The Argosy — page 233: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A Lady of St. Cyr. 221 her fan and parrot and little mirror; the gentleman gesticulating and scolding his lackeys—looked at them with a strange, grave sadness. The logs were crackling merrily on the portress’s hearth, but the child did not even pause at the open door; she walked straight forth under the arch of the porte-cochére, where the wind blew about her tattered brocade, and then out into the open street itself. That bleak north- east wind, which often blows in Paris, was making a second winter of the spring, but the little maid walked forth alone on her aimless course. Not fourteen days before her mother had been carned dead from that poor home ; her widowed mother, whose grace and beauty seemed to the child without a parallel. Lucie Lemeunier scarcely realized the goodness of the people who had fed and sheltered her during that weary time of bereavement : the ignorance and unconscious selfishness of childhood seldom permit of gratitude for our “daily bread ;” but now the innate pride of the little aristocrat surged up in a revolt against the desecration of her mother’s home by the “ canaille” who were to enter it. Sooner than witness this, she would go forth and die; she could but die at the worst, and had not her mother died ? The beautiful and noble Marie de Ste. Barbe had married the artist Paul Lemeunier, handsome, good, and clever, but alas! not noble ; and what virtue could wipe out this stain in the eyes of the family of Ste. Barbe? Henceforth Marie was dead to them, nor would they shelter or pity her when her husband died of a lingering sickness, and her few remaining jewels were melting away, all too rapidly, before the fiery breath of want. Death alone was kind, in dealing the final blow so swiftly that the poor mother had barely time to realize the dread solitude in which her little one would be left. On went that poor little one through the crowd of strangers, sup- posing, with the fatuity of childhood, that she would come to some end and home at last. But presently it began to rain, and the raindrops froze as they fell, and the poor little soul, noble though she was, was as hungry as the most plebeian of the small Parisians. But it was not well-bred to cry; ladies should bear all and say nothing. Yet, even a lady must eat, and at last the pains of hunger became by far the most pressing circumstances in the little girl’s existence. When her mother and she had wanted bread before, the mother’s fingers had earned it by the dainty embroideries which she had learned in her convent- school. Lucie could not sew now, but there was one thing she could do—she could sing. And so the small, shrill voice sent up, in a clear tone, a pretty little pastoral ditty composed by Durant :—- ‘¢ J’ai couru tous ces bocages, Ces prés, ces monts, ces rivages ; Mais je n’ai trouvé pourtant Celle que j’ai poursuivie : Hélas! qui me I’a ravie, La nymphe que j’aimais tant?” yd COMIC OOOKS.COn _