'Thank you, thank you, M. Thiebaut: this letter is for my mistress.' But the inquisitive old man either did not or would not understand Margaret's hint
to him to retire, and Madame de Vatteville was obliged to tell him to leave the room.
'Not a penny to bless herself with, though she has come to a better apartment!' muttered he, enraged at the disappointment to his curiosity'and yet as proud as an aristocrat!'
The abbess approached the casement, broke the seal with trembling hand, and read as follows:
'I have at length been able to treat with a merchant for the article in question, and have, after much difficulty, obtained a sum of 25,000 francsfar beyond anything I could have hoped. But the sum is to be paid in instalments, at long intervals. It may therefore be more convenient for you, under your peculiar circumstances, to accept the offer I now make of a pension of 1500 francs, to revert after your decease to the servant whom you mentioned as so devotedly attached to you. If you are willing to accept this offer, the bearer will hand you the necessary documents, by which you are to make over to me all further claim upon the property placed in my hands; and on your affixing your signature, he will pay you the first year in advance.Simon.'
However Simon settled the matter with his conscience, the abbess, trained in the school of adversity to be content with being preserved from absolute want, passed the remainder of her life quietly and happily with her good Margaret, both every day invoking blessings on the head of him whom they regarded as a generous benefactor. Madame de Vatteville lived to the age of one hundred, and her faithful Margaret survived only a few months the mistress to whom she had given such affecting proofs of attachment.
But Simon's detestable fraud proved of no use to him. After keeping his treasure for several years, he thought the Emperor's coronation presented a favourable opportunity for disposing of it. Unfortunately for him, his grasping avarice one morning suggested a thought which his ignorance prevented his rejecting: 'Since this rubyold-fashioned and stained as it iscan be worth so much, what would be its value if freed from all defect, and in modern setting?' And he soon found a lapidary, who, for a sum of 3000 francs, modernised it, and effaced the spot, and with it the impress, the stamp of its antiquityall that gave it value, beauty, worth! This wanting, no jeweller could recognise it: it was no longer worth a thousand crowns.
It was thus that the most splendid ruby in Europe lost its value and its fame; and its name is now only to be found in The Lapidaries' Guide , as that which had once been the most costly of gems. It seemed as if it could not survive the last of the illustrious house to which it owed its introduction into Europe, and its name.
HENRY TAYLOR
and popular distaste for habits of reflection shall continue the order of the day, so long will it be difficult for writers of Mr Taylor's type to popularise their meditations; to see themselves quoted in every provincial newspaper and twelfth-rate magazine; to be gloriously pirated by eager hordes at Brussels and New York; or to create a furor in 'the Row' on the day of publication, and turn bibliopolic premises into 'overflowing houses.' The public asks for glaring effects, palpable hits, double-dyed colours, treble X inspirations, concentrated essence of sentiments, and emotions up to French-romance pitch. With such a public, what has our author in common? While they make literary demands after their own heart, and expect every candidate for their not evergreen laurels to conform to their rules, Mr Taylor calmly unfolds his theory, that it is from 'deep self-possession, an intense repose' that all genuine emanations of poetic genius proceed, and expresses his doubt whether any high endeavour of poetic art ever has been or ever will be promoted by the stimulation of popular applause. He denies that youth is the poet's prime. He contends that what constitutes a great poet is a rare and peculiar balance of all the facultiesthe balance of reason with imagination, passion with self-possession, abundance with reserve, and inventive conception with executive ability. He insists that no man is worthy of the name of a poet who would not rather be read a hundred times by one reader than once by a hundred. He affirms that poetry, unless written simply to please and pamper, and not to elevate or instruct, will do little indeed towards procuring its writer a subsistence, and that it will probably not even yield him such a return as would suffice to support a labouring man for one month out of the twelve. Tenets like these are not for the million. The propounder they regard as talking at them, not to them. His principles and practice, his canons of taste, and his literary achievements, are far above out of their sighthis merit they are content to take on trust, by the hearing of the ear, a mystery of faith alone.