Lazarre

Dieppe, high and glaring white above the water, will always symbolize to me the gate of France. The nobility of that view remained in my thoughts when half the distance to Paris was traversed.

I could shut my eyes and see it as I lay on the straw in a post-house stable. A square hole in the front of the grenier gave upon the landscape. Even respectable houses in that part of the country were then built with few or no windows; but delicious masses of grayness they were, roofed with thick and overhanging thatch.

"The stables of France are nothing but covered dunghills," Doctor Chantry grumbled; so when I crept with the Indian to lodgings over the cattle, one of the beds in the house was hired for the gouty master. Even at inns there were two or three beds in a room where they set us to dine.

"An English inn-keeper would throw their furniture into the fire!" he cried in a language fortunately not understood.

"But we have two good rooms on the ground floor, and another for Skenedonk," I sometimes remonstrated with him, "at three shillings and sixpence a day, in your money."

"You would not see any man, let his rank be what it may," Doctor Chantry retorted, "dining in his bedroom, in England. And look at these walls!—papered with two or three kinds of paper, the bare spots hung with tapestry moth-eaten and filled with spiders! And what have we for table?—a board laid on cross-bars! And the oaken chairs are rush-bottomed, and so straight the backs are a persecution! The door hinges creak in these inns, the wind blows through—"

So his complaints went on, for there never was a man who got so much out of small miseries. Skenedonk and I must have failed to see all in our travels that he put before us. For we were full of enjoyment and wonder: at the country people, wooden shod, the women's caps and long cloaks; at the quiet fair roads which multiplied themselves until we often paused enchanted in a fairy world of sameness; at market-towns, where fountains in the squares were often older than America, the country out of which we arrived.

Skenedonk heard without shifting a muscle all Doctor Chantry's grievances; and I told him we ought to cherish them, for they were views of life we could not take ourselves. Few people are made so delicately that they lose color and rail at the sight of raw tripe brought in by a proud hostess to show her resources for dinner; or at a chicken coming upon the table with its head tucked beneath its wing.

"We are fed with poulet, poulet, nothing but poulet," said Doctor Chantry, "until the poulets themselves are ashamed to look us in the face!"

We fared well, indeed, and the wine was good, and my master said he must sustain himself on it though it proved his death. He could not march as Skenedonk and I regularly marched. We hired a cart to lift him and our knapsacks from village to village, with a driver who knew the road to Paris. When the distances were long we sometimes mounted beside him. I noticed that the soil of this country had not the chalk look of other lands which I afterwards saw to the east and north; but Napoleon was already making good the ancient thoroughfares.

When my master was on shipboard he enjoyed the sea even less than the free air of these broad stretches; for while he could cast an eye about and approve of something under the sky—perhaps a church steeple, or the color of a thatch which filled me with joy—he could not approve of anything aboard a ship. Indeed, it was pity to have no delight in cleaving the water, and in the far-off spouting of whales, to say nothing of a living world that rides in undulations. For my part, I loved even the creaking of a ship, and the uncertainty of ever coming to port, and the anxiety lest a black flag should show above every sail we passed. The slow progress of man from point to point in his experience, while it sometimes enrages, on the whole interests me; and the monotony of a voyage has a sweetness like the monotony of daily bread. I looked out of the grenier window upon the high road, and upon the June sun in the act of setting; for we had supped and gone early to rest after a hard day. Post horses were stamping underneath, all ready for some noble count who intended to make another stage of his journey before nightfall.

Small obtrusive cares, such as the desire that my shoes should last well into Paris, mingled with joy in the smell of the earth at sunset, and the looking forward to seeing Madame de Ferrier again. I wrapped myself every night in the conviction that I should see her, and more freely than I had ever seen her in America.

There was a noise of horses galloping, and the expected noble count arrived; being no other than De Chaumont with his post coaches. He stepped out of the first, and Ernestine stepped out of the second, carrying Paul. She took him to his mother. The door flew open, and the woman I adored received her child and walked back and forth with him. Annabel leaned out while the horses were changed. I saw Miss Chantry, and my heart misgave me, remembering her brother's prolonged lament at separation from her.

He was, I trusted, already shut into one of those public beds which are like cupboards; for the day had begun for us at three of the morning. But if he chose to show himself, and fall upon De Chaumont for luxurious conveyance to Paris, I was determined that Skenedonk and I should not appear. I wronged my poor master, who told me afterwards he watched through a crack of the cupboard bed with his heart in his mouth.

The pause was a very short one, for horses are soon changed. Madame de Ferrier threw a searching eye over the landscape. It was a mercy she did not see the hole in the grenier, through which I devoured her, daring for the first time to call her secretly—Eagle—the name that De Chaumont used with common freedom! Now how strange is this—that one woman should be to a man the sum of things! And what was her charm I could not tell, for I began to understand there were many beautiful women in the world, of all favors, and shapely perhaps as the one of my love. Only her I found drawing the soul out of my body; and none of the others did more than please the eye like pictures.

The carriages were gone with the sun, and it was no wonder all fell gray over the world.

De Chaumont had sailed behind us, and he would be in Paris long before us.

I had first felt some uneasiness, and dread of being arrested on our journey; though our Breton captain—who was a man of gold that I would travel far to see this day, if I could, even beneath the Atlantic, where he and his ship now float—obtained for us at Dieppe, on his own pledge, a kind of substitute for passports. We were a marked party, by reason of the doctor's lameness and Skenedonk's appearance. The Oneida, during his former sojourn in France, had been encouraged to preserve the novelty of his Indian dress. As I had nothing to give him in its place it did not become me to find fault. And he would have been more conspicuous with a cocked hat on his bare red scalp, and knee breeches instead of buckskins. Peasants ran out to look at him, and in return we looked at them with a good will.

We reached the very barriers of Paris, however, without falling into trouble. And in the streets were so many men of so many nations that Skenedonk's attire seemed no more bizarre than the turbans of the east or the white burnous of the Arab.

It was here that Skenedonk took his rôle as guide, and stalked through narrow crooked streets, which by comparison made New York, my first experience of a city, appear a plain and open village.

I do not pretend to know anything about Paris. Some spots in the mystic labyrinth stand out to memory, such as that open space where the guillotine had done its work, the site of the Bastille, and a long street leading from the place of the Bastille, parallel with the river; and this I have good reason to remember. It is called Rue St. Antoine. I learned well, also, a certain prison, and a part of the ancient city called Faubourg St. Germain. One who can strike obscure trails in the wilderness of nature, may blunt his fine instincts on the wilderness of man.

This did not befall the Indian. He took a bee line upon his old tracks, and when the place was sighted we threaded what seemed to be a rivulet between cliffs, for a moist depressed street-center kept us straddling something like a gutter, while with outstretched hands we could brace the opposite walls.

We entered a small court where a gruff man, called a concierge, having a dirty kerchief around his head, received us doubtfully. He was not the concierge of Skenedonk's day. We showed him coin; and Doctor Chantry sat down in his chair and looked at him with such contempt that his respect increased.

The house was clean, and all the stairs we climbed to the roof were well scoured. From the mansard there was a beautiful view of Paris, with forest growth drawing close to the heart of the city. For on that side of the world men dare not murder trees, but are obliged to respect and cherish them.

My poor master stretched himself on a bed by the stooping wall, and in disgust of life and great pain of feet, begged us to order a pan of charcoal and let him die the true Parisian death when that is not met on the scaffold. Skenedonk said to me in Iroquois that Doctor Chantry was a sick old woman who ought to be hidden some place to die, and it was his opinion that the blessing of the church would absolve us. We could then make use of the pouch of coin to carry on my plans.

My plans were more ridiculous than Skenedonk's. His at least took sober shape, while mine were still the wild emotions of a young man's mind. Many an hour I had spent on the ship, watching the foam speed past her side, trying to foresee my course like hers in a trackless world. But it seemed I must wait alertly for what destiny was making mine.

We paid for our lodgings, three commodious rooms, though in the mansard; my secretary dragging himself to sit erect with groans and record the increasing debt of myself and my servant.

"Come, Skenedonk," I then said. "Let us go down to the earth and buy something that Doctor Chantry can eat."

That benevolent Indian was quite as ready to go to market as to abate human nuisances. And Doctor Chantry said he could almost see English beef and ale across the channel; but translated into French they would, of course, be nothing but poulet and sour wine. I pillowed his feet with a bag of down which he had kicked off his bed, and Skenedonk and I lingered along the paving as we had many a time lingered through the woods. There were book stalls a few feet square where a man seemed smothered in his own volumes; and victual shops where you could almost feed yourself for two or three sous; and people sitting outdoors drinking wine, as if at a general festival. I thought Paris had comfort and prosperity—with hereditary kings overthrown and an upstart in their place. Yet the streets were dirty, with a smell of ancientness that sickened me.

We got a loaf of bread as long as a staff, a pat of butter in a leaf, and a bottle of wine. My servant, though unused to squaw labor, took on himself the porterage of our goods, and I pushed from street to street, keenly pleased with the novelty, which held somewhere in its volatile ether the person of Madame de Ferrier.

Skenedonk blazed our track with his observant eye, and we told ourselves we were searching for Doctor Chantry's beef. Being the unburdened hunter I undertook to scan cross places, and so came unexpectedly upon the Rue St. Antoine, as a man told me it was called, and a great hurrahing that filled the mouths of a crowd blocking the thoroughfare.

"Long live the emperor!" they shouted.

The man who told me the name of the street, a baker all in white, with his tray upon his head, objected contemptuously.

"The emperor is not in Paris: he is in Boulogne."

"You never know where he is—he is here—there—everywhere!" declared another workman, in a long dark garment like a hunting-shirt on the outside of his small clothes.

"Long live the emperor!—long live the emperor!"

I pushed forward as two or three heavy coaches checked their headlong speed, and officers parted the crowd.

"There he is!" admitted the baker behind me. Something struck me in the side, and there was Bellenger the potter, a man I thought beyond the seas in America. His head as I saw it that moment put the emperor's head out of my mind. He had a knife, and though he had used the handle, I foolishly caught it and took it from him. With all his strength he then pushed me so that I staggered against the wheel of a coach.

"Assassin!" he screamed; and then Paris fell around my ears.

If anybody had seen his act nobody refrained from joining in the cry.

"Assassin! Assassin! To the lamp post with him!"

I stood stupefied and astonished as an owl blinking in the sunshine, and two guards held my collar. The coaches lashed away, carrying the man of destiny—as I have since been told he called himself—as rapidly as possible, leaving the victim of destiny to be bayed at by that many-headed dog, the mongrel populace of Paris.

The idiot boy somewhere upon the hills of Lake George, always in a world of fog which could not be discovered again, had often come to my mind during my journeys, like a self that I had shed and left behind. But Bellenger was a cipher. I forgot him even at the campfire. Now here was this poor crazy potter on my track with vindictive intelligence, the day I set foot in Paris. Time was not granted even to set the lodging in order. He must have crossed the ocean with as good speed as Doctor Chantry and Skenedonk and I. He may have spied upon us from the port, through the barriers, and even to our mansard. At any rate he had found me in a crowd, and made use of me to my downfall: and I could have knocked my stupid head on the curb as I was haled away.

One glimpse of Skenedonk I caught while we marched along Rue St. Antoine, the gendarmes protecting me from the crowd. He thought I was going to the scaffold, where many a strapping fellow had gone in the Paris of his youth, and fought to reach me, laying about him with his loaf of bread. Skenedonk would certainly trail me, and find a way to be of use, unless he broke into trouble as readily as I had done.

My guards crossed the river in the neighborhood of palaces, and came by many windings to a huge pile rearing its back near a garden place, and there I was turned over to jailers and darkness. The entrance was unwholesome. A man at a table opened a tome which might have contained all the names in Paris. He dipped his quill and wrote by candlelight.

"Political offender or common criminal?" he inquired.

"Political offender," the officer answered.

"What is he charged with?"

"Trying to assassinate the emperor in his post-chaise."

"La, la, la!" the recorder grunted. "Another attempt! And gunpowder put in the street to blow the emperor up only last week. Good luck attends him:—only a few windows broken and some common people killed. Taken in the act, was this fellow?"

"With the knife in his hand."

"What name?" the recorder inquired.

I had thought on the answer, and told him merely that my name was Williams.

"Eh, bien, Monsieur Veeleeum. Take him to the east side among the political offenders," said the master-jailer to an assistant or turnkey.

"But it's full," responded the turnkey.

"Shove him in some place."

They searched me, and the turnkey lighted another candle. The meagerness of my output was beneath remark. When he had led me up a flight of stone steps he paused and inquired,

"Have you any money?"

"No."

"So much the worse for you."

"What is the name of this prison?" I asked.

"Ste. Pélagie," he answered. "If you have no money, and expect to eat here, you better give me some trinket to sell for you."

"I have no trinkets to give you."

He laughed.

"Your shirt or breeches will do."

"Are men shut up here to starve?"

The jailer shrugged.

"The bread is very bad, and the beans too hard to eat. We do not furnish the rations; it is not our fault. The rule here is nothing buys nothing. But sleep in your breeches while you can. You will soon be ready enough to eat them."

I was ready enough to eat them then, but forbore to let him know it. The whole place was damp and foul. We passed along a corridor less than four feet wide, and he unlocked a cell from which a revolting odor came. There was no light except what strained through a loophole under the ceiling. He turned the key upon me, and I held my nose. Oh, for a deep draught of the wilderness!

There seemed to be an iron bed at one side, with a heap of rags on top. I resolved to stand up all night before trusting myself to that couch. The cell was soon explored. Two strides in each direction measured it. The stone walls were marked or cut with names I could dimly see.

I braced my back against the door and watched the loophole where a gray hint of daylight told that the sun must be still shining. This faded to a blotch in the thick stone, and became obliterated.

Tired by the day's march, and with a taste of clean outdoor air still in my lungs, I chose one of the two corners not occupied by the ill odored bed, sat down, and fell asleep, dropping my cares. A grating of the lock disturbed me. The jailer pushed a jug of water into the room, and replaced his bolts.

Afterwards I do not remember anything except that the stone was not warm, and my stomach craved, until a groan in my ear stabbed sleep. I sat up awake in every nerve. There was nobody in the cell with me. Perhaps the groan had come from a neighboring prisoner.

Then a faint stir of covering could be heard upon the bed.

I rose and pressed as far as I could into my corner. No beast of the wilderness ever had such terror for me as the unknown thing that had been my cell-mate half a night without my knowledge.

Was a vampire—a demon—a witch—a ghost locked in there with me?

It moaned again, so faintly, that compassion instantly got the better of superstition.

"Who is there?" I demanded; as if the knowledge of a name would cure terror of the suffering thing naming itself.

I got no answer, and taking my resolution in hand, moved toward the bed, determined to know what housed with me. The jug of water stood in the way, and I lifted it with instinctive answer to the groan.

The creature heard the splash, and I knew by its mutter what it wanted. Groping darkly, to poise the jug for an unseen mouth, I realized that something helpless to the verge of extinction lay on the bed, and I would have to find the mouth myself or risk drowning it. I held the water on the bed-rail with my right hand, groped with the other, and found a clammy, death-cold forehead, a nose and cavernous cheeks, an open and fever roughened mouth. I poured water on my handkerchief and bathed the face. That would have been my first desire in extreme moments. The poor wretch gave a reviving moan, so I felt emboldened to steady the jug and let drop by drop gurgle down its throat.

Forgetting the horror of the bed I sat there, repeating at intervals this poor ministration until the porthole again dawned, and blackness became the twilight of day.

My cell-mate could not see me. I doubt if he ever knew that a hand gave him water. His eyes were meaningless, and he was so gaunt that his body scarcely made a ridge on the bed.

Some beans and mouldy bread were put in for my rations. The turnkey asked me how I intended to wash myself without basin or ewer or towels, and inquired further if he could be of service in disposing of my shirt or breeches.

"What ails this man?"

He shrugged, and said the prisoner had been wasting with fever.

"You get fever in Ste. Pélagie," he added, "especially when you eat the prison food. This man ought to be sent to the infirmary, but the infirmary is overflowing now."

"Who is he?"

"A journalist, or poet, or some miserable canaille of that sort. He will soon be out of your way." Our guard craned over to look at him. "Oui—da! He is a dying man! A priest must be sent to him soon. I remember he demanded one several days ago."

But that day and another dragged through before the priest appeared. I sent out my waistcoat, and got a wretched meal, and a few spoonfuls of wine that I used to moisten the dying man's lips. His life may or may not have been prolonged; but out of collapse he opened his mouth repeatedly and took the drops. He was more my blessing than I was his.

For I had an experience which has ever since given me to know the souls of prisoners.

The first day, in spite of the cell's foulness, I laughed secretly at jailers and felt at peace, holding the world at bay. I did not then know that Ste. Pélagie was the tomb of the accused, where more than one prisoner dragged out years without learning why he was put there. I was not brought to any trial or examination.

But gradually an uneasiness which cannot be imagined by one who has not felt it, grew upon me. I wanted light. The absence of it was torture! Light—to vivify the stifling air, which died as this man was dying—as I should die—in blinding mirk!

Moisture broke out all over my body, and cold dew stood on my forehead. How could human lungs breathe the midnight of blackening walls? The place was hot with the hell of confinement. I said over and over—"O God, Thou art Light!—in Thee is no darkness at all!"

This anguish seemed a repetition of something I had endured once before. The body and spirit remembered, though the mind had no register. I clawed at the walls. If I slept, it was to wake gasping, fighting upward with both hands.

The most singular phase was that I reproached myself for not soaking up more sun in the past. Oh, how much light was going to waste over wide fields and sparkling seas! The green woods, the green grass—they had their fill of sun, while we two perished!

I remembered creeping out of glare under the shadow of rocks, and wondered how I could have done it! If I ever came to the sun again I would stretch myself and roll from side to side, to let it burn me well! How blessed was the tan we got in summer from steeping in light!

Looking at my cell-mate I could have rent the walls.

"We are robbed," I told his deaf ears. "The light, poured freely all over the city, the light that belongs to you and me as much as to anybody, would save you! I wish I could pick you up and carry you out where the sun would shine through your bones! But let us be glad, you and I, that there is a woman who is not buried like a whitening sprout under this weight of stone! She is free, to walk around and take the light in her gray eyes and the wind in her brown hair. I swear to God if I ever come out of this I will never pass so much as a little plant prostrate in darkness, without helping it to the light."

It was night by the loophole when our turnkey threw the door open. I heard the priest and his sacristan joking in the corridor before they entered carrying their sacred parcels. The priest was a doddering old fellow, almost deaf, for the turnkey shouted at his ear, and dim of sight, for he stooped close to look at the dying man, who was beyond confession.

"Bring us something for a temporary altar," he commanded the turnkey, who stood candle in hand.

The turnkey gave his light to the sacristan, and taking care to lock us in, hurried to obey.

I measured the lank, ill-strung assistant, more an overgrown boy than a man of brawn, but expanded around his upper part by the fullness of a short white surplice. He had a face cheerful to silliness.

The turnkey brought a board supported by crosspieces; and withdrew, taking his own candle, as soon as the church's tapers were lighted.

The sacristan placed the temporary altar beside the foot of the bed, arrayed it, and recited the Confiteor.

Then the priest mumbled the Misereatur and Indulgentiam.

I had seen extreme unction administered as I had seen many another office of the church in my dim days, with scarcely any attention. Now the words were terribly living. I knew every one before it rolled off the celebrant's lips. Yet under that vivid surface knowledge I carried on as vivid a sequence of thought.

The priest elevated the ciborium, repeating,

"Ecce Agnus Dei."

Then three times—"Domine, non sum dignus."

I heard and saw with exquisite keenness, yet I was thinking,

"If I do not get out of here he will have to say those words over me."

He put the host in the parted mouth of the dying, and spoke—

"Corpus Domini nostri Jesu Christi custodiat animam tuam in vetam aeternam."

I thought how easy it would be to strip the loose surplice over the sacristan's head. There was a swift clip of the arm around your opponent's neck which I had learned in wrestling, that cut the breath off and dropped him as limp as a cloth. It was an Indian trick. I said to myself it would be impossible to use that trick on the sacristan if he left the cell behind the deaf old priest. I did not want to hurt him. Still, he would have a better chance to live after I had squeezed his neck, than I should have if I did not squeeze it.

The priest took out of a silver case a vessel of oil, and a branch. He sprinkled holy water with the branch, upon the bed, the walls, the sacristan and me, repeating,

"Asperges me, Domine, hyssopo, et mundabor: lavabis me, et super nivem dealbabor."

While I bent my head to the drops, I knew it was impossible to choke down the sacristan, strip off his surplice, invest myself with it and get out of the cell before priest or turnkey looked back. The sacrilege of such an attack would take all the strength out of me.

The priest said the Exaudi nos, exhorted the insensible figure, then recited the Credo and the Litany, the sacristan responding.

Silence followed.

I knew the end was approaching. My hands were as cold as the nerveless one which would soon receive the candle. I told myself I should be a fool to attempt it. There was not one chance in a hundred. I should not squeeze hard enough. The man would yell. If I were swift as lightning and silent as force, they would take me in the act. It was impossible. But people who cannot do impossible things have to perish.

The priest dipped his thumb in oil, and with it crossed the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, and hands of him who was leaving the use of these five senses and instruments of evil.

Then he placed a lighted candle in the stiffened fingers, and ended with—

"Accipe lampadem ardentem custodi unctionem tuam."

I said to myself—"I cannot do it! Nobody could! It is impossible!"

The sacristan now began to strip the altar and pack all the sacred implements into their cases: preparing his load in the center of the room.

The man was dead.

The sacristan's last office was to fix the two lighted altar candles on the head and foot railing of the bed. They showed the corpse in its appalling stillness, and stood like two angels, with the pit between them.

The sacristan rapped upon the door to let the turnkey know it was time to unlock.

I drew the thick air to my lung depths. The man who would breathe no more was not as rigid as I stood. But there was no use in attempting such a thing!

The turnkey opened a gap of doorway through which he could see the candles and the bed. He opened no wider than the breadth of the priest, who stepped out as the sacristan bent for the portables.

There was lightning in my arm as it took the sacristan around the neck and let him limp upon the stones. The tail of the priest's cassock was scarcely through the door.

"Eh bien! sacristan," called the turnkey. "Make haste with your load. I have this death to report. He is not so pretty that you must stand gazing at him all night!"

I had the surplice over the sacristan's head and over mine, and backed out with my load, facing the room.

If my jailer had thrust his candle at me, if the priest had turned to speak, if the man in the cell had got his breath before the bolt was turned, if my white surplice had not appeared the principal part of me in that black place—.

It was impossible!—but I had done it.

The turnkey's candle made a star-point in the corridor. He walked ahead of the priest and I walked behind. We descended to the entrance where the man with the big book sat taking stock of another wretch between officers. I saw as I shaded my face with the load, that his inattentive eye dwelt on my surplice, which would have passed me anywhere in France.

"Good-night, monsieur the curé," said the turnkey, letting us through the outer door.

"Good-night, good-night," the priest responded.

"And to you, sacristan."

"Good-night," I muttered, and he came a step after me. The candle was yet in his hand, showing him my bulk, and perhaps the small clothes he had longed to vend. I expected hue and cry, but walked on after the priest, and heard the heavy doors jar, and breathed again.

Hearkening behind and in front, on the right and the left, I followed him in the direction of what I have since learned to call the Jardin des Plantes. It is near Ste. Pélagie.

The priest, wearied by his long office, spoke only once about the darkness; for it was a cloudy night; and did not attend to my muttered response. I do not know what sympathy the excellent old man might have shown to an escaped prisoner who had choked his sacristan, and I had no mind to test it. He turned a corner, and with the wall angle between us, I eased down the sacred furniture, drew off the surplice and laid that upon it, and took to my heels up the left hand street; for the guard had brought me across the river to Ste. Pélagie.

I had no hat, and the cut of my coat showed that I had lost a waistcoat. Avoiding the little circles of yellowness made by lamp posts, I reached without mishap of falling into the hands of any patrol, a bridge crossing to an island point, and from the other side of the point to the opposite shore. At intervals along the parapet dim lights were placed.

Compared to Lake George, which wound like a river, and the mighty St. Lawrence as I remembered it, the Seine was a narrow stream. Some boats made constellations on the surface. The mass of island splitting it into two branches was almost the heart of Paris. There were other foot passengers on the bridge, and a gay carriage rolled by. I did not see any gendarmes, and only one foot passenger troubled me.

I was on the bridge above the left arm of the river when an ear trained in the woods caught his footstep, pausing as mine paused, and hurrying as mine hurried. If the sacristan had been found in Ste. Pélagie a pursuer would not track me so delicately, and neither would Skenedonk hold back on the trail. I stopped in the shade when we two were alone on the second span, and wheeled, certain of catching my man under the flare of a cresset. I caught him, and knew that it was Bellenger following me.

My mind was made up in an instant. I walked back to settle matters with him, though slaughter was far from my thoughts. I had done him no harm; but he was my enemy, and should be forced to let me alone.

The fellow who had appeared so feeble at his cabin that I opened the door for him, and so poor-spirited that his intellect claimed pity, stood up as firm as a bear at my approach, and met my eyes with perfect understanding.

Not another thing do I remember. The facts are simply these: I faced Bellenger; no blows passed; my mind flashed blank with the partial return of that old eclipse which has fallen upon me after strong excitement, in more than one critical moment. The hiatus seems brief when I awake though it may have lasted hours. I know the eclipse has been upon me, like the wing-shadow of eternity; but I have scarcely let go of time.

I could not prove that Bellenger dragged me to the parapet and threw me into the river. If I had known it I should have laughed at his doing so, for I could swim like a fish, through or under water, and sit on the lake bottom holding my breath until Skenedonk had been known to dive for me.

When next I sensed anything at all it was a feeling of cold.

I thought I was lying in one of the shallow runlets that come into Lake George, and the pebbles were an uneasy bed, chilling my shoulders. I was too stiff to move, or even turn my head to lift out of water the ear on which it rested. But I could unclose my eyelids, and this is what I saw:—a man naked to his waist, half reclining against a leaning slab of marble, down which a layer of water constantly moved. His legs were clothed, and his other garments lay across them. His face had sagged in my direction. There was a deep slash across his forehead, and he showed his teeth and his glassy eyes at the joke.

Beyond this silent figure was a woman as silent. The ridge of his body could not hide the long hair spread upon her breast. I considered the company and the moisture into which I had fallen with unspeakable amazement. We were in a low and wide stone chamber with a groined ceiling, supported by stone pillars. A row of lamps was arranged above us, so that no trait or feature might escape a beholder.

That we were put there for show entered my mind slowly and brought indignation. To be so helpless and so exposed was an outrage against which I struggled in nightmare impotence; for I was bare to my hips also, and I knew not what other marks I carried beside those which had scarred me all my conscious life.

Now in the distance, and echoing, feet descended stairs.

I knew that people were coming to look at us, and I could not move a muscle in resentment.

I heard their voices, fringed with echoes, before either speaker came within my vision.

"This is the mortuary chapel of the Hôtel Dieu?"

"Yes, monsieur the marquis, this is the mortuary chapel."

"Um! Cheerful place!"

"Much more cheerful than the bottom of the river, monsieur the marquis."

"No doubt. Never empty, eh?"

"I have been a servant of the Hôtel Dieu fourteen years, monsieur the marquis, and have not yet seen all the marble slabs vacant."

"You receive the bodies of the drowned?"

"And place them where they may be seen and claimed."

"How long do you keep them?"

"That depends. Sometimes their friends seek them at once. We have kept a body three months in the winter season, though he turned very green."

"Are all in your present collection gathering verdure?"

"No, monsieur. We have a very fresh one, just brought in; a big stalwart fellow, with the look of the country about him."

"Small clothes?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Buckle shoes?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"Hair light and long?"

"The very man, monsieur the marquis."

"I suppose I shall have to look at him. If he had to make himself unpleasant he should have stayed at the chateau where his mother could identify him. He is one of my peasants, come to Paris to see life! I must hold my nose and do it."

"It is not necessary to hold the nose, monsieur."

"After fourteen years, perhaps not."

I heard the snap of a snuff-box lid as the marquis fortified himself.

My agony for the woman who was to be looked at turned so sharp that I uttered a click in my throat. But they passed her, and merely glanced at my next neighbor.

The old marquis encountered my fixed stare. Visibly it shocked through him. He was all gray, and curled and powdered, instead of being clipped close and smooth in the style of the Empire; an exquisite, thin-featured man, high of nose and eyebrows, not large, but completely turned out as ample man and bright spirit. The slightest fragrance of scent was in his presence, and a shade of snuff on his upper lip appeared fine supercilious hairs.

I did not look at the servant of the Hôtel Dieu. The old noble and I held each other with unflinching gaze.

"Do you recognize him, monsieur?"

"I do," the old noble deliberately answered. "I should know this face anywhere. Have him taken to my carriage directly."

"Your carriage, monsieur! He can be sent—"

"I said take him to my carriage."

"It shall be done. His eyes have opened since he came in. But they sometimes look as if they would speak! Their faces change constantly. This other man who is grinning to-night may be quite serious to-morrow."

"And by the end of the month sorry enough, eh?"

The servant of the Hôtel Dieu tittered amiably, and I knew he was going for help to lift me off the slab, when he uttered a cry of surprise. The old marquis wheeled sharply, and said:

"Eh, bien! Is this another of them, promenading himself?"

I felt the Oneida coming before his silent moccasins strode near me. He did not wait an instant, but dragged me from the wet and death cold marble to the stone floor, where he knelt upon one knee and supported me. O Skenedonk! how delicious was the warmth of your healthy body—how comforting the grip of your hunter arms! Yet there are people who say an Indian is like a snake! I could have given thanks before the altar at the side of the crypt, which my fixed eyes encountered as he held me. The marble dripped into its gutter as if complaining of my escape.

"Oh, my dear friend!" cried the servant.

Skenedonk answered nothing at all.

"Who is this gentleman," the marquis inquired, "that seems to have the skin of a red German sausage drawn tight over his head?"

"This is an American Indian, monsieur the marquis."

"An Indian?"

"Yes, monsieur; but he understands French."

"Thank you for the hint. It may save me from having a German sausage drawn tight over my head. I have heard that American Indians practice giving their friends that appearance. How do you know he understands French?"

"I think it is the man who used to come to the Hôtel Dieu years ago, when I was new in its service. He was instructed in religion by churchmen in Paris, and learned the language. Oh, my dear monsieur—I think it is Iroquois that he is called—I am aware the Americans have different manners, but here we do not go into the mortuary chapel of the Hôtel Dieu and disarrange the bodies without permission!"

Skenedonk's eyes probably had less of the fawn in them than usual. I felt the guttural sound under his breast.

"I have found him, and now I will take him."

"But that is the marquis' servant!"

"The marquis is his servant!"

"Oh, my dear monsieur the Indian! You speak of a noble of France, the Marquis du Plessy! Be satisfied," pleaded the servitor of the Hôtel Dieu, "with this other body, whom no one is likely to claim! I may be permitted to offer you that, if you are determined—though it may cost me my place!—and after fourteen years' service! It you would appease him, monsieur the marquis—though I do not know whether they ever take money."

"I will appease him," said the old noble. "Go about your errand and be quick."

The servant fled up the stairs.

"This man is not dead, my friend," said the Marquis du Plessy.

Skenedonk knew it.

"But he will not live long in this cursed crypt," the noble added. "You will get into my carriage with him, we will take him and put him in hot sheets, and see what we can do for him."

I could feel Skenedonk's antagonism giving way in the relaxing of his muscles.

But maintaining his position the Oneida asserted:

"He is not yours!"

"He belongs to France."

"France belongs to him!" the Indian reversed.

"Eh, eh! Who is this young man?"

"The king."

"We have no king now, my friend. But assuming there is a man who should be king, how do you know this is the one?"

If Skenedonk made answer in words it was lost to me. The spirit sank to submergence in the body, I remember combating motion like a drugged person.

Torpor and prostration followed the recurring eclipse as that followed excitement and shock. I was not ill; and gathered knowledge of the environment, which was different from anything I had before experienced. De Chaumont's manor was a wilderness fortress compared to this private hotel of an ancient family in the heart of Paris.

I lay in a bed curtained with damask, and looked through open glass doors at a garden. Graveled walks, bosky trees and masses of flowers, plats of grass where arbored seats were placed, stretched their vista to a wall clothed in ivy, which proved to be the end of a chapel. For high over the curtain of thick green shone a rose window. The afternoon sun laid bare its fine staining, but only in the darkness when the church was illuminated and organ music rolled from it, did the soul of that window appear struck through with light.

Strange servants and Doctor Chantry by glimpses, and the old noble and the Oneida almost constantly, were about me. Doctor Chantry looked complacently through the curtains and wished me good-morning. I smiled to see that he was lodged as he desired, and that his clothes had been renewed in fine cloth, with lawn to his neck and silk stockings for his shrunk calves. My master was an elderly beau; and I gave myself no care that he had spent his money—the money of the expedition—on foppery.

Skenedonk also had new toggery in scarfs and trinkets which I did not recognize, and his fine buckskins were cleaned. The lackeys appeared subservient to him, and his native dignity was never more impressive than in that great house. I watched my host and my servant holding interviews, which Skenedonk may have considered councils, on the benches in the garden, and from which my secretary, the sick old woman, seemed excluded. But the small interest of seeing birds arrive on branches, and depart again, sufficed me; until an hour when life rose strongly.

I sat up in bed, and finding myself alone, took advantage of an adjoining room where a marble bath was set in the floor. Returning freshened from the plunge, with my sheet drawn around me, I found one of those skilled and gentle valets who seem less men than he-maids.

"I am to dress monsieur when monsieur is ready," said this person.

"I am ready now," I answered, and he led me into a suite of rooms and showed me an array which took my breath: dove-colored satin knee breeches, and a long embroidered coat of like color, a vest sprigged with rosebuds, cravat and lace ruffles, long silk stockings and shoes to match in extravagance, a shirt of fine lawn, and a hat for a nobleman.

"Tell your master," I said to the lackey, "that he intends me great kindness, but I prefer my own clothes."

"These are monsieur's own clothes, made to his order and measure."

"But I gave no order, and I was not measured."

The man raised his shoulders and elbows with gentlest dissent.

"These are only a few articles of monsieur's outfit. Here is the key. If monsieur selects another costume he will find each one complete."

By magic as it seemed, there was a wardrobe full of fineries provided for my use. The man displayed them; in close trousers and coats with short fronts, or knee breeches and long tails; costumes, he said, for the street, for driving, riding, traveling, for evening, and for morning; and one white satin court dress. At the marquis' order he had laid out one for a ball. Of my old clothes not a piece was to be seen.

The miracle was that what he put upon me fitted me. I became transformed like my servant and my secretary, and stood astonished at the result.