Lippincotts Magazine, December 1873 | Page 4

the broken waves of Oblivion; she listened to
my rhapsodies with the old puzzling silence; she confided to me certain
Sibylline leaves out of her diary; then she receded, cold and
unresponsive, a statue cut out of a shadow. I was obliged to untie my
cravat. Finally, I fell asleep and dreamed of Mary Ashburton crowned
with the neat workwoman's cap of Francine Joliet. I returned to dinner
considerably exalted, and just touched with rheumatism.
The soup was glacial, the roast was steaming, the conversation was
geographical. "Pray, M. Flemming," said my neighbor (he had been
stealing a look at the register of visitors' names), "can cattle be wintered
out of doors as far north as Pennsylvania, or only up to Virginia?"
"Pray," said another, "is not New York situated between the North
River and the Hudson?"
The prayer of a third made itself audible: "Ought we to say 'Delightful
_Wy_oming,' after Campbell, or Wy_o_ming?"
"We ought to eat with thankfulness the good things set before us," I
replied, with some presence of mind. "Excuse me, gentlemen," I added,
to carry off my vivacity, "but I think informing conversation is a bore
until after the nuts and raisins. A Danish proverb says that he who
knows what he is saying at a feast has but poor comprehension of what
he is eating. On my way hither, breakfasting at Strasburg, I enjoyed a
lesson in geography, and I aver that though the lesson was elementary,
I breakfasted very badly."
[Illustration: DELIGHTS OF THE VERLOBTEN.]
"Who was the teacher?" asked the explorer of Wyoming, a German, in
the tone of a man to whom no professor of Geography could properly
be a stranger.
"The teacher," I answered with a smile, "was one Fortnoye--"
I did not finish my sentence. At that name, Fortnoye, a kind of electric
movement was communicated around the board. Every eye sought the
face of Francine, who, troubled and confused, fell upon the cutlet
placed before her and cut it feverishly into flinders. Evidently there was

a secret thereabouts. When coffee was on, I applied myself to satisfying
the topographic doubts of my neighbors, but the name of the
geographical professor was approached no more.
When dinner was over, and only two stranded Belgians remained at
table, discussing whether the Falls of Niagara plunge from the United
States into Canada, or from Canada into the United States, I stole into
the narrow office, believing I should see Francine.
She was not there, but the register was lying on the desk. I fell to
turning the leaves over furiously: I felt that I was on the trail of
Fortnoye. I was not long in amassing a quantity of discoveries. Going
back to the previous year, I found the signature of Fortnoye in March
and April; in July and September, Fortnoye bound up and down the
Rhine; in the depth of the winter, Monsieur Tonson-Fortnoye come
again! Evidently one of the most frequent guests of my delicate
Francine was the interpreter of Cosmos in Strasburg, the white-bearded
mystifier of the champagne-cellar, the finest singing-voice in Épernay.
[Illustration: THE CHURCHYARD LOVER.]
Toward ten o'clock, as I paced the little grove called the Oak Wood, I
saw at the miniature lake four persons, who were regaining the bank
after trying to detach the little boat moored by the shore. They were just
the four from our social table with whom I best agreed. I joined the
party, and, hooking now a friendly arm to the elbow of one, now to that
of another, I soon obtained all they had to communicate on the subject
which occupied my mind. Each knew Fortnoye intimately: the result of
my quadratic amounted to the following:
First. Fortnoye, educated at the Polytechnic School in Paris, is a man of
grave character and profound learning.
Second. Fortnoye is a roysterer, latterly occupied in extending the
connection of a champagne-house at Épernay. He is a Bohemian, even
a poet: he can rhyme, but strictly in the interests of commerce--he
composes only drinking-songs.
Third. Fortnoye is an exploded speculator, dismissed from the French
Board: obliged to beat a retreat to Belgium, he soon found himself in
Baden, where he had good luck at the green table shortly before the
war.

_Fourth, and last_. (This was from the man of Wyoming.) Fortnoye
only retreated to Belgium as a refuge for his demagogic opinions. He
belongs to the innermost circle of the Commune and to all the French
and Italian secret associations. He is represented in the background of
several of Courbet's pictures. He has been everywhere: in Italy he
joined the society of the Mary Anne, where he met the celebrated
Lothair. This order has a branch called the Society of Pure Illumination.
If he has liberty to return into France, it is