Ambrose Bierce - "The Parenticide Club"

Jean de La Fontaine - "The Tales and Novels, v25: The Nightingale &c."

George Bernard Shaw - "The Inca of Perusalem"

J. Alexander Gunn - "Modern French Philosophy: A Study Of The Development Since Comte"

New Philadelphia Book Publisher Highlights Local Talent
Book and Publishing News from Publishers Newswire(tm)

Looking for Child to be on Cover of a New Book, 'The Model Child'
PHILADELPHIA, Pa. -- The Philadelphia literary world will celebrate the launch of two new players today, April 10th: Kay Square Press, a new publishing company focused on Philadelphia-area artists, their stories, and their art; and Kay Square's first release, 'With the Rich and Mighty: Emlen Etting of Philadelphia' (ISBN: 978-0-9815129-0-7), a critical biography by Kenneth C. Kaleta.

FlatSigned Press Alleges Don Imus Remarks Damage Legacy of President Gerald R. Ford
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Nathan Yungerberg, an accomplished model scout and professional child photographer is launching a nation-wide casting call to find the cover model for his highly anticipated book release, 'The Model Child: A Parents Guide to the Child Modeling Industry' (ISBN: 978-0-9817018-0-6).

Books: The Puppet Crown

H >> Harold MacGrath >> The Puppet Crown




"Then, Madame," said the ambassador, suppressing the admiration
in his eyes at this evidence of royal nonchalance, "I shall
inform his Majesty at once."

When he had gone, Madame turned coldly to her stricken followers.
"Messieurs, the fortunes of war are not on our side. I thank
you for your services. Now leave me; I wish to be alone."

One by one they filed out into the corridors. The orderly was
the last to leave, and he closed the door behind him. Madame
surveyed the room. All the curtains were drawn. She was alone.
She stood idly fingering the papers which lay scattered on the
table. Suddenly she lifted her hands above her head and clenched
them in a burst of silent rage. A dupe! doubly a dupe! To-morrow
the whole world would laugh at her, and she was without means of
wreaking vengeance. Presently the woman rose above the princess.
She sat down, laid her face on her arms and wept.

Fitzgerald stepped from behind one of the curtains. He had taken
refuge there during the archbishop's speech. He had not the
strength to witness the final humiliation of the woman he loved.
He was gazing out of the window at the troops in the Platz when
the door closed.

Madame heard the rustle of the curtain and looked up. She sprang
to her feet, her eyes blazing.

"You?" she cried. "You? You have dared to hide that you might
witness my weakness and my tears? You. . . ."

"Madame!"

"Go! I hate you!"

"Ah, Madame, we always hate those whom we have wronged. Do not
forget that I love you, with a love that passes convention."

"Monsieur, I am yet a princess. Did you not hear me bid you go?"

"Why?" in a voice singularly free from agitation. "Because I am
the only man who has served you unselfishly? Is that the reason,
Madame? You have laughed at me. I love you. You have broken me.
I love you. I can never look an honest man in the face again. I
love you. Though the shade of my father should rise to accuse me,
still would I say that I love you. Madame, will you find
another love like mine, the first love of a man who will know no
second? Forgive me if I rejoice in your despair, for your
despair is my hope. As a queen you would be too far away; but in
your misfortune you come so near! Madame, I shall follow you
wherever you go to tell you that I love you. You will never be
able to shut your ears to my voice; far or near, you will always
hear me saying that I love you. Ambition soars but a little way;
love has no fetters. Madame, your lips were given to me. Can you
forget that?"

"Monsieur, what do you wish?" subdued by the fervor of his tones.

"You! nothing in the world but you."

"Princesses such as I am do not wed for love. What! you take
advantage of my misfortune, the shattering of my dreams, to
force your love upon me?"

"Madame," the pride of his race lighting his eyes, "confess to
me that you did not win my love to play with it. If my heart was
necessary to your happiness, which lay in these shattered dreams,
tell me, and I will go. My love is so great that it does not
lack generosity."

For reply she sorted the papers and extended a blood-stained
packet toward him. "Here, Monsieur, are your consols." But the
moment his hand touched them, she made as though to take them
back. On the top of the packet was the letter she had written to
him, and on which he had written his scornful reply to her. She
paled as she saw him unfold it.

"So, Madame, my love was a pastime?" He came close to her, and
his look was like an invisible hand bearing down on her. "Madame,
I will go."

"No, no!" she cried, yielding to the impulse which suddenly laid
hold of her. "Not you! You shall not misjudge me. No, not you!
Those consols were given to me by the woman of your guide, Kopf,
who found them no one knows how. They were given to me this
morning. That letter. . . . . I did not intend that you should
see it. No, Monsieur; you shall not misjudge the woman, however
you judge the princess. Forgive me, it was not the woman who
sought your love; it was the princess who had need of it.

"I thought it would be but a passing fancy. I did not dream of
this end. To-morrow I shall be laughed at, and I cannot defend
myself as a man can. I must submit; I must smile and cover my
chagrin. O, Monsieur, do not speak to me of love; there is
nothing in my heart but rage and bitterness. To stoop as I have
stooped, and in vain! I am defeated; I must remain passive; like
a whipped child I am driven away. Talk not of love to me. I am
without illusion." She fell to weeping, and to him she was
lovelier in her tears than ever in her smiles. For would she
have shown this weakness to any but himself, and was it not a
sign that he was not wholly indifferent to her?

"Madame, what is it?" he cried, on his knees before her. "What
is it? Do you wish a crown? Find me a kingdom, and I will buy it
for you. Be mine, and woe to those who dare to laugh! Ah, could
I but convince you that love is above crowns and kingdoms, the
only glimpse we have on earth of Paradise. There is no boundary
to the dreams; no horizons; a vast, beautiful wilderness, and
you and I together. There are no storms, no clouds. Ambition,
the god of schemes, finds no entrance. Ah, how I love you! Your
face is ever before me, waking or sleeping. All thoughts are
merged into one, and that is of you. Self has dropped out of my
existence. Forget that you are a princess; remember only that
you are a woman, and that I love you."

Love has the key to eloquence. Madame forgot her vanished dreams;
the bitterness in her heart subsided. That mysterious,
indefinable thrill, which every woman experiences when a
boundless love is laid at her feet, passed through her, leaving
her sensible to a delicious languor. This man was strong in
himself, yet weak before her, and from his weakness she gained a
visible strength. Convention was nothing to him; that she was of
royal blood was still less. What other man would have dared her
wrath as he had done?

Nobility, she thought, was based on the observance of certain
laws. Around the central star were lesser stars, from which the
central star drew its radiance. Whenever one of these stars
deviates from its orbit, the glory of the central star is
diminished. To accept the love of the Englishman would be a blow
to the pride of Austria. She smiled.

"Monsieur," she said, in a hesitating voice, "Monsieur, I am
indeed a woman. You ask me if I can forget that I offered you my
lips? No. Nor do I wish to. Why did I permit you to kiss me? I
do not know. I could not analyze the impulse if I tried.
Monsieur, I am a woman who demands much from those who serve her.
I am capricious; my moods vary; I am unfamiliar with sentiment;
I hate oftener than I love. Listen. There is a canker in my
heart, made there by vanity. When it heals--well--mayhap you
will find the woman you desire. Mind you, I make no promises.
Follow me, if you will, but have patience; love me if you must,
but in silence;" and with a gesture which was not without a
certain fondness, she laid her hand upon his head.




CHAPTER XXIX


INTO STILL WATERS AND SILENCE

Into the princess's own chamber they carried Maurice, and laid
him on the white bed. Thus would she have it. No young man had
ever before entered that sacred chapel of her maiden dreams.
Beside the bed was a small prie-dieu; and she knelt upon the
cushion and rested her brow against the crucifix. The archbishop
covered his eyes, and the state physician bent his head.
Chastity and innocence at the feet of God; yet, not even these
can hold back the fleeting breath of life. She asked God to
forgive her the bitterness in her heart; she prayed for strength
to repel the weakness in her limbs. Presently she rose, an
angelic sweetness on her face. She looked down at Maurice; there
was no sign of life, save in the fitful drawing in of the nether
lip. She dampened a cloth and wiped the sweat of agony from the
marble brow.

"O, if only he might live!" she cried. "And he will not?"

"No, your Highness," said the physician. "He has perhaps an hour.
Extraordinary vitality alone is the cause of his living so long.
He has lost nearly all the blood in his body. It was a
frightful wound. He is dying, but he may return to consciousness
before the end.

The archbishop, with somber eyes, contemplated the pale,
handsome face, which lay motionless against the pillow. His
thoughts flew back to his own youth, to the long years which had
filled the gap between. Friends had come and gone, loved ones
vanished; and still he stood, like an oak in the heart of a
devastated forest, alone. Why had he been spared, and to what
end? Ah, how old he was, how very old! To live beyond the
allotted time, was not that a punishment for some transgression?
His eyes shone through a mist of tears.

The princess, too, contemplated the face of the dying man. How
many times had that face accompanied her in her dreams! How
familiar she was with every line of it, the lips, that turned
inward when they smiled; the certain lock of hair that fell upon
the forehead! And yet, she had seen the face in reality less
than half a dozen times. Why had it entered so persistently into
her dreams? Why had the flush risen to her cheeks at the
thought? At another time she would have refused to listen to the
voice which answered; but now, as the object of her thoughts lay
dying on her pillow, her mind would not play truant to her heart.
Sometimes the approach of love is so imperceptible that it does
not provoke analysis. We wake suddenly to find it in our hearts,
so strong and splendid that we submit without question. . . .
All, all her dreams had vanished, the latest and the fairest.
Across the azure of her youth had come and gone a vague,
beautiful flash of love. The door of earthly paradise had opened
and closed. That delicate string which vibrates with the joy of
living seemed parted; her heart was broken, and her young breast
a tomb. With straining eyes she continued to gaze. The invisible
arms of her love clasped Maurice to her heart and held him there.
Only that day he had stood before her, a delight to the eye;
and she had given him her hand to kiss. How bravely he had gone
forth from the city! She had followed him with her ardent gaze
until he was no longer to be seen. And now he lay dying. . . .
for her.

"Monsieur," she said, turning to the physician, "I have
something to say to Monseigneur."

The physician bowed and passed into the boudoir, the door of
which he closed.

"Father," she said to the prelate, "I have no secrets from you."
She pointed to Maurice. "I love him. I know not why. He comes
from a foreign land; his language nor his people are mine, and
yet the thought of him has filled my soul. I have talked to him
but four different times; and yet I love him. Why? I can not
tell. The mind has no power to rule the impulse of love. Were he
to live, perhaps my love would be a sin. Is it not strange,
father, that I love him? I have lost parental love; I am losing
a love a woman holds priceless above all others. He is dying
because of me. He loves me. I read it in his eyes just before he
fell. Perhaps it is better for him and for me that he should die,
for if he lived I could not live without him. Father, do I sin?"

"No, my child," and the prelate closed his eyes.

"I have been so lonely," she said, "so alone. I craved the love
of the young. He was so different from any man I had met before.
His bright, handsome face seemed constantly with me."

At this moment Maurice's breast rose and fell in a long sigh.
Presently the lids of his eyes rolled upward. Consciousness had
returned. His wandering gaze first encountered the sad, austere
visage of the prelate.

"Monseigneur?" he said, faintly.

"Do you wish absolution, my son?"

"I am dying. . . . ?"

"Yes."

"I am dying. . . . God has my account and he will judge it. I am
not a Catholic, Monseigneur." He turned his head. "Your
Highness?" He roved about the room with his eyes and discerned
the feminine touch in all the appointments.

"Where am I?"

"You are in my room, Monsieur," she said. Her voice broke, but
she met his eyes with a brave smile. "Is there anything we can
do for you?"

"Nothing. I am alone. To die. . . . Well, one time or another.
And yet, it is a beautiful world, when we but learn it, full of
color and life and love. I am young; I do not wish to die. And
now . . . even in the midst . . . to go . . . where? Monseigneur,
I am dying; to me princes and kings signify nothing. That is
not to say that they ever did. In the presence of death we are
all equal. Living, I might not speak; dying . . . since I have
but a little while to stay . . . I may speak?"

"Yes, my son, speak. Her Highness will listen."

"It is to her Highness that I wish to speak."

Her lips quivered and she made no secret of her tears. "What is
it you wish to say to me, Monsieur Carewe?" She smoothed his
forehead, and the touch of her hand made him forget his pain.

"Ah, I know not how to begin," he said. "Forgive me if I offend
your ears. . . . I have been foolish even to dream of it, but I
could not help it. . . . When first I saw you in the garden . .
the old dog was beside you. . . . Even then it came to me that
my future was linked to the thought of you. I did not know you
were so far beyond. . . . I was very cold, but I dared not let
you know it, for fear you would lead me at once to the gate.
That night wherever I looked I saw you. I strove to think of
some way to serve you, but I could not. I was so obscure. I
never thought that you would remember me again; but you did. . .
That afternoon in the carriage . . . I wanted to tell you then.
That rose you dropped . . . it is still on my heart. I loved
you, and to this end. And I am glad to die, for in this short
fortnight I have lived. . . . My mother used to call me Maurice
. . . to hear a woman repeat it again before I go."

"Maurice." She took his hand timidly in hers, and looked at the
archbishop.

"Speak to him from your heart, my child," said the prelate. "It
will comfort you both."

Suddenly she drooped and the tears fell upon the hand in hers.
"Maurice," she whispered, "you have not loved in vain." She
could utter no more; but she raised her head and looked into his
eyes, and he saw the glory of the world in hers.

"Into still waters and silence," he said softly. "No more pain,
nor joy, nor love; silence. . . . You love me! . . . Alexia; how
often have I repeated that name to myself. . . . I have not
strength to lift your hand to my lips."

She kissed him on the lips. She felt as if she, too, were dying.

"God guard your Highness," he said. "It is dark. . . . I do not
see you. . . . "

He tried to raise himself, but he could not. He sank back,
settled deeply into the pillow, and smiled. After that he lay
very still.