Oh the blackness of the world! Oh the Satanic beauty of sin! Oh the fragility of human resolution! Oh the perishability of human souls!

The appalling hopelessness of it would have frightened a braver heart than possessed by the daughter of Tinta. But where her mother had courage she had faith, and in the daily enlightenment acquired from preacher and Didon, she prayed with a fervency that might have made angels of every gentleman of New Orleans. And from day to day she awaited in faith an answer to her prayers.

It seemed a year, in truth it was only six weeks, since Monsieur Méance's last visit, but weeks counted by the day are long. And it was January weather. Four fair days, three cloudy days, and two stormy days, that is the program then as now for New Orleans weather. The fair days of blue skies and sunshine, flower fragrance and bird song, to make one love life; the sultry days to make one long for it; the stormy days to make one despair over it. At least it seemed so to Pieta. January is a terrible month for the masculine soul and for the feminine, too, and it is a terrible month for rowers to be kept night after night in a skiff on the river until daylight at least so thought Pieta.

It was during the stormy days, Pieta sat with her embroidery under the eye of her, aunt. It was a period when the limpid stream of a young girl's life was supposed to flow purer under supervision. The hour was the one when Monsieur Méance used to call. "Tante Oda?"

"What is it, Pieta?"

She was going to ask something she was thinking about, but she changed her mind. "That sermon last Sunday . . . did it not seem the true inspiration?''

"The inspiration of holy men is the condemnation of sinners. Satan does well to entice them from the Church. There would be, there would be no sin, were the Church our home; the Church should be our family, our friends, our past, our present, our future. . . . At the point of the bayonet, yes, at the point of the bayonet if necessary, should we be forced to recognize this. My child, when Satan holds down the eyes, when Satan closes the ears, then should . . . instead”———— jumping to her excitable point, the excitable point of all of her set, and -start the conversation where one would

...

that, she must rush to, with her floods of resentment and eloquence, "to send them back, to rebuff them! With armed men to touch the holy body of every Mother Church; it was, it was—the act of a hangman arresting the mother hastening to nourish her children." Words could not convey, her face could not express the scorn, contempt, and anger of her heart, that the brothers of the holy office of the Inquisition should not have been permitted to chide sin, here in her own city.- "Arrested and sent back in the dead of night by Miro? By Miro? No! by Satan, by the devil, by the fiend himself! The angels wept in heaven that day, to see the insult passed upon the mother of God! Blasphemy! blasphemy! blasphemy! A mother should correct her children. To save their bodies from sin, she should correct them. But to save their souls, to save a soul from everlasting hell, from everlasting hell, what is there a mother should not do? And as children should bow to our mother, even, even as when like Abraham, she raises the sacrificial knife . . . even if she asks the blood, the blood of one nearest . . .”

This was the way they talked when together, this was the tone of conversation Madame Odalise adored. The time passed.

"Tante Oda!" the girl began again after a long pause, a long stitching of her canvas; and again she changed her mind.

"I hope the weather will change, so that more can go to vespers to-day.”

Her great eyes were haggard; one would have said that from looking, looking so much, they had been unable to close, even if, as her aunt said, the opened lids revealed the nudities of the heart. And her face-one would have said, that not each day, but each hour of six weeks, had been an eternity of suspense, waiting, inquiring, anxiety.

"Tante Oda!" she wanted to say, "Oh! Tante Oda! The souls, the souls out there, can we do nothing to save them? The souls in the blackness of the world, to die into the blackness of hell! The souls, Tante Oda ! think of them, the souls of men. And life is so short, and eternity so long! And oh !the torments, the tortures, the anguish! You heard the preacher! the frown of God! the scourge of fire, the hissing serpents, the hissing sins that have coiled around human lives, the cries, the groans, the tears, the supplications-too late! too late-and we, the saved, to see, to hear, and unable to succor,

even so much as to speak, to look-not even the drop of water! Oh! the anguish of the saved! Oh ! the hell in heaven! Tante Oda! For our own happiness, for our own sakes, let us go out, let us go out to the lost, to the sinning-Oh! Tante Oda! Let us go this instant to Monsier Mémé, you and I! Let us represent to him, let us implore him to save his soul, his life! He does not know, he cannot know! I would fall on my knees to him. 'Monsieur,' I would say, 'Monsieur, think of your mother, of your sisters, of your grandmother.'-Tante Oda! Let us pray for him. Yes, but let us do something also, let us force him to amend! Let us not sit here day after day copying little prints with our hands, copying little prints with our lives; and the men out there going to destruction, the great, strong, handsome young men, the hope of the world!Is it to be a heaven only of women and priests!-Listen to the rain, Tante Oda! And look at the sky-that cloud! that cloud! It looks like the anger of God! And the sullen ugly earth! Does it not look as if it were full of sin and wickedness? Oh! the dark, gloomy, hopeless, poor world! It thundered and lightened all night, I could not sleep for thinking; I could not pray for thinking.

"Did Didon tell you, about Monsieur Mémé, Tante Oda? He crossed the river last night. The more furious the storm, the more determined he is to cross the river. What is the use of my praying for his soul if he is going to lose his life? If the saints would but keep him from crossing the river! He does not even carry a scapulary, Didon says. Didon says the water foams mountains high. It is so black they cannot see their hands before their faces. The poor negro rowers call upon the saints and the Virgin, but Monsieur Mémé only curses them the worse for not rowing harder. The thunder claps so loud, they sometimes think they are gone, and the lightning, they can feel it burn all over them. He is always in a terrible rage, they have never seen any thing like it, and he looks so fierce, so fierce they get frightened. Sometimes they run into drifting trees; one time the boat nearly capsized, Didon says.-In the name of heaven, Tante Oda! so cold and so still! Do you not know? Can you not think? Do you not see?-One of these nights Monsieur Mémé will cross the river-but he will never reach the other side. The thunder will clap, and the lightning will flash,

I can see the boat go over-Oh God! I have seen it night after night! I see them go down, I see them stretching their hands above the waters, the black hands of the negroes, the white, white hands of Monsieur Méance, with the diamond ring glittering on his finger-I see the look in his eyes! I hear the cry from his lips! Oh to be a saint then!

"How dark it is getting, and so cold, and what rain! It might be such a night as tonight! He is in the city-I saw him pass. Did you not see him pass, Tante Oda, a while ago?-That ugly, ugly river, I hate it! I am afraid of it. I have looked at it from the convent terrace, in daylight. I have seen it at night, peeped at it from the window when all were sleeping. Ugly always, but in a storm!-He will go down under itand his soul, Tante Oda! Think of his soul ! His young, handsome, brave, strong soul! ... Better a few more women lost, and a few more men saved!"

She wanted to say it, over and over again. She wanted to say it.-It was so poignantly loud in her heart, and still, when she opened her lips to do so-it was always and never any thing else but, "Tante Oda, the church," or, “Tante Oda, the sermon.”

CHAPTER XIX.

Ça que ti bien feré zamé ti mal feré.
What's rightly done, is never wrongly done.

THE little city went trembling into the night, with clouds and rain and the memory of past storms and hurricanes thick upon her. The inhabitants of brick structures may have felt less acutely their own littleness and insufficiency in a combat with the elements, but those who were condemned by poverty or their own parsimony to the instability of wooden provisions, they could do little better, these householders, as they fastened their doors and windows, shaking and rocking with the house, than repeat the exhortation of their intendant, addressed as a consolation, after a past devastation by wind and rain: "Let us put our faith in the divine Providence, who will appease our alarms and remedy the evils with which we are afflicted. Let us give a last proof of our loyalty to one sovereign by not abandoning a country which we have conquered and preserved in spite of human foes and the elements leagued against us. Let

us give to God the proof of our perfect resignation by saying with the holy man Job, etc." The Mississippi surged and swelled under the wind now dashing its spray over the levee, now sinking into ominous hollows, as if cowed and quelled under the heavy discharge of rain, which riddled and honeycombed the opaque surface. There was no sun to sink, for for two days the sun had not risen. A hundred muttering thunderbolts would break and blast at once, staggering the earth with noise, and shivering the heavens with lightning flashes, and the wind would scream out as if the lightning hurt it. The rowers lay in their blankets under the tarred cloth awning of the rocking, rolling Delaunay skiff, muttering prayers, holding fetiches in their hands against the elements; nodding in spite of their fears, and dreaming hell-dreams of the storm about them, starting to false alarms, waking to find the reality worse than their dreams, and sinking again with African impotence against sleep, into oblivion of danger and of their master.

"Here, Ulysse! Neron! Paco ! Dalt! Fools! Animals! Brutes!" that was the way the master always accosted them in storms. "Idiots! here! are you going to keep me in the rain all night!"'

They jumped out of their blankets, overthrowing the awning, tripping over their cars, jostling one another in their haste to help him into the skiff to wrap his cloak about him, to steady him on his way to the seat in the stern, while he took advantage of the lulls in the wind and the pauses in the thunder to vent his ill-temper upon them; making the unfortunate slaves responsible for losses at club and lapses of courtesy, disappointment in love and disgust of life, hatred of himself, hatred of Louisiana; daring the devil, daring sin, daring the very elements, when even to the bravest courage whispers, "Go not forth to-night!"

Didon was right! None but a desperate man were capable of crossing the river, so after a frolic. A soul in immensity were not more insignificant than this frail boat in the night.

The boatmen pulled and strained and struggled against the current, the effort forcing out shoal-grooves from them, as Didon said. The thunder fell over them, the lightning played about them, the waves broke over the sides of the boat, the whirlpools twisted them around, and the rain

pounded into the boat as if to pound it to the bottom; two of the men had to drop their oars and bail, bail for life-as Didon said.

The furious water hissed and heaved about them; and the night so black, so black; the sky right upon them--almost mashing them into the river. They ran upon a log-all was over! No! no! not yet. The negroes called aloud on the Savior, the Virgin, while the master cursed because they did not row better.

That they ever reached the opposite shore was the miracle that always bewildered the rowers. As soon as the stern touched the gunwale, Monsieur Méance leaped out. When he was at a little distance old Ulysse lifted up a sodden blanket and pointed out the direction of the negro quarters to the huddled creature underneath, who had crossed the river and braved death in contraband.

"For God's sake," he said, "go!" It was not the first time that the ferryman had helped a woman of his race to a friend or lover-but he had never seen so desperate a case as this. It must, he feared, be for life or liberty.

"Not that way!" he called as loud as he dared, "the master!" But she fled as if she had not heard him, and disappeared in the darkness.

The residence was not far from the bank. It stood high up on brick pillars. The wind raged, assaulting it with might and fury; the rain ran down the stairway as if it were a gallery. The old negro house guardian lay stretched on his blanket inside the door.

Monsieur Méance stepped over without waking him and opened the door of a chamber where a fire blazed and wax candles burned brightly. He shivered with cold at the sight of it. Behind him came the figure that had followed him from the boat, running as he did through the rain, stepping as he did over the sleeping negro; meeting his eye as he turned to cast aside his dripping cloak.

"Pieta !"

Sodden by the rain, buffeted by the wind, but in her convent uniform, her hair, plaited in two long plaits, smoothed down the side of her face, exactly as she looked and stood the first day he saw her, when she reminded him of Diana. Fixing him with her eyes, which more than ever were not the eyes of a Diana, the daughter of Tinta spoke her words of barbarous simplicity.

"I prayed for you to return and you did not return. I prayed for you to amend and you did not amend. I can pray no longer. I have come. If you had lost your life out there on the river, I would have lost mine. If you lose your soul, I shall lose mine."

Out there on the river! In that hell of rushing water, lightning, thunder! Out there with but one small plank between them and eternity! Out there, unflushed by wine, unpushed by bravado! She! The young man blanched, he struck his head with his hand, an exclamation of horror escaped him.

She stood looking at him. Had he heard? Did he understand? Had she said it yet? She did not remember. She had repeated it so often to herself, she could not tell whether she had said the words or only thought them; she opened her lips again.

The wind and the rain outside were still rehearsing their tempest; the time came for another clap of thunder, another flash of lightning. She closed her eyes involuntarily and like a child caught at something during the thunder.

Afraid! She was then afraid! Afraid of that child's play here in the house, and yet, and yet - He crossed where she was and knelt before her. Her dripping garments brushed his cheek; he took her hand; he bowed his head, and he seemed unnerved, he that had laughed and cursed during the storm.

It was then that Monsieur Mémé made proof of himself. He repulsed it all back into his mind, his heart, the thoughts of the hell on the river, the shivering, trembling, agonized form under the negro blankets; the youth, the purity, the innocence, the beauty, his own unworthiness-and-oh! the raging of the elements in his heart! a Louisiana tornado in a Louisiana heart !-her love! her love! her love! Thrusting it all back, emotion pressing against eyes, lips, breast, he laid his forehead one moment against the little cold, trembling hand. It was so cold! so trembling! and he arose from his knees.

"Pieta!" he said, so natural, yet so unnatural for him. He was indeed the finished actor his friends accused him of being. Even his face was no longer haggard nor his eyes wan, as they had a right to be. "Pieta! my sister!"

And she was so trembling, tottering, how easily he could have carried her. He lead her

to a chair. Her long plaits were dripping, even her face, so pinched and blue and cold where the rain had pelted it, was glistening with water, but he did not touch them. He pushed her in the chair to the fire. She leaned her head back against the soft cushions and closed her eyes; whether he were in the room or not, she could not tell.

Mela, the wife of the porter, slept in the closet near by.

He called at her open door. That was what she was there for, to hear, night or day, the first call from the young master, Mela, the daughter of old Mela, the old housekeeper, and nurse of the old master. The grandmother would hardly have insisted upon his exile except to replace her nursing and supervision at the other end of the world.

"Mela!" he grasped the two shoulders of the half-dressed woman and whispered. A half word only is needed when generations of command and obedience have skilled the understanding.

By the time Pieta's eyes were reopened, he was still at the back of her chair pushing her into position before the fire.

She looked around; the bright fire, the wax candles; was this a dream or that other: the cry of agony that burst through her lips, when the night's danger came on after the long day's apprehension; the running through the streets, finding the boat, the lying there for hours, with the rain pelting, the wind blowing, the thunder and lightning his foot grazed her as he stepped into the skiff-was that a dream or was this?

He called her name again. It was astonishing to himself the control he had over his voice, making it say Pieta so gently, so smoothly, so conventionally. Mela touched his arm. She was still half-dressed; her woolly hair sticking out from under her sleeping head-kerchief, her arms and neck bare. She held two smoking glasses on a waiter, indicating with a sign, the one for the young girl. The young man made a motion with his head in the direction of the river; the woman understood and nodded again.

"Pieta, we are both so cold, so wet! See, I am shivering worse than you," and he was shivering and trembling as he came to the front of her chair.

The liquid was so warm and grateful; she raised her eyes to him as she took the empty glass from her. It was the worst glance Monsieur Mémé had to stand. He moved

away with the glasses; and though he drew an ottoman close to her chair, he sat so that they did not meet face to face.

It was not long; the exhausted nerves, the warmed limbs relaxed, the weeks of anxious waiting, the intense suspense, the cries of emotion, the fear, fatigue, and physical exhaustion ceased; Pieta slept.

For one moment he looked to assure himself of it. It would seem from his taste and characteristics he would have looked with a thousand other intentions. Turning on his heel he left the room.

CHAPTER XX.

Ça on rivé dans semaine quatre zeudes.

-Creole proverb. That will happen in a week of four Thursdays.

MADAME ODALISE was opening her eyes not upon the light but upon the darkness of another day; one of those days when early mass seems being celebrated at midnight, when Didon had to pilot the way to church with a lantern, and Madame made votive offerings of her wet feet and prospective ailments upon the altar consecrated to the day. By voluntarily assuming the inevitable, and putting it to the account of an approving and solvent rewarder, the domestic tribulations of but a single day could almost support the soul in piety, and overbalance any little discredits.

Madame Odalise in her self-abnegation and presence of mind, lived nothing for herself; if she enjoyed, that is, if what passed for such with her could be called enjoyment, she enjoyed to such a saint; what she suffered, she suffered to another, and indeed, nothing less than a divine bank could have received such an accumulation of deposits as she had got into the habit of making.

She did not need morning bells to arouse her; she could easily have roused the bells themselves, as she was in the habit of rousing Didon and Pieta.

This was the moment Monsieur Méance had thought of, this what he must forestall. The picture of his grandmother in the early dawn rousing her family for church; going from bed to bed, and finding one who should be there not there! One-and he urged his rowers to pull still stronger, still faster.

They were the fresh oarsmen whom Mela had roused; the dry, clean skiff she had had launched from the props under the house; but Monsieur Méance glancing at the sky above him, cursed himself for returning so late the night before one half hour earlier, and he would be certain. The storm was slinking away ashamed like the nocturnal marauder it was, the wind and rain feebly trying to keep up a while longer their show of violence, the thunder in the distance sullenly muttering threats to return.

Day seemed to be breaking somewhere; but not there yet, not in sight of those brooding, leaden clouds. The yellow river, with its foam lashings, still frenzied from its midnight madness, broke viciously against the skiff, tossing in its way, trees, branches, and fragmentary wharf wreckings of wind and lightning.

The church bells might ring from instant to instant, and the stroke would fall unprepared! The cathedral bells were still far from ringing when the skiff landed at the city bank; and as if they might ring the next instant, he sped to the cottage.

His grandmother was older, much older, but Madame Odalise in night-cap and camisole did not evidence it. The life of a recluse and bigot ages a woman and debilitates her, as the young man saw-he had pushed Didon aside, running to the chamber ahead of her.

And the news he had to communicate! "Wait!" he cried. "Wait!" raising his hand, any thing but that, her suspicions, her accusations of him, of her! "Wait!" and he told her, beginning from the first day, the first interview, himself, himself, himselfcoming to the point; here and there going back again—to himself—still raising his hand and praying, commanding the old lady to wait to pause not to speak, not to say it until she understood all.

He understood it so well! It is only the young who can understand one another. The old see so correctly, feel so correctly. He understood her so well-the sweetness, the purity, the youth, the conscience, the divine conscience!—And he came to the place again when he must tell of it, the crossing the river, the storm, the "I have prayed for you to return and you did not return. I have prayed for you to amend and you did not amend. I have come. If you had lost your life out there on the river I should have lost mine. If you lose your soul I shall lose mine."