The Prince George's enquirer and southern Maryland advertiser. (Upper Marlborough, Md.) 1882-1925, 1894-12-14

quails, prolific and bohemian race, cross
the Mediterranean twice each year, first
to gain the shores of Africa with the early
winter, then returning in the spring, stop
ping successfully in each country where
the find thick grass and food to their liking.
For the moment" he continued, "they
light on the Littoral, where the Towering
fields assure them food and shelter; but in
August you will find them again at Ayvel-
les, and again you will hear them singing
in our wheat"
Germaine sadly shook her head
mo, shall not hear them again at home.
Not again shall witness the fleecy tops
of our wheatfelds stretching away to the
edge of the woods"
With suden heart burning Roger grasp
ed her hands, and mingled kisses with his
protest against this expression of despair.
why delude ones self" interrupted the
yonng woIfan; Il know that l am lost.
Only the other morning the doctor told
you so. Do not try to deny it; l was be-
hind the door listening to you. No, shall
not see Ayvelles again; l shall not have
strength enough to make the journey. l
shall die here; you will go back to our
home alone; and, after a period of sincere
grief, you will forget me and console your
self with another"
Roger uttered an indignant exclam tiol,
and passionately embraced his wife.
MA mignonne, love you madly, and
l swear to you that l shall never love an
other"
my poor friend, do not swear. You
see, Just as sickness refines the senses of
the sick, so also it renders their mental
faculties more penetrating, endowing them
with sort of second sight. Now, know
you better than you know yourself. More
than anything else you love love itself, and
when am no longer here to furnish your
affection with an object you will seek an
other Listen! Hear the quail again, under
the olive trees! Next spring, when it sings
again, you will have ceased to think OF me. y
As she had forseen, Germaine died in
her villa in Little Africa, and Roger, in his
distress, took her to Ayvelles in her coffin,
where she was buried in little country
graveyard, separated only by quickest
hedge from the fleecy wheatfields stretch
ing away to the edges of the woods. Dur
ing the first months that followed, a pro-
found sorrow kept the young widower
cloistered in the little countryseat to which
he had brought Germaine on leaving the
church on their wedding day, and where
everything spoke to him of his dead The
| solitude in which he dwelt was at once
painful and necessary to him. Each object
recalled the delightful hours of conjugal
companship, and these recollections, by
heightening his pain, renewed in his heart
the regret for the delights that had flown.
With these laments over lost happiness
was unconsciously mingled confused de-
sire of regaining it, and, if he had been
sincere with himself, he would have con-
fessed that that of which he felt the lack
was not so much the love done whose loss
he mourned as the love of which he found
himself deprived. He was homesick for
the caresses of former days. The sonor-
Gus gayety of the fields in the morning, the
slumber of the woods at nightfall, awaken
edin him desire for tender affection which
he was half ashamed to acknowledge.
One evening he was leaning on his ell
bows at his window, weary OF the sterile
agitations of his day. The torrid heat of
August had filled him with fever. He
gazed wearily over the darkening land
scape. In the uncertain CLEANS of the
twilight he followed with perverse curios-
ity the boys and girls roaming in couples
along the obscure roads.
Suddenly he heard in the wheat the three
notes of the quail, and this call of the
birds. Of passage, which is, so to speak, the
familiar accompaniment of August nights,
carried his thoughts back to himself. AS
he examined himself more scroupulously,
he was astonished at the turn of his
thoughts had taken within a few weeks.
Blushing at the strange preOccupations,
which now distracted him from sorrow,
he said to himself that solitude was bad
counsellor, and he resolved to travel. He
hoped that activity would rekindle the
smouldering flame of his sorrow and that
thus he would keep it more pure and
bright just as one revives the dying flame
of a candle by waving it in the open air
Alas! man, illogical inconsistent, COM
plex being, is as powerless to give duration
to his sorrow as to his joy. The river of
life in which everything flows away, van
ishes, and is lost, bears with the same
velocity, on it's troubled waves, our efforts
| and our weaknesses, our pleasures and our
sufferings.
The next year, in April, along the road
WAYS of Beaulieu aud Saint Jean, where
the roses lavished the wealth of their
bloom, on the shore of the Mediterranean
as blue and calm as the surface of lake
Roger walked with new friend on his
arm, supple, slender blonde, whose blue
eyes shed upon him the adorable intoxi
cation of dawning love. Under the lemon
trees with their acid perfumes, both re-
cited the rosary of love, whose litanies
tnOuSn ever Tic SAINT, are never WcdIl-
some Roger, entirely absorbed in the
selfish enjoyment of love, was occupied
only with the delights of the present hour
and for him the past was abolished. Sud
denly, under the little olive trees, from
depths of the thick grass, where red
anemones were bleeding, started the brief
song of the quail Through the bright
silvery foliage the bird of passage sent its
love-call-that abrupt refrain which the
peasants of Ayvelles translated into 'Paye
ties dettes! paye ties dettes!'
| Roger halted, and felt a slight shver
run through his flesh. 1t seemed to him
that Germaine's phantom form rose there
before him, and murmured with her
shadowy voice: Remember! Remem-
| ber.''