Chapter IX: Part 9

"I had no small difficulty in allaying the excitement of my dear better-half; she was generally patience and self-abnegation itself, but there is one point on which women are not to be trifled with, which makes hyenas of them, as Schiller says, and I inwardly called myself a confounded ass for having displayed my aesthetic enthusiasm for the beautiful girl in so wrong a quarter.

"Of course I took good care not to revert to the dangerous subject, but remained at home the whole of the next day, and devoted myself to painting an old oak-forest, as if the riven and rugged bark of the secular trees was far more bewitching than the smoothest satin-skin of a maiden of twenty, and a gnarled oak-branch more ensnaring than the exquisite little Venus-like nose of our poor persecuted beauty.

"The next day I even accomplished a greater triumph over myself, in that I withstood the temptation of looking in--quite accidentally, of course--at Van Kuylen's studio, there to play the part of comforter to a distressed child of humanity. I was certainly a little absent-minded all the afternoon, and as we walked to Nymphenburg, our children pushed along in the perambulator by the maid, failed to get up any very animated conversation. I apologised somewhat lamely for it, on the plea that I was studying atmospheric effects, though indeed there was nothing very noticeable in the sky. But my wife found it much pleasanter than if I had indulged my bad habit of too earnestly studying the faces of the girls and women we passed. There is indisputably about the sex this one weakness, that they have themselves no conception of a purely artistic standpoint, and therefore never allow for it in others.

"At last after four or five days, I found it intolerable to my manly self-respect, thus suddenly to withdraw from my worthy Dutchman, merely because he was in my wife's bad books. Consequently, after washing my brushes, I set out just about twilight, when I knew that though he could paint no longer, he was sure to be at home; and in this was most perfectly justified in my own eyes, since I could not possibly be expecting to find the fair Kate there, but only my small and unjustly calumniated friend.

"And to be sure I saw from a distance the shining of his lamp through the window: nevertheless I had to be told by the old servant that her master was gone out. Neither did I fare any better on the following day when I knocked at his studio during his hours of work. I called out my name as loud as I could, but he wouldn't open. When I enquired from the old servant whether he was occupied with a model, she shook her head, and shrugged her shoulders; then tapping her forehead with a very significant gesture, she sighed and said, 'Things had not been right with the good gentleman for some days past; he ate and drank nothing to speak of, walked up and down his bed-room half the night, and spoke to no one.' I asked whether the young lady who was with him on Whit Monday had been there since. The answer was that she had not, but that he still went on painting her, out of his head, and the good woman herself had already thought that love might have something to do with her master's silence and absence of mind.

"The truth flashed in upon me too plainly, and I tacitly reproached myself with having poured oil on the flame by speaking of his attachment to the lovely being as something quite reasonable and by no means hopeless. Truly, if we always reflected the serious mischief our jesting words might make, we should be at least as cautious in uttering them, as we are in ascertaining upon what we are about to throw the burning end of our cigar.

"Meanwhile there was nothing to be done. I knew my eccentric Mynheer Jan too well. If he had taken it into his head to eat a whole Edam cheese for his breakfast, no one could have dissuaded him. I made two other attempts to get at him, but in vain; and one evening when I accidentally met him by the 'Aukirche'--we had almost run up against each other--he was off like a shot, and all my calling, and scolding, and running after him did no good; he _would_ not have anything to do with me.

"By-and-bye I came to take the matter more quietly, and to say to myself, 'If he can do without thee, thou canst get on without him.' This mood of mine won me approving looks from my dear wife. I willingly allowed her the triumph--of which, by-the-way, she did not boast ungenerously--of believing that her remonstrances had weaned me from that soul-destroyer, Jan, and brought me back to the paths of virtue and landscape-painting. When my oak forest was done, we broke up our tent in the town, to pitch it, as we annually did, in the mountains. I wrote a kindly note to wish my friend good-bye, but got no answer in return. And so most of the summer passed away without my knowing whether he were dead or alive. The fair Kate seemed to have been swallowed up by an earthquake. Of all my friends and colleagues, who were generally not long in tracking out anything rare, none had discovered the slightest trace of our poor wonder of the world.

"When, however, the middle of September came, and I had got a little tired of painting studies, and perhaps, also, of the monotonous fare of our country abode, and began to long for a return to the amenities of town life, I became conscious of a lively desire to know what had become of my Dutchman and his beauty. My first walk in Munich was to his studio, where I found the nest empty indeed, but left upon his little slate my name and a hearty greeting. After that I went with my wife to the exhibition, for where one has been so long face to face with nature, it is a pleasure to see how art has been getting on in the meantime. But what was my amazement, when the first picture my eyes fell upon, was nothing else than an unmistakable genuine Van Kuylen, in which his unfortunate studies of Kate were turned to account in his well-known manner, and certainly so questionably, that I at first pretended not to notice it, in order to get my wife safely past. But she with her lynx-eyes instantly made out the whole story.

"'But do look,' she said, in a tolerably calm voice, in which, however, I could detect a satirical tone; 'here is a picture by your Dutch painter of holy subjects, and on a larger scale than any we have seen before. I must say, if the subject were not so objectionable, it would go far to reconcile me to him. It seems to me that he has made great progress: one might almost call this picture beautiful; not only the colouring, but the whole composition has something grandiose, historical as you call it, a style--' (You may see that the little woman had not consorted with artists for the last six years for nothing, and could deliver her art-criticisms as confidently as any newspaper writer, only rather more intelligently.) 'But I believe,' she continued, 'that the Bathsheba who is there undressing to take a bath in a very shallow reservoir, is your marvellous creature from the Rhine. At all events, she does not look like any of the other studies in the room, and the little King David who peeps from an upper window, and naturally shows us the beautiful cheese-coloured face of the painter, looks at the lady with a genuine artist's eye, such as I have seen in other people's heads when staring under the bonnets of pretty girls,' (with that, a side glance at her faithful husband.) 'Well! I must say she is not bad-looking, if he has not idealised his model too much; but was I not right to refuse to take that persecuted innocence into our house? A pretty snake, indeed, I should have warmed in my breast! _She_ helpless! I think one who lets herself be painted thus, knows very well how to help herself. And really I do not know which I ought to wonder at most, at my good unsuspicious husband, who was so easily taken in by an experienced adventuress, or, if indeed he were not so entirely harmless in the matter, at his sanguine hope of humbugging me. At all events I am very glad that things have taken this turn.'

"After this attack and these imputations clothed in the most discreet and proper language, to which I had not so much as a word to answer, my domestic guardian angel drew me hastily away, as if fearing that dangerous person might even in her picture exercise some witchcraft over me. And really there was nothing out of the way in the idea, for all that my eccentric friend possessed of taste and love of beauty, had been expended on the figure of the young woman, who, already undraped to the hips, sat on a low stool in the act of taking off her little shoe. While so doing she turned to the left the well-remembered profile, which was drawn with the tenderest contour, not a single feature altered, and a striking likeness; her hair, which seemed to have been just loosened, fell in bewitching confusion over her lustrous neck. Her back and arms were so beautifully drawn, that I knew not how to give the good 'genre' painter credit for them. But what specially attracted me was the sad impassive expression with which the fair being bent her head, and cast her long-lashed eyes on the ground. King David up there in his balcony did not appear to me at that moment to be such a great sinner after all; or at least the extenuating circumstances under which that abominable letter anent Uriah was written, came before me more impressively than they had ever done in the presence of any painting of the subject before.

"I confess that I spent the rest of the day in a somewhat perturbed mood; my old creed, namely, that women _were_ women, was once more confirmed, and the apparent exception turned out to be an illusion. Whether it were through vanity, or distress, or mere apathy, the beautiful girl had not maintained her inviolability. But although it is very pleasant to be proved right, and though I ought, besides, to have rejoiced that the poor _innamorato_ should in this not unusual way be healed of his madness, and probably at this moment happily betrothed, if not already a husband, there nevertheless lurked a certain uncomfortable feeling in my mind, and I caught myself involuntarily shaking my head as though there were something not quite right about it. My quick-witted wife seemed to discern what was going on within me, but as though the subject of my musings were too low and common to bear discussion, she never referred to the picture, and treated me with a gentleness and consideration befitting a penitent; in the spirit, in short, of the beautiful axiom, 'If a man have fallen, let love bring him back to duty.'

"On the following morning I was anxious to go to work, with fresh energies, at a new picture which I had already mentally composed; but I discovered that there was something wrong with me--there was still that story to unravel. What I should have liked best would have been to have gone at once to Mynheer Jan, and heard the truth, but he never got up before ten o'clock in the morning; so I lounged off again to the exhibition, that I might study the picture I had too hurriedly looked at the previous day, and was not a little annoyed at being reminded by the closed door that it was Saturday, the day when the pictures are hung and the public excluded. The official told me that Herr van Kuylen's picture had been taken back to his studio in the course of the previous evening.

"To while away the hours till ten, I turned off through the arcades, and betook myself to the English garden, where I never found time long. It is so celebrated that I need not praise it; but I venture to say there are not many, even among our good old Munich inhabitants, who know it at the time of its very greatest beauty, and that is early on an autumn, or late-summer morning, when it is as solemn and deserted as a primeval forest, and you can wander along the lofty avenues of shade without meeting a human creature. The gold-daisied meadows are luxuriant in the sun, the trees have lost none of their gorgeous foliage, the sun-light falls, I might say, in _pasto_ on the mirror-like ponds, and the magical dreamy silence thrills with the quiet rushing of the Isar, and the light and noiseless hopping of birds and squirrels from branch to branch. There was no one to be seen on the lonely benches, unless, perhaps, a student preparing for his examination, or some poor poet meditating his love-songs. As to my colleagues the landscape painters, I have never met one of them here.

"Accordingly as I said, I was lounging on this particular morning in the well-known paths, but not in a particularly good mood for making studies, for Van Kuylen's picture, and what could have happened to enable him to paint it, was constantly running in my head. When I had dreamingly sauntered on to the vicinity of the famous waterfall, which the grateful inhabitants prepared at so much expense as a surprise for King Ludwig, I saw a lady on the bench upon the little hill overlooking it, sitting motionless, and having nothing about her to excite my interest, till all at once it struck me that she had a black veil down. I thought, however, 'she has some reason for not wishing to be recognized except by the one for whom she is waiting, and I will pass quickly by,' when a strange impulse led me to turn round and give her another look. The veiled figure made a little start, as though it recognized me, but the next moment sat as motionless as before. But there was a something in the turn of the head which seemed to me so familiar, that I involuntarily turned back a step or two, and--'Good Heavens! It is you, Miss Kate,' I cried, 'and what brings you here?' and I held out my hand in cordial greeting. But she did not take it, and seemed on the point of running off. 'Stop,' said I, 'I have not bargained for this,' and in a friendly way I detained her. 'One is not to fly from an old friend in this manner, but to tell him where one has been for so many months past.' Meanwhile some uncomfortable terror was creeping over me, partly by reason of her strange silence and her looking about her as if for a way of escape, and partly because I had seen her hide a bottle under her shawl. It was, therefore, so plainly my duty not to leave her, that even my wife must have allowed it.

"'I shall not go away, Miss Kate,' I began, 'till you restore me a little of that confidence you showed at our first interview. You know I have only friendly intentions. You have something on your mind; it is vain to deny it; and I believe there is no one who can be so unselfish a confidant and adviser as I. Come, my dear young lady, let us seat ourselves on this bench. And now tell me why you seemed so shocked at seeing me again, and what sort of a cordial you are carrying there, and hiding from me. Fie, fie, Miss Kate, are you going to take to drinking secretly in your early youth?'

"She made no reply, but allowed herself to be led back to the bench, where I seated myself beside her.

"In order to give her time to compose herself, I began to talk of quite indifferent subjects: of the weather, and how beautiful it was here by the waterfall, and of how I had spent my summer, purposely dwelling a good deal upon my wife and children, as it always makes a good impression when doctors and spiritual pastors are affectionate husbands and parents.

"She seemed to be deaf to everything. There was no help for it, then, I must take the bull by the horns.

"'Miss Kate,' I said, 'is it long since you have seen Herr van Kuylen? My first expedition yesterday was to his house, but as I found no one at home--'

"She started at the sound of his name. Aha! I thought, there is something wrong here.

"'He must have been very industrious these last months,' I continued, as unconcernedly as I could; 'I myself have only seen one picture of his in the exhibition, but--'

"No sooner were the words spoken than from beneath the veil of the silent girl beside me, there burst such heart-rending sobs that I jumped up in horror.

"'For God's sake!' I cried, 'what is the matter with you? Here is a secret that will break your heart if you don't give it words. Tell me--explain to me--'

"'Let me go,' she cried out passionately, and again tried to make her escape. 'I am so unhappy that nobody can help me, and even if you do really wish me well--still it is too late. Nothing remains for me now but to--'

"Die--she would have said, but her sobs choked her. Meanwhile I had availed myself of the opportunity to get hold of the bottle, which she had put down on the bench beside her. With one quick gesture I at once hurled it into the little cascade below us.

"'So then,' said I, 'that was it! You are a little fury, Kate, and in your present heroic frame of mind, you were on the point of drinking off that little bottle, and making me your executor!'

"She shook her head. 'You are mistaken,' she said, 'it was not poison, it was only common _aquafortis_, not intended for internal use. If you must know everything, I was only going to wash my face with it.'

"'Kate!' I cried in horror. 'Are you mad?'

"'Not at all,' she gravely replied. 'The expedient would be rather rough, but efficient. I should then get rid of this accursed face which has been the cause of all my misery, and now, too, at length--of my shame.'

"These last words were scarcely audible, her face being hidden in her hands. I misunderstood their purport, and consequently did not at once know what to reply.

"It was she who solved my perplexity.

"She suddenly left off sobbing, and looked me full in the face with a singularly resolute expression.

"I could therefore contemplate her at my leisure, and found that if possible she was more beautiful than ever, her features still more delicate and refined, the tears on her fair cheeks--altogether she was the most enchanting and touching spectacle that a man could behold.

"'You think a good deal of what you have done,' she said in her quietest tones. 'However if it is not in this hour it will be in some other; carried out my purpose will surely be, for I am sick of life. If you knew all you would certainly not blame me, but in the main you do know; you have been yourself at the exhibition, you have there seen how a wicked and cruel-hearted man has dared to behave to a poor, virtuous, unhappy girl who would have nothing to say to him.'

"'What!' I cried, and the solution of the mystery flashed across me; 'he has then--you have not sat to him once for it?'

"'I!' she cried, with all the offended dignity of a little queen. 'I do not so much as know what it looks like. I have only been told of it by my landlady, who has not herself seen it, but an officer, to whom she carried back a uniform yesterday evening, said to her: "Your lodger, the pretty girl, who is so vastly coy whenever one comes to propose anything to her, and always locks herself up, does not seem to be so inaccessible to civilians; there she is at the exhibition, painted just as God made her; to be sure Dutch ducats are more valuable than our uniform buttons." At this the tailor's wife asked further questions, and told me again all that she learnt. She herself is quite furious, and never would have believed it of Herr van Kuylen. And all because I had refused to go again to his studio after he had come the third day of Whitsuntide to pay me a visit, when he knew I should be alone with the children, and made me an offer of marriage in French that Babette might not understand him; for which very reason I answered in German that I did not mean to marry, and that he knew very well why, and that now after his declaration I could no longer sit to him as he must perfectly understand. But he seemed to understand nothing, he was like a maniac, and I had great difficulty to get him out of the room at all, for he always broke out anew, now with jests, now with the most fearful adjurations. Since then I have never spoken a word to him, nor let him in when he knocked at my door, and in the street I always got out of the way so speedily, that he could have no hope at all. And then what does he go and do? Out of revenge and wickedness he puts me as it were in the pillory, so that every one may point their finger at me, and I no longer dare look up in the presence of respectable women. Oh, what men are! And I had thought that he, at least, was an exception, because he did not prate, and had a kind of appearance which was not likely to lead any one into folly and shame for his sake. Now I have had to pay for my stupid confidence by the misery of my whole life.'

"Then again she burst into tears.

"I now attempted to comfort her, and also to defend my friend Jan, by representing to her that painters think very differently on these matters to what ladies do; that he had most certainly not done it out of revenge; and that she could lose nothing in the eyes of any rational beings if this picture--like all the rest of Van Kuylen's--were destined for the gallery of some Amsterdam merchant, who knew as little of the existence of 'the fair Kate,' as she did of his.

"But it was all in vain. With the active imagination of all self-torturers, she pictured to herself that the picture might be engraved or lithographed, and then hung up in the windows of all the print-shops, and in all the public-rooms of the hotels along the Rhine, and that then everybody would say, 'Only see what our coy little schoolmaster's daughter has come to! A pretty face may lead a person great lengths indeed!' and what would her parents and sisters think of her--and suppose that such a print ever got as far as America, and came one day to the eyes of Hans Lutz. No, no, she would much rather--having rendered herself unrecognizable so far as she could--leap into the Isar, than day and night imagine such fearful things.

"'Do you know what?' said I at length. 'All these desperate lamentations and resolutions have no practical sense in them, and do not lead us any nearer the goal that you wish to reach--the nullifying as much as possible the mischief done. Be reasonable, Miss Kate, and accompany me at once to our common friend, who has certainly no idea how evil-disposed you are towards him. There you can at all events obtain a written assurance from him that he painted the picture in question entirely out of his own head, that you never sat to him except for a most unexceptionably decorous portrait, and even then were not alone with him. I will also try to induce him either to remove the likeness of the lady Bathsheba to you, or to put an honest drapery over her back. Come now, will not this be much more to the purpose than your spoiling your complexion either with the water of the Isar, or _aquafortis_? Only think what people would say about it; that you had done yourself a mischief out of an unfortunate attachment to our little Dutchman to whom you had sat!'

"This last quite too appalling idea seemed to remove all her objections; she saw that a rational measure taken now, need not prevent her doing the most despairing things by-and-bye, and as an empty cab happened to be coming up the great avenue, we both got into it, with the intention of at once bringing Van Kuylen to book.

"During the whole of the way she was silent, only answering Yes and No to my questions. Indeed I did not say much either, and pushed myself back as far as I could into the corner of the half-open vehicle; for we had to pass through the street in which I lived. If my good wife should chance to be looking out of the window, or were out walking, and met her husband driving with a veiled lady! As I have said she is one of the best of women, but all have a spot where they are vulnerable, and appearances would have been decidedly against me; for what could induce a landscape-painter to engage a female model in the English garden, and to get into a cab with her?--his own family may well suffice _him_ as lay figures!

"Meanwhile we had safely arrived at Van Kuylen's house in the meadows.

"An empty cab waiting in the street showed we had been preceded by some other visitor. As we passed through the little garden and approached the studio, we plainly heard the sound of voices within.

"'Sit down for a few moments on this bench, Miss Kate,' said I, 'I will just listen whether I know the other voice, and whether there seems any prospect of the person soon going away.'

"So saying, I went up to the door, which certainly was closed, but as it was only a very thin one--in winter another door was added--one could distinctly hear every word, unless, indeed, the speakers lowered their voices intentionally.

"The girl was far too excited and impatient to think of sitting down; she came and stood immediately behind me.

"'I have already explained to you,' we now heard Van Kuylen say, 'that I am not going to sell the picture, and as for the copy you wish for, I never copy any of my pictures. I am only too glad when I have once got myself expressed, however poorly it may be, and I lack the mercantile genius necessary for picture-multiplying.'

"'If you yourself do not intend to repeat it,' said a rather rough manly voice which was entirely strange to me, 'perhaps you will allow another to copy it for me, or at least let me have a photograph of it.'

"'I am sorry,' repeated Van Kuylen, 'that I cannot consent to have that picture reproduced in any way. The circumstances are quite peculiar,' and then he murmured something that we did not catch.

"'He is making short work of him,' said I, turning round to the girl. 'It is our time to appear on the scene,' I was going to add, but the words stuck in my throat. Pale as death, with wide-staring eyes, as though she saw a spectre, I do believe the poor child would have fallen if I had not thrown my arm around her and supported her in the very nick of time.

"'What is it? What is it?' I cried. 'Let me take you in to Van Kuylen's sofa. Are you ill?'

"She, however, shook her head in silence, and made a sign signifying, 'Hush! I must listen,' and now we heard the stranger speak again. 'I must request you at least to answer me one more question. Had you a model for the female figure?'

"'Certainly,' replied Van Kuylen, 'I never paint a stroke but from nature.'

"'Then you must know this girl intimately; you know where she lives, and can tell me--'

"'Give yourself no further trouble, sir,' interrupted Van Kuylen. 'I can well understand that this picture may excite other than artistic admiration, but as for telling who sat to me for it--no, sir. My studio is no bureau of enquiry, and besides--' then came some more muttered words.

"'Forgive me,' said the stranger, his voice all the more raised; 'I can comprehend that under the peculiar relation in which you seem to stand to your model--'

"At this moment the girl tore away from me like lightning, rushed to the door, and before I could try to hold her back, had burst in, and now stood--the most exquisite little fury that ever defended her good name--between the two men.

"I followed her instantly, and was just opening my mouth to interpose, when I heard the stranger give a hollow groan, and saw him reel back a step or two. I looked at him more closely. He was really a fine-looking man, remarkably well-dressed in black, with a resolute somewhat sunburnt face, in which I at once detected a few slight marks of small-pox.

"'Excuse me,' I stammered out in much embarrassment; 'I have the honour, Mr. Hans Lutz--'

"But Kate did not let me finish my speech; one quick glance at the picture, which stood on an easel in the middle of the studio, had sent all the blood back to her face. 'That is scandalous,' said she, going straight up to Van Kuylen, who with his straw-coloured face and nankeen attire cut a most unfortunate figure on this occasion. '_That_, then, is your gratitude to me for making an exception in your case, and consenting to sit for my portrait to you; and because I would consent to nothing else, you would degrade me in this way before the whole world, and represent me as a bad bold girl who lets herself be seen for money, and has no objection to her shame being openly exhibited! Declare now once for all before these two witnesses, whether you have ever seen me as I am painted there, whether I was ever alone with you, whether I did not show you the door when you came to me at my lodgings and begged and entreated me to be your wife.'

"Her eyes flashed, and now that she was silent, her nostrils quivered, and I noticed that she pressed her clenched fist closely to her side, as though she feared she might be tempted to commit an assault upon the little yellow man.

"I for my part, marvelled that he took it all so calmly.

"'I find out now,' he said at length with the utmost phlegm, and laying down his pipe, 'who it is I have before me. You are no doubt the engineering gentleman of whom the young lady has already told us. I congratulate you on your return, which will probably set all things to rights. If they went wrong it was your own fault. A person who allows so long a time to pass without being heard of, cannot be surprised at others coming forward in his absence. For the rest, I am prepared to give the lady whatever spoken or written assurance she may require. The best explanation, perhaps, will be found in _this_!

"So saying he went to a corner of the room, where all sorts of sketches and unfinished pictures were heaped up together, and after a short search, produced a study painted on paper, a female figure in the precise position of Bathsheba, and although the face was merely an outline, one saw at a glance that a quite different model must have sat for it--a coarse common-place person with black hair whose back and shoulders were widely celebrated amongst artists.

"'I thank you,' said the stranger, who seemed somewhat to have recovered the unexpected meeting. 'I believe every word you have said, but I hope you will not consider me too importunate if I repeat the request that the picture may be mine. You understand--'

"'I understand it all,' drily returned Van Kuylen, while lighting his clay-pipe with a large match; 'and as I have something to apologise for, and very much wish that the lady should not eternally resent my inconsiderate freak, I give you the picture for your new establishment. And now--you will excuse me. I have some business which cannot be postponed. A good journey to you.'

"Before one of us could find a word to reply, he made us an abrupt bow, and passed through a door leading into the interior of the house.

"We three who remained behind stood there in utter helplessness. I felt that I was one too many, and was planning how best to leave the pair alone, when suddenly the lovely girl came up to me, held out her hand, and with apparent composure said:

"'Farewell, dear sir; I thank you for all the kindness you have shown me. I will now go home and trouble you no further.'

"With that she turned round without casting one glance at her sun-burnt lover, and moved towards the door.

"'Katharine!' cried the young man, rushing towards her.

"'Leave me!' said the incensed beauty. 'We have no longer anything to do with each other. One who could believe _that_ of me--who could suppose that I should ever degrade myself so far--'

"'Listen to me, dear Kate,' I interposed, for I saw that both the proud high-tempered creatures were just in the mood to part as suddenly as they had met; 'if you really believe that I am a friend to you, do try to follow me and consider the question more calmly. Just put yourself in the place of your Hans Lutz, (you will forgive me, my dear sir, for using your Christian name though we have not even been introduced,) and ask yourself whether a lover is very likely to retain his five senses, when he chances to enter a picture-gallery, and sees the girl of his heart turn her back upon him in that fashion. And yet supposing you had really been Frau van Kuylen, and your husband _had_ painted you behind your back, as our greatest artists have been wont to do with their wives and mistresses, that would have been nothing so very out of the way either. Instead, therefore, of treating the matter so tragically, you ought rather to thank God for having brought things so happily round; to be reconciled to your lover; to my poor friend, who after all is the one to be pitied, for he goes empty away; and to your own face with which you were so very angry. It has, indeed, been an infliction to you, but at last it is to it that you are indebted for the happiness of having Mr. Hans Lutz again. For if Mrs. Bathsheba had not stolen your bewitching profile, who knows whether your lover would ever have come on your track here in Munich, and finally carried off picture and original both!'

"Such was the gist of my address, and my eloquence had the happiest results. There ensued a most affecting reconciliation, an embracing, kissing, and handshaking, whereof--as regards the last at all events--I had my due share, and in another five minutes I saw the happy pair drive off in the cab, radiant with delirious bliss, and had scarcely time to invite them to pay a visit to my house, and to call after the driver to go through the English garden, that being the best scene for such an idyll.

"Van Kuylen did not show himself again. But as I slowly followed the cab, and turned round once more, I thought I saw from the upper window of the small house, a resigned cloud of smoke eddy up from a white clay-pipe. He had not spared himself the pain of looking after the lovers from his lonely watch-tower.

"I need not say that I instantly went home, and accurately repeated the whole remarkable story to my dear wife. Alas! I failed to produce the desired effect thereby. There lurked in the soul of that excellent woman a prejudice against a girl who presumed to be so beautiful that all men ran after her, and even the steadiest landscape painters took in her an interest--fatherly, indeed, but dangerously warm. The suspicion that all might not have been so very right after all, seemed to gain confirmation, when day after day passed without bringing the happy pair to pay their promised visit. My wife went about again with a well-known air of magnanimously suppressed triumph, and treated me with such compassionate indulgence, that it almost drove me wild. But what was to be done? I must needs put up with it, and had only the choice of passing as a bad judge of character, or a secret sinner.

"However, in a fortnight's time the tide turned. I was sitting quietly over my work about noon, when in ran my little Christopher, and called out to me that I was to come instantly to mamma, that there was a most beautiful lady there with a gentleman, and that they had asked for me. There they were then, husband and wife, on their marriage trip through Italy to New York. On the day I had last seen them they had set out homewards to present themselves to their parents, and as Hans Lutz--his real name was Johann Ludwig Weinmann--was making a quantity of money over there in America, it was probably much the same to the father of the fair Kate, whether the result was attained by railway-making and bridge-building, or the tanning of leather. My good wife had at first--she afterwards confessed to me--sat rather monosyllabically there, but when I came in, and neither the young woman nor I blushed, nor exchanged any sign whatever of a private understanding, she finally resumed her equipoise, and was obliged to believe in me: more--in the course of the next half-hour she fell so completely in love with the beautiful world's wonder, she did not know how to let her go, and finally parted from her with the tenderest embraces. Later she said to me, 'It really is a very good thing she is gone to America.'

"The same evening brought another leave-taking, but only in the form of a letter. My good mynheer sent me a note, in which he after his own fashion, and with divers humorous marginal illustrations, announced his journey to Italy. He enclosed a small pen-and-ink drawing as a keepsake; which was very highly finished and in all respects a genuine Van Kuylen. Before a hut in a primeval forest sat a young pair under the shade of palms, bananas, and bread-fruit trees, a couple of fine children playing about their feet, the wife occupied with needle-work, the husband reading to her. Above them on the branch of a majestic tree squatted a small thin ape who was just about to throw a date into the beautiful young woman's lap. Whom the faces of the wedded pair resembled, and who had sat to the artist for the odd, pinched, resigned countenance of the ape it were needless to particularise."

END OF THE FAIR KATE.

GEOFFROY AND GARCINDE.

GEOFFROY AND GARCINDE.

About the time of the second crusade, there lived near Carcassonne in Provence, a nobleman, Count Hugo of Malaspina, who after the death of his fair and virtuous wife, sent his only daughter Garcinde, then ten years old, accompanied by her foster-sister Aigleta, to be educated at the convent of Mont Salvair, and recommenced himself, spite of grizzling hair, a wandering bachelor life. He was a stately knight, and popular both with men and women, so he had no lack of invitations to merry-making tournaments, and banquets at the castles of the wealthy nobles, far and near. But, however, his delight in military exercises and minstrelsy grew cool with years, so that he left the palm in both to be carried off by younger aspirants, developing, at the same time, an increasing love for wine and dice, and falling from his former character of a wise manager of himself and of his substance, to that of a degraded night-reveller, who even occupied the castle of his fathers as tenant to his creditors, and had nothing left to call his own but his unstained knightly courage, and the heart of his child. In order not to grieve that child, Count Hugo took the greatest care to prevent the rumour of the low state of his finances reaching the convent. He was in the habit of twice a year visiting his daughter, and the young girl, who up to this time had devoted all the power of loving she as yet had to her father, and admired him as the ideal of every human and knightly virtue and perfection,--did not fail to notice that the eyes of the fast aging man, had for some time back lost their open and joyous expression, that his cheeks were sunk, and his lips habitually compressed. But as she knew the way to cheer him, and for the time to make him forget the world outside the cloister-walls, she naturally attributed his depression to his solitude, and lovingly urged him to take her back, and keep her near him. At which the Count would sigh, gloomily shake his head and declare that it would not be consistent with her fair fame to live in a castle inhabited by men only, without better protection than he could offer. He could not, therefore, remove her from the cloister until she should exchange the companionship of the pious sisters for that of some worthy husband. This was not pleasant hearing to the intelligent girl, for although her life had not been otherwise than happy with the nuns, who were cheerful and busy, and though she had had, moreover, the companionship of the bright-eyed Aigleta--a lively girl and full of whatever fun was possible in a convent--yet Garcinde yearned to know and enjoy something of the world without, and above all to devote her loving heart entirely to her father. But he persisted that the honour of his house allowed of no other arrangement than the present, and after every conversation on the subject--as though stung by some secret vexation--he would abruptly take leave of his lovely child, who on such occasions sat in the turret of the convent-garden wall, lost in thought, and gazing on the road her father had taken.

Thus year after year passed by: the Count's daughter had long out-grown childhood, and the good nuns, reluctant as they might have been to part with their charge, yet began to wonder that nothing was said about marrying her. For they had no idea that Count Hugo, shrinking from confessing to a son-in-law that he was a beggar, spoke as little about his daughter as though she had been changed in her cradle, and a fairy bantling placed there in her stead.

Now it happened that early one morning, when no one was expecting him at his own castle, the Count returned quite alone on his roan mare, and gave a faint knock as a man mortally sick might give at a hospital-gate. The porter, growling over the untimely guest who roused him from his morning sleep, looked through the grating in the iron court-door, and was so startled by what he saw, that his trembling hands could scarcely draw the heavy bolt in order to admit of his master's entrance. For the face of the Count was pale as that of the dead, and his eyes hollow, fixed, and expressionless, as if, instead of having returned from a merry-making at the castle of his rich neighbour, the Count Pierre of Gaillac, he might have been emerging from the cave of St. Patrick, or from a still more terrible place where he had spent the night with spectres. He threw the bridle of his horse (the animal was covered with foam, and greedily drank the rain-water on the ground,) to the alarmed domestic, and uttered one word only, "Geoffroy." Then he ascended the winding-stair to his lonely room, shaking his head when the servant enquired whether the Count would have any refreshments, and whether he should wake up the other retainers.

The porter, who had never seen his master in such a plight, would have been slow to recover from the shock he had received, had not the horse, with a shrill neigh of distress, sunk on the ground. With some difficulty he got it to its feet again, and led the utterly exhausted animal to the stable, where he rendered it every care; then still talking to himself, and calling upon all saints and angels, he ran to the Geoffroy whom the Count had demanded.

The youth who bore this name dwelt in a lonely ivy-grown turret close to the moat, and as the dawn had hardly broken, he still lay in the sound sleep beseeming his health and early years. He was only twenty, a nephew of the Count's, the offspring of the unfortunate love between the high-born Countess Beatrix and a wandering minstrel, who knowing the proud spirit and the customs of the house of Malaspina, had no way of winning, except persuading her to elope with him. Count Rambaut her father, when he discovered the disgrace that had befallen his family, took no one into his counsels but his son Hugo; and father and brother rode forth by night to follow the track of the offenders. In seven days time they returned, walking their horses, a closed litter between them, in which the young Countess lay with snow-white face, more like a waxen form than a living woman. Her brother had killed her lover, her father had cursed the dying man. From that time she never spoke another word to either of them, but lived a widow in a detached turret, where she brought her boy into the world. She made no complaint, but resisted all attempts at reconciliation, though on their father's death, her brother, who had always been deeply attached to her, endeavoured by all the means in his power, to conciliate her. He himself bore her son to the font, and when he married, he imposed upon his wife the duty of daily visiting the lonely one, who never of her own accord left her self-elected prison. Both ladies had now departed this life; the young man Geoffroy--he was named after his father--was brought up almost as the Count's own son, and truly the proudest might have gloried in such a son. He was a beautiful youth, broad-shouldered, dark-complexioned, with great earnest eyes, and a sweet sad mouth almost feminine in form, which seldom smiled. For although he had in abundance all that a young heart could desire, gay garments, finely-tempered weapons, horse, falcon, and leisure enough for every knightly practice, and though, too, from his earliest infancy no one had ever spoken an unkind word to him, or reproached him with his birth, yet for all that a shadow hung over him. Unless he were wandering in the forest--which bordered on the moat, and was reached by a narrow bridge in ten paces or so--he would keep himself apart from all joyous company, in the same room where his mother had brought him into the world, as though there were no other place on earth where he had a right to be. In his mother's lifetime he had planted the little tower about with roses, and he still kept her chamber, bed, and wardrobe, just as she had liked them to be. He for his part had but few wants, and always held himself prepared to leave even this corner where he was tolerated, at the first insulting word. However, no one thought of such an event less than did Count Hugo, whose heart the boy had entirely won, for he had transferred his love for his sister, to her fatherless child. But as spite of all the kindness and care shown him, the son could never force himself to return the friendly grasp of the hand that had slain his father, all that the Count could do was to leave his nephew in perfect freedom. He never required any service from him, thanked him as for a favour conferred if Geoffroy tamed a falcon, or broke a horse for him, and when his means began to fail, he would rather himself dispense with a necessary than that Geoffroy should be disappointed of a wish. However, he never took him with him on a visit, not that he wished to deny this illegitimate sprout of the family tree--especially since his unfortunate mother was no longer there to blush for him--but rather that he did not wish the youth to witness his own reckless mode of life, or to be corrupted by the loose manners and dissolute society of the neighbouring nobles.

Therefore it was that the nephew, who had never received an order from his uncle, was surprised to be thus suddenly disturbed at so unusual an hour by the porter, who breathlessly told him what had happened, and summoned him to the castle. He did not, however, delay to dress and obey the call. When he entered the chamber, dimly lighted by the dawning day, he saw the Count sitting at a table with a taper before him, by the aid of which he had evidently been writing a letter. He now sat motionless, his head resting on his hands, which were buried deep in his grey hair. Geoffroy had to call him three times before he could rouse him from his trance, then when he saw the haggard face and lifeless eyes he, too, was shocked, although he did not love his uncle. But he made an effort, enquired whether he was ill, and whether he should ride to Carcassonne to fetch a leech.

"Saddle a horse, Geoffroy," returned Count Hugo, slowly rising, folding the letter he had written, and sealing it with his signet-ring. "You must take this letter to-day to the Lady Abbess of the Convent of Mont Salvair, and to-morrow she must send me off my daughter Garcinde, for I have something to say to her. And as I myself cannot reach her--my ride this night has done me harm, and my gout admonishes me to get into bed rather than into the saddle--I could wish that you should escort your cousin, and see to her safe journey hither. Take a servant with you who will bring back, on a baggage-horse, whatever may be personally needed, till the abbess can send the rest. The convent will lend Garcinde a horse. I have requested this to be done in my letter. You will rest for a night half-way, at the farm of La Vaquiera, my daughter being unaccustomed to riding, and the summer heat great. On the evening of the third day I shall expect to see you here."

The youth received the letter, lingered for a moment on the threshold as though some question were burning on his lips, then merely said, "It shall be done, my lord," and with a slight inclination, took his departure. When he got outside the door, he fancied that he heard himself recalled, and stood still a moment to see whether it really were so, but hearing nothing further he ran down the winding-stair, got his horse out of the stable, gave the requisite orders to one of the few servants that remained about the fallen house, and as the man was sleepy and slow in his movements, ordered him to follow after, while he himself sprang through the gate past the wondering porter, to whose questions as to what the Count wanted, and whether it really were all over with him, he merely replied by a shrug of the shoulders.