FOLLE-FARINE. Id left unused by them, partly because the river had been "They are the dead, surely," she thought, as she known to rise high enough to flood the floor; partly be- [stood among them: and she stayed there, with her «arise legend had bequeathed to it a ghastly repute of arms folded on her breast to still its beating, lest any wirits of murdered men who haunted it, sound should anger them and betray her; a thing lower No man or woman in rill the country round dared than the dust—a mortal amidst this great immortal venture to it after nightfall ; it was all that the stoutest' would do to'fetch and carry grain there at broad day; and the peasant who, being belated, rowed his market- boat past it when the moon was high, moved his oar with one trembling hand, and with the other crossed himself unceasingly. To Folle-Farine it bore no such terror. The unconscious pantheism breathed into her with her earliest thoughts, with the teachings of Phratos, made her see a nameless mystical and always wondrous beauty in every blade of grass that fed on the dew, and with the light rejoiced; in every bare brown stone that host. The mists and the shadows between her eyes and them parted them as with a sea of dim and subtle vapor, through which they looked white and impalpa ble as a summer cloud, when it seems to lean and touch the edge of the world in a gray, quiet dawn. They were but the creations of an artist's classic dreams, but to her they seemed to thrill, to move, to sigh, to gaze on her; to her, they seemed to live with that life of the air, of the winds, of the stars, of silence and solitude, and all the nameless liberties of death, of which she dreamed when, shunned, and cursed, and ished to gold in bright brook waters, under a tuft of hungered, she looked up to the skies at night from a weed; in every hillside stream that leaping and laugh- ; sleepless bed. og sparkled in the sun; in every wind that wailing went over the sickness of the weary world. For such a temper, no shape of the day or the night, no miracle of life or of death can have terror; it can Tfiey were indeed the dead: the dead of that fair time when all the earth was young, and men communed with their deities, and loved them, and were not afraid. When their gods were with them in their daily lives. dread nothing, because every created thing has in it a when in every breeze that curled the sea, in every or eau uv^,.,»b, " _ _ _.___. s___,___ „i™„i ,!,„,- AvrfrcnnA it, tlit. urr-^t m *>verv water-course divine origin and an eternal mystery. As she and the boat passed out into the loneliness ot the country, with fitful moon-gleams to light its pas- sage, the weather and the stream grew wilder yet. There were on both sides strips of the silvery inland sands, beds of tall reeds, and the straight stems of pop- lars, ghostlike in the gloom. The tide rushed faster; the winds blew more strongly from the north; the boat rocked, and now and then was washed with water, till its edges were submerged. She stood up in it, and gave her strength to its guid- ance; it was all that she could do to keep its course straight, and steer it so that it should not grate upon the sand, nor be blown into the tangles of the river For herself she had no care, she could swim like any cygnet; and for her own sport had spent hours m water at all seasons. But she krrew that to Claudis Flamma the boat was an honored treasure, since to replace it would have cost him many a hard-earned and well- loved piece of money.. As she stood thus upright in the little tossing vessel cloud that darkened in the west, in every water-course that leaped and sparkled in the sacred cedar groves, in every bee-sucked blossom of wild thyme that grew purple by the marble temple steps, 'the breath and the glance of the gods were felt, the footfall and the voice of the gods were heard. . They were indeed the dead: the dead who—dying earliest, whilst yet the earth was young enough to sor- row for its heroic lives to embalm them, to remember them, and count them worthy of lament—perished in their bodies, but lived forever immortal in tbe tradi- tions of the world. From every space of the somber chamber some one of these gazed on her through the mist. Here the silver dove of Argos winged her way through the iron-jaws of the dark seâ-gates. Here the white Io wandered in exile and unresting, forever scourged on by the sting in her flesh, as a man by the genius in him. , , Here the glad god whom all the woodlands loved played in the moonlight, on his reeds, to the young stags that couched at his feet in golden beds of daffodrls and against the darkness and the winds, she passed the ! asphodel. solitary building; it had been placed so low down Here in a darkened land the great Demeter moved against the shore, that its front walls, strong of hewn bereaved arrd childless, bidding fhe vine be barren, and stone, and deep bedded in the soil, were half submerged \ the fig-trees fruitless, and the seed of the sown furrows in the dense growth of the reeds and of the willowy i strengthless to multiply and fill the sickles with rrpe osiers which grew up and brushed the great arched j increase. windows of its haunted hall. The lower half of one of Here the women of Thebes danced upon Crthferon in the seven windows had been blown wide often; a broad I the ma(1 m00nless nights, under the cedars, with loose square casement, braced with iron bars, looking out ; hair on trie wind, and bosoms that heaved and brake upon the river, and lighted by a sickly glimmer of the through their girdles of fawnskin. moon. , Here at his labor, in Pherae, the sun-god toiled as a Her boat was swayed close against the wall, in a sud- siave; the highest wrought as the lowest; while wise den lurch, caused by a fiercer gust of wind and hrgher Hermes stood by and made mirth of the kingship that wave of the strong tide: the rushes entangled it; rt had bartered the rod of dominion for the mere music grounded on the sand. There was no chance, she knew, , wrijcn empty air could make in a hollow reed, of setting it afloat again without her leaving it to gain j . b th . „ods stooci Hypnos, and Onei- a footing on the lana, and use her force to push it off , ^^^^^^Pbowed heads crowned with into the current. i ._„' noI)m. an(1 moonwort, the flowering fern, and the Sire leaped out without a moment's thought among i J°?P?Hg am\ pressed to their lips, a white rose, in the rushes, with her kirtle girt up close above her knees. , f^^n^'e*t s°ymbo1of silence ; fashioned in the same She sank to lie.' ankles in the sand and stood to her | ^^l^^th tte same winged feet, which yet fall so waist in the water. i qoffiv tj,'at no human ears hear their coming; the godr But she was almost as light and sure of foot as a moor- : g^J??St of a 1 have pity on men ' gull, when it lights upon the treacherous mosses of a S|L™°fo0frt5" Grave P Bog arrd standing on the soaked and shelving bank, , Night and ot t. she thrust herself with all her might against her boat, , , *X' dislodged it, and pushed it out once more afloat "<^ -^""silvery as "smoke, in from the misty river. She was about to wade to it and.spring into it, before ! dense ££^1^ as smo ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^ nor story, and yet they spoke to her. with familiar -the gods of the These she saw, not plainly, but through the wavering shadows and the halo of the vapors which floated, the stream had time to move, it farther out, when an owl flew from the open window behind her. Uncon- sciously she turned her head to look whence the^bird had come. She saw the wide dark square of the opened case- ment; the gleam of a lamp within-the cavern-like vast- ness of the vaulted hall. Instinctively she paused, and drew closer, and forgot the boat. The stone sills of the seven windows were level with the topmost sprays of the tall reeds and the willowy underwood; they were, therefore, level with herself. Slw saw straight in; saw, so far as the pale uncertain fusion of moon arrd lamp rays showed them, the height and width of this legend haunted place; vaulted and pillared with timber and with stone; dim and lonely as a cathedral crypt; and with the night birds flying to ! and fro in it, as in a ruin, seeking their nests in its rafters and in the capitals of its columns. No fear, but a great awe fell upon her. She let the boat drift on its way unheeded; and stood there at gaze hke a forest doe. She had passed this grain tower with every day or night that she had gone down the river upr the errands of her taskmaster; but she had never looked within it once, holding the peasants' stories and terrors m the cold scorn of her intrepid courage. Now, when she looked, she for the first trme behtred -believed that the dead lived and gathered there. White, shadowy, countless shapes loomed through the gloom, all motionless, all noiseless, all beautiful ^ ¦with the serene yet terrible loveliness of death. voices. She knew them; she knew that they were gods, and yet to the world were dead; and in the eyes of the forést-god, who piped upon his reeds, she saw the eyes of Phratos look on her with their tender laugh- ter aiid their unforgotten love. .... Just so had he'looked so long ago—so long!—in the deep woods at moonrise, when he had played to the bounding fawns, to*the leaping waters, to the listening trees, to the sleeping flowers. They had called him an outcast—and lo!—she found him a god. , She sank on her knees, and buried her face m her hands and wept—wept with grief for the living lost for- ever—wept witr ioy that the dead forever lived. Tears had rarely sprung to her proud, rebellious eyes; she deemed them human things—things of weakness and of shame; she had thrust them back and bit her lips till the blood came in a thousand hours of pain, rather than men should see them arrd exult. The passion had its way for once, and spent itself,-andpassed. She rose trembling and pale, with her eyes wet and drmmed in luster, like stars that shine through ram, and looked around her fearfully. , . . She thought that the gods might rise in wrath against her, even as mortals did, for daring to be weary of her life As she rose, she saw for the first time before the cold hearth the body of a man. It was stretched straightly out on the stone floor; the whereby they mean the self-sown fruit of their own faults and follies. Had the gods slain him—being a mortal—for bis en- trance there? Marcellin in legends had told her of such things. He was human; with a human beauty; which, yet white and cold and golden, full of serenity and sad- ness, was like the sun-god's yonder, and very strange to her whose eyes had only rested on the sunburnt, pinched, and rugged faces or the populace around her. That beauty allured her; she forgot that, he had against her the crime of that humanity which she hatod. He was to her like some noble forest beast, some splendid bird of prey, struck down by a bolt from some murderous bow, strengthless and senseless, yet ma- jestic even irr its fall. " The gods slew him because he dared to be too like themselves," she thought, " else he could not be so beautiful—he—only a man, and dead?" The dreamy intoxication of fancy had deadened her to all sense of time or fact. The exaltation of nerve and brain made all fantastic fantasies seem possible to her as truth. Herself, she was strong; and desolate no more, since the eyes of the immortals had smiled on her, and bade her welcome there; and she felt an infinite pity on him, inasmuch as with all his likeness to them he yet, having incurred their wrath, lay helpless there as any broken reed. . , - ... *. She berrt above him her dark rich face, with a sort compassion on it; she stroked the pale heavy gold of his hair, with fingers brown and lithe, but mfimtely gentle; she fanned the cold pain of his forehead, with the breath of her roselike mouth; she touched hrm and stroked him and gazed on him, as she would have caressed and looked on the velvet hide ot the stag, the dappled plumage of the hawk, the white leaf of the ' \' subtle vague pleasure stole on her, a sharp sweet sorrow moved her—for he was beautiful, and he was " If they would give him back his life?" she thought: and she looked for the glad forest-god playing on his reed auridst the amber asphodels, he who had the smile and the glance of Phratos. But she could see Pan s face The wind rose, the moon was hidden, all was dark save the flicker of the flame of the lamp; the storm had broken, and the rain fell: she saw nothing now but the bowed head of Thanatos, holding the rose of silence t0OiiSher'ear there seemed to steal a voice from the da" One" life"Sole can ransom another. Live immortal with us; or for that dead man—perish." She bowed her head where she knelt in the darkness; the force of an irresistible fate seemed upon her; that sacrifice which is at once the delirium and divinity of her sex had entered into her. She was so lowly a thing; a creature so loveless and cursed; the gods, if they took her in pity would soon scorn 1 er as men had scorned; whilst fie who lay dead -though so still and so white, and so mute and so powerless-he looked a king among men, though the gods for his daring bad killed him. "i.et him live!" she murmured. It s tor me—1 am nothlng^nothhrg. Let me die as the Dust dres-wha» " Thfwi'nd blew the flame of the lamp into darkness; the moon still shone through the storm on to the face "^"nfheard. He-the ?nly friend who fails no livine thing. He alone remained, and waited for hei. h™?hom alone of all the gods-for this man's sake- shè chose. CHAPTER III. When the trance of her delirious imaginations passed, thev left her tranquil, but with the cold of death seem- ing to pass already from the form she looked on into here She was still crouching by his body on tho hearth; and knew what she had chosen, and did not rTenwas dead still-or so she thought-she watched him with dim dreaming eyes, watched hrm as women d°She1drewethe fair glistening hair'through her hands; she touched the closed and blue veined eyelids ten- deriv- she laid her ear against his heart to hearken for the first returning pulses of the life she had brought bïtVa°s n™more to her the dead body of a man, un- known, unheeded, a stranger, and because a mortal, of necessity to her a foe. It was a nameless, wondrous, mv^ic force and splendor to which she had given baek the pulse of existence, the light of day; which was no more the gods', nor any man's, no more the prey of ,uoA„„,.. _/,„..... but hers—hers—shared SSSœsra'K^vmi!™ 4M-A2.œr-5£&. te^j&Js&si night and day in the tombs of the kings of the East. Her color paled, her breath came and went, her body trembled like a leaf; yet she was not afraid. A divine ecstasy of surprise and faith smote the dun misery of her life. She saw at last another world tlia.r Ihe world of toil in which she had labored without sigh and without hope, as the blinded ox labored in the brick-field, treading his endless circles in the endlesi. dark, and only told that it was day by blows. She had no fear of them—these, whom she deemed the dwellers ot the lands beyond the sun, could not be more cruel to her than had been the sons of men. She yearned to them, longed for them ; wondered with rap- ture and with awe if these were the messengers of her father's kingdom ; if these would have mercy on her, and take her with them to their immortal homes— whether of heaven or of hell, what mattered it? It was enough to her that it would not be of earth. She raised herself upon the ledge above the rushes, poised herself lightly as a bird, and with deft soundless feet dropped safely on the floor within, and stood in the midst of that enchanted world—stood motionless, fazing upwards with rapt eyes, and daring barely to raw breath with any audible sigh, lest she should rouse them, and be driven from their presence. The flame of the lamp, and the moonlight, reflected back from the foam of the risen waters, shed a strange, pal lid, shadowy light on all the forms around, her. clinched close and hard; the limbs were in profound repose; the head was lit by the white glimmer from the moon; the face was calm and colorless, and full ot sad- In the dim strange light it looked white as marble, colossal as a statue, in that passionless rest—that.dread 'efnstiiictively she drew nearer to him, breathless and allured; she bent forward and looked closer on his aHe was a god like all the rest, she thought; but dead —not as they were dead, with eyes that rejoiced in the light of cloudless suns, and with lips that smiled with a serene benignity and an eternal love—but dead as mor- tals die, without hope, without release, with the breath frozen on their tired lips, and bound on their hearts eternally the burden of their sin and woe. She leaned down close by his side, and looked on him —sorrowful because he alone of all the gods was stricken there, and he alone had the shadow ot mor- tality upon him. , , ,. , „, Looking thus she saw that his hands were clinched upon his chest, as though their latest effort had been to tear the bones asunder, and wrench out a heart that ached beneath them. She saw that this was not a divine, but a human form-dead indeed as the rest were, but dead by a man's death of assassination, or disease, or suicide, or what men love to call the " act of Heaven, death nor the delight of love ; — onlv with the greatness she had bought for him. Even as she looked on him she felt the first faint flut- ter hi his heart; she heard the first faint breath upon h'ffisPeves unclosed and looked straight at hers, with- out reaS or luster in them, clouded with a heavy and de"¥odie-of'hunger-like a rat in a trap 1" he mut- tered in his throaf and strove to rise; he fell back, senseless striking his head upon the stones. . She started' her hands ceased to wander through his hair, and touch his cold lips as she would touch the cup visions of her heated brarn, asa ray of the clear day break pierces through the purple smoke from altar * The wSoSsf'were so terrible, and yet so trite: they cleft the mists of her dreams as tempered steel cleaves folds of gossamer. She0mutteredUthf "phrase after him-shaken from her stupor by its gaunt and common truth. „„*_„i It roused her to the consciousness of all his actual needs Her heart rebelled even against the newly- found' immortal masters, since being in wrath they could noTstrike him swiftly with the r vengeance, but had kiïed him thus with these lingering and most bit- ter pangs, and had gathered there as to a festival to SeAsshedstopped above him, she could discern the faint earthlfcavernous odor, which comes from the languid tangs' and empty chest of one who has long fasted. alSheSVadVnown that famine odor many atime «re ttonî ta tt» but of Maw» Dax, and by ae hed»e-rowi