FOLLE-FARINE.
Id
left unused by them, partly because the river had been "They are the dead, surely," she thought, as she
known to rise high enough to flood the floor; partly be- [stood among them: and she stayed there, with her
arise legend had bequeathed to it a ghastly repute of arms folded on her breast to still its beating, lest any
wirits of murdered men who haunted it,                          sound should anger them and betray her; a thing lower
No man or woman in rill the country round dared than the dusta mortal amidst this great immortal
venture to it after nightfall ; it was all that the stoutest'
would do to'fetch and carry grain there at broad day;
and the peasant who, being belated, rowed his market-
boat past it when the moon was high, moved his oar
with one trembling hand, and with the other crossed
himself unceasingly.
To Folle-Farine it bore no such terror.
The unconscious pantheism breathed into her with
her earliest thoughts, with the teachings of Phratos,
made her see a nameless mystical and always wondrous
beauty in every blade of grass that fed on the dew, and
with the light rejoiced; in every bare brown stone that
host.
The mists and the shadows between her eyes and
them parted them as with a sea of dim and subtle
vapor, through which they looked white and impalpa
ble as a summer cloud, when it seems to lean and
touch the edge of the world in a gray, quiet dawn.
They were but the creations of an artist's classic
dreams, but to her they seemed to thrill, to move, to
sigh, to gaze on her; to her, they seemed to live with
that life of the air, of the winds, of the stars, of silence
and solitude, and all the nameless liberties of death, of
which she dreamed when, shunned, and cursed, and
ished to gold in bright brook waters, under a tuft of   hungered, she looked up to the skies at night from a
weed; in every hillside stream that leaping and laugh- ; sleepless bed.
og sparkled in the sun;   in every wind that wailing
went over the sickness of the weary world.
For such a temper, no shape of the day or the night,
no miracle of life or of death can have terror; it can
Tfiey were indeed the dead: the dead of that fair
time when all the earth was young, and men communed
with their deities, and loved them, and were not afraid.
When their gods were with them in their daily lives.
dread nothing, because every created thing has in it a   when in every breeze that curled the sea, in every
or eau uv^,.,b, "   _ _   _.___. s___,___                                 ii ,!,,- AvrfrcnnA it, tlit. urr-^t  m *>verv water-course
divine origin and an eternal mystery.
As she and the boat passed out into the loneliness ot
the country, with fitful moon-gleams to light its pas-
sage, the weather and the stream grew wilder yet.
There were on both sides strips of the silvery inland
sands, beds of tall reeds, and the straight stems of pop-
lars, ghostlike in the gloom. The tide rushed faster;
the winds blew more strongly from the north; the boat
rocked, and now and then was washed with water, till
its edges were submerged.
She stood up in it, and gave her strength to its guid-
ance; it was all that she could do to keep its course
straight, and steer it so that it should not grate upon
the sand, nor be blown into the tangles of the river
For herself she had no care, she could swim like any
cygnet; and for her own sport had spent hours m water
at all seasons. But she krrew that to Claudis Flamma
the boat was an honored treasure, since to replace it
would have cost him many a hard-earned and well-
loved piece of money..
As she stood thus upright in the little tossing vessel
cloud that darkened in the west, in every water-course
that leaped and sparkled in the sacred cedar groves, in
every bee-sucked blossom of wild thyme that grew
purple by the marble temple steps, 'the breath and the
glance of the gods were felt, the footfall and the voice
of the gods were heard.                                              .
They were indeed the dead: the dead whodying
earliest, whilst yet the earth was young enough to sor-
row for its heroic lives to embalm them, to remember
them, and count them worthy of lamentperished in
their bodies, but lived forever immortal in tbe tradi-
tions of the world.
From every space of the somber chamber some one
of these gazed on her through the mist.
Here the silver dove of Argos winged her way through
the iron-jaws of the dark se-gates.
Here the white Io wandered in exile and unresting,
forever scourged on by the sting in her flesh, as a man
by the genius in him.                                    ,          ,
Here the glad god whom all the woodlands loved
played in the moonlight, on his reeds, to the young stags
that couched at his feet in golden beds of daffodrls and
against the darkness and the winds, she passed the ! asphodel.
solitary building;   it had been placed so  low down      Here in a darkened land the great Demeter moved
against the shore, that its front walls, strong of hewn   bereaved arrd childless, bidding fhe vine be barren, and
stone, and deep bedded in the soil, were half submerged \ the fig-trees fruitless, and the seed of the sown furrows
in the dense growth of the reeds and of the willowy i strengthless to multiply and fill the sickles with rrpe
osiers which grew up and brushed the great arched j increase.
windows of its haunted hall.   The lower half of one of      Here the women of Thebes danced upon Crthferon in
the seven windows had been blown wide often; a broad I the ma(1 m00nless nights, under the cedars, with loose
square casement, braced with iron bars, looking out ; hair on trie wind, and bosoms that heaved and brake
upon the river, and lighted by a sickly glimmer of the   through their girdles of fawnskin.
moon.                                                                             ,        Here at his labor, in Pherae, the sun-god toiled as a
Her boat was swayed close against the wall, in a sud-   siave; the highest wrought as the lowest; while wise
den lurch, caused by a fiercer gust of wind and hrgher   Hermes stood by and made mirth of the kingship that
wave of the strong tide:  the rushes entangled it;   rt   had bartered the rod of dominion for the mere music
grounded on the sand. There was no chance, she knew, , wrijcn empty air could make in a hollow reed,
of setting it afloat again without her leaving it to gain j                       .    b   th   . ods stooci Hypnos, and Onei-
a footing on the lana, and use her force to push it off , ^^^^^^Pbowed heads crowned with
into the current.                                                                i ._' noI)m. an(1 moonwort, the flowering fern, and the
Sire leaped out without a moment's thought among i J?P?Hg am\ pressed to their lips, a white rose, in
the rushes, with her kirtle girt up close above her knees. , f^^n^'e*t symbo1of silence ; fashioned in the same
She sank to lie.' ankles in the sand and stood to her | ^^l^^th tte same winged feet, which yet fall so
waist in the water.                                                            i qoffiv tj,'at no human ears hear their coming; the godr
But she was almost as light and sure of foot as a moor- : g^J??St of a 1 have pity on men     '
gull, when it lights upon the treacherous mosses of a   S|Lfo0frt5" Grave P
Bog   arrd standing on the soaked and shelving bank, , Night and ot t.
she thrust herself with all her might against her boat, ,   , *X'
dislodged it, and pushed it out once more afloat               "<^  -^""silvery as "smoke, in from the misty river.
She was about to wade to it and.spring into it, before ! dense ^1^ as smo ^ ^ ^^ ^ ^ ^^
nor story, and yet they spoke to her. with   familiar
-the gods of the
These she saw, not plainly, but through the wavering
shadows and the halo of the vapors which   floated,
the stream had time to move, it farther out, when an
owl flew from the open window behind her. Uncon-
sciously she turned her head to look whence the^bird
had come.
She saw the wide dark square of the opened case-
ment; the gleam of a lamp within-the cavern-like vast-
ness of the vaulted hall. Instinctively she paused, and
drew closer, and forgot the boat.
The stone sills of the seven windows were level with
the topmost sprays of the tall reeds and the willowy
underwood; they were, therefore, level with herself.
Slw saw straight in; saw, so far as the pale uncertain
fusion of moon arrd lamp rays showed them, the height
and width of this legend haunted place; vaulted and
pillared with timber and with stone; dim and lonely as
a cathedral crypt; and with the night birds flying to !
and fro in it, as in a ruin, seeking their nests in its
rafters and in the capitals of its columns.
No fear, but a great awe fell upon her. She let the
boat drift on its way unheeded; and stood there at gaze
hke a forest doe.
She had passed this grain tower with every day or
night that she had gone down the river upr the errands
of her taskmaster; but she had never looked within it
once, holding the peasants' stories and terrors m the
cold scorn of her intrepid courage.
Now, when she looked, she for the first trme behtred
-believed that the dead lived and gathered there.
White, shadowy, countless shapes loomed through
the gloom, all motionless, all noiseless, all beautiful ^
with the serene yet terrible loveliness of death.
voices. She knew them; she knew that they were
gods, and yet to the world were dead; and in the eyes
of the forst-god, who piped upon his reeds, she saw
the eyes of Phratos look on her with their tender laugh-
ter aiid their unforgotten love.                           ....
Just so had he'looked so long agoso long!in the
deep woods at moonrise, when he had played to the
bounding fawns, to*the leaping waters, to the listening
trees, to the sleeping flowers.
They had called him an outcastand lo!she found
him a god.                                                              ,
She sank on her knees, and buried her face m her
hands and weptwept with grief for the living lost for-
everwept witr ioy that the dead forever lived.
Tears had rarely sprung to her proud, rebellious eyes;
she deemed them human thingsthings of weakness
and of shame; she had thrust them back and bit her lips
till the blood came in a thousand hours of pain, rather
than men should see them arrd exult. The passion had
its way for once, and spent itself,-andpassed. She rose
trembling and pale, with her eyes wet and drmmed in
luster, like stars that shine through ram, and looked
around her fearfully.                        ,     .                    .
She thought that the gods might rise in wrath against
her, even as mortals did, for daring to be weary of her
life
As she rose, she saw for the first time before the cold
hearth the body of a man.
It was stretched straightly out on the stone floor; the
whereby they mean the self-sown fruit of their own
faults and follies.
Had the gods slain himbeing a mortalfor bis en-
trance there?
Marcellin in legends had told her of such things.
He was human; with a human beauty; which, yet
white and cold and golden, full of serenity and sad-
ness, was like the sun-god's yonder, and very strange
to her whose eyes had only rested on the sunburnt,
pinched, and rugged faces or the populace around her.
That beauty allured her; she forgot that, he had
against her the crime of that humanity which she hatod.
He was to her like some noble forest beast, some
splendid bird of prey, struck down by a bolt from some
murderous bow, strengthless and senseless, yet ma-
jestic even irr its fall.
" The gods slew him because he dared to be too like
themselves," she thought, " else he could not be so
beautifulheonly a man, and dead?"
The dreamy intoxication of fancy had deadened her
to all sense of time or fact. The exaltation of nerve
and brain made all fantastic fantasies seem possible to
her as truth.
Herself, she was strong; and desolate no more, since
the eyes of the immortals had smiled on her, and bade
her welcome there; and she felt an infinite pity on
him, inasmuch as with all his likeness to them he yet,
having incurred their wrath, lay helpless there as any
broken reed.                                    . ,   -          ...         *.
She berrt above him her dark rich face, with a sort
compassion on it; she stroked the pale heavy gold of
his hair, with fingers brown and lithe, but mfimtely
gentle; she fanned the cold pain of his forehead, with
the breath of her roselike mouth; she touched hrm and
stroked him and gazed on him, as she would have
caressed and looked on the velvet hide ot the stag, the
dappled plumage of the hawk, the white leaf of the
' \' subtle vague pleasure stole on her, a sharp sweet
sorrow moved herfor he was beautiful, and he was
" If they would give him back his life?" she thought:
and she looked for the glad forest-god playing on his
reed auridst the amber asphodels, he who had the smile
and the glance of Phratos. But she could see Pan s face
The wind rose, the moon was hidden, all was dark
save the flicker of the flame of the lamp; the storm
had broken, and the rain fell: she saw nothing now but
the bowed head of Thanatos, holding the rose of silence
t0OiiSher'ear there seemed to steal a voice from the
da" One" life"Sole can ransom another. Live immortal
with us; or for that dead manperish."
She bowed her head where she knelt in the darkness;
the force of an irresistible fate seemed upon her; that
sacrifice which is at once the delirium and divinity of
her sex had entered into her.
She was so lowly a thing; a creature so loveless and
cursed; the gods, if they took her in pity would soon
scorn 1 er as men had scorned; whilst fie who lay dead
-though so still and so white, and so mute and so
powerless-he looked a king among men, though the
gods for his daring bad killed him.
"i.et him live!" she murmured. It s tor me1 am
nothlng^nothhrg.    Let me die as the Dust dres-wha
" Thfwi'nd blew the flame of the lamp into darkness;
the moon still shone through the storm on to the face
"^"nfheard. He-the ?nly friend who fails no
livine thing. He alone remained, and waited for hei.
h?hom alone of all the gods-for this man's sake-
sh chose.                CHAPTER III.
When the trance of her delirious imaginations passed,
thev left her tranquil, but with the cold of death seem-
ing to pass already from the form she looked on into
here She was still crouching by his body on tho
hearth; and knew what she had chosen, and did not
rTenwas dead still-or so she thought-she watched
him with dim dreaming eyes, watched hrm as women
dShe1drewethe fair glistening hair'through her hands;
she touched the closed and blue veined eyelids ten-
deriv- she laid her ear against his heart to hearken for
the first returning pulses of the life she had brought
btVas nmore to her the dead body of a man, un-
known, unheeded, a stranger, and because a mortal,
of necessity to her a foe. It was a nameless, wondrous,
mv^ic force and splendor to which she had given baek
the pulse of existence, the light of day; which was no
more the gods', nor any man's, no more the prey of
,uoA,.. _/,..... but hershersshared
SSSsra'K^vmi! 4M-A2.r-5&. te^j&Js&si
night and day in the tombs of the kings of the East.
Her color paled, her breath came and went, her body
trembled like a leaf; yet she was not afraid.
A divine ecstasy of surprise and faith smote the dun
misery of her life. She saw at last another world tlia.r
Ihe world of toil in which she had labored without sigh
and without hope, as the blinded ox labored in the
brick-field, treading his endless circles in the endlesi.
dark, and only told that it was day by blows.
She had no fear of themthese, whom she deemed
the dwellers ot the lands beyond the sun, could not be
more cruel to her than had been the sons of men. She
yearned to them, longed for them ; wondered with rap-
ture and with awe if these were the messengers of her
father's kingdom ; if these would have mercy on her,
and take her with them to their immortal homes
whether of heaven or of hell, what mattered it?
It was enough to her that it would not be of earth.
She raised herself upon the ledge above the rushes,
poised herself lightly as a bird, and with deft soundless
feet dropped safely on the floor within, and stood in
the midst of that enchanted worldstood motionless,
fazing upwards with rapt eyes, and daring barely to
raw breath with any audible sigh, lest she should
rouse them, and be driven from their presence. The
flame of the lamp, and the moonlight, reflected back
from the foam of the risen waters, shed a strange, pal
lid, shadowy light on all the forms around, her.
clinched close and hard; the limbs were in profound
repose; the head was lit by the white glimmer from the
moon; the face was calm and colorless, and full ot sad-
In the dim strange light it looked white as marble,
colossal as a statue, in that passionless restthat.dread
'efnstiiictively she drew nearer to him, breathless and
allured;  she bent forward and looked closer on his
aHe was a god like all the rest, she thought; but dead
not as they were dead, with eyes that rejoiced in the
light of cloudless suns, and with lips that smiled with a
serene benignity and an eternal lovebut dead as mor-
tals die, without hope, without release, with the breath
frozen on their tired lips, and bound on their hearts
eternally the burden of their sin and woe.
She leaned down close by his side, and looked on him
sorrowful because he alone of all the gods was
stricken there, and he alone had the shadow ot mor-
tality upon him.                             , ,               ,. , ,
Looking thus she saw that his hands were clinched
upon his chest, as though their latest effort had been to
tear the bones asunder, and wrench out a heart that
ached beneath them. She saw that this was not a divine,
but a human form-dead indeed as the rest were, but
dead by a man's death of assassination, or disease, or
suicide, or what men love to call the " act of Heaven,
death nor the delight of love ; 
onlv with the greatness she had bought for him.
Even as she looked on him she felt the first faint flut-
ter hi his heart; she heard the first faint breath upon
h'ffisPeves unclosed and looked straight at hers, with-
out reaS or luster in them, clouded with a heavy and
de"odie-of'hunger-like a rat in a trap 1" he mut-
tered in his throaf and strove to rise; he fell back,
senseless striking his head upon the stones.                 .
She started' her hands ceased to wander through his
hair, and touch his cold lips as she would touch the cup
visions of her heated brarn, asa ray of the clear day
break pierces through the purple smoke from altar
* The wSoSsf'were so terrible, and yet so trite: they
cleft the mists of her dreams as tempered steel cleaves
folds of gossamer.
She0mutteredUthf "phrase after him-shaken from her
stupor by its gaunt and common truth.                 *_i
It roused her to the consciousness of all his actual
needs Her heart rebelled even against the newly-
found' immortal masters, since being in wrath they
could noTstrike him swiftly with the r vengeance, but
had kied him thus with these lingering and most bit-
ter pangs, and had gathered there as to a festival to
SeAsshedstopped above him, she could discern the faint
earthlfcavernous odor, which comes from the languid
tangs' and empty chest of one who has long fasted.
alSheSVadVnown that famine odor many atime re
tton ta tt but of Maw Dax, and by ae hede-rowi