The Trampling of the Lilies | Page 4

inclined little to the "Discourses upon the Origin
of Inequality" which his elbow hugged to his side. Rather was it a
mood of song and joy and things of light, and his mind was running on
a string of rhymes which mentally he offered up to his divinity. A
high-born lady was she, daughter to his lordly employer, the most
noble Marquis of Bellecour. And he a secretary, a clerk! Aye, but a
clerk with a great soul, a secretary with a great belief in the things to
come, which in that musty tome beneath his arm were dimly
prophesied.
And as he roamed beside the brook, his feet treading the elastic, velvety
turf, and crushing heedlessly late primrose and stray violet, his blood
quickened by the soft spring breeze, fragrant with hawthorn and the
smell of the moist brown earth, La Boulaye's happiness gathered

strength from the joy that on that day of spring seemed to invest all
Nature. An old-world song stole from his firm lips-at first timidly, like
a thing abashed in new surroundings, then in bolder tones that echoed
faintly through the trees
"Si le roi m'avait donne Paris, sa grande ville, Et qui'il me fallut quitter
L'amour de ma mie, Je dirais au roi Louis Reprenez votre Paris. J'aime
mieux ma mie, O gai! J'aime mieux ma mie!"
How mercurial a thing is a lover's heart! Here was one whose habits
were of solemnity and gloomy thought turned, so joyous that he could
sing aloud, alone in the midst of sunny Nature, for no better reason than
that Suzanne de Bellecour had yesternight smiled as - for some two
minutes by the clock - she had stood speaking with him.
"Presumptuous that I am," said he to the rivulet, to contradict himself
the next moment. "But no; the times are changing. Soon we shall be
equals all, as the good God made us, and - "
He paused, and smiled pensively. And as again the memory of her
yesternight's kindness rose before him, his smile broadened; it became
a laugh that went ringing down the glade, scaring a noisy thrush into
silence and sending it flying in affright across the scintillant waters of
the brook. Then that hearty laugh broke sharply off, as, behind him, the
sweetest voice in all the world demanded the reason of this
mad-sounding mirth.
La Boulaye's breath seemed in that instant to forsake him and he grew
paler than Nature and the writer's desk had fashioned him. Awkwardly
he turned and made her a deep bow.
" Mademoiselle! You - you see that you surprised me!" he faltered, like
a fool. For how should he, whose only comrades had been books, have
learnt to bear himself in the company of a woman, particularly when
she belonged to the ranks of those whom - despite Rousseau and his
other dear philosophers - he had been for years in the habit of
accounting his betters?

" Why, then, I am glad, Monsieur, that I surprised you in so gay a
humour - for, my faith, it is a rare enough thing."
"True, lady," said he foolishly, yet politely agreeing with her, "it is a
rare thing." And he sighed - "Helas!"
At that the laughter leapt from her young lips, and turned him hot and
cold as be stood awkwardly before her.
"I see that we shall have you sad at the thought of how rare is happiness,
you that but a moment back were - or so it seemed - so joyous. Or is it
that my coming has overcast the sky of your good humour?" she
demanded archly.
He blushed like a school-girl, and strenuously protested that it was not
so. In his haste he fell headlong into the sin of hastiness - as was but
natural - and said perhaps too much.
"Your coming, Mademoiselle?" he echoed. "Nay but even had I been
sad, your coming must have dispelled my melancholy as the coming of
the sun dispels the mist upon the mountains."
"A poet?" She mocked him playfully, with a toss of black curls and a
distracting glance of eyes blue as the heavens above them. "A poet,
Monsieur, and I never suspected it, for all that I held you a great
scholar. My father says you are."
"Are we not all poets at some season of our lives?" quoth he, for
growing accustomed to her presence - ravished by it, indeed - his
courage was returning fast and urging him beyond the limits of
discretion.
"And in what season may this rhyming fancy touch us?" she asked.
"Enlighten me, Monsieur."
He smiled, responsive to her merry mood, and his courage ever
swelling under the suasion of it, he answered her in a fearless, daring
fashion that was oddly unlike