KEPT TRYST WITH DESPAIR

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXV, Issue 5134, 28 November 1903, Page 12

KEPT TRYST WITH DESPAIR

(By Minnie Robinson.) When I was in Paris I used in the early morning to walk in tbo Luxcin-. bourg. It was so still and fresh tlion, that gracious smiling French garden, I seemed to get all tho charming siclo of tho French nature from it at that time. I would walk up ono blooming chestnut alley and davvn*anotiicr, and then pace about the leaping fountain in the basin. Then, at last reluctantly, I would mount the steps to the terrace and turn towards tbo groat iron gate that faced on tho Boulevard St. I was following some lectures at the Soi< honno that .spring. ; ' It was then that there would often cross my path a strange, broad-humped figure of an old woman. Her skirts stood out like a market woman’s, and wore dreadfully dingy. About her was pinned and hocked in twisted fashion an old black cloak, trimmed with tattered lace; on her bead a sort of compromise between hat and bonnet, mado of black velvet and netting, and knotted under her chin. To soo her from behind, in her draggled, greenish-black clothes, hobbling along slowly in that leafy, flower-adorned garden, her stooped Jittlo figure gave a sombre impres-, sion of abandoned old age. But to come face lo face with her. with tuo morning sunlight encircling bor, was quite another thing. I had quite start tho first time I saw her thus. To walk along behind what seems a symbolic figure of old ago on tho verge of tbo tomb, for a number of days, and then to coino upon its reverse side suddenly, and meet a gloaming pair of blue eyes, with eternal youth and hope

written in them, is not altogether common.

Never have I seen such a pair of eyes; blue as a summer-heaven, where gleams of the sun appeared to- concentre in tiny breaks of glory, and that looked past you serenely into some delicious land of promise. What did it matter that the wisps of hair straying out from the velvet hood about her face .were whiter than linen, and the wrinkles there like furrows long since plowed and replowed P I never, thought of them in the presence of those eyes. They were seeing a vision that had nothing to do with the passersby, nor the rustling trees above. Some peerless, sunny vision without a shadow in it, for they wore clear and untroubled as a Swiss lake at its fairest. I sometimes fancied them looking on one of those dreamy cloudlands that one sometimes sees outlined low down on a brilliant blue July or August sky, like the shadowy blue and white outline of a Beulah country of calm and peace. I could come and go before her as much as I chose. She never saw mo, nor any one else. Even when she was joshed by some impatient, hurrying individuals she never looked at them, but just tottered aside and seemed to go on dreaming her eternal sunny dream. I had followed a certain lino of work at the Sorbonne for some weeks, and at last I decided to change professors in order to take up a new subject. So I went one Thursday to hear the new professor lecture on Voltaire in the Aphitheatro Bicheliou. I chose a place near the desk and sat down. Then I looked about me. A few feet away sat the huddled up little black figure that I had seen so often in the Luxembourg. She was dreaming now, with her eyes shut, nodding gently from side to side., When the professor came in she went on nodding just the same in spite of tho applause that greeted his arrival. After awhUe, though, she opened them, not to look at him, hut into that mysterious glad country unknown to alj those delvers after terrestrial know-

ledge about her. Then sho slept again, and waked again to her dream. This continued throughout tbo lecture. As long as I attended those lectures sho was there in her same place, wliotherSt stormed or shone. Sho had a great old cotton umbrella that she 1 seemed to use as a kind of walking , ‘ cane, and a black bag, where I used | to see her mechanically storo_ stray’ newspapers that sho picked up in tho; Luxembourg. I never saw her read , them, though. 1 Ono day after I had become a littlo acquainted with tbo persons who camo ■ to the lectures I asked a babituo if ho knew anything about that littlo old i . lady sitting over there before us, nodd- ! ing. Ho smiled and remarked that she was a landmark—“a prehistoric relic, ! you might say,” he added, “for sho, Siscd to como here when tho Old Sor-j i honno was standing. It’s more than 10 j rears now, you know, since it was torn j away.” i “So long as that, and sho has been) coming hero all that timer” I said. ! “'So long as that, _ I can positively| . affirm,” lie said, decidedly, “and there is , n tradition in tho Sorbonno that she . lias been coming hero .more than 50 years—hero on this spot. Not m this ■ hall, you understand, but the part of) | the Old Sorbonno that it replaced.” | [ “But it is- most extraordinary. .! must bo very learned.” “On tbo contrary, she never seems to 1 hear a word. More than half the timoj i sho is sleeping, and tho other part youj i would say sho was gazing at tbo stars, j > to soo her expression.” I “How curious” I murmured. j : ‘Thcro is a story that goes tho! . rounds, and has been doing it for many; . years—you may take it for what it is: 1 worth; I dare say it’s much embroidered, > by this time—that somo 50 years ago, j

when she was a pretty young girl of 20, she was affianced to a fine’young fellow who was to take his degree at the Sorhonne. Her people wore poor and couldn’t give her a dot. but that didn’t matter to him, and they were going to marry when he took his degree—the day after, I believe—and they were going to work their way along together. One of those impossible, chimerical marriages, you see—no. sense in them. "Well, the day came for him to take his degree right here on this spot—though, of course, in the Old Sorbonne—and she was there with her mother with flowers, so the-gossips say. It was to have been a memorable day, for he was a brilliant fellow. The young men received their degrees, and he never appeared; had died of heart disease, alone in his room after ho had dressed for the occasion.

“The gossips say, too, that when, they told her she just seemed stunned for a bit, and then, afterward, they couldn’t make her understand that ho was dead. Sho didn’t cry or make a scene, hut the day after sho put on her hat and came to tho lecture hall, just as she had done the day before. At first they tried, to dissuade her. She seemed to listen and was gentle, but she came, nevertheless. And they say she’s been doing it ever since. All her kith and kin are dead now, long since, , and she, lives' some where in tho quarter. She’s always alone. No one has ever seen her accompanied by any one in my time. It’s a miraclo that nothing ever happens to her, for she san hardly hobble along, and never seems to look at any one along her way.” “Yes, it is strange that nothing has happened to her.” I said, “hut, then, there is a Providence that leads the dreamer in this world.”