Monsieur Motte/Chapter 1

T was near mid-day in June. A dazzling stream of vertical sun-rays fell into the quadrangular courtyard of the Institute St. Denis, and filled it to suffocation with light and heat. The flowers which grew in little beds, dotting the gray-flagged surface, bowed their heads under their leaves for shelter.

A thin strip of shadow, stretching from the side of the schoolhouse, began to creep over the garden, slowly following the sun in its progress past the obtruding walls of neighboring buildings, until he should disappear behind a certain square steeple far off in the distance; then the shade would entirely cover the yard; then the stars would be coming out, languid and pale; and then the fragrance of oleander ​and jasmine, travelling from yard to yard, would burden the air, soothing the senses in order to seduce the imagination.

Along the narrow shaded strip, quite filling it up, moved a class of girls in Indian file, their elbows scraping against the rugged bricks of the wall as they held their books up to the openings of their sun-bonnets. A murmur of rapidly articulated words, like the murmur of boiling water in a closed kettle, came from the leaves of their books, while from their hidden lips dropped disjointed fragments of "l'Histoire de France."

The foundation, as well as key-stone, of St. Denisian education, it was but natural that the examination in "l'Histoire de France, par D. Lévi Alvares, père," should fill the last days of the scholastic term; and as a prize in that exercise set the brightest crown upon the head of the victor, it was not strange that it should be conducted with such rigidity and impartiality as to demoralize panic-stricken contestants whose sex usually warranted justice in leaving one eye at least unbound.

Under the circumstances, a trust in luck is ​the most reliable source of comfort. If experience proved anything, if the study of the history of France itself made one point clear, it was the dependence of great events on trifles, the unfailing interposition of the inattendu, and, consequently, the utter futility of preparation. The graduating class of 1874 turned their pages with clammy fingers, and repeated mechanically, with unwearied tongues, any passage upon which Fate should direct their eyes; none dared be slighted with impunity, the most insignificant being perhaps the very one to trip them up; the most familiar, the traitor to play them false. A laggard church clock in the neighborhood gave them each eleven separate, distinct shocks. It warned them that two minutes and a half had already been consumed on the road from one class-room to the other, and reminded them of Monsieur Mignot's diabolical temper.

A little girl, also in a large sun-bonnet, with a placard marked "Passe-Partout" around her neck, turned an angle of the building suddenly and threw the nervous ranks into dire confusion; the books went down, the bonnets up.

​"Seigneur! qu'est-ce que c'est?"

"Ma chère! how you frightened me!"

"Mon Dieu! I thought it was Monsieur Mignot!"

"I am trembling all over!"

"I can hardly stand up!"

"Just feel how my heart beats!"

"You had better hurry up, mes enfants," replied the little one, in the patronizing tone of personal disinterestedness; "it is past eleven."

"But we don't know one word," they groaned in unison,—"not one single word."

"Ah, bah! you are frightened, that's all; you always say that." She gave one of them a good-natured push in the direction of the door about which they were standing in distressful hesitation.

"I tell you, old Mignot is in a horrible temper. Il a fait les quatre cents coups in our class; threw his inkstand at Stéphanie Morel's head."

The door, with startling coincidence, was violently pulled open at these words, and a gray-haired, spectacled old gentleman thrust out an irate face in quest of his dilatory class. Thrown by the catastrophe into a state of complete nes​cience of all things historical, from Clovis to Napoleon, the young ladies jerked off their sun-bonnets and entered the room, while the little girl escaped at full speed. A drowsy, quiet, peaceful half-hour followed in the yard,—a surprising silence for the centre of a busy city, considering the close proximity of two hundred school-girls. It was a mocking contrast to the scene of doubt, hesitation, and excitement on the other side of the closed door,—a contrast advantageous to the uneducated happiness of the insects and flowers.

A door-bell rang; not the bell of the pretty little gate which admitted visitors to the rose-hedged, violet-bordered walk leading to Madame's antichambre, but the bell of the capacious porte-cochère which was reserved for the exits and entrances of scholars and domestics. After a carefully measured pause, the ring was repeated, then again, and again. The rusty organ of intercommunication squeaked and creaked plaintively after each disturbance as if forced from a sick-bed to do painful and useless service. A gaunt, red-haired woman finally came out in obedience to the summons, with an elaboration ​of slowness which the shuffling sabots clearly betrayed to the outsider, as evidenced by a last superfluous, unnecessarily energetic pull of the bell-knob.

She carefully unrolled her sleeves as she sauntered along, and stood until she loosened the cord which reefed her dress to an unconventional height. Then she opened the grille and looked out.

"Ah, je le savais bien," she muttered, with strong Gascon accent.

There was a diminutive door cut into the large gate. It looked, with its coat of fresh paint, like a barnacle on the weather-beaten exterior. Opening with the facility of greased hinges, it was an unavoidable compromise between the heavy cypress timber and iron fastenings, prescribed by the worldly, or heavenly, experience of St. Denis as the proper protection of a young ladies' boarding-school, and the almost incessant going and coming which secluded femininity and excluded shops made necessary.

"But I can't get in there!" said a woman outside.

"Tant pis." And the little door was closed.

​"But I must come in with my basket."

A shrug of the shoulders was the only reply through the grille.

"It is Mamzelle Marie's toilet for the exhibition."

The little gate was again held open.

"Don't you see I can't get in there?"

"Ça m'est égal."

A snort of exasperation was heard on the outside, and a suppressed "C'est un peu fort!"

"Will you open the big gate for me so that I can bring in Mamzelle Marie's dress?"

No answer.

"Well, then, I shall ring at Madame's bell."

The white woman did not lack judgment. She was maintaining her own in a quarrel begun years ago; a quarrel involving complex questions of the privileges of order and the distinctions of race; a quarrel in which hostilities were continued, year by year, with no interruptions of courtesy or mitigation by truce. This occasion was one of the perquisites of Jeanne's position of femme de ménage,—slight compensation enough when compared to the indignities put upon her as a white woman, and the humilia​tions as a sensitive one by "cette négresse Marcélite." But the duration of triumph must be carefully measured. Marcélite's ultimatum, if carried out, would quickly reverse their relative positions by a bonus to Marcélite in the shape of a reprimand to Jeanne. She allowed her foe, however, to carry her basket in the hot sun as far as the next bell, and even waited until she put her hand on it before the iron bar fell and the massive structure was allowed to swing open.

"Ristocrate!" she muttered, without looking at either woman or basket.

"Canaille!" whispered the other, with her head thrown back and her nose in the air.

Glancing at the line of shade in the yard to see how near it was to twelve o'clock, for want of other accommodation Marcélite went into an open arbor, put her basket on the floor, and wiped her face with a colored foulard handkerchief. "Fait chaud mo dit toi," she said aloud in creole, her language for self-communion. She pulled her skirts out on each side, and sat down with a force that threatened the stability of the bench; then, careless of creeping and crawling ​possibilities, leaned her head back against the vine-covered wall. The green leaves formed a harmonious frame for the dark-brown face, red and yellow tignon, and the large gold ear-rings hanging beneath two glossy coques of black wool. Her features were regular and handsome according to the African type, with a strong, sensuous expression, subdued but not obliterated. Her soft black eyes showed in their voluptuous depths intelligence and strength and protecting tenderness. Her stiff purple calico dress settled in defining folds about her portly limbs. A white kerchief was pinned over her untrammelled bosom; her large, full, supple waist was encircled by the strings of her apron, which were tied in a careful bow at her side.

Besides the large basket, she carried on her arm a small covered one, which, if opened, would reveal her calling to be that of hairdressing. She was the hairdresser of the school, and as such, the general chargée d'affaires, confidente, messenger, and adviser of teachers and scholars. Her discretion was proven beyond suspicion. Her judgment, or rather her intuition, was bold, quick, and effective. In truth, Marcélite was as indis​pensable as a lightning-rod to the boarding-school, conducted as it was under the austere discipline of the old régime. Her smooth, round hands and taper fingers had been polished by constant friction with silken locks; her familiar, polite, gentle, servile manners were those contracted during a courtly life of dependent intimacy with superiors. It was said that her basket carried other articles besides combs, brushes, and cosmetics, and that her fingers had been found preferable to the post-office for the delivery of certain implicative missives written in the prose or verse of irresistible emotion. Even without her basket, any one, from her hands, gait, and language, would recognize a hairdresser of the élite, while in New Orleans, in the Quartier Créole, there was hardly a man, woman, or child who did not call her by name: Marcélite Gaulois.

She lifted a palmetto fan, bound and tied to her waist with black ribbon, and holding it up between her and observation, betook herself in quiet and privacy to slumber,—a nap of delicious relaxation, so gentle that the bite of a mosquito, the crawling of an ant, an incipient ​snore, startled it; but so tenacious that the uplifted hand and dropping head resettled themselves without breaking its delicate filaments. A little, thin, rusty-voiced bell had now one of its three important daily announcements to make,—Recreation Time. From all over the city came corroborative evidence of the fact, by chronometers, some a little ahead and some a little behind meridian. This want of unanimity proclaimed the notorious and distressing difference of two minutes and a half between Church and State,—a difference in which the smallest watch in the school could not avoid participation.

It was the same little girl with the "Passe-Partout" who published the truce to study. The rope of the bell and she were both too short, so she had to stand on tiptoe and jerk it in little quick jumps. The operation involved a terrible disproportion between labor invested and net profit, for which nothing but the gladsome nature of her mission, and the honorary distinction implied in it, could have compensated her. A moment of stillness, during which both the rope and the little girl quieted them​selves, and then, a shower of little girls fell into the yard,—all of them little girls, but not all of them children, and as much alike as drops of different colored water.

They were all dressed in calico dresses made in the same way, with very full, short skirts, and very full, short waists, fastened, matron-fashion, in front. They all wore very tight, glossy, fresh, black French kid boots, with tassels or bows hanging from the top. With big sun-bonnets, or heavily veiled hats on their heads, thick gloves on their hands, and handkerchiefs around their necks, they were walking buttresses against the ardent sun. They held their lunch baskets like bouquets, and their heads as if they wore crowns. They carried on conversations in sweet, low voices, with interrupting embraces and apostrophic tendernesses:—

"Chère!"

"Chérie!"

"Ange!"

"M'amie!"

They had a grace of ease, the gift of generations; a self-composure and polish, dating from ​the cradle. Of course they did not romp, but promenaded arm in arm, measuring their steps with dainty particularity; moving the whole body with rhythmic regularity, displaying and acquiring at the same time a sinuosity of motion. Their hair hung in plaits so far below their waists that it threatened to grow into a measuring-tape for their whole length.

The angular Jeanne appeared, holding a waiter at arm's-length over her head. She had no need to cluck or chirp; the sound of her sabots was enough to call around her in an instant an eager brood of hungry boarders, jumping and snatching for their portion of lunch. There was the usual moment of obstruction over the point of etiquette whether they should take their own piece of bread and butter or receive it from Jeanne. The same useless sacrifice of a test slice was made, and the obstinate servant had to give in with the same consolatory satisfaction of having been again true to her fixed principle to make herself as disagreeable as possible under any circumstances that the day might bring forth. There is great field for choice, even in slices of bread and butter. The ​ends, or knots of the loaves, split longitudinally, offer much more appetizing combinations of crust and crumb than the round inside slices. Knots, however, were the prerogative of the big girls; inside slices the grievance of the little ones. To-day, "comme toujours," as they said, with a shrug, the primary classes had to take what was left them. But their appetite was so good, they ate their homely fare with so much gusto, that the day scholars looked on enviously and despised their own epicurean baskets, which failed to elicit such expectations and never afforded them similar gratification.

À la fin des fins! The door which concealed the terrible struggle going on with the history of France was opened. All rushed forward for news, with eager sympathy. It was a dejected little army that filed out after so protracted a combat, with traces of tears in their eyes and all over their flushed cheeks. Tired and nervous, not one would confess to a ray of hope. Certainty of defeat had succeeded to certainty of failure. The history of France, with its disastrous appliances of chronology, dynasties, conquests, and revolutions, had gained, ac​cording to them, a complete and unquestioned victory.

"Marie Modeste, look at Marcélite," said one of the girls, hailing the diversion.

The bonne was coming out of the garden-house with her basket. One of the graduating class rushed forward to meet her, and both together disappeared in the direction of the dormitory stairway. "It is her toilette for the exhibition," was whispered, and curious eyes followed the basket invested with such preternatural importance. "They say le vieux is going to give her a superb one."

The Grand Concert Musicale et Distribution de Prix was to take place the next evening. All parents and friends had, for two weeks, been invited to "assist" by their presence. This annual fête was pre-eminently the fête of St. Denis. It was the goal of the scholastic course, the beginning of vacation, and the set term to the young ladies' aspirations if not ambition. A fair share of books, laurel crowns, in green and gold paper, and a possible real gold medal was with them the end if not the aim of study from the opening of the school ​in September. Personally they could not imagine any state or condition in life when knowledge of French history would be a comfort or cosmography an assistance; but prizes were so many concrete virtues which lasted fresh into grandmotherhood. Noblesse oblige, that the glory of maternal achievements be not dimmed in these very walls where their mothers, little creoles like themselves, strove for laurel crowns culled from the same imperishable tree in Rue Royale.

Marcélite followed Marie through the dormitory, down the little aisle, between the rows of beds with their veils of mosquito netting, until they came to the farthest corner; which, when one turned one's back to the rest of the chamber, had all the seclusion and "sociability" of a private apartment. The furniture, however, did not include chairs, so Marie seated herself on the side of the bed, and, taking off her bonnet, awaited Marcélite's pleasure to initiate her into the delightful mysteries of the basket.

She wondered where Marcélite had picked up the artistic expedient of heightening the ​effect by playing on the feelings of the spectator; and she wondered if carrying that basket up the stairs had really tired those strong shoulders and make her so dreadfully hot; and if it were really necessary that each one of those thousand pins should be quilted into the front of that white kerchief; and if Marcélite had made a vow not to open her mouth until she got out the last pin; and if—

She was naturally nervous and impatient, and twisted and turned ceaselessly on the bed during the ordeal of assumed procrastination. Her black eyes were oversized for her face, oversized and overweighted with expression; and most of the time, as to-day, they were accompanied by half-moon shadows which stretched half-way down her cheek. Over her forehead and temples the hieroglyphic tracery of blue veins might be seen, until it became obscured under the masses of black hair whose heavy plaits burdened the delicate head and strained the slender neck. The exterior of a girl of seventeen! That frail mortal encasement which precocious inner life threatens to rend and destroy. The appealing languor, the ​uncomplaining lassitude, the pathetic apathy, the transparent covering through which is seen the growth of the woman in the body of the child.

Marcélite saw upon the bed the impatient figure of a petulant girl, wild for the sight of her first toilette de bal. There lay on the bed, in reality, a proud, reserved, eager, passionate spirit, looking past toilettes, past graduating, past studies and examinations; looking from the prow of an insignificant vessel into the broad prospect, so near, so touching near, reserved for her, and all girls of seventeen,—that unique realm called "Woman's Kingdom."

Romances and poetry had been kept from her like wine and spices. But the flowers bloomed, and music had chords, and moonlight rays, and were the bars of the school never so strong, and the rules never so rigid, they could not prevent her heart from going out toward the rays, nor from listening to the music, nor from inhaling the breath of the flowers. And what they said is what they always say to the girl of seventeen. It is the love-time of life, when the heart first puts ​forth its flowers; and what boarding-school can frustrate spring? Her mouth, like her eyes, was encircled with a shadow, faint, almost imperceptible, as was the timid suggestion of nascent passion which it gave to the thin, sad lips.

She was four years old when she came to this school; so Marcélite told her, for she could not remember. Now she was seventeen. She looked at the strong, full maturity of Marcélite. Would she, Marie, ever be like that? Had Marcélite ever been like her? At seventeen, did she ever feel this way? This—oh, this longing! Could Marcélite put her finger on the day, as Marie could, when this emotion broke into her heart, that thought into her brain? Did Marcélite know the origin of blushes, the cause of tremors? Did Marcélite ever pray to die to be relieved from vague apprehensions, and then pray to live in the faith of some great unknown but instinctive prophecy?

She forbore to ask. If Marcélite had had a mother!—But did girls even ask their mothers these things? But she had no mother! Good, ​devoted, loyal as she was, Marcélite was not a mother—not her mother. She had stopped at the boundary where the mother ceases to be a physical and becomes a psychical necessity. The child still clung to Marcélite, but the young woman was motherless. She had an uncle, however, who might become a father.

"Là!" Marcélite had exhausted her last devisable subterfuge, and made known her readiness to begin the show.

"Là! mon bébé! là, ma mignonne! what do you think of that?" She turned it around by the belt; it seemed all covered over with bubbles of muslin and frostings of lace.

"Just look at that! Ah ha! I thought you would be astonished! You see that lace? Ça c'est du vrai, no doubt about that,—real Valenciennes. You think I don't know real lace, hein? and mousseline des Indes? You ask Madame Treize—you know what she said? 'Well, Marcélite, that is the prettiest pattern of lace and the finest piece of muslin I almost ever saw.' Madame Treize told me that herself; and it's true, for I know it myself."

​"Madame Treize, Marcélite?"

Madame Treize was the ou ne peut plus of New Orleans for fashion and extravagance.

"Yes, Madame Treize. Who do you think was going to make your dress, hein? Madame N'importe-qui?"

"Marcélite, it must have cost so much!"

"Eh bien, it's all paid for. What have you got to do with that? All you have got to do is to put it on and wear it. Oh, mon bébé! ma petite chérie!"—what tones of love her rich voice could carry,—"if it had cost thousands and thousands of dollars it would not be too fine for you, nor too pretty."

"But, Marcélite, I will be ashamed to wear it; it is too beautiful."

But the eyes sparkled joyfully, and the lips trembled with delightful anticipations.

"Here's the body! You see those bows? That was my taste. I said to myself, 'She must have blue ribbon bows on the shoulder,' and I went back and made Madame Treize put them on. Oh, I know Madame Treize; and Madame Treize, she knows me!"

"And the shoes, Marcélite?"

​Hands and voice fell with utter disgust.

"Now you see, Mamzelle, you always do that. Question, question, question, all the time. Why didn't you wait? Now you have spoiled it all,—all the surprise!"

"Pardon, Marcélite, I did not mean; but I was afraid you had forgotten—"

"Oh, mon bébé! when did Marcélite ever forget anything you wanted?"

Marie blushed with shame at a self-accusation of ingratitude.

"Ma bonne Marcélite! I am so impatient, I cannot help it."

A bundle of shoes was silently placed in her lap.

"White satin boots! Mar-cé-lite! White satin boots for me? Oh, I can't believe it! And I expected black leather!—how shall I ever thank my uncle for them; and all this? How can I ever do it?"

The radiant expression faded away from the nurse's face at these words.

"Oh, but I know it was your idea, Marcélite! My good, kind, dear Marcélite! I know it was all your idea. He never could have thought of all these beautiful things,—a man!"

​She put her arms around the bonne's neck and laid her head on the broad, soft shoulder, as she used to do when she was a little, little girl.

"Ah, Marcélite, my uncle can never be as kind to me as you are. He gives me the money, but you—"

She felt the hands patting her back and the lips pressed against her hair; but she could not see the desperate, passionate, caressing eyes, "savoring" her like the lips of an eager dog.

"Let us try them on," said Marcélite.

She knelt on the floor and stripped off one shoe and stocking. When the white foot on its fragile ankle lay in her dark palm, her passion broke out afresh. She kissed it over and over again; she nestled it in her bosom; she talked baby-talk to it in creole; she pulled on the fine stocking as if every wrinkle were an offence, and slackness an unpardonable crime. How they both labored over the boot,—straining, pulling, smoothing the satin, coaxing, urging, drawing the foot! What patience on both sides! What precaution that the glossy white should meet with no defilement! Finally the button-holes ​were caught over the buttons, and to all intents and purposes a beautiful, symmetrical, solidified satin foot lay before them.

"Too tight?"

It might have been a question, but it sounded more like the laying of a doubt.

"Too tight! just look!"

The little toes made a vigorous demonstration of contempt and denial.

"I can change them if they are."

"Do you want me to wear sabots like Jeanne?"

"They will stretch, anyhow."

Marcélite preferred yielding to her own rather than to another's conviction, even when they both were identical.

The boots were taken off, rolled in tissue-paper, and put away in the armoire, which was now opened to its fullest extent to receive the dress.

Marie leaned against the pillow of the bed and clasped her hands over her head. She listened dreamily and contentedly to her praises thrown off by Marcélite's fluent tongue. What would the reality be, if the foretaste were so sweet?

"I wonder what he will say, Marcélite?"

​"Qui ça?"

"My uncle. Do you think he will be pleased?"

"What makes you so foolish, bébé?"

"But that's not foolish, Marcélite."

"Hum!"

"Say, Marcélite, do you think he will be satisfied?"

"Satisfied with what?"

"Oh, you know, Marcélite,—satisfied with me."

The head was thrust too far into the armoire for an immediate answer.

"How can I tell, Mamzelle?"

"Mamzelle! Mamzelle! Madame Marcélite!"

"Well then, bébé."

"Anyway, he will come to the concert—Hein, Marcelline?"

"What is it, Zozo?"

"My uncle; he is coming to the concert, isn't he?"

Marcélite shrugged her shoulders; her mouth was filled with pins.

"Ma bonne! do not be so mean; tell me if he is coming, and what he said."

"Poor gentleman! he is so old."

​"Did he tell you that?"

Marie laughed; this was a standing joke between them.

"But, my child, what do you want him to say? You bother me so with your questions, I don't know what I am doing."

"But, Marcélite, it is only natural for me to want him to come to the concert and see me in my pretty dress that he gave me."

"Well, when one is old and sick—"

"Sick! ah, you did not tell me that."

"But I tell it to you all the time!"

"Oh, Marcélite!"

There is no better subject on which to exercise crude eloquence than the delinquencies of laundresses. A heinous infraction had been committed against the integrity of one of Marie's garments, and Marcélite threatened to consume the rest of the day in expressions of disgust and indignation.

"So he is not coming to the concert?" the girl demanded, excitedly.

"Ah! there's the bell; you had better run quick before they send for you."

"No, I am excused until time to practise my ​duet. Marcélite,"—the voice lost its excited tone and became pleading, humble, and timid,—"Marcélite, do you think my uncle will like me?"

"Mon Dieu! yes, yes, yes."

"Mais ne t'impatiente pas, ma bonne, I can't help thinking about it. He has never seen me—since I was a baby, I mean—and I don't recollect him at all, at all. Oh, Marcélite! I have tried so often, so often to recall him, and my maman"—she spoke it as shyly as an infant does the name of God in its first prayer. "If I could only go just one little point farther back, just that little bit"—she measured off a demi-centimetre on her finger—"but impossible. Maybe it will all come back to me when I see him, and the house, and the furniture. Perhaps if I had been allowed to see it only once or twice, I might be able to remember something. It is hard, Marcélite, it is very hard not even to be able to recollect a mother. To-morrow evening!"—she gave a long, long sigh,—"only to-morrow evening more!"

The depravity of the washerwoman must have got beyond even Marcélite's powers of ​description, for she had stopped talking, but held her head inside the shelf.

"One reason I want him to come to the concert is to take me home with him. In the first place, Madame wouldn't let me go unless he came for me; and—and I want the girls to see him; they have teased me so much about him. I believe, Marcélite, that if my graduating were put off one day longer, or if my uncle did not come for me to-morrow evening, I would die. How foolish! Just think of all these years I have been here, summer after summer, the only boarder left during vacation! I didn't seem to mind it then, but now it's all different; everything has become so different this last year."

The tears had been gathering in her eyes for some time, and she had been smearing them with her finger off the side of her face to escape Marcélite's notice; but now they came too fast for that, so she was forced to turn over and hide her face flat in the pillow.

"Crying, mon bébé? What is the matter with you—oh, oh!—you do not feel well! something you do not like about your toilette, hein? ​Tell Marcélite, chérie; tell your bonne. There! there!"

Sobs were added to tears, until she seemed in conflict with a tornado of grief. She pressed her head tighter and tighter against the pillow to stifle the noise, but her narrow, high shoulders shook convulsively, and her feet twisted and turned, one over the other, in uncontrollable agitation. Marcélite stood by her side, a look of keen torture on her emotional face. If the child had only been larger, or stronger! if she did not writhe so helplessly before her! if she had fought less bravely against the rending sobs! Ah! and if the shrouded form of a dead mother had not intervened with outstretched arms and reproachful eyes fixed upon Marcélite. She could hold out no longer, but fell on her knees by the bed, and clasped her arms around the little one to hold her quiet. With her face on the pillow, and her lips close to the red, burning ear, she whispered the soothing tendernesses of a maternal heart. There was a balsam which never failed: a story she had often told, but which repetition had only made more difficult, more hesitating; to-day the ​words fell like lead,—about the father Marie had never seen, the mother she had never known, the home-shelter of her baby years, beyond even her imagination, and the guardian uncle, the question of whose coming to the concert had so excited her.

"Is Marie Modeste here?" asked a little voice through a far-off door.

Marie started. "Yes." Her voice was rough, weak, and trembling.

"They want you for the 'Cheval de Bronze.'"

She sat up and let the nurse smooth her hair and bathe her face, keeping her lips tightly shut over the ebbing sobs.

"Thank you, Marcélite. Thank you for everything—for my beautiful dress, and my shoes; and thank my uncle too, and try and persuade him to come to-morrow evening, won't you, Marcélite? Do not tell him about my crying, though. Oh, I want to go home so much, and to see him! You know if you want you can get him to come. Won't you promise me, ma bonne?"

"You know I would kill myself for you, mon bébé."

​The good little Paula was waiting outside the door. Uncontrollable tears are too common in a girls' school to attract attention. They were crises which, though not to be explained, even the smallest girl understood intuitively, and for which were tacitly employed convenient conventional excuses.

"The concours was very difficult, chère?"

"Yes, very difficult."

"And Monsieur Mignot is so trying. I think he gets more exigeant every day."

And they kissed each other sympathetically on the stairway.

"Grand Dieu Seigneur!" groaned Marcélite, when Marie had left the room, holding her head with both hands. "What am I going to do now! I believe I am turning fool!"

Life was changing from a brilliant path in white muslin dresses to a hideous dilemma; and for once she did not know what to do. A travail seemed going on in her brain; her natural strength and audacity had completely oozed away from her. She began a vehement monologue in creole, reiterating assertions and explanations, stopping short always at one point.

​"My God! I never thought of that."

She looked towards the ceiling with violent reproaches to the bon Dieu, doux Jésus, and Sainte-Vierge. Why had they left her alone to manage this? They knew she was a "nigger, nigger, nigger" (trying to humiliate and insult herself). Why hadn't they done something? Why couldn't they do something now? And all she had done for them, and that ungrateful patron saint, the recipient of so much attention, so many favors! She never had asked them anything for herself, thank God! Marcélite could always manage her own affairs without the assistance of any one. But her bébé, for whom she had distinctly prayed and burned candles, and confessed and communed, and worked, and toiled, and kept straight! She clasped her flesh in her sharp, long nails, and the pain did her good. She could have dashed her head against the wall. She would gladly have stripped her shoulders to the lash, if—if it would do any good. She would kill herself, for the matter of that, but what would that prevent or remedy? The church was not far off, perhaps a miracle! But what miracle can avert the ​inevitable? She shoved her empty basket under the bed and went out upon the covered gallery that spanned the garden and led to Madame Lareveillère's bedchamber.

The quadrangle lay half overspread now by shadow. The gay insouciante flowers moved gently in an incipient breeze, the umbrella top of the little summer-house warded the rays from the benches beneath, and kept them cool and pleasant. Her own face was not more familiar, more matter-of-fact to Marcélite, and yet she saw in the yard things she had never remarked before. There was a different expression to it all. Flowers, summer-house, even the gray flags, depressed her and made her sad; as if they, or she, were going to die soon. She caught the balustrade in her hand, but it was not vertigo. What was it, then, that made her feel so unnatural and everything so portentous? This morning, life was so comfortable and small, everything just under her hand. She was mistress of every day, and night was the truce, if not the end of all trouble. But to-day had united itself to past and future in such a way that night was but a transparent veil that separated but could not ​isolate them one from the other. Time was in revolt against her; her own powers betrayed her; flight was impossible, resistance useless, death, even, futile.

What was the matter with her head, anyhow? She must be voudoued. If she could only feel as she did this morning! The slatternly Jeanne shuffled underneath on her way to the bell, an augur of ill-omen. She would go and see Madame Lareveillère.

Madame (as she was commonly called) sat at her secrétaire writing. Her pen, fine pointed as a cambric needle, scratched under her fingers as if it worked on steel instead of paper. She was very busy, transferring the names from a list before her into the gilt-edged prize-books piled up in glowing heaps all around her. A strict observer would have noticed many inaccuracies which would have invalidated any claim to correctness on the part of her copy. There were not only liberties taken with the prize itself, but entire names were involved in transactions which the original list by no means warranted. These inaccuracies always occurred after consultation of another list kept in Madame's little drawer,​—a list whose columns carried decimals instead of good and bad marks for lessons. A single ray of light, filtered through various intermedial shades and curtains, had been manoeuvred so as to fall on the small desk at a safe distance from Madame's sensitive complexion. At difficult calculations, she would screw up her eyes and peer at both lists brought into the focus of illumination, then would sink back into obscurity for advisory reflection.

There are so many calculations to be made, so many fine distinctions drawn, in a distribution of prizes! No one but a schoolmistress knows the mental effort requisite for the working out of an equation which sets good and bad scholars against good and bad pay. Why could not the rich girls study more, or the poor less? Oh, the simple beauty of strict, injudicious impartiality! Cursed be the inventor or originator of these annual rehearsals, where every one was rewarded except the rewarder!

On occasions like these any interruption is a deliverance; Madame heard with glad alacrity a knock at the door.

"Ah! c'est toi, Marcélite!"

​Marcélite represented another matter of yearly consideration, another question of paramount importance, a suspensive judgment, involving, however, Madame alone. With the assistance of the hairdresser, many years ago (the date is not essential, and women are sensitive about such things), the principal of the Institut St. Denis had engaged in one of those struggles against Time to which pretty unmarried women seem pledged during a certain period, the fighting age, of their lives. It was purely a defensive struggle on her part, and consisted in a protest against that uglifying process by which women are coaxed into resignation to old age and death. So far, she had maintained her own perfectly; and Time, for all the progress he had made in the sweet, delicate face of Eugénie Lareveillère, might just as well have been tied for ten years past to one of the four posts of the bedstead. The musical concert and distribution of prizes and its consequent indispensable new toilette furnished an excellent date for an annual review and consultation, when old measures were discussed, new ones adopted, and the next campaign planned. Madame, however, did not feel ​this year the same buoyant courage, the same irrepressible audacity as heretofore. In fact, there was a vague suspicion in her breast, hitherto unacknowledged, that in spite of facial evidence she herself, dans son intérieur, was beginning to grow the least, little, tiny bit old. She felt like capitulating with the enemy, and had almost made up her mind to surrender—her hair. "L'incertitude est le pire des maux, jusqu'au moment où la réalité nous fait regretter l'incertitude." Should the conditions be proven too hard for mortal beauty, she could at least revolt again. Thank heaven! over there in Paris worked devoted emissaries for women, and the last word had not yet been said by the artists of hair-dyes and cosmetics.

"Eh, bien, qu'en dis-tu, Marcélite?"

The artistically arranged head, with its curls and puffs and frisettes clustered like brown silken flowers above the fair skin, was directly in the line of Marcélite's vision. Who would have suspected that these were but transplanted exotics from the hot head of foreign youth? that under their adorning luxuriance lay, fastened by inflexible hairpins, the legitimate but deposed ​possessors of this crown? But they were old, gray, almost white, and Madame was suggesting for them a temporary and empirical resurrection. That head which daily for years she had moulded according to her comprehension of fashion; that inert little ball for which Marcélite, in her superb physical strength, had almost felt a contempt,—she looked at it now, and, like the flowers in the garden, it was changed to her, was pregnant with subtle, portentous meaning. She was beginning faintly to suspect the truth. All this buzzing, whirling, thought, fear, calculation, retrospection, and prevision, which had come into her great, big, strong head only an hour ago, had been going on in this little, fragile, delicate handful of skull for years, ever since it was born. She saw it now, she knew it,—the difference between Madame's head and hers, between a consciousness limited by eternity and one limited by a nightly sleep, between an intelligence looking into immortality and one looking into the eyes of a confessor.

The room would have been quite dark but for that one useful ray which, after enlightening the path of distributive justice for Madame, fell ​on and was absorbed by a picture opposite. Out of the obscurity arose one by one the features of the bedchamber,—the supreme model of bedchambers in the opinion of the impressionable loyalists of St. Denis; a bedchamber, the luxury of which could never be surpassed, the mysterious solemnity never equalled; a bedchamber, in fact, created to satisfy the majestic coquettishness of the autocratic superior of an aristocratic school for girls.

Indistinct, undefined, vague fragments of color struggled up through the floor of sombre carpet. The windows, made to exclude the light, were draped with mantles of lace and silk hanging from gigantic, massive, convoluted gilt cornices. The grand four-posted mahogany bedstead, with its rigging of mosquito-netting and cords and tassels, looked like some huge vessel that by accident had lodged in this small harbor. So stupendous, so immeasurable, so gloomily, grandly, majestically imposing, this dark, crimson-housed bedstead looked in the small, dimly-lighted room, that little girls sent on occasional messages to Madame felt a tremor of awe at the sight of it, and understood instinctively, without ​need of explanation or elucidation, that here, indeed, was one of those lits de justice which caused such dismay in the pages of their French history. The bureau with its laces and ribbons, its cushions, essence-bottles, jewel-cases, vide-poches, and little galleried étagères full of gay reflections for the mirror underneath, was as coquettish, as volatile, as petulant an article of furniture as was ever condemned to bedchamber companionship with a lit de justice.

The prie-dieu in front of the altar granted the occupant an encouraging view into all the visible appliances for stimulating faith in the things not seen. The willing heart, as by an ascending scale, rose insensibly from the humanity to the divinity of sacrifice and suffering: reliquaries, triply consecrated beads, palms, and crucifixes, pictures of sainted martyrs and martyrsessess (who contradicted the fallacious coincidence of homeliness and virtue), statuettes, prayer-books, pendent flasks of holy water, and an ecclesiastical flask of still holier liquid, impregnated with miraculous promises. A taper, in a red globe, burned with subdued effulgence below it all. Ghastly white and black bead wreaths, hanging ​under faded miniatures, set the bounds of mural consecration, and kept Madame mournfully reminded of her deceased husband and mother.

Marcélite stood, like a threatening idol, in the centre of the room, her eyes glaring through the gloom with fierce doggedness. Her feet were planted firmly apart, her hands doubled up on her high, round, massive hips. The cords of her short, thick neck stood out, and her broad, flexible nostrils rose and fell with passion. Her untamed African blood was in rebellion against the religion and civilization whose symbols were all about her in that dim and stately chamber,—a civilization which had tampered with her brain, had enervated her will, and had duped her with false assurances of her own capability.

She felt a crushing desire to tear down, split, destroy, to surround herself with ruins, to annihilate the miserable little weak devices of intelligence, and reassert the proud supremacy of brute force. She longed to humiliate that meek Virgin Mother; and if the form on the crucifix had been alive she would have gloated over his blood and agony. She thirsted to get her thin, ​taper, steel-like fingers but once more on that pretty, shapely, glossy head.

"Pauvre petite chatte! I shall miss her very much; you know, Marcélite, it seems only a year or two since you brought her here a little baby, and now she is a young lady of seventeen. Thirteen years ago! What a chétive little thing she was! You were as much of a scholar here then as she; you had to stay with her so much. You have been a faithful nurse to her, ma bonne femme. A mother could not have been more devoted, and very few would have done all you have for that child. Ah! that's a thing money can never pay for,—love. I hope Marie will always remember what you have been to her, and repay it with affection. But she will; she is a good girl,—a good, good girl, pauvre petite! It is Monsieur Motte, though, who should give you a handsome present, something really valuable. I would like to know what he would have done for a bonne for his niece without you. You remember that summer when she had the fever? Eh, well, she would have died but for you; I shall never forget her sad little face and her big black ​eyes. You know, her mother must see all that; I can never believe, Marcélite, that a mother cannot come back, sometimes, to see her children, particularly a little girl—"

Marcélite listened with head averted. Her hands had fallen from her hips, her mouth slowly relaxed, and the lips opened moist and red. As if drawn by strains of music, she came nearer and nearer Madame's chair.

"She was always such a quiet little thing, ma foi!" Madame's reminiscence was an endless chain. "I used to forget her entirely; but now she is going away, I know I shall miss her, yes, very much. I hope the world will be kind to her. She will be handsome, too, some day, when she does not have to study so hard, and can enjoy the diversions of society a little. By the time she is twenty you will see she will be une belle femme. Ah, Monsieur Motte, you will be satisfied, allez!"

The little pen commenced scratching away again, and this time registered the deed of prize of French history to l'élève, Marie Modeste Motte.

Marcélite, with wistful eyes, listened for some ​more of the soft, sweet tones. She made the movement of swallowing two or three times to get the swelling and stiffness out of her throat.

"Mamzelle Marie, too, she will be sorry to leave Madame." Her voice was thick and unsteady.

"Oh no, girls are always glad to quit school. Very naturally, too. When one is young, one does not like to stay indoors and study, when there is so much outside,—dancing, music, beaux." A sigh interrupted Madame. "It is all past for me now, but I can recollect how I felt when I was seventeen. Apropos, Marcélite, did you give my invitation to Monsieur Motte?"

"Yes, Madame."

The answer came after an interval of hesitation. At one moment Marcélite's eyes flashed as if she would brave all results and refuse to respond.

"And what did he say?"

"He—he sent his compliments to Madame."

Madame looked around to see what the good-natured coiffeuse meant by such sullen tones. "Yes; but did he say he would come to ​the concert? I wanted particularly to know that."

"He is so old, Madame."

"Là, là, the same old excuse! I am so tired of it."

"But when one is old, Madame."

"Ah, bah! I do not believe he is too old for his own pleasure. I know men; old age is a very convenient excuse at times."

Marcélite appeared to have no reply at the end of her ready tongue.

"But this time he must come, par exemple! even if he is so old. I think he might subject himself to some little inconvenience and trouble to see his niece graduate. He has not put himself out much about her for twelve or thirteen years."

"God knows! Madame."

"God knows? Mais, Marcélite, how silly you talk! Don't you see that Monsieur Motte must come to-morrow night, at least to take Marie home? God does know, and so should he."

Marcélite spoke as if galvanized by an inspiration. "Perhaps he wants Miss Marie to stay another year, Madame; you see, she is so ​young, and—and—there is so much to learn, enfin."

"He wants that, does he? he wants that! Ah, l'égoïste! That is like a man; oh, I know them, like a b c. No, if Marie is not too young to graduate, she is not too young to leave school; and besides, if she had not learned everything, how could she graduate? There is an end to learning, enfin. You tell Monsieur Motte that. But no, tiens, it is better I shall write it."

She seized some note-paper and put her message in writing with the customary epistolary embellishment of phrase at the expense of sincerity and truth.

"I hope he will be kind to her, and look out for a good parti for her. Of course she will have a dot,—his only relative. Did you not tell me she was his only relative, Marčélite? He has absolutely no one else besides her?"

"No, Madame."

"Well, then, she will get it all when he dies, unless"—with a shrug—"I do not know; one is never sure about men."

Madame bethought herself of the time, and looked at her watch just as Marčélite, by a sud​den resolution, made a desperate movement towards her.

"Nearly three o'clock! I must go and make my tour. Au revoir, ma bonne. Be sure and give Monsieur Motte my note, and come early to-morrow morning; and do not forget to think about what I told you, you know." She tapped her head significantly and left the room. On the short passage to the Salle des Classes she put off her natural manner, and assumed the conventional disguise supposed to be more fitting her high position. When the door opened and the little girls started up to drop their courtesies, and their "Je vous salue, Madame," her stately tread and severe mien could hardly have been distinguished from those of her predecessor, the aristocratic old refugée from the Island of St. Domingo.

After dinner, when the shadow had entirely enveloped the yard, and the fragrance of the oleander and jasmine had fastened itself on the air, the girls were allowed their evening recreation. Relieved from the more or less restraining presence of the day scholars, the boarders promenaded in the cordial intimacy of ​home life. The laughter of the children in the street, the music of the organs (there seemed to be one at each corner), the gay jingle of the ice-cream cart came over the wall to them. To-morrow there would be no wall between them and the world,—the great, gay, big world of New Orleans. The thought was too exhilarating for their fresh blood; they danced to the music and laughed to the laughter outside, they kissed their hands to invisible friends, and made révérences and complimentary speeches to the crescent moon up in the blue sky. The future would soon be here now! only to-morrow evening,—the future, which held for them a début in society, a box at the opera, beautiful toilettes, balls, dancing, music. No more study, routine, examinations, scoldings, punishments, and breadand-butter lunches. The very idea of it was intoxicating, and each girl felt guilty of a maudlin effusion of sentiment and nonsense to her best friend. A "best friend" is an institution in every girls' school. Every class-book when opened would direct you to a certain page on which was to be found the name of "celle que j'aime," or "celle que j'adore," or "mon amie ​chérie," or "ma toute devouée." The only source of scandal that flourished in their secluded circle was the formation or disrupting of these ties through the intermeddling officiousness of "rapporteuses" and "mauvaises langues." But the approaching dissolution of all ties drew them together, each one to each one's best friend, and, as usual, the vows exchanged became more fervent and passionate just before breaking. Marcélite was outside, leaning against the wall. Close over her head hung the pink oleanders through their green leaves, and on their strong perfume was wafted the merry voices of the boarders. How glad, how happy they were! She could hear her bébé above the others, and, strange to say, her laughter made her sadder even than her tears to-day. She lifted up her black, passionate face. If she could only see them! if she could look over the wall and catch one more glimpse of the girl whom as a baby she had held to her bosom, and whom she had carried in her arms through that gate when . . . "Ah, mon Dieu, ayez pitié de moi, pauvre négresse!"

"Dansez, chantez," they were singing and ​making a ronde. She heard some one at the gate,—Jeanne, probably, coming out. She turned her back quickly and walked away around the corner, making the tour of the square. When she turned the corner coming the other way, she was quite out of breath with walking so fast; as there was no one in the street, she increased her pace to a run, and reached the oleanders panting; but all was now still inside; the boarders had been summoned to supper. She stretched her arms out and leaned her head against the rough bricks. She turned and looked at the sky; her eyes gleamed through her tears like the hot stars through the blue air. She moved away a few steps, hesitated, returned; then went again, only to be drawn back under the oleanders. She sat down close to the wall, threw her apron over her head, and drew her feet up out of the way of the passers-by.

Daylight found her still there. When the early carts began to pass, laden for the neighboring market, she rose stiff and sore and walked in the direction of the river, where the morning breeze was just beginning to ripple the waters and drive away the fog.

​The great day of the concert began very early. Fête days always get up before the sun. The boarders in the dormitory raised their heads from their pillows and listened to the pushing and dragging going on underneath them: the men arranging the chairs for that night. Their heads, done up in white paper papillotes, looked like so many blanched porcupines. This was one of the first of those innumerable degrees of preparation by which they expected to transform themselves into houris of loveliness by concert-time. As there can be no beauty without curls, in a school-girl's opinion, and as a woman's first duty is to be beautiful, they felt called upon to roll lock after lock of their hair around white paper, which was then twisted to the utmost limit of endurance; and on occasions when tightness of curl is regulated by tightness of twist, endurance may safely be said to have no limits. Fear of the unavoidable ensuing disappointment forced Marie to renounce, reluctantly, beauty in favor of discretion. When her companions saw the omission, they screamed in dismay.

"Oh, Marie!"

​"Ah! Why didn't you put your hair up?"

"What a pity!"

"And you won't have curls for this evening?"

"Do it now!"

"Mais je t'assure, it will curl almost as tight."

"Let me do it for you, chère."

"No, me."

"But it is better to have it a little frisé, than straight, so."

Marie, from practice accomplished in excuses, persisted that she had a migraine.

"Oh, la migraine, poor thing!"

"I implore you, don't be ill to-night."

"Try my eau de Cologne."

"No, my eau sédative is better."

"Put this on your head."

"Tie this around your neck."

"Carry this in your pocket."

"Some water from Notre Dame de Lourdes."

"Some smelling-salts."

Madame Lareveillère opened her eyes that morning as from an unsuccessful experiment. She cared little about sleep as a restorative, ​but it was invaluable to her in this emergency as a cosmetic.

Jeanne brought in her morning cup of coffee, with the news that the men had almost finished in the Salle de Concert.

"C'est bon; tell Marcélite to come as soon as she is ready."

The eyes closed again on the pillow in expectation of speedy interruption. But sleep, the coquette, courted and coaxed in vain all night, came now with blandishment, lullaby, and soft caress, and fastened the already heavy lids down over the brown eyes, and carried the occupant of the big bed away out on pretty dreams of youth and pleasure; away, beyond all distractions, noises, interruptions; beyond the reach of matutinal habits, duties, engagements, rehearsals, prizes; beyond even the practising of the "Cheval de Bronze" on four pianos just underneath her. She slept as people sleep only on the field of battle or amid the ruins of broken promises; and thanks to her exalted position, she slept undisturbed.

"Mais, come in donc, Marcélite!" she exclaimed, as a perseverant knocking at the door ​for the past five minutes had the effect of balancing her in a state of uncertain wakefulness. "You are a little early this morning, it seems."

She rubbed her hands very softly over her still-closed eyes; that last dream was so sweet, so clinging, what a pity to open them!

"It is not Marcélite; it is I,—Madame Joubert."

"You! Madame Joubert!"

The excellent, punctilious, cold, austere, inflexible French teacher by her bedside!

"I thought it was Marcélite."

She still was hardly awake.

"No, it is I."

"But what is the matter, Madame Joubert?"

"It is twelve o'clock, Madame."

"Twelve o'clock! Impossible!"

"You hear it ringing, Madame."

"But where is Marcélite?"

"Marcélite did not come this morning."

"Marcélite did not come this morning!"

She was again going to say "Impossible!" but she perceived Madame Joubert's head, and was silent.

​Instead of her characteristic, formal, but conventionally fashionable coiffure, Madame Joubert had returned to, or assumed, that most primitive and innocent way of combing her hair, called la sauvagesse. Unrelieved by the soft perspective of Marcélite's handiwork, her plain, prominent features stood out with the savage boldness of rocks on a shrubless beach. "How frightfully ugly!" thought Madame Lareveillère.

"Marcélite did not come this morning? Why?"

"How should I know, Madame?"

"She must be ill; send Jeanne to see."

"I did that, Madame, five hours ago; she was not in her room."

"But what can have become of her?"

Madame Joubert had early in life eliminated the consideration of supposititious cases from the catalogue of her salaried duties; but she answered gratuitously,—

"I cannot imagine, Madame."

"But I must have some one to comb my hair."

"The music-teacher is waiting for you. The ​French professor says he will be here again in a half-hour; he has been here twice already. Madame Criard says that it is indispensable for her to consult you about the choruses."

"Mais, mon Dieu! Madame Joubert, I must have a hairdresser!"

Madame Joubert waived all participation in this responsibility by continuing her communication.

"The girls are all very tired; they say they will be worn out by to-night if they are kept much longer. They have been up ever since six o'clock."

"I know, I know, Madame Joubert; it was an accident. I also was awake at six o'clock. J'ai fait la nuit blanche. Then I fell asleep again. Ah! that miserable Marcélite! I beg of you, tell Jeanne to go for some one, no matter whom—Henriette, Julie, Artémise. I shall be ready in a moment."

In a surprisingly short while she was quite ready, all but her hair, and stood in her white muslin peignoir, tied with blue ribbons, before her toilette, waiting impatiently for some one to come to her assistance.

​How terrible it is not to be able to comb one's own hair! Her hands had grown completely unaccustomed to the exercise of the comb and brush.

"Madame," said Jeanne at the door, "I have been everywhere. I cannot find a hairdresser at home; I have left word at several places, and Madame Joubert says they are waiting for you."

What could she do? She looked in the glass at her gray, spare locks; she looked on her toilette at her beautiful brown curls and plaits. "How in the world did Marcélite manage to secure all that on this?"

There was a knock at the door.

"Perhaps that was a hairdresser!" She hastened to unfasten it.

"Madame," said a little girl, trying to speak distinctly, despite a nervous shortness of breath, "Madame Joubert sent me to tell you they were waiting."

"Very well, mon enfant, very well. I am coming."

"I shall be a greater fright than Madame Joubert," she murmured to herself.

​The drops of perspiration disfiguring the clear tissue of the muslin peignoir were the only visible results of her conscientious efforts.

"I will never be able to fix my hair."

There was another knock at the door, another "Madame Joubert vous fait dire," etc.

"Tell Madame Joubert I am coming in a moment."

How impatient Madame Joubert was this morning. Oh for Marcélite!

She knew nothing about hair, that was evident; but she remembered that she knew something about lace. Under the pressure of accelerating summonses from Madame Joubert, she fashioned a fichu, left on a chair from last night, into a very presentable substitute for curls and puffs.

"Mais ce n'est pas mal, en effet," she muttered. Hearing the sound of footsteps again in the corridor, she rushed from the mirror and met the messenger just as her hand was poised to give a knock at the door. The "Sa . . . lu . . . t! mois de va . . . can . . . ces!" and the "Vi . . . er . . . ge, Ma . . . ri . . . e" had been chorused and re-chorused; the "Cheval de Bronze" had been hammered into durable ​perfection; the solos and duos, dialogues and scenes, the salutatory and valedictory had been rehearsed ad nauseam.

Madame finally dismissed the tired actors, with the recommendation to collect all their petites affaires, so that their trunks could be sent away very early the next morning.

"I suppose Marcélite will be sure to come this evening?" she asked Madame Joubert.

"Oh, that is sure, Madame," Madame Joubert replied, as if this were one of the few rules of life without exceptions; and Madame Lareveillère believed her as confidently as if Noël and Chapsal had passed upon her answer, and the Dictionnaire de l'Académie had indorsed it.

The girls scattered themselves all over the school, effacing with cheerful industry every trace of their passage through the desert of education. "Dieu merci! that was all past." Marie had emptied her desk of everything belonging to her except her name, dug out of the black lid with a dull knife. That had to remain, with a good many other Marie Modeste Mottes on the different desks that had harbored her books during her sojourn in the various classes. This ​was all that would be left of her in the rooms where she had passed thirteen years of her life. The vacant teacher's desk, the throne of so many tyrants (the English teachers were all hateful!); the white walls with their ugly protecting dado of black; the rows of pegs, where the hats and cloaks hung; the white marble mantel, with its carving of naked cherubs, which the stove had discreetly clothed in soot,—she could never forget them. Sitting in her future home, the house of her uncle, she knew that these homely objects would come to her memory, as through sunset clouds of rose and gold.

"What will you do when you quit school, Marie?" her companions would ask, after detailing with ostentatious prolixity their own pleasant prospects.

"Ah, you know that depends entirely upon my uncle," she would reply, shrugging her thin shoulders under her calico waist.

This rich old uncle, an obstinate recluse, was the traditional le vieux of the school.

"How is le vieux to-day?" they would call to Marcélite.

​"Give my love to le vieux."

"Dis donc, why doesn't le vieux take Marie away in the summer?"

"Did you see the beautiful étrennes le vieux has sent Marie?"

"They say he has sent her a superb toilette for the exhibition, made at Madame Treize's, and white satin boots."

Her trunk had been brought down with the others, and placed at her bedside. What more credible witness than a coffin or a trunk? It stood there as it might have stood thirteen years ago, when her baby wardrobe was unpacked. Her dear, ugly, little, old trunk! It had belonged to her mother, and bore three faded M's on its leather skin. She leaned her head against the top as she knelt on the floor before it to pack her books. How much that trunk could tell her if it could only speak! If she were as old as that trunk, she would have known a father, a mother, and a home! She wrinkled her forehead in a concentrated effort to think a little farther back; to push her memory just a little,—a little beyond that mist out of which it arose. In vain! The big bell at the ​gate, with its clanging orders, remained the boundary of consciousness.

And Marcélite did not come, not even when the lamps were lighted, to comb their hair, fasten their dresses, and tie their sashes; did not even come at the very end to see how their toilettes became them. The young ladies had waited until the last moment, dressed to the last pin, taken their hair out of the last papillote, and then looked at one another in despair, indignation, and grief.

"Just look at my head, I ask you!"

"But mine is worse than yours."

"I shall never be able to do anything with mine."

"The more I brush, the more like a nègre I look."

"Ah, Marie, how wise you were not to put your hair in papillotes!"

"And all that trouble for nothing, hein!"

"And the pain."

"I didn't sleep a wink last night."

"See how nice Marie looks with her hair smoothly plaited."

"I will never forgive Marcélite."

​"Nor I."

"Nor I."

"Nor I."

Marie's heart sank when she thought how difficult it would be for Marcélite to efface this disappointment from the remembrance of her clients; and she felt guilty, as being in a measure responsible for it all. Marcélite was evidently detained, or prevented from coming, by preparations for Marie's return. Who knows?—perhaps the eccentric old uncle had something to do with it! Madame Joubert positively refused to mitigate the injury or condone the offence by the employment of another hairdresser. As she had commenced, so she closed the day à la sauvagesse; and so she determined to wear her hair to the end of her life, maintaining, logically, that what one hairdresser had done, all were liable to do; life should never serve this disappointment to her a second time: she would employ no more of them.

The being deserted in a critical moment by a trusted servitor, dropped without warning by a confidante, left with an indifference, which amounted to heartlessness, to the prying eyes ​and gossiping tongue of a stranger,—this, not the mere trivial combing, was what isolated and distinguished Madame Lareveillère in her affliction. The question had been lifted beyond material consequences. Morally, it approached tragic seriousness. Marcélite would naturally have suggested, whether she thought so or not, that the color of the new gray moire-antique was a trifle ingrate, and Madame at least might have had the merit of declining propitiatory compromises between it and her complexion. . . . Julie was an idiot, there was no doubt about that; and the length of her tongue was notorious. By to-morrow evening the delicate mysteries of the youthful-looking Madame Lareveillère's toilette would be unveiled to satisfy the sensational cravings of her malicious patronesses.

The young ladies were placed on a high platform of steps, and rose tier above tier like flowers in a horticultural show,—the upper classes at the top and the best-looking girls well in the centre, as if the product of their beauty as well as their study went to the credit of the institute. When anything particular ​arrested their attention they whispered behind their fans, and it was as if a hive of bees had been let loose; when they laughed it was like a cascade rippling from step to step; when they opened their white, blue, and rose-colored fans (school-girls always do the same thing at the same time) and fluttered them, then it was like a cloud of butterflies hovering and coquetting about their own lips.

The Externes were radiant in toilettes unmarred by accident or omission; the flattering compliments of their mirrors at home had turned their heads in the direction of perfect self-content. Resignation was the only equivalent the unfortunate Internes could offer in extenuation of the unfinished appearance of their heads.

"Mais, dis donc, chère, what is the matter with your hair?"

"Marcélite did not come."

"Why, doudouce, how could you allow your hair to be combed that way?"

"Marcélite did not come."

"Chérie, I think your hair is curled a little tight this evening."

​"I should think so; that diable Marcélite did not come."

"Mon Dieu, look at Madame Joubert à la sauvagesse!"

"And Madame à la grand maman!"

"Marcélite did not come, you see."

Not only was the room filled, but an eager audience crowded the yard and peeped in through the windows. The stairways, of course, were filled with the colored servants, an enthusiastic, irrepressible claque. When it was all over, and the last bis and encore had subsided, row after row of girls was gleaned by the parents, proud possessors of such shawlfuls of beauty, talent, and prizes. Marie's class, the last to leave, were picked off one by one. She helped the others to put on their wraps, gather up their prizes, and kissed one after another good-by.

Each man that came up was, by a glance, measured and compared with her imaginary standard. "He is too young." "He is too fat." "I hope he is not that cross-looking one." "Maybe it is he." "What a funny little one that is!" "Ah, he is very nice-look​ing!" "Is it he?" "No, he is Corinne's father." "I feel sure he is that ugly, disagreeable one." "Ah, here he is at last! at last!" "No; he only came to say good-night to Madame." "He is afraid of the crowd." "He is waiting outside." "He is at the gate in a carriage." "After all, he has only sent Marcélite." "I saw her here on the steps a while ago." She looked at the steps, they were deserted. There was but one person left in the room besides herself; Madame and her suite had gone to partake of their yearly exhibitional refreshments,—lemonade and masse-pain, served in the little parlor. Her uncle must be that man. The person walked out after finding a fan he had returned to seek.

She remained standing so by the piano a long while, her gold crown on her head, her prizes in her arms, and a light shawl she had thoughtfully provided to wear home. Home! She looked all around very slowly once more. She heard Jeanne crossing the yard, but before the servant could enter the door, the white muslin dress, blue sash, and satin boots had bounded into the darkness of the stairway. The white-​veiled beds which the night before had nestled the gay papillotted heads were deserted and silent in the darkness. What a shelter the darkness was! She caught hold of the bedpost, not thinking, but feeling. Then Madame Joubert came tripping across the gallery with a candle, on her way to bed. The prizes and shawl dropped to the floor, and Marie crouched down close behind the bar. "Oh, God," she prayed, "keep her from seeing me!" The teacher after a pause of reflection passed on to her room; the child on the floor gave herself up to the full grief of a disappointment which was not childish in its bitterness. The events of the evening kept slipping away from her while the contents of her previous life were poured out with never-ending detail, and as they lay there, before and all around her, she saw for the first time how bare, how denuded, of pleasure and comfort it had been. What had her weak little body not endured in patient ignorance? But the others were not ignorant,—the teachers, Marcélite, her uncle! How had they imposed upon the orphan in their hands! She saw it now, and she felt a woman's indigna​tion and pity over it. The maternal instinct in her bosom was roused by the contemplation of her own infancy. "Marcélite! Marcélite!" she called out, "how could you? for you knew, you knew it all!" The thought of a mother compelled to leave her baby on such an earth, the betrayal of the confidence of her own mother by her uncle, drew the first tears from her eyes. She leaned her head against the side of her bed and wept, not for herself, but for all women and all orphans. Her hand fell on the lace of her dress, and she could not recall at first what it was. She bounded up, and with eager, trembling fingers tearing open the fastenings, she threw the grotesque masquerade, boots and all, far from her on the floor, and stood clasping her naked arms over her panting breast; she had forgotten the gilt wreath on her head. "If she could die then and there! that would hurt her uncle who cared so little for her, Marcélite who had deserted her!" Living she had no one, but dead, she felt she had a mother. Before getting into bed, she mechanically fell on her knees, and her lips repeated the formula of a prayer, an uncorrected, rude tradition of her ​baby days, belonging to the other side of her memory. It consisted of one simple petition for her own welfare, but the blessings of peace, prosperity, and eternal salvation of her uncle and Marcélite were insisted upon with pious determination.

"I know I shall not sleep, I cannot sleep." Even with the words she sank into the oblivion of tired nature at seventeen years; an oblivion which blotted out everything,—toilette, prizes scattered on the floor, graduation, disappointment, and discomfort from the gilt-paper crown still encircling her black plaits.

"Has Marcélite come?" demanded Madame, before she tasted her coffee.

"Not yet, Madame."

"I wonder what has become of her?"

Jeanne sniffed a volume of unspeakable probabilities.

"Well, then, I will not have that sotte Julie; tell her so when she comes. I would rather dress myself."

"Will Madame take her breakfast alone, or with Madame Joubert?"

​The pleasure of vacation was tempered by the companionship of Madame Joubert at her daily meals,—a presence imposed by that stern tyrant, common courtesy.

"Not to-day, Jeanne; tell Madame Joubert I have la migraine. I shall eat breakfast alone."

"And Mamzelle Marie Modeste?"

"Marie Modeste!"

"Yes, Madame; where must she take her breakfast?"

The Gasconne's eyes flamed suddenly from under her red lashes and her voice ventured on its normal loud tones in these sacred precincts.

"It's a shame of that negress! She ought to be punished well for it, too, ha! Not to come for that poor young lady last night; to leave her in that big dormitory all by herself; and all the other young ladies to go home and have their pleasure, and she all by herself, just because she is an orphan. You think she doesn't feel that, hein? If I had known it I would have helped her undress, and stayed with her, too; I would have slept on the floor,—a delicate little nervous thing like that; and a great, big, fat, lazy, good-for-nothing quadroon like Mar​célite. Mais c'est infâme! It is enough to give her des crises. Oh, I would not have done that! tenez, not to go back to France would I have done that. And when I got up this morning, and saw her sitting in the arbor, so pale, I was frightened myself—I—"

"What is all this you are telling me? Jeanne, Jeanne, go immediately; run, I tell you—run and fetch that poor child here. Ah, mon Dieu! egoist that I am to forget her! Pauvre petite chatte! What must she think of me?"

She jumped out of bed, threw on a wrapper, and waited at the door, peeping out.

"Ma fille; I did not know—Jeanne has just told me."

The pale little figure made an effort to answer with the old pride and indifference.

"It seems my uncle—"

"Mais qu'est-ce que c'est donc, mon enfant? Do not cry so! What is one night more in your old school? It is all my fault; the idea that I should forget you,—leave you all alone while we were enjoying our lemonade and masse-pain! But why did you not come to me? Oh! oh! if you cry so, I shall think you are sorry not to ​leave me; besides, it will spoil your pretty eyes."

"If Marcélite had only come—"

"Ah, my dear! do not speak of her! do not mention her name to me. We are quittes from this day; you hear me? We are quittes. But Marie, my child, you will make yourself ill if you cry so. Really, you must try and compose yourself. What is it that troubles you so? Come here, come sit by me; let me confess you. I shall play that I am your maman. There, there, put your head here, my bébé, so. Oh, I know how you feel. I have known what disappointment was; but enfin, my child, that will all pass; and one day, when you are old and gray-headed like me, you will laugh well over it."

The tender words, the caresses, the enfolding arms, the tears that she saw standing in the august schoolmistress's eyes, the sympathetic movement of the soft, warm bosom,—her idea of a mother was not a vain imagining. This was it; this was what she had longed for all her life. And she did confess to her,—confessed it all, from the first childish trouble to the last disappointment. Oh, the delicious relief of ​complete, entire confession to a sympathetic ear!

The noble heart of Madame, which had frittered itself away over puny distributions of prizes and deceiving cosmetics, beat young, fresh, and impulsive as in the days when the gray hairs were chatains clair, and the cheeks bloomed natural roses. Tears fell from her eyes on the little black head lying so truthful, so confiding on her bosom. Grand Dieu! and they had been living thirteen years under the same roof,—the poor, insignificant, abandoned, suffering little Marie, and the gay, beautiful, rich, envied Madame Lareveillère! This was their first moment of confidence. Would God ever forgive her? Could she ever forgive herself? How good it feels to have a child in your arms! so. She went to the stand by her bed and filled a small gilded glass with eau des carmes and water.

"There, drink that, my child; it will compose you. I must make my toilette; it is breakfast-time. You see, ma fille, this is a lesson. You must not expect too much of the men; they are not like us. Oh, I know them well. They are all égoïstes. They take a great deal of trouble ​for you when you do not want it, if it suits them; and then they refuse to raise their little finger for you, though you get down on your knees to them. Now, there's your uncle. You see he has sent you to the best and most expensive school in the city, and he has dressed you well,—oh, yes, very well; look at your toilette last night! real lace; I remarked it. Yet he would not come for you and take you home, and spare you this disappointment. I wrote him a note myself and sent it by Marcélite."

"He is old, Madame," said Marie, loyally.

"Ah, bah! Plus les hommes sont vieux plus ils sont méchants. Oh, I have done that so often; I said, 'If you do not do this, I will not do that.' And what was the result? They did not do this, and I had tout simplement et bonnement to do that. I write to Monsieur Motte, 'Your niece shall not leave the Pension until you come for her;' he does not come, and I take her to him. Voilà la politique féminine."

After breakfast, when they had dressed, bonneted, and gloved themselves, Madame said,—

"Ma foi! I do not even know where the ​old Diogène lives. Do you remember the name of the street, Marie?"

"No, Madame; somewhere in the Faubourg d'en bas."

"Ah, well! I must look for it here."

She went to the table and quickly turned over the leaves of a ledger.

"Marie Modeste Motte, niece of Monsieur Motte. Mais, tiens, there is no address!"

Marie looked with interest at her name written in red ink.

"No; it is not there."

"Ah, que je suis bête. It is in the other one. This one is only for the last ten years. There, ma fille, get on a chair; can you reach that one? No, not that, the other one. How warm it is! You look it out for me!"

"I do not see any address here either, Madame."

"Impossible! There must be an address there. True, nothing but Marie Modeste Motte, niece of Monsieur Motte, just like the other one. Now, you see, that's Marcélite again; that's all her fault. It was her duty to give that address thirteen years ago. In thirteen ​years she has not had the time to do that!"

They both sat down warm and vexed.

"I shall send Jeanne for her again!"

But Jeanne's zeal had anticipated orders.

"I have already been there, Madame; I beat on her door, I beat on it as hard as I could, and the neighbors opened their windows and said they didn't think she had been there all night."

"Well, then, there is nothing for me to do but send for Monsieur le Notaire! Here, Jeanne; take this note to Monsieur Goupilleau."

All unmarried women, widows or maids, if put to the torture, would reveal some secret, unsuspected sources of advisory assistance,—a subterranean passage for friendship which sometimes offers a retreat into matrimony,—and the last possible wrinkle, the last resisting gray hair is added to other female burdens at the death of this secret counsellor or the closing up of the hidden passage. Therefore, how dreadful it is for women to be condemned to a life of such logical exactions where a reason is demanded for everything, even for ​a statu quo affection of fifteen years or more. Madame Lareveillère did not possess courage enough to defy logic, but her imagination and wit could seriously embarrass its conclusions. The raison d'être of a Goupilleau in her life had exercised both into athletic proportions.

"An old friend, ma mignonne; I look upon him as a father, and he treats me just as if I were his daughter. I go to him as to a confessor. And a great institute like this requires so much advice,—oh, so much! He is very old,—as old as Monsieur Motte himself. We might just as well take off our things; he will not come before evening. You see, he is so discreet, he would not come in the morning for anything in the world. He is just exactly like a father, I assure you, and very, very old."

The graduate and young lady of a day sat in the rocking-chair, quiet, almost happy. She was not in the home she had looked forward to; but Madame's tenderness, the beautiful room in its soothing twilight, and the patronizing majesty of the lit de justice made this a very pleasant abiding place in her journey,—the journey so long and so difficult from school ​to her real home, from girlhood to real young ladyhood. It was nearly two days now since she had seen Marcélite. How she longed for her, and what a scolding she intended to give her when she arrived at her uncle's, where, of course, Marcélite was waiting for her. How silly she had acted about the address! But, after all, procrastination is so natural. As for Madame, Marie smiled as she thought how easily a reconciliation could be effected between them, quittes though they were.

It is hard to wean young hearts from hoping and planning; they will do it in the very presence of the angel of death, and with their shrouds in full view.

Monsieur Goupilleau came: a Frenchman of small stature but large head. He had the eyes of a poet and the smile of a woman.

The prelude of compliments, the tentative flourish to determine in which key the ensuing variation on their little romance should be played, was omitted. Madame came brusquely to the motif, not personal to either of them.

"Monsieur Goupilleau, I take pleasure in presenting you to Mademoiselle Marie Motte, ​one of our young lady graduates. Mon ami, we are in the greatest trouble imaginable. Just imagine, Monsieur Motte, the uncle of mademoiselle could not come for her last night to take her home. He is so old and infirm," added Madame, considerately; "so you see mademoiselle could not leave last night: I want to take her home myself—a great pleasure it is, and not a trouble, I assure you, Marie—but we do not know where he lives."

"Ah! you have not his address."

"No, it should be in the ledger; but an accident,—in fact, the laziness of her bonne, who never brought it, not once in thirteen years."

"Her bonne?"

"Yes, her bonne Marcélite; you know Marcélite la coiffeuse; what, you do not know Marcélite, that great, fat—"

"Does Marcélite know where he lives?"

"But of course, my friend, Marcélite knows, she goes there every day."

"Well, send for Marcélite."

"Send for Marcélite! but I have sent for Marcélite at least a dozen times! she is never ​at her room. Marcélite! ha! my friend, I am done with Marcélite. What do you think? After combing my hair for fifteen years!—fifteen years, I tell you—she did not come yesterday at all, not once; and the concert at night! You should have seen our heads last night! we were frights—frights, I assure you!"

It was a poetical license, but the eyes of Monsieur Goupilleau disclaimed any such pos sibility for the head before him.

"Does not mademoiselle know the address of her uncle?"

"Ah, that, no. Mademoiselle has been a pensionnaire at the Institut St. Denis for thir teen years, and she has never been anywhere except to church; she has seen no one without a chaperon; she has received no letter that has not. passed through Madame Joubert's hands. Ah! for that I am particular, and it was Mon sieur Motte himself who requested it."

"Then you need a directory."

"A what?"

"A directory."

"But what is that,—a directory?"

"It's a volume, Madame, a book contain​ing the addresses of all the residents of the city."

"Quelle bonne idée! If I had only known that! I shall buy one. Jeanne! Jeanne! run quick, ma bonne, to Morel's and buy me a directory."

"Pardon, Madame, I think it would be quicker to send to Bâle's, the pharmacien at the corner, and borrow one. Here, Jeanne, take my card."

"A la bonne heure! now we shall find our affair."

But the M's, which started so many names in the directory, were perfectly innocent of any combination applicable to an old uncle by the name of Motte.

"You see, your directory is no better than my books!"

Monsieur Goupilleau looked mortified, and shrugged his shoulders.

"He must live outside the city limits, Madame."

"Marcélite always said, 'in the Faubourg d'en bas.'"

Jeanne interrupted stolidly: "Monsieur Bâle ​told me to bring the book right back; it is against his rules to lend it out of his store."

"Here, take it! take it! Tell him I am infinitely obliged. It was of no use, any way. Ah, les hommes!"

"Madame," began Monsieur Goupilleau in precautionary deprecation.

A sudden noise outside,—apparently an assault at the front door; a violent struggle in the antechamber!

"Grand Dieu! what can that be!" Madame's lips opened for a shrill Au secours! Voleurs! but seeing the notary rush to the door, she held him fast with her two little white hands on his arm.

"Mon ami, I implore you!"

The first recognition; the first expression of a fifteen years' secret affection! The first thrill (old as he was) of his first passion! But danger called him outside; he unloosed the hands and opened the door.

A heavy body propelled by Jeanne's strong hands fell on the floor of the room, accompanied by a shower of leaves from Monsieur Bâle's directory.

​"Misérable! Infâme! Effrontée! Ah, I have caught you! Scélérate!"

"Marcélite!"

"Marcélite!"

"Marcélite?"

"Sneaking outside the gate! Like an animal! like a thief! like a dog! Ha! I caught you well!"

The powerful arms seemed ready again to crush the unresisting form rising from the floor.

"Jeanne! hush! How dare you speak to Marcélite like that? Oh, ma bonne, what is the matter with you?"

Shaking, trembling, she cowered before them silent.

"Ah! she didn't expect me, la fière négresse! Just look at her!"

They did, in painful, questioning surprise. Was this their own clean, neat, brave, honest, handsome Marcélite,—this panting, tottering, bedraggled wretch before them, threatening to fall on the floor again, not daring to raise even her eyes?

"Marcélite! Marcélite! who has done this to you! Tell me, tell your bébé, Marcélite."

​"Is she drunk?" whispered Madame to the notary.

Her tignon had been dragged from her head. Her calico dress, torn and defaced, showed her skin in naked streaks. Her black woolly hair, always so carefully packed away under her head-kerchief, stood in grotesque masses around her face, scratched and bleeding like her exposed bosom. She jerked herself violently away from Marie's clasp.

"Send them away! Send them away!" she at last said to Monsieur Goupilleau, in a low, unnatural voice. "I will talk to you, but send them all away."

Madame and Marie immediately obeyed his look; but outside the door Marie stopped firmly.

"Madame, Marcélite can have nothing to say which I should not hear—"

"Hush—" Madame put her finger to her lips; the door was still a little open and the voices came to them.

Marcélite, from the corner of her bleared eyes, watched them retire, and then with a great heave of her naked chest she threw herself on the floor at the notary's feet.

​"Master! Oh master! Help me!"

All the suffering and pathos of a woman's heart were in the tones, all the weakness, dependence, and abandonment in the words.

The notary started at the unexpected appeal. His humanity, his manhood, his chivalry, answered it.

"Ma fille, speak; what can I do for you?"

He bent over her as she lay before him, and put his thin, white, wrinkled hand on her shoulder, where it had burst through her dress. His low voice promised the willing devotion of a saviour.

"But don't tell my bébé, don't let her know. My God! it will kill her! She's got no uncle—no Monsieur Motte! It was all a lie. It was me,—me a nigger, that sent her to school and paid for her—"

"You! Marcélite! You!"

Marcélite jumped up and tried to escape from the room. Monsieur Goupilleau quickly advanced before her to the door.

"You fooled me! It was you fooled me!" she screamed to Madame. "God will never forgive you for that! My bébé has heard it all!"

​Marie clung to her; Monsieur Goupilleau caught her by the arm.

"Marcélite! It was you,—you who sent me to school, who paid for me! And I have no uncle?"

Marcélite looked at the notary,—a prayer for help. The girl fell in a chair and hid her face in her hands.

"Oh, my God! I knew it would kill her! I knew it would! To be supported by a nigger!" She knelt by the chair. "Speak to me, Mamzelle Marie. Speak to me just once! Pardon me, my little mistress! Pardon me! I did not know what I was doing; I am only a fool nigger, anyhow! I wanted you to go to the finest school with ladies, and—and—oh! my bébé won't speak to me; she won't even look at me."

Marie raised her head, put both hands on the nurse's shoulders, and looked her straight in the eyes.

"And that also was all a lie about"—she sank her trembling voice—"about my mother?"

"That a lie! That a lie! 'Fore God in heaven, that was the truth; I swear it. I will ​kiss the crucifix. What do you take me for, Mamzelle Marie? Tell a lie about—"

Marie fell back in the chair with a despairing cry.

"I cannot believe any of it."

"Monsieur! Madame! I swear to you it's the truth! God in heaven knows it is. I wouldn't lie about that,—about my poor dead young mistress. Monsieur! Madame! tell Miss Marie for me; can't you believe me?" She shrieked in desperation to Monsieur Goupilleau.

He came to her unhesitatingly. "I believe you, Marcélite." He put his hand again on her shoulder; his voice faltered, "Poor Marcélite!"

"God bless you, master! God bless you for that. Let me tell you; you believe me when my bébé won't. My young mistress, she died; my young master, he had been killed in the war. My young mistress was all alone by herself, with nobody but me, and I didn't take her poor little baby out of her arms till she was dead, as she told me. Mon bébé, mon bébé! don't you know that's the truth? Can't you feel that's the truth? You see that; she will never speak to me again. I knew it; I told you ​so. I heard her last night, in that big room, all by herself, crying for Marcélite. Marcélite! my God! I was afraid to go to her, and I was just under a bed; you think that didn't 'most kill me?" She hid her face in her arms, and swayed her body back and forth.

"Marcélite," said Monsieur Goupilleau. The voice of the champion trembled, and his eyes glistened with tears at the distress he had pledged himself to relieve. "Marcélite, I believe you, my poor woman; I believe you. Tell me the name of the lady, the mother of Mademoiselle."

"Ha! her name! I am not ashamed to tell her name before anybody. Her name! I will tell you her name." She sprang to her feet. "You ask anybody from the Paroisse St. Jacques if they ever heard the name of Mamzelle Marie Modeste Viel and Monsieur Alphonse Motte. That was the name of her mother and her father, and I am not ashamed of it that I shouldn't tell, ha! Yes, and I am Marcélite Gaulois, and when my mother was sold out the parish, who took me and brought me up, and made me sleep on the foot of her bed, and fed me like her own baby, hein? Mamzelle Marie Viel's mother, and Mam​zelle was the other baby; and she nursed us like twins, hein? You ask anybody from the Paroisse St. Jacques. They know; they can tell you."

Marie stood up.

"Come, Marcélite, let us go. Madame, Monsieur—" She evidently struggled to say something else, but she only reiterated, "I must go; we must go; come, Marcélite, let us go."

No one would have remarked now that her eyes were too old for her face.

"Go? My Lord! Where have you got to go to?"

"I want to go home to Marcélite; I want to go away with her; come, Marcélite, let us go. Oh! don't you all see I can't stay here any longer? Let me go! Let me go!"

"Go with me! Go to my home! A white young lady like you go live with a nigger like me!"

"Come, Marcélite; please come; go with me; I don't want to stay here."

"You stand there! You hear that! Monsieur! Madame! You hear that!"

"Marcélite, I want to go with you; I want to live with you; I am not too good for that."

​"What! You don't think you ain't white! Oh, God! Strike me dead!"

She raised her naked arms over her head, imploring destruction.

"Marcélite, ma fille, do not forget, I have promised to help you. Marcélite, only listen to me a moment. Mademoiselle, do not fear; Mademoiselle shall not leave us. I shall protect her; I shall be a father to her—"

"And I," said Madame, drawing Marie still closer to her,—"I shall be her mother."

"Now, try, Marcélite," continued Monsieur Goupilleau,—"try to remember somebody, anybody who knows you, who knew your mistress; I want their names. Anybody, anybody will do, my poor Marcélite! Indeed, I believe you; we all believe you; we know you are telling the truth; but is there not a person, even a book, a piece of paper, anything, you can remember?"

He stood close to her; his head did not reach above her shoulders, but his eyes plead into her face as if petitioning for his own honor; and then they followed the hands of the woman fumbling, feeling, passing, repassing inside her torn dress-waist. He held his hands out,—the ​kind tender little hands that had rested so gently on her bruised black skin.

"If I have not lost it, if I have not dropped it out of my gown since last night—I never have dropped it, and I have carried it round inside my body now for seventeen years; but I was 'most crazy last night—"

She put a small package all wrapped up in an old bandanna handkerchief in his hands.

"I was keeping that for my bébé; I was going to give it to her when she graduated, just to remind her of her own mother. She gave it to me when she died."

It was only a little worn-out prayer-book, but all filled with written papers and locks of hair and dates and certificates,—frail fluttering scraps that dropped all over the table, but unanswerable champions for the honor of dead men and the purity of dead women.

"Par la grâce de Dieu!" exclaimed the notary, while the tears fell from his eyes on the precious relics, discolored and worn from bodily contact. Marie sank on her knees by the table, holding Marcélite tight by the hand.

"Par la grâce de Dieu! Nothing is wanting ​here,—nothing, nothing except the forgiveness of this good woman, and the assurances of our love and gratitude. And they say," turning to Madame, he hazarded the bold step of taking both her hands in his,—"they say," recollecting the tender pressure on his arm, he ventured still further,—"they say, Eugénie, that the days of heroism are past, and they laugh at our romance!"

And then the vacation again, the midsummer pause in life. The sun increasing its measure and degree of heat day by day, over-assessing the cooling powers of the night; and quietness settling itself more and more fixedly in the schoolrooms and yard, which seemed to grow larger and larger, increasing their space with their emptiness. The hard-worked pianos stood mute in their little cells. The great gate remained locked and bolted, only the little door swinging open at irregular intervals to admit some extra industrious or extra ignorant little mind coming to "make a class," as she called it, with Madame Joubert, always ready to lead a forlorn hope against participles or fractions. ​Marie Modeste knew the summer vacation better than any lesson she had learned in the St. Denis. There were no new pages in it for her. It had always contained the same old days sent over and over again, as if there were no need to vary a routine which, bringing rest and silence, brought a never-palling treat to the Institute. The naked beds in the dormitory, the white peignoirs of Madame Joubert's ungraceful déshabille, the muslins and novels of Madame Lareveillère, her own relaxed efforts for comfort and coolness,—it all might have been any one of the lived-out summers behind her. There was no missing detail of the past in the present. But for the future,—looking for it there was no future. Where it had been, the girl saw only a blank space, or a world thick with strangers, aliens. Was there then no living person among them all to hold her, to connect her, with humanity? Was she only a waif, a vestige? Was there then no house for her feet to enter seeking a home, no home holding a welcoming host for her,—not even a cold, misanthropic, selfish, ungracious old uncle; only tombs, and the incommunicable dead?

​The mornings and evenings, the whole life she had filled out in imagination,—was it all a mirage? And her studies, had they been learned only for herself? Ah! she had had hard feelings against her uncle at times; she had secretly cried at nights about him; she had been ashamed of him; she had abused him to Marcélite; she had even written, in passionate moments, wild letters of expostulation to him; but she had loved him through it all,—le vieux. However illy he had treated her, he had nevertheless represented her family to her. All her efforts had been made to please him some day, all her hopes cherished subject to his approval. Were he a thousand times worse than her loyalty had ever permitted the accusation, he were a benefaction to her now; for he had not gone out of existence alone,—he had taken her world, her home, her family, her nurse, her friend, her almost mother, with him. Where was the Marcélite of months and years gone by? Who was this wretched substitute crouching, cringing, trembling before her, unnaturally, unrecognizably?

The quadroon, unmasked, stripped of dis​guise, had indeed lost her nerve and audacity. Her brave personation was over. As Marcélite, there was nothing to accomplish except the part of a faithful servant. As Monsieur Motte, what could she not do? If she could only have created him out of her own death! If she could only have made what she had so happily invented! If she could only have prolonged indefinitely the undisturbed confidence and trust which had existed between Marie Modeste and herself! Her old volubility was gone. Whatever she said, lay under one vast suspicion. She could not meet the eyes of Marie Modeste; she could not even hold up her head before Jeanne. She began to reproach God, and vaguely to rebel against the shadow on her skin as casting the shadow on her life.

"Oh, my bébé! my little mistress! it's your nurse, it's your own negro who loves you, who would die for you!"—words which took the place of her prayers, her thoughts; her lips were always moving under them. She would undo her kerchief and put her hand where once the little face lay like a white magnolia against the dark skin, and go to sleep so. The place ​craved and ached so at times that she put plasters on it, and wore consecrated amulets over it. Her love, which had always been unscrupulous, became in her distress ferocious, insatiable; and she would rush to Madame Lareveillère, and like some wild animal that cannot tell its pain would shed mute tears and utter inarticulate moans.

"Frankly," said Madame to Monsieur Goupilleau, who came now in vacation regularly with the evening shades, as if to meet them on her gallery by appointment, "he will kill us all,—that old man! I can never forgive him for not having lived; but it is in accordance with his character," shrugging her shoulders. "What a monster of selfishness! I have been thinking,—ah, you do not know what my life is here with those two, Marie and Marcélite!—I have been thinking that perhaps I would accept Aurore Angely's invitation. She writes me every year to come on a visit to her plantation for a month or two. What do you say, eh? There is only one objection,—it is in the country. If it were only in the city; but the country,—dame! I have always held the country in horror. It ​is years since I have seen Aurore and Félix. Ah! he is a torpedo for you! exploding at a touch. Poor little thing! She has never been to the country, never even seen it!" continuing, after a pause unbroken by her friend. The consultations with Monsieur Goupilleau generally took the form of a monologue on her part. "I thought of course her old uncle would take her somewhere this summer, and introduce her to society next winter, and marry her to some good parti. It is barbarous,—the disappointment; it is positively a massacre!"

If the notary did not speak, it was not because he had nothing to suggest or propose; on the contrary, he was far advanced into the next winter with his plans, which defined themselves as if by enchantment under the low flexible voice of the lady.

"You see, my friend, a disappointment cracks us all,—us women,—as if we were fine vases. Ma foi! we ought all to be sold as bargains,—damaged goods. I am sure we are all cracked somewhere; the fracture may be hidden, but never mind, it is there, and every woman knows just where it is, and feels it too. Marie has re​ceived hers; she will never be sound again. It is very hard, all the same, for us older women to see young girls come into life so fresh, so fair, and so unconscious, and tap! there they are, hit right in the heart, and no one can save or prevent it. I wonder if there is a sound woman in the world!"

"I should hope not, Madame!" exclaimed Monsieur Goupilleau, involuntarily. "What an unbearable creature she would be! No." Of summer evenings, in gallery conversations, one hazards any thought. Perhaps it came from some of his early poetry. "God knows best; when he wishes to put the finishing, the perfecting touch to a woman, he simply sends her in youth some misfortune. It is his way; and I for one," shrugging his shoulders, "have nothing to criticise, seeing the results;" looking—but she was not aware of it—at the woman before him.

"The invitation comes this year like a Godsend."

Apropos of the Deity, Madame drifted back to the important item in her mind. "I can see now, it is positively the best thing we can ​do. To-day is Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday," she counted on her fingers. "Yes, I think we can take the Saturday boat; you know the boats leave every Saturday evening. And now,"—rising,—"I must go immediately and inform Madame Joubert. To tell you the truth, my friend,"—in the merest whisper,—"I do not think I could endure Madame Joubert all the summer. She is of a rigidity,—a rigidity!" raising her eyes and hands to express it. "But do not go; I shall return in a moment. I have something else to consult you about, you are so kind!"