The aegis & intelligencer. [volume] (Bel Air, Md.) 1864-1923, 1893-12-15
THE LEGEND OF THE J4COUE-
MINOT

General Jacq ueminot, one of Bona
| parties bravest officers, was man of
strong feelings and furious passions.
He had always been accustomed to
prompt and absolute obedience, and
exacted it from all about him. While
in the West Indies, he had married
very young. He had but one child,
Marguerite, who was all, and she re-
| ciprocated her fathers fondness and
| affection. She was sixteen years old
and woman, for those who are of
| the tropics step from childhood to
man or womanhood in brief stride.
| The girl was much alone and imagina-
| tive, and the son of her fathers neigh
Dor, who was only eighteen, was just
| home from school,
One afternoon her father returned
from the court of the first consul in a
bad temper and missed his daughter
Her. nurse, frightened out of her wits,
stammered out that she did not know
where she was. With his fierce,
black eyes afiame, her father unbuck-
led his sword belt and put on in its
place one which bore the most deadly
lethal weapon in the world, a three
cornered rapier, nearly three feet in
length, and as sharp at the point as a
cambria needle, and walked into the
garden. There he saw his child sit
ting with his neighbours son, whose
arms were held about her waist.
Perfectly innocent III thought and
deed, she sprang up and threw herself
between her lover and her fathers ra-
pier. All gentlemen wore swords then,
and the young man drew his invol-
unfairly. But what awaited the de-
fpnpa of vOnth aUairSt host
blade in the light division
After two OF three passes, in which
the sword of the tall, powerful soldier
curled viperishly around that of his
antagonist, with a quick disengage
he ran the boy through the heart, and
shaking him off his sword, he fell
heavily-dead. The girl had watched
the u IG mort with face as pale as
the mountain SHOWS. She could not
even scream. She looked on with
dilated eyes and Il face frozen in hor-
ror, petrified in her agony
AS her father turned to speak, she
screamed, do not touch me; you will
kill me as you did Herbert - and
fell as if she, too, were dead. She
never spoke her fathers name again,
and when the Summer flowers faded
and died, she died too.
When the father discovered that
his anger had cost him two lives, that
the young man had loved with all the
fire of his passionate race, but with
sentiment of the highest honor, and
that the young girl, who was as inno-
cent as a flower land all this he learn
ed from the few letters of her lovers
that were innocently hidden in the
girls prayer book,) his face grew pal
er and his manner was gentler to all
about him, while his troopers respect
ed the fathers grief.
There had been clump of Louis
Quinze roses grown by the bench
where the lovers were sitting when
the general found them. This rose
is beautifully shaped and of a pale
pink color, deepening to almost red
at its heart. Those rose branches
were red with the youths blood, and
the girls father ordered them to be cut
completely away. The next Spring
green shoots grew from the roots
again, and one day his old gardener
said: Monsieur, will you come into
the garden? There is Il miracle
The general went. He had not
been near the spot since the day
when he saw the eyes he loved once,
81 oOlG fthIl lIdPDS, lOOh upon Hill
with awful horror-;l look that would
haunt him for evermore. Truly it
seemed that miracle had been
wrought. One splendid stem had
grown up, and on it was one bud half
opened 1t was not Il pale pink, as
the parent had been but of a splendid
cardinal, velvety red-a royal rose,
full of grace and passionate beauty
The man who had never fiinched at
the charge of the wild Arab, when he
rode side by side with Kleber, and
stood the shock often of the Hunsar-
ian and Polish lances, put his hands
to his eyes and wept like a boy, and
the old gardener turned his face away
that he might not see the other grief,
while he softly whispered Il prayer for
a girls sinless soul.
''Shall l cut it down, my master -
said the old man, softly after IL few
minutes silence. No, it is the flow
er, let it remain said the other.