A FRAGMENT

THE YOUNG CHEVALIER

PROLOGUE

THE WINE-SELLER'S WIFE

There was a wine-seller's shop, as you went down to the river in the
city of the Anti-popes. There a man was served with good wine of the
country and plain country fare; and the place being clean and quiet,
with a prospect on the river, certain gentlemen who dwelt in that city
in attendance on a great personage made it a practice (when they had any
silver in their purses) to come and eat there and be private.

They called the wine-seller Paradou. He was built more like a bullock
than a man, huge in bone and brawn, high in colour, and with a hand like
a baby for size. Marie-Madeleine was the name of his wife; she was of
Marseilles, a city of entrancing women, nor was any fairer than herself.
She was tall, being almost of a height with Paradou; full-girdled,
point-device in every form, with an exquisite delicacy in the face; her
nose and nostrils a delight to look at from the fineness of the
sculpture, her eyes inclined a hair's-breadth inward, her colour between
dark and fair, and laid on even like a flower's. A faint rose dwelt in
it, as though she had been found unawares bathing, and had blushed from
head to foot. She was of a grave countenance, rarely smiling; yet it
seemed to be written upon every part of her that she rejoiced in life.
Her husband loved the heels of her feet and the knuckles of her fingers;
he loved her like a glutton and a brute; his love hung about her like
an atmosphere; one that came by chance into the wine-shop was aware of
that passion; and it might be said that by the strength of it the woman
had been drugged or spell-bound. She knew not if she loved or loathed
him; he was always in her eyes like something monstrous,--monstrous in
his love, monstrous in his person, horrific but imposing in his
violence; and her sentiment swung back and forward from desire to
sickness. But the mean, where it dwelt chiefly, was an apathetic
fascination, partly of horror; as of Europa in mid ocean with her bull.

On the 10th November 1749 there sat two of the foreign gentlemen in the
wine-seller's shop. They were both handsome men of a good presence,
richly dressed. The first was swarthy and long and lean, with an alert,
black look, and a mole upon his cheek. The other was more fair. He
seemed very easy and sedate, and a little melancholy for so young a man,
but his smile was charming. In his grey eyes there was much abstract