Chapter III: High Art (2)

Outside the bank, in College Green, is the celebrated statue of William III. Its location has been more than once changed, and it is now placed where the officer on guard at the bank can keep an eye upon it. This fearful object, which would make a Pradier or Chantrey shudder, is painted and gilt annually. It has long served as a bone of contention between Protestant and Papist, and has come off very badly several times at the hands of the latter--a circumstance which probably accounts for one of the horse's legs being about a foot longer than the rest--half of that limb having been renewed after it had been lost in one of the many free fights in which this remarkable quadruped has seen service. The greatest proprietor of real estate in Dublin is the young earl of Pembroke, son of the late Right Hon. Sidney Herbert, so well known in connection with the Crimean war, who was created, shortly before his death, Lord Herbert of Lea. His estate, which is the most valuable in Ireland, comprises Merrion Square and all the most fashionable part of the Irish metropolis, and extends for several miles along the railway line running from Kingstown, the landing-place from England, to the capital. The property also includes Mount Merrion, a neglected seat about four miles from the city. This mansion, which might easily be made delightful, commands a charming view over the lovely bay, and is surrounded by a small but picturesque park containing deer. It was, with the rest of Lord Pembroke's estate, formerly the property of Viscount Fitzwilliam, who founded the Fitzwilliam Museum in the University of Cambridge.

Lord Fitzwilliam was a somewhat eccentric person. His nearest relation had displeased him by some very trivial offence, such as coming down late for dinner, so he determined to leave his estate to his distant cousin, Lord Pembroke. Falling ill, Lord Fitzwilliam, desired that Lord Pembroke might be summoned from London. Word came back that it was unfortunately impossible for him to leave England immediately. Presently news arrived from Dublin that Lord Fitzwilliam was dead, and had bequeathed all--the property is now three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year--to Lord Pembroke, with remainder to his second son. By the death of the late Lord Pembroke the English and Irish properties have become united, and are to-day worth not less than six hundred thousand dollars a year! It is this young nobleman who has lately written _The Earl and The Doctor_.

REGINALD WYNFORD.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: The Fitzgeralds, of which family the duke of Leinster is chief, became Protestant in 1611, when George, sixteenth earl of Kildare, coming to the title and estates when eight years old, was given in ward, according to the custom of the time, to the duke of Lenox (then lord privy seal), who bred him a Protestant.]

[Footnote 2: In June, 1798, the corpse of Lord Edward Fitzgerald was conveyed from the jail of Newgate and entombed in St. Werburgh's church, Dublin, until the times would admit of their being removed to the family vault at Kildare. "A guard," says his brother, "was to have attended at Newgate the night of my poor brother's burial, in order to provide against all interruption from the different guards and patrols in the streets: it never arrived, which caused the funeral to be several times stopped on its way, so that the funeral did not take place until nearly two in the morning, and the people attending were obliged to stay in church until a pass could be procured to permit them to go out."]

[Footnote 3: Lord Charlemont had a seat called Marino, beautifully situated within a few miles of Dublin. There is within the grounds an exquisite building erected from designs of Sir William Chambers. It is a small villa, in its arrangements suggesting a _maison de joie_. The furniture is just as it was, and although sadly out of repair, the visitor can easily judge how exquisite the place must once have been. There is a superb mantelpiece, richly mounted in bronze and inlaid with lapis lazuli.]

[Footnote 4: The occupants of Henrietta street in 1784 included--the primate (Lord Rokeby); the earl of Shannon; Hon. Dr. Maxwell, bishop of Meath; the bishop of Kilmore; the bishop of Clogher; Right Hon. Luke Gardiner, M.P.; Viscount Kingsborough; Right Hon. D. Bowes-Daly, M.P.; Sir E. Crofton, Bart.

Twenty years later, Dublin was nearly deserted by the aristocracy on account of the Union. Up to that time nearly all the peers, except those really English, seem to have had residences in Dublin. In 1844, Lords Longford, De Vesci and Monck were the only peers who had houses there.]

[Footnote 5: The precincts, including a portion of the Liberties, were then entirely under the jurisdiction of the dean of St. Patrick's.]

[Footnote 6: It was a part of the grim and ghastly humor of this extraordinary man,

"Who left what little wealth he had
To found a home for fools or mad,
And prove by one satiric touch
No nation wanted it so much,"

to give nicknames, of which Cancerina was one, to the poor old wretches he met in his walks, to whom he gave charity.

Amongst Cancerina's sisters in misery were Stompanympha, Pullagowna, Friterilla, Stumphantha.]

THE MAESTRO'S CONFESSION.

(ANDREA DAL CASTAGNO--1460.)

I.

Threescore and ten!
I wish it were all to live again.
Doesn't the Scripture somewhere say,
By reason of strength men oft-times may
Even reach fourscore? Alack! who knows?
Ten sweet, long years of life! I would paint
Our Lady and many and many a saint,
And thereby win my soul's repose.
Yet, Fra Bernardo, you shake your head:
Has the leech once said
I must die? But he
Is only a fallible man, you see:
Now, if it had been our father the pope,
I should _know_ there was then no hope.
Were only I sure of a few kind years
More to be merry in, then my fears
I'd slip for a while, and turn and smile
At their hated reckonings: whence the need
Of squaring accounts for word and deed
Till the lease is up?... How? hear I right?
No, no! You could not have said, _To-night_!

II.

Ah, well! ah, well!
"Confess"--you tell me--"and be forgiven."
Is there no easier path to heaven?
Santa Maria! how can I tell
What, now for a score of years and more,
I've buried away in my heart so deep
That, howso tired I've been, I've kept
Eyes waking when near me another slept,
Lest I might mutter it in my sleep?
And now at the last to blab it clear!
How the women will shrink from my pictures! And worse
Will the men do--spit on my name, and curse;
But then up in heaven I shall not hear.

I faint! I faint!
Quick, Fra Bernardo! The figure stands
There in the niche--my patron saint:
Put it within my trembling hands
Till they are steadier. So!
My brain
Whirled and grew dizzy with sudden pain,
Trying to span that gulf of years,
Fronting again those long laid fears.
_Confess_? Why, yes, if I must, I must.
Now good Sant' Andrea be my trust!
But fill me first, from that crystal flask,
Strong wine to strengthen me for my task.
(That thing is a gem of craftsmanship:
Just mark how its curvings fit the lip.)

Ah, you, in your dreamy, tranquil life,
How can _you_ fathom the rage and strife,
The blinding envy, the burning smart,
That, worm-like, gnaws the Maestro's heart
When he sees another snatch the prize
Out from under his very eyes,
For which he would barter his soul? You see
I taught him his art from first to last:
Whatever he was he owed to me.
And then to be browbeat, overpassed,
Stealthily jeered behind the hand!
Why that was more than a saint could stand;
And I was no saint. And if my soul,
With a pride like Lucifer's, mocked control,
And goaded me on to madness, till
I lost all measure of good or ill,
Whose gift was it, pray? Oh, many a day
I've cursed it, yet whose is the blame, I say?

_His name_? How strange that you question so,
When I'm sure I have told it o'er and o'er,
And why should you care to hear it more?

III.

Well, as I was saying, Domenico
Was wont of my skill to make such light,
That, seeing him go on a certain night
Out with his lute, I followed. Hot
From a war of words, I heeded not
Whither I went, till I heard him twang
A madrigal under the lattice where
Only the night before I sang.
--A double robbery! and I swear
'Twas overmuch for the flesh to bear.

_Don't ask me_. I knew not what I did,
But I hastened home with my rapier hid
Under my cloak, and the blade was wet.
Just open that cabinet there and see
The strange red rustiness on it yet.

A calm that was dead as dead could be
Numbed me: I seized my chalks to trace--
What think you?--_Judas Iscariot's face_!
I just had finished the scowl, no more,
When the shuffle of feet drew near my door
(We lived together, you know I said):
Then wide they flung it, and on the floor
Laid down Domenico--dead!

Back swam my senses: a sickening pain
Tingled like lightning through my brain,
And ere the spasm of fear was broke,
The men who had borne him homeward spoke
Soothingly: "Some assassin's knife
Had taken the innocent artist's life--
Wherefore, 'twere hard to say: all men
Were prone to have troubles now and then
The world knew naught of. Toward his friend
Florence stood waiting to extend
Tenderest dole." Then came my tears,
And I've been sorry these twenty years.

Now, Fra Bernardo, you have my sin:
Do you think Saint Peter will let me in?

MARGARET J. PRESTON.

MONSIEUR FOURNIER'S EXPERIMENT.

"_La transfusion parait avoir eu quelque succes dans ces derniers temps_."

A dejected man, M. le docteur Maurice Fournier locked the door of his physiological laboratory in the Place de l'École de Médecine, and walked away toward his rooms in the rue Rossini. At two-and-thirty, rich, brilliant, an ambitious graduate of l'École de Médecine, an enthusiastic pupil of Claude Bernard's, a devoted lover of science, and above all of physiology, yesterday he was without a care save to make his name great among the great names of science--to win for himself a place in the foremost rank of the followers of that mistress whom only he loved and worshiped. To-day a word had swept away all his fondest hopes. Trousseau, the keenest observer in all Paris, formerly his father's friend, now no less his own, had kindly but firmly called his attention to himself, and to the malady that had so imperceptibly and insidiously fastened itself upon him that until the moment he never dreamed of its approach. He had been too full of his work to think of himself. In any other case he would scarcely have dared to dispute the opinion of the highest medical authority in Europe; nevertheless in his own he began to argue the matter: "But, my dear doctor, I am well."

"No, my friend, you are not. You are thin and pale, and I noticed the other night, when you came late to the meeting of the Institute, that your breathing was quick and labored, and that the reading of your excellent paper was frequently interrupted by a short cough."

"That was nothing. I was hurried and excited, and I have been keeping myself too closely to my work. A run to Dunkerque, a week of rest and sea-air, will make all right again."

But the great man shook his head gravely: "Not weeks, but years, of a different life are needed. You must give up the laboratory altogether if you want to live. Remember your mother's fate and your father's early death--think of the deadly blight that fell so soon upon the rare beauty of your sister. Some day you will realize your danger: realize it now, in time. Close your laboratory, lock up your library, say adieu to Paris, and lead the life of a traveler, an Arab, a Tartar. For the present cease to dream of the future: strength is better than a professorship in the College of France, and health more than the cross of the Legion of Honor."

Fournier was at first surprised and incredulous: he became convinced, then alarmed. After some thought he was horribly dejected. At such a time an Englishman becomes stolid, a German gives up utterly, an American begins to live fast, since he may not live long; but he, being a Frenchman and a Parisian, had alternations--first, the idea of suicide, which means sleep; second, reaction, which is hopefulness.

He chose to react, and did it promptly. A little time, and the rooms in the Place de l'École de Médecine, opposite the bookseller's, displayed a card stuck on the entrance-door with red wafers, "_à louer_," the hammer of the auctioneer knocked down the comfortable furniture of the apartments in the rue Rossini, while that of the carpenter nailed up the well-beloved books in stout boxes, and the places that had known M. le docteur knew him no more. None but those who have experienced the pleasures of a life devoted to scientific research can understand how hard all this was to him. The fulfillment of long-cherished desires, the completion of elaborate systematic investigations, the realization of pet theories, the establishment of new principles,--all, all abandoned after so much toil and care. To struggle painfully through a desert toward some beautiful height, which, at first dimly seen, has grown clearer and clearer and always more splendid as he advances, and now at its very foot to be turned back by a gloomy stream in whose depths lurks death itself; to reach out his hand to the golden truth, fruit of much winnowing of human knowledge, and as he grasps the precious grains to be borne back by a grim spectre whose very breath is horrible with the noisome odors of the tomb; to choose an arduous life, and learn to love it because it has high aims, and then to give it up at once and utterly!--alas, poor Fournier!

"Nevertheless," he said as he turned his back on Paris, "even idle wanderings are better than dying of consumption."

Behold the student of science a wanderer--sailing his yacht among the islands of the Mediterranean; making long journeys through the wild mountain-regions and lovely valleys of untraveled Spain; stemming the historic current of the Nile; among the nomad tribes, in Arab costume riding an Arabian mare, as wild an Arab as the wildest of them; killing tigers in India, tending stock in Australia, chasing buffaloes in Western America,--everywhere avoiding civilization and courting Nature and the company of men who either by birth or adoption were the children of Nature. By day the winds of heaven kissed his cheeks and the sun bronzed them: at night he often fell asleep wondering at the star-worlds that gemmed the only canopy over his welcome blanket-couch.

His treatment of consumption was certainly a rational one, and perhaps the only one that is ever wholly successful. But, alas! few can take so costly a prescription.

How often had his studies led him to dissect the bodies of animals that had died in their dens in the Jardin des Plantes! Often in the first generation of cage-life, almost always in the second, invariably in the third, they grow dull, listless, the fire goes out of their eyes, the litheness out of their limbs: they forget to eat, they cough, and soon they die. Of what? Consumption. Once our fathers were wild and lived in the open air: they scarcely ever died, as we do, of consumption. Crowded cities, bad drainage, overwork, want of healthful exercise, stimulating food, dissipation,--these are human cage-life. If a man is threatened with consumption, let him go back to the plains and forests before it is too late.

Certainly the treatment benefited Fournier. By and by it did more--it cured him. The cough was forgotten, the cheeks filled out, the muscles became hard as bundles of steel wire, his strength was prodigious: he ate his food with a relish unknown in Paris, and slept like a child.

Nevertheless, his mind, trained to habits of thought and observation, was not idle. When a city was his home he had been a physiologist and had studied _man_: he made the world his dwelling-place, and wandering among the nations he became an ethnologist and began to study _men_.

A distinguished professor, writing of the influence of climate upon man, for the sake of illustration supposes the case of a human being whose life should be prolonged through many ages, and who should pass that life in journeying slowly from the arctic regions southward through the varying climates of the earth to the eternal winter of the antarctic zone. Always preserving his personal identity, this traveler would undergo remarkable changes in form, feature and complexion, in habits and modes of life, and in mental and moral attributes. Though he might have been perfectly white at first, his skin would pass through every degree of darkness until he reached the equator, when it would be black. Proceeding onward, he would gradually become fairer, and on reaching the end of his journey he would again be pale. His intellectual powers would vary also, and with them the shape of his skull. His forehead, low and retreating, would by degrees assume a nobler form as he advanced to more genial climes, the facial angle reaching its maximum in the temperate zone, only to gradually diminish as he journeyed toward the torrid, and to again exhibit under the equator its original base development. As he continued his journey toward the south pole he would undergo a second time this series of progressing and retrograding changes, until at length, as he laid his weary bones to rest in some icy cave in the drear antarctics,

Multum ille et terris jactatus et alto,

he would be in every respect, save in age and a ripe experience, the same as at the outset of his wanderings.

Extravagant as this illustration may appear, the professor goes on to say, philosophically, on the doctrine of the unity of the human race, it is not so; for what else than such an imaginary prolonged individual life is the life of the race? And what greater changes have occurred to our imaginary traveler than have actually befallen the human family?

The facts are patent. Under the equator is found the negro, in the temperate zones the Indo-European, and toward the pole the Lapp and Esquimaux. They are as different as the climates in which they dwell; nevertheless, history, philology, the common traditions of the race, revelation, point to their brotherhood.

How is it that climate can bring about such modifications in man? Is it possible that the sun, shining upon his face and his children's faces for ages, can make their skin dark, and their hair crisp and curly, and their foreheads low? Or that sunshine and shadow, spring-time and autumn, summer's showers beating upon him and winter's snows falling about his path, can make him fair and free? Or that the dreary night and cheerless day of many changeless arctic years can make him short and fat and stolid as a seal? Surely not. These avail much; but other influences, indirect and obscure in their workings, but not the less essentially climatic, are required. Food, raiment, shelter, occupation, amusement, influences that tell upon the very citadel and stronghold of life--and all in their very nature climatic, since they are controlled and modified by climate--are the means by which such changes are effected. The savage living in the open air, not trammeled with much clothing, anointing his skin with oil, eating uncooked food, delighting in the chase and in battle, and living thus because his surroundings indicate it, becomes swart and athletic, fierce, cunning and cruel--takes ethnologically the lowest place. Of literature, science, art, he knows nothing: for him will is justice, fear law, some miserable fetich God. Still, in his nature lie dormant all the capabilities of the noblest manhood, awaiting only favorable surroundings to call them into glorious being. It might shock the salt of the earth to reflect that some centuries of life among them and their fair descendants would make him like them.

The arctic savage clad in furs and eating blubber does not differ essentially from his brother of the tropics. So much of his food is necessarily converted into heat that he cannot afford to lead so active a life; but he also, like him of the tropics, partakes with his surroundings in color. The one, living amid snowclad scenery, where the sparse vegetation is gray and grayish-green, and the birds and animals almost as white as the snow over which they wander, is pale, etiolated. The other, under a vertical sun, surrounded by a lush and lusty growth, whose flowers for variety and intensity of color are beyond description, and in which birds of brightest plumage and black and tawny beasts make their home, has the most marked supply of pigment--is dark-hued, black, in short a negro. Between these two extremes is the typical man, fair of face, with expanded brow and wavy hair, well fed, well clad, well housed, wresting from Nature her hidden things and making her mightiest forces the workers of his will; heaping together knowledge, cherishing art, reverencing justice, worshiping God. How startling the contrast between brothers!

Such changes do not take place in a few generations. For their completion hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years must elapse. The descendants of the blacks who were carried from Africa to America as slaves two centuries and a half ago, save where their color has been modified by a mixed parentage, are still black. Already the influence of new climatic surroundings and of association has wrought great changes upon them: they are no longer savages. But their complexion is as dark as that of their kidnapped forefathers. Their original physical condition remains almost unaltered, and with it many mental characteristics: their love of display and of bright colors, their fondness for tune and the power of music to move them, their weird and fantastic belief in ghosts and spirits, in signs, omens and charms, and many other traits, still bear witness to their savage origin. But even these are fading away, and these men are slowly but not the less surely becoming civilized and _white_.

The point of departure for every structural change in a living organism lies in the apparatus by which nutrition is maintained; and this in the higher classes is the blood. Most complex and wonderful of fluids, it contains in unexplained and inscrutable combination salts of iron, lime, soda and potassa, with water, oil, albumen, paraglobulin and fibrinogen, which united form fibrine--in fact, at times, some part of everything we eat and all that goes to form our bodies, which it everywhere permeates, vitalizes and sustains. Borne in countless numbers in its ever-ebbing and returning streams are little disks, flattened, bi-concave, not larger in man than one-three-thousandth of an inch in diameter, called red corpuscles, whose part it is to carry from the lungs to the tissues pure oxygen, without which the fire called life cannot be sustained, and back from the tissues to the lungs carbonic acid, one of the products of that fire; and larger, yet marvelously small, bodies called leucocytes or white corpuscles, whose precise origin and use to this day, in spite of all the labor that has been spent upon their study, remain unknown. But that which makes the blood wonderful above all other fluids is its vitality. Our common expression, "life's blood," is no idle phrase. The blood is indeed the very throne of life. If its springs are pure and bountiful, if its currents flow strong and free, muscle, bone and brain grow in symmetry and power, and there is cunning to devise and the strong right arm to execute. But if it be thin and poor, and its circulation feeble and uncertain, the will flags, the mind is weak and vacillating, the muscles grow puny, and the man becomes an unresisting prey to disease and circumstance. If it escape through a wound, strength ebbs with it, until at length life itself flows out with the unchecked crimson stream. Thus, then, by acting upon the blood, climate has wrought and is working such changes upon man. But why are constantly-acting causes so slow in producing their effects? How is it that countless generations must pass away before purely climatic causes, potent as they are, begin to manifest themselves in physical changes in the races of men exposed to them?

Fournier, physiologist, as I have said, by the education of the schools, but by the broader education of his travels sociologist and ethnologist, devoted himself again to science, and framed this hypothesis: _Climatic influences, acting upon man, bring about physical changes exceedingly slowly, because they are resisted by an inveterate habit of assimilation. This habit pertains either to the blood or the tissues, possibly to both, probably to the blood alone_.

To establish an hypothesis experiment is necessary. Physiology is a science of experiment. Hence the frequent uncertainty of its results, since no two observers conduct an experiment in exactly the same manner--certainly no two ever institute it under precisely the same conditions. Nevertheless, let us not decry science. Out of much searching after truth comes the finding of truth--after long groping in darkness one comes upon a ray of light.

An experiment was necessary. To the ingenious mind of Fournier an elaborate one occurred. If he could perform it, not only would his hypothesis be established and confirmed beyond all cavil, but a, field of scientific research also be opened such as was yet undreamed of. However, for this experiment subjects were needed. Brutes, beasts of the field? Not so: that were easy to achieve. Human beings, two living, healthy men, one white, one black, were the requirements. Impossible! The experiment could never be performed: its requirements were unattainable. O tempora! O mores! Alas, for the degeneracy of the age! In the days of the Roman emperors men were fed, literally fed, to wild beasts in the arena--Gauls, Scythians, Nubians, even Roman freedmen when barbarians were scarce. This to amuse the populace alone. Frightful waste of life! In India, a thousand lives thrown away in a day under the wheels of Juggernaut; in Europe, tens of thousands to gratify the imperious wills of grasping monarchs; in America, hundreds to sate the greed of railroad corporations. And now not two men to be had for an experiment of untold value to science, that would scarcely endanger life in one of them, and in the other would necessitate only the merest scratch! To what are we coming? No one complains that tattooed heads are going out of fashion--that the king of the Cannibal Isles no longer flatters a ship's master by inquiring which head of all his subjects is ornamented most to his fancy, and the next day sending him that head as a souvenir of his visit to the anthropophagic shores. It is well that the custom is dead. But is there not danger of drifting too far even toward the shore of compassion? May it not be that there is something wrong with the bowels of mercy when criminals are executed barbarously, while science needs their lives, or at least an insight into the method of their dying; when precise examination of the manner of nerve and blood supply to the organs of a superannuated horse is heavily finable; when charitable but perchance too enthusiastic societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals push their earnestness even to interference with scientific researches, because, forsooth! they jeopardize the lives of rabbits, guinea-pigs and dogs? The legend _Cave canem_ bears a deeper meaning now than it did in the inlaid pavements of Pompeian vestibules. We dare not trample it under foot.

Five years passed, and with restored health back came the old desires in redoubled force. Fournier longed to return to civilization and to work. The life that had been so delightful while it did him good became utterly unbearable when he had reaped its full benefit. I am tempted to quote a line about Europe and Cathay, but refrain: it will recur to the reader. He burned to renew the labors he had abandoned, to take up again the work he had laid down to do battle with disease, now that disease was vanquished. Thus the year 1863 found him in the city of Charleston, homeward bound in his journey around the world.

While still in the wilds west of the Mississippi he could have shaped his course northward and readily proceeded directly by steamer from New York to Europe. But a determined purpose led him to choose a different course, though he was well aware that it would involve indefinite delay in reaching Paris, and great personal risk. The life he had been leading made him think lightly of danger, and years would be well spent if he could accomplish the plans that induced him to go into the disorganized country of the South.

He straightway connected himself with the army as surgeon, and solicited a place at the front. He wanted active service. In this he was disappointed. Charleston, blockaded and beseiged, was in a state of military inaction. Save the occasional exchange of shot and shell at long range between the works on shore and those which the Unionists had erected and held upon the neighboring islands and marshes, nothing was done, and for nearly a year Fournier experienced the irksomeness of routine duty in a wretchedly arranged and appointed military hospital. Nevertheless, the time was not wholly wasted. From a planter fleeing from the anarchy of civil war he procured a native African slave, one of the shipload brought over a few years before in the Wanderer, the last slave-ship that put into an American harbor. This man he made his body-servant and kept always near him, partly to study him, but chiefly to secure his complete mental and moral thraldom. An almost unqualified savage, Fournier avoided systematiclly everything that would tend to civilize him. He taught him many things that were convenient in his higher mode of life, and taught him well, but of the great principles of civilization he strove to keep him in ignorance; and more, he so confused and distorted the few gleams of light that had reached that darkened soul that they made its gloom only the more hideous and profound. He wanted a man altogether savage, mentally, morally and physically. Instead of teaching him English or French, he learned from him many words of his own rude native tongue, and communicated with him as much as possible in that alone, aided by gesture, in which, like all Frenchmen, he possessed marvelous facility of expression. In the unexplored back-country of Africa the negro had been a prince, and Fournier bade him look forward to the time when he would return and rule. He always addressed him by his African name and title in his own tongue. He took him into the wards of his hospital, and taught him to be useful at surgical operations and to care for the instruments, that he might become familiar with them and with the sight of blood, which at first maddened him. Once he gave him a drug that made his head throb, and then bled him, with almost instant relief. He affected an interest in the amulets which hung at his neck, and besought him to give him one to wear. He committed to his care, with expressions of the greatest solicitude, a strong box, brass bound and carefully locked, which he told him contained his god, a most potent and cruel deity, who would, however, when it pleased him, give back the life of a dead man for _blood_. This box contained a silver cup, with a thermometer fixed in its side; a glass syringe holding about a third of a pint; a large curved needle perforated in its length like a tube, sharp at one end, at the other expanded to fit accurately the nozzle of the syringe; a little strainer also fitting the syringe; and last, a small bundle of wires with a handle like an egg-beater.

For the rest, this savage was crooked, ill-shapen and hideous. His skin was as black as night; his head small, the face immensely disproportionate to the cranium; his jaws massive and armed with glittering white teeth filed to points; his cheeks full, his nose flat, his eyes little, deep-set, restless, wicked. The usage he received from his new master was so different from his former experience with white men, and so in accord with his own undisciplined nature, that it called forth all the sympathies of his character. He soon loved the Frenchman with an intensity of affection almost incomprehensible. It is no exaggeration to say that he would have willingly laid down his life to gratify his master's slightest wish. The latter's knowledge was to him so comprehensive, his power so boundless and his will so imperious and inflexible, that he feared and worshiped him as a god.

Fournier looked upon his monster with satisfaction, and longed for a battle. His wish was at last gratified. On the Fourth of July, 1864, an engagement took place three miles north-west of Legaréville, near the North Edisto River. A force of Union soldiery had been assembled from the Sea Islands and from Florida, massed on Seabrook Island, and pushed thence up into South Carolina. The object of this expedition was unknown; indeed, as nothing whatever was accomplished, the strategy of it remains to this day unexplained. However, forewarned is forearmed. Every movement was watched and reported by the rebel scouts; all the troops that could be spared from Charleston were sent out to oppose the invaders; roads were obstructed; bridges were destroyed, batteries erected in strong positions, everything prepared to impede their progress. Our story needs not that we should dwell upon the sufferings of the Union soldiers on that futile expedition, from the narrow, dusty roads, the frequent scarcity of water, the intense heat. With infinite fatigue and peril they advanced only five or six miles in a day's march. Many died of sunstroke, and many fell by the way utterly exhausted. There was occasional skirmishing; but one actual battle. To that the troops gave the name of "the battle of Bloody Bridge." Picture a slightly undulating country covered with thick low forest; a narrow road that by an open plank bridge crosses a wide, sluggish stream with marshy banks, and curves beyond abruptly to the right to avoid a low, steep hill facing the bridge; crowning this hill an earth-work, rude to be sure, but steep, sodded, almost impregnable to men without artillery to play upon it; within, two cannon, for which there is plenty of ammunition, and six hundred Confederate soldiers, fresh, eager, determined; on the road in front of the battery, but just out of range of its guns, the Union forces halting under arms, the leaders anxious and discouraged, the men exhausted, careworn, wondering what is to be done next, heartily sick of it all, yet willing to do their best; in the thicket on both sides the road, not sheltered, only covered, within pistol-shot of the enemy, six hundred United States soldiers, a Massachusetts colored regiment, one of the first recruited, without cannon, over-marched, overheated, a forlorn hope, _sent forward to take the battery_! These men, stealthily assembling there among the trees and bushes, are ready. Not one of them carries a pound of superfluous weight. Their rifles with fixed bayonets, a handful of cartridges, a canteen of water, are enough. They wear flannel shirts and blue trowsers; numbers are bareheaded, some have cut off the sleeves of their shirts: they know there is work before them. Many kneel in prayer; comrades exchange messages to loved ones at home, and give each other little keepsakes--the rings they wore or brier pipes carved over with the names of coast battles; others--perhaps they have no loved ones--look to the locks of their pieces and await impatiently the signal to advance. The officers--white men, most of them Boston society fellows, old Harvard boys who once thought a six-mile pull or a long innings at cricket on a hot day hard work, and knew no more of military tactics than the Lancers--move about among them, speaking to this one and to that one, calling each by name, jesting quietly with one, encouraging another, praising a third, endeavoring to inspire in all a hope which they dare not feel themselves.

But hark! The signal to move. Quickly they form in the road, and with a shout advance at a run, their dusky faces glistening in that summer sun and their manly hearts beating bravely in the very jaws of death. Now the bridge trembles beneath their steady tread: the foremost are at the hill, yet no sign of life in the battery. Only the smooth green bank, the wretched flag in the distance, and those guns charged with death looking grimly down upon them and waiting. On they come, nearer and nearer, and now some are on the hill and begin to climb the steep that forms the defence, slowly and with difficulty, using at times their rifles as aids like alpenstocks. Not a word is spoken. It is hard to understand how so many men can move with so little noise. The silence is that which precedes all dreadful noises. It is ominous, terrible. Scarcely twenty feet more, and the foremost will reach the rampart. Haste! haste! The day is won!

Suddenly a figure in gray leaps upon the breastwork: he waves his sword, utters a short quick word of command, and disappears. It is enough. The sleeping battery awakes. The silence becomes hideous uproar. The smooth green line of the sod against the sky is lined with marksmen, and in an instant fringed with fire. Then the cannon bellow and the breezeless air is dense with smoke. The attacking column hesitates, trembles, makes a useless effort to advance, and then falls back beyond the bridge. The officers endeavor to rally their men and renew the attack at once, but in vain: flesh and blood cannot stand in such a storm. Nevertheless, the brave fellows--God bless their memory!--halt at length, and form and charge once more. And so again and again and again; every time in vain and with new losses, until at last they cannot rally, but retreat, broken and bleeding, to the main body of the expedition, carrying with them such of the wounded and dead as they can snatch from under the fire of the rebel riflemen. Such was the battle of Bloody Bridge, and well was it named. Five times that gallant regiment charged the battery, and when the smoke of battle cleared away the sun shone down upon a piteous sight--blood dyeing the green of that sodded escarp--blood in great clots upon the rocks and stumps of the rugged hill below--blood poured plenteously upon the dusty road, making it horrible with purple mire--blood staining the bridge and gathering in little pools upon the planks, and dripping slowly down through the cracks between them into the sluggish stream, where it floated with the water in great red clouds, toward which creatures dwelling in slimy depths below came up lazily, but when they tasted it became furious and fought among themselves like demons--blood drying in hideous networks and arabesques upon the railing of the bridge--blood upon the fences, blood upon the trembling leaves of the bushes by the wayside--blood everywhere! And everywhere the upturned faces and torn bodies of men who had dared to do their duty and to die: side by side the white, who led and the black who followed--all set and motionless, but all wearing the same expression of brave but hopeless determination. That was a brave charge at Balaklava, but, trust me, there have been Balaklavas that are yet unsung.

So the expedition went back, and its brigades were redistributed to the Sea Islands and to Florida; but why it was ever sent out, and why that regiment was sent forward to take the battery without artillery and without reinforcements, God, who knoweth all things, only knows. And God alone knows why there must be wars and rumors of wars, and why men made in his image must tear each other like maddened beasts.

In this battle, heavy as the losses were, the Confederates took but one prisoner. At the third charge a tall, broad-shouldered captain, who seemed, like another son of Thetis, almost invulnerable, darted impetuously ahead of his men and reached the summit of the defence. Useless bravery! In an instant a volley point blank swept away the charging men behind him, and a gunner's sabrethrust bore him to the ground within the works, where he lay stunned and bleeding beside the gun he had striven so hard to take. The man who had captured him, wild with excitement and maddened with the powder that blackened him and the hot blood which jetted upon him, sprang down, spat upon him, spurned him with his foot, and would have dashed out his brains with the heavy hilt of his clubbed sword had not a strong hand grasped his uplifted wrist.

It was Fournier, who had watched the battle with an interest as intense as that of the most ardent Southerner in the battery, though widely different in character. His interest was that of the naturalist who stands by eager and curious to see a rustic entrap some _rara avis_ that he desires to study, to use for his experiment. Better for the bird: it can suffer and die. Afterward what matter whether it stand neatly stuffed and mounted, a voiceless worshiper, in some glass mausoleum, or slowly moulder in a fence corner until its feathers are wafted far and wide, and only a little tuft of greener grass remains to its memory? As our naturalist's game was nobler and destined for more important study, so it was capable of lifelong suffering more subtle and intense. Perhaps Fournier had not fully considered, in his eagerness to prove his hypothesis, the dangers to the subjects of his experiment. Perhaps his mind was so intent upon the physical aspect of the questions that he had overlooked some of the intellectual and moral elements involved in the problem, and did not realize the enormities that would result should he succeed. On the other hand, perhaps he saw them, realized them fully, and was the more deeply fascinated with the research because of its leading into such gloomy and mysterious regions of speculation. Let us do him justice. Science was his god, and this idolater was willing to endure any labor and privation and to assume any responsibility in her service. Would that more who worship a greater God were as devoted!

He was a physiologist, and was simply engaged in an experimental investigation, yet in its progress he had already uncivilized a man whose eyes were beginning dimly to see the truth, had poisoned his mind with lies, and had hurled him into depths of Plutonian ignorance inconceivably more profound than his original estate; and now he was about to debase another fellow-creature of his own race, to tamper with his manhood, to confuse his identity, to render him among his own kindred and people perhaps tabooed, ostracised, despised--perhaps an object of pity. If he should succeed? Surely he had not come thus near success to suffer his splendid Yankee captain to be brained there before his eyes. Like a hawk he had watched every incident of the fight, and was on the alert to act the part of surgeon toward any who might be either wounded in the battery or taken prisoner. He had even resolved, in case of the capture of the place, to represent his peculiar position to the United States officer in command, and to beg of him permission to make his experiment upon a wounded rebel.

The gunner turned fiercely upon him, but dropped his arm and sheathed his sabre at his question, and then walked back to his gun abashed, for he was, after all, a brave and chivalrous man.

Fournier simply asked: "Do Confederate soldiers _murder_ prisoners of war?" And added, "He is a wounded man--leave him to me."

Then he knelt down beside him and examined his wound, and though he strove to be calm he trembled with excitement as he tore open the blue blouse and felt the warm blood welling over his fingers. It was a simple wound through the fleshy part of the shoulder: a strand of saddler's silk and a few strips of sticking-plaster would have sufficed to dress it, but the Frenchman smiled when he wiped away the clots and saw the blood spurting from two or three small divided arteries.

Then he called his African, and they carried the wounded man back to a tent, and laid him on a bed of moss and cypress boughs, and left him there to bleed, while he went out into the air, and walked about, and tossed his hat and shouted with excitement like a madman. But the battle raged, and the gunners charged their guns and fired, and charged and fired again, and the men along the breastwork grew furious with the slaughter and the fiery draughts they took from their canteens through lips blackened with powder and defiled with grease and shreds of cartridge-paper; and no one noticed the doctor's mad conduct nor the savage standing guard before the tent; nor did any other save those two in the whole battery--no, not even the gunner who had captured him--give a thought to the prisoner who lay bleeding there, until the battle was over.

And this prisoner, what of him? Any one, looking upon him as he lay upon the cypress boughs, would have known him to be thoroughbred. Everything about him proclaimed it. His face, manly but gentle, his figure, great in stature and strength, yet graceful in outline like a Grecian god, the very dress and accoutrements he wore, which were neat, strong, expensive, but without ornament, showed him to be a gentleman. And Robert Shirley was a gentleman. Probably no man in all the States could have been found who would have presented a greater contrast to the man standing guard outside the tent than this man who lay within it; and for that reason none who would have been so welcome to Fournier. As the one was a pure savage, the other was the realization of the most illustrious enlightenment; the one fierce, cunning, undisciplined, the other gentle, frank, considerate; as the one was hideous, ill-formed and black as night, so the other was radiant with manly beauty and fair as the morning. Each among his own people sprang from noble stock; the one a prince, the other the descendant of the purest Puritan race, which knew among its own divines and judges brave captains, and farther back a governor of the colony. But the guard and his people were at the foot of the scale, the guarded at the top. The blood flowing out upon the cypress bed was the best blood of America. It was blue blood and brave blood. Generation after generation it had flowed in the veins of fair women and noble men, and had never known dishonor. Yet Fournier let it flow. More, he was delighted that it continued to flow.

Presently, however, he sobered down, and began to prepare for his work. He placed a large caldron of water over a fire; he brought basins, towels and his case of surgical instruments, and placed them in the, tent, and with them the case which he had taught the African to believe contained his god. While thus busied he did not neglect the subject of his experiment. His watchful eye noted everything--the mass, of clots growing like a great crimson fungus under the wounded shoulder, the deadly pallor, the dark circles forming around the sunken eyes, the blanched lips, the transparent nostrils, the slow, deep respiration. From time to time he felt the wounded man's pulse and counted it carefully. _Ninety_--he went out again into the open air; _one hundred_--"The loss of blood tells," he muttered, and began to rearrange his appliances and busy himself uneasily with them; _one hundred and thirty beats to the minute _--"He is failing too fast: I must stop this bleeding" said the experimenter. Then he cleansed the wound, and tied the arteries, and bound it up. But the loss of blood had been so great that the heart fluttered wildly and feebly in its efforts to contract upon its diminished contents, and Fournier, anxious, and pale himself almost as his victim, trembled when his finger felt in vain for the bleeding artery and caught only a faint tremulous thrill, so feeble that he scarcely knew whether the heart was beating at all or not. In terror he threw the ends of the little tent and fanned him, and moistened his lips, and gave him brandy, and hastened to begin the experiment for which he had waited so long and for which both subjects were at last ready.

He told his savage that the Yankee was dying, but that he had communed with his god, who would let him live if blood was given in return. Then he reminded him of the time when he lost blood, and that it had done him no harm. The African, trained for this duty with so much care, did not fail him, but bared his arm and gave the blood. The god was brought forth and caught it, and the sacrifice began. As the silver, bowl floated in a basin of water so warm that the thermometer in its side marked ninety-eight degrees of Fahrenheit, Fournier stirred the blood flowing into it quickly with the bundle of wires, to collect the fibrine and prevent the formation of clots; he then drew it into the syringe through the strainer, and forced it through the perforated needle, which he had previously thrust into a large vein in Shirley's arm, carefully avoiding the introduction of the slightest bubble of air. Time after time he filled his syringe and emptied it into the veins of the wounded man, until at length he saw signs of reaction. The color came, the breathing became more natural, the pulse became slower, fuller, regular. By and by he moved, sighed, opened his eyes and spoke.

He asked a question: "What has happened?"