26
.,LLE-FAKINE.
All the week through he wrought perforce by night;
the great windows stood wide open to the bright, cold
moon of early spring; he worked only with black and
white, using color only at sunrise, or on the rare days
of his leisure.
Often at nightfall she left her loft, as secretly as a fox
its lair, and stole down the river, and screened herself
among the grasses, and watched him where he labored
in the mingling light of the moon, and of the oil-lamp
burning behind him.
She saw these things grow from beneath his hand,
these mighty shapes created by him ; and he seemed to
her like a god, with the power to beget worlds at his
will, and all human life in its full stature out from a
little dust.
The contrast of this royal strength, of this supreme
power which he wielded, with the helpless exhaustion
of the body in which she had found him dying, smote
her with a sorrow and a sweetness that were like noth-
ing she had ever owned. That a man could summon
hosts at his command like this, yet perish for a crust!
—that fusion of omnipotence and powerlessness, which
is the saddest and the strangest of aU the sad strange
things of genius, awoke an absorbing emotion in her.
She watched him thus for hours in the long nights of
a slow-footed spring, in whose mists and chills and
heavy dews her inured frame took no more harm than
did the green corn shooting through the furrows.
She was a witness to his solitude. She saw the fan-
cies of his brain take form. She saw the sweep of his
arm call up on the blank of the wall, or on the pale
spaces of the canvas, these images which for her nad
alike such majesty and such mystery. She saw the
faces beam, the eyes smile, the dancing-women rise,
the foliage uncurl, the gods come forth from the tem-
ples, the nereids glide through the moonlit waters, at
his command, and beneath his touch.
She saw him also in those moments when, conceiving
no eyes to be upon him, the man whom mankind de
nied loosened rein to the bitterness in him; and, stand
ing weary and heartsick before these creations for
which his generation had no sight, and no homage, let
the agony of constant failure, of continual defeat, over-
come him, and cursed aloud the madness which pos-
sessed him, and drove him on forever in this ungrace-
ful service, and would not let him do as other men did
—tell the world lies, and take its payment out in gold.
Until now she had hated all things, grieved for none,
unless, indeed, it were for a galled ox toiling wounded
and tortured on the field; or a trapped bird, shrieking
inthe Still midnight woods.
t But now, watching him, hearing him, a passionate
Sorrow for a human sorrow possessed her. And to her
eyes'he was so beautiful in that utter unlikeness to her-
self and to all men whom she had seen. She gazed at
him, never weary of that cold, fair, golden beauty, like
the beauty of his sun-god; of those serene deep-lidded
eyes, which looked so often past her at the dark night
skies; of those,.lithe and massive limbs, like the limbs
of the gladiator that yonder on the wall strained a lion
to his breast in the deadly embrace of combat.
She gazed at him until she loved him with the in-
tense passion of a young and ignorant life, into whose
gloom no love had ever entered. With this love the
instinct of her womanhood arose, amid the ignorance
and savagery of her nature; and she crouched perpet-
ually under the screen of the long grass to hide her
vigil, and whenever his eyes looked from his easel out-
ward to the night she drew back, breathless and trem-
bling, she knew not why, into the deepest shadow.
Meantime, with that rude justice which was in her,
she set herself atonement for her fault—the fault
through which those tender little bright-throated birds
were stretched dead among the first violets of the year.
She labored harder and longer than ever for her task-
master and denied herself the larger half of even those
scanty portions which were set aside for her of the
daily fare, living on almost nothing, as those learn to
do who are reared under the roof of the French poor.
To his revilings she was silent, and under his blows
patient. By night she toiled secretly, until she had re-
stored the value of that which she had taken.
Why did she do it? She coidd not have told. She
was proud of the evil origin they gave her; she had
a cynical gladness in her infamous repute; she scorned
women and hated men; yet all the same she kept her
hands pure of thefts and her lips pure of lies.
So the weeks ran on till the hardness of winter gave
way to the breath of the spring, and in all the wood and
orchard around the water-mill the boughs were green
with buds, and the ground was pale with primroses—a
spring all the sweeter and more fertile because of the
severity of the past winter.
It became mid-April, and it was market-day for Yprès,
and for all the other villages and homesteads lying
round that wondrous cathedral-spire, that shot into the
air, far-reaching and ethereal, like some vast fountain
whose column of water had been arrested, and changed
to ice.
The old quiet town was busy, with a rich sunshine
shed upon it, in which the first yellow butterflies of the
year had begun to dance.
Itwas high noon, and the highest tide of the market,
Flower-girls, fruit-girls, egg-sellers, poultry-huck-
sters, crowds of women, old and young, nad jolted in
on their docile asses, throned on their sheepskin sad-
dles; and now, chattering and chaffering, drove fast
their trade. On the steps of the cathedral boys with
birds'-nests, knife-grinders making their little wheels
fly, cobblers hammering, with boards across their
knees, traveling peddlers with knapsacks full of toys
and mirrors, and holy images, and strings of beads, sat
all together in competition but in amity.
Here and there a priest passed, with his black robe
and broad hat, like a dusky mushroom among a bed of
varihued gillyflowers. Heçe and there a soldier, all
color and glitter, showed like a gaudy red tulip in bloom
amidst tufts of thyme.
The old wrinkled leathern awnings of the market-
stalls glowed like copper in the brightness of the noon.
The red tiles of the houses edging the great square were
gilded with yellow houseleeks.
The little children ran hither and thither with big
bunches of primroses or sheaves of blue wood-hya-
cinths, singing. The red and blue serges of the young
girls' bodices were like the gay hues of the anemones
ha their baskets; and the brown faces of the old dames
under the white roofing of their headgear were like
the russet faces of the home-kept apples they had gar-
nered through all the winter.
Everywhere in the shade of the flapping leather, and
the darkness of the wooden porches, there were the
teadw blossoms of the field and forest, of the hedge
mé awflffin,    The azure of the hyacinths, the pale
saffron of the primroses, the cool hues of the meadow
daffodils, the ruby eyes of the cultured jonquils gleamed
among wet ferns, gray herbs, and freshly budded leaf-
age. Plovers1 eggs "nestled in moss-lined baskets;
sheaves of velvet-coated wallflowers poured fragrance
on the air; great plumes of lilac nodded on the wind,
and amber feathers of laburnum waved above the
homelier masses of mint and marjoram, and sage and
saxifrage.
It was high noon, but the women still found leisure-
time to hear the music of their own tongues, loud and
continuous as the clacking of mill paddles.
In one corner an excited little group was gathered
round the stall of a favorite flower-seller, who wore a
bright crimson gown, and a string of large silver beads
about her neck, and a wide linen cap that shaded her
pretty rosy face as a great snowy mushroom may
grow between the sun and a little rudy wild straw-
berry.
Her brown eyes were now brimming over with tears
where she stood surrounded by all the treasures of
spring. She held clasped in her arms a great pot with
a young almond-tree growing in it, and she was weep-
ing as though her heart would break, because a tile
had fallen from a roof above and crushed low all its
pink splendor of blossom.
*'J saw her look at it," she muttered. " Look at it
as she passed with her wicked eyes; and a black cat on
the roof mewed to her; and that moment the tile fell.
Oh, my almond-tree! oh, my little darling! the only
one I saved out of three through the frosts; the very
one that was to have gone this very night to Paris."
"Thou art not alone, Edmée," groaned an old
woman, tottering from her egg-stall with a heap of
ruffled, blood-stained, brown plumage held up in her
hand. 'l Look ! As she went by my poor brown hen —
the best sitter I have, good for eggs with every sunrise
from Lent to Noël—just cackled and shook her tail at
her; and at that very instant a huge yellow dog rushed
in and killed the blessed bird—killed her in her basket!
A great yellow beast that no one had ever seen before,
and that vanished again into the earth, like lightning."
"Not worse than she did to my precious Rémy,"
said a tanner's wife, who drew after" her, clinging to
her skirts, a little lame, misshapen, querulous child.
"She hath the evil eye," said sternly an old man who
nad served in the days of his boyhood in the Army of
Italy, as he sat washing fresh lettuces in a large brass
bowl, by his grandson's herb-stall.
" You remember how we met her in the fields last
Feast-night of the Three Kings?" asked a youth, look-
ing up from plucking Hie feathers out from a living,
struggling, moaning goose. " Coming singing through
the fog like nothing earthly; and a moment later a
torch caught iittle Jocelin's curls and burnt him till he
was so hideous that his mother could scarce have
known him.   You remember?"
"Surely we remember," they cried in a hearty chorus
round the broken almond-tree. " Was there not the
{-ood old Dax this very winter, killed by her if ever any
creature were killed by fou! means, though the law
would never listen to the Flandrins when they said so?"
"And little Bernardou," added one who had not
hitherto spoken. "Little Bernardou died a month
after his grandam, in hospital. She had e&afc hei'eye
on him, and the poor little lad never rallied."
" A jettatriee ever brings misfortune," muttered the
old soldier of Napoleon, washing his last lettuce and
lighting a fresh pipe.
"Or does worse," muttered the mother of the crip-
pled child. " She is not for nothing the devil's daughter,
mark you."
"Nky, indeed," said an old woman, knitting from a
ball dj wool with which a kitten played among the
strewn, cabbage-leaves and the crushed sweet-smelling
thymeA " Nay, was it not only this very winterthat my
son's litifle youngest boy threw a stone at her, just for
luck, as she went by in her boat through the town ;
and it struck her and drew blood from her shoulder;
and that self-same night a piece of the oaken carvings in
the ceiling gave way and dropped upon the little angel
as he slept, and broke his arm above the elbow:—she
is a witch; there is no question but she is a witch."
"If I were sure so, I would think it well to kill her,"
murmured the youth, as he stifled the struggling bird
between his knees.
" My sister met her going through the standing corn
last harvest-time, and the child she brought forth a
week after was born blind, and is blind now," said a
hard-visaged woman, washing turnips in a basin of
water.
" I was black-and-blue for a month when she threw
me down, and took from me that hawk I had trapped,
and went and fastened my wrist in the iron instead!'*
hissed a boy of twelve, in a shrill piping treble, as he
slit the tongue of a quivering starling.
1 ' They say she dances naked, by moonlight, in the
water with imps," cried a bright little lad who was at
play with the kitten.
"She is a witch, there is no doubt about that," said
again the old woman who sat knitting on the stone
bench in the sun.
" And her mother such a saint!" sighed another old
dame who was grouping green herbs together for
salads.
And all the while the girl Edmée elasped ner almond-
tree and sobbed over it.
"If she were only here," swore Edmée's lover under
his breath.
" At that moment the accused came towards them,
erect in the full light.
She had passed through the market with a load of
herbs and flowers for one of the chief hostelries in the
square, and was returning with the flat broad basket
balanced empty on her head.
Something of their mutterings and curses reached her,
but she neither hastened nor slackened her pace; she
came on towards them with her free, firm step, and her
lustrous eyes flashing hard against the sun.
She gave no sign that she had heard except that the
blood darkened a little in her cheeks, and her mouth
curled with a haughtier scorn. But the sight of her,
answering in that instant to their hate, the sight of her
with the sunshine on her scarlet sash and her slender
limbs, added impulse to their rage.
They had talked themselves into a passionate belief
in her as a thing hellborn and unclean, that brought
all manner of evil fates among them.   They knew that
holy water had never baptized her ; that neither cross
nor chrism had ever exorcised her; that a church's ,
door had never opened to her; they had heard their i
children hoot her many a time unrebuked; they had j
always hated her with the cruelty begotten by a timid '
' cowardice or a selfish dread.   They were now ripe to
| let their hate take shape in speech and act.
The lover of Edmée loosened his hand from the
silver beads about her throat, and caught up instead a
stone.
" Let us see if her flesh feels!" he cried, and cast n.
It fell short of her, being ill aimed; she did not slacken
her speed, nor turn out of her course; she still came
; towards them erect and with an even tread.
"Who lamed my Rémy?" screamed the cripple's
mother.
i "Who broke my grandson's arm?" cackled the old"
woman that sat knitting.
"Who withered my peach-tree?" the old gardener
hooted.
I     " Who freed the devil-bird and put me on the trap?"
¦ yelled the boy with the starling.
I     "Who flung the tile on the almond?" shouted the
: flower-girl's lover.
!     " Who made my sister bring forth a little beast, blind
. as a mole?" shrieked the woman washing in the brazen
', bowl.
I     " Who is a witch?—who dances naked?—who bathes
i with devils at the full moon?" cried the youth, who
! had plucked the goose bare, alive: and he stooped for
a pebble, and aimed better than his comrade, and flung
it at her as she came.
" It is a shame to see the child of Reine Flamma so
dealt with!" murmured the old creature that was
grouping her salads.   But her voice found no echo.
The old soldier even rebuked her. " A jettatriva
should be killed for the good of the people," he mum-
bled.
Meanwhile zhe came nearer and nearer. The last
stone had struck her upon the arm; but it had drawn
no blood ; she walked on with firm, slow steps into their
midst; unfaltering.
The courage did not touch them; they thought it only
the hardihood of a thing that was devil-begotten.
"She is always mute like that; she cannot feet
Strike, strike, strike!" cried the cripple's mother; and'
the little cripple himself clapped his small hands and
screamed his shrill laughter. The youths, obedient and
nothing loth, rained stones on her as fast as their hands
could fling them. Still she neither paused nor quailed:
but came on straightly, steadily, with her face set
against the light.
Their impatience and their eagerness made their aim:
uncertain; the stones fell fast about her on every side,
but one alone struck her—a jagged flint that fell where
the white linen skirt opened on her chest. It cut the
skin, and the blood started; the children shrieked and
danced with delight: the youths rushed at her inflamed
at once with her beauty and their own savage hate.
"Stone her to death! Stone her to death!" they
shouted ; she only laughed, and held her head erect and
stood motionless where they arrested her, without the*
blood once paling in her face or her eyes once losing;
their luminous calm scorn.
The little cripple clapped his hands, climbing on his
mother's back to see the sight, and his mother screamed
again and again above his laughter, " Strike! striked
strike!"
One of the lads seized her in his arms to force her 01/
her knees while the others stoned her. The touch of
him roused all the fire slumbering in her blood. She
twisted herself round in his hold with a movement so
rapid that it served to free her; struck him full on the
eyes with her clinched hand in a blow that sent him
stunned and staggering back; then, swiftly as light-
ning flash, drew her knife from her girdle, and striking;
out with it right and left, dashed through the people,,
who scattered from her path as sheep from the spring:
of a hound.
Slowly and with her face turned full upon them, she
backed her way across the market-place. The knife,
turned blade outward, was pressed against her chest.
None of them dared to follow her; they thought her
invulnerable and possessed.
She moved calmly with a firm tread backward-*
backward—backward ; holding her foes at bay; the-
scarlet sash on her loins flashing bright in the sun; her
level brows bent together as a tiger bends his ere he
leaps. They watched her, huddling together frightened
and silent. Even the rabid cries of the cripple's mother
had ceased. On the edge of the great square she paused
a moment; the knife still held at her chest, her mouth
curled in contemptuous laughter.
" Strike now I" she cried to them; and she dropped;
her weapon, and stood still.
But there was not one among them who dared lift his
hand. There was not so much as a word that answered
her.
She laughed aloud, and waited for their attack, while
the bell in the tower above them tolled loudly the
strokes of noon. No one among them stirred. Even
the shrill pipe of the lame boy's rejoicing had sunk,
and was still.
At that moment, through the golden haze of sum-
beams and dust that hung above the crowd, she-saw
the red gleam of the soldiers of the state; and their
heavy tramp echoed on the silence as they hastened to<
the scene of tumult. She had no faith in any justice
which these would deal her; had they not once dragged,
her before the tribunal of their law because- she had:
forced asunder the iron jaws of that trap in the oak.
wood to give freedom to the bleeding hawk that was
struggling in it whilst its callow birds sereamed in hun-
ger in their nest in the branches above?
She had no faith in them ; nor in any justice of men :
and she turned and went down a twisting lane shaded
from the sun, and ran swiftly as a doe through all its
turns, and down the steps leading to the water-side.
There her boat was moored; she entered it, and pulled
herself slowly down the river, which now at noontide
was almost deserted, whilst the shutters of the houses
that edged it on either side were all closed to keep out
the sun.
A boatman stretched half asleep upon the sacks in
his barge; a horse dozing in his harness on the towing-
path; a homeless child who had no one to call him in
to shelter from the heat, and who sat and dappled his
little burning feet in the flowing water; these and their
like were all there were here to look on her.
She rowed herself feebly with one oar gradually out
of the ways of the town ; her left arm was strained,
and for the moment, useless; her shoulders throbbed
with bruises; and the wound from the stone still bled.
She stanched the blood by degrees, and folded the linen
over it, and west on; she was so used to pain, and so
strong, that this Seemed to her to be but little. She had
passed through similar scenes before, though the peo-
ple had rarely broken into such open violence towards