How a Chromo-Lithograph is Printed.

Larger Image"SHE KNEW HERSELF FOR A LONELY, DISAGREEABLE OLD WOMAN."

"SHE KNEW HERSELF FOR A LONELY, DISAGREEABLE OLD WOMAN."

When Otterburn came out of the dining-room with the rest of the men he drew his wife a little aside and said to her: "Look here, old lady, I don't think we can carry this on. I am afraid Aunt Sarah will have a fit if we bait her much more. Her eyes rolled most unpleasantly at dinner. Where is she, by-the-bye?"

"She has gone upstairs looking mighty ugly," replied her ladyship. "She is going to express her baggage home to-morrow."

"Oh, she mustn't do that," said Otterburn. "She has always gone on like that, and her bark is worse than her bite. You go and calm her down, and we'll stop this game."

"We've won," said Lady Otterburn. "But I don't feel very spry over the victory. She is an old lady, and I guess we'll just have to let her play by herself as long as she camps here. I'll go up to her right now."

So Lady Otterburn entered Aunt Sarah's room just in time to catch her drying the two tears aforesaid and a few more that had followed them. A wave of compunction passed over her, and she felt that she and her husband and their guests had all behaved with the most unmannerly brutality.

"Dear Aunt Sarah," she said, "I hate that you should be all alone up here while we are enjoying ourselves downstairs. Won't you come down and hear Mrs. Vanhooten sing? They call her the nightingale of Cincinnati in the States."

Now, if Lady Otterburn had followed the impulse that came to her to kneel by the side of the old woman and mix tears, she would almost certainly have been repulsed and would have found Aunt Sarah once more encased in a full suit of prickles; for, however much in a moment of weakness that redoubtable old lady may have pitied herself, she certainly would have permitted no one else to pity her. But Lady Otterburn was a young woman of considerable tact as well as generosity of feeling, and her method of approach proved to be the best she could have chosen.

"Not to-night," replied Aunt Sarah. "I confess to being slightly upset at what has occurred, and I do not feel equal to mixing with your guests at present."

"I guess we must have offended you with our little game," said Lady Otterburn. "But we didn't mean any harm, and we have left off playing it now."

"It has served its purpose," said Aunt Sarah, slowly. "I have been thinking matters over since I came upstairs. It is not easy for a woman of my age and character to confess herself in the wrong, but as far as you are concerned, my dear, I—I—really think that by showing mutual respect and consideration we may, perhaps, get on very well together."

The speech had not ended quite in the manner Aunt Sarah had intended when shebegan it, but the habits of a lifetime are not changed in a moment, and its underlying meaning was, at any rate, clear. Aunt Sarah had come as near as she had ever done in her life to an unreserved apology for her behaviour.

Lady Otterburn was prepared to meet her a good deal more than half-way.

"Of course, you feel seeing me here in your place," she said. "I don't wonder. But both Edward and I want you to look upon Castle Gide as your home just the same as before." (This was not strictly true so far as Edward was concerned, but it must be admitted to have been generous.) "And I'm new to this country and to a position to which you were born. There are so many ways in which you could help, Aunt Sarah."

"My dear," said the old woman, "any help I can give you you shall have. But I think you are quite capable of holding your own anywhere, and—and of adorning any position."

So the treaty of peace was concluded, and the Countess and the Dowager Countess of Otterburn spent a pleasant hour together talking amicably of many things.

When Aunt Sarah came downstairs the next morning she found everybody very anxious to please her. The general attitude of the party was that of people who had committed a breach of courtesy and were ashamed of themselves. Probably this attitude drove compunction into Aunt Sarah's soul more completely than any other could have done. She met advances with amiability, and exercised her fearless tongue and her undoubtedly sharp intellect to the general amusement rather than to the general terrifying of the company. By the time that the house-party broke up she had discovered, possibly to her amazement, that ascendency could be maintained as completely and far more pleasantly by force of character combined with wit and good-humour than by force of character supported by aggressive arrogance alone.

And thus, fortified by experience of its efficacy, Aunt Sarah's conversion was permanent. This is not to say that from a most objectionable old woman she changed at a bound into an exceedingly attractive one. The simile of the leopard and the Ethiopian still holds good. But there was an all-round improvement in her attitude towards the world at large which, whenever she found herself at Castle Gide, was an improvement which seemed to approach the miraculous.

Larger Image"THE TWO LADIES OTTERBURN WORSHIPPING TOGETHER AT A CRADLE SHRINE."

"THE TWO LADIES OTTERBURN WORSHIPPING TOGETHER AT A CRADLE SHRINE."

A year after the events of this story, when the two Ladies Otterburn had been worshipping together for an hour at a cradle shrine plentifully bedecked with lace, the younger of them said to her husband:—

"Dear Aunt Sarah! She has a real loving heart. I guess it was warped by her never having a baby of her own."

By L. Gray-Gower.

Manyreaders have no doubt wondered how the vivid and faithful reproductions of celebrated pictures, with which the public has latterly become so familiar, are reproduced. There is a vague idea that it is the result of some occult colour-process that involves several distinct printings, but exactly what that process is remains commonly a sealed book. But there must be many readers who know nothing whatever of lithographic stones and colour-printing. Let us briefly, then, explain the principle.

About a hundred years ago a struggling Bavarian printer, Alois Senefelder by name, having no paper at hand with which to indite his washing bill, used for the purpose a flat slab of peculiarly soft stone which he had in his workshop. The ink he used was a rude and greasy mixture. The appearance of the writing on the stone suggested to him the possibility of reproducing the writing. His experiments were crowned with success, and lithography naturally took its place amongst the great industrial arts of the world.

If you enter any great lithographer's workshop to-day, like that of the Dangerfield Company at St. Albans, you will notice huge slabs of stone, two or three inches thick, ranging in size from that of a large bedstead to that of a small book. All these stones may be said to come from one place—Solenhofen, in the district of Monheim.

At the Dangerfield Company's works the writer seemed to be passing through a miniature quarry, or through a tombstone warehouse. The stones arrive at the works in their rough condition. They are prepared for use by being ground face to face with sand and water.

The broad principles of lithography consist, of course, in the strong adhesion of greasy substances to calcareous stone, the affinity of one greasy body for another, and the antipathy of such bodies to water. When water is applied to the surface of the stone it remains only on such portions as are not covered with grease, so that, if a roller charged with greasy ink be passed over the stone, the ink will only adhere to the greasy portions, while the moist parts will resist the ink and remain clean. In consequence, when a sheet of paper is pressed upon the stone, it only receives an impression in ink from the greasy line. This is the whole theory of lithography.

And now comes in the task of the expert colour-master. There has been growing up of late years a class of experts in colour for whom the entire National Gallery is only a collection of tints on canvas more or less adroitly combined. These men are master-lithographers. For them the most divine creations of Raphael, Titian, Claude, and Turner are workmanlike colour-combinations, which it is their business to analyze and resolve into their separate constituents. To-day the dead walls and hoardings of the kingdom are covered with wonderful posters and the shop windows lined with gorgeous lithographs evolved by men whose chromatic perception is so acute that they can tell you at a glance what the great Turner himself did not know: how many colours go to the making of one of Turner's pictures.

Larger ImageTHE ARTISTS' ROOM AT THE DANGERFIELD COMPANY'S WORKS, SHOWING THE LITHOGRAPHIC STONES.From a Photo. by][the Dangerfield Co.

THE ARTISTS' ROOM AT THE DANGERFIELD COMPANY'S WORKS, SHOWING THE LITHOGRAPHIC STONES.From a Photo. by][the Dangerfield Co.

THE ARTISTS' ROOM AT THE DANGERFIELD COMPANY'S WORKS, SHOWING THE LITHOGRAPHIC STONES.

From a Photo. by][the Dangerfield Co.

FIRST STONE—LIGHT YELLOW.THIRD STONE—LIGHTEST BLUE.

There are very few artists who can say exactly how their colour-effects were produced, or precisely what pigments were employed to attain certain tones. They work away, slowly painting and repainting until the end desired is reached.

SECOND STONE—DARK YELLOW.FOURTH STONE—LIGHT FLESH TINT.

"We have master-lithographers in our employ," said Mr. Adolphe Tuck to thewriter, "who can tell almost at a glance how many colours and shades go to the making of any given picture, no matter how complex."

FIFTH STONE—DARK BROWN.

Take the case of one of the most successful reproductions of one of the old masters, "The Madonna Ansidei," which hangs in the National Gallery. The colour-master of whom we have spoken quickly resolved this picture into eighteen colours, involving the use of eighteen lithographic stones, each printing a separate tint and being of itself almost a separate picture, until by repeated printings the whole masterpiece was gradually built up. This is the example of which we present illustrations in this article, and is the work of Mr. Adolphe Tuck.

SIXTH STONE—LIGHT BROWN.

But what an eye for colour! What a gift for the realities and essentials of tone to be able, without any mixings of paint or other analytic experiments, to divine straight away just what colours are needed, and prepare stone after stone with the absolute certainty that the combination would produce such a result!

SEVENTH STONE—LIGHT BLUE.

To illustrate the almost marvellous capability of the colour-expert in analyzing the colours of a picture submitted to him, one may mention that the late Sir Charles Eastlake, P.R.A., once ventured to assert that there were sixteen colours or shades visible in a picture by Van Dyck. The lithographic colour-expert declared there were only eleven.Accordingly an accurate copy was painted at the National Gallery of the picture, so accurate that it was difficult to discern a difference between the copy and the original. This was duly analyzed and placed on the stones, eleven in number, and the eleventh printing disclosed an exact facsimile of the copy, and therefore of the original.

EIGHTH STONE—PINK.

NINTH STONE—MEDIUM GREY.

Sir Charles Eastlake acknowledged himself beaten, and readily paid tribute to the wonderful analytic powers of an artist, or, rather, of a scientist, who could not paint a picture but could tell just what a picture was made of.

TENTH STONE—MEDIUM BLUE.

In the case of the Ansidei Madonna, the canvas was copied at the National Gallery under the eye of the Director. The first stage of reproduction was to transfer upon the stone a sort of yellowish-grey base or silhouette of the whole picture (No. 1). It will be noticed that the high lights are upon portions of St. John's and Mary's garments and the mitre of St. Nicholas.

The picture on the next stone, which is to overlay the first, gives more detail.

Gradually these pictures, each done by a separate artist, under the eyes of the colour expert or master-lithographer, assume greater perfection, as colour by colour is added, one from every stone, until in No. 9 one would fain think, as the artist himself may have thought, that the picture was finished, or at least approaching completion. But, as a matter of fact, it is only half completed. It is still lacking many necessaryqualities; the reds and the greens and the greys and the gold have yet to be added. What a quaint enigma is presented by Nos. 11, 12, 14, and 15! Taken by themselves they seem meaningless, but combined with their forerunners and successors they are seen to be essential to the finished picture.

ELEVENTH STONE—MEDIUM YELLOW.

In the very final stages the stones are devoted to greys, which by overlaying one another impart a roundness and solidity to the design which it would otherwise lack. It may be mentioned that this reproduction is, according to Mr. Tuck, the most successful, as it is the most elaborate, colour-lithograph ever attempted.

TWELFTH STONE—DARK RED.

THIRTEENTH STONE—DARK FLESH TINT.

In the case of an ordinary colour-drawing the usual method is to prepare a keystone—that is to say, an outline of the picture, together with the black or grey portions. It is then marked off into colours, each colour requiring, as has been said, a separate stone. Of the uncoloured outline as many copies are printed as there are to be colours in the finished picture, and each of these serves as a key or guide in determining in what position on each stone the separate colour shall be. Each artist then sets to work on his own part of the picture, which is very often, as will be seen by our illustrations, a picture by itself. The master-lithographer knows just how many of these pictures will be necessary to achieve a facsimile. It may be that one colour willfrequently have to be printed over another in order to produce the precise effect.

FOURTEENTH STONE—DARK BLUE.

For colour-printing the stone is polished. Naturally the order in which the colours succeed each other is very important, and must be carefully considered. But perhaps the great object of the maker of pictures from stones, after the picture in its various phases has been prepared, is to see that each colour falls accurately into its proper place on the paper. Nothing is more common, in a badly done lithograph, than to find in the face of the human subject, say an attractive young lady, the flesh colour overlapping the collar or the hat, or even extruding itself out into space beyond the ear. All this implies bad "registering." The drawing on each stone must be made to fit in, or register, with the preceding one, so that, as the paper is passed through the printing machine, the picture is built up colour on colour, each, however, being allowed to dry before the next is applied.

In preparing the stone to take the picture extreme care has to be exercised, for so great is its affinity for grease that even a finger-mark will become perpetuated. After a drawing on the stone is finished it is a precaution to coat it with a solution of gum-arabic and nitric acid, which fills up the pores of the stone in the unfilled parts and prevents the drawing from spreading.

FIFTEENTH STONE—LIGHT RED.

SIXTEENTH STONE—DARK GREY.

Having described the manner in whichthe picture on stone is prepared, we now come to the printing of it. To begin with, there is the "proving-press," which is employed in preparing the stones for the machine. The gummy solution is first washed off, but sufficient remains in the pores of the stones to offer a resisting influence to the ink when the time for printing comes. At this stage the stone is damped and a roller charged with printing ink is passed over its surface, every part of the design being brought in contact with the ink. Accidental grease spots are removed by scraping, polishing, or the application of acid, otherwise they would develop and spoil the result.

SEVENTEENTH STONE—GOLD.

EIGHTEENTH STONE—LIGHT GREY.

When the stone is thus rectified it is subjected to what is technically termed etching; that is, a weak solution of gum and nitric acid is applied, which causes the surface of the bare part of the stones to be gently eroded, and gives a stronger "tooth" to the design. Although the ink of the design itself may now be washed away and the picture be invisible, yet it is there, ready to receive any desired colour which forms the part of the picture. The stones have to be damped and inked before each impression is taken, but nevertheless the printing proceeds with great rapidity, ranging from six hundred to one thousand impressions per hour.

Larger ImageTHE FINISHED CHROMO-LITHOGRAPH:"THE MADONNA ANSIDEI" (AFTER RAPHAEL).

THE FINISHED CHROMO-LITHOGRAPH:"THE MADONNA ANSIDEI" (AFTER RAPHAEL).

By Max Pemberton.

Sadithe fiddler, carrying the little black case under his arm, locked the door of his garret as carefully as though it had contained the wealth of the Cæsars. It was the night of Monday, the twenty-first day of September, in the year 1870. Sadi had not tasted food for twenty hours, and, though he well understood that there was very little to eat in the town of Strasburg, he went forth bravely in quest of it. After all, someone might throw him a bone, even though he were nothing more than a poor, crazy fiddler.

"Heaven knows they have music enough here," he said to himself, as he descended the narrow staircase and came out beneath the eaves of the old houses. This was the thirty-second night since the hated Prussians had come swarming down from Wörth and had invested the city like an army of human locusts. There was scarcely a minute by day or night when the great guns ceased to thunder, or the shots to play havoc with the ancient streets of gallant Strasburg. Even as the fiddler walked away from his own house that night a great shell, thrown from one of the batteries to the north-west, came singing and sighing above him, and then fell with a mighty crash upon the roof next to his own. It was an incendiary shell, Sadi hazarded, and presently a tongue of flame leaping up from the doomed building told him that he had guessed aright. He knew that his worldly possessions, such as they were, would soon be engulfed in that raging furnace of smoke and fire; and he reflected with a sigh, odd fellow that he was, on a picture which he would have given much to save. Sadi wondered now that he had not brought the picture with him. Standing there upon the narrow pavement, while the flames licked about the window of his attic, he remembered the day when Lucy, the daughter of Ludenmayer, the artist from Bad Nauheim, had given the portrait to him and had written the words "In grateful remembrance" upon one corner of it. "We shall never return to Strasburg—never meet again, dear friend," she had said. He knew that it was true, admitted that she could be nothing to him—and yet his eyes were dim when he turned from the burning house and set off to wander aimlessly through the terrible streets.

He had never been a rich man, but the outbreak of the war between France and Prussia robbed him in a day of his employment and left him a beggar. Nero had fiddled while Rome was burning, but no one in Strasburg desired to emulate that incomparable artist; and while there had been days when Sadi might have earned a good dinner by playing the Marseillaise to patriotic hosts, his pride forbade him and his violin was silent. The same sense of the dignity of his art kept him from the public distribution of food ordered by the Mayor and the brave General Uhrich. He, Sadi Descourcelles, had the blood of kings in his veins. A philosophic observer might have remarked that it ran thin and sluggish upon that twenty-first day of September, for he, Sadi, was famishing, ravenous, desperate with the gnawing hunger as of youth and strenuous life. He felt that he could commit any crime for bread. He searched the very gutters with his eyes for any scrap of food that fortune might have cast there. Such lighted windows as showed to him the tables spread for dinner or supper moved him to frenzies of desire. Why should some eat when others were starving? And the Prussians killed all indiscriminately, he said, rich or poor, old and young, mothers and children. What folly resisted the right of Bismarck and the Red Prince? Sadi prayed that the city might fall and bread be given to him; but with the next breath he was cursing the blue-coats and hoping in his heart that Strasburg might never surrender. For he was a patriot in spite of his poverty.

It was a warm night of September, with a starry sky to be seen here and there between the clouds of sulphurous smoke which floated above the ramparts. Few walked abroad, for there was danger in the streets, and scarcely any cessation of the flying shells which the Prussians hurled upon the doomed city. Sadi was accustomed to the awful sounds and sights which accompanied the siege, and they were powerless any longer to affright him. Even the dead in the gutters—thechildren who had not made the war but paid the price of it with their young blood—found him callous and without sympathy. As these had died, so he would die and be at rest. He envied them as they lay there—the flare of the burning houses showed him the white faces and they seemed to sleep. Sadi believed that when next he slept it would be as these—eternally and without pain.

Larger Image"THE TWO PARTED SURLILY."

"THE TWO PARTED SURLILY."

He was indifferent to the danger; nevertheless some little measure of prudence remained to him, and he walked in the centre of the street to avoid the flying fragments and the falling timbers. Doleful cries from stricken houses fell upon deaf ears so far as Sadi the fiddler was concerned. The warnings of a friendly soldier, who told him that he was drawing perilously near the zone of fire, he received with a curt word of thanks. Had the man given him a crust he would have kissed him on both cheeks; but the fellow was hungry himself, and the two parted surlily—the one to a beer-shop, the other toward the ramparts.

"You can play them a tune, old fellow," the soldier said.

Sadi answered, "Why so, friend, since the houses dance already?"

Yes; the houses danced indeed, and the mad music of the guns waxed more terrible as Sadi approached the ramparts and could see the cannon for himself. It was just like a display of fireworks in the gardens of the Tuileries, he said. From minute to minute the dark background of the sky would be cleaved by a line of fire, which marked the path of an incendiary shell as it soared above the quivering city and fell in a shower of flame upon house, or church, or citadel. The hither ground was a mighty waste of rubble, a desert of rubbish, where a few weeks ago houses had stood up proudly, and churches had invited worshippers, and children had found their homes. And all this misery, this untold and savage destruction, was the work of the hated Prussians over yonder, where the night was red and the darkness behind it shielded the assassins. Sadi, in the presence of those who were doing something for France, asked himself what he had done. The answer was, "Nothing." He reflected upon it a little bitterly and turned away toward the west, walking from the ramparts of that unhappy quarter of the city which the Prussians had destroyed ten days ago and now forgotten.

The path was desolate—none trod it but Sadi the fiddler, and he stumbled often as he went. So completely had the Prussians demolished the quarter that the very contour of the streets was lost and a dismal plain presented itself—an open field of rubbish, broken here and there by great abysseswhich once had been the cellars of the houses. Sadi did not know why he walked in such a place or what hope of bread it could give him; but when he stumbled upon an open cellar he reflected that, after all, the house had been quitted in haste, and that some provision might have been left in its larders. The bare possibility appealing to his ravenous hunger sent him climbing down into the cellar like a schoolboy upon a forbidden venture. Impatiently, and with a strength he did not know that he possessed, he delved among the rubble, thrust at the great beams, and wormed his way toward the vault. None would interfere with him, he argued; there was no law, military or civil, which forbade a man to share a bone with the dogs. Sadi was like a miser seeking for his gold; and when at length he stood upright in that which undoubtedly had been the larder of a house, he felt all the joy of an explorer who has discovered an unknown city. Unhappily, such a transport endured for the briefest of moments. Sadi was just telling himself that he was a very lucky fellow when a great hand, thrust out of the darkness, clutched at his throat, and the rays of a lantern shining full in his face blinded him to any other sights.

"Well, my body-snatcher," cried a voice in guttural French, "and what may you be doing here?"

A German spoke; there was no doubt of it at all. Moreover, he was a huge fellow, probably a Prussian from the North; and although he wore the uniform of a French regiment of chasseurs, it was ridiculously small for him and showed its deficiencies when his cloak fell aside. Quick-witted and mentally alert, Sadi guessed the fellow's business there at the first hazard. He could be no one else than one of the many Prussian spies who then found their way in and out of Strasburg so readily. This desert waste of the city would harbour him surely—perchance he waited an opportunity to recross the lines, and was hiding meanwhile in this labyrinth like a fox that has gone to earth. All this passed through Sadi's mind in a moment, but it was accompanied by a cold shiver as though icy water were running down his back. For he perceived at once that the Prussian carried a revolver in his right hand and that the finger itched upon the trigger. A word, a step, might cost him his life. Sadi stood rigid as a statue, while the sweat gathered in heavy drops upon his brow.

"Come, no nonsense!" the Prussian repeated, menacingly. "You had better be honest with me. What is your business here? I will give you the half of a minute to tell me."

Sadi breathed heavily, but he spoke apparently without emotion.

"I have had nothing to eat for twenty hours," he said; "naturally I came here for food."

The Prussian interrupted him with a brutal laugh.

"Then you certainly live on vermin, my bag of bones," he retorted, with a jeer. "Come, your time is nearly up, and my fingers are impatient. You will really be very foolish if you are not candid with me."

He raised the pistol slowly, and deliberately touched Sadi's forehead with the cold barrel. The lantern's light showed a hard face and small eyes set above puffy cheeks. He wore a moustache in the French fashion and an uncouth imperial, which added to his grotesque appearance. Sadi knew that such a man would think it no greater crime to shoot a Frenchman than to drown a dog. Heroically as he had philosophized about death ten minutes ago, the nearer presence of it was very dreadful to him. He could imagine the sting of the bullet as it crashed through his forehead, the sudden giddiness, the voice which said, "Never again shall you speak, or breathe, or look up to the sun." A desperate desire of life came to him. He trembled violently, pressed his hand to his heart, but could not utter a single word. The Prussian watched him without compassion. He began to count ironically, "One, two, three," he said; "I will count ten,canaille," and he started off from the beginning again. He was at the number "five" when a second voice in the cellar caused him to turn sharply upon his heel and then to salute in the rigid German fashion.

"Ah, Herr Lieutenant, here is a job for you," he exclaimed, as though glad to be quit of the responsibility. "I found this rat in the hole here. Look at him for yourself and see what kind of a rogue he is."

The new-comer was quite a youth, a fair, freckled German lad, in little more than his twentieth year. He, too, wore a French uniform, but it was that of the artillery, and Sadi observed that it was a better fit than the loose clothes of the rough customer who had just been threatening him. Such trifling facts occupied the fiddler's mind to the exclusion of all else. He believed that he was about to die, and yet could count the buttons on the lieutenant's tunic, guess atthe State he came from, and hazard the colour of his eyes. The lad was a Bavarian, he said, a merry, laughing youngster. Impossible to believe that he would sanction a brutal murder. Sadi breathed quickly—he appealed to the lad's sympathy in an earnest, manly voice.

Larger Image"HE RAISED THE PISTOL SLOWLY."

"HE RAISED THE PISTOL SLOWLY."

"Herr Lieutenant, it is nothing of the kind," he protested; "I am a poor wretch of a fiddler, whose garret your people have just burned."

It was not a wise thing to have said, and the young soldier's interruption told Sadi as much.

"My people, sir!" he cried, sharply, and with feigned astonishment. "What people do you mean, then?"

"It is as I say," interrupted the trooper; "he is a spy who has tracked us to our hole, Herr Lieutenant. Better make an end of him while there is time."

"But not with a pistol, trooper," retorted the boy, with a little laugh. "At least, let us sup first."

Sadi breathed again, while the two Prussians discussed the pros and cons in a low voice. "If these men would but quarrel!" was his idea. They, however, had no intention of doing anything of the kind, for presently they ceased to wrangle, and the young soldier exclaimed, with some severity:—

"You say that you are a fiddler. What proofs of that can you give us?"

"My fiddle," answered Sadi, almost joyously; "you will find it on the stones upstairs, sir."

The answer surprised the men very much.

"Go and look for it, trooper," said the officer, quietly; "there is plenty of time before daylight to settle this fellow's affair. Besides, the captain is fond of a little music."

The trooper clambered up out of the cellar at the word of command, while the lieutenant calmly lighted a cigar and surveyed Sadi with an ironical glance.

"Poor business, yours, just now, is it not?" he asked.

"So poor that I am starving," said Sadi, with dignified simplicity.

"Ah! And you look for your supper on the dust-heaps. Just like a fiddler."

"I have walked to the ramparts and back every evening for three years," rejoined Sadi, whose self-possession remained to him. "The habit clings to me; besides, what is the harm?" he asked.

"The captain will teach you that; don't let me deceive you at all; he will certainly shoot you, old fellow. For myself, I am sensitive; it is my weakness to prefer live bodies to dead ones. I could not—no, I could not harm a fly, my Stradivarius. That is why you are now allowed to say your prayers."

His own humour amused him, and presently he continued:—

"But perhaps you do not want to say your prayers, my Amati. Other people generally do that when Frenchmen are fiddling. Here is your violin, I see. Let us play it together."

The trooper returned while he spoke, carrying the frayed black leather case which stood for all that life could give to Sadi Descourcelles. When the lieutenant seized upon it with rough hands it was as though someone had struck Sadi a blow.

"Gently, for Heaven's sake, sir," he cried. "Do you know that my fiddle is worth five thousand francs?"

"To us possibly a good deal more," retorted the lieutenant, uncompassionately. "The captain shall read your music, my little Paganini. This way, if you please, and mind your precious neck if you prefer pistols."

It was the lieutenant's evident idea that the violin-case contained the private papers of a common spy, who had fallen by some lucky chance into the hands of the very men he would have betrayed to the French. Proud at the capture, and confident of applause from his superior officers, he now pushed Sadi across the cellar in which they stood to a door upon the far side of it, whence a flight of steps led downward to a second cellar, more spacious and less encumbered. Here candles burned upon a rude table, a fire flickered upon a tiled hearth, and burly figures moved about a copper, whence a fragrant smell diffused itself. Sadi perceived at once that he had been conducted into a very nest of Prussians. He had no doubt whatever that these were the men who had been carrying news of Strasburg to the Red Prince since the siege began; their startled exclamations when the door opened, the quick exchange of sign and counter-sign, left no other conclusion possible. And he understood what he had to hope from them—he, who knew their secret and could, by a word, bring a rabble there which would tear them limb from limb.

The trooper thrust Sadi forward toward the fire, while coarse, stubbly faces peered into his own, and more than one hand reached out for a candle to examine him more closely. To the hurried questions: "Whom have you here; what cattle is this?" the lieutenant answered, simply: "I must see the captain; please to wake him." In a tense interval, during which someone entered a lunette of the cellar and touched a sleeping figure upon the shoulder, the ruffian by the copper asked Sadi if he were hungry, and, being answered "Yes," he took a ladleful of the boiling soup and poured it over the prisoner's fingers. Sadi cried out sharply; but before the act could be repeated a burly man strode out of the alcove and gave the fellow a box on the ear which sounded like a pistol-shot.

"What do you mean by that, sergeant?" the new-comer asked.

"A spy from the ramparts. I was keeping him warm, Herr Captain," was the answer.

"But this is no spy; this is Sadi the fiddler."

Sadi turned with a cry of joy.

"Ludenmayer! You, my friend!" he exclaimed.

"Sadi! Old Sadi the fiddler! Impossible!"

"Indeed, it is possible. Old Sadi, as you say, and so hungry that he could eat the bones off your dishes."

"Then he shall sup with us. A hungry man makes friends with strange company, and we are that, as you guess, Maître Sadi. Come, sergeant, fill our friend a bowl of soup. Let him spy out that to begin with. Eh, Sadi, you will not refuse a bowl of soup even from the Prussians? Then let us see you fall to. We can talk of old friends afterwards."

There were some murmurs at this from the men about the table, but the sergeant obeyed the order sullenly, and a bowl of the hot soup was set before the astonished Sadi almost before he had realized that a lucky accident had saved his life—for the moment, at any rate. Ludenmayer, honestly glad to see an old acquaintance, even under such circumstances, began to assure the rest that they had nothing to fear from Sadi; but at this the fiddler put down his spoon and flatly contradicted his friend.

"Not so," he said, blandly; "if it were in my power I would hang the lot of you!"

They laughed at him now—laughed at him for a foolish crank, airing his absurd patriotism even at the pistol's mouth. While some of them said that he would soon have Prussians enough for his neighbours in Strasburg, others promised the city twenty, thirty, forty hours of her freedom.

"And we shall have you for our guest, friend Sadi," Ludenmayer said, affably. "We like you so much that we cannot part with you. No, we must certainly keep you until the Red Prince comes in; after that we will send you to Munich to fiddle at the opera. Eh, my boy, there's a career—to scrape this new Wagner stuff and hear the madmen say that you are a genius. Will you come toMunich and see little Lucy again? I know that you will, Sadi."

Sadi sighed, but did not answer his friend. If the name of Lucy were a sweet remembrance to him, this promise of Strasburg's surrender and of the humiliation it must put upon France cut him to the quick. These men about him, jesting in the face of death, defiant of all risks—how much, perchance, they had done in the terrible weeks of the siege to bring about this inevitable cataclysm and the ruin and death which attended it! Their reward would be promotion and applause from those who had contrived France's misfortunes. None would punish them, none bring them to account, Sadi reflected bitterly; and, reflecting, he asked himself of a sudden if he were not the appointed agent—he, the humble fiddler, sent there by the chances of the night to discover and, it might be, to betray them.

"IF IT WERE IN MY POWER I WOULD HANG THE LOT OF YOU."

The idea came to him quite unexpectedly while the Prussians were at their supper. In another he would have scoffed at it, but Sadi had long been fretting upon his own uselessness and the poor part he had played at the time of his country's need; and now it came to him as in a flash that this was the appointed hour. That he would lose his own life in the endeavour to give these men up to France he was quite convinced; but this contemplation of sacrifice pleased him, and there was but one regret—that he could do nothing which would not wound the father of her he had so greatly loved. Yes, if he could call Frenchmen to this hiding-place they would spare none, and Ludenmayer would perish with the others. Sadi said thatmany a daughter mourned a father in Strasburg that day—why should little Lucy be spared? And yet he could not bring himself to harm his old friend. Did he not owe his life to him?

It was a strange scene—the big cellar lighted by guttering candles, the red fire flickering upon the hearth, and the sombre figures of the burly Prussians lolling over their dishes or their pipes. From time to time one or other would quit the place stealthily, returning anon with news from the ramparts or the streets. The young lieutenant disappeared altogether toward midnight, and Sadi knew that he had re-crossed the lines while his friends were pledging him in giant bumpers of champagne. As the hours went on the hilarity became reckless and, as it seemed to Sadi, even dangerous. Ludenmayer called for silence more than once, but the men, warmed with the wine, obeyed him reluctantly, and were soon talking and laughing again. It was at the height of such an outburst that Sadi touched his friend upon the shoulder and bethought him of the very first lie he had told in all his life.

"Did you say good-bye to the Herr Lieutenant?" he asked, in a low voice; and then continued, "I hope so, for you will never see him again, friend Ludenmayer."

The captain, who had been squatting upon a heap of straw by Sadi's side, laughed a little incredulously, but his nervousness was evident when he asked:—

"And why should we not see him again, Sadi?"

"Because they know where he will recross to-night."

"They know! Who knows, then?"

Larger Image"I CAME HERE TO WARN YOU."

"I CAME HERE TO WARN YOU."

"Levoire and the staff. It is rumoured that you are hiding in the ruins. I came here to warn you—you alone, mind, not the others."

He raised a finger as much as to say, "This is the compact between us." The Prussians round about were playing cards and dominoes, and quarrelling over their games. Ludenmayer, fallen serious in a moment, seemed to be turning over Sadi's words in his mind. Presently he said:—

"Levoire was a friend of yours, I think?"

"I had the honour to be instructor to his wife."

"Then she was your informant?"

He had put the idea into Sadi's head, and the fiddler seized upon it with avidity.

"We need not go into that. If you doubt her information, prove it for yourself. Your friends here are scarcely capable."

"That is true, the cattle. They think that their work is over. I must certainly go, Sadi—and take you with me."

"Not so, Ludenmayer; I must have nothing to do with it. Besides, I am very comfortable here."

"For the time being, yes. But if anything should happen to me, they would assuredly hang you, friend Sadi."

"I will take my chances, Ludenmayer. Remember, it is you alone that I wish toserve. They will at least respect your orders."

"Give them your word to be silent, and they will let you go away at once. There is nothing easier, Sadi."

"For a Prussian, perhaps—for me, no. We have been comrades—let that suffice, Ludenmayer. A wise man would go at once."

The eyes of the two met, and the Prussian seemed to read something of this odd fellow's purpose in his dilated pupils and the stern, set expression of his mouth. It came to Ludenmayer that he and the gregarious dozen of spies with him were already in a trap from which haste alone would save them. This simple old fiddler knew much more than he would tell. Ludenmayer, trained to selfishness by his occupation, cared nothing for that which happened to the others if he could save his own skin. He was grateful to Sadi, and he wrung his hand.

"Well," he said, in a louder voice, for all to hear, "I must certainly be off, but I shall not be away long. Do not spare the bottle, Sadi. And mind you treat him well," he added, turning to the company, "for he is my guest."

The men stood to the salute mechanically, and the sentry in the passage whispering that the road was clear, Ludenmayer left the cellar with a last word in Sadi's ear.

"Take care of yourself," he said; "they are in an ugly mood."

Sadi nodded his head confidently, but his heart beat quicker when the door was shut, and he looked a little eagerly into the faces of the crew as though he would learn their purpose now that the captain was gone. It could not be very long, he argued, before Ludenmayer discovered the trick which had been played upon him and returned to charge him with it. As to the Prussians about him, some were already steeped with wine, and they lay sprawling like animals in the straw; others, and the cook was among the number of these, eyed their captain's guest suspiciously and discussed him in low voices. Sadi knew that his life hung upon a thread; but when a great ruffian drew a revolver and loaded it deliberately the fiddler was not afraid. "They will not shoot me," he said to himself; "they would be afraid of the noise." What he feared was the rope and the hook in the beam above, but he did not confess it by his looks; and turning from them with a laugh he buried his head in the straw and pretended to sleep. Soon the others imitated him, and the heavy breathing of tired men echoed through the cellar.

Sadi lay for a long while without any other idea than that of his own danger and the fate which awaited him if Ludenmayer did not come back. He had caught up the precious fiddle which the captain returned to him, and he hugged it to him as the one possession left to him in the world. Silent as the place was, the broken roof admitted sounds of the later night, the blare of bugles, and the booming of the shells. Sadi wondered what those distant troops would say if a man should go to them and cry, "The cellars by the old church of St. Gervais are full of Prussian spies; you will find them sleeping there." Could he but send that message, at least one of the wrongs of those bitter days would be avenged. And yet how impotent he was! The desert waste of land above would be without one living soul at such an hour; and he knew that any attempt to quit the cellar would bring instant death upon him. Sadi, convinced of the hopelessness of his idea, lay very still and counted the dreary hours. For a time he slept; and when he awoke it was the sentry's voice which aroused him. The man had come down to warn his comrades. A regiment of the line marched out to the assistance of the gunners at Lunette 53—you could hear their heavy tramping as they crossed the old road, now lumbered over with stones and the rubble of the tumbled houses. There would be many, very many of them, the ear said. Sadi alone amongst those who listened to the footsteps did not tremble or turn pale. He was unloosing his fiddle in its case. None saw him or thought of him in that tragic moment. "For France!" he said, and he believed it was the last word he would ever utter.

The alarm cried softly in the cellar found stupid ears and men but half-awakened from a drunken sleep. Some of the Prussians sat up with hush words upon their lips; others simply lay and listened—a regiment was marching past certainly, but what of that? They had but to lie close and to douse the lights (which they were quick to do) and their safety was assured. This they believed when sudden music, loud and distinct, sent them leaping to their feet and crying for their swords. Someone played the "Wacht am Rhein" at their very elbows—a voice roared "Shoot the fiddler down"—another voice cried out for a light. It was the supreme moment in the life of Sadi thefiddler. Never had he played so wildly or with such delight of his notes. And the darkness, he said, might yet save him. Dodging here, ducking there, he plunged into the passage and went on headlong toward the light. But he never ceased to play the "Wacht am Rhein" when he could stand a moment to breathe, and the bullets singing by him, the sword-thrusts aimed at him, did but make him play the louder.

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