in the world where they would be more esteemed than they are in their own neighborhood.

At election times I never found that it was a ground of objection to a republican candidate that he was a rich man. Social hostility becomes intense only when it is excited by political hostility. There has been a sort of understanding amongst many reactionary rich people in France, since the last elections, to give as little employment as possible to the wage-earning classes, in order to

punish them for voting in favor of republican candidates. This has excited much natural indignation amongst the working-classes, who think they have as good a right to vote according to their own judgment as any other electors, and who consider that wealth has its duties as well as its pleasures; but when those duties are even partially and incompletely fulfilled, when there is even any visible desire to fulfill them, there is no hostility against riches, except amongst anarchists and agitators.

Philip Gilbert Hamerton.

SEVERAL years ago, my doctor ordered me to break up all old associations, find my way into some quiet place, and there rest for a year or two. Accordingly, I left the United States, hurry, and money-making behind me, crossed the St. Lawrence, and, after long and lazy loiterings through French Canada, settled down in the obscure little hamlet of St. Robideaux. My chief business was to think of nothing, and to sleep. I lived there, if you choose to call it living, for a year. St. Robideaux was quiet and hushed as any moor-hen's nest in the reeds. Nothing more active than dreams was ever there hatched into life.

The village, a cluster of gray cottages with steep red and yellow roofs, lay in a hollow of the hills, up the sides of which wheat-fields and orchards stretched, trying to warm themselves in the chilled sunlight. The river, cool and dark, flowed lazily alongside of the grassy road, which we called Rue Honoré. Sometimes a lumberman floated down on his raft from the great pine forests above. You could hear him shouting to the boys, or singing, "Ay! ay! Douce sœur Doré!" until he was out of sight.

The little auberge, with Repos des Voyageurs thrust out upon a creaking sign from the sycamore in front, stood close to the river. Vain hospitality! No voyageur except myself came to St. Robideaux in that year. Madame Baltarre, when she had finished her work and mixed her pot-au-feu, sat, with her knitting, on the gallery of the house, like the other women, and watched the sun from day to day as it ripened the peas in her garden below, or tinged and purpled the pale green grapes on the wall. She had abundance of leisure. She would look for hours at the low, bellying clouds swooping down all day long over the ramparts of the hills, to disappear in the gorge below.

The old curé and M. Demy came up every afternoon to bear me company on my end of the gallery. We were all, I think, of good accord: hence we talked but little.

I had brought several different kinds of tobacco with me. It was a solemn event when we opened a new package. We puffed our pipes in silence awhile, and, if the flavor was good, we nodded to each other and loved the world better than before.

"There were two live people in St. Robideaux before you came, monsieur," Père Drouôt would say, 66 our friend Olave Demy, here, and myself. Now there are three. When we talk with you on literature and affairs, I feel that my hand is on the wheel of the great machine yonder."

The "literature" which we discussed was an occasional two months old copy of the London Times which the curé produced to enliven my exile.

"I have a friend in Quebec who sends me this great sheet," he would say. "You will have heard, perhaps, that it is called the Thunderer in England? Ah, ça, ça ! What a world we live in! The sweep of it quite takes away my breath!" and he would gaze with awe at the yellow page, fold it carefully, put it into his pocket, and light his pipe again. The "affairs" which occupied us were the ripening of the curé's corn or the condition of the hay in St. Robideaux parish. In the morning we usually sat under the great cedar in the cure's garden, to discuss the effect of that day's weather on these crops; and in the afternoon, when the sun came around to the gallery of the inn, we migrated to it and talked it all over again. No one was offended if the others occasionally dropped into a doze.

The brief hot summer crept thus slow ly away, and the briefer high-colored autumn began to be whitened with frost. M. Labadie now came sometimes to smoke a pipe with us. His summer's work was over; his harvest having gone down the river in two great cases on the last raft. All the village assembled to see it go, and most of the lookers-on fervently threw the sign of the cross after it for good luck. Everybody was a friend to M. Labadie.

"There is no such honey in America," said Madame Baltarre. "Pure juice of the flowers."

The little farm of the bee-grower lay a mile or two north of the village: its

only crops were white clover and violets. The old gray house with its steep red roof rose out of the gardens. The sun always shone there, and the air was heavy with perfume; there was no sound but the buzzing of the black, goldbanded Italian bees, darting here and there through the sweet clover. Nature in St. Robideaux slept, with long, full, quiet breaths; but in the old bee-farm she woke with a cheerful smile.

M. Labadie, according to Père Drouôt, was the only one of the habitants "of education." He was even more silent than the other slow-speaking villagers; but in the matter of bees, at least, I found him learned, full of facts and humorous, keen observations. His bees were entirely human to him, always spoken of as "Messieurs;" a shrewd, intelligent race, with whom he had been allied by business relations and friendship for forty years.

On Sundays I used to watch for the tall, stooping figure of the bee-grower, clothed in a brown frogged surtout made twenty years ago, as he came down the road to church, leading his little girls, Rose and Josephine, by the hand. After mass was over the three would stop to shake hands and chatter with their neighbors, and then they would betake themselves to a sunny corner of the churchyard, where a grave, apart from all others, was covered with white clover and violets. The bees hummed over it all day long. They would kneel there to say a prayer; and then seat themselves on a low stone bench, near by, to eat their little gâteaux for the noon meal.

I joined them one warm afternoon, and observed that when anything of interest was said they glanced eagerly to the grave, as if some unseen listener hid there. Little Josephine, with whom I had an old friendship, whispered to me, nodding downward,

"Voilà ma chère mère. She expects us on the Sunday afternoon."

Then M. Labadie, his gnarled face a shade paler, explained to me in laborious English that it would have been their comfort to keep her at home: in the garden, par exemple, which was her joy, or in the orchard, where were her seat and work-table under the great plum-tree for thirty years. But that was not ground consecrated. "So it is that she lies here, monsieur," waving both hands downward. "But it is her own violets and clover that grow here; and mes amis," looking at the bees and lowering his voice," they do not forget; they are always with her."

A few weeks after this, one cold November day, M. Labadie consented to remain with my other friends, to share my supper of a fricassee of bacon, potatoes, and chives, and brown bread. Madame Baltarre's coffee was hot and delicious, and we sat about the table, which she had drawn up to the great open fire after supper, sipping it thoughtfully, while she removed the dishes and set the apartment to rights. There was another fireplace in the long, low room, and when she had finished she pinned a fresh white apron over her snuff-colored gown, and sat down beside it, at her sewing. The red glow of the firelight twinkled on the white floor, the old mahogany armoire, the picture of the Child Jesus with a bleeding heart, and the shelves full of red cups and plates. A heavy snow had fallen that day, and the lonely white stretches outside of the window and the flat graying sky made the warmth and snugness within more cheerful. We all felt it. The curé flung another log on the fire, opening up red deeps of heat; we pulled our chairs closer. Olave Demy was persuaded to tell about the October bear-hunt again; the curé sang a plaintive ballad in Canadian patois, with a voice like a fine cracked flute; and I adroitly turned the talk so as to bring in some of my own best stories. They had immense sucThe French habitant has a hun

cess.

gry curiosity about everything belonging to "the States." It is to him what Europe is to the untraveled American.

"M. Labadie," said the curé, "is the only person in St. Robideaux who has been to the States. Before you came, monsieur, he used every day to give us of his experience in that great country."

M. Labadie adjusted his waistcoat and looked into his cup with a vain attempt at unconsciousness.

"You traveled in the West, monsieur, in the South?"

"I did not penetrate so far as I had purposed," he said gravely, for the subject was too weighty to be approached carelessly. After sipping his coffee critically awhile, he continued: "It was not I, monsieur. Madame Labadie, my little Jeannette, she had ambitions for me. She said when we were first married,

You must visit the States. You must see the world, Georges.' But the children came fast, one, four, six, eleven. I had then but few colonies of Messieurs my friends, to keep soup in the pot. Sometimes there was no soup. But Jeannette still cries, You must go to see the world. There are bee-farms in Massachusetts, in Cincinnati, in Califor nia. You must visit them all.

"Bien, the children, they grow, they leave us, they sicken and come home, some of them, to die. We have only Rose and Josephine left. But in all these years Jeannette lays by money secretly, sou by sou. Then she gives it to me. Go, mon ami,' she says,— go to California, to Florida. See all the bee-farms in that great country.' I could not balk her, monsieur. She had worked for it for thirty years. I went." "To California?"

6

"No; I did not even reach Le Niagarra, which I had hoped much to see." He set down his cup nervously. "Traveling is more expensive than we supposed. I was careful, most careful. But when I reached Utica, on the second day, I found my money would just take me

leigh!' But, monsieur, when I see the finger-nails of a woman not clean, and her shoe-laces untied," — the good father shook his head," something is wrong in her soul. Bien! The one place where I found her most often was on the gallery of M. Labadie's house. There she sat in the sun. She was enraptured with the sun, with the old house, with the fields of white clover and violets; she lapped up honey as a cat does cream; she caressed Rose and Josephine. I protest, monsieur, my flesh crept when I saw her thick fingers paddling with the little hands of the children. M. Labadie sat beside her, telling her of Messieurs the bees, of the witty sayings of Rose and Josephine, and of his wife, poor Jeannette, with tears streaming from his eyes. Well, well, monsieur, you know what occurs when a man talks to another woman of his wife, with the tears streaming! In September they were married." Père Drouôt shrugged his shoulders, spreading out both hands. "Ah-a! No sooner was Veuve Badleigh established in the easy-chair on the porch, in the sun, mistress of the house, the bees, the little girls, and poor M. Labadie, than presto! all is changed!

"I know not what went on there. Nobody has ever known. M. Labadie was poor, as all we others. One does not raise and clothe and feed and nurse and bury so many little ones by the help only of a few bees, and meantime live on meat and white bread, like a governor-general. My faith, no! The table and clothes of our friend had always been scant and poor. But he was never in debt, not a penny. Yet in six months after his second marriage he had mortgaged his farm to raise money for the new yellow gowns and rich plats of madame! Ah, monsieur, it was execrable! St. Robideaux was convulsed with rage and pity. But we kept silent, such regard have we for M. Labadie.

"Alas! this was nothing to that

which was to come. A young man appeared in the village, a vulgar fellow, lean, pimpled, loud-talking, dressed in the New York fashion. His oaths and his jokes made the very air of the street filthy. He was Paul Badleigh, son of madame. She had not told M. Labadie of this son until he appeared. He swaggers about the bee-farm, he makes servants of Rose and Josephine, he swears at their father. Was he her son? Ah, monsieur, how can I tell? Sometimes I think he is a thief, a vaurien. I know him to be a drunkard and a gambler, and she, perhaps, is an accomplice. But how can I tell?

"So the autumn goes, and the winter comes. Paul Badleigh had been drinking hard, and was not able to leave the farm. The Veuve Badleigh (I never could bring myself to call her Madame Labadie) came into the village at times, more unclean, more watchful, than ever. She did not take the trouble now to flatter the poor villagers; she had reaped her harvest.

"Rose and Josephine came in to mass, the thin, scared little creatures. When they met their old friends, they ran past like guilty things. The shame of that woman and of her foul son was upon the children."

"As to M. Labadie," interrupted Olave Demy," he never came into the village, not even for mass. The humiliation was too heavy upon him."

"I met him once on the road, near the church," said Père Drouot; "but he crept out of sight, as if he were the thief and gambler. When he passed the churchyard he turned his head, that he might not see his poor Jeannette's grave." He sighed, sipped his coffee, and continued:

"It was about this time, monsieur, that my friend Olave and myself were sitting here by the fire, just as now, one cold evening. The wind was blowing a hurricane. Suddenly it sounded, as tonight, with a shriek down the gorge,