Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 15, No. 90, June, 1875

"'Cast thy bread upon the waters,'" I answered, "'and thou shalt find it after many days.'"

"Yes, sir," said Louise: "our curate tells us that prayers are like letters—when properly stamped with faith they always reach their address."

"Ay," exclaimed Henri, "but does God always answer them?"

François drew a mass-book from his pocket and finding the Lord's Prayer, "Look," he said as he pointed to the words, Fiat voluntas tua in terra ut in coelo.

A few minutes after the church-clock struck nine, and by a common impulse all the population of the market-place hurried simultaneously toward the town-hall. The door and ground-floor windows of this building opened at the same time, and we could see the mayor of St. Valéry, with the commissioner of police and a captain of infantry in full uniform, seated at a table upon which stood a cylindrical box horizontally between two pivots. This was the urn. Two gendarmes, one upon each side, stood watching over it with their arms folded. A man came to the window and shouted something which I could not catch, and at the same moment half a dozen mayors of districts, girt with their tri-color sashes, ran up the steps of the Hôtel de Ville to draw for the order in which their respective communes were to present themselves. This formality occupied five minutes, and the mayors then came out again to marshal their people into separate groups. The district in which the Derblays lived was to go up third, and as he came to tell us this the mayor of N– patted François on the back and told him that three was an odd number and therefore lucky. Poor Madeleine was so weak that she could hardly stand up: Louise and I were obliged to support her.

At half-past nine, punctually, the conscription began, and amidst a breathless silence one of the mayor's assistants came to the window and called out the first name: "Adolphe Monnier, of the commune of S–;" and a tall country-boy, elbowing his way through the crowd, walked up into the town-hall. The commissioner of police gave the round box a touch, and as it turned round some six or seven times one might almost have heard a raindrop fall. "Now," said he laughing, "good luck to you!" and the peasant, plunging his hand into the trap of the box, drew out a little piece of card-board rolled into a curl. "No. 17," shouted the infantry captain, taking it from his hands and reading it, whilst a loud roar of laughter from the mob hailed the dismal face with which the unhappy lad heard of his ill-success.

"Oh, what a head for a soldier!" cried some wag in the crowd. "Yes," screamed another, "he'll make the Russians run." "Have you chosen your regiment yet?" barked a third. "Why, of course!" yelped a fourth: "he is to be fife-player in the second battalion of the pope's horse-beadles."

And amid a shower of jokes equally witty No. 17 came down, and a second name was called. After him came a third, and then a fourth, and so on, all equally unlucky; and no wonder, since all the numbers up to one hundred were losing ones. There were great differences in the way in which the youths bore their discomfiture: some went up crying to the urn and trembled as in an ague whilst it was rolling round; three stamped and sobbed like children when they had lost, and the crowd, ever charitable in its doings, threw about their ears by way of comfort a volley of epigrams which pricked them like so many wasps; others, on the contrary, went up laughing, and upon drawing a bad number stuck the card in their hats and came down bandying jokes with the mob as unconcernedly as though they had been only taking a pinch of snuff instead of selling seven long years of their lives. Others, again, trying to imitate the latter, but in reality too miserable to do so with ease, only succeeded in making themselves ridiculous, drawing upon themselves an extra amount of squibs from the spectators; upon which, like young steers worried by mosquitoes, they would begin distributing kicks and blows right and left with most liberal profusion, to the no small disgust of the mayor and the immense amusement of the infantry captain, who laughed like an ox in a clover-field.

At last a boy went up and drew the number 109: frantic cheers greeted this check to fortune, and the lucky fellow rushed down with such wild demonstrations of joy that it would have been no great folly to have mistaken him for a criminal just reprieved.

A few minutes after the commune of Henri Derblay was called up. Henri himself was sixth on the roll. His father's face had become livid; his mother hung so heavily on my arm that I fancied at one moment she had fainted; Louise was as white as a sheet, and her lips, bloodless and cold, looked blue and frozen as ice.

"Courage, Henri!" I said: "more than forty have drawn, and but one winning number has come out yet: you will have at least nine good chances."

"Henri Derblay, of the commune of N–," cried an official, and we all started as though a gun had been fired. The moment had come: a minute more and the doubt would become certainty.

"Courage, mother!" whispered the boy, stooping over Madeleine and repeating in a faltering tone the words I had just spoken to him.

The poor woman was speechless: she tried to smile, but her face twitched as though in a convulsion. "My child—" she whispered, and stopped short.

"Henri Derblay!" cried the voice again, and the crowd around repeated the cry: "Be quick, Derblay, they are waiting for you."

The boy drew his sleeve across his eyes and tottered up to the steps of the hall. Louise fell down on her knees; François and his wife did the same; for myself, my temples throbbed as in fever, my hands were dry as wood, and my eyes, fixed on the conscription-urn, seemed starting out of their sockets.

Henri walked up to the box.

"Allons, mon garçon," said the mayor, "un peu d'aplomb;" and he opened the lid. Derblay thrust in his hand: his face was turned toward us, and I could see him draw out his ticket and give it to the captain: a moment's deep silence.

"No. 3!" roared the officer; and a howl of derision from the mob covered his words. Henri had become a soldier.

I could not well see what then followed: there was a sudden hush, a chorus of exclamations, a rush toward the steps of the town-hall, and then the crowd fell back to make way for two gendarmes who were carrying a body between them.

"Is he dead?" asked a number of voices.

"Oh no," tittered the two men—"only fainted: he'll soon come round again." And the mob burst into a laugh.

E.C. GRENVILLE MURRAY.

THE SYMPHONY

"O Trade! O Trade! would thou wert dead!The age needs heart—'tis tired of head.We're all for love," the violins said."Of what avail the rigorous taleOf coin for coin and box for bale?Grant thee, O Trade! thine uttermost hope,Level red gold with blue sky-slope,And base it deep as devils grope,When all's done what hast thou wonOf the only sweet that's under the sun?Ay, canst thou buy a single sighOf true love's least, least ecstasy?"Then all the mightier strings, assembling,Fell a-trembling, with a tremblingBridegroom's heart-beats quick resembling;Ranged them on the violin's sideLike a bridegroom by his bride,And, heart in voice, together cried:"Yea, what avail the endless taleOf gain by cunning and plus by sale?Look up the land, look down the land—The poor, the poor, the poor, they standWedged by the pressing of Trade's handAgainst an inward-opening doorThat pressure tightens ever more:They sigh, with a monstrous foul-air sigh,For the outside heaven of liberty,Where Art, sweet lark, translates the skyInto a heavenly melody.'Each day, all day' (these poor folks say),'In the same old year-long, drear-long way,We weave in the mills and heave in the kilns,We sieve mine-meshes under the hills,And thieve much gold from the Devil's bank tills,To relieve, O God, what manner of ills?—Such manner of ills as brute-flesh thrills.The beasts, they hunger, eat, sleep, die,And so do we, and our world's a sty;And, fellow-swine, why nuzzle and cry?Swinehood hath never a remedy,The rich man says, and passes by,And clamps his nostril and shuts his eye.Did God say once in God's sweet tone,Man shall not live by bread alone,But by all that cometh from His white throne?Yea: God said so,But the mills say No,And the kilns and the strong bank-tills say No:There's plenty that can, if you can't. Go to:Move out, if you think you're underpaid.The poor are prolific; we re not afraid;Business is business; a trade is a trade,Over and over the mills have said.'"And then these passionate hot protestingsChanged to less vehement moods, untilThey sank to sad suggestingsAnd requestings sadder still:"And oh, if the world might some time see'Tis not a law of necessityThat a trade just naught but a trade must be!Does business mean, Die, you—live, I?Then 'business is business' phrases a lie:'Tis only war grown miserly.If Traffic is battle, name it so:War-crimes less will shame it so,And we victims less will blame it so.But oh, for the poor to have some partIn the sweeter half of life called Art,Is not a problem of head, but of heart.Vainly might Plato's head revolve it:Plainly the heart of a child could solve it."And then, as when our words seem all too rudeWe cease from speech, to take our thought and broodBack in our heart's great dark and solitude,So sank the strings to heartwise throbbing,Of long chords change-marked with sobbing—Motherly sobbing, not distinctlier heardThan half wing-openings of the sleeping bird,Some dream of danger to her young hath stirred.Then stirring and demurring ceased, and lo!Every least ripple of the strings' song flowDied to a level with each level bow,And made a great chord tranquil-surfaced soAs a brook beneath his curving bank doth goTo linger in the sacred dark and greenWhere many boughs the still pool overlean,And many leaves make shadow with their sheen.But presentlyA velvet flute-note fell down pleasantlyUpon the bosom of that harmony,And sailed and sailed incessantly,As if a petal from a wild-rose blownHad fluttered down upon that pool of tone,And boatwise dropped o' the convex sideAnd floated down the glassy tide,And clarified and glorifiedThe solemn spaces where the shadows bide.From the velvet convex of that fluted noteSomewhat, half song, half odor, forth did float—As if God turned a rose into a throat—"When Nature from her far-off glenFlutes her soft messages to men,The flute can say them o'er again;Yea, Nature, singing sweet and lone,Breathes through life's strident polyphoneThe flute-voice in the world of tone.Sweet friends,Man's love ascendsTo finer and diviner endsThan man's mere thought e'er comprehends.For I, e'en I,As here I lie,A petal on a harmony,Demand of Science whence and whyMan's tender pain, man's inward cry,When he doth gaze on earth and sky?Behold, I grow more bold:I holdFull powers from Nature manifold.I speak for each no-tonguèd treeThat, spring by spring, doth nobler be,And dumbly and most wistfullyHis mighty prayerful arms outspreadsAbove men's oft-unheeding heads,And his big blessing downward sheds.I speak for all-shaped blooms and leaves,Lichens on stones and moss on eaves,Grasses and grains in ranks and sheaves;Broad-fronded ferns and keen-leaved canes,And briery mazes bounding lanes,And marsh-plants, thirsty-cupped for rains,And milky stems and sugary veins;For every long-armed woman-vineThat round a piteous tree doth twine;For passionate odors, and divinePistils, and petals crystalline;All purities of shady springs,All shynesses of film-winged thingsThat fly from tree-trunks and bark-rings;All modesties of mountain-fawnsThat leap to covert from wild lawns,And tremble if the day but dawns;All sparklings of small beady eyesOf birds, and sidelong glances wiseWherewith the jay hints tragedies;All piquancies of prickly burs,And smoothnesses of downs and fursOf eiders and of minevers;All limpid honeys that do lieAt stamen-bases, nor denyThe humming-birds' fine roguery,Bee-thighs, nor any butterfly;All gracious curves of slender wings,Bark-mottlings, fibre-spiralings,Fern-wavings and leaf-flickerings;Each dial-marked leaf and flower-bellWherewith in every lonesome dellTime to himself his hours doth tell;All tree-sounds, rustlings of pine-cones,Wind-sighings, doves' melodious moans,And night's unearthly undertones;All placid lakes and waveless deeps,All cool reposing mountain-steeps,Vale-calms and tranquil lotos-sleeps;Yea, all fair forms, and sounds, and lights,And warmths, and mysteries, and mights,Of Nature's utmost depths and heights,——These doth my timid tongue present,Their mouthpiece and lead instrumentAnd servant, all love-eloquent.I heard, when 'All for love' the violins cried:Nature through me doth take their human side.That soul is like a groom without a brideThat ne'er by Nature in great love hath sighed.Much time is run, and man hath changed his ways,Since Nature, in the antique fable-days,Was hid from man's true love by proxy fays,False fauns and rascal gods that stole her praise.The nymphs, cold creatures of man's colder brain,Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fainNever to lave its love in them again.Later, a sweet Voice Love thy neighbor said;Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspreadBeyond all confines of old ethnic dread.Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head:'All men are neighbors,' so the sweet Voice said.So, when man's arms had measure as man's race,The liberal compass of his warm embraceStretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space;With hands a-grope he felt smooth Nature's grace,Drew her to breast and kissed her sweetheart face:His heart found neighbors in great hills and treesAnd streams and clouds and suns and birds and bees,And throbbed with neighbor-loves in loving these.But oh, the poor! the poor! the poor!That stand by the inward-opening doorTrade's hand doth tighten ever more,And sigh with a monstrous foul-air sighFor the outside heaven of liberty,Where Nature spreads her wild blue skyFor Art to make into melody!Thou Trade! thou king of the modern days!Change thy ways,Change thy ways;Let the sweaty laborers fileA little while,A little while,Where Art and Nature sing and smile.Trade! is thy heart all dead, all dead?And hast thou nothing but a head?I'm all for heart," the flute-voice said,And into sudden silence fled,Like as a blush that while 'tis redDies to a still, still white instead.Thereto a thrilling calm succeeds,Till presently the silence breedsA little breeze among the reedsThat seems to blow by sea-marsh weeds:Then from the gentle stir and fretSings out the melting clarionet,Like as a lady sings while yetHer eyes with salty tears are wet."O Trade! O Trade!" the Lady said,"I too will wish thee utterly deadIf all thy heart is in thy head.For O my God! and O my God!What shameful ways have women trodAt beckoning of Trade's golden rod!Alas when sighs are traders' lies,And heart's-ease eyes and violet eyesAre merchandise!O purchased lips that kiss with pain!O cheeks coin-spotted with smirch and stain!O trafficked hearts that break in twain!—And yet what wonder at my sisters' crime?So hath Trade withered up Love's sinewy prime,Men love not women as in olden time.Ah, not in these cold merchantable daysDeem men their life an opal gray, where playsThe one red sweet of gracious ladies' praise.Now comes a suitor with sharp prying eye—Says, Here, you Lady, if you'll sell, I'll buy:Come, heart for heart—a trade? What! weeping? why?Shame on such wooers' dapper mercery!I would my lover kneeling at my feetIn humble manliness should cry, O sweet!I know not if thy heart my heart will meet:I ask not if thy love my love can greet:Whatever thy worshipful soft tongue shall say,I'll kiss thine answer, be it yea or nay:I do but know I love thee, and I prayTo be thy knight until my dying day.Woe him that cunning trades in hearts contrives!Base love good women to base loving drives.If men loved larger, larger were our lives;And wooed they nobler, won they nobler wives."There thrust the bold straightforward hornTo battle for that lady lorn;With heartsome voice of mellow scorn,Like any knight in knighthood's morn."Now comfort thee," said he,"Fair Ladye.Soon shall God right thy grievous wrong,Soon shall man sing thee a true-love song,Voiced in act his whole life long,Yea, all thy sweet life long,Fair Ladye.Where's he that craftily hath saidThe day of chivalry is dead?I'll prove that lie upon his head,Or I will die instead,Fair Ladye.Is Honor gone into his grave?Hath Faith become a caitiff knave,And Selfhood turned into a slaveTo work in Mammon's cave,Fair Ladye?Will Truth's long blade ne'er gleam again?Hath Giant Trade in dungeons slainAll great contempts of mean-got gainAnd hates of inward stain,Fair Ladye?For aye shall Name and Fame be sold,And Place be hugged for the sake of gold,And smirch-robed Justice feebly scoldAt Crime all money-bold,Fair Ladye?Shall self-wrapt husbands aye forgetKiss-pardons for the daily fretWherewith sweet wifely eyes are wet—Blind to lips kiss-wise set—Fair Ladye?Shall lovers higgle, heart for heart,Till wooing grows a trading martWhere much for little, and all for part,Make love a cheapening art,Fair Ladye?Shall woman scorch for a single sinThat her betrayer can revel in,And she be burnt, and he but grinWhen that the flames begin,Fair Ladye?Shall ne'er prevail the woman's plea,We maids would far, far whiter beIf that our eyes might sometimes seeMen maids in purity,Fair Ladye?Shall Trade aye salve his conscience-achesWith jibes at Chivalry's old mistakes,The wars that o'erhot knighthood makesFor Christ's and ladies' sakes,Fair Ladye?Now by each knight that e'er hath prayedTo fight like a man and love like a maid,Since Pembroke's life, as Pembroke's blade,I' the scabbard, death, was laid,Fair Ladye.I dare avouch my faith is brightThat God doth right and God hath might,Nor time hath changed His hair to white,Nor His dear love to spite,Fair Ladye.I doubt no doubts: I strive, and shrive my clay,And fight my fight in the patient modern wayFor true love and for thee—ah me! and prayTo be thy knight until my dying day,Fair Ladye,"Said that knightly horn, and spurred awayInto the thick of the melodious fray.And then the hautboy played and smiled,And sang like a little large-eyed child,Cool-hearted and all undefiled."Huge Trade!" he said,"Would thou wouldst lift me on thy head,And run where'er my finger led!Once said a Man—and wise was He—Never shalt thou the heavens see,Save as a little child thou be."Then o'er sea-lashings of commingling tunesThe ancient wise bassoons,Like weirdGray-beardOld harpers sitting on the wild sea-dunes,Chanted runes:"Bright-waved gain, gray-waved loss,The sea of all doth lash and toss,One wave forward and one across.But now 'twas trough, now 'tis crest,And worst doth foam and flash to best,And curst to blest."Life! Life! thou sea-fugue, writ from east to west,Love, Love alone can poreOn thy dissolving scoreOf wild half-phrasings,Blotted ere writ,And double erasings.Of tunes full fit.Yea, Love, sole music-master blest,May read thy weltering palimpsest.To follow Time's dying melodies through,And never to lose the old in the new,And ever to solve the discords true—Love alone can do.And ever Love hears the poor-folks' crying,And ever Love hears the women's sighing,And ever sweet knighthood's death-defying,And ever wise childhood's deep implying,And never a trader's glozing and lying."And yet shall Love himself be heard,Though long deferred, though long deferred:O'er the modern waste a dove hath whirred:Music is Love in search of a Word."SIDNEY LANIER.

THE BLOUSARD IN HIS HOURS OF EASE

Bulwer in his last novel said something to the effect that an orang-outang would receive a degree of polish and refinement by ten years of life in Paris. This statement is not to be taken literally, of course: I have detected no special polish of manners in the monkeys confined at the Jardin d'Acclimatation in Paris, some of whom are pretty well on in years. The novelist only sought to make a strong expression of his good opinion of French manners, no doubt. In observing the blouse wearers of Paris in their hours of ease and relaxation, I have been struck with the great prevalence of a certain unforced courtesy of manner, even among the coarsest. No one would dream what a howling demon this creature could and did become in the days of the Commune who should see him enjoying himself at his ball, his concert, his theatre or his dinner.

I suppose no one not in the confidence of the managers of these places would readily credit to what an extent the public masquerade-balls of Paris are the peculiar possession of the blousard. The gaping crowds of English and Americans who go to the disreputable Jardin Mabille and the like resorts in summer to gaze at what they imagine is a scene of French revelry, do not know that the cancan-dancer there is paid for his jollity. The men who dance at the Jardin Mabille are not there for revelry's sake: they are earning a few sous from the manager, who knows that he must do something to amuse his usual spectators—viz., the tourists—who go back to Manchester or to Omaha and astonish their friends with tales of the goings-on of those dreadful Frenchmen in Paris. The women who disport in the cancan at the same place are simply hired by the season. It is not at the Jardin Mabille that the visitor to Paris need ever look to see genuine revelry: the place is as much a place of jollification for the people as the stage of a theatre is, and no more. Very often the dancer at night is a blousard by day. So at many of the masquerade-balls which rage in the winter, particularly during the weeks just preceding Mardi Gras. These are less purely tourist astonishers than the Jardin Mabille. They are largely visited by the fast young men and old beaux and roués of Paris, but these are almost never seen to go upon the floor and dance. In the crowded ball-room of the Valentino on a masquerade-night you may have observed with wondering awe the gyrations of an extraordinary couple around whom a ring has been formed, giving them free space on the floor for their wild abandon of exercise. The man is long, lank and grotesque; he wears a tail coat which reaches the floor, and upon his back is strapped a crazy guitar with broken strings; his false nose stands out from his face at prodigious length; his hat is a bottle, his gloves are buckskin gauntlets, and his trousers are those of a circus-rider. The woman does not hide her face with a mask, for her face is her fortune, and she cannot afford to hide it: she is painted tastefully with vermilion and white; abundant false curls cluster at her neck, and are surmounted by a dainty little punchinello cap in pink silk and gilding; her dress is every color of the rainbow, and reaches to her knees; blue gaiters with pink rosettes are on her feet, and kid gloves are on her hands. The saltatory terpsichoreanisms of this couple are seemingly inspired by a mad gayety of spirit which only the utmost extravagance of gesture and pirouette will satisfy. The man flings his feet above the woman's head; the woman sinks to the floor, and springs up again as if made of tempered steel; and as a conclusion to the figure she turns a complete somersault in the air. If you are so innocent as to suppose that these performers are exerting themselves in that manner for the mere pleasure of the thing, you are innocent indeed. They are "artists," and receive a salary from the manager of the Valentino.

To innumerable blousards in Paris these dancers are objects of emulation. The Valentino supports a large troupe of such performers, and is less often the scene of the blousard's efforts, therefore, than ball-rooms where the regular corps of dancers is smaller. The matter of the admission-fee also regulates the blousard to some extent in his choice of resort. At the mask-balls he most favors—such as the Élysée-Montmartre at the Barrière Rochechouart, or the Tivoli Waux-Hall (sic) near the Château d'Eau—there is no charge for admission to cavaliers in costume. Tourists sometimes stumble upon these places, but not often: they are remote from the gay quarter which foreigners haunt.

The neighborhood of the Château d'Eau—an immense paved space at the junction of the Boulevards St. Martin and du Temple—is to the blousard what the neighborhood of the Madeleine is to the small shopkeeper. He does not frequent it every day: it is a scene for special visits—more expensive than the immediate quarter where he eats, drinks and sleeps, and more attractive. There is a café on the southern side of the esplanade, where, if you go on a Saturday night, you may see a curious sight. It is after midnight that the place is thronged. Descending a broad flight of steps, you turn to the right and go down another flight, entering an immense underground hall, broken up with sturdy square pillars, and brilliant with mirrors which line walls and pillars in every direction. Here are gathered a great number of men and women, sitting at the tables, drinking beer and wine, playing cards, dominoes and backgammon, and filling the air with the incessant din of conversation and the smoke of pipes and cigars. The women are generally bareheaded or in muslin caps. The men are almost without exception in blouses—some white, some black, some in the newest stages of shiny blue gingham, some faded with long wearing and frequent washing. Caps and soft hats are universal: a tall hat is nowhere to be seen—a fact which is much more significant in Paris than it would be in America, for in Paris the tall hat is almost de rigueur among the better classes. Girls from sixteen to twenty years of age stroll in from the street bareheaded with the cool manner of boys, quite alone and unconcerned, looking around quietly to see if there is any one they know: in case of recognizing an acquaintance they perhaps sit down to a game or stand with hands in pockets and converse. They have not the air of nymphes du pavé, and are simply grisettes (working-girls), passing away their idle hours in precisely the same independent way as if they were of the opposite sex. For the price of the glass of beer which he orders when he sits down (six cents) the blousard can sit here all night, playing cards and smoking.