[Transcriber's note]

[Table of Contents]

CHRISTMAS STORIES

Christmas Stories
from
French and Spanish Writers

BY

ANTOINETTE OGDEN

CHICAGO
A. C. McCLURG AND COMPANY
1892

Copyright
By A. C. McClurg and Co.
A. D. 1892

CONTENTS.

CHRISTMAS STORIES.

A BIRD IN THE SNOW.

From the Spanish of Armando Palacio Valdés.

He was born blind, and had been taught the one thing which the blind generally learn,—music; for this art he was specially gifted. His mother died when he was little more than a child, and his father, who was the first cornetist of a military band, followed her to the grave a few years later. He had a brother in America from whom he had never heard; still, through indirect sources he knew him to be well off, married, and the father of two fine children. To the day of his death the old musician, indignant at his son's ingratitude, would not allow his name to be mentioned in his presence; but the blind boy's affection for his brother remained unchanged. He could not forget that this elder brother had been the support of his childhood, the defence of his weakness against the other boys, and that he had always spoken to him with kindness. The recollection of Santiago's voice as he entered his room in the morning, shouting, "Hey there, Juanito! get up, man; don't sleep so!" rang in the blind boy's ears with a more pleasing harmony than could ever be drawn from the keys of a piano or the strings of a violin. Was it probable that such a kind heart had grown cold? Juan could not believe it, and was always striving to justify him. At times the fault was with the mail, or it might be that his brother did not wish to write until he could send them a good deal of money; then again, he fancied that he meant to surprise them by presenting himself some fine day, laden with gold, in the modest entresol in which they lived. But he never dared communicate any of these fancies to his father; only when the old man, wrought to an unusual pitch of exasperation, bitterly apostrophized the absent one, he found the courage to say: "You must not despair, father. Santiago is good, and my heart tells me that we shall hear from him one of these days."

The father died, however, without hearing from his son, between a priest, who exhorted him, and the blind boy, who clung convulsively to his hand, as if he meant to detain him in this world by main force. When the old man's body was removed from the house, the boy seemed to have lost his reason, and in a frenzy of grief he struggled with the undertaker's men. Then he was left alone. And what loneliness was his! No father, no mother, no relatives, no friends; he was even deprived of the sunlight, which is the friend of all created things. He was two whole days in his room pacing the floor like a caged wolf, without tasting food. The chamber-maid, assisted by a compassionate neighbor, succeeded in saving him from this slow process of suicide. He was prevailed upon to eat. He spent the rest of his life praying, and working at his music.

His father, shortly before his death, had obtained for him a position as organist in one of the churches of Madrid, with a salary of seventy cents a day. This was scarcely sufficient to meet the running expenses of a house, however modest; so within a fortnight Juan sold all that had constituted the furniture of his humble home, dismissed his servant, and took a room at a boarding-house, for which he paid forty cents a day; the remaining thirty cents covered all his other expenses. He lived thus for several months without leaving his room except to fulfil his obligations. His only walks were from the house to the church, and from the church back again. His grief weighed upon him so heavily that he never opened his lips. He spent the long hours of the day composing a grand requiem Mass for the repose of his father's soul, depending upon the charity of the parish for its execution; and although it would be incorrect to say that he strained his five senses,—on account of his having but four,—it can at least be said that he threw all the energies of his body and soul into his work.

The ministerial crisis overtook him before his task was half finished. I do not remember who came into power, whether the Radicals, Conservatives, or Constitutionals; at any rate, there was some great change. The news reached Juan late, and to his sorrow. The new cabinet soon judged him, in his capacity as an organist, to be a dangerous citizen, and felt that from the heights of the choir, at vespers or in the solemnity of the Mass, with the swell and the roar from all the stops of the organ, he was evincing sentiments of opposition which were truly scandalous. The new ministers were ill disposed, as they declared in Congress through the lips of one of their authorized members, "to tolerate any form of imposition," so they proceeded with praiseworthy energy to place Juan on the retired list, and to find him a substitute whose musical manœuvres might offer a better guarantee,—a man, in a word, who would prove more loyal to the institutions. On being officially informed of this, the blind one experienced no emotion beyond surprise. In the deep recesses of his heart he was pleased, as he was thus left more time in which to work at his Mass. The situation appeared to him in its real light only when his landlady, at the end of the month, came to him for money. He had none to give her, naturally, as his salary had been withdrawn; and he was compelled to pawn his father's watch, after which he resumed his work with perfect serenity and without a thought of the future. But the landlady came again for money at the end of another month, and he once more pawned a jewel of the scant paternal legacy; this was a small diamond ring. In a few months there was nothing left to pawn. So the landlady, in consideration of his helplessness, kept him two or three days beyond the time and then turned him out, with the self-congratulatory feeling of having acted generously in not claiming his trunk and clothes, from which she might have realized the few cents that he still owed her.

He looked for another lodging, but was unable to rent a piano, which was a sore trial to him; evidently he could not finish his Mass. He knew a shopkeeper who owned a piano and who permitted him to make use of it. But Juan soon noticed that his visits grew more and more inopportune, so he left off going. Shortly, too, he was turned out of his new lodgings, only this time they kept his trunk. Then came a period of misery and anguish,—of that misery of which it is hard to conceive. We know that life has few joys for the homeless and the poor, but if in addition they be blind and alone, surely they have found the limit of human suffering. Juan was tossed about from lodging to lodging, lying in bed while his only shirt was being washed, wandering through the streets of Madrid with torn shoes, his trousers worn to a fringe about his feet, his hair long, and his beard unshaven. Some compassionate fellow-lodger obtained a position for him in a café, from which, however, he was soon turned out, for its frequenters did not relish his music. He never played popular dances or peteneras, no fandangos, not even an occasional polka. His fingers glided over the keys in dreamy ecstasies of Beethoven and Chopin, and the audience found some difficulty in keeping time with their spoons. So out he went again through the byways of the capital. Every now and then some charitable soul, accidentally brought in contact with his misery, assisted him indirectly, for Juan shuddered at the thought of begging. He took his meals in some tavern or other in the lowest quarter of Madrid, ate just enough to keep from starving, and for two cents he was allowed to sleep in a hovel between beggars and evil-doers. Once they stole his trousers while he was asleep, and left him a pair of cotton ones in their stead. This was in November.

Poor Juan, who had always cherished the thought of his brother's return, now in the depths of his misery nursed his chimera with redoubled faith. He had a letter written and sent to Havana. As he had no idea how his brother could be reached, the letter bore no direction. He made all manner of inquiries, but to no effect, and he spent long hours on his knees, hoping that Heaven might send Santiago to his rescue. His only happy moments were those spent in prayer, as he knelt behind a pillar in the far-off corner of some solitary church, breathing the acrid odors of dampness and melting wax, listening to the flickering sputter of the tapers and the faint murmur rising from the lips of the faithful in the nave of the temple. His innocent soul then soared above the cruelties of life and communed with God and the Holy Mother. From his early childhood devotion to the Virgin had been deeply rooted in his heart. As he had never known his mother, he instinctively turned to the mother of God for that tender and loving protection which only a woman can give a child. He had composed a number of hymns and canticles in her honor, and he never fell asleep without pressing his lips to the image of the Carmen, which he wore on his neck.

There came a day, however, when heaven and earth forsook him. Driven from his last shelter, without a crust to save him from starvation, or a cloak to protect him from the cold, he realized with terror that the time had come when he would have to beg. A great struggle took place in his soul. Shame and suffering made a desperate stand against necessity. The profound darkness which surrounded him increased the anguish of the strife; but hunger conquered in the end. He prayed for strength with sobs, and resigned himself to his fate. Still, wishing to disguise his humiliation, he determined to sing in the streets, at night only. His voice was good, and he had a rare knowledge of the art of singing. It occurred to him that he had no means of accompaniment. But he soon found another unfortunate, perhaps a trifle less wretched than himself, who lent him an old and broken guitar. He mended it as best he could, and with a voice hoarse with tears he went out into the street on a frosty December night. His heart beat violently; his knees trembled under him. When he tried to sing in one of the central thoroughfares, he found he could not utter a sound. Suffering and shame seemed to have tied a knot in his throat. He groped about until he had found a wall to lean against. There he stood for awhile, and when he felt a little calmer he began the tenor's aria from the first act of "Favorita." A blind singer who sang neither couplets nor popular songs soon excited some curiosity among the passers-by, and in a few minutes a crowd had gathered around him. There was a murmur of surprise and admiration at the art with which he overcame the difficulties of the composition, and many a copper was dropped in the hat that dangled from his arm. After this he sang the aria of the fourth act of "Africana." But too many had stopped to listen, and the authorities began to fear that this might be a cause of disturbance; for it is a well-established fact with officials of the police force that people who congregate in the streets to hear a blind man sing are always prompted by motives of rebellion,—it means a peculiar hostility to the institutions; in a word, an attitude thoroughly incompatible with the peace of society and the security of the State. Accordingly, a policeman caught Juan energetically by the arm and said, "Here, here! go straight home now, and don't let me catch you stopping at any more street corners."

"I'm doing no harm!"

"You are blocking the thoroughfare. Come, move on, move on, if you don't want to go to the lock-up."

It is really encouraging to see how careful our authorities are in clearing the streets of blind singers; and I really believe, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, that if they could keep them equally free from thieves and murderers, they would do so with pleasure. Juan went back to his hovel with a heavy heart, for he was by nature shrinking and timid, and was grieved at having disturbed the peace and given rise to the interference of the executive power. He had made twenty-seven cents. With this he bought something to eat on the following day, and paid rent for the little pile of straw on which he slept. The next night he went out again and sang a few more operatic arias; but the people again crowded around him, and once more a policeman felt himself called upon to interfere, shouting at him to move on. But how could he? If he kept moving on, he would not make a cent. He could not expect the people to follow him. Juan moved on, however, on and on, because he was timid, and the mere thought of infringing the laws, of disturbing even momentarily the peace of his native land, was worse than death to him. So his earnings rapidly decreased. The necessity of moving on, on the one hand, and the fact that his performances had lost the charm of novelty, which in Spain always commands its price, daily deprived him of a few coppers. With what he brought home at night he could scarcely buy enough food to keep him alive. The situation was desperate. The poor boy saw but one luminous point in the clouded horizon of his life, and that was his brother's return to Madrid. Every night as he left his hovel with his guitar swinging from his shoulder he thought, "If Santiago should be in Madrid and hear me sing, he would know me by my voice." And this hope, or rather this chimera, alone gave him the strength to endure life. However, there came again a day in which his anguish knew no limit. On the preceding night he had earned only six coppers. It had been so cold! This was Christmas Eve. When the morning dawned upon the world, it found Madrid wrapped in a sheet of snow six inches thick. It snowed steadily all day long, which was a matter of little consequence to the majority of people, and was even a cause of much rejoicing among æsthetes generally. Those poets in particular who enjoy what is called easy circumstances spent the greater part of the day watching the flakes through the plate-glass of their study windows, meditating upon and elaborating those graceful and ingenious similes that cause the audiences at the theatre to shout, "Bravo, bravo!" or those who read their verses to exclaim, "What a genius that young fellow is!"

Juan's breakfast had been a crust of stale bread and a cup of watery coffee. He could not divert his hunger by contemplating the beauty of the snow,—in the first place, because he was blind, and in the second, because, even had he not been blind, he would have had some difficulty in seeing it through the patched and filthy panes of his hovel. He spent the day huddled in a corner on his straw mattress, evoking scenes of his childhood and caressing the sweet dream of his brother's return. At nightfall he grew very faint, but necessity drove him into the streets to beg. His guitar was gone. He had sold it for sixty cents on a day of similar hardship. The snow fell with the same persistence. His legs trembled as they had when he sang for the first time, but now it was from hunger rather than shame. He groped about as best he could, with great lumps of mud above his ankles. The silence told him that there was scarcely a soul on the street. The carriages rolled noiselessly along, and he once came near being run over. In one of the central thoroughfares he began to sing the first thing that came to his lips. His voice was weak and hoarse. Nobody stopped to listen. "Let us try another street," thought he; and he went down the Avenue of San Jerónimo, walking awkwardly in the snow, with a white coating on his shoulders and water squirting from his shoes. The cold had begun to penetrate into his very bones, and hunger gave him a violent pain. For a moment with the cold and the pain came a feeling of faintness which made him think that he was about to die, and lifting his spirit to the Virgin of the Carmen, his protectress, he exclaimed in his anguish, "Mother, have pity!" And after pronouncing these words he felt relieved and walked, or rather dragged himself, to the Plaza de las Cortes. There he grasped a lamp-post, and under the impression of the Virgin's protection sang Gounod's "Ave Maria." Still nobody stopped to hear him. The people of Madrid were at the theatres, at the cafés, or at home, dancing their little ones on their knees in the glow of the hearth,—in the warmth of their love. The snow continued to fall steadily, copiously, with the evident purpose of furnishing a topic for the local column of the morning paper, where it would be described in a thousand delicate phrases. The occasional passers-by hurried along muffled up to their ears under their umbrellas. The lamp-posts had put on their white night-caps, from under which escaped thin rays of dismal light. The silence was broken only by the vague and distant rumble of carriages and by the light fall of the snowflakes, that sounded like the faint and continuous rustle of silk. The voice of Juan alone vibrated in the stillness of the night, imploring the mother of the unprotected; and his chant seemed a cry of anguish rather than a hymn of praise, a moan of sadness and resignation falling dreary and chill, like snow upon the heart.

And his cry for pity was in vain. In vain he repeated the sweet name of Mary, adjusting it to the modulations of every melody. Heaven and the Virgin were far away, it seemed, and could not hear him. The neighbors of the plaza were near at hand, but they did not choose to hear. Nobody came down to take him in from the cold; no window was thrown open to drop him a copper. The passers-by, pursued, as it were, by the fleet steps of pneumonia, scarcely dared stop. Juan's voice at last died in his throat; he could sing no more. His legs trembled under him; his hands lost their sense of touch. He took a few steps, then sank on the sidewalk at the foot of the grating that surrounds the square. He sat with his elbows on his knees and buried his head in his hands. He felt vaguely that it was the last moment of his life, and he again prayed, imploring the divine pity.

At the end of a few minutes he was conscious of being shaken by the arm, and knew that a man was standing before him. He raised his head, and taking for granted it was the old story about moving on, inquired timidly,—

"Are you an officer?"

"No; I am no officer. What is the matter with you? Get up."

"I don't believe I can, sir."

"Are you very cold?"

"Yes, sir; but it isn't exactly that,—I haven't had anything to eat to-day."

"I will help you, then. Come; up with you."

The man took Juan by both arms and stood him on his feet. He seemed very strong.

"Now lean on me, and let us see if we can find a cab."

"But where are you going to take me?"

"Nowhere where you wouldn't want to go. Are you afraid?"

"No; I feel in my heart that you will help me."

"Come along, then. Let's see how soon I can get you something hot to drink."

"God will reward you for this, sir; the Virgin will reward you. I thought I was going to die there, against that grating."

"Don't talk about dying, man. The question now is to find a cab; if we can only move along fast enough—What is the matter? Are you stumbling?"

"Yes, sir. I think I struck a lamp-post. You see—as I am blind—"

"Are you blind?" asked the stranger, anxiously.

"Yes, sir."

"Since when?"

"I was born blind."

Juan felt his companion's arm tremble in his, and they walked along in silence. Suddenly the man stopped and asked in a voice husky with emotion,—

"What is your name?"

"Juan."

"Juan what?"

"Juan Martínez."

"And your father was Manuel Martínez, wasn't he,—musician of the third artillery band?"

"Yes, sir."

The blind one felt the tight clasp of two powerful arms that almost smothered him, and heard a trembling voice exclaim,—

"My God, how horrible, and how happy! I am a criminal, Juan! I am your brother Santiago!"

And the two brothers stood sobbing together in the middle of the street. The snow fell on them lightly. Suddenly Santiago tore himself from his brother's embrace, and began to shout, intermingling his words with interjections,—

"A cab! A cab! Isn't there a cab anywhere around? Curse my luck! Come, Juanillo, try; make an effort, my boy; we are not so very far. But where in the name of sense are all the cabs? Not one has passed us. Ah, I see one coming, thank God! No; the brute is going in the other direction. Here is another. This one is mine. Hello there, driver! Five dollars if you take us flying to Number 13 Castellana."

And taking his brother in his arms as though he had been a mere child, he put him in the cab and jumped in after him. The driver whipped his horse, and off they went, gliding swiftly and noiselessly over the snow. In the mean time Santiago, with his arms still around Juan, told him something of his life. He had been in Costa Rica, not Cuba, and had accumulated a respectable fortune. He had spent many years in the country, beyond mail service and far from any point of communication with Europe. He had written several letters to his father, and had managed to get these on some steamer trading with England, but had never received any answer. In the hope of returning shortly to Spain, he had made no inquiries. He had been in Madrid for four months. He learned from the parish record that his father was dead; but all he could discover concerning Juan was vague and contradictory. Some believed that he had died, while others said that, reduced to the last stages of misery, he went through the streets singing and playing on the guitar. All his efforts to find him had been fruitless; but fortunately Providence had thrown him into his arms. Santiago laughed and cried alternately, showing himself to be the same frank, open-hearted, jovial soul that Juan had loved so in his childhood. The cab finally came to a stop. A man-servant opened the door, and Juan was fairly lifted into the house. When the door closed behind him, he breathed a warm atmosphere full of that peculiar aroma of comfort which wealth seems to exhale. His feet sank in the soft carpet. Two servants relieved him of his dripping clothes and brought him clean linen and a warm dressing-gown. In the same room, before a crackling wood fire, he was served a comforting bowl of hot broth, followed by something more substantial, which he was made to take very slowly and with all the precautions which his critical condition required. Then a bottle of old wine was brought up from the cellar. Santiago was too restless to sit still. He came and went, giving orders, interrupting himself every minute to say,—

"How do you feel now, Juan? Are you warm enough? Perhaps you don't care for this wine."

When the meal was over, the two brothers sat silently side by side before the fire. Santiago then inquired of one of the servants if the Señora and the children had already retired. On learning that they had, he said to Juan, beaming with delight,—

"Can you play on the piano?"

"Yes."

"Come into the parlor, then. Let us give them a surprise."

He accordingly led him into an adjoining room and seated him at the piano. He raised the top so as to obtain the greatest possible vibration, threw open the doors, and went through all the manœuvres peculiar to a surprise,—tiptoeing, whispering, speaking in a falsetto, and so much absurd pantomime that Juan could not help laughing as he realized how little his brother had changed.

"Now, Juanillo, play something startling, and play it loud, with all your might."

The blind boy struck up a military march. A quiver ran through the silent house like that which stirs a music-box while it is being wound up. The notes poured from the piano, hurrying, jostling one another, but never losing their triumphant rhythm. Every now and then Santiago exclaimed,—

"Louder, Juanillo! Louder!"

And the blind boy struck the notes with all his spirit and might.

"I see my wife peeping in from behind the curtains. Go on, Juanillo. She is in her night-gown,—he, he! I am pretending not to see her. I have no doubt she thinks I am crazy,—he, he! Go on, Juanillo."

Juan obeyed, although he thought the jest had been carried far enough. He wanted to know his sister-in-law and kiss his nephews.

"Now I can just see Manolita. Hello! Paquito is up too. Didn't I tell you we should surprise them? But I am afraid they will take cold. Stop a minute, Juanito!"

And the infernal clamor was silenced.

"Come, Adela, Manolita, and Paquito, get on your things and come in to see your uncle Juan. This is Juanillo, of whom you have heard me speak so often. I have just found him in the street almost frozen to death. Come, hurry and dress, all of you."

The whole family was soon ready, and rushed in to embrace the blind boy. The wife's voice was soft and harmonious. To Juan it sounded like the voice of the Virgin. He discovered, too, that she was weeping silently at the thought of all his sufferings. She ordered a foot-warmer to be brought in. She wrapped his legs in a cloak and put a soft cushion behind his head. The children stood around his chair, caressing him, and all listened with tears to the accounts of his past misery. Santiago struck his forehead; the children stroked his hands, saying,—

"You will never be hungry again, will you, uncle? Or go out without a cloak and an umbrella? I don't want you to, neither does Manolita, nor mamma, nor papa."

"I wager you will not give him your bed, Paquito," said Santiago, trying to conceal his tears under his affected merriment.

"My bed won't fit him, papa! But he can have the bed in the guests' chamber. It is a great bed, uncle, a big, big bed!"

"I don't believe I care to go to bed," said Juan. "Not just now at any rate, I am so comfortable here."

"That pain has gone, hasn't it, uncle?" whispered Manolita, kissing and stroking his hand.

"Yes, dear, yes,—God bless you! Nothing pains me now. I am happy, very happy! Only I feel sleepy, so sleepy that I can hardly raise my eyelids."

"Never mind us; sleep if you feel like it," said Santiago.

"Yes, uncle, sleep," repeated the children.

And Juan fell asleep,—but he wakened in another world.

The next morning, at dawn, two policemen stumbled against a corpse in the snow. The doctor of the charity hospital pronounced it a case of congealing of the blood.

As one of the officers turned him over, face upward,—

"Look, Jiménez," said he; "he seems to be laughing."

A CHRISTMAS IN THE FOREST.

From the French of André Theuriet.

Christmas Eve that year was bleak and cold, and the village seemed benumbed. The houses were closed hermetically, and so were the stables, from which came the muffled sound of animals chewing the cud. From time to time the clacking of wooden shoes on the hardened ground resounded through the deserted streets, then a door was hastily opened and closed, and all relapsed into silence. It was evident from the thick smoke rising through the chimneys into the gray air that every family was huddled around its hearth while the housewife prepared the Christmas supper. Stooping forward, with their legs stretched out to the fire, their countenances beaming with pleasure at the prospect of the morrow's festival and the foretaste of the fat and juicy blood-sausages, the peasants laughed at the north wind that swept the roads, at the frost that powdered the trees of the forest, and the ice that seemed to vitrify the streams and the river. Following their example, my friend Tristan and I spent the livelong day in the old house of the Abbatiale at the corner of the hearth, smoking our pipes and reading poetry. At sundown we had grown tired of seclusion and determined to venture out.

"The forest must be a strange sight with this heavy frost," said I to Tristan. "Suppose we take a turn through the wood after supper; besides, I must see the sabotiers from Courroy about a little matter."

So we pulled on our gaiters, stuffed our pipes, wrapped ourselves in our cloaks and mufflers, and penetrated into the wood.

We walked along cheerfully over the rugged, hardened soil of the trenches furrowed with deep, frozen ruts. Through the copse on either side we saw mysterious white depths. After a damp night the north wind had transformed the mists and vapors that overhung the branches into a tangle of snowy lace. In the half light of the gloaming we could still distinguish the sparkling needles of the junipers, the frosted puffs of the clematis, the bluish crystallizations of the beech, and the silver filigree of the nut-trees. The silence was broken by the occasional creaking of the frozen limbs, and every now and then a breath of impalpable white dust dampened our cheeks as it melted there.

We walked along at a steady pace, and in less than an hour caught sight of the red and flickering glow of the sabotiers' camp pitched on the edge of the forest above a stream that flowed down toward the valley of Santonge. The settlement consisted of a spacious, cone-shaped, dirt-coated hut and a cabin with board walls carefully sealed with moss. The hut answered the combined purposes of dormitory and kitchen; the cabin was used for the stowing away of tools and wooden shoes, and also for the two donkeys employed in the transportation of goods. The sabotiers, masters, apprentices, friends, and children were seated on beech logs around the fire in front of the hut, and their mobile silhouettes formed intensely black profiles against the red of the fire. Three short posts driven into the ground and drawn together at the top formed the crane, from which hung an iron pot that simmered over the coals. An appetizing odor of stewed hare escaped from the tin lid as it rose and fell under the puffs of vapor. The master, a lively, nervous, hairy little man, welcomed us with his usual cordiality.

"Sit down and warm yourselves," said he. "You find us preparing the Christmas supper. I'm afraid we'll not sleep over soundly to-night. My old woman is ill. I've fixed her a bed in the cabin where she'll be more comfortable, and warmer on account of the animals. My boy has gone to Santonge to get the doctor. There's no time to be lost. My little girl is kept busy running from the cabin to the hut."

We had no sooner taken our seats around the fire than the snowflakes began to whirl about in the stillness above us. They fell so thick and fast that in less than a quarter of an hour we were compelled to protect the fire with a hurdle covered with sackcloth.

"By my faith! gentlemen," said the sabotier, "you'll not be able to start out again in this storm. You'll have to stay and have your Christmas supper with us,—and taste of our stew."

The weather was certainly not tempting, and we accepted the invitation. Besides, the adventure amused us, and we were delighted at the prospect of a Christmas supper in the heart of the forest. An hour later we were in the hut, and by the light of a miserable little candle-end we had our Christmas supper, devouring our hare-stew with a sharp appetite and washing it down with a draught of unfermented wine that scraped our throats. The snow fell thicker and thicker, wrapping the forest in a soft white wadding that deadened every sound. Now and then the sabotier rose and went into the cabin, then came back looking worried, listening anxiously for the good woman from Santonge. Suddenly a few metallic notes, muffled by the snow, rose softly from the depth of the valley. A similar sound from an opposite direction rang out in answer, then followed a third and a fourth, and soon a vague confusion of Christmas chimes floated over the forest.

Our hosts, without interrupting the process of mastication and while they passed around the wine-jug, tried to recognize the various chimes by the fulness of the sounds.

"Those—now—those are the bells from Vivey. They are hardly any louder than the sound of the donkey's hoofs on the stones."

"That is the bell of Auberive!"

"Yes; and that peal that sounds like the droning of a swarm of beetles, that's the Grancey chimes."

During this discussion Tristan and I began to succumb to the combined action of warmth and fully satisfied appetite. Our eyes blinked, and before we knew it we fell asleep on the moss of the hut, lulled by the music of the Christmas chimes. A piercing shriek followed by a sound of joyful voices woke us with a start.

It had ceased snowing. The night was growing pale, and through the little skylight we could see above the fleecy trees a faint light in the sky, where a belated star hung quivering.

"It is a boy!" shouted the master, bursting in upon us. "Gentlemen, if you think you would like to see him, why, I should be very glad; and it might bring him luck."

We went crunching over the snow after him to the cabin, lighted by a smoky lamp. On her bed of laths and moss lay the young mother, weak and exhausted, her head thrown back, her pale face framed in by a mass of frowzy auburn hair. The "good woman," assisted by the little girl, was bundling up the new-comer, who wailed feebly. The two donkeys, amazed at so much stir and confusion, turned their kindly gray faces toward the bed, shook their long ears, and gazed around them with wide, intelligent eyes, blowing through their nostrils puffs of warm vapor that hung like a thin mist on the air. At the foot of the bed stood a young shepherd, with a black and white she-goat and a new-born kid.

"I have brought you the she-goat, Ma'am Fleuriot," said he, in his Langrois drawl. "You can have her for the boy as long as you wish."

The goat was baaing, the new-born child wailed, and the donkeys breathed loudly. There was something primitive and biblical about the whole scene.

Without, in the violet light of the dawn, while a distant church-bell scattered its early notes through the air, one of the young apprentices, dancing in the snow to keep warm, sang out at the top of his lungs that old Christmas carol, which seemed then full of new meaning and poetry,—

"He is born, the little Child.

Ring out, hautbois! ring out, bagpipes!

He is born, the little Child;

Let us sing the happy news."

THE LOUIS-D'OR.

From the French of François Coppée.

When Lucien de Hem saw his last bill for a hundred francs clawed by the banker's rake, when he rose from the roulette-table where he had just lost the débris of his little fortune scraped together for this supreme battle, he experienced something like vertigo, and thought that he should fall. His brain was muddled; his legs were limp and trembling. He threw himself upon the leather lounge that circumscribed the gambling-table. For a few moments he mechanically followed the clandestine proceedings of that hell in which he had sullied the best years of his youth, recognized the worn profiles of the gamblers under the merciless glare of the three great shadeless lamps, listened to the clicking and the sliding of the gold over the felt, realized that he was bankrupt, lost, remembered that in the top drawer of his dressing-table lay a pair of pistols,—the very pistols of which General de Hem, his father, had made noble use at the attack of Zaatcha; then, overcome by exhaustion, he sank into a heavy sleep.

When he awoke his mouth was clammy, and his tongue stuck to his palate. He realized by a hasty glance at the clock that he had scarcely slept a half-hour, and he felt the imperious necessity of going out to get a breath of the fresh night air. The hands on the dial pointed exactly to a quarter of twelve. As he rose and stretched his arms it occurred to him that it was Christmas Eve, and by one of those ironical freaks of the memory, he felt as though he were once more a child, ready to stand his little boot on the hearth before going to bed. Just then old Dronski, one of the pillars of the trade, the traditional Pole, wrapped in the greasy worn cloak adorned with frogs and passementerie, came up to Lucien muttering something behind his dirty grayish beard.

"Lend me five francs, will you, Monsieur? I haven't stirred from this place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn't come out once. You may laugh at me all you like, but I'll bet you my fist that when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number."

Lucien de Hem shrugged his shoulders; and fumbling through his pockets, he found that he had not even money enough to comply with that feature of gambling etiquette known among the frequenters of the establishment as "the Pole's hundred cents." He passed into the antechamber, put on his hat and cloak, and disappeared down the narrow stairway with the agility of people who have a fever. During the four hours which Lucien had spent in the den it had snowed heavily, and the street, one of those narrow wedges between two rows of high buildings in the very heart of Paris, was intensely white. Above, in the calm blue black of the sky, cold stars glittered. The exhausted gambler shivered under his furs, and hurried along with a blank despair in his heart, thinking of the pistols that awaited him in the top drawer of his dressing-table. He had not gone a hundred feet when he stopped suddenly before a heart-rending spectacle.

On a stone bench, near the monumental doorway of a wealthy residence, sat a little girl six or seven years old, barely covered by a ragged black gown. She had fallen asleep there in spite of the bitter cold, her body bent forward in a pitiful posture of resigned exhaustion. Her poor little head and her dainty shoulder had moulded themselves into the angle of the freezing wall. One of her worn slippers had fallen from her dangling foot and lay in the snow before her. Lucien de Hem mechanically thrust his hand into his vest-pocket, but he remembered that he had not even been able to fee the club waiter. He went up to the child, however, impelled by an instinct of pity. He meant, no doubt, to pick her up and take her home with him, to give her shelter for the night, when suddenly he saw something glitter in the little slipper at his feet. He stooped. It was a louis-d'or.

Some charitable soul—a woman, no doubt—had passed there, and at the pathetic sight of that little shoe in the snow had remembered the poetic Christmas legend, and with discreet fingers had dropped a splendid gift, so that the forsaken little one might still believe in the presents of the Child-Christ, and might awake with renewed faith in the midst of her misery.

A gold louis! That meant many days of rest and comfort for the little beggar. Lucien was just about to awaken her and surprise her with her good fortune when, in a strange hallucination, he heard a voice in his ear, which whispered with the drawling inflection of the old Pole: "I haven't stirred from this place for two days, and for two whole days seventeen hasn't come out once. I'll bet you my fist that when the clock strikes twelve, seventeen will be the winning number."

Then this youth, who was twenty-three years of age, the descendant of a race of honest men,—this youth who bore a great military name, and had never been guilty of an unmanly act,—conceived a monstrous thought; an insane desire took possession of him. He looked anxiously up and down the street, and having assured himself that he had no witness, he knelt, and reaching out cautiously with trembling fingers, stole the treasure from the little shoe, then rose with a spring and ran breathlessly down the street. He rushed like a madman up the stairs of the gambling-house, flung open the door with his fist, and burst into the room at the first stroke of midnight. He threw the gold-piece on the table and cried,—

"Seventeen!"

Seventeen won. He then pushed the whole pile on the "red." The red won. He left the seventy-two louis on the same color. The red came out again. He doubled the stakes, twice, three times, and always with the same success. Before him was a huge pile of gold and bank-notes. He tried the "twelve," the "column,"—he worked every combination. His luck was something unheard of, something almost supernatural. One might have believed that the little ivory ball, in its frenzied dance around the table, had been bewitched, magnetized by this feverish gambler, and obeyed his will. With a few bold strokes he had won back the bundle of bank-notes which he had lost in the early part of the evening. Then he staked two and three hundred louis at a time, and as his fantastic luck never failed him, he soon won back the whole capital that had constituted his inherited fortune.

In his haste to begin the game he had not even thought of taking off his fur-lined coat, the great pockets of which were now swollen with the rolls of bank-notes, and heavy with the weight of the gold. Not knowing where to put the money that was steadily accumulating before him, he stuffed it away in the inside and outside pockets of his coat, his vest, his trousers, in his cigar-case, his handkerchief. Everything became a recipient. And still he played and still he won, his brain whirling the while like that of a drunkard or a madman. It was amazing to see him stand there throwing gold on the table by the handful, with that haughty gesture of absolute certainty and disdain. But withal there was a gnawing at his heart, something that felt like a red-hot iron there, and he could not rid himself of the vision of the child asleep in the snow,—the child whom he had robbed.

"In just a few minutes," said he, "I will go back to her. She must be there in the same place. Of course she must be there. It is no crime, after all. I will make it right to her,—it will be no crime. Quite the contrary. I will leave here in a few moments, when the clock strikes again, I swear it. Just as soon as the clock strikes again I will stop, I will go straight to where she is, I will take her up in my arms and will carry her home with me asleep. I have done her no harm; I have made a fortune for her. I will keep her with me and educate her; I will love her as I would a child of my own, and I will take care of her,—always, as long as she lives!"

But the clock struck one, a quarter past, half-past, and Lucien was still there. Finally, a few minutes before two the man opposite him rose brusquely and said in a loud voice,—

"The bank is broken, gentlemen; this will do for to-night."

Lucien started, and wedging his way brutally through the group of gamblers, who pressed around him in envious admiration, hurried out into the street and ran as fast as he could toward the stone bench. In a moment he saw by the light of the gas that the child was still there.

"God be praised!" said he, and his heart gave a great throb of joy. Yes, here she was! He took her little hand in his. Poor little hand, how cold it was! He caught her under the arms and lifted her. Her head fell back, but she did not awake. "The happy sleep of childhood!" thought he. He pressed her close to his breast to warm her, and with a vague presentiment he tried to rouse her from this heavy sleep by kissing her eyelids. But he realized then with horror that through the child's half-open lids her eyes were dull, glassy, fixed. A distracting suspicion flashed through his mind. He put his lips to the child's mouth; he felt no breath.

While Lucien had been building a fortune with the louis stolen from this little one, she, homeless and forsaken, had perished with cold.

Lucien felt a suffocating knot at his throat. In his anguish he tried to cry out; and in the effort which he made he awoke from his nightmare, and found himself on the leather lounge in the gambling-room, where he had fallen asleep a little before midnight. The garçon of the den had gone home at about five o'clock, and out of pity had not wakened him.

A misty December dawn made the window-panes pale. Lucien went out, pawned his watch, took a bath, then went over to the Bureau of Recruits, and enlisted as a volunteer in the First Regiment of the Chasseurs d'Afrique.

Lucien de Hem is now a lieutenant. He has not a cent in the world but his pay. He manages to make that do, however, for he is a steady officer, and never touches a card. He even contrives to economize, it would seem; for a few days ago a comrade, who was following him up one of the steep streets of the Kasba, saw him stop to lay a piece of money in the lap of a little Spanish girl who had fallen asleep in a doorway. His comrade was startled at the poor lieutenant's generosity, for this piece of money was a gold louis.

A CHRISTMAS SUPPER IN THE MARAIS.

From the French of Alphonse Daudet.

M. Majesté, a seltzer-water manufacturer of the Marais, has just indulged in a little Christmas supper with a few friends of the Place Royale, and walks home humming. The clock at St. Paul's strikes two. "How late it is!" thinks the good man as he hurries along. But the pavement is slippery, the streets are dark, and then, in this devil of an old neighborhood which belongs to the time when carriages were scarce, there are the greatest number of turns, corners, steps, and posts in front of the houses for the accommodation of horsemen, all of which are calculated to impede a man's progress, particularly when his legs are heavy and his sight somewhat blurred by the toasts of the Christmas supper. M. Majesté reaches his destination at last, however. He stops before a great doorway above which gleams in the moonlight the freshly gilded coat-of-arms, the recently retouched armorial-bearings which he has converted into a trade-mark.

Former
Hôtel de Nesmond.
Majesté, jr.,
Seltzer-water Manufacturer.

The old Nesmond coat-of-arms stands out, resplendent, on all the siphons of the factory, on all the memoranda and letter-heads.

The doorway leads directly to the court,—a large, sunny court which floods the narrow street with light even at noon, when the portals are thrown open. Far back in this court stands a great and ancient structure,—blackened walls covered with lace-work and embroideries of stone, bulging iron balconies, stone balconies with pilasters, great high windows crowned with pediments, and capitals rearing their heads along the upper stories like so many little roofs within the roof, then above it all, set in the very slate, the mansard dormer-windows, like the round mirrors of a boudoir, daintily framed with garlands. From the court to the first story rises a great stone stairway gnawed and worn green by the rains. A meagre vine dangles along the wall, lifeless and black like the rope that swings from the pulley in the attic; and the whole has an indescribable air of sad grandeur and decay.

This is the ancient Hôtel de Nesmond. In the broad light of day it has quite a different aspect. The words "Office," "Store," "Entrance to the work-rooms," in bright gilt letters, seem to rejuvenate the old walls and infuse a new life into them. The drays from the railroad shake the iron portals as they rumble through, and the clerks step out on the landing to receive the goods. The court is obstructed with cases, baskets, straw, wrappers, and pack-cloth. One is conscious of being in a factory. But at night, in the death-like stillness, with the winter moon casting and tangling fantastic shadows through the confused intricacy of all these roofs, the old dwelling of the Nesmonds resumes its lordly air. The court of honor seems to expand; the wrought-iron of the balconies looks like fine lace; the old stairway is full of shadows in the uncertain light, of mysterious recesses like those of a cathedral; there are empty niches and half concealed steps that suggest an altar.

On this particular night M. Majesté is deeply impressed with the grandeur of his dwelling. The echo of his own footsteps startles him as he crosses the great deserted court. The stairway seems even broader than usual, and peculiarly heavy to climb. But that is the Christmas supper, no doubt. At the first landing he stops to take breath; he leans on one of the window-sills. So much for living in a historic mansion! M. Majesté is certainly not a poet, oh, no! and still as he gazes around him at this lordly old place, which seems to be sleeping so peacefully under its benumbed, snow-hooded roofs, as he looks down into this grand, aristocratic old court which the moon floods with a bluish light, weird fancies flash through his brain.

"Suppose the Nesmonds should take it into their heads to come back, eh?"

Just then there is a violent pull at the door-bell. The portal swings open instantly, so brusquely that it puts out the light of the lamp-post in the court. From the shadow of the doorway come rustling sounds and confused whisperings. There seems to be a great crowd wrangling and jostling to get in. There are footmen, a multitude of footmen, coaches with glass panes glimmering in the moonlight, sedan-chairs swaying lightly between two torches whose long flames writhe and twist in the draught of the doorway. In a second the court is crowded; but at the foot of the stairway the confusion ceases. People alight from the coaches, recognize one another, smile, bow, and make their way up the stairs, chatting softly as though they were quite familiar with the house. There is much rustling of silks and clanking of swords on the landing, and billows of white hair, heavy and dull with powder. Through the faint sound of the airy tread comes a thin, high quiver of voices and little peals of laughter that has lost its vibration. All these people seem old, very old,—eyes that have lost their fire, slumbering jewels that have lost their light, antique brocades that shimmer with a subdued iridescence in the light of the torches, and above it all a thin mist of powder that rises at every courtesy from the white-puffed scaffoldings of these stately heads. In a moment the place seems to be haunted. Torches glitter from window to window and up and down the curving stairways; the very dormers in the mansard twinkle with joy and life. The whole mansion is ablaze with light, as though a great burst of sunset had set its windows aglow.

"Merciful saints! they will set the house on fire!" thinks M. Majesté; and having recovered from his stupor, he makes an effort to shake the numbness from his legs, and hurries down into the court, where the footmen have just lighted a great bonfire. M. Majesté goes up to them, speaks to them; but they do not answer; they stand there chatting among themselves softly, and not the faintest breath issues from their lips into the freezing shadow of the night. M. Majesté is somewhat put out. He is reassured, however, when he realizes that this great fire with its long straight flames is a most peculiar fire, which emits no heat,—which simply glows, but does not burn. The good man therefore sets his mind at rest, goes upstairs again, and makes his way into the store.

These stores on the first floor must have been grand reception-halls in their day. Particles of tarnished gold still cling to the angles. Mythological frescos circle about the ceilings, wind round the mirrors, hover above the doorways, vague and subdued, like bygone memories. Unfortunately there are no curtains or furniture anywhere, nothing but baskets, great cases filled with leaden-headed siphons, and the withered limb of an old lilac bush rising in black outline outside the window. M. Majesté enters. He finds the rooms crowded and brilliantly illumined. He bows, but nobody seems to notice him. The women, in their satin wraps, lean on their cavaliers' arms and flirt with ceremonious, mincing graces. They promenade, chat, separate into groups. All these old marquises really seem quite at home. One little shade stops, all of a quiver, before a painted pier-glass; then she glances smilingly at a Diana that rises out of the wood-work, lithe and roseate, with a crescent on her brow.

"This is I; think of it! And here I am!"

"Nesmond, come and see your crest!" and they laugh immoderately at the sight of the Nesmond coat-of-arms displayed on the wrappers above the name of Majesté, Jr.

"Ha, ha, ha! Majesté! There are some majesties left in France after all, then!"

And there is no end of merriment, of mincing coquetries. Little trills of laughter rise like the notes of a flute in the air. Some one exclaims suddenly,—

"Champagne! champagne!"

"Nonsense!"

"Yes, indeed, champagne. Come, Countess, what say you to a little Christmas supper?"

They have mistaken M. Majesté's seltzer-water for champagne. They naturally find it somewhat flat. But these poor little ghosts have such unsteady heads! The foam of the seltzer-water somehow excites them and makes them feel like dancing. Minuets are immediately organized. Four rare violinists provided by Nesmond strike out with an old melody by Rameau, full of triplets, quaint and melancholy in its vivacity; and you should see the pretty little grandmothers turn slowly and bow gravely in time with the music.

Their very finery seems freshened and rejuvenated by the sound, and so do the waistcoats of cloth-of-gold, the brocaded coats and diamond-buckled shoes. The panels themselves seem to awake. The old mirror, scratched and dim, which has stood encased in the wall for over two hundred years, recognizes them all, glows softly upon them, showing them their own images with a pale vagueness like a tender regret.

In the midst of all this elegance M. Majesté feels somewhat ill at ease. He is huddled in a corner, and looks on from behind a case of bottles. But gradually the day dawns. Through the glass doors of the store one can see the court growing light, then the top of the windows, then all one side of the great parlor. Before the light of day the figures melt and disappear. The four little violinists alone are belated in a corner; and M. Majesté watches them evaporate as the daylight creeps upon them. In the court below he can just see the vague form of a sedan-chair, a powdered head sprinkled with emeralds, and the last spark of a torch that a lackey has dropped on the pavement, and which blends with the sparks from the wheels of a dray, rumbling in noisily through the open portals.

THE PRINCESS AND THE RAGAMUFFIN.

From the Spanish of Benito Pérez Galdós.

I.

Pacorrito Migajas was a great character. He stood a trifle over two feet from the ground, and had just turned his seventh year. His skin was tanned by the sun and the wind, and his wizened face suggested a dwarf rather than a child. His eyes, adorned with long eyelashes that looked like black wires, were full of vitality and resplendent with mischief. His mouth was amazing in its ugliness; and his ears, strangely like those of a faun, seemed to have been attached to his face, rather than to have grown there. He was dressed in a shirt of every possible shade of grime, and a pair of patchwork trousers upheld by a single suspender. In the winter he wore a coat which he had inherited from his grandfather. The sleeves had been cut off at the elbow, and Pacorrito considered it a handsome fit, as overcoats go. A rag which aspired to be a muffler was wound like a snake round and round his neck, and on his head he wore a cap which he had picked up at the Rastro. He had little use for shoes, which he considered in the light of a hindrance, neither did he wear stockings, having a great aversion to the roughness of the threads.

Pacorrito's ancestors could not have been more illustrious. His father, accused of having attempted to make his way into a house through the drain, went to Ceuta for a change of climate, and died there. His mother, a great lady who for many years kept a chestnut-stand in the Cava de San Miguel, had also fallen somehow into the hands of the authorities, and after much ado with judges and notaries, had repaired to the Alcalá jail. Pacorrito had one sister, but this last relative had deserted her post at the tobacco factory and flown to Sevilla in amorous pursuit of an artillery officer. Up to the present she has not returned.

Migajas was therefore alone in the world, with no protection but that of God, and no guide but his own will.

II.

The pious reader need not fancy that Pacorrito was in the least daunted or disturbed at finding himself alone; not he. In his brief career he had had occasion to study the ways of the world, and he knew a thing or two about the fraud and vanity of life. He filled himself with energy and confronted the situation like a hero. He was on excellent terms with numerous persons of his age and quality, and even with bearded men, who seemed disposed to protect him, so by dint of push he got the better of his sad condition.

He sold matches, newspapers, and lottery tickets,—three branches of industry which, if intelligently pursued, might certainly be productive of honest gain. And so it happened that Pacorrito was never in want of a penny or so to assist a friend in need, or to treat his acquaintances of the fair sex.

He was spared all domestic worries, all household cares and exigencies. His palaces were the Prado in summer, and the portals of the Casa Panadería in winter. By nature he was frugal and wisely inimical to the pomps of the world. He slept anywhere, ate whatever he found, just as the birds do, and suffered no anxiety on this score, because of the religious submissiveness that filled his soul, and his instinctive faith in that mysterious Providence which deserts no one, great or small. One might be apt to conclude from this that Migajas was happy. It seems natural enough that he should be. He was deprived of relatives, it is true, but he enjoyed the precious boon of liberty. As his wants were few, the fruit of his labor kept him in plenty, and he was not indebted to any one for anything. His sleep was disturbed neither by cares nor ambition. He was poor but contented; his body was destitute, but his spirit was rich in peace. Well, in spite of all this, my lord Pacorrito was unhappy. Why? Because he was in love,—over ears in love, as they commonly say.

Yes, sir, this very Pacorrito, who was so small, so ugly, so poor, and so alone, loved. Inexorable law of life, which permits no being, whatever his condition, to elude the despotic yoke of love! With a mind free from impure thoughts, our hero loved. He loved with a dreamer's idealism, yet at times he felt that ardent fire which set the blood boiling like the very devil in his veins. The object of his thoughts aroused every variety of sensation in his volcanic heart. He had days of sweet Platonicism, like Petrarch, then again, he was warm and impetuous, like Romeo. And who, pray, had inspired Pacorrito with this terrible passion? No less a person than a great lady who wore silk and velvet gowns, beautiful furs and gold eyeglasses,—a great lady with flaxen ringlets that fell on her alabaster neck, and who had been known to sit at the piano for three days in succession.

III.

Who was this celestial beauty, and how came Migajas to make her acquaintance? This is how it happened: Our hero's mercantile operations extended over a great part of one of the streets opening into the Puerta del Sol,—a busy thoroughfare lined with beautiful shops, the show-windows of which are resplendent at night, and display all the marvels of industry. One of these stores, which is kept by a German, is always full of exquisite trifles and novelties. It is the great bazaar of childhood, both juvenile and adult. During the Carnival it is hung with grotesque masks; in Holy Week it is filled with figures of saints and pious images. At Christmas and New Year's it is all Bethlehem mangers and Christmas-trees, laden with toys and magnificent presents.

Pacorrito's mad passion began when the German filled his show-window with the most enchanting collection of richly dressed ladies that Parisian fancy could conceive. Almost all of them were two feet tall. Their faces were of highly refined wax, and the crimson of fresh roses could not equal the glow of their chaste cheeks. Their immobile eyes of blue glass shone with a splendor surpassing that of the human pupil. Their hair of softest crimped wool could with greater justice be compared to the rays of the sun than that of most great ladies; and the strawberries of April, the cherries of May, and the coral from the deep seas were ugly things compared to their lips. Their good breeding and deportment were such that they never stirred from the spot where they were placed. They merely creaked the wooden joints of their knees, their shoulders, and their elbows, when the German sat them at the piano or made them raise their eyeglasses to look out into the street. Otherwise they were no trouble whatever, and no one had ever heard them say, "This month is mine."

There was one among them,—what a woman! She was the tallest, the most lithe, the most beautiful, the most sympathetic, the most elegant,—in a word, the greatest lady of them all. She was no doubt a person of high degree, judging from her grave, grand manner and that patronizing air which was so becoming to her.

"Grand woman! She is the paragon!" thought Pacorrito the first time he saw her, and for a whole hour he stood before the show-window, rooted to the sidewalk.

IV.

Pacorrito had reached the state of emotional excitement, the delirium peculiar to heroes of romance. His brain boiled; writhing, stinging serpents wound themselves around his heart; his mind was a volcano; he despised life; he longed for death; he soliloquized; he gazed at the moon; he soared beyond the seventh heaven. Many a time had night overtaken him in a melancholy ecstasy before the show-window, oblivious to everything, oblivious to his very business interests. It might be well to state at once that our good Migajas met with no rebuff. I mean that his mad passion was to a certain extent reciprocated. Who can measure the intensity of a heart of tow and sawdust? The world is full of mysteries. Science is vain and will never penetrate the depths of things. Who will draw the line defining the exact sphere of the inanimate? Where does the inanimate begin? Down with the pedant who stands before a stone or a cork and says, "Thou hast no soul." God alone knows the true dimensions of the invisible limbo, wherein rests all that which does not love.

Pacorrito was quite sure of having stirred his lady's pulse. She gazed at him, and without moving a muscle, opening her mouth, or winking an eye, she spoke soulful things to him, now sweet as hope, now sad like the prescience of tragic events. This naturally fanned the flame that burned in our friend's heart, and his daring imagination conceived dramatic plans of conquest, and even of matrimony.

One night the faithful lover repaired punctually to the tryst. The lady was seated at the piano, her hands suspended over the keys, and her divine face turned to the street. The ragamuffin and she exchanged glances; and what passion, what idealism, in that look! Sighs and tender thoughts were following one another, when an event occurred which clipped the thread of this sweet communion and shattered at one blow the happiness of both lovers. It was one of those sudden catastrophes that inflict a mortal wound and lead to suicides, tragedies, and other lamentable things.

A hand proceeding from the interior of the shop was thrust into the show-window; it caught the lady by the belt and disappeared with her within. Pacorrito's amazement was followed by a sense of misery so intense that he longed to die there and then. To see the object of his love vanish as though she had been swallowed by the insatiable grave, to be unable to rescue her or follow her, were it to the bottomless pit, ah, here was a blow which was beyond human endurance!

Migajas was about to drop on the sidewalk. He thought of suicide; he invoked God and the Devil.

"They have sold her!" he muttered hoarsely; and he pulled his hair and scratched his face and kicked, and as he did so he dropped his matches, his lottery tickets, and his newspapers. Worldly interests, you are not worth a sigh!

V.

After a time, when he had recovered from his violent emotion, he glanced toward the interior of the store and saw two or three grown persons and several little girls talking with the German. One of these little girls held in her arms the lady of his thoughts. He felt like rushing upon them frantically, but he forbore, for it occurred to him that his appearance was not in his favor, and that there would be every chance of his getting a sound drubbing and being handed over to the police. He stood rooted to the threshold, meditating upon the horrors of the slave-trade, upon this heinous Tyrolese institution wherein a few dollars decided the fate of honest creatures, exposing them to the savage destructiveness of ill-bred children. Human nature appeared to him in all its baseness. Those who had purchased the lady left the shop and entered a luxurious carriage. And how they laughed, the wretches! Even the wee fellow, the most petted and spoiled of them all, no doubt, took the liberty of pulling the unfortunate doll by the arms, although he had the greatest quantity of toys appropriate to his age and for his own exclusive enjoyment. The grown persons, too, seemed satisfied with the new acquisition.

While the footman stood by to receive orders, Pacorrito, who was a person of heroic and daring resolutions, conceived the idea of swinging behind the carriage. This he did with that agility peculiar to the ragamuffin when he wishes to take a ride across the city.

Stretching his neck to the right, he saw the arm of the lady who had been sacrificed to lucre sticking out of the window. This rigid arm and its pink fist spoke forcibly to his imagination, calling to him through the rumble of the wheels:

"Save me, save me, my Pacorrito!"

VI.

Under the archway of the great dwelling before which the carriage stopped, Pacorrito's illusion vanished. A servant informed him that if he soiled the flagstones with his muddy feet, he would have his back-bone broken. Migajas retired before this overwhelming argument, but from that instant his heart was filled with a scorching thirst for vengeance. His fiery nature impelled him forward into the night of the unforeseen, into the arms of his fortune. His soul was well fitted to noisy and dramatic adventures, so what should he do but make a compact with those who removed the garbage from the house where his beloved lived enslaved; and by this means—which may not have been altogether poetical, but which revealed the shrewdness of a heart as big as the top of a pine-tree—he found his way into the palace. How his heart throbbed as he went up the stairs and into the kitchen! The thought of being near her confused him so that more than once his basket fell from his hand, spilling its contents down the steps. But nowhere could he see his lady-love. He often heard the screams of children at play, but nothing more.

The servants, because he was so little and so ugly, played many a trick upon him. One alone, who seemed more compassionate than the rest, gave him sweetmeats. One cold morning the cook, through pity or through sheer wickedness perhaps, gave him a draught of wine that was as biting and fiery as the very devil. The ragamuffin felt a warm and delightful current run through his whole body while hot vapors rose to his head. His legs trembled; his limp arms fell beside him in voluptuous abandon. A stream of playful laughter rose from his heart and gurgled from his lips; and Pacorrito held on to the wall with both hands to keep from falling. A vigorous kick somewhat modified his mirth, and he left the kitchen. His brain was topsy-turvy. He had no idea where his steps were leading him. He ran along staggering and laughing, first over cold tiles, then over smooth boarded floors, then over soft, warm carpets. Suddenly he caught sight of an object on the floor. He stood petrified for a second; then he uttered a roar of pain and fell upon his knees. Heavens! There, stretched before him like a corpse, with a crack through her alabaster brow, a broken arm, and dishevelled locks, was the lady of his thoughts.

For a moment our hero was speechless. His voice was smothered in his throat. He pressed the cold body to his heart and covered it with burning kisses. The lady's eyes were open, and she gazed with melancholy tenderness at her faithful lover, for she lived, in spite of her wounds. Pacorrito knew it by the singular light of her calm blue eyes, that emitted little flames of love and gratitude.

"Señora, let me know who reduced you to this sad condition!" he exclaimed in pathetic and anguished tones. His pain was soon followed by a burst of rage, and he thought of the great revenge he would take upon the perpetrators of the iniquity. Just then he heard footsteps approaching, so he tucked the lady under his arm and started on a run. He went down the stairs, crossed the court, and broke into the street. He could scarcely be said to be running; he was flying, like a bird that has stolen grain, heard a report, and feeling itself unhurt, determines to put the greatest possible distance between itself and the gun. He ran past one, two, three, ten streets, till he thought he was far enough away to be in safety, and then stopped to rest, laying the object of his insensate tenderness upon his knees.

VII.

Night came upon him, and he welcomed with delight the soft shadows that hid the daring act and protected his love. He examined her injured body carefully, and concluded that the wounds were not serious, although one might have seen her brain, had she had one, through the opening in her skull, and the sawdust of her heart poured out in copious streams through the rents in her breast. Her gown was in shreds, and part of her hair had been dropped in the hasty flight. His soul overflowed with sorrow when he realized that he had not the money with which to meet the situation. As he had given up his business, naturally his pockets were empty, and a loved woman, particularly if she is in poor health, is a source of unlimited expense. Migajas laid his hand sadly upon that part of his rags wherein he had habitually kept his coin, but nothing was there.

"At this critical moment," thought he, "when I need a house, a bed, a world of doctors and surgeons, an abundance of food, a bright fire and a dressmaker, I have nothing—nothing!"

But as he was very tired, he laid his head upon his idol's body and fell asleep like an angel.

Then a great miracle took place. The lady began to revive, and finally rising to her feet, showed Pacorrito a smiling countenance. The wound had disappeared from her noble brow; her lithe form was without a rent, her gown neat and whole. On her curled and perfumed locks she wore a coquettish hat trimmed with minute flowers,—in a word, she stood before him in all her beauty just as he had known her in the show-window.

Migajas was dazzled, stupefied, dumb. He fell on his knees and worshipped her as people do a divinity. Then she took the ragamuffin by the hand, and in a voice clear, pure, and sweeter than the song of the nightingale, she said to him,—

"Pacorrito, follow me! I want to show you my gratitude, and tell you of the sublime love with which you have inspired me. You have been loyal, constant, generous, heroic; you have rescued me from the power of those Vandals that tortured me. You deserve my heart and my hand. Come, follow me! Do not be foolish; do not think you are inferior to me because you are in rags."

Migajas gazed at the lady's elegant, luxurious attire and said sadly, "My lady, where can I go in this dress?"

The lady did not answer; she merely led Pacorrito by the hand into a mysterious region of shadows.

The ragamuffin soon found himself in a grand parlor brilliantly illumined and filled with beautiful objects. The first moment of bewilderment passed, he distinguished a thousand different figures and statuettes, like those that peopled the shop in which he had seen his beloved for the first time. What greatly surprised him was to see all the fine ladies who in shimmering gowns had occupied the show-window with his friend come forth to meet them. His lady accepted their homage with grave and ceremonious courtesy. She seemed to belong to a higher caste than they. Her queenly manner, her proud though not haughty bearing, suggested dominion. She immediately presented Pacorrito. For his part he was much confused and grew redder than a poppy when the princess, taking his hand, said,—

"Allow me to present to you the Señor Don Pacorrito de las Migajas, who will honor us with his presence to-night."

The wings of his heart drooped, as they say, when he compared the luxury that surrounded him with his own poverty, his rags, his bare feet, his torn trousers upheld by a single suspender, and his coat-sleeves cut off at the elbow.

"I can divine your thoughts," said the princess, aside. "Your dress is not the most appropriate for a celebration like this. As a matter of fact, you are not presentable."

"Señora, that deuced tailor of mine," stammered Migajas, "has been false to his word, and—"

"Never mind; we will dress you here," said the noble lady.

The valets in this strange mansion were tiny and very comical monkeys. Wee parrots of the kind known as perricos acted as pages, to say nothing of a great number of paper birds. They immediately set to work to repair, as far as it was possible, Pacorrito's unfortunate appearance. They slipped his feet into a pair of tiny gilded match-boxes that made the most stylish boots; they cut a neck-cloth for him out of half a little red paper lantern and turned an osier flower-pot into a sort of pastoral hat which they trimmed elaborately with flowers. As Pacorrito had never been decorated, they took a metal plate from an elegant Kepi and hung it around his neck, by way of a decoration, and also a match-box, which was round and looked like a watch, and the cut-glass stopper of a small bottle of perfumery. The paper birds conceived the happy thought of putting an ivory paper-cutter in his belt, to figure as a sword or dagger. Thanks to these and numerous other inventions for concealing his tatters, our friend looked so handsome that no one would have recognized him. As he caught sight of himself in the mirror-top of a work-box, he swelled with pride. He was radiant.

VIII.

The ball now began. A number of canaries from their respective cages sang waltzes and habaneras. The cornets and the clarionets too were very skilful in pressing their keys all by themselves; the violins pinched their own strings; and the trumpets blew into each other. Migajas thought this music was entrancing. It is unnecessary to say that the princess danced with him. The other ladies found partners among the officers of the army and the sovereigns who had left their horses outside. Among these were Prince Bismarck, the Emperor of Germany, and Napoleon. Migajas was beside himself with pride and excitement. It would be impossible to describe the emotions of his soul as he dashed into the dizzy whirls of the waltz with his beloved in his arms. Her soft breathing and an occasional stray lock of her golden hair caressed his cheek, tickling him gently and producing a strange intoxication. A loving glance or a little sigh of fatigue would every now and then put a climax to his madness.

Suddenly the monkeys appeared and announced supper. This caused a great commotion. Migajas rejoiced greatly, for with no prejudice to the spiritual character of his love, the poor little fellow was very hungry.

IX.

The dining-hall was superb and the table exquisite. The china was of the very finest manufactured for dolls, and a multitude of bouquets showed their colors and scattered their fragrance from egg-stands and thimbles. Pacorrito sat at the princess's right. They began to eat. The parrots and paper birds waited upon them with such order and rapidity that they seemed like soldiers drilling before their general. The dishes were delicious. Everything was raw, or at all events cold. Migajas was rather pleased with the supper at first, but he was soon surfeited. The menu was as follows: bits of sponge cake, turkeys smaller than birds, which one could swallow at a mouthful, gilt-heads no bigger than almonds, a rich supply of hemp-seed, a pâté of bird-seed à la Canaria, bread-crumb à la perdigona, a fricassée of pheasants' eyes with a sauce of wild mulberries, a salad of moss, delicious sweetmeats, and every possible variety of fruit, harvested by the parrots from the tapestries where they were embroidered, the melons being as small as grapes and the grapes as small as lentils. During the supper the company chattered ceaselessly,—all but Migajas, who, being short of wit, sat there and said never a word. He was confused in the presence of so many gold-corded and uniformed generals. He was amazed, too, at finding so much loquacity and frolicsomeness in these great men, who had stood stiff and dumb in the show-window as though they were made of clay.

The one known as Bismarck, in particular, never stopped to draw breath. He said the wildest things imaginable, pounded the table with his fist, and threw bread balls at the princess. He flung his arms about most marvellously, just as though a string were attached to their hinges, and somebody under the table had hold of it.

"What fun I am having!" said the chancellor. "My dear princess, when a man spends his life adorning a mantel-piece in the cheerful company of a clock, a bronze figure, and a pot of begonias, he really needs recreation; and at a festival like this he lays in a supply of mirth for the year."

"Ah, happy, a thousand times happy, they whose only duty consists in adorning mantelpieces!" said the lady, in melancholy tones. "It may be wearisome, but you do not at least suffer as we do,—we whose lives are a prolonged martyrdom; we, the toys of the small men. It would be impossible for me to make you understand, Prince Bismarck, what we suffer when one pulls our right arm, another our left; when this one cracks our head, that one quarters us or leaves us in the water to soak, or rips us open to find out what is inside of us!"

"I can imagine it," said the chancellor, opening his arms and clapping them together several times.

"How unfortunate!" said Espartero and two of the emperors at once.

"I was the least unfortunate of all," said the lady, "for I found a friend and protector in the valorous and faithful Migajas, who managed to save me from the barbarous torture."

Pacorrito blushed to the very roots of his hair.

"Valorous and faithful!" repeated all the dolls, in admiring chorus.

"And therefore to-night, when our Genius Creator permits us to come together for this great celebration, I chose to honor him by bringing him with me and offering him my hand as a sign of alliance and reconciliation between the lineage of dolls and that of well-bred, compassionate children."

X.

At this Prince Bismarck looked at Pacorrito with an expression of such malignity and sarcasm that our illustrious hero was filled with wrath. At the same instant this wretch of a chancellor aimed a bread ball at Migajas, and fired it so accurately that the bridegroom came near being blinded for life. But Migajas was a prototype of prudence and circumspection, so he controlled his feelings and was silent. The princess threw him a glance of love and gratitude.

"What fun I am having!" repeated the chancellor, clapping his wooden hands together. "Before it is time to resume our place beside the clock and listen to its unceasing tic-tac, let us fathom the depths of pleasure and intoxication,—let us be happy! If the Señor Pacorrito would favor us by calling the daily paper, we might laugh a little."

"The Señor de Migajas," said the princess, kindly, "did not come here to make us laugh. But there is no reason why we should not enjoy hearing him call out the paper or even matches if he is willing to do so."

The ragamuffin could find no words with which to answer his beloved. He was sorely incensed at the proposition, which he judged to be a fling at his dignity and decorum.

"Let him dance!" shouted the chancellor, impertinently; "let him dance on the table! and if he refuse to do so, I move that he be stripped of the fine clothes we dressed him in, and be left ragged and barefooted as he was when he came."

Migajas felt all his blood rush to his heart. He was blind with rage. "Do not be cruel, my dear prince," said the princess, smiling; "leave him to me. I will take it upon myself to dispel the storm that is rising within our good Migajas here."

A loud peal of laughter greeted this reply, and all the dolls, and the most celebrated generals and emperors of the world, simultaneously fell to pounding one another's heads like the Punch and Judy puppets.

"Make him dance! make him call matches!" they clamored.

Migajas felt faint. The sentiment of dignity was so powerfully developed in him that he would have died rather than have gone through the suggested degradation. He was just about to reply when the malignant chancellor, pulling a long thin straw from a work-basket and wetting the end of it in his mouth, drove it into Pacorrito's ear with such a quick movement that the latter did not realize the familiarity of the act until he had suffered the nervous shock produced by tricks of this sort.

Blind with rage, he put his hand to his belt and drew the paper-cutter. The ladies shrieked and the princess fainted; but the enraged Migajas, far from being pacified by this, seemed to be growing more and more infuriated, and rushing upon his insolent adversary, he began to deal blows right and left. The air was filled with yells, threats, and imprecations. The parrots croaked and the very birds moved their paper tails in sign of panic.

Nobody laughed now at the daring Migajas. A few moments later the chancellor might have been seen going about gathering up his arms and legs (a strange case which cannot be explained), and all the emperors were noseless. They gradually, however, with a little glue and a great deal of innate skill, mended one another,—a rare advantage, this, of puppet surgery. The princess, having recovered from her swoon through the virtue of smelling-salts, administered by her pages in a filbert-shell, called the ragamuffin aside, and leading him to her private apartments, spoke as follows:—

XI.

"Most illustrious Migajas, what you have just done, far from lessening my love for you, has only increased it, for you have given evidence of indomitable valor by your easy triumph over this swarm of scoffing puppets, the most despicable class of beings on earth. The tender sentiments that bind me to you move me to propose that you become my husband with no further delay."

Pacorrito fell on his knees.

"As soon as we are married, the emperors and chancellors will all venerate you as they do me, for I must tell you that I am queen of this division of the world. My titles are not usurped; they are transmitted by the divine law of puppets established by the Supreme Genius that created us and governs us."

"My lady," Migajas said, or tried to say, "my happiness is so great that I cannot express it."

"Very well, then," said the lady, with great majesty, "since you are willing to become my husband, and consequently prince and lord of this puppet kingdom, I must inform you that in order to do so you will have to renounce your human personality."

"I do not exactly grasp your Majesty's meaning," said the ragamuffin.

"You belong to the human race. I do not. Our natures being different, we cannot unite. There is but one way. Give up your humanity. It is the easiest thing in the world, believe me. It is only necessary that you will it. Now, answer me. Pacorrito, son of man, will you be a puppet?"

The peculiar nature of this request set the ragamuffin to thinking for a few seconds.

"And what does this thing of being a puppet consist in?"

"You will be like me. Our nature is perhaps nearer perfection than yours. We are to all appearances devoid of life, but we live, believe me. To the imperfect senses of man we lack movement, words, affection, but this is far from being the case. You have had an opportunity of judging how we move, how we speak, and how we feel. Our fate, for the present at least, is not a very happy one. We are the toys of your children, and even your men, but as a compensation for this disadvantage we are eternal."

"Eternal!"

"Yes; we live forever. When these wicked children of yours break us, we rise with a new life out of our destruction, and are born anew, describing a mysterious and everlasting circle from the shop to the children, from them to the Tyrolese factory, and thence to the shop again through the ages everlasting."

"Through the ages everlasting!" repeated Migajas, absorbed.

"It is not always rose-color with us; but, on the other hand, you see, we do not know death, and then our Genius Creator permits us to meet at certain great festivals to celebrate the glory of our race, as we have done to-night. We cannot elude the laws of our being,—it is not given us to enter the reign of humanity, although men can easily enter ours, and in fact have very often been known to become puppets."

"A most extraordinary thing!" exclaimed Pacorrito, full of amazement.

"You know the requirements of puppet initiation. I have nothing more to say. Our dogmas are very simple. Now, meditate upon it, and answer my question, Will you be a doll?"

The princess's attitude was that of a priestess of antiquity. Pacorrito was captivated.

"I want to be a doll," declared the ragamuffin, resolutely.

The princess then proceeded to trace diabolical characters in the air, and to utter great words which Pacorrito had never heard before, and which were neither Latin, Chinese, nor Chaldean. He concluded that they were Tyrolese. When this was consummated, the lady threw her arms about Migajas, saying,—

"Now you are my husband. I have the power of marrying, and also of receiving neophytes into our Great Law. My darling little prince, may you be blessed through time everlasting!" And the whole court of figures entered, singing, "Through time everlasting!" to the accompaniment of canaries and nightingales.