumb and wind up by being hooded himself—but I would flee!"
"'My father is an old soldier,' the woman said to me," proceeded Victorin with his narrative. "'One of his old wounds opened, he is dying; he knew you as a child, Victorin; he does not wish to die without once more pressing the hand of his young general ”

“ Saying this she clasped her son passionately to her heart.
"Infamous calumnies against Victorin have floated about the camp," the old captain proceeded to say. "We gave them no credence; but, less enlightened than ourselves, the soldier is ever hasty in censure as he is in praise. Follow the instructions of your august mother, Victorin, and no longer offer a handle to calumny. We shall wait for your orders on the parade ground; rely upon us, as we do upon you." ”

“ Victorinus, a man of entire affection, gentleness, sincerity, and blamelessness, [5] a man, further, conspicuous for the noblest accomplishments to be thus afflicted by his son's most untimely death, was this in any sense just or fair? If Providence does govern the world, was this too rightly provided? If all human things are determined by Destiny, ought this to have been determined by Destiny? ”

“ Victorine was then fifteen, and mistress of twenty louis in gold; but on account of her heresy, Monsieur le Prieur took it from her for the benefit of the church, and to expend in masses for Pauline and Basil’s souls, but he allows us to keep Victorine with us, at least till she is one and twenty, for he hopes a constant communion with Catholics will, in the end, work her conversion. ”

“ Wenceslas is my poet, and I love him as if he were my own child, and make no secret of it. Bah! your virtuous women see evil everywhere and in everything. Bless me, could they not sit by a man without doing wrong? I am a spoilt child who has had all it ever wanted, and bonbons no longer excite me.—Poor things! I am sorry for them!
"And who slandered me so?"
"Victorin," said Crevel.
"Then why did you not stop his mouth, the odious legal macaw! with the story of the two hundred thousand francs and his mamma?"
"Oh, the Baroness had fled," said Lisbeth. ”

“ Victorine is gentle and amiable; she will soon twist her father round her fingers, and set his head spinning like a German top by plying him with sentiment! She will be too much touched by your devotion to forget you; you will marry her. ”

“ Not quite fathoming the drift of Victorine's meditations we suggest that it is perhaps a Belgian refugee sparrow, at which her amusement is so intense that she is obliged to leave the room.
Sometimes her hancy takes great flights, for she is very high-minded. Her weekly bath gives rise to much lofty philosophical reflection, and she has come to the firm conclusion that it is "mieux que manger." Also she has great taste, of which she occasionally gives us the benefit. She laughs scornfully at certain objets d'art and praises others. ”

“ The sight of Victorine riding familiarly, and with an evident joyous pride, by the side of one of the richest men in the country, and a young man at that,--and a young man, moreover, who looked and behaved as if he were in love with his companion,--how could the poor miller be expected to be cordial and unconstrained with such a sight before his eyes! ”

“ We do our best to allay Victorine's anxiety. She however is not at all convinced, and evidently reserves to herself full liberty of action to protect us from German espionage and the effects of our own guilelessness at a later date.
In the rare moments when not at work she is pensive, but her imagination is by no means at rest. ”

“ Victorine is really engaged! The day after the Ralli de Papier it rained again, and as we were sitting in the little salon after breakfast the old Baron was announced. He was dressed in a frock coat and a tall hat, just as if it was Paris and the height of the season. They made conversation for about ten minutes, and then he got up and, putting his heels together, he said he had come to request a private interview with Mme. la Comtesse Douairière de Croixmare, and Monsieur le Comte de Croixmare, son fils; upon which Victorine looked coy, and began scrabbling with her toes on the paquet. ”

“ Monsieur also has the eye straight. In effect the picture there that Monsieur designs is of a justness, but of a justness! One would say the place itself," leaning back and half closing her eyes. "In Belgium could it not be better done. No. It is I, Victorine, who say it. If Monseiur has the false digestion, by contrary it is evident that he has the head solid."
But Victoine has a fault dark and grievous in the British eye. She jibs at fresh air. ”

“ Victorine could have asked, had she thought it right, if it might not be this very heresy which made her beloved. She had been taught by her aunt Pauline to seek after peace, and to pursue it, for such is well-pleasing in the eyes of our God. And that person who strives not with his neighbour, who is content with his own situation, and willing to give way in what is right to others, p. 78will most probably, if he act consistently, be beloved by his friends and neighbours. ”

“ The Augustinian The Victorines. monastery of St Victor near Paris became the headquarters of mysticism during the 12th century. It had a wide influence in awakening popular piety, and the works that issued from it formed the textbooks of mystical and pietistic minds in the centuries that followed. Hugh's pupil, Richard of St Victor, declares, in opposition to dialectic scholasticism, that the objects of mystic contemplation are partly above reason, and partly, as in the intuition of the Trinity, contrary to reason. ”

“ And then, as may be imagined, great were the rejoicings at Prince Victor's prowess. 'It was a mere trifle!' remarked that valiant little gentleman modestly; 'when a man can shoot a mosquito with a shuttle, everything else is child's play.'
So he received half the kingdom, and ruled it with great dignity, refusing ever afterwards to fight, saying truly that kings never fought themselves, but paid others to fight for them.
Thus he lived in peace, and when he died every one said Valiant Vicky was the greatest hero the world had ever seen. ”

“ There was no reserve between these two--if, indeed, propinquity had not established complete freedom from what Victor termed gêne long ago--and she gazed up into his face with eyes transparent, shining, darkly blue as sapphires, eyes so brilliant that in admiring them he hardly noticed the coarse red and white grease paint which thickly coated her delicate skin, or the bistre rings around those beautiful orbs. "Victor! Speak! If you are not satisfied, I shall chuck the profession--dearly as I love my work, I couldn't stand it!" ”

“ Instantaneously the Asiatic disappeared, thrust back into its habitual latency within the prison of European: Prince Victor was as he had been, as always to the world, cool, composed, and crafty, master, never creature, of his emotions. ”

“ Then Victor awoke as out of a dream and out of life, and clasped the harmonious, fleeting airs to his languishing bosom, and, amidst the gushing tears which, like a rain-cloud, veiled from him the whole landscape, he cried out, beside himself: "Ah, Emanuel, come!—Ah, I thirst for thee—Float no more in sound, thou blessed one; take thy deposed human face, and appear to me, and slay me by a shudder, and keep me in thy arms!" ”

“ Victor found in him a man full of dignity, from whom business did not take away politeness, nor thinking wit; and whom a little irony and coldness only the more exalted, but who seemed to despise feeling, scholars, and mankind. Victor generally imagined to himself a minister—e. g. Pitt—as a Swiss glacier, on which the clouds and dew that nourish it freeze overhead, which oppresses the low places, and, in its alternation between melting and congealing, sends out great torrents down below, and out of whose clefts corpses are drifted. ”

“ While by that grave I sang "Abide with me,"
As on the night when Victor went to sea;
Ah, I was leaning then upon the breast
That five-and-twenty years has been at rest.
Oh, Victor! art thou gone so far away
That thou cans't hear no earth tone night or day?
Sometimes it seems as if thou wert not far,
Nearer and warmer than the nearest star.
How the wind moans--Ethel, my precious one,
Where shall we wander by to-morrow's sun?
Homeless and friendless in a stranger land,
Our Saviour help and aid; Thy mighty hand
Can save, Thine ear can list each bitter moan. ”

“ Prince Victor to the rescue!' so the valiant little weaver was ordered by the King to go out and destroy the invading army, after which he was to receive half the kingdom as a reward. Now Valiant Vicky, with all his boasting, was no fool, and he said to himself, 'This is a very different affair from the others. A man may kill a mosquito, an elephant, and a tiger; yet another man may kill him. And here is not one man, but thousands! No, no!—what is the use of half a kingdom if you haven't a head on your shoulders? ”

“ We will seat ourselves only among the joyous ones, and listen while they, during the afternoon, work away as portrait-painters, drapery-painters, and gallery-inspectors, at the picture of the beloved Briton. All remembrances are made into hopes, and Victor is to bring nothing with him that is changed except his stature. Flamin, wild as an English garden, but more fruitful, refreshed himself and others with his delineation of Victor's gentle truthfulness and honesty, and of his head, and praised even his poetic fire, which he generally did not rate very high. ”

“ The good youth often seeks, by acts of sacrifice, to reconcile his conscience again with his thoughts. With heart-beatings of enthusiasm he awaited the moment of solitude. A garden detaches and draws together people in the easiest manner, and only in such a place should one impart secrets; Victor could soon, in an arbor which wove itself on four chestnut-trees with its blooming vein-work nest-wise over their heads, embrace his father with trembling emotion, and speak and glow for his friend with tongue and heart. His Lordship's surprise was greater than his emotion. ”

“ In Spain, in Austria, best of all, in France—
Spurned on its horns or underneath its hooves,
When the spent monster goes upon its knees
To pad and pash the prostrate wretch—I, Victor,
Sole to have stood up against France—beat down
By inches, brayed to pieces finally
By some vast unimaginable charge,
A flying hell of horse and foot and guns
Over me, and all's lost, forever lost,
There's no more Victor when the world wakes up! ”

“ Victor welcomed him with the soft voice of a subdued heart, but he only half spoke either his thoughts or his words. Victor gazed deep down into the soul which mourned for friendship; for only a heart sees a heart; so only the great man sees great men, as one sees mountains only from mountains. ”

“ Wherever he might go, the world would go also, and the covert smile ... and the covert smile ... God, how apart from all mankind he seemed this night. But for Victor he would have sought the woods at once, facing the Iroquois fearlessly. He must remain, to bow his head before the glances of the curious, the head that once was held so high; accept rebuffs without murmur, stand aside, step down, and follow. If a man laughed at him, he must turn away: his sword could no longer protect him. How his lips thirsted for the wine-cup, for one mad night, and then ... ”