The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1887-01-08 00:00:00

lotine, come now and tramp with us our dance of
death.' Yes—l must—l must go when you com-
mand."
Lilting his hands as if grasping these of an
imaginary partner, M. Lecour commenced a wild
gallopade through th,. large room, uttering himself a
shrill whistle, to the music of which he continued his
weird dance, till he fell utterly exhausted upon the
floor.
The autumn wind had risen almost to a gale, and
as it swept in gusts past the old tower, the branches
of the trees without rattled sharply against the
window-panes. The dampness of the. atmosphere
caused the wood of which the furniture was made to
snap with quick, sharp reports, and each one sounded
in the ears of the prostrate man as an ominous warn-
ing that the spirits of the dead were flitting through
the room. The lights flickered in the draughts which
forced themselves into the apartment, and he fancied
that goblin shapes were hovering over them, making
efforts to extinguish them, and leave him to the added
horror of darkness.

The eyes of the prostrate old man wandered round
the room, and fastened themselves with a sickening
thrill of awe upon his easel. It stood in the full glare
of light, and in his mad dance he must have swept
aside the curtain that hung over it; but he now
gazed upon it with the firm conviction that some
viewless hand had removed the covering from his
work.

The painting represented a woman not yet past the
middle age, with a face once regally handsome, but
now worn and palid, yet still lofty and unsubdued,
amid the evident squalor that surrounded her, for she
sat in a narrow prison cell, and the delicate hands
were endeavouring to mend a broken shoe with an old
bodkin, and a thread drawn from the coarse garment
which clothed her stately form. A mass of long, thick
hair, white as a snowdrift, hung loosely over her
shoulders, and the pale face looked out from it with
a fixed expression of endurance, which revealed the
indomitable soul within. _ .

Around the slender throat was drawn a faint
crimson line, so shadowy that it seemed a vapour of
blcod, symbolising the doom of the morrow, rathez
than the actual impress ef the knife. It was evidently
the daughter of the Cxsars, the beautiful Marie
Antoinette, the night before her execution, endeavour-
ing to prepare her death toilet with some regard to
external decency, even amid the ruthless mob that
dragged her to the scaffold.
It was wonderfully like her, for the painter had
seen her thus employed— he had stood as the last
sentinel over that fallen majesty, and daguerreo-
typed her image so indellibly upon his brain, as to be
able to reproduce it with startling fidelity.
He had ridden with her to the scaffold, stood beside
the executioner when he lifted the gory head from the
basket, and exhibited the features of her who had
once been their queen to the hootings and revilings of
the pitiless mob.
No wonder this man was a monomaniac, for his
were terrible memories to carry into the deep solitude
in which he lived. Impelled by some impulse that
he could not conquer, he had painted that head again
and again, though the ineffably sad face was an inex-
pressible horror to him.
Now he fancied that the bowed head was lifted, the
locked lips unclosed, and the cry:
" Where is my child ?" seemed to issued from them.
" Ilestore him to his own—now is your only chance
to do so."
"The same message," he muttered, "always the
same; this time with a slight addition. She knows
yet what is passing on earth. Yes—if I dared, I would
make this atonement, but what could the poorimbecile
do" _ .

By a vieent &Tort ho closed his eyes, and when he
opened them again, he saw that the head was in the
usual position, and a gleam of judgment assured him
that it was only his own fantasy which had produced
the illusion. He laughed aloud, and to his excited
senses the laugh seemed to echoe from every angle of
the room. Starting up to do battle with the unseen
enemies who jeered at him thus, the old man staggered
feebly from side to side, wildly striking the empty
space around him.
At length he fell exhausted upon the sofa which
usually served him as a bed. His body rested there,
but his spirits still wrestled with the weird shapes his
own imagination evoked from the bloody record of the
past. At length, unable to endure more, he drew
from his pocket a small box, and took from it a por-
tion of the dark green paste it contained. This soon
produced a dull, benumbing sensation, and sleep,
scarcely less terrible than his waking fancies, fell upon
his senses.