Père Antoines Date-Palm | Page 3

the priest was seen sitting by the mound,
his finger closed in the unread breviary.
The summer broke on that sunny land; and in the cool morning twilight,
and after nightfall, Antoine lingered by the grave. He could never be
with it enough.
One morning he observed a delicate stem, with two curiously shaped
emerald leaves, springing up from the centre of the mound. At first he
merely noticed it casually; but presently the plant grew so tall, and was
so strangely unlike anything he had ever seen before, that he examined
it with care.
How straight and graceful and exquisite it was! When it swung to and
fro with the summer wind, in the twilight, it seemed to Antoine as if
little Anglice were standing there in the garden.
The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot, wondering
what manner of blossom it would unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden.
One Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face like a

sailor's, leaned over the garden rail, and said to him,
"What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir!"
"Mon Dieu!" cried Père Antoine starting, "and is it a palm?"
"Yes, indeed," returned the man. "I did n't reckon the tree would
flourish in this latitude."
"Ah, mon Dieu!" was all the priest could say aloud; but he murmured
to himself, "Bon Dieu, vous m'avez donné cela!"
If Père Antoine loved the tree before, he worshipped it now. He
watered it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his arms. Here
were Emile and Anglice and the child, all in one!
The years glided away, and the date-palm and the priest grew
together--only one became vigorous and the other feeble. Père Antoine
had long passed the meridian of life. The tree was in its youth. It no
longer stood in an isolated garden; for pretentious brick and stucco
houses had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They looked down
scowling on the humble thatched roof. The city was edging up, trying
to crowd him off his land. But he clung to it like lichen and refused to
sell.
Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he laughed at them.
Sometimes he was hungry, and cold, and thinly clad; but he laughed
none the less.
"Get thee behind me, Satan!" said the old priest's smile.
Père Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit
under the pliant, caressing leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab;
and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even
in death Père Antoine was faithful to his trust.
The owner of that land loses it if he harm the date-tree.
And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy

stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the
incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. May the hand wither
that touches her ungently!
"Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice," said Miss Blondeau
tenderly.

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