"I am here by chance," he said presently, “I am going on an urgent errand, to seek the doctor for my neighbor, who is desperately ill, and I thought I would stop in to give you a word, because I have no idea when I can come again." "I beg you not to take any trouble for me." "Women are very punctilious." mated; that I had more tears to shed and more rebellious desires to crush. The next morning I sent Pietro to bring me news of the sick woman. She was very ill. Then, all of us, Ursula and Pietro and my little Alexis recited the prayers for the dying. When we such had finished them, I said, "Let us pray again that if it is God's will this mother may be spared to her daughter." I interrupted tranquilly, "I don't think I have ever given you reason to think so: hereafter remember that I consider you as absolute master of your time." He did not answer, but following the direction of his thoughts, he said aloud, "They are really to be pitied." I saw that he was very much affected by the illness of his neighbor, and I asked news of her. "Do you really wish to know? I thought you did not approve of these ladies." "I do not know them and I do not judge them, but you like them, and that is enough to give me an interest in their grief." He regarded me intently for a second, then looking down on his cap and shaking the flakes of snow from it, he continued: "The mother has only two or three days to live, and the daughter is alone in the world." "God have pity on them," I said with sincere commiseration, "I will pray for them with all my heart." Another flash from his eyes, another long silence, then he said, "Adieu." "Au revoir," I murmured, with a grief that was half tenderness. "Yes, au revoir." Ursula came close to me, and putting her trembling lips to my ear whispered: "God bless you, Myriam." "O why?" I said, feeling the blood mount into my face. The good old woman said nothing, but as she bent her head on her joined hands I thought that perhaps she was praying for me. Towards evening a travelling merchant brought news that the strange lady was dead, and that her daughter had thrown herself upon the body, and in her despair seemed to wish to follow her. "Is there no one there to comfort her?" I asked. "Who should there be? La Querciaia is perfectly isolated, and the ladies do not know a single soul." I looked around me. I looked out of the window, over the desert of snow, I looked up at the white sky. Poor child! The pedlar was preparing to go on, and already had his pack on his shoulders, when I asked him if he could get me a carriage before night. He said he could, and in spite of the consternation of Ursula and Pietro, I ordered him to send me one without losing any time. I kissed Alexis, who was hanging to He seemed to fear that he had been my skirts, asking:— too kind, and added: "It will not be very soon.' All day I struggled, a prey to conflicting wishes. I followed him in imagination to the pavilion where the strangers lived. I could see the dying mother in her bed, and the desolate, brokenhearted daughter, and him going from one to another. O, he must love her! A contraction of my heart warned me that my sacrifice was not yet consumLIVING AGE. VOL. XV. 778 "Mamma, why do you cry?" I did not know. I did not even know that I was crying. I made my preparations with much emotion, and warning my people that I would bring the orphan back with me, I told Ursula to have a room ready for her. La Querciaia was not more than half an hour distant, but we took twice that time to break a road through the body should be frozen snow, on which some hungry and assured her that her mother's crows were flying about. In this wan landscape, no longer veiled with climbing plants and roses, la Querciaia rose up before me with its strange architecture, looking like a fortress and a convent in one. I was driven to the door of the pavilion which was opened y my cousin himself. "You!" he exclaimed, and no words could express the exaltation in his look and voice. Standing on the threshold in a whirlwind of snow I hardly knew how to justify my presence, but it was he who took me by the hand with gentle firmness, and very quickly in a few words I explained my purpose. He took me immediately to the young woman, who saw me enter without astonishment. She heard my first words with the apathy of a person half insane with grief. Her room was bare and cold; there had been a fire, but it had not been cared for. As I looked at her I did not think of the elegant young woman whom I had seen in church. Her hair was disordered, her hands were blue with co.d; there was something desolate, abandoned, terrified, that speedily found its way to my heart. If I had ever indulged sentiments less pure, less noble, they all disappeared before this real suffering. My cousin, who looked at me intently, knew what was passing through my mind. He took her hand and putting it in mine, said earnestly: "Trust her; she is a friend." No one had been able to persuade her to rest, or to eat. In all the neighborhood, there was not a single person who could offer her hospitality, or a single woman who could comfort her. The night drew near, terrible and agonizing. I bent over the poor child and said as gently as I could: "Will you come home with me?" She started, and looked at me doubtfully. "Do not be afraid. I am a mother." At these words she burst into violent weeping and hid her head in my bosom. Little by little we persuaded her; my cousin promised not to leave the house, watched over religiously. Then she acquiesced, and I went away with her in the closed carriage, across the desert of snow which was a fitting frame for our two griefs. My cousin stood upon the threshold until the carriage drove away. His expression was deeply serious and gentle. Ursula had a good fire ready and warm drinks. She helped me as much as she could, to sustain and comfort the desolate girl. A little later when we had taken her to her room, and she had fallen asleep, I thought of her, resting safely beneath my roof, confided to my care, protected by me, and a great flood of happiness overwhelmed me, and I thought that at that moment his spirit might be close to mine. I sat up late that night, reading over from a long, complicated letter my husband. He said that he had made up his mind definitely to establish himself in Paris, in view of a position in the Embassy, and that it would be useful to have his family with him; that Alexis was old enough to begin his education, and if I had no objection he would like to have me join him at Paris with the child. tation that I was forced to cling to the railing for support. Then he said: "Will you forgive me?" My God, what joys there are in this world! My hands trembled beneath the immortelles, and I bent my head to invite him to go with me, and also to tell him yes. Did he understand my silence? The grave and painful occupations of the day left me no time to be alone with him or with myself, but my heart overflowed with joy. I decided to keep the young girl with me until she could go to a relative, an old friend of her mother who would take care of her, and provide for her future. In the mean time I helped her, and comforted her, and wiped away her tears. I was surprised at my own energy and courage; the poor child showed her gratitude in the most touching manner, and the calm days flowed along full of melancholy sweetness. A secret instinct prevented my asking my cousin about his plans for the future, especially as he said nothing about them himself, and when the young girl had gone he resumed his affectionate, assiduous visits as if nothing were changed around us. Better still, it seemed only as if I had had an evil dream and was in the joy of awakening from it. One evening-he sometimes came in the evening-I told him of my decision to join my husband in Paris. The unexpected news startled him, but at bottom he did not believe it. He looked at me keenly to see if I had any hidden meaning, and a sudden suspicion flitted across him. "And all that you leave here." "And all that I leave here." With these words we stopped. I had the impression that some one in the room was watching us. Perhaps it was the hours full of light and darkness that would never come back again. "What will become of these sofas and chairs, the work tables full of you and your perfume?" He said this in the laughing tone which he used often to conceal some deeper emotion. "They will sleep under their linen covers." "And your two old servants?" grey One of those hours that listened to us must have trembled in its phantom veil; it seemed as if something palpitated in the air, as if I were seized hy invisible hands. He repeated in a low voice: "What will become of me?" "You," my voice was hardly a whisper, "you must marry." "And if I will not marry?" I was silent. He repeated vehemently, "And if I will not marry? Answer!" He had not made one step towards me, he did not move, but а flame burned in his eyes. I measured all the greatness of the "Why do you think of going to Paris temptation; I saw its ineffable sweetat this time?" I took my husband's letter and read it to him, reminding him that Alexis was seven years old, and if his father wished to interest himself in the child, I ought to second him with all my power. "At the bottom of your heart you would like to go to Paris. That is it." I do not know what sort of expression of distress rose to my face, but he added quickly, and sympathetically: ness. There seemed to arise out of an unexplored darkness phantoms of rapture and passion. One single word and he was mine. I felt it! In this blessed solitude, far from the world, in the awakening spring, in my heart which was open to love, which trembled and palpitated under the tenderness of his glance! All would begin again; the enchanting evenings, the confidential talks, the unreserve of heart, the joy of being together. My longing was SO violent that it shook me. But what did he see of this? With my head bent above my work, I tried to count the stitches, and not till I had succeeded did I speak: "You would be wrong; the ways of dreams are many; the path of life is one. You must marry." "Do you intend to take this music with you?" I was confused for a moment, and the keys of the piano sighed out the pathetic tones of the old song, but I answered quickly:"Perhaps I must." A secret involuntary feeling must "Are you in earnest?" he said, fixing have betrayed itself in my voice, for his eyes on my face. he made no account of those three I felt that a single moment of weak- words, but divined through them Я ness, and I was lost forever! "I am," I answered. deep tenderness. I saw then his noble face light up, and his soul came out :0 He darted a keen glance at me, and me, confiding and entire. Was not this bent his head. This was one of our last talks. Having written to my husband saying that I was willing to join him, he answered that he would be glad if I would hasten my departure as much as possible, so that he could come to meet us. Circumstances helped my will. The winter was almost over. The temperature was softer, and here and there the snow was melting. In my garden, lying exposed to the sun, there was not a trace of it left. I looked at the bare branches of the acacias, and thought with sadness that I should not be here to see them bloom. "O dear mistress," cried Ursula, weeping, "when you come back, I shall be dead." From her, too, I had to hide my anguish while I bade farewell to all the plants, to all the stones, to all the walls. When I went to church, the last Sunday, I bade farewell also to distant la Querciaia, evoking from my memory that beautiful day when I had visited it with other eyes and another heart. "I know," I said to my cousin as we stood by the piano gathering my music together, "that I shall come back some day to this dear place and to these dear objects, but shall I find them as they are now?" "Be sure of it. As life goes on, what is lost is the materiality of things. The spirit of things is immortal; it is that which we love in them." He knew always how to say at the right moment, the thing which would go deepest. After a pause he said: what he had dreamed of in the dawn of his affection, long, long before the obscure mystery of the senses had blinded him? Had he not been thinking of this, that memorable evening when he had said: "You cannot imagine the good that a woman can do in bringing faith back into the heart of a sceptic?" And he understood this above all, that only from a noble source could spring a love like mine. This I believe; otherwise there would not have been such serenity and gentleness in his look. There could be no longer any doubt. As he stood silent in the shadow I saw arise in him a longing for companionship which was touching in the virile pride of this soul. Then I thought, "Some woman, Emma, or some other, will come to take her place in hils empty house, in his passionate heart. Many changes shall I find when I come back in a few years. Many dead flowers, many dead things, and in me also, something dead,—but what could ever take from me the supreme joy that I had given him faith!" I was near the window; I raised the flame-colored curtain and looked out on the garden. In the early days of our acquaintance, my cousin had said that it was too orderly, too well kept. He said it had none of the poetry and mystery of abandoned places. Now, I thought, now it will clothe itself with all the poetry that he misses. He will see neglect weave its webs across the flower beds, he will see sadness, he will see mystery obscure the shadows of the trees and no longer will our spirits beat together in the paths where, without confessing it, we loved each other. He came and stood beside me and took my hand; still my thought flowed on, my eyes looked with love at the dear rose-trees that would soon break out into flower under the March breeze, when I heard his grave voice:"Then this is farewell, Myriam. Shall we meet again?" I pressed his hand with a light pro、 longing of my grasp, I did not turn my head, I did not look at him, I did not speak, but he knew at last what grief and passion lay in my silence. THE END. From The Fortnightly Review. Pascal is one of the great men whose minds have been fascinated by the eternal riddle of existence, and have carried to a logical conclusion one typical mode of meeting if not of answering it; and who have also had the gift of coining thought into language so terse and vivid as to be part of the intellectual currency of future generations. Yet the thought even of such men had to be expressed in the dialect and applied to the particular circumstances of their time. It may be worth while, therefore, to consider in what way Pascal's view was colored by the conditions of the day, and what are its true relations to the development of thought. I make no claim to the special knowledge which would be necessary for a treatise, and am content to refer, once for all, to Ste.Beuve's admirable "Port Royal," in which the great critic has shown Pascal as a living man among his surroundings, and pointed out with incomparable skill his relation not only to the religious and philosophical, but to the social, political, and literary movements of a profoundly interesting period. I shall only aim at setting out one or two cardinal points. First of all, Pascal came at a great period: at the time when philosophic 1 Lecture before the West London Ethical Society, May 2, 1897. new systems were being stirred by the influences named after Descartes and Bacon; when the greatest minds were breaking off the fetters of effete scholasticism; and when it was possible for men of the highest order to take a Pisgah sight of the promised land of knowledge without being distracted and bewildered, like their successors, in the complexity of actual explorations of the region. In one respect Pascal was especially qualified to take part in the movement. The philosophy of Descartes was essentially a philosophy for mathematicians, for mathematics, at that time, represented the decisive example of intellectual progress. Metaphysics, it seems, might at last become progressive if, instead of wearily rambling round the old dialectical circle, it could adopt similar methods. Descartes laid down the principle. Spinoza's "Ethics," appropriating the forms of geometrical demonstration and presenting the whole universe as an incarnate Euclid, shows the rational consummation of the experiment. Now, Pascal was obviously a heaven-born mathematician. By the age of twelve, we are told, he had thought out for himself the elementary propositions of Euclid; by nineteen he had invented and constructed a calculating machine, and obtained results which were important steps towards the differential calculus developed by Newton and Leibnitz. In his last years, when attacked by a bad toothache, he returned to the studies which had long been thrown aside, and in a few sleepless nights discovered certain geometrical theorems. His results were published, and the mathematicians of Europe challenged to find out the proof. After three months' labor, Wallis, the ablest English mathematician of the day, produced a proof-not, it was said, satisfactory. Patriotism induces me to add that Wallis had no toothache to stimulate him. At an early age, however, Pascal's health had broken down; from his eighteenth year until his death he never had a day free from pain. His first conversion, at the age of twenty-three, induced him to throw aside scientific activity as worldly vanity. He became closely as а |