THE LEGEND OF THE JACQUEMINOT.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 4739, 2 September 1893, Page 2

THE LEGEND OF THE JACQUEMINOT.

(New York Times.) Gsn. Jacqueminot, one of Bonaparte's bravest officers, was a man of strong feelings and furious passions. He had always been accustomed to prompt and absolute obedience, and exacted it from all about him. While in the We3t Indie 3, he had married very young. He had but one child, Marguerite, who was his all, and ahe reciprocated hor father's fondness and affection. She was sixteen yeare old and a woman, for those who are of the tropics step from childhood to man or womanhood in a brieF stride. The girl was much alone and imaginative, and the son of her father's neighbour, who was only eighteen, was just homo from school. One afternoon her father returned from the Court of the firßt Consul in a bad temper and niaacd hia daughter. Her nurse, frightened out of her wits, stammered oat . that tks did not know whera she was. "With his fierce black eyes aflame, her father unbuckled his sword belt and put on in its place one which bore the most .deadly lethal weipon in the world, a thre3-cornered rapier, .nearly three feet in.lsngth, and as Bharp at the point as a cambric needle, and walked into the garden. There he saw his child Bitting with his neighbour's son, whose arms were abouf; her. Perfectly innocent in thought and deed, she sprang np and threw herself bebweua her lover and her father's rapier. All gentlemen wore a words then, and the young man drew his involuntarily. But what availed the defence of a youth against the beat blade in the light division ! After two or three passes, in which fcho B word of the tall, powerful soldier curlod viperiehly around that of his ant agonic t, with a quick disengage he ran the boy through the heart, and, shaking him off hiß sword, he fell heavily — dead. The girl had watched the duel a la mort with a face as pale as the mountain snows. She could not even scream... .She looked on with dilated eyes and a~face frozen in horror. As her father turned to speak, sbe screamed, "Do not touch me;" you will kill me. as you did Hubert!" and fell ao if she, too, were dead. She never spoke her father's name egain, and when the summer flowers "faded and d:ed, ehe died, too. When tho father discovered that his anger had. cost two lives, that the young man had loved with all the fire of hiß passionate race, but with a sentiment of the highest honour, and that the young girl, who iraa as innocent as a flower (and all this he learned from the few letters of her lover's th?.t were innocently hidden in the irl's prayer book), hia face grew paler and hia manner was geutler to all about him, while hia troopers, with a delicacy that belongs to the true soldier of Prance, respected the father's grief. There had been a clump of Louis Quinz9 ro?eB grown by the bench where the lovera were sitting when the General found them. This rcse ia beautifully shaped and of a, pale pink colo'ir, deepening ir> almost led at its heart. Thore ro3o branches were red with the youth's blocd, and the girl'a father ordered them to be cut completely awaj. The next spring green shoots giesr from tho roota again, and one day hia old gardener eaid: "Monsieur, will you come into the garden ? There is a miracle to be seen." ) The General went. He had not been

'near the epofc since the day when he e»w ' the eyes be loved, once bo eoft and happy, look upon him with' awful horror— a look that would haunt hrn for evermore. Truly it Bfiemed that a miracle had been wrought. One splendid stem bad grownup, and on it was one bud half opened.' It was not a pale pink, as the parent had been, but of a ep'end d cardinal velvety red— a royal rose, full of grace and pasBionate beiuty . The man who bad never flinched at- the charge of the wild Arab when he rode side by side with Kleber, and Etood the Bhock often of the Hungarian I and Polish lancers, put his handa to hia j eyei and wept like a boy, and the old gardener turned his face away that he I might nob Bee the other's grief, whi(e he softly whispered a prayer for the ginl/eaa soul that bad gone to God, toe fairest flower that ever bloomed am! 2 the. rosea i and lilie3 of France. "Shall I cdt it down, my niater?" raid the old man, Boftly, after a few minutes' silence. ■ " Ho,. it is the flower," said the other. 'It 'grew ami floutiahe-i, and this was 'the l*'g<uid told me one sof o afternoon in the eweafeat tones in. the world, of the- lover's- gift because it (sprang- from a lover's heart's life blood, of- the queen of roaes, the royal Jacqneminot.