m. It was in the terrible year 1794. She
knew the hour at which the tumbril with those condemned to die passed
the windows; and at the first signal would close them and draw the
curtain. But on this day some invincible fascination nailed her to her
place. There were ten faces; but she had eyes for one alone. She had
not forgotten, could not mistake, him--that pale head, so proud and
fine, but now thin with suffering; the beautiful mobile eyes, now
encircled with the signs of sorrow and watching. The convict's shirt,
open in large, broad folds, left bare the neck, delicate as a woman's,
and made for that youthful face an aureole, of innocence, of martyrdom.
His looks [149] met hers. Did he recognize her? She could not have
said. She remained there, paralyzed with emotion, till the moment when
the vision disappeared.

Then she flung herself into her chamber, fell on her knees, lost
herself in prayer. There was a distant roll of drums. The man to whom
she had given her maiden soul was gone.

"Cursed be their anger, for it was cruel!" says the reader. But
Monsieur Filon's stories sometimes end as merrily as they begin; and
always he is all delicacy--a delicacy which keeps his large yet minute
antiquarian knowledge of that vanished time ever in service to a direct
interest in humanity as it is permanently, alike before and after '93.
His book is certainly one well worth possessing.

THE END

16th July 1890

End of Project Gutenberg's Essays from 'The Guardian', by Walter Horatio Pater

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