The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile

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The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile

                             OSCAR WILDE

                              THE CRIME
                                 OF
                          LORD ARTHUR SAVILE



               TRANSLATED FROM ENGLISH BY ALBERT SAVINE




                                 1905



PREFACE


_Le Crime de lord Arthur Savile_, here translated into French for the
first time, is, in the work of Oscar Wilde, one of the most
curious.

When this news appeared, in 1891, in the triumphal wake of the
_Portrait of Dorian Gray_, English critics were struck only by
its paradoxical character. This is how it was classified, so many
magazines and newspapers on whose appreciation the appearance weighed
ironic subtitle applied to an assassination project: _study of
duty_.

A few notes, intentionally sown by Oscar Wilde in his story,
finished leading the judges astray.

Then, we looked for relatives to the inspiring idea of ​​this story. It is
obvious, we said to ourselves, that Oscar Wilde read _Le Bonheur dans le crime_
by Barbey d'Aurevilly and he also borrowed something from _A
Rebours_.

It is possible, but these reflections, if they are sensitive, are not
capital.

Today, the facts have shed light on the work and we can say that
_The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile_ is pathologically the most
characteristic of the writings of Oscar Wilde.

The writer inverts the notices of Good and Evil in the brain
of his hero, not as a paradoxical writer but as a real patient.

The distinction is easy to make.

Read rather the very curious novel of Georges Darien, _Le Voleur_ [1],
which is a long and funny paradox, and you will immediately see the
difference between the two notes. In the Darien volume, Georges
Randal, chose theft as a profession: he becomes a thief like
is a banker, doctor or lawyer, and he has thief ideas on all
things. He fights against society with the weapons he has chosen and
that Darien has logically furnished according to the mentality of his hero.
Randal, who is not a monster, has exactly the sensitivity of a
_outlaw_.

[Note 1: Stock, editor.]

It is quite different with Lord Arthur Savile than with Georges Randal.
The point except where his ideas derail and are reversed, we do not
could reason more normally.

"Looking at the portrait of Sybil now, Lord Arthur, writes
Wilde, was filled with that terrible pity that comes from love. He felt
that marrying her with the _fatum_ of murder hanging on her head would be a
treason like that of Judas, a crime worse than any
never dreamed of the Borgias.

"What happiness would there be for them, when at any time it could be
called to mate the dreadful prophecy written in his hand?

"At all costs, marriage had to be postponed ...

"Although he loved this young girl dearly, although the only contact
of his fingers when they were sitting next to each other, did
quiver all the nerves of his body with exquisite joy, he
no less clearly recognized where his duty was and had full
aware of this fact that he had no right to marry her _until
what he would have committed the murder.

"That done, he could appear in front of the altars with Sybil Merton
and put his life back in the hands of the woman he loved, without fear of
act badly.

"That done, he could take her in his arms, knowing that she
would never have to bow his head in shame.

"But before, we had to _do that_ and the sooner the better
for both ”.

Wilde's hero, by virtue of this strange reasoning, therefore commits
his crime _by duty_. However, if one reads carefully the works that
learned doctors have devoted to the case of the novelist, we will see what
illustration this news brings to the most recent theories.

The tales that complete this volume are, on the contrary, pure
literary fantasies, pages of the exquisite dilettante that was
Wilde. There are some features of this irony that the critics
from across the Channel called _Wildismes_.

The reader will thus have a point of comparison which will allow him to
reject or admit the considerations presented above.

THE TRANSLATOR.



The first edition of the short story _The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile_
appeared in July 1891 by publisher Osgood. This news was
reprinted in 300 copies for the only curious. This edition, without
date, bears no name of publisher or printer.




THE CRIME OF LORD ARTHUR SAVILE



I

It was Lady Windermere's last reception before spring.

Bentinck House was, more than usual, crowded with a crowd of
visitors.

Six cabinet members came directly after the hearing of the
_speaker_, with all their spittle and big cords.

All the pretty women wore their most elegant suits and,
at the end of the gallery of paintings, stood Princess Sophie of
Carlsrühe, a fat tartar-type lady with little black eyes
and wonderful emeralds, speaking in a shrill voice a bad
French and laughing without restraint at all that was said to him.

Admittedly, there was here a singular mixture of society: superb
Pairesses chatted courteously with violent radicals. Of
popular preachers rubbed elbows with famous
skeptics. A whole flock of bishops followed, as on the trail, a
strong _prima-donna_, from living room to living room. On the stairs were grouped
a few members of the Royal Academy, disguised as artists, and we have
says the dining room was absolutely crammed with geniuses for a while.

Anyway, it was one of Lady Windermere's best evenings and the
princess remained there until past half past eleven.

Soon after her departure Lady Windermere returned to the gallery of
tables in which a famous economist solemnly expounded the theory
music scientist to a Hungarian virtuoso foaming with rage.

She began to chat with the Duchess of Paisley.

She looked wonderfully beautiful, with her opulent throat a
ivory white, her big blue forget-me-not eyes and heavy curls
of her golden hair. Hair of_ pure gold_ [2], not hair of this
pale straw shade which today usurps the beautiful name of gold,
hair as gold as woven in rays of the sun or hidden in amber
strange, the hair that framed his face like a halo of
holy, with something of the fascination of a sinner.

[Note 2: In French in the text.]

His was a curious psychological study.

Early in life she had discovered this important truth
that nothing resembles innocence more than imprudence, and, by a
series of carefree getaways, - half of them quite
innocent - she had acquired all the privileges of a personality.

She had changed husbands several times. Indeed, the Debrett wore
three marriages to her credit, but since she had never changed
as a lover, the world had long ceased to chatter scandalously
on his account.

Now she was forty years old, no children, and this passion
disorderly pleasure which is the secret of those who remained young.

Suddenly she looked curiously around the living room and said of her
clear contralto voice:

--Where is my palmist?

- Your what, Gladys? exclaimed the Duchess with a start.
involuntary.

--My palmist, duchess. I can't live without him now.

`` Dear Gladys, you are always so original, '' murmured the Duchess,
trying to remember what a palmist actually is and
hoping it wasn't quite the same as a chiropodist.

--He comes to see my hand regularly twice a week,
Lady Windermere went on, and he took a great interest in it.

--Good Lord! said the Duchess to herself. This must be some sort of
manicure. This is really terrible! Finally, I hope that at least
he's a stranger. In this way it will be a little less unpleasant.

`` Certainly, I must present it to you.

- Introduce him to me! cried the Duchess. So you mean it is
here.

She looked around her for her little tortoiseshell fan and
her very old lace shawl, as if to be ready to flee to the
first alert.

- Of course he's here. I cannot think of giving a meeting without
him. He tells me that I have a purely psychic hand and that if my thumb
had been a little shorter, I would have been a pessimist
convinced and would have locked myself in a convent.

--Oh! I see! said the Duchess, who felt very relieved. He says the
fortune telling, I guess?

`` And the bad one too, '' replied Lady Windermere, `` a lot of things like that.
kind. Next year, for example, I would be in great danger, at the
both on land and at sea. So I must live in a balloon and
every evening, I have my dinner hoisted in a basket. All this is
written there, on my little finger or on the palm of my hand, I don't know
more exactly.

"But surely that is tempting Providence, Gladys."

--My dear Duchess, Providence can certainly resist
temptations by the passing of time. I think everyone should do
read in his hand, once a month, in order to know what not to
not to do. If no one is kind enough to pick up Mr. Podgers, I
will go there myself.

`` Leave it to me, Lady Windermere, '' said a tiny young man,
all pretty, who was there and followed the conversation with a smile
amused.

--Thank you very much, Lord Arthur; but I'm afraid you will
not recognize.

`` If he is as singular as you say, Lady Windermere, I do not
could hardly miss it. Just say how he is and, on
the hour, I'll bring it to you.

--Is! He is not a palmist. I mean he has nothing
mysterious, esoteric, that it does not have a romantic appearance. This is
a small man, fat, with a comically bald head and large
gold glasses, someone who stands in the middle between the doctor of the
family and the village attorney. I'm sorry, but this
is not my fault. People are so boring. All my pianists have
exactly the air of pianists and all my poets exactly the air of
poets. I remember, last season, I invited a
terrible conspirator, a man who had spilled the blood of a crowd
people, who always wore a chain mail and had a dagger
hidden in the sleeve of his shirt. Well! know that when it is
arrived, he just looked like a good old clergyman. All the
evening, he sparkled his witticisms. Certainly it was a lot of fun
and well in all respects, but I was sorely disappointed. When I
asked him about his chain mail, he just laughed
and told me that it was too cold to take it to England ... Ah!
this is Mr. Podgers. Well! mr podgers i would like you to read
in the hand of the Duchess of Paisley .... Duchess, want to remove yourself
your glove ... not the one on your left hand ... the other ...

--My dear Gladys, really I do not believe that this is quite
suitable, said the Duchess, reluctantly unbuttoning a
fairly dirty skin.

`` Nothing of interest is ever so, '' said Lady Windermere.
make the world this way_ [3]. But I must introduce you, Duchess.
This is Mr. Podgers, my favorite palmist; mr podgers, the duchess
of Paisley .... and if you say she has a moon mount more
developed than mine, I would not believe in you anymore.

[Note 3: In French in the text.]

--I'm sure, Gladys, that there is nothing of the kind in my hand, said
the Duchess in a serious tone.

`` Your Grace is quite right, '' replied Mr. Podgers.
glancing at the plump little hand with fingers
short and square. The mountain of the moon is not developed. However
the line of life is excellent. Please kindly
let the wrist flex ... thank you ... three lines
distinct on the _rascette_ [4] ... you will live to old age,
duchess, and you will be extremely happy ... Very moderate ambition,
line of intelligence without exaggeration, line of the heart ...

[Note 4: In French in the text.]

"Be discreet about this, Mr. Podgers," cried Lady Windermere.

`` Nothing would please me more, '' replied Mr. Podgers, bowing.
if the Duchess had given rise to it, but I regret to say that I
see a great constancy of affection combined with a very
strong duty.

`` Please continue, Mr. Podgers, '' said the Duchess, whose gaze
marked satisfaction.

--Economy is not the least of the virtues of your Grace, continued
Mr. Podgers.

Lady Windermere burst into convulsive laughter.

--Economics is an excellent thing, remarked the Duchess with
complacency. When I married Paisley he had eleven castles and no
a decent house where one could live.

`` And now he has twelve houses and not a single castle, '' cried the lady.
Windermere.

`` Oh my dear, '' said the Duchess, `` I like ...

`` Comfort, '' resumed Mr. Podgers, `` and modern improvements, and
hot water brought to all rooms. Your Grace has quite
reason. Comfort is the only thing our civilization can do for us
give.

--You have admirably described the character of the Duchess, sir
Podgers. Now please tell us Lady Flora's.

And to respond to a nod from the smiling hostess, a little
young girl, with Scottish red hair and very high shoulder blades,
awkwardly stood up off the sofa and exhibited a long, bony hand
with fingers flattened into a spatula.

--Ah! a pianist, I see! says Mr. Podgers, an excellent pianist
and maybe an offline musician. Very reserved, very honest and
endowed with a strong love for animals.

--That is exactly right! cried the Duchess, turning to
Lady Windermere. Absolutely correct. Flora breeds two dozen collies
to Macloskie and she would fill our townhouse with a real
menagerie if his father allowed it.

--Well! but that's exactly what I do at home every Thursday
evening, Lady Windermere replied, laughing. Only I prefer lions
to collies.

`` That is your only mistake, Lady Windermere, '' said Mr. Podgers, with a
pompous hi.

--If a woman cannot make her errors charming, it is only a
female, she replied ... But you still have to read us in
a few hands ... Come, Sir Thomas, show yours to Mr. Podgers.

And an old man of fine appearance, who wore a white jacket,
stepped forward and held out to the palmist a thick, rough hand with a very
long middle finger.

- Adventurous nature; in the past four long trips and one in
the future ... Shipwrecked three times ... Not just twice, but in
danger of shipwreck on your next trip. Relentless curator,
very punctual, having a passion for collections of curiosities. A
dangerous disease between the sixteenth and eighteenth year. Inherited
of a fortune towards the thirtieth. Great aversion to cats and
radicals.

--Extraordinary! exclaimed Sir Thomas. You should also read in the
hand of my wife.

`` Of your second wife, '' said Mr. Podgers calmly,
still Sir Thomas' hand in his.

But Lady Marvel, a melancholy-looking woman with dark hair and
sentimental lashes, clearly refused to reveal his past or
his future.

Nor could any of Lady Windermere's efforts bring Mr.
Koloff, the Russian ambassador, even consented to take off his gloves.

In fact, many people dreaded facing this strange little
man with a stereotypical smile, golden glasses and bright eyes
pearl, and when he said to poor Lady Fermor, aloud and in front
everyone, that she cared very little about music, but that she
loved musicians, it was generally considered that palmistry is
a science that should only be encouraged _tete-a-tete_ [5].

[Note 5: In French in the text.]

Lord Arthur Savile, however, who knew nothing of the unfortunate
Lady Fermor's story, and who had followed Mr. Podgers with a very
great interest, had a keen curiosity to see it read in her hand.

As he felt some modesty in putting himself forward, he crossed the
room and walked over to where Lady Windermere was sitting and,
with a blush, which was a charm, asked her if she thought that
Mr. Podgers would like to take care of him.

"Of course he will look after you," said Lady Windermere. It's for
that he is here. All my lions, Lord Arthur, are lions in
representation. They jump in hoops when I ask them to.
But first I must warn you that I will tell Sybil everything.
She's coming to lunch with me tomorrow to chat hats, and if Mr.
Podgers thinks you have a bad temper or a tendency to
drop, or a woman who lives in Bayswater [6], certainly I do not
will not ignore.

[Note 6: Neighborhood north of Kensington Park, inhabited by
women maintained by the aristocracy of London (_Note du
translator_.)]

Lord Arthur smiled and nodded.

"I'm not afraid," he replied. Sybil knows me as well as
I know her.

--Ah! I'm a little upset to hear you say that. The best
marriage, it's a mutual misunderstanding ... no, I'm not
all cynical. I only have experience, which, however, is
very often the same ... Mr. Podgers, Lord Arthur Savile dies
want you to read in his hand. Don't tell him he's engaged
to one of the prettiest girls in London: a month ago the
_Morning Post_ published the news.

`` Dear Lady Windermere, '' cried the Marquise de Jedburgh, ``
the kindness of letting Mr. Podgers stop here a minute longer.
He's telling me that I'll get on the boards and this
interests me the most.

--If he told you that, Lady Jedburgh, I will not hesitate to
remove it. Come immediately, Mr. Podgers, and read in the hand of
Lord Arthur.

--Well! said Lady Jedburgh pouting as she stood up
of the sofa, if I am not allowed to get on the boards, I
will at least be allowed to attend the show, I hope.

--Naturally. We're all going to attend the session, lady replied
Windermere. And now Mr. Podgers take us back and tell us
something pretty, Lord Arthur is one of my dearest favorites.

But when Mr. Podgers saw Lord Arthur's hand, he strangely became
pale and said nothing.

A shiver seemed to pass over him. Her big bushy eyebrows
were seized with a convulsive tremor of the bizarre, irritating tic, which
dominated him when he was embarrassed.

Then a few big drops of sweat beaded on his yellow forehead,
like a poisonous dew and his greasy fingers turned cold and
viscous.

Lord Arthur did not fail to notice these strange signs of unrest.
and, for the first time in his life, he felt fear. His
Natural movement was to run away from the living room, but he restrained himself.

It was better to know the worst, whatever it was, than to stay in
this awful uncertainty.

"I am waiting, Mr. Podgers," he said.

"We're all waiting," Lady Windermere cried impatiently.

But the palmist didn't answer.

`` I believe Arthur is going to get on the boards, '' said Lady Jedburgh, `` and
that after your release Mr. Podgers is afraid to tell him.

Suddenly Mr. Podgers dropped Lord Arthur's right hand and
grasped the left strong, bending so low to examine it that the
the gold frame of his glasses seemed to almost brush his palm.

For a moment his face turned to a white mask of horror, but he covered
soon his _blood_ [7] and, looking at Lady Windermere, said to her with
a forced smile:

--It is the hand of a charming young man.

[Note 7: In French in the text.]

`` Certainly, '' replied Lady Windermere, `` but will he be a charming husband?
This is what I need to know.

`` All charming young people are charming husbands, '' continued Mr.
Podgers.

`` I don't think a husband should be too handsome, '' whispered Lady.
Jedburgh, thoughtfully. It's so dangerous.

- My dear child, they are never too attractive; cried lady
Windermere. But what I need are details. There are only
details that interest. What must happen to Lord Arthur?

--Well! In a few days Lord Arthur is due to travel.

--Yes, his honeymoon naturally.

--And he will lose a parent.

'Not her sister, I hope,' said Lady Jedburgh pityingly.

`` Certainly no, not his sister, '' replied Mr. Podgers, with a gesture of
depreciation of the hand, a distant relative.

--Well! I am sorely disappointed, said Lady Windermere. I do not have
absolutely nothing to say to Sybil tomorrow. Who cares today about
distant relatives? It's been out of fashion for years. However,
I guess she would do well to buy a black silk dress: it serves
always for the church, see. And, now, let's go to supper. We
surely ate everything there, but we can still find some
hot broth. François used to make excellent broth, but
now he's so agitated by politics that i never am
certain of nothing with him. I would like General Boulanger to
keep quiet ... Duchess, I'm sure you're tired!

`` Not at all, my dear Gladys, '' replied the Duchess, walking towards
the door, I had a lot of fun and the chiropodist; I want to say
the palmist, is a lot of fun. Flora, where can my fan be
tortoiseshell? ... Oh! thank you, Sir Thomas, thank you very much! ... and my
lace shawl? ... Oh thank you, Sir Thomas, too kind indeed!

And the worthy creature ends up coming down the stairs without leaving
more than twice drop his bottle of smell.

All this time Lord Arthur Savile had remained standing by the
fireplace with the same feeling of fear that weighed on him, the same
sickly preoccupation with a bad future.

He smiled sadly at his sister as she slipped close to him on the arm of
Lord Plymdale, very pretty in his pink brocade trimmed with pearls, and he
Barely heard Lady Windermere when she invited her to follow her. he
thought Sybil Merton and the idea that something might happen
between them filled her eyes with tears.

Someone looking at him would have said that Nemesis had stolen the
Pallas' shield and had shown him the head of the Gorgon. he
appeared petrified and his face had the appearance of a marble in his
melancholy.

He had lived the delicate and luxurious life of a well-born young man and
rich, an exquisite life freed from all degrading worries, a
of a beautiful childish _insouciance_ [8], and now, for the first
times he was aware of the terrible mystery of destiny, of
the fearful idea of ​​fate.

[Note 8: In French in the text.]

How crazy and monstrous it all seemed to him!

Could it be that what was written in his hand, in characters that he
could not read but that another could decipher, was
terrible fault secret, some bloody sign of crime!

Was there no escape?

Are we only chess pieces brought into play by a power
invisible, only vases that the potter models as he pleases for honor
or shame?

His reason rebelled against this thought and yet he felt that
some tragedy hung over his head and that he had been all
suddenly called to bear an intolerable burden.

The actors are really happy people; they can choose to play
either tragedy or comedy, to suffer or to cheer up, to make people laugh
or make you cry. But, in real life, it is quite different.

Many men and women are forced to play roles
to which nothing intended them. Our Guildensterns play us Hamlet and
our Hamlet must be joking like a Prince Hal.

The world is a theater, but the play is deplorably distributed.

Suddenly Mr. Podgers entered the living room.

At the sight of Lord Arthur, he stopped and his plump face
distinction turned a greenish yellow color. The eyes of both
men met and there was a moment of silence.

`` The Duchess left one of her gloves here, Lord Arthur, and
asked to bring it back to him, 'said Mr. Podgers at last. Ah! I see it on the
sofa! ... Good evening!

`` Mr. Podgers, I must insist that you give me a
immediate response to a question I am going to ask you.

`` Another time, Lord Arthur. The Duchess is waiting for me. I must
join her.

- You won't go. The Duchess is not in such a hurry.

`` Ladies are not in the habit of waiting, '' said Mr. Podgers, with a
sickly smile. The fair sex is always impatient.

Lord Arthur's thin, chiseled lips curled up
haughty disdain.

The poor Duchess seemed to him of such small importance at this moment.

He crossed the living room and came to where Mr. Podgers had stopped.

He held out his hand to her.

- Tell me what you see there. Tell me the truth. I want her
know. I am not a child.

Mr. Podgers' eyes flickered under his gold glasses. He went
embarrassed from one foot to the other as his fingers played
nervously with a sparkling watch chain.

--What makes you think I saw in your hand, Lord
Arthur, anything more than what I told you?

--I know you saw something more and I insist that
you told me what it is. I'll give you a check for a hundred pounds.

Green eyes twinkled for a minute, then went dark again.

- One hundred guineas! said Mr. Podgers at last in a low voice.

--Yes, a hundred guineas. I'll send you a check tomorrow. What is your
club?

- I don't have a club. That is to say I don't have one at the moment, but
my address is ... Let me give you my card.

And taking a piece of golden cardboard from his jacket pocket on
slice, Mr. Podgers handed it with a deep salute to Lord Arthur who
read:

    MR SEPTIMUS R PODGERS. PALMIST _103a West Moon street_

`` I get 10 to 4, '' muttered Mr. Podgers mechanically, `` and I do
a reduction for families.

- Hurry! cried Lord Arthur, turning very pale and handing him the
hand.

Mr. Podgers looked around with a nervous glance and said
fall the heavy _portière_ [9] on the door.

[Note 9: In French in the text.]

'It will take a little while, Lord Arthur. You better you
Sit.

`` Hurry, sir, '' cried Lord Arthur again, stamping his foot with
anger on the waxed floor.

Mr. Podgers smiled, took out a small glass magnifying glass.
magnifying glass and wiped it carefully with his handkerchief.

"I am completely ready," he said.



II

Ten minutes later, his face white with terror, his eyes distraught with
In grief, Lord Arthur Savile rushed out of Bentinck House.

He made his way through the crowd of footmen, covered with
furs, which were stationed around the large colonnaded pavilion.

He did not seem to see or hear anything.

The night was very cold and the gas lamps around the square
twinkled and flickered under the whipping of the wind, but its
his hands were hot with fever and his temples were burning like
fire.

He came and went, almost with the walk of a drunken man.

A police officer watched him curiously as he passed, and a
beggar, who stepped out of the door to ask for alms,
recoiled in fear at seeing a misfortune greater than his.

Lord Arthur Savile once stopped under a lamppost and looked at his
hands. He thought he saw the blood stain that stained them and a faint cry
burst from her trembling lips.

Assassin! this is what the palmist saw there. Assassin! The night
even seemed to know it, and the sorry wind was ringing him in his ears.
The dark corners of the streets were full of this accusation. She
grimaced in his eyes at the roofs of the houses.

First, he went to the Park, whose dark wood seemed to fascinate him.
He leaned wearily against the railings, cooling his temples
the humidity of the iron and listening to the whispering silence of the trees.

--Assassin! Assassin! he repeated as if the reiteration of
the accusation could cloud the meaning of the word.

The sound of his own voice made him shiver and yet he wished
almost that the echo heard it and awoke the city from its dreams
asleep. He felt a desire to stop the chance passer-by and all
tell him.

Then he wandered around Oxford-street in narrow lanes and
shameful.

Two women with painted faces taunted him as he passed.

From a dark courtyard came a sound of cursing and slapping, followed by
shrill cries and, hurried pell-mell under a damp and icy door,
he saw the hunched backs and the worn-out bodies of poverty and
old age.

A strange pity seized him.

Were these children of sin and misery predestined for their
comes out, like him to his? Were they like him only the puppets
of a monstrous puppet?

And yet it was not the mystery, but the comedy of suffering
which struck him, its absolute uselessness, its grotesque lack of meaning. that
everything seemed to him incoherent, devoid of harmony! He was amazed at the
there was a discrepancy between the superficial optimism of our time
and the real facts of existence.

He was still very young.

Some time later he found himself in front of Marylebone Church.

The silent pavement seemed a long ribbon of faded silver, speckled
here and there by the dark arabesques of moving shadows.

Everything over there rounded off in a circle the line of flickering gas lamps
and in front of a small house surrounded by walls was stationed a cab
lonely whose coachman slept on the seat.

Lord Arthur walked briskly in the direction of Portland Place,
looking around every moment as if he was afraid to be
monitoring.

At the corner of Rich-Street, two men were stopped and reading a
small poster on a fence.

A strange feeling of curiosity worked on him and he crossed the street
in that direction.

As he approached, the word _assassin_ in black letters struck him.
the eye.

He stopped and a stream of blush rose to his cheeks.

It was an official notice offering a reward to anyone providing
information to facilitate the arrest of a man,
average, between thirty and forty, wearing a floppy hat with
pulled up, a black jacket and striped cotton canvas pants. This
man had a scar on his right cheek.

Lord Arthur read the poster, then read it again.

He wondered if the man would be arrested and how he had received this
scratch.

Perhaps one day his name would be plastered like this on the
walls of London? Maybe one day we would also put our head to
price.

The thought made him sick with horror.

He turned on his heels and fled into the night.

He barely knew where he was.

He had a vague memory of having wandered through a labyrinth of
sordid houses, to get lost in a gigantic jumble of streets
dark and dawn was beginning to break when at last he recognized that he
was in Picadilly-Circus.

As he followed Belgrave-Square, he encountered the large cars of
taxiing on their way to Covent-Garden.

The carters in white coats, with pleasant faces tanned by
the sun, with its uncultivated curly hair, vigorously lengthened the
not, cracking their whip and calling each other sometimes
others.

On the back of a huge gray horse, the leader of a team, was
hooted a chubby boy, a bouquet of primroses in his folded-down hat,
clinging with a firm grip to the mane and laughing out loud.

In the morning light the great piles of vegetables stood out
like blocks of green jade on the pink petals of some rose
wonderful.

Lord Arthur felt a keen sense of curiosity, without his being able to say
Why.

There was something in the delicate prettiness of dawn that
seemed inexpressibly moved and he thought of all the days that
are born in beauty and go to bed in a storm.

These bastards, with their harsh voices, their coarse good humor, their
nonchalant look, what a strange London they saw! a liberated London
of the crimes of the night and the smoke of the day, a pale, ghostly city,
a desolate city of graves.

He wondered what they thought and if they knew anything
its splendours and its shames, its proud and beautiful joys of
color, of its horrible hunger, and of all that is brewing and ruining there
from morning to night.

Probably, it was only an outlet for them, a market where they
carried their products to sell them and where they did not stay at
more than a few hours, leaving the streets always
silent, the houses still asleep.

He was pleased to see them pass.

Rustic as they were, with their thick studded shoes, their
heavy gait, they carried something of Arcadia within them.

Lord Arthur felt that they had lived with Nature and that she
had taught them Peace. He envied them everything they had
of ignorance.

When he reached Belgrave-Square the sky was an evanescent blue
and the birds began to chirp in the gardens.



III

When Lord Arthur awoke it was noon and the sun on the meridian
filtered through the ivory silk curtains of her bedroom.

He got up and looked out the window.

A haze of heat hung over the big city and the
roofs of houses looked like tarnished silver.

In the trembling greens of the square below, a few children
chased like white butterflies, and the sidewalks were
crowded with people heading to the Park.

Never had life seemed so good to him. Never evil and its domain
had never seemed so far from the law.

So his valet brought him a cup of chocolate on a
tray.

When he had drunk it, he pushed aside a heavy plush _portiere_ [10]
peach-colored, and went into the bathroom.

[Note 10: In French in the text.]

Light slipped gently from above through thin plates
transparent onyx and the water, in the marble bowl, had the weak
shine of moonstone.

Lord Arthur hurriedly plunged into it until the cold bubbling
touched her throat and her hair. So he abruptly thrust his head down
underwater, as if he wanted to purify himself from the taint of some
shameful memory.

When he got out of the water, he almost felt calm. The well-being
physical, which he had felt, had dominated him, as it often happens
for superbly shaped natures, for the senses, like fire,
can purify as well as destroy.

After lunch, he stretched out on a couch and lit a cigarette.

On the top of the fireplace, lined with a very fine old brocade, there was
a large photograph of Sybil Merton, as he had seen it, the
first time at Lady Noel's ball.

The small head, a delicious model, tilted slightly to the side,
as if the thin and frail throat, the reed neck had difficulty
bear the weight of so much beauty. The lips were slightly
half-opened and seemed made for soft music and, in
his dreamy eyes, we read the astonishment of the most tender purity
virginal.

Molded in her soft _crêpe de chine_ [11] costume, a large
fan of foliage in hand, it looked like one of those delicate
small figurines that we found in the olive woods which
neighbor Tanagra and there was in his pose and in his attitude
some features of Greek grace.

[Note 11: In French in the text.]

Yet she was not _petite_ [12].

[Note 12: In French in the text.]

She was just perfectly proportioned, a rare thing at an age when
so many women are either larger than life or insignificant.

Watching her at this moment, Lord Arthur was filled with that terrible
pity that arises from love. He felt that marrying her with the _fatum_ of
murder hanging on his head would be a treason like that of
Judas, a crime worse than any the Borgias ever dreamed of.

What happiness would there be for them, when at any time it could be
called to fulfill the dreadful prophecy written in his hand? What
life would lead as long as fate held this terrible
fortune in its scales?

At all costs, the marriage had to be delayed. It was quite there
resolved.

Although he loved this young girl dearly, although the only touch
of his fingers when they were sitting next to each other,
quiver all the nerves of his body with exquisite joy, he
no less clearly recognized where his duty was and had full
aware of this fact that he had no right to marry her until
that he had committed the murder.

That done, he could appear before the altars with Sybil Merton
and put his life back in the hands of the woman he loved, without fear of
act badly.

That done, he could hug her, knowing that she
would never have to bow his head in shame.

But before, you had to _do this_ and the sooner the better
for both.

Many people in his situation would have preferred the flowery path of the
pleasure in the steep climbs of duty; but Lord Arthur was too
conscientious to place pleasure above principle.

In his love there was only one passion and Sybil was
for him the symbol of all that is good and noble.

For a moment he felt a natural repugnance against the work he
was called to accomplish, but soon that impression faded. His
heart told him that this was not a crime, but a sacrifice: his
reason reminded him that no other way out was open to him. he
He had to choose between living for himself and living for others
and, however terrible, without a doubt, that was the task which was imposed on him,
yet he knew that he should not let selfishness triumph over
love, sooner or later each of us is called to solve this same
problem: the same question is asked of each of us.

For Lord Arthur, it arose early in life, before his
character has been damaged by the cynicism, which calculates, of middle age, or
that his heart was corroded by the superficial and elegant selfishness of our
period, and he did not hesitate to do his duty.

Fortunately for him too, he was not a mere dreamer, a
idle dilettante. If he had been such, he would have hesitated like Hamlet and allowed
may irresolution ruin his design. But it was basically
convenient. For him, life was action, rather than thought.

He possessed this rare gift, common sense.

The cruel and violent sensations of the evening of the day before had
now quite erased and it was almost with a feeling of
ashamed that he thought of his mad walk, from street to street, of his terrible
emotional agony.

The very sincerity of his sufferings now made them pass to his
eyes for non-existent.

He wondered how he could have been mad enough to declaim and
to extravagate against the inevitable.

The only question, which seemed to trouble him, was how he
would complete his task, for he did not have his eyes closed to this
makes murder, like the religions of the pagan world, require a
victim, as well as a priest.

Not being a genius, he had no enemies, and, moreover, he
felt that this was not the place to satisfy some grudge or
some personal hatred; the mission he was in charge of was one
great and grave solemnity.

As a result, he made a list of his friends and relatives on
a sheet of notepads and, after careful consideration, decided on
favor of Lady Clementina Beauchamp, a dear old lady who lived
Curzon-Street and was his own second cousin on his side
mother.

He had always loved Lady Clem, as everyone called her, and
how rich he himself, having taken possession of all the fortune
of Lord Rugby, when he came of age it was not possible that he
some contemptible advantage of money resulted for him from his death.

In fact, the more he thought about the question, the more Lady Clem seemed to him.
the right person to choose and considering that any delay was
a bad deed towards Sybil, he resolved to take care of everything
of his preparations.

The first thing to do, of course, was to settle with the
palmist.

So he sat down in front of a small Sheraton desk, which was in front of
window, and fills out a check for 100 pounds payable to Mr.
Septimus Podgers. Then, putting it in an envelope, he told his
servant to carry it to West-Moon-street.

He then telephoned his stables to hitch up his coupe and dressed for
go out.

As he left his room, he glanced at the photograph of
Sybil Merton and swore that no matter what, he would always leave her
ignore what he was doing for her sake and that he would keep the
secret of his sacrifice forever buried in his heart.

On his way to Buckingham club, he stopped at a florist and
sent Sybil a beautiful basket of daffodils with pretty petals
white and with pistils resembling pheasant eyes.

Arriving at the club, he went straight to the library, rang the bell
the bell and asked the boy to bring him a lemon soda and a
toxicology book.

He had definitely stopped poison was the best
instrument to adopt for his boring work.

Nothing displeased him more than an act of personal violence and, in
Besides, he was very careful not to kill Lady Clementina by any means
who could attract public attention, for he hated the idea of
become a lion of the day at Lady Windermere or have her name appear
in the snippets of newspapers that ordinary people read.

He also had to take into account Sybil's father and mother who
belonged to a somewhat old-fashioned world and might oppose the
marriage if something analogous to a scandal happened, well
that he would be assured that if he let them know all the facts of
cause, they would be the first to appreciate the motives that
dictated his conduct.

So he had every reason to decide in favor of the poison. It was
safe, secure, quiet. He acted without any need for scenes
painful for which, like many Englishmen, he had a
ingrained aversion.

However, he knew absolutely nothing about the science of poisons.
and, as the footman seemed quite unable to find
in the library something other than the _Ruff's Guide_ and the _Baily's
Magazine_, he himself examined the shelves loaded with books and
get your hands on a very well bound edition of the _Pharmacopée_ and
a copy of Erskine's _Toxicology_, edited by Mathew Reid,
president of the Royal College of Physicians and one of the oldest members
of the Buckingham-club, where he was once elected by confusion with another
candidate, a setback that had so greatly annoyed the committee that
when the real character introduced himself, he unanimously blackballed him.

Lord Arthur was very much taken aback by the technical terms used
by the two books.

He found himself regretting that he had not paid more attention to his
studies at Oxford, when in the second volume of Erskine he found a
very interesting and comprehensive account of the properties of aconite,
written in the clearest English.

It seemed to him that this was just the poison he needed.

It was prompt, that is to say, almost immediate in its effects.

It did not cause pain and taken as a capsule of
gelatin, instructions for use recommended by Sir Mathew, it had nothing
unpleasant to the taste.

As a result, he made a note on his shirt cuff of the dose
necessary to bring death, put the books back in place and reassembled
Saint-James street to Pestle and Humbey, the big pharmacists.

Mr. Pestle, who always served his clients in person as
aristocracy, was greatly surprised at the order and in a very
deferential, muttered something about the need for a
doctor. However, as soon as Lord Arthur explained to him that
it was to administer it to a large Norwegian dog of which he was
forced to undo because he was showing symptoms of rabies and was
had twice tried to bite his driver on the fat of the leg, he seemed
fully satisfied, congratulated Lord Arthur on his astonishing knowledge.
of toxicology and immediately executed the prescription.

Lord Arthur put the capsule in a pretty silver _bonbonnière_ [13]
that he saw at a store window on Bond street, threw the naughty
box of Pestle and Humbey and went straight to Lady Clementina.

--Well! _mister the bad subject_ [14], cried the old lady.
as he entered his living room why didn't you come to see me
all these days?

[Note 13: In French in the text.]

[Note 14: In French in the text.]

`` My dear Lady Clem, I never have a moment of my own, '' replied Lord.
Arthur with a smile.

--I guess you mean you spend all your days
with Miss Sybil Merton to buy _cliffons_ [15] and to say
foolery. I can't understand why people are so embarrassed
to get married. In my time, we would never have dreamed of so many
display and parade so much, in public and in particular, for one thing
Of this genre.

[Note 15: In French in the text.]

--I assure you that I haven't seen Sybil for twenty-four hours,
Lady Clem. As far as I know, she belongs entirely to his
seamstresses.

- Of course! And that's the only reason that brings you to an old lady
ugly woman like me. I am surprised that you men do not
do not know how to take leave. _We did crazy things for me_ [16] and
here is poor rheumatic creature with a false bun and a bad
health! Well! if it were not for this dear Lady Jansen who sent me the
worst French novels she can find, I don't know what I
could do with my days. Doctors do little more than shoot
fees from their clients. They can't even heal my
stomach disease.

[Note 16: In French in the text.]

`` I have brought you a remedy for her, Lady Clem, '' said Lord gravely.
Arthur. It's a wonderful thing invented by an American.

--I don't think I like American inventions. I am even
sure not to like them. I recently read some novels
Americans and it was real nonsense.

--Oh! there is no insanity here at all, Lady Clem. I assure you that
it is a radical remedy. You have to promise to try some.

And Lord Arthur took the little candy box from his pocket and handed it to
Lady Clementina.

`` But this candy box is delicious, Arthur. It's a real gift.
This is really kind of you ... and here is the remedy
wonderful ... it looks like candy. I'll take it
at once.

- God of heaven, Lady Clem! cried Lord Arthur, seizing her hand,
nothing like that should be done. It is homeopathic medicine.
If you take it without an upset stomach, it will not hurt you.
well. Wait until you have a seizure and then resort to it. You will be
surprise of the result.

`` I would have liked to have taken that right away, '' said Lady Clementina.
looking at the small transparent capsule with its bubble in the light
floating liquid aconitine. I'm sure it's delicious. I
admit it to you, while hating doctors, I adore medicines.
However, I will keep it until my next seizure.

--And when will this crisis occur? asked Lord Arthur with
hurry, will it be soon?

--Not for a week, I hope. I had a very bad yesterday
day, but you never know.

--You are sure to have a seizure before the end of the month then, lady
Clem?

--I fear it. But as you show me sympathy today,
Arthur! Really the influence of Sybil on you makes you a lot of
well. And now you must save yourself. I dine with dull people,
people who don't have frivolous conversations and I feel that if
I'm not taking a nap just now, I would never be able
to keep me awake during dinner. Goodbye, Arthur. Tell Sybil my
affection and many thanks to you for your American remedy.

'You won't forget to take it, Lady Clem, will you? said lord
Arthur rising from his chair.

--Of course, I will not forget, you little simpleton. I find it strong
nice of you to think of me. I will write to you and I will tell you if he
need more blood cells.

Lord Arthur left Lady Clementina's house, full of spirits, and
with a feeling of great comfort.

In the evening he had an interview with Sybil Merton. He tells her that he is
suddenly found himself in a horribly difficult position where neither
neither honor nor duty allowed him to retreat. He tells her that he
the marriage had to be postponed, because until it was out of its
embarrassment, he did not have his freedom.

He begged her to trust him and not to doubt the future.
Everything would be fine, but patience was needed.

The scene took place in the greenhouse at Mr. Merton's house in Park Lane
where Lord Arthur had dined as usual.

Sybil had never looked happier, and for a moment Lord Arthur
had been tempted to behave like a coward, to write to lady
Clementina on the subject of the globule and letting the marriage take place,
as if there wasn't a Mr. Podgers in the world.

However, his good nature quickly asserted itself, and even when Sybil
toppled crying in his arms, he did not weaken.

The beauty, which made her nerves vibrate, had also touched her
consciousness. He felt that wreck such a good life for a few
months of fun would be a nasty thing.

He stayed with Sybil until around midnight, comforting her and being
in his turn comforted, and the next day early, he left for
Venice after writing a manly and firm letter to Mr. Merton on the subject
of the necessary postponement of marriage.



IV

In Venice he met his brother Lord Surbiton who had just arrived from
Corfu in his yacht.

The two young people spent a charming fortnight together.

In the morning, they wandered over the Lido, or slipped here and there through the
green canals in their long black gondola. In the afternoon, they
usually received visits on the yacht and in the evening they had dinner
at Florian's and smoked countless cigarettes in the Piazza.

Yet one way or the other, Lord Arthur was not happy.

Every day, he studied in the _Times_ the "column of deaths",
expecting to hear the news of Lady Clementina's death there, but
every day he had a disappointment.

He began to fear that some accident had happened to him and regretted
many times for preventing her from taking aconitine when she
had been so eager to experience the effects.

Sybil's letters, though full of love, trust and
tenderness, were often in a very sad tone and sometimes he thought
that he was separated from her forever.

After a fortnight, Lord Surbiton was weary of Venice and
resolved to run along the coast to Ravenna because he had
heard that there are great hunts in the Pinetum.

Lord Arthur at first absolutely refused to follow him, but Surbiton,
whom he loved very much, finally convinced him that, if he continued to reside
at the Hotel Danielli he would die of boredom; and, on the fifteenth day in the morning,
they set sail with a strong northeast wind and a little sea
restless.

The crossing was pleasant.

Life in the open air brought fresh colors to the cheeks of
Lord Arthur, but after the twenty-second day he recovered from his
concerns about Lady Clementina and despite the remonstrances
from Surbiton he took the train to Venice.

When he disembarked from his gondola on the steps of the hotel, the
Owner came to meet him with a pile of telegrams.

Lord Arthur snatched them from his hands and opened them.
opening with a sudden gesture.

Everything had succeeded.

Lady Clementina had died suddenly in the night five days before.

Lord Arthur's first thought was for Sybil and he sent her a
telegram to announce his immediate return to London.

Then he ordered his valet to prepare his luggage for
the evening rapid, quintupled the payment of his gondoliers and went up
the staircase of his room with a light step and a firm heart.

Three letters awaited him there.

One was from Sybil, full of sympathy and condolence; others
of Arthur's mother and Lady Clementina's attorney.

The old lady, it seems, had dined with the Duchess that evening.
had preceded his death. She had charmed everyone with her humor and
her _ esprit_ [17], but she had retired a little early,
complaining of stomach pain.

[Note 17: In French in the text.]

In the morning, they had found her dead in her bed, without her appearing
to have suffered in no way.

Sir Mathew Reid had been called then, but there was nothing left
to do and, within the legal deadlines, she had been buried at Beauchamp
Chalcote.

A few days before her death, she had made her will. She left
to Lord Arthur his little house in Curzon Street, all its furniture,
his personal effects, his gallery of paintings with the exception of his
collection of miniatures which she gave to her sister, Lady Margaret
Rufford, and her amethyst bracelet which she bequeathed to Sybil Merton.

The building was not very valuable; but Mr. Mansfield, the attorney,
was very anxious that Lord Arthur would return, as soon as he could
possible, because there was a lot of debt to pay and lady
Clementina had never kept her accounts in order.

Lord Arthur was very touched by the good memory of Lady Clementina and thought
that Mr. Podgers had indeed taken a heavy responsibility in
this case.

His love for Sybil, however, dominated all other emotions and the
consciousness, that he had done his duty, gave him peace and comfort.

Arriving at Charing Cross, he felt quite happy.

The Mertons received him very affectionately, Sibyl made him promise
that he would not stand any obstacle interposed between them, and
the wedding was fixed for June 7th.

Once again life seemed beautiful and bright to her and all its
old joy was reborn for him.

One day, however, he was making an inventory of his house on Curzon Street with
Lady Clementina and Sybil's lawyer, burning packets of letters
yellowed and emptying drawers of weird old stuff, when the young
girl suddenly gave a little cry of joy.

--- What did you find, Sybil? said Lord Arthur raising his head from his
working and smiling.

--This pretty little silver _bonbonnière_ [18]. Is that nice and
Dutch? Are you giving it to me? Amethysts won't suit me, I
believe, until I'm eighty.

[Note 18: In French in the text.]

It was the box that had contained the aconitine.

Lord Arthur flinched and a sudden flush rose to his cheeks.

He had almost forgotten what he had done and it seemed to him
curious coincidence that Sybil, for whose sake he had been
all these anxieties, was the first to remind him of them.

`` Of course, Sibyl, this is yours. It was I who gave it to
poor Lady Clem.

--Oh, thank you, Arthur. And would I also have the _bonbon_ [19]? I did not know
not that Lady Clementina liked sweets: I believed her too much
intellectual.

[Note 19: In French in the text.]

Lord Arthur turned terribly pale and a horrible idea crossed his mind
the mind.

--A _bonbon_, Sybil! What do you mean? he asked in a voice
bass and hoarse.

--There is one in there, only one. It looks old and dirty and I have
not the slightest desire to bite it ... What's the matter, Arthur? Like you
turn pale!

Lord Arthur leaped across the living room and grabbed the candy box.

The amber-colored pill was there with its glob of poison.

Despite everything, Lady Clementina had died her natural death.

The shock of this discovery was almost beyond Lord
Arthur.

He threw the pill into the fire and collapsed on the couch with a cry of
despair.



V

Mr. Merton was very sorry at the second postponement of the marriage and Lady Julia,
who had already ordered her wedding dress, did all she could to
bring Sybil to a break.

So tenderly, however, that Sybil loved her mother, she had donated
all his life giving his hand to Lord Arthur and nothing that
telling him Lady Julia didn't make her falter in her faith.

As for Lord Arthur, it took him many days to recover from
his cruel disappointment and, for a while, his nerves were completely
out of whack.

Yet his excellent common sense soon recovered and his mind sane.
and practice did not allow him to hesitate for long on the conduct to
hold on.

Since the poison had gone bankrupt so completely, the thing it
appropriate to use was dynamite or any other kind of explosives.

As a result, he again examined the list of his friends and
parents and, after serious consideration, he resolved to blow
his uncle, the Dean of Chichester.

The dean, who was a man of much culture and knowledge,
loved clocks. He had a wonderful collection of devices
to measure the time which stretched from the 15th century to our
days. It seemed to Lord Arthur that this hobby of the good dean provided him
a great opportunity to carry out his plans.

But getting an explosive machine was, of course, quite another.
problem.

The _London Directory_ [20] gave him no information on this subject.
and he thought it would be of little use to him to go to the news
at Scotland Yard [21]. There we are never informed of the deeds and actions of the
of dynamite only after an explosion has taken place and still
do we ever know much about it.

[Note 20: The equivalent of our Directory for English trade.
(_Translator's note_.)]

[Note 21: The police headquarters. (_Translator's note_.)]

Suddenly he thought of his friend Rouvaloff, a young Russian with very
revolutionaries, whom he had met the previous winter at Lady
Windermere.

Count Rouvaloff was supposed to write a life of Peter the Great.
He had come to England on the pretext of studying the documents there.
relating to the Czar's stay in this country as a carpenter of
Marine; but generally he was suspected of being a nihilistic agent and
there was no doubt that the Russian Embassy did not take a favorable view
its presence in London.

Lord Arthur thought that this was just the right man for his
designs, and one morning he drove to his accommodation in Bloomsbury to
ask him for his opinion and his assistance.

- So here you are thinking, to occupy yourself seriously in politics,
said Count Rouvaloff, when Lord Arthur had explained to him the object of his
Steps.

But Lord Arthur who hated bluster of any kind
that was, felt obliged to explain to him that social questions
did not have the slightest interest in him and that he needed a
explosor in a purely family affair which only concerned
himself.

Count Rouvaloff looked at him for a few moments with surprise.

Then, seeing that he was quite serious, he wrote an address on
a piece of paper, signed with his initials and handed it to Lord Arthur
across the table.

--Scotland Yard would give a lot to know this address, my dear
friend.

'They won't have it,' cried Lord Arthur, bursting into a laugh.

And, after warmly shaking the hand of the young Russian, he
rushed down the stairs, looked at the paper and told his driver to
drive him to Soho square.

There he dismissed him and followed Greek street until he came to a
a place called Bayle's court. He passed under the viaduct and
found in a curious _cul-de-sac_ [22] which appeared to be occupied by a
French laundry room. From one house to another, a whole network of ropes
lay laden with laundry and in the morning air there was a
wavy white canvases.

[Note 22: In French in the text.]

Lord Arthur went straight to the end of this drier and knocked on a small
green house.

After some waiting, during which all the windows of the courtyard are
populated with heads that appeared and disappeared, the door was
opened by a stranger, quite rough looking, who asked him very
bad english what he wanted.

Lord Arthur handed him the paper which Count Rouvaloff had given him.

As soon as he saw it, the man bowed and urged Lord Arthur to enter.
in a very small room on the ground floor, in front.

A few moments later, Herr Winckelkopf, as he was called in
England, hurriedly entered the room, a soiled towel
of wine stains on his neck and a fork on his left hand.

`` Count Rouvaloff, '' said Lord Arthur, bowing, `` gave me a
introduction near you and I am very eager to have with you
a short interview for a business question. My name is Smith ...
Robert Smith and I need you to provide me with a clock
explosive.

`` Pleased to receive you, Lord Arthur, '' replied the malicious little one.
German laughing. So don't look at me so
alarm. It's my duty to know everyone and I remember
seeing you one evening at Lady Windermere's. I hope his Grace is
in good health. Will you come and sit next to me while
am I finishing lunch? I have an excellent _pâté_ [23] and my friends are quite
good to say that my Rhine wine is better than any of those we
can drink at the German Embassy.

[Foonote 23: In French in the text.]

And before Lord Arthur recovered from his surprise at being recognized,
he was sitting in the back room, slowly drinking the
most delicious Marcobrünner in a pale yellow cup marked with
imperial monograms and chatted in the friendliest way possible
possible with the famous conspirator.

`` Exploding clocks, '' said Herr Winckelkopf, `` are not very
good items for export abroad, even when successful
to pass them through customs. The train service is so irregular
that usually they explode before reaching their destination.
If, however, you need someone of these gear for use
interior, I can provide a great item for you and guarantee you
that you will be satisfied with the result. May I ask you for what use
you intend it. If it's for the police or for someone who touches
anything in Scotland Yard, I'm sorry, but I can't
do nothing for you. English detectives are truly our best
friends. I have always found that taking into account their stupidity
we can do absolutely anything we want; I do not want
touching a hair of the head of neither of them.

`` I assure you, '' replied Lord Arthur, `` that it has nothing to do with
the police. In reality, the clockwork movement is intended for the dean of
Chichester.

- Hey there! Hey there! I had no idea you were so pronounced in
matter of religion, Lord Arthur. Young people today do not
hardly get excited about it.

`` I think you treasure me too much, Herr Winckelkopf, '' said Lord Arthur.
blushing. The point is, I am absolutely ignorant of theology.

--So it's a very personal matter.

--Absolutely.

Herr Winckelkopf shrugged and left the room.

Four minutes later he reappeared with a round cake of dynamite from the
size of a penny and a pretty little French clock topped
of a figurine of Liberty trampling the hydra of Despotism.

Lord Arthur's face lit up at the sight.

--That's exactly what I need. Now teach me how
it explodes?

--Ah! this is my secret, Herr Winckelkopf replied, contemplating his
invention with a fair look of pride. Just tell me when
you want it to explode and I will set the mechanism for the hour
indicated.

--Well! today is tuesday and if you can send it to me all from
after...

--It's impossible. I have a lot of jobs, a very important job
for some friends from Moscow.

--Oh! there will still be time if it is delivered tomorrow evening or Thursday
morning. As for the time of the explosion, let's fix it for Friday at noon. AT
that hour the dean is still at home.

"Friday at noon," repeated Herr Winckelkopf.

And he made a note about it on a large ledger open on a
office by the fireplace.

`` And now, '' said Lord Arthur, rising from his chair, `` please
let them know how much I owe you.

`` It is such a small matter, Lord Arthur, that I will count you
this to the fair. Dynamite costs seven shellings six pence, the
clock movement three pounds ten shellings and wearing approx
five shellings. I'm too happy to oblige a friend of the count
Rouvaloff.

--But your inconvenience, Herr Winckelkopf?

--Oh! it's nothing. It's a pleasure for me. I don't work for
money: I live entirely for my art.

Lord Arthur put four pounds two shellings six pence on the table,
thanked the little German for his kindness and, declining his
better an invitation to meet some anarchists at a tea
fork the following Saturday, he left Herr Winckelkopf's house and
went to the Park.

For the next two days Lord Arthur was in a state of
very great nervous agitation. On Friday at noon, he went to
Buckingham, club to await the news.

All afternoon, the stupid lackey on duty at the door mounted
telegrams from all over the country giving the results of the races
of horses, judgments in divorce cases, the state of
temperature and other similar information, while the ribbon
unraveled the most tedious details about the night session of the
House of Commons and a little panic at the Stock Exchange [24].

[Note 24: The London Stock Exchange.]

At four o'clock the evening papers arrived and Lord Arthur disappeared
in the reading room with the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the _James's
Gazette_, the _Globe_ and the_Echo_, to the great indignation of the colonel
Goodchild, who wished to read the transcript of a speech given
by him, in the morning, at the lord-mayor's hotel, about the missions
South Africans and the convenience of having, in each province,
Negro bishops.

But the colonel, for one reason or another, had a very strong prejudice
against the _Evenings News_.

None of the journals, however, contained the slightest allusion to
Chichester and Lord Arthur understood that the attack had failed.

It was a terrible blow to him, and for a few minutes he remained completely
quite dejected.

Herr Winckelkopf, whom he went to see the next day, apologized
laborious and offered to provide him with another clock of his own
fresh or a case of nitro-glycerin bombs at cost.

But Lord Arthur had lost all confidence in the explosives and Herr
Winckelkopf recognized that all things are so sophisticated today
that it is difficult to have even unadulterated dynamite.

However, the little German, while admitting that the movement to
watchmaking could be defective on some points, was not without
hope that the clock could still go off. He cited in support of his
thesis the case of a barometer he had once sent to the governor
Odessa military, set to explode on the tenth day. This barometer
had produced nothing after three years. He was also everything
quite correct that, when it exploded, it only succeeded in reducing
porridge a maid, for the governor had left town six
weeks before, but at least that proved that dynamite, as
destructive force, under the command of a clockwork movement,
was a powerful agent, although a little inaccurate.

Lord Arthur was somewhat consoled by this reflection, but even at this point
by sight he was destined to experience further disappointment. Two days
later, as he was going up the stairs, the Duchess called him into her
boudoir and showed her a letter she had just received from the deanery.

--Jane writes charming letters to me, she said, you should read
the last: it is as interesting as the novels sent to us
Mudie.

Lord Arthur quickly took the letter from her.

It was thus conceived:

    THE DEAN, CHICHESTER

    May 27.

    "My very dear aunt,

    "Thank you very much for the flannel for the Dorcas company and
    also for the guingamp.

    "I completely agree with you in considering their absurdity
    need to wear pretty things, but today everyone
    is so radical, so irreligious that it is difficult to make them
    see that they do not have to have the tastes and the elegance of the high
    classes. I really don't know where we are going! Like daddy says
    often in his sermons we live in a century of unbelief.

    "We had a good story about a little pendulum
    that an unknown admirer sent to dad last Thursday. She is
    arrival from London, postage paid, in a wooden crate and dad thinks
    that it was sent to him by some reader of his remarkable
    sermon "_Is the License Liberty? _", because the clock is
    surmounted by a figure of a woman with what is called a cap
    phrygian on the head.

    "I don't find it very suitable, but daddy says it's
    historical. So I guess there is nothing to complain about.

    "Parker unpacked the object and dad placed it on the fireplace in the
    library.

    "We were all sitting in this room on Friday morning when, at the
    at the very moment when the clock struck noon, we heard something like
    noise of wings; a small puff of smoke issued from the pedestal of the
    figure and the goddess of Liberty fell and broke her nose on the
    fire guard.

    "Maria was very excited, but it was really an adventure if
    ridiculous that James and I had a good deal of laughing.
    Papa even chorus.

    “When we looked at the clock, we saw that it was a
    kind of alarm clock and that by placing the stop on one hour
    determined and putting powder and a capsule of fulminate
    under a small hammer, the bursting occurred when it was
    wanted to.

    "Dad said it was too loud a clock to stay in
    the library.

    "So Reggie took her to school and there she continues to produce
    small explosions throughout the day.

    "Do you think Arthur would like a wedding present like this?" I
    guess this must be quite trendy in London.

    "Dad says these clocks are good for doing good, because they
    show that freedom is not sustainable and that its reign must
    end with a fall. Daddy says freedom was invented in time
    of the French Revolution. It sounds terrible.

    "I will go to the Dorcas in a little while and I will read them your
    so informative letter. How true is your aunt, your idea
    that with their rank in life they would like to wear what
    not befitting. I have to say their concern for the costume is absurd when
    they have so many other serious concerns in this world and in the next.

    "I am very happy that your flower poplin is doing so well and
    that your lace is not torn. Wednesday, I will take to
    the bishop the yellow satin which you so graciously gave to me
    and I believe it will have the best effect.

    "Do you have knots or not?" Jennings says now everyone
    world wears knots and shirts are frilled.

    “Reggie just had another new explosion. Daddy
    ordered to transport the clock to the stable. I do not think that
    dad appreciates him as much as he did at first, although he is very
    flattered to have received such a kind and ingenious present. This
    proves that you read your sermons and benefit from them.

    "Dad sends you his best regards, James, Reggie and Maria unite in
    him, hoping that Uncle Cécil's gout is getting better.

    “Believe me, my dear aunt, your loving niece.

    "JANE PERCY."


    _P. S._ Answer me about the knots. Jennings supports with
    insistence that they are in fashion.

Lord Arthur looked at the letter so earnestly and so unhappily that
the Duchess burst out laughing.

`` My dear Arthur, '' she declared to him, `` I won't show you a
letter from a young girl! But what about this clock? It seems to me
a really curious invention and I would like to have one like it.

`` I don't have much faith in these clocks, '' said Lord Arthur, with
her sad smile.

And, after kissing his mother, he left the room.

When he reached the top of the stairs, he threw himself on an armchair and his
eyes filled with tears.

He had done his best to commit the murder, but in two
occasions his attempts had failed, and that, without there being any
his fault. He had tried to do his duty, but it seemed that the
destiny betrayed him.

He was overwhelmed by the feeling of the sterility of good intentions,
of the futility of efforts for a good deed.

Perhaps it would have been better to break the marriage. Sybil would have suffered,
it is true; but suffering does not ruin a character as noble as
his.

What did it matter for him! There is always some war where a man
can get killed, whatever cause a man can give his life to
and if life had no pleasure for him, death did not frighten him
not.

May destiny hatch its fate as it pleases! He wouldn't do anything for the
ward off.

At half past seven, he got dressed and went to the club.

Surbiton was there, with a company of young men, and Lord Arthur was
forced to have dinner with them. Their banal conversation, their idle lazzis
did not interest him and as soon as the coffee was served he left them,
inventing the pretext of a meeting to explain his retirement.

As he left the club, the lackey on duty at the door handed him a
letter.

She was from Herr Winckelkopf, who invited her to come the next day
evening, see an explosive umbrella that exploded as soon as you opened it.
It was the last word of the inventors. The umbrella had just arrived from
Geneva.

Lord Arthur tore the letter into small fragments. He was determined to
no longer have to resort to new attempts.

Then he went wandering along the banks of the Thames and, for
hours he remained seated near the river.

The moon showed itself through a veil of tawny clouds, like an eye
lion behind a mane and countless stars glittered
the abyss of the heavens, like the golden dust that has been sown on a dome
purple.

At times a boat swayed on the muddy river and
continued on its course, drifting with the current.

The railway signals, from green, turned red, as
trains were crossing the bridge with shrill whistles.

A little later, midnight fell with a heavy noise from the small tower
of Westminster, and with each ring of the ringing bell the night seemed
to shiver.

Then the railway lights went out. A lonely lamp
continued alone to shine like a large ruby ​​on a gigantic mast and
the city's rumor died down.

At two o'clock Lord Arthur got up and strolled around Blackfriars.

How unreal everything seemed to him, like a strange dream!

Across the river, the houses seemed to be submerging
darkness. One would have said that money and shadow had shaped the world to
new.

The enormous dome of Saint Paul splayed like a bubble through
the blackish atmosphere.

As he approached Cleopatra's Needle, Lord Arthur saw a man
leaning over the parapet and when he approached, the light from the lamppost
falling squarely on his face, he recognized him.

It was Mr. Podgers.

No one could have forgotten the fat and flabby face, the golden glasses, the
weak sickly smile, the sensual mouth of the palmist.

Lord Arthur stopped.

An idea suddenly illuminated her, like lightning.

He slowly crept over to Mr. Podgers.

In a second he grabbed him by the legs and threw him into the Thames.

A rude curse, a splash of splash, and that was it.

Lord Arthur looked anxiously at the surface of the river, but he could not
nothing to see of the palmist except his little hat that twirled in
a whirlpool of water silvery by moonlight. After a few
minutes, the hat also fell and no trace of Mr. Podgers
remained visible.

For a moment Lord Arthur thought he saw a big figure
deformed body that rushed up the stairs near the bridge, and a dreadful
feeling of failure took hold of him, but soon this image grew stronger
in reflection and when the moon shone again, after clearing
clouds, she disappeared at the end.

Then it seemed to him that he had carried out the decrees of fate. He pushed
a deep sigh of relief and Sybil's name rose to his lips.

- Did you drop anything in the water, sir? said
suddenly a voice behind him.

He turned abruptly and saw a _policeman_ with an eye lantern
beef.

"Nothing that matters, sergeant," he replied, smiling.

And, hailing a passing cab, he jumped in and ordered the driver
to drive him to Belgrave square.

Over the next few days, he was alternately happy and
worried.

There were times he almost expected to see Mr. Podgers
enter his room and yet other times he felt that the
fortune could not be so unfair to him.

Twice he went to the palmist's address in West-Moon Street,
but he could not take it upon himself to ring the doorbell.

He longed for a certainty and he dreaded it.

At the end, she came.

He was sitting in the club's smoking room. He was having tea, listening
with a little boredom Surbiton who reported to him the last
operetta of La Gaîté, when the footman brought the
evening.

He took the _Gazette de Saint-James_ and leafed through the pages of a
looked distracted when that singular title caught his eye.

SUICIDE OF A CHIROMIST

He turned pale with emotion and began to read.

The thread was thus designed.

    "_Yesterday morning, at 7 o'clock, the body of Mr. Septimus R. Podgers, the
    famous palmist, was washed up on the shore at Greenwich opposite
    of the Ship Hotel.

    The unfortunate gentleman had been missing for a few days and the
    palmistry circles were very concerned about his
    respect.

    It is assumed that he committed suicide under the influence of a disturbance
    momentary of his mental faculties caused by overwork and the jury
    of the coroner rendered, to this effect, a valid verdict this afternoon.

    "Mr. Podgers had just completed a comprehensive treatise relating to the hand
    human. This work will soon be published and will raise, without
    no doubt, a lot of curiosity.

    "The deceased was 65 years old and does not seem to leave a family."

Lord Arthur rushed out of the club, newspaper in hand, to the
bewilderment of the lackey in charge of the concierge who tried in vain
to stop it.

He ran straight to Park Lane.

Sybil, who was at his window, saw him arrive and something told him
that he brought good news. She ran to meet him and,
when she looked at his face, she understood that everything was fine.

'My dear Sybil,' cried Lord Arthur, 'let's get married tomorrow!

--Young fool, and the wedding cake that is not even ordered! replied
Sybil laughing in the midst of her tears.



VI

When the wedding took place, about three weeks later, Saint-Peter
was invaded by a real crowd of people from the best world.

The service was read with great touch by the Dean of Chichester
and everyone agreed that we had never seen
more beautiful couple than the groom and the bride.

They were more than beautiful, because they were happy.

Lord Arthur never regretted what he had suffered for the love of
Sybil, while she, for her part, gave him the best things
that a woman can give a man respect, tenderness and
love.

For them, reality did not kill the novel.

They always retained the youth of feelings.

A few years later, when two beautiful children were born to them,
Lady Windermere came to visit them at Alton Priory - an old
beloved estate which had been the Duke's wedding present to his son, - and a
afternoon she was sitting next to Lady Arthur under a lime tree
in the garden, looking at the little boy and girl who were playing at each other
stroll through the rose bed like uncertain sunbeams,
she suddenly took her hostess' hands in hers and said:

- Are you happy, Sybil?

`` Dear Lady Windermere, yes, I am happy! And you don't
are you not?

“I don't have time to be, Sybil. I always liked the last
person that I was introduced to, but usually as soon as I got to know
someone, I'm tired of it.

"Do your lions no longer give you satisfaction, Lady Windermere?"

--Oh! my dear, lions are only good for one season! As soon as we have them
cut off the mane, they become the most stunning creatures
of the world. Besides, if you are really nice to them, they will
drive very badly with you. Do you remember that horrible Mr.
Podgers? He was a dreadful impostor. Of course, I didn't
not noticed at first and even when he needed to borrow
money, I gave him, but I couldn't stand him giving me
the courtyard. He really made me hate palmistry. Currently it is
telepathy that charms me. It's much more fun.

`` Nothing should be said here against palmistry, Lady Windermere. This is
the only subject Arthur doesn't like to be laughed at, I assure you,
on this, his ideas are completely stopped!

"Don't you mean he believes it, Sybil?"

"Ask him, Lady Windermere." Here it is.

Lord Arthur arrived, in fact, through the garden, a large bouquet of
yellow roses in his hand and his two children dancing around him.

--Lord Arthur?

`` At your command, Lady Windermere.

- Really dare you tell me that you believe in palmistry.

"Certainly yes," said the young man, smiling.

--And why?

`` Because I owe him all the happiness of my life, '' he whispered.
spilling in a wicker chair.

`` My dear Lord Arthur, what do you mean by that?

`` Sybil, '' he replied, handing the roses to his wife and looking at her.
in his purple eyes.

--What stupidity! cried Lady Windermere. In my life I have never
heard stupidity Such!




TALES

_A Carlos Blacker_


OW



The following _Tales_ were published in May 1888 by David Nutt
in an illustrated edition by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood. They were
reprinted in January 1889, then in February 1902, still by the same
editor and with the same illustrations.



THE DEDICATED FRIEND



One morning the old water rat stuck his head out of its hole. He had some
very lively round eyes and thick gray mustaches. His tail seemed
a long piece of black elastic gum.

Little ducks swam in the tank, like a troop
yellow canaries and their mother, all white with red legs,
tried to teach them to dip their heads in the water.

--You can never go to good society if you do not know
not bite your head, she told them.

And, again, she was showing them how to do it.
But the little ducks paid no attention to his lessons. They
were so young they didn't know what advantage there is to living
in the society_.

--What disobedient children! cried the old water rat. They
deserve to be drowned!

- Heaven preserve me! replied the cane. It takes a beginning to
everything and parents cannot be too patient.

--Ah! I have no idea what feelings
parents, said the water rat. I am not a father. In fact,
I never got married and never dreamed of doing so. Without
doubt love is a good thing in its own way, but friendship is worth
better. Of course, I don't know anything in the world that is more noble or more rare
than a devoted friendship.

"And what, please, is your idea of ​​the duties of a devoted friend?"
asked a green linnet perched on a twisted willow and who had listened
the conversation.

`` Yes, that's exactly what I would like to know, '' said the duck, and she
swam to the end of the tank and pricked his head to give his
children the good example.

--What a stupid question! cried the water rat. I hear my friend
devoted be devoted to me, parbleu!

--And what will you do in return? said the little bird, waving on a
twig silvery and flapping its small wings.

"I don't understand you," replied the water rat.

"Let me tell you a story about it," said Linnet.

--Is history for me? asked the water rat. If so, I
I will gladly listen to it, because I love tales to madness.

"It is applicable to you," replied Linnet.

She flew away and, falling on the edge of the tank, she told
the story of the devoted Friend.

“Once upon a time,” said Linnet, “there was an honest boy named Hans.

"Was he a really distinguished man?" asked the water rat.

"No," replied the linnet. I don't think he was distinguished at all,
except for her good heart and her brown and pleasant round face. He lived
in a poor country house and every day he worked his
garden. In all the land, there was no garden as pretty as
his. There grew poet's carnations, wallflowers, purses
to pastor, saxifrage. There grew damask roses, roses
yellow, lilac and gold crocuses, red and white violets. According to
the months bloomed there in turn rosehips and cardamines,
wild marjoram and basil, primroses and iris from Germany,
asphodels and carnations-cloves. A flower took the place of a
other flower. So there were always pretty things to look at and
pleasant smells to breathe.

Little Hans had many friends, but the most devoted of all was
the great Hugh the Miller. Truly the rich miller was so devoted to the
little Hans that he would never have gone to his garden without looking
flower beds, without picking a large bouquet or a handful of
succulent salads or without filling their pockets with plums or cherries
depending on the season.

`` Real friends have everything in common, '' the
miller.

And little Hans nodded, smiled and felt quite proud
to have a friend who thought such noble things.

Sometimes, however, the neighborhood found it strange that the wealthy miller
never gave anything back to little Hans, even though he had a hundred bags
of flour stored in his mill, six dairy cows and a large
number of woolen animals; but Hans never confused his brain
similar ideas. Nothing pleased him more than hearing the
beautiful things that the miller used to say about the solidarity of
true friends.

So little Hans was working his garden. Spring, summer and
fall he was very happy; but when the winter came and he
had no fruits or flowers to bring to the market, he was in great pain
cold and hunger and often he went to bed without having eaten another
thing but a few dry pears and a few bad nuts. Winter
also, he was extremely isolated, as the miller never came on
see in this season.

--It is not good that I go to see little Hans as long as the
snow, the miller often said to his wife. When people have
troubles, we must leave them alone and not torment them with visits.
At least these are my ideas on friendship and I am sure they
are fair. So I will wait for spring and then I will go and see him:
he will be able to give me a large basket of primroses and that will make him
happy.

`` You are certainly full of concern for others, '' replied his
woman sitting in a comfortable armchair near a beautiful log fire
pine. It is a real treat to hear you talk about friendship. I
I'm sure the priest wouldn't say such beautiful things as you
on this, although he lives in a three-story house and wears a
gold ring on her pinky finger.

"But couldn't we get little Hans to come here?" questioned
the young son of the farmer. If poor Hans is in trouble, I'll tell him
give half of my soup and show him my white rabbits.

--What fool you are! cried the miller. I really don't know how to
what good is it to send you to school. You seem to learn nothing from it.
Of course! if little Hans came here, if he saw our good fire, our
excellent supper and our big barrel of red wine, it could
become envious. However envy is a very terrible thing and which would spoil
the best characters. Certainly I will not suffer that the character
Hans be spoiled. I'm her best friend and I will always watch over
him and take care that he is not exposed to any temptation. Moreover, if
Hans would come here, he could ask me to give him some flour
on credit, and that I cannot do. Flour is one thing and
friendship is another, and they should not be confused. My
faith! these words are spelled differently and mean things
all different. Everyone knows this.

`` How well you speak, '' said the miller's wife, handing him a
tall glass of hot beer. I really feel asleep. This is
just like in church.

`` Many do well, '' replied the miller, `` but few know well.
talk, which proves that talking is by far the most
difficult and also the more beautiful of the two.

And he looked sternly over the table at his young son who
felt so ashamed of himself that he bowed his head, almost became
scarlet and began to cry in her tea.

He was so young you'll excuse him.

- Is that the end of the story? asked the water rat.

"No, not," replied the linnet. It's the beginning.

`` Then you are quite behind your time, '' said the rat.
of water. Every good storyteller today begins at the end, starts again at
start and end in the middle. This is the new method. I heard
that from the mouth of a critic who was walking around the tank
with a young man. He dealt with the matter in master and I'm sure
that he must be right, because he had blue glasses and his head
bald; and when the young man made some observation to him,
he always replied: "Pooh!" But continue, please, your
history. I really like the sucker. I myself have all kinds of beautiful
feelings: also there is a great sympathy between us.

--Well! said the linnet, sometimes hopping on one leg and sometimes
on the other. As soon as the winter was over, as soon as the primroses
began to open their pale yellow stars, the miller told his
woman he was going to go out and visit little Hans.

--Ah! what a good heart you have! his wife shouted at him. You still think
to others. Consider taking the large basket with you to bring back flowers.

Then the miller tied the wings of the mill together with a strong
iron chain and walked down the hill, basket in arm.

"Good morning, little Hans," said the miller.

`` Good morning, '' said Hans, leaning on his spade and with a smile that
went from ear to ear.

--And how did you spend the winter? continued the miller.

--Well, good! Hans replied, 'it's nice of you to inform yourself.
I had a bad time to spend, but now spring
is back and I'm almost happy ... then my flowers are fine
give.

`` We have spoken of you often this winter, Hans, '' continued the miller, ``
and we were wondering what was happening to you.

--It's very good for you, said Hans ... I was almost afraid that you
forgot me.

--Hans, I'm surprised to hear you speak like that,
miller. Friendship never forgets. That's what she's admirable, but
I'm afraid you don't understand the poetry of life ... Like your
primroses are beautiful, in parentheses.

`` Certainly they are really beautiful, '' said Hans, `` and he is happy for
I have a lot of them. I'll take them to the market and sell them at
the burgomaster's daughter and with the money I will buy my wheelbarrow.

- Will you buy back your wheelbarrow? Do you mean you got it
sold? It is a very silly act.

'Certainly, yes, but the fact is,' replied Hans, 'that I had to.
You know, winter is a very bad season for me and I
really didn't have the money to buy bread. So I sold
first the gold buttons of my Sunday dress, then I sold
my silver chain and then my big flute. Finally I sold my
wheelbarrow. But now I'm going to buy it all back.

"Hans," said the miller, "I will give you my wheelbarrow." She is not in
very good state. One side is gone and there is something crooked
to the spokes of the wheel, but in spite of that I will give it to you. I know that
it's generous of me and a lot of people would find me crazy about
let go of it, but I'm not like the rest of the world. I think
that generosity is the essence of friendship and, moreover, I have
bought a new wheelbarrow. Yes, you can rest assured ... I
will give you my wheelbarrow.

--Thank you, it's really generous of you, said little Hans and
her pleasant round face shines with pleasure. I can easily
repair, because I have a board at home.

--A board! cried the miller. Perfect! that's exactly what he told me
need for the roof of my barn. There is a big hole and my wheat will be
all wet if I don't plug it. As you said about it!
It is really to be noticed that a good deed always generates a good deed.
other. I gave you my wheelbarrow and now you will give me
your board. Of course the wheelbarrow is worth much more than the
board, but sincere friendship never notices such things.
Please give me the board right now and I will sit down today
even at work to repair my barn.

--Certainly! replied little Hans.

And he ran to his lean-to and took out the plank.

`` It's not a very big board, '' said the miller, looking at it.
and I fear that when I have repaired the roof of my barn, it will
not enough left for you to mend the wheelbarrow, but it is
naturally not my fault ... And now, as I gave you my
wheelbarrow I'm sure in return you will want to give me some
flowers ... Here is the basket, you will take care to fill it almost
entirely.

--Almost entirely? said little Hans, almost in grief, for the basket
was large and he realized that if he
filled, he would have no more flowers to take to the market. Now it was
very eager to redeem his silver buttons.

`` Faith, '' replied the miller, `` as I gave you my wheelbarrow,
didn't think it was too much to ask you for some flowers. I can myself
deceive, but I believed that friendship, true friendship, was freed
selfishness of any kind.

`` My dear friend, my best friend, '' protested little Hans, `` every
flowers from my garden are at your disposal, because I have a much more vivid
desire of your esteem than of my money buttons.

And he ran to pick these pretty primroses and fill the basket of
miller.

- Farewell, little Hans! said the miller going up the hill his board
on the shoulder and his large basket on his arm.

--Farewell! said little Hans.

And he began to dig merrily: he was so happy to have the wheelbarrow.

The next day he tied a leaf goat on his door, when he
heard the voice of the miller calling him from the road. So he jumped
from his ladder, ran to the bottom of the garden and looked over the
wall.

It was the miller with a large sack of flour on his shoulder.

`` Dear little Hans, '' said the miller, `` would you bring me this bag of
flour at the market?

--Oh! I'm sorry, said Hans, but I'm really, really busy
today. I have all my climbing plants to fix, all my
flowers to water, all my grass to mow at roulette.

`` Faith, '' replied the miller, `` I thought that in consideration of what
I gave you my wheelbarrow, it would be unkind of you to me
refuse.

--Oh! I do not refuse! protested little Hans. For everything in the world, I
would not want to befriend you.

And he went to get his cap and left with the big bag on his
shoulder.

It was a very hot day and the road was excruciatingly powdered.
Before Hans had reached the landmark of the sixth mile, he was
so tired he had to sit down and rest. Nevertheless it was not long
to continue courageously on his way and finally arrived at the market.

After waiting a few moments, he sold the bag of flour to a
good price and then he went straight home, for he was afraid
if he lingered too long to meet some thief on the way.

`` It has certainly been a rough day, '' said Hans to himself, getting into bed, `` but
I'm glad I didn't refuse because the sucker is my best
friend and, moreover, he will give me his wheelbarrow.

Very early in the morning, the next day, the miller came to get the money from
his bag of flour, but little Hans was so tired that he was
still in bed.

--My word! said the miller, you are very lazy. When I think
that I just gave you my wheelbarrow, it seems to me that you could
work more valiantly.

Laziness is a great vice and, of course, I would not want one of my
friends either lazy or listless. Don't judge my language casually
with you. I would certainly not think of speaking like this if I were not
your friend. But what good would friendship be if we couldn't say clearly
what do we think? Anyone can say kind things, strive
to please and flatter, but a sincere friend says unpleasant things
and does not hesitate to hurt. On the contrary, if he is a friend
true, he prefers that, because he knows that in this way he does good.

`` I am very sorry, '' replied little Hans, rubbing his eyes and
taking off her nightcap, but I was so tired I thought
I had gone to bed a short time ago and was listening to the birds singing.
Don't you know I always work better when I hear
sing the birds?

--Well! so much the better! replied the miller, slapping Hans in the
the back, because I need you to fix the roof of my barn.

Little Hans had a great need to go and work in his garden, because
his flowers had not been watered for two days, but he would not
not refuse the miller, because he was a good friend to him.

--Do you think it would not be friendly to tell you what I have to do?
he asked in a humble and timid voice.

`` Faith, '' replied the miller, `` I didn't think it was much.
ask you, since I just gave you my
wheelbarrow, but of course if you refuse I will go and do it myself.

--Oh! not at all, cried little Hans, jumping from his bed.

He dressed and went to the barn.

He worked there all day till sunset and sunset
from the sun the miller came to see where he was.

--Have you plugged the hole in the roof? little Hans, cried the miller,
cheerful voice.

"It's almost over," replied little Hans, coming down the ladder.

--Ah! said the miller, there is no job more delicious than that
that we can do for others.

`` It is certainly a privilege to hear you speak, '' replied the
little Hans who stopped and wiped his forehead, a very great privilege,
but I am afraid I will never have such beautiful ideas as you.

--Oh! they will come to you, said the miller, but you should take
more trouble. Now all you have to do is practice friendship.
Some day you will also have the theory.

- Do you really believe it? asked little Hans.

"I don't doubt it," replied the miller. But now that you
fixed the roof, you better go home and you
rest; because tomorrow I need you to lead my sheep to the
Mountain.

Poor little Hans dared not protest, and the next day, at dawn, the
miller brought his sheep to his small farm and Hans left with
them for the mountain. Going back and forth took him all day and
when he returned he was so tired that he fell asleep in his chair and didn't
woke up that day.

--What delicious weather I will have in my garden! he said to himself, and he was going
get down to work.

But somehow he didn't have time to throw a shot
look at his flowers: his friend the miller would arrive and send him to
long runs or asked him to come and help at the mill. Sometimes the
little Hans was desperate to think his flowers would believe he
had forgotten them, but he consoled himself by thinking that the miller
was his best friend.

`` Besides, '' he used to say, `` he's going to give me his wheelbarrow and
it is an act of pure generosity.

So little Hans worked for the miller and the miller said
many beautiful things about friendship that Hans wrote in a book by
reason and that he reread in the evening, for he was literate.

Now it happened that one evening little Hans was sitting by his fire when
there was a loud knock on the door.

The night was very dark. The wind was blowing and roaring around the
house so terribly that at first Hans thought it was the hurricane that
knocked on the door. But a second blow rang out, then a third more
rude than the others.

`` He's some poor traveler, '' said little Hans to himself, and he ran to
door.

The miller was on the threshold, a lantern in one hand and a large
cudgel on the other.

`` Dear little Hans, '' cried the miller, `` I am very sorry. My kid is
fell off a ladder and injured himself. I'll go get the doctor. But
he lives far away and the night is so bad i thought he
you better go in my place. You know that I give you
my wheelbarrow. So it would be nice of you to do something in return
thing for me.

"Certainly," cried little Hans. I'm glad you have
thought of picking me up and I'll leave right away. But you
should lend me your lantern, because the night is so dark that I
fear falling into some ditch.

- I'm sorry, replied the miller, but it's my new lantern
and it would be a great loss if some accident should happen to him.

--Well! Let's stop talking about it! I will do without, said little Hans.

He put on his big fur coat and his warm red cap,
tied her muffler around her throat and left.

What a terrible storm it was blowing. The night was so dark that the
Little Hans could hardly see there and the wind was so strong that he could hardly
walk. Nevertheless he was very courageous and, after he had walked
nearly three o'clock he arrived at the doctor and knocked on his door.

`` Who is there? '' Cried the doctor, putting his head out of his window.
bedroom.

- Little Hans, doctor!

--What do you want, little Hans?

--The miller's son fell off a ladder and injured himself and we must
that you come on time.

--Very well! replied the doctor.

And he immediately harnessed his horse, put on his big boots, took
his lantern and went down the stairs. He set off in the direction of the
miller's house, little Hans walking behind him.

But the storm is getting bigger. The rain fell in torrents and little Hans did not
could neither see where he was going nor hold his foot to the horse. At the end he lost
his way, wandered over the moor which was a dangerous place full of
deep holes and where poor Hans drowned.

The next day, shepherds found his body floating on a large
mare and carried him to his small farm.

Everyone went to Little Hans's funeral, because he was very
loved, and the miller was at the head of the mourning.

"I was his best friend," said the miller; it is right that I have the
place of honor.

He therefore took the head of the procession in a long black coat and, from time to time
time, he wiped his eyes with a large pocket square.

- Little Hans is sure to be a great loss to all of us, said the
tinsmith, when the funeral was over and the mourning was
comfortably seated at the hostel drinking spiced wine and eating
good cakes.

"It is above all a great loss for me," replied the miller. My
I was good enough to offer to give him my wheelbarrow and
now I don't know what to do with it. She bothers me at home and she
is in such bad condition that if I sold it I wouldn't get anything out of it.
Certainly I will not give anything to anyone anymore. We suffer
always to have been generous.

"It is very fair," said the water rat after a long pause.

--Perfect! That's the last word, said Linnet.

--And what became of the miller? said the water rat.

--Oh! I really don't know, replied the linnet, and certainly that
I do not care.

--It is obvious that you are not of a sympathetic nature, said the
water rat.

`` I'm afraid you haven't seen the moral of the story, '' replied the
linnet.

--The what? cried the water rat.

--Morality.

- Do you mean that history has a moral.

"Certainly," said Linnet.

- My faith! said the water rat angrily, you should have told me
before starting. If you would have done it, I certainly wouldn't
would not have listened. Certainly I would have told you: "Pooh!" as the
critical. But I can say it now.

And he shouted his "Pooh!" with all his voice, flicked his tail and
returned to his hole.

--And what do you say about the water rat? asked the cane who arrived in
patrolling a few minutes later. He has a lot of qualities, but
for my part, I have the feelings of a mother and I cannot see a
bachelor hardened without tears coming to my eyes.

"I am afraid I have bored him," replied the linnet. The point is that I
told him a story that has its moral.

--Ah! it's always a very dangerous thing, said the duck.

And I absolutely agree with him.





THE FAMOUS ROCKET


The king's son was about to get married. Also the celebrations
were they general.

He had waited a whole year for his fiancée and, in the end, she was
arrival.

She was a Russian princess and had traveled from Finland
in a sleigh drawn by six reindeer.

The sleigh was shaped like a large golden swan and the little princess
was lying there between the wings of the swan.

His long ermine coat fell straight to his feet.

On her head she had a little cap woven of silver, and she was
pale as the snow palace in which she had always lived.

She was so pale that when she passed through the streets people would
astonished.

"She looks like a white rose," they cried.

And, from the balconies, flowers were thrown at her.

At the castle gate, the prince was waiting to receive her. He had
dreamy purple eyes and her hair was like fine gold.

When he saw her he flexed his knee and kissed her hand.

`` Your portrait was beautiful, '' he whispered, `` but you are more beautiful than
your portrait.

And the little princess blushed.

`` She looked like a white rose earlier, '' said a young page.
to her neighbor, but now she looks like a red rose.

And the whole court was in rapture.

Over the next three days, everyone said to each other:

--White rose, red rose; red rose, white rose!

And the king gave orders that the page pay should be doubled.

As he was not receiving any pay, his position was not good.
improved, but it was considered a great honor and the decree
royal was duly published in the _Gazette de la Cour_.

After three days, the marriage was celebrated.

It was a superb ceremony.

The groom and the bride walked, hand in hand, under a canopy
of purple velvet, embroidered with small pearls.

Then there was an official banquet which lasted five hours.

The prince and the princess sat at the end of the great hall and drank
in a cup of pure crystal. Only true lovers can drink
in this cup, because if lying lips touched it, the crystal
would tarnish and turn gray and cloudy.

"It is obvious that they love each other," said the little page.
It is crystal clear.

And the king doubled his pay again.

--What an honor! exclaimed all the courtiers.

After the banquet there was a ball.

The groom and the bride were to dance the rose dance together and the
king playing the flute.

He was playing very badly, but nobody had ever dared to tell him, because
that he was king. However, he only knew two tunes and was never
of course which one he played, but it didn't matter, because whatever he did, everything
the world was shouting:

--It is charming! it is charming!

The last item in the program was a large display of fires
fireworks which was to end exactly at midnight.

The little princess had never seen fireworks in her life. As well
had the king ordered the royal pyrotechnician to bring into play all
the resources of his art on the princess's wedding day.

--What do fireworks look like? she asked the prince,
one morning, as she was walking on the terrace.

`` They look like the aurora borealis, '' said the king, still replying.
to questions addressed to others. Only they are more
nature. Me, I prefer them to the stars, because we always know when they
will start to shine and they are as nice as my music from
flute. You will certainly see them.

So at the end of the royal garden a stand had been prepared and as soon as
the royal pyrotechnician had everything put away, the fireworks
began to talk to each other.

"The world is certainly very beautiful," said a small firecracker. look
rather these yellow tulips. My faith! they would be real chestnuts
would not be prettier. I am very happy to have traveled.
Travel amazingly develops the mind and throws down all
prejudices that we could conceive.

--The king's garden is not the world, young fool, said a fat woman.
Roman candle. The world is a huge space, and it would take you
three days to cover it all.

- Any place you love is the world for you, said a sun
once attached to an old fir box and very proud of his
broken heart, but love is out of fashion; the poets killed him. They
wrote so much about it that no one believes them anymore, and I am not
not surprised. True love suffers and is silent ... I remember that
myself once ... but that's not what it is here. The novel is a
thing of the past.

--Stupidity! cried the Roman candle, the novel never dies.
It looks like the moon! He still lives; certainly the groom and the bride
love each other dearly. I learned everything about them this morning from a cartridge
of brown paper which was in the same drawer as me and which
knows the latest news from the court.

But the sun shook its head.

--The novel is dead! The novel is dead! The novel is dead! he whispered.

He was one of those people who thinks that if you repeat a number
many times the same, it ends up being true.

Suddenly a sharp, piercing cough was heard, and all looked
around them.

It was a haughty-looking little rocket that was attached to the end
of a stick. She was always coughing before making an observation like
to attract attention.

--Hum! Hmmm! she said.

And everyone listened to him except the poor sun that was still shaking
his head and whispered:

--The novel is dead!

--To order! To order! cried a brown.

He had something of a politician.

He had always taken an important part in local elections.
So he knew all the expressions we use in Parliament.

- Quite dead! sighed the sun.

And he fell asleep again.

As soon as the silence was perfect, the rocket coughed a third time
and began.

She spoke in a distinct and very slow voice, as if she was dictating
memories and was still looking over the shoulder of the person to
which she was talking about.

In fact, she had very distinguished manners.

--How happy is the king's son! she noticed, to get married on
same day when I have to be launched. Really, if it was combined with
long hand, it could not turn out better for him, but the princes
are always lucky.

--Ah! bah! Said the little firecracker, I thought it was just the
contrary and that you were launched in honor of the prince.

`` It may be your case, '' replied the rocket, `` and even I doubt it.
not, but for me it's different. I am a quality rocket and
I come from quality parents. My mother was the most famous
girandole of its time. She was famous for the grace of her dance.
When she made her big public appearance, she turned nineteen times
before extinguishing and, at each turn, it threw seven stars in the air
red. It was three and a half feet in diameter and was composed
of the best powder. My dad was rocket like me and mining
French. He was flying so high that we feared not to see him
go back down. He was coming down, however, because he was of a
excellent constitution and he made a very brilliant fall in a rain
of golden sparks. The newspapers spoke about him in very
flatterers and even the _Gazette de la cour_ said of him that he marked the
triumph of pylotechnic art.

--Pyrotechnics, you mean pyrotechnics, intervened the
Bengal light. I know it's pyrotechnic, because I saw the
word written on my tin box.

`` Faith, I say pylotechnic, '' replied the rocket in a tone of voice.
strict.

And the bengal fire was so destroyed that it immediately began to
manhandle the little firecrackers to show that he too was a
person of any importance.

- I was saying ... continued the rocket ... - I was saying ... what am I
was saying?

"You were talking about yourself," continued the Roman candle.

--Naturally. I know I was talking about some interesting topic
when I was so rudely interrupted. I hate rudeness
and bad manners of all kinds, because I am extremely
sensitive. No one in the world is as sensitive as I am, I'm sure.

--What is a sensitive person? said the chestnut by candlelight
Roman.

--A person who, because he has corns, always walks on
other people's toes, the candle answered in a low whisper.

And the brown man almost burst out laughing.

--Sorry! What are you laughing at? the rocket asked. I do not laugh.

"I laugh because I'm happy," replied the brown-haired man.

"That is a very selfish motive," said the rocket angrily. What right
do you have to be happy? You should think of others. In fact you
should think of me. I still think of myself and I estimate that everyone
world should do the same. This is called sympathy.
It is a beautiful virtue and I possess it to a high degree. Suppose, by
example, that I have some accident this evening. What a misfortune that would be
for all of you! The prince and the princess could no longer be
happy: that would be the end of their household life. And as for the king, I
believe he could not stand it. Really when I start to
thinking about the importance of my role, I am almost moved to tears.

`` If you want to please others, '' cried the Roman candle, `` you
better keep you dry.

--Certainly! exclaimed the bengal fire which was not very good
mood is just common sense.

--Common sense really? returned the rocket indignantly. You forget that
I have nothing in common and I am very distinguished. My faith, all the
world can have common sense, as long as one has no imagination.
But I have imagination, cause I never see it like it is
are. I always see them very different from what they are. When
to keep me dry is that there is obviously no one here who
knows how to fully appreciate a delicate nature. Fortunately for me little
matters to me. The only thing that sustains someone in life is the
awareness of the immense inferiority of his fellows and this is a
feeling that I have always had in me. But none of you have any
heart. You scream and rejoice as if the prince and the princess
were not getting married.

--He! exclaimed a small fire globe. Why not? It is a happy
opportunity and when I roar in the air, I propose to share it with
all the stars. You will see them shine when I tell them about the
pretty bride.

--Oh! what a banal idea of ​​life! said the rocket, but I was not waiting
nothing else. There is nothing in you. You are hollow and empty. Bah!
perhaps the prince and the princess will go to live in a country where there
a deep river, maybe they will have only one son, a little boy
curly, with purple eyes, like the prince's. Maybe some
will he go for a walk with his nurse? Maybe the nanny
she will fall asleep under a big elderberry. Maybe the child will fall
in the river and drown. What a terrible misfortune! Poor people
people lose their only child! it is really terrible. I could not
never put up with that.

"But they haven't lost their only child," said the Roman candle.
Nothing has happened to them.

"I didn't say he arrived," said the rocket. I said he
could happen. If they had lost their only child, it would be useless
to say anything about it. I hate people who cry
on their overturned jug of milk. But when I think they lost their
only son, of course I am very saddened.

"Certainly," exclaimed the bengal fire. In fact, you are the
most affected person I have ever seen.

--You are the most ill-behaved person I have ever met,
rocket, and you cannot understand my affection for the prince.

--Bah, you don't even know him, cracked the Roman candle.

"I never said I knew him," replied the rocket. I dare
say that if I knew him, I wouldn't be his friend. This is
a dangerous thing to know your own friends.

"You better keep dry," said the fireball. It's a
important thing.

`` Very important to you, no doubt, '' replied the rocket, `` but I
will cry if it suits me.

And the rocket burst into tears that flowed down his staff in drops of
rain and almost drowned two little beetles who were just thinking
to start a family and were looking for a nice dry place to
install.

--She must have a really romantic nature, because she cries when
there is no reason to cry, says the sun.

And he sighed deeply and thought of the tree box.

But the Roman candle and the Bengal fire were indignant. Of
all their voices, they cried.

--Graces! Grimaces!

They were extremely practical and whenever they did
opposition to something they called it _Grimaces_.

So the moon rose like a beautiful silver shield and the stars
shone and the sound of music came from the palace.

The prince and princess led the dance. They danced so well
that the little white lilies glanced at the window and
were watching and the great red poppies bobbing their heads and
beat time.

Then ten o'clock struck, then eleven, then twelve and at the last stroke of
midnight, everyone appeared on the terrace, and the king called the
royal pyrotechnician.

"Start the fireworks," said the king.

And the royal pyrotechnician gave a deep salute and went to the end of the
garden.

He had six helpers with him. Each of them carried a burning torch
attached to a long pole.

It was, of course, a superb display of light.

--Whizz! Whizz! said the sun, which began to turn.

--Boum! Boom! replied the Roman candle.

So the firecrackers started dancing and the bengal fires colored
all in red.

--Farewell! cried the fireball, as it soared making
raining tiny blue sparks.

--Bang! Bang! replied the chestnuts, who were having a great time.

Each had great success except the rocket.

She was so wet from crying that she couldn't leave. What there
had better in her, it was the powder and she was so drenched in
tears that she was out of order. All his poor relatives, to which
she did not deign to speak, except with a sneer of disdain, said
a great crash through the sky like superb golden flowers blooming in
flames Hooray! Hooray! cried the court.

And the little princess laughed with pleasure.

--I suppose I have been reserved for some great occasion, said the
rocket. Without a doubt that is what it means.

And she looked more proud than ever.

The next day, the workers came to put everything back in place.

"Obviously it's a deputation," said the rocket to itself. I will receive them with
a wise dignity.

So she put her nose in the air and started to frown
as if she was thinking about something very important. But
the workers paid no attention to her until they
passed.

Then one of them saw him.

--Ah! he cried. What a bad rocket!

And he threw her into the ditch over the wall.

- Bad rocket! Bad rocket! she said, as she spun around
the air. Impossible! Famous rocket, that's what we meant.
Bad, famous, it sounds almost the same, and often both
things are the same.

And she fell into the mud.

--It is not comfortable here, she remarked, but it probably is
some fashionable spa where I was sent to restore
my health. My nerves are certainly very shaken and I need
rest.

So a little frog, with little bright eyes and a coat
dapple green, swam towards her.

"A newcomer, I see," said the frog. Well! After all there is
nothing like mud. Give me a rainy season and a ditch and I
am completely happy ... do you think the afternoon will be hot?
Certainly, I hope so, but the sky is all blue and cloudless. What
misfortune!

--Hum! Hmmm! said the rocket which began to cough.

--What a delicious voice you have! cried the frog. Looks like a
croak and croak is the most musical cry in the world. Tonight,
you will hear our choristers. We put ourselves in the old mare aux
ducks near the farmer's house and, as soon as the moon appears, we
let's start. The concert is so lovely that everyone comes to us
listen. Just yesterday I heard the farmer's wife say
to her mother that she hadn't been able to sleep for a second of the night because of
we. It is very sweet to see yourself so popular.

--Hum! Hmmm! said the rocket.

She was very annoyed that she couldn't say a word.

--A delicious voice indeed! continued the frog. I hope you
will come to the duck pond. I have to take a look
to my daughters. I have six beautiful daughters and I am so worried that the
pike does not meet them. He's a real monster, and he wouldn't have the
least scruple in making it his lunch. So goodbye! I taste a lot
your conversation, I assure you.

"You call it a conversation," said the rocket. You talked about everything
time. It's not a conversation.

`` Someone must always listen, '' replied the frog, `` and
I like to bear the brunt of the conversation. This saved the
time and quarrels.

"But I like the discussion," said the rocket.

"I hope not," replied the frog pityingly. The
discussions are extremely vulgar, because in good society everything
everyone professes exactly the same opinions. Goodbye again. I see
my daughters there.

And the little frog began to swim again.

--You are a very annoying person, said the rocket, and very badly.
high. I hate people who talk about themselves like you, when we
needs to talk about himself, like I do. That's what we call
selfishness and selfishness is a detestable thing, especially for
someone of my character, because I am well known for my nature
sympathetic. You should take my example. You cannot have
a better model. Now that you have this chance, hurry up
take advantage of it, because I will go to court almost immediately. I
am highly esteemed at court. Yesterday the prince and the princess met
married in my honor. You probably don't know any of this, because
you are provincial.

- No need to talk to him, said a dragonfly perched on top.
of a large black rush. She left.

--Well! it is she who loses there and not me! I won't stop
to talk to her, only because she doesn't listen to me. I like
hear me speak. It is one of my greatest pleasures. I often have
long conversations with myself and I'm so deep, that sometimes
I don't understand a word of what I'm saying.

`` Then you must certainly have a degree in philosophy, '' said the
dragonfly.

And she spread her pretty gauze wings and soared towards the sky.

"How silly of him not to stay here," said the rocket. I
I'm sure she hasn't often had the chance to fill her mind;
nonetheless, I don't care. A genius like mine will surely be appreciated
One day.

And she sank a little deeper into the mud.

Shortly after, a large white duck swam towards her. She had the
yellow legs and webbed paws and was considered a
great beauty because of its waddle.

--Couac! Quack! Quack! she says. What curious turn you have?
May I ask you if you were born this way or if it is the result of
some accident.

--It is obvious that you have always lived in the country. Other
you would know who I am. Nevertheless, I apologize for your ignorance. It would be
unreasonable to expect to find others as remarkable as
oneself. No doubt you will be amazed to learn that I am flying
in the heavens and I fall again in a shower of golden sparks.

--I do not have that in high esteem, said the cane, for I do not
anything that is useful to anyone. Ah! if you plowed the fields
like an ox, if you dragged a cart like a horse, if you
keep a flock like a sheepdog, that would be something.

`` My brave creature, '' said the rocket in a very haughty tone, `` I see that
you belong to the lower class. People of my rank are never
useful. We have some sparkle and that is more than enough. I
I myself have no taste for any kind of industry , especially for
kind of industry you recommend. I have also always felt that
heavy work is simply a refuge for people who have nothing else
to do in life.

--Well! Well! said the duck who was in a very peaceful mood and did not
never quarreled with anyone. Everyone has different tastes. I
wishes, in any event, that you come to establish here your
residence.

--Not! cried the rocket. I'm just a visitor, a
visitor of distinction. The point is I find this place good
boring. There is neither society nor solitude here. It's exactly
suburb ... I will undoubtedly go to Court, because I am destined to
sensation in the world.

"I also thought about entering public life," said the duck. he
there are so many things where the need for reform is felt. So I have
chaired, not long ago, a meeting where we voted
resolutions blaming everything that displeases us. Nevertheless, it does not appear
not have produced much effect. Now i take care of things
domestic workers and I watch over my family.

--I am made for public life and this is where all my
kinship, even the most humble. Everywhere we appear we get excited
great attention. This time I did not appear in person, but
when I do, it's a magnificent sight. As for things
servants, they make old people quickly and they distract the minds of
higher things.

--Oh! the lofty things in life how beautiful they are! said the duck,
and it reminds me how hungry I am!

And the cane swam on the river, resuming its quack ... quack ...
quack ...

"Come back, come back," cried the rocket. I have a lot of things of yours
say.

But the duck was not paying attention to her.

--I'm glad she left. It really is a spirit
poor.

And she sank deeper into the mud and started to think about
the beauty of genius, when suddenly two little boys in white coats
hurried to the edge of the ditch with a cauldron and some bundles.

"It must be the deputation," the rocket thought, and assumed a dignified air.

--Oh! cried one of the kids, look at that old stick. I am surprised that he is
arrived here.

And he pulled the rocket out of the ditch.

--Old stick! growled the rocket. Impossible! He meant precious
stick. Precious stick is a compliment. He takes me for a dignitary
from the courtyard.

"Let's put it on the fire," said the other kid. This will help to boil the
cooking pot.

They piled up the fagots, put the rocket on the pile and here was the fire
taken.

--That's wonderful! cried the rocket. They put me in the spotlight. Of
so everyone will see me.

`` Now we are going to sleep, '' said the children, `` and when we
wake up, the pot will be boiling.

And they lay down on the grass and closed their eyes.

The rocket was very wet. It was a long time before she
was burning. In the end, however, it caught fire.

"Now I'm going to go," she cried.

And she was straightening up, and she was stiffening.

--I know that I will climb higher than the stars, higher than the
moon, higher than the sun. I'd go so high that ...

--Fizz, Fizz, Fizz!

She rose into the air.

--Delicious! she cried. I will ride like this forever. What a success
I have!

But no one saw her.

Then she began to feel a curious tingling sensation.

--I'm going to explode! she cried. I'll set the whole world on fire and I
will make such a noise that we will only talk about it within a year.

And, indeed, it exploded.

--Bang! Bang! Bang! said the powder.

The powder couldn't help it.

But no one heard it, even the two boys who slept with fists
closed.

Of the rocket there was only the stick that fell on the back of a goose
took his walk around the ditch.

--Sky! she cried. Here it is raining sticks.

And she threw herself into the water.

--I think I made a great sensation! the rocket gasped.

And she expired.





THE HAPPY PRINCE


At the top of the city, on a small column, stood the statue
of the Happy Prince.

It was all clad in fine gold leaf goatskin. She had, in
as eyes, two brilliant sapphyrs and a large red ruby ​​glowed
hilt of his sword.

Also, we admired him a lot.

`` He is as beautiful as a weather vane, '' remarked one of the
City council who wanted to acquire a reputation as an expert
in art.

`` Only it is not so useful, '' he added, fearing that
took him for an impractical man.

And of course he was not.

--Why are you not like the Happy Prince? a mother asked
sensitive to her little boy who claimed the moon. The Happy Prince
would never have dreamed of asking for something at all times.

--I am glad that there is someone in the world who is quite
happy, murmured a man to whom nothing had succeeded, looking at the
wonderful statue.

--He really looks like an angel, said the children of charity in
coming out of the cathedral, dressed in their beautiful scarlet coats and
with their pretty white jackets.

--What do you see? replied the maths master, you don't
have never seen one.

--Oh! we have seen it in our dreams, the children replied.

And the math master frowned and took a look
severe, because he could not approve of children allowing themselves to
dream.

One night, a little Swallow flew with its wings towards the city.

Six weeks earlier, her friends had left for Egypt, but she
had remained behind.

She was in love with the most beautiful of the reeds.

She had met him in early spring as she was flying on the
river in pursuit of a large yellow butterfly, and its slender size
had been so attractive to her that she had stopped for him
talk.

`` Shall I love you, '' said the Swallow, who liked to go straight
goal.

And the reed had given him a deep bow.

Then the Swallow had flown around him, brushing the water of his
wings and tracing silver trails there.

It was his way of courting, and so passed the whole summer.

"It's a ridiculous attachment," the other swallows chirped.
This reed has no money, and it really has too many families.

Indeed, the river was completely covered with reeds.

As autumn came, all the swallows took to flight.

When they were gone, their friend felt isolated and began to
weary of her lover.

"He doesn't know how to talk," she said; and, then, I'm afraid it is
fickle, because it flirts constantly with the breeze.

And, of course, whenever there was a breeze, the reed
multiplied his most gracious courtesies.

"I understand that he is a homebody," murmured the Swallow. I like
travel. So who loves me must love to travel with me.

- Do you want to follow me? finally asked the Swallow of the reed.

But the reed shook its head. He was too attached to his home.

"You played with me," cried the Swallow. I'm going to
Pyramids, farewell!

And the Swallow went away.

All day long she had been flying and at night she came to the
city.

--Where shall I seek shelter? she says to herself. I hope the city will have done
preparations to receive me.

Then she saw the statue on the little column.

"I'm going to perch there," she cried. The site is pretty. There's a lot
fresh air.

So she came to fall just between the Prince's feet
Happy.

`` I have a golden room, '' she said to herself softly after looking
around her.

And she got ready to sleep.

But, as she put her head under her wing, here is a large
drop of water fell on her.

--How curious! she cried. There is not a cloud in the sky,
the stars are quite clear and bright, and there he is
raining! The climate in northern Europe is really strange. Reed
loved the rain, but it was pure selfishness on her part.

Then a new drop came to fall.

--What is the use of a statue, if it does not guarantee rain,
the swallow. I'll go get a good fireplace awning.

And she decided to take her flight further.

But before she opened her wings, a third drop fell.

The Swallow looked above her and she saw ...

Ah! what is she experiencing?

The eyes of the Happy Prince were full of tears, and the tears
flowed down her golden cheeks.

Her face was so beautiful in the moonlight, that the little swallow
felt overwhelmed by pity.

--Who are you? she says.

--I am the Happy Prince.

--So why are you whining like that? asked the Swallow.
You almost soaked me.

`` When I was alive and had a man's heart, '' replied the
statue, I didn't know what tears were because I was living
at the Sans-Souci Palace, which is not allowed entry to grief.
During the day I played with my companions in the garden and in the evening I
was dancing in the great hall. Around the garden ran a very high
wall, but I never had a fancy of what was beyond
this wall, everything that surrounded me was so beautiful. My courtiers
called me the Happy Prince, and sure enough I was really happy
if pleasure is happiness. So I lived, so I died, and,
now that i'm dead they hooted me so high i can see
all the ugliness and all the miseries of my city, and although my
heart is lead, I have no other resource but to cry.

--What! it isn't good gold, the Swallow thought to herself.

She was too well behaved to say anything out loud about
people.

`` Over there, '' continued the statue, in his low musical voice, over there in
a small street, it is a poor house. One of the windows is open
and through it I can see a woman seated at a table. Her face is
thin and worn. She has thick, red hands, all pricked
by the needle, because she is a seamstress. She embroiders flowers from the
Passion on a satin dress that must be worn at the next ball of the
court, the most beautiful of the Queen's bridesmaids. In a bed,
at the corner of the room lies her sick little boy. He has a fever and he
asks for oranges. His mother has nothing to give him but water from the
river. Also he cries. Swallow, Swallow, Little Swallow, don't
will you not bring him the ruby ​​of the hilt of my sword? My feet
are attached to the pedestal and I cannot move.

"I am expected in Egypt," replied the Swallow. My friends flutter
back and forth across the Nile and chatting with the great lotuses. Soon they
will go to sleep in the tomb of the Great King. The King himself is there in
his wooden coffin. It is wrapped in a yellow cloth and embalmed with
aromatics. Around his neck he has a chain of pale green jade and
his hands are like dry leaves.

`` Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, '' said the Prince,
will you not stay with me one night, and will you not be my messenger?
The child is so thirsty and the mother is so sad.

"I don't think I like children," replied the Swallow. Summer
last when i was staying by the river two bad boys
brought up, the miller's children, kept throwing me
stones. Of course, they never reached me. We swallows,
we fly too well for that, and besides, I'm from a family
famous for his agility, but still a mark of disrespect.

But the eyes of the Happy Prince were so sad that the little one
Hirondelle was very sorry.

--It's very cold here, she said, but I will stay one night with you
and I will be your messenger.

--- Thank you, little Swallow, replied the prince.

So the little Swallow tore the great ruby ​​from the Prince's sword,
and, carrying it in its beak, took flight over the roofs of the
city.

She passed over the tower of the cathedral where angels were carved in
White marble.

She walked over the Palace and heard dance music.

A beautiful young girl appeared on the balcony with her lover.

--How beautiful are the stars, he said, and how powerful
the strength of love!

--I would like my dress to be ready for the official ball,
she replied. I ordered to embroider passion flowers there, but
the seamstresses are so careless.

She crossed over the river and saw the lanterns hanging from the mast.
boats.

She walked past the ghetto and saw the old Jews who were doing
business between them and weighed coins in copper scales.

Finally, she arrived at the poor house and took a look.

The child was shaking feverishly in his bed and his mother was
asleep she was so tired.

The swallow hopped into the room and put the big ruby ​​on the
table, on the seamstress's thimble.

Then she hovered gently around the bed, fanning the
child's face.

--What sweet freshness I feel! said the child. I have to get better.

And he fell into a delicious sleep.

So the Swallow went off with wings towards the Happy Prince and him
said what she had done.

--It's curious, she remarked, but now I almost feel
heat, and yet it is very cold.

"It is because you have done a good deed," replied the Prince.

And the little Swallow started to think and then she fell asleep.
Whenever she thought, she fell asleep.

When dawn broke, she flew to the river and took a bath.

--That's a remarkable phenomenon! cried the professor of ornithology
passing over the bridge. A swallow in winter!

And he wrote a long letter about it to a local newspaper. All
the world quoted it. She was full of so many words that you couldn't
understand.

"This evening I am leaving for Egypt," said the Swallow to himself.

And, at the prospect, she was very happy.

She visited all the public monuments and rested for a long time on the
top of the church tower.

Everywhere she went the pierrots chirped. They said to each other
to each other:

--How distinguished is this foreigner!

It filled her with joy.

When the moon rose, she swirled back to the Prince
Happy.

- Do you have any commissions for Egypt? she shouted at him. I am
on my departure.

- Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow! said the Prince, don't
won't you stay with me one more night?

"I am expected in Egypt," replied the Swallow. Tomorrow my friends will be there
will fly to the second cataract. There the hippopotamus lies down among
rushes and the God Memnon stands on a large granite throne.
All night long he watches for the stars, and, when the morning star shines,
he utters a cry of joy and then he is silent. At noon, the yellow lions
go down to drink by the river. They have eyes like treble
green seas and their roars are much brighter than the
roars of cataracts.

- Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow, said the Prince, over there
on the other side of town, I see a young man in an attic. he
is leaning over a desk covered with papers and, in a glass next to
he has a bunch of wilted violets. Her hair is brown and
curly. Her lips are red like pomegranate seeds. It has
big dreamy eyes. He tries hard to finish a play for the director
theater, but he is too cold to write any more. There is no
fire in the garret and hunger knocked him down without strength.

`` I will stay with you one more night, '' said the Swallow, who had
really a good heart. Shall I take him another ruby?

--Alas! I have no more rubies, said the Prince. My eyes are the only one
thing I have left. These are rare sapphires that were brought back from
India a thousand years ago. Tear off one of them and take it for
him. He will sell it to a jeweler. He will buy something to eat and
what to heat and will finish his play.

`` Dear Prince, '' said the Swallow, `` I cannot do that.

And she began to cry.

- Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow! said the Prince. Do this
that I command you.

So the Swallow plucked out the Prince's eye and flew to the garret
of the student.

It was easy to get in, because there was a hole in the roof.

The Swallow entered like a line and hopped around the room.

The young man had his head buried in his hands. He did not hear
the flutter of the bird's wings and, when it raised its head, it
saw the beautiful sapphire lying on the faded violets.

"I'm starting to be appreciated," he cried. This comes from some rich man
admirer. Now I can finish my play.

And he seemed quite happy.

The next day, the Hirondelle flew to the port.

She rested on the mast of a large ship and gazed at the sailors
who were hauling huge crates out of the hold with ropes.

--Ah-hoist! they shouted at each crate that arrived on the bridge.

"I am going to Egypt," cried the Swallow to them.

But no one paid attention to her and, when the moon rose, she
returned to the Happy Prince.

"I came to say goodbye to you," she said to him.

- Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow! said the Prince. Born
won't you stay with me one more night?

`` It's winter, '' replied the Swallow, `` and the frozen snow will be
soon here. In Egypt, the sun is hot on the green palm trees. The
crocodiles, lying in the mud, lazily gazing at the trees
riverside. My companions build nests in the temple
from Baalbeck. The pink and white doves follow them with their eyes and
coo alternately. Dear Prince, I must leave you,
but I will never forget you and, next spring, I will
will bring two beautiful gems from there to replace the ones you have
given. The ruby ​​will be redder than a red rose and the sapphire will be
as blue as the great sea.

`` Below, in the square, '' replied the Happy Prince, `` there is a
little match seller. She dropped her matches in
the stream and they are all spoiled. Her father will beat her, if she
does not bring home any money, and she cries. She has neither
shoes or stockings and her little head is bare. Take out my other eye and
give it to her, and her father won't beat her.

`` I would spend another night with you, '' said the Swallow, `` but I don't
then tear your eye out. Then you would be quite blind.

- Swallow, Swallow, little Swallow! said the Prince. Do this
that I command you.

Then the Swallow tore the Prince's second eye out and took flight in
winning.

She fell on the shoulder of the little match-seller and
slipped the jewel into the palm of his hand.

--The pretty piece of glass! cried the little girl.

And, all laughing, she ran home.

Then the Swallow came back to the Prince again.

"Now you are blind," she said. So i will stay with you
forever.

"No, little Swallow," said the poor Prince. You have to go
in Egypt.

"I will always stay with you," said the Swallow.

And she fell asleep between the Prince's feet.

The next day, she stood on the Prince's shoulder and told him
accounts of what she had seen in strange lands.

She told him about scarlet ibis that stand in long rows on
the banks of the Nile and fish with beaks for gold fish, Sphynx
who is as old as the world, lives in the desert and knows all
things; merchants who walk slowly beside their camels and
roll rosaries of amber in their hands; of the king of the mountains
the Moon, who is black as ebony and worships a large block of crystal;
of the great green serpent that sleeps in a palm tree and that twenty priests are
charged with feeding honey cakes; and pygmies who sail on
a large lake on wide flat sheets and are still at war
with butterflies.

`` Dear little Swallow, '' said the Prince, `` you tell me
things, but more wonderful is what men and women endure
women. There is no mystery as great as misery. Fly by my
town, little Swallow, and tell me what you see there.

So the little swallow flew through the big city and saw the rich
who rejoiced in their superb palaces while the beggars
were seated at their doors.

She flew through the dark alleys and saw the pale faces of children
starving, gazing recklessly at the dark streets.

Under the arches of a bridge, two small children were lying in the
arms of each other to try to keep warm.

- How hungry we are! they said.

- We must not stay lying here! cried the town sergeant.

And they walked away in the rain.

Then the Swallow resumed its flight and went to tell the Prince what she
had seen.

"I am covered with fine gold," said the Prince; tear it off sheet by sheet
and give it to my poor. Men still believe that gold can
make them happy.

Leaf by leaf, the Swallow tore the fine gold until the
Prince Happy had neither luster nor beauty.

Leaf by leaf, she distributed fine gold to the poor and the faces
children turned pink, they laughed and played in the street.

"Now we have bread," they cried.

Then the snow came, and after the snow the ice.

The streets seemed to be shoed with silver, they shone
sparkled. Long icicles, such as crystal daggers,
hung from the roofs of houses. Everyone covered
furs and the little boys wore scarlet hats and
were skating on the ice.

Poor little Swallow was cold, always colder, but she
did not want to leave the Prince; she loved him too much for that. She
was pecking at the crumbs at the baker's door, when the baker
not looking, and trying to warm himself by beating his wings.

But in the end she saw that she was going to die. She just had the
force to fly once more on the Prince's shoulder.

- Farewell, dear Prince! she whispered. Let me kiss your hand.

--I'm glad you're finally leaving for Egypt, little one
Swallow, said the Prince. You've been here too long, but
you must kiss me on the lips, because I love you.

"I'm not going to Egypt," said the Swallow. I go
go to the house of Death. Death is the sister of Sleep,
is not it?

And she kissed the Happy Prince on the lips and fell dead to his
feet.

At this moment, a singular crackling sounded inside the statue
as if something had broken.

The point is, the lead heart had split in two.

Really it was terribly cold.

Early the next day, the mayor was walking in the square under
the statue with the city councilors.

As they passed the pedestal, he looked up at the statue.

--God! he said. How the Happy Prince seems ragged!

--He is really ragged! said the city councilors who
still agreed with the mayor and they too raised their heads to
look at the statue.

--The ruby ​​of his sword has fallen, his eyes are no longer in place and he
is not golden at all, said the mayor. In short, it is hardly worth more than
Beggar.

--Wer more than a beggar! echoed the town councilors.

"And here he has a dead bird at his feet," continued the mayor.
Really we will have to promulgate a decree to protect birds
to die here.

And the city secretary took note of this idea.

So the statue of the Happy Prince was overturned.

--As it is no longer beautiful, it is no longer useful! said the teacher
of art at the University.

So we cast the statue in a furnace and the mayor gathers the
council in assembly to decide what to do with the metal.

"We could," he suggested, making another statue of it. Mine by
example.

"Or mine," said each of the town councilors.

And they quarreled.

The last time I heard from them they were arguing
always.

--What a strange thing! said the foundry foreman. This heart of
cast iron does not want to melt in the furnace, we will have to throw it
scrap.

The foundrymen threw it on the rubbish heap where the Swallow lay
dead.

--Bring me the two most precious things in town, said God
to one of his angels.

And the angel brought him the leaden heart and the dead bird.

--You have chosen well, said God. In my garden of Paradise, this little one
bird will sing forever and, in my city of gold, the Happy Prince
will repeat my praise.





THE ROSSIGNOL AND THE ROSE

--She said she would dance with me if I brought her roses
red, moaned the young student, but in all my garden there is no
not a red rose.

From its nest in the eye, the nightingale heard it.

He looked through the leaves and marveled.

- No red roses in all my garden! cried the student.

And her beautiful eyes filled with tears.

--Ah! on what small thing does happiness depend! I have read everything that
sages have written; I have all the secrets of philosophy and fault
with a red rose here is my shattered life.

"Here at last is the true lover," said the nightingale. Every night I
sang it, although I did not know it; every night I repeat
its story to the stars, and now I see it. Her hair is
dark as the flower of the hyacinth and her lips are red as
the rose he desires, but passion has made his face pale as
ivory and sorrow put its seal on his forehead.

`` The prince is giving a ball tomorrow night, '' whispered the young student and my
loves will be part of the celebration. If I bring her a red rose, she will dance
with me until dawn. If I bring her a red rose, I'll have her
will hug. She'll bow her head on my shoulder and her hand
will hug mine. But there are no red roses in my garden.
Then I will be alone and she will neglect me. She won't do zero
watch out for me and my heart will break.

"Here is the true lover," said the nightingale. He suffers all that
I sing: all that is joy for me is pain for him. Surely
love is a wonderful thing, more precious than emeralds and
more expensive than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot pay for it,
because it does not appear on the market. It cannot be bought from the merchant nor
weigh it in a balance to acquire it by the weight of gold.

"The musicians will stand on their platform," said the young student.
They will play their stringed instruments and my loves will dance
sound of harp and violin. She will dance so lightly that her foot
will not touch the floor and the people of the court in their gay attire
crowd around her, but with me she will not dance, because I
have no red roses to give him.

And he threw himself on the grass, plunged his face into his hands and
was crying.

--Why is he crying? a little green lizard asked, as he ran
beside him, his tail in the air.

--But why? said a butterfly fluttering in pursuit of a
ray of sunshine.

--But why so? whispered a daisy to its neighbor with a sweet
small voice.

--He is crying because of a red rose.

--Because of a red rose. How ridiculous!

And the little lizard, who was a little cynical, laughed heartily.

But the nightingale understood the secret of the student's pains, remained
silent on the eye and reflects on the mystery of love.

Suddenly it spread its brown wings to take flight and took flight.

He passed through the wood like a shadow and, like a shadow, he
crossed the garden.

In the center of the flowerbed stood a beautiful rose bush, and when he saw it he
flew towards him and stood on a small branch.

--Give me a red rose, he cried, and I will sing you my best.
sweet songs.

But the rose bush shook its head.

--My roses are white, he replied, white as the foam of the sea.
and whiter than snow in the mountains. But go find
my brother who grows around the old sundial and maybe you
will he give what you ask for.

So the nightingale flew to the rosebush that grew around the old dial
solar.

--Give me a red rose, he cried, and I will sing you my best
sweet songs.

But the rose bush shook its head.

`` My roses are yellow, '' he replied, `` as yellow as the
sirens who sit on a tree trunk, yellower than the narcissus
which blooms in the meadows, before the reaper comes with his scythe.
But go to my brother who is growing under the student window and
maybe he will give you what you ask for.

Then the nightingale flew to the rosebush that was growing under the window of
the student.

--Give me a red rose, he cried, and I will sing you my best.
sweet songs.

But the tree shook its head.

`` My roses are red, '' he replied, `` as red as the paws of
doves and redder than large coral fans than the ocean
cradles in its abyss, but winter has frozen my veins, the frost has
withered my buds, the hurricane broke my branches and I will have no more
roses all year round.

`` I only need one red rose, '' cried the nightingale, `` one rose
red. Isn't there some way I can get one?

`` There is a way, '' replied the rosebush, `` but it is so terrible that I
dare not tell you.

"Tell me," said the nightingale. I am not shy.

`` If you need a red rose, '' said the rosebush, `` you must build it from
moonlight musical notes and stain it with blood of your own
heart. You will sing to me, your throat leaning against thorns. Any
at night you will sing for me and the thorns will pierce your heart:
your vital blood will flow through my veins and become mine.

`` Death is a great price for a red rose, '' replied the nightingale,
and everyone loves life. It's sweet to perch in the wood
green, to watch the sun in its golden chariot and the moon in its
chariot of pearls. It is sweet, the smell of hawthorn bushes. They
are gentle, the blue bells that hide in the valley and the
heather covering the hill. Yet love is better than
life and what is the heart of a bird compared to the heart of a man?

So he spread his brown wings and soared into the air. He passed
through the garden like a shadow and, like a shadow, he crossed the
wood.

The young student was still lying on the grass where the nightingale
had left him and the tears had not yet dried in his beauties
eyes.

`` Be happy, '' cried the nightingale, `` be happy, you will have your
Red rose. I'll build it with musical notes in the moonlight and
dye blood from my own heart. All I will ask you in
back is that you are a true lover because love is over
wise that philosophy, although it is wise, and stronger than
power, although it is strong. Its wings are the color of fire and its
body the color of flames, her lips are as sweet as honey and her
breath is like incense.

The student looked up from the grass, strained his ears, but could not
understand what the nightingale was saying to him, for he only knew
things that are written in books.

But the eye understood and was saddened, for he loved the little one very much.
nightingale which had built its nest in its branches.

"Sing me one last song," he whispered. I will be so sad
when you are gone.

So the nightingale sang for the eye and his voice was like water
jaseuse of an Argentinian fountain.

When he had finished his song, the student got up and pulled out his notepad.
and his pencil from his pocket.

`` The nightingale, '' he said to himself, walking down the path, `` the nightingale has
undeniable beauty, but does it have feeling? I am afraid that is no. In
in fact, he is like many artists, he is all style, without zero
sincerity. He does not sacrifice himself for others. He only thinks of the
music and, as everyone knows, art is selfish. Of course, we cannot
contest that his voice has very beautiful notes. What a pity that all this
makes no sense, has no practical purpose.

And he went to his room, lay down on his little pallet and
began to think of his loves.

A little later he fell asleep.

And, when the moon shone in the heavens, the nightingale flew to the rosebush
and placed his throat against the thorns.

All night long he sang his throat pressed against the thorns and the cold
crystal moon stopped and listened all night.

All night long he sang and the thorns got deeper and deeper
in his throat and his vital blood flowed out of his body.

First he sang of the birth of love in a boy's heart and
of a girl and, on the highest twig of the rosebush, blooms a rose
wonderful, petal after petal, as a song followed a
song.

First she was pale as the mist that floats on the river, pale
like the feet of the morning and silvery like the wings of the dawn.

The rose, which bloomed on the highest twig of the rosebush, seemed
the shadow of a rose in a silver mirror, the shadow of a rose in a
lake.

But the rosebush cried out to the nightingale to press closer against
the spikes.

`` Squeeze more closely, little nightingale, '' said the rosebush, `` or
the day will return before the rose is finished.

Then the nightingale pressed more closely against the thorns and its
song flowed more brilliantly, for he sang how passion hatches in
the soul of man and of a virgin.

And a delicate redness appeared on the petals of the rose as the
face of a groom who kisses the lips of his fiancee.

But the thorns had not yet reached the heart of the nightingale,
also the heart of the rose remained white, for the blood alone of a
nightingale can redden the heart of a rose.

And the rose called out to the nightingale to press more tightly against the
thorns.

`` Squeeze more closely, little nightingale, '' he said, `` or the day
will occur before the rose is finished.

Then the nightingale pressed closer against the thorns, and the
thorns touched his heart, and in him a cruel torment of
pain.

More bitter, more bitter was the pain, more impetuous, more impetuous
his song sprang forth, for he sang of perfect love through death,
love that does not die in the grave.

And the marvelous rose will turn red like the roses of Bengal. Purple
was the color of the petals and purple like a ruby ​​was the heart.

But the nightingale's voice weakened. Its little wings began to
beat and a cloud spread over his eyes.

Her song grew weaker and weaker. He felt that something
choked her by the throat.

Then his song launched a last burst.

The white moon heard it and she forgot the dawn and lingered in the
sky.

The red rose heard it; she trembled with ecstasy and opened her
petals in the cold morning air.

The echo carried him to his crimson cave on the hills and awoke from
their dreams the sleeping flocks.

The song floated among the reeds of the river and they carried its
message to the sea.

`` See, see, '' cried the rosebush, `` the rose is finished.

But the nightingale did not answer: it was lying in the highlands
grasses, dead with a heart pierced with thorns.

At noon the student opened his window and looked out.

--What strange good fortune! he cried, here is a red rose! I
never seen such a rose in my life. She is so beautiful that I am
sure she must have a complicated name in Latin.

And he bent down and picked it up.

So he put on his hat and ran to the professor with his rose
hand.

The professor's daughter was sitting on the doorstep. She
was unrolling blue silk on a spool and her little dog was lying
at his feet.

--You said you would dance with me if I brought you a
red rose, the student told him. This is the reddest rose in the world.
Tonight you will place her close to your heart and when we dance
together she will tell you how much I love you.

But the young girl frowned.

"I'm afraid that rose doesn't match my dress," she replied.
Besides, the chamberlain's nephew sent me some real jewels and
everyone knows that jewelry costs more than flowers.

--Oh! my word, you are ungrateful! the student said angrily.

And he threw the rose into the street where it fell into the stream.

A heavy cart crushed him.

--Ingrate! said the young girl. I will tell you that you are very wrong
Student. And what are you after all? a simple student. Pooh! I do not believe
not that you ever have silver buckles on your shoes like
the chamberlain's nephew.

And she got up from her chair and went into the house.

--What silliness love is! said the student, looking back on his
not. It is not half as useful as logic, because it cannot
prove nothing and he always talks about things that will not happen and does
believing things in people that are not true. In short, it is not
all practical and as in our time everything is to be practical, I
will go back to philosophy and study metaphysics.

With that, the student returned to his room, opened a large book
powdery and began to read.






THE EGOIST GIANT


Every afternoon when they came home from school, the children had
used to go and play in the giant's garden.

It was a large, lonely garden with soft green grass. Here and there on
the grass, beautiful flowers shone like stars and there was
twelve peach trees which, in spring, bloomed a delicate bloom
pink and white and in the fall bore beautiful fruit.

The birds perched on the trees and sang so deliciously
that children usually stopped playing to listen to them.

--How happy we are here! they cried to each other.

One day the giant returned.

He had been to visit his friend the Cornish Ogre and he had stayed
seven years at home. After those seven years were over, he had
said all he had to say, because his conversation had limits and
he resolved to return to his castle.

When he arrived, he saw the children playing in the garden.

--What are you doing there? he cried in a very sour voice.

And the children fled.

"My garden is mine alone," continued the giant. Everybody must
understand this and I will not allow anyone but me to frolic in it.

So he surrounded it with a high wall and placed a sign there.

  No entry
     otherwise
        of
     lawsuits

He was a selfish giant.

The poor children no longer had a place of recreation.

They tried to play on the road, but the road was very powdered
and full of hard stones and they didn't like it.

They got used to it when their lessons were over
walk around the high wall and talk about the beautiful garden which
was beyond.

--How happy we were there! they said to each other.

So spring came and all over the country there were little flowers
and small birds.

In the selfish giant's garden alone, it was still winter.

The birds did not care to sing there since there was no
more children and the trees forgot to bloom.

Once a beautiful flower raised its head above the grass, but when
she saw the sign, she was so saddened at the thought of the children
she dropped to the ground and fell asleep again.

The only ones to rejoice were the snow and ice.

"Spring has forgotten this garden," they cried. So we go
live there all year round.

The snow spread its great white cloak on the grass and the ice covered
money all trees.

So they invited the north wind to stay with them.

He accepted and came.

He was wrapped in furs. He roared all day by the garden
and every moment was knocking down chimneys.

"It's a delicious place," he said. We will ask the hail to
visit us.

Hail came, too.

Every day for three hours she drummed on the roof
of the castle until she broke a lot of slates and then
she was circling the garden as fast as possible. She
was dressed in gray and her breath was ice.

--I cannot understand why spring is so long in coming,
said the selfish giant as he stood at the window and looked
its white and cold garden. I wish the weather would change.

But spring did not come. Summer neither.

In all the gardens, autumn brought golden fruits, but not
gave none to the giant's garden.

"He is too selfish," he said.

And always it was winter with the giant and the north wind, and the
hail, and ice, and snow, dancing among the trees.

One morning the giant, already awake, was lying in his bed, when he
heard delicious music. She was so sweet to his ears that he
believed that the king's musicians had to pass by there.

In reality, it was a small linnet singing in front of her window,
but it had been so long since he heard a bird sing
in his garden that it seemed to him that it was the most beautiful music of the
world.

So the hail stopped dancing on the giant's head and the north wind
to roar. A delicious scent came to him through the open window.

"I think spring has finally come," said the giant.

And he jumped out of bed and looked.

What is he experiencing?

He saw a strange sight.

Through a small breach in the wall, the children had slipped
in the garden and were perched on the branches of the trees. On all
the trees he could see, there was a small child and the trees
were so happy to bear children again that they had
covered with flowers and they gracefully waved their arms on the
head of children.

The birds fluttered from one to the other and chirped with delight
and the flowers raised their heads in the green grass and laughed.

It was a pretty picture.

In one corner it was still winter, in the far corner
of the garden.

There was a very little child there. He was so small that he couldn't
reach the branches of the tree and he was walking around in
weeping bitterly.

The poor tree was still covered in ice and snow and the
north wind was blowing and roaring above him.

"Climb up, little boy," said the tree.

And he held out his branches as low as he could, but the
little boy was too small.

The giant's heart melted when he looked out.

"How selfish I have been," he thought. Now I know why the
spring did not want to come here. I'm gonna put that poor little boy
on the top of the tree; then I will throw down the wall and my garden
will forever be the place of recreation for children.

He was very, very sorry for what he had done.

So he went down the stairs, gently opened the front door and
went down into the garden.

But when the children saw him, they were so terrified that they took
the flight and the garden became winter again.

Only the little child had not run away, for his eyes were so
full of tears that he had not seen the giant coming.

And the giant slipped behind him, took him gently in his hands and
put it on the tree.

And the tree immediately blossoms; the birds came to roost and sing and
the little boy stretched out his two arms, put them around the giant's neck
and kissed her.

And the other children, when they saw that the giant was no more
wicked, ran up and spring came with them.

"It is your garden now, little children," said the giant.

And he took a great ax and knocked down the wall.

And when the people went to the market at noon, they found the
giant who played with the children in the most beautiful garden we have
never seen.

All day long they played, and in the evening they came to say goodbye to the
giant.

- But where is your little companion, he said, the boy I hooted
on the tree?

It was him that the giant liked best because he had kissed him.

--We don't know, replied the children: he is gone.

"Tell him to be exact in coming here tomorrow," said the giant.

But the children said they didn't know where he lived and
than before they had never seen him.

And the giant became very sad.

Every afternoon, after school, the children came to play
with the giant, but we never saw the little boy the giant loved again.
He was very benevolent to everyone, but he regretted his first
boyfriend and often he talked about it.

"That I would like to see him," he used to say.

Years passed and the giant grew old and weaker. He could not
no longer take part in the game; he remained seated on a large armchair and
watched the children play and admired his garden.

`` I have many beautiful flowers, '' he said, `` but children are the
most beautiful flowers.

One winter morning, as he was getting dressed, he looked out the window.
Now he no longer hated winter; he knew he was only the
spring sleep and the rest of flowers.

Suddenly he rubbed his eyes in surprise and watched carefully.

Certainly it was a wonderful sight.

At the end of the garden there was a tree almost covered with pretty
White flowers. Its branches were all gold and fruit
of silver hung there and under the tree stood the little boy
that he liked.

The giant tumbled down the stairs, elated and entered the
garden. He hurried across the grass and approached the child. And,
when he was close to him, his face flushed with anger and he said:

--Who dared to hurt you?

On the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two
nails and also the prints of two nails on his little feet.

--Who dared to hurt you? cried the giant, tell me. I will take a
great sword and I will kill him.

`` No, '' replied the child, `` these are the wounds of love.

--Who is it? said the giant.

And a respectful fear came over him and he knelt before the little one
boy.

And the boy smiles at the giant and says to him:

- You let me play once in your garden. Today you
will come with me to my garden which is Paradise.

And when the children came that afternoon, they found the
a giant lying dead under the tree, all covered with white flowers.




NEWS PUBLISHED IN AMERICA


These three new _Ego te Absolvo_, _Old Bishop's_, _La Peau
of orange, _ were published in an American journal after death
by Oscar Wilde, and under his signature. We translate them here although
the authenticity seems to us eminently suspect.




EGO TE ABSOLVO

I

Under their blue berets blackened by powder, soiled by dust
roads, the soldiers of Miralles have the mines of bandits, with
their dark skin, their beards and their uncultivated hair. For five
long weeks, they drag the roads, almost without sleep,
almost restless, firing at all hours with rage
growing.

Will we not end with these Republican bandits? Don Carlos them
had, however, promised that after Estella's fatigue, Spain
would be theirs.

They all thirst for revenge and blood, and it is the joy of shedding
the blood that keeps them upright, so weary, so exhausted that they feel.

Basques, Navarrese, Catalans, sons of exiles who died of hunger and misery
on foreign soil, they have the anger of wild beasts against these regulars
who compete with them for the route of the Castile plateaus, the route of the palaces
where they swore to replace the legitimate king to share, on the
steps of the restored throne, the dignities of the kingdom and the riches of
defeated.

Between these mountaineers and the men of the new parties, there is no
only political grudges: there is above all and above all an old
count of unpunished murders, looting without ransom, arson without
revenge.

So when a soldier from Concha falls to their hands, woe to him! he
pays for others, for those who escape.

"Brother, we must die," they said to him, sticking him to a rock.

The man makes a sign of the cross and, as soon as his hand goes down
in a slower _so be it, _ the guns, lined up ten paces from his
chest, spit death.

The man sags like an old rag and we don't talk about him anymore.

The vultures of the Pyrenees do the rest.

If, his cassock rolled up, the priest Miralles, a little plump man and
bent, eyes slanted, passes within range of the gunners, he hangs his
rifle on his belt and absolves or blesses the dying with a quick gesture.

Sometimes, without removing the marine telescope from his eyes, which he uses to
inspecting rocks or oak woods, he confesses the prisoner.

Lady, a general is responsible for the life of his troops!

Republican either, but Catholic, the regular does not seem surprised to
this strange double role of the soldier priest.

We have to confess it since we are going to shoot him and is he not
quite natural that he should be shot, since he allowed himself to be caught and that
if he had taken he would shoot.

This logic fully satisfies the low demands of his brain
of peasant torn from the soil to bend under the military harness.

Then, what's the use of reasoning with this brutal fact, threatening death,
immediate, inevitable!

Since this must happen, it is only a matter of doing your
packages to present themselves in good order when we enter
the inevitable there.



II

That evening, as the sun was setting, Pedro Carrega was in
sentry to the chaos of Mallorta when a woman and a mule turned
the Buenavista trail.

At random he shot.

It was the mule that fell. The woman ran to him before he had the
time to reload his shot and, when he held it at the end of his gun,
the Navarre did not know how to shoot.

The woman was beautiful, desirable, with her long, dark hair
cascading down to her calves, her red lips, her eyes
shiny.

Pedro Carrega, for his prisoner, forgot the quarrel of Don Carlos and
of the Republic.

The woman, who was afraid, swore to him besides that she adored the _rey
neto_. She proved to him that she didn't hate perfumed caresses
powder of war and that Pedro Carrega was if not the most beautiful of
mortals, at least the most pampered of the victors, between the big masses
of Mallorta's Chaos Stone.

The two arms of the prisoner still encircled a collar almost
browned the tanned neck of Carrega, when Joaquin Martinez came to take his
faction.

--He! gently, he said, two go, señor caballero. Nights are
fresh. It is not good to sleep without a coat, comrade. I see that
you are a man of precaution: flag of hair, for neckerchief of the
warm arms and blanket of soft flesh. My turn, friend!

Carrega stood up and pushing his prisoner behind him:

- Your turn, whipper. Where Carrega reigns, there are not two kings. If the
nights are cool, go warm yourself against this mule that my rifle
slaughtered, or slaughter another. My booty is mine, like the
Navarre belongs to King Carlos, son of a Jewess!

Joaquin Martinez shouldered his gun and he was about to shoot when the woman,
savage leap, diverted the gun and sent the bullet lost in the
the clouds.

Shrugging his shoulders, Martinez threw down the unloaded weapon and,
navaja in her stomach, laid Carrega's prisoner on the ground.

--Body of God! yelled the Navarre, throwing himself forward, brandishing
his rifle.

But a new blow from the terrible _navaja_ hung on his lips the
kyrielle of blasphemies.

A white scum at the corner of his mouth, he sagged in the pool of
blood from the body of the disembowelled woman.

At the sound of the shot, Miralles, followed by a few men, came running.

Martinez did not try to deny the quarrel.

Of his eyes with arches almost bare of eyebrows by a spitting
with a bad gun, the priest bandoulier embraced the whole scene.

- Pigs! he growled. Let's see the female! Badly accommodated beautiful girl
with a nasty stab! It served you well, you fool! At least
Carrega had it for his pleasure. Come on, boy, he said
addressing Martinez, whose eye never left him, it's nice to
wanting to steal the booty of his comrade. Hey! you others, let me
confess this pagan: we don't need you around here. Say your
_confiteor_, Martinez, and do your act of contrition.

--_ Ego te absolvo_, muttered Miralles in a gesture of blessing ...
Pigs, damn sons of whores, who cut their throats for a female!

Then, sharply pointing his gun at the man, he burned his
brains on the two corpses.

`` If we let these fellows do it, '' he grumbled, `` soon the king
Carlos would no longer have an army!



OLD BISHOP'S


It was one evening at l'Epatant.

That old Loiselier maniac was chatting on one of the large sofas with
Lord Stephen Algernon Sydney, the strange voluntary exile, who fled from
this side of the Channel the furious denunciations of a father, as one
hardly sees any.

Suddenly Algernon Sydney, throwing away the cigarette he was still rolling
between his fingers, without ever lighting it, raised his voice:

"Do you know Nottingham, gentlemen?" Unless you are
lace maker, tulle weaver or charcoal merchant, there are
many chances that you will answer me in the negative?

`` Allow, '' interrupted de Cerneval, `` the globetrotter that the laurels
of Phileas Fogg have so often prevented sleep that he succeeded, the year
past, after three less successful attempts, to go around the world
in 76 days 22 hours 37 minutes 9 seconds, allow me, I'm not
neither manufacturer, nor weaver, nor coalman, and I know Nottingham.
“Nottingham, capital of the county of that name, at the confluence of the Leen and
de la Trent, 200 kilometers NW of London, a very old town
fortified by William the Conqueror, seat of several parliaments.
Manufactures of shawls, silks, woolens, tulles, lace, earthenware,
grains, iron, coals, cheeses and cattle. Ruins, castle and museum,
wonderful hospitals. 193,591 inhabitants. " This to prove to you, my
dear lord, that there is at least one Frenchman in l'Epatant who knows his
geography.

- Believe it, my dear count, that I never dreamed of contesting
your geographical knowledge, nor do I ignore that you have
probably walked ten times as far as I will go
in the years I have left to live, but geographic science or
the view in space of buildings in a city are different things,
and I did not expect to find here a man for whom the cave of
Robin Hood and The Forest no longer hold any secrets.

De Cerneval, who was in a bad mood that evening, made a gesture.
mocking:

--The beautiful secrets that those of the cave, say Robin's cave
Hood, or that those of this forest which is only a vulgar field of
race.

--A racetrack, my dear count, where we ... flirt at 9 a.m.
evening, as we don't flirt on the Longchamps racecourse, and if
I say _flirte_, it's because we are in England, in the country of
cant. In Italy, it would be called otherwise. It doesn't matter, moreover,
because, if one flirts there at 9 o'clock in the evening, in the face of the moon and
policemen who, for a bit, would apologize for disturbing the flirtatious
midnight we slaughter there or rather we slaughter there, there are still a few
chandeliers, because good traditions are lost everywhere, you know it,
my dear count, you who have crossed the _plazas_ of Montevideo and the
_calles_ of Buenos-Ayres without dreading the lazzo of the _caballeros of the
noche_.

--If you walk us like that, Algernon, we will visit tonight
in your company the campos-santos of Italy, the plazas of
Constitucion of all the capitals of South America, and we do
no further ahead, interjected the fat Loiselier in turn,
Cerneval's well-known antipathy for Lord Algernon no longer seemed
to have fun. You have a perfectly English way of telling, though it
closely resembles that of the Respondent.

  He says very calmly what we don't care about
  And run at full gallop when it's done,

And that way is absolutely disagreeable to a digesting man.
Tell it, I don't mind, but tell it in a harmonic way, like
said this animal of Lippmann.

- Do not get angry, Loiselier, do not get angry. Getting angry is
even worse for a man who digests and, you know, my
dear, at the first anger, it is apoplexy that awaits you. So
listen me, calmly, calmly, gracefully, as if I were there
nice Jeanne Printemps or your little prankster from Melcy. Let's see, the
houndstooth mouth, my fat father ... I am, moreover, in the heart
of my subject and, when I tell you about the _caballeros de la noche_ of
Montevideo, it takes your myopia to believe me far from the riders of
fog of Nottingham, who are the heroes of my anecdote, - because this
is just an anecdote.

You know, I hung out with a lot of bad names in my
existence.

I have no vulgar prejudices on this subject.

I have more esteem for some Jack the ripper than for
the opulent jeweler with needles. Was he a jeweler, Loiselier? This
must have been more of a banker, right, my dear? I squeeze more
willingly the hand of a professional than that of a crook like this
Ladislas Téligny whom you expelled the other month and who had duped
up to Monsieur de Cerneval.

However, I have rarely known in this very unchristian world a
character who inspired me at first glance as much antipathy as
the old jailer Dickson, but this honest scoundrel, a hundred times worse
certainly the worst of those he was responsible for maintaining on the
wet straw of the "dungeons," had a repertoire of memories all
each more attractive than the next and when he had been housed in
company of two or three good bottles of authentic rum, he
you disgusted a real fanfare.

I read the memoirs of our executioner Barry, the man who hanged in
fifteen 973 criminals. Well! it's a little beer next to the
memories of my Dickson. I'm not talking about the talent of the storyteller. Barry
or his dyer have none. The education of executioners is
singularly neglected in our time. Dickson, on the contrary, had at
supreme degree the gift of presentation: he brought the heroes of
his stories.

Poor Dickson, he was like your poet's virgin, the one who
loved the ball too much, he tasted too much rum, that's what killed him. Me
I enjoyed his stories too much. So one day we started
the fifth bottle, Dickson was left drunk and was no longer
wake up.

It was a real shame, because I have no doubt that he still had matters
a few weeks of stories, just with his memories of the Old
Bishop's of Nottingham where his childhood was spent near his
father jailer.

I had thought of raising a statue to him in front of that of William
Morfield, the philanthropist who earned £ 400,000 per
year to exploit his workers and was willing to restore them 500 sous
form of subsidies to hospitals and old people's homes.

The Municipality of Nottingham deemed it inappropriate to bring the
a great local man and a great drunkard no less local; me, it's this
rapprochement that charmed me.

My excellent father, in his memoir against me put this proposal,
which he qualifies as infamous, at the forefront of the irrefutable proofs of my
immorality.

Loiselier smirked, while de Cerneval started off frankly.
laugh burst.

--Well? Gentlemen, I come back to the mist riders of The
Forest. There were some, 80 or 100 years ago, I don't know exactly,
half a dozen in the care of my friend Dickson's father
under the thick vaults of Old Bishop's, when he was visited by a
known surgeon of Nottingham.

You have to tell you, gentlemen, that in England we have a stubborn cult
for what are called personal rights.

With you, when we talk about human dignity, it is, I believe, a
quite moral point of view: on the other side of the strait, we place dignity
human elsewhere. Simple question of latitude.

This does not prevent guillotining or hanging: if I cannot see clearly
the difference for the guillotine or the hanged man.

But while in Paris the body of a guillotine is somehow
delivered of right to the experiments of the faculty, as well as the deaths of
your hospitals belong to autopsy amphitheatres, - which is
much more natural since being miserable they are more guilty than
the scoundrels, - in England one would not dare to dispose without express
consent of the body of a hanged man.

Hence the need for surgeons, who have a taste for study, to
visit our prisons and pay court to condemned gentlemen, in order to
to get them to do a good little act in order to sell not
their soul, but their rag.

This is where respect for the dignity of my revered father's country leads.

The Old Bishop's fog riders were equally penetrated
that our legislation of this feeling of human dignity. They
consented to be hanged because they could not do otherwise,
but sell their bodies to the surgeon, never, sir.

No gold, no banknotes, no tempting promises of "drinking and frank
lippées ”, as your Rabelais says, did nothing: the lords
riders were intractable and our surgeon withdrew all heartbroken
of his failure, when he thought of asking Father Dickson if Old
Bishop's did not contain any death row inmates.

--We still have one, Your Honor, but it is not
gentleman, that one! ... He is a bankrupt son of the devil, replied Dickson,
scratching his ear, like a man who has something
hard to say.

You know, Loiselier, the pretty little squirrel cage, this love of
mill where the condemned take turns in such an expressive
mimicry, you may have thought that this was a torture of
middle ages: not at all, my dear. It is a modern penalty, a
improvement. The old torture was more cruel; but also in
in those ancient times there were no more telegraph operators _ad usum
principis_, what opera pages for financiers of your kind.

The esteemed prisoner of Old Bishop's awaited the executioner's hour.

After his complete failure in the other dungeons, the surgeon was
quite surprised to find in the "bankrupt son of the devil" a man to whom
he was in no way loath to accept three guineas.

A quarter of an hour later he left the prison with his parchment
well in order.

Three days passed.

The surgeon's client was having fun.

The first guinea had melted as if by magic.

A new half-crown had just descended into the crucible under
form of liquids as varied as they are alcoholic, which the throat of
prisoner.

To see him drink so well, Dickson, as drunk as his offspring,
felt his contempt for the "bankrupt son of the devil" crumbling.

In the evening, unable to hold back his tongue and especially his throat which
was burning with lust, he decided to strike up a conversation with his host and
as one politeness is another, the new friends shared
from then on the shots.

`` But at last, '' Dickson said wistfully as they drained
together the last bottle, now everything is drunk and you will need
bear the thought that this miserable surgeon is going to butcher your flesh.
It tears my heart apart, my poor friend, sobbed Dickson with a
a drunkard's tenderness.

"Not so stupid," replied the surgeon's client. My award bears:
"Will be strangled and then burned instead of executions." I
know the laws, my dear friend, he does not depend on anyone, even on the bench
of the king, to change its provisions. The surgeon will dissect my
ashes as it sees fit. I hear being burnt and I will be ....

Little La Salcète came in like a bomb, his hat over his ear.
his habit.

"You are chatting, gentlemen, and the Opéra-Comique is on fire.

In the blink of an eye, everyone was up and, as it is that night
that Lord Stephen Algernon Sydney had his head crushed by a beam
working to draw from the flames the little subject Cavanier first, we
have never known or how died the malignant client of the surgeon of
Nottingham, nor what to think of the abominable reputation that the
Lord Algernon's father had done to his son and that in so proud contempt
of the English cant, he displayed with a sort of bravado.




ORANGE SKIN


I

I was just recently in possession of my doctoral degree, and,
the clientele coming slowly, I had long hours to stroll
in clinics.

It was there that I met John Mérédith.

Not a doctor, a first-rate chemist, a simple lover of medicine,
the young Englishman charmed me with his unconventional spirit and we were
in a few weeks as intimate as one is at twenty-three between
young people of the same age and the same tastes.

I took Mérédith to my cousins ​​Carterac where I imagined I had
discovered my _ half of orange, _ as the Spaniards say, in this
little woodcock of Angela who entered the convent before I was well
fixed on my feelings.

Meredith, he introduced me to Lord Babington, his uncle and guardian.
He lived with the very young woman, in the spring of which he had
the foolishness of uniting its winter, a small house, festooned with ivy
and wisteria, in a large park, a short distance from the
Ville-d'Avray, and every Sunday we arrived around eleven o'clock
and a half, Mérédith and I, like Madame Babington, who was French
and Catholic, returned from mass, said at this charming church
of Ville-d'Avray which is full of works of art to shame the
provincial cathedrals.

We spent the day on the terrace perfumed with the scents of
lemongrass, chatting with the old lord or listening to the
Lady Marcelle who nourished our nonchaloirs with her rocking harmony,
or we would go in the woods to pick the blossoming honeysuckles
or the first lilacs.

Usually Lord William would take my arm and we would let Meredith
make the knight serving Madame Marcelle.

They would go ahead with a quick foot and catch up with us on the way back,
arms laden with bouquets and greenery.

Strangely enough, the aunt and the nephew only seemed to get along
and during the walks: at home, on the roads, they were
this slightly aggressive politeness which is not uncommon between the young woman
of an old uncle and the nephew who is to inherit from that uncle.

Mérédith, to whom I had observed the contrast of the two
attitudes, which I had noticed in them, answered me with
spontaneity full of humor.

- Dear friend, as you say, I do not love my aunt. Her presence
with my tutor irritates and annoys me. Madame Marcelle hates
cordially her nephew: my visits to her husband annoy her. But when
we are leaving for the woods, there are only two comrades in us who
like walking, big trees, cool breeze, breathless air
from heights, wild flowers. Madame Marcelle is twenty-two years old,
a sparkling spirit. I am not much his senior and no one
said not stupid. In short, we only think about having fun and enjoying
life during our walk, even if it means resuming our attitudes
courteous hostility as we approached the house.

I replied to Mérédith that I did not understand that the friend in
Bois was not the friend at home and that her psychology seemed to me
very subtle.

--I did not say _amie_, he replied, I said _camarade_ and it is
all different. There is no possible friendship between the wife of my
uncle and me: camaraderie is not binding.

When I scrutinize my _me_ from that time, I think maybe deep down
I was sufficiently in love with Madame Marcelle to remain enchanted
that Meredith beat him so cold.

This feeling, which I did not realize, was probably this
which paralyzed me in my initial designs for Angela.

One Sunday - I had been dating for a little over three months
Lord William's hospitable roof, - it was June 14, 188., - we
all four of us had lunch in the little Renaissance dining room.

We were at dessert and Madame Marcelle, in English fashion, said
bring the wines.

Usually she stayed at the table and worried about preventing Lord
William, who had a tendency to take in too much sherry or
Corton.

But that day she seemed to me immersed in a deep distraction.

As I have always been a very light drinker, I left both
English were right and I observed my neighbor.

She was playing with the skin of the orange she had just sucked quarter
by neighborhood.

First, with her fruit knife, she cut it into long strips;
then, she subdivided the thongs into small diamonds; finally, she reunites
small diamonds in a heap in the middle of his plate.

And, suddenly appearing to take an interest in her husband's conversation,
she cut the story he was giving from two or three brief observations,
of a cruise in the Chinese seas.

Then she picked up her knife, raised it for a moment on her plate and
got absorbed in the execution of a very complicated ornamental design,
arranging the small diamonds all around and at the bottom of the plate.

Then she asked me some mundane questions about the trendy piece,
as if disinterested in his work of arabesques, raised the knife
on his plate with an air of banter and with a small decided gesture brought back
the diamonds in the center of the plate.

Again the knife trick began again, and this time two
only diamonds lined up. For a moment the knife rested on
the plate above the two diamonds, to resume soon the
vertical position.

And then, suddenly, Madame Marcelle upset the fragments of skin
orange and put them back in a heap.

The game was over.

Lord William continued the interminable account of his quarrels with Lord
Elgin. Meredith, seemingly carefree, slowly drank her sherry.

Authorized by a gesture from the young woman, I lit a _niña_.

There was no doubt: the orange peel game was a system
organized correspondence and this correspondence could not be addressed
than at Mérédith.

But what good is it since in the woods the correspondents had everything
leisure to chat away from prying eyes?

In a puff of smoke from my cigar, I decided to throw a
look at Madame Marcelle. Her imperative gaze never left
Meredith, as if waiting for an answer.

--Your sherry is excellent, uncle, but a walker should not
abuse. I would like today that we push as close as possible
by Vaucresson. What do your legs say?

- They say, my boy, that they need your friend's arm
doctor.

- At your disposal, Lord William.

--Well! In that case, let's prepare for the departure. Milady, try not to
put more than an hour in your toilet, concluded Lord William.
malicious.

And we left as usual. But I observed that the aunt and
the nephew, as soon as they got ahead, had a lively argument,
Madame Marcelle multiplying the imperative gestures, while Mérédith
seemed to retaliate with denials.



II

After a three hour walk we returned, Lord William and I,
in Ville-d'Avray but we were not joined by Mérédith and Madame
Babington.

No doubt they had lingered drinking lemonade in some
country cap and, without worrying about these intrepid walkers,
Lord William, who cured his old man's ailments from
special procedures, had a bitter served.

It could well be half past six when a sort of harsh harp
entered as far as the terrace.

Madame Marcelle jumped out with the lightness of a bird.

`` Come quickly, '' she cried, `` help poor Mérédith who is
sprained his foot. Suppressed the midnight train, handsome sires! Here you are
our prisoners until tomorrow when we will advise by means of transporting
Mérédith at home! I will have your room prepared, because you
share that of Mérédith, doctor, the most beautiful lady in France and
from England being able to offer you only what she has.

And Madame Marcelle rushed towards the stairs.

Helped by the servants, I carried Mérédith on the oriental divan next to the
piano.

He refused to go any further claiming that it was enough
suffer without being bored. We would ride it when it was time to meet
go to bed, but he meant if not to dine, at least to attend the meal.

I only got him to visit his foot. Maybe he was a little
swollen from excessive walking, but I saw nothing worrying about it, nothing
even which clearly revealed the cause of the pains of which he complained.

'It's not a strain,' I said, 'maybe a severe cramp.
Have Eton's students become young ladies they are starting to
the diet for so little? You're going to dinner, Mérédith, and, I
wish, have a good appetite.

Madame Marcelle reappeared in the living room, hardly had I decided Mérédith to
substitute large slippers for rest for her thin shoes.

She seemed very gay, milady, more laughing and more teasing than
usually, but she usually seemed to care very little about
Meredith.

After dinner, where Lord William did not fail to have some
Champagne to drink at the cure of his nephew, Lord Elgin's rival
fell asleep in her armchair, while Madame Marcelle, at the piano,
played polishes and lullabies by Chopin, his favorite teacher.

Mérédith smoked silently. Leaning on the Pleyel, I turned the
leaves, exchanging a word from time to time with the musician.

At eleven o'clock Lord William awoke and gave the signal for
retirement.

We went up Mérédith to the second floor, lit by Madame Marcelle
who advised me, our room not having a bell, to knock on the
floor if Meredith needed anything.

--My room is immediately under it and I will notify
servants, because unfortunately Jeanne, my maid, who
usually sleeps in my bathroom, is on leave until
tomorrow evening.

I helped Meredith to bed, and after the lights were out, I didn't
wasted no time in falling asleep.

When I awoke it was a dark, moonless night.

I struck a match to check my watch.

It was a quarter past two.

I was going to blow out the candle when, not hearing the breath of
Meredith, I almost automatically turned my head towards her bed.

The bed was empty.

There, I thought, explains this weird strain. My Meredith
is a good actor and Madame Marcelle, with her lozenges of skin
orange, which intrigued me so much, simply marked the time
of the shepherd! Go believe after that in the virtue of aunts and the oath
nephews: "I don't love my aunt, she hates me cordially." he
there would be no need to go far to have the proof, if
I had, like the lame devil, the faculty to dishevel the houses
from their roofs and rooms from their ceilings. And, however, Lord
William is sleeping the sleep of the just: it is in order. But also this
an old man of sixty-five needed to go and marry a
twenty-year-old woman ... No matter if my friend Mérédith was going to give this
night an heir to his uncle, he would doubtless find it bad.
Doctor, my friend, all men are crazy. Yourself, you beat it
charm. Are you not in your bed to sleep and not to philosophize?
Well! sleep without worrying about the vicissitudes of other people's lives.

But this fine reasoning did not make me sleepy and it is
until dawn that I could finally sleep ...



III

I was awakened by a cry of appeal to which answered an exclamation
distressed by Mérédith, who rushed for the stairs. As soon as I was in
state of presenting myself decently, I followed him.

--What is it? I asked a maid I met on the
first floor landing.

'Lord Babington,' she said to me, 'is dead or dying.

I turn excruciatingly pale. I suddenly thought of the knife on the plate
under the two orange peel diamonds.

Meredith's voice, a white voice, called me from the bedroom
half-open.

I entered.

Madame Marcelle, pale and defeated, was crying at the foot of the bed.

Mérédith gestured to the corpse.

I approached.

As the first glance revealed to me, Lord William had ceased
to live. In a quick examination, I wanted to investigate the causes of
death.

Whatever concern, whatever concern I had about the events of the
night, nothing significant allowed us to doubt that death was
natural: it was an apparently indisputable ruptured aneurysm.
The disproportionate rush to the patient's strength, his usual abuses
alcoholic drinks, his excesses of the day before could explain
the accident.

I had trembled. Mérédith was such a good actor and such a learned chemist.

I felt a weight less on my heart. After all, the doctor
coroner would manage as he saw fit. What I knew, - at
basically they were hypotheses and not a science, - had no role to
play here. The colleague, whom Mérédith had called for, would find
ascertainable causes of death and human justice would be
satisfied.

If there was ... something else, the consciousness of Mérédith and Marcelle
alone would have to answer ...

And besides, was there something else?

An intrigue, a date? Okay.

A crime? If I had said so, everyone would have taken me for a fool.
I would have been told that I had drunk too much Champagne the day before with Lord
William and that if the results of these exaggerated libations had been
less fatal for me than for the old man, it was not a
reason for disturbing with my more or less informed dreams the peace of
Ville-d'Avray.

I deepened my doubts and fell silent.



IV

Meredith left, immediately after her uncle's funeral, to
England.

Madame Marcelle retired to Burgundy with distant relatives and I
heard no more from them for about a year.

I knew around this time from the banal cardboard that Mérédith was marrying the
aunt he loathed, he claimed, and later I learned that the title
Lord did not risk going to collateral because, according to the
usual cliché, Heaven had blessed their union several times.

On various occasions, I received invitations from my old friend to
to visit in Inverness, but circumstances kept me unwillingly
Paris, and I regret it, because I would surely have unraveled in their privacy
if he and Madame Marcelle embodied happiness in crime or
happiness in love.

_Quien sabe? _

We judge so quickly and so badly, we hardened skeptics!
concluded the doctor, shaking the ashes of his cigar.

END



TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PREFACE.
  Bibliographic note of the translator.
  The Crime of Lord Arthur Savile.
  Tales.
  Bibliographic note of the translator.
  The Devoted Friend.
  The Famous Rocket.
  The Happy Prince.
  The Nightingale and the Rose.
  The Selfish Giant.
  News published in America.
  Bibliographic note of the translator.
  Ego te absolvo.
  Old Bishop's.
  The Orange Skin.