Saturday, 22 October 2022

Good Reading: "Four Travelling Companions" by Ludwig Bechstein (translated into English)

Once on a time four travellers joined on the road. One of them was a king's son, the second a nobleman, the third a merchant and the fourth a hand-labourer. Each of the four had spent every coin he had, and they had nothing left but the clothes they wore on their backs.

One day they all felt hungry. How were they were to find money or food?

The prince said, "A fair trust in the Lord's protection is not to be forsaken."

The merchant then said, "Being prudent enough and with good judgement when it comes to calculated risks is my motto as long as luck is on my side."

"Being well-behaved, with an active, handsome and youthful figure is worth a lot," said the nobleman. He spoke for good manners as he had been taught them.

And the working-man said, "I for my part think a careful and industrious man may get on well in the world of work."

While they talked about it, the four travellers came to a city and sat down outside the city gate. It was evening. Three of them said to the other, "You speak for industry and carefulness, so go and see how you can get us a night's lodging and food by it. We will wait for you here, outside that inn."

"I will, and readily," answered the labourer, "if each of you in turn will put your mottos to work too."

They agreed to this. The working man went into the city, puzzling himself how he should contrive to lodge and feed himself and his comrades, and then asked people who lived in the city too. One of them advised him to fetch a load of wood and offer it for sale, for the city was wide, many lived in it, and wood was dear. The labourer set about it at once, and as soon as he had cut a sizable bundle of faggots, he brought it to the city and found a ready buyer for it for two silver pennies. This was enough to feed and lodge his comrades. Merry at heart he returned to the inn where he had left them and wrote with chalk over the door, "An honest man gained two silver pennies in one day by being industrious and strong."

The next day the nobleman was sent out to see how far, "Being well-behaved, with an active, youthful and handsome figure" would get him. He went into the city rather sadly, for he could not tell at all what he should best do to fulfil his task. Sad at heart he seated himself on the steps of a house, determined to part qfrom his companions since he could not bring back anything to them. But while he sat thus, a pretty, well-dowered widow went by. When she saw the nobleman's fine features, she stopped to ask who he was and where he came from. She sent her servants to invite him to have dinner at her house. When he came, she was so charmed with his manners and conversation that she gave him a hundred gold pennies when he left. Delighted with his good luck he returned to his companions and wrote over the door, "With his fresh young face a man got a hundred gold pennies in one day."

The third morning it was the merchant's turn to try. He passed through the town, which was close by the sea, to the harbour. Just at that time a ship lay at anchor there. On the shore stood the owner of the cargo and around him were many merchants who wanted to buy. But they said the sum he asked was too high, and went away. They felt assured that no one but themselves could buy the goods and that thei cargo owner would have to lower his terms.

The poor travelling merchant was the son of a rich merchant. While the other merchants were away, he walked up to the owner of the cargo and spoke with him. After he had told the cargo owner his name, he bought the goods for fifty thousand dollars, to be paid within a few weeks.

Soon afterwards the other merchants came back, for they could not really do without the goods. Now they had to buy them of the travelling merchant and pay him so that he got a profit of five thousand dollars.

The young merchant returned speedily to his companions and wrote beneath the other incriptions, "A merchant ventured a lot, gambling with money he did not have at hand he gained in one day five thousand dollars." It was not prudence that did it, after all, he considered, willing to revise his motto.

The next morning the king's son went into the city, thinking to himself what he should do to earn as much as his comrades. He had learnt no trade or profession, had no handsome face to recommend him, no rich merchant for a father and was neither gifted with foresight nor carefulness. However, he had faith in Providence. For all that he sat down on a stone by the wayside and buried his face deeply in his hands, reflecting.

A week earler the king of the city had died. That morning his corpse was being carried to a nearby cloister, followed by all the people. But the young prince sat so buried in thought that he heard and saw nothing of what was passing around him, and so he neglected to rise to show respect when the funeral procession approached. A soldier stepped aside out of the train and gave the prince a blow across his back, saying, "You bewildered rascal! Have you no sadness in your face for our dead, bewailed king? Away with you!"

The prince let the procession pass by him without a word, and when it came back, he had reseated himself on the same stone and in the same posture as before. Again the soldier struck him and said, "Didn't I tell you that you should not remain here?" He beckoned to some guards and ordered them to take the prince to prison. He was thrown into a gloomy cell, but he still believed in a mild Providence and looked forward to being released in due time. It came very soon, for a day or two after the old king's burial, the people met to elect a new king; and while they were debating about it, the soldier who had put the prince in prison presented him to them as fit. "A good king must be able to withstand imprisonments in rough times," he said, "and I have got a fit candidate here."

The prince said that he was a king's son and named his father. He further told them that when his father died, the kingdom should have come to him, but his younger brother had robbed him of it and forced him to leave his dominions or die.

Now, among the people who heard this were many who had known the father of the speaker and had also travelled through his territories. They shouted out that the father was a good man and this son was hopefully like him and unlike his brother; and some even cried, "Long live the king! Viva! Viva!"

So the young prince was chosen king. He was carried in triumph round the city according to the custom on such occasions. When he came to the place where his three comrades had inscribed their mottoes, he commanded a fourth to be added to them. The words were, "Careful industry, youth, a nose for good deals in business, are all great gifts if things go well." The people marvelled and exulted that they had made such a good choice of king and thanked Heaven.

When the king was led to his new throne, he called for his three old companions. As soon as they arrived he told them in front of a large assembley:

"I came here after I had been banished from my own place. First I entered the service of a nobleman who did not know me. Then, after a year's time I desired to move from there. I got my wages, but my traveller's clothes cost much and left me with only two pennies. I wanted to give a penny in charity. At that moment I met a fowler who was carrying two doves to market. I could use my money on nothing better than setting free one of these creatures, I considered. However, the fowler would sell me both of his birds or none, so I had to spend the money for the two doves. As soon as I got them, I walked to a neighbouring meadow and let them both fly. They alighted on a fir-tree; and I heard the one say to the other, 'This man has saved our lives by spending all he had. We owe him a grateful return' Then they flew up to me and said, 'You have been very kind to us. Beneath the roots of the tree over there lies a great treasure. Dig there and you will find it.'

"I thanked the birds for letting med know of the treasure, and asked them how they had fallen into a trap laid by man when they knew so much.

"They answered, 'The flight of a bird is in part ordained to happen, and that is the case with humans too.'"

The king ended his speech and settled his old fellow-travellers in various offices. The nobleman got a seat at his council-board; the daring merchant was to manage the finances of his kingdom; and the labourer was made overseer in general of the public works. The king also went with a retinue to see if he could find the buried treasure that the doves had told him about, now that he had men and tools to help him dig for it, and they found it some meters down in the hard soil under the tree.

"A little kindness goes a long way," he said to himself, thinking of how well the doves had repaid him.

Friday, 21 October 2022

Friday's Sung Word: "Pierrô Apaixonado" by Noel Rosa and Heitor dos Prazeres (in Portuguese).

Um Pierrô apaixonado
Que vivia só cantando
Por causa de uma Colombina
Acabou chorando, acabou chorando

A Colombina entrou num botequim
Bebeu, bebeu, saiu assim, assim
Dizendo: Pierrô cacete
Vai tomar sorvete com o Arlequim

Um grande amor tem sempre um triste fim
Com o Pierrô aconteceu assim
Levando esse grande chute
Foi tomar vermute com amendoim.

 

 
You can listen "Pierrô Apaixonado" sung by Joel e Gaúcho with the Diabos dos Céus band here.


Thursday, 20 October 2022

Thursday's Serial: "Bébée" or "Two Little Wooden Shoes" by Ouida (in English) - VI

CHAPTER XI.

The next day she had her promised book hidden under the vine-leaves of her empty basket as she went homeward, and though she had not seen him very long or spoken to him very much, she was happy.

The golden gates of knowledge had just opened to her; she saw a faint, far-off glimpse of the Hesperides gardens within; of the dragon she had never heard, and had no fear.

"Might I know your name?" she had asked him wistfully, as she had given him the rosebud, and taken the volume in return that day.

"They call me Flamen."

"It is your name?"

"Yes, for the world. You must call me Victor, as other women do. Why do you want my name?"

"Jeannot asked it of me."

"Oh, Jeannot asked it, did he?"

"Yes; besides," said Bébée, with her eyes very soft and very serious, and her happy voice hushed,—"besides, I want to pray for you of course, every day; and if I do not know your name, how can I make Our Lady rightly understand? The flowers know you without a name, but she might not, because so very many are always beseeching her, and you see she has all the world to look after."

He had looked at her with a curious look, and had bade her farewell, and let her go home alone that night.

Her work was quickly done, and by the light of the moon she spread her book on her lap in the porch of the hut and began her new delight.

The children had come and pulled at her skirts and begged her to play.

But Bébée had shaken her head.

"I am going to learn to be very wise, dear," she told them; "I shall not have time to dance or to play."

"But people are not merry when they are wise, Bébée," said Franz, the biggest boy.

"Perhaps not," said Bébée: "but one cannot be everything, you know, Franz."

"But surely, you would rather be merry than anything else?"

"I think there is something better, Franz. I am not sure; I want to find out; I will tell you when I know."

"Who has put that into your head, Bébée?"

"The angels in the cathedral," she told them; and the children were awed and left her, and went away to play blind-man's-buff by themselves, on the grass by the swan's water.

"But for all that the angels have said it," said Franz to his sisters, "I cannot see what good it will be to her to be wise, if she will not care any longer afterwards for almond gingerbread and currant cake."

It was the little tale of "Paul and Virginia" that he had given her to begin her studies with: but it was a grand copy, full of beautiful drawings nearly at every page.

It was hard work for her to read at first, but the drawings enticed and helped her, and she soon sank breathlessly into the charm of the story. Many words she did not know; many passages were beyond her comprehension; she was absolutely ignorant, and had nothing but the force of her own fancy to aid her.

But though stumbling at every step, as a lame child through a flowery hillside in summer, she was happy as the child would be, because of the sweet, strange air that was blowing about her, and the blossoms that she could gather into her hand, so rare, so wonderful, and yet withal so familiar, because they were blossoms.

With her fingers buried in her curls, with her book on her knee, with the moon rays white and strong on the page, Bébée sat entranced as the hours went by; the children's play shouts died away; the babble of the gossip at the house doors ceased; people went by and called good night to her; the little huts shut up one by one, like the white and purple convolvulus cups in the hedges.

Bébée did not stir, nor did she hear them; she was deaf even to the singing of the nightingales in the willows, where she sat in her little thatch above, and the wet garden-ways beyond her.

A heavy step came tramping down the lane. A voice called to her,—

"What are you doing, Bébée, there, this time of the night? It is on the strike of twelve."

She started as if she were doing some evil thing, and stretched her arms out, and looked around with blinded, wondering eyes, as if she had been rudely wakened from her sleep.

"What are you doing up so late?" asked Jeannot; he was coming from the forest in the dead of night to bring food for his family; he lost his sleep thus often, but he never thought that he did anything except his duty in those long, dark, tiring tramps to and fro between Soignies and Laeken.

Bébée shut her book and smiled with dreaming eyes, that saw him not at all.

"I was reading—and, Jeannot, his name is Flamen for the world, but I may call him Victor."

"What do I care for his name?"

"You asked it this morning."

"More fool I. Why do you read? Reading is not for poor folk like you and me."

Bébée smiled up at the white clear moon that sailed above the woods.

She was not awake out of her dream. She only dimly heard the words he spoke.

"You are a little peasant," said Jeannot roughly, as he paused at the gate. "It is all you can do to get your bread. You have no one to stand between you and hunger. How will it be with you when the slug gets your roses, and the snail your carnations, and your hens die of damp, and your lace is all wove awry, because your head runs on reading and folly, and you are spoilt for all simple pleasures and for all honest work?"

She smiled, still looking up at the moon, with the dropping ivy touching her hair.

"You are cross, dear Jeannot. Good night."

A moment afterwards the little rickety door was shut, and the rusty bolt drawn within it; Jeannot stood in the cool summer night all alone, and knew how stupid he had been in his wrath.

He leaned on the gate a minute; then crossed the garden as softly as his wooden shoes would let him. He tapped gently on the shutter of the lattice.

"Bébée—Bébée—just listen. I spoke roughly, dear—I know I have no right. I am sorry. Will you be friends with me again?—do be friends again."

She opened the shutter a little way, so that he could see her pretty mouth speaking, "we are friends—we will always be friends, of course—only you do not know. Good night."

He went away with a heavy heart and a long-drawn step. He would have preferred that she should have been angry with him.

Bébée, left alone, let the clothes drop off her pretty round shoulders and her rosy limbs, and shook out her coils of hair, and kissed the book, and laid it under her head, and went to sleep with a smile on her face.

Only, as she slept, her ringers moved as if she were counting her beads, and her lips murmured,—

"Oh, dear Holy Mother, you have so much to think of—yes. I know—all the poor, and all the little children. But take care of him; he is called Flamen, and he lives in the street of Mary of Burgundy; you cannot miss him; and if you will look for him always, and have a heed that the angels never leave him, I will give you my great cactus glower—my only one—on your Feast of Roses this very year. Oh, dear Mother, you will not forget!"

 

CHAPTER XII.

Bébée was a dreamer in her way, and aspired to be a scholar too. But all the same, she was not a little fool.

She had been reared in hardy, simple, honest ways of living, and would have thought it as shameful as a theft to have owed her bread to other folk.

So, though she had a wakeful, restless night, full of strange fantasies, none the less was she out in her garden by daybreak; none the less did she sweep out her floor and make her mash for the fowls, and wash out her bit of linen and hang it to dry on a line among the tall, flaunting hollyhocks that were so proud of themselves because they reached to the roof.

"What do you want with books, Bébée?" said Reine, the sabot-maker's wife, across the privet hedge, as she also hung out her linen. "Franz told me you were reading last night. It is the silver buckles have done that: one mischief always begets another."

"Where is the mischief, good Reine?" said Bébée, who was always prettily behaved with her elders, though, when pushed to it, she could hold her own.

"The mischief will be in discontent," said the sabot-maker's wife. "People live on their own little patch, and think it is the world; that is as it should be—everybody within his own, like a nut in its shell. But when you get reading, you hear of a swarm of things you never saw, and you fret because you cannot see them, and you dream, and dream, and a hole is burnt in your soup-pot, and your dough is as heavy as lead. You are like bees that leave their own clover fields to buzz themselves dead against the glass of a hothouse."

Bébée smiled, reaching to spread out her linen. But she said nothing.

"What good is it talking to them?" she thought; "they do not know."

Already the neighbors and friends of her infancy seemed so far, far away; creatures of a distant world, that she had long left; it was no use talking, they never would understand.

"Antoine should never have taught you your letters," said Reine, groaning under the great blue shirts she was hanging on high among the leaves. "I told him so at the time. I said, 'The child is a good child, and spins, and sews, and sweeps, rare and fine for her age; why go and spoil her?' But he was always headstrong. Not a child of mine knows a letter, the saints be praised! nor a word of any tongue but our own good Flemish. You should have been brought up the same. You would have come to no trouble then."

"I am in no trouble, dear Reine," said Bébée, scattering the potato-peels to the clacking poultry, and she smiled into the faces of the golden oxlips that nodded to her back again in sunshiny sympathy.

"Not yet," said Reine, hanging her last shirt.

But Bébée was not hearing; she was calling the chickens, and telling the oxlips how pretty they looked in the borders; and in her heart she was counting the minutes till the old Dutch cuckoo-clock at Mère Krebs's—the only clock in the lane—should crow out the hour at which she went down to the city.

She loved the hut, the birds, the flowers; but they were little to her now compared with the dark golden picturesque square, the changing crowds, the frowning roofs, the gray stones, and colors and shadows of the throngs for one face and for one smile.

"He is sure to be there," she thought, and started half an hour earlier than was her wont. She wanted to tell him all her rapture in the book; no one else could understand.

But all the day through he never came.

Bébée sat with a sick heart and a parched little throat, selling her flowers and straining her eyes through the tumult of the square.

The whole day went by, and there was no sign of him.

The flowers had sold well: it was a feast day; her pouch was full of pence—what was that to her?

She went and prayed in the cathedral, but it seemed cold, and desolate, and empty; even the storied windows seemed dark.

"Perhaps he is gore out of the city," she thought; and a terror fell on her that frightened her, it was so unlike any fear that she had ever known—even the fear when she had seen death on old Antoine's face had been nothing like this.

Going home through the streets, she passed the café of the Trois Frères that looks out on the trees of the park, and that has flowers in its balconies, and pleasant windows that stand open to let the sounds of the soldiers' music enter. She saw him in one of the windows. There were amber and scarlet and black; silks and satins and velvets. There was a fan painted and jewelled. There were women's faces. There was a heap of purple fruit and glittering sweetmeats. He laughed there. His beautiful Murillo head was dark against the white and gold within.

Bébée looked up,—paused a second,—then went onward, with a thorn in her heart.

He Had not seen her.

"It is natural, of course—he has his world—he does not think often of me—there is no reason why he should be as good as he is," she said to herself as she went slowly over the stones.

She had the dog's soul—only she did not know it.

But the tears Fell down her cheeks, as she walked.

It looked so bright in there, so gay, with the sound of the music coming in through the trees, and those women,—she had seen such women before; sometimes in the winter nights, going home from the lacework, she had stopped at the doors of the palaces, or of the opera house, when the carriages were setting down their brilliant burdens; and sometimes on the great feast days she had seen the people of the court going out to some gala at the theatre, or some great review of troops, or some ceremonial of foreign sovereigns; but she had never thought about them before; she had never wondered whether velvet was better to wear than woollen serge, or-diamonds lighter on the head than a little cap of linen.

But now—

Those women seemed to her so dazzling, so wondrously, so superhumanly beautiful; they seemed like some of those new dahlia flowers, rose and purple and gold, that outblazed the sun on the south border of her little garden, and blanched all the soft color out of the homely roses, and pimpernels, and sweet-williams, and double-stocks, that had bloomed there ever since the days of Waterloo.

But the dahlias had no scent; and Bébée wondered if these women had any heart in them,—they looked all laughter, and glitter, and vanity. To the child, whose dreams of womanhood were evolved from the face of the Mary of the Assumption, of the Susannah of Mieris, and of that Angel in the blue coif whose face has a light as of the sun,—to her who had dreamed her way into vague perceptions of her own sex's maidenhood and maternity by help of those great pictures which had been before her sight from infancy, there was some taint, some artifice, some want, some harshness in these jewelled women; she could not have reasoned about it, but she felt it, as she felt that the grand dahlias missed a flower's divinity, being scentless.

She was a little bit of wild thyme herself; hardy, fragrant, clean, tender, flowering by the wayside, full of honey, though only nourished on the turf and the stones, these gaudy, brilliant, ruby-bright, scarlet-mantled dahlias hurt her with a dim sense of pain and shame.

Fasting, next day at sunrise she confessed to Father Francis:—

"I saw beautiful rich women, and I envied them; and I could not pray to

Mary last night for thinking of them, for I hated them so much."

But she did not say,—

"I hated them because they were with him."

Out of the purest little soul, Love entering drives forth Candor.

"That is not like you at all, Bébée," said the good old man, as she knelt at his feet on the bricks of his little bare study, where all the books he ever spelt out were treatises on the art of bee-keeping.

"My dear, you never were covetous at all, nor did you ever seem to care for the things of the world. I wish Jehan had not given you those silver buckles; I think they have set your little soul on vanities."

"It is not the buckles; I am not covetous," said Bébée; and then her face grew warm. She did not know why. and she did not hear the rest of Father Francis's admonitions.

 

CHAPTER XIII.

But the next noon-time brought him to the market stall, and the next also, and so the summer days slipped away, and Bébée was quite happy if she saw him in the morning time, to give him a fresh rose, or at evening by the gates, or under the beech-trees, when he brought her a new book, and sauntered awhile up the green lane beside her.

An innocent, unconscious love like Bébée's wants so little food to make it all content. Such mere trifles are beautiful and sweet to it. Such slender stray gleams of light suffice to make a broad, bright golden noon of perfect joy around it.

All the delirium, and fever, and desire, and despair, that are in maturer passion, are far away from it: far as is the flash of the meteor across sultry skies from the blue forget-me-not down in the brown meadow brook.

It was very wonderful to Bébée that he, this stranger from Rubes' fairyland, could come at all to keep pace with her little clattering wooden shoes over the dust and the grass in the dim twilight time. The days went by in a trance of sweet amaze, and she kept count of the hours no more by the cuckoo-clock of the mill-house, or the deep chimes of the Brussels belfries; but only by such moments as brought her a word from his lips, or even a glimpse of him from afar, across the crowded square.

She sat up half the nights reading the books he gave her, studying the long cruel polysyllables, and spelling slowly through the phrases that seemed to her so cramped and tangled, and which yet were a pleasure to unravel forsake of the thought they held.

For Bébée, ignorant little simple soul that she was, had a mind in her that was eager, observant, quick to acquire, skilful to retain; and it would happen in certain times that Flamen, speaking to her of the things which he gave to her to read, would think to himself that this child had more wisdom than was often to be found in schools.

Meanwhile he pondered various studies in various stages of a Gretchen, and made love to Bébée—made love at least by his eyes and by his voice, not hurrying his pleasant task, but hovering about her softly, and mindful not to scare her, as a man will gently lower his hand over a poised butterfly that he seeks to kill, and which one single movement, a thought too quick, may scare away to safety.

Bébée knew where he lived in the street of Mary of Burgundy: in an old palace that belonged to a great Flemish noble, who never dwelt there himself; but to ask anything about him—why he was there? what his rank was? why he stayed in the city at all?—was a sort of treason that never entered her thoughts.

Psyche, if she had been as simple and loyal as Bébée was, would never have lighted her own candle; but even Psyche would not have borrowed any one else's lamp to lighten the love darkness.

To Bébée he was sacred, unapproachable, unquestionable; he was a wonderful, perfect happiness that had fallen into her life; he was a gift of God, as the sun was.

She took his going and coming as she took that of the sun, never dreaming of reproaching his absence, never dreaming of asking if in the empty night he shone on any other worlds than hers.

It was hardly so much a faith with her as an instinct; faith must reason ere it know itself to be faith. Bébée never reasoned any more than her roses did.

The good folks in the market place watched her a little anxiously; they thought ill of that little moss-rose that every day found its way to one wearer only; but after all they did not see much, and the neighbors nothing at all. For he never went home to her, nor with her, and most of the time that he spent with Bébée was in the quiet evening shadows, as she went up with her empty basket through the deserted country roads.

Bébée was all day long in the city, indeed, as other girls were, but with her it had always been different. Antoine had always been with her up to the day of his death; and after his death she had sat in the same place, surrounded by the people she had known from infancy, and an insult to her would have been answered by a stroke from the cobbler's strap or from the tinker's hammer. There was one girl only who ever tried to do her any harm—a good-looking stout wench, who stood at the corner of the Montagne de la Cour with a stall of fruit in the summer time, and in winter time drove a milk cart over the snow. This girl would get at her sometimes, and talk of the students, and tell her how good it was to get out of the town on a holiday, and go to any one of the villages where there was Kermesse and dance, and drink the little blue wine, and have trinkets bought for one, and come home in the moonlight in a char-à-banc, with the horns sounding, and the lads singing, and the ribbons flying from the old horse's ears.

"She is such a little close sly thing!" thought the fruit girl, sulkily.

To vice, innocence must always seem only a superior kind of chicanery.

"We dance almost every evening, the children and I," Bébée had answered when urged fifty times by this girl to go to fairs, and balls at the wine shops. "That does just as well. And I have seen Kermesse once at Malines—it was beautiful. I went with Mère Dax, but it cost a great deal I know, though she did not let me pay."

"You little fool!" the fruit girl would say, and grin, and eat a pear.

But the good honest old women who sat about in the Grande Place, hearing, had always taken the fruit girl to task, when they got her by herself.

"Leave the child alone, you mischievous one," said they. "Be content with being base yourself. Look you, Lisette; she is not one like you to make eyes at the law students, and pester the painter lads for a day's outing. Let her be, or we will tell your mother how you leave the fruit for the gutter children to pick and thieve, while you are stealing up the stairs into that young French fellow's chamber. Oh, oh! a fine beating you will get when she knows!"

Lisette's mother was a fierce and strong old Brabantoise who exacted heavy reckoning with her daughter for every single plum and peach that she sent out of her dark sweet-smelling fruit shop to be sunned in the streets, and under the students' love-glances.

So the girl took heed, and left Bébée alone.

"What should I want her to come with us for?" she reasoned with herself. "She is twice as pretty as I am; Jules might take to her instead—who knows?"

So that she was at once savage and yet triumphant when she saw, as she thought, Bébée drifting down the high flood of temptation.

"Oh, oh, you dainty one!" she cried one day to her. "So you would not take the nuts and mulberries that do for us common folk, because you had a mind for a fine pine out of the hothouses! That was all, was it? Eh, well; I do not begrudge you. Only take care; remember, the nuts and mulberries last through summer and autumn, and there are heaps of them on every fair-stall and street corner; but the pine, that is eaten in a day, one springtime, and its like does not grow in the hedges. You will have your mouth full of sugar an hour,—and then, eh!—you will go famished all the year."

"I do not understand," said Bébée, looking up, with her thoughts far away, and scarcely hearing the words spoken to her.

"Oh, pretty little fool! you understand well enough," said Lisette, grinning, as she rubbed up a melon. "Does he give you fine things? You might let me see."

"No one gives me anything."

"Chut! you want me to believe that. Why Jules is only a lad, and his father is a silk mercer, and only gives him a hundred francs a month, but Jules buys me all I want—somehow—or do you think I would take the trouble to set my cap straight when he goes by? He gave me these ear-rings, look. I wish you would let me see what you get."

But Bébée had gone away—unheeding—dreaming of Juliet and of Jeanne d'Arc, of whom he had told her tales.

He made sketches of her sometimes, but seldom pleased himself.

It was not so easy as he had imagined that it would prove to portray this little flower-like face, with the clear eyes and the child's open brow. He who had painted Phryne so long and faithfully had got a taint on his brush—he could not paint this pure, bright, rosy dawn—he who had always painted the glare of midnight gas on rouge or rags. Yet he felt that if he could transfer to canvas the light that was on Bébée's face he would get what Scheffer had missed. For a time it eluded him. You shall paint a gold and glistening brocade, or a fan of peacock's feathers, to perfection, and yet, perhaps, the dewy whiteness of the humble little field daisy shall baffle and escape you.

He felt, too, that he must catch her expression flying as he would do the flash of a swallow's wing across a blue sky; he knew that Bébée, forced to studied attitudes in an atelier, would be no longer the ideal that he wanted.

More than once he came and filled in more fully his various designs in the little hut garden, among the sweet gray lavender and the golden disks of the sunflowers; and more than once Bébée was missed from her place in the front of the Broodhuis.

The Varnhart children would gather now and then open-mouthed at the wicket, and Mère Krebs would shake her head as she went by on her sheepskin saddle, and mutter that the child's head would be turned by vanity; and old Jehan would lean on his stick and peer through the sweetbrier, and wonder stupidly if this strange man who could make Bébée's face beam over again upon that panel of wood could not give him back his dead daughter who had been pushed away under the black earth so long, long before, when the red mill had been brave and new, the red mill that the boys and girls called old.

But except these, no one noticed much.

Painters were no rare sights in Brabant.

The people were used to see them coming and going, making pictures of mud and stones, and ducks and sheep, and of all common and silly things.

"What does he pay you, Bébée?" they used to ask, with the shrewd Flemish thought after the main chance.

"Nothing," Bébée would answer, with a quick color in her face; and they would reply in contemptuous reproof, "Careless little fool; you should make enough to buy you wood all winter. When the man from Ghent painted Trine and her cow, he gave her a whole gold bit for standing still so long in the clover. The Krebs would be sure to lend you her cow, if it be the cow that makes the difference."

Bébée was silent, weeding her carnation bed;—what could she tell them that they would understand?

She seemed so far away from them all—those good friends of her childhood—now that this wonderful new world of his giving had opened to her sight.

She lived in a dream.

Whether she sat in the market place taking copper coins, or in the moonlight with a book on her knees, it was all the same. Her feet ran, her tongue spoke, her hands worked; she did not neglect her goat or her garden, she did not forsake her house labor or her good deeds to old Annémie; but all the while she only heard one voice, she only felt one touch, she only saw one face.

Here and there—one in a million—there is a female thing that can love like this, once and forever.

Such an one is dedicated, birth upwards, to the Mater Dolorosa.

He had something nearer akin to affection for her than he had ever had in his life for anything, but he was never in love with her—no more in love with her than with the moss-rosebuds that she fastened in his breast. Yet he played with her, because she was such a little, soft, tempting female thing; and because, to see her face flush, and her heart heave, to feel her fresh feelings stir into life, and to watch her changes from shyness to confidence, and from frankness again into fear, was a natural pastime in the lazy golden weather.

That he spared her as far as he did,—when after all she would have married Jeannot anyhow,—and that he sketched her face in the open air, and never entered her hut and never beguiled her to his own old palace in the city, was a new virtue in himself for which he hardly knew whether to feel respect or ridicule; anyway, it seemed virtue to him.

So long as he did not seduce the body, it seemed to him that it could never matter how he slew the soul,—the little, honest, happy, pure, frank soul, that amidst its poverty and hardships was like a robin's song to the winter sun.

"Hoot, toot, pretty innocent, so you are no better than the rest of us," hissed her enemy, Lisette, the fruit girl, against her as she went by the stall one evening as the sun set. "Prut! so it was no such purity after all that made you never look at the student lads and the soldiers, eh? You were so dainty of taste, you must needs pick and choose, and, Lord's sake, after all your coyness, to drop at a beckoning finger as one may say—pong!—in a minute, like an apple over-ripe! Oh hé, you sly one!"

Bébée flushed red, in a sort of instinct of offence; not sure what her fault was, but vaguely stung by the brutal words.

Bébée walked homeward by him, with her empty baskets: looked at him with grave wondering eyes.

"What did she mean? I do not understand. I must have done some wrong—or she thinks so. Do you know?"

Flamen laughed, and answered her evasively,—

"You have done her the wrong of a fair skin when hers is brown, and a little foot while hers is as big as a trooper's; there is no greater sin, Bébée, possible in woman to woman."

"Hold your peace, you shrill jade," he added, in anger to the fruiterer, flinging at her a crown piece, that the girl caught, and bit with her teeth with a chuckle. "Do not heed her, Bébée. She is a coarse-tongued brute, and is jealous, no doubt."

"Jealous?—of what?"

The word had no meaning to Bébée.

"That I am not a student or a soldier, as her lovers are."

As her lovers were! Bébée felt her face burn again. Was he her lover then? The child's innocent body and soul thrilled with a hot, sweet delight and fear commingled.

Bébée was not quite satisfied until she had knelt down that night and asked the Master of all poor maidens to see if there were any wickedness in her heart, hidden there like a bee in a rose, and if there were to take it out and make her worthier of this wonderful new happiness in her life.

Wednesday, 19 October 2022

The Profession of Faith of the Fathers in the First Council of Nicaea - 325 AD (translated into English)

    We believe in one God the Father all powerful, maker of all things both seen and unseen. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten begotten from the Father, that is from the substance of the Father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came to be, both those in heaven and those in earth; for us humans and for our salvation he came down and became incarnate, became human, suffered and rose up on the third day, went up into the heavens, is coming to judge the living and the dead. And in the holy Spirit.

    And those who say “there once was when he was not”, and “before he was begotten he was not”, and that “he came to be from things that were not”, or “from another hypostasis or substance", affirming that the Son of God is subject to change or alteration these the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematises.

Tuesday, 18 October 2022

Tuesday's Serial "The Mystery of the Sea" by Bram Stoker (in English) - IX

CHAPTER XIX - ON CHANGING ONE’S NAME

With a smile Marjory began:

“You are satisfied that it was because of the fireworks and Joan of Arc business that I came away?”

“Oh yes!”

“And that this was the final and determining cause?”

“Why certainly!”

“Then you are wrong!” I looked at her in wonder and in some secret concern. If I were wrong in this belief, then why not in others? If Adams’s belief and my acceptance of it were erroneous, what new mystery was there to be revealed? Just at present things had been looking so well for the accomplishment of my wishes that any disturbance must be unwelcome. Marjory, watching me from under her eyelashes, had by this time summed me up. The stern look which she always had when her brows were fixed in thought, melted into a smile which was partly happy, partly mischievous, and wholly girlish.

“Make your mind easy, Archie” she said, and oh! how my heart leaped when she addressed me by my Christian name for the first time. “There isn’t anything to get uneasy about. I’ll tell you what it was if you wish.”

“Certainly I wish, if you don’t dislike telling me.”

So she went on:

“I did not mind the fireworks; that is I did mind them and liked them too. Between you and me, there has to be a lot of fireworks for one to object to them. People may say what they please, but it’s only those who have not tasted popular favour that say they don’t like it. I don’t know how Joan of Arc felt, but I’ve a pretty cute idea that she was like other girls. If she enjoyed being cheered and made much of as well as I did, no wonder that she kept up the game as long as she could. What broke me all up was the proposals of marriage! It’s all very well getting proposed to by people you know, and that you don’t dislike. But when you get a washing basket full of proposals every morning by the post; when seedy looking scallywags ogle you; when smug young men with soft hats and no chins wait outside your door to hand you their own poems; and when greasy cranks stop your carriage to proffer their hearts to you before your servants, it becomes too much. Of course you can burn the letters, though there are some of them too good and too honest not to treat their writers with respect. But the cranks and egotists, and scallywags and publicans and sinners, the loafers that float round one like an unwholesome miasma; these are too many and too various, and too awful to cope with. I felt the conviction so driven in to me that the girl, or at any rate her personality, counts for so little, but that her money, or her notoriety, or celebrity or whatever it is, counts for so much, that I couldn’t bear to meet strangers at all. Burglars and ghosts and tigers and snakes and all kinds of things that dart out on you are bad enough; but I tell you that proposers on the pounce are a holy terror. Why, at last I began to distrust everyone. There wasn’t an unmarried man of my acquaintance that I didn’t begin to suspect of some design; and then the funny part of it was that if they didn’t come up to the scratch I felt aggrieved. It was awfully unfair wasn’t it? But I could not help it. I wonder if there is a sort of moral jaundice which makes one see colours all wrong! If there is, I had it; and so I just came away to get cured if I could.

“You can’t imagine the freedom which it was to me not to be made much of and run after. Of course there was a disappointing side to it; I’m afraid people’s heads swell very quick! But, all told, it was delightful. Mrs. Jack had come with me, and I had covered up my tracks at home so that no one would be worried. We ran up to Canada, and at Montreal took a steamer to Liverpool. We got out, however, at Moville. We had given false names, so that we couldn’t be tracked.” Here she stopped; and a shy look grew over her face. I waited, for I thought it would embarrass her less to tell things in her own way than to be asked questions. The shy look grew into a rosy blush, through which came that divine truth which now and again can shine from a girl’s eyes. She said in quite a different way from any in which she had spoken to me as yet; with a gentle appealing gravity:

“That was why I let you keep the wrong impression as to my name. I couldn’t bear that you, who had been so good to me, should, at the very start of our—our friendship, find me out in a piece of falsity. And then when we knew each other better, and after you had treated me with so much confidence about the Second Sight and Gormala and the Treasure, it made me feel so guilty every time I thought of it that I was ashamed to speak.” She stopped and I ventured to take her hand. I said in as consolatory a way as I could:

“But my dear, that was not any deceit—to me at any rate. You took another name to avoid trouble before ever I even saw you; how then could I be aggrieved. Besides” I added, feeling bolder as she did not make any effort to draw away her hand, “I should be the last person in the world to object to your changing your name!”

“Why?” she asked raising her eyes to mine with a glance which shot through me. This was pure coquetry; she knew just as well as I did what I meant. All the same, however, I said:

“Because I too want you to change it!” She did not say a word, but looked down.

I was now sure of my ground, and without a word I bent over and kissed her. She did not draw back. Her arms went round me; and in an instant I had a glimpse of heaven.

Presently she put me away gently and said:

“There was another reason why I did not speak all that time. I can tell it to you now.”

“Pardon me” I interrupted “but before you tell me, am I to take it that—well, what has just been between us—is an affirmative answer to my question?” Her teeth flashed as well as her eyes as she answered:

“Have you any doubt? Was there any imperfection in the answer? If so, perhaps we had better read it as ‘no.’”

My answer was not verbal; but it was satisfactory to me. Then she went on:

“I can surely tell you now at all events. Have you still doubts?”

“Yes” said I, “many, very many, hundreds, thousands, millions, all of which are clamouring for instant satisfaction!” She said quietly and very demurely, at the same time raising that warning hand which I already well knew, and which I could not but feel was apt to have an influence on my life, though I had no doubt but that it would always be for good:

“Then as there are so many, there is not the slightest use trying to deal with them now.”

 “All right” I said “we shall take them in proper season and deal with them seriatim.” She said nothing, but she looked happy.

I felt so happy myself that the very air round us, and the sunshine, and the sea, seemed full of joyous song. There was music even in the screaming of the myriad seagulls sweeping overhead, and in the wash of the rising and falling waves at our feet. I kept my eyes on Marjory as she went on t speak:

“Oh, it is a delight to be able to tell you now what a pleasure it was to me to know that you, who knew nothing of me, of my money, or my ship, or all the fireworks and Joan of Arc business—I shall never forget that phrase—had come to me for myself alone. It was a pleasure which I could not help prolonging. Even had I had no awkwardness in telling my name, I should have kept it back if possible; so that, till we had made our inner feelings known to each other, I should have been able to revel in this assurance of personal attraction;” I was so happy that I felt I could interrupt:

“That sounds an awfully stilted way of putting it, is it not?” I said. “May I take it that what you mean is, that though you loved me a little—of course after I had shown you that I loved you a great deal—you still wished to keep me on a string; so that my ignorance of your extrinsic qualities might add a flavour to your enjoyment of my personal devotion?”

“You talk” she said with a joyful smile “like a small book with gilt edges! And now, I know you want to know more of my surroundings, where we are living and what are our plans.”

Her words brought a sort of cold shiver to me. In my great happiness I had forgotten for the time all anxiety for her safety. In a rush there swept over me all the matters which had caused me such anguish of mind for the last day and a half. She saw the change in me, and with poetic feeling put in picturesque form her evident concern:

“Archie, what troubles you? your face is like a cloud passing over a cornfield!”

“I am anxious about you” I said. “In the perfection of happiness which you have given me, I forgot for the moment some things that are troubling me.” With infinite gentleness, and with that sweet tenderness which is the sympathetic facet of love, she laid her hand on mine and said:

“Tell me what troubles you. I have a right to know now, have I not?” For answer I raised her hand and kissed it; then holding it in mine I went on:

“At the same time that I learned about you, I heard of some other things which have caused me much anxiety. You will help to put me at ease, won’t you?”

“Anything you like I shall do. I am all yours now!”

“Thank you, my darling, thank you!” was all I could say; her sweet surrender of herself overwhelmed me. “But I shall tell you later; in the meantime tell me all about yourself, for that is a part of what I wait for.” So she spoke:

“We are living, Mrs. Jack and I, in an old Castle some miles back in the country from here. First I must tell you that Mrs. Jack is my old nurse. Her husband had been a workman of my father’s in his pioneer days. When Dad made his own pile he took care of Jack—Jack Dempsey his name was, but we never called him anything but Jack. His wife was Mrs. Jack then, and has been so ever since to me. When mother died, Mrs. Jack, who had lost her husband a little while before, came to take care of me. Then when father died she took care of everything; and has been like a mother to me ever since. As I dare say you have noticed, she has never got over the deferential manner which she used to have in her poorer days. But Mrs. Jack is a rich woman as women go; if some of my proposers had an idea of how much money she has they would never let her alone till she married some one. I think she got a little frightened at the way I was treated; and there was a secret conviction that she might be the next to suffer. If it hadn’t been for that, I doubt if she would ever, even to please me, have fallen in with my mad scheme of running away under false names. When we came to London we saw the people at Morgan’s; and the gentleman who had charge of our affairs undertook to keep silence as to us. He was a nice old man, and I told him enough of the state of affairs for him to understand that I had a good reason for lying dark. I thought that Scotland might be a good place to hide in for a time; so we looked about amongst the land agents for a house where we would not be likely to be found. They offered us a lot; but at last they told us of one between Ellon and Peterhead, way back from the road. We found it in a dip between a lot of hills where you would never suspect there was a house at all, especially as it was closely surrounded with a wood. It is in reality an old castle, built about two or three hundred years ago. The people who own it—Barnard by name, are away, the agent told us, and the place was to let year after year but no one has ever taken it. He didn’t seem to know much about the owners as he had only seen their solicitor; but he said they might come some time and ask to visit the house. It is an interesting old place, but awfully gloomy. There are steel trellis gates, and great oak doors bound with steel, that rumble like thunder when you shut them. There are vaulted roofs; and windows in the thickness of the wall, which though they are big enough to sit in, are only slits at the outside. Oh! it is a perfect daisy of an old house. You must come and see it! I will take you all over it; that is, over all I can, for there are some parts of it shut off and locked up.”

“When may I go?” I asked.

“Well, I had thought,” she answered, “that it would be very nice if you were to get your wheel and ride over with me to-day.”

“Count me in every time! By the way what is the name of the place?”

“Crom Castle. Crom is the name of the little village, but it is a couple of miles away.” I paused a while thinking before I spoke. Then with my mind made up I said:

“Before we leave here I want to speak of something which, however unimportant you may think it, makes me anxious. You will let me at the beginning beg, won’t you, that you do not ask me who my informant is, or not to tell you anything except what I think advisable.” Her face grew grave as she said:

“You frighten me! But Archie, dear, I trust you. I trust you; and you may speak plainly. I shall understand.”

 

CHAPTER XX - COMRADESHIP

“I want you to promise me that you will not hide yourself where I cannot find you. I have grave reason for the request. Also, I want you, if you will, to let some others know where you are.” At first there was instinctive defiance in her mouth and nostrils. Then her brows wrinkled in thought; the sequence was an index to character which I could not but notice. However the war was not long; reason, whatever was the outcome of its dominance, triumphed over impulse. I thought I could understand the logical process which led to her spoken conclusion:

“You want to report me to ‘Uncle Sam’.”

“That’s about it!” I answered, and hurried on to give her a reason before she made up her mind to object.

“Remember, my dear, that your nation is at war; and, though you are at present safe in a country friendly to both belligerents, there are evil-minded people in all countries who will take advantage of anything unusual, to work their own ends. That splendid gift of yours to the nation, while it has made you a public favourite and won for you millions of friends—and proposals—has yet made for you a host of enemies. It is not as if you had given a hospital-ship or an ambulance. Your gift belongs to the war side and calls out active hatred; and no doubt there are men banded together to do you harm. This cannot be allowed. Your friends, and the nation as a whole, would take any step to prevent such a thing; but they might all be powerless if you were hidden anywhere where they could not find you.” As I spoke, Marjory looked at me keenly, not with hostility, but with genuine interest. When I had finished she said quietly:

“That is very well; but now tell me, dear”—how the word thrilled me; it was the first time she had used it to me—“did Sam Adams fill you up with that argument, or is it your own? Don’t think me nasty; but I want to know something of what is going on. Believe me, I am willing to do all you wish if it is your own will; and I am grateful for your thought for me. But I don’t want you to be a mere mouthpiece for any party moves by the politicians at home.”

“How do you mean?”

“My dear boy, I don’t suppose you know enough of American politics to see how a certain lot would use to their own advantage anything that came in their way. Anybody or anything which the public takes an interest in would be, and is, used by them unscrupulously. Why, if the hangers-on to the war party wanted to make a show, they might enroll my proposers and start a new battalion.”

“But,” I remonstrated, “you don’t think the Government is like that?” In reply she smiled:

“I don’t altogether know about that. Parties are parties all the world over. But of course the Washington people wouldn’t do things that are done by local politicians. And one other thing. Don’t imagine for a moment that I think Sam Adams is anything of the kind. He belongs to the service of the nation and takes his orders from his chief. How can he, or any one fixed like him, know the ins and outs of things; except from what he hears privately from home, or gathers from what goes on around him if he is cute?” It appeared to me that all this was tending to establish an argument against taking the American Embassy into confidence, so I struck in before it should be complete. As I was not at liberty to take Marjory into confidence with regard to my source of information, I had to try to get her to agree to what I thought right or necessary on other grounds:

“My dearest, can you not leave out politics, American or otherwise. What on earth have politics to do with us?” She opened her eyes in wonder; she was reasoning better than I was. With an air of conviction she said:

“Why, everything! If any one wants to do me harm, it must be on the grounds of politics. I don’t believe there is any one in the world who could want to injure me on private grounds. Oh! my dear, I don’t want to talk about it, not even to you; but all my life I have tried to help other people in a quiet way. My guardians would tell you that I have asked them for too much money to give to charities; and personally I have tried to do what a girl can in a helpful way to others. I have been in hospitals and homes of all kinds; and I have classes of girls in my own house and try to make them happier and better. Archie, don’t think poorly of me for speaking like this; but I couldn’t bear that you should think I had no sense of the responsibility of great wealth. I have always looked on it as a trust; and I hope, my dear, that in time to come you will help me to bear the burden and to share the trust!” I had thought up to now that I couldn’t love her more than I did. But when I heard her words, and recognised the high purpose that lay behind them, and saw the sweet embarrassment which came to her in speaking them to me, I felt that I had been mistaken. She looked at me lovingly, and, holding my hand in both of hers, went on:

“What then could hurt me except it came from the political side. I could quite understand it if Spaniards wished to harm me, for I have done what I can to hinder them from murdering and torturing other victims. And I could understand if some of our own low-down politicians would try to use me as a stalking horse, though they wouldn’t harm me. I want to keep clear of politics; and I tell you frankly that I shall if I can.”

“But Marjory dear, there may be, I believe there are, Spaniards who would try to harm you. If you were in America you would be safer from them; for there at present, whilst the war is on, every stranger is a marked man. Here, on neutral ground, foreigners are free; and they are not watched and observed in the same way. If there were such fiends, and I am told there are, they might do you a harm before any one could know their intention or have time to forestall them.”

All the native independence of Marjory’s race and nature stood out in strong relief as she answered me:

“My dear Archie, I come from a race of men who have held their lives in their hands from the cradle to the grave. My father, and my grandfather, and my great grandfather were pioneers in Illinois, in Kentucky, in the Rockies and California. They knew that there were treacherous foes behind them every hour of their lives; and yet they were not afraid. And I am not afraid either. Their blood is in my veins, and speaks loudly to me when any sense of fear comes near me. Their brains, as well as their hands, kept guard on their lives; and my brains are like theirs. I do not fear any foe, open or secret. Indeed, when I think of a secret foe all the keenness of my people wakes in me, and I want to fight. And this secret work is a way in which a woman can fight in an age like ours. If my enemies plot, I can counter-plot; if they watch without faltering to catch me off guard, I can keep guard unflinchingly. A woman can’t go out now-a-days, except at odd times, and fight with weapons like Joan of Arc, or the Maid of Saragossa; but she can do her fighting in her own way, level with her time. I don’t see that if there is to be danger around me, why I shouldn’t do as my ancestors did, fight harder than their foes. Here! let me tell you something now, that I intended to say later. Do you know what race of men I come from? Does my name tell you nothing? If not, then this will!”

She took from her neck, where again it had been concealed by a lace collar, the golden jewel which I had rescued from the sea. As I took it in my hand and examined it she went on:

“That came to me from my father, who got it from his, and he from his, on and on till our story of it, which is only verbal, for we have no records, is lost in the legend that it is a relic of the Armada brought to America by two cousins who had married, both being of the family to which the great Sir Francis Drake belonged. I didn’t know, till lately, and none of us ever did, where exactly in the family the last owners of the brooch came in, or how they became possessed of such a beautiful jewel. But you have told me in your translation of Don de Escoban’s narrative. That was the jewel that Benvenuto Cellini made in duplicate when he wrought the figurehead for the Pope’s galley. The Pope gave it to Bernardino de Escoban, and he gave it to Admiral Pedro de Valdes. I have been looking up the history of the time since I saw you, and I found that Admiral de Valdes when he was taken prisoner by Sir Francis Drake at the fight with the Armada was kept, pending his ransom, in the house of Richard Drake, kinsman of Sir Francis. How the Drake family got possession of the brooch I don’t know; but anyhow I don’t suppose they stole it. They were a kindly lot in private, any of them that I ever knew; though when they were in a fight they fought like demons. The old Spanish Dons were generous and free with their presents, and I take it that when Pedro de Valdes got his ransom he made the finest gift he could to those who had been kind to him. That is the way I figure it out.”

Whilst she was speaking, thoughts kept crowding in upon me. Here was indeed the missing link in the chain of Marjory’s connection with the hidden treasure; and here was the beginning of the end of Gormala’s prophecy, for as such I had come to regard it. The Fates were at work upon us. Clotho was spinning the thread which was to enmesh Marjory and myself and all who were in the scheme of the old prophecy of the Mystery of the Sea and its working out.

Once more the sense of impotence grew upon me. We were all as shuttlecocks, buffeted to and fro without power to alter our course. With the thought came that measure of resignation which is the anodyne to despair. In a sort of trance of passivity I heard Marjory’s voice run on:

“Therefore, my dear Archie, I will trust to you to help me. The comradeship which has been between us, will never through this grow less; though nearer and dearer and closer ties may seem to overshadow it.”

I could not answer such reasoning; but I took her in my arms and kissed her. I understood, as she did, that my kisses meant acquiescence in her wishes. After a while I said to her:

“One thing I must do. I owe it as a duty of honour to tell my informant that I am unable to give your address to the American Embassy, and that I cannot myself take a part in anything which is to be done except by your consent. But oh! my dear, I fear we are entering on a dangerous course. We are all staying deliberately in the dark, whilst there is light to be had; and we shall need all the light which we can get.” Then a thought struck me and I added, “By the way, I suppose I am free to give information how I can, so long as you are not committed or compromised?” She thought for quite a few minutes before she answered. I could see that she was weighing up the situation, and considering it from all points of view. Then she said, putting both her hands in mine:

“In this, as in all ways, Archie, I know that I can trust you. There is so much more than even this between us, that I should feel mean to give it a thought hereafter!”