The herald., 1895-02-24
LEONIE
GRANT ALLEN.

Madonna's cave, he told me, was the
singular case of Leon and Ieonie.
The Two young people lived and loved
in an out-of-thc- way village on the fianks
OF the Coudon. Gaunt limestone hills
bare, white and arid--hemmed in the lit
tie valley where their township nestled
but high up the spurs the hand of man
had piled, with ceascless care intermina-
BILE olive terraces; while below, the rich
red soil of the alluvial plain showed in
spring one endless stretch of unfolding
green vine leaves. Gray mouldering
houses clung to the slopes of the gray
mouldering rock; the village jutted out on
promontory into the plain; its outer
most point was occupied by the platform of
the whitewashed church; high above it
the ruined keep of a medieval chateau
/ frowned down on the overlapping
| Italian tiles of the provencal hamlet.
Leon and Leonie had lived there all their
! lives; the white limestone hills, and the
| green vine-clad valley, and the intense
| blue streak of the Bay of Toulon beyond
bounded their mental and physical hori-
zon.
Perhaps it was the accidental similarity
of their names that first drew Leon and
Leonie to together. They had the same
fete day. When they were children their
parents took them to the village church,
ON the festival of st. Leon, to say their
prayers together; and after that they
played with one another, and shared their
gilt gingerbread, and quarreled and made
up again after the fashion OF children in
Province and elsewhere. And so, as they
grew up, they naturally fell in love. Le-
onie thought there was no young man in
the commune to compare with Leon,
while Leon taking wider masculine
view of the situation, didn't believe there
was another such girl as Leonie in the
whole ACCOMPLISHMENTS
Now, on the mountains behind the
village, there was a holy cavern, known
from old days as the Saint Baum, and
much reverenced by the peasants of the
ancestors OF the Liguran people, it had
acquired in these latter times fresh re-
pute for sanctity; for it was long and
branching, and in one of its recesses Our
Lady herself had appeared one day to an
ecstatic young lady by the name of Marie
much priced by the devout-a shrine
had been erected in the depths
of the cave; lamp was kept burning
by the munificence of the faithful and
pious maidens were wont to offer their
hearts petitions, for the most part with
opposite sex, before tinsel-laden image.
Notre Dame de la Grotte became indeed
the chief cult of the neighborhood. 'Tis
true, Monsieur lie Docteur describes Marie
Bella, in his profane way, as an hysterical
girl and even Monsieur lie Cure had
doubt as to the appartion and the reality
of the miracles performed by Our Lady's
intercession. But the rags and crutches
left behind by the cured might surely be
enough to convince the most incredulouS;
while the picture painted by the village
carpenter, representing blue-robed Ma
donna stretching her arms from most
comfortably solid wooden clouds to re-
store a shipwrecked husband to his pray
ing wife, was regarded on the spot as a
singular counterblast to the encroaching
waves of nineteenth century skeptlcism.
For they have heard in the Var that crit
icsm is now rife, and that doubts are
abroad as to the truth of the miracles per-
formed in grottoes.
When Leon grew up, he was as hand
some young man as you would wish to
see. With his broad red sash bound loosely
round his waist, his rough sheepskin
cloak, his fiery black eyes, his fierce Pro-
vencal moustache, his outstanding MEN,
and his perfect carriage OF the shapely
Greek head on those stalwart shoulders,
he was indeed the very model of the ideal
OF his countrymen. No wonder, then,
that all the girls were in love with him
not Leonie alone, but half a dozen more
including Christine, who kept the village
postoffice. But Icons heart was firmly
fixed on Leonie In vain Christine, who
was an older and wiser girl, and whose
father was richer by far than Leonies,
spread all her wiles to attract his atten
ton; in vain she went in for q reckless
expenditure of small wax candles to Notre
Dame de la Grotte-Leon's heart was still
true, in spite of all, to Leonie
In ST the time came for cons mill
tary service There were red eyes in the
village on the day of his departure.
The night before he lelt he had walk ed
across to Toulon, and there, in a shop de-
voted to articles OF religion, he had bought
for Leonie little red rosary of imitation
coral. Twas affections last gift, a mere
thing of twenty sous, but religion had
hallowed it. With his own hands he
hung it round the poor girls neck.
When | am far, my child he said,
" you will pray for me daily to Notre
Dame de la Grotte; you will pray for my
return, that | may come back to marry
YOU"
And Leonie, holding up her frightened
white face, made answer, 81 will pray for
you each day, my Leon; | will wear out the
rosary before leave off praying.
Then Leon went away, and the girls OF
the commune stood and waved farewell to
him. A registering noisy lot they were,
those raw recruits driving off in the re-
public's hired van from the tirage, and
shouting out, Ca vous IA ravigotei
BIS hard as they could shout it. But as
they drove down the street, and Oh ris-
tine and the rest stood watching with
fearful eyes, Leone turned, with sudden
cry of ''Au revoir, Leonie; au revoir ie
reviendrai.' -
Christine looked at her with anger in
her cruel black eyes. If he won't have
me" she said to herself iiercely, I" at any
rate he won't have that milk-and- -watery
little mink there!"
Leon went Off and lived his three years
like most other young soldiers. He saw
life" as men see it in a gaunti French
barrack on dusty white platform, in II
squalid suburb, outside malodorous and
unimpressive agricultural center. He
sowed such wild oats as his pay and the
exigencies of the service permitted. He
smoked cheap, bad cigars and absorbed
untold absinthe at sandy-hoored cafes,
and learned the ways of a man OF the
world, and bewitched the hearts of the
local nursemaids. But all the time he
was true, in a soldiers way, to Leonie.
Not, of course, that he was better than
the rest OF the Hundred and Twentieth of
the line; in matters like these we must,
perhaps, be content with tidclidy OF sentl-
ment. Still, it was always his ideal to
go back TO the Coudon and marry Leonie,
Her white little face still haunted him like
a dream amid the parlous joys of dusty
and mistral-swept garrison town in the
Rhone valley,
As for Leonie, left disconsolate in her
l..... lx.4 ,rI.ft