LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1977, 25 June 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

LE3 INCOMPSEHENSIBLEB. [By Victor Hugo.] , Book I. A man sat on a picket fence. Picket fences were invented by Charlemagne, and improved upon by Charles IL of England. Still the man sat on the fence. Rook 11, The fence surrounded a tall, gloomy building. The building had shutters at the window. The man was a Frenchman, There were other Frenchmen in the same neighborhood. They were in bed. Frenchmen were discovered by Oliver Cromwell, and subsequently patented by the author. They are copy ■ righted. All Frenchmen not bearing the signature of the author are spurious. It was night. It was a dark night. Darkness is a shadow that rises from the ground when the sun goes down. The man on the fence was thinking. His name was Llppiatt. Book 111. Lippiatt loved Maronette. Maronette was a girl. She knew Lippiatt; she did not know that Lippiatt loved her, Maronette lived in the gloomy house. Lippiatt did not tell Maronette that he loved her. He was a quiet man. Like all Frenchmen, he was the bravest man In thirteen counties. Ha was a tailor. A tailor is one who promises to have your clothes done Saturday, and then brings them round week after next. Lippiatt was poor. All heroes are poor. Book IV. Maronette opened a window and shied an old boot at Lippiatt ' Is that von Lippiatt ?’ she asked. ‘ Yes,’ said Lippiatt, Maronette laughed. * My father says I must marry the man who will bring him the Norwegian maelstrom,’ said Maronette. Book V. Like all tailors in France, Lippiatt was a good tailor. He stole a boat and started for the ooait of Norway. A fearful storm came on. The world drew on a fieavy cloak to protect it from the storm. The sea opened a thousand mouths to swallow Lippiatt. It was hungry for him. Hia heard and hair were filled with salt. Great, grasping hands of darkness reached down to snatch him. Lippiatt only laughed. The sea grew wilder. Monsters of the water crowded against the boat. They were reaching for Lippiatt. He steered his boat to avoid them. A wave averages twenty feet in height. It contains 400 tons of water. It is thicker at the base than at the top. In that respect it is like a pyramid. Bat it is not three cornered. It is oval in shape. A round wave is a waterspout, A waterspout is thick at the top and bottom and slender in the middle. Lippiatt knew this. He was not afraid of waves, Ha was fearful of waterspouts. Book VI. In four days Lippiatt arrived at the maelstrom. * It is for Maronette,’ said he. The maelstrom is shaped like a funnel. The lower end is at the bottom. The mouth is at the top. It is caused by the tides. The Norwegians suppose it is caused by a hole in the earth. Lfppxatt knew better. He went down in the maelstrom and fastened a rope around the lower end. To this rope ho adjusted blocks and pulleys. Then he climbed out of the pit and fastened the other end of the rope to the masthead. The blocks gave him a purchase. He rested. Book VII. Having rested, Lippiatt pulled on the rope. He pulled the maelstrom inside out. The bottom was then at the top. It spun around like an inverted top. Lippiatt drove a staple into it and fastened his line. Then ho set sail. The maelstrom followed. ‘ I shall marry Maronette,’ he said. Book VIII. Another man sat on the picket fence. It was Goudenay. Gondenay loved Maronette. Maronette loved Goudenay. Gondenay saw something coming Into the harbor. * What is that ?’ he asked.

It looked like an inverted funnel. It waa a thousand feet high. ‘ I don’t know,’ said Maronette. She was right. She didn’t. Book IX.

Lippiatt disembarked. He took the maelstrom on. his shoulders. Then he went to the gloomy house. He hung the maelstrom on the picket fence. ‘ How do you do, Gondenay P’ he asked. He know Gondenay. He had disappointed him about some trousers. ‘I am happy,’ said Gondenay; ‘I am going to marry Maronette. Lippiatt looked at Maronette. • Yes,’ she said, * I marry Gondenay this morning.’ Book X. Lippiatt went to the wedding. Ha gave Maronette a silver card receiver. Maronette smiled. Lippiatt went bank to the picket fence. He ate the maelstrom up. Book XI, As the wedding party went home, they saw a dead body lying by the picket fence. The point of the maelstrom was sticking out of the mouth. ‘ Good gracious!’ said Maronette. « Holy smoke 1’ exclaimed Qoudenay. It was Lippiatt. ANITA. Going from Chicago to Now York in a parlor car some years ago, I chanced to find myself seated opposite a lady, not young, and very plainly dressed, who attracted me strongly. What first drew my attention to her waa her voice. I had never before heard anything like it—clear deep, and sympathetic, every syllable perfectly accentuated, and so even, full, and flowing, that to listen to it charmed one irresistibly. I had just finished reading the New York “Herald,” when her ‘Please permit me to look at your paper for a moment ?’ fell on my ear like a note of music. Of course, I gave her the paper. She was a woman not far from sixty, largeframed and deep-chested. Her features were irregular, bat her blue eyes were replete with genius, and a finer shaped head never sat on a woman’s shoulders than that which I caught myself regarding with more of interest than politeness warranted. When the train stopped at Toledo, a handsome dark-eyed Italian girl came to the car window and hold up for our inspection a basket of oranues. The lady selected two or three from the great golden pile and tossed a half-dollar to the youthful fruit vendor. 1 That Italian girl’s face reminds me of one I once saw in dome.’ said my traveling companion, handing the oiaugos she had purchased to her colored maid, who just behind her, the very pink of dn&ky attendants. I was so fascinated by her voice and manner that before I well knew what I was saying I had blurted ont the question ; • A girl with a story, I am sure, and one which I should dearly like to know.’

The old lady smiled, and a wonderful smile it was, lighting up beautifully one of the moat expressive countenances I had ever seen. I can do no more than repeat her words; to catch the spirit of her marvellously dramatic way of speaking would be simply imposaible. * While at Rome, some years ago, I one day visited the studio of a rising American sculptor. Ho was quite a young man, handsome, and a great favorite. Flushed with his first success, ambitious and gifted, he had some reason to be pleased with the world and the world with him. He had just finished an exquisite statue of Ariadne forsaken, and it was to see this last and best work of his chisel that I had been invited to visit the studio. It represented Ariadne, just after awaking, alone on the Island of Naxos, deserted by Theceus, terrified and heart-broken. The grief, alarm, and despair depicted on the marble features were the very perfection of art, and nothing conld be more beautiful than the sorrowful loveliness cf the drooping head and imploring, outstretched hands. A crimson, 'ilk curtain, arranged so as to throw a soft, warm light over the statue became slightly displaced, and behind its heavy folds, with her head resting against the pedestal of an unfinished Demeter, I saw a young Italian peasant girl asleep. The movement aroused her, and she opened a pair of dark eyes that were intensely mournful in their slow, upward gaze. The small brown hands, the exquisitely turned wrist and arm, the largo sad eyes, dark as night, wine-red lips and long smooth braids of ebon hair, were purely Italian. I could not help locking at her in undisguised admiration. The young sculptor smiled, and said to the girl kindly, *• You may go, Anita, you will not be wanted to-day, but do not fail to come to-morrow. ’ ‘With a dumb, dog-like obedience, the girl arose, and, without a word, silently disappeared. ‘ Anita is the model who stood for Ariadne. She has the mute, grieved, startled expression that I wanted for this particular work ; and in that one respect, at least, my Ariadne cannot be surpassed. You see her here again In Dsmeter searching for her daughter. Sven the baud that holds the uplifted torch has something indescribably rad about it. That’s Anita’s own sorrowful look, I’d know it among a thousand.” ’ *IE Anita had been a model of wood, instead of flesh and blood, he could not have spoken more indifferently. I can’t tell why, but the girl interested me deeply. She semeed so lonely, so poor and friendless—one of the many hundreds of models who haunt the studios of Rome, living heaven only knows where or how. W ith her passionate southern blood she inherited the dark dreamy beauty of the Tuscan race ; and all the warm silent love of her heart she had given, unasked and nncared for, to the young sculptor. He did not return her love, and she knew it—just as one knows they cannot possess a star, because it is so high above them, * Anita’s affection was nothing to the handsome American absolutely nothing ; for he was soon to marry a wealthy lady of rank, young and lovely, to whom his poor model was no more to be compared than the light from a bundle of fagots is to bo likened to the moon. ‘ He entered his studio one morning with a song on his Ups, and his heart overrunning with gladness, for on the morrow he would marry the woman he loved —loved best in all the world—entered, to find Anita lying at the feet of Ariadne, dead.’ The unutterable pathos of the word as it fell, slow and distinctly, from the narrator’s lips, seemed to conjare up the form of the hapless girl, lying cold and still at the base of the statue, as vividly as if the scene had been enacted before one’s very eyes. ‘ Dead!’ I echoed blankly. 1 had not expected quite so tragic a climax. ‘ Aye, dead ’ That was Anita’s way of ending her troubles. She had taken a narcotic poison, quietly pillowed her head on her shapely arm, turned her white face up to the still whiter Ariadne’s, and so died peacefully, and with no outward sign of either pain or regret.’ I thanked my travelling companion for the story, and wondered meanwhile where I had seen that peculiar!} striking countenance before. It flashed across my mind in a moment. The elderly lady with the melodious voice and magnificent breadth of brow was Charlotte Cushman.