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She thought of the child that was sleeping in her lap. There was a boat in front of the custom-house-a boat such as the custom-house men alone have the bankrupts-not worth two sous, and in the boat there were a pair of oars and two fishing-lines.

It is as bad as robbery to make use of another person's property, but Kergriz could have killed a man for a loaf of bread.

He set the boat, which was flat-bottomed, adrift, and then he said: Love of my eyes, Rosaïte my dear, they say that mackerel abound on the bar when the weather is bad; let us confront the storm, and if Heaven so wills it, to-morrow we shall have wherewithal to eat and sleep.

A flat-bottomed boat on the bar, when the wind is high and the waves are heavy, is like a straw caught by the sails of a windmill!

They went nevertheless; they brought-to there, casting the great stone which served the custom-house men for a kedge, and there they were amidst devilish waves that sometimes went down as if to wash the lower regions, and then rose up as high as Mont Saint Michel, from whence can be seen Auray, Sainte Anne d'Auray, and seventeen other steeples, not to mention my château of Penguy, which has also a chapel.

They say that this mountain was raised by the hand of man-by the Pagans. Go and see it, Vincent, with Annaïc on your arm, boy! Neither Pagans nor Christians could have moved so much earth.

There are always some crabs in the custom-house fishing-boats. They are excellent bait. Kergriz baited two lines, one for himself and one for Rosaïte, and away they go! The little one slept on, and he smiled, the little angel.

No sooner did Rosaïte's line touch the bottom than a fish as big as a calf got hold of the bait. She uttered a shout of delight, but the boat, which had no keel, rolled over, and the shout of delight ended in a cry of despair. The little one, the dear little child, had gone over the side. Rosaïte saw this although she was blind. Blind young mothers have eyes in their hearts.

"Kergriz, my man," she said, "go after our little one. I will follow you."

It was a very dark night. The voices of the dead came from Quiberon, where the gentlemen fell. The bar frothed and howled. A three-masted ship could not have remained there, where the punt floated like a wreck. Kergriz crossed himself and went in head first

What o'clock is it, friends? Eight o'clock. I have time to finish the evening at the house of the mayor's adjunct. Do not make a row, children; you shall hear the end of the story.

Kergriz remained long enough under the water to bring blood into the eyes of Rosaïte instead of tears.

She called. The voice of the tempest answered her and drowned her voice. But God hears all things, notwithstanding the voice of the tempest. She called, and oh! how she prayed!

Nothing! Around her the whistling of the wind, beyond, the waves thundering on the beach.

She was going to take to the sea in her turn, when she saw-I mean what I say this time, my Christian friends she saw the wet hair of her husband Kergriz coming to the surface.

She had wept blood, and the scales had fallen from her eyes.

It is true nevertheless; and why not, if it was the will of God. Kergriz brought up the little one from the bottom of the water, and

he was heavy.

The little one was heavy because his long clothes had got fast to the hinges of a box.

Guess what there was in the box.

Bring me my chopine, Annaïc, my treasure.

For Lannurien had a claim to two chopines, one at his coming, and one at his going. That was the reason why he came in so often, and went away so quickly.

Annaïc brought the mug, saying:

"What was there in the box, Lannurien, good Lannurien ?"

"In the box there were five hundred pistoles, my girl, just the amount won at a game of cards by monsieur my cousin Marshal de Volvire, as true as that Vincent will see by your eyes!"

The good man crossed himself, drank to the health of the company, and cast the remainder into the ashes, as it is polite to do, but there was not enough to have satisfied the thirst of a fly. Then he rose up, taking his long stick in his hand. "Good evening," he said, "high and right. Kergriz became a merchant, and Rosaïte a great lady. The judges gave her inheritance to Jégo, the rich man, although she was my aunt. The others may draw their pin from the game."

"And never Lannurien?" said Annaïc, quizzing the old man, for it was time to come to the last pun.

"And never l'âne n'eut rien !" replied the old man, with gravity.

He then saluted the company with dignity, and his steps resounded on the pebbles in the pathway. The moon shone in the heavens. They could see his sturdy outline to the bending of the road as it stood out * from the level lande. For many nights after he came, relating strange things, yet never repeating the same story. The children of Annaïe and Vincent played on his knees. But one day he failed to come.

And some days after his death, an old woman died at the village of Landevan. The deceased Lannurien was proprietor of the château of Penguy. That time the judges did not say no. There is in the cemetery of Belze a wooden cross, which looks over the lande upon the sea, and which bears this inscription: "Here lies Yves-Marie de Lannurien. He was of noble origin, a relation of the Penguys, of the Quillios, the Volvires, and many other Breton families." Above the inscription some children scratched the words Bonhomme Chopine, and below, the ferocious pun: "L'âne n'eut rien !"

This story, so characteristic of that primitive and unsophisticated corner of the world yclept Brittany, is by Paul Féval. The fact of the old man being a beggar, and yet so hospitably received and entertained, would appear to militate against its general verisimilitude; but Mr. Weld, in his charming little book, "A Vacation in Brittany," speaking of the beggars, says: "They are of a superior order to the tribe of mendicants generally. They invariably find ready and hearty welcome from the cottagers, who offer them the best seat by the fire, and a share of their frugal meal. This is requited by a liberal outpouring of the gossip gleaned in neighbouring villages; and they are careful to tell the girls how many young men have fallen in love with them, and what holy wells possess the greatest love-powers."

Villemarqué also observes, in his "Barzaz Breiz" (vol. i. p. 32): “ It is very remarkable that, despised elsewhere, and the rebuffed of society, beggars are honoured in Brittany, and are almost the objects of an affectionate attention; this most Christian commiseration employs the tenderest forms in the denominations which it gives to them; they are called 'good poor,' 'dear poor,' 'beloved poor,' and 'pauvrets; they are even sometimes designated as friends, or 'frères du bon Dieu.' Nowhere is the beggar thrust away; he is always sure of finding an asylum and bread, in the manor-house as in the cottage. So soon as his prayers are heard at the door, or the bark of his dog announces his presence, he is welcomed, introduced into the house, his wallet and stick are taken from him, a seat is given to him by the fireside, even in the arm-chair belonging to the head of the family, and food is tendered. After having rested himself, he sings some new song to his hosts, and never goes away but with his heart gladdened and his wallet full. He is assigned the place of honour at the nuptials of the poor, where he sings the praises of the bride, who herself serves him at table."

The reference to "the gentlemen who fell at Quiberon" is an allusion to the royalists, among whom was the Bishop of Dol and numerous emigrants, who were shot by companies of fifty, in what is now called the "Champ de Martyrs," July 21st, 1795. A small temple has been erected at one end of the field so designated, with the short but touching inscription over the entrance: "HIC CECIDERUNT." Some enthusiastic republican wrote the word "Liberté," in huge letters, on one of the walls, which called forth the following rejoinder from Victor Hugo's poem :

O Dieu! leur liberté, c'était un monstre immense,
Se nommant vérité parce qu'il était nu,
Balbutiant les cris de l'aveugle démence
Et l'aveu du vice ingenu!

A Chapelle Expiatoire has also been erected near the Chartreuse; over the entrance of which are the words, "La France en pleurs l'a élevé;" and the interior contains numerous inscriptions of the following nature: "Indignement immolés pour Dieu et pour le Roi. La mort des justes est précieuse devant Dieu." "Vous recevrez une grande gloire et un nom éternel."

We shall reserve "Le Fils de Malherbe," by Frédéric Thomas, as one of the more readable contributions for another addition to our versions of the story-tellers' obolus.

38

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ABOUT MISERY MAKING SPORT TO MOCK ITSELF.

A CUE FROM SHAKSPEARE.

BY FRANCIS JACOX.

OLD John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster, puns grimly on his name, when King Richard, in the flippant heyday of careless youth and insolence of po power, salutes him by that name, and asks how fares it with aged Gaunt? Old Gaunt, indeed, the moribund ancient discourses-the name befits his composition; gaunt in being old; gaunt in fasting, for grief keeps him from meat. For sleeping England long time has he watched, he says; and watching breeds leanness, leanness is all gaunt. He taxes royal Richard, his nephew, with having made him gaunt. Gaunt is he for the grave, gaunt as a grave. And so the old man maunders on, chewing the cud of that bitter fancy. It is not unnatural that the king should interpose with a note of interrogation: Can sick men play so nicely with their names? And the querulous sufferer's significant reply is this: "No; misery makes sport to mock itself."*

There are moods and tenses when misery does this almost as a matter of course. Many a misérable, in his tumult of griefs, does, or strives to do, for himself what the faithful fool did for Lear, when together they braved the blast on the midnight heath, and the fool laboured to outjest Lear's heart-struck injuries.† Differing vastly in degree, there is something of the same kind in Desdemona's essay to amuse herself, in Othello's absence, with the cynical humour of honest, honest Iago, professedly nothing if not critical:

I am not merry; but I do beguile
The thing I am by seeming otherwise.‡

Even in such laughter, as the Wise Man hath it, the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth-as the beginning-is heaviness.

We are told of Oliver Goldsmith in his latter days, when, from the pecuniary difficulties he had brought upon himself by his errors and extravagances, he came to lose his wonted gaiety and good humour, and got to be, at times, peevish and irritable,-that, being too proud to ask assistance from his friends, he buried his cares and anxieties in his own bosom, and endeavoured in company to keep up his usual air of buoyancy and unconcern. This gave his conduct, says Washington Irving, "an appearance of fitfulness and caprice, varying suddenly from moodiness to mirth, and from silent gravity to shallow laughter; causing surprise and ridicule in those who were not aware of the sickness of heart which lay beneath." They did not descry the latent misery which kept saying, Am I not in sport? nor guessed that misery thus made sport only to guile them and mock itself.

* King Richard II., Act II. Sc. 1. † King Lear, Act III. Sc. 1. Othello, Act. II. Sc. 1.

Life of Goldsmith, ch. xliii.

Known only to les misérables are the subtle shifts and devices of such self-mockery,

And of wild mirth each clamorous art,
Which, if it cannot cheer the heart,
May stupify and stun its smart,

For one loud busy day.*

Says Doctor Dove to Doctor Dense, when the latter, true to his name, is all astonishment at the Doctor's egregious fooling, and begins to suspect him of fooling in earnest, "Ay, Doctor! you meet in this world with false mirth as often as with false gravity; the grinning hypocrite is not a more uncommon character than the groaning one." He goes on to say that as much light discourse comes from a heavy heart as from a hollow one, and from a full mind as from an empty head. And he quotes Mr. Danby's remark, that levity is sometimes a refuge from the gloom of seriousness; and that a man may whistle from want of thought, or from having too much of it.†

Some one observed once to Dr. Johnson, that it seemed strange that he, who so often delighted his company by his lively conversation, should say that he was miserable. "Alas! it is all outside," replied the sage; " I may be cracking my joke, and cursing the sun. Sun, how I hate thy beams!"" Boswell appends a foot-note, in which he remarks that beyond doubt a man may appear very gay in company, who is sad at heart. "His merriment is like the sound of drums and trumpets in a battle, to drown the groans of the wounded and dying."‡ It is well known that Cowper was in a morbidly despondent state when he penned "John Gilpin;" of which delectable ballad, and its congeners, he himself bears record: "Strange as it may seem, the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest mood, and but for that saddest mood, perhaps, had never been written at all."§ In the height of his ill-fortune, in 1826, Sir Walter Scott was ever giving vent, in his Diary or elsewhere, to some whimsical outburst or humorous sally; and after inditing an extra gay jeu-d'esprit in his journal, just before leaving his dingy Edinburgh lodgings for Abbotsford, he follows it up next day by this bit of self-portraiture: "Anybody would think, from the fal-de-ral conclusion of my journal of yesterday, that I left town in a very gay humour; cujus contrarium verum est. But nature has given me a kind of buoyancy-I know not what to call it that mingled even with my deepest afflictions and most gloomy hours. I have a secret pride-I fancy it will be so most truly termed-which impels me to mix with my distress strange snatches of mirth ' which have no mirth in them.' '"|| Finely says Hartley Coleridge, in one of those sonnets he knew so well to round into grace of form, and infuse with tender feeling,

Ah me! It is the saddest thing on earth
To see a change where much is yet unchanged,
To mark a face, not alter'd, but estranged
From its own wonted self, by its own hearth

* Scott, The Lord of the Isles, canto i. st. 17.
† The Doctor, ch. lx.

‡ See Boswell's Life of Johnson, sub anno 1784. See Southey's Life of Cowper, II. 38. Diary of Sir Walter Scott, July 14, 1826.

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