Chapter III: Front Matter (3)

Toward evening Undine was hanging upon the knight's arm with lowly tenderness, while she drew him gently out before the door, where the setting sun shone richly over the fresh grass and upon the high slender boles of the trees. Her emotion was visible; the dew of sadness and love swam in her eyes, while a tender and fearful secret seemed to hover upon her lips, but was only made known by hardly breathed sighs. She led her husband farther and farther onward without speaking. When he asked her questions, she replied only with looks, in which, it is true, there appeared to be no immediate answer to his inquiries, but a whole heaven of love and timid devotion. Thus they reached the margin of the swollen forest stream, and the knight was astonished to see it gliding away with so gentle a murmuring of its waves, that no vestige of its former swell and wildness was now discernible.

"By morning it will be wholly drained off," said the beautiful wife, almost weeping, "and you will then be able to travel, without anything to hinder you, whithersoever you will."

"Not without you, dear Undine," replied the knight, laughing: "think only, were I disposed to leave you, both the Church and the spiritual powers, the emperor and the laws of the realm, would require the fugitive to be seized and restored to you."

"All this depends on you--all depends on you," whispered his little companion, half weeping and half smiling. "But I still feel sure that you will not leave me; I love you too deeply to fear that misery. Now bear me over to that little island which lies before us. There shall the decision be made. I could easily, indeed, glide through that mere rippling of the water without your aid, but it is so sweet to lie in your arms; and should you determine to put me away, I shall have rested in them once more, ... for the last time."

Huldbrand was so full of strange anxiety and emotion, that he knew not what answer to make her. He took her in his arms and carried her over, now first realizing the fact that this was the same little island from which he had borne her back to the old fisherman, the first night of his arrival. On the farther side he placed her upon the soft grass, and was throwing himself lovingly near his beautiful burden; but she said to him:--"Not here, but opposite me. I shall read my doom in your eyes, even before your lips pronounce it; now listen attentively to what I shall relate to you." And she began:--

"You must know, my own love, that there are beings in the elements which bear the strongest resemblance to the human race, and which at the same time but seldom become visible to you. The wonderful salamanders sparkle and sport amid the flames; deep in the earth the meagre and malicious gnomes pursue their revels; the forest spirits belong to the air, and wander in the woods; while in the seas, rivers, and streams live the widespread race of water spirits. These last, beneath resounding domes of crystal, through which the sky can shine with its sun and stars, inhabit a region of light and beauty; lofty coral-trees glow with blue and crimson fruits in their gardens; they walk over the pure sand of the sea, among exquisitely variegated shells, and amid whatever of beauty the old world possessed, such as the present is no more worthy to enjoy,--creations which the floods covered with their secret veils of silver; and now these noble monuments sparkle below, stately and solemn, and bedewed by the water, which loves them, and calls forth from their crevices delicate moss-flowers and enwreathing tufts of sedge.

"Now, the nation that dwell there are very fair and lovely to behold, for the most part more beautiful than human beings. Many a fisherman has been so fortunate as to catch a view of a delicate maiden of the waters, while she was floating and singing upon the deep. He would then spread far the fame of her beauty; and to such wonderful females men are wont to give the name of Undines.--But what need of saying more? You, my dear husband, now actually behold an Undine before you."

The knight would have persuaded himself that his lovely wife was under the influence of one of her odd whims, and that she was only amusing herself and him with her extravagant inventions. He wished it might be so. But with whatever emphasis he said this to himself, he still could not credit the hope for a moment: a strange shivering shot through his soul; unable to utter a word, he gazed upon the sweet speaker with a fixed eye. She shook her head in distress, sighed from her full heart, and then proceeded in the following manner:--

"We should be far superior to you, who are another race of the human family,--for we also call ourselves human beings, as we resemble them in form and features,--had we not one evil peculiar to ourselves. Both we and the beings I have mentioned as inhabiting the other elements vanish into air at death and go out of existence, spirit and body, so that no vestige of us remains; and when you hereafter awake to a purer state of being, we shall remain where sand and sparks and wind and waves remain. Thus, we have no souls; the element moves us, and again is obedient to our will while we live, though it scatters us like dust when we die; and as we have nothing to trouble us, we are as merry as nightingales, little gold-fishes, and other pretty children of nature.

"But all beings aspire to rise in the scale of existence higher than they are. It was therefore the wish of my father, who is a powerful water prince in the Mediterranean Sea, that his only daughter should become possessed of a soul, although she should have to endure many of the sufferings of those who share that gift.

"Now, the race to which I belong have no other means of obtaining a soul than by forming with an individual of your own the most intimate union of love. I am now possessed of a soul, and my soul thanks you, my best beloved, and never shall cease to thank you, if you do not render my whole future life miserable. For what will become of me, if you avoid and reject me? Still, I would not keep you as my own by artifice. And should you decide to cast me off, then do it now, and return alone to the shore. I will plunge into this brook, where my uncle will receive me; my uncle, who here in the forest, far removed from his other friends, passes his strange and solitary existence. But he is powerful, as well as revered and beloved by many great rivers; and as he brought me hither to the fisherman a light-hearted and laughing child, he will take me home to my parents a woman, gifted with a soul, with power to love and to suffer."

She was about to add something more, when Huldbrand with the most heartfelt tenderness and love clasped her in his arms, and again bore her back to the shore. There amid tears and kisses he first swore never to forsake his affectionate wife, and esteemed himself even more happy than Pygmalion, for whom Venus gave life to this beautiful statue, and thus changed it into a beloved wife. Supported by his arm, and in the confidence of affection, Undine returned to the cottage; and now she first realized with her whole heart how little cause she had for regretting what she had left--the crystal palaces of her mysterious father.

THE LAST APPEARANCE OF UNDINE

From 'Undine'

Should I relate to you how passed the marriage feast at Castle Ringstetten, it would be as if you saw a heap of bright and pleasant things, but all overspread with a black mourning crape, through whose darkening veil their brilliancy would appear but a mockery of the nothingness of all earthly joys.

It was not that any spectral delusion disturbed the scene of festivity; for the castle, as we well know, had been secured against the mischief of the water spirits. But the knight, the fisherman, and all the guests were unable to banish the feeling that the chief personage of the feast was still wanting, and that this chief personage could be no other than the gentle and beloved Undine.

Whenever a door was heard to open, all eyes were involuntarily turned in that direction; and if it was nothing but the steward with new dishes, or the cup-bearer with a supply of wine of higher flavor than the last, they again looked down in sadness and disappointment, while the flashes of wit and merriment which had been passing at times from one to another were extinguished by tears of mournful remembrance.

The bride was the least thoughtful of the company, and therefore the most happy; but even to her it sometimes seemed strange that she should be sitting at the head of the table, wearing a green wreath and gold-embroidered robe, while Undine was lying a corpse, stiff and cold, at the bottom of the Danube, or carried out by the current into the ocean. For ever since her father had suggested something of this sort, his words were continually sounding in her ear; and this day in particular, they would neither fade from her memory nor yield to other thoughts.

Evening had scarcely arrived when the company returned to their homes; not dismissed by the impatience of the bridegroom, as wedding parties are sometimes broken up, but constrained solely by heavy sadness and forebodings of evil. Bertalda retired with her maidens, and the knight with his attendants, to undress; but there was no gay laughing company of bridesmaids and bridesmen at this mournful festival.

Bertalda wished to awake more cheerful thoughts: she ordered her maidens to spread before her a brilliant set of jewels, a present from Huldbrand, together with rich apparel and veils, that she might select from among them the brightest and most beautiful for her dress in the morning. The attendants rejoiced at this opportunity of pouring forth good wishes and promises of happiness to their young mistress, and failed not to extol the beauty of the bride with the most glowing eloquence. This went on for a long time, until Bertalda at last, looking in a mirror, said with a sigh:--

"Ah, but do you not see plainly how freckled I am growing? Look here on the side of my neck."

They looked at the place and found the freckles indeed, as their fair mistress had said; but they called them mere beauty-spots, the faintest touches of the sun, such as would only heighten the whiteness of her delicate complexion. Bertalda shook her head, and still viewed them as a blemish.

"And I could remove them," she said at last, sighing. "But the castle fountain is covered, from which I formerly used to have that precious water, so purifying to the skin. Oh, had I this evening only a single flask of it!"

"Is that all?" cried an alert waiting-maid, laughing as she glided out of the apartment.

"She will not be so foolish," said Bertalda, well pleased and surprised, "as to cause the stone cover of the fountain to be taken off this very evening?" That instant they heard the tread of men already passing along the court-yard, and could see from the window where the officious maiden was leading them directly up to the fountain, and that they carried levers and other instruments on their shoulders.

"It is certainly my will," said Bertalda with a smile, "if it does not take them too long." And pleased with the thought that a word from her was now sufficient to accomplish what had formerly been refused with a painful reproof, she looked down upon their operations in the bright moonlit castle court.

The men raised the enormous stone with an effort; some one of the number indeed would occasionally sigh, when he recollected that they were destroying the work of their former beloved mistress. Their labor, however, was much lighter than they had expected. It seemed as if some power from within the fountain itself aided them in raising the stone.

"It appears," said the workmen to one another in astonishment, "as if the confined water had become a springing fountain." And the stone rose more and more, and almost without the assistance of the workpeople, rolled slowly down upon the pavement with a hollow sound. But an appearance from the opening of the fountain filled them with awe, as it rose like a white column of water; at first they imagined it really to be a fountain, until they perceived the rising form to be a pale female, veiled in white. She wept bitterly, raised her hands above her head, wringing them sadly as with slow and solemn step she moved toward the castle. The servants shrank back, and fled from the spring, while the bride, pale and motionless with horror, stood with her maidens at the window. When the figure had now come close beneath their room, it looked up to them sobbing, and Bertalda thought she recognized through the veil the pale features of Undine. But the mourning form passed on, sad, reluctant, and lingering, as if going to the place of execution. Bertalda screamed to her maids to call the knight; not one of them dared to stir from her place; and even the bride herself became again mute, as if trembling at the sound of her own voice.

While they continued standing at the window, motionless as statues, the mysterious wanderer had entered the castle, ascended the well-known stairs, and traversed the well-known halls, in silent tears. Alas, how differently had she once passed through these rooms!

The knight had in the mean time dismissed his attendants. Half undressed and in deep dejection, he was standing before a large mirror; a wax taper burned dimly beside him. At this moment some one tapped at his door very, very softly. Undine had formerly tapped in this way, when she was playing some of her endearing wiles.

"It is all an illusion!" said he to himself. "I must to my nuptial bed."

"You must indeed, but to a cold one!" he heard a voice, choked with sobs, repeat from without; and then he saw in the mirror that the door of his room was slowly, slowly opened, and the white figure entered, and gently closed it behind her.

"They have opened the spring," said she in a low tone; "and now I am here, and you must die."

He felt in his failing breath that this must indeed be; but covering his eyes with his hands, he cried:--"Do not in my death-hour, do not make me mad with terror. If that veil conceals hideous features, do not lift it! Take my life, but let me not see you."

"Alas!" replied the pale figure, "will you not then look upon me once more? I am as fair now as when you wooed me on the island!"

"Oh, if it indeed were so," sighed Huldbrand, "and that I might die by a kiss from you!"

"Most willingly, my own love," said she. She threw back her veil; heavenly fair shone forth her pure countenance. Trembling with love and the awe of approaching death, the knight leant towards her. She kissed him with a holy kiss; but she relaxed not her hold, pressing him more closely in her arms, and weeping as if she would weep away her soul. Tears rushed into the knight's eyes, while a thrill both of bliss and agony shot through his heart, until he at last expired, sinking softly back from her fair arms upon the pillow of his couch a corpse.

"I have wept him to death!" said she to some domestics who met her in the ante-chamber; and passing through the terrified group, she went slowly out, and disappeared in the fountain.

SONG FROM 'MINSTREL LOVE'

Oh welcome, Sir Bolt, to me!
And a welcome, Sir Arrow, to thee!
But wherefore such pride
In your swift airy ride?
You're but splints of the ashen tree.
When once on earth lying,
There's an end of your flying!
Lullaby! lullaby! lullaby!
But we freshly will wing you
And back again swing you,
And teach you to wend
To your Moorish friend.

Sir Bolt, you have oft been here;
And Sir Arrow, you've often flown near;
But still from pure haste
All your courage would waste
On the earth and the streamlet clear.
What! over all leaping,
In shame are you sleeping?
Lullaby! lullaby! lullaby!
Or if you smote one,
'Twas but darklingly done,
As the grain that winds fling
To the bird on the wing.

ANATOLE FRANCE

(1844-)

Anatole France, whose real name of Thibault is sunk in his literary signature, was born in Paris, April 16th, 1844. His father, a wealthy bookseller, seems to have been a thoughtful, meditative man, and his mother a woman of great refinement and tenderness. Their son shows the result of the double influence. Always fond of books, he early devoted himself to literary work, and made his debut as writer in 1868 in a biographical study of Alfred de Vigny. This was shortly followed by two volumes of poetry: 'Les Poemes Dores' (Golden Verses) and 'Les Noces Corintheennes' (Corinthian Revels). Since this work of his youth he has published at least twelve novels and romances, of which the most familiar are: 'Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard' (The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard), 'Le Livre de Mon Ami' (My Friend's Book), 'Le Lys Rouge' (The Red Lily), and 'Les Desirs de Jean Servieu' (Jean Servieu's Wishes). Several volumes of essays, critical introductions to splendid editions of Racine, Moliere, La Fontaine, and Le Sage, of 'Manon Lescaut' and 'Paul and Virginia,' numberless studies of men and books for the reviews and journals,--these measure the tireless industry of an incessant worker. In 1876 M. France became an attache of the Library of the Senate. In December 1896 he was received as member of the French Academy, succeeding to the chair of Ferdinand de Lesseps, whose eulogy he pronounced with exquisite taste and grace.

Like Renan, whose disciple he is, this fine artist was formed in the clerical schools. His perfection of style, clear, distinguished, scintillating with wit and fancy, furnishes, as a distinguished French critic remarks, a strong contrast to the painful and heavy periods of the literary products of a State education. He is an enthusiastic humanist, a fervent Neo-Hellenist, delicately sensitive to the beauty of the antique, the magic of words, and the harmony of phrase.

Outside of France, his best known works are 'Le Crime de Sylvestre Bonnard' (crowned by the Academy) and 'Le Livre de Mon Ami.' The first of these expresses the author's Hellenism, sentiment, experience, love of form, and gentle pessimism. Into the character of Sylvestre Bonnard, that intelligent, contemplative, ironical, sweet-natured old philosopher, he has put most of himself. In 'Le Livre de Mon Ami' are reflected the childhood and youth of the author. It is a living book, made out of the impulses of the heart, holding the very essence of moral grace, written with exquisite irony absolutely free from bitterness.

It is to be regretted that in some of his later writings this charming writer has fallen short of the standard of these works, though the versatility of talent he displays is great and admirable. In 'Thais' he has painted the magnificent Alexandria of the Ptolemies; in 'Le Lys Rouge' the Florence of to-day. In 'La Rotisserie de la Reine Pedauque' (The Cook-Shop of the Queen Pedauque) and in 'Les Opinions de M. Jerome Coignard,' Gil Blas, Rabelais, Wilhelm Meister, and Montaigne seem to jostle each other. In 'Le Jardin d'Epicure' (The Garden of Epicurus) a modern Epicurus, discreet, indulgent, listless, listens to lively discussions between the shades of Plato, Origen, Augustine, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, while an Esquimaux refutes Bossuet, a Polynesian develops his theory of the soul, and Cicero and Cousin agree in their estimate of a future life.

In his own words, M. Anatole France has always been inclined to take life as a spectacle, offering no solution of its perplexities, proposing no remedies for its ills. His literary quality, as M. Jules Lemaitre observes, owes little or nothing to the spirit or literature of the North. His intelligence is the pure and extreme product of Greek and Latin tradition.

IN THE GARDENS

From 'The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard.' Copyright, 1890, by Harper & Brothers

APRIL 16.

St. Droctoveus and the early abbots of Saint-Germain-des-Pres have been occupying me for the past forty years; but I do not know whether I shall be able to write their history before I go to join them. It is already quite a long time since I became an old man. One day last year, on the Pont des Arts, one of my fellow-members at the Institute was lamenting before me over the _ennui_ of becoming old.

"Still," Sainte-Beuve replied to him, "it is the only way that has yet been found of living a long time."

I have tried this way, and I know just what it is worth. The trouble of it is not that one lasts too long, but that one sees all about him pass away--mother, wife, friends, children. Nature makes and unmakes all these divine treasures with gloomy indifference, and at last we find that we have not loved,--we have only been embracing shadows. But how sweet some shadows are! If ever creature glided like a shadow through the life of a man, it was certainly that young girl whom I fell in love with when--incredible though it now seems--I was myself a youth.

A Christian sarcophagus from the catacombs of Rome bears a formula of imprecation, the whole terrible meaning of which I only learned with time. It says:--"_Whatsoever impious man violates this sepulchre, may he die the last of his own people!_" In my capacity of archaeologist I have opened tombs and disturbed ashes, in order to collect the shreds of apparel, metal ornaments, or gems that were mingled with those ashes. But I did it only through that scientific curiosity which does not exclude the feelings of reverence and of piety. May that malediction graven by some one of the first followers of the Apostles upon a martyr's tomb never fall upon me! I ought not to fear to survive my own people so long as there are men in the world; for there are always some whom one can love.

But the power of love itself weakens and gradually becomes lost with age, like all the other energies of man. Example proves it; and it is this which terrifies me. Am I sure that I have not myself already suffered this great loss? I should surely have felt it, but for the happy meeting which has rejuvenated me. Poets speak of the Fountain of Youth: it does exist; it gushes up from the earth at every step we take. And one passes by without drinking of it!

The young girl I loved, married of her own choice to a rival, passed, all gray-haired, into the eternal rest. I have found her daughter--so that my life, which before seemed to me without utility, now once more finds a purpose and a reason for being.

To-day I "take the sun," as they say in Provence; I take it on the terrace of the Luxembourg, at the foot of the statue of Marguerite de Navarre. It is a spring sun, intoxicating as young wine. I sit and dream. My thoughts escape from my head like the foam from a bottle of beer. They are light, and their fizzing amuses me. I dream; such a pastime is certainly permissible to an old fellow who has published thirty volumes of texts, and contributed to the Journal des Savants for twenty-six years. I have the satisfaction of feeling that I performed my task as well as it was possible for me, and that I utilized to their fullest extent those mediocre faculties with which nature endowed me. My efforts were not all in vain, and I have contributed, in my own modest way, to that renaissance of historical labors which will remain the honor of this restless century. I shall certainly be counted among those ten or twelve who revealed to France her own literary antiquities. My publication of the poetical works of Gautier de Coincy inaugurated a judicious system and made a date. It is in the austere calm of old age that I decree to myself this deserved credit, and God, who sees my heart, knows whether pride or vanity have aught to do with this self-award of justice.

But I am tired; my eyes are dim; my hand trembles, and I see an image of myself in those old men of Homer, whose weakness excluded them from the battle, and who, seated upon the ramparts, lifted up their voices like crickets among the leaves.

So my thoughts were wandering, when three young men seated themselves near me. I do not know whether each one of them had come in three boats, like the monkey of La Fontaine, but the three certainly displayed themselves over the space of twelve chairs. I took pleasure in watching them, not because they had anything very extraordinary about them, but because I discerned in them that brave joyous manner which is natural to youth. They were from the schools. I was less assured of it by the books they were carrying than by the character of their physiognomy. For all who busy themselves with the things of the mind can be at once recognized by an indescribable something which is common to all of them. I am very fond of young people; and these pleased me, in spite of a certain provoking wild manner which recalled to me my own college days with marvelous vividness. But they did not wear velvet doublets and long hair, as we used to do; they did not walk about, as we used to do, with a death's-head; they did not cry out, as we used to do, "Hell and malediction!" They were quite properly dressed, and neither their costume nor their language had anything suggestive of the Middle Ages. I must also add that they paid considerable attention to the women passing on the terrace, and expressed their admiration of some of them in very animated language. But their reflections, even on this subject, were not of a character to oblige me to flee from my seat. Besides, so long as youth is studious, I think it has a right to its gayeties.

One of them having made some gallant pleasantry which I forget, the smallest and darkest of the three exclaimed, with a slight Gascon accent:--

"What a thing to say! Only physiologists like us have any right to occupy ourselves about living matter. As for you, Gelis, who only live in the past,--like all your fellow archivists and paleographers,--you will do better to confine yourself to those stone women over there, who are your contemporaries."

And he pointed to the statues of the Ladies of Ancient France which towered up, all white, in a half-circle under the trees of the terrace. This joke, though in itself trifling, enabled me to know that the young man called Gelis was a student at the Ecole des Chartes. From the conversation which followed I was able to learn that his neighbor, blond and wan almost to diaphaneity, taciturn and sarcastic, was Boulmier, a fellow-student. Gelis and the future doctor (I hope he will become one some day) discoursed together with much fantasy and spirit. In the midst of the loftiest speculations they would play upon words, and make jokes after the peculiar fashion of really witty persons--that is to say, in a style of enormous absurdity. I need hardly say, I suppose, that they only deigned to maintain the most monstrous kind of paradoxes. They employed all their powers of imagination to make themselves as ludicrous as possible, and all their powers of reasoning to assert the contrary of common-sense. All the better for them! I do not like to see young folks too rational.

The student of medicine, after glancing at the title of the book that Boulmier held in his hand, exclaimed:--

"What!--you read Michelet--you?"

"Yes," replied Boulmier very gravely. "I like novels."

Gelis, who dominated both by his fine stature, imperious gestures, and ready wit, took the book, turned over a few pages rapidly, and said:--

"Michelet always had a great propensity to emotional tenderness. He wept sweet tears over Maillard, that nice little man who introduced _la paperasserie_ into the September massacres. But as emotional tenderness leads to fury, he becomes all at once furious against the victims. There is no help for it. It is the sentimentality of the age. The assassin is pitied, but the victim is considered quite unpardonable. In his later manner Michelet is more Michelet than ever before. There is no common-sense in it; it is simply wonderful! Neither art nor science, neither criticism nor narrative; only furies and fainting spells and epileptic fits over matters which he never deigns to explain. Childish outcries--_envies de femme grosse!_--and a style, my friends!--not a single finished phrase! It is astounding!"

And he handed the book back to his comrade. "This is amusing madness," I thought to myself, "and not quite so devoid of common-sense as it appears. This young man, though only playing, has sharply touched the defect in the cuirass."

But the Provencal student declared that history was a thoroughly despicable exercise of rhetoric. According to him, the only true history was the natural history of man. Michelet was in the right path when he came in contact with the fistula of Louis XIV., but he fell back into the old rut almost immediately afterwards.

After this judicious expression of opinion, the young physiologist went to join a party of passing friends. The two archivists, less well acquainted in the neighborhood of a garden so far from the Rue Paradis-aux-Marais, remained together, and began to chat about their studies. Gelis, who had completed his third class-year, was preparing a thesis, on the subject of which he expatiated with youthful enthusiasm. Indeed, I thought the subject a very good one, particularly because I had recently thought myself called upon to treat a notable part of it. It was the 'Monasticum Gallicanum.' The young erudite (I give him the name as a presage) wants to describe all the engravings made about 1690 for the work which Dom Michel Germain would have had printed, but for the one irremediable hindrance which is rarely foreseen and never avoided. Dom Michel Germain left his manuscript complete, however, and in good order when he died. Shall I be able to do as much with mine?--but that is not the present question. So far as I am able to understand, M. Gelis intends to devote a brief archaeological notice to each of the abbeys pictured by the humble engravers of Dom Michel Germain.

His friend asked him whether he was acquainted with all the manuscripts and printed documents relating to the subject. It was then that I pricked up my ears. They spoke at first of original sources; and I must confess they did so in a satisfactory manner, despite their innumerable and detestable puns. Then they began to speak about contemporary studies on the subject.

"Have you read," asked Boulmier, "the notice of Courajod?"

"Good!" I thought to myself.

"Yes," replied Gelis; "it is accurate."

"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the article by Tamisey de Larroque in the Revue des Questions Historiques?"

"Good!" I thought to myself, for the second time.

"Yes," replied Gelis, "it is full of things...."

"Have you read," said Boulmier, "the 'Tableau des Abbayes Benedictines en 1600,' by Sylvestre Bonnard?"

"Good!" I said to myself, for the third time.

"_Ma foi!_ no!" replied Gelis. "Bonnard is an idiot!"

Turning my head, I perceived that the shadow had reached the place where I was sitting. It was growing chilly, and I thought to myself what a fool I was to have remained sitting there, at the risk of getting the rheumatism, just to listen to the impertinence of those two young fellows!

"Well! well!" I said to myself as I got up. "Let this prattling fledgeling write his thesis, and sustain it! He will find my colleague Quicherat, or some other professor at the school, to show him what an ignoramus he is. I consider him neither more nor less than a rascal; and really, now that I come to think of it, what he said about Michelet awhile ago was quite insufferable, outrageous! To talk in that way about an old master replete with genius! It was simply abominable!"

CHILD-LIFE

From 'The Book of My Friend'

Everything in immortal nature is a miracle to the little child.

I was happy. A thousand things at once familiar and mysterious filled my imagination, a thousand things which were nothing in themselves, but which made my life. It was very small, that life of mine; but it was a life--which is to say, the centre of all things, the kernel of the world. Do not smile at what I say,--or smile only in sympathy, and reflect: whoever lives, be it only a dog, is at the centre of all things.

Deciding to be a hermit and a saint, and to resign the good things of this world, I threw my toys out of the window.

"The child is a fool!" cried my father, closing the window. I felt anger and shame at hearing myself thus judged. But immediately I considered that my father, not being so holy as I, could never share with me the glory of the blessed, and this thought was for me a great consolation.

Every Saturday we were taken to confession. If any one will tell me why, he will greatly oblige me. The practice inspired me with both respect and weariness. I hardly think it probable that M. le Cure took a lively interest in hearing my sins; but it was certainly disagreeable to me to cite them to him. The first difficulty was to find them. You can perhaps believe me, when I declare that at ten years of age I did not possess the psychic qualities and the methods of analysis which would have made it possible rationally to explore my inmost conscience. Nevertheless it was necessary to have sins: for--no sins, no confession. I had been given, it is true, a little book which contained them all: I had only to choose. But the choice itself was difficult. There was so much obscurely said of "larceny, simony, prevarication"! I read in the little book, "I accuse myself of having despaired; I accuse myself of having listened to evil conversations." Even this furnished little wherewith to burden my conscience. Therefore ordinarily I confined myself to "distractions." Distractions during mass, distractions during meals, distractions in "religious assemblies,"--I avowed all; yet the deplorable emptiness of my conscience filled me with deep shame. I was humiliated at having no sins....

I will tell you what, each year, the stormy skies of autumn, the first dinners by lamplight, the yellowing leaves on the shivering trees, bring to my mind; I will tell you what I see as I cross the Luxembourg garden in the early October days--those sad and beautiful days when the leaves fall, one by one, on the white shoulders of the statues there.

What I see then is a little fellow who with his hands in his pockets is going to school, hopping along like a sparrow. I see him in thought only, for he is but a shadow, a shadow of the "me" as I was twenty-five years ago. Really, he interests me,--this little fellow. When he was living I gave him but little thought, but now that he is no more, I love him well. He was worth altogether more than the rest of the "me's" that I have been since. He was a happy-hearted boy as he crossed the Luxembourg garden in the fresh air of the morning. All that he saw then I see to-day. It is the same sky, and the same earth; the same soul of things is here as before,--that soul that still makes me gay, or sad, or troubled: only _he_ is no more! He was heedless enough, but he was not wicked; and in justice to him I must declare that he has not left me a single harsh memory. He was an innocent child that I have lost. It is natural that I should regret him; it is natural that I should see him in thought, and delight in recalling him to memory....

Nothing is of more value for giving a child a knowledge of the great social machine than the life of the streets. He should see in the morning the milkwomen, the water carriers, the charcoal men; he should look in the shop windows of the grocer, the pork vender, and the wine-seller; he should watch the regiments pass, with the music of the band. In short, he should suck in the air of the streets, that he may learn that the law of labor is Divine, and that each man has his work to do in the world....

Oh! ye sordid old Jews of the Rue Cherche-Midi, and you my masters, simple sellers of old books on the quays, what gratitude do I owe you! More and better than university professors, have you contributed to my intellectual life! You displayed before my ravished eyes the mysterious forms of the life of the past, and every sort of monument of precious human thought. In ferreting among your shelves, in contemplating your dusty display laden with the pathetic relics of our fathers and their noble thoughts, I have been penetrated with the most wholesome of philosophies. In studying the worm-eaten volumes, the rusty iron-work, the worn carvings of your stock, I experienced, child as I was, a profound realization of the fluent, changing nature of things and the nothingness of all, and I have been always since inclined to sadness, to gentleness, and pity.

The open-air school taught me, as you see, great lessons; but the home school was more profitable still. The family repast, so charming when the glasses are clear, the cloth white, and the faces tranquil,--the dinner of each day with its familiar talk,--gives to the child the taste for the humble and holy things of life, the love of loving. He eats day by day that blessed bread which the spiritual Father broke and gave to the pilgrims in the inn at Emmaus, and says, like them, "My heart is warmed within me." Ah! how good a school is the school of home!...

The little fellow of whom I spoke but just now to you, with a sympathy for which you pardon me, perhaps, reflecting that it is not egotistic but is addressed only to a shadow,--the little fellow who crossed the Luxembourg garden, hopping like a sparrow,--became later an enthusiastic humanist.

I studied Homer. I saw Thetis rise like a white mist over the sea, I saw Nausicaa and her companions, and the palm-tree of Delos, and the sky, and the earth, and the sea, and the tearful smile of Andromache. I comprehended, I felt. For six months I lived in the Odyssey. This was the cause of numerous punishments: but what to me were _pensums_? I was with Ulysses on his violet sea. Alcestis and Antigone gave me more noble dreams than ever child had before. With my head swallowed up in the dictionary on my ink-stained desk, I saw divine forms,--ivory arms falling on white tunics,--and heard voices sweeter than the sweetest music, lamenting harmoniously.

This again cost me fresh punishments. They were just; I was "busying" myself "with things foreign to the class." Alas! the habit remains with me still. In whatever class in life I am put for the rest of my days, I fear yet, old as I am, to encounter again the reproach of my old professor: "Monsieur Pierre Nozierre, you busy yourself with things foreign to the class."

* * * * *

But the evening falls over the plane-trees of the Luxembourg, and the little phantom which I have evoked disappears in the shadow. Adieu! little "me" whom I have lost, whom I should forever regret, had I not found thee again, beautified, in my son!

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature.'

FROM 'THE GARDEN OF EPICURUS'

Irony and pity are two good counselors: the one, who smiles, makes life amiable; the other, who weeps, makes it sacred. The Irony that I invoke is not cruel. She mocks neither love nor beauty. She is gentle and benevolent. Her smile calms anger, and it is she who teaches us to laugh at fools and sinners whom, but for her, we might be weak enough to hate.

ST. FRANCIS D'ASSISI

(1182-1226)

BY MAURICE FRANCIS EGAN

Francis d'Assisi was at first called Francis Bernardone. His father Pietro was a merchant of Assisi, much given to the pomps and vanities of the world, a lover of France and of everything French. It was after a visit to France in 1182 that, rejoining his beloved wife Pica in the vale of Umbria, he found that God had given to him a little son. Pica called the boy John, in honor of the playmate of the little Christ; but Pietro commanded that he should be named Francis, because of the bright land from whence he drew the rich silks and thick velvets he liked to handle and to sell.

The vale of Umbria is the place for poets; it should be visited in the summer, when the roses bloom on the trellises which the early Italian painters put as backgrounds to their mothers and children. Florence is not far away; and near is the birthplace of one of the fathers of the sonnet, Fra Guittone, and of another poet, Propertius.

Francis's childhood, boyhood, and later youth were happy. His father denied him no luxury in his power to give; he was sent to the priests of the church of St. George. They taught him some Latin and much of the Provencal tongue,--for at that time there was no Italian language; there were only dialects, and the Provencal was used by the elegant, those who loved poetry. Francis Bernardone was one of these; he sang the popular Provencal songs of the day to the lute, for he had learned music. And so passionately did he long for "excess of it," that, the legend says, he stayed up all one night singing a duet with a nightingale. The bird conquered; and later, Francis made a poem glorifying the Creator who had given such a thrilling voice to it.

Up to the age of twenty-four Francis had been one of the lightest hearted and the lightest headed of the rich young men of Assisi. His father openly rejoiced in his extravagance, and admired the graceful manner with which he wore gay clothes cut in latest fashions of France. Madonna Pica, his mother, trembled for his future, while she adored him and in spite of herself believed in him. Her neighbors reproached her: "Your son throws money away; he is the son of a prince!" And Pica, troubled, answered, "He whom you call the child of a prince will one day be a child of God."

Pietro was delighted to see his son lead in all the sports of the _corti_ of Assisi. The _corti_ were associations of young men addicted to Provencal poetry and music and all sorts of gayety. Folgore da San Gemiano gives, in a series of sonnets, well translated by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, descriptions of their sports arranged according to the months. March was the season for

"--lamprey, salmon, eel, and trout,
Dental and dolphin, sturgeon, all the rout
Of fish in all the streams that fill the seas."

In April are dances:--

"And through hollow brass
A sound of German music on the air."

When summer came, Folgore says the _corti_ had other things:--

"For July, in Siena by the willow-tree
I give you barrels of white Tuscan wine,
In ice far down your cellars stored supine;
And morn and eve to eat, in company,
Of those vast jellies dear to you and me;
Of partridges and youngling pheasants sweet,
Boiled capons, sovereign kids;--and let their treat
Be veal and garlic, with whom these agree."

Francis was permeated with the ideas of chivalry, and his language was its phraseology. So much was he in love with chivalry that he became the founder of a new order, whose patroness should be the Lady Poverty. Never had there been a time in Europe since the decay of the Roman empire, when poverty was more derided. Princes, merchants, even many prelates and priests, neglected and contemned the poor. The voices of the outcasts and the leper went up to God, and he sent their terrible echoes to awaken the heart of Francis.

In Sicily, Frederick II.--the Julian of the time--lived among fountains and orange blossoms and gorgeous pomegranate arches,--a type of the arrogant voluptuousness of the time, a voluptuousness which Dante symbolized later as the leopard. Against this luxury Francis put the lady of his love, Poverty. In the 'Poetes Franciscains,' Frederick Ozanam says:--

"He thus designated what had become for him the ideal of all perfection,--the type of all moral beauty. He loved to personify Poverty as the symbolic genius of his time: he imagined her as the daughter of Heaven; and he called her by turns the lady of his thoughts, his affianced, and his bride."

The towns of Italy were continually at war, in 1206 and thereabout. Francis was taken prisoner in a battle of his native townsmen with the Perugians. Restless and depressed, unsatisfied by the revelry of his comrades, he threw himself into the train of the Count de Brienne, who was making war on the German Emperor for the two Sicilies. About this time, he was moved to give his fine military clothes to a shivering soldier. At Spoleto, after this act of charity, he dreamed that the voice of God asked what he valued most in life. "Earthly fame," he said.--"But which of two is better for you,--the Master, or the servant? And why will you forsake the Master for the servant, the Lord for the slave?"--"O Lord, what shall I do?" asked Francis.--"Return unto the city," said the voice, "and there it will be told you what you shall do and how you may interpret this vision."

He obeyed; he left the army; his old companions were glad to see him, and again he joined the _corti_. But he was paler and more silent. "You are in love!" his companions said, laughingly.

"I am in truth thinking of a bride more noble, more richly dowered, and more beautiful than the world has ever seen."

Pietro was away from home, and his son made donations to the poor. He grew more tranquil, though the Voice had not explained its message. He knelt at the foot of the crucifix one day in the old chapel of St. Damian, and waited. Then the revelation came:--"Francis, go to rebuild my house, which is falling into ruin!"

Francis took this command, which seemed to have come from the lips of his crucified Redeemer, literally. It meant that he should repair the chapel of St. Damian. Later, he accepted it in a broader sense. More important things than the walls of St. Damian were falling into ruin.

Francis was a man of action, and one who took life literally. He went to his father's shop, chose some precious stuffs, and sold them with his horse at Foliquo, for much below their value. Pietro had brought Francis up in a princely fashion: why should he not behave as a prince? And surely the father who had not grudged the richest of his stuffs for the celebrations of the _corti_, would not object to their sacrifice at the command of the Voice for the repairing of St. Damian! Pietro, who had not heard the Voice, vowed vengeance on his son for his foolishness. The priest at St. Damian's had refused the money; but Francis threw it into the window, and Pietro, finding it, went away swearing that his son had kept some of it. Francis wandered about begging stones for the rebuilding of St. Damian's. Pietro, maddened by the foolishness of his son, appealed to a magistrate. Francis cast off all his garments, and gave them to his father. The Bishop of Assisi covered his nakedness with his own mantle until the gown of a poor laborer was brought to him. Dipping his right hand in a pile of mortar, Francis drew a rough cross upon his breast: "Pietro Bernardone," he said, "until now I have called you my father; henceforth I can truly say, 'Our Father who art in heaven,' for he is my wealth, and in him do I place all my hope."

Francis went away, to build his chapel and sing in the Provencal speech hymns in honor of God and of love for his greatness. In June 1208 he began to preach. He converted two men, one rich and of rank, the other a priest. They gave all to the poor, and took up their abode near a hospital for lepers. They had no home but the chapel of the Angels, near the Portiuncula. This was the beginning of the great order of the Friars Minors, the Franciscans.

Francis was the first poet to use the Italian speech--a poet who was inspired to change the fate of Europe. "He would never," the author of a recent monograph on St. Francis says, "destroy or tread on a written page. If it were Christian writing, it might contain the name of God; even if it were the work of a pagan, it contained the letters that make up the sacred name. When St. Francis, of the people and singing for the people, wrote in the vernacular, he asked Fra Pacifico, who had been a great poet in the world, to reduce his verses to the rules of metre."

St. Bonaventura, Jacomino di Verona, and Jacopone di Todi, the author of the 'Stabat Mater,' were Franciscans who followed in his footsteps. "The Crusades were," to quote again, "defensive as well as offensive. The Sultan, whom St. Francis visited and filled with respect, was not far from Christendom." Frederick of Sicily, with his Saracens, menaced Assisi itself. Hideous doctrines and practices were rife; and the thirty thousand friars who soon enrolled themselves in the band of Francis gained the love of the people, preached Christianity anew, symbolized it rudely for folk that could not read, and, as St. Francis had done, they appealed to the imagination. The legends of St. Francis--one can find them in the 'Little Flowers,' of which there are at least two good English translations--became the tenderest poems of the poor.

If St. Francis had been less of a poet, he would have been less of a saint. He died a poet, on October 4, 1226: he asked to be buried on the Infernal Hill of Assisi, where the crusaders were laid to rest; "and," he said, "sing my 'Canticle of the Sun,' so that I may add a song in praise of my sister Death. The lines," he added, "will be found at the end of the 'Cantico del Sole.'"

Paul Sabatier's 'Life of St. Francis,' and Mrs. Oliphant's, are best known to English-speaking readers. The most exhaustive 'Life' is by the Abbe Leon Le Monnier, in two volumes. It has lately been translated into English.

[Signature: Maurice Francis Egan]

ORDER

[_Our Lord Speaks_]

And though I fill thy heart with hottest love,
Yet in true order must thy heart love me,
For without order can no virtue be;
By thine own virtue, then, I from above
Stand in thy soul; and so, most earnestly,
Must love from turmoil be kept wholly free:
The life of fruitful trees, the seasons of
The circling year move gently as a dove:
I measured all the things upon the earth;
Love ordered them, and order kept them fair,
And love to order must be truly wed.
O soul, why all this heat of little worth?
Why cast out order with no thought of care?
For by love's heat must love be governed?

Translation of Maurice Francis Egan.

THE CANTICLE OF THE SUN

[The title is 'Incipiunt Laudes Creaturarum quas fecit
Franciscus ad Laudem et Honorem Dei cum esset Infirmus ad
Sanctum Damianum.' It is sometimes called the 'Canticle of
the Creatures.' It is in Italian, and it opens with these
words:--"Altissimi, omnipotente, bon Signore, tue so le laude
la gloria e l'onore et omne benedictione."]

O Most High, Almighty, good Lord God, to thee belong praise, glory, honor, and all blessing.

Praised be my Lord God, with all his creatures, and specially our brother the sun, who brings us the day and who brings us the light; fair is he, and he shines with a very great splendor. O Lord, he signifies to us thee!

Praised be my Lord for our sister the moon, and for the stars, the which he has set clear and lovely in heaven.