IMPRESSIONS BYPIERRBLOTI

i

INTRODUCTION

BYHENRY-JAMES

CHARLOTTE S. M.

THE LIBRARY

OF

THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

.

IMPRESSIONS BY PIERRE LOTI

IMPRESSIONS ^PIERRE LOTI

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HENRY JAMES

ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE AND CO. WESTMINSTER <*fe MDCCCXCVIII.

BIRMINGHAM: PRINTED AT THE GUILD PRESS 45 GREAT CHARLES STREEET.

Pierre Loti.

MAY as well admit at the outset that in speaking of Pierre Loti I give way to an inclination of the irresistible sort, express indeed a lively obligation. I am conscious of owing him that amount and that kind of pleasure as to which hesitation resides only in the difficulty of statement. He has been for me, from the hour of my making his ac quaintance, one of the joys of the time, and the fact moreover of his being of the time has often, to my eyes, made it seem to suffer less from the presence of writers less delightful yet more acclaimed. It is a part of the joy I speak of that, having once for all, at the beginning, caused the critical sense thoroughly to vibrate, he has ever since then let it alone, brought about in my mind a state of acceptance, a state of gratitude, in which I have been content not to discriminate. Critically, on first knowing him, I surrendered — for it has always seemed to me that the inner chamber of taste opens only to that key ; but, the surrender being complete — the chamber never again

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closed — I feel that, like King Amasis with the ring, I have thrown the key into the deep. He is extremely unequal and extremely imperfect. He is familiar with both ends of the scale of taste. I am not sure even that on the whole his talent has gained with experience as much as was to have been expected, that his earlier years have not been those in which he was most to endear himself. But these things have made little difference to a reader so committed to an affection.

It has been a very simple case. At night all cats are grey, and I have liked him so much in general that there has always been a perch, a margin left when the special case has for the moment cut away a little of the ground. The love of letters renders us no greater service — certainly opens to us no greater satisfaction — than in putting us from time to time under some such charm. There need never be a fear, I think, of its doing so too often. When the charm, in such a manner, fixes itself, what has hap pened is that the effect, the operative gift, has become to us simply a value, and that an experience more or less bitter has taught us never, in literature, to sacrifice any value we may have been fortunate enough to light upon. Such discoveries are too happy, such values too great. They do for us what nothing else does. There are other charms and other surrenders, but those have their action in another air. What the mind feels in any form of magic is a particular extension of the contact with life, and no two forms give us exactly the same. Every artist who really touches us becomes in this way an individual instrument, the fiddler, the improviser of an original tune. The inspiration may sometimes fail, the notes

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sound weak or false ; but to break, on that account, the fiddle across one's knee is surely — given, as we look about the much-mixed field, the other " values " — a strange aesthetic economy.

I.

I read and relish him whenever he appears, but his earlier things are those to which I most return. It took some time, in those years, quite to make him out — he was so strange a mixture for readers of our tradition. He was a " sailor-man " and yet a poet, a poet and yet a sailor- man. To a marked division of these functions we had always been accustomed, looking as little for sensibility in the seaman as perhaps for seamanship in the man of emo tion. So far as we were at all conscious of the uses of sensibility it was not to the British or the American tar that we were in the habit of applying for it. Tobias Smollett, Captain Marryat, Tom Cringle, Fenimore Cooper had taught us another way, and in general our enjoyment of what we artlessly term adventure had not been associated, either as a fact or as an idea, with the privilege of a range of feeling. There was from the first in Loti the experience of the navigator, and yet there was the faculty, the necessity of expression. The experience had doubtless not been prodigious, but it had been at least of a sort that among writers of our race has mostly, for some reason, seemed positively to preclude ex pression. He introduced confusion, as I have elsewhere had occasion to say, into our assumption, so consecrated by time, that adventures are mainly for those who lack the fiddle-bow and the fiddle-bow all for those condemned

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to chamber-music. This was his period of most beautiful production — the period of Mon Frere Tves, Pecheur d'lslande, Fleurs d'Ennui, Aziyade, Le Roman d'un Spahi^ Le Manage de Loti; which are not here enumerated in their order of appearance. They presented themselves as the literary recreations — flowers of reminiscence and im agination, not always flowers of lassitude — of a young officer in the navy, a native of Rochefort and of old Huguenot race, whose private name has so completely lost itself in his public that I shall mention him but this once as M. Julien Viaud. They made their full mark only on the publication of Mon Frere Tves, but from that moment Loti was placed.

I hasten to add that from that moment also the sea- rover has been less visible in him than the man of expres sion ; without detriment, however, to the immense good fortune of his having betimes, in irresponsible youth, possessed himself of the mystery of the sea. The sense of it and the love of it, with the admirable passion they make, are the background of most of his work, and of all French writers of the day he is the one from whom Paris, with its screen of many folds, least shuts off the rest of the globe. He mentions Paris not even to curse it, and the rest of the globe — but mainly the watery wastes — has been his hunting-ground. It is largely in fact as if he had been kept afloat by the very reasons that conduce to the frequent disembarkment of the Englishman in quest of impressions. He had in these years, as a Frenchman, fewer places to land. When he did land, however, the impressions came thick and are mainly presented in the intensely personal form. They are autobiographic with-

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out reserve, for reserve, in spite of his extraordinary faculty of selection and compression, his special genius for summarising, is not his strong point. Whenever Loti landed, in short, he made love, and whenever he made love he appears to have told of it. That would be our main stick to beat him with if his principal use for us had been to inspire us — as I believe it has inspired some readers — with the desire to beat. The limits of that desire on my own part I have sufficiently hinted at, and I feel that I should have had no use of him at all had I not at an early stage arrived at some sort of adequate view of his necessity for " telling." It is the telling, above all, I judge, that is the lion in the path of those whom he displeases. I have never supposed, at any rate, that we can enjoy the special gift of others altogether on terms made by ourselves ; it seems to me that when such a gift is real we should take it in any way we can get it — take it and be thankful. Of course — by the most blessed of all laws — we are always free not to take, not even to read, and I dare say that for many persons the non-perusal of reminiscences such as these constitutes a positive pleasure. There are writers, there are voyagers who tell nothing, and for the best of reasons. Loti's singular power to tell is exactly his value, and to attempt to make a law for it might easily be, for readers and critics, a rash adventure. His striking of the notes we delight in may be, for all we know, conditioned on his striking of others we don't. And then — and then : what can one say after all but that we leave him his liberty ? Not that we would leave it to everyone. There iare sympathies, in short, and im punities; so that I have been careful to make with the

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erotics both of Le Manage de Loti and of Madame Chry- santheme such terms as would not spoil for me the rest of the message. This rest, in Loti, has always one mean ing. It is the part not about his love-making.

We are most of all free from care, accordingly, in those of his volumes in which the story he has to tell is the story of someone else — the delightful brother Yves, the magni ficent Yann of Brittany, Ramuntcho the bold young Basque, or even the doleful little hero of Matelot. It is difficult not to regret that these stories of someone else, all with so special a beauty, are not the most numerous in the list ; I would gladly have given for another Pecheur d'Islande, indeed for another Ramuntcho or another Matelot, a dozen things of the complexion of LExilee, of fantome d 'Orient, of Le Roman d"un Enfant. In L'Exilee he " tells" with a vengeance and quite too much ; too much, I mean, of what he feels for the troubled, misplaced, accomplished Queen of whose splendid hospitality and confidence the volume is a record : too much also, doubtless, of what he knows of the personal appearance and habits and private affairs — oh, of a delicacy ! — of her principal lady-in-wait ing. These are Loti's mystifying moments, other speci mens of which confront us in the singular publicity given by Le Livre de la Pitie et de la Mort to the last illness, the last hours, the laying out and interment of one of the nearest and most loved of his female relatives. Stranger than strange as well, in the pages in question, are the simplicity and solemnity of his expatiation on the favourite cats and other inmates, the domestic arrangements and in timate trifles of the home of his youth. It is odd that a mere matter of shading — for in such things it is only that

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— should make so much difference ; but these are the errors as to which it may be said not so much that the hand would be stayed in the commission of them by the presence of a sense of humour as that this presence would in general have rendered them insupposable. They pro ceed after all largely, from one of the most marked fea tures of the French literary mind of the day — that intense professionalism which is in its turn the result of conscious and cultivated art. To work as hard as the countrymen of Loti for the most part work their language — work their perceptions, their emotions and sensibilities, their sense of form, of style, of the shade, the effect, their analysis alike of subject and of tone — to do all this is to thrust the torch assuredly into every corner of experience and to drop every grain of observation into the literary mill.

Nothing, in consequence, is more striking than the failure of any sense — as we ourselves understand it — of a division between the public and the private : the writer becomes primarily a writer and ceases in the same propor tion to be anything else. His soul, his life and its pulsa tions are mere wheels and springs in the machinery of expression, and the man, as a man, can treat himself to no distinctive experience, reserve no garden-plot for wasteful human use. There are precious kinds of silence that he ceases to be able to afford, luxuries of simple choice, happy failures of logic, for ever banished from his budget. Full of suggestion on this head, for instance, is the manner in which the brothers Goncourt live, in their extraordinary Journal, up to the last penny of that part of their income which might have been supposed to be most peculiarly personal ; paying it out, on the spot, without, as one may

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say, so much as passing it through their moral bank. The French writer, on the other hand — I speak most, of course, of the creators, as we perhaps a trifle fatuously call them — can afford an expenditure of expression, particu larly in prose, that causes his English-speaking brother to appear by contrast to carry on a very small business. The literary establishment of the latter is indeed in compari son but meagrely mounted. Such is far from the case with Loti's, which offers perhaps, through the peculiar profusion of the personal note, as striking an example as can be named of the rattling spiritual train de maison to which I allude. I am lost in admiration of such an eco nomy ; wonderstruck, as I reflect, as I measure it, at his employment of his means. Three fourths of his work are the most charming egotism ; the portion that is finest, the four or five more or less constructed and conducted tales, is the minor portion. And yet the egotism lives and blooms too, scatters the rarest fragrance and throws out pages like great strange flowers. It all comes from the fact that he uses all his impressions. There are many impressions he never has, but he gives us for all they are worth those with which he is favoured — never misses them on the wing nor shirks the catching; and of the lightest, loosest yet cunningest interweaving of these his curious prose mainly consists. It consists of the happiest conceivable utterance of feelings about aspects. What he may well have assured himself at the start was of his pro bably being one of the persons in the world to whom aspects had most to say. Wonderful and beautiful is the language in which they speak to him, and that language, as he has reported it, has made his literary fortune. Know-

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ledge of the finer, or at any rate the unpersonal sort, re flection of the deeper, the power to compose, in the larger sense, or truly to invent, have had the smallest hand in the business. At the same time he has been subject to the law that nothing in art, however capricious, can be done with out love, and he has continually loved two things — one of them the great watery globe and the other the nature of man.

These two things are what, in an exquisite way, both Pecheur (Tlslande and Mon Frere Tves consist of; the first the simplest, deepest little story of love and death, the other the largest, tenderest, brightest picture of friendship and life. The persons concerned are all sailor-folk, and the setting of the drama — so far as not the great void of the sea-spaces, against which his figures magnificently stand up — is the landscape and colouring, the village scenery of Brittany, for which no one has had so fine and sincere a touch. With however much appreciation any lover of Loti may once have spoken of these books, there can never fail to be a freshness in coming back to them ; they belong so to the class of the happiest literary things. And yet, essentially, one must speak of them mainly for old acquaintance — without the power of really naming their charm. The beauty of the author at his best is something too unnameable, something that seems a kind of secret between himself and his reader. That indeed perhaps is what we feel for all the authors who give us the finer joy : we feel it to be quite enough if they know what we like them for. When others don't know, that, somehow, at moments, practically adds to the reason. None of the famous " love-stories " of the world are, at

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any rate, more charged than this history of Yann and Gaud with the particular exquisite, the mixture of beauty and misery, that we require of the type — which, to com mend itself to the right corner of our memory, must always have its final terror and tragedy. Made up of two main forces, human passion, human hope and effort, pain and defeat, and the wonderfully vivified presence of nature in ambush and waiting only to devour, the whole thing hangs together and drives home its effect with an admir able artistic economy. Loti's manner is so all his own — the manner of intimate confidence in his reader, of talk, of anecdote, of sequences neglected and lost, a part of the work obligingly done for him — that quite equally at his best and at his middling he offers the constant interest of a thorough concealment of his means. I can imagine at once no more unqualified success and no model more to be deprecated. The only thing possible was to be Loti ; let us pray to be protected from any attempt to emulate him by any shorter cut. He offers himself expressly enough as the least literary of writers, and one grants him that without a protest so long as he remains one of the most literary of pleasures. He is of course only what is vulgarly called " deep," and at the very bottom of his depth — like the purse in the consciousness of the pick pocket looking innocently the other way — lies the finest little knowledge of exactly how to do it. A small gold thread, perfectly palpable to himself, guides him through his gaps and breaks, the sweet wild garden of his conspi cuous want of plan. This serves him extraordinarily in Mon Frere Tves, in which there is so much delightful clearness and so little concatenation. There are times

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indeed when we feel him to hold his happy instinct on terms scarcely fair ; it does so for him whatever he wants and yet gives, on our part, a positive air of pedantry to all technical inquiries.

What touches deepest in his tales — and indeed in his every page — is, as should be mentioned without delay, the general pity of almost everything. It need hardly be said that he is not of the complexion of the moralist, and the light leading him through the tribulations of his people is as little as possible any reference to what they " had better " have done. We can never at all imagine them to have done anything different, so little can it come up for them to follow anything but their immediate social instincts. When they pay for that only in sorrow or shame, this becomes precisely for ourselves the spring of an added interest. Loti's philosophy is the philosophy of imagination — of likes and dislikes, of indulgence for weakness and compassion for accident, of kindly tolerance for unguarded or unbalanced good faith. His people have come into the world mainly to feel, and he, upon their heels, mainly to feel /or them. So, with all this, he feels even more than they. That is his most individual note — that he has carried his sensibility, so unquenched and on the whole so little vulgarised, so much about the great globe. The subjects of it in his two earlier novels and in Matelot and Ramuntcho are the simplest of simple folk, the poorest of the poor. They are all young and fresh and strong, all beautiful and natural, kind and stricken ; they earn their living in labour and sorrow, and their joys are the scant breathing-times in the hard battle of life. The humility of their condition is perhaps what most of

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all — given the admirable tenderness of his treatment of them — makes us think of Loti as the last of the raffines. It gives the measure of his admirable sense of sociability, gives the natural note to the delicacy of his human tone, to all his heart-softenings and his cultivation of pathos. The strange little tale of Mate/of is nothing in the world but heart-softening ; I call it strange for the simple reason of its being a priori so unexpected a stroke on the part of a member of his profession. It depicts the career of a small sensitive sailor-boy who feels everything really too much and in regard to whom we are ourselves, doubtless, in this way — though it is almost brutal to say so — drawn on to participations that are excessive. He dies, of course, in sight of home, of a fever contracted in torrid eastern seas, and the whole affair is but a merciless performance on the finest fiddlestring. Yet the good Lotist, as I may say, can only swallow Matelot whole : I should even guage his goodness by his capacity to do so. But if the thing is irresistible it is also calculated, transparent ; it unscrews the stopper of tears with a positively audible creak. What then is the reason that its tone is exquisite and its pathos practically profound ? I am glad to suppose the answer to such a question to lie beyond my analysis. The reason is where the best reason always is, in the very air of the picture — of which a particular breath, for instance, is in the eloquence, the rare delicacy of presentation, of the episode of the young man's innocent friendship, blighted by fate, with the mild Madeleine of Quebec, the charm of such a passage — Loti at his melancholy happiest —as that in which the author strikes the last note of this adventure. " So it had come to their loving each other

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with a tenderness that was equally pure for each. She, ignorant of the things of love and reading her Bible every night ; she, destined to keep her useless freshness and youth for a few more springtimes not less pale and then to grow old and fade in the narrowing round of these same streets and these same walls. He, already spoiled with kisses and with other arms, having the world for his changing abode and called to start off perhaps to-morrow, never again to come back — only to leave his body in dis tant seas."

Fully characteristic of Loti is this mention of his sailor- boy as " spoiled " — spoiled by contacts after all supposedly familiar to sailor-boys. That is but a touch of his usual pessimism, and practically our comment on it as we read consists in not believing it : being spoiled is a process his delightful people are in general so little the worse for. The reason of which, I take it, just brings us close to the general explanation of the author's largest magic, the beauty of his dealings with sun and wind and space. These are the elements with which, whether spoiled or not, his characters mainly live and which he renders for them with a breadth that never fails. They remain some how, throughout, globe-creatures, with the great arch of the sky for two-thirds of their consciousness, becoming no uglier by anything that may happen to them than birds become by the traps and missies of man. If they were mewed and stewed in close rooms, in dark towns, it might be a different matter. None of them circulate with more ease and grace than Ramuntcho, the hero of his latest tale, expert, in his character of bright young Basque, at Pyre- neean tennis, Pyreneean smuggling and climbing, Pyre-

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neean love-making, too, not least. If here and there, from book to book, the charm had suffered a chill, in Ramuntcho it all comes back — the thing is wholly admirable. And yet what is it ? — what that would commend it to readers who like their mouthful of " story " big ? Perfect is the bravery of the author's indifference to these and possibly the thing that I most like him for. It is impossible not to admire a man whose general assurance and his faith in his particular star permit him to set sail with so small a provision of plot. The beauty of such an outfit as Loti's is in its positively never leaving him without a subject. Cast ashore on strands the most desert, he is sufficiently nourished by the delicacy of his senses. They play in and out of Ramuntcho with the effect of the chequering of the sun in a wood, and our enjoyment of the tale — one can speak at least of one's own — is simply our recognition of the intensity of all the presences. We look into the eyes of the people, we sit with them in the boat, and spring with them on the turf, and racket with them at the game, and sweat with them in the great hot sun, smelling the woods and tasting the wine and hearing the cries — enjoy ing at every turn the colour and the rustle and the light. We live with their simplicity and we generally love their ways. Above all we love their loves, and there is no one like Loti for making us fond of his lovers. So moments and pictures stand out for us, all with the freshness of odours, contacts, the tone of white walls and brown interiors caught, in glimpses, as we take our ascent through chest nut-woods. It is all experience and memory, and yet all glamour and grace.

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III.

In the volumes, the most numerous, that are simply the record of impressions, of change of place, we come back perpetually to that tremor of the fiddlestring. No other word renders so well the fine vibration in Loti of what he sees and what he makes us see. This fineness is his charm ing quality and arrived at without affectation or contortion. The spasm of the descriptive alternates in the case of too many other travellers with mere visual apathy, and our choice is on the whole mainly between those who are without observation and those who are without expression. But to Loti things come with the sun and the wind and the chance of the spot and the moment ; his perception is a sensitive plate on which aspects are forever at play. He is the companion, beyond all others, of my own selection, for the simple reason that none other shows me so easily such far and strange things. He has readers, of a cer tainty, whom he more than consoles for the humdrum nature of their fate ; as positively, with this affection for him, it is better to have had no adventures of one's own. It is simpler — and I say so quite without irony — not to have travelled, not to have trodden with heavier feet the ground over which we follow him. It is of the scenes I shall never visit that I like to read descriptions, and no thing, for that matter, would induce me to interfere with any impression happily received from him. The descrip tion in fact for the most part only mystifies and irritates when memory is really in possession. I prefer his memory to my own, and am ready to think it no hard rule of life to have had, in my chair, to take so much of the more

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wonderful world from a little lemon-covered book. We can only, at the best, be transported, and the author of Propos d'Exil, of Au Maroc, of Japoneries d1 Automne deli vers us infallibly, by a process of his own, at the right door in the wall. He has not been an explorer and is not of that race, but his perception so penetrates that he has only to ta£e me round the corner to give me the sense of exploring^. I have been assured that Madame Chrysantheme is as preposterous, as benighted a picture of Japan as if a stranger, disembarking at Liverpool, had confined his acquaintance with England to a few weeks spent in dis^ reputable female society in a vulgar suburb of that cityJ But the moral of this truth, if a truth it be, would really seem all to the writer's advantage : I should delight in any observer in whom the gift of observation, the sense of appearances, might be such as to make Birkenhead, say, give him, and by his delightful intervention give me^ a picture so charming and so living. Whether Loti tells us or no what we want is a question that we certainly never put ; what we want becomes for the time just what ever he has to tell us. To turn him over again as I write these lines is, none the less, scarcely to know where, for examples, to pick and choose. We always meet side by side, to begin with, specimens of his innocence and speci mens of his craft. This collection of Figures et Choses qui Passaient, opens with a succession of pages embodying, on the occasion of the death of the baby of his servant, the sort of emotion that we others flatter ourselves we keep — when we have it to keep — veiled and hushed ; but it goes on to the admirable Trois yournees de Guerre^ an impression of the French attack on the Anam forts in the

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summer of 1883, which gives the reader exactly the sense of blinking, wondering, perspiring participation in the presence of endless queerness — the sense of seeing, hearing, touching, smelling the whole hot, grotesque little horror. No one approaches Loti for reconstituting such an episode as this — and in the most off-hand, jotted, anecdotic way — as a presented personal impression. Such notes are doubt less journalism, but journalism exquisite. " In the midst of the morning light, which was fresh and blue, these flames " (a village was on fire) " were of an extraordinary red ; they cast no light, but were as dark as blood. You saw them twisted and mixing, saw everything instantly consumed ; the smoke-clouds, intensely black, diffused a sharp musty stench. On the roofs of the pagodas, in the midst of their devilries, among the darts of all the forked tails and outspread claws, the rush of the fire-tongues seemed at first natural enough. But all the little plaster monsters had begun to crackle and burst, scattering to right and left the blue porcelain of their scales and the crystal balls of their wicked eyes, then had crumbled, with the beams, into the gaping holes of the temples."

Loti's East is, throughout, of all Easts the most beguil ing, though, for the most part — unless perhaps in the case of Au Maroc, where he appears to have been peculiarly initiated — it seldom ceases to be the usual, accessible East, the East of Cook, of tickets and time-tables, of the English and American swarm. The swarm, at any rate, never taints Loti's air, and we remain, in his caravan, as discon nected from everything else as it need occur to us to desire. If he has been only where they all have been, he has at least brought back what they all have not, what

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indeed, for my imagination, n otheodhsa ronnee — the fine, strange flower of the thing, the element that continues to haunt us, the sweetest, saddest secret it whispers to the mind. When the innumerable others — further pushers, doubtless, and sharper penetrators — shall offer us notes of this quality, then, only then, shall we grant that they have been as far. It would of course never be easy to find in any caravan a pilgrim with so absolute an esteem for his own emotions. Loti belongs to the precious few who are not afraid of being ridiculous; a condition not in itself perhaps constituting positive wealth, but speedily raised to that value when the naught in question is on the right side of certain other figures. His attitude is that whatever, on the spot and in the connection, he may happen to feel is suggestive, interesting and human, so that his duty with regard to it can only be essentially to utter it. The duty of not being ridiculous is one to which too many travellers of our own race assign the high position that he attributes to right expression, to right expression alone. It has led him, this gallant point of honour, to say, at Jerusalem — in the volume with that title — too many things about himself, even to appear indeed to have made the wondrous pilgrimage too much in search of a present able figure which is not quite the one we might have guessed. Yet here too his sympathetic "self" still in cludes a more sensible vision of a hundred other and very different things than many a record — of the type that leaxes us unstirred — accompanied with more precautions. Jerusalem, on the other hand, I admit, is a trifle spoiled for the rigid Lotist by being, in all the list, the book that gives out most wandering airs, most echoes already heard,

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of " literature." That the author has not been from be ginning to end intensely literary let me not for a moment do his prodigious legerdemain the wrong to suggest, for his particular shade of the natural was surely never arrived at without much choosing and comparing. His lightness is the lightness of knowledge and his ease the ease of practice. But he covers his tracks, as I have hinted, con summately ; it is the perfect pointing of the watch with out, discoverably, the mechanism. In 'Jerusalem we seem a little to hear the tick.

But I have been reading again Au Maroc^ in which, figuratively as well as literally, there is not the least rumble of wheels. The author here wanders over his subject with a step as independent of the usual literary macadam as the march of his caravan, in the roadless land, found itself perforce of any other ; and nothing is more delightful than to keep him company through such a mixture of wondrous matter and incalculable talk. Such a volume as this expresses him at his best, for the special adventure gives most chance to his admirable curiosity, his undiscourageable passion for putting on as many as possible of the queer forms of consciousness encountered in other races and under other skies, of living — though not perhaps for so very long — into conditions exotic and uncomfortable, the inner sense of the strangeness of which he more beguilingly than ever communicates. The inner sense seems to me always to begin where the finest fair of most travellers stops, and this exquisite Au Maroc is all made up of it. His evocation of the almost unutterable Fez, his description of the days spent there apart from the other members of the mission in which he was included,

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his picture, perhaps even more, of his further push to the gruesome, melancholy Mekinez — the warm vividness of these things takes on for the fond reader the intensity of some private romance. Loti, in short, becomes thus — to put it only at that, and where his wandering sensibility is concerned — the rarest of tale-tellers. He drinks, in this character, so deep of impressions that places where he has passed are left dry : there are none, I repeat, we pay him the questionable compliment of wishing to visit after him. We; are content to go nowhere — which is a much greater tribute. When I say we are content I mean perhaps we are determined, for he leaves us, in a way all his own, with a fear of finding strange things themselves not so true as he is true to their surprising essence. Droll, in a manner, yet without injury to their charm, are the pages of his attempt — condemned, one must recognise, to a suc cess mainly superficial — to live a little the life of any corner that happens to strike him as extraordinary and in particular to dress in its draperies ; droll perhaps above all his frank delight in these last aids to illusion and very expressive, at all events, of the joy of masquerading as an Oriental that appears to have been from the first his harmless revenge on his having been born a mere Hugue not. This he was not the man to think sufficient. We forgive any millinery that still leaves the standpoint of the painter as free as, for instance, in such a passage as this : " Toward two in the afternoon a halt in some place or other, from which this image remains with me: the perpetual boundless plain, flowered over as never a garden, and alone there, a little way off, our old exhausted Caid down on his knees at prayer. We are in a zone of white

PIERRE LO7L zi

daisies mixed with pink poppies. The old man, close to his end, has an earthen face, a beard as blanched as lichen, a dress of the same freshness of colour as the poppies and daisies around, the kaftan of pink cloth showing through the long white mufflers. His white horse, with its high red saddle, browses beside him and plunges its head into the grass. He himself, half sunk among the flowers, the white and pink flowers that are circled, beneath the deep blue of the summer sky, by the infinite desert of the immense flowery level — he himself, prostrate on the earth in which he will soon be laid, begs for the mercy of Allah with the fervour of prayer given by the feeling of annihi lation at hand." That is pure, essential Loti — poetry in observation, felicity in sadness.

Henry James.

The Passing of a Child.

[HAT I am going to write is only for those who have actually stood by some newly-made little grave, covered still perhaps with fresh flowers, and found themselves overwhelmed by the remem brance of a child's eyes that were closed there for ever under the awful earth.

This death of little children — this baffling enigma how it cheats our under standing ! Why are they taken, instead of us, who have done our day's work, and who would willingly accept to go ? Or rather why did they come, since they were to depart so soon, only to have undergone the iniquitous agony of death ? Before their white tombs our reason and our hearts struggle in conflict, rebellious and distressed in darkness and doubt.

n The delightful little being whose memory I would en deavour to prolong by speaking of him, was the only son of Sylvestre, an old servant of ours, who had become after ten years of service, almost one of the family. ]

THE PASSING OF A CHILD. 23

He had only seen two summers of our earth. His silky hair, yellow as that of a doll, parted in funny little curls, difficult enough to dress. His complexion was like Ben gal roses, his features like a child angel's ; whilst a little mouth that was always open above a chin slightly reced ing, gave him an adorable air of naivete. Moreover he was the happiest of babies, absorbed in the new joy of ex istence, of breathing, of moving, full of life and healthful- ness, and round and muscular as a cupid.

But his peculiar charm was in his eyes, great blue eyes, frank and truthful and ever wide with astonishment before all the things of this world.

In Paris, at the hotel, on this grey December morning after my long journey from the north, where I had been without news for several days, I casually open one of the letters in a pile brought me from the poste-restante and read : " Yesterday evening at eight o'clock little Roger died in dreadful agony. We are all deeply distressed. Poor Sylvestre is pitiful to see."

At first I turn and walk up and down as one agitated by physical suffering. Then I continue reading, to learn more : croup, it seems, caused his death, taking him in a few hours from amidst the distraught watchers.

I walk up and down again, observing unconsciously the details of every object about me, the hideousness of the room, and kick aside everything in my way, until I can grasp the inexorable reality of what I have just read; and then suddenly a mist rises, I can see nothing, and the tears come.

The idea that little Roger might die had never entered my thoughts. Nor did I realize that he had taken so

24 ?HE PASSING

large a place in my heart — that little child ! I could not believe that I cared so much for him. Besides, can we tell why we are drawn towards some special little being who is nothing to us, rather than to one who may be more closely tied : it is something, perhaps, that steals from their child eyes, something that rises from the little soul, so new and pure, to penetrate ours that is oppressed and gloomy.

In this same pile of letters is a telegram which has been with the others for the last few days, at the poste restante: " I am in dreadful trouble. Our little Roger is dead — Sylvestre."

I look at the dates. All this happened two days ago ! They will bury him, then, to-night and it is too late. I cannot possibly arrive in time. There is no human way to see his dear little face again, even pale and rigid.

" Roger Couec," that was the title he gave himself when he was asked " What is your name " (his own abbreviation of his father's name, a Breton one of rough consonants). When he pronounced this Couec, he was so delightfully comical that we invariably made him repeat it — to think to-day of this little word, to hear it echoing in my mind, sickens me.

Here, in Paris, I ought to stay some time, I had a thousand things to do, so many appointments, friends counting on me for dinner, pressing questions to be settled, none of which seems of any importance now ; but I am determined to go. I shall not even trouble to warn them. I shall go home, home. All the same he won't be there, poor little fellow ! He will never be there again, our Roger Couec.

OF A CHILD. 25

But there is no train I can possibly take till this even ing. During the whole desolate day I shall have to wait — wait in this room, or wander about the streets, alone, and miserable, among those who are necessarily indifferent — my being in revolt, exasperated and helpless against the stupid cruelty of Death, who closes the eyes of the young, and mows down children to lay them in his charnel house.

" I am in dreadful trouble. Our little Roger is dead." As the weary hours go by, I keep thinking of his little life, a little life of only two summers, and as each moment passes, there deepens in me the sense that it is over for ever.

Oh ! his little voice — I can hear it now, as it would echo through the courtyard of our house when I passed his parents' rooms. He always followed me : " Messieu, Messieu !" (to him Monsieur was my name) and then his little footsteps would patter merrily behind. All that is at an end — shut up in the past !

As I look back, I see him in a certain pink merino frock — his every-day costume at this time of the year — and a white tie, " the Valliere? embroidered at each end with a Chinese flower. He generally wore it the wrong way round, the bow at the back, underneath his little yellow curls. Good God, it breaks my heart, and the tears blind me again when I think of that crooked little tie, all in a muddle at the back of his pink frock.

He had an indomitable spirit, this little Roger, and yet he never flew into violent passions, as most children do. If we annoyed him by stopping him from splashing in water, or by taking away from him anything he might break, he would cry desperately, but only from unhappi-

26 'THE PASSING

ness : " Is it possible people can be so unjust," he would seem to say, " Is it possible that such awful things can happen to me !" Then we had to give in to him at once, for in these moods he was irresistible. And now one would give days of one's life never to have caused him any little annoyance.

Sometimes, when he thought he had anything very important to do, and was stopped on the way, he would look up with extraordinary seriousness, and silently push aside one's hand to proceed to his business, frowning severely. Cats sometimes affect this droll gravity when they are anxious to be about their affairs, too occupied to take any heed of the most persistent calling.

He had such eyes, this little Roger, eyes hardly of the earth, that habitually laughed with a little confident joy, yet, at furtive moments, would suddenly look over serious. And although everything in him suggested life — the in consequent happiness of being, of laughter, he had, when one thinks of it, eyes that seemed to question, to implore, to trouble about some unknown to-morrow.

And it is these he chooses, the inexorable, imbecile mower, to throw into his cemetery holes !

On the morrow, the 6th of December, after travelling all night, I arrive at my home in the early morning of a dismal winter day.

I find poor Sylvestre in my room lighting the fire. He says childishly, with a great sob from his breast, " I have lost my little Roger." And here, in the cold room, day light just creeping through the windows, and a forgotten lamp still alight on the table, he tells me about the end of this little child for whom I weep even as much as he.

OF A CHILD. 27

So violent, so unexpected is this aggressiveness of death! He was stifled in full life, struggling, wringing his little hands in his suffering. . . " Until the last moment," says Sylvestre, " he held out his arms for me to take him, he clung to me, and tried to raise himself up ; he did not want to die."

Whilst listening to these awful details I suddenly think of a scene that took place last summer. One evening they came and told me that little Roger was ill. I went at once to his parents' house, and there I found him on his mother's knees, trembling, his cheeks wet with tears. He closed his little hand over my ringer and looked up im ploringly. " Would you believe," he seemed to say, " what has happened to me — the fear I had of stifling — if you knew !" There was nothing seriously the matter, a little choking that often happens to babies. But already in his look stirred the consciousness of his own weakness and the anxiety, the agony of feeling so little, so powerless before the menacing darkness he dared not face alone. Remembering that terrible expression I can only imagine too well the look he must have given of supplication and growing terror when he threw out his arms to his father " not wanting to die."

He had such absolute confidence in our protection that it seemed as if we had betrayed the little fellow in allow ing this cursed Mower to carry him away. His expression at certain moments, recurring now to my mind so livingly, causes me more emotion than human words can say. And I think that the humbleness of his birth adds I know not what of greater misery to the pain I feel at having lost him. I should certainly have wept less had he been a little prince

28 THE PASSING

" Oh ! he was not forgotten," continues Sylvestre. " Every one in the neighbourhood came, and he had so many flowers, so many wreaths ! Besides the whole house is in deep mourning for him ; we shall never hear his laughter there again, nor the sound of his baby footsteps, nor the dear shrill little voice."

We are silent at breakfast this morning, and Sylvestre, who has resumed his duties for the first time since the child's death, waits on us, his eyes smarting with tears.

All this last summer Roger used to come and assist at our meals when we had them here in the breakfast room. We would hear him trotting along the court-yard between the flower-stands, anxious to be in time, and then he would appear at the door smiling and radiant, hesitating for a moment to ask permission with his eyes before coming in, as if already in his little mind he understood that he had not quite the right. " Yes, come in ; come in Roger Couec." Then he would march in, pretending he was a soldier. Left, right, left, right ; and during the whole breakfast he would tumble in and out between his father's legs, considerably upsetting the service.

At dessert he would push himself closer to my little boy (three years his senior, and devoted to him as to his best doll) and become suddenly bold, pouting his lips for the cherry or strawberry he knew he would get.

After breakfast I went to the back of the house, to the yard leading to the servants' premises. Into this sunny quarter, one reached by a few steps, I used to go often on the pretext of visiting the greenhouse, but really to see something of Roger Couec, who was generally roaming about there in a little pink frock and a Chinese silk tie.

OF A CHILD. 29

As soon as he saw me he would hasten up that I might take him with me ; and even on those days when I did not want him, he was irresistible, his little voice calling, his determination to follow me, stumbling as he did on the steps, too high for his little legs, that separated the two courts, and going on all fours at last in a most business like way in order to get along more quickly. Little being come to life under my roof, just as the swallows do in the spring, and as the roses bud on the old walls ; for him these courts overshadowed by green branches represented the world ! How inscrutable to us his little notions of life, his little thoughts — buried now in the great abyss !

It is the first evening since my return.

I have just placed the portrait of little Roger above my writing table in a pink and gold frame — pink like his little frock. It is one he gave me himself. Somebody had put it in his hands and told him to take it to " Mes- sieu," and he came with a timid air, and something of a twinkle, to make me a present of his portrait ; he knew well enough it was his own portrait. How he clutched it with his tiny hands !

Now Sylvestre brings me his little tie, all washed and ironed, la Valliere^ that I asked him to give me." I bought it in China when I was a sailor," he explained. I hang the little cravat on the frame of the picture knotted with a sprig of white flowers. The portrait will preserve for some years yet the little angel-face that proved so ephe meral, and that was taken from us so soon. We shall still have something to remind us of that inexpressible child look.

Another day gone.

3o THE PASSING

One dull morning in crossing the back yard, I saw the little pink dress that they had washed, and that was hang ing on a cord to dry, the little sleeves dangling : it will become a thing put away, carefully folded, and in future years no one will remember what child used to wear it. Then I went into Sylvestre's, and I saw, arranged on some shelves, those little toys I knew so well : his wooden horse, the big goat he was so fond of, and his gun for playing at soldiers.

There, too, was the album of coloured prints, pictures of birds he was never tired of looking at. Whilst he turned the leaves he would point them out one after another and pronounce their names with a shout. An ostrich seemed to amuse him the most, one can hardly tell why ; he would stamp with joy the moment the picture came, and announce " strich " with an air of triumph.

Every little insignificant thing that recalls him now only brings pain.

Towards noon of this same day a brilliant sun breaks through the morning's mist and the heavens are clear. I walk with Sylvestre, who is in deep mourning, across the cemetery. It seems here like April weather.

We find the place where he is laid, our little Roger, no tomb made yet, only the signs of a recent burial. But the newly-turned-up earth, the greasy earth, the awful earth is hidden under a bed of flowers : all the wreaths that fol lowed the light bier, hardly faded yet.

So, it is under there that the little face is hidden for ever.

Another day, and it is the first Sunday since he is no longer here : one of those beautiful winter days, perhaps

OF A CHILD. 31

the most melancholy of the year, bright with deceptive sunshine, almost like April, but that draw in early to chill dark evenings.

On such afternoons they would dress Roger Couec in his best frock, his white fur tippet and large hat. His parents would take him out for a walk among the other little children all dressed in their Sunday clothes, proudly conscious that he was invariably the rosiest and prettiest child among the little Sunday decked crowd.

To-day Sylvestre and his wife have gone alone to the cemetery : there, in the wan sunshine, they are busying themselves in arranging the white wreaths that are still fresh on the little grave, on the horrible mould. And now the day draws in miserably cold. It is time to go in, the time they would bring the little fellow home, his cheeks crimson from the wind. This evening they return alone, the first Sunday the father and mother are without their little Roger. They have left him over there, frigid and discoloured under the earth. When they return to the empty room they will no longer hear the shrill little voice and the echoing laugh. The little Sunday frock and hat, put away in the cupboard, will become only relics that time will soon render old-fashioned.

And at last they will accustom themselves to not seeing their little Roger, just as I shall get out of the habit of listening for his footsteps in the yard, or looking up for his sudden appearance at the breakfast-room door.

The day when he fell back in his cradle, inert after having suffered so much, after having desperately implored our help with outstretched arms, he was surely enough on that day mown down for ever, and cast back into the

32 THE PASSING OF A CHILD.

abyss. . . . The strange union of atoms that formed for a brief moment his little smile and the expression of his eyes, disintegrated and at an end. In our memory, which after all will disintegrate too, his image will soon fade ; even in this minute corner of the world where his life of two short years was spent, one will soon forget that he passed; things will go on the same, existence here as elsewhere will continue its way. And in the course of innumerable destinies, in the infinite circles of the ages, his disappear ance will be as neglected and forgotten as the death of a swallow, or the fading of a white rose on our walls. And yet how can I express my sense of bitter revolt, my infi nite pity, at the thought of the vain supplication of that last look so full of terror at the approach of his end. How can I speak of the pain I feel, with the added agony of thinking that the dead child will not even know of it ! . . .

Easter Holidays.

N those days every month seemed end less, and the years an eternity. Summer time and holidays would last delightfully enough, but the late autumn and winter, poisoned by tasks and punishments, by the cold and rain, dragged along with lamentable slowness.

The year of which I am going to speak, here was, I think, the twelfth I had seen on this earth of ours. I spent it, alas ! under the rod of " the Great Black Ape," professor of literature at the college I had entered with no particular distinction ; and it has left an impression on me that, even to this day, remains painful, however lightly I turn my thoughts to it.

I can remember, as though it were yesterday, the profound melancholy of that October day, the last of the holidays, and the eve of the dreaded return to school. I had come back that very morning from spending a free delightful summer in the South and the sunshine with some cousins, and my head was still full of all that I had seen and done there : the gathering of the grapes among the reddening vines, the climbing up through the oak woods to the

34 EASTER HOLIDAYS.

quaint old manors perched aloft on the heights, the un premeditated rambles with a troop of little followers of whom I was the undisputed leader. . . What a change to come home only to see the summer die, and to take up on the morrow the miserable routine of things.

Surely enough, on that day, a chill swept through the air under a suddenly clouded heaven, bringing with it all the sadness of autumn which I resented in my childhood with inexplicable intensity. Moreover there was " the Great Black Ape " (Monsieur Cracheux) whom I must face in a few hours. I knew him by sight, having often seen him as I passed the dreary college gates with my nurse. For a year now I had scented him out and dreaded him, and my peculiar disgust for his person aggravated my sense of terror at the inevitable " going in." This last day I spent first in filling my little museum with the different precious specimens that I had brought back from my walks in the South : wondrous butterflies caught in the hay, and astonishing fossils discovered in the natural grottoes and valleys. And then alone in my room I sat down at my desk — where on the morrow alas ! I should have to begin to work — and undertook a task which kept me busy till dusk : the making of a calendar after my own fashion, from which I could tear off a page every evening. Ten little packets to be prepared of thirty leaflets each, for ten school months, the dates and the days marked, Thursdays and Sundays written with special elaboration on pink paper.

Whilst I was arranging this, out from the foggy street rose the plaintive cries of the wandering chimney sweeps, who came always in Autumn time, like the knell of the

EASTER HOLIDAYS. 35

summer days : " Chimneys to sweep !" The lugubrious chant filled my heart with untold agonies. Still my task went on ; I had come to the month of April and to Easter. On pink paper of course that great day, and beautifully writ ten with a garland of flowers encircling it. On pink paper, too, the following days, ten days of vacation — a delightful truce to the hostilities of " the Great Ape."

When it was finished, I opened my cupboard of toys to nail up my ten months in a row on the edge of the shelf, beginning with this dire October.

In nailing the month of April I looked at the pink bundle that marked the Easter holidays, and thought with despair, will it ever come ? And in an imaginary future I saw myself tearing down those leaves at the end of each day that would grow milder and longer till the Spring would be in the air.

Then came the month of May. When I get there, I said to myself, at the hour to tear, it will be quite light and the sky golden from a setting sun, and I shall hear in the street the young women and sailors dancing, and singing roundels of May, under the garlands hung above them on the windows.

Then June and the flowers, and the fruit, and the sun shine — then July — the coming at last of the long holidays and the intoxicating departure for a visit to our cousins in the South.

How immeasurably distant those future times appeared to be!

II.

The yoke of the Great Black Ape was truly terrible —

36 EASTER HOLIDATS.

beyond my worst forebodings. What a sad and weary winter it was, my hands always stained with ink, my task never finished, and naturally a conscience that was never at rest. Even on Thursdays and Sundays this old man, who had no bowels of compassion, overwhelmed us. To amuse my little fellow-sufferers I painted on my copy books, which we secretly passed round, huge black apes in various attitudes — poring over classic works, or scratch ing themselves.

In these days the race of the Great Black Ape is dying out, though a few still remain in the heart of the prov inces, and I should like to rouse those unhappy little fel lows, who are slow at their work, and at the bottom of the class, to revolt against the trash that is forced upon them to the ruin of their bodies and minds alike.

For all this, Easter did approach, and soon the last leaf lets that covered the longed-for little batch of pink would be thrown to the winds.

But Easter was very early that year and Spring a sorry laggard.

A terrible fear that the days on the pink paper would be days of rain and wintry weather took hold of me.

Palm Sunday went by with hardly a gleam of sunshine. Then Good Friday, a sad grey day, the guns at the naval station booming every half-hour to remind the world of the death of Christ.

And Saturday came, gloomy too, but bringing with it the end of the Great Ape's rule — and liberty !

The last class was just at an end — only one more quarter of an hour ! I could hardly keep my seat !

Careful to the last, I wrote a hasty good-bye to Andre

EASTER HOLIDAYS. 37

between the leaves of my blotter. He was the eldest and most grown-up of us all, and that year had shown some liking for me, perhaps because I was the youngest, and something still of a baby. (We only saw one another in class as he was a boarder and I a day-scholar, and then the Great Ape had had the meanness to put us at oppo site ends of the room, under the pretext that we talked too much, which obliged us to write to one another the whole time in an Egyptian code on paper stamped with a monkey in Chinese ink, the seal of our slavery.)

There was only a quarter of an hour before the general sigh of relief; my feet tingled to be up, and my legs itched to make for the window.

" Now boys," suddenly said the Great Ape, " take down the holiday task that you must bring me on Wednesday week when the class will re-assemble."

A holiday task ! We were betrayed ! What a pitiless brute he was !

We all looked at one another, some in consternation, others furious and indignant.

It was a Latin composition ! And I who could not even write French, and fell short in all the Great Ape's subjects!

I wrote it down, brimming over with rage the while, badly and untidily on purpose.

Moreover his subject was absurd. " In a great scented garden through which the Spring breeze softly blew, a rash child, heedless of his tutor's warning, amused himself by teazing the bees who were sucking honey from the freshly-opened flowers." (From time to time there were dots to mark the places we were to fill in at our own dis cretion.) " At last this disobedient child succeeded in

38 EASTER HOLIDATS.

trapping one of these interesting workers in the cup of a campanula with his finger and thumb. And the infuriated insect," dictated the old man, " and the infuriated insect, began to struggle (notice the infinitive of movement), and to sting the fingers of his cowardly persecutor. This, boys, is the moral. A full stop, that's all."

On my way home I kept repeating to myself the phrase " the infuriated insect," which, I don't know why, parti cularly exasperated me. And to the title of the Black Ape I added, as I ground my teeth with rage, " Dirty old sparrow !"

Everything in this world of ours is a matter of custom and convention, and this " dirty sparrow " in our school slang expressed a completely overwhelming insult.

On Easter Sunday the church bells pealed out. From early morning the streets were filled with moving crowds of people in their best clothes. Following the old custom, the good folk had decked themselves out in light clothes and straw hats. But the heavens were still clouded and the sun sulking.

It was sad to see them all in their Spring garments hurrying along with frozen looks, and their heads bent against the bitter north wind.

Surely Spring should not disappoint children who have awaited it with such confidence and fervour during the three interminable months of winter.

From the morrow it was arranged that I should work at my holiday task for an hour a day, with the idea that in two or three days it would be finished, my hands washed of it and my heart free.

Patiently enough I kept to my room the whole ap-

EASTER HOLIDAYS. 39

pointed time, my elbows on the desk and my fingers covered with ink, but nothing would come : " And the infuriated insect began to struggle." Inspiration failed me, my thoughts would wonder ; I was dreaming of the Spring that would not appear, and longing to run outside, for all the rain and wind.

And my heart sickened as I realized that the days, those precious days written on the pink paper, were slip ping inevitably by — cheerlessly, miserably.

III.

The holidays were flying — each day the same cold rain, each day the same dark skies. There were only four more. On Friday my little friend, Jeanne, came with her mother to invite me to spend the day with her in a garden which belonged to them outside the town. What an un expected joy ! And the weather was actually clearing after the torrent of rain, clouded at moments only, then bright with sunshine.

After the week's confinement to the house, because of the wet, it seemed wonderful to find the Spring at last. I had even doubted its existence, but it was there all the same, blooming in profusion; the pink hyacinths, anemones so red, anemones so purple, and tufts of the common gilly-flower, glorious golden yellow, striped with brown. How brilliant they were, nodding their heads under the uncertain skys, where great clouds swept past still laden with winter greyness. And a sense of mysterious delight stole over me in the presence of all these flowers, in spite of the gusts of wind and the threatening rain.

On my homeward way I grew sad — the day was over

40 EASTER HOLIDATS.

and the unfinished Latin task hung over my head for the morrow — the abominable infuriated insect. I whispered a suggestion to my little friend that she should come and fetch me again before the term began, which she promised to do.

IV.

Oh, miserable me ! This evening the last of the pink papers must be torn off.

There I was, after breakfast, pouring over the Latin com position, hardly further advanced than on the Easter Monday, when I heard that little Jeanne was waiting for me downstairs to take me to her garden in the suburbs. But my father came up, looked with consternation at my copy-book and refused to let me go. "He must finish his composition first," said he, " and then he can join her." Heavens ! and it was the last day.

The thought of missing this one chance of spending the afternoon with Jeanne in the great garden, filled me with absolute despair.

I set to my subject with rage. I introduced breezes and butterflies, crimson roses and flowers of punic red ; then I came to the phrase which was almost at the end, "And the infuriated insect. . ." Began to struggle ', in my big Latin dictionary was translated : Jactare corpus (to throw the body from side to side). As the expression seemed to me rather strong for a bee I added to corpus the ingenious epithet tenue, (tiny,) and to keep the insidious infinitive of movement I wrote : tenue corpus jactare fur ens.

There ! it was finished ! Now quick for my nurse to take me to the garden, for to my great humiliation I was

EASTER HOLIDAYS. 41

not considered old enough to go out alone. In great haste I washed my hands, inky up to the elbow, and dressed ready to start for the garden where Jeanne would be waiting for me among the golden gilly-flowers and the red anemones. Quick, quick, quick, for it was late and the sun was setting — the sun of my last day !

Alas ! as we went through the town gates, there in the avenue of young elms that led to the suburbs I saw Jeanne — Jeanne coming back with her mother.

" So this is the time you come," she said with a little tone of irony. " We are just going home."

Then in the chill of the day that was drawing to its close, I knew that for a whole year I could not be with the Spring in this great garden with its grey walls, and its tender early flowers, so vivid and brilliant under the chang ing sky. A devastating sense of regret took possession of me, one of those strange and inexplicable fits of melan choly with which my whole childhood was tinged, especially at those hours of the evening when the shadows were lengthening.

V.

Next morning we sat with mournful faces on rows of benches, whilst the Great Ape read aloud our Easter pro ductions.

My turn came to be read aloud by him. And who would have thought it ; I had evidently succeeded in doing well. Even when he came to the phrase, Tenue corpus jactare furens, he exclaimed in a shrill grotesque little voice, " Oh, that's excellent !"

Well that was too much ! To have done something that pleased the Old Ape !

42 EASTER HOLIDAYS.

Covered with confusion, I sought the eyes of my friend Andre, full of anxiety to learn what he would think of me. He made a grimace from the distance, lowering his head and protruding his lips to make me feel ashamed.

He seemed to mock me, but his smile was kind and affectionate withal ; I saw he did not think too badly of me for having done anything so good, and I felt a little consoled.

A Reflective Moment.

HERE are moments, rare as they are peculiar, when the true character of a country suddenly frees itself from the uniform commonplace of an every- fday world, and a soul seems to rise from the very soil, to steal from the 'trees, and from out a thousand things : the bygone spirit of the race that slept numbed by the great universal medley, for a moment waking.

To-day, the 22nd of November, at the extreme point where France ends, as I sit alone on my terrace that actually overlooks Spain, the spirit of the Basque Country appears to me for the first time. Our European countries, alas ! grow more and more like one another. Thus I had lived for a year in this Euscalerria without having dis covered anything very peculiar, and without having be come in any way aware that I was growing attached to it. But doubtless a gradual working within me has taken place, a slow penetrating of the Basque effluvium that has insensibly prepared me to understand her and to love her.

To-day is the feast of the Perpetual Adoration, and the

44 A REFLECTIVE MOMENT.

churches, Spanish as well as French, are fuller than ever of burning tapers and simple souls that pray. It is glori ously fine ; on the Bidassoa, on the Pyrenees, over the sea, reigns the same infinite calm. The still air is warm as in May, yet with the indefinable melancholy of late Autumn — sign in itself of the waning year. The sea in the dis tance glitters as a band of blue mother-of-pearl. There are southern, almost African tints on the mountains which are clearly outlined against the sky, though vapor ous, and bathed in all that is diaphanous and golden. The Bidassoa, at my feet, sluggish and smooth, reflects, with the accuracy of a mirror, Fontarabia opposite — its church, its strong castle scorched by a hundred summers, the arid mountains beyond with their smallest ruts and faintest shadows, even their tiniest cottages scattered about white on the great red foundations, all delightfully inverted. High up in the air or down in the depths of the deceptive mirror the most distant summits are equally pure. The immobility of everything, the luminous bril liancy of the tints give these Spanish hills something of the sadness of Morocco ; to-day, especially, one feels that Africa is quite close — as though the clearness of the atmosphere, that lessened visible distance, had also had the power to bring it nearer us.

And this great calm silence over everything — this un changing stillness of the air, these motionless lights and great shadows, give me at first the impression of a pause in the dizzy movement of centuries, of a reflectiveness, an immense waiting, or rather a look of melancholy thrown back on a past anterior to suns and human beings, races and religions

A REFLECTIVE MOMENT. 45

And, in the great spaces for sound ring the old bells of the churches, calling men the better, in the strange hushes, to their dead worships, Fontarabia, Hendaye, the convents of Monks ring, ring, send out their summons with the same note of age, the same old voices as in cen turies gone.

On the Bidassoa, boats pass slowly from shore to shore, forming long lines of sleepy ripples that blur the inverted picture of Fontarabia and the brown mountains. The sailors on board, rugged-faced, wearing the traditional black cap, and beardless according to the Basque custom, talk together in a tongue that is thousands of years old, or sing, in a nasal falsetto, their old ancestral airs.

And on the surrounding paths, all flowering again in this marvellous Autumn time, between the hedges, hedges covered as in Spring with wild roses, privet and honey suckle, are women and young girls on their way from onechurch to another, dressed mostly in black, a thick black mantilla falling over their foreheads, the costume habitually worn by those who go to pray, either for them selves or for the dead laid under the earth in the cemetries.

Then suddenly as I stand before this scene — listening still to the clanking of the old bells, or the snatches of song that resound from the distance, I become aware of all that this country has preserved of peculiar and dis tinctive, down to its very depths. I feel for the first time stealing up everywhere an atmosphere of separateness, as it were, from the rest of the world, of mystery — a living essence of what the place is — destructible alas ! but still impregnating all things, exhaling from all things — surely the dying soul of the Basque country.

46 A REFLECTIVE MOMENT.

And yet in the distance comes a hideous thing, noisy, black, tearing past with idiotic speed, shaking the ground, and disturbing the delightful calm by whistles and rattling iron : the train — the railway, a mightier leveller than time, distributing the base fabrics of industry, propagating modern ideas, disgorging daily here as else where the common-place, and stupid.

At Loyola.

O WARDS evening, as the sun is setting, the express from Saint Sebas tian to Madrid puts us down at a town called Zumarraga, where my Basque companion and myself are obliged to wait an hour for the carriage that is to take us on to Ignace.

The mildness of a Southern Aut umn is in the air, but everywhere dead leaves are falling. This waiting on an October evening about an isolated little town surrounded by high mountains, and where the people only speak an incomprehensible language is inevi tably depressing. We stroll about aimlessly. In a win dow in one of the dark narrow streets a solitary parrot talks to itself.

" I am sure he speaks Basque too," I say to my com panion.

" Most likely," he answers, and listens. " Yes, he actu ally does, he continues with a laugh. " I can hear him saying Jacquo ederra (Pretty Jacquo)."

For the tenth time we find ourselves in front of the Church which stands in a great square surrounded by old

48 AT LOTOLA.

ruined houses with projecting roofs, and carved balconies, and emblazoned walls. It forms one side of the Square, and is built of a reddish brown stone, weather-worn and cracked in places ; and beyond (of the same red stone) rise the mountains into evening light. In the centre of the Square is a fountain to which young peasants come for water. There is also a new monument of white marble gleaming in relief against the shadowy surroundings : a statue of an old man with the brow of a visionary, holding in his hands a guitar, yarraguire, a wandering musician, composer of patriotic hymns, seditious enough, and love songs. An inscription in that ancient language that can never really be understood by strangers, informs the world that the Basques have honoured the last of their bards. These Euscarrien people, still distinctive, still entirely themselves, have in truth neither been successfully assimi lated on the one side by France nor on the other by Spain.

In the distance the shrill notes of a flute break on the air, accompanied by a tambourine at intervals, peculiarly Arabian in its abrupt time. They draw near, and a wed ding party appears — a very humble little wedding party, moving along quickly, all but running to the sound of the music.

Once within the Square, the little procession stops to dance, all among the fallen leaves that scurry about their feet, blown by the wind. They number but fifteen, and just now we are their sole spectators. The bride, who is young and pretty, alone is fashionably dressed, with leg of mutton sleeves and a skirt of 1 830, the last caprice of 1 892. The tambourine and the flute play a rapid wild air, one of those Basque tunes in five time that upset all our notions

AT LOYOLA. 49

of rhythm ; and they start together a most complicated dance interrupted by leaps and cries — an ancient dance, the tradition of which will soon be lost.

Some girls come along with pitchers on their heads to draw water from the fountain ; and then the bridegroom, who looks about eighteen, goes towards them and asks them to dance. Children run up, and a few idlers stroll into the Square, so that quite a little assembly is formed to make the wedding of the poor folk less cheerless in this great forlorn place at the approach of night. In the streets, too, the peasants stop their cumbrous waggons drawn by oxen, that roll noisily along on round discs of wood like the wheels of an ancient chariot.

At five o'clock our carriage is brought to us there, ready at last : a kind of cabriolet with a hood of oil-cloth, and drawn by two horses harnessed in tandem, with a consi derable number of bells on their necks.

We are almost at once in the country ; it grows quite dark, the air as warm as that of a summer night. An hour and a half on the road, at a great pace, across valleys and through gorges, skirting torrents we cannot see, but hear roaring at our feet in spite of bells that jingle all the time, whilst a soft wind from the south scatters dead leaves up to our faces.

We stop at last before the porch of an enormous fonda. We have reached our destination. On the other side of the road is the Convent of Saint Ignatius, a black mass rising from out of the darkness, quite solitary ; the Fonda and the Convent, there is nothing else at Loyola !

The Fonda is an old building with staircases one might find in a palace, their balustrades of wrought iron. As

50 AT LOTOLA.

soon as you enter you scent the acid odour of the food, common to all Spanish inns. The good folk within nei ther understand French nor Spanish, simply the language of the country — Basque. At table there is only an old priest and ourselves ; but a short time ago, it seems, when the new General of the Jesuits was called, the great rooms were full of travellers from all parts, even from the furthest end of Poland and Russia.

The Fonda is almost a holy place ; the walls are hung with sacred pictures, and along the staircases are writings forbidding those who go up and down to swear or to blaspheme.

II.

As I wake at Loyola, long rays of light filtering through the shutters meet my eyes. The large room in which I have slept is white-washed and bare — almost empty, with pictures of saints and holy water vases hung on the walls. All through the night I heard the convent bells tolling, and the roar of a torrent not far distant. This morning it is the voice of one of the Fonda servants that wakes me, singing a Basque air in five time on the staircase, an air by that Yparraguire whose statue I saw yesterday in the great forlorn Square at Zumarraga.

I open my windows to let in the streaming sun. It is the glorious morning of a Southern October. If it were not for the red and gold of the trees, for the dead leaves scattered on the grass, one would say this was an August day. The site is unique and admirably chosen : a small unbroken plain, the only one to be found for miles round in this wild corner of the Basque country, a plain as fertile

AT LOYOLA. 51

as a garden, watered by a fresh torrent, and mysteriously shut in, almost roofed in by high rugged mountains that separate it from the rest of the world. The running water makes a murmuring noise in the silence around, and a pastoral calm hovers over the whole of the exquisite region.

Yet in front of me rises the Convent of Saint Ignatius, nest of the Jesuits, throned as sovereign master, immense and superb in this isolated spot : a dark mass of grey masonry, imposing and magnificent, in the midst of this deserted country that has remained so rustic and primitive. The chapel is in the centre of the great fa9ade which forms, as it were, two strange wings : its dome rises in the grand proportions of a basilica ; its peristyle stands out in a sumptuous semicircle of marble, the portico and pil lars of black marble emblazoned with white ; the steps that lead up to it are immense, adorned with lions and statues. And in front nothing but beds of chrysanthe mums, peaceful alleys between old-fashioned trellised borders, and oddly enough no enclosing walls or rails — open to the wide country, to the fields and paths where the peasants may go to and fro.

( Gloomy thoughts associate themselves with this nest of Jesuitism and of the Inquisition : looking at this convent of Loyola, whose very name savours of oppression, one cannot help thinking of the cruel and implacable things that were formerly decreed in lowered voices behind these walls, and then executed close by or far away, always pitilessly and in the dark) This huge and opulent edifice, with its heavy architecture, its dominating air, hidden in these mountains, has all the physiognomy that expresses

52 AT LOTOLA.

the great Jesuitical idea. Yet the confidence implied in the surroundings, these gardens open to everyone, these flowers unprotected even by a hedge, give an unexpected air of hospitality. The rule of this order is certainly the most astonishing deformation of Christianity that has ever issued from the human brain, and just as there is a persis tent gentleness, in spite of all things, a sweetness surround ing the name of Jesus, so this word Jesuit, which is derived from it, remains always disturbing and cold and hard.

In the midst actually of the trellised pathways labourers go to and fro. Waggons, on wheels of massive wood, in the Roman fashion, that make a peculiar groaning sound as they roll — a sound one hears on every road in the Basque country — are filled to overflowing with red and golden cider apples that leave a train of scent on the mild air, and are led by peasants who sing old world songs as they pass the high windows, with no attempt at constraint. In fact a profound security surrounds the great Jesuifiere, an air impregnated with only peace and abundance.

We leave the Fonda to go out into the sunshine and walk in the grounds of the gloomy convent. One of the doors before us suddenly opens, evidently the door of the school, for about thirty little boys scamper out, jumping and shouting, whilst an old fellow, in the black gown of the order, hastens to close the shutters on the first floor above their heads, that they may safely play the traditional Basque game of ball against the walls, without risk of breaking the windows. They play for a little while, their childish merriment echoing delightfully among the sombre walls. Then they gradually disperse about the country, and all is silence again — the great silence of the fields — no

AT LOYOLA. 53

one passes now. As the approach of noon, the sun pours down with greater and greater force upon the beds of chrysanthemums and the stately staircase of marble.

As I go up to the Chapel by these steps, admiring the sumptuous porticoes, the incomparable site, and the won derful blue sky, I experience a strange sense of instinctive repulsion — something of an old Hugenot rancour against this Society of Jesus. Not that I give credence to all the accusa tions of wrong doing and evil certain hot-heads have hurled against it — and, besides, what do its crimes signify ? A human institution should only be judged by the amount of enthusiasm it has aroused in the hearts of men, by the amount of consolation or soothing illusion it has been able to give to the world. But this Society of Jesus, which only knows how to annihilate all whom it allures to its em brace, that is based on a savage impersonality, awful, too, in its almost boundless power and mysterious proceedings, disquiets and confuses me.

The great doors of the Chapel, profusely sculptured from top to bottom, and decorated with brass ornaments, are so well polished and varnished, that, in spite of their age, they are as bright as though they were new. In no other church are doors kept with such care. They at once give an impression of wealth, of persistence and durability. No one is there. We try gently to push one of the sculptured doors, which gives and opens, there seems to be nothing to keep them closed. And then the splendour breaks upon us.

An immense round church. In the centre a circular colonnade, massive and strong, of marble that is almost black, relieved by very fine threads of gold, supports

54 AT LOYOLA.

a dome of a lighter colour, all of grey and pink marble. This dome is decorated with a series of gigantic slabs of marble, grey and gold, ranged in a circle. Each of these slabs rests on a regal drapery, also of marble, that appears to fall in folds, their outside edges of the palest rose coloured marble, the inside, the lining as it were, of a brighter shade, the whole having the lustre of porcelain. And over each of the black columns that support the pink roof, a white statue stands in relief against the folds of the beautiful drapery ; quite a company of these personages up there, all of a snowy whiteness arranged circular-wise in attitudes of thought and prayer. At the further end of the church, facing the entrance, is the marvellous sanctuary, the high Altar made entirely of brown agate inlaid with rare stones of different colours, among which white predominates. About these great columns of twisted agate, prodigious mosaics entwine like spirals of riband, the whole so exquisitely polished that it gleams like the inside of a sea shell. In the centre stands a life-sized statue of St. Ignatius in chiselled and embossed silver. About the central rotunda, in the aisles of brown and grey marble, the different secondary altars are orna mented with statues, nearly all of which are remarkable, and whose gilded draperies have that peculiar sheen that gold takes on marble. Nowhere is there any excess of decoration, actually a severe soberness in all the magnifi cence ; everywhere the natural tints and gleam of marble ; gold used only on the robes of the saints with extreme discretion, in fine threads and light embroideries, bright rich glittering gold.

The whole place is maintained with a freshness that is

AT: LOYOLA. 55

almost new, nevertheless one divines the age of things beneath. Every detail here is bright, and without trace of dust, even to the resounding flag-stones under our feet. There is not another church in the world that is so per fectly kept, and this excessive care is in itself a measure of the Society's wealth.

Still nobody about. We entered without anyone notic ing us, by a door that is always open. The sudden appa rition of such a place on emerging from the surrounding hills, the quiet of the morning, this silence amidst a splen dour that seems hardly religious, makes one dream of enchanted palaces that, at the touch of a magic wand, might vanish.

Altogether, from a human point of view, I find this magnificence of convents and churches that have swallowed the fortunes of thousands of different people, and which are so impersonal, affording to their creators even, no more joy than to the casual traveller who hundreds of years afterwards happens to pass by, strange and inexpli cable.

After the Chapel, we desire to see the interior of the convent, and return therefore to the walks of chrysanthe mums. We ask some peasants what we should do, where to knock, which door to go in by.

" Oh !" they say, " by which ever you like ; all the doors are right, for one is allowed to go everywhere."

And they push the first door we come upon which opens wide before us. Rather hesitatingly, and again without meeting anyone, we go up to the second floor, and sud denly find ourselves in a room like a small Asiatic pagoda, or a fairy's chamber. Extraordinarily low in the ceiling,

56 AT LOYOLA.

it has enormous beams that one can touch with one's hand, each one of which is a garland of acanthus leaves pro fusely gilded. These beams, that are repeated throughout the whole length of the room, all equally magnificent in their extravagant excess of decoration, form together a kind of tunnel of golden foliage. The room is divided by a gilded grill beyond which two sacred lamps, with globes like pink flowers, burn before the golden reliquaries. All is bright with that inimitable soft tone of the heavy gilding habitually used in former times, and a delicious odour of incense fills the air. However, a tiny grill opens in a door, and a pair of eyes look at us ; then the door opens, and a young man between eighteen and twenty years of age, with a cheery face, wearing the black gown of the Jesuit and carrying a feather brush under his arm, and a broom in his hand, smilingly beckons us to go in. He is in a sumptuous old room hung with red brocade, and scat tered with gilded furniture and tables of marble marque- trie, busy dusting some reliquaries. He asks us if we are French. My companion, who thinks he recognises in him a man of his own race, answers in the Basque language.

" Why, yes," responds the brother, " you are French, but French Euscualdunac !" (French Basques).

His words seem to suggest : "therefore you are scarcely French ! Say rather that we are compatriots !" and he becomes more genial than ever. He explains to us that this is the room of Ignatius Loyola, and that it is confided to his care. These bones now encrusted with precious stones, and these stuffs that fill the reliquaries, are the remains of the person and the garments of the great saint.

AT LOYOLA. 57

If we wish to visit the Convent, he tells us, with the same expressive confidence that seems here to be in the very air, we have only to go down to the ground floor, turn to the right then to the left and knock at the second door, there we shall find some fathers who will be de lighted to show us round. So we go and knock at the prescribed door. A brother porter, after looking at us, smiling, too, like the Basque brother upstairs, shows us into a large airy parlour. Of course, he says, we shall be shown round wherever we wish to go. A French father shall even be chosen for our guide, if we will have the goodness to sit down and wait a moment. It would be impossible to wish for a more hospitable house, or for more agreeable hosts.

Soon the father, who is to take us round, arrives with outstretched hand. His expression is kind and frank; he looks me straight in the face ; nothing of what is called the Jesuitical air in his manner. He is cordial, affable and gay. The Convent, we wander through, is immense, a very labryinth in which, he tells us, young novices often lose their way. With its white walls and in its bareness, it resembles any other convent. The interminable corri dors have little cells on each side that look out into the quiet country ; over the door of each of these is written the name of the father who inhabits it. There are many French names, some English and some Russian : the Society of Jesus extends its unseen hand everywhere.

But the wonder of the place is the old feudal castle of St. Ignatius, which chance led us to enter first. It is one of those little vulture's nests of the Spanish Middle Ages, with archaic walls made of stone and of red brick curi-

58 AT LOYOLA,

ously intermingled. It is enclosed, set as a precious stone in the great formidable convent sprung from it. So reli giously is it respected, that in the rooms adjoining it, whatever their decoration may be, the wall that forms part of the castle is left bare in the rough stone. Its extreme age makes the buildings that surround it, in themselves old enough, appear almost new, and its small- ness seems the more astonishing in the midst of the gigan tic proportions of the monastery, resembling indeed a toy castle built in former days for children. Sacred lamps and perfumes burn throughout, day and night. The Jesuits, who have succeeded each other these four centuries, have made it a sacred duty to decorate it from top to bottom. There are altars and gildings even in its little stables. The room with the roof of golden foliage like a pagoda, which we saw on arriving, is the ancient recep tion room of the castle, no doubt quite modest in former days, now, out of respect, the old beams are covered in all this wealth, as a relic might be put in a golden shrine.

Loyola is situated between two little old Basque towns near one another, Aspei'tia and Ascoi'tia, typical old places, doubtless unchanged since their construction — sombre houses with diminutive shops and small industries. Both have churches, blest, like that of Loyola, by the terrestial visits of St. Ignatius, and rich in decoration to an extent unusual even in Spain. At Aspei'tia, behind the high altar, from the pavement to the roof, there is a mass of golden foliage deeply carved in wood that must have cost infinite patience to accomplish.

The chief industry of both these towns, bathed now in a fierce Autumn sun, appears to be the manufacture of

LOYOLA. 59

alpargates (boots with cloth tops) and of avarcac (Basque boots made of sheepskin that fasten in the old-fashioned way with a lacing up the calf of the leg) .

At Ascoi'tia especially, the streets are lined with boot makers, working in feverish haste, as if an unshod world were anxiously waiting for the completion of their alpar gates. These good people sew and tap in a kind of frenzy, and the string soles pile up about them in little mountains.

The same carriage, that brought us here in the dark yesterday, takes us back to Zumarraga to-day in the hot sunshine. We pass a great many heavy waggons drawn by oxen, and full of scented apples, lumbering slowly along on their massive wheels. Our horses, covered with bells, galop over beds of dead leaves, through wondrous little valleys, by the side of cool torrents we only heard on our nocturnal journey.

The Mayor of the Sea.

I HE great solemn room in the Town Hall of Fontarabia, dilapidated and empty, bears witness, as does the whole town here, to a bygone magni ficence. At the further end of the hall, under a sort of dai's of old bro cade, there is a portrait of the Queen Regent, and along the walls, benches and arm-chairs are ranged.

We are three or four waiting. The shutters are closed because of the fiies, leaving us almost in darkness. " In a minute," says the Alcalde (the mayor of the town) "when the vespers are over, they will come."

We hear the sound of a Basque flute, plaintive and strange as Arab music, rising from the silence without. It is stiflingly hot, and, in spite of the darkness in the room, one is conscious that the great July sun is flaming in the heavens, burning down on this mass of old wood and stones which make up Fontarabia.

We go out on to the old balcony of forged iron to see if they are coming. Below us is the " Calle Major," a

THE MAYOR OF THE SEA. 61

narrow street impenetrable by the sun, enclosed between houses dating back to the middle ages. It is on a steep incline ending down below in a ruined gate, and appar ently closed at the top — walled in by the dark mass of the church. A veritable scene from old Spain — a little bit that has remained extraordinarily intact — roofs with sculp tured beams projecting to afford shade, magnificent em blazonries in relief on the walls of reddish stone ; balconies of forged iron, one above the other, decorated with pots of flowers, and brightened everywhere by geraniums and carnations. Spanish heads appear at the windows, and look towards the church, waiting for the procession that is coming. Curiosity begins to animate the dead street. The bells suddenly ring, the very vibrations reach us, and fill the calm hot air : vespers are over.

The people come out of the dark old houses, they lean over the balconies and fill up the door-ways. Service being over, five or six priests, suave and kind in appear ance, join us in the hall and greet us.

At last the drum is heard in the distance. They are coming.

At the top of the street, from the turning which seems to end it, a procession emerges. One by one the men appear in front of the old church wall that forms the great background of this picture. First the musicians, in red caps, playing a quick lively march. Behind them a woman who seems to be the principal person in the pro cession, a woman draped in pure white, tall and perfectly proportioned, with the movements of a goddess. She advances rapidly, almost dancing in time to the music, a large coffer on her head, which she holds with upraised

62 THE MAYOR

arms, like the rounded handles of a Greek vase. After her comes a boy carrying a great red banner embroidered with a blue escutcheon. Then a group of bronzed faces wearing the traditional Basque cap : the fishermen — all the brotherhood of Fontarabia — come from the seamen's quarter for the annual solemnity of the election of their new Alcalde.

The Mayor of the Sea, chief of the brotherhood, is elected every year by a limited suffrage, and ever since the middle ages, this duty has been performed under the hot July sun, with an unaltered ceremonial.

They have marched down the " Calle Mayor " to music, and now have come up into the Town Hall where every one solemnly takes his place : the Alcalde of the town in the centre, under the dais ; on each side of him the two marine officers, the one French, the other Spanish, who are in command on the Bidassoa ; then the two Alcaldes of the sea, the old and the new, and lastly the peasants and fishermen. The red banner, at least four hundred years old, has been raised ; its archaic embroideries repre sent a scene of whale fishing and aureoled saints walking on troubled waters. They have attached it to the iron balcony, that it may float above the street during the ceremony.

The coffer brought by the beautiful dark girl is opened before the Alcaldes. It contains the treasure of the brotherhood which has to be verified : a large parchment covered with Gothic writing conferring special blessings from Pope Clement VIII ; a silver crucifix, a silver reli quary, a silver chalice, a silver pit and rods for the masters in whalebone with silver knobs (for the brotherhood, who

OF THE SEA. 63

only fish now for tunny and sardines, was founded long ago when whales were still taken in the Bay of Biscay).

These venerable objects that have been passed down from hand to hand for so many centuries, are still intact.

They read aloud the accounts of the community in that ancient tongue of unknown origin which strangers never succeed in wholly comprehending : So much for the general working, so much for relief, so much for the masses for the dead, and for safe voyages. Every fisher man round the room listens attentively : sailors descended from countless generations of sea adventurers who lived on the dangerous waters of the Bay of Biscay. Hardened faces, sunburnt and tanned — carefully shaved as monks. Rapacious in their way, given to poaching and defying the laws by throwing nets in French waters, even on our very shores, yet brave folk withal and bold seamen !

The verification over, there is evidently to be sport without. Already shouts arise from the crowded street : they are bringing the bull !

He arrives, a reluctant enough creature, fastened to a piece of wood that is drawn by a pair of oxen yoked to gether, the rope long enough to allow the unhappy animal to belabour the beasts before him with his horns. This unwieldly equipage is difficult to drive, and advances amidst many jerks and stops and kickings.

From under the porch of the Town Hall comes the sound of brass instruments, alternating with the Basque orchestra : little flutes and tambourines play the old airs in five time, an odd rhythm of unknown antiquity, so strange to our ears.

Meanwhile the bull, with its swathed horns, has been

64 THE MATOR

detached from the team and tied to a stone pillar by a long cord that allows him to sweep the whole street. Maddened and stupified, it rushes headlong at the passers- by who call it, and dodge dexteriously aside. Then come mad stampedes, banging of doors, galloping on the slippery pavement, cries of fright, stumbles, dangerous escapes and shouts of laughter.

When the sport is over the fishermen form into proces sion again to return to their quarter by the sea, where a gala is prepared in the house of the new Mayor.

At the head, the band, tambourines and flute. Then the tall beautiful girl who carries the sacred coffer, and who falls at once into the rhythmic walk, swaying with the music. Next the great banner, the mayors, the officers and the priests. Lastly the fishermen and the crowd that accompany them in ever increasing numbers.

They file along the gloomy narrow street of high houses in joyous haste, descending, after the turning by the church, towards the sea — away suddenly from the stuffiness of Fontarabia, along the side of a fence that slopes precipitously down to the depths of the Bay of Biscay; the Pyrenees, the coast of France and the infinite blue ocean, lying in a glory of light at their feet.

Down there, on the shore, rests the modest little house of the new mayor of the sea, surrounded, in the Basque way, by plane trees pruned to form a roof. The doors are open. On the arrival of the little train the sacred banner is planted by the entrance, and the precious coffer put away in the recess of an alcove behind the bed.

A table, simply arranged for the feast, and decorated with large bouquets, stands in a small low room, the

OF THE SEA. 65

rafters low and as oppressive as those on a ship. The whitewashed walls are hung with pictures of Christ, of the Virgin, and the saints who protect seamen.

They crowd in and sit down, mayors, officers, priests and the more notable fishermen, as many as it will hold. The place is hot as an oven, in spite of occasional wafts of sea-air. Fish and shell-fish, with every kind of sauce, are served by smiling girls and women. Between each course cigarettes are exchanged and lighted — and fishing matters and smuggling are talked over in Spanish, and more especially in Basque.

The room is on the ground floor, close to the people walk ing about outside. Through the open window, in the fore ground, the red banner is visible, now waving high, now almost sweeping the sand. Then the beach where a fan dango is being danced to music, and between the dancers, who turn and sway, their arms raised high, is a glimpse of the deep blue sea covered to-day with hundreds of black sleeping atoms — the boats of the fishermen keeping holi day. The people outside come in turn, and look and smile through the window. Even passing strangers from Biarritz and Saint Sebastian, cyclists in knickerbockers, and elegant women in large feathered hats. These latter examine the banner — the beautiful work, and the strange personages embroidered on it.

And as far from them as these embroideries they find so amusing — as far, thank Heaven, from their notions and their modern emptinesses, are the crude bronzed fish ermen, who eat at this table between pictures of Christ, in the whole simpleness of bygone times, with the same hopes, the same dreams, the same joys.

The Grotto of Isturitz.

LL grottoes are more or less alike, their galleries, their stalactites and their domes are of one archi tecture. The same mysterious Genii, who invent the forms of the slow crystalizations, who preside at the metamorphoses of inorganic matter, have superintended with an eternal patience the moulding

of their white arabesques. However, this grotto at Isturitz deserves to be seen, though doubtless there are others in existence more wonderful.

It is situated in the heart of the old Basque country, which we approach by shady roads through ravines and woods, half way up a wild mountain side.

At first we have to climb up tiny tracks, between rocks and streamlets, on a carpeted way of sweet-smelling mint and wild flowers. As we get higher and higher we see that the country all round us is of the same character :

THE GROTTO OF ISTURITZ. 67

pastural, shady and peaceful, with great woods, and here and there little churches nestling among the trees.

The entrance to the grotto is a hole closed by a wall of masonry and a door of some kind.

Our guide, an Isturitz peasant, thrusts in a large key and opens it up for us, and we enter at once into the dark ness and damp and cold, into the silence so full of fright- ning echoes; — and the strange mystery of subterranean regions steals on us.

We go down into the depths by a steep slope. The roof rises higher and higher over our heads, till the flames of our candles are entirely lost, as in the deep shadows of a cathedral.

We come into the great nave. In the centre, in spite of the appalling darkness in which our lights flicker, something gigantic can be vaguely distinguished, rising up in an almost human attitude, white as milk, suggesting an alabaster colossus that would endeavour to touch the vaulted roof with its head.

Our guide throws down, at the feet of this creature, a handful of straw which he had brought with him to set ablaze for the final spectacle later on.

He wishes first to lead us into the several side galleries where all those things and beings that haunt bad dreams are petrified. Stalactites in infinite variety are grouped together in families, the forms in each more or less resem bling one another, as if the Genii of the Grotto had taken to classifying them.

One gallery is consecrated more especially to light fringes, so delicate sometimes that a touch would break them ; they hang down everywhere like frozen rain, fall-

68 THE GROTTO

ing from the roof in innumerable garlands : fringes of all widths, very long, or quite short, that separate or inter mingle with a surprising variety of caprice.

Elsewhere they are like the long white fingers of a corpse, sometimes open, sometimes bent like a claw ; they might be a collection of arms and hands, gigantic, some of them, that have been arranged, hung up, stuck in pro fusion on the cold partitions ; but never a sharp point, never an angle anywhere ; all of the same cream-like ap pearance that excludes any idea of hardness : one expects it to give to the slightest pressure, and is surprised, on touching it, to find it as rigid as marble.

Here and there a monster equally white, of alarming outline, rises or crouches unexpectedly in the middle of the path, or tapers in a shadowy corner. And when one realizes that the smallest of these motionless creatures has required at least two thousand years of work at the hands of the genii decorateurs we gain a conception of patience, of possible duration rather crushing to our human transi- toriness.

Elsewhere is the region of great animal forms, soft and rounded, a confusion of elephants' trunks and ears, piles of larvae, of human embryos, with huge eyeless heads, all the waste of still-born creatures. And everywhere those isolated beings, separated from the confused mass of germs, seated about anywhere with swinging limbs, and hanging ears.

When we come back to the first nave our guide lights his straw fire, and the oppressive darkness vanishes, recedes

OF ISTURITZ. 69

with the aisles into the long corridors which we have just left. In the glow of this red flame, the high vault of the cathedral is revealed, exquisitely festooned and fringed ; pillars stand out curiously worked from top to bottom.

The colossal white spectre, dimly seen on our arrival, looks exactly like a woman draped in veils. The shadow of it rises and falls and dances on the partitions of this weird place.

One stands confounded before the meaning of these things, before the enigma of these forms, before the reason of such strange magnificence built up in the silence and darkness, without object, by chance, in the course of hundreds and thousands of years through the imperceptible dripping of the stones.

On coming out of the grotto, one experiences a sense of delight at being once again in the pure warm air, amongst the verdure of the oaks, with the wide wooded horizon, in the light and the open ; instead of the sepulchral atmos phere of the underground, the sweet healthy scent of the mint and wild carnations ; instead of the continuous drip ping of dead waters in the silence below, the gay sound of the torrents — living waters, and in the distance, the tinkling bells of cattle returning to the fields.

For a moment, even to breathe in the fresh air is intoxi cating, and the spreading country on all sides, so quiet and green, seems an Eden.

Midnight Mass.

T is Christmas night, but the air at this extreme point of Southern France is as soft as it might be in April. A crescent moon, that must soon sink be hind the dark mass of mountains in the west, is still in the sky among tiny clouds that resemble flakes of white eiderdown.

From the French shore, where I live, I have just heard n o'clock struck by the old bell of Fontarabia on the Spanish shore. And here comes the boat I ordered to take me at this nocturnal hour to the other side of the Bidassoa, the divisional line of the fron tier ; it glides along by the light of a lantern to the foot of my garden that is laid out in terraces above the dark water.

Therefore let us away to Spain. The wide sluggish river is luminous in the moonlight; — this Christmas even ing, as mild as a night in April.

MIDNIGHT MASS. 71

For several years past, I have crossed these waters on the same night and at the same hour ; sometimes in the mild weather, sometimes in frosty weather, or in storms; sometimes alone, sometimes with friends of whom I have since lost sight, or who are dead. And it was always to go to the same midnight mass, in the same convent of the Capuchin monks, which is situated in a rather lonely spot by the banks of the Bidassoa, on the road that leads from Fontarabia to Irun. There is a certain melancholy in revisiting every year the same things, in the same places, on the same dates and at the same hour.

After a short crossing, of perhaps a quarter of an hour, smooth as the gliding of shadows, we land on the Spanish shore, and being recognised by the carabineers on guard, I can walk freely towards the monks' chapel by a road that follows the bank of the river at the foot of the moun tains.

The bright crescent moon is actually deserting me, leaving me to the care of the stars in a more shadowy world. All along the road there are high Basque houses, old and dilapidated, their white-washed walls perceptibly white even in the dark ; and here and there phantom trees with great leafless branches. Parts of the road more closed in than the rest, are overshadowed by rocks, and enveloped in deeper gloom. Everything slumbers in peace and silence.

Twenty minutes' walk, or half-an-hour perhaps, going leisurely along in the quiet night that surely borrows a soothing atmosphere from the sweet mystery of Christ-

72 MIDNIGHT MASS.

mastide. Two or three bands of singers pass me, whose approach can be heard from some distance in the midst of such silence ; boys from Fontarabia, who walk about with lanterns, singing ancient songs in which the Magi of Beth lehem figure ; some accompanying themselves on a guitar, others on a tambourine, all a little tipsy. They say a cheerful good-night to me as they pass, and the sound of their voices, and of the jerky ancient music is lost in the distance.

Here at last are the great walls of the convent, pale grey and unreal in appearance under the midnight stars ; I go up a high flight of steps, and already there filters to me, from within, the odour of incense, out into the pure air.

The door of the chapel is open, throwing a ray of yel low light into the blue of the night. It seems that this evening anyone may enter without interference. And yet formerly, on Christmas Days, this door was barred ; it was necessary to pass through the sacristy after having shown a patte blanche to a suspicious monk, and only little groups of the brazen-faced, or of the elect, succeeded in gaining admittance. But in our time everything is simplified, everything is made commonplace ; sanctuaries have no more barriers, and are open to all comers.

The chapel is full already, and on entering, dense clouds of incense make it almost impossible to see, an unexpected darkness, different enough to that outside. The Capucins, motionless before the altar, and the women uniformly veiled in black, motionless in the nave, are vaguely dis-

MIDNIGHT MASS. 73

cernible. Through the murmurings of the litanies chanted in low voices from the choir, a strange impression arrests one at the sight of this mass of women, whose heads, draped in black, are bent towards the ground. They have all put on the mantilla of mourning generally worn in the Basque country during religious services in sign of human frailty. Everything here is meant to remind one of death. It seems to hover gloomily over these several hun dred bowed heads. Each pavement stone in the church is a funeral slab, and one is conscious that the ground one walks on is full of bones. A cadaverous odour, that the incense cannot dissimilate, rises from this crowd of peasants and poor folk, among whom the old are in the majority, and here and there a hollow cough resounds loudly under the vaulted roofx As a fact it is only the terrifying thought of death that has brought all these beings here to-night to pray in common ; against death that all these bells are ringing, the noise of them breaking sud denly on the silence. And against death too, that this great white Virgin has been erected, it alone lit up by the flickering tapers in the sombre chapel — Oh ! so smiling and white this great Virgin wreathed in pale roses : surely a deceiving visictfi of infinite sweetness, radiant among the clouds of incensej,

The incense grows thicker and thicker in the nave, and the statues of the saints become confused with the motion less monks, whose beards and locks are as archaic as those of the images of wood and of stone.

However, the muttered litanies are only a sort of pre liminary incantation ; a preparation for something else that is to happen, and for which the crowd is waiting.

74 MIDNIGHT MASS.

Above the faithful, who are kneeling or sitting, a vast mysterious gallery barred like a harem, projects from the front wall over a third of the church ; one feels that it is full of invisible assistants. At times the sound of a drum escapes, or the clashing noise of brass, as if they were preparing for some wonderful music.

The moment has come, Mass is about to begin. Many more tapers are lighted. A dozen monks, whose gowns and cowls are of white silk, enter the cloudy choir in ritu alistic order, preceded by deacons who carry lanterns on ipng shafts, ancient and half barbaric. (^ And then suddenly from the secret gallery high up, there bursts forth a strange, strident music, that almost makes one shudder after the soothing monotony of the litanies : Christ is born, the supposed conqueror of death, has appeared on earth, and his advent is hailed with a sudden and mad joy ! j Two or three hautboy 'j, which have the biting tones of Bedouin bagpipes, lead a choir of reck lessly joyous men's voices, accompanied by thirty Basque drums, and by a legion of castenets. The whole thing, though discordant and unexpected in a church, succeeded nevertheless in producing by its very strangeness a sort of religious fervour. They are old Christmas hymns belong ing to Guipuzcoa, as quick and lively as habaneras, or as seguidllles. And the monks in the gallery, who are making all this noise of savage revelry, accompany their music with a sort of ritual step. One hears the movements of beating time, and sees their dancing shadows on the walls.

The long and complicated Mass continues with a be wildering noise of hautboy 'jy and of human notes in a nasal falsetto. Above the black veiled heads, above the poor

MIDNIGHT MASS. 75

and aged, into the smoke of the incense that grows still thicker, the old world hymns succeed one another in a growing exaltation, accompanied all the while by the little thunder of the rattling tambourines, and by the dry light noise of the castenets sounding between deft fingers. Then, when all is over, there is a hurried movement among the peasants and the poor towards the choir, where a doll has just arrived in the arms of a monk, who offers it to the faithful to kiss, a poor lifeless doll that has been carefully wrapped in a child's swaddling clothes, and that repre sents the new-born Saviour.

And now they all disperse into the night that has grown colder and of a deeper blue.

I return alone to the boat that is to take me to the French shore,, as one just awakend from a dream of the olden times.\ I come away rather saddened : another Christmas has passed over my head, another year has stretched into the abyss without having brought me the solution of anything, nor the hope of anything]

And, as I go back alone, I feel that I am a thousand times more disinherited than the least of those humble people, those old men or those poor folk, who, praying as their ancestors prayed, have just kissed the simple, ridi culous, and adorably ineffable doll in its linen.

The Passing of the Procession.

[VERY year, for centuries past, on the Wednesday morning preceding Pente cost, some twenty or thirty Basque villages on the Spanish slope of the Pyrenees have been emptied of their parishoners. The good folk, laden with crosses like that borne by Christ, make a pilgrimage up to the Convent of Roncevalles ; and, in order to see the procession, it is necessary to sleep the night before at Burguette, the last village it passes through before arriving at the venerable monastry.

Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, a peaceful and charming town that the railway, alas ! will soon spoil, is the place I start from on this Tuesday, the ist of June, under a very cloudy sky, to drive to Burguette by shady roads through an immense forest of beeches.

About an hour after leaving Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port we get into Spain, and stop at Val-Carlos, the village where we have to alight for the frontier formalities.

THE PASSING OF THE PROCESSION. 77

And then, as Burguette is on the other side of the Pyrenees (not far from the top, and at a very high altitude) we ascend again for another four hours, penetrating into the heart of the forest which grows more and more wild and green. A coming storm growls ominously around us among the clouds, and the bell of Val-Carlos begins to ring out in a cracked, mournful tone. Its vibrations follow us for a long time, and then are lost below in the infinite silence of the trees.

On the banks of the road-side there is a monotonous wealth of pink flowers: pink silenes, pink amourettes, pink foxgloves; besides columbines, great campanulas and won derful saxifrages. And everywhere falling waters, in tiny streams, or noisy cascades, among the ferns.

The hail- storm bursts suddenly upon us, sharp and cut- ing like the lash of a whip. We stop by an almost ver tical side of the mountain carpeted with these same flowers in magnificent profusion. The hail pelts us with myriads of glass pearls. The long stalks of the foxgloves, cut and broken, scatter their flowers on the moss, so many of them, fluttering like pink ribands amongst the green leaves and grass.

It is over quickly enough — the shower passes, and the horses move on again, dragging us up the never-ending zig-zags in the forest of beeches. And all the trees of this forest are alike, apparently of the same shape and age, having reached complete development without hindrance, as a primaeval forest grows.

The storm continues to grumble in the distance, and above our heads stretches a dark and unbroken cloud which we gradually approach. The forest rises on all

78 THE PASSING OF

sides to vanish in this cloud ; high up, the trees and the rocks that touch this filmy veil seem confused in a motion less smoke, their heads entirely drowned in the grey mass. We seem to be climbing the sides of a great closed gulf; heavy rocks overhang us on all sides ; it is so dark that it might be a premature twilight, and would be gloomy in deed were it not for the glory of the verdure and the wondrous pink flowers.

Soon we get quite close to the misty roof which looks as if it could actually be touched. At a turning of the deserted road we meet a procession, a humble village pro cession wet through by the shower of hail — a hundred mountaineers following a silver cross and three priests in muslin surplices. They are returning towards Val-Carlos, singing litanies, infinitely melancholy heard here amidst the impassive sovereignity of the trees and dark sky.

Then again no one, nothing but the great stillness, and the silence of those gigantic walls of verdure, the mystery of the forest that stretches up to join the nebulous vault that ever nears our heads like a sort of Dantesque roof. We are passing through a gloomy obscurity all green and grey.

And, after about four hours of this monotonous climb ing, we get at last into the cloud which proves a freezing mist ; we can distinguish nothing but the nearest branches — the great, white branches of the beech trees. The evening is approaching, and everything around us grows more shadowy.

When we are at the highest point of this zig-zag road, which now begins to descend before us, the rain comes down in torrents, whilst daylight fades ; still, through the

THE PROCESSION. 79

downfall, we can see the high convent walls of Roncevalles where we shall return to-morrow morning with the pro cession. Half a mile further on, as the twilight deepens, we reach Burguette. In the pelting rain and the splashing mud I alight at the only inn in the village, which appears to be two or three centuries old.

There I expected to spend a solitary and quiet night. But no, on the eve of the pilgrimage it is the custom apparently to make merry. After supper a guitar appears, the handle decorated with tufts of wool, like the head of a mule, then a second, then a third, a whole orchestra in fact, including a tambourine spangled over with brass.

And the warm Spanish music begins, first lightly and hesitatingly, as the cider and wine goes the round to raise the good folks' spirits. Gradually fandangoes^ jotas, haba neras are re-enforced and accelerated, always with more noise and at a greater pace. Carabineers arrive, smugglers and shepherds. There are no women, excepting the two servants of the house, who hardly know which way to turn. But the men dance among themselves with shouts of childish delight.

Now the guitarists sing, as their hands move wildly over the strings ; with head thrown back, eyes closed as if with intoxication, and mouth wide open displaying wolf-like teeth, they repeat the airs indefinitely, with a kind of fury, on notes almost too high. From midnight until two o'clock, whilst the storm is raging outside, everybody dances, even the innkeeper, even his wife, and the old men and women whom the noise has awakened in the cor ners. The ancient inn vibrates from top to bottom: one feels the old wood-work and the blackened ceiling shake,

8o THE PASSING OF

whilst the walls seem to be animated, impregnated with the dancing vibrations of the guitars.

Wednesday, June 2nd.

Far and near, the clattering of footsteps and the tinkling of numberless little bells that hang on the necks of the sheep and goats, is the music that breaks on the morning in this out of the way village, as day dawns among the cloudy peaks.

The old inn awakes, silent now, after having vibrated all night to the exaltation of song and the frenzy of guitars.

It is seven o'clock when I come down from my room and stand on the threshold of the door to wait for the pro cession to pass. It is no longer raining. A little sun pierces the wandering clouds in which the village has been wrapt. The street through which the procession of crosses will defile, is fairly regular and long, and runs be tween small old houses that are all alike, with high dark roofs made of planks of beech, the wood of the neighbour ing forests. The mud in the road is indented with end less little marks made by the cloven feet of flocks which have been driven out on to the high pasture lands, or into the fields. From time to time peasants and peasant women pass by, on mules also with bells, their harness gleaming with brass, and saddles finished with red pen dants. All are going in the direction of Roncevalles for the pilgrimage of the day.

The open space near the Church would be an excellent place to see the procession come up from the village below, to see it appearing from out of that white mist resting like a cloud in the hollow of the Pyrenees.

THE PROCESSION. 81

The Church is heavy and defaced ; centuries of storms have beaten upon its rustic granite front, and the open space before it is riddled like that of the streets by the footprints of sheep and goats.

Suddenly, high up in the belfry windows where two bells of equal size are visible, some men appear, who set to ringing hastily, using the tongues of the bells as mallets. Ding, ding, ding, they strike the bronze with frantic rapidity, just as they played the guitar last night. The air is filled at once with a wild crashing noise, the signal for the procession they have already perceived and that will soon be visible to us.

Then it comes, emerging from the mist. At first it looks like a procession of wooden beams painfully carried by men in mourning. Then, as it draws nearer and the great blocks of wood become more distinctly outlined, they are seen to have the shape of instruments of torture : crosses, like that of Calvary, which penitents are bearing on their backs, supporting the cross bars with outstretched arms as though they were suffering crucifixion. One begins to hear an intermittent moaning that rises in rhythmic lamentation from this moving mass of men. There are five hundred perhaps, all in black, with black cowls drawn over the face, and walking bare-footed in the mud, two abreast, with hurried steps, unlike the slow pace usually adopted in processions. Ora pro nobis ! Ora pro nobis ! they cry in a lugubrious tone, as they pass with strange haste, their head bowed under the cross. At cer tain intervals are the mayors of the villages, hat in hand and draped in ceremonial capes. Next comes a group of deacons in muslin surplices, carrying on long poles the gilt

82 THE PASSING OF

crosses belonging to the twenty or thirty neighbouring parishes, mostly of ancient workmanship, some almost barbarous. Then, bringing up the rear, troops of women in black mantillas advance, singing litanies to the Virgin in mournful voices. They have no cowls on their faces ; their mantillas veil but withered ugliness, looks of sordid suffering : a population sapped of youth by the bleak climate of such regions — pale girls of the heights where the conditions of life become overwhelming. On the Church square, and scattered about the street of Burguette, are the inevitable tourists, attracted as though by some frontier feast, to this remote village, alas ! no longer suffi ciently protected by the mountains, no longer far enough away from Biarritz or from Bayonne. It is needless to say that these intruders are armed with opera-glasses, various appurtenances, kodacs, bicycles, even flutes. And in front of all these humble inhabitants of the mountains, passing on their way in childlike faith to kneel before Our Lady of Roncevalles, in gruesome rags pitiful to see — in front of them, these people find matter for laughter, for remarks that are the quintessence of inanity.

Still, on towards Roncevalles the procession continues to ascend, uttering their lugubrious groans; and in its wake I find myself once again in the country.

The country here is extraordinarily green, being con stantly in a state of moisture from its proximity to or contact with the clouds ; rather melancholy, at the same time suggesting a little paradise that the hand of man has scarcely touched ; and something indescribable in the air makes one conscious of the height one has attained.

The road passes through clumps of great beeches, their

THE PROCESSION. 83

branches covered with white lichen, through fields of daisies where white goats feed in flocks. But further on all around is the forest of endless beeches, peaceful and monotonous, silent, fresh and green. The peaks in the neighbourhood of this plateau of Burguette, that appeared to tower so high when seen from the plains below, look like little hills quite close at hand, wooded always by the same strong species. And the clouds that are at home here, wander round us like smoke, like fleecy eiderdown, floating or resting over the green splendour of the trees.

The procession which I continue to follow, moves on still at the same quick pace, noiselessly because the feet of these mountaineers are bare or else shod in espadrilles. Nothing is heard but lamentations persistently repeated in a measured rhythm. Before me is the black mass of women ; then the group with the silver crosses on which a ray of sunlight falls at this moment, lighting up the the nebulous green of the background ; lastly in the van guard beyond, the crowd of crucified penitents with out stretched arms, who will be hidden soon in the thick grey mist before them with its mother-of-pearl reflections. The ancient Roncevalles, towards which they are all wending, is invisible in the clouds, a great pale mist that was passing had stopped to envelope it.

We are in truth quite close to this Roncevalles we can not see, for there is a sudden clash of bells which signal our approach in rapid strokes, as the bells of Burguette did this morning. The Convent looms out in a moment, magnified by the indistinctness of its outlines blurred by the en shrouding clouds. It appears colossal and fierce with its fortress dungeon and its confusion of heavy walls.

84 THE PASSING OF THE PROCESSION.

The procession plunges into the shade of an old granite porch to cross a deserted cloister with ruined arches, whose crevices are filled with ferns and moss. The mist still en velopes the human silhouettes, and produces a chill sepul chral dampness, giving everything a look of unreality, that takes the imagination back into the twilight of the past.

At last we penetrate, like a flood, into the obscurity of the Church clouded in incense. At the further end, tapers burn before the old tabernacles of burnished gold. The wan lights make the gilded columns, the gilded altar piece — the remains of ancient splendour — gleam in the midst of the dilapidation and gloom. But in the nave there is not light enough to see one's way, and at first there is some confusion as the procession crowds in : sweating bodies push and elbow one another ; the crosses come into colli sion, one hears the clashing of wood and the heavy bangs on the flag-stones.

By degrees, however, the crowd gropes its way, and one's eyes get accustomed to the darkness. The whole of the centre aisle is occupied by a dense mass of women veiled in black, and on either side, symmetrically arranged, are the five hundred crucified, with arms extended, tired and out of breath. This is the end of their painful march under the weight of their heavy burdens. Now the monks are going to say mass for them.

Mon Dieu ! without those drifting clouds it might all have seemed vulgar and trivial.

The Sword Dance.

NDER the glare of a midday sun the tennis was drawing to an end. The six champions were sweating from the heat in the centre of a huge grey court, cemented and levelled so that the balls should bound true ; in the restrained movement of their arms, in the still vigorous play of their mus cles, and in their agile leaps one de- vined a fatigue, and some haste to get the game over.

Moreover, I had lost all interest in the match, the sides were quite unequal, and there could be no doubt as to the ultimate result. I ceased to watch the players, and my eyes fell on an inscription in white chalk, written on the dazzling wall that was rounded at its base where the balls struck with a hard sound. I read it mechanically, Viva Euskual Herria said the inscription in large awkwardly traced letters (Long live the Basque country !) Doubtless the work of some passing enthusiast, or of a child. It took hold of me, assuming a sudden importance in my mind :

86 THE SWORD DANCE.

these unfamiliar words so strangely sonorous, this cry of revolt against the general process of levelling summed up for me all that yet remained of what was Basque in this Saint-Jean-de-Luz, which day by day was fading from her.

When one has lived some time in this dying Euskual- Herria one sees so many games of tennis, and plays so many oneself, that they lose their power of producing an impression of local colour on the imagination. More over to-day — a great gala day, in a town that is fast becoming a kind of watering place — the tiers that surround the court were filled by a cosmopolitan crowd of most distressingly commonplace appearance.

Then there arrived a troup of odd-looking peasants, all dressed alike. The Basques who were present received them with murmurs of welcome: "You ! you ! you !" The visitors smiled and answered according to the custom : "You! you! you!" in high bird-like voices, such as certain tribes of Red Indians assume when they dance.

They wore black trousers, black caps, black blouses kilted in a thousand pleats and worn short, ending indeed above the loins ; their faces were clean shaven, and had that simple expression peculiar to old world people. They were " Souletins," delegated dancers, who had come to take part in the festivities from the ancient district of Soule, whose traditions are still immutable. Their music accompanied them : a tambourine, and a kind of great flute shaped like a quiver, a veritable pipe of Pan.

In their presence the game was finished. And as soon as the drawling voice of the crier had proclaimed the last point in Basque, before the crowd had time to rise, the organisers of the festivities invited the Souletins to dance.

THE SWORD DANCE. 87

Then the old man, who had been playing the pastoral flute, advanced into the middle of the court, whilst the dancers, who numbered about thirty, formed a large circle around him holding hands. At the sound of a tiny trill, strangely mysterious, and as if coming from far off, that proceeded from the huge archaic flute, the men began to move slowly in measured time. Here and there stupid laughter was heard to escape from under elegant hats ; but the greater number of the people, even of the more common tourists were impressed and interested. A hush fell upon the crowd present at this almost silent dance, in which the light slippers of the Souletins glided noise lessly over the surface of the court.

The spirit of past ages had surely come to life once again at the sound of the flute, communicating to the sen sitive, unexpected thrills, and to coarser natures a feeling of respect in spite of themselves.

With the regularity of automatons, the Souletins executed to a mournful measure the quickest and most complicated steps. Occasionally a nervous leap would raise them from the ground altogether, their pleated blouses, so quaintly short, spreading wide under their arms like the skirts of a ballet girl — so light were they, one could not hear them fall to the ground again, and not withstanding the great speed with which their feet moved, their faces remained impassive and solemn. Still the old flutist stood in the centre of the circle, playing his shrill music as though he led them by some sorcery. The mid day sun stunted the shadows of these dancers in black garments, almost to nothing, as they whirled in a circle on the grey asphalt.

88 THE SWORD DANCE.

The Angelus began to ring — for thank^God the Angelas still rings out from the venerable belfries in this country — as the crowd dispersed after the performance, pouring into the streets of Saint-Jean-de-Luz.

A dance was announced to take place at four o'clock (the ancient sword dance to be performed by young mountaineers of Guipuzcoa) ; meanwhile the time had to be passed by lunching at some hotel, among tourists of all classes, and then by wandering about the gay streets of the town, where here and there the Basque music of tam bourines and fifes could be heard.

In Saint-Jean-de-Luz there are still some delightful corners, some quite secluded streets where the original character of the place is yet preserved : jutting out roofs ; whitewashed fa9ades intersected by green or red beams ; great trees overhanging garden walls; glimpses of the blue sea, or of the purple Pyrenees ; peace and silence between white walk on a pavement of pebbles gathered from the sea shored Nevertheless, dreadful modern buildings are rising up daily — not a corner of the shore, not a lovely hill-side that is not dishonoured now by some great costly erection conceived by bloated barbarians, by snobs gone mad. It would be so simple not to disfigure the country, to build Basque houses, as a few artists have had the good taste to do ! Alas, alas, who will save us from this moder\a trumpery, from over luxury, from uniformity — and idiotsj!

.......

I sat down to wait under some trees of a square in front of a cafe that had been established in a house of the seven teenth century, the ex-abode of royalty, and watched

THE SWORD DANCE. 89

bicyclist after bicyclist pass by ; women with befeathered hats, women of all nationalities, of all ranks, but who copied one another in their dress, devoid of style or meaning, with a complete disdain of any difference of type. It is one of the achievements of this century that, at any watering place, it is quite impossible to tell at first sight whether you are at Ostend, at Trouville, or at Saint Sebastian.

I entirely lost that note of strangeness the dancers had given me in the morning. An effort was even necessary to remind myself that, in those distant mountains, there still exists the remnants of a people who guards, with the secret of its origin, the faith and traditions and language of its ancestors. However, two guitarists approached me, a blind old man and a young girl, who had come from Spain to beg for pence during the festivities. And the moment I heard their music, a soft music almost drowned by the noise of the wind from the sea, and the confused murmur from the town, a veil began to fall — to fall on all the modern trivialities. They struck up an old " Mal- guenia." One of the guitars played the air; it was like a song of Arabia, a moan spreading over desert plains. The other accompanied in little short and trembling notes that imitated the croaking of grasshoppers in deserts of scorching sand. It seemed to speak of sorrows born by souls in other ages, in Andalusia, at the heavy hour of noon, when the Moors were in possession. . . In the indefinable nature of this music, in the mystery of its rhythm, the peculiar genius of the race will be preserved for centuries still to come, in spite of the universal fusion of men and things.

90 <THE SWORD DANCE.

At last, on the stroke of four, the young mountaineers of Guipuzcoa, who had come to dance, appeared in the court of the convent where the crowd had been assembled for some time on several hundred chairs.

One held an immense silk standard, the others naked swords. Unconcerned, and solemn in appearance as their brothers of Soule this morning, they mounted the plat form that had been prepared for them.

They wore red caps, were all in their shirt sleeves, and tieless, in the Basque fashion ; their trousers were white under an open waistcoat, with the traditional leather orna ments on their calves: straps of leather studded with small bells that would jingle in a moment with a barbaric sound as they danced.

The decorated platform certainly looked rather like a theatre at a fair, in spite of a simplicity almost naif in its directness. To appreciate them fully it was necessary to put aside any such comparison, and to forget equally the modern crowd and a thousand ridiculous little details — in fact the general surroundings.

Moreover, they themselves appeared quite unconscious of their audience. It seems that on the previous day they had replied to the director of a neighbouring Casino, who wished to engage them for the evening, " No, we are Basques who dance in the open air before Basques, the dances of our country, that the traditions of them may be prolonged. We are not folk who take money to show ourselves off."

They were tall, supple, strong men, quite as much at their ease before this crowd of bathers as in their own vil lage, when it is a question of dancing among themselves,

THE SWORD DANCE. 91

on Sundays, in the open places before the churches. At first they knelt down together with heads bent low towards the earth in a magnificent salute to their standard ; the bearer himself, kneeling in the centre of the motionless group, began slowly to brandish the pole, with supple movements in such a way as to cause the folds of silk to fly like great agitated wings above their heads. Then they all rose, grandly tall, and the dance commenced to the sound of a warlike march played on fife and tam bourine. The step was singularly complicated, varied from time to time by tremendous bounds that shook the little bells about them, and rattled the leather straps against their calves. There was a brandishing of rapiers in time to music, quick thrusts and parrying — a simulta neous meeting of all the swords with the clash of steel. It recalled some scene in antiquity — one of those warlike dances in which the young men of Greece delighted.

Many other dances followed on this same platform, all very ancient, some dating back incalculable ages, so remote is the origin of these people. They performed the ancient pastoral of Abraham, played by " young boys from the community of Barcus — in which angels and demons figure by the side of the patriarch, nay even Chodorlahomor, King of Sodom."

Later, when it had grown dark, they began again in the public Square, this time without a platform, in the very midst of the crowd. The sword dance appeared peculiarly noble and barbaric in the glimmer of lanterns under a moonlit sky. And then at the end a general fan-

92 THE SWORD DANCE.

dango took place — everyone, girls and boys in a mad whirl of intoxicating pleasure.

For a whole week the traditional Basque festivities suc ceeded one another at Saint-Jean-de-Luz, all the old dances, the diverse games of tennis ; improvisations by inspired shepherds, competitions in those strange cries of hilarity called Irrintzina which make one shudder; songs and sacred hymns in churches. And the performers of these bear names whose consonants echo down to us from primitive times, names such as Agestaran, Lizarraga, Imbil, Olai'z, and Heguiaphal. . .

It all takes place amidst surroundings that become more and more incongruous, before assemblies in which Beotiens predominate, and is so out of vogue, so little characteristic of the country now, alas ! that at moments it seems almost lamentable in the midst of the foolishly smiling crowd.

Yet how touching, how worthy of sympathy and res pect are these efforts at preservation, these religious revi vals of past customs which those festivities represent !

Cathedral Impressions.

.URGOS, when the light wanes, at the close of an April Sunday, in the splen dour of Southern Spring, and in all the golden red of the sunset.

The air is still and very soft, and as the daylight fades, a joyless evening spreads gradually over the old world city, isola ted here in the country, decrepid and dying on the banks of a meagre river that has no communication with the life-bringing sea. In the waning light it seems as if the oppression of this superb name Burgos, evoking splendours of greater days, weighs upon her Sunday streets, where the Spain of to day, so insignificant beside the Spain of former times, perambulates in its fine modern clothes.

The Cathedral, the very celebrated cathedral, at once comes into sight : above the houses appear points that rise high into the golden air, points and arrows miraculously carved, so frail in their exquisite tracery, like paper lace- work, almost, that the wind must blow away— and for

94 CATHEDRAL IMPRESSIONS.

centuries they have been there, immovable. At this hour they flame red, caught by the sinking sun that in a moment will colour them alone, leaving the little street in dark ness, whence gradually the Sunday crowd will disappear into the obscure dwellings.

The very heart of the town is the cathedral's throne. I am conducted there through a labyrinth of old houses as quickly as possible, as I am leaving at nightfall. Here it is. Great walls pierced by Gothic ogives, flights of steps, sumptuous porticoes where a world of statues, sculptured in red stone, are ranged in rows, placed one above the other. Then, majestic gates — and suddenly a twilight, a sepulchral chill on one's shoulders, a sweet smell of incense in a subteranean darkness : I have gained the inside, pene trating a world of incredible magnificence, of solitude gloomily enchanted. In front of me are dark receding distances, traversed here and there by rainbow beams that fall from some great window, whilst flagstones resound under my feet in the silence, echoing as in a cave.

It is the cathedral, the legendary cathedral, the marvel of olden times; more surprising than Milan, Strasburg or Toledo. In its Sunday evening abandonment, the great organs silent and the censers extinguished, it inspires something of dread.

At first, the impression one gets, is that of entering a petrified forest, of walking under huge trees. The columns, the enormous trunks rise up entwined by what might be ivy or moss, in fact, fine and wonderful sculpture. Above, wherever these pillars spread out their branch-like arches, masses of foliage cluster, a veritable leafage of stone, close and thick, like a roof of high forest trees overhead, testi-

CATHEDRAL IMPRESSIONS. 95

fying to the patient work of a whole generation of men. All carved in living stone, all infinitely durable in spite of such rare delicacy, and already transmitted to us from afar through the past centuries. Between enormous pillars, in all directions, are giant gates in bronze and iron, thirty feet high, prodigiously wrought, separating the great nave from a multitude of secondary chapels still more inconceivably magnificent, where the delicate leaves, the fairy-like bowers, which there too rise to the vaulted roof, are no longer of stone but of glittering gold.

A man, who is the guardian of all this wealth, opens these heavy barriers of bronze or of iron, one after another, with wrought keys that are as long as daggers ; the banging of the gates, as they close behind us, resound lingeringly under the vaulted roof.

It is too late, he says, to see everything; night is coming on. He hastens me forward.

At first we were alone in this vast place, then four or five mountain peasants arrive in old clothes, with a shrink ing look, uncouth and miserable, who ask permission to follow, and join themselves to us in a group. They peer quite closely at the sumptuous things in the growing dusk, touching the gold with their fingers, and moistening the marbles with their breath.

We go into the choir which is full of inestimable treasures. It is shut ofF in a kind of great bronze cage, concealed by long draperies of brocade falling the whole height of the nave ; candlesticks of embossed silver, that measure five or six feet, are arranged before the high altar

96 CATHEDRAL IMPRESSIONS.

glistening with gold. Afterwards, into all the secondary chapels, whose gates in opening, awake louder and more lingering echoes in the growing darkness, their golden traceries, imitating acanthus leaves and dainty chicory plants, seen close at hand, are peopled by hundreds of figures and animals. Then, hurrying on again, we are shown the tombs of the saintly founders ; the man, who conducts us, briskly raises the cloth of red and gold velvet that covers their images of alabaster or of marble, their white reclining statues. We pass through a labyrinth of cloisters full of souvenirs and relics ; the doors are fastened by strange locks representing human faces, the key fitting into mouths that grin. And at last back to the immense nave again, nearly dark now, re-entering unexpectedly by a small door.

There is no sense of religious peace in the place; on the contrary, only a feeling of magnificence that is implacable and overpowering ; no, not even calm, in spite of the dusk and the silence ; not even the restful unity to be found in certain Japanese sanctuaries of the Holy Moun tain, which, together with this one, are the most splendid temples to the Gods still unmolested by time. In this extravagant excess of wealth one is conscious of something wrong, of something intensely human and almost sensual. A prodigious past is evoked : the Spain of the great period, abounding in power and in gold ; but the peace, the sweet peace of so many other Christian Churches is wholly absent here.

I have experienced, before now, that to see things for the first time by stealth, in the evening, in the fever of a hurried visit, is the way to receive a complete, definite

CATHEDRAL IMPRESSIONS. 97

and just impression of them. It happened once, sometime ago now, that having paid my first visit to the Acropolis at Athens in the middle of the night, in the course of a few minutes, at the price of many difficulties, and at the risk of missing my ship, I remember that I caught a vivid glimpse of its ancient splendour, in a way that I have never since experienced. Thus with Burgos, I feel I would rather not come again to weaken and dwarf my im pressions of the whole, merely for the sake of seeing some incomparable details I might undoubtedly discover.

We are going out.

Two small lights burn like Tom Thumb tapers in the far distance of the nave, and near them a dark kneeling form becomes visible. Let us see what it is ; let us ap proach very quietly over the resounding flagstones, in order not to disturb this praying phantom. Two wax tapers, such modest tapers, are burning before a picture of the Virgin, which hangs in a neglected corner, in an unim portant niche behind one of the great pillars, yet is sump tuous enough in its frame of old gold.

A woman dressed in black, with a mantilla of mourning on her head, is prostrate before it. She holds a miserable baby at her breast, a child but a few months old, in whose shrivelled little face there is already the stamp of death. She prays ardently for him as the wax of the tapers gradu ally diminishes, the penny tapers she has placed before the humblest picture she could find, this sorrowing creature. The contrast between the prodigious wealth all round and the rags of the supplicant is overwhelming and cruel : be-

98 CATHEDRAL IMPRESSIONS.

tween the persistent durability of those many thousand saints draped in gold and the frailty of this little being with no to-morrow, brought to them all wrapt up in rags, and timidly presented before them that they may take pity on him, destined surely to return soon to mother earth.

She is already decrepid, this woman whose attitude sug gests such boundless distress, a grandmother perhaps, dis puting with death for the child of a dead daughter, or perhaps a mother, who, at an advanced age, has conceived a child that is not likely to live.

With infinite tenderness she holds and covers up the poor little human thing that owes its failure, its miserable state to some unknown chance ; she draws a black hand kerchief over the piteous face that seems to express already some future suffering, and wraps a shawl about the thin body no bigger than a doll's, to protect it from the sepul chral damp that is falling on it from the vaulted roof. Still she kneels, and her lips move in obstinate and vain repetitions. Now she looks at me with eyes full of deso lation, divining a pity no doubt in mine, seeming to ask doesn't he look ill, my poor little one.

I turn away to elude her dumb question that tears at my heart, and pretend to be interested in other things. But the next moment, seeing that I remain there, she raises her head towards me again, after a quick glance at the splendour around. Evidently she is not quite con vinced, and her eyes ask still more anxiously this time : Do you really think that they will listen to me, these magnificent divinities ?

God ! I do not know if they will listen. In her place I would rather carry my child to one of those country

CATHEDRAL IMPRESSIONS. 99

chapels where the Virgin of simple folk reigns. The Madonnas and Saints who inhabit this place are, more than anything else, I think, creatures of ceremony, hard ened by secular pomp. No, I cannot imagine that they would occupy themselves with a poor old woman in tears, and with her little deformed child who is dying.

The Passing of the Sultan.

am

HE window through which I looking is in one of the Kiosks of the Yeldiz Palace, the habitual resi dence of His Majesty the Sultan.

And the window forms the frame to a great scene that is very peculiar, very unique, and that furnishes at the very first glimpse a precise indi cation of the time and place.

First, there is a Mosque, miraculously white in the-dust and blazing June sun at mid-day, under a sky pale with heat, quite a new and elegant Mosque, though built in the pure old style, a Mosque suggesting the refinements of a modern Islam, in this, not unlike our new Gothic churches in which-archaic researches are allied to perfected methods; almost too pretty with its high portico crowned by Arabian trefoils, the fine carving of its windosw, the grace of its minarets covered with ornaments like reversed stalactites, and surmounted by a glittering crescent of gold.

In the immediate neighbourhood all is equally new, the

THE PASSING OF THE SULTAN. 101

ground sanded and naked, the trees young, the grass mown, and baskets of flowers arranged with all the care usual in princely residences.

Behind the white Mosque all in lace-work, that occu pies the centre of the picture, and is the principal sub ject, appear indistinctly the great marvels of former times. In the distance — which, as the perspective indicates, we are looking down upon from a height — stretches theBosphorus, the silhouette of Asiatic Scutari ; then, that incomparable thing, the point of the old Seraglio jutting out into the water of Marmora, with minarets, cupolas and the cypresses of Stamboul : all lightly sketched in grey blues, devoured by the sunshine and the glare of the scintilating sea just visible under a veil of luminous dust, and occupying little space in the background, behind the lovely Mosque, like the diminutive houses and palaces that nestle near the arms and against the shoulders of the central figure in certain pictures by old masters. It is so wonderful this point of Stamboul with Saint Sophia and the old Seraglio, that the very indication of its presence evokes in this modern scene, recollections of the glorious past.

The interlacing roads, and alleys, and avenues that sur round the Imperial Mosque, are full of soldiers on the march, approaching one another to the sound of military music, and gradually concentrating round the white per forated walls of the sanctuary, where evidently some solem nity is to take place. On all sides they are seen crossing one another, and zigzagging as in some endless fairy defile on the stage. Cavalry flags, black banners embroidered in silver, the red ensigns of the lancers, pass and repass before one another in a cloud of rising dust; the brass instruments

fHE PASSING OF

of the bands sparkle in the sun, as well as the high Cha- peaus-chinois (military musical instruments) decorated with horses' tails ; bells ring and flourishes resound, whilst the air is filled with the peculiarly solemn tone of Turkish trumpets. Still the soldiers continue to arrive, massing themselves in a pre-arranged order, with a perfect preci sion, and halting suddenly at their post. The nearest, those who take their stand in serried ranks directly below us, against the walls of the Kiosk, are Arnautes from the north of the Empire, and Zouaves of Tripoli in green turbans — splendid men, both in bearing and demeanour, individually and in mass.

Now they are all there, not a movement among them, every man wrapt in thought, for the holy hour of noon is approaching, and soon the ceremony will take place in the Mosque, for which they have all been assembled, the " Selamlike," the great Friday prayer, at which the Sultan will be present in person.

In the room here, there is no feeling of devout silence ; diplomatists talk with the wives of ambassadors, or discuss political questions together. Nor is there any in the adjoining room, which is crowded with people, women especially : tourists of different European nationalities to whom, by request of the embassies, the Grand Master of Ceremonies has given permission to come and see the procession of the Selamlike. An aide-de-camp, the most obliging Mehmed-Bey, in long flowing Circassian sleeves, does the honours and shows the fair sight-seers to suit able seats. Will his Majesty, who is to pass here under these very windows, be on horseback or in a carriage ? A question that greatly absorbs the spectators, and that is

THE SULTAN. 103

impossible to answer. Generally, for this short transit of two or three hundred yards between the Palace and the Mosque, the Sultan finds it simpler to get into a carriage while his chargers are led behind, in this case regrettable, for his Majesty looks very fine on horseback, and besides, answers better to our idea of a Khalif than when passing in a landau like any western king.

The time draws near ; the marble steps of the Mosque have just been hastily covered with the precious red carpet, on which the Sultan is to place his feet, and on each side of the door, strange Asiatic groups have ranged themselves ; long robes, green and yellow and orange, stand out against the snowy whiteness of the walls ; dark heads of solemn aspect surmounted by large turbans: — priests deputed from Mecca, from Bagdad, from far distant countries over which the Khalif extends his religious empire, bringing with them a charming touch of the fierce barbarity of ancient times.

Along the sanded avenue, lined by the troops and kept clear by a double row of soldiers, dignitaries of all sorts begin to arrive on their way to the prayer, more especially officers, generals, and marshalls, all the heads of the Turk ish Army : — but they are scarcely noticed in the general impatience to see the Sultan pass.

In an elegant closed carriage, the princesses of the Imperial family sweep by, a cloud of muslin concealing their dress and faces.

The sun blazes : in the white rooms, on the white Mosque, in the distances blurred by scintillating reflections and dust, everywhere a glare of light, whilst the presence of these thousands of armed men massed together in silence,

104 THE PASSING OF

all but holding their breath, seems to augment the oppres sive heat.

One by one the great personages invited to the prayer continue to arrive on foot; the Imperial princes, the elders with their aides-de-camp, the children in military cos tume accompanied by their tutors. Irresistibly charming is a beautiful boy in naval costume covered with crosses, who walks superbly, and turns his delightful intelligent face to the people as he passes. In the tourists' room, where he is not known, women's heads, in flowery hats like May gardens, lean from the window to look at him, and ask : " Who is it ?" It is the little Prince Burhan- Eddine, his Majesty's youngest son.

Mid-day approaches. Everyone looks towards the Palace. Watches are consulted — travellers' watches that never agree, being regulated to all the different European times. Through the troops, who rouse themselves and stand erect, there runs a perceptible movement that announces the approach of the sovereign. Amidst the clashing of brass instruments the bands play the Imperial Anthem. And up in the aerial gallery of the white min aret, under the golden crescent, the mezzin has just appeared, very small against the sky in the blazing sun. The mez zin who is to chant the holy prayer.

Twelve o'clock ! Suddenly the music ceases, halts in the middle of a phrase, an unexpected silence falls as though under the oppression of something rather awful. The troops stiffen themselves to a panting immobility. Then the three cries, Allah ! Allah ! Allah ! rising simul taneously from the powerful chests of five thousand soldiers, rend the hot motionless air.

THE SULTAN. 105

And in the silence that falls again, after the great out burst, the sovereign passes.

He is in a carriage, with Osman Pacha the illustrious hero of Plevna in front of him, and passes quickly, as every head bends.

And from aloft, under the blazing sky, the chant of the mezzin falls, the oriental call, the secular call : this mar vellous voice, chosen from among all voices, dominates the noise below, covers the military commands and the vague murmuring of so many thousand men. It is fresh, flexible and infinite, something strange, too, in its melancholy hautboy tones. The quick plaintive fugues rise and fall above the human heads, throwing the mystic feeling of Islam, even over the unbelieving strangers assembled there for this unusual sight.

The Khalif, who has descended from his landau, mounts the marble stairs on the red carpet. The oriental dresses and sombre turbans, that were grouped upon the steps, prostrate themselves to the ground. The last notes of the heavenly voice grown plaintive, die on the air — and it is over. The Khalif has passed. Everyone begins to breathe and speak freely again after the religious hush, and con versations are resumed among the cosmopolitan groups in the Kiosk, whilst the beautiful white chargers harnessed in gold are led away.

The moment has been short, but nevertheless, one has felt again with a thrill amid splendid scenic effects, the sweeping past of one of those special beings called Em perors or Kings, in whom great nations are personified.

The Passing of the Queen.

CTUALLY I live in France, but on a kind of projecting balcony that overlooks Spain. As the windows and terraces of my little home are almost washed by the Bidassoa, I can see and hear all that passes on the opposite shore, which is not in France.

To-day, a lovely day in the

height of summer-time, there is suddenly an unexpected commotion among the bells over there : the Church of Fontarabia, the Church of Irun, the monasteries, all peal and peal as for some great festival. Then a large national flag, red with a band of yellow, rises quickly above the Castle of Jeanne-la-Folle, brilliant against the brown, sombre mountains, and the French boats put off hurriedly for Fontarabia, taking people from here evidently to see some sight,

" What is it ?" I ask a boatman from my window. " It's the Queen — the Queen of Spain. We are going to see her pass !"

THE PASSING OF THE %VEEN. 107

Of course, I knew that every summer Her Majesty the Queen Regent came from St. Sebastian to make a pil grimage of several hours to old Fontarabia. Well, sup posing I go too, and mix in the crowd of peasants and fishermen to see the Queen pass. I hasten down and take my place in a gay boat-load, in which a troop of young girls and boys exchange merriments in the most ancient and mysterious language in the world, with that full, light roll of the r peculiar to Basque words.

Ten minutes on the Bidassoa that sweeps sluggishly along under the brilliant southern sunlight, and we land on the Spanish shore, on the deserted quai of Fontarabia.

The young girls say that it is already late : the Queen will soon leave the Church and go away ; one must run.

By a familiar short cut we climb nimbly up between houses built in the darkest middle ages, sinister and dead under the burning sun, and we are soon in the wonderful old street des Chevaliers^ close to the Church with its walls like a fortress, magnificently emblazoned.

But we are late indeed — hardly in time to doff our caps and open our sun-dazed eyes, before the Queen passes, very quickly, in an open carriage drawn by mules at a galop over the noisy paving stones. She has hardly appeared, hardly been recognised, than she is driving rapidly away, with the infant King at her side, who turns for a moment to look at the Church with his deep young eyes. She is quite simply dressed, this queen, according to the modern custom that requires sovereigns to look as much as possible like their subjects, yet so queenly in appearance, in spite of her attempt at simplicity that in this particular case, there could be no confusion.

io8 THE PASSING OF THE QUEEN.

I smile at the disappointment of my companions who

had hurried over from our France where there are no more

, kings, in the hope no doubt of admiring a golden dress.

(Really this strange levelling which sweeps everything

away — customs, traditions, dress, pomp and ceremonies —

strikes the imagination most forcibly here among the

Spanish surroundings of a past still intact, among the

grand old houses with their armorial bearings, and with

the sound everywhere of those very ancient bells pealing

in honour of the Queen.)

At the far end of me narrow old street, the Royal carriage is already nearly out of sight, and the country folk and the fishermen, grouped round the Church, are slow to put on their caps, slow to raise their voices, as if affected by some religious emotion. And yet they are all Carlists by ancient enough tradition ; but one feels that even to them the sovereign and mother who has just passed, so unaffected and quiet in her simple dress, com mands a sympathy and respect by the mere charm of her presence.

The Moth.

NE cloudy evening, in my own par ticular study, that resembles some cor ner of the east, a gleam of light slips through between the half-drawn cur tains, forming a long line in the sur rounding obscurity.

From the folds of my red velvet wall hangings, gold embroideries of archaic design, some tiny crea ture makes its escape, as if drawn towards the dying gleam of light, and once there, flutters impatiently about ; a tiny grey moth hardly visible — a wisp of straw with wings, that has doubtless just been hatched in this pale renewing of the year.

\ A season ago, whilst I was sailing the Chinese seas, it had surely been a horrible little worm, silently devouring the fibre of the precious velvet, in the undisturbed security of my deserted room.

And to-day an entirely new life intoxicated this atom, the small place seemed huge to him, and this semi-dark ness, light. This was its hour of youth, of exuberance, its

no THE MOTH.

hour of love, and the goal and crown of its whole inferior larval existence.

Quicker and quicker in the delirium of life it flapped its wings of silken dust to describe those fantastic little curves.

In passing, I knocked it down with a thoughtless flip. There on the ground, on the purple of an oriental carpet, I saw its little battered body again, shaken with the flut- terings of death, and out of pity, that it should not suffer further, that it might return to its nothingness, I placed my foot on its microscopic agony.

And then I paused to think a minute. What did this remind me of? Something of the same kind, a similar sort of agitation, a similar intoxicated flutter, had produced in me a brief melancholy of the same nature, but more acute.

Where had I seen it then ?

Yes, surely at Constantinople, one evening in April, on the wooden bridge that joins Stamboul to Pera ! It was the end of such a Spring day as this, when I was making my way in the mist across a bridge. All the beggars that haunt this spot were at their posts ; along the whole length of the balustrade, their familiar figures were grouped, the blind, the lame, and idiots covered with sores. Among the rest was a miserable child, four or five years old per haps, with shrivelled hands and sore eyes, who sat day by day motionless upon some rags at the edge of the pave ment, apathetic and slow as any caterpillar. Behind him crouched his mother, an old woman showing the red stumps of her two legs amputated at the knee.

People passed by, the busy and the idle, on horseback,

THE MOTH. in

and in carriages, men in red fezes, veiled beauties of the harem, and, behind these crowds, Stamboul raised its domes magnificently into the evening sky.

In a voice that was almost sweet, the woman without legs called her little one to her, saying in Turkish : "Come and put on your coat, Mahmoud ! Come quickly, for the wind is turning cold."

He rose meekly and went. His coat was a little old sordid Arabian cloak of a greyish colour with undecided stripes, and of the oriental shape with a hood. His mother handed him this rag, and he put out his tiny arms ending in the deformed hands.

But, in a moment, before the second sleeve was on, he escaped in a sudden fit of mischief, and began to run wildly about, describing circles before the passers by, and amusing himself by fluttering the sleeves of his Arabian cloak like wings in the rising wind.

A little of that eternal youth so evanescent, a little of the playful childishness of budding life that is common to man and beasts, had chanced to wake in him. Among his ancestors there must have been, as among everyone else's, beings who were healthy, who knew the joy of physical pleasure, the simple joy of being and of moving : something then of those who had gone before lived again furtively in his frail atrophied flesh.

I watched him in astonishment, having always known him inactive : an infinite sadness possessed me at the sight of his poor little ephemeral attempt at gaiety, his playful sport, the fluttering of his grey cloak in the cold wind and waning light.

His crippled mother became anxious, fearing the horses

ii2 THE MOTH.

and carriages : she called him, and grew angry, trying to drag herself towards him to catch him. But still he whirled in amongst the indifferent groups as they passed, whirled distractedly, like the grey moths of the evening.

He came back however and crouched down at his post of misery, resuming the dejected attitude, and did not move again. It had ended, suddenly, as it had begun.

Something more cruel even than the flip given to the moth had just crushed this already thoughtless little creature : the uncertainty of its shelter and supper that night ; the consciousness of being so miserable, so different from others, of having dead hands, and of being a pariah. His head was bent now, and he looked down on the ground with a cunning evil expression, winking his eyes the while.

The association in my mind between him and the moth is even more intimate than I have been able to express.

Profanation.

HE grave-digger is in the garden, and has come to inform the Com mander that the holes are made ! "

This sinister sentence is addressed to me by a young sailor with a fresh bright voice, speaking with a Gas con accent.

A Spring morning, a wondrous morning in May, beams on the Basque country. And there is so much fresh life every where, so much joy in the air, so much rising sap in the green plants, that death seems a dark improbable dream. Yet, at the gate of my garden so full of roses, there stands the old man just announced — the grave-digger with earth- soiled hands.

It concerns those poor young Breton sailors, youths of twenty, drowned four years ago in the breakers of the Bidassoa, who are to be exhumed to-day. The ceme- tary where they rested has become too small, too full of the dead — they must be roused and moved. The crew of

n4 PROFANATION.

their ship, of which I am now in command, has just bought for them a freehold piece of ground where they are all to be laid together. And, as their relations are far away, the care devolves on me of superintending this change of rest ing-place.

The holes are made. It is time I should go. Fol lowing the old remover of the dead, I take the path bordered with daisies and veronicas and wild germander, that leads to the enclosure of perfect peace.

From the top of a hill bordering the Bidassoa, the ceme tery overlooks great luminous depths of sea, expanses of water and mountains together, in all conceivable blues, from the very pale to deep intense indigos. The air, which is peculiarly soft to breathe, is full of the scent of hawthorn and lilies. The cemetery is all in bloom, like a private garden where everything grows in profusion ; white lilies and old-fashioned flowers raise their long stalks here and there above the tombs ; pinks are massed in borders, or spread out in carpets ; Easter daisies as bou quets in formal rows ; and, above all, quantities of Bengal roses in luxuriant flower, masses of pink, outlined deli cately against the distant blue. Surely southern May has thrown an exquisite raiment about this spot, and the weather to-day is exceptional, even here in the south, clearest of the clear, and mild without being oppressive, almost still, with an occasional waft of breeze that passes impregnated with life. In vain has one experienced the illusions of these spring days, one allows oneself to be taken in by them again and again, as one ever will do until old age. One gives oneself up to an intoxication of living, of wellbeing, that seems as if it could never come to an end,

PROFANATION. 115

any more than this festival of light and youth that per meates the world this morning, immense, gleaming and soft.

The earth has been dug out, till the rotten planks of of the coffins are laid bare ; at this they have stopped, in accordance with my orders ; they wait for me before raising the awful lids.

Well, let us begin with Tvon Gaeto, 22 years of age, top man, whose name is written in white letters on a meagre little cross of black wood overturned among the pinks and the daisies.

The old grave-digger descends till he disappears between the walls of the freshly-opened grave ; another man, his mate, remains above on the brink, waiting attentively.

One stroke of the mattock, and the planks yield and crumble, and amidst a rich soil darker than the rest, hide ous remains are brought to light. The grave-digger pulls at something long and blackish : a leg that breaks at the knee and remains in his hand :

" Here," says he to the man above, " they are too far gone ; we must take them bit by bit ; run home quickly and fetch the basket!"

And bending over his work, he scratches about with his nails, picking up the toes one by one, and placing them in a little heap, as if for a game of knuckle-bones.

" I should not have thought they would have been so far gone," he continues, " though they do go more quickly on this side of the cemetery."

Indeed nothing remains but the bones that hardly hold together.

The May sun pours down into this grave as brightly as

ii6 PROFANATION.

on the neighbouring flowers, pours down upon these long buried bones that one would imagine were of a shadowy world, made to move only in the darkness of night, and that one is surprised to find visible in the daylight, so in ertly still. The horror one waited for is less of a fact — they differ so little, these bones, from the earth around, whence the roses draw their life.

The osier basket is brought, and the remains are heaped into it. The digger proceeds methodically, working by degrees towards the head of the dead man. Having found the legs, and carefully counted all the toes, he now dis covers the larger bones of the trunk entwined by numer ous white filaments of some vigorous root.

Still higher up, more horrible than all the rest, is the chest : between the reddish circles that are actually the ribs, is a mass of rottenness, an accumulation of worms. Then, in spite of the smiling sun, in spite of the deluding flowers, a shudder of revolt and of horror passes over us, and even the old man straightens and hesitates.

He makes up his mind at last, however, joins his hands and cleans out the thorax as with a spoon. He is right after all — it is nothing but inoffensive matter, nourishing to those roots, even now almost mould, and that will pass into the branches of the rose trees when next they spring up.

Again, and this time more definitely, the horror of it leaves us ; the revolt, the disgust, gives place to a certain grave resignation, and I feel that I too, if needs be, could dare touch such remains as these, at some rural work of cul tivation or in the performance of a pious duty. Coming thus, in broad daylight, upon the mystery of subterranean

PROFANATION. 117

transformations, to see that a corpse is nothing but this, that at the end of three or four years it is so little human, so akin to the soil and to the stones, has after all something of a tranquilizing effect. It helps one to understand the last wish of certain thinkers, of Alphonse Karr amongst others, to be buried between thin planks — hardly solid, that they might the sooner return to the earth.

Meanwhile they have rilled up the basket ; some frag ments of the sailor's shirt, still recognisable, and his tie, almost intact, have been thrown into it.

Now the man thrusts in a piece of the coffin, and I ask him :

" Why this bit of wood ? "

" Oh ! " he answers, " for what's stuck to it. Look, it's part of him — his worms," and he turns the plank over to show me a mass of larvae clinging to it underneath.

The sun rises brilliantly in the blue heavens. The hour of noon advances in a calm splendour. From the soil rises a scent of mint, of burnt grass, that will overpower the perfume of all the flowers, of the roses and pinks and gilly-flowers, until the cool of evening. The air seems full of joy ; life scatters its thousand forces, and the spring smiles everywhere. Far below, the glistening surface of the sea has covered itself with innumerable little white sails : the whole flotilla of the Fontarabian fishermen sail ing gaily out into the open sea in a light breeze. Perched on the walls of the enclosure are little children peering down to see what we are doing, and close to us, two young girls, with Basque handkerchiefs on their heads, quietly watch the piled-up basket.

The old grave-digger continues to search with his fingers.

1 1 8 PR OFANATION.

" Oh ! " he exclaims, " look, they are quite right in saying that the corpse always falls to the same side, the head to the left — here is the head ; look which way it is turned ! Oh ! his teeth, how white they are — like milk ! "

He picks up the head, raising it dripping and red from the grave into the glare of the sunlight.

"Just look at these teeth, how fine they are. By our Lady, so young too — children like that, and such beautiful children as they were !"

Then turning to the two handsome girls who do not seem in the least impressed, having been watching from mere curiosity, he says :

" I know of more than one girl in the country who wept on the day of their death, I can tell you ! At their burial — I can remember it as though it were yesterday — I bet there were more than three hundred people — Ah ! the hair now ; see, here is the hair !

And on the heap of remains he puts some light bits that look like pale tow,

Meanwhile the basket at the edge of the grave is brim ming over, and a mass of black rottenness slips off and falls upon the old grave-digger, on to his neck and down the inside of his shirt.

" Oh ! " he murmurs, a little disconcerted, and shakes himself, " I should have preferred him to fall on me, when he was alive. However, it will not kill I am thinking ! "

The painful task goes on. Three of the bodies have been dispatched by bits ; we are at the fourth, Jean Ker- gos, steersman. Near his leg, at the height where his trouser-pocket might have been, the old man finds a little black thing which he puts down at my feet : a leather

PROFANATION. 119

purse, with a metal clasp. The poor fellow, not washed ashore till days after the wreck, was no doubt placed in the coffin as he was.

I have the purse opened. It contains some pieces of silver, some Spanish pence, and some sailor's buttons with needles to sew them on. The lad was careful evidently, one who liked to keep his sailor's clothes in good order. Well, give him back his purse and sewing materials ; let them be in the basket with the rest, with his bones and the remains of his flesh. Let us only keep the pieces of silver — he has perhaps some old poverty-stricken mother to whom this last legacy might furnish bread.

When the basket has been rilled for the last time, and they carry it away along the green paths over which wild roses trail, I leave the empty graves, and follow. The birds about are singing, and bees hum in the still warm air, fresh withal. I have never seen a more charming day, nor more enchanting weather, nor the spring more full of sweet deluding promises^ And the sense of unexpected peace deepens in me, peace from the physical fear of death, from the horror of cemeteries — a resignation to this prompt decay in the earth where the friendly roots pene trate and transform everythingj

We come to the single grave that has been prepared to receive them together. Down, into a large case of white wood where the mixed remains of the others are already accumulated, they throw the contents of this fourth basket. Then all that sense of peacefulness goes. The contempla tion is awful of all this mass of red bones, of rags of sailor's clothes, of black rottenness and of worms, which was once four young men, four fine sailors. Some reddish balls

1 20 PR OFANATION.

— the skulls — stand out in the nameless heap, the head of one between the shin bones of the other in hideous pro miscuity, in ridiculous and pitiable disorder.

With some feeling of anxiety I ask myself if we have not, in our pious endeavours, committed the most odious of profanations. Oh ! if we could only leave the bodies in peace, there where they are laid — not open tombs — not lay hands on the naked bones !

/The Orientals encumber their towns with cemeteries, rather than violate a sepulchre ; they divert a road rather than disturb the humblest of the dead. But we — we are far away from such delicate respect ! ]

For those at Sea.

ERHAPS in former days I may have turned a small current of sympathy and of charity towards the heroic race of sailors consecrated, from father to son, to the Iceland fishing. Tears have been shed over the Yanns and over the iSylvestres, over the Gauds and the old grandmother Moans ; who are in- ' numerable among these fisher folk. At a time when the sea had made more orphans and widows than usual, my unknown friends generously re sponded to my appeal, and I had the immense joy of dis tributing large alms at Paimpol.

And yet they are the happier, these Icelanders who die like Yaun and like the crew of the Leopoldine in the fulness of health and vigor, carried away suddenly by the waves in the midst of a storm.

It is for the still more disinherited that I hold out my hand to-day ; for those who are taken ill at sea during the fishing season, on those distant frozen waters ; for those who succumb there in awful agony, eternally tossed about

122 FOR THOSE AT SEA.

and wet on board uninhabitable boats, where everyone is hopelessly ignorant of what should be done to cure them. These brave fellows have not even the elementary succour that the poorest highway wanderer is sure of finding in the workhouses of France. The mortality through ill nesses that are not tended is enormous every year, and it is shocking to think that nothing has been done to lessen it, though it were so easy !

A work has been started with this object. A society has been formed to equip hospital boats to go to the Ice landic seas, and in which invalids will be received — re ceived and nearly always saved, for in general the slightest care and the most ordinary remedies are sufficient to re establish these robust constitutions.

But money is still wanted by this new society. It should be given now, given to prevent the miserable death of those distant sufferers : young and valiant fathers ot families, or sons of widowed women or elder brothers, the support of forsaken nests, or the longed-for of poor affi anced brides in white caps.

Carmencita.

• WENTY years alas ! have passed since then.

I was quite a young midshipman: I looked like a child attached to the •staff of the admiral who was in com mand of the South Sea station.

I really do not remember who had introduced me to this beloved Car mencita. She lived at Valparaiso,

far from the quays and the ships, in a lovely quarter they call the Almendral, her house, with iron-barred windows according to the South American custom, situated in the midst of a garden. She must have been about thirty-five or thirty-six years old, the age when beauty wanes amongst the Spanish women on this coast. To my youthful eyes she seemed already a person of middle age, and indeed she made no secret of her years, in spite of the elegant toilettes that were sent her direct from Paris. " I am such an old maid," she would say.

We were soon bound together by an intimate friendship

1 24 GARMENCITA.

in the purest sense of the word. I consecrated my even ings to her, every hour I was spared from duty on board; and every day, in a sweet maternal fashion, she made me conjugate my Spanish verbs. Her fine face, a little yellow and a little — -just a little — like parchment, was dominated by wondrous eyes, so long that they seemed never to end, with eyelashes that curled, and corners that, when she smiled, turned up like those of a Chinese. I thought to myself how pretty she must have been. Habitually silent, she would speak in monosyllables, doing the rest with quick flashes of facial expression — a pout or a glance, yet she was witty enough at times, and something of the tease, though quite without malice.

She was very clever at palmistry. I would let her hold my hand for any length of time, in my eagerness to know the future, having always some new question to put to her.

At her house, especially in the evening, as soon as it grew dark, I would feel a sensation of distant exile, in spite of the European hangings and furniture. Perhaps because of that silent isolated quarter in which she lived, and the thought of the long tramp that must be made through the empty streets before reaching those animated quays ; and of those two kilometres to be rowed in a boat, often on a rough sea, in order to reach my ship before midnight, for midshipmen on the Chilian coast had not the right to sleep ashore nor even to outstay the hour of Cinderella. Her garden, too, was foreign, yet there were shrubs with small leaves and small flowers which grew there as well as in temperate countries that have a winter, but they were all new to me, and unknown : plants of the southern hemi sphere subject to the cold of a winter the inverse of ours.

CARMENCITA. 125

One of her great means of charming was music. She had wonderful fingers, and would play Listz in a wild delightful manner, mingled with a certain exotic strange ness. I would often ask her to play habaneras and sequi- dlllos and all kinds of Spanish and Chilian dances. And once, when she was playing one with a rhythm that seemed new to me, I asked her what it was. " That ?" she said, "A Sema Coueque. The dance of the country ; you really didn't know it ?"

Later on, I was often to see this Sema Goueque, amongst the pretty Cholas (half-castes of Spanish and Indian blend). But just then I did not know it. " Oh !" she continued, " very well we will dance it for you." She sent at once for Juanita, Mercedes, and Pilar (fifteen to eighteen years of age) her three nieces who lived at the end of the gar den with their mother. When the dancers were in their places, each with a raised arm holding a handkerchief in her hand, she suddenly got up from the piano where she was going to play this Sema Coueque'. " Oh," she exclaimed, " you had better sing like the Cholas^ and I will do the tambourine."

The girls sang as they swayed, and she with a changed look — her eyes seemed almost Indian — beat on the reso nant wood with her little dry hands, that surely had be come sticks, marking the jerky pang! pang! pang! of the Sema Coueque.

That the evening might be complete, they even served mathe, a traditional South American infusion that one drinks through a reed tube.

I did not take long to learn. And it became a habit to end our evenings, when Pilar, Mercedes and Juanita

ia6 CARMENCITA.

always came in, with a " Suppose we dance Sema Coueque" Once, on the eve of leaving Chili and of starting for Poly nesia, I wanted her to dance herself:

" Oh !" she said, " such an old maid as I ! Really, Pilar, can I possibly do what he asks ?"

" Monsieur," answered Pilar, " no one in Valparaiso dances like Aunt Carmencita."

With a grace that was supple and light, she began to dance. At first her slender figure swayed from the hips which scarcely moved, shaken only by a slight rhythmic motion. Then suddenly she started off, as if lifted up by the strange cadence, and whirled round. Then for the first time it seemed to me that she was young.

We saw each other again, ten months later on my return from Oceania. A short and melancholy stay before my departure for France — the long farewell. I found her aged — especially after the young Tahitians whom I had just left. In my absence her hair had become mixed with silver threads, and one of her pretty teeth had been filled with gold.

In the garden the austral plants were losing their leaves: we were in April — the beginning of Autumn there.

We parted, promising to write to one another.

Then, in time, the letters grew scarce, and somehow at last ceased. Twenty-three years is such an eternity !

My thoughts of the South Seas, of Valparaiso, of the Almendral became more and more rare. She is old now, I would say to myself, my poor Carmencita, bent perhaps and grey haired.

And now, last night I dreamt of her, I saw the house again at the Almendral, the old drawing-room in the grey

CARMENCITA. 127

twilight, Carmencita in an arm-chair, grown white and decripid. I said, "Suppose we dance a Sema Coueque!" With a sad gesture she showed me the old lady cloaks and shawls in which she was wrapped up to the chin.

Then in my dream the hour suddenly struck when I had to go back on board my frigate which was leaving. It was already late. I had a long way to go through the dark town, through the poor quarter where many Cholas, mocking and laughing, were dancing the Sema Coueque ; their bare arms, holding out the handkerchief, met at every moment to bar my way and retard my progress. At last the vision melted out into the silent night of nothingness, as I reached the borders of a sombre sea where no one danced any more.

This morning, when I awoke to real life again, I found the memory of Carmencita very vivid, as invariably hap pens when one has dreamt of anybody. It made me espe cially melancholy to think of her faded beauty, and of her figure that had now lost its grace. And it was for the first time, after twenty-three years, like the rousing of some tender emotion that lurks unconsciously at the root of all friendship with women when they are beautiful or have scarcely ceased to be so.

The Opposite Wall.

fIGHT at the end of a court, the three lived together in a modest abode, the mother and daughter and a maternal relation (an aunt), already advanced in years, whom they had just received into their home.

The daughter was still quite young, still in the ephemeral freshness of her eighteen years — when they were ob liged, through reverse of fortune, to shut themselves up in the most retired corner of their ancestral home. The rest of the beloved abode, all the bright side that looked on to the street, must needs be let to desecrating strangers, who changed the aspect of the old place and destroyed its asso ciations.

An executive sale had despoiled them of the more luxu rious furniture of the old days ; they arranged their new little drawing-room with rather incongruous things: relics of their ancestors, odds and ends collected from the lofts and store-rooms of the house. But they had loved it at once, this humble room, which now for years to come

THE OPPOSITE WALL. 129

was to unite all three around the same fire and the same lamp in the winter evenings : a comfortable room with a homely and cosy look, somewhat enclosed it is true, yet without giving any impression of gloominess, for the win dows, simply draped in muslin curtains, looked out on to a sunny court, where low walls were decked with honey suckle and roses.

Happy in this modest room, they were already begin ning to forget the comfort and the luxury of former times, when one day a communication was made to them which caused the deepest consternation. The new owner was to build two stories on to his abode ; a wall was to rise up there before their windows, taking away the air and hiding the sun.

And no way alas ! of averting this evil that struck home more acutely than all the foregoing reverses of fortune.

To buy up the neighbour's house (an easy matter in the days of their past prosperity) was not to be thought of now ! There was nothing to be done, in their poverty, but to bow the head.

So the wall began to spring up, layer by layer ; they watched it rise with anguish, and a mournful silence reigned in the little sitting-room that grew more gloomy day by day, in proportion as the dark thing rose up. And to think that it, growing ever higher, would soon replace the depths of blue sky, or the golden clouds against which the low wall stood out in relief with its covering of branches !

In a month the masons had finished their work: a

130 THE OPPOSITE WALL.

smooth surface of hewn stone painted a greyish-white, very much like a November sky, perpetually opaque, monotonous and dead ; and in the summers that followed, the rose trees and the shrubs of the court became etiolated in its shadow.

The hot June and July sun still penetrated the sitting- room, though more tardily in the morning, disappearing quickly in the evening ; the dusks of late autumn fell an hour earlier, followed at once by a pervading grey gloom.

And time passed : the months and seasons went by. As the light waned in the nondescript hours of the evening when one by one the three women put down their em broidery or their sewing before lighting the lamp, the young girl — who would soon have ceased to be young — always raised her eyes towards that wall, which stood there instead of the sky of former days ; and with a kind of childish melancholy, that came upon her constantly like the mania of a prisoner, she would amuse herself by look ing, from a certain place, at the branches of the rose trees and the tops of the shrubs against the grey background of painted stones, and by trying to imagine that this back ground was a sky, a sky rather lower and nearer than the real one, as the kind that weighs down upon the distorted visions of a dream at night.

They had the hope of inheriting some money, and often spoke of it, round the lighted lamp at their work-table, as of a fairy tale, so far away did it seem.

THE OPPOSITE WALL. 131

But when they should have it — this American succes sion — at no matter what price, they would buy the neigh bour's house in order to pull down all the new part, to re-establish things as they were in the old times, and to give back to their court, to their dear roses the sun of former days. To throw down this wall had become their one terrestrial desire, the one thought continually in their minds.

And the old aunt would say :

" My dear children, God grant that I may live long enough to see that happy day !"

It was long in coming, this inheritance of theirs.

The rain in time had made black stripes on the smooth surface, sad to see, forming a kind of V, or the blurred outline of a bird hovering. And the young girl gazed on it for a long time every day, every day.

Once, in a very hot Spring when, in spite of the sha dow of the wall, the roses had bloomed earlier and more profusely than usual, a young man appeared at this end of the court and for several evenings sat at the table with these three ladies of meagre fortunes. He was passing through the town, and had brought introductions from mutual friends, not without a thought of marriage. He was good looking, with a proud face bronzed by the great sea breezes.

But he thought the inheritance too chimerical. She was not rich enough, this young girl, whose cheeks were moreover, beginning to grow pale for want of light.

1 32 THE OPPOSITE WALL.

He departed to return no more, he, who had repre sented, for a time, sun and strength and life. And she, who had already considered herself his betrothed, felt at his departure a sudden inward sense of death.

And the monotonous years continued their course like impassable rivers ; five went by, ten, fifteen and even twenty. The portionless girl lost her freshness little by little — this freshness that was so useless and despised ; the mother's hair turned white ; the old aunt became infirm, with shaking head, an octogenarian in a faded armchair, eternally seated in the same place, near the darkened win dow, her venerable profile outlined against the foliage of the court, below that background of smooth wall, where unwonted marks in the shape of a bird, traced by the slowly dripping rain, were becoming more accentuated.

In the presence of the wall, of the inexorable wall, they all three grew old. And the rose trees and shrubs grew old too, with the less sinister age of plants that seem to grow young again each Spring.

" Oh ! my children, my poor children," the aunt still continued to murmur in her cracked voice that no longer finished the sentences, " if only I live long enough ."

And her bony hand pointed with a menacing gesture to the oppressive stone thing.

She had been dead for ten months. They had wept for her as for the dearest of grandmothers. Her absence from the little sitting-room had left an unspeakable void

THE OPPOSITE WALL. 133

in the lives of these recluses, and then, the inheritance came, came when they were no longer thinking of it, with a shock at last.

The old maid — she had reached forty now — felt quite young in the joy of possessing a fortune once more.

They would get rid of the tenants, of course, they would reinstate themselves ; but from preference they would generally occupy the little sitting-room of their humbler days : in the first place it was now full of associations, and then, it would regain its sunny cheerfulness as soon as they had taken down the imprisoning wall that was now nothing but a useless eyesore, easy enough to destroy with a battery of golden sovereigns.

At last it took place, this pulling down of the wall. For twenty mournful years they had desired its destruction. Now, on an April day, with the first warm breezes and the first long evenings, the thing was accomplished, quite easily amidst the noise of falling stones and clouds of dust and the singing of the workmen.

And towards the end of the second day, when all was finished, when the labourers had gone, and silence reigned again, they found themselves once more seated at their table, mother and daughter, astonished at seeing so clearly and having no need of the lamp to begin their evening meal. As in a strange return to former days, they saw the rose trees in their court once more against the sky. But instead of the joy they had expected, they felt at first an indefinable uneasiness : there was too much light, all at once, in their little room, a sort of resplendent sadness,

OPPOSITE

and the sense of an unaccustomed void outside, of an im mense change. No words came to them in the presence of the accomplishment of their dream; each was absorbed; a growing melancholy took hold of them, they remained