"If I had been true!" said Victor,"if I had not listened to him! But him I will not blame. For why should I blame him? Am I an idiot? And his influence could not have prevailed, had I not so chosen, when I stood before my judges and they questioned me. No,I acquit Mazurier. Perhaps what I have denied never appeared to him so glorious as it did once to me; and so he was guiltless at least of knowing what it was I did. But I knew. And I could not have been deceived for a moment. No,I think it impossible that for a moment I should have been deceived. They would have made a notable example of me, Jacqueline. I am rich,I am a student.Oh, yes! Jesus Christ may die for me, and I accept the benefit; but when it comes to suffering for His sake,you could not have expected that of such a poltroon, Jacqueline! We may look for it in brave men like Leclerc, whose very living depends on their ability to earn their bread,to earn it by daily sweat; but men who need not toil, who have leisure and education,of course you would not expect such testimony to the truth of Jesus from them! Bishop Briconnet recants,and Martial Mazurier; and Victor Le Roy is no braver man, no truer man than these!"
With bitter shame and self-scorning he spoke.Poor Jacqueline had not a word to say. She sat beside him. She would help him bear his cross. Heavy-laden as he, she awaited the future, saying, in the silence of her spirit's dismal solitude, "Oh, teach us! Oh, help us!" But she called not on any name; her prayer went out in search of a God whom in that hour she knew not. The dark cloud and shadow of Satan that overshadowed him was also upon her.
"Mazurier is coming in the morning to take me with him, Jacqueline," said Victor. "We are to make a journey."
"What is it, Victor?" she asked, quietly.
There was nothing left for her but patience,that she clearly saw,nothing but patience, and quiet enduring of the will of God.
"He is afraid of me,or of himself,or of both, I believe. He thinks a change of scene would be good for both of us, poor lepers that we are."
"I must go with you, Victor Le Roy," said the resolute Jacqueline.
"Wherefore?" asked he.
"Because, when you were strong and happy, that was your desire, Victor; and now that you are sick and sorrowing, I will not give you to another: no! not to Mazurier, nor to any one that breathes, except myself, to whom you belong."
"I must stay here in Meaux, then?"
"That depends upon yourself, Victor."
"We were to have been married. We were going to look after our estate, now that the hard summer and the hard years of work are ended."
"Yes, Victor, it was so."
"But I will not wrong you. You were to be the wife of Victor Le Roy. You are his widow, Jacqueline. For you do not think that he lives any longer?"
"He lives, and he is free! If he has sinned, like Peter even, he weeps bitterly."
"Like Peter? Peter denied his Lord. But he did weep, as you say,bitterly. Peter confessed again."
"And none served the Master with truer heart or greater courage afterward. Victor, you remember."
"Even so,oh, Jacqueline!"
"Victor! Victor! it was only Judas who hanged himself."
"Come, Jacqueline!"
She arose and went with him. At dawn they were married. Love did lead and save them.
I see two youthful students studying one page. I see two loving spirits walking through thick darkness. Along the horizon flicker the promises of day. They say, "O Holy Ghost, hast thou forsaken thine own temples?" Aloud they cry to God.
I see them wandering among Domrémy woods and meadows,around the castle of Picardy,talking of Joan. I see them resting by the graves they find in two ancient villages. I see them walk in sunny places; they are not called to toil; they may gather all the blossoms that delight their eyes. Their love grows beyond childhood,does not die before it comes to love's best estate. Happy bride and bridegroom! But I see them as through a cloud whose fair hues are transient.
From the meadow-lands and the vineyards and the dark forests of the mountains, from study and from rest, I see them move with solemn faces and calm steps. Brave lights are in their eyes, and flowers that are immortal they carry in their hands. No distillation can exhaust the fragrance of those blooms.
What dost thou here, Victor? What dost thou here, Jacqueline?
This is the place of prisons. Here they light again, as they have often lighted, torch and fagot;life must pay the cost! Angry crowds and hooting multitudes love this dreary square. Oh, Jacqueline and Victor, what is this I behold?
They come together from their prison, hand in hand. "The testimony of Jesus!" Stand back, Mazurier! Retire, Briconnet! Here is not your place,this is not your hour! Yet here incendiaries fire the temples of the Holy Ghost!
The judges do not now congratulate. Jacqueline waits not now at midnight for the coming of Le Roy. Bride and bridegroom, there they stand; they face the world to give their testimony.
And a woman's voice, almost I deem the voice of Elsie Méril, echoes the mother's cry that followed John Leclerc when he fought the beasts at Meaux,
"Blessed be Jesus Christ, and His witnesses."
So of the Truth were they borne up that day in a blazing chariot to meet their Lord in the air, to be forever with their Lord.
* * * * *ON A MAGNOLIA-FLOWER
Memorial of my former days,
Magnolia, as I scent thy breath,
And on thy pallid beauty gaze,
I feel not far from death!
So much hath happened! and so much
The tomb hath claimed of what was mine!
Thy fragrance moves me with a touch
As from a hand divine:
So many dead! so many wed!
Since first, by this Magnolia's tree,
I pressed a gentle hand and said,
A word no more for me!
Lady, who sendest from the South
This frail, pale token of the past,
I press the petals to my mouth,
And sighas 'twere my last.
Oh, love, we live, but many fell!
The world's a wreck, but we survive!
Say, rather, still on earth we dwell,
But gray at thirty-five!
SOME NOTES ON SHAKSPEARE
In 1849, the discovery by Mr. Payne Collier of a copy of the Works of Shakspeare, known as the folio of 1632, with manuscript notes and emendations of the same or nearly the same date, created a great and general interest in the world of letters.
The marginal notes were said to be in a handwriting not much later than the period when the volume came from the press; and Shakspearian scholars and students of Shakspeare, and the far more numerous class, lovers of Shakspeare, learned and unlearned, received with respectful eagerness a version of his text claiming a date so near to the lifetime of the master that it was impossible to resist the impression that the alterations came to the world with only less weight of authority than if they had been undoubtedly his own.
The general satisfaction of the literary world in the treasure-trove was but little alloyed by the occasional cautiously expressed doubts of some caviller at the authenticity of the newly discovered "curiosity of literature"; the daily newspapers made room in their crowded columns for extracts from the volume; the weekly journals put forth more elaborate articles on its history and contents; and the monthly and quarterly reviews bestowed their longer and more careful criticism upon the new readings of that text, to elucidate which has been the devout industry of some of England's ripest scholars and profoundest thinkers; while the actors, not to be behindhand in a study especially concerning their vocation, adopted with more enthusiasm than discrimination some of the new readings, and showed a laudable acquaintance with the improved version, by exchanging undoubtedly the better for the worse, upon the authority of Mr. Collier's folio, soon after the publication of which I had the ill-fortune to hear a popular actress destroy the effect and meaning of one of the most powerful passages in "Macbeth" by substituting the new for the old reading of the line,
The cutting antithesis of "What beast" in retort to her husband's assertion, "I dare do all that may become a man," was tamely rendered by the lady, in obedience to Mr. Collier's folio, "What boast was it, then,"a change that any one possessed of poetical or dramatic perception would have submitted to upon nothing short of the positive demonstration of the author's having so written the passage.
Opinions were, indeed, divided as to the intrinsic merit of the emendations or alterations. Some of the new readings were undoubted improvements, some were unimportant, and others again were beyond all controversy inferior to the established text of the passages; and it seemed not a little difficult to reconcile the critical acumen and poetical insight of many of the corrections with the feebleness and prosaic triviality of others.
Again, it was observed by those conversant with the earlier editions, especially with the little read or valued Oxford edition, that a vast number of the passages given as emendations in Mr. Collier's folio were precisely the same in Hanmer's text. Indeed, it seems not a little remarkable that neither Mr. Collier nor his opponents have thought it worth their while to state that nearly half, and that undoubtedly the better half, of the so-called new readings are to be found in the finely printed, but little esteemed, text of the Oxford Shakspeare. If, indeed, these corrections now come to us with the authority of a critic but little removed from Shakspeare's own time, it is remarkable that Sir Thomas Hanmer's, or rather Mr. Theobald's, ingenuity should have forestalled the fiat