The Lion's Claw.

Waikato Times, Volume XXIV, Issue 1973, 28 February 1885, Page 5 (Supplement)

The Lion's Claw.

By Fba>,cois Coitee.

Julien de Rhe, lieutenant in the navy, had come back in a sad condition from his expedition to Cochin China ; and when, after three long months of illness in his Touraine home, he grew strong enough to walk a few yards on the terrace of the banks of the Loire, with his mother and sister on each aide of him— how lovingly they had nursed him, the good bouls ! — those shirering fiis still camo over him sometimes if the autumn winds were colder than usual. " You should go to Pau for the winter," said the doctor ; " the climate is mild and not too hot — just the thing for you — calming and soothing ; and you will oomo back to your mother, in three months' time, a man again." And so it was that, toward the middle of November, Julien de Ilh6, leaning from his sunlit window in the Hotel Garderes, looked out on the sublime panorama of the Pyrenees,

putting the while at those cigarettes which seem so delicious to a convalescent, and fell to thinking of those he had smoked formerly in secret between decks on the Borda. They brought back all the sensations of his sixteenth year. " Why, the place is full of pretty women," said the young fellow the first time ha went out to listen to the band in the Place Royale, and to stroll in the sun in front of the statue of good King Henry; and though he was neither a libertine nor a fop, the sailor, beginning to enjoy life again, dressed hiuiaelf in his best cap, and his frock coat with the three new gold bands, and the rosette of the Legion of Honor, that his mother had brought to him when he lay in bed so ill that he never hoped to wear it but once— on the black cloth of his colfin. It had been a good idea, all the same, to come to Pau. How beautiful it all was— the sun that warmed without burning, the blue heavens, the wide landscape, with its far-off boundary of hills, and beyond, its enow peaks rising into the sky ! And how amusing it was to stroll about in that cosmopolitan crowd, among the fair foreigners, and listen to their voices talking every language in Europe, and mingling together like the different songs of the birds in an aviary. It is true that there were some disagreeable sights as well — such as the young Englishman, for instance, in the last stage of consumption, who was wheeled about in a little carriage by his servant, wrapped in shawls and comforters ; the Englishman, who had eyes like a boiled cod fish, and wore a black respirator over his mouth. Ah ! it was enough to make one shiver. And then after the first movement of pity — men are such egotists — Julien remembered what he looked like himself when he landed at Toulon, as thin as a skeleton, with cuclea round his eyes like two rings of chocolate; and he thought that, now he was cured, he had had a narrow escape. And Julien Rhe felt that it was a good thing to be alive, to breathe the warm soft air out there in the sunshine, well dressed, freshly shaved, and proud of the rosette at his buttonhole. And ho gave money to the beggars, gazed after the pretty women who passed him, and at last stopped, feeling quite softened at the sight, to watch the pretty little American girls, in black stockings and gloves and floating white dresses, who -were dancing in a ring around one of the trees of the Place lioyale, to the tune of the double-quick march which the band was playing. Ho wss just ready to fall in love, this happy convalescent, and it was a case of love at first sight the day he saw Mademoiselle Olga Barbarine, the most beautiful girl of all the Russian colony, jump from her horse in front of the Hotel Gasaion, where she lived with her mother. It was five o'clock in the evening, and she bad jmt returned from the hunt. The five or six admirers, ira pink, who accompanied her had jumped off their horaea together, to help her down. She took the first hand that came, and as soon as she was off her horse, she knocked on one of the tables in the verandah with the handle of her riding-whip, and, calling for a cup of milk, which she drank at a draught, stood there a moment, laughing, looking like some goddess of old with her slender form distinctly outlined as if moulded in her black riding-habit, and the waves of her shining auburn hair loosened from her man's hat and falling on her shouldera. She held her empty oup in both hands, satisfied, and, as it were, intoxicated by the fresh beverage, and behind her the setting eun lit up her golden hair till it encircled her face like a halo. Then, suddenly, growing grave again, she put down the cup on the table, gave a slight, disdainful bow to the group in pink, and walked, with a queenly step, into the hotel, tapping her boot with her riding-whip. Throe days later Julien de lthu, who had epent his time asking his friends, " Who* is. she ? lam madly in love with her ; I adore her," etc., was introduced — not a very difficult matter— to tho Barbarines, and made one of the squadron of admirers of the beautiful Russian. Waa she really a Kussian, tbis intoxicating creature, who had been galloping about all day and waltzing all night, ever since the beginning of the season? Yes, by her reputed father, her mother's first husband, the (Jount Barbarine. Bat every one knew the mother had been divorced just at the very time of her daughter's birth, and that Madame Barbarine, whose father was a New York banker named Jacobson, had long kept up a liaison that was almost public, with a northern prince— some Christian or Oscar. Had she any nationality, tbis ohild who had been brought up, by turns, in a Scotoh nursery, in a convent at Naples, in a school at Geneva ; who had slept half her nights on the cushions of express trains, and in whose memory, as in a stereoscope, there was nothing but a succession of watering-places, sea-side towns, winter cities, and other places of fashionable resort, to which, for the last fifteen years, her mother— still a handsome woman, in spite of the eruption on her face— had carried her blcue person, her ennui, her samovar, and her pet monkeys ? Alas I she had no country, this strange gill, who, with all the modesty of a maiden, had the audacity of a boy, and who said, laughing at herself, " As for me, I am neither from London, nor from Paris, nor from Vienna, nor from St. Petersburg. lam from the table d' hote." Had she any relations ? None, it seemed. Her true father — the Oscar, or Christian, to whom Madame Barbarine so often alluded— had been dead several years, and her father, according to the law— the liussian count — had never taken any notice of her. He was completely ruined, and had no other means of existence but his gun. He was a dead-shot, and earned his living by winning prizes at the pigeon matches, like a sort of civilised Lenthcratocking. As for the countess, though she had periodic attacks of motherly sentiinentalism that set one's teeth on edge they rang so false, she was blessed with the moat perfect, absolute, and utter selfishness. When Olga, who was then eight years old, had had typhoid fever, and nearly died of it, Madam Barbarine, while she was nursing her little girl for appearance's sake, never once forgot to put on her greased gloves at night to keep her hands white. Julien do 11116 learned all these things when he enrolled himself in tho flying squadron that was always mameuvring round about Mademoiselle Olga Barbarine. Yet he fell in love with her desperately, this strange and touching girl, who looked him so straight in the face, and who, the day the lieutenant was introduced to her by a mutual friend, said to him, as she lit her phcresh oigarette : "Ah 1 you are the man who is so much in love with me ? How do you do ?" And she shook his hand like a man. He fell in lovg with her, the good honest sailor, and to love her all the more that, before long, he came to understand and pity her. For he was not mistaken ; Olga was strange, and badly brought up ; but she had no coquetry, and her boul wa3 proud and truo. Who knows? Perhaps she feit the vanity of her life of pleasure and agitation. What is certain is that she judged, and judged severely, all those young lellowa who danefcd attendance upon her in the hunting field, and w rote their names on her programme every evening. They were all in lo\e with her, but none of them really respected her, for there was not one among them who had H3 yet made up his mind to ask her to marry him. And she treated them pretty roughly, and called them to older — with a good stroke of her riding-whip, like the handsome horsewoman ehe. was— when they ventured to

whisper too close in her ear in the whirl of a waltz, or to squeeze the hand she held out to them in good-fellowship. Juhen, whose refinement of heart stood him instead of quickness of perception— it is often the simpleminded who «cc the mo3t clearly — had discovered the hidden treaeuies of loyalty in the soul of this patrician, who was in reality so unhappy. He loved her for her beauty certainly, and hia senses reoled when he felt her lean upon hia arm in the pauses of the danee — this grand, fair woman, with her dark eyes, and her ckin that seemed so like the rose afler a storm, when, in her nonchalant way, she talked to him, intoxicating him with the violet fragrance of her breath and the glitter of her stariy eyes. But be loved her as well, he loved her above all for the pain she hid so proudly ; and hia heart burned as he watched the sad, sorrowful glance that Olga bent on her mother when Madame Barbarine, at her four-to-six tea — sitting with her back to the light to hide the black spotd on her nose, against which even the anti-bolboa was powerless — hinted almost opsnly at her royal conquests in the northern courts. He would marry her 1 Yes, he would take her away from these perilous surroundings. He would take her to his own mother, who was a good woman. She should breathe the purifying and strengthening atmosphere of a home that was worthy of the name. In a word, he would save her ! He often thought of it; he thought of nothing else now. He even fancied sometimes that Olga had guessed his intention, and at Madame Barbarine's four-to-six, where Olga treated all her admirers in that frank, boyish way of hers, when she handed the sailor his tea in a glass, after the Prussian fashion, he thought he saw in the depths of the young girl's eyes a sweet far-away light that seemed to respond to his generous pity and infinite tenderness. " Yes, mademoiselle, my sick leave is up in a week. I shall leave Fau to-morrow. I shall spend a few days in Touraine with my sifter, and from there I shall go back to Brest as aide-de-camp to the naval prefect. In a year or eighteen months I shall go to sea again." They were alone in the reading-room of the hotel, standing near an open window, with thousands of stars twinkling and glimmering above them in the dark heavens. " Good-bye, then, and a pleasant journey," answered Olga with her fresh, firm voice. " I want to ask you for something, Monsieur de llhe. Yes, that hon'a claw mounted on a little gold ring that you wear at your watchchain. I have a fancy for it. It came from a lion that you once killed out hunting in Africa, didn't it ? 1 am a sort of wild animal myself. That trinket pleases me. Give it to me ; I will keep it in remembrance of you." Juhen unfastened tha little charm and put it into the girl's hand ; then suddenly he caught her hand in both his own and whispered, passionately : " I love you 1 Will you be my wife ?" Olga loosened her hand gently, still holding the lion's claw ; then, crossing her arms upon her breast, she looked Juhen full in the face for a moment with no sign of emotion on her own. " No," she said at la t, "no I And yet yon are the first man who has loved me, and told me so in that straightforward way. It ia for that reason that I refuse." " Olga ! " cried Juhen in a changed voice. "Listen to me," Bhe went on, interrupting him by a gesture, "and understand thoroughly why I answer no. I feel that I am not worthy of you, and I should not make you happy. You remember tuat letter of your sister's that you complained of having lost? Well, you dropped it here, and I picked it up and read it. Your sister anbwered the confessions you had made of your feelings tor me — feelings that I had guessed long ago. She rejoiced at tnem, like the simple, innocent child she is, but in terms tnat have shown me what a wide, what a terrible difference there is between me and a real maiden. When I read that letter I saw what your family was like. Yours is an old and honorable nouse — ia it not ? — into which you should bring none but an honorable wife. You should thank God, Monsieur de line, that you have a grey-haired mother of whom yon can never think without feeling a proud tenderness melting your heart. I have a mother, too, but I have been forced to judge her. You have only seen the ridioulous side, monsieur, but I know her better. If you were to ask her for my hand, she would refuse you, because you are of the minor nobility, and your fortune is moderate. My mother has made up her mind I am to make a grand marriage ; er, if not— if not, she will find me something else. UeinJ You seel anl pretty experienced for a girl of nineteen 1 It is horrible — is it not? But so it is. And that is why wo were at Nice last winter, at Skeweningue last summer, and why we are now at Pau. That is why we knock about from one end of Europe to another like so much baggage ; why we never sleep but^ in hotel beds, and only eat at the table d' hate. My mother was almost a royal princess, you know, and ever since I was fifteen she has given me to understand that I am destined to be at least an archduchess, if only a lefthanded one. Marry a gentleman hardly more than a mere bourgeois 1 Why, in her eyes, I should be lowering myself. Ah, you must be disgusted with me ; and lam ashamed of myself I No, don't deny it. No, you could never take me to your mother — I, whose heart has been bo defiled— as your wife. Besides, I am only an expensive and useless luxury that you have no need of, and that could never make you happy. And, for that matter, I don't love you — I don't love any one. Love is among the things that have been forbidden me. Farewell, Monsieur de llhe. Go away, and say no more, for God's sake. Only — you will leave me your lion's claw, won't you? It will remind mo of a true-hearted man, to whom I have acted like a true-hearted woman. No ; say no more. We must part for ever. Farewell."

Three years after the steam transport, Da Cowdic, returniug from Senegal, touched at tbe Canaries to take in letters. After she had .started on her journey through the rough night again, the boatswain came into the otticera' cabin and laid a packet of newspapers on the table. Juhen dc llho opened a news sheet about threo weeks old, from Pans, and read under ihe heading " Movements and Whereabouts," the following hueb :— " His Majesty tbe King of Swabia, who ia travelling incognito, under the name of the Count of Augsberg, arrived here yesterday evening. " An annoying accident happened at the station on His Majesty's arrival. The Baroness de Hall, who, ouly accompanied by her mother, the Countess Baibarino, was travelling with His Majesty, lot a jewel— of alight value, though she apparently set great store on it. It is a simple lion's claw mounted on a small circlet of gold. Madame de Hall has oliered a reward ol two hundred franoa lor the recovery ol this jewel." " Look out, Julien, you are forgetting the hour of your watch, my dear fellow." " Thank you," said Juhen de line, throwing down tbe paper, and waking as from ft drutiin. That night the man at the wheel, who was alone on the poop with the officer of tha watch, saw him put his handkerchief to his (ace several times. There was a good d~al of , wind and sleet, yet, where he stood, it oould not have reaohed him. — Translated from the French by Mademoiselle Bouchier,