Monsieur Maurice | Page 7

pathetic, half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs--of Bacchus, and Pan, and Polyphemus--of nymphs who became trees, and shepherds who were transformed to fountains, and all kinds of beautiful wild myths of antique Greece--far more beautiful and far more wild than all the tales of gnomes and witches in my book of Hartz legends.
At other times, when the weather was cold or rainy, he would take down his "Mus��e Napol��on," a noble work in eight or ten volumes, and show me engravings after pictures by great masters in the Louvre, explaining them to me as we went along, painting in words the glow and glory of the absent colour, and steeping my childish imagination in golden dreams of Raphael and Titian, and Paulo Veronese.
And sometimes, too, as the dusk came on and the firelight brightened in the gathering gloom, he would take up his guitar, and to the accompaniment of a few slight chords sing me a quaint old French chanson of the feudal times; or an Arab chant picked up in the tent or the Nile boat; or a Spanish ballad, half love-song, half litany, learned from the lips of a muleteer on the Pyrenean border.
For Monsieur Maurice, whatever his present adversities, had travelled far and wide at some foregone period of his life--in Syria, and Persia; in northernmost Tartary and the Siberian steppes; in Egypt and the Nubian desert, and among the perilous wilds of central Arabia. He spoke and wrote with facility some ten or twelve languages. He drew admirably, and had a profound knowledge of the Italian schools of art; and his memory was a rich storehouse of adventure and anecdote, legend and song.
I am an old woman now, and Monsieur Maurice must have passed away many a year ago upon his last long journey; but even at this distance of time, my eyes are dimmed with tears when I remember how he used to unlock that storehouse for my pleasure, and ransack his memory for stories either of his own personal perils by flood and field, or of the hairbreadth 'scapes of earlier travellers. For it was his amusement to amuse me; his happiness to make me happy. And I in return loved him with all my childish heart. Nay, with something deeper and more romantic than a childish love--say rather with that kind of passionate hero-worship which is an attribute more of youth than of childhood, and, like the quality of mercy, blesseth him that gives even more than him that takes.
"What dreadful places you have travelled in, Monsieur Maurice!" I exclaimed one day. "What dangers you have seen!"
He had been showing me a little sketchbook full of Eastern jottings, and had just explained how a certain boat therein depicted had upset with him on a part of the Upper Nile so swarming with alligators that he had to swim for his life, and even so, barely scrambled up the slimy bank in time.
"He who travels far courts many kinds of death," replied Monsieur Maurice; "but he escapes that which is worst--death from ennui."
"Suppose they had dragged you back, when you were half way up the bank!" said I, shuddering.
And as I spoke, I felt myself turn pale; for I could see the brown monsters crowding to shore, and the red glitter of their cruel eyes and the hot breath steaming from their open jaws.
"Then they would have eaten me up as easily as you might swallow an oyster," laughed Monsieur Maurice. "Nay, my child, why that serious face? I should have escaped a world of trouble, and been missed by no one--except poor Ali."
"Who was Ali?" I asked quickly.
"Ali was my Nubian servant--my only friend, then; as you, little Gretchen, are my only friend, now," replied Monsieur Maurice, sadly. "Aye, my only little friend in the wide world--and I think a true one."
I did not know what to say; but I nestled closer to his side; and pressed my cheek up fondly against his shoulder.
"Tell me more about him, Monsieur Maurice," I whispered. "I am so glad he loved you dearly."
"He loved me very dearly," said Monsieur Maurice "so dearly that he gave his life for me."
"But is Ali dead?"
"Ay--Ali is dead. Nay, his story is brief enough, petite. I bought him in the slave market at Cairo--a poor, sickly, soulless lad, half stupid from ill-treatment. I gave him good food, good clothes, and liberty. I taught him to read. I made him my own servant; and his soul and his strength came back to him as if by a miracle. He became stalwart and intelligent, and so faithful that he was ten times more my slave than if I had held him to his bondage. I took him with me through all my Eastern pilgrimage. He was my body-guard; my cook;