Lazarre by Mary Hartwell Catherwood

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I took the padlocked book out of my breast and laid it upon the table. I
looked at the priest, not at her. The padlocked book seemed to have no
more to do with the conversation, than a hat or a pair of gloves.

I saw, as one sees from the side of the eye, the scarlet rush of blood
and the snow-white rush of pallor which covered her one after the other.
The moment was too strenuous. I could not spare her. She had to bear it
with me.

She set her clenched hands on her knees.

"Sire!"

I faced her. The coldest look I ever saw in her gray eyes repelled me,
as she deliberately said--

"You are not such a fool!"

I stared back as coldly and sternly, and deliberately answered--

"I am--just--such a fool!"

"Consider how any person who might be to blame for your decision, would
despise you for it afterwards!"

"A boy in the first flush of his youth," Abbe Edgeworth said, his fine
jaws squared with a grin, "might throw away a kingdom for some woman who
took his fancy, and whom he could not have perhaps, unless he did throw
his kingdom away. And after he had done it he would hate the woman. But
a young man in his strength doesn't do such things!"

"A king who hasn't spirit to be a king!" Madame de Ferrier mocked.

I mercilessly faced her down.

"What is there about me? Sum me up. I am robbed on every side by any one
who cares to fleece me. Whenever I am about to accomplish anything I
fall down as if knocked on the head!"

She rose from her seat.

"You let yourself be robbed because you are princely! You have plainly
left behind you every weakness of your childhood. Look at him in his
strength, Monsieur Abbe! He has sucked in the vigor of a new country!
The failing power of an old line of kings is renewed in him! You could
not have nourished such a dauphin for France in your exiled court!
Burying in the American soil has developed what you see for
yourself--the king!"

"He is a handsome man," Abbe Edgeworth quietly admitted.

"Oh, let his beauty alone! Look at his manhood--his kinghood!"

"Of what use is his kinghood if he will not exercise it?"

"He must!"

She turned upon me fiercely.

"Have you no ambition?"

"Yes, madame. But there are several kinds of ambition, as there are
several kinds of success. You have to knock people down with each kind,
if you want it acknowledged. As I told you awhile ago, I am tenacious
beyond belief, and shall succeed in what I undertake."

"What are you undertaking?"

"I am not undertaking to mount a throne."

"I cannot believe it! Where is there a man who would turn from what is
offered you? Consider the life before you in this country. Compare it
with the life you are throwing away." She joined her hands. "Sire, the
men of my house who fought for the kings of yours, plead through me that
you will take your inheritance."

I kept my eyes on Abbe Edgeworth. He considered the padlocked book as an
object directly in his line of vision. Its wooden covers and small metal
padlock attracted the secondary attention we bestow on trifles when we
are at great issues.

I answered her,

"The men of your house--and the women of your house, madame--cannot
dictate what kings of my house should do in this day."

"Well as you appear to know him, madame," said Abbe Edgeworth, "and
loyally as you urge him, your efforts are wasted."

She next accused me--

"You hesitate on account of the Indians!"

"If there were no Indians in America, I should do just as I am doing."

"All men," the abbe noted, "hold in contempt a man who will not grasp
power when he can."

"Why should I grasp power? I have it in myself. I am using it."

"Using it to ruin yourself!" she cried.

"Monseigneur!" The abbe rose. We stood eye to eye. "I was at the side of
the king your father upon the scaffold. My hand held to his lips the
crucifix of our Lord Jesus Christ. In his death no word of bitterness
escaped him. True son of St. Louis, he supremely loved France. Upon you
he laid injunction to leave to God alone the punishment of regicides,
and to devote your life to the welfare of all Frenchmen. Monseigneur!
are you deaf to this call of sacred duty? The voice of your father from
the scaffold, in this hour when the fortunes of your house are lowest,
bids you take your rightful place and rid your people of the usurper who
grinds France and Europe into the blood-stained earth!"

I wheeled and walked across the floor from Abbe Edgeworth, and turned
again and faced him.

"Monsieur, you have put a dart through me. If anything in the universe
could move me from my position, what you have said would do it. But my
father's blood cries through me to-day--'Shall the son of Louis XVI be
forced down the unwilling throats of his countrymen by foreign
bayonets?--Russians--Germans--English!--Shall the dauphin of France be
hoisted to place by the alien?'--My father would forbid it! . . . You
appeal to my family love. I bear about with me everywhere the pictured
faces of my family. The father whose name you invoke, is always close to
my heart. That royal duchess, whom you are privileged to see daily,
monsieur, and I--never--is so dear and sacred to me that I think of her
with a prayer. . . . But my life is here. . . . Monsieur, in this new
world, no man can say to me--'Come,' or 'Go.' I am as free as the Indian.
But the pretender to the throne of France, the puppet of Russia, of
England, of the enemies of my country,--a slave to policy and intrigue--a
chained wanderer about Europe--O my God! to be such a pretender--gasping
for air--for light--as I gasped in Ste. Pelagie!--O let me be a free
man--a free man!"

The old churchman whispered over and over--

"My royal son!"

My arms dropped relaxed.

There was another reason. I did not give it. I would not give it.

We heard the spring wind following the river channel--and a far faint
call that I knew so well--the triangular wild flock in the upper air,
flying north.

"Honk! honk!" It was the jubilant cry of freedom!

"Madame," said Abbe Edgeworth, resting his head on his hands, "I have
seen many stubborn Bourbons, but he is the most obstinate of them all.
We do not make as much impression on him as that little padlocked book."

Her terrified eyes darted at him--and hid their panic.

"Monsieur Abbe," she exclaimed piercingly, "tell him no woman will love
him for throwing away a kingdom!"

The priest began once more.

"You will not resign your rights?"

"No."

"You will not exercise them?"

"No."

"If I postpone my departure from to-day until to-morrow, or next week,
or next month, is there any possibility of your reconsidering this
decision?"

"No."

"Monseigneur, must I leave you with this answer?"

"Your staying cannot alter it, Monsieur Abbe."

"You understand this ends all overtures from France?"

"I understand."

"Is there nothing that you would ask?"

"I would ask Madame d'Angouleme to remember me."

[Illustration: "Louis! You are a king! You are a king!"]

He came forward like a courtier, lifted my hand to his lips, and kissed
it.

"With your permission, Monseigneur, I will now retire and ride slowly
back along the river until you overtake me. I should like to have some
time for solitary thought."

"You have my permission, Monsieur Abbe."

He bowed to Madame de Ferrier, and so moving to the door, he bowed again
to me, and took his leave.

His horse's impatient start, and his remonstrance as he mounted, came
plainly to our ears. The regular beat of hoofs upon the sward followed;
then an alternating tap-tap of horse's feet diminished down the trail.

Eagle and I avoided looking at each other.

A bird inquired through the door with inquisitive chirp, and was away.

Volcanoes, and whirlwinds, fire, and all force, held themselves
condensed and quiescent in the still room.

I moved first, laying Marie-Therese's message on the padlocked book.
Standing with folded arms I faced Eagle, and she as stonily faced me. It
was a stare of unspeakable love that counts a thousand years as a day.

She shuddered from head to foot. Thus a soul might ripple in passing
from its body.

"I am not worth a kingdom!" her voice wailed through the room.

I opened my arms and took her. Volcanoes and whirlwinds, fire, and all
force, were under our feet. We trod them breast to breast.

She held my head between her hands. The tears streamed down her face.

"Louis!--you are a king!--you are a king!"

THE END.

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WITH HOOPS _of_ STEEL

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* * * * *

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By HENRY THEW STEPHENSON

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THE STORY OF AN AMERICAN CRUCIFIXION

THE PENITENTES

By LOUIS HOW

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THE SUBTLE SPIRIT OF THE SEA

SWEEPERS OF THE SEA

The Story of a Strange Navy

By CLAUDE H. WETMORE

* * * * *

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A STORY TOLD BY A REAL STORYTELLER

A SON OF AUSTERITY

By GEORGE KNIGHT

* * * * *

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With a frontispiece by Harrison Fisher

12mo, Cloth. Price, $1.50

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The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

VIGOROUS, ELEMENTAL, DRAMATIC

A HEART OF FLAME

The story of a Master Passion

BY CHARLES FLEMING EMBREE

Author of "A Dream of a Throne."

* * * * *

The men and women in this story are children of the soil. Their strength
is in their nearness to nature. Their minds are vigorous, their bodies
powerful, their passions elemental, their courage sublime. They are
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The story is a story of great wrongs and of supreme love. It is done in
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It is a work of art--powerful, convincing and abiding. Powerful, because
true to life; convincing, for it has the saving touch of humor; and
abiding because love, like "A Heart of Flame," prevails in the end.

With illustrations by Dan Smith

12mo. cloth. Price, $1.50.

The Bowen-Merrill Company, _Indianapolis_

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