tly
to the same house; and, on the actress being named, kindly pointed out
to him a third member of this club as the lady's lover-in-title. The
peculiar etiquette of the institution demanded, it seems, that the
fortunate gallant should escort the beloved home, but then go to the
_cercle_ and play (they were wise enough to play whist then) for great
part of the night before exercising the remainder of his rights and
privileges. In the interval, apparently, other cats might be grey. And,
as it happened, Gerard saw in a paper that some shares of his, long
rubbish, had become of value. He would be better off; he might aspire
to a portion of the lady's spare hours. But this notion, it is not
surprising to hear, did not appeal to our Gerard. He sees in the same
paper that a _fete_ is going to take place in his old country of the
Valois; and when at last he goes home two "faces in the fire" rise for
him, those of the little peasant girl Sylvie and of the chatelaine
Adrienne--beautiful, triumphant, but destined to be a nun. Unable to
sleep, he gets up at one in the morning, and manages to find himself at
Loisy, the scene of the _fete_, in time.

One would fain go on, but duty forbids a larger allotment of space; and,
after all, the thing itself may be read by any one in half an hour or
so, and will not, at least ought not, to be forgotten for half a
lifetime--or a whole one. The finding of Sylvie, no longer a _little_
girl, but still a girl, still not married, though, as turns out, about
to be so, is chequered with all sorts of things--sketches of landscape;
touches of literature; black-and-white renderings of the _Voyage a
Cythere_; verses to Adrienne; to the actress Aurelie (to become later
the dream-Aurelia); and, lastly--in the earlier forms of the piece at
any rate--snatches of folk-song, including that really noble ballad:

Quand Jean Renaud de la guerre revint,

which falls very little, if at all, short of the greatest specimens of
English, German, Danish, or Spanish.

And over and through it all, and in other pieces as well, there is the
faint, quaint, music--prose, when not verse--which reminds one[246]
somehow of Browning's famous Toccata-piece. Only the "dear dead women"
are dear dead fairies; and the whole might be sung at that "Fairy's
Funeral" which Christopher North imagined so well, though he did not
carry it out quite impeccably.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Alfred de Vigny: