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own hearthstone. The children, tethered by the foot to a post, would angle through the trapdoors for turtles, or twiddle derisive fingers at the wolf or boar that peered hungrily through the twilight from the strand; the hunter would toil over the causeway with his spoil of stag, or urus, or aurochs; the husbandman, on the main, would mind his wheat-field or his sheepfold; the potter, with wheel or without, would pile up his product of jar and pipkin; the weaver at her clay-weighted loom would manipulate her hunks of flax; and the worker in skins, or arrow-heads, or fish-hooks would pursue his industrious way. Then some careless maid—oh, joy!—would let slip a bowl or jug through a chink in the rude flooring, or an impatient artisan would hurl a faulty hatchethead far out over the water, and each would fall, and sink in the marl below, and wait there patiently three or four thousand years for a worthy old antiquarian to come into his own. And his new guest, instead of starting in with Roman readings in one syllable, might now begin with the very A B C of Swiss history, as rightfully she should. Such images as these churned in the Governor's excited brain as, accompanied by his secondary sympathizer, he rustled through the town and scaled the height behind it in search of his primary one. But what pleasure is complete? The Governor, panting and perspiring, told off the last step of that stony incline, and gained the turf and shade of that churchly little rectangle only to find the field already in possession of another. This was a lithe, graceful, self-assured youngmanoftwenty-five, whose mannerseemed a perfect epitome of urban elegance, and whose fantastic costuming, blossoming into every sort of vernal wantonness, affronted those serene presences across the water with a jauntiness that approached blasphemy. Or so it seemed to the good Governor, whose balked impatience was hastening on to the discovery of other affronts more deadly still, when Miss West presented the new-comer as the young Fin-de-Siècle. The Count, she hastened to add, with a certain accent of complacent relish, was just twenty-four hours from Paris. The Governor found it impossible to maintain a complete rigidity before this suave and smiling young man, and therefore unbent sufficiently to present his own companion, the Baron Thus-and-So, mentioning one of the oldest, most famous, and most unmanageable names in all Tyrol, a name which for ordinary use the Governor unceremoniously metamorphosed into "Zeitgeist." The Baron Zeitgeist wore Tyrolean grays and greens, and had hastily slung a jagerhut, with one curling cock-feather, across his blond head; and the Governor, whose eye, indeed, was not altogether dimmed to pictorial effect, thought that

this was as far as any young man need go when posturing before the Alps.

The Chatelaine had not yet recovered from the shock which had come to her with the dawning of this brilliant Parisian apparition beneath the shadowed arch of the church door, and to the Governor the sight of that bright and knowing face lighted up a million gas-jets in competition. with the blessed light of day, while every footfall of those dapper boots helped to spread a field of asphalt over the green churchyard turf; but Aurelia West had often seen the like before, and she lost no time in demanding of the Count, with an aggressive audacity, and a seeming consciousness of the superfluity of the question, what he was doing in Switzerland. Well, he was there as a fictionist; he was picking up material. This he said with the air of a man who thought one answer would do as well as another. No interest, he declared, was equal to the human interest. And humanity was never so interesting as when at a disadvantage. And it was never more at a disadvantage than when amusing its leisure; nor at a more supreme disadvantage than when this leisure found it disporting before the great front of nature. He looked calmly around the little group, waved his hand in a businesslike way toward the Jungfrau, and presently retired into the shrubbery to jot down this little string of epigrams. Not every one would think them worth saving, but the appreciation of values differs, and they were saved, and appeared in print in Paris in the autumn. I simply mention this fact here because the "Étude d'une Âme" may never have come to your notice.

The Governor, who inwardly confessed himself a little put out, but who hardly fancied himself as figuring to any great disadvantage, opined that for this sort of note-taking their own quiet little town might not be so good a field as Lucerne, for example, where a brass band might be listened to on the Schweizerhof Quay, whence the Rigi might be ascended for the sunrise, and where, as he understood from the prints, Mlle. Pasdenom, also from Paris, was shortly expected to open out with an Offenbachian repertoire on the stage of the Casino. This last chance shot found lodgment somewhere, for the Count, a trifle dashed, hastened on rapidly to another set of reasons. This time he was merely winging his flight across a corner of the country on his way down to Italy; he was going to see his friend, the Marchese of Tempo-Rubato, who had a hunting-box in the mountains above Bergamo, and his father, the old Duke of Largo-everybody knew the Duke. All this, and much more, to Miss West; and that young lady, thankful to have gone no farther beyond bounds, and inwardly resolving hereafter to keep within bounds still more circumscribed, astutely started out on a little course

of thought quite her own. For one thing, she should beware in the future of any reason that seemed too plain, too simple. For another thing, she should certainly hear the band play on the Schweizerhof Quay.

If Fin-de-Siècle, during his winter's acquaintance with Aurelia West, had given that undiscriminating young woman more admiration than respect, he was now bestowing on the Chatelaine a considerable degree of respect, no particular degree of admiration, and an insufferable degree of curiosity. He began his notetaking on the churchyard terrace with all the ardor that a new type inspires, and he continued it on the steamer deck, as they sped in all haste toward Morat, with an absorption that thrust landscape and antiquities equally into the background. The Governor had collected his little party with the least possible loss of time, and his satisfaction as to its composition was complete; for among the group of quiet, suave, well-fed old gentlemen aft was his great confrère and rival, Professor Saitoutetplus, whose complacency since the discovery of a lake-dwelling or so on his own frontage near Cortaillod had been a thorn in the Governor's side for many a year past. And the others, if less prominent as landed proprietors, were equally eminent as scientists; every one of them, at some reunion or other, had laid his "paper" on that dusky damask tablecover of the Governor's, and had contracted his eyebrows to stop the tinkling of the prisms on the tarnished candelabrum at his elbow. And now they sat there together on the shady side of the paddle-box, conversing amiably enough, but ready at any moment to sink the friend in the controversialist with a suddenness and completeness that would throw a stranger into a panic of apprehension. But the friend, although he sank, never failed to rise again; and the Chatelaine, when contentious voices began to rise, knew that conversational life-preservers were close at hand, and gave no evidence of being in any great degree disturbed. She, with the other young people, was well up toward the bow; and thus the Hirondelle, with youth at the prow and learning at the helm, sped on her

way.

The Chatelaine, whose wardrobe was doubtless small and simple, wore for this excursion just what she had worn upon the terracea gray woolen gown, a small bonnet of brown straw, not altogether unlike a poke, and a garment which I venture, with some diffidence, to term a pelisse. To have called her aspect archaic would have been unjustly severe; yet to have called it wholly unfashionable would have been quite within the bounds of truth. But as this strong, serene, cool-eyed young woman trod firmly from one side of the boat to the other, her glance ranging freely over lake

and mountain, and her head raised finely to catch the freshening breeze that swept athwart the bow, Aurelia West could not but speed one shaft of envy toward this young creature set so high that she was able to ignore all current conventionalities and yet become in no degree absurd. As soon request the Alps themselves to change their robe of snow and pineboughs as to ask the "taste for nature" to wax or wane or vacillate.

Meanwhile Fin-de-Siècle pursued his inquiries with an unabashed directness that a complete gentleman might well have hesitated to employ. When he learned that the Chatelaine's idea of dissipation was San Remo, he felt that he had made a point; when he discovered that her ideal of splendor was Geneva, he felt that he had made another; when she said that she had never witnessed a real dramatic representation, he squeezed his own elbows in ecstasy; and when she avowed that little in her reading had been more recent than "Paul et Virginie," he was almost charmed into silence. The Chatelaine was able to meet all his inquiries with serene composure, and at the same time to give some heed to the painstaking little profundities with which the young Baron Zeitgeist was trying to chain the wandering attention of Aurelia West; and once, too, when a group of peasant girls, who were attired in the sober holiday finery of the district, and who sat huddled together in an obscure corner not far away, began modestly to croon some old folk-songs, she added her own voice to theirs. Zeitgeist had been in America, as he had lost no time in informing the new arrival on meeting her in the Governor's salon, and his talk referred to a time and place quite other than the present. So did the talk of the Governor's friends, occasional bits of which floated now and then to Aurelia's ears. But she was giving very little heed to either the one or the other. Now and then she heard a word of the stone age, indeed, and again of the bronze age, and again of the age of iron; but she herself knew only one age -the age of flesh and blood. To the Chatelaine, of course, the proper study of mankind was antiquity; but from her own point of view the proper study of mankind was man, and the particular man now in her thoughts was the one who had followed her, or some one else, from Paris.

The steamer had now left the Lake of Neuchâtel, and was bumping on, as best it might, through the narrow channel of the Broye. The motion had become too violent and irregular for the singing peasantry, and they lapsed into silence. The steamer presently jarred against a scowful of mowers whose work grazed the edge of the stream; a boy who was knocked overboard from the stem of the scow was

brought up by a big boat-hook, and the intervention of the officer in command prevented the boarding of the Hirondelle by a horde of angry agriculturists. A quarter of a mile farther the boat grazed bottom, and a rod beyond this it stuck fast, and nothing but the straining, writhing, pushing, and shouting of the entire crew made the accomplishment of the trip a possibility. But none of these minor mishaps had cast a single drop of water on the flames of controversy now raging among the savants of Neuchâtel. The Chatelaine, looking back, observed that her godfather was quite red in the face, and that the worthy Saitoutetplus was moving his umbrella in a fashion totally foreign to the usual manipulation of the olive-branch. Monsieur was being requested to recall how it had turned out not merely at their own Concise or Yverdon, but also at Wauwyl, at Wangen, at Robenhausen, where by no chance could the potter's wheel have been employed. And again, would monsieur be pleased to remember that the jar had not been found in the peat itself, but in the first stratum beneath ita consideration that rendered necessary a reconstruction of the entire theory. But, on the other hand, the cher professeur must not lose sight of the important fact that the jar had been clearly shown to contain not carbonized acorns, but beechnuts, which permitted an entirely different interpretation of the matter. Meanwhile the Chatelaine watched for the appearance of Morat's high-set castle-tower, with its pair of attendant poplars, and, seeing them, felt that deliverance was nigh.

Morat, rising steeply from behind its frontage of ruined sea-wall and its rounded clumps of willow, is a compact, bustling little place, and as picturesque, in a hearty, downright fashion, as a purely Protestant town can be. For a touch of the pensive and forlorn thriftlessness that the Church may bestow our friends waited for Estavayer, which had a place in the circuitous route that took them home. But Morat possesses two features which even the most troublesome esthete must appreciate-an inn which offers at once a good dinner and a good view across the lake from its high back windows, and a town-wall which, more than any dinner, must make the mouth of the discriminating visitor water. Our friends despatched their lunch in the big public room, crowded with a jostling, good-natured fair-throng, and then, in deference to the visitor from over sea, made a little excursion on the wall, a tiny semicircle of less than half a mile, all told, with a huddle of steep roofs within and a fine spread of gardens and open meadows without. It is a rugged old fabric, broken through by a dozen awkward towers, and covered for its whole length with a rude peaked roof that rests on

a rough timber framework, set with wabbling lines of coarse old tiles; but it deserves a place among the minor promenades of Switzerland, it is so authentic, so accessible, so abounding in pleasant and ever-shifting glimpses of lake, town, mountain, and country-side.

But the Governor's impatience over Aventicum left very little time for any other place, and his guests presently found themselves seated under his famous old pear-trees near the Temple of Mars, while his chief Roman was offering them by way of refreshment the choice between gooseberries and buttermilk. Then they were shown the remains of the basilica of Aulus Perfidius, whose treachery to the Roman cause, as explained by Zeitgeist, was the reason for the removal of a good part of this structure in favor of a barrack for the Thirteenth Legion: a row of cippi commemorating various members of that body now formed a border for the asparagus-bed. They saw numerous other novelties and rarities, and on the way home they stopped at Payerne to glance at the old Benedictine abbey, from the broad archway of which half a hundred shrill-voiced school-children were being scattered broadcast, and to look in at the old church where the saddle of good Queen Bertha is to be seen, with its hole for her distaff. And they took time at Estavayer, while waiting for the homeward steamer, to run over the causeways and through the courts of the fine old brick château; and they glided into the port at Neuchâtel as the stars were coming out and the dews were making it worth while to feel a new seat before taking it; and Aurelia West was fain to acknowledge to the Chatelaine, as they walked home along the darkling quay, that not for many a day had she been more completely filled with panorama, medievalism, and classicality. But the lake-dwellers? Yes, yes-that is a question I can answer; but it is one that I had hoped you might forget to ask.

Well, none of us need to be told that a single whiff of real fact may quickly dissipate a whole bushel of antiquarian chaff. And all of us can understand that the humbler the fount of information the harder it is to gulp down its gushings. There are certain features connected with that afternoon at Aventicum Novum which the Governor never cared to linger on, and which were never afterward referred to in his presence. The plain facts are these: the Governor's steward had a father; this father, an octogenarian down in a cottage by the shore, had a memory; and this memory was able to connect the work of the lake-dwellers with certain work of his own lost both to sight and recollection for fully fifty years. That was all. The Governor's fancy had gone up as rockets do, and had come down as rockets will; and now, when the worthy Sai

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THE JURA: BOUND TO THE CHARIOT-WHEELS.

AFTER the obsequies of Julia Placidia the Chatelaine and her friends set about the recovery of their spirits by means of a series of little fêtes and excursions, not too hilarious and not too suddenly begun. They started with a sedate ramble over the heights of the Chaumont, and they continued with a little run, partly by rail and partly on foot, up through the glories of the Val de Travers. One day came a picnic on the grassy slopes above the towered and gabled old manor of Cornaux, whence the Lake of Bienne, along with red-tiled Neuveville and the inviting Isle of St. Peter, spread out a soothing little sonatina in quietly blended blues, reds, and greens; and on another day they betook themselves up to La Chaux-de-Fonds to spend a few hours among the watchmakers, much to the delight of Aurelia West, in whose breast the shopping instinct, like hope, sprang eternal, and in whose eyes the pleasant peculiarities of the Jura landscapes had not yet lost their charm. And in the course of a week they had so far left their grief behind as to attempt a quiet little fête in the prim old garden behind the Governor's house. They summoned hither half a dozen shy young students and a corresponding number of straight, self-conscious maidens, the daughters and nieces of professors, and attempted a bit of dancing en

plein air to the music of a flute, a violin, and a violoncello. The cello was manned by Zeitgeist, and the flute was looked after by the Governor himself, who would have resented the least imputation of rheumatic finger-joints as the worst of insults; and the efforts of both were directed by the violinist,—a townsman and a professional,— a nervous, elderly little man whose interest in the occasion rather overshadowed the deference that he should have shown to such distinguished amateurs, whose slightest slip he rebuked and corrected with Draconic severity. The Governor was brought to book half a dozen times or more, and at last was smilingly obliged to confess himself rather out of practice; but Zeitgeist, whose instrument was his constant traveling companion and in almost daily use, escaped with merely a rap or two. Miss West, who had observed the peregrinations of the cello with some amusement and little less concern, once made bold to ask its owner why he had not chosen something smaller; but she learned at once that nothing else could quite meet his particular requirements. The violin was too shrill and shrieking; the viola was too robust and rampageous; only the soulful sonority of the violoncello could give adequate expression to his passion and his pain. But to the Chatelaine there was nothing that required special comment in the journeyings of that big green bag; for more than once she had seen an unwieldy sitz-bath bumping its way up the Nicolaithal to Zermatt, and last year she had made the acquaintance of an elderly Anglaise who had carried a parrot in an enormous cage all the way from Plymouth to Pontresina and back again.

The days went on quickly and pleasantly, and Aurelia West was pleased to find herself slipping more easily and more completely into the round of cheerful serenities that marked the course of life at Neuchâtel. This was precisely what she had come for, and it would be agreeable enough for a few weeks, after the distractions of Paris and the diversions of the Riviera. It was on this southern shore that the two young women had first become acquainted, during a month passed between Mentone and San Remo, and the Chatelaine had left La Trinité for Neuchâtel in order to meet her guest, as I may say, upon the threshold. Yet, while the Governor's little fêtes and excursions had half rubbed the Rue de la Paix from her memory, and had jostled the last Battle of Flowers two or three degrees along the road to ancient history, still they had not done much to quiet the feeling of doubt and surprise and general uncertainty which rose and fluttered whenever she looked back on that day's journey of hers from Paris to the Alps.

She had made the journey alone. When I say "alone," I use the word in a narrow, technical sense; she was accompanied by no friend, no relative, no chaperon. The relatives in whose care she was to have gone were obliged to give up their idea of Basel at the last moment, and to this independent young woman the eighthour trip across France by daylight did not present itself as an undertaking of any extreme difficulty. But as for company unrelated, company in the plain, ordinary sense,—she had enough and to spare, as you shall see.

She had made all her arrangements to depart with the éclat proper to one of the colony who was so fair, so young, and of a position so assured. Her costume was distinctly in the mode, and that mode at its highest. Her traveling-wrap was in a large, light plaid, which, even in the piece, looked striking enough; her hat showed a width of brim and a wealth of adornment that more than met the necessities of the case; and the handle of her parasol was incredibly long and ornate. Still, whatever her aunt may or may not have said, before or after, there was nothing in her get-up-as she invariably insisted when looking back upon this curious day-that was not completely justified by the plates in "La Mode Illustrée." Her bags and other belongings were equally modish, a dozen people of consequence had assembled at the Gare de l'Est to see her off, and nothing in the world had been wanting to give her departure the proper effect except a minute or two of time. But a wretched accident had delayed her five or more, and when her uncle hurried her through the salle d'attente to the platform, a dozen apprehensive friends, who had bought tickets to the first station out that they might pass the guard, had given her up; the porters were running along swiftly as they slammed the doors of the carriages, and her attendant, wrenching open one of the compartments, had only time to push her in when the train started, even before she had found her seat. No bonbons, no flowers, no hand-shaking, no kisses; but as the train pulled out she was solaced by a momentary glimpse of a traveler more unfortunate still. A young man-a boulevardier, it seemed-came struggling through the crowd with a new portmanteau in one hand, an immense bouquet in the other, and an evident intention on the carriage before hers in his every movement. His figure seemed familiar enough, but his hat was jammed down over his eyes and nose. He stumbled and fell. The portmanteau burst open. The bouquet flew to pieces. What became of the youth himself she had no time to see. Nor was she disturbed by the spectacle which her uncle presently offered to those remaining behind-rushing after the train with outstretched arms, as if to pull it back by main

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