this morning, on the Beuzeville road, between nine and ten o'clock, a pocket-book of black leather, containing five hundred francs and business papers. You are requested to return it - to the mayor's office at once, or to Maître Fortuné Houlbrèque of Manneville. There will be fifty francs reward." Then the man departed. They heard once more at a distance the dull beatings on the drum, and the faint voice of the crier. Then they began to talk of this event, reckoning up the chances which Maître Houlbrèque had of finding or of not finding his pocket-book again. And the meal went on. They were finishing their coffee when the corporal of gendarmes appeared on the threshold. He asked:— "Is Maître Hauchecorne, of Bréauté, here ? » Maître Hauchecorne, seated at the other end of the table, answered: "Here I am." And the corporal resumed: "Maître Hauchecorne, will you have the kindness to come with me to the mayor's office? M. le Maire would like to speak to you." The peasant, surprised and uneasy, gulped down his little glass of cognac, got up, and—even worse bent over than in the morning, since the first steps after a rest were always particularly difficult started off, repeating: "Here I am, here I am." And he followed the corporal. The mayor was waiting for him, seated in an arm-chair. He was the notary of the place, a tall, grave man of pompous speech. "Maître Hauchecorne," said he, "this morning, on the Beuzeville road, you were seen to pick up the pocket-book lost by Maître Houlbrèque of Manneville." The countryman, speechless, gazed at the mayor; frightened already by this suspicion, which rested on him he knew not why. “I—I picked up that pocket-book?" "Yes, you." "I swear I didn't even know nothing about it at all.” "You were seen." (( They saw me me? Who is that who saw me?" "M. Malandain, the harness-maker." Then the old man remembered, understood, and reddening. with anger: "Ah! he saw me, did he, the rascal? He saw me picking up this string here, M'sieu' le Maire." And fumbling at the bottom of his pocket, he pulled out of it the little end of string. But the mayor incredulously shook his head: — "You will not make me believe, Maître Hauchecorne, that M. Malandain, who is a man worthy of credit, has mistaken this string for a pocket-book." The peasant, furious, raised his hand and spit as if to attest his good faith, repeating: "For all that, it is the truth of the good God, the blessed truth, M'sieu' le Maire. There! on my soul and my salvation I "After picking up the thing in question, you even looked for some time in the mud to see if a piece of money had not dropped out of it." The good man was suffocated with indignation and with fear. "If they can say - If they can say such lies as that to slander an honest man! If they can say -!" He might protest, he was not believed. He was confronted with M. Malandain, who repeated and sustained his testimony. They abused one another for an hour. At his own request, Maître Hauchecorne was searched. Nothing was found on him. At last the mayor, much perplexed, sent him away, warning him that he would inform the public prosecutor and ask for orders. The news had spread. When he left the mayor's office, the old man was surrounded, interrogated with a curiosity which was serious or mocking as the case might be, but into which no indignation entered. And he began to tell the story of the string. They did not believe him. They laughed. He passed on, buttonholed by every one, himself buttonholing his acquaintances, beginning over and over again his tale and his protestations, showing his pockets turned inside out to prove that he had nothing. They said to him:- And he grew angry, exasperated, feverish, in despair at not being believed; and always telling his story. The night came. It was time to go home. He set out with three of his neighbors, to whom he pointed out the place where he had picked up the end of string; and all the way he talked of his adventure. That evening he made the round in the village of Bréauté, so as to tell every one. He met only unbelievers. He was ill of it all night long. The next day, about one in the afternoon, Marius Paumelle, a farm hand of Maître Breton, the market-gardener at Ymauville, returned the pocket-book and its contents to Maître Houlbrèque of Manneville. This man said that he had indeed found it on the road; but not knowing how to read, he had carried it home and given it to his master. The news spread to the environs. Maître Hauchecorne was informed. He put himself at once upon the go, and began to relate his story as completed by the dénouement. He triumphed. "What grieved me," said he, "was not the thing itself, do you understand; but it was the lies. There's nothing does you so much harm as being in disgrace for lying." All day he talked of his adventure; he told it on the roads to the people who passed; at the cabaret to the people who drank; and the next Sunday, when they came out of church. He even stopped strangers to tell them about it. He was easy now, and yet something worried him without his knowing exactly what it was. People had a joking manner while they listened. They did not seem convinced. He seemed to feel their tittle-tattle behind his back. On Tuesday of the next week he went to market at Goderville, prompted entirely by the need of telling his story. Malandain, standing on his door-step, began to laugh as he saw him pass. Why? He accosted a farmer of Criquetot, who did not let him finish, and giving him a punch in the pit of his stomach, cried in his face: "Oh you great rogue, va!" Then turned his heel upon him. Maître Hauchecorne remained speechless, and grew more and more uneasy. Why had they called him "great rogue"? When seated at table in Jourdain's tavern he began again to explain the whole affair. A horse-dealer of Montivilliers shouted at him: "Get out, get out, you old scamp: I know all about your string!" Hauchecorne stammered: "But since they found it again, the pocket-book — ! » "Hold your tongue, daddy: there's one who finds it and there's another who returns it. And no one the wiser." The peasant was choked. He understood at last. They accused him of having had the pocket-book brought back by an accomplice, by a confederate. He tried to protest. The whole table began to laugh. He could not finish his dinner, and went away amid a chorus of jeers. He went home ashamed and indignant, choked with rage, with confusion; the more cast down since from his Norman cunning, he was perhaps capable of having done what they accused him of, and even of boasting of it as a good trick. His innocence dimly seemed to him impossible to prove, his craftiness being so well known. And he felt himself struck to the heart by the injustice of the suspicion. Then he began anew to tell of his adventure, lengthening his recital every day, each time adding new proofs, more energetic protestations, and more solemn oaths which he thought of, which he prepared in his hours of solitude, his mind being entirely occupied by the story of the string. The more complicated his defense, the more artful his arguments, the less he was believed. "Those are liars' proofs," they said behind his back. He felt this; it preyed upon his heart. He exhausted himself in useless efforts. He was visibly wasting away. The jokers now made him tell "the story of the piece of string" to amuse them, just as you make a soldier who has been on a campaign tell his story of the battle. His mind, struck at the root, grew weak. About the end of December he took to his bed. He died early in January, and in the delirium of the death agony he protested his innocence, repeating: "A little bit of string-a little bit of string- see, here it is, M'sieu' le Maire." Translation of Jonathan Sturges. U. OF ILL LIB. FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE (1805-1870) REDERICK DENISON MAURICE takes high rank among the religious teachers of this century, more by virtue of what he was than of what he wrote. He is of those elect souls whose insight becomes a guiding force both to themselves and to their fellows. Of a generation which knew Carlyle and Mill and Darwin, which was given over to the dry-rot of intellectual despair in all matters concerning the religious life of man, Maurice seemed born out of due time. He belonged apparently to an earlier or to a later day. Yet by force, not of his intellect but of his faith, he succeeded in turning many of his contemporaries to the Christian ideal which haunted him throughout his life, and which perpetually dominated his nineteenth-century inheritance of skepticism. Unlike Newman, with whom he was associated at Oxford, Maurice was content to find in the Church of England, as in all churches, only a partial realization of his ideal of righteousness. He is of those who believe that the whole truth can never be revealed to one generation. He shares FREDERICK D. MAURICE the Platonic belief that the vision of God becomes gradually apparent through many æons. This liberalism was the mainspring of his power as gious teacher. a reli His early training had enlarged his sympathies and prepared the way for his future ministrations. He was born in 1805 of a Unitarian father, and of a mother who adhered to the doctrines of Calvin. His first religious problem was to reconcile these differences of faith. Later his education at Cambridge deepened within him the evangelical sympathies, which made him long to unite the world under one banner as Sons of God. Upon leaving Cambridge he undertook the editorship of the Athenæum in London, and while engaged upon this work became a member of the Church of England. His residence at Oxford was the natural outcome of this step. The strong hold of medievalism was then vital with the presence of Newman, |