Chapter III: I. Antonio (7)

As Mary understood book-keeping, the duties of her new office were soon learned; and the only evil attending it was, that she could not take care of her father. But determined not to lose her, Mr. Benjamin found means to reconcile the difficulty by giving them a room behind the shop, where they lived very comfortably, till Glegg, recovering some portion of health, was able to work a little at his trade.

In process of time, however, as infirmity began to disable Mr. Benjamin for the daily walk from his residence to his shop, he left the whole management of the business to the father and daughter, receiving every shilling of the profits, except the moderate salaries he gave them, which were sufficient to furnish them with all the necessaries of life, though nothing beyond. But when the old gentleman died, and his will was opened, it was found that he had left every thing he possessed to Mary Glegg; except one guinea, which, without alleging any reason, he bequeathed to Leah Leet.

A FORGOTTEN CELEBRITY.

"Time and chance," as King Solomon says, "happen to all;" and this is peculiarly the case in the matter of fame and reputation. Many who have done much, and have enjoyed a fine prospect of a name that should survive them, have scarcely earned an epitaph; while others, by a mere accident, have rolled luxuriously down to posterity, like a fly on the chariot-wheels of another's reputation. "The historic muse" is a very careless jade, and many names with which she has undertaken to march down to latest times, have been lost by the way, like the stones in the legend that fell through the devil's apron when he was carrying them to build one of his bridges. The chiffonniers of literature pick up these histories from time to time; sometimes they are valuable, sometimes only curious. Mademoiselle de Gournay's story is a curiosity.

Marie de Jars, Demoiselle de Gournay, was born at Paris in 1566. She was of a noble and ancient family; her father, at his death, left what in those days was a handsome fortune; but Mademoiselle de Gournay, his widow, had an unfortunate mania for building, which devoured it. When she took her place beside her husband in his grave, she left little but mortgages behind her.

Judging from the portraits prefixed to her works, Marie de Jars must in her youth have possessed some personal attractions, in spite of her detractors: her figure was of middle height, her face rather round than oval, but with a pleasing expression, and adorned with a pair of large black eyes and a pretty little mouth. Her own account of herself, in a copy of verses, addressed to her friend Mademoiselle de Ragny, is, that she was of a very lively and obliging disposition. That she was obliging and kind-hearted, many circumstances of her life could prove; but for liveliness, we are inclined to think that she flattered herself: nothing can be further removed from liveliness than her works--they are pompously serious.

Her father died when she was very young, leaving five children: two elder and two younger than Marie. The eldest daughter married; the son entered the army; and Marie, the eldest of the remaining three, seems to have been left pretty much to follow her own devices. From her earliest years she had a passion for reading, and showed a wonderful sagacity in the choice of books: her favorites were Amyot, Ronsard, and Montaigne; to these authors she afterward added Racan. She was so faithfully exclusive in her taste, that she never cared to read any others. It was in 1580 that Montaigne published the two first volumes of his Essays. Marie de Jars was scarcely fourteen when they fell accidentally in her way, and her admiration amounted to enthusiasm: she sent a friend to tell Montaigne, who was then in Paris, how much she admired him, and the esteem in which she held his book. This proceeding from so young a person, who was moreover "fort demoiselle," flattered Montaigne very sensibly. He went the very next day to pay a visit to Mademoiselle de Gournay: her conversation and enthusiasm won the heart of the philosopher. In their first interview Montaigne offered her the affection of a father for a daughter and Mademoiselle de Gournay proudly assumed the title of the adopted daughter of Montaigne; and in a letter addressed to him, which is still to be seen, she says, "that she feels as proud of that title as she should be to be called the mother of the Muses themselves." This friendship never failed or diminished; it was the best thing Marie ever achieved in this life, and is her chief claim on the sympathy and interest of posterity. But Marie de Jars became possessed by the demon of wishing to become a distinguished woman on her own account. To accomplish this, she set to work to learn Greek and Latin, and though she brought more zeal than method to her studies, she worked with so much perseverance as to obtain a good insight into both languages.

Montaigne, in the next edition of his Essays, added the following passage to the seventeenth chapter of the second book: "I have taken a delight to publish in many places the hopes I have of Marie de Gournay de Jars, my adopted daughter, beloved by me with more than a paternal love, and treasured up in my solitude and retirement as one of the best parts of my own being. I have no regard to any thing in this world but to her. If a man may presage from her youth, her soul will one day be capable of very great things; and, among others, of that perfection of friendship of which we do not read that any of her sex could yet arrive at; the sincerity and solidity of her manners are already sufficient for it; her affection toward me more than superabundant, and such as that there is nothing more to be wished, if not that the apprehension she has of my end from the five-and-fifty years I had reached when she knew me, might not so much afflict her.

"The judgment she made of my first Essays, being a woman so young, and in this age, and alone in her order, place, and the notable vehemence with which she loved and desired me, upon the sole esteem she had of me before ever she saw my face, are things very worthy of consideration."

Any woman might justly have been proud of such a tribute, and one feels to like Montaigne himself all the better for it. In 1588 Montaigne went with Mademoiselle de Gournay and her mother to their château at Gournay-sur-Aronde, and spent some time with them.

In the year following she published her first book, calling it "Proumenoir de M. de Montaigne." She dedicated it to him, and sent a copy to him at Bordeaux, where he was then residing. That must have been a very proud day for Marie! This "Proumenoir" was not, as its title might suggest, any account of Montaigne, or relics of his conversation, but only a rambling Arabian story, which if gracefully told by Marie herself, might perhaps have been interesting during the course of a walk, but which, set down upon paper, is insipid to a degree, and of an interminable length. Montaigne is answerable for the sin of having encouraged her to write it, thus adding to the weary array of books that nobody is able to read.

At her mother's death, Mademoiselle de Gournay did something much better: she took charge of her younger brother and sister, and administered the affairs of the family (which, as we have said, Madame de Gournay had left in great embarrassment) with so much discretion and judgment, that she redeemed all the mortgages, paid off all the debts, and was in possession of about two thousand pounds in money.

Montaigne died in 1592, at Bordeaux. Enthusiastic and devoted, Mademoiselle de Gournay set off as soon as she was informed of it, and, providing herself with passes, crossed almost the whole kingdom of France alone, to visit his widow and daughter, to console them as best she might--and to weep with them the loss they had sustained.

Madame de Montaigne gave her the Essays, enriched with notes in her husband's hand-writing, in order that she might prepare a new and complete edition of them. This was a labor of love to Marie: she revised all the proofs, which were executed with so much correctness, that she is well entitled to call it, as she does, "le bon et vieux exemplaire." It remains to this day the principal edition as regards authenticity of text, and one of the handsomest as regards typography. It appeared in 1595 (Paris, Abel Langlier). Mademoiselle de Gournay wrote a preface, which is not without eloquence. She vigorously repels all the objections that had been raised against the work, and alludes to her adoption by Montaigne with genuine feeling. We translate the passage: "Reader, having the desire to make the best of myself to thee, I adorn myself with the noble title of this adoption. I have no other ornament, and I have a good right to call him my true father, from whom all that is good or noble in my soul proceeds. The parent to whom I owe my being, and whom my evil fortune snatched from me in my infancy, was an excellent father, and a most virtuous and clever man--and he would have felt less jealousy in seeing the second to whom I gave this title of father, than he would have felt pride in seeing the manner of man he was." The good lady's style is of the most intractable to render into common language.

With Montaigne's death, the whole course of Mademoiselle de Gournay's life seemed to be arrested. Henceforth all her strength and enthusiasm were expended in keeping herself exactly where he had left her. She resolutely set her face against all the improvements and innovations which were every day being brought into the French language, which was making rapid progress; but Mademoiselle de Gournay believed that she had seen the end of all perfection when Montaigne died. Not only in her style of writing, but also in her mode of living, she remained obstinately stereotyped after the fashion of the sixteenth century, during the first half of the seventeenth. While still young, she became a whimsical relic of a by-gone mode--a caricature out of date. She resided in Paris, where there was at that time a mania for playing practical jokes; and Mademoiselle de Gournay, with her pedantry and peculiarities, was considered as lawful game; many unworthy tricks were played upon her by persons who, nevertheless, dreaded the explosions of her wrath on discovery, which on such occasions were of an emphatic simplicity of speech, startling to modern ears. The word "hoaxing" was not then invented, but the thing itself was well understood. A forged letter was written, purporting to come from King James the First of England, requesting Mademoiselle de Gournay to send him her portrait and her life. She fell into the snare, and sat for her picture, and spent six weeks in writing her memoirs, which she actually sent to England--where, of course, no one knew what to make of them. But when Marshal Lavardin, who was the French embassador in England, returned to Paris, the parties who forged the letter did not fail to tell Mademoiselle de Gournay that the King of England had spoken most highly of her to the embassador, and had shown him her autograph, which occupied a distinguished place in his cabinet. As M. de Lavardin died almost directly after his return, Mademoiselle de Gournay ran no risk of being undeceived.

For a short time she abandoned literature and the belles-lettres to plunge into alchemy, for which she had a mania. Her friends remonstrated in vain; they told her how many other people alchemy had ruined, but she not the less persisted in flinging the remains of her fortune into the crucible. Like all who have been bewitched by this science, Marie fancied that her experiments were arrested by poverty at the moment of success. She retrenched in every way; in food, in clothing; reduced herself to barest necessaries; and sat constantly with the bellows in her hand, hanging over the smoke of her furnace. Of course, no gold rewarded her research, and she was at length absolutely obliged to abandon her laboratory, and betake herself afresh to literature. As generous in adversity as she had been in prosperity, Mademoiselle de Gournay was not hindered by her poverty from adopting an orphan child, the daughter of Jamyn, the poet, and friend of Ronsard. In the society of this young girl, and of a cat which she celebrated in verse, Marie de Gournay allowed every thing in the world to change and progress as they might, fully persuaded that the glory of French literature had died with her adopted father, and that she had had the honor of burying it.

This cat deserves a special mention, as it was a very noticeable animal in its day. It rejoiced in the name of _Piallion_, and during the twelve years it lived with Mademoiselle de Gournay, it never once quitted the apartments of its mistress to run with other cats upon the roofs and gutters of the neighboring houses; it was, in all respects, discreet and dignified, as became a cat of quality, and above all, as became the cat of such a mistress as Mademoiselle de Gournay. If Mademoiselle de Gournay had been young and handsome, _Piallion_ would, no doubt, have been as celebrated as Leslie's sparrow; as it was, however, it only shared in the satires and caricatures that were made upon its mistress. When Mademoiselle de Gournay renounced alchemy, and began again to busy herself in literature, she unfortunately mixed herself up in some controversy of the day where the Jesuits were in question; we forget what side she took, but she brought down upon herself much abuse and scandal; among other things, she was accused of having led an irregular life, and being even then, "_une femme galante!_" This charge distressed her greatly, and she appealed to a friend to write her vindication. He told her by way of consolation, that if she would publish her portrait, it would be more effectual than a dozen vindications! Poor Mademoiselle de Gournay had long since lost whatever good looks she had possessed in early life, and her alchemical pursuits had added at least ten years to her appearance.

In the midst of all the disagreeable circumstances of her lot, she was not without some consolation. She kept up her relation with the family of Montaigne, and went on a visit to them in Guyenne, where she remained fifteen months. In all her distress, Mademoiselle Montaigne and her daughter, Mademoiselle de Gamaches, never deserted her. There is a touching passage in one of her works, in which the name of the "bonne amye" is mentioned. There is little doubt but that it refers to one of these ladies; it is as follows:

"If my condition be somewhat better than could have been expected, from the miserable remnant of fortune that remained to me after the quittance of all my debts, liabilities, and losses, it is the assistance of a good friend, who took pleasure to see me keep up a decent appearance, which is the cause of it."

Mademoiselle de Gournay also brightened the dull realities of her existence with brilliant ideas of the fame she was laying up for herself with posterity--hopes which neither Mademoiselle Jamyn nor Piallion were likely to damp. In 1626, she published a collection of her works, in prose and verse, which she entitled "L'Ombre de Mademoiselle de Gournay," and sat in her retirement expecting the rebound of the sensation she had no doubt of producing throughout Europe.

The book was written in imitation of Montaigne's "Essays"--all manner of subjects treated of, without any regard to order or arrangement; long dissertations, rambling from topic to topic in every chapter, without any rule but her own caprice. It may be imagined what advantage such a work would give to those disposed to find matter for ridicule; the spirit of mystification and love of hoaxing were not extinct. There was a pitiless clique of idle men attached to the Court, and circulating in society, who were always on the watch for victims, at whose expense they might make good stories, or whom they might make the subjects of a practical jest. Mademoiselle de Gournay had fallen into their snares years before, and she seemed a still more tempting victim now. A regular conspiracy of wicked wits was formed against the poor old woman, who was then not much under sixty years of age. Her vanity had grown to enormous magnitude; her credulity was in proportion; while her power of swallowing and digesting any flattery, however gross, was something fabulous. No tribute that could be offered exceeded her notion of her own deserts. She certainly offered fair game for ridicule, and she was not spared.

Louis the Thirteenth, who labored under the royal malady of ennui, enjoyed the accounts of the mystifications that were constantly put upon the poor old lady.

They told her (and she believed them) that there was nothing talked about at Court but her book; and that his Majesty, Louis the Thirteenth, was her warm admirer. Mademoiselle de Gournay not unnaturally expected that some solid proof of the royal admiration would follow; but nothing came. Louis, well content to be amused by absurd stories about her, never dreamed of rewarding her for them. She was made to believe that her portrait adorned the galleries of Brussels and Antwerp; that in Holland her works had been published with complimentary prefaces; that, in Italy, Cæsar Carpaccio and Charles Pinto had celebrated her genius in their own tongue, and spread the glory of her name from one end of the peninsula to the other; and that no well-educated person in Europe was ignorant of her name and works. Marie de Gournay, after having been adopted by Montaigne, found all these marvels quite probable and easy of belief. These splendid visions of fame and success were quite as good as reality; they gilded her poverty, and invested her privations with a dignity more than regal. Among many other mystifications played off upon her, there was one which has since, in different forms, made the plot of farces and vaudevilles without number; but it was for the behoof of Mademoiselle de Gournay that it was originally made and invented. The poet Racan, whose works were some of the few Mademoiselle de Gournay condescended to read, had received a copy of "L'Ombre," and prepared to pay her a visit to return thanks. It must be borne in mind that they had never seen each other; the conspirators chanced to hear of his intentions. Such a fine occasion was not to be neglected; having ascertained the time appointed for the interview they took care to be beforehand. The first who presented himself was the Chevalier de Bresire; he caused himself to be announced by Mademoiselle Jamyn (the orphan she had adopted; now her friend and companion), as M. Racan. He was clever and agreeable, and flattered Mademoiselle de Gournay with so much grace, that she was enchanted with him. He had scarcely departed, when M. Yvrande arrived: "Announce M. Racan," said he to Mademoiselle Jamyn.

"M. Racan has only this moment left us."

"Some vile trick!" said he, with indignation.

Mademoiselle de Gournay, seeing a young man, still handsomer and more agreeable than the other, and whose compliments were still more poetical, was easily pacified, and received him graciously. A few moments after he had left, the poet himself made his appearance. He was absent, nervous, shabbily dressed, awkward, and had, moreover, a ridiculous pronunciation. He called himself "LACAN."

The old lady was now out of all patience.

"Must I, then, see nothing but _Racans_ all the days of my life!" she exclaimed, and taking off her slipper, she flung it at his head, abusing him vehemently for daring to impose upon her; and drove him out of the house.

Of course this story was much too good not to have a great success; it circulated not only through the Court, but all over Paris, and came at last to the ears of poor Mademoiselle de Gournay herself, who could not be consoled, as it revealed all the tricks to which she had been a victim. The illusions thus rudely destroyed were far more precious than the philosopher's stone she had so vainly sought, and involved a disappointment infinitely more painful. Who can help sympathizing with the poor woman, who thus saw all her fairy treasures resolved into their intrinsic worthlessness?

However, good came out of evil. Cardinal Richelieu--who had been especially delighted with the story of the three Racans, and was never weary of hearing it repeated--took the fancy of wishing to see her that he might try to make a good story out of her himself. He sent for her, and indulged in some very clumsy pleasantry, of which he had the grace to feel afterward ashamed. Willing to make her some amends, he settled a pension upon her, in order that for the rest of her days, she, and her friend, and her cat, might live on something better than dry bread.

Under the influence of this gleam of sunshine, Mademoiselle de Gournay edited another edition of Montaigne's work, with an abridgment of her former preface. She also published a fresh work of her own, entitled, "Avis et Présens de Mademoiselle de Gournay," which had a moderate success. Another edition of "L'Ombre" was also called for. All this, in some measure, consoled her for past humiliations.

Her prosperity lasted until the death of Cardinal Richelieu. Mademoiselle de Gournay, then in extreme old age, still survived him. When the list of pensions granted by the Cardinal was submitted to the king, her name caught his eye. Louis the Thirteenth--who might have had some grateful recollection of the many hearty laughs his royalty had enjoyed at her expense--declared that the Cardinal must have been mad to grant such a woman a pension, and ordered it to be suppressed! Mademoiselle de Gournay passed the few remaining years of her life in a state of poverty painful to reflect upon. She died somewhere about 1646, at the age of eighty.

Poor as she was, she made her will as became a person of her birth. She bequeathed her clothes to Mademoiselle Jamyn, who, old and infirm, survived her; a few books she left to different friends; and a curious old Map of the World, to the poet Gombauld--a personage as eccentric as herself, and one who lived and died in still greater penury, but who valued her legacy, and transmitted it to his heirs as the most precious treasure in the world.

DILIGENCE IN DOING GOOD.

Thomas Wright, of Manchester, is a worn but not a weary man of sixty-three, who has for forty-seven years been weekly servant in a large iron foundry, of which he is now the foreman. His daily work begins at five o'clock in the morning, and closes at six in the evening; for forty-seven years he has worked through twelve hours daily, to support himself and those depending on him. Those depending on him are not few; he has had nineteen children; and at some periods there have been grandchildren looking to him for bread. His income never has attained two hundred pounds a year. This is a life of toil. Exeter Hall might plead for him as a man taxed beyond the standard limit; but he had bread to earn, and knew that he had need to work for it: he did work with great zeal and great efficiency, obtaining very high respect and confidence from his employers. A man so laboring, and leading in his home an exemplary, pious life, might be entitled to go to bed betimes, and rest in peace between these days of industry and natural fatigue. What could a man do, in the little leisure left by so much unremitting work? Poor as he was--toiling as he did, a modest man of humble origin, with no power in the world to aid him but the wonderful spiritual power of an earnest will--Thomas Wright has found means, in his little intervals of leisure, to lead back, with a gentle hand, three hundred convicted criminals to virtue; to wipe the blot from their names and the blight from their prospects; to place them in honest homes, supported by an honest livelihood.

Fourteen years ago Mr. Wright visited, one Sunday, the New Bailey Prison, at Manchester, and took an earnest interest in what he saw. He knew that, with the stain of jail upon them, the unhappy prisoners, after release, would seek in vain for occupation; and that society would shut the door of reformation on them, and compel them, if they would not starve, to walk on in the ways of crime. The jail-mark branding them as dangerous, men buttoned up their pockets when they pleaded for a second trial of their honesty, and left them helpless. Then, Thomas Wright resolved, in his own honest heart, that he would visit in the prisons, and become a friend to those who had no helper.

The chaplain of the New Bailey, Mr. Bagshawe, recognized in the beginning the true practical benevolence of the simple-minded visitor. On his second visit a convict was pointed out, on whom Mr. Wright might test his power. It was certain power. From the vantage-ground of a comparative equality of station, he pleaded with his fellow workman for the wisdom of a virtuous and honest life. Heaven does, and Earth should, wipe out of account repented evil. Words warm from the heart, backed with a deep and contagious sense in the hearer of the high-minded virtue shown by his companion, were not uttered, like lip-sympathy, in vain. Then Thomas Wright engaged to help his friend, to get employment for him; and, if necessary, to be surety with his own goods for his honorable conduct. He fulfilled his pledge; and that man has been ever since, a prosperous laborer, and an upright member of society.

So the work began. So earnest, so humble; yet, like other earnest, humble efforts, with a blessing of prosperity upon it. In this way, during the last fourteen years, by this one man, working in the leisure of a twelve hours' daily toil, hundreds have been restored to peace. He has sent husbands repentant to their wives; he has restored fathers to the fatherless. Without incurring debt, supporting a large family on little gains, he has contrived to spare out of his little; contenting himself with a bare existence, that he might have clothes to give and bits of money, where they were required to reinstate an outcast in society.

Mr. Wright is a dissenter--free, of course, from bigotry; for bigotry can never co-exist with charity so genuine. Although a dissenter working spiritually in the prison, he never comes into jarring contact with the chaplain. He makes a point of kindling in his outcast friends a religious feeling; but that is not sectarian; he speaks only the largest sentiments of Christianity, and asks only that they attend, once every week, a place of worship, leaving them to choose what church or chapel it may be. And, in the chapel he himself attends, wherever his eye turns, he can see decent families who stand by his means there; men whom he has rescued from the vilest courses, kneeling modestly beside their children and their wives. Are not these families substantial prayers?

Very humbly all this has been done. In behalf of each outcast in turn, Mr. Wright has pleaded with his own employer, or with others, in a plain, manly way. Many now work under himself, in his own place of occupation; his word and guarantees having been sufficient recommendation. Elsewhere, he has, when rebuffed, persevered from place to place, offering and laying down his own earnings as guarantee; clothing and assisting the repentant unemployed convict out of his own means, as far as possible; speaking words, or writing letters, with a patient zeal, to reconcile to him his honest relatives, or to restore lost friends. Bare sustenance for his own body by day, that he might screw out of himself little funds in aid of his good deeds--and four hours' sleep at night, after his hard work, that he might screw out of his bed more time for his devoted labor--these tell their tale upon the body of the man, who still works daily twelve hours for his family, and six or eight hours for his race. He is now sixty-three years old, and working forward on his course worn, but unwearied.

No plaudits have been in his ear, and he has sought none. Of his labor, the success was the reward. Some ladies joined; and working quietly, as he does, in an under-current of society, after a while, he had from them the aid of a small charitable fund, to draw upon occasionally in the interest of the poor friends for whom he struggled. Prison Inspectors found him out, and praised him in reports. At first there were a few words, and a note told of "this benevolent individual. His simple, unostentatious, but earnest and successful labors on behalf of discharged prisoners are above all praise." After a few years, the reports grew in their enthusiasm, and strung together illustrations of the work that has been done so quietly. Let us quote from this source one or two examples:

"Five years ago I was," owns a certain G.J., "in the New Bailey, convicted of felony, and sentenced to four months' imprisonment. When I was discharged from prison, I could get no employment. I went to my old employer, to ask him to take me again. He said, I need not apply to him, for if he could get me transported he would; so I could get no work until I met with Mr. Wright, who got me employed in a place, where I remained some time, and have been in employment ever since. I am now engaged as a screw-cutter--a business I was obliged to learn--and am earning nineteen shillings and twopence a week. I have a wife and four children, and but for Mr. Wright, I should have been a lost man."

Others tell how they were saved by the timely supplies of Mr. Wright's money, which "kept their heads above water" till they obtained the trust of an employer. Another, after telling his career, adds: "I am now, consequently, in very comfortable circumstances; I am more comfortable now than ever I was in my life; I wish every poor man was as comfortable as I am. I am free from tippling, and cursing, and swearing; have peace of mind, and no quarreling at home as there used to be. I dare say I was as wicked a man as any in Manchester. I thought if I could once get settled under such a gentleman as Mr. Wright, I would not abuse my opportunity, and all I expected I have received. I have got Bibles, hymn-book, prayer-book, and tracts; and those things I never had in my house since I have been married before. My wife is delighted. My boy goes to school, and my girl also."

Were the spirit of Mr. Wright diffused more generally through society, the number of fallen men--who, being restored with all due prudence to a generous confidence, "would not abuse their opportunity"--would tell decidedly on the statistics of our criminal courts and prisons. To labor as Mr. Wright has done, must be the prerogative of few, though all the indolent may note, by way of spur, how much a man, even like Thomas Wright, poor, humble, scantily instructed, may beget of good out of an earnest will.

THE NIGHT TRAIN.

The curate and his daughter sat before the fire. Both had been for some time silent, for the father had fallen into that listless dreaminess to which nothing is so conducive as gazing on the glowing caverns in the coals, and pretty little Faith cared not to disturb a rest that he was not likely to be long suffered to enjoy unmolested. And so the flamelets rose and sank, lighting their thoughtful faces, and glittering on the gold-embossed backs of the treasured volumes on the shelves--the curate's most constant friends. Twilight saddened into night. Up from behind the gray church tower came the moon. But still not a word broke the silence in the parsonage parlor. The gaunt arms of the trees waved drearily without. A streak of white moonshine crept across the carpet like a silver snake. Still he gazed fixedly on the bright pagoda 'mid the flame: it totters, but before it falls we will track his wandering musings for a moment. All men, he thinks, have as children gazed on the burning coals, and fashioned castles, figures, mountains in them, but though the elements are all the same, no two men ever have presented to them exactly the same position or difficulty in life, and so only general rules of conduct can be laid down; but yet--the minaret crumbles to nothing, and changes to a strange fantastic face, then into something like a funeral plume; his dreams are all dispersed; the pensive damsel looks up hurriedly, for high above the muttering wind, fierce as the summons at the gates of Cawdor, he hears a knocking loud and long.

It was a farmer's boy from the village. His message was soon told. A poor man had been seized with sudden illness at the wayside public-house, and the clergyman's presence was required immediately. He lingered to tell Faith not to wait up for him, then rose without a murmur, and prepared for his long dreary walk. A moment after he was crossing the neatly-kept garden, where the hydrangeas showed like piles of skulls in the pale moonshine, and the chestnut leaves were falling thick and fast. Then out into the deep-rutted road, through miry lanes, across stark scraps of common, and paths covered with fern and marsh-mallow, till at last the glimmering candle in the hostelry window came in sight, and he stood under the creaking signboard of the White Horse. The inn was of the humblest description, and the room into which he was shown very wretched indeed. The plaster had peeled off the walls in great odd shapes, like the countries on a map; the shutters had as many cracks as an ill-fitting dissecting puzzle; the flooring was damp and broken, there was a tracery of spiders' webs about the bed-furniture, and the only sounds were the groans of the occupant of the bed, and the drowsy ticking of the death-watch. Thinking he was asleep, the curate prepared to sit down and wait for him to wake of himself, but the noise of a drinking-song, shouted by some laborers in the bar, startled him from his uneasy slumber, and when Mr. F. next looked up, the ghastly face of the sick man confronted his own--an eery nightmare face, such as meets one in the outlines of Retzsch, or peering out of the goblin scenes and witches' caves of Peter Breughel. But if the face was terrible, the voice that asked him "Why he came!" and bade him take away the light that glared and hurt his eyes, was more unearthly still. But when he recognized him as the clergyman, his manner altered. In a comparatively tranquil state he listened to the minister's earnest warnings and blessed consolations; then suddenly the pain seized him; he screamed and groaned awhile in wild delirium; a deep calm followed. Raising himself in the bed, he drew a roll of torn and discolored papers from under the pillow, and put it into the curate's hand. His senses never returned. A few more throbbings and struggles--a wandering of the eyes about the room, first to the ceiling, where the death-watch ticked on drearily, then to the Arcadian scene on the tattered patchwork counterpane--a clutching at the bed-clothes--a shuddering--a film--and then--death!

The curate did not sleep that night until he had read the stranger's diary to an end. It began thus:

"_August 3d._--Brian Marcliffe came to me again; the same odd, mysterious air that I have noticed so long. What can it mean? He can not have found--But no, it's worse than useless having dark forebodings. I shall soon be able to put the sea between me and this cursed golden inferno, Brazil, and with my darling Bertha forget all these fears in the paradise of full purses--England.

"_August 4th._--I met him by chance again, coming from the overseer's. Confound it, how demon-like he looked! I will speak to him myself, rather than be in suspense much longer. I should then know the worst, at least.

"_August 5th._--Ruin! The worst has come. He does know all about my being behindhand in my accounts, and hints--I can't write down what. Bertha will never marry him but _as the only chance of saving me from exposure_. Can he be devil enough to propose it?

"_August 20th._--Am I the same man I was a month ago! Farewell forever, land of diamonds, slaves, and late summers. Farewell lust of gold and dread of disgrace. It is over, I hope, forever. My Bertha--my own now--is sleeping like a lily near me, and the only sound is the splashing of the sea that is bearing me every moment further from my fear. But stay; what have I left behind me! What is there in that glen of mimosas? A rotting corpse. What in men's mouths? The name of murderer. Pray God it be not. Let me think.

"On the Monday when I was leaving the office, Brian came again, and asked me to go as far as old Olivenza's coffee plantation. I said I would come, and we set out an hour past sunset. It was a beautiful evening; the skies as pure as the robe of seraphim; the clouds like curls of incense, now hiding, now revealing the dazzling glory of the rising moon--all, save one black streak right across her face, like a spread eagle. Well, we had nearly got to the plantation before Brian spoke; but I saw he was preparing something by the villainous look of his eyes. He began:

"'So, Reuben Darke, you have considered my proposition, and agree, of course?'

"I believe I professed ignorance of it; for, indeed, he had never said any thing definite.

"'The consequences of opposition are as terrible as they are inevitable,' said he, threateningly.

"'You can not stoop to such vileness--to such wrong. You know that I am striving for a great end--that I will make restitution full and ample if I live to reach England.'

"This was the sense of what I said, but his answer was clearly prepared long before he knew what I should urge. It came gnashing through his closed teeth like the hiss of an adder.

"'I must do my duty. It is my place to overlook the accounts of all the clerks. You will show me your books to-morrow.'

"He turned away. I prayed he might not speak again, for his voice stirred up a feeling I had never known before; but my bad angel, I suppose, brought him back. I scarcely recollect what he said. I have a vague notion of hearing him mention Bertha's name with some cursed plan that was to give her up to him forever, and then he would, 'for the sake of old friendship, deal as gently as he possibly could with me.' Those words I remember well, and those were the last he ever spoke to me. I dread to think they were his last on earth. The feeling I had wrestled against mastered me now. I could restrain myself no longer, and struck at him with a knife. He clutched my left hand in his teeth like a tiger-cat. For a second we were grappling together for life or death, but he had no chance against me; and when I had breath to look at him next, he was lying on his back, the hands that he had tried to parry my blows with cut and bleeding, and red stains on the broad mimosa leaves around. Oh, God! what a reproach there was in all the calm and silence of the night! How the deep quiet of the sky spoke to my heart, so troubled, dark, and guilty! As on the first dread day by sin polluted, the voice of God in Eden drove Adam forth abashed, so spoke the still small voice of holy Nature with more than earthquake tones to me, and straight I fled away.

"My Bertha does not know the whole. She only knows that Brian had me in his power, owing to some money transactions. If she did know it, my conscience tells me she would not now be sleeping here. There--all will be well in England. Pray Heaven we get there safe. I will go up on deck a few minutes. Writing it down has brought the whole affair so fresh before me, that it is useless trying to sleep in this fever. But yet I am glad it is written.

"_October 15th._--We entered the Channel this afternoon. It is my wife's birthday; she took it as a happy omen, and seemed so pleased with the glitter and joyance of the busy river, that for a whole hour--the first since I left Rio--the dreadful secret hidden 'mid those leaves was absent from my mind.

"_October 16th._--The first news that meets me on entering London is, that my uncle has died suddenly, and left all his affairs frightfully embarrassed. My chief dependence was on him. This is a sad beginning; indeed, I feel that 'all these things are against me.'"

Several pages were here torn from the unfortunate Darke's manuscript; and in the succeeding ones the entries were scanty, and with long intervals between each other. They detailed the sufferings of the writer and his wife on their arrival in London; his repeated efforts to obtain employment, and the difficulties he met with, owing to his uncle's death, and his own inability to refer any one to the directors of the mine at Rio. For more than a year (judging from the dates, by no means regularly affixed) he appeared to have struggled on thus, until, when his hopes were fast sinking, and his health rapidly giving way under this succession of disappointments, he obtained a situation on a recently-opened line of railway in the north, through the interest of an old schoolfellow, whom he accidentally met, and who retained in manhood schoolboy heart enough to show gratitude for many kindnesses in olden days. The language was strangely impassioned and earnest in which he expressed his joy at this change of fortune; and the full-hearted thankfulness with which he described telling his wife the good news, seemed to prove that affliction had exerted a calming and blessed influence on his passion-tossed mind. But the clergyman could not help noticing that the spirit pervading the latter part of the diary was strangely different from that which animated the commencement, it being written apparently with the firm conviction of an inevitable destiny hanging over the writer; and this, like the shadow of an unseen cloud in a fair picture, gave a sombre meaning to his self-communings.

After briefly mentioning the fact of his taking up his abode with Bertha and one little child at the cottage provided by the company, and that he had heard by chance that his enemy was still alive, he proceeded:

"I like this new home much. It is a tiny, sheltered cottage, with beehives in the garden, and honeysuckles peeping in at the lattice, nestling innocently among the pine-trees, like a fairy islet. The railway runs for about a mile parallel with the canal, and the two modes of traveling contrast curiously. The former with all its brightness, freshness, and precision; the latter a very sluggard. I often have long talks with Huntly, my assistant here, and try to make him see the change it will work; but he is not over shrewd; or, rather, fate did not give him a bookworm uncle like it did me, and so reasoning is hard work to him; it always is to the untaught. The canal is picturesque certainly. Let me try a description. The surface of the water is overlaid with weeds rank and luxuriant, save where the passage of a boat has preserved a trench, stagnant, and cold, and deep. There is not a human habitation near except ours. Scarcely any paths, the thickets are so tangled. This does not read an inviting account, I know, but there is a charm to me in the leaves of myriad shapes, in fern, and moss, and rush, in every silvan nook and glittering hedgerow--above all, in the dark slumberous pines, those giant sentinels round our dear home. Bertha smiled quite like her old self when she saw it. Oh, how, in all the wreck of this last year, has her love upheld me! always lightening, never adding to our weight of grief. She has, indeed, been faithful, true, and beautiful--like the Indian tree, that has its flower and fragrance best by night. I can not explain why it is that my love seems to grow each hour, but with a kind of tremble in its intensity, as though there were a separation coming. Perhaps it is only the result of the change in my fortunes.

"_March 10th._--Two years ago I should have laughed had any one told me that a dream would give me a second thought, much less that I should sit down to write what I remember of one; but I must write down last night's, nevertheless. I thought that it was a clear moonlight night, and that I rose as usual to signal to the latest luggage train. I had got to the accustomed place, and stood waiting a long time. For days, for months; I knew this, because the trees were budding when I began my watch--were bare as winter when, with a roar and quaking all around, the night train came. At first I held a lantern in my hand, to signal all was well. Strange as it may appear, I felt no weariness, for I was fixed as by a wizard's rod. It passed at length; but not, thank God! as it has ever passed before; for from the carriage window, like a mask, glared Marcliffe's vengeful face. I said I held a light; but, as the smoke and iron hurtled by, the lamp was dashed to atoms, and in my outstretched hand I grasped a knife! There was a yell of demons in my ear, with Brian's jeering laugh above it all. I moaned awhile in horror, and woke to find my Bertha's eyes on mine. She has been soothing and kind as mercy to me all the day, and I, alas! wayward, almost cruel. I saw it pained her, but I could not help it. Oh, would that this world had no concealments, no divisions, no estrangement of hearts! I dread the night; there is something tells me it will come again, for when I took the Bible down to read, it opened at the words:

"'I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, and will speak unto him in a dream.'

"A thrill went through me as I read. It sounded like a death-knell.

"_The next day._--As I foresaw it came again last night; the same in every terrible particular, and with the same consolation on awaking. But what I have seen to-day gives it a meaning that I tremble at. Huntly returned from D----. He brought a birthday present for little Harry; it happened to be wrapped in an old newspaper. As it was opened, I saw _his_ name, and a moment after read this:

"'NEXT OF KIN.--If any child or children of the late Ehud
Marcliffe, Gentleman, of Cranholm Manse, who died September 5,
18--, be yet surviving, it is desired that he or they will
forthwith put themselves in communication with Messrs. Faulk and
Lockerby, Solicitors, D----.'

"This leaves me no hope; and knowing, as I do, the unfaltering steadfastness of his hate I feel the days of this security and peace are numbered....

"A whole month has gone since I opened this last. There is no fear now. He is dead. But how? The eye that reads this record alone will know. That fatal Thursday went by, a phantasm of dark thoughts; and then I lay down, as usual, for a couple of hours before going to watch. I did this, for there was a kind of instinct in me (the feeling deserves no higher name) which made me go about my avocations in the accustomed way, and seem as little disturbed as possible. I lay down, and in my dream, as distinct as ever it passed by day, for the third time that awful freight swept like a whirlwind by. I awoke. It wanted only three minutes to the hour when the night-train usually passed. I staggered to the door, but, instead of coming out into the light, an inky shadow lay across the road. It was a car left by Huntly's carelessness on the up-rail. I stood like one of stone, thinking of the tranquil happiness of the last months, of Bertha's smile, and Harry's baby laugh--of all the sun and pleasure of our home, and how this precious fabric, wove by love, was to be rent and torn; and how one word from him would ruin all, and send my wife and child to poverty again. And that man's life was in my hand. Well may we daily pray against temptation.

"A white cloud curled up above the pines.

"There was no delay. I caught up the lantern, and ran down the line. A throbbing, like the workings of a giant's pulse, smote my ear. I reached the signal-post, and laid my hand upon the bell. But there was no time for thought.

"The murmur deepened to a roar. The clouds of steam rose high above the pines, and, girt about with wreathing vapor, the iron outline, with its blood-red lamps and Hecla glow beneath, came on.

"My eyes were strangely keen, for at that distance I could discern a man leaning out of the nearest window. I knew who it must be, and almost expecting to see the last dreadful particular fulfilled, held out my hand--_the sign that all was safe_. The driver signaled that he understood, and quickened pace. I shut my eyes when it drew near, but, as it passed, distinctly heard my name called thrice.

"There was a moment that seemed never-ending. Then a clatter as of a hundred anvil strokes, a rush of snow-white steam, a shower of red-hot ashes scattered far, the hum of voices, and the clanging of the bell. Then, and not till then, I ventured to look up and hurry to the spot. The train, a series of shapeless wrecks, luggage-vans, trucks, carriages in wild confusion, lay across the road; live coals from the engine-fire were hissing in the black canal stream; the guard was bleeding and crushed beneath a wheel; twining wreaths of white steam, like spirits, melted into air above. Huntly was stooping over a begrimed corpse. The glare of the lantern, as it flashed upon the face, showed every omen true. It was Marcliffe.

"I can bear to chronicle my own temptations, yielding, guilt, but not to write down the separation that I dreaded most, and tried to avert, alas! so fatally. It is indeed a lesson of the nothingness of man's subtlest plans to avoid the penalty his crimes call down. How vain have all my efforts been to preserve our hearth inviolate, to keep our home in blessed security. Indeed, that night God's peace and favor 'departed from the threshold of the house' forever."

The misfortune alluded to was thus briefly mentioned at the end of the newspaper report of the accident, inclosed with the other papers of the dead man:

"We are sorry to say that the wife of the station-keeper, Darke, whose dangerous state we noticed a week ago, expired last night, after giving birth to a child, still-born."