d to Antoine as if little
Anglice were standing there in the garden.

The days stole by, and Antoine tended the fragile shoot, wondering what
manner of blossom it would unfold, white, or scarlet, or golden. One
Sunday, a stranger, with a bronzed, weather-beaten face like a sailor's,
leaned over the garden rail, and said to him,

"What a fine young date-palm you have there, sir!"

"Mon Dieu!" cried Pere Antoine starting, "and is it a palm?"

"Yes, indeed," returned the man. "I did n't reckon the tree would
flourish in this latitude."

"Ah, mon Dieu!" was all the priest could say aloud; but he murmured to
himself, "Bon Dieu, vous m'avez donne cela!"

If Pere Antoine loved the tree before, he worshipped it now. He watered
it, and nurtured it, and could have clasped it in his arms. Here were
Emile and Anglice and the child, all in one!

The years glided away, and the date-palm and the priest grew
together--only one became vigorous and the other feeble. Pere Antoine
had long passed the meridian of life. The tree was in its youth. It no
longer stood in an isolated garden; for pretentious brick and stucco
houses had clustered about Antoine's cottage. They looked down scowling
on the humble thatched roof. The city was edging up, trying to crowd him
off his land. But he clung to it like lichen and refused to sell.

Speculators piled gold on his doorsteps, and he laughed at them.
Sometimes he was hungry, and cold, and thinly clad; but he laughed none
the less.

"Get thee behind me, Satan!" said the old priest's smile.

Pere Antoine was very old now, scarcely able to walk; but he could sit
under the pliant, caressing leaves of his palm, loving it like an Arab;
and there he sat till the grimmest of speculators came to him. But even
in death Pere Antoine was faithful to his trust.

The owner of that land loses it if he harm the date-tree.

And there it stands in the narrow, dingy street, a beautiful, dreamy
stranger, an exquisite foreign lady whose grace is a joy to the eye, the
incense of whose breath makes the air enamored. May the hand wither that
touches her ungently!

"_Because it grew from the heart of little Anglice_," said Miss Blondeau
tenderly.

End of Project Gutenberg's Pere Antoine's Date-Palm, by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PERE ANTOINE'S DATE-PALM ***

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