THE VENUS OF ILLE PROSPER MÉRIMÉE

“Ιλεως, ἦν δ’ ἐγὼ, ἔοτω ὁ ἀνδριὰς καὶ ἢπιος οὔτως ἀνδρεῖος ὤν.”

Lucian, Philopseudes.

I was descending the last declivity of the Canigou, and, although the sun was already set, I could distinguish in the plain the houses of the little town of Ille, towards which I was making.

“Of course,” I said to the Catalan who had served me as guide since the previous evening, “of course you know where M. de Peyrehorade stays?”

“Know where he stays!” he exclaimed; “I know his house as well as my own; and, if it were not so dark, I would show it you. It is the finest in Ille. He has money, he has, M. de Peyrehorade, and he’s marrying his son to richer than himself even.”

“And is this marriage to be soon?” I asked him.

“Soon! perhaps the fiddles are ordered for the wedding already. To-night, perhaps, to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, for all that I know! It’s to be at Puygarrig; for it’s Mademoiselle de Puygarrig whom the young gentleman is marrying. It will be grand, that it will!”

I had an introduction from my friend, M. de P., to M. de Peyrehorade. He, I had been informed, was a very learned antiquary, and most exceedingly obliging. He would consider it a pleasure to show me all the ruins for ten leagues around. Now, I was counting on his aid to visit the environs of Ille, which I knew to be rich in monuments of antiquity and of the Middle Ages. This marriage, of which I now heard for the first time, upset all my plans.

“I am going to be a spoil-sport,” I said to myself. But I was expected; seeing that M. de P. had said I was coming, I was bound to present myself.

“I’ll bet you, sir,” my guide said to me, when we were now in the plain, “I’ll bet you a cigar that I guess what you are going to do at M. de Peyrehorade’s.”

“O!” I said to him, as I handed him a cigar, “that’s not very difficult to guess! At this hour of night, after doing six leagues on the Canigou, the great thing is supper.”

“Yes, but to-morrow?... Listen, I’ll wager you’ve come to Ille to see the idol. I guessed as much from seeing you take the portraits of the saints at Serrabona.”

“The idol! What idol?” The word excited my curiosity.

“What! Did they not tell you at Perpignan, how M. de Peyrehorade had found an idol in the ground?”

“A statue in terra cotta or earthenware, do you mean?”

“No, no, in real copper, enough to make a lot of pennies with. It weighs as much as a church-bell. It was away down in the ground, at the foot of an olive-tree, that we got it.”

“Then you were present at the discovery?”

“Yes, sir. M. de Peyrehorade told us a fortnight ago, Jean Coll and me, to root up an old olive-tree that was frosted last year, for it was a very bad one, as you know. Well then, as we were busy, Jean Coll, who was going at it with all his might, gave a blow with his pick, and I hear Boom ..., as if he had struck on a bell. ‘What’s that?’ says I. We pick, and we pick, and, look! there appears a black hand, which looked like the hand of a corpse rising out of the ground. I did get a fright. I go off to the master, and I says to him, ‛Corpses, master, under the olive-tree! Must call the parson,’ ‛What corpses?’ says he to me. He comes, and has no sooner seen the hand than he cries out, ‛An antique! An antique!’ You would have thought he had found a treasure. And there he was, with the pick, with his hands, fussing away and doing as much work as the two of us, with his way of it.”

“And after all, what did you find?”

“A great black woman, more than half naked, saving your Honour’s presence, all in copper, and M. de Peyrehorade told us that it was an idol of the time of the heathens ... of the time of Charlemagne, no less!”

“I see what it is.... Just a Virgin in bronze from some convent that has been destroyed.”

“Just a Virgin! Very much so!... I’d easily have recognized it, if it had been just a Virgin. It’s an idol, I tell you; that’s well seen from her look. She fixes you with her great, white eyes.... You’d think she was staring at you. You have to cast down your eyes, you have, if you look at her.”

“White eyes, do you say? No doubt they are inlaid on the bronze. Perhaps it will be some Roman statue.”

“Roman! that’s it. M. de Peyrehorade said that she’s a Roman. Ah! I can see you’re a scholar like himself.”

“Is she complete, in good preservation?”

“Yes, sir. She wants nothing. She’s even finer and better finished than the bust of Louis-Philippe at the Town-house in painted plaster. But, for all that, I don’t like the idol’s face. She looks wicked ... and she is wicked.”

“Wicked! What wickedness has she done to you?”

“Not to me exactly; but you’ll see. We were breaking our backs to make her stand upright, even M. de Peyrehorade, who was also pulling at the rope, though he has not much more strength than a chicken, honest man! After a good deal of trouble we get her straight. I was picking up a piece of tile to prop her, when, crash! there she falls in a heap on her back. I shouted, ‛Look out below, there!’ But not quick enough, though, for Jean Coll had not time to pull away his leg.”

“And was he hurt?”

“Broken as clean as a pipe-shank, his poor leg! Zounds, when I saw that, my, I was furious! I wanted to put my pick through the idol, but M. de Peyrehorade prevented me. He gave money to Jean Coll, but for all that he has been in bed a fortnight since it happened to him, and the doctor says that he’ll never walk as well with that leg as with the other. It’s a pity for him, for he was our best runner and, next to the young gentleman, our trickiest tennis-player. M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade was sorry about it, for it was Coll he used to play with. My word, it was good to see how they returned the balls. Paf! Paf! They never once touched the ground.”

Talking thus, we entered Ille, and soon I found myself in presence of M. de Peyrehorade. He was a little old man, still fresh and lively, powdered, red-nosed, with a jovial and roguish air. Before opening M. de P.’s letter, he had installed me in front of a well-spread table, and had presented me to his wife and son as an illustrious archæologist, who was to rescue Roussillon from the oblivion in which it had been left by the indifference of savants.

All the time that I was eating with a good appetite—for nothing makes one so sharp-set as the keen air of the mountains—I was examining my hosts. I have said something about M. de Peyrehorade; I ought to add that he was vivacity itself. He talked, ate, got up, ran to his library, brought me books, showed me prints, filled my glass; he was never two minutes at rest. His wife, a little too stout, like most Catalan women when they are over forty, struck me as a double-dyed provincial, occupied solely with the cares of her household. Although the supper was enough for six persons at least, she ran to the kitchen, made them kill pigeons and fry miliasses, and opened I don’t know how many pots of preserves. In an instant the table was crowded with dishes and bottles, and I should assuredly have died of indigestion, if I had even tasted everything that they offered me. Nevertheless, at each dish that I refused, there were fresh excuses. They were afraid I should find myself very uncomfortable at Ille. In the country there are so few resources, and Parisians are so hard to please!

Amid all his parents’ comings and goings, M. Alphonse de Peyrehorade budged no more than a gate-post. He was a tall young man of six-and-twenty, with a countenance handsome and regular, but lacking in expression. His build and his athletic proportions quite justified the reputation of an indefatigable tennis-player which he had acquired in the district. He was dressed that evening with elegance, exactly after the plate in the latest number of the Journal des Modes. But he seemed to me to be ill at ease in his habiliments; he was as stiff as a poker in his velvet stock, and could only turn all in a piece. His large, sunburnt hands and short nails contrasted singularly with his costume. They were the hands of a labourer sticking out of the cuffs of a dandy. Moreover, though he looked me up and down from head to foot most inquisitively in my quality of a Parisian, he never addressed me the whole evening, except once, to ask me where I had bought my watch-chain.

“Ah, well, my dear guest,” M. de Peyrehorade said to me as the supper was drawing to an end, “you belong to me, you are under my roof. I will not let you go, at least not until you have seen everything of interest that we have in our mountains. You must get acquainted with our Roussillon, and do justice to it. You have no idea of all that we are going to show you. Phœnician, Celtic, Roman, Arab, Byzantine antiquities, I’ll show you them all, from the cedar to the hyssop. I’ll take you everywhere, and won’t spare you a single brick.”

A fit of coughing forced him to stop. I took advantage of it to tell him that I should be most sorry to inconvenience him on an occasion so interesting to his family.

If he would have the kindness to give me his valuable advice as to the excursions which I ought to make, I should be able, without his taking the trouble of accompanying me, to....

“Ah, you mean the marriage of that boy there!” he shouted, and interrupted me. “Fiddlesticks! that will be over by the day after to-morrow. You’ll celebrate the wedding along with us, a family affair, for the bride is in mourning for an aunt, whose heiress she is. So no party, no dance.... It’s a pity ... you would have seen our Catalan girls dancing.... They are pretty, and perhaps you’d have taken the fancy to imitate my Alphonse. One marriage, they say, leads to another.... By Saturday, after the young couple are married, I’ll be free, and we’ll set out. I must apologize to you for boring you with a country wedding. For a Parisian who is sated with gaieties ... and a wedding without a dance into the bargain! However, you’ll see a bride ... a bride ... you’ll tell me what you think about her.... But you’re a sober-sides and don’t look at women now. I’ve better than that to show you. I’ll let you see something!... I am keeping a fine surprise for you to-morrow.”

“Faith,” I said, “it is not easy to have a treasure in the house without the public knowing all about it. I think I can guess the surprise that you have in store for me. Yes, if it is your statue you mean, the description of it which my guide gave me has served only to excite my curiosity and to dispose me to admiration.”

“Ah! He has told you of the idol, for so they call my beautiful Venus Tur.... But I won’t tell you anything. To-morrow in daylight you shall see her, and you shall tell me if I am right in thinking her a masterpiece. Upon my word! you could not have arrived more opportunely! There are some inscriptions, which I, poor ignoramus, explain in my own way ... but a savant from Paris!... You will perhaps laugh at my interpretation ... for I have written a paper.... I who am speaking to you ... an old provincial antiquary, I have come out.... I mean to make the press groan.... If you will be so kind as read and correct me, I flatter myself.... For example, I am very curious to know how you will translate that inscription on the base: CAVE.... But I won’t ask you anything just now! To-morrow, to-morrow! Not a word about the Venus to-day!”

“You are just as well, Peyrehorade,” said his wife, “to let your idol alone. Can’t you see that you are preventing the gentleman from eating? Go away with you! The gentleman has seen plenty of finer statues than yours at Paris. At the Tuileries there are dozens of them, and in bronze, too.”

“There’s ignorance for you, the blessed ignorance of the provinces!” broke in M. de Peyrehorade. “To compare an admirable antique to Coustou’s vapid faces!

“Do you know, my wife wanted me to melt down my statue to make into a bell for our church? Because she would have been the donor. A masterpiece of Myron’s, my dear sir!”

“Masterpiece! Masterpiece! A pretty masterpiece she’s made, breaking a man’s leg!”

“Look here, wife,” said M. de Peyrehorade, in a firm tone, stretching out to her his right leg in a stocking of clouded silk, “if my Venus had broken that leg for me, I should not have regretted it.”

“Gracious! Peyrehorade, how can you say that? Fortunately the man’s getting better. But still I can’t bring myself to look at a statue which causes misfortunes like that. Poor Jean Coll!”

“Wounded by Venus, sir,” said M. de Peyrehorade with a great laugh, “wounded by Venus, the rascal complains:

‛Veneris nec præmia nôris.’

Who hasn’t been wounded by Venus?”

M. Alphonse, who understood French better than Latin, winked an eye with a knowing air, and looked at me, as much as to ask, “D’ye understand, Mr. Parisian?”

The supper came to an end. For the last hour I had eaten nothing. I was tired, and I could not manage to hide the frequent yawns which escaped me. Madame de Peyrehorade was the first to notice them, and remarked that it was time to go to bed. Thereupon began fresh apologies for the poor couch I was about to find. I should not be so comfortable as in Paris. Things are so uncomfortable in the provinces. I must excuse Roussillon people. It was in vain that I protested that after a journey in the mountains a truss of straw would be a delicious couch for me; they persisted in entreating me to pardon poor country folk, if they did not treat me so well as they could have desired. At last I went upstairs to the room which was meant for me, accompanied by M. de Peyrehorade. The stair, the upper steps of which were of wood, led to the middle of a corridor, on which several rooms opened.

“To the right,” said my host, “are the apartments which I intend for the future Madame Alphonse. Your room is at the end of the opposite corridor. You quite understand,” he added with an air which was meant to be sly, “you quite understand that newly married folk must be isolated. You are at one end of the house, they at the other.” We entered a well furnished room, where the first object on which I set eyes was a bed seven feet long, six wide, and so high that one required a stool to hoist oneself into it. My host, having shown me where the bell was, and having satisfied himself that the sugar-bowl was filled and the eau-de-Cologne bottles duly set on the dressing-table, after having asked me several times if I had everything I wanted, wished me good-night and left me to myself.

The windows were shut. Before undressing, I opened one to breathe the fresh night air, so delightful after a long supper. Before me lay the Canigou, which is wonderful to behold at any time, but which, that night, seemed to me the finest mountain in the world, lit up as it was by a resplendent moon. I remained some minutes contemplating the marvellous sky-line, and I was about to close my window when, looking down, I observed the statue on a pedestal some two-score yards from the house. It was placed at the corner of a quick-set hedge, which divided a little garden from a spacious square perfectly smooth, which, as I learned later, was the town tennis-court. This space, the property of M. de Peyrehorade, had been made over by him to the commune, at the pressing solicitations of his son.

At the distance where I was, it was difficult to make out the attitude of the statue; I could only judge of its height, which seemed to be about six feet. At that moment, two rascals from the town were passing by the tennis-court, pretty close to the hedge, whistling the pretty Roussillon air Montagnes régalades. They stopped to look at the statue; one of them even apostrophized it aloud. He spoke Catalan; but I had been in Roussillon long enough to be able to understand pretty well what he was saying.

“So you’re there, you hussy!” (The Catalan word was more forcible). “You’re there!” he said. “So it’s you who broke Jean Coll’s leg for him! If you belonged to me, I’d break your neck.”

“Bah! What would you break it with?” said the other. “She’s made of copper, so hard that Stephen broke his file on it trying to cut into it. It’s copper of heathen times; it’s harder than I don’t know what.”

“If I had my cold chisel,” (it seems that he was an apprentice locksmith), “I’d soon knock out her big white eyes, as easy as I’d take an almond out of its shell. There’s more than two half-crowns’ worth of silver in them.”

They went a step or two on their way.

“I must wish the idol good-night,” said the taller of the apprentices, stopping short.

He stooped down, and no doubt picked up a stone. I saw him straighten out his arm and throw something, and immediately a sonorous blow rang on the bronze. That same instant, the apprentice put his hand to his head and uttered a cry of pain.

“She’s thrown it back at me!” he exclaimed.

And my two rascals took to their heels. Evidently the stone had rebounded from the metal and had punished the joker for his outrage on the goddess.

I shut the window, laughing heartily.

“Another Vandal punished by Venus! Would that all the destroyers of our ancient monuments had their heads broken in the same way!”

With this charitable desire, I fell asleep.

It was broad daylight when I awoke. At one side of my bed stood M. de Peyrehorade in his dressing-gown; at the other a servant, sent by his wife, a cup of chocolate in his hand.

“Come! get up, Parisian! That’s just like you lazy people from the capital!” said my host, while I dressed myself hurriedly. “Eight o’clock, and still in bed! Why, I’ve been up since six o’clock! This is the third time I’ve been upstairs; I went to your door on tiptoe; no one, no sign of life. It is bad for you to sleep too much at your age. And my Venus, whom you have not seen yet! Come, quick and take this cup of Barcelona chocolate.... Real smuggled.... Chocolate such as you don’t have in Paris. Fortify yourself, for, once you are in the presence of my Venus, there will be no tearing you away from her.”

In five minutes I was ready, that is to say, half shaved, buttoned awry, and scalded by the chocolate that I had swallowed boiling hot. I went down to the garden, and found myself before an admirable statue.

It really was a Venus of marvellous beauty. The upper part of the body was nude, as the ancients usually represented the greater divinities; the right hand, raised level with the breast, was turned palm inwards, the thumb and first two fingers extended, the others slightly bent. The other hand, approaching her haunch, supported the drapery that covered the lower part of the body. The pose of the statue recalled that of the player at morra, which is designated, for some reason or other, by the name of Germanicus. Perhaps the intention was to represent the goddess as playing at morra.

Be that as it may, nothing more perfect could possibly be seen than the body of that Venus; nothing more suave, more voluptuous than its contours; nothing more elegant and more noble than its drapery. I had expected some work of the Lower Empire; I saw a masterpiece of the best period of sculpture. What struck me above all was the exquisite truth of the forms, so much so that one might have supposed them moulded from nature, if nature produced such perfect models.

The hair, piled above the forehead, seemed to have been gilded at one time. The head, small like that of almost all Greek statues, was slightly inclined forwards. As for the face, I shall never succeed in expressing its strange character, the type of which was not like that of any other antique statue that I can remember. It was not the calm and severe beauty of the Greek sculptors, who, on system, gave all the features a majestic immobility. Here, on the contrary, I observed with surprise the distinct intention of the artist to render mischievousness almost bordering on malice. All the features were slightly contracted: the eyes a little oblique, the mouth raised at the corners, the nostrils somewhat distended. Disdain, irony, cruelty were to be read on this visage, which was at the same time of an incredible beauty. In fact, the more one looked at that admirable statue, the more one experienced a feeling of pain that such marvellous beauty could be allied to utter absence of sensibility.

“If the model ever existed,” I said to M. de Peyrehorade—” and I doubt if Heaven ever produced such a woman—how I pity her lovers! She must have found pleasure in making them die of despair. There is something ferocious in her expression, and yet I have never seen anything so beautiful.”

“‛Tis Venus’ self a stooping o’er her prey!”

exclaimed M. de Peyrehorade, gratified at my enthusiasm.

The expression of infernal irony was augmented, perhaps, by the contrast between her eyes inlaid with silver, very brilliant, and the blackish-green patina which time had given to the whole statue. Those brilliant eyes produced a certain illusion, which recalled reality, life. I remembered what my guide had told me, that she made those who looked at her cast down their eyes. That was almost true, and I could not refrain from a gesture of anger against myself at feeling somewhat ill at ease before this figure of bronze.

“Now that you have admired everything in detail, my dear colleague in the antique,” said my host, “let us proceed, if you please, to a scientific discussion. What do you say about this inscription, to which you have not paid any attention as yet?”

He showed me the base of the statue, and there I read these words:

CAVE AMANTEM.

“Quid dicis, doctissime?” he asked me, rubbing his hands. “Let us see whether we shall agree on the meaning of this cave amantem!”

“Why,” I said, “there are two possible meanings. You can translate, ‛Beware of him who loves thee; distrust lovers.’ But, in this sense I do not know whether cave amantem would be good Latinity. Looking to the lady’s diabolical expression, I am more inclined to think that the artist meant to warn the beholder against this terrible beauty. So I would translate, ‛Beware for thyself, if she loves thee.’”

“Humph!” said M. de Peyrehorade. “Yes, that is an admissible rendering: but you will not be offended if I prefer the first translation, which, however, I shall develop. You know who the lover of Venus was, do you not?”

“There are several.”

“Yes; but the first is Vulcan. Was the meaning not intended to be ‛Despite all thy beauty, thy disdainful air, thou shalt have a blacksmith, an ugly lameter for lover?’ A profound moral, sir, for coquettes!”

I could not keep from smiling, the interpretation seemed so far-fetched.

“It’s a terrible language, Latin, with its conciseness,” I remarked, to avoid contradicting my antiquary explicitly, and I fell back a few paces in order to view the statue better.

“One moment, colleague!” said M. de Peyrehorade, taking me by the arm, “you haven’t seen all. There’s still another inscription. Get up on the base and look at the right arm.” So speaking, he helped me to get up.

I clung on without much ceremony by the neck of the Venus with whom I was beginning to be quite at home. I even looked at her for a moment “under the nose,” and found her more wicked and more beautiful than ever at close quarters. Then I saw that there were engraved on the arm some characters in ancient cursive character, as it seemed to me. With the help of spectacles I spelled out what follows, and meanwhile M. de Peyrehorade repeated each word as I pronounced it, signifying his approval by voice and gesture. Accordingly I read:

VENERI TVRBVL ... EVTYCHES MYRO IMPERIO FECIT

After the word TVRBVL in the first line it seemed to me that there were several letters effaced; but TVRBVL was perfectly legible.

“Which means?” my host asked me, beaming and smiling mischievously, for he was pretty sure that I would not get easily over that TVRBVL.

“There is one word which I can’t explain yet,” I told him, “but all the rest is easy: Eutyches Myron made this offering to Venus at her command.”

“Just so! But TVRBVL, what do you make of that? What is TVRBVL?”

“Tvrbvl bothers me considerably. I am hunting in vain for some known epithet of Venus which might help me. Let us see, what do you say to TVRBVLENTA? Venus who troubles, agitates?... You see that I am always possessed by her wicked expression. TVRBVLENTA, that is not at all a bad epithet for Venus,” I added in a modest tone, for I was not very well satisfied myself with my explanation.

“Venus the Turbulent! Venus the Rowdy! Ah! Then you believe that my Venus is a tavern Venus, do you? Not at all, sir; she is a well-bred Venus. But I’ll explain this TVRBVL ... to you. Though you must promise not to divulge my discovery before my paper is printed. Because, you see, I am proud of this find.... You might as well leave us poor devils of provincials some ears to glean. You are so rich, you learned gentlemen of Paris!”

From the top of the pedestal, where I was still perched, I solemnly promised him that I would never be so dishonourable as to rob him of his discovery.

“Tvrbvl ..., sir,” said he, coming nearer and lowering his voice, for fear any one besides me might hear him, “read TVRBVLNERAE.”

“I am still no wiser.”

“Listen! A league from here, at the foot of the mountain, there is a village called Boulternère. That is a corruption of the Latin word TVRBVLNERA. Nothing more common than these inversions. Boulternère, sir, was a Roman town. I always suspected so, but I never had evidence for it. The evidence is here! This Venus was the local deity of the city of Boulternère; and this word Boulternère, of which I have just demonstrated the ancient origin, proves a thing more curious still, namely, that Boulternère, before being a Roman town, was a town of the Phœnicians!”

He paused for a moment to take breath and enjoy my surprise. I managed to repress a strong desire to laugh.

“In fact,” he continued, “TVRBVLNERA is pure Phœnician; TVR, pronounce TOOR.... Toor and SOOR, the same word, are they not? Sur is the Phœnician name of Tyre; I need not remind you of its meaning. Bvl is Baal; Bâl, Bel, Bul, slight difference of pronunciation. As for NERA, that gives me a little trouble. I am inclined to think, failing a Phœnician word, that it comes from the Greek νηρός, moist, marshy. The word would then be a hybrid. To justify νηρός, I’ll show you at Boulternère how the streams from the mountains form pestilential marshes there. On the other hand, the termination NERA might have been added much later in honour of Nera Pivesuvia, wife of Tetricus, who may have rendered some benefit to the city of Turbul. But, looking to the marshes, I prefer the derivation from νηρός.”

He took a pinch of snuff with a satisfied air.

“But let us leave the Phœnicians and return to the inscription. I translate, then, ‛To Venus of Boulternère Myron dedicates at her command this statue, his work.’”

I took good care not to criticize his etymology; but I wished in my turn to give evidence of penetration, and said to him:

“Stop a moment, sir, Myron consecrated something; but I do not at all see that it was this statue.”

“How so?” he exclaimed. “Was not Myron a famous Greek sculptor? His talent must have been perpetuated in his family: it must have been one of his descendants who made this statue. Nothing is more certain.”

“But,” I replied, “I see a little hole in the arm. In my opinion, it served to fasten something, a bracelet, for instance, which this Myron gave to Venus as an expiatory offering. Myron was an unhappy lover. Venus was angry with him; he appeased her by consecrating a golden bracelet to her. Note that fecit is very often used for consecravit. They are synonymous terms. I could show you more than one example, if I had Gruter, or even Orellius at hand. It is natural that a lover should see Venus in a dream, that he should imagine that she commands him to give a golden bracelet to her statue. Myron consecrated a bracelet to her.... Then the barbarians, or even some sacrilegious robber....”

“Ah, it is easy to see that you have written novels!” exclaimed my host, as he lent me a hand to descend. “No, sir; it is a work of the school of Myron. Only look at the workmanship, and you’ll agree.”

Having made it an invariable rule never to give a point-blank contradiction to obstinate antiquaries, I bowed my head with an air of conviction and said:

“It is an admirable piece.”

“Good gracious!” exclaimed M. de Peyrehorade. “Another piece of vandalism! Some one must have been throwing stones at my statue!”

He had just observed a white mark a little above the breast of the Venus. I noticed a similar trace on the fingers of the right hand, which, I supposed at the time, the stone had touched in its passage, or perhaps even a fragment had been knocked off it by the shock, and had rebounded on to the hand. I related to my host the insult, of which I had been a witness, and the prompt punishment which had followed it. He laughed heartily at the story, and, comparing the appprentice to Diomede, wished that, like the Greek hero, he might see all his companions turned into white birds.

The breakfast bell interrupted this classical conversation, and, as on the previous evening, I was obliged to eat enough for four. Then M. de Peyrehorade’s farmers came; and, while he gave audience to them, his son took me to see a barouche which he had bought at Toulouse for his bride, and which I, of course, admired. Next I went into the stable with him, where he kept me for half an hour boasting about his horses, telling me their pedigrees, and detailing the prizes that they had won at the county races. At last he came to tell me about his future wife, having been led up to her by a grey mare which he intended for her.

“We’ll see her to-day,” he said. “I don’t know whether you’ll think her pretty. You are difficult to please at Paris; but every one here and at Perpignan thinks her charming. The beauty of it is that she is very rich. Her aunt at Prades has left her property to her. Oh, I’ll be very happy.”

I was deeply disgusted to see a young man apparently more impressed by the dowry than by the charms of his future wife.

“You know something about jewels,” continued M. Alphonse, “what do you think of this? This is the ring which I’m to give her to-morrow.”

With these words he drew from the first joint of his little finger a big ring enriched with diamonds, in the form of two clasped hands; an allusion which struck me as infinitely poetical. The workmanship was ancient, but I thought that it had been remodelled to set the diamonds. Inside the ring, in Gothic letters, could be read the words, “Sempr’ ab ti,” that is to say, “Ever with thee.”

“It is a pretty ring,” I said; “but those diamonds that have been added have made it lose something of its character.”

“Oh, it is very much prettier like that,” he said with a smile. “There are twelve hundred francs worth of diamonds there. It was given to me by my mother. It was a very ancient family ring ... from the times of chivalry. My grandmother used it for her wedding-ring, and she got it from her grandmother. Goodness knows when it was made.”

“The custom at Paris,” I told him, “is to give quite a simple ring, usually composed of two different metals, such as gold and platinum. Wait! that other ring, the one on that finger, would be very suitable. This one, with its diamonds and its hands in relief, is so big that one could never put on a glove over it.”

“Oh, Madame Alphonse will manage as she likes. I expect she’ll be quite glad to have it in any case. Twelve thousand francs is a nice thing to have on one’s finger. That little ring there,” he added, with a complacent glance at the perfectly plain ring which he wore on his hand, “that ring there was given me by a girl at Paris one Shrove Tuesday. Ah, how I went the pace when I was at Paris two years ago! That’s the place to enjoy oneself!...” And he heaved a sigh of regret.

We were to dine that day at Puygarrig, with the bride’s parents; we got into a barouche and drove to the château, which was about a league and a half distant from Ille. I was presented and received as the friend of the family. I shall say nothing about the dinner or the conversation which ensued, and in which I took little part. M. Alphonse, placed beside his betrothed, said something in her ear every quarter of an hour. For her part, she did not often raise her eyes, and, when her intended spoke to her, she blushed modestly, but answered him without embarrassment.

Mademoiselle de Puygarrig was eighteen years of age; her supple and delicate figure was a contrast to the large-boned frame of her robust bridegroom. She was not merely beautiful, but entrancing. I admired the perfect naturalness of all her answers; and her air of kindness, which yet was not without a slight tinge of mischief, reminded me involuntarily of my host’s Venus. As I made this comparison mentally, I asked myself whether the superiority in point of beauty, which was undoubtedly to be awarded to the statue, was not due, in great part, to its tigress-like expression; for energy, even that of evil passions, always excites us to astonishment and a sort of involuntary admiration.

“What a pity,” said I to myself, as we left Puygarrig, “that so amiable a creature should be rich, and her portion should attract the suit of a man so unworthy of her!” On the way back to Ille, being at a loss for something to say to Madame de Peyrehorade, whom I thought it good manners to address occasionally, I exclaimed:

“You are great freethinkers in Roussillon! Why, Madame, you are holding a marriage on a Friday! At Paris we are more superstitious; nobody there would dare to take a wife on such a day.”

“For goodness’ sake don’t talk about that to me!” she said. “If it had depended on me alone, we should certainly have chosen another day. But Peyrehorade would have it, and we had to give in to him. I am anxious about it all the same. What if anything happens? There must be some reason for it, for else why is everybody afraid of Friday?”

“Friday!” cried her husband, “that’s Venus’s day! A good day for a marriage! You see, my dear colleague, I can never get away from my Venus. On my honour, it’s because of her that I chose Friday! To-morrow, if you like, before the wedding, we’ll make a little sacrifice to her; we’ll sacrifice two doves, and if I knew where to get some incense....”

“For shame, Peyrehorade!” broke in his wife, scandalized beyond endurance. “Burn incense to an idol! That would be an abomination! Whatever would they say about us in the district?”

“At least,” said M. de Peyrehorade, “you will allow me to place a wreath of roses and lilies on her head:

Manibus date lilia plenis.

You see, sir, the Charter is an empty word. We have not liberty of worship!”

The arrangements for the morrow were settled as follows. Everybody was to be dressed and ready at ten o’clock sharp. After chocolate, we were to drive to Puygarrig. The civil marriage was to take place at the mayor’s office in the village, and the religious ceremony in the chapel at the château. Next was to come a breakfast. After the breakfast we were to pass the time as best we could until seven o’clock. At seven we were to return to Ille, to M. de Peyrehorade’s, where the united families were to sup. The rest followed naturally. As they could not dance, they meant to eat as much as possible.

By eight o’clock I was seated before the Venus, pencil in hand, beginning the head of the statue over again for the twentieth time without being able to catch its expression. M. de Peyrehorade kept coming and going about me, giving me his advice and repeating his Phœnician etymologies; then he disposed some Bengal roses on the pedestal of the statue, and in a tragi-comic voice addressed to it his prayers for the couple who were about to live under his roof. About nine o’clock he went in to dress, and at the same moment M. Alphonse made his appearance, very tight in a new coat, with white gloves, patent-leather boots, chased studs, a rose in his button-hole.

“You will draw my wife’s portrait?” he asked, bending over my sketch. “She is pretty too.”

At that moment, on the tennis-court which I have mentioned, a match began, which at once attracted M. Alphonse’s attention. I too, tired and in despair of rendering that diabolical face, soon quitted my sketch to watch the players. Among them were some Spanish muleteers who had arrived the night before. They were Aragonese and Navarrese, almost all of marvellous skill. Accordingly the Ille men, though encouraged by the presence and advice of M. Alphonse, were pretty promptly beaten by these new champions. The local spectators were in consternation. M. Alphonse looked at his watch. It was only half-past nine yet. His mother had not got her hair dressed. He hesitated no longer; he took off his coat, asked for a jacket, and challenged the Spaniards. When I saw him do so, I smiled and was rather surprised.

“We must keep up the honour of the country,” he said. I found him really handsome then. He was aroused. His dress, which had occupied him so much a little ago, was nothing more to him now. A few minutes before, he had been afraid to turn his head for fear of deranging his neck-tie. Now he had no more thought of his curled hair or his neatly pleated ruffle. And his bride?... Really, had it been necessary, I believe he would have had the marriage postponed. I saw him hastily slip on a pair of sandals, turn up his sleeves, and, with a confident air, place himself at the head of the defeated side, like Cæsar rallying his soldiers at Dyrrachium. I leaped over the hedge and stationed myself comfortably under the shade of a celiis australis, so that I had a good view of the two camps.

Contrary to general expectation, M. Alphonse missed the first ball; true it came skimming low down and delivered with surprising force by an Aragonese, who appeared to be the leader of the Spaniards.

He was a man about forty years of age, hard and wiry, about six feet tall, and his olive skin was almost as dark in tone as the bronze of the Venus.

M. Alphonse threw his racket on the ground in a rage.

“It’s this confounded ring,” he cried, “which pinched my finger, and made me miss a safe ball!”

He took off the diamond ring, not without difficulty; I went to take it from him; but he was too quick for me and ran to the Venus, put the ring on its ring-finger, and resumed his place at the head of the Ille men.

He was pale, but calm and resolute. Thenceforth he did not make a single mistake, and the Spaniards were thoroughly beaten. It was a fine sight to see the enthusiasm of the on-lookers: some uttered a thousand cries of joy and threw their bonnets in the air; others pressed his hands, calling him the honour of their country. If he had repelled an invasion, I doubt whether he would have received more lively or more sincere congratulations. The disappointment of the losers added still more to the brilliance of his victory.

“We’ll have other matches, my good fellow,” he said to the Aragonese with a tone of superiority; “but I’ll give you a handicap.”

I could have wished that M. Alphonse had been more modest, and I was almost pained at the humiliation of his rival.

The Spanish giant felt the insult keenly. I saw him turn pale under his sunburnt skin. He looked at his racket gloomily and set his teeth; then, in a choked voice, he said almost inaudibly, “Me lo pagarás.”

M. de Peyrehorade’s voice disturbed his son’s triumph; my host, much surprised not to find him presiding over the harnessing of the new barouche, was still more surprised to see him all in a sweat, racket in hand. M. Alphonse ran to the house, washed his hands and face, put his new coat and patent-leather shoes on again, and five minutes later we were off at a brisk trot on the way to Puygarrig. All the tennis-players of the town and a great number of on-lookers followed us with cries of joy. The strong horses which drew us had difficulty in keeping ahead of those intrepid Catalans.

We were at Puygarrig, and the procession was about to set out for the mayor’s office, when M. Alphonse struck his forehead, and said to me in an undertone:

“How stupid of me! I’ve forgotten the ring! It’s on the finger of the Venus, the Devil take her! What ever you do, don’t mention it to my mother. Perhaps she’ll not notice anything.”

“You could send somebody,” I said.

“Bah! My man is staying behind at Ille. And those fellows here, I don’t much trust them. Twelve hundred francs worth of diamonds! That would be a temptation to a good many of them. Besides, what would they think here of my absent-mindedness? They’d make fine fun of me. They’d call me the statue’s husband.... I just hope nobody steals it from me! Fortunately the idol has put a fear on my rogues. They don’t dare go within arm’s length of it. Bah! It doesn’t matter; I’ve got another ring.” The two ceremonies, civil and religious, were performed with due pomp; and Mademoiselle de Puygarrig received a little Paris dress-maker’s ring, never suspecting that her bridegroom was making the sacrifice of a love-token to her. Then we sat down to table, where we drank, ate, even sang, all at great length. I felt for the bride in the coarse merriment which was resounding about her; still, she kept a better countenance than I had expected, and her embarrassment had nothing either of awkwardness or affectation about it.

Perhaps courage comes with difficult situations.

The breakfast having terminated when it pleased Heaven, it was four o’clock; the men went to walk in the park, which was magnificent, or to watch the Puygarrig peasant-girls dancing on the château lawn arrayed in their holiday clothes. In this way we spent some hours. Meanwhile the women were very busy with the bride, who was making them admire her wedding-presents. Then she changed her dress, and I noticed that she covered up her fine hair with a cap and a feathered hat, for women are in a great hurry until they have assumed as soon as possible the ornaments which custom forbids them to wear as long as they are unmarried.

It was almost eight o’clock when they set about starting for Ille. But first there was a pathetic scene. Mademoiselle de Puygarrig’s aunt, who had been a mother to her, a very aged and very devout woman, was not to go to town with us. At her niece’s going away she made a touching address to her on the duties of a wife, a discourse which resulted in a torrent of tears and never-ending embraces. M. de Peyrehorade compared this parting to the Rape of the Sabines. We set out, however, and on the way we all did our utmost to distract the bride and make her laugh; but in vain.

At Ille supper was waiting us, and what a supper! If I had been disgusted at the coarse merriment of the morning, I was still more so at the equivocations and pleasantries of which the bridegroom and, above all, the bride were the objects. The bridegroom, who had disappeared for an instant before sitting down to table, was pale and icily serious. Every other minute he took a draught of old Collioure wine, almost as strong as brandy. I was beside him, and I felt obliged to warn him:

“Take care! They say that wine....”

I told him some nonsense or other to put myself on a level with the other guests.

He nudged me with his knee and, in an undertone, said to me:

“When we rise from table ..., let me have a word with you.”

His grave tone surprised me. I looked more attentively at him, and I noticed the strange alteration in his features.

“Do you feel unwell?” I asked him.

“No.”

And he fell to drinking again.

Meanwhile, amid shouts and clapping of hands, a child of eleven, who had slipped under the table, showed the company a pretty white and pink ribbon which he had just unfastened from the bride’s ankle. That was called her garter. It was at once cut in pieces and distributed to the young people, who decorated their buttonholes with it, after an old custom, which is still maintained in some patriarchal families. This caused the bride to blush to the whites of her eyes.... But her distress was at a height when M. de Peyrehorade, having called for silence, sang her certain Catalan verses, impromptu, he said. Here is the sense of them, if I understood it aright:

“What is this, my friends! Has the wine which I have drunk made me see double! There are two Venuses here....”

The bridegroom suddenly looked round with an air of alarm which made everybody laugh.

“Yes,” pursued M. de Peyrehorade, “there are two Venuses under my roof. The one, I found in the earth, like a truffle; the other, descended from the skies, has just divided her girdle among us.”

He meant her garter.

“My son, choose which you prefer, the Roman Venus or the Catalan Venus. The rascal takes the Catalan, and his choice is the best. The Roman is black, the Catalan is white. The Roman is cold, the Catalan sets every one who approaches her on fire.”

This conclusion excited such a roar, such noisy applause and such resounding laughter, that I thought the ceiling was going to fall on our heads. Round the table there were only three solemn faces, the young couple’s and my own. I had a bad headache; and besides, for some reason or other, a marriage always depresses me. This one, besides, rather disgusted me.

The last couplets having been sung by the depute mayor—and very free they were, I ought to mention—we went into the drawing-room to witness the retiral of the bride, who was soon to be conducted to her chamber, for it was near midnight. M. Alphonse drew me into a window recess, and said, with averted eyes:

“You will laugh at me.... But I don’t know what is wrong with me.... I am bewitched! Devil take me!”

The first thought which came into my head was that he imagined himself threatened with some misfortune similar to those mentioned by Montaigne and Madame de Sévigné:

“The whole Empire of Love is replete with tragic histories, etc.”

“I thought that sort of accidents never happened except to persons of intelligence,” I said to myself.

“You’ve drunk too much Collioure, my dear Monsieur Alphonse,” I said to him. “I warned you.”

“Yes, perhaps. But this is something much more dreadful.”

His voice was broken. I really thought he was drunk.

“You know my ring?” he continued after a pause.

“What! Has it been taken away?”

“No.”

“Then you have it, have you not?”

“No ... I ... I can’t get it off that devil of a Venus’s finger.”

“A fine story! You’ve not pulled hard enough.”

“Not at all.... But the Venus.... She has closed her finger.”

He stared at me with a haggard face, supporting himself by the window-fastening to keep himself from falling.

“A pretty tale!” I said to him. “You have pushed the ring too far on. You’ll get it off to-morrow with pincers. But take care not to spoil the statue.”

“I tell you no! The Venus’s finger is turned in, crooked in; she has her hand clenched, do you understand?... She is my wife, it seems, since I have given her my ring.... She won’t give it back now.”

I felt a sudden shiver, and for an instant my flesh crept. Then a great sigh that he gave sent a reek of wine over to me, and all my emotion disappeared.

“The silly fool,” thought I, “is quite drunk.”

“You are an antiquary, sir,” the bridegroom added in a lamentable tone; “you know about those statues ... perhaps there is some spring, some devilment, that I don’t know about.... Would you go and see?”

“Willingly,” I said. “Come along with me.”

“No, I’d rather you went alone.”

I went out of the drawing-room. The weather had changed during supper, and the rain was beginning to fall heavily. I was about to ask for an umbrella, when a thought arrested me. I should be a great fool, I said to myself, to go and verify what a drunk man had told me! Besides, he perhaps wished to play some ill-natured joke on me to make me a laughing-stock for those good provincials; and the least that would result to me from it would be to get soaked to the skin and catch a bad cold.

From the door I cast a glance at the statue all running with water, and I went upstairs to my room without returning to the drawing-room. I went to bed; but sleep was long of coming. All the scenes of the day presented themselves to my mind. I thought of that young girl, so lovely and so pure, left to the mercy of a brutal drunkard. “What an odious thing,” I said to myself, “a marriage of convenience is! A mayor puts on a tricolour scarf, a parson a stole, and there, the most respectable girl in the world is handed over to the Minotaur! what can two beings who do not love each other have to say to each other at a moment such as this, a moment which two lovers would purchase at the price of their lives? Can a woman ever love a man whom she has once seen coarse? First impressions are never effaced, and I am sure of this, that that M. Alphonse will richly deserve to be hated....”

During my monologue, which I have shortened considerably, I had heard a great deal of coming and going in the house, doors opening and shutting, carriages driving away; then I seemed to have heard the light steps of a number of women on the stair, making for the end of the corridor opposite to my room. It was probably the bride’s attendants taking her to bed. In course of time they had gone downstairs again. Madame de Peyrehorade’s door was shut. How anxious and uneasy that poor girl must be, I thought! I turned about on my bed in a bad temper. A bachelor cuts a foolish figure in a house where a marriage is being held.

Silence reigned for some time; then it was broken by heavy steps climbing up the stair. The wooden treads cracked loudly.

“The brute!” I exclaimed. “I’ll wager he’s going to fall on the stairs.”

All became quiet again. I took a book to change the course of my thoughts. It was a statistical account of the department, graced with a memorandum by M. de Peyrehorade on the druidical monuments of the Prades hundred. I fell over at the third page.

I slept badly, and woke several times. It might be about five o’clock in the morning, and I had been awake twenty minutes or more, when the cock crew. Day was about to dawn. Just then I heard distinctly the same heavy steps, the same cracking of the stair, that I had heard before falling asleep. It struck me as strange. I yawned and tried to think why M. Alphonse was rising so early in the morning. I could imagine no likely reason. I was about to close my eyes again, when my attention was excited anew by a strange trampling, with which the ringing of bells and the sound of doors being noisily opened soon mingled; then I made out confused cries.

“My drunk friend has set the house afire somewhere!” I thought, as I jumped down out of bed.

I dressed in a hurry and went out into the corridor. From the opposite end came cries and lamentations, and one heart-rending voice dominated all the others—” My son! My son!” It was evident that some calamity had happened to M. Alphonse. I ran to the nuptial chamber: it was full of people. The first thing that met my view was the young man half-clad, stretched across the bed, the frame of which was broken. He was livid and motionless. His mother was weeping and crying at his side. M. de Peyrehorade was busy, rubbing his temples with eau-de-Cologne, or holding smelling-salts to his nose. Alas! his son had been dead for a long time. On a sofa at the other end of the room was the bride, writhing in horrible convulsions. She was uttering inarticulate cries, and two strong servants had the utmost difficulty in holding her.

“Good God!” I exclaimed, “whatever has happened?”

I went up to the bed and raised the unfortunate young man’s body; it was already stiff and cold. His clenched teeth and his blackened face gave evidence of the most frightful agony. It was only too plain that his end had been violent and his death-struggles terrible. Yet there was no trace of blood on his clothes. I opened his shirt, and on his chest I saw a livid mark, which was continued round his ribs and back. One would have thought that he had been crushed in a band of iron.

My foot trod upon something hard on the carpet; I stooped down, and saw the diamond ring.

I drew M. de Peyrehorade and his wife into their room; then I had the bride taken there.

“You have still a daughter,” I said to them, “you owe her your care.” Then I left them alone.

There seemed to me no doubt that M. Alphonse had been the victim of a murder, the perpetrators of which had found means to let themselves in to the bride’s room at night. Yet those bruises on his chest and their circular direction puzzled me considerably, for a stick or an iron bar could not have produced them. All at once I remembered to have heard that the bravos of Valencia make use of long bags of leather, stuffed with fine sand, to knock down the persons whom they have been paid to kill. I immediately remembered the Aragonese muleteer and his threat; at the same time I scarcely dared to think that he had taken such a terrible revenge for a harmless joke.

I went about the house, searching everywhere for traces of breaking in, without finding them anywhere. I went down to the garden, to see whether the murderers could have got in from that side; but I found no certain traces there. Besides last night’s rain had so soaked the earth that it could not have retained any very sharp impression. All the same, I observed some footprints deeply imprinted in the ground; they were in two contrary directions, but in the same line, starting from the corner of the hedge beside the tennis-court and ending at the house-door. They might have been made by M. Alphonse when he went to look for his ring on the statue’s finger. On the other hand, the hedge at that place was not so close as elsewhere; that must have been the spot where the murderers crossed it. Passing and repassing before the statue, I halted for a moment to look at it. This time, I confess, I could not contemplate its expression of ironical wickedness without fear; and, my head full of the horrible scenes which I had just witnessed, I seemed to behold an infernal deity applauding the misfortune which had overtaken that house.

I got back to my room and remained there until midday. Then I went to inquire for my hosts. They were a little more composed. Mademoiselle de Puygarrig—I ought to say M. Alphonse’s widow—had recovered consciousness. She had even spoken with the public prosecutor from Perpignan, who was then on circuit at Ille, and that official had taken her deposition. He asked for mine. I told him what I knew, and did not conceal my suspicions about the Aragonese muleteer. He ordered him to be arrested at once.

“Have you learned anything from Madame Alphonse?” I asked the public prosecutor, when my deposition had been written and signed.

“That unhappy young lady has gone out of her mind,” he said to me with a sad smile. “Out of her mind! Quite out! Here’s her story.

“She had been in bed, she says, for some minutes, with the curtains drawn, when the door of her room opened, and some one came in. Madame Alphonse was then on the far side of the bed, with her face to the wall. She did not move, being sure that it was her husband. An instant later the bed groaned as if it was loaded with an enormous weight. She was very much afraid, but did not dare to turn her head. Five minutes, ten minutes perhaps—she could form no notion of the time—passed thus. Then she made an involuntary movement, or rather the person who was in the bed made one, and she felt the contact of something as cold as ice, these are the expressions she used. She buried herself in the far side of the bed, trembling in every limb. Shortly afterwards the door opened a second time, and some one entered, who said, ‛Good evening, my little wife.’ Very soon after, the curtains were drawn aside. She heard a smothered cry. The person who was in the bed beside her sat up, and seemed to stretch forward his arms. She turned her head then ... and saw, she declares, her husband on his knees at the bed-side, his head level with the pillow, in the arms of a sort of greenish giant who was hugging him with violence. She says, and she has repeated it to me a score of times, poor woman! ... she says that she recognized ... can you guess? The bronze Venus, M. de Peyrehorade’s statue.... Since it came into the neighbourhood, every one dreams about it. But to resume the unhappy madwoman’s story. At that sight she lost consciousness, and probably she had already lost her reason some time before. She is quite unable to say how long she continued in her faint. When she came to herself, she still saw the phantom, or the statue, as she always calls it, motionless, its legs and the lower part of its body in the bed, its bust and arms stretched over, and in its arms her husband, without movement. A cock crew. The statue then got out of the bed, let fall the corpse, and went out. Madame Alphonse tore at the bell-pull, and you know the rest.”

They brought up the Spaniard; he was calm, and defended himself with much coolness and presence of mind. To be sure, he did not deny the saying which I had heard; but he explained that all he meant by it was that, next day, when he was rested, he would have won a tennis-match from his conqueror. I recollect that he added:

“When an Aragonese is affronted, he does not wait till the next day to avenge himself. If I had thought that M. Alphonse meant to insult me, I would have given him one in the belly with my knife on the spot.”

They compared his shoes with the footprints in the garden; his shoes were very much larger.

Finally the innkeeper, with whom the man had lodged, affirmed that he had spent the whole night rubbing and dosing one of his mules that was sick.

Moreover, this Aragonese was a man of good reputation, well known in the neighbourhood, to which he came every year on his business. So they released him and made their excuses to him.

I forgot the deposition of a servant, who had been the last to see M. Alphonse in life. It was at the moment when he was about to go upstairs to his wife, and, calling the servant, he had asked him with an air of anxiety, if he knew where I was. The servant answered him that he had seen nothing of me. M. Alphonse then heaved a sigh, and remained speechless for more than a minute, then he said, “Well, I declare, the devil must have taken him away too!”

I asked this man whether M. Alphonse had his diamond ring when he spoke to him. The servant hesitated about answering; at last he said that he thought no, but that he really had not paid any attention.

“If he had had the ring on his finger,” he added, correcting himself, “I should certainly have noticed it, for I thought that he had given it to Madame Alphonse.”

While questioning this man I felt something of the superstitious terror which Madame Alphonse’s deposition had spread all through the house. The public prosecutor looked at me with a smile, and I took good care not to say anything more.

Some hours after M. Alphonse’s funeral, I made ready to leave Ille. M. de Peyrehorade’s carriage was to take me to Perpignan. In spite of his weak condition, the poor old man insisted on accompanying me to the gate of his garden. We crossed it in silence, he dragging himself along painfully, leaning on my arm. At the moment of our parting, I cast a last look on the Venus. I could well foresee that my host, although he did not share the terror and hatred with which it inspired a part of his family, would wish to rid himself of an object which would remind him unceasingly of a fearful calamity. My intention was to get him to promise to place it in a museum. I was hesitating about how to broach the matter, when M. de Peyrehorade mechanically turned his head in the direction in which he saw me looking fixedly. He caught sight of the statue, and at once burst into tears. I embraced him, and, without venturing to say a single word to him, got into the carriage.

Since my departure I have not learned that the slightest fresh light has been shed upon this mysterious catastrophe.

M. de Peyrehorade died some months after his son. By his will he bequeathed to me his manuscripts, which I shall perhaps publish some day. I have found no trace whatever among them of the paper dealing with the inscriptions on the Venus.

P.S.—My friend M. de P. has just written to me from Perpignan that the statue no longer exists. After her husband’s death, Madame de Peyrehorade’s first care was to have it melted down and made into a bell, and in this new form it is doing duty at the church of Ille. But, adds M. de P., it would appear that ill luck pursues the owners of that bronze. Since this bell began to ring at Ille the vines have twice been frosted.