Antonia

[Illustration 01: THE LOVERS' TRYST They sat there in the darkness, amid bushes laden with flowers, in the splendor of early summer, which retains all the charm of spring.]

CONTENTS CHAPTER I CHAPTER II CHAPTER III CHAPTER IV CHAPTER V CHAPTER VI CHAPTER VII CHAPTER VIII

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS THE LOVERS' TRYST JULIEN'S RUSE A DISTURBED CONFERENCE JULIEN ESCORTS MADAME D'ESTRELLE JULIE AT THE CONVENT AT CHAILLOT THE CHRISTENING OF THE LILY

ANTONIA

To M. EDOUARD RODRIGUES

To you who adopt orphan children, and who do good modestly, with both hands and at sight, as you read Mozart and Beethoven.

GEORGE SAND

I

The time was the month of April, 1785, and the place Paris, where the spring that year was a genuine spring. The garden was in holiday attire, the greensward was studded with marguerites, the birds were singing, and the lilacs grew so straight and so close to Julien's window, that their fragrant clusters actually entered his room and strewed the white tiled floor of his studio with their little violet crosses.

Julien Thierry was a painter of flowers, like his father André Thierry, renowned under Louis XV. in the art of decorating spaces over doors, dining-room panels and boudoir ceilings. Those dainty ornaments became, under his skilful hands, objects of genuine, serious art, so that the artisan had became an artist, highly esteemed by people of taste, handsomely paid, and a person of much consideration in society. Julien, his pupil, had confined himself to painting on canvas. The fashion of his time frowned upon the fanciful and charming decorations of the Pompadour style. The Louis XVI. style was more severe; flowers were no longer strewn upon walls and ceilings, but were framed. Julien, then, painted flower and fruit pieces of the Mignon variety, mother-of-pearl shells, multi-colored butterflies, green lizards and drops of dew. He had much talent, he was handsome, he was twenty-four years old, and his father had left him nothing but debts.

André Thierry's widow was there in the studio where Julien was at work, and where the clusters of lilac shed their petals under the soft touch of a warm breeze. She was a woman of sixty, well-preserved, with eyes that were still beautiful, hair almost black, and slim, delicate hands. Short, slight, pale, dressed poorly, but with studied neatness, Madame Thierry was knitting mittens, and from time to time raised her eyes to glance at her son, who was absorbed in the study of a rose.

"Julien," she said, "why is it, I wonder, that you don't sing now when you are working? You might induce the nightingale to let us hear his voice."

"Listen, mother, there he is now," Julien replied. "He doesn't need anybody to give him the key."

And at that moment they did in fact hear the pure, sweet and resonant notes of the nightingale for the first time that year.

"Ah! so he has come!" exclaimed Madame Thierry. "To think that a whole year has passed!--Can you see him, Julien?" she asked, as the young man, putting aside his work, scrutinized the shrubs massed in front of the window.

"I thought I saw him," he replied with a sigh, "but I was mistaken."

And he returned to his easel. His mother watched him more closely, but she dared not question him.

"Never mind," she began after a few moments, "you have a beautiful voice too, and I used to love to hear you sing the pretty ballads your poor father sang so well--only last year at just this time!"

"Yes," Julien replied, "you insist on my singing them, and then you weep. No, I don't propose to sing any more!"

"I won't weep, I promise you! Sing me a lively one, and I will laugh--as if he were here!"