Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 22, November, 1878

"Ah, bah!" retorted he: "that was when I could not be detected, and when more than life was in question. But now to kill this man would be to suffer death myself in the next hour, and to know that my wife and children were punished as well. Besides," he continued, as if trying to reason with her, "you have told me nothing which convinces me that what you say is true."

"Listen, then," she said, raising her head, which had sunk upon her breast. "You do not believe that he is starving her to death: you think she has all the food required by one in her weak and perishing condition. You think her cries, her prayers, her agony of desire for nourishment—for nourishment!—are only the result of sickness, and that if she had it she could not eat. Bien! Every morning, when I go into her room to dress her blisters with fresh poultices, I find the old ones torn off and eaten up! Tell me, Pierre, have any of our kin, in their worst straits of hunger and suffering, done worse than that?"

She spoke in a low voice, but it was freighted with such an intensity of horror and misery that the man beside her could not speak for an instant. When he did, he said in tones of the deepest feeling, "Ma pauvre maîtresse! ma pauvre maîtresse!"

"Do you still refuse?" hissed Marcelline.

The answer was compassionate, but resolved: "I do, Marcelline. Not even for her sake can I risk all. You know I have nearly saved enough money to buy my freedom. Once free, I shall soon purchase Sophie and the young ones: I cannot abandon such hopes even to save her."

There was a moment's silence. "May God help me, then!" said the woman as she rose, "for I swear by the Blessed Sacrament to save her if she be still alive—to revenge her if she be dead."

Three days later a long funeral cortége passed from the gates of the Levassour plantation and took its way along the dusty road toward the Catholic church of the settlement, some three miles off. In and out between the massive green walls of shining Cherokee rose-vines, which formed impenetrable barriers on either side of the way, wound the long line of old-fashioned chariots with black coachmen in queer, antiquated liveries, preceded by the tawdry French hearse with its numerous gilt devices and huge nodding plumes. The pitiless sun beat down upon them, and the blinding clouds of dust rose and choked them, but the mourners, both black and white, who formed the procession—and it was closed by a throng of weeping negroes on foot—were too much interested and absorbed in their melancholy task to feel either the one or the other, for such an occasion as this had never taken place in all that quiet country-side before. Inside of that hearse, in a snow-white coffin covered with flowers and gayly decorated with cut paper, silver crosses and waxen saints, reposed the mortal remains of Madame Hypolite Levassour, who had died at midnight thirty-six hours previously; and by her side in another coffin, more hastily contrived, lay the body of her well-beloved son-in-law and physician, Docteur Alphège Cherbuliez, who within six hours after her death had been killed by a shot-gun in the hands of an unknown assassin. Two negro men, Gérard Grôl and Pierre Lambas, had been arrested on strong suspicion, and were now in close confinement awaiting the trial which both knew would be short, sharp and swift, and administered by a judge who would not wait for legal proceedings to assist or confirm his decisions. Circumstantial evidence was strong against them, and the two unfortunate wretches were not more conscious that the sun was shining in heaven, making the narrow caboose in which they had been confined an unendurable, suffocating den of heat, than they were that when the dead were buried and grief was satisfied vengeance would make sudden and terrible work with them.

When the church was reached the carriages drew up in double ranks around the broad green meadow in which it stood, and the occupants, descending, filed in motley array into the building. Just in front of the altar two tressels were prepared for the coffins, which were not brought in until the whole congregation, which filled the pews to overflowing, was seated. Then the measured tramp of men was heard, and amid general weeping and lamentation the pall-bearers entered, and the priest, advancing from the foot of the altar, sprinkled with holy water first one coffin and then the other as they were placed before him, while the choir chanted softly the "De Profundis." Everything proceeded quietly as usual through the beautiful services for the burial of the dead, and the cool, dark church, with its mingled odor of incense and flowers, became more and more quiet as the soothing influences crept over the hearts of those assembled there. Mass was over, and the priest, coming out from the chancel, knelt before the tall crucifix which stood at the foot of the coffins and began the most touching of all prayers, "Non intres in judicium," when a sudden movement was heard at the lower end of the church, a stifled cry of alarm instantly hushed, and in another moment Marcelline, who had followed the cortége, like the other servants, on foot, walked slowly and with a perfectly composed and steady step up the aisle, made her reverence to the Host which was concealed in the tabernacle before her, and then stood facing the priest, who without pausing finished his prayer and rose from his knees.

"What wouldst thou have, my daughter," he asked with dignity, "that thou dost disturb the holy services of the Church?"

There was a slight pause. Marcelline seemed to steady herself: then putting her hand on the coffin of Alphège Cherbuliez, she said in a high, monotonous voice which rang through the building and reached even the watchers on the green without, "I killed Doctor Alphège Cherbuliez with my own hands. No one helped me and no one saw me. You can turn Pierre Lambas and Gérard Grôl loose."

There was a sudden stir like the rushing of a mighty wind through the church, but the priest waved his hand and the people were still.

"What was your motive?" he asked without moving.

The woman had never turned her head, and now answered him in the same overstrained key: "He starved my mistress to death. I saw her slowly dying of hunger and thirst day after day, and I made up my mind to kill him as soon as I could get the chance. I had to wait and wait," she went on, her voice sinking a little, "till at last it was too late."

She stopped, suddenly stooped and kissed her mistress's coffin: then wheeling round and facing the congregation, who sat spellbound, she shook her clenched fist at them. "Ah!" she said, speaking in a terrible voice, "you knew, you must have known—friends and cousins and brothers, ay, daughters too—that bread—bread!—was what she wanted. Who heard her cry for food? Who heard her beg and pray and implore for one little sip of milk, one little bite of meat?" Her voice rose to a shriek as she went on, but such was the force of her passion that no effort was made to check her: "You, all of you—all heard, all saw, all knew, yet none had courage to act; and now, c'est moi! c'est moi!" striking her breast violently with both hands, "la pauvre esclave, qui l'ai vengée!"

She paused: there was a dead silence. Instantly a ring of men closed round her: she was swept from the church, so swiftly was she borne away, and the service proceeded.

The priest looked pale, and sent two or three messages to those without, but they were of no avail. Before he could leave the altar, which he did as hurriedly as possible, Marcelline was hanging from the limb of an oak tree within sight of the church, her last words being, "God will forgive me: I did right." But bitter were the tears Père Ramain shed when he found she had gone to her last account unshriven and unabsolved.

    Annie Porter.

SYMPHONIC STUDIES

(AFTER ROBERT SCHUMANN.)

PRELUDE

Blue storm-clouds in hot heavens of mid-July
Hung heavy, brooding over land and sea:
Our hearts, a-tremble, throbbed in harmony
With the wild, restless tone of air and sky.
Shall we not call him Prospero who held
In his enchanted hands the fateful key
Of that tempestuous hour's mystery,
And with controlling wand our spirits spelled,
With him to wander by a sun-bright shore,
To hear fine, fairy voices, and to fly
With disembodied Ariel once more
Above earth's wrack and ruin? Far and nigh
The laughter of the thunder echoed loud,
And harmless lightnings leapt from cloud to cloud.

I

Floating upon a swelling wave of sound,
We seemed to overlook an endless sea:
Poised 'twixt clear heavens and glittering surf were we.
We drank the air in flight: we knew no bound
To the audacious ventures of desire.
Nigh us the sun was dropping, drowned in gold;
Deep, deep below the burning billows rolled;
And all the sea sang like a smitten lyre.
Oh, the wild voices of those chanting waves!
The human faces glimpsed beneath the tide!
Familiar eyes gazed from profound sea-caves,
And we, exalted, were as we had died.
We knew the sea was Life, the harmonious cry
The blended discords of humanity.

II

Look deeper yet: mark 'midst the wave-blurred mass,
In lines distinct, in colors clear defined,
The typic groups and figures of mankind.
Behold within the cool and liquid glass
Bright child-folk sporting with smooth yellow shells,
Astride of dolphins, leaping up to kiss
Fair mother-faces. From the vast abyss
How joyously their thought-free laughter wells!
Some slumber in grim caverns unafraid,
Lulled by the overwhelming water's sound,
And some make mouths at dragons, undismayed.
Oh dauntless innocence! The gulfs profound
Re-echo strangely with their ringing glee,
And with wise mermaids' plaintive melody.

III

What do the sea-nymphs in that coral cave?
With wondering eyes their supple forms they bend
O'er something rarely beautiful. They lend
Their lithe white arms, and through the golden wave
They lift it tenderly. Oh blinding sight!
A naked, radiant goddess, tranced in sleep,
Full-limbed, voluptuous, 'neath the mantling sweep
Of auburn locks that kiss her ankles white!
Upward they bear her, chanting low and sweet: