little even to his dear friend, the priest, who rode with him, and scarcely looking out of the windows of his carriage, for any wonder of the way. At length the broad walls and towers of the city came in sight,-a city set in a fair land of meadow and stream. The morning sun shone bright over it, and the priest, looking up, perceived how it glittered upon a great building of many white towers, whose gilt pinnacles gleamed like so many crowns of gold. "Look, Your Majesty," he said, with a sad attempt at gaiety, "yonder is your palace." And the duke looked up from a deep reverie, and saw his palace, and groaned aloud. But presently there came a sad twinkle in his sad eyes, as he descried another building of many peaks and pinnacles glittering in the sun. "Look up, my Lord Archbishop," he said, turning to his friend, "yonder is your palace. And as the good priest looked, his face was all sorrow, and the tears overflowed his eyes, as he thought of the simple souls once in his keeping, in his parish far away. But presently, the king, looking again toward the palace, descried a flag floating from one of the towers, covered with heraldic devices. As he looked, it seemed that ten years of weariness fell from his face, and a great joy returned. "Look," he said, almost in a whisper, to the priest, "those are not my arms. . . ." The priest looked, and then looked again into the duke's eyes, and ten years of weariness fell from his face also, and a great joy returned. "Thank God! we are saved," the duke and the priest exclaimed together, and fell laughing upon each other's shoulders. For the arms floating from the tower of the palace were the arms of the usurper, and the king that cared not to be a king had lost his kingdom. And, while they were still rejoicing together, there came the sound of many horsemen from the direction of the city, a cavalcade of many glittering spears. The duke halted his train to await their coming, and when they had arrived where the duke was, a herald in cloth-of-gold broke from their ranks, and read aloud from a great parchment many sounding wordsthe meaning of which was that the good Duke Stanislaus had been deposed from his kingdom, and that the High and Mighty Prince, the usurper, reigned in his stead. When the herald had concluded, the duke's voice was heard in reply: "It is well-it is very well!" he said; "Gather yonder white flower and take it back to your master, and say it is the white flower of peace betwixt him and me." And astonishment fell on all, and no one, of course, except the priest, understood. All thought that the good duke had lost his wits, which, indeed, had been the growing belief of his courtiers for some time. But the herald gathered the white flower and carried it back to the city, with sound of many trumpets. Need one say that the usurper least of all understood? With the herald went all the gilded coaches and the fine ladies and gentlemen, complaining sadly that they had had such a long and tedious journey to no purpose, and hastening with all speed to take their allegiance to the new king. The duke's own people alone remained with him, and when all the rest had gone, the duke gave orders for the horses' heads to be turned homeward, to the green valley in which alone he cared to be a king. "Back to the bees and the books and the kind country hearts," cried the duke to his friend. "Back to the little church among the quiet trees," added the priest, who had cared as little for an archbishop's miter as the duke for a kingly crown. Since then the duke has been left to hive his bees in peace, and it may be added that he has never been known to lose his temper again. FROM THE MINIATURE IN THE COLLECTION OF MR. J. PIERPONT MORGAN The portrait bears on the reverse this autograph inscription: "Genoa, Oct. 17th, 1822. This Miniature was given to me by my poor dear friend Shelley in the presence of Lord Byron. Leigh Hunt." T was Augustine's name for them and I never knew them by any other. "Venez vite, Madame, voir Les Amoureux," she called to me one spring morning when she ought to have been busy with brooms and brushes instead of bothering her head about lovers. Perhaps because the month was May, when love is in season, I dropped my own work and joined her at the kitchen window. As I live on the very highest floor of a house that passes for a sky-scraper in London, though it would disappear among the real sky-scrapers of New York, my kitchen and, indeed, all my windows look on nothing save a vast stretch of sky and a vast stretch of roofs, but such a sky as you could not find anywhere out of England, and such roofs as you could not find anywhere out of London: new and old, tall and low, flat and steep, with gable-ends and flanked by towers, mansards, and the latest patent inventions, jumbled up together anyhow, and none more extraordinary than the ancient, crooked, red-tiled group immediately below me-a view I would not exchange for the finest panorama in the Alps. To a garret window in the most ancient and crooked of these Augustine's finger was pointing. It is a win dow I had seen hundreds of times before, a window I can never go to mine without seeing, for it is the nearest down there, and the biggest, made of two of the ordinary size thrown into one, projecting farther than any of the others, and, unlike them, covered on top with glass. But never had I seen it quite as it was on this brilliant May morning, flung wide open, with the spring sunshine streaming through upon a youth and a maid who stood just inside clasped in each other's arms. Augustine was right. They were Les Amoureux, by whatever other name they may have called themselves to the landlord of the shabby old garret in which they settled that same day, with an easel, two chairs, and a mirror, for all visible furni ture. or should be, except in the modern novel: The lilac and laburnum were blossoming in London when they came, the evenings were growing long and golden, the spirit of youth was in everything, and with Les Amoureux as neighbors the meaning of May-which the years in passing dim for us all, alas!—was clear to me again. In the midst of the infirm, tumbled-down, tragic old houses their love sprang up like a flower, and it was so pretty blooming in the dingy attic that as the days went on I not only saw their window every time I went to mine, but I found myself going to mine on purpose to see it. I got into the habit of watching them much as I watched the wood-pigeons who had built their nest in a neighboring tree. Everybody who ever was young has a sneaking sentiment for love and youth, and I was not too old to remember that I, too, began life in a garret, and often it was into mine I was looking across the past as I stood at my window, and the roofs, not of London, but of Rome, were spread out below me. But, after all, I had not to find excuses for watching Les Amoureux, when they did not mind being watched any more than the pigeons. To know there were curious neighbors might draw the red-haired young lady in the garret on one side of theirs to her window, and drive the lean, hungry-looking man in the garret on the other side from his. But it never occurred to Les Amoureux that there were neighbors to be aware of. For them the world was bounded by their own sloping walls, and they alone existed. They detached themselves so completely from the life about them that it was not possible to think of them as in any way a part of it. They were no two people in particular, but simply Les Amoureux-the loversDaphnis and Chloe, Aucassin and Nicolette, Romeo and Juliet, strayed from the thyme-scented pastures of Lesbos, the sunburned land of Provence, or the grim palaces of Verona, to a little, musty, old Lon don attic. They were young, as lovers always are, Love lightened the labor, for they shared it. He was the artist, and she the model. On some days, in a nun's black veil, she knelt before him; on others, as a peasant, she lured him to the dance. Sometimes she wore patches and powder for him, sometimes classic draperies and sandals. She dressed for the river, the races, the moors, to which she never went. It was hard work, no doubt, but many a woman in love would have envied her chance to add the enchantment of variety to her beauty. And he was so ready to be enchanted--so ready to interrupt the pose, to throw down his pencil, push back his chair from the easel, and take her in his arms. As on that first morning, they would stand there, clasped close in front |
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