, 1889-12-15

$500 NV 1BAAOd
"because of the pool"
'Indeed. 1 had remarked that the in
habitants of the village are s~ingularly
pale"
"They have the fever; but they suffer
less h we, for they are not so near"
"True," l said with a slight shiver; ]
had always particularly feared malarial
fevers.
After dinner, Mime. Charter retired to
prepare my chamber, not in the chateau,
which long abandonment had rendered
uninhabitable, but in the lodge on the
upper floor. The manager and / drew
up to the fire.
"Sir," said the old man, "excuse us il
we receive you poorly. 1t is sad in this
country; the fever takes the children
from the very cradle, and only at the
graveyard does it leave the men who
have resisted it. 1t is because of the
pool, which should be drained, " he added,
extending his hand toward the window.
"And then we, sir, we are sadder thar
the others, for we lost our daughter q
month ago"
"Your daughter is dead, Chartier?" ]
asked.
God knows, sir. As for us, we dc
not know what has become of her.
Presently he went on in a very low tone:
Madeleine was very sad, very i'll; she
was as we are, my good sir. But the
birds still sing when they are i'll, and
Madeleine sang near us, who do not even
talk. l thought she would resist the
scourge, and 1 said to myself, Some day,
God willing, 1 shall take her to live in o
ritv To can fhn rnzn. l., H. .Nzz1a-uz
would have given our lives, my pooI
wife and l. But she was very pale; she
went too often to the edge of the water.
She loved-I do not know why-that
water, which harmed her SO. Often,
when her mother called her to dinner,
she was seated in the wet grass at the
side of the pool. We scolded her, but it
did no good. 1t pleased her, she said, to
listen to the noise of the wind in the
reeds. She had nothing else to amuse
her, the dear child. In other countries
the little girls of poor people can gather
flowers, peep in the birds nests and have
doves and play with them as in the pict-
ures l have seen in the city shops; here,
sir, there are no other flowers thar the
lilies of the pool, the little birds would
be afraid to build their nests in eur
great, gloomy trees, and the only doves
are ravens. My poor girl, then, loved the
pool. Sometimes, of an evening, Iwould
hear her open the window of her cham.
ber-the chamber where you will sleep
tonight, sir. Come inl l would cry;
go to bed, you will take cold No, moi
she would say; and when 1 asked her
what she was looking at, There is q star
in the pool she would answer. One
morning at the breakfast hour Madeleine
did not come down stairs. Her mother
went up to her room. Madeleine is not
herep cried my wife. 1t was n month
ago, one Sunday morning. Madeleine
has not yet come back"
Charter had spoken slowly in a mo-
notonous tone. Now he wept silently.
The disappearance of their child more
thai accounted for the gloom of my
hosts. repented having judged them
harshly, and it was with sincere pity that
l pressed the old mans hands as l re-
tired.
My was a room covered with
a moldy paper; in one corner an iron bed,
two cane seated chairs At right and left
of u walnut commode, a portrait of a
young girl-Madeleine, Notwithstanding
the single window; that was all. ]
went to bed and to sleep, not without
some difficulty, for the stewards tale
had predisposed my mind to l~ugubrious
thoughts, and then 1 thought of the fever
which l dreaded so.
After an hour of restless sleep l awoke
with a start.
who's there?' | cried.
The lamp which l mad not extinguished
enabled me to convince myself that l was
alone-absolutely alone with the portrait.
From my bed, where I could no longer
sleep, 1 looked long at this picture. II
was a young girl, very pale, dressed in
white, in an attitude of meditation; she
gazed at the window with q strange
earnestness. As one involuntarily fol.
lows the glance of a person near, l di-
rected my eyes parallel to those of the
portrait. The window had no curtains;
beyond the panes appeared vaguely the
indistinct silhouettes of the forest, and
in h shadow there was u single star.
Turning back from Madeleine, L noticed
that her gaze had become more intense,
but it was easy to explain to myself why
it seemed SO; plunged for an instant into
the night, my eyes should now see more
clearly those of the portrait, on which
the lamp shone full.
What 1 could not explain, what l dc
not understand even yet, was an absurd
idea-the result, no doubt, of my ner-
vous excitement-which led me to get
up, open the sash, as if in obedience to
the desire of the portrait, and, the win
dow open, turn back t it to receive its
thanks. A breath of wind which en-
tered the room extinguished the lamp,
and the portrait disappeared.
Without, the shadows were profound;
beneath the low and black sky vast trees
stood out, terrible against the night,
about a great, pale space in which shiv-
cred ~furtive, steely lights and the dimmed
reflection of a single start was the
pool.
Shuddering, l knew not why, l gazed
at the heavens, the trees, the pool. 1t
slept, but it lived. I OWNED that a
ceaseless agitation moved it, revealed on
the surface by the trembling. of the
weeds; strange visions were in its inky
l Ia-tl,. - ~