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 famous Admiral de Portenduère, the rival of the Suffrens, the Kergarouëts, the Guichens and the Simeuses? On the paneling, opposite the fireplace, could be seen the Vicomte de Portenduère, and the old lady’s mother, a Kergarouët-Ploëgat. And so Savinien’s great-uncle was the Vice-admiral Kergarouët, and his cousin the Comte de Portenduère, the admiral’s grandson, both of them very rich. The Vice-admiral de Kergarouët lived in Paris, and the Comte de Portenduère at the castle of that name in the Dauphiné. His cousin the count represented the elder branch, and Savinien was the only offspring of the younger De Portenduère. The count, past forty years of age, and married to a rich woman, had three children. His fortune, accruing from several legacies, amounted—so it was said—to sixty thousand francs income. Deputy of L’Isère, he passed his winters in Paris, where he had bought back the De Portenduère mansion with the indemnities brought him by the Villèle law. The Vice-admiral de Kergarouët had recently married his niece, Mademoiselle de Fontaine, solely in order to secure her his fortune. And so the viscount’s shortcomings were to lose him two powerful protectors. If Savinien, a young and handsome fellow, had entered the navy, with his name and backed by an admiral and a deputy, he might perhaps at twenty-three have already been a lieutenant; but his mother, objecting to her only son being destined for a military career, had had him educated at Nemours by one of the Abbé Chaperon’s curates,


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 and had flattered herself that she would be able to keep her son beside her until her death. She sensibly wished to marry him to a Demoiselle d’Aiglemont, worth twelve thousand francs a year, to whose hand the name of De Portenduère and the farm of the Bordières made it possible to aspire. This restricted but prudent scheme, which might restore the family to the second generation, was to be defeated by events. The D’Aiglemonts then became ruined, and one of their daughters, the eldest, Hélène, disappeared without the family giving any explanation of this mystery. The tedium of a life without freedom, outlet or action, with no other food than filial love, so wearied Savinien, that he burst his bonds, however gentle they might be, and swore never to live in a province, understanding, somewhat late, that his future was not limited to the Rue des Bourgeois. And so at twenty-one he had left his mother to make the acquaintance of his relations and try his luck in Paris. To a young man of twenty-one, free, unopposed, necessarily eager for pleasure and to whose name of De Portenduère and rich kindred all fashionable circles were open, the life of Nemours and the life of Paris were bound to form a fatal contrast. Certain that his mother was keeping the savings of twenty years hoarded in some hiding-place, Savinien soon spent the six thousand francs she had given him with which to see Paris. This sum did not defray the expenses of his first six months, and then he owed double that amount to his hotel, his

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 tailor, his bootmaker, his livery-stable keeper, to a jeweler, and to all the tradesmen who contribute to the luxury of young men. He had hardly succeeded in becoming known, hardly learnt how to talk, to make calls, to wear his waistcoats and choose them, to order his clothes and to put on a tie, when he found himself at the head of thirty thousand francs’ worth of debt and knowing no better than to seek a delicate turn of expression in which to declare his love to the sister of the Marquis de Ronquerolles, Madame de Sérizy, a fashionable woman, but whose youth had bloomed under the Empire.

“How did you others extricate yourselves?” said Savinien one day, at the end of a breakfast, to a few dandies with whom he had formed a connection, as nowadays young men form connections whose affectations in everything aim at the same goal and who lay claim to an impossible equality.

“You were no richer than I, you go along without anxiety, you keep up your positions, and I, I already have debts!”

“We all began that way,” laughed Rastignac, Lucien de Rubempré, Maxime de Trailles, and Émile Blondet, the dandies of the day.

“If De Marsay happened to be rich at the outset of life, it was an accident!” said the host, a parvenu called Finot, who was trying to associate with these young men. “And had he not been himself,” he added, bowing to him, “his fortune might be the undoing of him.”


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 “You have hit upon the right expression,” said Maxime de Trailles.

“And the right idea too,” rejoined Rastignac.

“My dear fellow,” said De Marsay gravely, to Savinien, “debts are the silent partners of experience. A good University education with masters for accomplishments and for uninviting utilities, who teach you nothing, costs sixty thousand francs. If the world’s education costs double that, it teaches you life, business, politics, men, and sometimes, women.”

Blondet concluded this lesson with this translation of a verse from La Fontaine:

Instead of pondering over the sense of what was told him by the most skilful pilots of the Parisian archipelago, Savinien merely took it as a joke.

“Take care, my dear fellow,” said De Marsay, “you have a good name, and if you do not get the good luck required by your name, you may end your days in the garb of a quarter-master in a cavalry regiment—

he added, spouting this verse by Corneille and taking Savinien’s arm—“Nearly six years ago,” he resumed, “a young Comte d’Esgrignon came amongst us, who did not live more than two years in the paradise of high life! Alas! he lived the life


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 of a rocket He soared as high as to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and he relapsed into his native town, where he atones for his trespasses between an old catarrhal father and a game of whist at two-penny points. Tell Madame de Sérizy your position quite simply, without shame; she would be very useful to you; whilst, if you play the charade of a first love with her, she will pose as a Raphael Madonna, play at forfeits and make you journey at great expense into the Land of Love.”

Savinien, still too young, and out of sheer gentlemanly honor, did not dare confess his financial position to Madame de Sérizy. Madame de Portenduère, just when her son did not know which way to turn, sent twenty thousand francs—all that she possessed—in consequence of a letter in which Savinien, initiated by his friends into the ballistics of the wiles directed by children against the paternal strong-box, spoke of bills to be paid and of the disgrace of allowing his signature to be protested. With this assistance he reached the end of the first year. The second year, still bound to the chariot wheels of Madame de Sérizy, who was seriously in love with him and who also improved him, he availed himself of the dangerous aid of usurers. A deputy among his friends, a friend of his cousin De Portenduère, Des Lupeaulx, directed him, one day of distress, to Gobseck, to Gigonnet and to Palma, who, rightly and duly informed of the value of his mother’s property, gave him delightfully easy discount. The usurer and the delusive help of


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 renewals made his life happy for about eighteen months. Without daring to forsake Madame de Sérizy, the poor boy fell madly in love with the beautiful Comtesse de Kergarouët, prudish like all young women who are waiting for the death of an old husband, and who skilfully preserve their virtue for a second marriage. Incapable of understanding that a calculated virtue is unconquerable, Savinien continued paying his court to Émilie de Kergarouët with the full appearance of a rich man; he never missed a ball or a play at which she happened to be.

“My dear fellow, you have not got enough powder with which to blow up that rock,” said De Marsay to him one evening, laughing.

In vain this young king of Paris fashion, out of pity, tried to explain Émilie de Fontaine to this boy; it needed the dismal enlightenment of misery and the darkness of a prison to open Savinien’s eyes. A bill of exchange, rashly signed for a jeweler, in league with the usurers who did not want to have the odium of the arrest, caused Savinien de Portenduère, unknown to his friends, to be imprisoned at Sainte-Pélagie for the sum of one hundred and seventeen thousand francs. As soon as Rastignac, De Marsay and Lucien de Rubempre heard this news, all three came to see Savinien and finding him stripped of everything, each one offered him a bill for one thousand francs. The valet, bribed by two creditors, had told of the secret apartment where Savinien lodged, and everything had


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 been seized, except the clothes and the little jewelry that he was wearing. The three young men, provided with an excellent dinner, and whilst drinking the sherry brought by De Marsay, enquired into Savinien’s situation, apparently in order to organize his future, but doubtless in order to try him.

“When one is called Savinien de Portenduère,” cried Rastignac, “when one has a future peer of France for a cousin, and the Admiral de Kergarouët for a great-uncle, if one commits the huge mistake of allowing one’s self to be put in Sainte-Pélagie, one must not stay there, my dear fellow!”

“Why did you tell me nothing of all this?” cried De Marsay, “you had my traveling carriage, ten thousand francs and letters for Germany at your disposal. We know Gobseck, Gigonnet and other crocodiles, we would have made them come to terms. And in the first place, who was the ass who led you to drink at this deadly source?” asked De Marsay.

“Des Lupeaulx.”

The three young men looked at each other, thus exchanging the same thought, a suspicion, but without uttering it.

“Explain your resources to me, show me your hand?” asked De Marsay.

When Savinien had described his mother and her bow-trimmed caps, her little house with its three windows facing the Rue des Bourgeois, with no other garden than a yard with a well and a shed for storing the wood; when he had counted up the value of


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 this house, built of sandstone, rough-cast in reddish mortar, and had appreciated the Bordières farm, the three dandies looked at each other and feelingly quoted the saying of the abbé in the Marrons du Feu, by Alfred de Musset, whose Contes d’Espagne had just then appeared:

“Sad!”

“Your mother would pay on receipt of a cleverly written letter,” said Rastignac.

“Yes, and then—?” cried De Marsay.

“Had you only been put into a cab,” said Lucien, “the King’s government would have procured you a position in diplomacy; but Sainte-Pélagie is not the anteroom of an embassy.”

“You are not strong enough for Paris life,” said Rastignac.

“Let’s see!” rejoined De Marsay, measuring Savinien as a dealer rates a horse, “you have beautiful, well-formed blue eyes, you have a white, well-cut forehead, magnificent black hair, a small moustache which looks well against your pale cheeks, and a slender figure; you have a foot which indicates breeding, shoulders and chest that are not too much like a porter’s and are yet solid. You are what I call an elegant dark man. Your face is of the Louis XIII. style, with little color, and a nicely shaped nose; and you have besides, that which pleases women, a something indefinable that men themselves do not understand and which is in the appearance, the bearing, the sound of the voice, in the darting of the glance, in the gestures, a host of little things


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 that women see and to which they attach a certain meaning which escapes us. You do not know yourself, my dear fellow. With a little steadiness, in six months you would bewitch an Englishwoman with a hundred thousand francs, especially by taking the title of Vicomte de Portenduère to which you have a right. My charming mother-in-law, Lady Dudley, who is without her match in impaling two hearts, will discover her for you in some one of the alluvial grounds of Great Britain. But you must be able and know how to carry over your debts for ninety days by some deft manoeuvre of financial policy. Why did you keep it from me? At Baden, the usurers would have respected you, and perhaps have served you; but, after having put you in prison they despise you. The usurer is like society, like the people, on his knees before a man who is strong enough to laugh at him, and pitiless toward the lambs. In the eyes of certain people, Sainte-Pélagie is a she-devil who madly scorches young men’s souls. Do you want my advice, my dear boy? I should say to you as to little D’Esgrignon: ‘Pay your debts with caution, keeping enough to live upon for three years, and marry in the provinces the first girl who may have thirty thousand francs income. In three years, you will have found some sensible heiress who wants to call herself Madame de Portenduère.’ This is wisdom. So let us drink. I propose this toast: ‘To the girl with cash!’”

The young men did not leave their ex-friend until


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 the official hour for leave-taking, and on the doorstep they said to each other:

“He is not strong!” “He is very much downcast!” “Will he get over it?”

The next day, Savinien wrote his mother a general confession of twenty-two pages. After having wept for a whole day, Madame de Portenduère first wrote to her son, promising to get him out of prison: then to the Comtes de Portenduère and De Kergarouët.

The letters that the curé had just been reading and that the poor mother was holding in her hands, wet with tears, had arrived that same morning and had broken her heart.

TO MADAME DE PORTENDUÈRE.

“Paris, September, 1829.

“MADAME,

“You cannot doubt the interest the admiral and I take in your troubles. What you write to Monsieur de Kergarouët grieves me all the more as my house was your son’s; we were proud of him. If Savinien had had more confidence in the admiral we would have taken him with us, and he would already have been suitably placed; but he said nothing to us, the unhappy boy! The admiral could not pay a hundred thousand francs; he is in debt himself and has involved himself for me who knew nothing of his pecuniary position. He is all the more grieved in that Savinien has, for the moment, tied our hands by allowing himself to be arrested. If my handsome nephew had not had I cannot say how foolish a passion for me which stifled the voice of the kinship in the pride of the lover, we would have made him travel in Germany whilst his affairs were being settled here. Monsieur de Kergarouët


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 would have been able to ask for a post in the naval offices for his grand-nephew; but an imprisonment for debt will doubtless paralyze the admiral’s applications. Pay Savinien’s debts, let him serve in the navy—he will make his way like a true Portenduère—he has their fire in his beautiful black eyes—and we will all help him.

“So do not despair, madame; you still have friends, amongst whom I wish to be included as one of the most sincere, and I send all wishes with the respects of

“Your very affectionate servant,

“ÉMILIE DE KERGAROUËT.”

TO MADAME DE PORTENDUERE.

“Portenduère, August, 1829.

“MY DEAR AUNT,

“I am as much vexed as distressed at Savinien’s escapades. Married, the father of two sons and a daughter, my fortune, already so slender relatively to my position and prospects, does not permit me to diminish it by a sum of one hundred thousand francs to pay the ransom of a Portenduère whom the moneylenders have seized. Sell your farm, pay his debts and come to Portenduère; you will there find the welcome we owe you, even were our hearts not wholly yours. You will live happily, and we will end by marrying Savinien, whom my wife thinks charming. This prank is nothing, do not be unhappy, it will never be known in our province, where we know several very rich girls who would be delighted to belong to us.

“My wife joins with me in telling you of the pleasure you would give us, and begs you will accept her wishes for the realization of this project and the assurance of our affectionate respects.

“LUC-SAVINIEN COMTE DE PORTENDUERE.”

“What letters for a Kergarouët!” cried the old Bretonne, wiping her eyes.

“The admiral does not know that his nephew is


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 in prison,” finally said the Abbé Chaperon, “only the countess has read your letter, and she has answered it. But it is necessary to come to some decision,” he continued after a pause, “and this is what I have the honor of advising you to do. Do not sell your farm. The lease is up, and it has lasted now for twenty-four years; in a few months, you will be able to raise the rent to six thousand francs, and have a bonus equal to two years’ rent. Borrow from an honest man, and not from the men of the town who trade in mortgages. Your neighbor is a worthy man, a man of good society, who was in the fashionable world before the Revolution, and who from atheism has turned to Catholicism. Do not feel any reluctance in coming to see him this evening, he would be much affected by your step; forget for a moment that you are a Kergarouët.”

“Never!” said the aged mother in a harsh voice.

“Well then, be an amiable Kergarouët; come when he is alone, he will only lend at three and a half, perhaps at three per cent, and will do you service with delicacy, you will be pleased; he himself will go to deliver Savinien, for he would be obliged to sell some stock, and he will bring him back to you.”

“Are you then speaking of that little Minoret?”

“That little one is eighty-three years old,” replied the Abbé Chaperon, smiling. “My dear lady, have a little Christian charity, do not wound him, he may be useful to you in more ways than one.”

“And how?”


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Littell's Living Age/Volume 182/Issue 2358/The Cruise of the Chrysalis

of cruises in small yachts have a certain interest for all healthy Englishmen, whether their hobby be sailing or not; but small yachts that are under fifteen tons are necessarily limited in their choice of cruising-grounds. There is, however, one cruising-ground of fairly easy access, where there is plenty of room, plenty of variety, and which is markedly foreign in its appearance, and that is Holland and its great inland sea, the Zuyder Zee, bordered by its many ancient cities, each with a capital harbor, and with its islands, which are worlds of themselves, not satellites of the mainland. It is a favorite cruising-ground of mine, and the following is the log of a little yacht belonging to my wife and myself, which carried her joint owners a delightful cruise on Dutch waterways.

The Chrysalis (a name compounded of the names of her owners) is ten tons builders' measurement, and nine tons Y. R.A. She is forty feet long over all, and nine feet beam, with the moderate draught of four feet nine inches, but quite enough for Dutch canals and rivers. She is the fisherman's idea of a good sea-boat, having a “flat floor and two good ends,” ballasted with a lead keel. She is very snugly rigged as a yawl, is as handy as a Una boat, dry in a seaway, and fairly fast, The accommodation consists of a good forecastle with two cots, cooking-galley, pantry, lavatory, main cabin about eight feet square, and two bed berths on each side of a narrow well, over which hatches slide in bad weather.

We left Lowestoft harbor at noon on the 3d June. There was but a light air from the south-east – dead ahead, as our course was south-east – and we had to use our sweep to get out of the harbor. We tacked slowly down the Roads to the southward until we reached Pakefield Gat, when we stood out to sea, the wind having southered, so that we could lay our course. With all lower sail and jib-headed topsail set, the boat lay over and leapt through the waves, the wind freshening quickly and settling from the south-west. We had set the log at twelve o'clock at noon, and were fairly astart upon our voyage across the North Sea. Directly we got outside the sands we experienced a long ground-swell, caused, as it happened, by a strong blow of the day before in mid-sea. The glass was falling too rapidly to be reassuring, and we meant to hurry across as fast as we could, as the swell might, as far as we. knew, be a token of a coming gale, instead of a consequence of one that was past, so we sailed her with her lee-rail awash, and the tops of the waves now and then breaking over the fore-deck.

By three o'clock the land had entirely disappeared. We were also out of the track of coasting steamers and vessels, and there was not another sail in sight. We might expect now to be alone on the circle of the sea until we fell in with the North Sea fishing-fleet in the early morning. The wind freshening and the sea increasing, too much water was coming aboard over the bows, so we lowered the stay foresail, which is a very pressing sail on a small craft, while the jib is a lifting sail. The effect was marked. Although our speed was scarcely lessened, we went along perfectly dry over a bright blue translucent sea, with a surge of dazzling whiteness roaring away from our lee-bow.

At five we took in the topsail, and shortly afterwards the mizzen; and at seven, as the wind was now strong, and the high swell beginning to break, we lowered the topmast. Relieved of the top-hamper, the little yacht bore herself easily and bravely in what was really an awkward sea, such, indeed, as you might not see in a hundred journeys across in the summer time. “A winter sea and a winter sky,” said the skipper, as he looked back at the stormy yellow sunset and black, hard-edged clouds. For some time before the sun neared the horizon it had been surrounded by a halo of rainbow colors – a “sundog,” as it is called, which always presages wind; the glass was falling rapidly, and was below thirty inches, so that we apprehended a dirty night of it. It now took all our skill to dodge the break of the swell. “White horses” covered the sea all round, and we went sliding up one side of a steep wave and down another in a lively fashion, luffing to it if the wave came on the bow, or bearing away, so that her stern lifted to it first, if the wave came on the quarter. Every now and then there would be a sudden lull, then a gathering of a greater wave, which would come roaring along as if it meant to engulf us, but we would rise in what appeared to be a marvellous manner over its height; but the drop on its other side down its steep swift slope, and the dive into the two or three short high waves which succeeded each big one, was a thing to be remembered rather than to be welcomed. Wet jackets and holding on was the order of the day.

At 8.45 P.M. we hauled the log, which registered 57½ knots, so that we had been travelling at the remarkable speed – under the circumstances of a rough sea and towing a jolly – of over six knots an hour, a knot equalling 1.1515 of an English mile. The jolly was half full of water, and was too big to get on board. We fully expected to lose her every minute.

As it grew dark we took the precaution of changing to our second jib, and taking two reefs in the mainsail, also reeving two other reef-earings in case the expected gale broke during the night. We were now snug enough for the night, and to our relief the wind grew no stronger. When we got among the lights of the North Sea fishing-fleet, which shone brightly and in numbers all around us, we sailed close under the sterns of one or two of the smacks as they lay at their nets, and asked them to report us at Lowestoft on their return in the morning

It was quite light long before the sun rose from behind a low wall of black cloud, the upper edge of which was a straight line of flame; and the mackerel clouds in the western sky, and the heaving sea beneath, were ruddier far than the eastern sky and sea. With the sunrise it fell calm, and as the swell still continued in some degree, the rolling of the boat made the windless sails flap loudly, and the boom swing and jerk as if it would rive the boat to pieces.

Sending up the topmast and making all sail, we drifted along until five o'clock, when the two tall towers of Scheveningen were faintly visible through the haze. Then we came suddenly out of the clear blue sea into a muddy torrent, the line of demarcation being as perfectly sharp as a division between two solids rather than between two liquids. This was the ebb-water from the Maas, and soon the shipping entering Maas sluice was plainly to be seen. A fine breeze sprang up from the westward with the flood-tide about nine o'clock; and with wind and tide in our favor, and all sail set, we smoked away up the long miles of uninteresting river at a rare pace, and at twelve o'clock we dropped anchor just off the park at Rotterdam, a hundred yards below the quay of the Harwich steamers. A hasty run ashore to despatch a telegram to the wife to cross by the night boat, which brought her to us by nine o'clock the next morning, and then a general clean and tidying up, and a comfortable meal and rest.

Of a place so well known as Rotterdam we have nothing to say here; and I desire to assume that every reader knows something of the history of the Netherlands, for thoroughly to enjoy Holland journeyings a more than superficial acquaintance with her past is necessary.

We “did” the town, and visited the Hague with its pictures, and Scheveningen, with its quaint Noah's arks of brightly painted fishing-boats tossing in the surf, its fish-auctions on the beach, and its teams of horses hauling up the vessels on the strand.

Our anchorage could not be called a quiet one, owing to the swell caused by passing steamers; but it was fresher and pleasanter than to moor in one of the many havens or basins which lie within Rotterdam streets, and are so crowded with barges and small steamers, and have such a busy movement of going and coming, and loading and discharging cargo, that they remind one of the teeming activity of the occupants of the galleries of an ants' nest, when laid bare by an intruding spade.

At half past five on the Thursday morning a fussy little tug, only large enough to hold her powerful engines, took us in tow; and when the “missus” turned out at breakfast-time, she found us moving gently along the broad, smooth river, with a motion so motionless that it was imperceptible in the cabin, although we were travelling at the rate of five miles an hour. We formed one of a procession of five vessels in two files, each with her warp fast to the steamer – two lighters, two tjalks, and ourselves.

The tjalk abreast of us, as a type of all other tjalks in the country, which by scores and hundreds we met daily, may be described. She was massively built of varnished oak, with bows so bluff as to be almost square, a straight-sided box, made, like all Dutch craft, to slide over the water rather than through it, and with immense wing-like lee-boards on each side to let down and supply the place of a keel when going to windward. A tall mast bore a lofty, narrow-headed mainsail with a short, curved gaff, and a fore-staysail from the bow. The great rudder bore along its upper edge a grotesquely carved and gaily painted lion couchant, the most common of all the rudder decorations, and of as much importance as the familiar figure-head in sea-going ships.

Hull and spars were brightly varnished, with casings of polished brass, and rings and scrolls of red and blue paint wherever there was room; the staves of the water-barrels were green and white, and marvellous landscapes were painted on the ends. There was a neat raised cabin at the stern, gaily ornamented in green and yellow, with little white-curtained, flower-decked windows, through which one caught glimpses of a spotless dolls'-house interior, with shining pots and pans and quaint shapes of blue and brown earthen vessels. Of course all the items of household life – cooking, washing, the baby's toilet, and so on – were performed in the most open and unconcerned manner on deck.

The river Yssel from Rotterdam to Gouda is somewhat tame and uninteresting. The chief impression was that everything was slowly gliding – ourselves, the craft we met or passed, the high banks, and the farmers' chariots (the word cart conveys no idea of the quaint shapes of these vehicles), and the hazy clouds which made the day so soft and silvery. A storks' nest in a tall tree, with the old birds and young perched upon it, was the first excitement, and then we noticed many storks and herons in the bays or which, between breakwaters, are numerous. Many of these bays are utilized for setting the fishermen's nets. In others, men were digging up the deposited mud which supplies the material to the many brickyards along the river. In these yards are made the clinkers or narrow bricks with which so many of the streets and roads of Holland are paved, a neat and cleanly method, only available in a land where the heavy traffic goes by water.

It was afternoon when we arrived at Gouda, and casting loose from the steamer, we had to pole the yacht through the lock and into the narrow town canals. In these we made nearly the entire circuit of the town in company with many other craft. It was a slow progress, as there were a score of bridges which had to be opened. Only two vessels were allowed to pass through each time, and then the bridge would be shut to allow the passengers to cross. At length we reached the main canal, and moored under a grove of trees in front of some little shops, with tjalks before, behind, and outside of us. The canal looked doubly dirty, as they always do in the towns; but there was no perceptible smell, and we saw a boy lie down on his stomach, part the floating filth with his hands, and drink heartily. Women would come up with two buckets, one of which, filled with slops, they would empty into the canal, and the other they would fill with water for household use.

Nearly every street in Gouda had a canal down it, and in this respect and the general quaintness of its tree-shaded houses, I should call Gouda one of the most thoroughly typical towns in Holland. In its vast, plain church we saw a tailor plying his trade, the half-made clothes spread out over the pews. He was probably the sacristan of the church also. In Enkhuisen church we saw a baby's perambulator, and clothes hung out to dry. Of course the Dutchman does not take off his hat when he walks about an empty church, nor does he cease smoking.

At Gouda, as everywhere in Holland, we noticed the perfect whiteness of the linen of the poorest people. The little children playing in the street had on the whitest of stockings and pinafores even at the close of the day. The extreme softness of the water in the canals makes it easy to wash with a moderate amount of elbow-grease. The formal blue wire-gauze blinds in every front sitting-room window, of exactly the same pattern; the heavily handsome, shining front doors, ornamented with scroll-work; the formal rows of flat-branched and close-trimmed trees, between the houses and the canal; the deep shade, and the extreme dislike to admitting sunlight into the houses; the heavy, lace-edged blinds, never more than half drawn up; the glimpses through the windows of trim tea-tables, with tiny paraffin-lamps glowing under tea-urns; the outdoor mirrors set at an angle outside the windows, to show the curious frouw within who comes along the street, and also reflecting her own face to the passerby, – all and every one of these characteristics of Dutch towns were noted during our evening walk in Gouda.

But on this evening, as on every evening during our cruise, we felt sleepy at ten o'clock; and the deep, delicious sleep of the yachtsman on quiet waters was too rudely broken at four the next morning, when a steam-tug took us in tow in company with four other craft bound to Amsterdam by Overtoom, the direct trading-route, but one which, for reasons to be presently seen, yachtsmen should avoid.

Early as it was, business on the canal had all begun. We moved very slowly round the sharp curves of the canal out of Gouda, and at no time went faster than a man's quick walk. Thus it was easy for the numerous pedlar boats to hitch alongside the craft and sell their bread, cheese, butter, milk, and vegetables, being towed a mile or two in the process. We were fairly successful with our limited Dutch in asking them the names of places. “Who ate dat?” sounds niggerish, but is the proper way of pronouncing (not of spelling) “What place is that?” If one man only replied we understood, and could spot the place on the map; but generally three or four would shout out the name together, and then the result was confusing, being double Dutch with a vengeance. We glided dreamily the broad canal passing Boskoop; a collection of brightly colored doll's-houses on both sides of the canal, with well-kept gardens, smart summer-houses with complacent mottoes, as “Ons Genoegen,” “Our Delight.” The women's washing-tubs amused us. They are sunk in the canal at the foot of each garden, and have a ledge around. In these the housewife may stand dry-foot, though up to her matronly waist in water, and wash her clothes in the canal without stooping.

There was ever the same stream of passing craft, sailing, and towed by steamers, horses, and by dogs. Of course it is a common sight to see small carts drawn along the streets and roads by dogs; but it looked outlandish to see dogs marching gravely along the canal-banks towing the small boats laden with green milk-pails, or red cheeses, or flowers and vegetables. This mode of towing was, how ever, generally confined to the smaller side-canals. The dogs look well-fed and happy, doing their work willingly and cheerfully, and distinctly proud of their equipage, and jealous of other dog-carts.

We took a sharp turn through the sluice at Gouwsluis, and shortly reached the very quaintest of canal-side villages – Alphen – with a storks nest on a chimney-top, the bird on one leg calmly surveying the busy scene below as the vessels glided through the bridge, with groups of waiting passengers on each side.

From Alphen our long procession went peacefully along until of a sudden we entered the large lake known as Brassemmer Meer, which was calm and placid, with low reedy shores fading on either hand. It was about two miles across it, and took us a very agreeable half-hour. At the other side we entered a little village, the canal being the street thereof, as usual, and the houses close to the waters edge. Our route now lay along the border of the great Polder, which took the place of the renowned Haarlem Meer, a polder being the low meadows intersected with dykes, which were once the bed of a lake, but have been drained, and now form the very greenest and most fertile of marshes. As far as the eye could reach stretched the perfectly flat meadows straightly cut, with numberless gleaming dykes, instead of the sea where once naval battles were fought between Dutch and Spaniard. The level was some twelve feet below the surrounding canal on which we were sailing, and into which by a series of easy steps, from dyke to little canal, and little canal along to big canal, the water was pumped by wind and steam mills. Holland is largely made out of such polders.

On our right was a very large lake, on which the title of Haarlem Meer has descended. it has openings into the canal, and had many small crafts sailing on it.

This particular route was new to all of us. Haarlem was on our left, and the river Amstel on our right, and Overtoom in front of us. After passing many fruitful market-gardens intersected with broad dykes, we came in sight of Amsterdam; but leaving its towers on the right, we came late in the afternoon to the foulest place imaginable, a narrow canal filled with foul fluid, inky in color, where it could be seen for the crowd of vessels upon it, and smelling vilely.

Our steamer had cast us off and gone ahead, and for more than an hour we had to pole through a crowd of barges, all struggling to enter a lock, into which at last we got.

Through the lock our steamer took us in tow again, along the most awful sewer, with chemical works, scavengers' heaps, manure-factories, and unnamable abominations on its banks – the lighter in front of us, being deeply laden, churning up the pestilential mud from the bottom. We shut the wife down below with a bottle of eau-de-Cologne in front of her, and we held our breath and wondered where we were going to. We ought of course to have taken the route by the Amstel or by Haarlem.

Matters improved by-and-by, and we reached a basin hard by the railway bridge, where the steamer cast us off for good, and we presently poled to a dock communicating with the Y. As the wind lay we should have to beat out of the dock through a narrow opening into the river, and a host of longshore loafers gathered round and offered to pilot us to Amsterdam (which was just around the corner so to speak), coolly demanding from ten to thirty shillings for the service, and prophesying our destruction if we ventured without them. Quickly hoisting our sails and making a few inquiries as to the depth of water from a customs officer who had boarded us, we set sail, and at the third tack were standing for the entrance, while a large East India steamer coming up the river was also making for it. Seeing that we should meet in the entrance, and as sails have pride of place over steam irrespective of size, she shut off steam, and we held on our course. A boat-load of pilots had followed us, and seeing what they thought was our predicament cried, “What do you think of it now? Wont you take a pilot now?” receiving a reply in forcible if not polite English. We judged our distance accurately, and slid out between the bow of the steamer and the jetty, with at least six feet to spare on either side.

It was a treat to be on the fresh and sparkling Y after the horrors of Overtoom, and bowling gaily along we soon reached the little piers jutting out from the quay near the station, and were moored and stowed, and with dinner under way, and a group of the curiously dressed Marken people, who had come from a schuyt close by, surveying us. On this old-world island on the Zuyder Zee, close as it is to Amsterdam, the people wear a costume which is comically picturesque.

The streets of Amsterdam are delightful, with their curious and variegated gables, and the angles at which the houses lean, supported as they are more by each other than by their rotting pile-foundations driven into peaty mud. From the enthralling (to womankind) shops in the Niewendijk and Kaalverstraat to the odds and ends of the Jews quarter, there is a picture at every step; but most of all do I like the Y itself, that broad river which was once an arm of the Zuyder Zee, but is now cut off from it by immense sluices. Fresh and breezy and wide, it is a kaleidoscope of craft, from the great East India steamers and ocean-going ships which have come by the deep ship-canal from the new haven at Ymuiden, to the schuyts from the Zuyder Zee, long lighters from the Rhine, and tjalks and barges of many kinds from the inland canals. The small craft sail through rapidly opening bridges among the queer gables along the town canal, and other craft are disgorged as it were out of the houses, and scatter upon the Y.

Yachting is a pastime growing more into favor with the Dutch, especially within the last two years. Their pleasure-craft are of two kinds; the flat-bottomed boiejer, with its bluff bows and great lee-boards, simply a dandified model of the usual tjalk, most solidly built of varnished oak, clumsy to look at, but really fast in sailing, particularly in running before the wind; and the beamy centre-board yacht, of American model, of which there are many at Amsterdam. All the yachts are kept up with the utmost care, the ironwork not galvanized but kept bright polished, and the brass work and varnish dazzling to behold. The internal arrangements are also remarkably neat and good.

Then, as a relief from the admiration of the craft, we can go to the Rijks Museum, one of the finest in Europe, and never tire of the pictures. Let whosoever goes there be sure not to miss the part known as the Netherlands Museum, where there are natural-size models of peasant homes, with family groups, life-size, of the inhabitants. Zeeland, Friesland, Walcheren, Hindeloopen, are all reproduced with startling fidelity. One fine morning we ran across the Y, under foresail only, to the locks at the entrance of the North Holland Canal, and through these we hoisted all sail and ran quickly along the canal before a light, fair wind.

The North Holland Canal was the great highway for ships from the sea at Nieuwediep until the shorter canal from Ymuiden to Amsterdam took away all the heavy traffic. Now only the country craft and small steamers navigate it, and it is comparatively deserted, but it is broad and deep and kept in perfect order. The villages and houses on the banks are all of one type, the houses square with,, pyramidal roofs of great height, partly thatched and partly tiled in ornamental patterns, the tiles so highly glazed as to shine as if varnished. The land being lower than the canal, frequently only the roofs of the farmhouses were visible above the banks; but, where walls were visible, we saw hanging on them rows of milk-pails, some of copper bright-scoured outside, but painted red or green inside, and sometimes of gaily painted wood. The houses were gaily painted also, with green gables pricked out with white or yellow. Around each square farmhouse was a square plot, with generally a square of trees in rows, and a square of green, weed-covered dyke. A little bridge crossing the dyke would have a gaily ornamented gate across it, by its size and decoration indicating the owners wealth or taste. The paths up to the house were often painted with patterns and borders, and very commonly the trunks of the trees up to the height of six feet from the ground were painted, chiefly blue, but sometimes red or brown. The shorn sheep tethered to the banks, and with canvas jackets on to replace the warm wool; the black-and-white cattle in the meadows, many of these having canvas coats on also; the numerous windmills, revolving the opposite way to English windmills; the brilliant green of the grass, silver of the dykes, and sheen of flowers in the sunshine, all gave food for remark as we slipped quietly along.

When we reached Purmerend, where there are locks, the wind had shifted to the westward, and, as the canal takes a sudden turn in that direction, we could not sail any further, but we arranged with a man and horse to tow us as far as Molenbuurt, where the canal again turns to the northward. Our steed went at a jog-trot, with the man sitting sideways on its back, and took us along faster than a man could walk. When we met other craft also towing, one or the other, according to the rule of the road and the side on which tow-path might be, stopped his horse and let the tow-line slack, so that the meeting horse and vessel might pass over. This was in all cases very skilfully done just at the right moment.

The country on the right was chiefly polders, taking the place of the great Beemster Lake and others. On the left was a large mere, called Langemeer. At Molenbuurt our towman cast us off, receiving three guelders, about 6d. a mile for his services. We hoisted all sail, but it fell calm, and we had to employ another man to tow us.

At Alkmaar we moored under a pleas ant grove of trees in a small park, and were soon besieged by the usual inquisitive crowd; the boys were rather trouble some, but the grown-up people were exceedingly civil, and apparently were much impressed by the Prince of Wales's feathers which, as the badge of our club, appeared upon our caps and flag. They were all much interested to find that a lady was on board such a little boat.

The weigh-house at Alkmaar is a well-known subject for a sketch; and the market on a fair-day is a sight, crammed as it is with piles of cheeses, brought by the craft which crowd the town canal; while country chariots, with their high poop canopies, bring the stout farmers and their silver-crowned wives to make the quaint old town gay with quaint dresses.

In a field on the other side of the canal, opposite the yacht, was a tall pole with a platform on the top, and on this obligingly placed coign of vantage a stork had built its nest. It was most amusing to watch through our glasses the old storks feeding the young ones; and in the morning be fore breakfast, I crossed with my camera and proceeded to take some photographs of them. While so doing, a young farmer came down, and invited me and my frouw to go and see the butter and cheese making at his farm. We did so, finding the house to be of the usual type. The dyke surrounding the premises stank most frightfully, and its filth was in extreme contrast to the neatness and cleanliness of the house, outbuildings, and utensils of the farm.

We duly saw the round cheeses moulded and made and the butter pressed, and then entered the cow-byres, which at this time of the year were empty, the cattle being in the fields. They occupied one side of the square house, and had no ceiling, the whole of the space above the height of the walls and under the great pyramidal roof being empty and open, the only the living-rooms being ceiled off from it. The byres were beautifully clean, and bright with paint and varnish, colored oilcloth being laid all along where the sterns of the cows would overhang, and the stalls deeply floored with loose sea-shells. Rings in overhead beams marked the places where the cows tails were tied up at milking-time out of the way. The farmer pointed with pride to several swallows' nests under the low beams, and underneath each nest was placed a flat shelf to prevent the droppings of the birds from soiling the floor below.

In the garden we saw rabbits in a dovecot perched on the top of a tall pole, and doves in rabbit-hutches close to the ground, and some beautiful golden pheasants, and then we took a closer photograph of the storks nest. The old bird was very suspicious of our camera, and made her young ones lie close in the nest.

After breakfast we made all sail, and went tearing along before a fine breeze northward, approaching within a couple of miles of the coast, where the lofty sand-dunes, tumultuous in form, and showing white in the sun, which keep the North Sea out of Holland, bore us company for many miles. It was a pleasant, rippling sail to Nieuwediep, the only excitement being at the floating drawbridges, which were not well watched by their keepers, the traffic on the canal being so slight, so that we had to holloa loud and long to get them opened in time, and check the speed of the yacht by “yawing” her about.

In the evening we strolled along the great Helder Dyke, along the North Sea shore, a massive work which wins admiration, and looked over the troublous Zuyder Zee, which, however, appeared placid and calm and tempting for the morrow.

We soon engaged a pilot for the dangerous crossing to Harlingen, and were up in the morning at four o'clock, and by five were through the lock into the harbor. The tide had commenced to make, and raced up the long, narrow harbor at a speed of six or seven miles an hour, so that we could not, as we intended, slip out with the ebb, and it took all the strength of two men to tow the yacht against the tide. Half-way down the harbor a pilot cutter was moored alongside the quay, and we hung on outside of her and hoisted sail as a light air began to make off the land.

There was just sufficient wind to enable us to stem the tide, and we were just hoisting our largest topsail when we saw the schuyts running in from the North Sea before a heavy wind. They came bruising along in groups of a dozen or twenty, their bluff bows making the spin-drift fly. We had but little room to dodge between them; but in a few minutes we were rushing along the Texel stream of the Zuyder Zee before a wild squall of wind from the north-west, which soon rose to a regular smothering sea, short, choppy, all white water. We had to shorten sail and lower the topmast in a violent hurry. The wife was in bed at the time, but was not long in dressing; and on from the cabin saw the sea, which her deceitful husband had represented to be always calm and lake-like, a mass of foam through which the yacht was flying, with a great white surge at her bow, and the water tumbling over on both sides of the deck.

The old pilot steered us remarkably well through the pother, every now and then diving into a paper bag which he had brought with him, filled with coarse shag tobacco, frequent handfuls of which he transferred to his capacious cheeks.

We were surrounded by dangerous shoals traversed by narrow channels marked out by buoys and perches, through which there was a race of tide. After about fifteen miles of fair wind and tide, we turned to the northward and had to tack tediously against the tide for about nine miles along the narrow Inschot channel between the Robbesand and Molenrack and the Waard-gronden shoals.

Rounding a white buoy, we turned a sharp corner and sailed back almost in the direction in which we had come with a fair wind and tide down the Blauwe Sleuk channel to the south-east, our destination, Harlingen on the Friesland shore of the Zuyder Zee, being in sight. A heavy thunderstorm killed the wind and it fell dead calm. Drifting away to the southward into shoaling water (where we poled along for some time) we had to anchor for an hour. The heavy storm-clouds over to the westward looked alarming, and tempest after tempest passed over the islands to the northward, making the scene in that direction exceedingly grand, while we swayed gently on a calm sea; and to the eastward we could see one of those pearly atmospheres for which the Zuyder Zee is noted. The Friesland shore was lost in a bright haze, out of which prominent objects such as churches, houses, and trees stood up boldly above the horizon, unconnected with each other; and with a silver streak of sea underneath and between them to a further horizon beyond. Each object was doubled by reflection, and the general appearance was that of a row of buoys of queer shapes floating upon a smooth lake for miles and miles. This appearance may be seen almost every calm summer day on the Zuyder Zee when a few miles out from shore.

A slight breeze from the westward allowed us to raise our anchor, and then as and we sailed away for Harlingen, a shoal of dolphins hove in sight, and presently overtook the yacht, and dividing into two companies of a dozen in each, kept on both emerging sides of the yacht within fifty yards of us. The gambols of these creatures, which in appearance are like immense porpoises, were very interesting. They plunged and dived and leaped many feet out of the water, falling back with a resounding splash, and rushing under and around the yacht in rapid play. They are probably the white-beaked dolphin, but there is much uncertainty as to the species of cetaceans inhabiting the North Sea, and several kinds are called by the fishermen by the common name of scoulter. They come inshore in rough weather, and are fond of following vessels, which perhaps they may take to be of a kindred species. We sailed into Harlingen at three in the afternoon, where our appearance attracted much attention. We pushed through the lock to a comfortable mooring-place in a very narrow canal, and made all snug, putting the awning up between us and the curious crowd on shore. The next morning a paragraph appeared in the newspapers, and went the round of the Friesland press. With the aid of a dictionary we translated it as follows: –

Yesterday evening arrived here from England a sailing-vessel so small as here before not over the sea is come. It is a narrowly built pleasure-yacht, measuring from stem to stern, perhaps 30 feet at the largest; in her middle 6 feet. Her entire hold is as cabin enclosed in. This little ship is provided with two masts. Evidently she shall along the canals of our land a tournée make. She is at least ready to sail in the Leeuwarden canal.

Harlingen is busy on the arrival of the London steamers, but apparently at no other time. There are large and convenient docks, and every facility for trade.

The next morning the wind was ahead for our course to Leeuwarden, and there was a collection of tow-horses and their attendants on the bank waiting to be employed. Having ascertained the market value of a tow, we declined to pay the exhorbitant prices at first asked, and saying we were in no hurry, but would wait until the wind changed, we let them all depart save one who came to our terms namely, 3¼ guelders for the tow to Leeuwarden, a days journey. So, after breakfast, we took his line aboard, and started at a jog-trot along a very narrow and winding canal through green pastures, where the larks were singing high aloft in the sunshine in true English fashion. Our towman was most amusing. He was a yellow-haired, blue-eyed Frisian, with long, untidy locks, short and thick-set, but active and very excitable. When we came to a great haystack on a barge moored to the bank, he clambered up it on all fours just like a cat, to pass the tow-rope over. He hung his sabots over the horses neck, and put on a pair of cloth slippers. He had no whip, but in lieu thereof he would take off one slipper to beat his horse with, hopping the while on the other leg in a most ludicrous fashion. He had to stop to replace his slipper, and the steed, after trotting on a few yards, would coolly halt and turn round to watch. Then there would be a hullabaloo and a repetition of the performance.

We stopped at and explored Franeker, a funny little town half-way to Leeuwarden, and then under way again we trotted merrily along in an enjoyable manner, but without much incident, passing many small villages, of which one, called Deinum, had a remarkable church spire with a globular top, something like a huge inverted turnip, or, more poetically, the minaret of a Moorish mosque.

We arrived at Leeuwarden, and moored in a widening of the canal with sylvan surroundings, so that we seemed to be in a lake in a park. Hundreds of terns were swooping and circling about us, between the trees and over the water, looking brilliantly white in the sunshine against a rising thunder-cloud, while their plaintive cries mingled with the growl of the distant thunder.

We were at once boarded by a civil harbor-master, who spoke English, and procured us a pilot over the Friesland meres for the next day but one.

Leeuwarden is a remarkably fine town, with modern and fashionable appearances fitting in better than usual with the picturesque characteristics of an ancient Dutch city. The gold helmet, with frontal bangles and pins, is commonly worn by the women, and when covered only by a rich lace cap is very taking; but when, as is too often the case, it is surmounted by a modern bonnet or hat, with artificial flowers and gay ribbons, the effect is incongruous.

Early in the morning we were awakened by the lowing of cattle and bleating of sheep, which passed us at frequent intervals; but there was no sound of tramping feet, which was puzzling until we awoke to the fact that these droves of animals were being conveyed in steamers and sailing-craft along the canal, and not by road. The canals were chock-full of vessels unloading animals, merchandise, cheeses, crockery (blue and brown, and quaint and artistic in shape), flowers, and vegetables.

The cattle-market was beautifully clean, and the drovers' and dealers' proceedings remarkably orderly. The open spaces of the city were converted into markets flowers in one place, cheeses in another, hardware in a third, meat in another, and so on. The streets were crowded, and the brilliant sun shone fiercely upon the golden helmets which bobbed everywhere through the crowd. These helmets are often of very great value, and set with jewels. Of course they are treasured heirlooms. The jewellers' shops are full of them, and full also of the delicate filigree-work for which Leeuwarden is noted.

We did some marketing for provisions, and in vain search for mutton bought some kids flesh, which was very sweet and crisp. Meat was always our great difficulty, and at Hoorn we were actually offered horse-flesh as a delicacy.

The pilot came on board at five the next morning, and the yacht was poled a long circuit through the canals and out the other side of the town while we were yet in bed. Many routes were now open to us through the most charming district of Friesland, and our actual route was determined from hour to hour by the wind, as it chanced to be fair or not. The south and east of Friesland is a labyrinth of canals and great meres, and when the wind was foul there could be no towing. The wind, however, was conveniently fair, and we bowled along at a great pace, at first through narrow canals by Froskepolle and Warrega. At the latter place the canal was so narrow that we had to lower sail to prevent our boom from breaking the windows. Our advent created great excitement. People catching sight of us would bolt indoors, to reappear with the whole family.

In the bushes in the gardens, and on the trees, were hung gourd-shaped baskets, which served as nests for the numerous ducks. One sees these curious basket-purses hung up everywhere in Friesland, by and along, and always above the level of the water. Sometimes they are supported on a framework of sticks.

We had to trice up the tack and lower the peak at every bridge, as appears to be the rule, and as we had to put a doublejee or so into the wooden shoe at the end of a fishing-pole, in which the toll is taken at the bridges, we ranged all our small coins on the cabin-top to be in readiness, for we generally shot through the bridge at a great pace.

We came to our first mere at the reed-and-water-surrounded village of Grouw, which looked such a thoroughly aquatic sort of place that we should like to revisit it.

Our pilot made many inquiries as to the depth of water from meeting craft as we flew along under a press of sail and with a freshening wind; the season had been a dry one, and the waters were unusually low. It was a wild-looking country through which we were hurrying – water, reeds, marsh, and sky; and nothing else all around, save the numerous wild-fowl – waders, terns, and gulls – which would make these watery wastes a paradise to the ornithologist.

We shall never forget the sail across Sneekje Meer, which is some eight miles across. We entered it in company with half-a-dozen big tjalks laden with peat (which is scooped from the bottom of the lakes), but soon left them astern and led the way along the straight channel, well buoyed out, which marked the way across the peaty-colored sea. For sea it looked, the low shores being only faintly discernible, an effect owing more to their flatness than to their distance.

Wishing to visit Sneek, we turned off to the right along a channel so shoal that our keel dragged in the mud, and we had to keep the yacht well laid over by means of her top-sail to lessen her draught; so the decks were well awash. We met a Dutch yacht about our own size, and very smart and trim, with lofty, narrow-headed sail, and a bright-colored flag as big as a top-sail. Her owner shouted to us excitedly the only English phrase he could call to mind in a hurry, which was the odd greeting of “Good-bye, sir! Good-bye, sir!”

We spent about an hour in Sneek shopping and money-changing, and meeting with great civility. It is an odd little town, with a wealth of queer bits to sketch; most foreign in its aspect, and a place where one feels most comfortably out of the world. We would have stayed there, but our pilot was nervous about the depth of water, and wished to take advantage of the strong fair wind.

On our way out of the Sneek channel, we met the Dutch yacht returning, with her sails soaked half-way up the mast. She had found more “sea” on than she liked on Sneekje Meer.

As the wind was now blowing very hard, we had to shorten canvas considerably. We tore along canals and over meres before half a gale, and when we entered the stormy expanse of Tjeuke Meer (ten miles across) we were surprised to find what a commotion of coffee-colored waves and tinted surf there was. The channel was very shallow. We kept continually sounding with a pole, to find only five feet of water and a hard bottom. Two great waves mounted on each quarter as we dragged the shallow water after us.

The land was literally invisible through the mist and spray torn from the short waves. Our decks were swept with fresh water almost as much as they had been with the North Sea waves. No other craft was moving, but many were anchored or drifted aground. I think the peculiar hue of the water made the scene more wildly grand. As we neared the lower end of the mere, we turned off to the right. Our pilot looked happier as the water deepened to six feet, and we shot into a canal where our swell washed the pike and eel fishers boats high on to the marsh; then hurried over another large mere (called Groote Brekken), the farther end of which seemed to be merged into the sea; out of this into a narrow canal, and presently, lowering all sail, ran under bare poles into Lemmer, having sailed fifty-five kilometres in seven and a half hours of grand sailing.

Lemmer is a little town on the Zuyder Zee, having an excellent new harbor, with further works in course of construction. Herlingen and Stavoren look with jealousy upon its development, and it will prove a formidable rival to them, as the approach to it is not hindered by the dangerous sands, as is the case with the two older harbors of Friesland.

We spent the next day, which was Sunday, at Lemmer; and as the gale still continued, and it was cold and wet, things were rather dull. The people, too, were decidedly cold and unfriendly in their looks and demeanor. The day passed slowly until the evening, when we came across a man to whom we had, two years ago, done a good turn at the island of Urk. He could speak a little English, and he came aboard and sat with us in the cabin for some time. We apologized for the small size of our cabin, and he replied, “There is plenty of room. Your frouw is not so thick as mine. Mine weighs two hundredweight.”

We returned his call later on by invitation. He was an Aard-appelan-handel, or potato-dealer, owning a schuyt and trading to Urk.

In the little parlor behind his shop we found the frouw, a full two hundredweight of unrestrained flesh, but with a comely face under her golden crown; his daughter, a strapping young woman, who was a champion skater; a nice china tea-service, the coffee-pot on its little lamp, and the very best cigar I ever smoked. The coffee-pot would not pour, and the frouw retired with it, and we distinctly heard her blowing down the spout. She brought my wife a stooftje, or wooden-box foot-stool, in which was an earthen pan containing a glowing peat, which I was told diffused an agreeable warmth on this cold night. These foot-warmers are in general use all over Holland, and one sees in the churches great piles of them, set aside in the summer time. In the winter the fire-box is as essential an article of church-going as a Bible.

When we rose to take our leave, I gave them my card, and to our great delight the frouw ran to the shop-window, and taking down a placard about eighteen inches square with the name on it, P. Ionge, Aard-appelen-handel, gave it to us in exchange. Before we could carry it off, however, the daughter ran up-stairs and returned with a proper card of her own, with which we were fain to be content.

In the morning, while going through the lock, we were amused to see the town bellman making a proclamation. Instead of a bell, he had a big brass plate dangling at the end of a string, and this he banged with a stick.

Once out of the harbor, we ran to the southward for the island of Urk, over a gently heaving sea, and with a light, fair wind filling our biggest topsail and balloon jib. The shores of Friesland faded away, leaving only a line of clumps floating in a silvery haze; then, as these disappeared, Urk Island rose like a cloud on the horizon, and presently became plainly visible – a curious mound of gravel distinctly unlike any part of the mainland, crowned with its serrated group of houses and the lighthouse on the green. As we had visited Urk twice before, and knew well its brawny fishermen and amazonish but comely women, we did not now land. In manner, customs, and dress, and also in lack of household cleanliness, the Urk islanders are a tribe apart from the Dutch.

Leaving the island on our left, we ran still to the south-west in search of a beacon which marks the end of the large shoal known as Enkhuisen Sand, which stretches out so far from the shore that the lofty church-tower of Enkhuisen was the only thing visible on the western horizon. We caught sight of the beacon just as we began to think we had missed it. It is a mere stick with a cage on the top. We raced past it with a freshening wind and sea, and as we hauled our wind and stood to the westward to fetch Hoorn Bay, we had to lower the topsail. Soon we were among the fleet of schuyts engaged in fishing for anchovies. Queer-looking craft they are; flat-bottomed of course, with long, narrow lee-boards, very beamy, and with such high, sloping prows as to make them look all bow and no stern. But nothing can be better adapted for riding safely over the short, steep seas which a strong wind soon raises on the Zuyder Zee. The many harbors of the Zuyder Zee are crowded with these craft, especially on Saturday nights, when the boats have all come in for the Sabbaths rest.

It is said that a thousand may sometimes be seen in sight at one time, and the sky-line to the southward seemed like the teeth of a saw with their narrow sails, so numerous were they. There are harbors to leeward from wherever the storm-wind may blow on this beautiful sea, and its so-called dead cities are busy with sea-life, and their spacious harbors thronged with craft.

The north-Holland coast was now visible in a succession of clumps – trees, or houses, with the ever-present pearly lustre underneath and between. Then the clumps were joined by the thin, flat line of shore, and we stood along the land looking for Hoorn. A smart breeze and some rain sent us swishing along with the lee decks awash, and as close-hauled as we could go, until the beautiful watergate of Hoorn, with its lofty tower, came in sight, and then we had to tack up the harbor, sounding carefully with a pole on each tack, and sailed into the pretty tree-bordered basin which forms the inner harbor of Hoorn. Here we were quietly and safely moored for two days. There is plenty to see at and near Hoorn. The city itself is so delightfully ancient, with its pointed and ornate gables leaning this way and that in defiance of the laws of architectural gravity; its weigh-house, where the cheese-weighers attached to the huge scales wear different-colored hats as a distinctive mark for the cheese of each district; the market-place, where the country chariots were drawn up, and the cheeses spread upon the ground in readiness for the morrows market, protected by tarpaulins and canvas in case of rain during the night; the busy modern Dutch life, which is yet as quaint and distinctive as the ancient life, and is still well fitted to the ancient streets; the English shield from a war-ship hung as a trophy outside the town hall, – all is interesting in the extreme, and makes every step in Hoorn a pleasant one.

We revisited Enkhuisen, which we had remembered to have been the deadest of the dead cities, but where we now found a large new harbor with steamers to Friesland, running in connection with trains which entered a brand-new and sumptuous station. The harbors were crowded with fishing-craft, and the channels between the mainland and the sand were thronged with sailing-craft – great tjalks laden high with peat or hay, or the brushwood used for repairing dykes, unwieldy, floating stacks which yet managed to sail well.

The streets were less grass-grown than before, and the dead city is awaking from its long sleep. We went to Zaandam, with its broad and beautiful river, and its three hundred and sixty-five windmills, sawing wood, grinding flour, and turning out money for the wealthy Zaandammers. We strolled through the bright green neadows, where the black-and-white cows were milked by blue-bloused men into red milk-pails, and the milk was carried in green-and-white boats, along green dykes to green-and-red farms, within squares of green and yellow stemmed trees; and all under a blue-and-white sky and a blazing sun; all bright, pronounced color, and never a half-tone anywhere.

We strolled under the great dyke which surrounds the Zuyder Zee with a rampart of Norway stone, and holds its waters as in a gigantic cup above the surrounding land, and we heard the waves breaking above our heads on the other side of the dyke.

We left Hoorn at eight o'clock on a sunny morning, but had not gone half a mile when a fog came on so thick that we could not see the bowsprit end. As there was a good and fair breeze, we kept on, hoping the fog would soon clear, but taking the precaution to set the log and a proper compass course; but the fog thickened, and we could hardly see each other. We were bound to Amsterdam, twenty-seven miles to the southward, but wished to touch Marken, thirteen miles off. On we sailed, peering anxiously with straining eyes for the schuyts which we knew to be near us. A gigantic shape would suddenly loom up and quickly disappear, and we knew that we had passed within a very few yards of a schuyt, or a tall pole would glide past within a few inches of the bulwark, showing that we were among the long lines of sticks to which the eel-fishers fasten their eel-lines and nets. The average depth of the southern part of the Zuyder Zee is but eight feet, and it is this shoalness which makes its seas dangerous in a storm.

There were momentary lightenings of the fog and then dense smotherings of it, until we could hardly see the compass-card; of all sea troubles short of an actual gale a fog is the worst, and to a well-found and strong yacht a fog in crowded waters is perhaps worse than a gale. Our eyes ached and our heads grew dizzy peering through the darkness. As the skipper said, “One can see anything in a fog,` meaning that the strange shapes of the rolling mist are deceptive, and show untruthfully ship or buoy or land, while hiding the reality. After a couple of hours of this unpleasant and dangerous state of things, we hauled the log, and found that we had run the entire distance to Marken. We at once sounded, and found that we were in five feet of water – only three inches to spare. In another five minutes we should have been ashore on Marken Island. We stood off to six feet and in to five, carefully and continually sounding, until the land loomed overhead. We kept as close to the shadow of it as we dared until we heard the sound of the fog-bell off the harbor, and not deeming it prudent to land, we stood on for Amsterdam. All at once the fog lifted, giving us a good view of the island. In another half-hour every vestige of fog had disappeared, and we were ramping along under a brilliant sun and blue sky; the sea covered with schuyts through which we had come safely in a somewhat marvellous manner. We distanced all craft bound in the same direction, sailed briskly up to the great sluices at Schellingwoude, which connect the Y with the ZuyderZee, passed through in company with many vessels and yachts, left them all astern, and arrived at our old berth at Amsterdam early in the afternoon.

There was a gorgeous and most successful regatta on the Friday at sea off Ymuiden, on the Saturday on the Y, on the Sunday on the Zuyder Zee, and a weeks cruise of yachts in company round the Zuyder Zee, which must have been most charming but imperative business called us back to England on the Saturday, and we missed most of the fun.


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 “But he has an angel beside him, the most heavenly young girl—”

“Yes, that little Ursule—Well, and then?”

The poor curé dared not continue upon hearing that “Well,—and then?” the dryness and asperity of which decided beforehand the proposition that he wished to make.

“I believe doctor Minoret to be extremely rich—”

“All the better for him.”

“You have very indirectly caused your son’s present misfortunes by not giving him any career, take care of the future!” said the curé severely. “Am I to announce your visit to your neighbor?”

“But why, knowing that I want him, should he not come here?”

“Ah! madame! by going to him, you will pay three per cent, and, if he comes to you, you will pay five,” said the curé, who hit upon this good reason in order to decide the old lady, “and, if you were forced to sell your farm through Dionis the notary, or through Massin the clerk, who would refuse you cash in the hope of profiting by your misfortune, you would lose half the value of the Bordières. I have not the least influence over the Dionis, the Massins, and the Levraults, rich men of the district who covet your farm and know that your son is in prison.”

“They know it! they know it!” she cried, raising her arms.—“Oh! my poor curé, you have let your coffee grow cold—Tiennette! Tiennette!”

Tiennette, an old Bretonne in a Breton jacket and


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 cap, about sixty years old, entered briskly and took the curé’s coffee to heat it.

“Stay quiet, Monsieur le Recteur,” she said, seeing that the curé wanted to drink it, “I will put it into hot water, it will not get nasty.”

“Well,” resumed the curé with his insinuating voice, “I will go and warn Monsieur le Docteur of your visit, and you will come.”

The old mother only yielded after an hour’s discussion, in which the curé was obliged to repeat his arguments ten times over. And even then the haughty Kergarouët was only conquered by these parting words:

“Savinien would go!”

“Then it is better that I go,” she said.


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*
Nine o’clock was striking when the little door contrived within the large one closed upon the curé, who eagerly rang at the doctor’s gate. From Tiennette the Abbé Chaperon fell into the hands of La Bougival, for the old nurse said:

“You are very late, Monsieur le Curé!” just as the other had said: “Why do you leave madame so early when she is in trouble?”

The curé found a large party in the doctor’s green and brown salon, for Dionis had been to reassure the heirs, by calling on Massin to repeat his uncle’s words to him.

“I think,” he said, “that Ursule has a love in her heart which will give her nothing but sorrow and anxiety; she seems to be romantic—thus do notaries term excessive sensitiveness,—and we shall see her long remain single. Therefore, no suspicion; show her particular attention, and be your uncle’s servants, for he is more cunning than a hundred Goupils,” added the notary, not knowing that Goupil is a corruption of the latin word, vulpes, a fox.

And so, Mesdames Massin and Crémière, their husbands, the postmaster and Désiré formed, with the Nemours doctor and Bongrand, a noisy and unwonted company at the doctor’s house. As


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 he came in the Abbé Chaperon heard the sound of the piano. Poor Ursule was finishing Beethoven’s symphony in A.

With the craftiness that innocence is allowed, the child, whom her godfather had enlightened and who disliked the heirs, chose this grand music which has to be studied to be understood, so as to put these women out of conceit with their fancy. The more beautiful music is, the less ignorant people enjoy it. And so, when the door opened and the Abbé Chaperon showed his venerable head the heirs cried: “Ah! here is Monsieur le Curé!” all delighted at being able to get up and put an end to their torture.

The exclamation found an echo at the card-table, where Bongrand, the Nemours doctor and the old man were victims of the presumption with which the tax-collector, in order to please his great-uncle, had proposed himself as a fourth at whist. Ursule left the piano. The doctor rose as if to greet the curé, but really to put a stop to the game. After greatly complimenting their uncle upon his goddaughter’s talent, the heirs made their bows.

“Good-night, my friends,” cried the doctor when the iron gate resounded.

“Ah! is that what costs so dear?” said Madame Crémière to Madame Massin when they had gone a few steps.

“Heaven defend me from giving the money for my little Aline to treat me to such a clatter in the house!” replied Madame Massin.


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 “She said that it was by Bethovan who is supposed to be a great musician,” said the tax-collector, “he has some reputation.”

“Upon my faith! it is not at Nemours then,” rejoined Madame Crémière, “and he is well named Bête à vent.”

“I believe that our uncle did it on purpose so that we should not go there again,” said Massin, “for he winked at his conceited creature as he showed the green volume.”

“If they amuse themselves with that racket,” returned the postmaster, “they do well to stay by themselves.”

“The justice of the peace must be very fond of playing to listen to those Sonacles,” said Madame Crémière.

“I shall never be able to play before people who do not understand music,” said Ursule, going and sitting beside the card-table.

“Ideas, with richly organized people, can only develop in a favorable sphere,” said the curé of Nemours. “In the same way as a priest could not bless in the presence of an evil spirit, as the chestnut dies in rich ground, so a musical genius experiences an inward defeat when he is surrounded by ignorant persons. In all the arts we must receive, from the souls that serve as a medium to our souls, as much strength as we impart to them. This axiom which governs human affections has prompted the proverbs: ‘One must do as others do;’ ‘Birds of a feather flock together.’ But the


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 suffering that you must have endured only overtakes tender, delicate natures.”

“Therefore, my friends,” said the doctor, “a thing that would merely pain any other woman might kill my little Ursule. Ah! when I am no more, raise that protecting hedge between this dear flower and the world which is spoken of in Catullus’ verse: Ut flos, etc.”

“And yet these ladies were very flattering to you, Ursule,” said the justice of the peace, smiling.

“Coarsely flattering,” observed the Nemours doctor.

“I have always remarked coarseness in flattery made to order,” replied old Minoret, “and why?”

“A genuine thought bears its own delicacy,” said the abbé.

“You dined with Madame de Portenduère?” then said Ursule, questioning the Abbé Chaperon with a look full of anxious curiosity.

“Yes, the poor lady is much distressed, and it is possible that she may come to see you to-night, Monsieur Minoret.”

“If she is in trouble and has need of me, I will call upon her,” cried the doctor, “let us finish the last rubber.”

Under the table Ursule squeezed the old man’s hand.

“Her son,” said the justice of the peace, “was a little too simple to live in Paris without a mentor. When I knew that enquiries were being made at


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 the notary’s about the old lady’s farm, I guessed that he was discounting his mother’s death.”

“Do you believe him capable of it?” said Ursule, darting a terrible look at Monsieur Bongrand, who said to himself: “Alas! yes! she loves him.”

“Yes and no,” said the Nemours doctor, “Savinien has good in him and that is why he is in prison; rascals never go there.”

“My friends,” cried old Minoret, “this is quite enough for to-night; one must not allow a poor mother to weep a moment longer, when one can dry her tears.”

The four friends rose and went out Ursule accompanied them as far as the iron gate, watching her godfather and the curé knocking at the opposite door; and, when Tiennette had shown them in, she sat down on one of the posts outside the house, with La Bougival beside her.

“Madame la Vicomtesse,” said the curé, who was the first to enter the little parlor, “Monsieur le Docteur did not at all wish you to take the trouble to go to his house—”

“I belong too much to bygone days, madame,” rejoined the doctor, “not to know all that a man owes to a lady of your rank, and I am only too happy, after what Monsieur le Curé has told me, to be able to render you some service.”

Madame de Portenduère, upon whom the step agreed upon had weighed so heavily that, since the Abbé Chaperon’s departure, she had resolved to apply to the Nemours notary, was so surprised at


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 Minoret’s delicacy, that she rose to return his bow and pointed to an armchair.

“Sit down, monsieur,” she said with a royal air, “our dear curé will have told you that the viscount is in prison for a few boyish debts, a hundred thousand francs—If you could lend them to him, I would give you as security my Bordières farm.”

“We will talk of that, Madame la Vicomtesse, when I shall have restored monsieur your son to you, if you will allow me to be your agent in these circumstances.”

“Very well, Monsieur le Docteur,” replied the old lady, inclining her head, and looking at the curé as much as to say, “You are right, he is a man of good breeding.”

“My friend the doctor,” then said the curé, “is, as you see, madame, full of devotion to your family.”

“We shall be very grateful to you, monsieur,” said Madame de Portenduère, with visible effort, “for, at your age, to venture in Paris on the track of a giddy-brain’s misdeeds—”

“Madame, in ’65, I had the honor of seeing the illustrious Admiral de Portenduère at the house of that excellent Monsieur de Malesherbes, and at the house of Monsieur le Comte de Buffon, who wished to question him about several curious facts of his voyages. It is quite possible that the late Monsieur de Portenduère, your husband, may have been there. At that time the French navy was glorious, it was making head against England, and in this profession the captain contributed his share of courage.


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 How impatiently, in ’83 and ’84, did we wait for news of the camp of Saint-Roch! I all but went as doctor with the King’s forces. At that time your great-uncle, the Admiral de Kergarouët who is still living, waged his famous battle, for he was on La Belle Poule.”

“Ah! if he knew that his grand-nephew were in prison!”

“Monsieur le Vicomte will not be there two days longer,” said old Minoret, rising.

He put out his hand to take that of the old lady, who suffered him to do so, he deposited a respectful kiss upon it, made a low bow, and went out; but he returned to say to the curé: “My dear abbé, will you engage a seat for me in the diligence for tomorrow morning?”

The curé remained about half an hour singing the praises of Doctor Minoret, who had intended making a conquest of the old lady, and had succeeded.

“He is wonderful for his age,” she said, “he talks of going to Paris and arranging my son’s affairs as if he were only twenty-five years old. He has been in good society.”

“The best, madame; and, nowadays, more than one son of a poor French peer would be glad to marry his ward, who is worth a million. Ah! if this idea entered Savinien’s head, times are so changed, that the greatest objections would not be on your side after your son’s behavior.”

The profound astonishment that this last sentence caused the old lady permitted the curé to finish.


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 “You are out of your mind, my dear Abbé Chaperon.”

“You must think of it, madame, and God grant that your son may in future so conduct himself as to win this old man’s esteem!”

“If it were not you, Monsieur le Curé,” said Madame de Portenduère, “if anybody else were to speak to me so—”

“You would not see him again,” said the Abbé Chaperon, smiling. “Let us hope that your dear son will tell you what goes on in Paris in the way of marriages. You will think of Savinien’s happiness, and, after having already compromised his future, will not prevent him from creating himself a position.”

“And it is you who say this to me!”

“If I did not say it to you, who would?” cried the priest, rising and beating a hasty retreat.

The curé saw Ursule and her godfather walking round the courtyard. The tender-hearted doctor had been so much teased by his goddaughter that he had just yielded; she wanted to go to Paris and was giving him a thousand pretexts. He called the curé, who came, and the doctor begged him to retain all the front seats for him that same evening, if the diligence office were still open. The next day, at half-past six in the evening, the old man and the young girl arrived in Paris, where, that very evening, the doctor went to consult his notary. Political events were threatening. Several times the day before, whilst talking with the doctor, the justice of


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 the peace at Nemours had said that it was madness to keep one penny’s income in stocks as long as the dispute that had arisen between the press and the Court was still undecided. Minoret’s notary approved of the advice indirectly given by the justice of the peace. And so the doctor took advantage of his journey to realize his industrial shares and his stock, all of which happened to be rising, and to deposit his funds in the Bank. The notary also persuaded his old client to sell out the stock left to Ursule by Monsieur de Jordy, and which, like a good father of a family, he had turned to account. He promised to set an exceedingly crafty agent to deal with Savinien’s creditors; but it was necessary, in order to succeed, that the young man should have the courage to remain a few days longer in prison.

“In this sort of business hurry costs at least fifteen per cent,” said the notary to the doctor. “And, in the first place, you will not have your funds before seven or eight days.”

When Ursule heard that Savinien would be at least a week longer in prison, she begged her guardian to let her accompany him for once. Old Minoret refused. The uncle and the niece were staying in a hotel in the Rue Croix-des-Petits-Champs, where the doctor had taken the whole of a convenient suit; and, knowing his ward’s conscientiousness, made her promise not to go out when he was gone about his business. The good old man took Ursule about Paris, and showed her the thoroughfares, the


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 shops and the boulevards; but nothing interested or amused her.

“What do you want to do?” said the old man.

“To see Sainte-Pélagie,” she obstinately replied.

Then Minoret took a cab and drove her as far as the Rue de la Clef, where the carriage stopped in front of the ignoble façade of the former monastery, now transformed into a prison. The sight of these high, gray walls where all the windows were barred, and the wicket can only be entered by stooping—awful lesson!—this gloomy pile in a quarter full of misery where it stands up amidst deserted streets like a crowning misery: all these melancholy things overcame Ursule and made her weep a little.

“What!” she said, “are young men imprisoned for money? how can a debt give a money-lender even greater power than the king? And so he is there!” she cried, “and where, godfather?” she added, looking from window to window.

“Ursule,” said the old man, “you make me play the fool. This is not forgetting him.”

“But,” she rejoined, “if I must give him up, may I not feel any interest in him? I can love him and marry nobody else.”

“Ah!” cried the kind old man, “there is so much reason in your infatuation, that I am sorry I brought you here.”

Three days later, the old man had the receipts in due form, the claims, and all the documents establishing Savinien’s freedom. This settlement, including the agent’s fees, had been effected for the


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 sum of eighty thousand francs. The doctor still had eight hundred thousand francs left, which his notary made him invest in Treasury bonds, in order not to lose too much interest. He was keeping twenty thousand francs in bank-notes for Savinien. The doctor went himself to secure his freedom on Saturday at two o’clock, and the young viscount, already informed by a letter from his mother, thanked his deliverer with sincere earnestness of heart.

“You must not delay in going to see your mother,” said old Minoret.

Savinien in some confusion replied that he had contracted a debt of honor in prison, and related the visit of his friends.

“I thought you might have some privileged debt,” cried the doctor, smiling, “your mother borrows one hundred thousand francs from me, but I have only paid ninety thousand; here is the remainder, be careful of it, monsieur, and consider what you keep of it as your stake on the green baize of Fortune.”

During the last eight days, Savinien had been reflecting upon the present time. The competition in everything exacts great labor from the man who seeks a fortune. Unlawful means demand more talent and underhand dealings than an open quest. Worldly successes, far from giving any position, devour time and require an enormous amount of money. The name of Portenduère, which his mother had told him was all-powerful, was nothing in Paris. His cousin, the deputy, the Comte de


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 Portenduère, cut but a small figure in the midst of the elective Chamber in the presence of the peerage and the Court, and had none too much credit for himself. The Admiral de Kergarouët only existed through his wife. He had seen orators, men who had come from social surroundings inferior to the nobility or to the petty gentry, become influential persons. After all, money was the pivot, the sole means, the sole mover of a society that Louis XVIII. had insisted upon creating in imitation of England. On the way from the Rue de la Clef to the Rue Croix-des-PetitsChamps, the young man unfolded to the old doctor the summary of his reflections, which were, besides, in keeping with De Marsay’s advice.

“I must,” he said, “be forgotten for three or four years, and seek a profession. Perhaps I may make a name by a book on politics or moral statistics, or by some treatise on one of the questions of the hour. In short, while trying to marry a young girl who will consider me eligible, I will work under cover and in silence.”

By carefully studying the young man’s face, the doctor recognized the seriousness of the wounded man who longs for revenge. He highly approved of this plan.

“Neighbor,” he said, in conclusion, “if you have cast off the skin of the old nobility, which is no longer admissible nowadays, after three or four years of a steady, industrious life, I will undertake to find you a superior, beautiful, amiable and pious young girl, possessed of seven to eight hundred


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 thousand francs, who will make you happy and of whom you will be proud, but who will be noble only in heart.”

“Eh! doctor!” cried the young man, “nowadays there is no longer a nobility, there is only an aristocracy.”

“Go and pay your debts of honor and return here; I am going to engage the front seat of the diligence, for my ward is with me,” said the old man.

At six o’clock that night, the three travelers left in the Ducler from the Rue Dauphine. Ursule, who had put on a veil, never spoke a word. After having, through an impulse of superficial gallantry, sent that kiss which did as much havoc with Ursule as a whole book of love would have done, Savinien had entirely forgotten the doctor’s ward in the torments of his debts, and, besides, his hopeless love for Émilie de Kergarouët did not allow him to give a thought to a few looks exchanged with a little girl of Nemours; and so he did not recognize her when the old man helped her up first and placed himself beside her so as to separate her from the young viscount.

“I shall have some accounts to give you,” said the doctor to the young man, “I am bringing you all your old papers.”

“I very nearly did not come,” said Savinien, “for I had to order some clothes and linen; the Philistines have robbed me of everything, and I am arriving like the prodigal son.”

However interesting the subjects of conversation


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 between the young and the old man might be, however witty certain of Savinien’s answers, the young girl remained dumb until the twilight, her green veil lowered, her hands crossed over her shawl.

“Mademoiselle does not look as if she had been fascinated by Paris,” said Savinien finally, piqued.

“I am glad to return to Nemours,” she replied in a voice of emotion, raising her veil. In spite of the darkness, Savinien then recognized her by the size of her plaits and her shining blue eyes.

“And I, I leave Paris without regret to bury myself in Nemours, since I find my beautiful neighbor there,” he said. “I hope, Monsieur le Docteur, that you will allow me to call upon you; I love music, and I remember having heard Mademoiselle Ursule’s piano.”

“I do not know, monsieur,” said the doctor gravely, “whether your mother will wish to see you visiting an old man who is bound to feel all a mother’s anxiety for this dear child.”

This guarded reply gave Savinien much food for thought and he then remembered the kiss so lightly sent. The night had come, the heat was oppressive, Savinien and the doctor were the first to fall asleep. Ursule, who was awake a long time making plans, succumbed toward midnight. She had removed her little hat of ordinary plaited straw. Her head, covered with an embroidered cap, soon lay upon her godfather’s shoulder. At break of day, at Bouron, Savinien was the first to awaken. He then noticed Ursule with the disordered head


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 caused by the jolting; the cap was crumpled, turned up; the unrolled plaits fell on both sides of her face, flushed with the heat of the carriage; but, in this situation, which would be dreadful for women who depend upon toilette, youth and beauty triumph. Innocence always enjoys good sleep. The half-parted lips showed pretty teeth, the loosened shawl disclosed, without offence to Ursule, under the folds of a colored muslin gown, all the grace of her body. In short, the purity of this virgin soul shone in this physiognomy and was seen to all the better advantage in that no other expression disturbed it. Old Minoret, waking, replaced his daughter’s head in the corner of the carriage so that she could be more comfortable; she let him do as he pleased without noticing it, so soundly was she sleeping after all the nights spent in thinking over Savinien’s misfortune.

“Poor little thing!” he said to his neighbor, “she sleeps like the child that she is.”

“You must be proud of her,” rejoined Savinien, “for she seems to be as good as she is beautiful.”

“Ah! she is the joy of the house. Were she my daughter I could not love her more. She will be sixteen on the fifth of February next. God grant that I may live long enough to marry her to a man who will make her happy! I wanted to take her to the play in Paris, which she was visiting for the first time; but she refused, the curé of Nemours had forbidden it. ‘But,’ I said to her, ‘when you are married suppose your husband should wish to take


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 you?’—‘I will do all that my husband wishes,’ she answered. ‘If he asks me to do some wrong thing and I am weak enough to obey him, he will be charged with those sins before God; but for his sake I should of course draw upon all my strength to resist him.’”

Entering Nemours, at five in the morning, Ursule awoke, all abashed at her untidiness and at meeting Savinien’s look of admiration. In the hour that the diligence takes in coming from Bouron, where it stops a few minutes, the young man had fallen in love with Ursule. He had studied the sincerity of this soul, the beauty of body, the whiteness of the complexion, the delicacy of feature, the charm of the voice which had uttered the short and expressive sentence in which the poor child told all while wishing to tell nothing. In short, I do not know what presentiment told him that Ursule was the wife described to him by the doctor, whilst framing her in gold with these magic words, “Seven to eight hundred thousand francs!”

“In three or four years she will be twenty and I shall be twenty-seven; the good old man spoke of tests, of work, and good conduct! However cunning he may appear, he will end by telling me his secret.”

The three neighbors separated opposite their houses, and Savinien put coquetry into his adieus by casting a look full of entreaty at Ursule. Madame de Portenduère let her son sleep until midday. In spite of the fatigue of the journey the


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 doctor and Ursule went to High Mass. Savinien’s deliverance and his return in the doctor’s company had explained the object of the latter’s absence to the politicians of the town and to the heirs who were assembled in the market-place in a conclave similar to the one they had held there a fortnight before. To the great astonishment of the groups, on the way out from mass, Madame de Portenduère stopped old Minoret, who offered her his arm and took her home. The old lady wished to invite him, as well as his ward, to dinner that same day, telling him that Monsieur le Curé would be her other guest.

“He wanted to show Ursule Paris,” said Minoret-Levrault.

“Plague take him! the old man never takes a step without his little nurse!” cried Crémière.

“There must be great intimacy between them for Madame de Portenduère to take his arm,” said Massin.

“And you have never guessed that your uncle has sold his stock and released young Portenduère!” cried Goupil. “He refused it to my master, but he did not refuse his mistress—Ah! you are done for. The viscount will propose marriage settlements instead of a bond, and the doctor will make the husband indebted to his treasure of a goddaughter for all that it is necessary to give in order to conclude such an alliance.”

“It might not be a mistake to marry Ursule to Monsieur Savinien, “said the butcher. “The old lady is giving a dinner to-night to Monsieur Minoret,