Monsieur Maurice | Page 9

knew how to bear. He had brought with him, as I have shown, certain things wherewith to alleviate the weariness of captivity--books, music, drawing materials, and the like; but I soon discovered that the books were his only solace, and that he never took up pencil or guitar, unless for my amusement.
He wrote a great deal, however, and so consumed many a weary hour of the twenty-four. He used a thick yellowish paper cut quite square, and wrote a very small, neat, upright hand, as clear and legible as print. Every time I found him at his desk and saw those closely covered pages multiplying under his hand, I used to wonder what he could have to write about, and for whose eyes that elaborate manuscript was intended.
"How cold you are, Monsieur Maurice!" I used to say. "You are as cold as my snow-man in the court-yard! Won't you come out to-day for half-an-hour?"
And his hands, in truth, were always ice-like, even though the hearth was heaped with blazing logs.
"Not to-day, petite," he would reply. "It is too bleak for me--and besides, you see, I am writing."
It was his invariable reply. He was always writing--or if not writing, reading; or brooding listlessly over the fire. And so he grew paler every day.
"But the writing can wait, Monsieur Maurice," I urged one morning, "and you can't always be reading the same old books over and over again!"
"Some books never grow old, little Gretchen," he replied. "This, for instance, is quite new; and yet it was written by one Horatius Flaccus somewhere about eighteen hundred years ago."
"But the sun is really shining this morning, Monsieur Maurice!"
"Comment!" he said, smiling. "Do you think to persuade me that yonder is the sun--the great, golden, glorious, bountiful sun? No, no, my child! Where I come from, we have the only true sun, and believe in no other!"
"But you come from France, don't you, Monsieur Maurice?" I asked quickly.
"From the South of France, petite--from the France of palms, and orange-groves, and olives; where the myrtle flowers at Christmas, and the roses bloom all the year round!"
"But that must be where Paradise was, Monsieur Maurice!" I exclaimed.
"Ay; it was Paradise once--for me," he said, with a sigh.
Thus, after a moment's pause, he went on:--
"The house in which I was born stands on a low cliff above the sea. It is an old, old house, with all kinds of quaint little turrets, and gable ends, and picturesque nooks and corners about it--such as one sees in most French Chateaux of that period; and it lies back somewhat, with a great rambling garden stretching out between it and the edge of the cliff. Three berceaux of orange-trees lead straight away from the paved terrace on which the salon windows open, to another terrace overhanging the beach and the sea. The cliff is overgrown from top to bottom with shrubs and wild flowers, and a flight of steps cut in the living rock leads down to a little cove and a strip of yellow sand a hundred feet below. Ah, petite, I fancy I can see myself scrambling up and down those steps--a child younger than yourself; watching the sun go down into that purple sea; counting the sails in the offing at early morn; and building castles with that yellow sand, just as you build castles out yonder with the snow!"
I clasped my hands and listened breathlessly.
"Oh, Monsieur Maurice," I said, "I did not think there was such a beautiful place in the world! It sounds like a fairy tale."
He smiled, sighed, and--being seated at his desk with the pen in his hand--took up a blank sheet of paper, and began sketching the Chateau and the cliff.
"Tell me more about it, Monsieur Maurice," I pleaded coaxingly.
"What more can I tell you, little one? See--this window in the turret to the left was my bed-room window, and here, just below, was my study, where as a boy I prepared my lessons for my tutor. That large Gothic window under the gable was the window of the library."
"And is it all just like that still?" I asked.
"I don't know," he said dreamily. "I suppose so."
He was now putting in the rocks, and the rough steps leading down to the beach.
"Had you any little brothers and sisters, Monsieur Maurice?" I asked next; for my interest and curiosity were unbounded.
He shook his head.
"None," he said, "none whatever. I was an only child; and I am the last of my name."
I longed to question him further, but did not dare to do so.
"You will go back there some day, Monsieur Maurice," I said hesitatingly, "when--when--"
"When I am free, little Gretchen? Ah! who can tell? Besides the old place is no longer mine. They have taken it from me, and given it to a stranger."
"Taken