Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

At the fatal summons Charles rose with alacrity. The King passed through the long gallery by a line of soldiers. Awe and sorrow seem now to have mingled in their countenances. Their barbarous commanders were intent on their own triumph, and no farther required the forced cry of "Justice and Execution." Charles stepped out of an enlarged window of the Banqueting House, where a new opening leveled it with the scaffold. Charles came forward with the same indifference as "he would have entered Whitehall on a masque night," as an intelligent observer described. The King looked towards St. James's and smiled. Curious eyes were watchful of his slightest motions; and the Commonwealth papers of the day express their surprise, perhaps their vexation, at the unaltered aspect and the firm step of the Monarch. These mean spirits had flattered themselves that he who had been cradled in royalty, who had lived years in the fields of honor, and was now, they presumed, a recreant in imprisonment,--"the grand Delinquent of England,"--as they called him, would start in horror at the block.

This last triumph at least was not reserved for them,--it was for the King. Charles, dauntless, strode "the floor of Death," to use Fuller's peculiar but expressive phraseology. He looked on the block with the axe lying upon it, with attention; his only anxiety was that the block seemed not sufficiently raised, and that the edge of the axe might be turned by being swept by the flappings of cloaks, or blunted by the feet of some moving about the scaffold. "Take care they do not put me to pain!--Take heed of the axe! take heed of the axe!" exclaimed the King to a gentleman passing by. "Hurt not the axe; that may hurt me!" His continued anxiety concerning these _circumstances_ proves that he felt not the terror of death, solely anxious to avoid the pain, for he had an idea of their cruelty. With that sedate thoughtfulness which was in all his actions, he only looked at the business of the hour. One circumstance Charles observed with a smile. They had a notion that the King would resist the executioner; on the suggestion of Hugh Peters, it is said, they had driven iron staples and ropes into the scaffold, that their victim, if necessary, might be bound down upon the block.

The King's speech has many remarkable points, but certainly nothing so remarkable as the place where it was delivered. This was the first "King's Speech" spoken from a scaffold. Time shall confirm, as history has demonstrated, his principle that "They mistook the nature of government; for people are free under a government, not by being sharers in it, but by the due administration of the laws." "It was for this," said Charles, "that now I am come here. If I could have given way to an arbitrary sway, for to have all laws changed according to the power of the sword, I need not have come here; and therefore I tell you that I am _the Martyr of the People_!"

SYDNEY DOBELL

(1824-1874)

Sydney Dobell, the son of a wine merchant, was born at Cranbrook in Kent. His parents, both persons of strong individuality, believed in home training, and not one of their eight children went either to school or to university. They belonged to the Broad Church Community founded by Sydney's maternal grandfather, Samuel Thompson; a church intended to recall in its principles the primitive Christian ages. The parents looked upon Sydney, their eldest-born, as destined to become the apostle of this creed. He grew up in a kind of religious fervor, with his precocious mind unnaturally stimulated; a course of conduct which materially weakened his constitution, and made him a chronic invalid at the early age of thirty-three. He read whatever books came to hand, many of them far beyond his years. At the age of eight he filled his diary with theological discussions.

Entering his father's counting-house as a mere lad, he remained to the end of his life a business man of great energy. Notwithstanding his rare poetic endowments, he never seems to have entertained a single-minded purpose to be a poet and nothing more. On the contrary, he thought the ideal and the practical life perfectly compatible, and he strove to unite in himself the poet and the man of affairs. He wrote habitually until 1856, when regular literary work was forbidden by his physicians. With characteristic energy he now turned his thoughts into other channels; identified himself with the affairs of Gloucester, where he was living, looked after his business, and was one of the first to adopt the system of industrial co-operation. The last four years of his life, a period of suffering and helplessness, he spent at Barton-End House, above the Stroud valley, where he died in the spring of 1874.

In the work of Dobell it is curious to find so few traces of the influences under which he grew up. He had every encouragement to become a writer of religious poetry; yet much of his work is philosophic and recondite. His delicate health is in a measure responsible for his failure to achieve the success which his natural endowments promised. All his literary work was done between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-three. 'The Roman,' his first long poem, appeared in 1850. Dedicated to the Italian struggle for liberty, it showed his breadth of sympathy. In 'Balder,' finished in 1853, Dobell is at his best both as thinker and as poet. Yet its many fine passages, its wealth of metaphor, and the exquisite songs of Amy, hardly counterbalance the remoteness of its theme, and its over-subtle analysis of morbid psychic states. It is a poem to be read in fragments, and has aptly been called a mine for poets.

With Alexander Smith he published in 1855 a series of sonnets inspired by the Crimean War. This was followed in 1856 by 'England in War Time,' a collection of Dobell's lyrical and descriptive poems, which possess more general human interest than any other of his books.

After continuous work was interdicted, he still contributed verse and prose to the periodicals. His essays have been collected by Professor Nichol, under the title 'Thoughts on Art, Philosophy, and Religion.' As a poet Dobell belongs to the so-called "spasmodic school," a school "characterized by an undercurrent of discontent with the mystery of existence, by vain effort, unrewarded struggle, skeptical unrest, and an uneasy striving after some incomprehensible end.... Poetry of this kind is marked by an excess of metaphor which darkens rather than illustrates, and by a general extravagance of language. On the other hand, it manifests freshness and originality, and a rich natural beauty." Dobell's descriptions of scenery are among the finest in English literature. His senses were abnormally acute, like those of a savage, a condition which intensified his appreciation of natural beauty. Possessing a vivid imagination and wide sympathies, he was often over-subtle and obscure. He strove to realize in himself his ideal of a poet, and during his years of ill-health gave himself up to promoting the welfare of his fellow-men; but of his seventeen years of inactivity he says:--"The keen perception of all that should be done, and that so bitterly cries for doing, accompanies the consciousness of all that I might but cannot do."

EPIGRAM ON THE DEATH OF EDWARD FORBES

Nature, a jealous mistress, laid him low.
He wooed and won her; and, by love made bold,
She showed him more than mortal man should know--
Then slew him lest her secret should be told.

HOW'S MY BOY?

"Ho, sailor of the sea!
How's my boy--my boy?"--
"What's your boy's name, good wife,
And in what good ship sailed he?"

"My boy John--
He that went to sea--
What care I for the ship, sailor?
My boy's my boy to me.

"You come back from the sea,
And not know my John?
I might as well have asked some landsman,
Yonder down in the town.
There's not an ass in all the parish
But knows my John.

"How's my boy--my boy?
And unless you let me know,
I'll swear you are no sailor,
Blue jacket or no--
Brass buttons or no, sailor,
Anchor and crown or no--

"Sure, his ship was the Jolly Briton--"
"Speak low, woman, speak low!

"And why should I speak low, sailor,
About my own boy John?
If I was loud as I am proud
I'd sing him over the town!
Why should I speak low, sailor?"--
"That good ship went down."

"How's my boy--my boy?
What care I for the ship, sailor?
I was never aboard her.
Be she afloat or be she aground,
Sinking or swimming, I'll be bound
Her owners can afford her!
I say, how's my John?"--
"Every man on board went down,
Every man aboard her."

"How's my boy--my boy?
What care I for the men, sailor?
I'm not their mother.
How's my boy--my boy?
Tell me of him and no other!
How's my boy--my boy?"

THE SAILOR'S RETURN

This morn I lay a-dreaming,
This morn, this merry morn;
When the cock crew shrill from over the hill,
I heard a bugle horn.

And through the dream I was dreaming,
There sighed the sigh of the sea,
And through the dream I was dreaming,
This voice came singing to me:--

"High over the breakers,
Low under the lee,
Sing ho!
The billow,
And the lash of the rolling sea!

"Boat, boat, to the billow,
Boat, boat, to the lee!
Love, on thy pillow,
Art thou dreaming of me?

"Billow, billow, breaking,
Land us low on the lee!
For sleeping or waking,
Sweet love, I am coming to thee!

"High, high, o'er the breakers,
Low, low, on the lee,
Sing ho!
The billow
That brings me back to thee!"

AFLOAT AND ASHORE

"Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort,
Like a whale to starboard, a whale to port;
Tumble and rumble, and grumble and snort,
And the steamer steams thro' the sea, love!"

"I see the ship on the sea, love;
I stand alone
On this rock;
The sea does not shock
The stone;
The waters around it are swirled,
But under my feet
I feel it go down
To where the hemispheres meet
At the adamant heart of the world.
Oh that the rock would move!
Oh that the rock would roll
To meet thee over the sea, love!
Surely my mighty love
Should fill it like a soul,
And it should bear me to thee, love;
Like a ship on the sea, love,
Bear me, bear me, to thee, love!"

"Guns are thundering, seas are sundering, crowds are wondering,
Low on our lee, love.
Over and over the cannon-clouds cover brother and lover, but over
and over
The whirl-wheels trundle the sea, love;
And on through the loud pealing pomp of her cloud
The great ship is going to thee, love,
Blind to her mark, like a world through the dark,
Thundering, sundering, to the crowds wondering,
Thundering over to thee, love."

"I have come down to thee coming to me, love;
I stand, I stand
On the solid sand;
I see thee coming to me, love;
The sea runs up to me on the sand:
I start--'tis as if thou hadst stretched thine hand
And touched me through the sea, love.
I feel as if I must die,
For there's something longs to fly,
Fly and fly, to thee, love.

As the blood of the flower ere she blows
Is beating up to the sun,
And her roots do hold her down,
And it blushes and breaks undone
In a rose,
So my blood is beating in me, love!
I see thee nigh and nigher;
And my soul leaps up like sudden fire,
My life's in the air
To meet thee there,
To meet thee coming to me, love!
Over the sea,
Coming to me,
Coming, and coming to me, love!"

"The boats are lowered: I leap in first,
Pull, boys, pull! or my heart will burst!
More! more!--lend me an oar!--
I'm thro' the breakers! I'm on the shore!
I see thee waiting for me, love!"

"A sudden storm
Of sighs and tears,
A clenching arm,
A look of years.
In my bosom a thousand cries,
A flash like light before my eyes,
And I am lost in thee, love!"

THE SOUL

From 'Balder'

And as the mounting and descending bark,
Borne on exulting by the under deep,
Gains of the wild wave something not the wave,
Catches a joy of going and a will
Resistless, and upon the last lee foam
Leaps into air beyond it,--so the soul
Upon the Alpine ocean mountain-tossed,
Incessant carried up to heaven, and plunged
To darkness, and, still wet with drops of death,
Held into light eternal, and again
Cast down, to be again uplift in vast
And infinite succession, cannot stay
The mad momentum.

ENGLAND

From 'Balder'

This dear English land!
This happy England, loud with brooks and birds,
Shining with harvests, cool with dewy trees,
And bloomed from hill to dell: but whose best flowers
Are daughters, and Ophelia still more fair
Than any rose she weaves; whose noblest floods
The pulsing torrent of a nation's heart;
Whose forests stronger than her native oaks
Are living men; and whose unfathomed lakes,
Forever calm, the unforgotten dead
In quiet grave-yards willowed seemly round,
O'er which To-day bends sad, and sees his face.
Whose rocks are rights, consolidate of old
Through unremembered years, around whose base
The ever-surging peoples roll and roar
Perpetual, as around her cliffs the seas
That only wash them whiter; and whose mountains,
Souls that from this mere footing of the earth
Lift their great virtues through all clouds of Fate
Up to the very heavens, and make them rise
To keep the gods above us!

AMERICA

Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us! O ye
Who north or south, or east or western land,
Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth,
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and God
For God; O ye who in eternal youth
Speak with a living and creative flood
This universal English, and do stand
Its breathing book; live worthy of that grand
Heroic utterance--parted, yet a whole,
Far, yet unsevered,--children brave and free
Of the great Mother tongue, and ye shall be
Lords of an empire wide as Shakespeare's soul,
Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme,
And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as Spenser's dream.

AMY'S SONG OF THE WILLOW

From 'Balder'

The years they come, and the years they go,
Like winds that blow from sea to sea;
From dark to dark they come and go,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.
Down by the stream there be two sweet willows,
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
One hale, one blighted, two wedded willows,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.

She is blighted, the fair young willow;
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
She hears the spring-blood beat in the bark;
She hears the spring-leaf bud on the bough;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.

The stream runs sparkling under the willow,
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
The summer rose-leaves drop in the stream;
The winter oak-leaves drop in the stream;
But she bends blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the dew-fall and the rain.

Sometimes the wind lifts the bright stream to her,
--Hush thee, babe, while the wild winds blow,--
The false stream sinks, and her tears fall faster;
Because she touched it her tears fall faster;
Over the stream her tears fall faster,
All in the sunshine or the rain.

The years they come, and the years they go;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
And under mine eyes shines the bright life-river;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
Sweet sounds the spring in the hale green willow,
The goodly green willow, the green waving willow,
Sweet in the willow, the wind-whispering willow;
Sing well-away, sing well-away!
But I bend blighted, the wan weeping willow,
All in the sun, and the dew, and the rain.

AUSTIN DOBSON

(1840-)

BY ESTHER SINGLETON

At first thought it seems difficult to consider Austin Dobson as belonging to the Victorian period, so entirely is he saturated with the spirit of the eighteenth century. A careful study of his verse reveals the fact that the Georgian era, seen through the vista of his poetic imagination, is divested of all that is coarse, dark, gross, and prosaic. The mental atmosphere and the types and characters that he gives, express only beauty and charm.

One approaches the poems of Austin Dobson as one stands before a rare collection of enamels, fan-mounts, jeweled snuff-boxes, and delicate carvings in ivory and silver; and after delighting in the beauty and finish of these graceful curios, passes into a gallery of paintings and water-colors, suggesting Watteau, Fragonard, Boucher, Meissonier, and Greuze. We also wander among trim box-hedges and quaint gardens of roses and bright hollyhocks; lean by sun-dials to watch the shadow of Time; and enjoy the sight of gay belles, patched and powdered and dressed in brocaded gowns and gypsy hats. Gallant beaux, such as are associated with Reynolds's portraits, appear, and hand them into sedan-chairs or lead them through stately minuets to the notes of Rameau, Couperin, and Arne.

Just as the scent of rose-leaves, lavender, and musk rises from antique Chinese jars, so Dobson's delicate verse reconstructs a life

"Of fashion gone, and half-forgotten ways."

He is equally at home in France. Nothing could be more sympathetic and exquisite than 'A Revolutionary Relic,' 'The Cure's Progress,' 'Une Marquise,' and the 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' one of which is cited below.

In the 'Vers de Societe,' as well as his other poetry, Dobson fulfills all the requirements of light verse--charm, mockery, pathos, banter, and, while apparently skimming the surface, often shows us the strange depths of the human heart. He blends so many qualities that he deserves the praise of T.B. Aldrich, who says, "Austin Dobson has the grace of Suckling and the finish of Herrick, and is easily master of both in metrical art."

Henry Austin Dobson, the son of Mr. George Clarisse Dobson, a civil engineer, was born in Plymouth, England, January 18th 1840. His early years were spent in Anglesea, and after receiving his education in Beaumaris, Coventry, and Strasburg, he returned to England to become a civil engineer. In 1856 he entered the civil service of Great Britain, and ever since that date he has held offices in the Board of Trade. His leisure was devoted to literature, and when Anthony Trollope first issued his magazine St. Paul's in 1868, he introduced to the public the verse of Austin Dobson. In 1873 his fugitive poems were published in a small volume entitled 'Vignettes in Rhyme' and 'Vers de Societe.' This was followed in 1877 by 'Proverbs in Porcelain,' and both books, with additional poems, were printed again in two volumes: 'Old World Idylls' (1883), and 'At the Sign of the Lyre' (1885). Mr. Dobson's original essays are contained in three volumes: 'Four Frenchwomen,' studies of Charlotte Corday, Madame Roland, the Princess de Lamballe, and Madame de Genlis (1890), and 'Eighteenth-Century Vignettes' (first series 1892, second series 1894), which touch upon a host of picturesque and fascinating themes. He has written also several biographies: of Hogarth, of Fielding, of Steele (1886), of Goldsmith (1888), and a 'Memoir of Horace Walpole' (1890). He has also written felicitous critical introductions to many new editions of the eighteenth-century classics.

Austin Dobson has been most happy in breathing English life into the old poems of French verse, such as ballades, villanelles, roundels, and rondeaux; and he has also written clever and satirical fables, cast in the form and temper of Gay and Prior, with quaint obsolete affectations, redolent of the classic age of Anne.

So serious is his attitude towards art, and so large his audience, that the hope expressed in the following rondeau will certainly be realized:--

In after days, when grasses high
O'er-top the stone where I shall lie,
Though ill or well the world adjust
My slender claim to honored dust,
I shall not question nor reply.

I shall not see the morning sky,
I shall not hear the night-wind sigh;
I shall be mute, as all men must,
In after days.

But yet, now living, fain were I
That some one then should testify,
Saying--_He held his pen in trust_
_To Art, not serving shame or lust._
Will none?--Then let my memory die
In after days!

ON A NANKIN PLATE

VILLANELLE

"Ah me, but it might have been!
Was there ever so dismal a fate?"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

"Such a maid as was never seen:
She passed, tho' I cried to her, 'Wait,'--
Ah me, but it might have been!

"I cried, 'O my Flower, my Queen,
Be mine!'--'Twas precipitate,"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

"But then ... she was just sixteen,--
Long-eyed, as a lily straight,--
Ah me, but it might have been!

"As it was, from her palankeen
She laughed--'You're a week too late!'"
(Quoth the little blue mandarin.)

"That is why, in a mist of spleen
I mourn on this Nankin Plate.
Ah me, but it might have been!"
Quoth the little blue mandarin.

THE OLD SEDAN-CHAIR

"What's not destroyed by Time's devouring Hand?
Where's Troy,--and where's the May-Pole in the Strand?"
--BRAMSTON'S 'ART OF POLITICKS.'

It stands in the stable-yard, under the eaves,
Propped up by a broomstick and covered with leaves;
It once was the pride of the gay and the fair,
But now 'tis a ruin,--that old Sedan-chair!

It is battered and tattered,--it little avails
That once it was lacquered, and glistened with nails;
For its leather is cracked into lozenge and square
Like a canvas by Wilkie,--that old Sedan-chair.

See, here come the bearing-straps; here were the holes
For the poles of the bearers--when once there were poles;
It was cushioned with silk, it was wadded with hair,
As the birds have discovered,--that old Sedan-chair.

"Where's Troy?" says the poet! Look; under the seat
Is a nest with four eggs; 'tis a favored retreat
Of the Muscovy hen, who has hatched, I dare swear,
Quite an army of chicks in that old Sedan-chair.

And yet--Can't you fancy a face in the frame
Of the window,--some high-headed damsel or dame,
Be-patched and be-powdered, just set by the stair,
While they raise up the lid of that old Sedan-chair?

Can't you fancy Sir Plume, as beside her he stands,
With his ruffles a-droop on his delicate hands,
With his cinnamon coat, with his laced solitaire,
As he lifts her out light from that old Sedan-chair?

Then it swings away slowly. Ah, many a league
It has trotted 'twixt sturdy-legged Terence and Teague;
Stout fellows!--but prone, on a question of fare,
To brandish the poles of that old Sedan-chair!

It has waited by portals where Garrick has played;
It has waited by Heidegger's "Grand Masquerade";
For my Lady Codille, for my Lady Bellair,
It has waited--and waited, that old Sedan-chair!

Oh, the scandals it knows! Oh, the tales it could tell
Of Drum and Ridotto, of Rake and of Belle,--
Of Cock-fight and Levee, and (scarcely more rare!)
Of Fete-days at Tyburn, that old Sedan-chair!

"_Heu! quantum mutata_," I say as I go.
It deserves better fate than a stable-yard, though!
We must furbish it up, and dispatch it,--"With Care,"--
To a Fine-Art Museum--that old Sedan-chair.

THE BALLAD OF PROSE AND RHYME

When the ways are heavy with mire and rut,
In November fogs, in December snows,
When the North Wind howls, and the doors are shut,--
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a scent from the whitethorn blows,
And the jasmine-stars at the casement climb,
And a Rosalind-face at the lattice shows,
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

When the brain gets dry as an empty nut,
When the reason stands on its squarest toes,
When the mind (like a beard) has a "formal cut,"--
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever the May-blood stirs and glows,
And the young year draws to the "golden prime,"
And Sir Romeo sticks in his ear a rose,--
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

In a theme where the thoughts have a pedant-strut,
In a changing quarrel of "Ayes" and "Noes,"
In a starched procession of "If" and "But,"--
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever a soft glance softer grows
And the light hours dance to the trysting-time,
And the secret is told "that no one knows,"--
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

ENVOY

In the work-a-day world,--for its needs and woes,
There is place and enough for the pains of prose;
But whenever the May-bells clash and chime,
Then hey! for the ripple of laughing rhyme!

THE CURE'S PROGRESS

Monsieur The Cure down the street
Comes with his kind old face,--
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair,
And his green umbrella-case.

You may see him pass by the little "_Grande Place_,"
And the tiny "_Hotel-de-Ville_";
He smiles as he goes, to the _fleuriste_ Rose,
And the _pompier_ Theophile.

He turns as a rule through the "_Marche_" cool,
Where the noisy fishwives call;
And his compliment pays to the "_belle Therese_,"
As she knits in her dusky stall.

There's a letter to drop at the locksmith's shop,
And Toto, the locksmith's niece,
Has jubilant hopes, for the Cure gropes
In his tails for a _pain d'epice_.

There's a little dispute with a merchant of fruit
Who is said to be heterodox,
That will ended be with a "_Ma foi, oui!_"
And a pinch from the Cure's box.

There is also a word that no one heard
To the furrier's daughter Lou;
And a pale cheek fed with a flickering red,
And a "_Bon Dieu garde M'sieu!_"

But a grander way for the _Sous-Prefet_,
And a bow for Ma'am'selle Anne;
And a mock "off-hat" to the Notary's cat,
And a nod to the Sacristan:--

For ever through life the Cure goes
With a smile on his kind old face--
With his coat worn bare, and his straggling hair.
And his green umbrella-case.

"GOOD-NIGHT, BABETTE"

"Si vieillesse pouvait!"

SCENE.--_A small neat room. In a high Voltaire chair sits a
white-haired old gentleman._

M. VIEUXBOIS [_turning querulously_]

Day of my life! Where _can_ she get?
BABETTE! I Say! BABETTE!--BABETTE!

BABETTE [_entering hurriedly_]

Coming, M'sieu'! If M'sieu' speaks
So loud, he won't be well for weeks!

M. VIEUXBOIS

Where have you been?

BABETTE

Why, M'sieu' knows:--
April!... Ville-d' Avray!... Ma'm'selle ROSE!

M. VIEUXBOIS

Ah! I am old,--and I forget.
Was the place growing green, BABETTE?

BABETTE

But of a greenness!--Yes, M'sieu'!
And then the sky so blue!--so blue!
And when I dropped my _immortelle_,
How the birds sang!
[_Lifting her apron to her eyes._]
This poor Ma'm'selle!

M. VIEUXBOIS

You're a good girl, BABETTE, but she,--
She was an angel, verily.
Sometimes I think I see her yet
Stand smiling by the cabinet;
And once, I know, she peeped and laughed
Betwixt the curtains....
Where's the draught?
[_She gives him a cup._]
Now I shall sleep, I think, BABETTE;--
Sing me your Norman _chansonnette_.

BABETTE [_sings_]

"_Once at the Angelus
(Ere I was dead),
Angels all glorious
Came to my bed;--
Angels in blue and white,
Crowned on the head._"

M. VIEUXBOIS [_drowsily_]

"She was an Angel" ... "Once she laughed" ...
What! was I dreaming?
Where's the draught?

BABETTE [_showing the empty cup_]

The draught, M'sieu'?

M. VIEUXBOIS

How I forget!
I am so old! But sing, BABETTE!

BABETTE [_sings_]

"_One was the Friend I left
Stark in the Snow;
One was the Wife that died
Long,--long ago;
One was the Love I lost--
How could she know?_"

M. VIEUXBOIS [_murmuring_]

Ah PAUL! ... old PAUL! ... EULALIE, too!
And ROSE ... And O! "the sky so blue!"

BABETTE [_sings_]

"_One had my Mother's eyes,
Wistful and mild;
One had my Father's face;
One was a Child:
All of them bent to me,--
Bent down and smiled!_"
[He is asleep!]