Lippincotts Magazine, December 1873 | Page 3

which, in his neat tavern, I had recognized
my brave old friend Joliet: it was impossible, by the same shibboleth, to
refuse longer an acquaintance with his daughter.
My entertainer, in fact, was no other than Francine Joliet, grown from a
little female stripling into a distracting pattern of a woman. Twelve
years had never thrown more fortunate changes over a growing human
flower.
[Illustration: A VIRTUOSO.]
The acquaintance being thus renewed, I could not but remember my
last conversation with Joliet--his way of acquainting me with her
absence from home, his mention of her godmother in Brussels, and his
strange reticence as I pressed the subject. A slight chill, owing perhaps
to the undue warmth of my admiration for this delicate creature, fell
over my first cordiality. I asked a question or two, assuming a kind,
elderly type of interest: "How do you find yourself here in Carlsruhe?
Are you satisfactorily placed?"
"As well as possible, dear M. Flemming. I am a bird in its nest."
"Mated, no doubt, my dear?"
"No."
"You are not a widow, I hope, my poor little Francine?"
"No." She blushed, as if she had not been pretty enough before.
"They call you madame, you see."
"A mistress of a hotel, that is the usual title. Is it not the custom among
the Indians of America?"
"The godmother who took care of you--you perceive how well I know
your biography, my child--is she dead, then?"
"No, thank Heaven! She is quite well."
"She is doubtless now living in Carlsruhe?"
"No, at Brussels."
"Then why are you here? why have you quitted so kind a friend?"
My catechism, growing thus more and more brutal, might have been

prolonged until bedtime, but on the arrival of a new traveler she left me
there, with a pen in my hand and a quantity of delicious cobwebs in my
head, saying gently, "I will see you this evening, kind friend."
The same evening, after a botanizing stroll in the adjoining wood--a
treat that my tin box and I had promised each other--I found myself
again with Francine. Full of curiosity as I was concerning her
adventures, I determined that she should direct the conversation herself,
and take her own pretty time to tell the more personal parts of the story.
The stage grisette is perpetually exploring the pockets of her apron.
Francine, who wore a roundabout apron of a white and crackling nature,
adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she
asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that hem with
the nail of her rosy little thumb; when she fell into reminiscences of her
mother, she smoothed the apron respectfully and sadly; when she
proposed a question or a doubt, she extracted little threads from the
seam: at last, perfectly satisfied with the apron, she laid her two small
hands in each other on its dainty snow-bank, and resigned herself to a
perfect torrent of remarks about the horse, the van, the little cabin
among the roses, the small one-eyed dog and the two chickens.
Conversation, a thing which is manufactured by an American girl, is a
thing which takes possession of a French girl.
All the while I remained uninstructed as to why my little Francine had
left her protectress, why she was keeping house at Carlsruhe, and on
what understanding her customers called her madame.
I was obliged to take next day a long alterative excursion among the
trees of the Haardtwald: in fact, her gentle warmth, her freshness, her
nattiness, the very protection she shed over me, were working sad
mischief to my peace of mind. I came upon an old shepherd, who, with
his music-book thrown into a bush in front of him, was leaning back
against a tree and drawing sweet sounds out of a cornet-à-piston.
"Even so," I said, "did Stark the Viking hear the notes of the enchanted
horn teaching every tree he came to the echo of his true-love's name."
But the churlish shepherd, the moment he caught sight of me, put up
his pipe, whistled to his dogs and rejoined the flock. I was dissatisfied
with his unsocial retreat. I felt, with renewed force, that a note was
lacking to the full harmony of my life, and I threw myself upon a bank.
I tried not to see the artificial roads of the forest, alive with city

carriages. I believed myself lost in a primeval wood, and I examined
the state of my heart. I perceived with concern that that organ was still
lacerated. The languid, musical pageant of my youth streamed toward
me again through the leafy aisles, and I remembered my high aspirings,
my poems, my ideals: the floating vision of a Dark Ladye passed or
looked up at me through