In the Days of My Youth Part 75

I seldom cared in these days for what was going on in the busy outside world; but this morning, my attention having been drawn to the subject, I amused myself, as I paced to and fro, by watching the eager faces of the little throng of idlers. Presently I fell in with the rest, and found myself conning the placard on the tree.

The name that met my astonished eyes on that placard was the name of Hortense Dufresnoy.

The sentence ran thus:--

"Grand Biennial Prize for Poetry--Subject: _The Pa.s.s of Thermopylae_,--Successful Candidate, _Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy_."

Breathless, I read the pa.s.sage twice; then, hearing at a little distance the shrill voice of the importunate newsvender, I plunged after him and stopped him, just as he came to the--

"Frightful murder in the Rue du Faubourg Saint ..."

"Here," said I, tapping him on the shoulder; "give me one of your papers."

The man's eyes glittered.

"Only forty centimes, M'sieur," said he. "'Tis the first I've sold to-day."

He looked poor and wretched. I dropped into his hand a coin that would have purchased all his little sheaf of journals, and hurried away, not to take the change or hear his thanks. He was silent for some moments; then took up his cry at the point where he had broken off, and started away with:--

--"Antoine!--state of the Bourse--latest despatches from the seat of war--news of the day--only forty centimes!"

I took my paper to a quiet bench near the fountain, and read the whole account. There had been eighteen anonymous poems submitted to the Academy. Three out of the eighteen had come under discussion; one out of the three had been warmly advocated by Beranger, one by Lebrun, and the third by some other academician. The poem selected by Beranger was at length chosen; the sealed enclosure opened; and the name of the successful compet.i.tor found to be Hortense Dufresnoy. To Hortense Dufresnoy, therefore, the prize and crown were awarded.

I read the article through, and then went home, hoping to be the first to congratulate her. Timidly, and with a fast-beating heart, I rang the bell at her outer door; for we all had our bells at Madame Bousse's, and lived in our rooms as if they were little private houses.

She opened the door, and, seeing me, looked surprised; for I had never before ventured to pay her a visit in her apartment.

"I have come to wish you joy," said I, not venturing to cross the threshold.

"To wish me joy?"

"You have not seen a morning paper?"

"A morning paper!"

And, echoing me thus, her color changed, and a strange vague look--it might be of hope, it might be of fear--came into her face.

"There is something in the _Moniteur_" I went on, smiling, 'that concerns you nearly."

"That concerns me?" she exclaimed. "_Me_? For Heaven's sake, speak plainly. I do not understand you. Has--has anything been discovered?"

"Yes--it has been discovered at the Academie Francaise that Mademoiselle Hortense Dufresnoy has written the best poem on Thermopylae."

She drew a deep breath, pressed her hands tightly together, and murmured:--

"Alas! is that all?"

"All! Nay--is it not enough to step at once into fame--to have been advocated by Beranger--to have the poem crowned in the Theatre of the Academie Francaise?"

She stood silent, with drooping head and listless hands, all disappointment and despondency. Presently she looked up.

"Where did you learn this?" she asked.

I handed her the journal.

"Come in, fellow-student," said she, and held the door wide for me to enter.

For the second time I found myself in her little _salon_, and found everything in the self-same order.

"Well," I said, "are you not happy?"

She shook her head.

"Success is not happiness," she replied, smiling mournfully. "That Beranger should have advocated my poem is an honor beyond price; but--but I need more than this to make me happy."

And her eyes wandered, with a strange, yearning look, to the sword over the chimney-piece.

Seeing that look, my heart sank, and the tears sprang unbidden to my eyes. Whose was the sword? For whose sake was her life so lonely and secluded? For whom was she waiting? Surely here, if one could but read it aright, lay the secret of her strange and sudden journeys--here I touched unawares upon the mystery of her life!

I did not speak. I shaded my face with my hand, and sat looking on the ground. Then, the silence remaining unbroken, I rose, and examined the drawings on the walls.

They were water-colors for the most part, and treated in a masterly but quite peculiar style. The skies were sombre, the foregrounds singularly elaborate, the color stern and forcible. Angry sunsets barred by lines of purple cirrus stratus; sweeps of desolate heath bounded by jagged peaks; steep mountain pa.s.ses crimson with faded ferns and half-obscured by rain-clouds; strange studies of weeds, and rivers, and lonely reaches of desolate sea-sh.o.r.e ... these were some of the subjects, and all were evidently by the same hand.

"Ah," said Hortense, "you are criticizing my sketches!"

"Your sketches!" I exclaimed. "Are these your work?"

"Certainly," she replied, smiling. "Why not? What do you think of them?"

"What do I think of them! Well, I think that if you had not been a poet you ought to have been a painter. How fortunate you are in being able to express yourself so variously! Are these compositions, or studies from Nature?"

"All studies from Nature--mere records of fact. I do not presume to create--I am content humbly and from a distance to copy the changing moods of Nature."

"Pray be your own catalogue, then, and tell me where these places are."

"Willingly. This coast-line with the run of breaking surf was taken on the sh.o.r.es of Normandy, some few miles from Dieppe. This sunset is a recollection of a glorious evening near Frankfort, and those purple mountains in the distance are part of the Taunus range. Here is an old mediaeval gateway at Solothurn, in Switzerland. This wild heath near the sea is in the neighborhood of Biscay. This quaint knot of ruinous houses in a weed-grown Court was sketched at Bruges. Do you see that milk-girl with her scarlet petticoat and Flemish _faille?_ She supplied us with milk, and her dairy was up that dark archway. She stood for me several times, when I wanted a foreground figure."

"You have travelled a great deal," I said. "Were you long in Belgium?"

"Yes; I lived there for some years. I was first pupil, then teacher, in a large school in Brussels. I was afterwards governess in a private family in Bruges. Of late, however, I have preferred to live in Paris, and give morning lessons. I have more liberty thus, and more leisure."

"And these two little quaint bronze figures?"

"Hans Sachs and Peter Vischer. I brought them from Nuremberg. Hans Sachs, you see, wears a furred robe, and presses a book to his breast.

He does not look in the least like a cobbler. Peter Vischer, on the contrary, wears his leather ap.r.o.n and carries his mallet in his hand.

Artist and iron-smith, he glories in his trade, and looks as st.u.r.dy a little burgher as one would wish to see."

"And this statuette in green marble?"