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the talk of the world as I have done
be exposed to the risk of insult as I
have been-until she had the shelter
and protection denied to me. And I
having thus overleaped the bound that a
prudent mother would prescribe to her
child, have become one whose hand men
do not seek, unless they themselves take
the same roads to notoriety.
Do you
not think she was right?"

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- we were on the lake - the sun was setting."

"But you do not tell me the line that so impressed you," said Mrs. Morley, with the woman's kindly tact. Oh, I re

"The line-which line? member; the line was this

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I see as from a tower the end of all. And now-kiss me, dearest — never word again to me about this conversation: never a word about Mr. Vane the dark curtain has fallen on the past.”

CHAPTER XI.

"Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl,certainly not right. But I do wish that you had the shelter and protection which Madame Savarin meant to express; I do wish that you were happily married to one very different from MEN and women are much more like Mr. Vane-one who would be more each other in certain large elements of proud of your genius than of your character than is generally supposed, beauty one who would say, 'My name, but it is that very resemblance which safer far in its enduring nobility than makes their differences the more incomthose that depend on titles and lands-prehensible to each other; just as in which are held on the tenure of the pop- politics, theology, or that most disputaular breath - must be honoured by pos- tious of all things disputable, metaphysterity, for She has deigned to make it ics, the nearer the reasoners approach hers. No democratic revolution can dis-each other in points that to an uncritical ennoble me." bystander seem the most important, the more sure they are to start off in opposite directions upon reaching the speck

"Ay, ay, you believe that men will be found to think with complacency that they owe to a wife a name that they of a pinprick. could not achieve for themselves. Pos- Now there are certain grand meetingsibly there are such men. Where? places between man and woman - the among those that are already united by grandest of all is on the ground of love, sympathies in the same callings, the and yet here also is the great field of same labours, the same hopes and fears, quarrel. And here the teller of a tale with the women who have left behind such as mine ought, if he is sufficiently them the privacies of home. Madame wise to be humble, to know that it is alde Grantmesnil was wrong. Artists most profanation if, as man, he preshould wed with artists. True - true!" sumes to enter the penetralia of a woHere she passed her hand over her man's innermost heart, and repeat, as a forehead it was a pretty way of hers man would repeat, all the vibrations of when seeking to concentrate thought-sound which the heart of a woman sends and was silent a moment or so. forth undistinguishable even to her own ear.

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"Did you ever feel," she then asked dreamily, "that there are moments in life when a dark curtain seems to fall over one's past that a day before was so clear, so blended with the present? One cannot any longer look behind; the gaze is attracted onward, and a track of fire flashes upon the future, the future which yesterday was invisible. There is a line by some English poet - Mr. Vane once quoted it, not to me, but to M. Savarin, and in illustration of his argument, that the most complicated recesses of thought are best reached by the simplest forms of expression. I said to myself, I will study that truth if ever I take to literature as I have taken to song; and yes-it was that evening that the ambition fatal to woman fixed on me its relentless fangs

I know Isaura as intimately as if I had rocked her in her cradle, played with her in her childhood, educated and trained her in her youth; and yet I can no more tell you faithfully what passed in her mind during the forty-eight hours that intervened between her conversation with that American lady and her reappearance in some commonplace drawing-room, than I can tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel if the sun that his world reflected were blotted out of creation.

I can only say that when she reappeared in that commonplace drawingroom world, there was a change in her face not very perceptible to the ordinary observer. If anything, to his eye she at Enghien was handsomer the eye was brighter

CHAPTER XII.

the complexion (always lustrous, though somewhat pale, the limpid paleness that suits so well with dark hair) GUSTAVE recovered, but slowly. The was yet more lustrous, it was flushed physician pronounced him out of all iminto delicate rose hues - hues that still mediate danger, but said frankly to him, better suit with dark hair. What, then, and somewhat more guardedly to his pawas the change, and change not for the rents, "There is ample cause to beware." better? The lips, once so pensively "Look you, my young friend," he added sweet, had grown hard; on the brow that to Rameau, mere brain-work seldom had seemed to laugh when the lips did, kills a man once accustomed to it, like there was no longer sympathy between you; but heart-work, and stomach-work, brow and lip; there was scarcely seen a and nerve-work, added to brain-work, fine thread-like line that in a few years may soon consign to the coffin a frame would be a furrow on the space between ten times more robust than yours. Write the eyes; the voice was not so tenderly as much as you will- that is your voca-* soft; the step was haughtier. What all tion; but it is not your vocation to drink such change denoted it is for a woman absinthe - to preside at orgies in the to decide - I can only guess. In the Maison Dorée. Regulate yourself, and meanwhile, Mademoiselle Cicogna had not after the fashion of the fabulous Don sent her servant daily to inquire after M. Juan. Marry-live soberly and quietly Rameau. That, I think, she would have done under any circumstances. Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin-made it up with her sealed the reconciliation by a cold kiss. That, too, under any circumstances, I think, she would have done under some circumstances the kiss might have been less cold.

There was one thing unwonted in her habits. I mention it, though it is only a woman who can say if it means anything worth noticing.

For six days she had left a letter from Madame de Grantmesnil unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was connected the whole of her innermost life from the day when the lonely desolate child had seen, beyond the dusty thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery land in poetry and art - onward through her restless, dreamy, aspiring youth onward-onward till now, through all that constitutes the glorious reality that we call romance.

Never before had she left for two days unanswered letters which were to her as Sibylline leaves to some unquiet neophyte yearning for solutions to enigmas suggested whether by the world without or by the soul within. For six days Madame de Grantmesnil's letter remained unanswered, unread, neglected, thrust out of sight; just as when some imperious necessity compels us to grapple with a world that is, we cast aside the romance which, in our holiday hours, had beguiled us to a world with which we have interests and sympathies no more.

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and you may survive the grand-children of viveurs. Go on as you have done, and before the year is out you are in Père la chaise."

Rameau listened languidly, but with a profound conviction that the physician thoroughly understood his case.

Lying helpless on his bed, he had no desire for orgies at the Maison Dorée; with parched lips thirsty for innocent tisane of lime-blossoms, the thought of absinthe was as odious to him as the liquid fire of Phlegethon. If ever sinner became suddenly convinced that there was a good deal to be said in favour, of a moral life, that sinner at the moment I speak of was Gustave Rameau. Certainly a moral life—“Domus et placens uxor, were essential to the poet who, aspiring to immortal glory, was condemned to the ailments of a very perishable frame.

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Ah," he murmured plaintively to himself, "that girl Isaura can have no true sympathy with genius! It is no ordinary man that she will kill in me!"

And so murmuring he fell asleep. When he woke and found his head pillowed on his mother's breast, it was much as a sensitive, delicate man may wake after having drunk too much the night before. Repentant, mournful, maudlin, he began to weep, and in the course of his weeping he confided to his mother the secret of his heart.

Isaura had refused him- that refusal had made him desperate.

"Ah! with Isaura how changed would be his habits! how pure! how healthful!" His mother listened fondly, and did her best to comfort him and cheer his drooping spirits.

She told him of Isaura's messages of

inquiry duly twice a-day. Rameau, who knew more about women in general, and Isaura in particular, than his mother conjectured, shook his head mournfully. "She could not do less," he said. "Has no one offered to do more?" he thought of Julie when he asked that Madame Rameau hesitated.

These poor Parisians! it is the mode to preach against them; and before my book closes I shall have to preach no, not to preach, but to imply plenty of faults to consider and amend. Meanwhile I try my best to take them, as the philosophy of life tells us to take other people, for what they are.

dipped, not in ink, but in blood from a vein she had opened in her arm: "Trai tor-I have not seen thee for three days. Dost thou dare to love another? If so, I care not how thou attempt to conceal it -woe to her! Ingrat! woe to thee! Love is not love, unless, when betrayed by Love, it appeals to death. Answer me quick — quick. JULIE."

Poor Gustave thought of that letter and groaned. Certainly his mother was right-he ought to get rid of Julie; but he did not clearly see how Julie was to be got rid of. He replied to Madame Rameau peevishly, "Don't trouble your head about Mademoiselle Caumartin; she is in no want of money. Of course, if I could hope for Isaura — but, alas! I dare not hope. Give me my tisane."

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I do not think the domestic relations of the Parisian bourgeoisie are as bad as they are said to be in French novels. Madame Rameau is not an uncommon When the doctor called next day, he type of her class. She had been when looked grave, and, drawing Madame she first married singularly handsome. Rameau into the next room, he said, It was from her that Gustave inherited "We are not getting on so well as I had his beauty; and her husband was a very hoped; the fever is gone, but there is ordinary type of the French shop-keeper much to apprehend from the debility left very plain, by no means intellectual, behind. His spirits are sadly depressed." but gay, good-humoured, devotedly at- Then added the doctor pleasantly, and tached to his wife, and with implicit trust with that wonderful insight into our comin her conjugal virtue. Never was trust plex humanity in which physicians excel better placed. There was not a happier poets, and in which Parisian physicians nor a more faithful couple in the quartier are not excelled by any physicians in the in which they resided. Madame Rameau | world, - "Can't you think of any bit of hesitated when her boy, thinking of Julie, good news that 'M. Thiers asked if no one had done more than send about your son's last poem' that 'it is to inquire after him as Isaura had done. a question among the Academicians beAfter that hesitating pause she said, tween him and Jules Janin'-or that "Yes a young lady calling herself Ma- the beautiful Duchesse de- - has been demoiselle Julie Caumartin wished to in- placed in a lunatic asylum because she stal herself here as your nurse. When I has gone mad for love of a certain young said, 'But I am his mother- he needs Red Republican whose name begins with no other nurses,' she would have retreat- R.' — can't you think of any bit of similar ed, and looked ashamed-poor thing! good news? If you can, it will be a tonic I don't blame her if she loved my son. to the relaxed state of your dear boy's But, my son, I say this if you love her, amour propre, compared to which all the don't talk to me about that Mademoiselle drugs in the Pharmacopoeia are moonCicogna; and if you love Mademoiselle shine and water; and meanwhile be sure Cicogna, why, then, your father will take to remove him to your own house, and care that the poor girl who loved you · out of the reach of his giddy young not knowing that you loved another friends, as soon as you possibly can." not left to the temptation of penury."

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Rameau's pale lips withered into a phantom-like sneer. Julie! the resplendent Julie!-true, only a ballet-dancer, but whose equipage in the Bois had once been the envy of duchesses - Julie ! who had sacrificed fortune for his sake - who, freed from him, could have millionnaires again at her feet! Julie! to be saved from penury, as a shop-keeper would save an erring nurse-maid-Julie! the irrepressible Julie! who had written to him, the day before his illness, in a pen

When that great authority thus left his patient's case in the hands of the mother, she said "The boy shall be saved."

CHAPTER XIII. ISAURA was seated beside the Venosta, -to whom, of late, she seemed to cling with greater fondness than ever, working at some piece of embroidery - a la bour from which she had been estranged for years; but now she had taken writing, reading, music, into passionate disgust. Isaura was thus seated, silently

Madame Rameau.

But, oh Mademoi

intent upon her work, and the Venosta | that I have seen you. in full talk, when the servant announced selle! pardon me do not withdraw your hand-pardon the mother who comes from the sick-bed of her only son and asks if you will assist to save him! A word from you is life or death to him!"

The name startled both; the Venosta had never heard that the poet had a mother living, and immediately jumped to the conclusion that Madame Rameau must be a wife he had hitherto kept unrevealed. And when a woman, still very handsome, with a countenance grave and sad, entered the salon, the Venosta murmured, "The husband's perfidy reveals itself on a wife's face," and took out her handkerchief in preparation for sympathizing tears.

"Mademoiselle," said the visitor, halting, with eyes fixed on Isaura. "Pardon my intrusion-my son has the honour to be known to you. Every one who knows him must share in my sorrow so young-so promising, and in such danger - my poor boy!" Madame Rameau stopped abruptly. Her tears forced their way-she turned aside to conceal them.

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In her twofold condition of being womanhood and genius - Isaura was too largely endowed with that quickness of sympathy which distinguishes woman from man, and genius from talent, not to be wondrously susceptible to pity.

"Nay, nay, do not speak thus, Madame; your son knows how much I value, how sincerely I return, his friendship; but-but," she paused a moment, and continued sadly and with tearful eyes "I have no heart to give to him to any one."

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"I do not-I would not if I daredask what it would be violence to yourself to promise. I do not ask you to bid me return to my son and say, 'Hope and recover,' but let me take some healing message from your lips. If I understand your words rightly, I at least may say that you do not give to another the hopes you deny to him?"

"So far you understand me rightly, Madame. It has been said, that romancewriters give away so much of their hearts to heroes or heroines of their own creation, that they leave nothing worth the giving to human beings like themselves. Perhaps it is so; yet, Madame," added Isaura, with a smile of exquisite sweetness in its melancholy, "I have heart enough left to feel for you.”

Already she had wound her arm round the grieving mother - already drawn her to the seat from which she herself had Madame Rameau was touched. “Ah, risen - and bending over her had said Mademoiselle, I do not believe in the some words true, conventional enough saying you have quoted. But I must not in themselves, but cooed forth in a abuse your goodness by pressing further voice the softest I ever expect to hear, upon you subjects from which you shrink. save in dreams, on this side of the grave. Only one word more: you know that my Madame Rameau swept her hand over husband and I are but quiet tradesfolk, her eyes, glanced round the room, and not in the society, nor aspiring to it, to noticing the Venosta in dressing-robe which my son's talents have raised himand slippers, staring with those Italian self; yet dare I ask that you will not eyes, in seeming so quietly innocent, in close here the acquaintance that I have reality so searchingly shrewd, she whis-obtruded on you?-dare I ask, that I pered pleadingly, "May I speak to you a few minutes alone?" This was not a request that Isaura could refuse, though she was embarrassed and troubled by the surmise of Madame Rameau's object in asking it; accordingly she led her visitor into the adjoining room, and making an apologetic sign to the Venosta, closed the door.

CHAPTER XIV.

WHEN they were alone, Madame Rameau took Isaura's hand in both her own, and, gazing wistfully into her face, said, "No wonder you are so loved-yours is the beauty that sinks into the heart and rests there. I prize my boy more, now

may, now and then, call on you - that now and then I may see you at my own home? Believe that I would not here ask anything which your own mother would disapprove if she overlooked disparities of station. Humble as our home is, slander never passed its threshold."

"Ah, Madame, I and the Signora Venosta, whom in our Italian tongue I call mother, can but feel honoured and grateful whenever it pleases you to receive visits from us."

"It would be a base return for such

gracious compliance with my request if I concealed from you the reason why I pray Heaven to bless you for that answer. The physician says that it may be long

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on her the belief that it is in her power to save a human life, and to animate its career towards those goals which are never based wholly upon earth in the earnest eyes of genius, or perhaps in the yet more upward vision of pure-souled believing woman.

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And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages of convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every step in his progress seems so gently softened in character - seems fined from the old affectations, so ennobled above the old cynicism — and, above all, so needing her presence, so sunless without it, that well, need I finish the sentence? the reader will complete what I leave unsaid.

before my son is sufficiently convalescent | more by his mother's lips is impressed to dispense with a mother's care, and resume his former life and occupation in the great world. It is everything for us if we can coax him into coming under our own rooftree. This is difficult to do. It is natural for a young man launched into the world to like his own chez lui. Then what will happen to Gustave? He, lonely and heart-stricken, will ask friends, young as himself, but far stronger, to come and cheer him; or he will seek to distract his thoughts by the over-work of his brain; in either case he is doomed. But I have stronger motives yet to fix him awhile at our hearth. This is just the moment, once lost never to be regained, when soothing companionship, gentle reproachless advice, can fix him lastingly in the habits and modes of life which will banish all fears of his future from the hearts of his parents. You at least honour him with friendship, with kindly interest - you would at least desire to wean him from all that a friend may disapprove or lamenta creature whom Providence meant to be good and perhaps great. If I say to him, It will be long before you can go out and see your friends, but at my house your friends shall come and see you- among them Signora Venosta and Mademoiselle Cicogna will now and then drop in my victory is gained, and my son is saved.""

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Enough, that one day Isaura returned home from a visit at Madame Rameau's with the knowledge that her hand was pledged her future life disposed of; and that, escaping from the Venosti, whom she so fondly, and in her hunger for a mother's love, called Madre, the girl shut herself up in her own room with locked doors.

Ah, poor child! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura! whose delicate image I feel myself too rude and too hard to transfer to this page in the purity of its outlines, and the blended softnesses of its hues thou who, when saying things serious in the words men use, saidst them with a seriousness so charming, and with looks so feminine - thou, of whom no man I ever knew was quite worthy-ah, poor, simple, miserable girl, as I see thee now in the solitude of that white-curtained virginal room! hast thou, then, merged at last thy peculiar star into the cluster of all these commonplace girls whose lips have said "Ay," when their hearts said "No"?thou, oh brilliant Isaura! thou, oh poor motherless child!

IT needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligent reader, be thou man She had sunk into her chair - her own or woman-but more especially woman favourite chair, — the covering of it had of the consequences following each been embroidered by Madame de Grantother, as wave follows wave in a tide, that mesnil, and bestowed on her as a birthresulted from the interview with which day present last year—the year in which my last chapter closed. Gustave is re- she had first learned what it is to lovemoved to his parents' house; he remains the year in which she had first learned for weeks confined within doors, or, on what it is to strive for fame. And somesunny days, taken an hour or so in his how uniting, as many young people do, own carriage, drawn by the horse bought love and fame in dreams of the future, from Rochebriant, into by-roads remote that silken seat had been to her as the from the fashionable world; Isaura visits Tripod of Delphi was to the Pythian: his mother, liking, respecting, influenced | she had taken to it, as it were intuitively, by her more and more; in those visits she in all those hours, whether of joy or sorsits beside the sofa on which Rameau row, when youth seeks to prophesy, and reclines. Gradually, gently more and does but dream.

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