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THE

LITTLE SCHOOLMASTER MARK


[Illustration]




THE LITTLE SCHOOLMASTER MARK

A Spiritual Romance

BY J. H. SHORTHOUSE

AUTHOR OF 'JOHN INGLESANT'

          London
          MACMILLAN AND CO.
          AND NEW YORK
          1894




    _Part I--First Edition, October 1883. Reprinted December 1883_

    _Part II--First Edition, 1884. Reprinted twice February 1885_

    _Complete Edition made up from parts 1885. Reprinted 1891, 1894_


    _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._




PREFACE.


THE readers of German autobiography (and more delightful reading cannot
be had) will perceive that I have made use of some passages in the
childhood of Heinrich Jung-Stilling to create the character of Little
Mark. The experience of the Princess as to private religious societies
was also that of Stilling. Should this little tale induce any one, at
present ignorant of Stilling's Autobiography, to read that book, they
will forget any grudge they may have formed against the present writer.
As a matter of common honesty I should wish to express the pleasure I
have had in reading another delightful book, _Studies of the Eighteenth
Century in Italy_, by Vernon Lee.

The words of the anthem in the concluding chapter are taken from a
sermon by Canon Knox Little, "The Vision of the Truth," preached in St.
Paul's in Lent 1883, and published in _The Witness of the Passion_. They
are so exactly in accord with the message which the shadowy beings of my
tale seem to have left me that I cannot force myself to coin another
phrase.

                                                                J. H. S.




          TO
          Lady Alwyne Compton
          BY PERMISSION
          THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED




THE

LITTLE SCHOOLMASTER MARK.

A Spiritual Romance.




PART FIRST.




I.


THE Court Chaplain Eisenhart walked up the village street towards the
schoolhouse. It was April, in the year 1750, and a soft west wind was
blowing up the street, across the oak woods of the near forest. Between
the forest and the village lay a valley of meadows, planted with thorn
bushes and old birch trees with snow-white stems: the fresh green leaves
trembled continually in the restless wind. On the other side of the
street a lofty crag rose precipitously above a rushing mountain torrent.
This rock is the spur of other lofty hills, planted with oak and beech
trees, through the openings of which a boy may frequently be seen,
driving an ox or gathering firewood on his half-trodden path. Here and
there in the distance the smoke of charcoal-burners ascends into the
sky. Between the street and the torrent stand the houses of the village,
with high thatched roofs and walls of timber and of mud, and, at the
back, projecting stages and steps above the rushing water. A paradise in
the late spring, in summer, and in autumn, these wild and romantic
woods, traversed only by a few forest paths, are terrible in winter, and
the contrast is part of their charm. The schoolhouse stands in the upper
part of the village, on the opposite side of the street to the rest of
the houses, looking across the valley to the western sun. Two large
birch trees are before the open door. The Court Chaplain pauses before
he goes in.

How it comes to pass that a Court Chaplain should be walking up the
street of this forest village we shall see anon.

At first sight there does not seem to be much schoolwork going on. A
boy, or we should rather say a child, of fifteen is seated at an open
window looking over the forest. He is fair-haired and blue-eyed; but it
is the deep blue of an angel's, not the cold gray blue of a courtier's
eyes. Around him are seated several children, both boys and girls; and,
far from teaching, he appears to be relating stories to them. The
story, whatever it is, ceases as the Court Chaplain goes in, and both
raconteur and audience rise.

"I have something to say to thee, schoolmaster," said the Chaplain,
"send the children away. Thou wilt not teach them anything more to-day,
I suspect."

The children went away lingeringly, not at all like children just let
loose from school.

When they were gone the expression of the Chaplain's face changed--he
looked at the little schoolmaster very kindly, and sat down on one of
the benches, which were black and worn with age.

"Last year, little one," he said, "when the Herr Rector took thee away
from the Latin school and from thy father's tailoring, and confirmed
thee, and thou tookest thy first communion, and he made thee
schoolmaster here, many wise people shook their heads. I do not think,"
he continued, with a smile, "that they have ceased shaking them when
they have seen in how strange a manner thou keepest school."

"Ah, your Reverence," said the boy, eagerly, "the good people are
satisfied enough when they see that their children learn without
receiving much correction; and many of them even take pleasure in the
beautiful tales which I relate to the children, and which they repeat to
them. Every morning, as soon as the children enter the school, I pray
with them, and catechise them in the principles of our holy religion, as
God teaches me, for I use no book. Then I set the children to read and
to write, and promise them these charming tales if they learn well. It
is impossible to express with what zeal the children learn. When they
are perverse or not diligent I do not relate my histories, but I read to
myself."

"Well, little one," said the Court Chaplain, "it is a strange system of
education, but I am far from saying that it is a bad one. Nevertheless
it will not last. The Herr Rector has his eye upon thee, and will send
thee back to thy tailoring very soon."

The tears came into the little schoolmaster's eyes, and he turned very
pale.

"Well, do not be sad," said the Chaplain. "I have been thinking and
working for thee. Thou hast heard of the Prince, though thou hast, I
think, never seen the pleasure palace, Joyeuse, though it is so near."

"I have seen the iron gates with the golden scrolls," said the boy.
"They are like the heavenly Jerusalem; every several gate is one pearl."

The Chaplain did not notice the confused metaphor of this description.

"Well," he said, "I have been speaking to the Prince of thee. Thou
knowest nothing of these things, but the Prince has lived for many years
in Italy, a country where they do nothing but sing and dance. He has
come back, as thou knowest, and has married a wife, according to the
traditions of his race. Since he came back to Germany he has taken a
fancy to this forest-lodge, for at first it was little more, and has
garnished it and enlarged it according to his southern fancies; that is
why he likes it better than his princely cities. He has two children--a
boy and a girl--eight and nine, or thereabouts. The Princess is not a
good woman. She neglects her children, and she prefers the princely
cities to her husband, to her little ones, and to the beautiful forests
and hills."

The little schoolmaster listened with open eyes. Then he said, beneath
his breath:

"How Satanic that must be!"

"The Prince," continued the Court Chaplain, "is a beautiful soul
'manqué,' which means spoilt. His sister, the Princess Isoline von
Isenberg-Wertheim, is such a soul. She has joined herself to a company
of pious people who have taken an old manor-house belonging to the
Prince on the farther side of the palace gardens, where they devote
themselves to prayer, to good works, and to the manufacture of
half-silk stuffs, by which they maintain themselves and give to the
poor. The Prince himself knows something of such feelings. He indeed
knows the way of piety, though he does not follow it. He acknowledges
the grace of refinement which piety gives, even to the most highly bred.
He is particularly desirous that his children should possess this
supreme touch. Something that I told him of thee pleased his fancy. Thy
strange way of keeping school seemed to him very new; more especially
was he delighted with that infancy story of thee and old Father Stalher.
The old man, I told the Prince, came into thy father's for his new coat
and found thee reading. Reading, in any one, seemed to Father Stalher
little short of miraculous; but in a child of eight it was more--it was
elfish.

"'What are you doing there, child?' said Father Stalher.

"'I am reading.'

"'Canst thou read already?'

"'That is a foolish question, for I am a human being,' said the child,
and began to read with ease, proper emphasis, and due distinction.

"Stalher was amazed, and said:

"'The devil fetch me, I have never seen the like in all my life.'

"Then little Mark jumped up and looked timidly and carefully round the
room. When he saw that the devil did not come, he went down on his knees
in the middle of the floor and said:

"'O God! how gracious art thou.'

"Then, standing up boldly before old Stalher, he said:

"'Man, hast thou ever seen Satan?'

"'No.'

"'Then call upon him no more.'

"And the child went quietly into another room.

"And I told the Prince what thy old grandfather used to say to me.

"'The lad is soaring away from us; we must pray that God will guide him
by His good Spirit.'

"When I told all this to the Prince, he said:

"'I will have this boy. He shall teach my children as he does the
village ones. None can teach children as can such a child as this.'"

The little schoolmaster had been looking before him all the time the
Chaplain had been speaking, as though in something of a maze. He
evidently saw nothing to wonder at in the story of himself and old
Stalher. It seemed to him commonplace and obvious enough.

"I shall send up a tailor from Joyeuse to-morrow," said the Chaplain; "a
court tailor, such as thou never saw'st, nor thy father either. He must
measure thee for a court-suit of black. Then we will go together, and I
will present thee to the Prince."




II.


A FEW days after this conversation there was a melancholy procession
down the village street. The Court Chaplain and the schoolmaster walked
first; the boy was crying bitterly. Then followed all the children of
the school, all weeping, and many peasant women, and two or three old
men. The Rector stood in a corner of the churchyard under a great walnut
tree and looked on. He did not weep. The Court Chaplain looked ashamed,
for all the people took this misfortune to be of his causing.

When they had gone some way out of the village the children stopped,
and, collecting into a little crowd, they wept more than ever. The
Chaplain turned round and waved his hand, but the little schoolmaster
was too troubled to take any farewell. He covered his face with his
hands and went on, weeping bitterly. At last they passed away out of
sight.

When they had gone on some distance, the boy became calmer; he took his
hands from his face, and looked up at the Chaplain through his tears.

"What am I to do when I come to the Prince, your Reverence?" he said.

"Thou must make a bow as best thou canst," said the other; "thou must
not speak till the Prince speaks to thee, and thou must say 'Highness'
sometimes, but not too often."

"How am I to tell when to say 'Highness' and when to forbear?" said the
boy.

"Ah! that I cannot tell thee. Thou must trust in God; He will show thee
when to say 'Highness' and when not."

They went forward in this way across the meadows, and through the
scattered forest for two leagues or more, in the mid-day heat. The boy
was not used to labour, and he grew very tired and unhappy. It seemed to
him that he was leaving behind all that was fair and true and beautiful,
and going to that which was false and garish and unkind. At last they
came to an open drive, or avenue of the forest, where great oaks were
growing. Some distance up the avenue they saw a high park pale
stretching away on either hand, and in the centre of the drive were
iron gates covered with gilt scrolls and letters. The Court Chaplain
pushed the gates open, and they went in.

Inside, the forest drive was planted with young trees in triple rows.
After walking for some distance they reached another gate, similar to
the first, but provided with "loges," or guardrooms, on either side. One
or two soldiers were standing listlessly about, but they took no heed.
Here the drive entered the palace gardens, laid out in grass plots and
stone terraces, and crossed by lofty hedges which shut out the view.
They approached the long façade of a house with pointed roofs and green
shutter blinds to all the windows. Here the Chaplain left the path, and
conducted his companion to a remote side entrance; and, after passing
through many passages and small rooms, at last left him to the tender
mercies of the court tailor and some domestics, at whose hands the
little schoolmaster suffered what appeared to him to be unspeakable
indignities. He was washed from head to foot, his hair was cut, curled,
and frizzled, and he was finally arrayed in a plain suit of black silk,
with silk stockings, and delicate shoes with silver buckles, and plain
linen bands like a clergyman. The worn homespun suit that had become
dear to him was ruthlessly thrown upon a dust-heap, and a message was
sent to Herr Chaplain that his _protégé_ was now fit to be presented to
the Prince.

The boy could scarcely restrain his tears; he felt as though he were
wandering through the paths of a miserable dream. Ah! could he only
awake and find himself again in the old schoolhouse, narrating the
adventures of the Fair Melusina to the attentive little ones.

The Chaplain led him up some back stairs, and through corridors and
anterooms, all full of wonderful things, which the boy passed
bewildered, till they reached a small room where were two boys
apparently of his own age. They appeared to have been just engaged in
punching each other's heads, for their hair was disordered, their faces
red, and one was in tears. They regarded the Chaplain with a sullen
suspicion, and the schoolmaster with undisguised contempt. The door at
the farther side of the room was partly open, the Chaplain scratched
upon it, and, receiving some answer, they went in.

The little schoolmaster dared scarcely breathe when he got into the
room, so surprising was all he saw. To the left of the door, as they
came in, was placed a harpsichord, before which was standing, with her
back towards them, a young girl whose face they could not see; by her
side, at the harpsichord, was seated an elderly man upon whom the boy
gazed with wonder, so different was he from anything that he had ever
seen before; opposite to them, in the window, hung a canary in a cage,
and the boy perceived, even in the surprise of the moment, that the bird
was agitated and troubled. But the next moment all his attention was
absorbed by the figure of the Prince, who was seated on a couch to the
right of the room, and almost facing them. To say that this was the
most wonderful sight that the little schoolmaster had ever seen would be
to speak foolishly, for he had seen no wonderful sights, but it
surpassed the wildest imagination of his dreams. The Prince was a very
handsome man of about thirty-five, of a slight and delicate figure, and
of foreign manners and pose. He was dressed in a suit of what seemed to
the boy a wonderful white cloth, of a soft material, embroidered in
silk, with flowers of the most lovely tints. The coat was sparingly
ornamented in this manner, but the waistcoat, which was only partly
seen, was a mass of these exquisite flowers. At his throat and wrists
were masses of costly lace, and his hair was frizzled, and slightly
powdered, which increased the delicate expression of his features, which
were perfectly cut. He lay back on the couch, caressing, with his right
hand, a small monkey, also gorgeously dressed, and armed with a toy
sword, who sat on the arm of the sofa cracking nuts, and throwing the
shells upon the carpet.

The Prince looked up as the two came in, and waved his disengaged hand
for them to stand back, and the next moment the strange phantasmagoria,
into which the boy's life was turned, took another phase, and he again
lost all perception of what he had seen before; for there burst into the
little room the most wonderful voice, which not only he and the
Chaplain, but even the Maestro and the Prince, had well-nigh ever heard.

The girl, who was taking her music lesson, had been discovered in Italy
by the old Maestro, who managed the music of the private theatre which
the Prince had formed. He had heard her, a poor untaught girl, in a
coffee-house in Venice, and she afterwards became, in the opinion of
some, the most pathetic female actress and singer of the century.

The first chord of her voice penetrated into the boy's nature as nothing
had ever done before; he had never heard any singing save that of the
peasants at church, and of the boys and girls who sang hymns round the
cottage hearths in the winter nights.

The solemn tramp of the Lutheran measures, where the deep basses of the
men drown the women's soft voices, and the shrill unshaded singing of
the children, could hardly belong to this art, which he heard now for
the first time. These sudden runs and trills, so fantastic and
difficult, these chords and harmonies, so quaint and full of colour,
were messages from a world of sound, as yet an unknown country to the
boy. He stood gazing upon the singer with open mouth. The Prince moved
his jewelled hand slightly in unison with the notes; the monkey,
apparently rather scared, left off cracking his nuts, and, creeping
close to his master, nestled against his beautiful coat close to the
star upon his breast.

Then suddenly, in this world of wonders, a still more wonderful thing
occurred. There entered into this bewitching, this entrancing voice, a
strange, almost a discordant, note. Through the fantasied gaiety of the
theme, to which the sustained whirr of the harpsichord was like the
sigh of the wind through the long grass, there was perceptible a strain,
a tremor of sadness, almost of sobs. It was as if, in the midst of
festival, some hidden grief, known beforetime of all, but forgotten or
suppressed, should at once and in a moment well up in the hearts of all,
turning the dance-measures into funeral chants, the love-songs into the
loveliest of chorales. The Maestro faltered in his accompaniment; the
Prince left off marking the time, he swept the monkey from him with a
movement of his hand, and leaned forward eagerly in his seat: the
discarded favourite slunk into a corner, where it leaned disconsolately
against the wall. The pathetic strain went on, growing more tremulous
and more intense, when suddenly the singing stopped, the girl buried
her face in her hands and sank upon the floor in a passion of tears; the
boy sprang forward, he forgot where he was, he forgot the Prince--

"It is the bird," he cried, "the bird!"

The canary, whose dying struggles the singer had been watching through
her song, gave a final shudder and fell lifeless from its perch.

The Prince rose: he lifted the singer from her knees, and, taking her
hands from the wet face, he turned to the others with a smile.

"Ah, Herr Chaplain," he said, "you come in a good hour. This then is the
angel-child. They will console each other."

And, picking up the monkey as he passed, he left the room by another
door.




III.


WHEN the Prince was gone the Maestro gathered up some music and turned
to his pupil, who was drying her eyes and looking somewhat curiously at
the boy through her tears.

"Well, Signorina," he said, "you truly sang that very well. If you could
bring some of that 'timbre' into your voice always, you would indeed be
a singer. But you are too light, too 'frivole.' I wish we could have a
canary always who would die;" and, bowing very slightly to the Chaplain,
he left the room.

Then the Chaplain looked kindly at the young people.

"Fräulein," he said, "this is the young tutor to the little serene
Highnesses, I will leave you together, as the Prince wished."

When they were alone the boy felt very uncomfortable. He was very shy.
This perhaps was as well, for there was no shyness at all on the part of
his companion.

"So," she said, looking at him with a smile, and eyes that were again
bright, "you are the new toy. I have heard of you. You are a wonderful
holy child; what they call 'pious' in this country. How very funny! come
and give me a kiss."

"No, Fräulein," said Mark, blushing still more, "that would be improper
in me."

"Would it?" said the girl lightly; "don't angels kiss? How very stupid
it must be to be an angel! Come and look at poor 'Fifine' then! I
suppose she is quite dead."

And, opening the cage, she took out the piteous heap of yellow feathers
and held it in her delicate hand, while the tears came again into her
large dark eyes.

"Ah! it was dreadful," she said, "to sing and see him die."

"But, Fräulein," said the boy, "you sang most beautifully. I never heard
anything so wonderful. It was heaven itself."

The girl looked at him very kindly.

"Oh, you like my singing," she said, "I am glad of that. Do you know, we
shall be great friends. I like you. You are a very pretty boy."

And she tried to put her arm round his neck. Mark eluded her embrace.
"Fräulein," he said, with a dignified air, which made his companion
laugh, "you must remember that I am tutor to their serene Highnesses; I
shall be very glad to be friends with you, and you will tell me
something about the people in the palace."

"Oh!" replied the girl, "there is no one but our own company, but they
are the greatest fun, and better fun here than anywhere else. It is
delightful to see them among these stupid, solemn, heavy Germans, with
their terrible language. I shall love to see you with them, you will
stare your pretty eyes out. There's old Carricchio--that's not his name,
you know, but he is called so because of his part--that is the best of
them, they are always the same--off the stage or on it--always
laughing, always joking, always kicking up their heels. You will see the
faces--such delicious grimaces, old Carricchio will make at you when he
asks you for the salt. But don't be frightened, I'll take care of you.
They are all in love with me, but I like you already better than all of
them. You shall come on yourself sometime, just as you are; you will
make a delightful part."

Mark stared at her with amazement.

"But what are these people?" he said; "what do they do?"

"Oh, you will see," she said, laughing; "how can I tell you. You never
dreamt of such things; you will stare your eyes out. Well, there's the
Prince, and the little Highnesses, and the old _Barotin_, the governess,
and"--here a change came over the girl's face--"and the Princess is
coming soon, I hear, with her '_servente_.'"

"The Princess!" said the boy, "does she ever come?"

"Yes, she comes, sometimes," said his companion. "I wish she didn't. She
is a bad woman. I hate her."

"Why? and what is her '_servente_?'"

"I hate her," said the girl; "her _servente_ is the
Count--_Cavalière-servente_, you know"--and her face became quite hard
and fierce--"he is the devil himself."

The little schoolmaster's face became quite pale.

"The devil!" he said, staring with his large blue eyes.

"Oh! you foolish boy!" she said, laughing again, "I don't mean that
devil. The Count is a much more real devil than he!"

The boy looked so dreadfully shocked that she grew quite cheerful again.

"What a strange boy you are!" she said, laughing. "Do you think he will
come and take you away? I'll take care of you--come and sit on my lap;"
and, sitting down, she spread out her lap for him with an inviting
gesture.

Mark rejected this attractive offer with disdain, and looked so
unspeakably miserable and ready to cry that his companion took pity upon
him.

"Poor boy," she said, "you shan't be teased any more. Come with me, I
will take you to the _Barotin_, and present you to the little serene
Highnesses. They are nice children--for Highnesses; you will get on well
with them."

Taking the boy's unwilling hand, she led him through several rooms,
lined with old marquetterie cabinets in the Italian fashion, till she
found a page, to whom she delivered Mark, telling him to take him to the
Baroness, into whose presence she herself did not appear anxious to
intrude, that he might be presented to his future pupils.

The page promised to obey, and, giving him a box on the ear to ensure
attention, a familiarity which he took with the most cheerful and
forgiving air, she left the room.

The moment she was gone the page made a rush at Mark, and, seizing him
round the waist, lifted him from the ground and ran with him through two
or three rooms, till he reached a door, where he deposited him upon his
feet. Then throwing open the door, he announced suddenly, "The Herr
Tutor to the serene Highnesses!" and shut Mark into the room.

His breath taken away by this atrocious attack upon his person and
dignity, Mark saw before him a stately, but not unkindly-looking lady
and two beautiful children, a boy and girl, of about eight and nine
years of age. The lady rose, and, looking at Mark with some curiosity,
as well she might, said:

"Your serene Highnesses, this is the tutor whom the Prince, your father,
has provided for you. You will no doubt profit greatly by his
instructions."

The little girl came forward at once, and gave Mark her hand, which, not
knowing what to do with, he held for a moment and then dropped.

"My papa has spoken of you," she said. "He has told me that you are
very good."

"I shall try to be good, Princess," said Mark, who by this time had
recovered his breath.

The little girl seemed very much insulted. She drew herself up and
flushed all over her face.

"You must not say _Princess_ to me," she said, "that is what only the
little Princes say. You must say, 'my most gracious and serene
Highness,' whenever you speak to me."

This was too much. Mark blushed with anger.

"May God forgive me," he said, "if I do anything so foolish. I am here
to teach thee and thy brother, and I will do it in my own way, or not at
all."

The little Princess looked as if she were about to cry, then, apparently
thinking better of it, she said, with a half sob, and dropping the
stately "_you_":

"Well, my papa says that thou art an angel. I suppose thou must do as
thou wilt."

The little boy, meanwhile, had been staring at Mark with solemn eyes. He
said nothing, but he came, finally, to the little schoolmaster and put
his hand in his.

What more might have been said cannot be told, for at this moment the
page appeared again, saying that dinner was served at the third table,
and that the Herr Tutor was to dine there.

The Baroness seemed surprised at this.

"I should have supposed," she said, "that he would have dined with the
Chaplain at the second table."

"No," asserted the page boldly, "the Prince has ordered it."

When alone, the Prince seldom dined ostensibly in public; but often
appeared masqued at the third table, which was that of the actors and
singers. He had given no orders at all about Mark. The arrangement was
entirely of the Signorina's making, who desired that he should dine with
her. It was a bold stroke; and an hour afterwards, when the Court
Chaplain discovered it, measures were taken to prevent its
recurrence--at least for a time.

In whatever way this arrangement came to be made, however, the result
was very advantageous to Mark. In the first place, it was not
formidable. The company took little notice of him. Signor Carricchio
made grotesque faces at others, but not at him. He sat quite safe and
snug by the Signorina, and certainly stared with all his eyes, as she
had said. The long, dark, aquiline features of the men, the mobile play
of humorous farce upon their faces, the constant chatter and sport--what
could the German peasant boy do but stare? His friend taught him how to
hold his knife and fork, and how to eat. The Italians were very nice in
their eating, and the boy picked up more in five minutes from the
Signorina--he was very quick--than he would have done in weeks from the
Chaplain.

He was so scared and frightened, and the girl was so kind to him, that
his boy's heart went out to her.

"What shall I call you, Signorina?" he said, as dinner was over. "You
are so good to me." He had already caught the Italian word.

"My name is Faustina Banti," she said, looking at him with her great
eyes; "but you may call me 'Tina,' if you like. I had a little brother
once who called me that. He died."

"You are so very kind to me, Tina," said the boy, "I am sure you must be
very good."

She looked at him again, smiling.




IV.


THE next morning early Mark was sent for to the Prince. He was shown
into the dressing-room, but the Prince was already dressed. He was
seated in an easy-chair reading a small closely-printed sheet of paper,
upon which the word "Wien" was conspicuous to the boy. The Prince bade
the little schoolmaster be seated on a fauteuil near him, and looked so
kindly that he felt quite at his ease.

"Well! little one," said the Prince, "how findest thou thyself? Hast
thou found any friends yet in this place?"

"The Signorina has been very kind to me, Highness," said the boy.

"Ah!" said the Prince, smiling, "thou hast found that out already. That
is not so bad. I thought you two would be friends. What has the
Signorina told thee?"

"She has told me of the actors who are so clever and so strange. She
says that they are all in love with her."

"That is not unlikely. And what else?"

"She has told me of the Princess and of her servente."

"Indeed!" said the Prince, with the slightest possible appearance of
increased interest; "what does she say of the Princess?"

"She says that she is a bad woman, and that she hates her."

"Ah! the Signorina appears to have formed opinions of her own, and to
be able to express them. What else?"

"She says that the servente is the devil himself! But she does not mean
the real devil. She says that the servente is a much more real devil
than he! Is not that horrible, Highness?"

The Prince looked at Mark for two or three moments, with a kindly but
strange far-reaching look, which struck the boy, though he did not in
the least understand it.

"I did well, little one," he said at last, "when I sent for thee."

There was a pause. The Prince seemed to have forgotten the presence of
the boy, who already was sufficiently of a courtier to hold his tongue.

At last the Prince spoke.

"And the children," he said; "thou hast seen them?"

"Yes," said Mark, with a little shy smile, "I did badly there. I
insulted the gracious Fräulein by calling her 'Princess,' which she said
only the little Princes should do; and I told her I was come to teach
her and her little brother, and that I should do it in my own way or not
at all."

The Prince looked as though he feared that this unexpected amusement
would be almost too delightful.

"Well, little one," he said, "thou hast begun well. Better than this
none could have done. Only be careful that thou art not spoilt. Care
nothing for what thou hearest here. Continue to hate and fear the devil;
for, whether he be thy own devil or the servente, he is more powerful
than thou. Say nothing but what He whom thou rightly callest God teaches
thee to say. So all will be well. Better teacher than thou my daughter
could not have. I would wish her to be pious, within reason; not like
her aunt, that would not be well. I should wish her to care for the
poor. Nothing is so gracious in noble ladies as to care for the poor.
When they cease to do this they lose tone at once. The French noblesse
have done so. I should like her to visit the poor herself. It will have
the best effect upon her nature; much better," continued the Prince with
a half smile, and seemingly speaking to himself, "much better, I should
imagine, than on the poor themselves. But what will you have?--some one
must suffer, and the final touch cannot be obtained without."

There was another pause. This aspect of the necessary suffering the poor
had to undergo was so new to Mark that he required some time to grasp
it. The visits of noble ladies to his village had not been so frequent
as to cause the malign effects to be deeply felt.

       *       *       *       *       *

Acting upon this advice so far as he understood it, Mark pursued the
same system of education with the little Highnesses as he had followed
with the village children; that is, he set them to read such things as
he was told they ought to learn, and encouraged them to do so by
promising to relate his histories and tales if they were good.

It is surprising how much the same human nature remains after
generations of different breeding and culture. It is true that these
princely children had heard many tales before, perhaps the very ones the
little schoolmaster now related, yet they delighted in nothing so much
as hearing them again. Much of this pleasure, no doubt, was due to the
intense faith and interest in them shown by Mark himself. He talked to
them also much about God and the unseen world of angels, and of the
wicked one; and, as they believed firmly that he was an angel, they
listened to these things with the more ready belief. Indeed, the
affection which the little boy formed for his child-tutor was unusual.
He was a silent, solemn child; he said nothing, but he attached himself
to Mark with a persistent devotion.

Every one in the palace, indeed, took to the boy: the pages left off
teasing him; the Signorina petted him in a manner sufficient to deprive
her numerous lovers of their reason; the servants waited on him for love
and not for reward; but the strangest thing of all was, that in
proportion as he was kindly treated--just as much as every one seemed to
love him and delight in him--just so much did the boy become miserable
and unhappy. The kinder these people were, the more he felt the abyss
which lay between his soul and theirs; earnestness and solemn faith in
his--sarcasm and lively farce, and, at the most, kindly toleration of
belief, in theirs.

Had they ill-treated or wronged him, he would not have felt it so much;
but kindness and security on their part, seemed to intensify the sense
of doubt and perplexity on his.

It is difficult to realise the effect which sarcasm and irony have upon
such natures as his. They look upon life with such a single eye. It is
so beautiful and solemn to them. Truth is so true; they are so much in
earnest that they cannot understand the complex feeling that finds
relief in sarcasm and allegory, that tolerates the frivolous and the
vain, as an ironic reading of the lesson of life.

The actors were particularly kind to him, though their grotesque
attempts to amuse him mostly added to his misery. They were extremely
anxious that he should appear upon the stage, and indeed the boy's
beauty and simplicity would have made an excellent foil.

"Herr Tutor," said old Carricchio the arlecchino to him one day, with
mock gravity, "we are about to perform a comedy--what is called a
masqued comedy, not because we wear masques, for we don't, but because
of our dresses. It consists of music, dancing, love-making, joking, and
buffoonery; you will see what a trifle it is all about. The scene is in
the garden of a country-house--during what in Italy we call the
Villeggiatura, that is the month we spend in the country during the
vintage. A lady's fan is found by an ill-natured person in a curious
place; all the rest agree not to see the fan, not to acknowledge that it
is a fan. It is all left to us at the moment, all except the songs and
the music, and you know how delightful those are. If you would take a
part, and keep your own character throughout, it would be magnificent;
but we will wait, if you once see it you will wish to act."

No one, indeed, was kinder to Mark, or seemed more to delight in his
society than the old arlecchino, and the two made a most curious sight,
seated together on one of the terraces on a sunny afternoon. Nothing
could be more diverse in appearance than this strangely assorted pair.
Carricchio was tall, with long limbs, and large aquiline features. He
wore a set smile upon his large expressive mouth, which seemed born of
no sense of enjoyment, but of an infinite insight, and of a mocking
friendliness. He seldom wore anything but the dress of his part; but he
wrapped himself mostly in a long cloak, lined with fur, for even the
northern sunshine seemed chilly to the old clown. Wrapped in this
ancient garment, he would sit beside Mark, listening to the boy's
stories with his deep unfathomed smile; and as he went on with his
histories, the boy used to look into his companion's face, wondering at
the slow smile, and at the deep wrinkles of the worn visage, till at
length, fascinated at the sight, he forgot his stories, and looking into
the old man's face appeared to Mark, though the comparison seems
preposterous, like gazing at the fated story of the mystic tracings of
the star-lit skies.

Why the old man listened so patiently to these childish stories no one
could tell; perhaps he did not hear them. He himself said that the
presence of Mark had the effect of music upon his jaded and worn sense.
But, indeed, there was beneath Carricchio's mechanical buffoonery and
farce a sober and pathetic humour, which was almost unconscious, and
which was now, probably owing to advancing years, first becoming known
either to himself or others.

"The Maestro has been talking to me this morning," he said one day. "He
says that life is a wretched masque, a miserable apology for existence
by the side of art; what do you say to that?"

"I do not know what it means," said Mark; "I neither know life nor art,
how can I tell?"

"That is true, but you know more than you think. The Maestro means that
life is imperfect, struggling, a failure, ugly most often; art is
perfect, complete, beautiful, and full of force and power. But I tell
him that some failure is better than success; sometimes ugliness is a
finer thing than beauty; and that the best art is that which only
reproduces life. If life were fashioned after the most perfect art you
would never be able to cry, nor to make me cry, as you do over your
beautiful tales."

Mark tried to understand this, but failed, and was therefore silent.
Indeed it is not certain whether Carricchio himself understood what he
was saying.

He seemed to have some suspicion of this, for he did not go on talking,
but was silent for some time. These silences were common between the
two.

At last he said:

"I think where the Maestro is wrong is in making the two quarrel. They
cannot quarrel. There is no art without life, and no life without art.
Look at a puppet-play--the fantoccini--it means life and it means art."

"I never saw a puppet-play," said Mark.

"Well, you have seen us," said Carricchio; "we are much the same. We
move ourselves--they are moved by wires; but we do just the same
things--we are life and we are art, in the burletta we are both. I often
think which is which--which is the imposture and which is the masque.
Then I think that somewhere there must be a higher art that surpasses
the realism of life--a divine art which is not life but fashions life.

"When I look at you, little one," Carricchio went on, "I feel almost as
I do when the violins break in upon the jar and fret of the wittiest
dialogue. Jest and lively fancy--these are the sweets of life, no
doubt--and humorous thought and speech and gesture--but they are not
this divine art, they are not rest. They shrivel and wither the brain.
The whole being is parched, the heart is dry in this sultry, piercing
light. But when the stringed melodies steal in, and when the rippling,
surging arpeggios and crescendos sweep in upon the sense, and the
stilled cadences that lull and soothe--then, indeed, it is like moisture
and the gracious dew. It is like sleep; the strained nerves relax; the
overwrought frame, which is like dry garden mould, is softened, and the
flowers spring up again."

Carricchio paused; but as Mark said nothing, he went on again.

"The other life is gay, lively, bright, full of excitement and
interest, of tender pity even, and of love--but this is rest and peace.
The other is human life, but what is this? Art? Ah! but a divine art.
Here is no struggle, no selfish desire, no striving, no conflict of love
or of hate. It is like silence, the most unselfish thing there is. I
have, indeed, sometimes thought that music must be the silence of
heaven."

"The silence of heaven!" said Mark, with open eyes. "The silence of
heaven! What, then, are its words?"

"Ah! that," said the old clown, smiling, but with a sad slowness in his
speech, "is beyond me to tell. I can hear its silence, but not its
voice."




V.


THE private theatre in the palace was a room of very moderate size, for
the audience was necessarily very small; in fact, the stage was larger
than the auditorium. The play took place in the afternoon, and there was
no artificial light; many of the operatic performances in Italy, indeed,
took place in the open air.

Yet, though the time of day and the natural light deprived the theatre
of much of the strangeness and glamour with which it is usually
associated, and which so much impress a youth who sees it for the first
time, the effect of the first performance upon Mark was very remarkable.
He was seated immediately behind the Prince. Far from being delighted
with the play, he was overpowered as it went on by an intense melancholy
horror. When the violins, the flutes, and the fifes began the overture,
a new sense seemed given to him, which was not pleasure but the
intensest dread. If the singing of the Signorina had been a shock to
him, accustomed as he was only to the solemn singing of his childhood,
what must this elfish, weird, melodious music have seemed, full of gay
and careless life, and of artless unconscious airs which yet were
miracles of art? He sat, terrified at these delicious sounds, as though
this world of music without thought or conscience were a wicked thing.
The shrill notes of the fifes, the long tremulous vibration of the
strings, seemed to draw his heart after them. Wherever this wizard call
might lead him it seemed he would have to follow the alluring chords.

But when the acting began his terror became more intense. The grotesque
figures seemed to him those of devils, or at the best of fantastic imps
or gnomes. He could understand nothing of the dialogue, but the
gestures, the laughter, the wild singing, were shocking to him. When the
Signorina appeared, the strange intensity of her colour, the brilliancy
of her eyes, and what seemed to him the freedom of her gestures and the
boldness of her bewitching glances, far from delighting, as they seemed
to do all the others, made him ready to weep with shame and grief. He
sank back in his seat to avoid the notice of the Prince, who, indeed,
was too much absorbed in the music and the acting to remember him.

The beauty of the music only added to his despair; had it been less
lovely, had the acting not forced now and then a glance of admiring
wonder or struck a note of high-toned touching pathos even, it would not
all have seemed so much the work of evil. When the comedy was over he
crept silently away to his room; and in the excitement of congratulation
and praise, as actors and audience mingled together, and the Signorina
was receiving the commendations of the Prince, he was not missed.

He could not stay in this place--that at least was clear to him. He must
escape. He must return to nature, to the woods and birds, to children
and to children's sports. These gibing grimaces, these endless bowings
and scrapings and false compliments, known of all to be false, would
choke him if he stayed. He must escape from the house of frivolity into
the soft, gracious outer air of sincerity and truth.

He cried himself to sleep: all through the night, amid fitful slumber,
the crowd of masques jostled and mocked at him; the weird strains of
unknown instruments reached his half-conscious bewildered sense. Early
in the morning he awoke. There had been rain in the night, and the
smiling morning beckoned him out.

He stole down some back stairs, and found a door which opened on gardens
and walks at the back of the palace. This he managed to open, and went
out.

The path on which the door opened led him through rows of fruit-trees
and young plantations. A little forest of delicate boughs and young
leaves lifted itself up against the blue sky, and a myriad drops
sparkled in the morning sun. The fresh cool air, the blue sky, the
singing of the birds, restored Mark to himself. He seemed to see again
the possibility of escape from evil, and the hope of righteousness and
peace. His whole spirit went out in prayer and love to the Almighty, who
had made these lovely things. He felt as he had been wont to do when, on
a fine Sunday, he had walked home with his children in order, relating
to them the most beautiful tales of God. He wandered slowly down the
narrow paths. The fresh-turned earth between the rows of saplings, the
beds of herbs, the moist grass, gave forth a scent at once delicate and
searching. The boy's cheerfulness began to return. The past seemed to
fade. He almost thought himself the little schoolmaster again.

After wandering for some time through this delicious land of perfume, of
light, and sweet sound, he came to a very long but narrow avenue of old
elm trees that led down a gradual slope, as it seemed, into the heart of
the forest. Beneath the avenue a well-kept path seemed to point with a
guiding hand.

He followed the path for some distance, and had just perceived what
seemed to be an old manor-house, standing in a courtyard at the farther
end, when he was conscious of a figure advancing along the path to meet
him: as it approached he saw that it was that of a lady of tall and
commanding appearance, and apparently of great beauty; she wore the
dress of some sisterhood. When he was near enough to see her face he
found that it was indeed beautiful, with an expression of the purest
sincerity and benevolence. The lady stopped and spoke to Mark at once.

"You must be the new tutor to their Highnesses," she said; "I have heard
of you."

Mark said that he was.

"You do not look well," said the lady, very kindly; "are you happy at
the palace?"

"Are you the Princess Isoline?" said Mark, not answering the question;
"I think you must be, you are so beautiful."

"I am the Princess Isoline," said the lady; "walk a little way with me."

Mark turned with the lady and walked back towards the palace. After a
moment or two he said: "I am not happy at Joyeuse, I am very miserable,
I want to run away."

"What makes you so unhappy? Are they not kind to you? The Prince is very
kind, and the children are good children--I have always thought."

"They are all very kind, too kind to me," said the boy. "I cannot make
you understand why I am so miserable, I cannot tell myself--the Prince
is worse than all----"

"Why is the Prince the worst of all?" said the lady, in a very gentle
voice.

"All the rest I know are wrong," replied the boy, passionately--"the
actors, the Signorina, the pages, and all; but when the Prince looks at
me with his quiet smile--when the look comes into his eyes as though he
could see through time even into eternity--when he looks at me in his
kindly, pitying way--I begin to doubt. Oh, Highness, it is terrible to
doubt! Do you think that the Prince is right?"

The Princess was silent for a moment or two; it was not that she did not
understand the boy, for she understood him very well.

"No, I think you are right and not the Prince," she said at length, in
her quiet voice.

There was a pause: neither seemed to know what to say next. They had
now nearly reached the end of the avenue next the palace; the Princess
stopped.

"Come back with me," she said, "I will show you my house."

They walked slowly along the narrow pathway towards the old house at the
farther end. The Princess was evidently considering what to say.

"Why do you know that they are all wrong?" she said at last.

"Highness," said the boy after a pause, "I have never lived amongst, or
seen anything, since I was born, but what was natural and real--the
forest, the fruit-trees in blossom, the gardens, and the flowers. I have
never heard anything except of God--of the wretchedness of sin--of
beautiful stories of good people. My grandfather, when he was alive,
used to talk to me, as I sat with him at his charcoal-burning in the
forest, of my forefathers who were all honest and pious people. There
are not many Princes who can say that."

The Princess did not seem to notice this last uncourtly speech.

"'I shall then find all my forefathers in Heaven,' I would say to him,"
continued Mark. "'Yes, that thou wilt! we shall then be of high
nobility. Do not lose this privilege.' If I lose this privilege, how sad
that will be! But here, in the palace, they think nothing of these
things--instead of hymns they sing the strangest, wildest songs, so
strange and beautiful that I fear and tremble at them as if the sounds
were wicked sounds."

So talking, the Princess and the boy went on through the lovely wood;
at last they left the avenue and passed into the courtyard of a stately
but decayed house. The walls of the courtyard were overgrown with ivy,
and trees were growing up against the house and shading some of the
windows. The Princess passed on without speaking, and entered the hall
by an open door. As they entered, Mark could hear the sound of looms,
and inside were several men and women at different machines employed in
weaving cloth. The Princess spoke to several, and leading Mark onward
she ascended a wide staircase, and reached at last a long gallery at the
back of the house. Here were many looms, and girls and men employed in
weaving. The long range of lofty windows faced the north, and over the
nearer woods could be seen the vast sweep of the great Thuringian
Forest, where Martin Luther had lived and walked. The risen sun was
gilding the distant woods. A sense of indescribable loveliness and peace
seemed to Mark to pervade the place.

"How happy you must be here, gracious Highness!" he exclaimed.

They were standing apart in one of the windows towards the end of the
long room, and the noise of the looms made a continuous murmur that
prevented their voices being heard by the others who were near.

The Princess looked at Mark for some moments without reply.

"I must speak the truth always," she said at last, "but more than ever
to such as thou art. I am not happy."

The boy looked at her as though his heart would break.

"Not happy," he said in a low voice, "and you so good."

"The good are not happy," said the Princess, "and the happy are not
good."

There was a pause; then the Princess went on:

"The people who are with me are good, but they are not happy. They have
left the world and its pleasures, but they regret them; they live in the
perpetual consciousness of this self-denial--this fancy that they are
serving God better than others are; they are in danger of becoming
jealous and hypocritical. I warn you never to join a particular society
which proposes, as its object, to serve God better than others. You are
safer, more in the way of serving God in the palace, even amid the
singing and the music which seems to you so wicked. They are happy; they
are thoughtless, gay, like the birds. They have at least no dark gloomy
thoughts of God, even if they have no thoughts of Him at all. They may
be won to Him, nay, they may be nearer to Him now than some who think
themselves so good. Since I began this way of life I have heard of many
such societies, which have crumbled into the dust with derision, and are
remembered only with reproach."

Mark stood gazing at the distant forest without seeing it. He did not
know what to think.

"I do not know why I have told you this," said the Princess; "I had no
thought of saying such words when I brought you here. I seem to have
spoken them without willing it. Perhaps it was the will of God."

"Why do you go on with this life," said Mark sadly, "if it be not good?
The Prince would be glad if you would come back to the palace. He has
told me so."

It seemed to the boy that life grew more and more sad. It seemed that,
baffled and turned back at every turn, there was no reality, no sincere
walk anywhere possible. The worse seemed everywhere the better, the
children of this world everywhere wiser than the children of light.

"I cannot go back now," said the Princess. "When you are gone I shall
forget this; I shall think otherwise. There is something in your look
that has made me speak like this."

"Then are these people really not happy?" said Mark again.

"Why should they be happy?" said the Princess, with some bitterness in
her voice. "They have given up all that makes life pleasant--fine
clothes, delicate food, cunning harmonies, love, gay devices, and
sports. Why should they be happy? They have dull work, none to amuse or
enliven the long days."

"I was very happy in my village outside the palace gates," said Mark
quietly; "I had none of these things; I only taught the little peasants,
yet I was happy. From morning to night the path was straight before
me,--a bright and easy path; and the end was always light. Now all is
difficult and strange. Since I passed through the gates with the golden
scrolls, which I thought were like the heavenly Jerusalem, all goes
crooked and awry; nothing seems plain and righteous as in the pleasant
old days. I have come into an enchanted palace, the air of which I
cannot breathe and live; I must go back."

"No, not so," said the Princess, "you are wanted here. Where you were
you were of little good. There were at least others who could do your
work. Here none can do it but you. They never saw any one like you
before. They know it and speak of it. All are changed somewhat since you
came; you might, it is true, come to me, but I should not wish it. The
air of this house would be worse for you even than that of the palace
which you fear so much. Besides, the Prince would not be pleased with
me."

Mark looked sadly before him for some moments before he said:

"Even if it be true what you say, still I must go. It is killing me. I
wish to do right and good to all; but what good shall I do if it takes
all my strength and life? I shall ask the Prince to let me go back."

"No," said the Princess, "not that--never that. It is impossible, you
cannot go back!"

"Cannot go back!" cried Mark. "Why? The Prince is very kind. He will not
keep me here to die."

"Yes, the Prince is very kind, but he cannot do that; what is passed can
never happen again. It is the children's phrase, 'Do it again.' It can
never be done again. You have passed, as you say, the golden gates into
an enchanted world; you have known good and evil; you have tasted of the
fruit of the so-called Tree of Life; you cannot go back to the village.
Think."

Mark was silent for a longer space this time. His eyes were dim, but he
seemed to see afar off.

"No," he said at last, "it is true, I cannot go back. The village, and
the school, and the children have passed away. I should not find them
there, as they were before. If I cannot come to you, there is nothing
for me but to die."

"The Pagans," said the Princess, "the old Pagans, that knew their gods
but dimly, used to say--"The God-beloved die young." It has been said
since by Christian men.--Do not be afraid to die. Instead of your form
and voice there will be remembrance and remorse; instead of indifference
and sarcasm there will be contrition; in place of thoughtless kindliness
a tender love. Do not be afraid to die. The charm is working now; it
will increase when sight is changed for memory, and the changeful
irritation of time for changeless recollection and regret. The body of
the sown grain is transfigured into the flower of a spiritual life, and
from the dust is raised a mystic presence which can never fade. Do not
be afraid to die."

Mark walked slowly back to the palace. He could not think; he was
stunned and bewildered. He wished the Princess Isoline would have let
him come to her. Then he thought all might yet be well. When he reached
the palace he found everything in confusion. The Princess and her friend
the _servente_ had suddenly arrived.




VI.


LATER on in the day Mark was told that the Princess wished to see him,
and that he must wait upon her in her own apartment. He was taken to a
part of the palace into which he had hitherto never been; in which a
luxurious suite of rooms was reserved for the Princess when she
condescended to occupy them. The most easterly of the suite was a
morning sitting-room, which opened upon a balcony or trellised verandah,
shaded with jasmine. The room was furnished in a very different style
from the rest of the palace. The other rooms, though rich, were rather
bare of garniture, after the Italian manner--their ornaments consisting
of cabinets of inlaid wood and pictures on the walls, with the centre of
the room left clear. These rooms on the contrary, were full of small
gilt furniture, after the fashion of the French court. Curious screens,
depicting strange birds of gaudy plumage, embarrassed Mark as he entered
the room.

The Prince was seated near a lady who was reclining in the window, and
opposite to them was a stranger whom Mark knew must be the Count. The
lady was beautiful, but with a kind of beauty strange to the boy, and
her dress was more wonderful than any he had yet seen, though it was a
mere morning robe. She looked curiously at him as he entered the room.

"This, then," she said, "is the clown who is to educate my children."

At this not very encouraging address the boy stopped, and stood silently
contemplating the group.

The Count was the first who came to his assistance.

"The youth is not so bad, Princess," he said. "He has an air of society
about him, in spite of his youth."

The Prince looked at the Count with a pleased expression.

"Do not fear for the children, Adelaide," he said; "they will fare very
well. Their manners are improved already. When they come to Vienna you
will see how fine their breeding will be thought to be. Leave them to
me. You do not care for them; leave them to me and to the Herr Tutor."

Mark was looking at the Count. This was another strange study for the
boy. He was older than the Prince--a man of about forty; more firmly
built, and with well-cut but massive features. He wore a peruke of very
short, curled hair; his dress was rich, but very simple; and his whole
appearance and manner suggested curiously that of a man who carried no
more weight than he could possibly help, who encumbered himself with
nothing that he could throw aside, who offered in every action, speech,
and gesture the least possible resistance to the atmosphere, moral,
social, or physical, in which he found himself. His manner to the Prince
was deferential, without being marked, and he evidently wished to
propitiate him.

"Thou art very pious, I hear," said the Princess, addressing Mark in a
tone of unmitigated contempt.

The boy only bowed.

"Is he dumb?" said the Princess, still with undisguised disdain.

"No," said the Prince quietly. "He can speak when he thinks that what he
says will be well received."

"He is wise," said the Count.

"Well," said the Princess sharply, "my wishes count for nothing; of that
we are well aware. But I do not want my children to be infected with the
superstitions of the past, which still linger among the coarse and
ignorant peasantry. I suppose, now, this peasant schoolmaster believes
in a God and a hell, and in a heaven for such as he?" and she threw
herself back with a light laugh.

"No, surely," said the Count blandly, "that were too gross, even for a
peasant priest."

"Tell me, Herr Tutor," said the Princess; and now she threw a nameless
charm into her manner as she addressed the boy, from whom she wished an
answer; "tell me, dost thou believe in a heaven?"

"Yes, gracious Highness," said Mark.

"It has always struck me," said the Prince, with a philosophic air,
"that we might leave the poor their distant heaven. Its existence cannot
injure us. I have sometimes fancied that they might retort upon me: 'You
have everything here that life can wish: we have nothing. You have
dainty food, and fine clothes, and learning, and music, and all the
fruition that your fastidious fancy craves: we are cold and hungry, and
ignorant and miserable. Leave us our heaven! At least, if you do not
believe in it, keep silence before us. Our belief does not trouble you;
it takes nothing from the least of your pleasures; it is all we have.'"

"When the Prince begins to preach," said the Princess, with scarcely
less contempt than she had shown for Mark, "I always leave the room."

The Count immediately rose and opened a small door leading to a boudoir.
The Prince rose and bowed. The Princess swept to the ground before him
in an elaborate curtsey, and, looking contemptuously, yet with a certain
amused interest, at Mark, left the room.

The Prince resumed his seat, and, leaning back, looked from one to the
other of his companions. He was really thinking with amusement what a
so strangely-assorted couple might be likely to say to each other; but
the Count, misled by his desire to please the Prince, misunderstood him.
He supposed that he wished that the conversation which the Princess had
interrupted should be continued, and, sitting down, he began again.

"I suppose, Herr Tutor," he said, "you propose to train your pupils so
that they shall be best fitted to mingle with the world in which they
will be called upon to play an important part?"

The Prince motioned to Mark to sit, which he did, upon the edge of an
embroidered couch.

"If the serene Highness," he said, "had wished for one to teach his
children who knew the great world and the cities he would not have sent
for me."

"What do you teach them, then?"

"I tell them beautiful histories," said Mark, "of good people, and of
love, and of God."

"It has been proved," said the Count, "that there is no God."

"Then there is still love," said the boy.

"Yes, there is still love," said the Count, with an amused glance at the
Prince; "all the more that we have got rid of a cruel God."

The boy's face flushed.

"How can you dare say that?" he said.

"Why," said the Count, with a simulated warmth, "what is the God of you
pious people but a cruel God? He who condemns the weak and the
ignorant--the weak whom He has Himself made weak, and the ignorant whom
He keeps in darkness--to an eternity of torture for a trivial and
temporary, if not an unconscious, fault? What is that God but cruel who
will not forgive till He has gratified His revenge upon His own Son?
What is that God but cruel---- But I need not go on. The whole thing is
nothing but a figment and a dream, hatched in the diseased fancies of
half-starved monks dying by inches in caves and deserts, terrified by
the ghastly visions of a ruined body and a disordered mind--men so
stupid and so wicked that they could not discern the nature of the man
whom they professed to take for their God--a man, apparently, one of
those rare natures, in advance of their time, whom friends and enemies
alike misconceive and thwart; and who die, as He died, helpless and
defeated, with a despairing cry to a heedless or visionary God in whom
they have believed in vain."

As the Count went on, a new and terrible phase of experience was passing
through Mark's mind. As the brain consists of two parts, so the mind
seems dual also. Thought seems at different times to consist of
different phases, each of which can only see itself--of a faith that can
see no doubt--of a doubt that can conceive of no certainty; one week
exalted to the highest heaven, the next plunged into the lowest hell.
For the first time in his life this latter phase was passing through
Mark's mind. What had always looked to him as certain as the hills and
fields, seemed, on a sudden, shrunken and vanished away. His mind felt
emptied and vacant; he could not even think of God. It appeared even
marvellous to him that anything could have filled this vast fathomless
void, much less such a lovely and populous world as that which now
seemed vanished as a morning mist. He tried to rouse his energies, to
grasp at and to recover his accustomed thoughts, but he seemed
fascinated; the eyes of the Count rested on him, as he thought, with an
evil glance. He turned faint.

But the Prince came to his aid. He was looking across at the Count with
a sort of lazy dislike; as one looks at a stuffed reptile or at a foul
but caged bird.

"Thou art soon put down, little one," he said, with his kindly, lofty
air. "Tell him all this is nothing to thee! That disease and
distraction never created anything. That nothing lives without a germ of
life. Tell the Count that thou art not careful to answer him--that it
may be as he says. Tell him that even were it so--that He of whom he
speaks died broken-hearted in that despairing cry to the Father who He
thought had deserted Him--tell the Count thou art still with Him! Tell
him that if His mission was misconceived and perverted, it was because
His spirit and method was Divine! Tell the Count that in spite of
failure and despair, nay, perchance--who knows?--because even of that
despair, He has drawn all men to Him from that cross of His as He said.
Tell the Count that He has ascended to His Father and to thy Father,
and, alone among the personalities of the world's story, sits at the
right hand of God! Tell him this, he will have nothing to reply."

And, as if to render reply impossible, the Prince rose and, calling to
his spaniel, who came at his gesture from the sunshine in the window, he
struck a small Indian gong upon the table, and the pages drawing back
the curtains of the antechamber, he left the room.

The Count looked at the boy with a smile. Mark's face was flushed, his
eyes sparkling and full of tears.

"Well, Herr Tutor," said the Count not unkindly, "dost thou say all
that?"

"Yes," said the boy, "God helping me, I say all that!"

"Thou might'st do worse, Tutor," said the Count, "than follow the
Prince."

And he too left the room.




VII.


THE arrival of the Princess very much increased the gaiety and activity
of life within the palace. Every one became impressed with the idea that
the one thing necessary was to entertain her. The actors set to work to
prepare new plays, new spectacles; the musicians to compose new
combinations of quaint notes; the poets new sonnets on strange and, if
possible, new conceits. As the Princess was very difficult to please,
and as it was almost impossible to conceive anything which appeared new
to her jaded intellect, the difficulty of the task caused any idea that
promised novelty to be seized upon with a desperate determination. The
most favourite one still continued to be the proposition that Mark
should be induced, by fair means or foul, to take a part upon the stage.
His own character--the _rôle_ which he instinctively played--was so
absolutely original and fresh that the universal opinion was confident
of the success of such a performance.

"By some means or other," said old Carricchio, "he must be got to act."

"You may do what you will with him," said the Signorina sadly; "he will
die. He is too good to live. Like my little brother and the poor canary,
he will die."

In pursuit, then, of this ingenious plan, the Princess was requested to
honour with her presence a performance of a hitherto unknown character,
to be given in the palace gardens. She at first declined, saying that
she had seen everything that could be performed so often that she was
sick of such things, and that each of their vaunted and promised
novelties proved more stale and dull than its precursor. It was
therefore necessary to let her know something of what was proposed; and
no sooner did she understand that Mark was to be the centre round which
the play turned, than she entered into the plot with the greatest zeal.

It is, perhaps, not strange that to such a woman Mark's character and
personality offered a singular novelty and even charm. The thought of
triumphing over this child-like innocence, of contrasting it with the
licence and riot which the play would offer, struck her jaded curiosity
with a sense of delicious freshness, and she took an eager delight in
the arrangement and contrivance of the scenes.

In expansion of the idea suggested by some of the wonderful theatres in
Italy, where the open-air stage extended into real avenues and thickets,
it was decided that the entire play should be represented in the palace
gardens: and that, in fact, the audience should take part in the action
of the drama. This, where the whole household was theatrical, and where
the actors were trained in the Italian comedy, which left so much to the
_improvisatore_--to the individual taste and skill of the actor--was a
scheme not difficult to realise.

The palace garden, which was very large, was disposed in terraces and
hedges; it was planted with numerous thickets and groves, and, wherever
the inequalities of the ground allowed it, with lofty banks of thick
shrubs crowned with young trees, beneath which were arranged statues and
fountains in the Italian manner. The hedges were cut into arcades and
arches, giving free access to the retired lawns and shady nooks; and
these arcades, and the lofty groves and terraces, gave a constant sense
of mystery and expectation to the scene. The ample lawns and open spaces
afforded more than one suitable stage, upon which the most important
scenes of a play might be performed.

Beneath one of the highest and most important banks, which stretched in
a perfectly straight line across the garden, planted thickly with
flowering shrubs and fringed at the top with a long line of young trees,
whose delicate foliage was distinct against the sky, was placed the
largest of the fountains. It was copied from that in the Piazza Santa
Maria in Transtevere in Rome, and was ornamented with great shells,
fish, and Tritons. On either side of the fountain, and leading to the
terrace at the back, were flights of marble steps, with wide-stretching
stone bases upon either side towering above the grass. In front of the
fountain and of the steps, beyond a belt of greensward, were long hedges
planted in parallel rows, and connected in arches and arcades, crossing
and re-crossing each other in an intricate maze, so that a large
company, wandering through their paths, might suddenly appear and
disappear. Beyond the hedges the lawn stretched out again, broken by
flowerbeds and statues, and fringed by masses of foliage and lofty
limes. A sound of falling water was heard on all sides; and, by
mysterious contrivance of concealed mechanism, flute and harp music
sounded from the depths of the bosky groves.

+ + + + +

Mark knew little of what was going on. He occupied himself mostly with
his young pupils; but the conversation he had had with the Princess
Isoline had troubled his mind, and a sense of perplexity and of
approaching evil weighed upon his spirits and affected his health. He,
who had never known sickness in his peasant life, now, when confined to
a life so unnatural and artificial, so out of harmony with his mind and
soul, became listless and weak in body, and haunted by fitful terrors
and failings of consciousness. He knew that some extraordinary
preparations were being made; but he was not spoken to upon the subject,
and paid little attention to what was going on. Indeed, had he been in
the least of a suspicious nature, the entire absence of solicitation or
interference might have led him to suspect some secret machination
against his simplicity and peace, some contrived treachery at work; but
no such idea crossed his mind, he occupied himself with his own
melancholy thoughts and with the histories and parables which he related
to his pupils.

On the morning of the day fixed for the performance, then, things being
in this condition, Mark rose early. He had been informed that it was
necessary that he should wear his best court-suit, which we have seen
was of black silk with white bands and ruffles. He gave his pupils a
short lesson, but their thoughts were so much occupied by the
expectation of the coming festivity that he soon released them and
wandered out into the gardens alone. The performance of the play had
been fixed for noon.

The day was bright and serene. The gardens were brilliant with colour
and sweet with the perfume of flowers and herbs. Strains of mysterious
harmony from secret music startled the wanderer along the paths.

Mark strayed listlessly through the more distant groves. He was
distressed and dissatisfied with himself. His spirit seemed to have lost
its happy elasticity, his mind its active joyousness. The things which
formerly delighted him no longer seemed to please, even the loveliness
of nature was unable to arouse him. He found himself envying those
others who took so much real delight, or seemed to him to do so, in
fantastic and frivolous music and jest and comic sport. He began to
wonder what this new surprising play--these elaborately prepared
harmonies--these swells and runs and shakes--might prove to be. Then he
hated himself for this envy--for this curiosity. He wished to return to
his old innocence--his old simplicity.

But he felt that this could never be. As the Princess had told him,
whatever in after years he might become, never would he taste this
delight of his child's nature again. He was inexpressibly sad and
depressed.

As he wandered on, not knowing where he went, and growing almost stupid,
and indifferent even to pain, he found himself suddenly surrounded by a
throng of dancing and laughing girls. It was easy, in this magic garden,
to steal unobserved upon any one amid the bosky hedges and arcades; but
to surprise one so abstracted as the dreamy and listless boy required no
effort at all. With hands clasped and mocking laughter they surrounded
the unhappy Mark. They were masqued, with delicate bits of fringed silk
across the eyes, but had they not been so he was too confused to have
recognised them. He tried in vain to escape. Then he was lifted from the
ground by a score of hands and borne rapidly away.

The stories of swan-maidens and winged fairies of his old histories
crossed his mind, and he seemed to be flying through the air; suddenly
this strange flight came to an end; he was on his feet again, and, as he
looked confusedly around, he found that he was alone.

He was standing on a circular space of lawn, surrounded by the lofty
wood. In the centre was an antique statue of a faun playing upon a
flute. He seemed to recognise the scene, but could not in his confusion
recall in what part of the vast garden it lay.

As he stood, lost in wonder and expectation, a fairy-like figure was
suddenly present before him, from whence coming he could not tell. The
slim and delicate form was dressed in a gossamer robe, through which the
lovely limbs might be seen. She held a light masque in her hand, and
laughed at him with her dancing eyes and rosy mouth. It was the little
Princess, his pupil.

Even now no thought of plot or treachery entered the boy's mind; he
gazed at her in wondering amaze.

"You must come with me," said the girl-princess, holding out her hand;
"I am sent to fetch you to the under world."

Behind them as they stood, and facing the statue of the faun, was a cave
or hollow in the wood, half concealed by the pendant tendrils of
creeping and flowering plants. It seemed the opening of a subterranean
passage. The child pushed aside the hanging blossoms and drew Mark,
still dazed and unresisting, after her. They went down into the dark
cave.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile from early dawn the palace had been noisy with pattering feet.
For its bizarre population was augmented from many sources, and the
great performance of the day taxed the exertions of all. As the morning
advanced visitors began to arrive, and were marshalled to certain parts
of the gardens where positions were allotted them, and refreshments
served in tents. They were mostly masqued. Then strange groups began to
form themselves before the garden front of the palace, and on the
terraces. These were all masqued, and dressed in variety of incongruous
and fantastic costumes, for though the play was supposed to be
classical, yet the necessity of entertaining the Princess with
something startling and lively was more exacting than artistic
congruity. As we have seen, the Prince had always inclined more to the
fairy and masqued comedy than to the serious opera, and on this occasion
the result was more original and fantastic than had ever before been
achieved.

As the morning went on, there gradually arranged itself, as if by
fortuitous incident, as strange a medley of fairy mediæval legend and of
classic lore as eye ever looked upon. As the Prince and Princess,
surrounded by their principal guests, all masqued and attired in every
shade of colour and diversity of form, stood upon the steps before the
palace, the wide gardens seemed full of groups equally varied and
equally brilliant with their own. From behind the green screens of the
hedges, and from beneath the arcades, figures were constantly emerging
and passing again out of sight, apparently accidentally, but in fact
with a carefully-devised plan. Strains of delicate music filled the air.

Then a group of girls in misty drapery, and masqued across the eyes, the
same indeed that had carried off Mark, appeared suddenly before the
princely group. They had discovered in the deepest dell of their native
mountain a deserted babe--the offspring doubtless of the loves of some
wandering god. They were become its nurses, and fed it upon sacred honey
and consecrated bread. Of immortal birth themselves, and untouched by
the passing years, the boy became, as he grew up, the plaything, and
finally the beloved of his beautiful friends. But the boy himself is
indifferent to their attractions, and careless or averse to their
caresses. He is often lost to them, and wanders in the mountain
fastnesses with the fawns and kids.

All this and more was told in action, in song, and recitative, upon the
palace lawns before this strange audience, themselves partly actors in
the pastoral drama. Rural dances, and games and sacrifices were
presented with delicately-conceived grouping and pictorial effect. Then
the main action of the drama developed itself. The most lovely of the
nymphs, the queen and leader of the rest, inspires a devoted passion in
the heart of the priest of Apollo, before whose altar they offer
sacrifice, and listen for guiding and response. She rejects his love
with cruel contempt, pining always for the coy and errant boy-god, who
thinks of nothing but the distant mountain summits and the divine
whispers of the rustling woods. The priest, insulted and enraged,
invokes the aid of his divinity, and a change comes over the gay and
magic scene. A terrible pestilence strikes down the inhabitants of these
sylvan lawns, and gloomy funerals, and the pathetic strains of dirges
take the place of dances and lively songs.

The terrified people throw themselves before the altar of the incensed
Apollo, and the god speaks again. His anger can be appeased only by the
sacrifice of the contemptuous nymph who has insulted his priest, or of
some one who is willing to perish in her place. Proclamation is made
across the sunny lawns, inviting a victim who will earn the wreath of
self-sacrifice and of immortal consciousness of a great deed, but there
is no response.

The fatal day draws on; the altar of sacrifice is prepared; but there
spreads a rumour among the crowd--fanned probably by hope--that at the
last moment a god will interfere. Some even speak of the wandering boy,
if he could only be found. Surely he--so removed from earthly and
selfish loves, so strange in his simplicity, in his purity--surely he
would lay down his guileless life without a pang. Could he only be
found! or would he appear!

The herald's voice had died away for the third time amid a fanfare of
trumpets. At the foot of the steps of the long terrace, by the Roman
fountain, a delicate and lovely form stood on the grassy verge before
the altar, by the leaping and rushing water's side; a little to the
left, whence the road from Hades was supposed to come, stood the divine
messenger, the lofty herald--clad in white, with a white wand; behind
the altar stood the wretched priest, on whom the fearful task devolved,
the passion of terror, of pity, and of love, traced upon his face; all
sound of music had died away; a hush as of death itself fell upon the
expectant crowd; from green arch and trellised walk the throng of
masques, actors and spectators alike, pressed forward upon the lawn
before the altar.... The priest tore the fillet from his brow and threw
down his knife.

       *       *       *       *       *

The darkness of the cave gave place to a burst of dazzling sunlight as
Mark and the little Princess, who in the darkness had resumed her
masque, came out suddenly from the unseen opening upon one of the great
stone bases by the side of the steps. To the boy's wonderstruck sense
the flaring light, the mystic and awful forms, the thronged masques, the
shock of surprise and terror, fell with a stunning force. He uttered a
sharp cry like that of a snared and harmless creature of the woods. He
pressed his hands before his face to shut out the bewildering scene,
and, stepping suddenly backward in his surprise, fell from the edge of
the stone platform some eight feet to the ground. A cry of natural
terror broke from the victim, in place of the death-song she was
expected to utter, and she left her place and sprang forward towards the
steps. The crowd of masques which surrounded the Prince came forward
tumultuously, and a hurried movement and cry ran through the people,
half of whom were uncertain whether the settled order of the play was
interrupted or not.

Mark lay quite still on the grass, his eyes closed, the Signorina
bending over him; but the herald, who was in fact director of the play,
waved his wand imperiously before the masques, and they fell back.

"Resume your place, Signorina," he said, "this part of the play has,
apparently, failed. You will sing your death-song, and the priest will
offer himself in your stead."

But the girl rose, and, forcing her way to where the Prince stood, threw
herself upon his arm.

"Oh, stop it, Highness, stop it!" she cried, amid a passion of sobs;
"he is dying, do you not see!"

The Prince removed his masque; those around him, following the signal,
also unmasqued, and the play was stopped.




PART SECOND.




I.


THERE was no change in the bright sunlight or in the festive colours of
the gay crowd. The grass was as green, the sky as blue, the rushing
leaping water sparkled as before, nevertheless a sudden change and
deadness fell upon the garden and its throng of guests. The hush that
had preceded Mark's appearance was of a far different kind. That had
been a silence of awe, of expectation, of excitement, and of life; this
was the scared silence of dismay. Those who were most distant from the
Prince, and who could do so with decency, began to scatter like
frightened children, and were lost in the arcaded hedges and walks. The
Prince remained standing, his masque in his hand, the Signorina still
weeping on his arm; she was too excited to admit of comfort, he stroked
her hand kindly, as he would that of a child. The Herald, who was
evidently exceedingly disgusted at the turn things had taken, and the
quite unnecessary stop that had been put to the play, had retired a few
paces, and was in conference with Carricchio, who was apparently trying
to console him. The Princess, scared and startled, was drawing the Count
after her to leave the scene, when a tall and beautiful woman emerged
from a trellised walk and, through the respectful crowd that fell back
to give her passage, advanced towards the Prince.

"You may resume your play, Ferdinand," she said, and her voice was very
sad but without a touch of scorn; "you may resume your play. It is not
you who have killed this child; it is I."

Then, stooping over the lifeless body, she raised it in her arms, and,
in the midst of a yet more perfect stillness, as in the presence of a
being of a holier and a loftier world, the Princess Isoline disappeared
with her burden into the forest depths.

She followed the path under the narrow avenue, where she had once walked
with Mark, till she reached her quiet and melancholy house; and,
entering at once into the hall, she deposited her burden upon the long
table, where the household was wont to dine. She laid it with the feet
at one end of the board, and, straightening the stiffening limbs, she
knelt down before it and buried her face in her hands.

"_The good are not happy, and the happy are not good_"--was she then
good because she was so miserable? Ah no! Or was this wretchedness a
wicked thing? Again, surely not!

As she lay thus, crushed and beaten down, her form contorted with sobs,
a quiet footstep roused her, and, raising her eyes, she saw the Prince
through her blinding tears. He was standing by the table, near the head
of the child. His face was very pale, and the eyes had lost the
habitual languor of their expression, and were full of an earnest
tender grief. The Princess rose, and they looked each other straight in
the eyes. Through the mist of tears the Prince's form became refined and
purified, and he stood there with a beauty hitherto altogether unknown,
even to her.

"I told this child, Isoline," he said; "I told this child that I had
done well to send for him."

"Ferdinand," she said again, "it is not you who have done this; it is
I." She stopped for a moment to recover control, and went on more
passionately--"I, who pretended to the devoted life! in which alone he
could breathe; I, to whom he looked for help and strength; I, who
deserted him and gave a false report of the promised land."

The Prince looked at her with eyes full of compassion, but did not
reply.

"You did what you could," continued his sister; "your effort was surely
a noble one. More, in fact; you came to the help of his faith against
evil. It is always so! The children of the world act always better than
the children of light!"

In her self-abasement and despair the Princess did not remember Mark's
words, that the greatest trial of his faith had been the Prince: a
tolerance which is kindly and even appreciative, and yet, as with a
clearness of a farther insight stands indifferently aside, must always
be the great trial of simple faith.

"It is easier, Isoline," said her brother at last, "to maintain a low
standard than a high. It seems to me that we have both been wrong, but
yours is the nobler fault. You attempted an impossible flight--a flight
which human nature has no wings strong enough to achieve. As for me,
this has been a terrible shock--more than I could have thought possible,
I who fancied myself so secure and so serene. That such a terrible
chance could happen shows how unstable are the most finished schemes of
life. I fancied that my life was an art, and I dreamed that it might be
perfected--as a religious art. Fool that I was! How can life or religion
be an art when the merest accident can dissolve the entire fabric at a
blow? No art can exist in the presence of an impalpable mystery, of an
unknown, inappeasable, implacable Force."

"No," said the Princess; "art is not enough!--morality, virtue, love
even, is not enough. None of these can pierce the veil. Nothing profits,
save the Divine Humanity, which, through the mystery of Sacrifice, has
entered the unseen. You know, Ferdinand," and she looked up through her
tears with a sad smile, "in your art there was always in old times a
mystery."

She rose as she said this, and stood more lovely than ever in her grief
and in her faith; and the Prince moved a step forward, and put his hand
upon the breast of the child. As they stood, looking each other full in
the eyes, in the notorious beauty of their order and of their race, it
might have seemed to a sanguine fancy that, over the piteous victim of
earth's failure, art and religion for the moment were at one.




II.


THE pleasure Palace was deserted. Mark was buried in a shadowy graveyard
behind the old manor-house, where was a ruined chapel that had been a
canonry. The Princess Isoline gave up her house, and dissolved her
family. They were scattered to their several homes. She said that her
place was by her brother's side. It would seem that none were sorry for
some excuse. The Prince could no longer endure the place; he said that
he had neglected his princely cities, and must visit them for a time.
The Signorina was inconsolable, but her singing improved day by day.
The Maestro began to have hopes of her. He wrote to Vienna concerning an
engagement for her at the Imperial Theatre there, without even
consulting the Prince, who for the moment was disgusted with the very
name of art. Old Carricchio said that the northern sunshine was more
intolerable than ever, and that he should return to Italy, but would
take Vienna in his way. It might be supposed that this old man would
have been much distressed, but, if this were the case, he concealed his
feelings with his usual humorous eccentricity. He spent most of his time
listening to Tina's singing. Even the Maestro and the pages seemed to
miss Mark more.

In the general disorganisation and confusion the Princess even was not
entirely unaffected. She was continually speaking of Mark, whose
singular personality had struck her fancy, and whose sudden and pathetic
death had touched her with pity. She appeared unusually affectionate to
her husband and to his sister, and she despatched the Count to secure a
residence in Vienna, where she expressed her intention of taking the
entire family as soon as the Prince had satisfied his newly-awakened
conscience by a sight of Wertheim. The children were delighted with the
thought, and were apparently consoled for the absence of their tutor.
Perhaps already his tales had begun to tire.

The Maestro and Carricchio were walking side by side upon the terrace
where Mark was used to sit.

"I shall make a sensation at Vienna," said the Maestro; "that little
girl is growing into an impassioned actress with a marvellous voice. I
have an idea. I have already arranged the score. I shall throw this
story into the form of opera--a serious opera, not one of your farcical
things. It is a charming story, most pathetic, and will make people cry.
That boy's character was exquisite: 'Ah,' they will say, 'that lovely
child!'"

"I don't understand your pathos," said Carricchio crossly,--"the pathos
of composers and writers and imaginative men. It is all ideal. You talk
of farce, I prefer the jester's farce. I never knew any of you to weep
over any real misery--any starving people, any loathsome, sordid poor!"

"I should think not," said the Maestro; "there is nothing delightful in
real misery--it is loathsome, as you say; it is horrible, it is
disagreeable even! Art never contemplates the disagreeable; it would
cease to be true art if it did. But when you are happy yourself, when
you are surrounded by comfort and luxury--_then_ to contemplate misery,
sorrow, woe! Ah! this is the height of luxury: this is art! Yes, true
art!"

"It seems selfish, to me," said the Arlecchino surlily.

"Selfish!" exclaimed the Maestro; "of course it is selfish! Unless it is
selfish it cannot be art. Art has an end, an aim, an intention--if it
deserts this aim it ceases to be art. It must be selfish."

There was a slight pause, then the Maestro, who seemed to be in great
spirits, went on:

"I always thought the Prince a poor creature, now I am sure of it. He is
neither one thing nor the other. He will never be an artist, in the true
sense."

"He is very sorry for that poor child," said Carricchio.

"Sorry!" exclaimed the Maestro. "Sorry! I tell you when the canary died
I was delighted, but I am still more delighted now. I predict to you a
great future for the Signorina. She will be a great actress and singer.
The death of this child is everything to us; it was just what was
required to give her power, to stir the depths of her nature. _Mio
caro_," he continued caressingly, putting his hand on Carricchio's arm,
"believe me, _this_ is life, and _this_ is art!"

"He is a cold-blooded old devil," muttered Carricchio savagely, as he
turned away, "with his infernal talk of art. I would not go to Vienna
with him but for the Signorina. I will see her once upon the stage
there. Then the old worn-out Arlecchino will go back into the sunshine,
and die, and go to Mark."




III.


THE Maestro's romantic opera was a success. He was at least so far a
genius that he knew where he was strong and where he was weak.

He reproduced with great exactness the play in the palace gardens, but
he kept the person and character of Mark enshrouded in mystery, allowing
him to appear very seldom, and trusting entirely to the singing of the
principal performers, and especially of the Signorina, to impress the
audience with the idea of his purity and innocence. He surpassed himself
in the intense wistful music of the score; never had he produced such
pathetic airs, such pleading sustained harmonies, such quivering
lingering chords and cadences. At the supreme moment the boy appears,
and, after singing with exquisite melody his hapless yet heroic fate,
offers his bosom to the sacrificial knife. But a god intervenes. Veiled
in cloud and recognised in thunders, a divine and merciful hand is laid
upon the child. Death comes to him as a sleep, and over his dead and
lovely form the anger of heaven is appeased. Incapable as the Maestro
was of feeling much of the pathos and beauty of his own work, still,
with that wonderful instinct, or art, or genius, which supplies the
place of feeling, he produced, amid much that was grotesque and
incongruous, a work of delicate touch and thrilling and entrancing
sound. The little theatre near the Kohl market, where the piece was
first produced, was crowded nightly, and the narrow thoroughfares
through private houses and courtyards, called Durch-häuser, with which
the extraordinary and otherwise impenetrable maze of building which
formed old Vienna was pierced through and through, were filled with fine
and delicate ladies and gay courtiers seeking admission. So great,
indeed, was the success that an arrangement was made with the conductors
of the Imperial Theatre for the opera to be performed there. The
Empress-Queen and her husband were present, the frigid silence of
etiquette was broken more than once by applause, and the Abate
Metastasio wrote some lines for the Signorina; indeed, the success of
the piece was caused by the girl's singing.

"Mark is better than the canary," the Maestro was continually repeating.

In his hour of triumph the old gentleman presented a quaint and
attractive study to the observer of the by-ways of art. Amid the rococo
surroundings among which he moved, he was himself a singular example of
the power of art to extract from bizarre and unpromising material
somewhat at least of pure and lasting fruit. He had attired his withered
and lean figure in brilliant hues and the finest lace, and in this
attire he trained the girl, also fantastically dressed, to warble the
most touching and delicious plaints. The instinctive pathos of inanimate
things, of forms and colours, was perceived in sound, and much that
hitherto seemed paltry and frivolous was refined and ennobled. Mark's
death, and even that of the poor canary, was beginning to bear fruit.
Nature and love were feeling out the enigma of existence by the aid of
art.

The reference to the canary was not, indeed, made in the presence of
Tina, for the Maestro found that it was not acceptable. Nevertheless, a
strange fellowship and affection was springing up between these two. The
critics complained that the Signorina varied her notes; but, in fact,
the score of the opera never remained the same--at least as regarded her
parts. As she sang, with the Maestro beside her at the harpsichord,
imagination and recollection, instructed by the magic of sound, touched
her notes with an unconscious pathos and revealed to her master, with
his ready pencil in one hand and the other on the keys, fresh heights
and depths of cultured harmony, new combinations of fluttering,
melodious notes.

This copartnership, this action and reaction, had something wonderful
and charming about it; the power of nature in the girl's voice
suggesting possibilities of more melodious, more artistic pathos to the
composer, the girl's passionate instinct recognising the touch, and
confessing the help, of the master's skill. It seems a strange duet, yet
I do not know that we should think it strange.

The girl's nature, pure and loving, was supremely moved by the discovery
of this power of realisation and expression which it had obtained; but
at times it frightened her.

"I hate all this," she would cry sometimes, starting away from the
harpsichord; "they are dead and cold, and I sing!"

"Sing! _mia cara!_" the old man would say, with, for him, a soft and
kindly tone; "you cannot help but sing: and when did love and sorrow
feel so near and real to you as when, just now, you sang that phrase in
F minor?"

"It is wicked!" said the girl; but she sang over again, to the perfect
satisfaction of her master, the phrase in F minor.

"It is true," she said, after a pause. "I knew not how to love--I knew
not what love was till I learned to sing from you. Every day I learn
more what love is; I feel every hour more able to love--I love you more
and more for teaching me the art of love."

"Ah, _mia cara_," said the Maestro, "that was not difficult! You were
born with that gift. But it is strange to me, I confess it, how
pathetically you sing. It is not in the music--at any rate, not in my
music. It is beyond my art and even strange to it, but it touches even
me."

And the old man shrugged his shoulders with an odd gesture, in which
something like self-contempt struggled with an unaccustomed emotion.

The girl had turned half round, and was looking at him with her bright,
yet wistful eyes.

"Never mind, Maestro," she said; "I shall love you always for your
music, in spite of your contempt of love, and your miserable, cold----"

And she gave a little shudder. She was forming, indeed, a passionate
regard for the old man, solely for the sake of his art.

It was not by any means the first time that such an event had occurred,
for unselfish love is much more common than cynical mankind believes.




IV.


THE Prince soon grew tired of Wertheim. Apart from other reasons, of
which perhaps we may learn something hereafter, he felt lost without the
accustomed _entourage_ which he had attracted to Joyeuse. The death of
Mark had made a profound impression upon his delicately strung
temperament. It disturbed the lofty serenity of his life, it shocked his
taste, it was bad art. That such a thing could have happened to him in
the very citadel and arcanum of his carefully designed existence--and
should have happened, too, as the result of his own individual purpose
and action--arrested him as with an archangel's sword; showed him
forcibly that his delicately woven mail was deficient in some important,
but as yet unperceived, point; that his fancifully conceived prince-life
was liable to sudden catastrophe. He had lived delicately, but the
bitterness of death was not passed. He left Wertheim, and, travelling
with his children and servants in several carriages and _chaises de
poste_, he journeyed to Vienna, whither the Princess had preceded him.

The Prince travelled alone in a _carrosse-coupé_, or travelling chaise,
at the head of his party. The Barotin and the children followed him in
the second carriage, which was full of toys for their entertainment; now
and again one or the other would be promoted for a stage or two to
their father's carriage, to remain there as long as they entertained
him. After a time they entered upon the flat plains of the Danube and
approached Vienna.

As they crossed the flat waste of water meadows, over the long bridges
of boats, and through the rows of poplars, a drive usually so dreary to
travellers to Vienna, the sun broke out gloriously and the afternoon
became very fine. For many miles before him, over the monotonous waste,
the great tower of St. Stephen's Church had confronted the Prince,
crowned with its gigantic eagle and surrounded by wheeling flocks of
birds--cranes and ravens and daws. Herons and storks rose now and again
from the ditches and pools by the wayside and flitted across the road.
The brilliant light shone upon the mists of the river and upon the
distant crags and woods.

The Prince was alone; the children were tired and restless from the long
journey, and were sent back to the long-suffering Barotin. He lay back
upon the rich furs which filled the carriage, and kept his eyes
listlessly fixed upon the distant tower. The descending sun lighted up
the weather-stains and the vari-coloured mosses that covered its sides;
a rainbow, thrown across the black clouds of the north and east, spanned
the heavens with a lofty arch.

The Prince gazed wearily over the striking scene. Existence appeared to
him, at the moment, extremely complicated.

"It was a terrible mistake," he said, his thoughts still running on the
old disaster; "a terrible mistake! Yet they cannot be right--Isoline and
the people with her--who talk of nothing but sacrifice and self-denial,
and denounce everything by which life is not only made endurable, but by
which, indeed, it is actually maintained in being. What would life be if
every one were as they? 'Ah!' she says, 'there is little chance of that!
So few think of aught save self! So few deny themselves for the sake of
others, you need not grudge us few our self-chosen path.' That is where
they make the fatal mistake. Each man should carve out his life, as a
whole, as though the lives of all were perfect, not as if it were a
broken fragment of a fine statue; each should be a perfect Apollo of
the Belvedere Gardens, not a mere torso; not a strong arm only that can
strike, not a finger only that can beckon--even though it be to God.
Because all cannot enjoy them, does that make assorted colour, and sweet
sound, and delicate pottery less perfect, less worthy to be sought? He
should aim at the complete life--should love, and feel, and enjoy."

The great tower rose higher and higher above the Prince as he thought
these last words aloud; the screaming kites and daws wheeled above his
head; the great eagle loomed larger and larger in the evening light.
They passed over the wide glacis, threaded the drawbridges and barriers,
and entered the tortuous narrow streets. A golden haze lighted the
crowded thoroughfares and beautified the carving and gables of the
lofty houses. A motley crowd of people, from east and west alike, in
strange variety of costume, thronged the causeways, and hardly escaped
the carriage-wheels in their reckless course. The sight roused the
Prince from his melancholy, and he gazed with an amused and even
delighted air from his carriage-windows. His nature, pleasure-loving and
imaginative, found this moving life a source of never-tiring interest
and suggestiveness. The fate, the interests, the aims, and sorrows of
every human figure that passed across his vision, even for a second,
formed itself in some infinitely slight, yet perfectly real and
tangible, degree in his mind; and he conceived the stir and tremor of a
great city's life with a perfect grasp of all the little details that
make up the dramatic, the graphic whole.

The carriage swept through the Place St. Michael, past the Imperial
Palace, and, pursuing its course through the winding streets to the
imminent peril of the populace of Croats, Servians, Germans, and a mixed
people of no nation under heaven, reached the _Hôtel_ which had been
selected for the Prince in the Tein quarter.

Though this quiet quarter is in close neighbourhood to the most busy and
noisy parts of the city, the contrast was striking. The Prince saw
nothing here but quaint palaces crowded together within a space of a few
hundred yards. Here were the palaces of the Lichtensteins, the
Festetics, the Esterhazys, the Schönbornes. Antique escutcheons were
hanging before the houses, and strange devices of the golden fleece,
and other crests and bearings were erected on the gables and roofs.
Vienna was emphatically the city of heraldry, and a tendency towards
Oriental taste in noble and burgher produced a fantastic architecture of
gables and minarets, breaking the massive lines of fortress-like
mediæval palace and _hôtel_. Here and there a carriage was standing in
the quiet street, and servants in gaudy liveries stood in the sunshine
about the steps and gates.

The next morning the Prince was seated at his toilette, in the hands of
his dresser, who was frizzling and powdering his hair. By his side was
standing his valet or body-servant, as he would be called in
England--_Chasseur_ or _Jager_, as he was called in North or South
Germany. This man was one of the most competent of his order, and
devoted to his master.

"Well, Karl," the Prince was saying, with his kindly air, "thou
breathest again here, I doubt not. This place is more to thy mind than
Joyeuse--_n'est ce pas_? There is life here and intrigue. It is better
even than Rome? Is it so?"

"Wherever the Serene Highness is," replied Karl graciously, "I am
content and happy. I was happy in Rome, in Joyeuse, at Wertheim; but I
confess that I like Wien. There is colour here, and quaintness, and
_esprit_."

Karl had picked up many art terms with the rest of the princely
household.

"Ah! Wertheim!" said the Prince, rather sadly as it seemed. "I like
Wertheim, ah! so much--for a day or two. One is so great a man there. I
know every one, and every one knows me. I feel almost like a beneficent
Providence, and as though I had discovered the perfection of art in
life. When I walk in the garden avenue after dinner, between the
statues, and every one has right of audience and petition, and one old
woman begs that her only son may be excused from military service, and
another that her stall in the market may not be taken away; and one old
man's house is burnt down, and he wants help to rebuild it, and another
craves right of wood-gathering in the princely forests, and another begs
that his son may be enrolled among the under-keepers and beaters of the
game, with right of snaring a hare,--and all these things are so easy to
grant, and seem to these poor folks so gracious, and like the gifts of
heaven, that one thinks for the moment that this must be the perfection
of life. But it palls, Karl; in a day or two it palls! The wants and
sufferings of the poor are so much alike; they want variety, they are so
deficient in shade, they are such poor art!" and the Prince sighed
wearily.

"That is natural for the Serene Highness," said Karl, with a
sympathising pity which was amusing; "that is natural to the Serene
Highness, who does not see below the surface, and to whom all speak with
bated breath. There is plenty of light and shade in the lives of the
poor, if you go deep enough."

"Ah!" said the Prince with interest, "is it so? Doubtless now, within a
few yards of us, there are art-scenes enacted, tragedies and comedies
going on, of which you know the different _rôles_--one of which, maybe,
you fill yourself. Eh, Karl?"

"It is a great city, Highness," said Karl. "They are all alike, good and
ill, love and hatred, the knave and the fool. All the world over, it is
much the same."

At this moment, the hair-powdering being over, the Prince rose.

"Well," he said, "to-night the Signorina sings at the Imperial Theatre.
She and the Maestro sup with me afterwards. The Princess sups at the
Palace."




V.


IT is difficult at the present day to realise such scenes as that
presented by the Imperial Theatre during the performance that evening.
The comparative smallness of the interior and dimness of the lights,
combined with the incomparable splendour and richness in the appearance
of the audience which filled every portion of the theatre, even to the
gallery of the servants, with undiminished brilliancy, produced an
effect of subdued splendour and of a mystic glow of colour which we
should look for in vain in any theatre in Europe now.

The Empress-Queen and her husband occupied a central box, and the Court,
graduated according to rank, and radiating from this centre, filled
boxes, pit, and gallery. The Prince's box was on the royal tier, not far
from the Empress. He was accompanied by the Princess and his sister.

"I am delighted with Isoline," the Princess said; "that poor child's
death has worked wonders upon her in a way no one would have expected.
She seems to have thrown off her singular fancies, and behaves as other
people do."

"Isoline never was very easy to understand," said the Prince.

Whether or not she were inspired by the presence of the Prince, the
Signorina had never sung so wonderfully as she did that night. The
frigid silence of Imperial etiquette, so discouraging and chilling to
southern artists, gave place, now and again, to an irrepressible murmur
of emotion and applause. The passionate yearning of the purest love, the
pathos of unselfish grief, found a fit utterance in notes of an
inimitable sweetness, and in melodies whose dainty phrases were ennobled
and mellowed at once by delicate art and loftiest feeling. The house
gave way at last to an uncontrollable enthusiasm, and, regardless of
Court etiquette, the entire assembly rose to its feet amid a tumult of
applause.

Not far from the Maestro, who was conducting the music from the centre
of the orchestra, was seated Carricchio. He had, of course, discarded
his professional dress, and had attired himself, according to the
genius of his countrymen, in rich but dark and plain attire. Any one who
could have watched his face--that face which the little Schoolmaster was
used to wonder at--and could have marked the quaint mingling, on the
large worn features, of the old humorous movement with the new emotions
of wonder and of love, would not have spent his moments in vain.

But the success was too complete. The Empress-Queen was shocked at the
breach of decorum. She was not in the least touched by the Signorina's
singing, and the story of the opera was unintelligible to her. It was
suggested by those who were offended and injured by the success of the
piece, and by the displacement of other operas, that this arrangement
entailed increased expense upon the royal treasury, and, amid the
penurious and pettifogging instincts of the Court of Vienna in those
days, this was a fatal thrust. The theatre, it was said, was required
for other pieces, notably for a new opera by Metastasio himself.

"It was very beautiful, Ferdinand," said the Princess, as they left the
box; and, struck by her tone and by the unaccustomed use of his name,
the Prince looked at her with surprise, for it was years since he had
seen the sweet, softened, well-remembered look in her eyes. "I liked
that boy!"

"I will convey your approbation to the Signorina," replied the Prince;
"it will complete the triumph of the night."

"Where do you sup to-night, Ferdinand?" said the Princess.

"I--I sup in private with the Maestro and Tina," said the Prince.

"Ah!" said the Princess, still with the same wistful, unaccustomed look.
"There is a cover laid for me at the Imperial table--I must go."

It is absurd to talk of what would have happened had the threads of our
lives been woven into different tissues, else we might say that but for
that Imperial cover the issues of this story would have had a different
close.

The Maestro waited at the theatre till the Signorina had changed her
dress. When she appeared she was radiant with triumph and delight, but
the old man was sad and depressed. Some intimation of the fatal
resolution had been conveyed to him in the interval.

"What is the matter with you, Maestro?" said the girl; "you ought to be
delighted, and you look as gloomy as a ghost. What is it?"

"It is nothing," said the Maestro. "I am an old man, _mia cara_, and the
performance tires me. Let us go to the Prince."

They entered a fiacre, and were driven to the courtyard of the Prince's
_Hôtel_.

The supper, though private, was luxurious, and was attended by all the
servants of the Prince. Inspired by the success of the night, the Prince
exerted himself to please; but, apart from all other circumstances, the
Signorina would have delighted any man. She was at that delightful age
when the girl is passing into the woman; she was increasing daily in
beauty, she was perfectly dressed, she was radiant that night with
happiness, and with the consciousness of success; she was touched by the
recollection of the past, and profoundly affected by the power of
expression which she had found in song; more than this--much more--she
was drawn irresistibly by a feeling of pity and sympathy towards the old
man; she could not understand his depression and gloom; she paid little
attention to the Prince, but lavished a thousand pretty arts and
delicate attentions on the vain endeavour to rouse her friend. No other
conduct could have rendered her so attractive in the eyes of the Prince.
To his refined and really high-toned taste, this pretty devotedness,
this manifestly pure affection and gratitude, as of a daughter,
commended by such loveliness and vivacity, were irresistible. It was
exactly that combination of pathos and grace and art that suited his
cultured fancy and the long habit of his trained life. He was
inexpressibly delighted and happy. Forgetful of past mistake and
misfortune, he congratulated himself on his success in attaching to his
person and family so lively and dulcet a creature. His scheme of life
seemed complete and authorised to his conscience by success.

Once more he uttered the fatal words, "_I will have_ this girl."

"You are the happiest man I know, Maestro," he said; "you are truly a
creative artist, for you not only create melodious sounds and
spirit-stirring ideas, but you actually create flesh and blood sirens
and human creatures as lovely as your sounds, and far more real. The
Signorina is your work, and see, as is natural, how devoted she is to
her maker."

"Every one thinks others happier than himself, Prince," said the old
man, still gloomy. "As for the Signorina, she has much more made me than
I her. I shall only injure and cripple her."

The girl looked at him with tears in her eyes.

"The Maestro is not well," she said to the Prince; "he will be more
cheerful to-morrow. Success frightens him. It is often more terrible
than failure."

"He fears that you will forsake him, when you are courted and praised so
much," said the Prince in a low voice, for the old man seemed scarcely
to notice what passed; "he fears you will forsake him," and as he spoke
the Prince kept his eyes fixed inquiringly on the girl's face.

The Signorina said nothing. She turned her dark great eyes full on the
old man, and the Prince wanted no more than what the eyes told him.

"She is a glorious creature," he said to himself.




VI.


THE next morning the crash came. The Maestro was informed that only one
more performance could be allowed at the Imperial Theatre, and that,
further, there were difficulties in the way of the performance being
permitted in any theatre in Vienna. The old man was crushed: he came to
the Signorina with the notice in his hand.

"_Mia cara_," he said, making great efforts to be calm, "this is the
end. I am a broken and a ruined man. I have been all my life waiting for
this chance--this gift of inspiration. I thought that it would never
come; it tarried so long, and I grew so old. At last it came, but only
just in time. I have never written anything like this music, and never
shall again. Now it is stopped. I must go. I cannot stay where it must
not be played; I must go somewhere, and take my music with me. It will
not be for long. The Prince will not leave Vienna. He is pleased with
the city and with his reception. I must leave you all."

The girl was on her feet before him, with flashing eyes which were full
of tears.

"Maestro!" she said; "what mean you to talk in this way? Do you suppose
that I will ever leave you, that I will stay if you go? I owe everything
to you. I cannot sing without you. I will follow you to
Paris--anywhere. Whatever fortune awaits you shall await us both."

"Ah, Tina," said the old man, "you are very good, but you mistake. I am
not the great master you suppose. I know it too well. There is always
something wanting in my notes. When you sing them, well and good. Even
as they are they never would have been scored but for you. When I leave
you the glamour will be taken out of them. They will be cold and dead:
no one will think anything of them any more."

"If this be true," said the girl, almost fiercely, "it is all the more
reason why I will never leave you! You have made me, as the Prince said;
I am yours for life. Wherever you go I will go; whatever you write I
will sing. If we fail, we fail together. If we succeed, the success is
yours."

She paused for a moment, and then, with a deeper flush and a tender
confidence which seemed inspired:

"And we shall succeed! I have not yet sung my best. I, too, know it. You
have not yet made me all you may. Whatever you teach me I will sing!"

The old man looked at her, as well he might, deeply moved, but he shook
his head.

"Tina," he said, "I will not have it. You must not be ruined for me. You
must not go. Other masters, greater than I, will finish what it is my
happiness to have begun. The world will ring with your name. Art will be
enriched with your glorious singing. I shall hear of it before I die.
The old Maestro will say, 'Ah, that is the girl whom I taught.'"

The girl was standing now quite calm, all trace of emotion even had past
away. She looked at him with a serene smile that was sublime in its
rest. It was not worth while even to say a word.

       *       *       *       *       *

The decision of the Maestro and the Signorina filled the princely
household with distress. Tina had been, at Joyeuse, the light and joy of
a joyful place; and, although the household saw much less of her at
Vienna, yet the charm of her presence and of her triumphs was still
their own. The Prince heard the news with absolute dismay. It was not
only that he had begun to love the girl, he conceived that she belonged
to him of right. The Maestro was his; he had assisted, maintained, and
patronised him; by his encouragement and in his service he had
discovered the girl and trained her in music. They were both part of his
scheme, of his art of life. It was bad, doubtless, that, when he had
attempted still higher flights, when he had wished to bring, and, as he
had once thought, succeeded in bringing, religion, faith, and piety,
with all their delicate loveliness, to grace the abundance of his life's
feast--it was bad, doubtless, that, at the moment of success, a terrible
catastrophe should have cruelly broken this lovely plaything, and left
him with a haunting conscience as of well-nigh a deliberate murderer.
All this was bad, but now he seemed about to fail, not only in these
original and high efforts, which perhaps had never been attempted
before, but in the simplest schemes of art; and to fail, to be foiled by
the perversity of a girl! He had great influence in Vienna; he doubted
not but that he could soon overcome the opposition of interested rivals,
or, if not exactly this, there were other masters besides this one,
there was other music for the Signorina to sing. He believed with him
that her future would be brilliant, and he considered himself the
rightful possessor of her triumph and of her charm. He imperiously
ordered the Maestro to remain.

The old man begged to be excused.

He was old and broken down, he said; he had taught the Signorina all he
knew. Henceforward he must pass her on to abler teachers. It was no wish
of his that she should accompany him, he had urged her to remain.

In truth, as was not wonderful, his whole heart was in this last music
of his; as a matter of selfish pride and enjoyment even, apart from his
narrow, though to some extent real, conceptions of art, he must hear it
again performed in a great theatre, and that soon.

The vexation of the Prince became excessive. He lost his habitual ease
and serenity of tone. He sent for Carricchio.

The Princess Isoline was with him.

"Let the girl go, Ferdinand," she was saying. "Let her go for a time.
She will improve by travel, and by singing in other cities. She is of a
grateful and affectionate nature; be sure that she will never forget
you: she will return when you send for her."

Then, as Carricchio was announced, the Princess rose and left the room.

"Carricchio," said the Prince impetuously, "you must stop this nonsense
of the Banti's leaving Vienna. If the Maestro chooses to stay, well and
good. If he chooses to go, also good. He will be a stupid old fool! But
it is his own business. I have nothing to do with it; but Tina shall not
go. She belongs to me. I will not have it. You have influence with her,
and must stop it."

"Highness," said Carricchio, "she will not go for long. The Maestro is
old and broken; he will be helpless among strangers, hostile or
indifferent. She will be friendless; she will be glad to come back;"
and there passed over Carricchio's face an unconscious habitual grimace.

"I tell you," said the Prince, "she shall not go at all. She belongs to
me: voice and body and soul, she belongs to me."

He was flushed with excitement. In spite of the habitual dignity of
manner and of gesture which he could not wholly lose, his appearance, as
he stood in the centre of the room before Carricchio, was so strange, so
different from its usual lofty quiet, that the latter looked at him with
surprise, and even apprehension.

"_Mon Prince_," he said at last, "beware! Take the warning of an old
man. Let her alone. God warns every man once--sometimes twice--seldom a
third time. My Prince, let her alone!"

"What, Carricchio!" said the Prince lightly. "Are you also one of us?
Are we all in love with a little singing-girl?"

"My Prince," said Carricchio, "it matters little what an old fool like
me loves or does not love. I am a broken old Arlecchino, you a Prince.
She will have none of us. She alone of all of us--Prince and Princess
and clown alike--has solved the riddle which that boy, whom we killed,
was sent to teach us. She alone has made her life an art, for she alone
has found that art is capable of sacrifice. She alone of all of us has
based her art upon nature and upon love. She is passionately devoted to
her master--her father in art and life, for he rescued her from poverty
and shame. She will follow him through the world. _Mon Prince_, let her
alone."

"To let her go," said the Prince, "would be to spoil everything. Shall
I give up a deliberate plan of life, finely conceived and carefully
carried out, to gratify the whims of a foolish girl? Why is religion to
interfere always with art? Why is sacrifice always to be preached to us?
Life is not sacrifice: it is a morbid, monkish idea. Life is success,
fruition, enjoyment. Life is an art--religion also should be an art."

"Where there is love," said Carricchio, "there must be sacrifice, and no
life is perfect without love. There are only two things capable of
sacrifice--nature and love. When art is saturated with nature and
elevated by love, it becomes a religion, but religion never becomes an
art; for art without nature and without love is partial and selfish, and
cannot include the whole of life. You will find, believe me, that if
you follow art apart from these two, you have indeed only been following
a deception, for it has not only been irreligion, it has been bad art."

"The sphere of religion," said the Prince, "is the present, and its
scope the whole of human life. It is, therefore, an art. If art is
selfish, so is religion. The most disinterested martyr is selfish, for
he is following the dictates of his higher self. I tell you Tina is
mine, I want her. She shall not go!"

"You said the same of the boy, Highness," said Carricchio gravely; "yet
he went--went a long journey from us all. _Mon Prince_, beware!"




VII.


FAILING with the old Arlecchino, the Prince determined to try his own
influence with the girl; but he had no intention of acting in a
blundering and inartistic manner. He was too good an artist not to
prepare the way. Having failed with Carricchio, he resolved to try the
Maestro once more.

He sent for the old man. "Maestro," he said, "I regret exceedingly what
has happened. I do not wish to make a disturbance immediately after
coming to Court after so long an absence. It would not be well. But we
shall soon put things right. Meanwhile, if you like to travel for a few
months you can do so. There is no necessity for it that I know of, but
it will be an entertainment for you, and you will gather ideas for your
music, and, no doubt, fame also. If the Signorina remains here, you
shall have letters of credit on Paris or any other city. As you will not
be dependent on your music, it probably will be a great success. As the
Scripture says, 'To him that hath shall be given.' When you are tired of
wandering you can return. But Tina remains here--you understand."

"I have already tried to persuade her, Highness," said the old man.

"Well, you must try again. You shall sup with her to-night, as you are
neither of you wanted at the opera. I will order supper for you in _la
petite Salle_ beyond the _salon_. When I return at night I shall find
everything arranged."

The Prince himself went to the opera. He did not care to be seen, as he
was supposed to have received a slight, but he had nothing else to do,
and was interested in the performance, which was a new opera by
Metastasio. Indeed, he was restless, and wanted diversion of any kind.

He sat well back in his box, across the front of which the delicate lace
curtains were partly drawn. Karl the _Jager_, and the valet who
attended, had left the box and retired to their own gallery, where they
criticised the play and the music with more interest than did their
master. The Prince lay back in his chair, watching the piece listlessly
through the gauzy screen, and listening half heedlessly to the
music--the wonderful music of Pergolesi.

The fairy world of song and harmony, peopled by fantastic and impossible
creatures who exist only for the sake of the melodies which give them
birth, was not devoid of powerful and pathetic phases of passion and of
character; but what made its lesson particularly adapted to the Prince's
frame of mind, and gradually aroused his languid interest, was the
subordination of passion and character to the nicest art. The deepest
sorrow warbled to exquisite airs; passion, despairing and bewildered,
flinging itself as an evil thing across the devious paths of Romance,
yet never for a second forgetful of the nicest harmony or capable of a
jarring note. This ideal musical world--bizarre and rococo as, in some
respects, it was--seemed to the Prince in some sort an allegory, or even
parody, on the art-life he had set himself to create or to perfect. He
thought he saw that even its faults were instinct with, and revealed,
the secret of which he was in search. Faultiness and feebleness, folly
and littleness, seemed restrained, corrected, transformed, when
presented in solemn, noble, and pure melodies. Everything in this parody
of life was ruled by art just as, in the so-called reality, he had
wished. The lesson was not altogether a noble one. Passion, ennobled by
art, lost its fatal, repellent aspect, and became perfect as an artistic
whole. Here the poison worked readily in the Prince's mind. To sacrifice
the least portion of this art-life to any narrow illiterate scruples was
to sin against its perfection, without which the whole structure were
worthless. Better, far better, throw the entire scheme to the winds.
Imperfect art is worse than none at all. He had already forgotten, if he
had ever listened to it, Carricchio's warning against unreal and
loveless art.

Moreover, as the play went on, and the fantastic adventures and fortunes
of its strange actors gradually won the Prince's attention and attracted
his interest, through the gauzy veil of the curtains and the haze of
delicious melody, his desire was excited and he longed to play out his
own part on a real stage, and with tangible, no longer ideal, delights
and success. Why did he sit there gazing at a mere show of life, when
life itself, in a form strangely attractive and prepared--life which he
himself had in some sort formed and created--awaited him, with parts
and scenes, ready for the playing, compared to which all the glamour of
the piece before him was a mere dream-shade? Fortune had been kind to
him; or rather, he thought, his patient loyalty to art had wrought the
usual result. As he had followed his steadfast course, nature, chance,
the confusions and spite of men, had all tended to co-operate with him,
had each supplied a thread of gold to perfect his brilliant woof of
coloured existence. The moment seemed at hand; let him no longer dally
with shadows, but play his own part, compared with which the piece
before him was poor and tame.

       *       *       *       *       *

"_La petite Salle_," as the Prince had called it--in which supper had
been laid for Tina and the Maestro--was situated at the end of a
splendid "_apartement_," which contained the _salon_ and the other
reception-rooms of the _Hôtel_. It communicated with other rooms and
private staircases, and was therefore peculiarly suitable for purposes
of retirement. It was decorated, with the picturesque daintiness of the
French Court, in panels painted in imitation of Watteau, festooned with
silk, embroidered with flowers. One or two cabinets supporting plate,
and chairs richly embroidered in vari-coloured silk, completed the
furniture. The supper was served on a small round table, with a costly
service of china and Venetian glass.

Tina had accepted the invitation with pleasure. She had feared that this
evening, when the work of another was being performed at the Imperial
Theatre, to the exclusion of his great masterpiece, would have been a
time of great depression with the Maestro, and she resolved to endeavour
to cheer him. She had dressed herself with the greatest care, and
without thought of cost. She had never looked so charming--every day
seemed to mature her beauty. The supper was all that could have been
expected or wished; nevertheless the Maestro was distrait and even
sulky. Tina lavished her bewitching wiles and enchantments upon him in
vain.

After the first course or two, which, it must be admitted, were served
by the attendants in a somewhat perfunctory manner, the Maestro
dismissed the servants, saying that the Signorina and he would prefer
waiting upon themselves: dumb waiters, containing wines and other
accessories, were placed by the table's side, and the servants left the
room.

Still the Maestro seemed ill at ease. Tina, finding that her sallies
were received with a morose indifference, relapsed into silence, and sat
furtively glancing at her companion, with a pouting, disconsolate air
which, it might have been thought, would have been found irresistible
even by an ascetic.

At last the Maestro, after several futile attempts, and with an awkward
and embarrassed air, began:

"I have been thinking, Signora," he said, "over my future plans, and I
have resolved not to try to get my music performed, at present at any
rate, in any great city. I am old and want rest. I propose to travel
for a few months. It will therefore not be necessary to take you from
Vienna."

His manner was so constrained, and his resolution so unexpected, that
the girl looked at him with perplexity. It was, of course, impossible
for her, in her ignorance, to perceive that what was troubling the
Maestro was the difficulty of concealing from himself that he had
accepted a bribe to desert his art and his friend.

"Maestro," she said at last, "what can you mean?--you to whom it has
been given to achieve such a success? How can you talk of rest? What
rest can be more perfect than to listen to your own wonderful music? To
see, to feel, the power of your glorious art over others, over
yourself?"

The Maestro hesitated and floundered worse than before. He was, as he
had said himself, when under the influence of as noble feeling as he was
capable of, a bad artist; but he had sufficient of the true instinct to
be conscious of his bad work. He was ashamed of himself and of his
_fainéantise_. He made a bungling business of it all round.

He had, before the Prince had made his offer, begun to regret that in a
moment of irritation he had been so precipitate in insisting upon
leaving Vienna; but now that an offer of freedom, of a sojourn in Paris,
of independent means, was made him, the proposal was too attractive to
be declined. He felt, beside, that there was so much truth in the
Prince's bitter phrase--when he was independent of his music, he felt
certain that his music would be a great success.

"It will be better so, Faustina," he said at last; "you will be happier
here. You will have plenty to sing, plenty to teach you. The Prince will
be pleased."

She was still looking at him wonderingly, but a smile was slowly growing
in her eyes. She judged him by a nature as generous and unselfish as his
was paltry and mean.

"You are saying this," she said, "for my sake. You fear that I shall
suffer hardship and want. You sacrifice yourself--more than
yourself--for me."

This turn in the conversation completed the vexation of the Maestro.
When you are doing a particularly mean thing, nothing is more
aggravating than to have noble and generous motives imputed to you; and
to have a very pretty woman offer herself to you, unreservedly, when
motives of paltry selfishness render the offer unacceptable, is enough
to provoke any man.

The old man lost his temper completely.

"Faustina," he said, "you are a fool. I have told you already that I
intend to travel, without thinking of work or of pay. You must stay
here. I shall not want you. You have everything here you can wish. The
Prince is your lover. You have a brilliant future before you. Don't let
me have any more trouble about you."

Still the girl could not believe that her friend and teacher meant to
cast her off. She was looking at him wonderingly and sadly.

"Maestro," she said, "you are not well. You are cross and tired; we will
not speak of this any more to-night. This worry has made you ill.
To-morrow you will see quite differently. You can never leave your
art--and Tina."

This feminine persistency, as it seemed to him--this leaving a
discussion open which it was absolutely necessary should be closed that
night--was too much for the Maestro.

"I leave Vienna," he said brutally, "the day after to-morrow. I suppose
that you will not insist on following me uninvited. If so, I shall know
what to do."

This tone and look revealed to the girl, at last, that she was cast off
and discarded by the only man for whom she really cared. She threw
herself on her knees beside his chair, and caught his hand.

"Maestro," she said passionately, "you will not be so cruel! You will
not leave me! What can I do? How can I live, without you? I cannot sing
without you. I am your child. You took me out of the gutter; you taught
me all I know; you made me all I am. I will do anything you tell me. I
will not trouble you. I will not speak even! I care for no one except
for you. I know you better, I can care for you, can serve you better,
than they all. You will not be so cruel! You will not send me away from
you."

The more passionately she spoke, the more rapid and fervent her
utterance, the more fretful and irritated did the old man become. He
pushed her roughly from him.

"Tina," he said again, "you are a fool. Get up from your knees. I don't
want any of this stage-acting here."

He rose himself, and began to wander about the room, muttering and
grumbling.

As he pushed her rudely from him, the girl rose and, retreating some
steps from the table, gazed at him with a dazed, wondering look, as of
one before whose eyes some strange unaccountable thing was happening.

She was standing, in her brilliant beauty and in her delicate and
fantastic dress, her hands clasped before her. The jewels on her fingers
and on her breast paled before the solemn glow of her wonderful eyes,
which were dry, only from the intensity of her thought.

"No," she said at last, as it would seem in answer to some unspoken
question. "No. There is nothing strange in this. A woman's heart is
easily won. I am not the first, by many, who has found that out, too
late."

It might have seemed impossible to one easily stirred, easily wrought
upon by a woman's beauty--it would surely have seemed impossible to such
a one that any could gaze on a sight like this and harbour a selfish
thought; but the old man was perfectly unmoved.

"It is always the way," he said peevishly, "always the way with women;
now we shall have a scene--tears--entreaties. I shall be called all
manner of hard names for giving sensible advice."

And he turned his back upon the girl, and stood sullenly, gazing
apparently upon one of the painted panels of the wall.

For about a minute there was a terrible pause, then the curtains that
veiled the _salon_ were drawn forcibly back, and the groom of the
chambers, who was a Frenchman, announced suddenly--

"_Monseigneur le Prince._"




VIII.


THE Prince came forward smiling. The Maestro made a gesture of
inexpressible relief. He shuffled off toward the still opened curtain,
and, turning as he reached it, he bowed to the ground before his patron
and his pupil, and disappeared through the opening as the servant let
the curtain drop. We shall not care, I think, to see him again.

Faustina looked still more scared and bewildered than before at this
sudden change of actors and of parts. She would gladly have left the
room but she was incapable of anything of the kind--besides, where
should she go? The scene seemed to swim before her eyes, and the lights
to flicker. She sank down on her chair again.

The Prince had never looked so well. He was flushed with excitement, and
the habitual _insouciance_ of his manner had given place to a reality
and earnestness of purpose which rendered eloquent his every gesture and
look. He was exquisitely dressed in silk, embroidered with flowers. The
priceless lace at his wrists and throat accommodated itself, with a
delicate fulness, to the soft outline of his dress and figure. His
expression was full of kindliness and protection, but of kindliness
delicate and refined. The girl's eyes were fascinated in spite of
herself.

"Have you quarrelled with the Maestro, Tina?" said the Prince. "He
seemed in a marvellous hurry to be gone."

Faustina made two or three ineffectual attempts to speak before she
could find her voice. She burst into tears.

"He is cruel! cruel!" she said. "He does not love me. He will not have
me any longer. He throws me away."

"Poor child!" said the Prince, "you will not be deserted. I am your
friend; we are all your friends. The Maestro even will come back to you.
He is cross and angry. When he finds how lost he is without you and your
lovely voice, he will come back to you; you and he will carry all before
you again."

"Speak to him, Highness!" cried the girl passionately. "You are kind
and good to all--kinder than any one to me. Speak to him! do not let
him go without me! He cannot live without his music, and no one surely
can know his music so well as I, whom he has taught!"

She looked so indescribably attractive in her tears and her distress
that the Prince wondered at the sight. "Let her go, indeed!"

"Tina," he said very kindly, "I fear that can hardly be. The Maestro is
only going for a time. There is, in fact, no need that he should go at
all. It is his own wish, his own wish, Tina. He is too old to make his
way among strangers, and will soon come back. But you we cannot spare.
You are too much a favourite with us all. We are too much accustomed to
you: every one would miss you--the Princess and all; you must stay with
us."

"I cannot stay," said the girl, looking earnestly and beseechingly at
the Prince. "I want to go with him."

The Prince hesitated for a moment. In an instantaneous flash of thought
the two paths lay open before him, plain and clear to be seen.
Carricchio's warning struck him again with renewed force. The more
terrible presage of Mark's death cast itself, ghostlike, before his
steps. He could plead no excuse of self-deception: he saw the beauty and
the danger of the way which lay before him on either hand. He hesitated
for a moment, then he deliberately chose the lower path.

"Tina," he said, "I cannot spare you; you must not go. You are mine--I
love you; you belong to me;" and he stepped forward, as if to take her
in his arms.

The girl sprang to her feet. She drew herself up to her full height, and
her splendid eyes, expanded to their full orbit, flashed upon the Prince
with a look of astonishment and reproach. With the entire power of her
trained voice, which, magnificent as it was, could still but imperfectly
render the reality of remonstrance and pathetic regret, she uttered but
one word--"Prince!"

The cadence of her voice, trembling in the passionate intensity of
musical tone, the whole power of her woman's nature, exerted to its full
in expostulation and reproach--the magnetic force of her intense
consciousness--struck upon the conscience and cultured taste of the
Prince with crushing effect. He lost the perfectly serene tone of pose
and demeanour which distinguished him and became him so well. He aged
perceptibly, incredible as it may seem, ten years. The fatal step which
he had taken was revealed to him in a moment as in a flash of light,
with all the stain and taint with which it had tarnished the fair dream
of finished art which he had conceived it possible to perfect. He was
utterly demoralised and crushed. Mark's death was nothing to this. That
had been a terrible mistake, but his part in it had been indirect, and
his motive, at least so he flattered himself, comparatively high; but
this action, so entirely his own, revealed to him, in its vulgar
commonplaceness, by the glorious perfection of the girl's action and
tone, withered him with a sense of irreparable failure and disgrace. He
made one or two ineffectual attempts to rally; it was impossible--there
was nothing for him but to leave the room.

Faustina was unconscious of his going. She found herself left alone. The
situation was still not without its difficulties. She was alone,
unattended by servants, she knew not where to go, how to leave the
_Hôtel_. She lay for some time in a sort of swoon; then she rose and
wandered from the room.

The only means of exit with which she was acquainted was through the
curtains into the _salon_. She parted them and went out, hardly knowing
what she did.

The vast _salon_ was but dimly lighted, and no servants were to be seen;
the whole house seemed silent and deserted--more especially these state
apartments. She passed slowly and with faltering steps down the slippery
floor of the _salon_, with its dimly-lighted candelabra of massive
silver and its half-seen portraits, and, opening the great door at the
opposite end, found herself in an antechamber which communicated with a
grand staircase, both ascending and descending. To descend was evidently
useless--she could not go out into the streets of Vienna alone at night
and in her fanciful dress. She went up the wide staircase in the hope of
finding some female domestics who would help her; as she reached the
next flight the sound of music, subdued and solemn, fell upon her ear.
She knew enough of German music to know that it was the tune of a hymn.

The door of the room from which the sound seemed to come stood partly
open. She went in.

Before an harpsichord, with her hand carelessly passing over the keys,
and her head turned at the sound of footsteps, stood the Princess
Isoline. The light of a branched candelabra fell full upon her stately
figure, revealing the compassionate, lofty expression of her beautiful
face. The girl crossed the room towards her and fell on her knees at her
feet.

"Child," said the Princess, "what is it? Why are you here?"

"I cannot tell," said the girl; and now at last she found it possible to
weep. "I do not know what has happened. The Maestro has forsaken me, and
I have insulted the Prince."

Gradually, in a broken way, she told her story, kneeling by the
Princess, who stood serenely, her fingers still wandering over the
harpsichord keys, her left hand caressing the girl's hair and cheek.

"He was a wonderful child," said the Princess at last, more to herself
than to Faustina, for as she spoke she played again the simple notes of
the Lutheran hymn. "He was truly a wonderful child. A very Christ-child,
it seems to me, in his simple life and sudden death; for, though what he
did was little, yet the lives of all of us seem different for his
life--changed since his death. As for me, since his life crossed my path
I have seen more, it seems to me, of the mercy of God and of Christ's
working in paths and among lives where I never thought to look for it
before."

Faustina did not reply, and the Princess played several bars of the hymn
before she spoke again.

"Do you not see," she said at last, "the blessing it has been also to my
brother the Prince?--for the desire that he felt, surely a noble one, to
refine the life of art by the sacred touch of religion--the effort that
he made, though it seemed a failure, and was made--it may be, I dare not
judge him--blindly, and in a mistaken fashion; yet this effort has
to-night proved his own salvation, through you."

She stopped, and again the notes of the hymn sounded through the room.

"Carricchio was right," she went on, "when he told the Prince that you
alone of all of us had solved the riddle, for on you alone has art
exercised its supreme, its magic touch, in drawing out and developing
the emotions, the powers of the soul. You alone possessed the perfect
gift of nature--the untainted well-spring of natural life--which
assimilated Mark's spirit with your spirit, and reproduced his life
within your own."

Faustina dropped the Princess's hand, which she had taken, and bent her
head still lower, as if shrinking from her kindly praise.

"The Prince also had something of this gift, and, in so far as he had,
he built up by his own action what, in his supreme need, saved him from
his lower self. I have come to see that the world's virtues, which, in
my self-righteous isolation, I despised, are often, as I blindly said to
the boy, nearer Christ's than my vaunted ones; that the world-spirit is
often the Christ-spirit, and that, when we begin to see that His
footsteps may be traced in paths where we little expect to find them, we
shall no longer dare to talk of the secular life. Your little brother
that died was not without his work, and the canary even was the type of
a nobler life, even as Mark's death was the type of a nobler death. In
strange and unlooked-for ways the mission of sacrifice and love fulfils
itself, and, living in the full light of its influence, we can never
realise the blessing we have derived, the changed aspect of the race we
have inherited, from the Cross of Christ."




IX.


THE next evening there was given, at the Imperial Palace, a ball and
supper, to which none but _la haute noblesse_ were invited. The dancing
began with a brilliant Polonaise, which, headed by the Empress-Queen and
her husband, passed through the rooms in stately procession, in singular
and picturesque contrast and harmony with another faded and more solemn
procession and array of figures in antique armour and dainty ruffs and
doublets, and gold chains and princely mantles, the ancestral portraits
who watched the formal slow dance-movement from the walls.

After the Polonaise came the supper, which was somewhat prolonged. The
supper over, a minuet was danced, and afterward, the company being now
happy and cheerful, and being, moreover, of sufficiently high and
similar rank to dispense with somewhat of the rigid court etiquette,
began to wander through the rooms in an informal manner, and to arrange
_contre-danses_ among themselves.

In those days the _contre-danse_ had not hardened itself into the
quadrille. It was danced, not in fours, but in sets of varying numbers,
and of characters and figures mostly undefined.

In one of the great halls, recently erected by the Emperor-architect,
Charles VI., in a different taste from the older rooms, with marble
floors and ceiling, and lined with mirrors, a very large set, composed
of guests of the highest rank, was being watched by no inconsiderable
number of their companions.

It is difficult to conceive a more magnificent or fascinating sight,
reflected and multiplied as it was by the mirrors on the walls.

The Princess von Isenberg-Wertheim was dancing with a young noble, a
prince of the House of Colleredo, a very handsome, but gay and reckless,
young man. The dance was drawing to a close, the musicians, playing one
of the last figures, _La Pastorelle_, to a very delicate and fine
movement, to which the dancers were devoting their utmost, closest
attention and skill.

As the Princess was standing by her partner, awaiting their turn to go
down the dance, a slight movement caused her to turn her head, and she
found the Count, her friend, standing close to her.

"I am sorry to interrupt, Princess," he said, in a low voice, "but I
fear something serious has happened to the Prince. He cannot be found."

The Princess turned very pale. She caught her breath for a moment, then
she said, in the same tone, "Where is Karl, the _Jager_?"

"I do not know," replied the Count. "I never thought of him."

"Then he is not here," said the Princess, with a relieved air. "If Karl
is with him the Prince is safe."

The Count made a very slight movement of his shoulders, but the
Princess turned serenely to the young man.

"We will finish the figure, Monseigneur," she said graciously; "then,
perhaps, you will excuse me."

"Nothing has happened to the Prince, believe me," said the young man
kindly, as they moved down the room. "He has doubtless gone on some
private expedition with his servant. He probably forgot to leave a
message, and will return to-morrow."

The Princess was so reassured, apparently, by these reflections that she
remained for the final figure of the dance. Then she left the palace,
and, declining the Count's company, drove to her _Hôtel_ alone.

She was more strangely moved than she could have explained to herself.
She was, indeed, frightened and perplexed by her own feelings. She felt
herself influenced by an hitherto unrecognised power, and, as it were,
driven onwards by an overpowering impulse, not her own.

Returning, as she did, at an unexpected hour, her women were not in
waiting for her, and, leaving the servants who had accompanied her from
the palace in the hall of the _Hôtel_, she wandered up the great
staircase alone. The corridors and rooms were dimly lighted, and a
perfect stillness reigned through the house.

The Princess ascended slowly towards her own apartment, where she
expected to find some, at least, of her dressers, and in so doing, in a
dimly-lighted corridor, she passed the rooms allotted to her children.
The thought of them was not, indeed, in her mind when, as she passed a
door, she fancied that she heard a suppressed, continued crying, as of
children in distress. Still more moved and troubled by this faint
pathetic sound she opened the door and went in. The room was an
antechamber, and both it and the apartment beyond were dark. The
Princess procured a small lamp from the corridor and entered the suite
of rooms.

In the bedchamber beyond the antechamber she found the children, both
sitting up in one bed, clasped in each other's arms, and crying quietly.
The little boy had evidently come for shelter and comfort to his
sister's bed.

"What is the matter, children?" said the Princess, in a tone which
seemed to the little ones strangely soft and kind. "Why are you not
asleep?"

The children had ceased crying, and were looking at her wonderingly as
she stood in her jewels and ball-dress, a brilliant scarf of Indian work
hanging from her arm, the lamp in her hand. They hardly knew whether it
was their mother, whom they saw so seldom, or some serene ethereal
visitant, who resembled her in face and form.

The little Princess, however, with the self-possession of her class,
apparently left this point undecided, and began in her quiet, stately
little way to explain.

"It was dark," she said, "and we were asleep, Fritz and I, and we both
dreamed the same dream. We thought that we were walking in a beautiful
garden, where there were trees, and flowers, and butterflies, and wide
cascades of water, in which rainbows were shining; and while we were
playing there, and were very happy chasing the butterflies, the Herr
Tutor, who was an angel, and who went to heaven, came and took us by the
hand; and, when we saw his face, we knew that he is an angel now; and he
led us through the garden, and talked to us of many things--of God, and
of angels, and of heaven--just as he used to do. But I saw that, though
he talked so pleasantly, he was leading us out of this pleasant garden,
and the flowers grew dim, and the butterflies flew away, and the sky
became very dark. And he led us quite out of the garden into a
burial-ground, where there were tombs, and open graves, and crosses, and
tall dark trees that bore no flower; and the Herr Tutor told us not to
be afraid, and led us on through the graves without speaking any more.
He led us into the midst of the burial-ground, and in the midst of the
burial-ground there was a Calvary, and at the foot of the Calvary there
was a bier. And on the bier we saw you and papa lying quite straight and
still, and we thought that you were dead. And the Herr Tutor vanished
away; and we were so frightened that we cried. And we knelt side by
side, and prayed to the Christ that He would come down. And the Christ
came down from the cross, and came to the bier, and touched it, and you
and papa stood up beautiful and smiling, and came towards us with
outstretched hands, and the Christ vanished away. And we were so glad
that we awoke; and it was dark, and there was no Christ, and no Herr
Tutor, who is an angel, and no papa, and no one to tell us what to do
or where to go."

As the little Princess ceased some servants came in, with whispered
explanations and apologies. The Princess went to her own room. She had
not known what to say to the child; indeed, she hardly knew what had
passed. She allowed herself to be undressed, and lay down.

But, in the deep silence of the hours that preceded the dawn, an
overpowering restlessness took possession of her. A sense of strange
forces and influences, to which she was utterly unaccustomed, seemed
present to her spirit: a crowd of fair and heavenly existences, which
seemed to follow on the steps of that singular boy who had first
attracted her wearied fancy, the Signorina's singing, which had stamped
this impression upon her mind, the strange tenderness she had been
conscious of, the renewed sense of her husband's grace and beauty, his
alarming absence, her children's mystical dream. A new world seemed to
open to her. She felt how poor and bare her life had been, how deserted
by these gracious creatures of the imagination, how unblessed by the
purest, the truest art--the art of pathos and of love.

With the streaks of dawn that stole into the chamber she was conscious
of an irrepressible desire that took possession of her to rise and go
forth. An irresistible power seemed to draw her to follow: she rose,
and, dressing herself in such clothes as were at hand, she went out.

The house itself was quite still, but faintly in the distance might be
heard the sound of a bell. In so religious a Court as that of Vienna
there were private chapels attached to most of the houses of the
nobility, and there was one attached to a neighbouring palace, to which
there was a private communication with the _Hôtel_ taken by the Prince.

Following the sound of the bell the Princess traversed several passages,
and reached at last a staircase, down which she turned. As she reached
the first landing two women came out from an open door. They started at
the sight of the Princess. They were the Princess Isoline and Faustina.

"Is it you, Princess?" said the former. "What has called you up so
early?"

"Are you going to the chapel, Isoline?" said the Princess. "May I come
with you?"

+ + + + +

The three ladies entered the chapel by a private door, which led them to
a pew behind the stalls. Upon the original Gothic stone-work and tracery
of the chapel, which was very old, had been introduced rococo work in
mahogany and brass, angels and trumpets and scrolls. The stalls and
organs were covered with filigree work of this description, the windows
filled with paintings in the same florid and incongruous taste. There
were few persons in the chapel, most of them being ladies from the
adjoining palaces, together with a few musicians, for the musical part
of the service was carefully performed by a large and well-paid staff.

Two of the ladies were Protestant, the third, Faustina, a Catholic of a
very undeveloped type; but the music of the Mass spoke a mysterious
language, recognisable to hearts of every creed.

Before the altar, laden with gilded plate and lighted with candles in
silver sconces, the priest said Mass. Above him, in the window, painted
in a lovely Italian landscape full of figures, with towns and castles
and mountain ranges and market-people with horses and cattle, were
represented, in careful and minute painting, the three Marys before the
empty tomb.

"The City of the Sunlight," sang the choir, in an elaborate anthem, with
an allegro movement of the tenors that spoke of sunshine amid the grass
and flowers and flashing sea, of the breezy south wind upon rippling
water and golden hair; and after them the bass recitative, with a
positive assurance that knew no doubt, asserted "The gates--the gates of
it are many--many," which the tenors and altos, with a sudden
inspiration, interpreted, "God's purposes fulfilled--fulfilled in many
ways;" and the whole choir, in a minor key, as with hushed and
awe-struck voices, completed the theme, "But the end is union in the
heart--the heart of the Crucifix; in the City--the City of the Saints."

       *       *       *       *       *

On her return from the chapel a note from the Prince was put into the
Princess's hand. It merely stated that he was gone to Hernhuth to the
Count Zinzendorf. It had been written at a tavern in the environs of
the city, after his sudden determination had been formed the day before,
and had been entrusted to a servant of the inn to deliver. He had
arrived at the _Hôtel_ after the Princess had left, and, on asking for
her Highness, had been told by a careless porter that she was at the
Palace. Wandering about the Palace courts late at night he had been
arrested as a suspicious person, and kept prisoner till the morning.

+ + + + +

In course of time (posts were slow in those days) the Princess received
a long letter from her husband, giving an account of Hernhuth, and of
his conversations with the Count, and concluding with these words:--

"From all this you will, doubtless, conclude that Hernhuth does not
suit me very well, and that the Count and I do not always agree. It
would be more after Isoline's taste. I like the children's dream, as you
tell it, best. We have been dead, and laid upon a bier; but we will,
please God, live hereafter for the children and the Christ."


THE END.



          _Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK, _Edinburgh._




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          6. THE HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN. With 10 Illustrations
          by Sir J. E. MILLAIS, Bart., HUGH CAMERON, R.S.A.,
          SAM BOUGH, R.S.A., R. HERDMAN, R.S.A., and WAL.
          PAGET.

          7. A LEGEND OF MONTROSE and THE BLACK DWARF. With
          7 Illustrations by Sir GEORGE REID, P.R.S.A.,
          GEORGE HAY, R.S.A., HORATIO MACCULLOCH, R.S.A., W.
          E. LOCKHART, R.S.A., H. MACBETH-RAEBURN, and T.
          SCOTT.

          8. THE BRIDE OF LAMMERMOOR. With 8 Illustrations
          by Sir J. E. MILLAIS, Bart., JOHN SMART, R.S.A.,
          SAM BOUGH, R.S.A., GEORGE HAY, R.S.A., and H.
          MACBETH-RAEBURN.

          9. IVANHOE. With 12 Illustrations by AD. LALAUZE.

          10. THE MONASTERY. With 10 Illustrations by GORDON
          BROWNE.

          11. THE ABBOT. With 10 Illustrations by GORDON
          BROWNE.

          12. KENILWORTH. With 12 Illustrations by AD.
          LALAUZE.

          13. THE PIRATE. With 10 Illustrations by W. E.
          LOCKHART, R.S.A., SAM BOUGH, R.S.A., HERBERT
          DICKSEE, W. STRANG, LOCKHART BOGLE, C. J. HOLMES,
          and F. S. WALKER.

          14. THE FORTUNES OF NIGEL. With 10 Illustrations
          by JOHN PETTIE, R.A., and R. W. MACBETH, A.R.A.

          15. PEVERIL OF THE PEAK. With 15 Illustrations by
          W. Q. ORCHARDSON, R.A., JOHN PETTIE, R.A., F.
          DADD, R.I., ARTHUR HOPKINS, A.R.W.S., and S. L.
          WOOD.

          16. QUENTIN DURWARD. With 12 Illustrations by AD.
          LALAUZE.

          17. ST. RONAN'S WELL. With 10 Illustrations by Sir
          G. REID, P.R.S.A., R. W. MACBETH, A.R.A., W. HOLE,
          R.S.A., and A. FORESTIER.

          18. REDGAUNTLET. With 12 Illustrations by Sir
          JAMES D. LINTON, P.R.I., JAMES ORROCK, R.I., SAM
          BOUGH, R.S.A., W. HOLE, R.S.A., G. HAY, R.S.A., T.
          SCOTT, A.R.S.A., W. BOUCHER, and FRANK SHORT.

          19. THE BETROTHED AND THE TALISMAN. With 10
          Illustrations by HERBERT DICKSEE, WAL. PAGET, and
          J. LE BLANT.

          20. WOODSTOCK. With 10 Illustrations by W. HOLE,
          R.S.A.

          21. THE FAIR MAID OF PERTH. With 10 Illustrations
          by Sir G. REID, P.R.S.A., JOHN PETTIE, R.A., R. W.
          MACBETH, A.R.A., and ROBERT HERDMAN, R.S.A.

          22. ANNE OF GEIERSTEIN. With 10 Illustrations by
          R. DE LOS RIOS.

          23. COUNT ROBERT OF PARIS and THE SURGEON'S
          DAUGHTER. With 10 Illustrations by W. HATHERELL,
          R.I., and W. B. WOLLEN, R.I.

          24. CASTLE DANGEROUS, CHRONICLES OF THE
          CANON-GATE, ETC. With 10 Illustrations by H.
          MACBETH-RAEBURN and G. D. ARMOUR.




The Border Waverley

SOME OPINIONS OF THE PRESS


_TIMES._--"It would be difficult to find in these days a more competent
and sympathetic editor of Scott than his countryman, the brilliant and
versatile man of letters who has undertaken the task, and if any proof
were wanted either of his qualifications or of his skill and discretion
in displaying them, Mr. Lang has furnished it abundantly in his charming
Introduction to 'Waverley.' The editor's own notes are judiciously
sparing, but conspicuously to the point, and they are very discreetly
separated from those of the author, Mr. Lang's laudable purpose being to
illustrate and explain Scott, not to make the notes a pretext for
displaying his own critical faculty and literary erudition. The
illustrations by various competent hands are beautiful in themselves and
beautifully executed, and, altogether, the 'Border Edition' of the
Waverley Novels bids fair to become the classical edition of the great
Scottish classic."

_SPECTATOR._--"We trust that this fine edition of our greatest and most
poetical of novelists will attain, if it has not already done so, the
high popularity it deserves. To all Scott's lovers it is a pleasure to
know that, despite the daily and weekly inrush of ephemeral fiction, the
sale of his works is said by the booksellers to rank next below
Tennyson's in poetry, and above that of everybody else in prose."

_ATHENÆUM._--"The handsome 'Border Edition' has been brought to a
successful conclusion. The publisher deserves to be complimented on the
manner in which the edition has been printed and illustrated, and Mr.
Lang on the way in which he has performed his portion of the work. His
introductions have been tasteful and readable; he has not overdone his
part; and, while he has supplied much useful information, he has by no
means overburdened the volumes with notes."

_NOTES AND QUERIES._--"This spirited and ambitious enterprise has been
conducted to a safe termination, and the most ideal edition of the
Waverley Novels in existence is now completed."

_SATURDAY REVIEW._--"Of all the many collections of the Waverley Novels,
the 'Border Edition' is incomparably the most handsome and the most
desirable.... Type, paper, illustrations, are altogether admirable."

_MAGAZINE OF ART._--"Size, type, paper, and printing, to say nothing of
the excessively liberal and charming introduction of the illustrations,
make this perhaps the most desirable edition of Scott ever issued on
this side of the Border."

_DAILY CHRONICLE._--"There is absolutely no fault to be found with it,
as to paper, type, or arrangement."




THE WORKS OF

THOMAS HARDY

Collected Edition

           1. TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES.
           2. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD.
           3. THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE.
           4. A PAIR OF BLUE EYES.
           5. TWO ON A TOWER.
           6. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE.
           7. THE WOODLANDERS.
           8. JUDE THE OBSCURE.
           9. THE TRUMPET-MAJOR.
          10. THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA.
          11. A LAODICEAN.
          12. DESPERATE REMEDIES.
          13. WESSEX TALES.
          14. LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES.
          15. A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES.
          16. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE.
          17. THE WELL-BELOVED.
          18. WESSEX POEMS, and other Verses.
          19. POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT.




THE WORKS OF

CHARLES KINGSLEY

          WESTWARD HO!

          HYPATIA; or, New Foes with an old Face.

          TWO YEARS AGO.

          ALTON LOCKE, Tailor and Poet. An Autobiography.

          HEREWARD THE WAKE, "Last of the English."

          YEAST: A Problem.

          POEMS: including The Saint's Tragedy, Andromeda,
          Songs, Ballads, etc.

          THE WATER-BABIES: A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby.
          With Illustrations by LINLEY SAMBOURNE.

          THE HEROES; or, Greek Fairy Tales for my Children.
          With Illustrations by the Author.

          GLAUCUS; or, The Wonders of the Shore. With
          Illustrations.

          MADAM HOW AND LADY WHY; or, First Lessons in Earth
          Lore for Children. With Illustrations.

          AT LAST. A Christmas in the West Indies. With
          Illustrations.

          THE HERMITS.

          HISTORICAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS.

          PLAYS AND PURITANS, and other Historical Essays.

          THE ROMAN AND THE TEUTON.

          PROSE IDYLLS, New and Old.

          SCIENTIFIC LECTURES AND ESSAYS.

          SANITARY AND SOCIAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS.

          LITERARY AND GENERAL LECTURES AND ESSAYS.

          ALL SAINTS' DAY: and other Sermons.

          DISCIPLINE: and other Sermons.

          THE GOOD NEWS OF GOD. Sermons.

          GOSPEL OF THE PENTATEUCH.

          SERMONS FOR THE TIMES.

          VILLAGE SERMONS, AND TOWN AND COUNTRY SERMONS.

          THE WATER OF LIFE: and other Sermons.

          WESTMINSTER SERMONS.




THE NOVELS

OF

F. MARION CRAWFORD


       1. MR. ISAACS: A Tale of Modern India.
       2. DOCTOR CLAUDIUS: A True Story.
       3. A ROMAN SINGER.
       4. ZOROASTER.
       5. MARZIO'S CRUCIFIX.
       6. A TALE OF A LONELY PARISH.
       7. PAUL PATOFF.
       8. WITH THE IMMORTALS.
       9. GREIFENSTEIN.
      10. TAQUISARA: A Novel.
      11. A ROSE OF YESTERDAY.
      12. SANT' ILARIO.
      13. A CIGARETTE-MAKER'S ROMANCE.
      14. KHALED: A Tale of Arabia.
      15. THE THREE FATES.
      16. THE WITCH OF PRAGUE.
      17. MARION DARCHE: A Story without Comment.
      18. KATHARINE LAUDERDALE.
      19. THE CHILDREN OF THE KING.
      20. PIETRO GHISLERI.
      21. DON ORSINO.
      22. CASA BRACCIO.
      23. ADAM JOHNSTONE'S SON.
      24. THE RALSTONS.
      25. CORLEONE: A Tale of Sicily.
      26. VIA CRUCIS: A Romance of the Second Crusade.
      27. IN THE PALACE OF THE KING: A Love Story of Old Madrid.
      28. CECILIA: A Story of Modern Rome.
      29. MARIETTA: A Maid of Venice.
      30. THE HEART OF ROME.
      31. SOPRANO: A Portrait.
      32. "WHOSOEVER SHALL OFFEND----"
      33. A LADY OF ROME.
      34. ARETHUSA.




THE NOVELS

OF

ROLF BOLDREWOOD


          1. ROBBERY UNDER ARMS: A Story of Life and
          Adventure in the Bush and in the Gold-fields of
          Australia.

          2. A MODERN BUCCANEER.

          3. THE MINER'S RIGHT: A Tale of the Australian
          Gold-fields.

          4. THE SQUATTER'S DREAM.

          5. A SYDNEY-SIDE SAXON.

          6. A COLONIAL REFORMER.

          7. NEVERMORE.

          8. PLAIN LIVING: A Bush Idyll.

          9. MY RUN HOME.

          10. THE SEALSKIN CLOAK.

          11. THE CROOKED STICK; or, Pollie's Probation.

          12. OLD MELBOURNE MEMORIES.

          13. A ROMANCE OF CANVAS TOWN, and other Stories.

          14. WAR TO THE KNIFE; or, Tangata Maori.

          15. BABES IN THE BUSH.

          16. IN BAD COMPANY, and other Stories.


By H. G. WELLS

    THE PLATTNER STORY: and others.
    TALES OF SPACE AND TIME.
    THE STOLEN BACILLUS: and other Incidents.
    THE INVISIBLE MAN. A Grotesque Romance.
    LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM. A Story of a very Young Couple.
    WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES.
    THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON.
    TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM.
    THE FOOD OF THE GODS AND HOW IT Came to Earth.
    KIPPS: The Story of a Simple Soul.


By A. E. W. MASON

    THE COURTSHIP OF MORRICE BUCKLER.
    THE PHILANDERERS.
    MIRANDA OF THE BALCONY.


By EGERTON CASTLE

    "LA BELLA": and others.
    "YOUNG APRIL."
    MARSHFIELD THE OBSERVER.
    By AGNES and EGERTON CASTLE
    THE BATH COMEDY.
    THE PRIDE OF JENNICO. Being a Memoir of Captain Basil Jennico.
    THE SECRET ORCHARD.


By MAARTEN MAARTENS

    THE GREATER GLORY. A Story of High Life.
    MY LADY NOBODY. A Novel.
    GOD'S FOOL. A Koopstad Story.
    THE SIN OF JOOST AVELINGH. A Dutch Story.
    HER MEMORY.
    AN OLD MAID'S LOVE.




THE NOVELS OF

ROSA N. CAREY


          _WESTMINSTER GAZETTE._--"A clever delineator of
          character, possessed of a reserve of strength in a
          quiet, easy, flowing style, Miss Carey never fails
          to please a large class of readers."

          _STANDARD._--"Miss Carey has the gift of writing
          naturally and simply, her pathos is true and
          unforced, and her conversations are sprightly and
          sharp."

          _LADY._--"Miss Carey's novels are always welcome;
          they are out of the common run--immaculately pure,
          and very high in tone."

          Over 700,000 of these works have been printed.

     1. NELLIE'S MEMORIES. 52nd Thousand.
     2. WEE WIFIE. 38th Thousand.
     3. BARBARA HEATHCOTE'S TRIAL. 35th Thousand.
     4. ROBERT ORD'S ATONEMENT. 28th Thousand.
     5. WOOED AND MARRIED. 38th Thousand.
     6. HERIOT'S CHOICE. 27th Thousand.
     7. QUEENIE'S WHIM. 32nd Thousand.
     8. NOT LIKE OTHER GIRLS. 41st Thousand.
     9. MARY ST. JOHN. 27th Thousand.
    10. FOR LILIAS. 26th Thousand.
    11. UNCLE MAX. 34th Thousand.
    12. RUE WITH A DIFFERENCE. 24th Thousand.
    13. THE HIGHWAY OF FATE. 23rd Thousand.
    14. ONLY THE GOVERNESS. 37th Thousand.
    15. LOVER OR FRIEND? 27th Thousand.
    16. BASIL LYNDHURST. 24th Thousand.
    17. SIR GODFREY'S GRAND-DAUGHTERS. 25th Thousand.
    18. THE OLD, OLD STORY. 27th Thousand.
    19. THE MISTRESS OF BRAE FARM. 30th Thousand.
    20. MRS. ROMNEY and "BUT MEN MUST WORK." 14th Thousand.
    21. OTHER PEOPLE'S LIVES. 5th Thousand.
    22. HERB OF GRACE. 25th Thousand.
    23. A PASSAGE PERILOUS. 22nd Thousand.
    24. AT THE MOORINGS. 21st Thousand.
    25. THE HOUSEHOLD OF PETER. 21st Thousand.
    26. NO FRIEND LIKE A SISTER. 18th Thousand.
    27. THE ANGEL OF FORGIVENESS. 17th Thousand.




THE NOVELS AND TALES OF

CHARLOTTE M. YONGE


          THE HEIR OF REDCLYFFE. With Illustrations by KATE
          GREENAWAY.

          HEARTSEASE; or, the Brother's Wife. New Edition.
          With Illustrations by KATE GREENAWAY.

          HOPES AND FEARS; or, Scenes from the Life of a
          Spinster. With Illustrations by HERBERT GANDY.

          DYNEVOR TERRACE; or, the Clue of Life. With
          Illustrations by ADRIAN STOKES.

          THE DAISY CHAIN; or, Aspirations. A Family
          Chronicle With Illustrations by J. P. ATKINSON.

          THE TRIAL: More Links of the Daisy Chain. With
          Illustrations by J. P. ATKINSON.

          THE PILLARS OF THE HOUSE; or, Under Wode, under
          Rode. Two Vols. With Illustrations by HERBERT
          GANDY.

          THE YOUNG STEPMOTHER; or, a Chronicle of Mistakes.
          With Illustrations by MARIAN HUXLEY.

          THE CLEVER WOMAN OF THE FAMILY. With Illustrations
          by ADRIAN STOKES.

          THE THREE BRIDES. With Illustrations by ADRIAN
          STOKES.

          MY YOUNG ALCIDES: A Faded Photograph. With
          Illustrations by ADRIAN STOKES.

          THE CAGED LION. With Illustrations by W. J.
          HENNESSY.

          THE DOVE IN THE EAGLE'S NEST. With Illustrations
          by W. J. HENNESSY.

          THE CHAPLET OF PEARLS; or, the White and Black
          Ribaumont. With Illustrations by W. J. HENNESSY.

          LADY HESTER; or, Ursula's Narrative; and THE
          DANVERS PAPERS. With Illustrations by JANE E.
          COOK.

          MAGNUM BONUM; or, Mother Carey's Brood. With
          Illustrations by W. J. HENNESSY.

          LOVE AND LIFE: an Old Story in Eighteenth Century
          Costume. With Illustrations by W. J. HENNESSY.

          UNKNOWN TO HISTORY. A Story of the Captivity of
          Mary of Scotland. With Illustrations by W. J.
          HENNESSY.

          STRAY PEARLS. Memoirs of Margaret de Ribaumont,
          Viscountess of Bellaise. With Illustrations by W.
          J. HENNESSY.

          THE ARMOURER'S 'PRENTICES. With Illustrations by
          W. J. HENNESSY.

          SCENES AND CHARACTERS; or, Eighteen Months at
          Beechcroft. With Illustrations by W. J. HENNESSY.

          CHANTRY HOUSE. With Illustrations by W. J.
          HENNESSY.

          A MODERN TELEMACHUS. With Illustrations by W. J.
          HENNESSY.

          BYWORDS. A collection of Tales new and old.

          BEECHCROFT AT ROCKSTONE.

          MORE BYWORDS.

          A REPUTED CHANGELING; or, Three Seventh Years Two
          Centuries Ago.

          THE LITTLE DUKE, RICHARD THE FEARLESS. With
          Illustrations.

          THE LANCES OF LYNWOOD. With Illustrations by J. B.

          THE PRINCE AND THE PAGE: A Story of the Last
          Crusade. With Illustrations by ADRIAN STOKES.

          TWO PENNILESS PRINCESSES. With Illustrations by W.
          J. HENNESSY.

          THAT STICK.

          AN OLD WOMAN'S OUTLOOK IN A HAMPSHIRE VILLAGE.

          GRISLY GRISELL; or, The Laidly Lady of Whitburn. A
          Tale of the Wars of the Roses.

          HENRIETTA'S WISH. Second Edition.

          THE LONG VACATION.

          THE RELEASE; or, Caroline's French Kindred.

          THE PILGRIMAGE OF THE BEN BERIAH.

          THE TWO GUARDIANS; or, Home in this World. Second
          Edition.

          COUNTESS KATE AND THE STOKESLEY SECRET.

          MODERN BROODS; or, Developments Unlooked for.

          STROLLING PLAYERS: A Harmony of Contrasts. By C.
          M. YONGE and C. R. COLERIDGE.




Works by Mrs. Craik


  Olive: A Novel. With Illustrations by G. BOWERS.
  Agatha's Husband: A Novel. With Illustrations by WALTER CRANE.
  The Head of the Family: A Novel. With Illustrations by WALTER CRANE.
  Two Marriages.
  The Laurel Bush.
  King Arthur: Not a Love Story.
  About Money, and other Things.
  Concerning Men, and other Papers.




Works by Mrs. Oliphant


  Neighbours on the Green.
  Kirsteen: the Story of a Scotch Family Seventy Years Ago.
  A Beleaguered City: A Story of the Seen and the Unseen.
  Hester: a Story of Contemporary Life.
  He that Will Not when He May.
  The Railway Man and his Children.
  The Marriage of Elinor.
  Sir Tom.
  The Heir-Presumptive and the Heir-Apparent.
  A Country Gentleman and his Family.
  A Son of the Soil.
  The Second Son.
  The Wizard's Son: A Novel.
  Lady William.
  Young Musgrave.




The Works of Dean Farrar


          SEEKERS AFTER GOD. The Lives of Seneca, Epictetus,
          and Marcus Aurelius.

          ETERNAL HOPE. Sermons preached in Westminster
          Abbey.

          THE FALL OF MAN: and other Sermons.

          THE WITNESS OF HISTORY TO CHRIST.

          THE SILENCE AND VOICES OF GOD, with other Sermons.

          "IN THE DAYS OF THY YOUTH." Sermons on Practical
          Subjects.

          SAINTLY WORKERS. Five Lenten Lectures.

          EPHPHATHA; or, the Amelioration of the World.

          MERCY AND JUDGMENT: a few last words on Christian
          Eschatology.

          SERMONS & ADDRESSES DELIVERED IN AMERICA.




THE WORKS OF

Frederick Denison Maurice


          SERMONS PREACHED IN LINCOLN'S INN CHAPEL. In six
          vols.

          SERMONS PREACHED IN COUNTRY CHURCHES.

          CHRISTMAS DAY: and other Sermons.

          THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS.

          THE PROPHETS AND KINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

          THE PATRIARCHS AND LAWGIVERS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

          THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

          THE GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN.

          THE EPISTLES OF ST. JOHN.

          THE FRIENDSHIP OF BOOKS: and other Lectures.

          THE PRAYER BOOK AND THE LORD'S PRAYER.

          THE DOCTRINE OF SACRIFICE. Deduced from the
          Scriptures.

          THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES.

          THE KINGDOM OF CHRIST; or, Hints to a Quaker
          respecting the Principles, Constitution, and
          Ordinances of the Catholic Church. 2 vols.


By J. H. SHORTHOUSE

          JOHN INGLESANT: A Romance.
          SIR PERCIVAL: a Story of the Past and of the Present.
          THE LITTLE SCHOOLMASTER MARK.
          THE COUNTESS EVE.
          A TEACHER OF THE VIOLIN.
          BLANCHE, LADY FALAISE.


By GERTRUDE ATHERTON

          THE CONQUEROR.
          A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE.
          THE CALIFORNIANS.


By HUGH CONWAY

          A FAMILY AFFAIR.


By W. CLARK RUSSELL

          MAROONED.


By ANNIE KEARY

    A YORK AND A LANCASTER ROSE.

    CASTLE DALY: the Story of an Irish Home thirty years ago.

    JANET'S HOME.

    OLDBURY.

    A DOUBTING HEART.

    THE NATIONS AROUND ISRAEL.


By THOMAS HUGHES

          TOM BROWN'S SCHOOLDAYS.
          TOM BROWN AT OXFORD.
          THE SCOURING OF THE WHITE HORSE.
          ALFRED THE GREAT.


By ARCHIBALD FORBES

          BARRACKS, BIVOUACS, AND BATTLES.
          SOUVENIRS OF SOME CONTINENTS.


By MONTAGU WILLIAMS

          LEAVES OF A LIFE.
          ROUND LONDON.
          LATER LEAVES.


By E. WERNER

          FICKLE FORTUNE.


By W. E. NORRIS

          THIRLBY HALL.
          A BACHELOR'S BLUNDER.


The Works of SHAKESPEARE

  VICTORIA EDITION. In Three Volumes.
  Vol. I. COMEDIES. Vol. II. HISTORIES. Vol. III. TRAGEDIES.


UNIFORM EDITION OF THE

NOVELS OF CHARLES LEVER

With all the Original Illustrations.

          1. HARRY LORREQUER. Illustrated by PHIZ.

          2. CHARLES O'MALLEY. Illustrated by PHIZ.

          3. JACK HINTON THE GUARDSMAN. Illustrated by PHIZ.

          4. TOM BURKE OF OURS. Illustrated by PHIZ.

          5. ARTHUR O'LEARY. Illustrated by G. CRUIKSHANK.

          6. LORD KILGOBBIN. Illustrated by LUKE FILDES.


By W. WARDE FOWLER

          A YEAR WITH THE BIRDS. Illustrated.
          TALES OF THE BIRDS. Illustrated.
          MORE TALES OF THE BIRDS. Illustrated.
          SUMMER STUDIES OF BIRDS AND BOOKS.


By FRANK BUCKLAND

          CURIOSITIES OF NATURAL HISTORY. Illustrated. In
          four volumes:

          FIRST SERIES--Rats, Serpents, Fishes, Frogs,
          Monkeys, etc.

          SECOND SERIES--Fossils, Bears, Wolves, Cats,
          Eagles, Hedgehogs, Eels, Herrings, Whales.

          THIRD SERIES--Wild Ducks, Fishing, Lions, Tigers,
          Foxes, Porpoises.

          FOURTH SERIES--Giants, Mummies, Mermaids,
          Wonderful People, Salmon, etc.


Works by Various Authors

          Hogan, M.P.

          Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor

          The New Antigone

          Memories of Father Healy

          CANON ATKINSON.--The Last of the Giant Killers

          ---- Playhours and Half-Holidays; or, further
          Experiences of Two Schoolboys

          SIR S. BAKER.--True Tales for my Grandsons

          R. H. BARHAM.--The Ingoldsby Legends

          REV. R. H. D. BARHAM.--Life of Theodore Hook

          BLENNERHASSET AND SLEEMAN.--Adventures in
          Mashonaland

          LANOE FALCONER.--Cecilia de Noël

          W. FORBES-MITCHELL.--Reminiscences of the Great
          Mutiny

          REV. J. GILMORE.--Storm Warriors

          MARY LINSKILL.--Tales of the North Riding

          S. R. LYSAGHT.--The Marplot

          ---- One of the Grenvilles

          M. M'LENNAN.--Muckle Jock, and other Stories

          LUCAS MALET.--Mrs. Lorimer

          G. MASSON.--A Compendious Dictionary of the French
          Language

          MAJOR GAMBIER PARRY.--The Story of Dick

          E. C. PRICE.--In the Lion's Mouth

          LORD REDESDALE.--Tales of Old Japan

          W. C. RHOADES.--John Trevennick

          MARCHESA THEODOLI.--Under Pressure

          ANTHONY TROLLOPE.--The Three Clerks

          CHARLES WHITEHEAD.--Richard Savage




ENGLISH MEN OF LETTERS

EDITED BY JOHN MORLEY.

_Arranged in 13 Volumes, each containing the Lives of three Authors._

          I. Chaucer. By Dr. A. W. WARD. Spenser. By Dean
          CHURCH. Dryden. By Prof. SAINTSBURY.

          II. Milton. By MARK PATTISON. Goldsmith. By W.
          BLACK. Cowper. By GOLDWIN SMITH.

          III. Byron. By Professor NICHOL. Shelley. By J. A.
          SYMONDS. Keats. By SIDNEY COLVIN.

          IV. Wordsworth, By F. W. H. MYERS. Southey. By
          Prof. DOWDEN. Landor. By SIDNEY COLVIN.

          V. Charles Lamb. By Canon AINGER. Addison. By W.
          J. COURTHOPE. Swift. By Sir LESLIE STEPHEN, K.C.B.

          VI. Scott. By R. H. HUTTON. Burns. By Principal
          SHAIRP. Coleridge. By H. D. TRAILL.

          VII. Hume. By Prof. HUXLEY, F.R.S. Locke. By THOS.
          FOWLER. Burke. By JOHN MORLEY.

          VIII. Defoe. By W. MINTO. Sterne. By H. D. TRAILL.
          Hawthorne. By HENRY JAMES.

          IX. Fielding. By AUSTIN DOBSON. Thackeray. By
          ANTHONY TROLLOPE. Dickens. By Dr. A. W. WARD.

          X. Gibbon. By J. C. MORISON. Carlyle. By Professor
          NICHOL. Macaulay. By J. C. MORISON.

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Transcriber's notes:

Italic and bold text is denoted by _ and = respectively. This book had
two different kinds of break in the text. One was set off by extra white
space between paragraphs and the other by a line of asterisks. The break
for white space has now been represented by a line of +.

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 198, "began" changed to "begun" (begun to regret)






End of Project Gutenberg's The Little Schoolmaster Mark, by J. H. Shorthouse