Chapter VI: Part 6

But Barty could not afford this little outing, and he was very sad--with a sadness that not all the Pauillac and St.-Estephe in M. Babet's cellars could have dispelled.

He made his friend a present of a beautiful pair of razors--English razors, which he no longer needed, since he no longer meant to shave--"en signe de mon deuil!" as he said. They had been the gift of Lord Archibald in happier days. Alas! he had forgotten to give his uncle Archie the traditional halfpenny, but he took good care to extract a sou from le Grand Bonzig!

So ended this little episode in Barty's life. He never saw Bonzig again, nor heard from him, and _of_ him only once more. That sou was wasted.

It was at Blankenberghe, on the coast of Belgium, that he at last had news of him--a year later--at the cafe on the plage, and in such an odd and unexpected manner that I can't help telling how it happened.

One afternoon a corner of the big coffee-room was being arranged for private theatricals, in which Barty was to perform the part of a waiter. He had just borrowed the real waiter's jacket and apron, and was dusting the little tables for the amusement of Mlle. Solange, the dame de comptoir, and of the waiter, Prosper, who had on Barty's own shooting-jacket.

Suddenly an old gentleman came in and beckoned to Barty and ordered a demi-tasse and petit-verre. There were no other customers at that hour.

Mlle. Solange was horrified; but Barty insisted on waiting on the Old gentleman in person, and helped him to his coffee and pousse-cafe with all the humorous grace I can so well imagine, and handed him the _Independance Belge_, and went back to superintend the arrangements for the coming play.

Presently the old gentleman looked up from his paper and became interested, and soon he grew uneasy, and finally he rose and went up to Barty and bowed, and said (in French, of course):

"Monsieur, I have made a very stupid mistake. I am near-sighted, and that must be my apology. Besides, you have revenged yourself 'avec tant d'esprit,' that you will not bear me _rancune_! May I ask you to accept my card, with my sincere excuses?..."

And lo! it was Bonzig's famous Baron! Barty immediately inquired after his lost friend.

"Bonzig? Ah, monsieur--what a terrible tragedy! Poor Bonzig, the Best of men--he came to me at Etretat. I invited him there from Sheer friendship! He was drowned the very evening he arrived.

"He went and bathed after sunset--on his own responsibility and without mentioning it to any one. How it happened I don't know--nobody knows. He was a good swimmer, I believe, but very blind without his glasses. He undressed behind a rock on the shore, which is against the regulations. His body was not found till two days after, three leagues down the coast.

"He had an aged mother, who came to Etretat. It was harrowing! They were people who had seen better days," etc., etc., etc.

And so no more of le Grand Bonzig.

Nor did Barty ever again meet Lirieux, in whose existence a change had also been wrought by fortune; but whether for good or evil I can't say. He was taken to Italy and Greece by a wealthy relative. What happened to him there--whether he ever came back, or succeeded or failed--Barty never heard! He dropped out of Barty's life as completely as if he had been drowned like his old friend.

These episodes, like many others past and to come in this biography, had no particular influence on Barty Josselin's career, and no reference to them is to be found in anything he has ever written. My only reason for telling them is that I found them so interesting when he told _me_, and so characteristic of himself. He was "bon raconteur." I'm afraid I'm not, and that I've lugged these good people in by the hair of the head; but I'm doing my best. "La plus belle fille au monde ne peut donner que ce qu'elle a!"

I look to my editor to edit me--and to my illustrator to pull me through.

* * * * *

That autumn (1856) my father went to France for six weeks, on business. My sister Ida went with the Gibsons to Ramsgate, and I remained in London with my mother. I did my best to replace my father in Barge Yard, and when he came back he was so pleased with me (and I think with himself also) that he gave me twenty pounds, and said, "Go to Paris for a week, Bob, and see Barty, and give him this, with my love."

And "this" was another twenty-pound note. He had never given me such a sum in my life--not a quarter of it; and "this" was the first time he had ever tipped Barty.

Things were beginning at last to go well with him. He had arranged to sell the vintages of Bordeaux and Champagne, as well as those of Burgundy; and was dreaming of those of Germany and Portugal and Spain. Fortune was beginning to smile on Barge Yard, and ours was to become the largest wine business in the world--comme tout un chacun sait.

I started for Paris that very night, and knocked at Barty's bedroom door by six next morning; it was hardly daylight--a morning to be remembered; and what a breakfasting at Babet's, after a rather cold swim in the Passy school of natation, and a walk all round the outside of the school that was once ours!

Barty looked very well, but very thin, and his small sprouting beard and mustache had quite altered the character of his face. I shall distress my lady readers if I tell them the alteration was not an improvement; so I won't.

What a happy week that was to me I leave to the reader's imagination. We took a large double-bedded room at the Hotel de Lille et d'Albion in case we might want to smoke and talk all night; we did, I think, and had our coffee brought up to us in the morning.

I will not attempt to describe the sensations of a young man going back to his beloved Paris "after five years." Tout ca, c'est de l'histoire ancienne. And Barty and Paris together--that is not for such a pen as mine.

I showed him a new photograph of Leah Gibson--a very large one and an excellent. He gazed at it a long time with his magnifying-glass and without, all his keen perceptions on the alert; and I watched his face narrowly.

"My eyes! She _is_ a beautiful young woman, and no mistake!" he said, with a sigh. "You mustn't let her slip through your fingers, Bob!"

"How about that toss?" said I, and laughed.

"Oh, I resign _my_ claim; she's not for the likes o' me. You're going to be a great capitalist--a citizen of credit and renown. I'm Mr. Nobody, of nowhere. Go in and win, my boy; you have my best wishes. If I can scrape together enough money to buy myself a white waistcoat and a decent coat, I'll be your best man; or some left-off things of yours might do--we're about of a size, aren't we? You've become tres bel homme, Bob, plutot bel homme que joli garcon, hein? That's what women are fond of; English women especially. I'm nowhere now, without my uniform and the rest. Is it still Skinner who builds for you? Good old Skinner! Mes compliments!"

This simple little speech took a hidden weight off my mind and left me very happy. I confided frankly to the good Barty that no Sally in any alley had ever been more warmly adored by any industrious young London apprentice than was Leah Gibson by me!

"Ca y est, alors! Je te felicite d'avance, et je garde mes larmes pour quand tu seras parti. Allons diner chez Babet: j'ai soif de boire a ton bonheur!"

Before I left we met an English artist he had known at the British Museum--an excellent fellow, one Walters, who took him under his wing, and was the means of his entering the atelier Troplong in the Rue des Belges as an art student. And thus Barty began his art studies in a proper and legitimate way. It was characteristic of him that this should never have occurred to him before.

So when I parted with the dear fellow things were looking a little brighter for him too.

All through the winter he worked very hard--the first to come, the last to go; and enjoyed his studio life thoroughly.

Such readers as I am likely to have will not require to be told what the interior of a French atelier of the kind is like, nor its domestic economy; nor will I attempt to describe all the fun and the frolic, although I heard it all from Barty in after-years, and very good it was. I almost felt I'd studied there myself! He was a prime favorite--"le Beau Josselin," as he was called.

He made very rapid progress, and had already begun to work in colors by the spring. He made many friends, but led a quiet, industrious life, unrelieved (as far as I know) by any of those light episodes one associates with student life in Paris. His principal amusements through the long winter evenings were the cafe and the brasserie, mild ecarte, a game at billiards or dominoes, and long talks about art and literature with the usual unkempt young geniuses of the place and time--French, English, American.

Then he suddenly took it into his head to go to Antwerp; I don't know who influenced him in this direction, but I arranged to meet him there at the end of April--and we spent a delightful week together, staying at the "Grand Laboureur" in the Place de Meer. The town was still surrounded by the old walls and the moat, and of a picturesqueness that seemed as if it would never pall.

Twice or three times that week British tourists and travelers Landed at the quai by the Place Verte from _The Baron Osy_--and this landing was Barty's delight.

The sight of fair, fresh English girls, with huge crinolines, and their hair done up in chenille nets, made him long for England again, and the sound of their voices went nigh to weakening his resolve. But he stood firm to the last, and saw me off by _The Baron_. I felt a strange "serrement de coeur" as I left him standing there, so firm, as if he had been put "au piquet" by M. Dumollard! and so thin and tall and slender--and his boyish face so grave. Good heavens! How much alone he seemed, who was so little built to live alone!

It is really not too much to say that I would have given up to him everything I possessed in the world--every blessed thing! Except Leah--and Leah was not mine to give!

Now and again Barty's face would take on a look so ineffably, pathetically, angelically simple and childlike that it moved one to the very depths, and made one feel like father and mother to him in one! It was the true revelation of his innermost soul, which in many ways remained that of a child even in his middle age and till he died. All his life he never quite put away childish things!

I really believe that in bygone ages he would have moved the world with that look, and been another Peter the Hermit!

He became a pupil at the academy under De Keyser and Van Lerius, and worked harder than ever.

He took a room nearly all window on a second floor in the Marche aux oeufs, just under the shadow of the gigantic spire which rings a fragment of melody every seven minutes and a half--and the whole tune at midnight, fortissimo.

He laid in a stock of cigars at less than a centime apiece, and dried them in the sun; they left as he smoked them a firm white ash two inches long; and he grew so fond of them that he cared to smoke nothing else.

He rose before the dawn, and went for a swim more than a mile away--got to the academy at six--worked till eight--breakfasted on a little roll called a pistolet, and a cup of coffee; then the academy again from nine till twelve--when dinner, the cheapest he had ever known, but not the worst. Then work again all the afternoon, copying old masters at the Gallery. Then a cheap supper, a long walk along the quais or ramparts or outside--a game of dominoes, and a glass or two of "Malines" or "Louvain"--then bed, without invading hordes; the Flemish are as clean as the Dutch; and there he would soon smoke and read himself to sleep in spite of chimes--which lull you, when once you get "achimatized," as he called it, meaning of course to be funny: a villainous kind of fun--caught, I fear, in Barge Yard, Bucklersbury. It used to rain puns in the City--especially in the Stock Exchange, which is close to Barge Yard.

It was a happy life, and he grew to like it better than any life he had led yet; besides, he improved rapidly, as his facility was great--for painting as for everything he tried his hand at.

He also had a very agreeable social existence.

One morning at the academy, two or three days after his arrival, he was accosted by a fellow-student--one Tescheles--who introduced himself as an old pupil of Troplong's in the Rue des Belges. They had a long chat in French about the old Paris studio. Among other things, Tescheles asked if there were still any English there.

"Oui"--says Barty--"un nomme Valteres"....

Barty pronounced this name as if it were French; and noticed that Tescheles smiled, exclaiming:

"Parbleu, ce bon Valteres--je l'connais bien!"

Next day Tescheles came up to an English student called Fox and said:

"Well, old stick-in-the-mud, how are _you_ getting on?"

"Why, you don't mean to say _you're_ an Englishman?" says Barty to Tescheles.

"Good heavens! you don't mean to say _you_ are! fancy your calling poor old Walters _Valteres_!"

And after that they became very intimate, and that was a good thing for Barty.

The polyglot Tescheles was of a famous musical family, of mixed German and Russian origin, naturalized in England and domiciled in France--a true cosmopolite and a wonderful linguist, besides being also a cultivated musician and excellent painter; and all the musicians, famous or otherwise, that passed through Antwerp made his rooms a favorite resort and house of call. And Barty was introduced into a world as delightful to him as it was new--and to music that ravished his soul with a novel enchantment: Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Schumann--and he found that Schubert had written a few other songs besides the famous "Serenade"!

One evening he was even asked if he could make music himself, and actually volunteered to sing--and sang that famous ballad of Balfe's which seems destined to become immortal in this country--"When other lips" ... _alias_, "Then you'll remember me!"

Strange to say, it was absolutely new to this high musical circle, but they went quite mad over it; and the beautiful melody got naturalized from that moment in Belgium and beyond, and Barty was proclaimed the primo tenore of Antwerp--although he was only a barytone!

A fortnight after this Barty heard "When other lips" played by the "Guides" band in the park at Brussels. Its first appearance out of England--and all through him.

Then he belonged to the Antwerp "Cercle Artistique," where he made many friends and was very popular, as I can well imagine.

Thus he was happier than he had ever been in his life; but for one thing that plagued him now and again: his oft-recurring desire to be conscious once more of the north, which he had not felt for four or five years.

The want of this sensation at certain periods--especially at night--would send a chill thrill of desolation through him like a wave; a wild panic, a quick agony, as though the true meaning of absolute loneliness were suddenly realized by a lightning flash of insight, and it were to last for ever and ever.

This would pass away in a second or two, but left a haunting recollection behind for many hours. And then all was again sunshine, and the world was made of many friends--and solitude was impossible evermore.

One memorable morning this happiness received a check and a great horror befell him. It was towards the end of summer--just before the vacation.

With a dozen others, he was painting the head of an old man from the life, when he became quite suddenly conscious of something strange in his sight. First he shut his left eye and saw with his right quite perfectly; then he shut the right, and lo! whatever he looked at with the left dwindled to a vanishing point and became invisible. No rubbing or bathing of his eye would alter the terrible fact, and he knew what great fear really means, for the first time.

Much kind concern was expressed, and Van Lerius told him to go at once to a Monsieur Noiret, a professor at the Catholic University of Louvain, who had attended _him_ for the eyes, and had the reputation of being the first oculist in Belgium.

Barty wrote immediately and an appointment was made, and in three days he saw the great man, half professor, half priest, who took him into a dark chamber lighted by a lamp, and dilated his pupil with atropine, and looked into his eye with the newly discovered "ophthalmoscope."

Professor Noiret told him it was merely a congestion of the retina--for which no cause could be assigned; and that he would be cured in less than a month. That he was to have a seton let into the back of his neck, dry-cup himself on the chest and thighs night and morning, and take a preparation of mercury three times a day. Also that he must go to the seaside immediately--and he recommended Ostend.

Barty told him that he was an impecunious art student, and that Ostend was a very expensive place.

Noiret considerately recommended Blankenberghe, which was cheap; asked for and took his full fee, and said, with a courtly priestly bow:

"If you are not cured, come back in a month. _Au revoir!_"

So poor Barty had the seton put in by a kind of barber-surgeon, and was told how to dress it night and morning; got his medicines and his dry-cupping apparatus, and went off to Blankenberghe quite hopeful.

And there things happened to him which I really think are worth telling; in the first place, because, even if they did not concern Barty Josselin, they should be amusing for their own sake--that is, if I could only tell them as he told me afterwards; and I will do my best!

And then he was nearing the end of the time when he was to remain as other mortals are. His new life was soon to open, the great change to which we owe the Barty Josselin who had changed the world for _us_!

Besides, this is a biography--not a novel--not literature! So what does it matter how it's written, so long as it's all true!

Part Fifth

"O celeste haine,
Comment t'assouvir?
O souffrance humaine,
Qui te peut guerir?
Si lourde est ma peine
J'en voudrais mourir--
Tel est mon desir!

"Navre de comprendre,
Las de compatir,
Pour ne plus entendre,
Ni voir, ni sentir,
Je suis pret a rendre
Mon dernier soupir--
Et c'est mon desir!

"Ne plus rien connaitre,
Ni me souvenir--
Ne jamais renaitre,
Ni me rendormir--
Ne plus jamais etre,
Mais en bien finir--
Voila mon desir!"--Anon.

Barty went third class to Bruges, and saw all over it, and slept at the "Fleur de Ble," and heard new chimes, and remembered his Longfellow.

Next morning, a very fine one, as he was hopefully smoking his centime cigar with immense relish near the little three-horsed wagonette that was to bear him to Blankenberghe, he saw that he was to have three fellow-passengers, with a considerable amount of very interesting luggage, and rejoiced.

First, a tall man about thirty, in a very smart white summer suit, surmounted by a jaunty little straw hat with a yellow ribbon. He was strikingly handsome, and wore immense black whiskers but no mustache, and had a most magnificent double row of white, pearly teeth, which he showed very much when he smiled, and he smiled very often. He was evidently a personage of importance and very well off, for he gave himself great airs and ordered people about and chaffed them, and it made them laugh instead of making them angry; and he was obeyed with wonderful alacrity. He spoke French fluently, but with a marked Italian accent.

Next, a very blond lady of about the same age, not beautiful, but rather overdressed, and whose accent, when she spoke French, was very German, and who looked as if she might be easily moved to wrath. Now and then she spoke to the gentleman in a very audible Italian aside, and Barty was able to gather that her Italian was about as rudimentary as his own.

Last and least, a pale, plain, pathetic little girl of six or eight, with a nose rather swollen, and a black plait down her back, and large black eyes, something like Leah Gibson's; and she never took these eyes off Barty's face.

Their luggage consisted of two big trunks, a guitar and violin (in their cases), and music-books bound together by a rope.

"Vous allez a Blankenberghe, mossie?" said the Italian, with a winning smile.

Barty answered in the affirmative, and the Italian smiled ecstatic delight.

"Je souis bienn content--nous ferons route ensiemble...." I will translate: "I call myself Carlo Veronese--first barytone of the theatre of La Scala, Milan. The signora is my second wife; she is prima donna assoluta of the grand opera, Naples. The little ragazza is my daughter by my first wife. She is the greatest violinist of her age now living--un' prodige, mossie--un' fenomeno!"

Barty, charmed with his new acquaintance, gave the signore his card, and Carlo Veronese invited him graciously to take a seat in the wagonette, as if it were his own private carriage. Barty, who was the most easily impressed person that ever lived, accepted with as much sincere gratitude as if he hadn't already paid for his place, and they started on their sunny drive of eight miles along the dusty straight Belgian chaussee, bordered with poplars on either side, and paved with flagstones all the way to Blankenberghe.

Signor Veronese informed Barty that on their holiday travels they always managed to combine profit with pleasure, and that he proposed giving a grand concert at the Cafe on the Plage, or the Kursaal, next day; that he was going to sing Figaro's great song in the _Barbiere_, and the signora would give "_Roberto, toua que z'aime_" in French (or, rather, "_Ropert, doi que ch'aime_," as _she_ called it, correcting his accent), and the fenomeno, whose name was Marianina, would play an arrangement of the "Carnival of Venice" by Paganini.

"Ma vous aussi, vous etes mousicien--je vois ca par la votre figoure!"

Barty modestly disclaimed all pretensions, and said he was only an art student--a painter.

"All the arts are brothers," said the signore, and the little signorina stole her hand into Barty's and left it there.

"Listen," said the signore; "why not arrange to live together, you and we? I hate throwing away money on mere pomposity and grandiosity and show. We always take a little furnished apartment, elle et moi. Then I go and buy provisions, bon marche--and she cooks them--and we have our meals better than at the hotel and at half the price! Join us, unless you like to throw your money by the window!"

The Signorina Marianina's little brown hand gave Barty's a little warm squeeze, and Barty was only too delighted to accept an arrangement that promised to be so agreeable and so practically wise.

They arrived at Blankenberghe, and, leaving their luggage at the wagonette station, went in search of lodgings. These were soon found in a large attic at the top of a house, over a bakery. One little mansarde, with a truckle-bed and wash-hand stand, did for the family of Veronese; another, smaller still, for Barty.

Other mansardes also opened on to the large attic, or grenier, where there were sacks of grain and of flour, and a sweet smell of cleanliness. Barty wondered that such economical arrangements could suit his new friends, but was well pleased; a weight was taken off his mind. He feared a style of living he could not have afforded to share, and here were all difficulties smoothed away without any trouble whatever.

They got in their luggage, and Barty went with the signore in search of bread and meat and wine and ground coffee. When they got back, a little stove was ready lighted in the Veronese garret; they cooked the food in a frying-pan, opening the window wide and closing the door, as the signore thought it useless to inform the world by the sense of smell that they did their cooking _en famille_; and Barty enjoyed the meal immensely, and almost forgot his trouble, but for the pain of his seton.

After lunch the signore produced his placards, already printed by hand, and made some paste in an iron pot, and the signora made coffee. And Veronese tuned his guitar and said:

"Je vais vous canter couelquecose--una piccola cosa da niente!--vous comprenez l'Italien?"

"Oh yes," said Barty: he had picked up a deal of Italian and many pretty Italian canzonets from his friend old Pergolese, who kept the Italian eating-house in Rupert Street. "Sing me a stornella--je les adore."

And he set himself to listen, with his heart in his mouth from sheer pleasurable anticipation.

The signore sang a pretty little song, by Gordigiani, called "Il vero amore." Barty knew it well.

"E lo mio amor e andato a soggiornare
A Lucca bella--e diventar signore...."

Alas for lost illusions! The signore's voice was a coarse, unsympathetic, strident buffo bass, not always quite in the middle of the note; nor, in spite of his native liveliness of accent and expression, did he make the song interesting or pretty in the least.

Poor Barty had fallen from the skies; but he did his best not to show his disenchantment, and this, from a kind and amiable way he always had and a constant wish to please, was not difficult.

Then the signora sang "O mon Fernand!" from the _Favorita_, in French, but with a hideous German accent and a screech as of some Teutonic peacock, and without a single sympathetic note; though otherwise well in tune, and with a certain professional knowledge of what she was about.

And then poor Marianina was made to stand up on six music-books, opposite a small music-easel, and play her "Carnival of Venice" on the violin. Every time she made a false note in the difficult variations, her father, with his long, thick, hairy middle finger, gave her a fierce fillip on the nose, and she had to swallow her tears and play on. Barty was almost wild with angry pity, but dissembled, for fear of making her worse enemies in her father and stepmother.

Not that the poor little thing played badly; indeed, she played surprisingly well for her age, and Barty was sincere in his warm commendation of her talent.

"Et vous ne cantez pas du tout--du tout?" said Veronese.

"Oh, si, quelquefois!"

"Cantez couelquecoze--ze vous accompagnerai sous la guitare!--n'ayez pas paoure--nous sommes indoulgents, elle et moi--"

"Oh--je m'accompagnerai bien moi-meme comme je pourrai--" said Barty, and took the guitar, and sang a little French Tyrolienne called "Fleur des Alpes," which he could always sing quite beautifully; and the effect was droll indeed.

Marianina wept; the signore went down on his knees in a theatrical manner to him, and called him "maestro" and other big Italian names; the Frau signora, with tears in her eyes, asked permission to kiss his hand, which his modesty refused--he kissed hers instead.

"He was a great genius, a bird of God, who had amused himself by making fools of poor, innocent, humble, wandering minstrels. Oh, would he not be generous as he was great and be one of them for a few days, and take half the profits--more--whatever he liked?" etc.

And indeed they immediately saw the business side of the question, and were, to do them justice, immensely liberal in their conditions of partnership--and also most distressingly persistent, with adulations that got more and more fulsome the more he held back.

There was a long discussion. Barty had to be quite brutal at the end--told them he was not a musician, but a painter, and that nothing on earth should induce him to join them in their concert.

And finally, much crestfallen and somewhat huffed, the pair went out to post their placards all over the town, and Barty went for a bath and a long walk--suddenly feeling sad again and horribly one-eyed and maimed, and more wofully northless and homeless and friendless than ever.

Blankenberghe was already very full, and when he got back he saw the famous placards everywhere. And found his friends cooking their dinner, and was pressed to join them; and did so--producing a magnificent pasty and some hot-house grapes and two bottles of wine as a peace-offering--and was forgiven.

And after dinner they all sat on grain-sacks together in the large granary, and made music--with lady's-maids and valets and servants of the house for a most genial and appreciative audience--and had a very pleasant evening; and Barty came to the conclusion that he had mistaken his trade--that he sang devilish well, in fact; and so he did.

Whatever his technical shortcomings might be, he could make any tune sound pretty when he sang it. He had the native gift of ease, pathos, rhythm, humor, and charm--and a delightful sympathetic twang in his voice. His mother must have sung something like that; and all Paris went mad about her. No technical teaching in the world can ever match a genuine inheritance; and that's a fact.

Next morning they all bathed together, and Barty unheroically and quite obscurely saved a life.

The signore and his fat white signora went dancing out into the Sunny waves and right away seawards.

Then came Barty with an all-round shirt-collar round his neck and a white tie on, to conceal his seton, and a pair of blue spectacles for the glare. And behind him Marianina, hopping on and following as best she might. He turned round to encourage her, and she had suddenly disappeared; half uneasy, he went back a step or two, and saw her little pale-brown face gasping just beneath the surface--she had just got out of her depth.

He snatched her out, and she clung to him like a small monkey and cried dreadfully, and was sick all over him and herself. He managed to get her back on shore and washed and dried and consoled her before her people came back--and had the tact not to mention this adventure, guessing what fillips she would catch on her poor little pink nose for her stupidity. She looked her gratitude for this reticence of his in the most touching way, with her big black eyes--and had a cunning smile of delight at their common tacit understanding. Her rescuer from a watery grave did not apply for the "medaille de sauvetage"!

Barty took an immense walk that day to avoid the common repast; he was getting very tired of the two senior Veroneses.

The concert in the evening was a tremendous success. The blatant signore sang his Figaro song very well indeed--it suited him better than little feminine love-ditties. The signora was loud and passionate and dramatic in "Roberto"; and Belgians make more allowance for a German accent in French than Parisians; besides, it was not _quite_ their own language that was being murdered before, them. It _may_ be, some day! I sincerely hope so. Je leur veux du bien.

Poor little Marianina stood on her six music-books and played with immense care and earnestness, just like a frightened but well-trained poodle walking on its hind-legs--one eye on her music and the tail of the other on her father, who accompanied her with his guitar. She got an encore, to Barty's great relief; and to hers too, no doubt--if she hadn't, fillips on the nose for supper that night! Then there were more solos and duets, with obbligatos for the violin.

Next day Veronese and his wife were in high feather at the Kursaal, where they had sung the night before.

A very distinguished military foreigner, in attendance on some august personage from Spain or Portugal (and later from Ostend), warmly and publicly complimented the signore on "his admirable rendering of 'Largo al factotum'--which, as his dear old friend Rossini had once told him (the General), he (Rossini) had always modestly looked upon as the one thing he had ever written with which he was _almost_ pleased!"

Marianina also received warm commendation from this agreeable old soldier, while quite a fashionable crowd was listening; and Veronese arranged for another concert that evening, and placarded the town accordingly.

Barty managed to escape any more meals in the Casa Veronese, but took Marianina for one or two pleasant walks, and told her stories and sang to her in the grenier, while she improvised for him clever little obbligatos on her fiddle.

He found a cheap eating-house and picked up a companion or two to chat with. He also killed time with his seton-dressing and self dry-cupping--and hired French novels and read them as much as he dared with his remaining eye, about which he was morbidly nervous; he always fancied it would get its retina congested like the other, in which no improvement manifested itself whatever--and this depressed him very much. He was a most impatient patient.

To return. The second concert was as conspicuous a failure as the first had been a success: the attendance was small and less distinguished, and there was no enthusiasm. The Frau signora slipped a note and lost her temper in the middle of "Roberto," and sang out of tune and with careless, open contempt of her audience, and this the audience seemed to understand and openly resent. Poor Marianina was frightened, and played very wrong notes under the furious gaze of her papa, and finally broke down and cried, and there were some hisses for him, as well as kind and encouraging applause for the child. Then up jumps Barty and gets on the platform and takes the signore's guitar and twangs it, and smiles all round benignly--immense applause!

Then he pats Marianina's thin pale cheek and wipes her eyes and gives her a kiss. Frantic applause! Then "Fleur des Alpes!"

Ovation! encore! bis! ter!

And for a third encore he sings a very pretty little Flemish ballad about the rose without a thorn--"Het Roosje uit de Dorne." It is the only Flemish song he knows, and I hope I have spelt it right! And the audience goes quite crazy with enthusiasm, and everybody goes home happy, even the Veroneses--and Marianina does not get filliped that night.

After this the Veroneses tried humbler spheres for the display of their talents, and in less than a week exhausted every pothouse and beer-tavern and low drinking-shop in Blankenberghe! and at last they took to performing for casual coppers in the open street, and went very rapidly down hill. The signore lost his jauntiness and grew sordid and soiled and shabby and humble; the signora looked like a sulky, dirty, draggle-tailed fury, ready to break out into violence on the slightest provocation; poor Marianina got paler and thinner, and Barty was very unhappy about her. The only things left rosy about her were her bruised nose, and her fingers, that always seemed stiff with cold; indeed, they were blue rather than rosy--and anything but clean.

One evening he bought her a little warm gray cloak that took his fancy; when he went home after dinner to give it her he found the three birds of song had taken flight--sans tambour ni trompette, and leaving no message for him. The baker-landlord had turned them adrift--sent them about their business, sacrificing some of his rent to get rid of them; not a heavy loss, I fancy.

Barty went after them all over the little town, but did not find them; he heard they were last seen marching off with guitar and fiddle in a southerly direction along the coast, and found that their luggage was to be sent to Ostend.

He felt very sorry for Marianina and missed her--and gave the cloak to some poor child in the town, and was very lonely.

One morning as he loafed about dejectedly with his hands in his pockets, he found his way to the little Hotel de Ville, whence issued sounds of music. He went in. It was like a kind of reading-room and concert-room combined; there was a piano there, and a young lady practising, with her mother knitting by her side; and two or three other people, friends of theirs, lounging about and looking at the papers.

The mamma was a very handsome person of aristocratic appearance. The pretty daughter was practicing the soprano part in a duet by Campana, which Barty knew well; it was "Una sera d' amore." The tenor had apparently not kept his appointment, and madame expressed some irritation at this; first to a friend, in French, but with a slight English accent--then in English to her daughter; and Barty grew interested.

After a little while, catching the mamma's eye (which was not difficult, as she very frankly and persistently gazed at him, and with a singularly tender and wistful expression of face), he got up and asked in English if he could be of any use--seeing that he knew the music well and had often sung it. The lady was delighted, and Barty and mademoiselle sang the duet in capital style to the mamma's accompaniment: "guarda che Bianca luna," etc.

"What a lovely voice you've got! May I ask your name?" says the mamma.

"Josselin."

"English, of course?"

"Upon my word I hardly know whether I'm English or French!" said Barty, and he and the lady fell into conversation.

It turned out that she was Irish, and married to a Belgian soldier, le General Comte de Cleves (who was a tremendous swell, it seems--but just then in Brussels).

Barty told Madame de Cleves the story of his eye--he was always very communicative about his eye; and she suddenly buried her face in her hands and wept; and mademoiselle told him in a whisper that her eldest brother had gone blind and died three or four years ago, and that he was extraordinarily like Barty both in face and figure.

Presently another son of Madame de Cleves came in--an officer of dragoons in undress uniform, a splendid youth. He was the missing tenor, and made his excuses for being late, and sang very well indeed.

And Barty became the intimate friend of these good people, who made Blankenberghe a different place to him--and conceived for him a violent liking, and introduced him to all their smart Belgian friends; they were quite a set--bathing together, making music and dancing, taking excursions, and so forth. And before a fortnight was over Barty had become the most popular young man in the town, the gayest of the gay, the young guardsman once more, throwing dull care to the winds; and in spite of his impecuniosity (of which he made no secret whatever) the _boute-en-train_ of the company. And this led to many droll adventures--of which I will tell one as a sample.

A certain Belgian viscount, who had a very pretty French wife, took a dislike to Barty. He had the reputation of being a tremendous fire-eater. His wife, a light-hearted little flirt (but with not much harm in her), took a great fancy to him, on the contrary.

One day she asked him for a wax impression of the seal-ring he wore on his finger, and the following morning he sealed an empty envelope and stamped it with his ring, and handed it to her on the Plage. She snatched it with a quick gesture and slipped it into her pocket with quite a guilty little coquettish look of mutual understanding.

Monsieur Jean (as the viscount was called) noticed this, and jostled rudely against Josselin, who jostled back again and laughed.

Then the whole party walked off to the "tir," or shooting-gallery on the Plage; some wager was on, I believe, and when they got there they all began to shoot--at different distances, ladies and gentlemen; all but Barty; it was a kind of handicap.

Monsieur Jean, after a fierce and significant look at Barty, slowly raised his pistol, took a deliberate aim at the small target, and fired--hitting it just half an inch over the bull's-eye; a capital shot. Barty couldn't have done better himself. Then taking another loaded pistol, he presented it to my friend by the butt and said, with a solemn bow:

"A vous, monsieur de la garde."

"Messieurs de la garde doivent toujours tirer les premiers!" said Barty, laughing; and carelessly let off his pistol in the direction of the target without even taking aim. A little bell rang, and there was a shout of applause; and Barty was conscious that by an extraordinary fluke he had hit the bull's-eye in the middle, and saw the situation at once.

Suddenly looking very grave and very sad, he threw the pistol away, and said:

"Je ne tire plus--j'ai trop peur d'avoir la main malheureuse un jour!" and smiled benignly at M. Jean.

A moment's silence fell on the party and M. Jean turned very pale.

Barty went up to Madame Jean:

"Will you forgive me for giving you with my seal an empty envelope? I couldn't think of anything pretty enough to write you--so I gave it up. Tear it and forgive me. I'll do better next time!"

The lady blushed and pulled the letter out of her pocket and held it up to the light, and it was, as Barty said, merely an empty envelope and a red seal. She then held it out to her husband and exclaimed:

"Le cachet de Monsieur Josselin, que je lui avais demande...!"

So bloodshed was perhaps avoided, and Monsieur Jean took care not to jostle Josselin any more. Indeed, they became great friends.

For next day Barty strolled into the Salle d'Armes, Rue des Dunes--and there he found Monsieur Jean fencing with young de Cleves, the dragoon. Both were good fencers, but Barty was the finest fencer I ever met in my life, and always kept it up; and remembering his adventure of the previous day, it amused him to affect a careless nonchalance about such trivial things--"des enfantillages!"

"_You_ take a turn with Jean, Josselin!" said the dragoon.

"Oh! I'm out of practice--and I've only got one eye...."

"Je vous en prie, monsieur de la garde!" said the viscount.

"Cette fois, alors, nous allons tirer _ensemble_!" says Barty, and languidly dons the mask with an affected air, and makes a fuss about the glove not suiting him; and then, in spite of his defective sight, which seems to make no difference, he lightly and gracefully gives M. Jean such a dressing as that gentleman had never got in his life--not even from his maitre d'armes: and afterwards to young de Cleves the same. Well I knew his way of doing this kind of thing!

So Barty and M. and Madame Jean became quite intimate--and with his usual indiscretion Barty told them how he fluked that bull's-eye, and they were charmed!

"Vous etes impayable, savez-vous, mon cher!" says M. Jean--"vous avez tous les talents, et un million dans le gosier par-dessus le marche! Si jamais je puis vous etre de service, savez-vous, comptez sur moi pour la vie ..." said the impulsive viscount when they bade each other good-bye at the end.

"Et plus jamais d'enveloppes vides, quand vous m'ecrirez!" says madame.

* * * * *

So frivolous time wore on, and Barty found it pleasant to frivol in such pleasant company--very pleasant indeed! But when alone in his garret, with his seton-dressing and dry-cuppings, it was not so gay. He had to confess to himself that his eye was getting slowly worse instead of better; darkening day by day; and a little more retina had been taken in by the strange disease--"la peau de chagrin," as he nicknamed this wretched retina of his, after Balzac's famous story. He could still see with the left of it and at the bottom, but a veil had come over the middle and all the rest; by daylight he could see through this veil, but every object he saw was discolored and distorted and deformed--it was worse than darkness itself; and this was so distressing, and so interfered with the sight of the other eye, that when the sun went down, the total darkness in the ruined portion of his left retina came as a positive relief. He took all this very desperately to heart and had very terrible forebodings. For he had never known an ache or a pain, and had innocently gloried all his life in the singular perfection of his five wits.

Then his money was coming to an end; he would soon have to sing in the streets, like Veronese, with Lady Archibald's guitar.

Dear Lady Archibald! When things went wrong with her she would always laugh, and say:

"Les miseres du jour font le bonheur du lendemain!"

This he would say or sing to himself over and over again, and go to bed at night quite hopeful and sanguine after a merry day spent among his many friends; and soon sink into sleep, persuaded that his trouble was a bad dream which next morning would scatter and dispel. But when he woke, it was to find the grim reality sitting by his pillow, and he couldn't dry-cup it away. The very sunshine was an ache as he went out and got his breakfast with his blue spectacles on; and black care would link its bony arm in his as he listlessly strolled by the much-sounding sea--and cling to him close as he swam or dived; and he would wonder what he had ever done that so serious and tragic a calamity should have befallen so light a person as himself; who could only dance and sing and play the fool to make people laugh--Rigoletto--Triboulet--a mere grasshopper, no ant or bee or spider, not even a third-class beetle--surely this was not according to the eternal fitness of things!

And thus in the unutterable utterness of his dejection he would make himself such evil cheer that he sickened with envy at the mere sight of any living thing that could see out of two eyes--a homeless irresponsible dog, a hunchback beggar, a crippled organ-grinder and his monkey--till he met some acquaintance; even but a rolling fisherman with a brown face and honest blue eyes--a pair of them--and then he would forget his sorrow and his envy in chat and jokes and laughter with him over each a centime cigar; and was set up in good spirits for the day! Such was Barty Josselin, the most ready lover of his kind that ever existed, the slave of his last impression.

And thus he lived under the shadow of the sword of Damocles for many months; on and off, for years--indeed, as long as he lived at all. It is good discipline. It rids one of much superfluous self-complacency and puts a wholesome check on our keeping too good a conceit of ourselves; it prevents us from caring too meanly about mean things--too keenly about our own infinitesimal personalities; it makes us feel quick sympathy for those who live under a like condition: there are many such weapons dangling over the heads of us poor mortals by just a hair--a panoply, an armory, a very arsenal! And we grow to learn in time that when the hair gives way and the big thing falls, the blow is not half so bad as the fright had been, even if it kills us; and more often than not it is but the shadow of a sword, after all; a bogie that has kept us off many an evil track--perhaps even a blessing in disguise! And in the end, down comes some other sword from somewhere else and cuts for us the Gordian knot of our brief tangled existence, and solves the riddle and sets us free.

This is a world of surprises, where little ever happens but the unforeseen, which is seldom worth meeting halfway! And these moral reflections of mine are quite unnecessary and somewhat obvious, but they harm nobody, and are very soothing to make and utter at my time of life. Pity the sorrows of a poor old man and forgive him his maudlin garrulity....

* * * * *

One afternoon, lolling in deep dejection on the top of a little sandy hillock, a "dune," and plucking the long coarse grass, he saw a very tall elderly lady, accompanied by her maid, coming his way along the asphalt path that overlooked the sea--or rather, that prevented the sea from overlooking the land and overflowing it!

She was in deep black and wore a thick veil.

With a little jump of surprise he recognized his aunt Caroline--Lady Caroline Grey--of all his aunts the aunt who had loved him the best as a boy--whom he had loved the best.

She was a Roman Catholic, and very devout indeed--a widow, and childless now. And between her and Barty a coolness had fallen during the last few years--a heavy raw thick mist of cold estrangement; and all on account of his London life and the notoriety he had achieved there; things of which she disapproved entirely, and thought "unworthy of a gentleman": and who can blame her for thinking so?

She had at first written to him long letters of remonstrance and good advice; which he gave up answering, after a while. And when they met in society, her manner had grown chill and distant and severe.

He hadn't seen or heard of his aunt Caroline for three or four years; but at the sudden sight of her a wave of tender childish remembrance swept over him, and his heart beat quite warmly to her: affliction is a solvent of many things, and first-cousin to forgiveness.

She passed without looking his way, and he jumped up and followed her, and said:

"Oh, Aunt Caroline! won't you even speak to me?"

She started violently, and turned round, and cried: "Oh, Barty, Barty, where have you been all these years?" and seized both his hands, and shook all over.

"Oh, Barty--my beloved little Barty--take me somewhere where we can sit down and talk. I've been thinking of you very much, Barty--I've lost my poor son--he died last Christmas! I was afraid you had forgotten my existence! I was thinking of you the very moment you spoke!"

The maid left them, and she took his arm and they found a seat.

She put up her veil and looked at him: there was a great likeness between them in spite of the difference of age. She had been his father's favorite sister (some ten years younger than Lord Runswick); and she was very handsome still, though about fifty-five.

"Oh, Barty, my darling--how things have gone wrong between us! Is it _all_ my doing? Oh, I hope not!..." And she kissed him.

"How like, how like! And you're getting a little black and bulgy under the eyes--especially the left one--and so did _he_, at just about your age! And how thin you are!"

"I don't think anything need ever go wrong between us again, Aunt Caroline! I am a very altered person, and a very unlucky one!"

"Tell me, dear!"

And he told her all his story, from the fatal quarrel with her brother Lord Archibald--and the true history of that quarrel; and all that had happened since: he had nothing to keep back.

She frequently wept a little, for truth was in every tone of his voice; and when it came to the story of his lost eye, she wept very much indeed. And his need of affection, of female affection especially, and of kinship, was so immense that he clung to this most kind and loving woman as if she'd been his mother come back from the grave, or his dear Lady Archibald.

This meeting made a great difference to Barty in many ways--made amends! Lady Caroline meant to pass the winter at Malines, of all places in the world. The Archbishop was her friend, and she was friends also with one or two priests at the seminary there. She was by no means rich, having but an annuity of not quite three hundred a year; and it soon became the dearest wish of her heart that Barty should live with her for a while, and be nursed by her if he wanted nursing; and she thought he did. Besides, it would be convenient on account of his doctor, M. Noiret, of the University of Louvain, which was near Malines--half an hour by train.