that you should not have heard of it! I don't understand. Where have you been? Why-" "But," I interrupted, "he is not dead. It is you who are mistaken. He is at Miss Fanny's." I Maitland glanced at me queerly. "Impossible, old man. I saw him dead. spoke with him just before he died. He gave me instructions about some papers. It was an epidemic of fever in a little outof-the-way settlement. I was ill afterward myself. Why, is it possible that people don't know! Perhaps my cable never reached the papers; but-" Then something in my face must have stopped him. "Nevertheless, he is here in the house," I said. "I have seen him." We looked in each other's eyes; then the mystery of it swept over both of us overwhelmingly. "You have seen him?" Maitland exclaimed in a low tone. I nodded. "They have all seen himMiss Fanny, Miss Ferry, Mrs. Day." Then I remembered the cub's answer: "I have n't seen any old man about," and broke off, my mind in a whirl of strange thoughts. "Do you suppose they know?" I said aloud. "Surely they can't, because" Then I stopped. "Do you mean"-he felt his way slowly; it plainly seemed so preposterous -"do you mean that they actually believe him to be there-in the flesh?" "I don't know; that is what I can't understand," I said. "They talk of him as if he were still there?" he questioned. I nodded. to us," I said. on his mind about them at the last-his memoirs, I imagined. It is what I really came here for. In fact, I was on my way to Miss Fanny's when I met you." "Oh, must you?" I cried. "Can't she be spared?" I shrank, without analyzing my reasons, from the idea of that interview with Miss Fanny. Maitland stared at me. "Of course not," I agreed instantly. "I did not realize. I am a little dazed with it all." Then a sense of possible recompense in the situation struck me. "Was he unchanged at the last?" I asked. "He was never more wonderful," Maitland replied solemnly. A wave of thankfulness swept over me. "What a comfort to know that!" "Yes, is n't it?" he responded. Then we turned and walked slowly and silently in the direction of the house. In the shaded parlor when Miss Fanny entered I arranged so that she sat with her back to the dim light as we talked, so that even our loving eyes might not surprise too ruthlessly the revelation in her face. I saw that it was difficult for Maitland to come to the point of his visit, self-conscious as he was with our strange discovery. But at last, clearing his throat, he began: "Before I leave, dear Miss Fanny, I must arrange with you to go over Mr. Hepworth's papers. I have rather a short allowance of time here, unfortunately." I did not look at Miss Fanny's face, but "But he has never spoken I saw, in her lap, her frail, blue-veined We looked about at the old landmarks in the quiet September sunshine. "You give me the creeps," said Maitland. He glanced at me hurriedly, then looked away. "If such things can be-how about Miss Fanny's part?" "That is what I was wondering about," I returned. "She must have discovered. Why should she keep it back?" She is the soul of truth," agreed Maitland. "What do you think?" "I don't know what to think," I replied inadequately. We were both silent for some time, then Maitland turned in the direction of the town. "He left some statement with me about his things. He had something hands tremble. It was a moment before she spoke. "Yes, you have always helped him so beautifully with his work." There was a pause. Maitland looked down into his hat and turned it slowly. about. "You know I was with him down there, in Barbadoes"-he paused-"at the last.' The words, one would have said, did not reach Miss Fanny with their full significance, yet there was a strained sound in her voice. "I think he is not in his room now," she began hurriedly. Then, for we had both looked up quickly, involuntarily, at her, she met our eyes. She looked from Maitland to me, then back at Maitland; then her eyes fell, and slowly a dull flush crept up to the roots of her hair. I could 11 לוונט والانار the traveler has passed hardly prepares him for the moment when, from his carriage window, he looks to the Seine far below, long narrow islands dividing it into two streams, bridges spanning it from shore to shore, a big modern town spreading from it to the low hills on the horizon, and, out of the midst of houses and factories and chimneys, the cathedral towers rising in their beauty. Before he has time for any impression save that of the grandeur of it, or for any criticism of industrial atmosphere. The Month of Mary is not a service of obligation, but never of old, at the most important ceremony, have I found people assembled in so great numbers and so fervent in prayer. To surprise the cathedral thus in its most intimate devotions, is to see in it something more than a monument existing by the care of the state and for the curiosity of the tourist. It helps one then to understand, better than when you study it, guide-book in hand, why its builders made it beautiful and why its history is one of all the tears and laughter of Rouen since it became Christian, until now, when statesmen would have it cease to be Catholic. The interior is never so solemn as at this hour, the great piers and arches in shining light leading the eye straight to the fires of the altar, while choir and chapels are lost in the shadowy space beyond, where the white columns loom dimly, and the priest, bearing the Blessed Sacrament, passes and disappears as the acolyte's little bell tinkles faintly and ever more faintly into silence. The mystery of the sanctuary colors and deepens the beauty of the vast church. Daylight gives less mystery, but intensifies the drama of the architecture, which is in no cathedral so overwhelming. Even Fergusson, chary with his enthusiasm, describes the west front as "a romance in stone." Even Ruskin, quick to detect uselessness in ornament, deccribes the central door as "the most exquisite piece of pure flamboyant work existing.' The whole façade is an incredibly flamboyant array of sculpture and statues, tier above tier, of niches and canopies, gables and pinnacles, arcades and traceries open to the sky; and it is unlike all other west fronts, with its turrets and spires, and with its two towers, set beyond the aisles and the doors, adding to the effect of width and size, the difference in their design increasing the magnificence of the architectural confusion. One cannot go further back in the architectural records of the cathedral than the base of the Norman tower of St. Romain to the north; one comes to the end of fine Gothic in the Tour de Beurrethe Butter Tower-to the south. Some think that it also marks the end of the people's piety, because it was paid for from the dispensations granted to the weak who could not do without butter in Lent, the reason for the name. But the Church, which insisted upon sacrifice of some kind in the season of penance, was merely exchanging a light for a heavier one, and again proving its wisdom by the alternative. All Rouen might have gone butterless, and there would be nothing to show for its abstinence; but to the sacrifice of its purse was raised as monument one of the loveliest towers in the world. The transept doors blossom as luxuriantly into decoration. The apostles are grouped about the southern portal, Portail de la Calende, as if summoned to bear witness to the truth of the story of Christ told in the tympanum above; at the northern portal,-the Portail des Libraires, St. Romain, with Gargouille, who is own sister to Tarasque of the Midi, presides over nothing more serious than the capricious fancies of the most capricious genius who ever carved in stone. On a series of little panels about the door, acrobats tumble, strange monsters play on violin and lute, mermaids balance on their curling tails, dogs gnaw and worry their bits of bone, grotesques upon grotesques reach up as far as the eye can follow, while, from near niches, Mary and Martha, Geneviève, Apolline, and Mary of the Desert, look on, as they have for centuries, and smile the pleasantest, gayest smile ever copied by the medieval sculptor from the smiling models who posed to him as saints. High steps descend from the Portail de la Calende to the place, where a flower-market is held to this day. The long, narrow court leading to the Portail des Libraires was once filled with the shops of the booksellers, who gave it the name, and whose tradition still lingers, if feebly, in the little shop where one can buy holy pictures and picture post-cards. In no French town does one realize better than at Rouen that the French cathedral was not, like the English, shut off from the life of the people, but belonged to them, theirs to use as they would. They made their home, they did their work, under its shadow. It was a national edifice before it became a historical monument. It should be respected as the symbol of democracy, and the endeavor is to destroy all traces of association between cathedral and people. There is rejoicing when the old houses and hovels that propped themselves up against |
