Lippincotts Magazine, December 1873 | Page 7

in a stolen
ribbon or pressed in a book.
She continued simply, "I am very much alone myself. Without the
visits of Monsieur Fortnoye I should be dead of ennui. I am so glad to
find you know him, monsieur!"
[Illustration: SELF-CONTROL.]
This jarred upon me more than I can say. I assumed, as one can at my
age, an air of parental benevolence, in which I administered my
dissatisfaction: "Fortnoye is a roysterer, a squanderer, a wanderer and a

_pètroleur_. At your age, my child, you are really imprudent."
"He is a little wild, but he is young himself. And so good, so generous,
so kind! I owe him everything."
"On what conditions?" said I, more severely perhaps than I meant.
"Your relations, my daughter, are not very clear. Is he then your
_verlobter_?"
She looked at me with an expression of stupefaction, then buried her
face in her hands: "He my intended! Has he ever dreamed of such a
thing? Am I not a poor flower-girl?"
And she was sobbing through her fingers.
My nights were sweet at Carlsruhe. My slumber was ushered in with
those delicious dream-sketches that lend their grace to folly. Each
morning I wondered what surprise the day would arrange for me.
The little wood was hidden from my window by an early fog: the birds
were silent. I was meditating on my singular position, in pawn as it
were under the care of Joliet's good daughter, when I heard my name
pronounced at the bottom of the stairs. It was Sylvester Berkley.
The briskness of our friendships depends on the time when--the place
where. To men in prison a familiar face is the next thing to liberty.
Some years ago I had an absurd dispute with a neighbor about a
party-wall at Passy, and was obliged to go to the Palace of Justice at ten
every morning for a week. My forced intercourse with those solemn
birds in black plumage had a singular effect on me. While among them
I felt as if cut off from my species, and visiting with Gulliver some
dreadful island peopled with mere allegories. As the time passed I grew
worse: I dragged myself to the Cité with horror, and before returning
home was always obliged to wash out my brains by a short stroll in
Notre Dame or amongst the fine glass of the Sainte Chapelle. One day,
pacing the pale and shuffling corridors of the palace, waiting for an
unpunctual lawyer, and regarding the gowns and caps around me with

insupportable hate, at the turning of a passage--oh happiness!--a face
was revealed in the distance, the face of a friend, the face of an old
neighbor. At the bright apparition I made an involuntary sign of joy:
the owner of the face seemed no less pleased. We walked toward each
other, our hands expanded. All of a sudden a doubt seemed to strike us
both at the same moment: he slackened his pace, I slackened mine. We
met: we had never done so before. It was a little mistake. We saluted
each other slightly and gravely, and separated once more, as wise in our
looks as that irreproachable hero who, after marching up the hill with
his men, pocketed his thoughts and marched down again.
My meeting with Berkley Junior was not precisely similar, but
connected with the same feelings and associations. I dashed down four
steps at a time, precipitated myself on him like a bird of prey, and
wrung his hands again and again with fondest violence.
Now, up to that date my relations with Sylvester Berkley had been of a
frigid and formal description. I had met him two or three times with his
hearty old relation, and had borne away the distinct impression that he
was a prig. While the uncle would breakfast in his tub, like Diogenes,
off simple bones and cutlets, Sylvester ate some sort of a mash made of
bruised oats: while the nephew made an untenable pretension to family
honors, the elder talked familiarly of the porcelain trade, freely alluding
to the youth as a piece of precious Sèvres that had cracked.
He met my advances with a calmness, imprinted with astonishment,
that recalled me to myself. Against such a refrigerator my heart and
fancy recovered their proper level: I had been caressing an iceberg in a
white cravat. I examined my emotions, and found, to my shame, that
my warmth had a selfish origin in the fact that I was alone in Carlsruhe,
greatly in need of a passport and a purse.
"Do you intend shortly to quit the archducal seat?" asked Sylvester, by
way of an agreeable remark.
"I have the strongest obligations to be at home," I returned. "I only
await your kind assistance about my passport."

"It