er? You must speak, if I have to
drag the words from between your teeth."

"O God! O God!" she moaned, "I dare not tell you--it is too shameful--I
never saw Liszt--I heard much of him--I adored him, his music--I was
vain, foolish, doting! I thought, perhaps, you might be a great pianist,
and if you were told that Liszt was your father--your real father." ...

"My real father--who was he? Quick, woman, speak!"

"He was Liszt's favorite piano-tuner," she whispered.

Dull silence reigned, and then I heard some one slowly descending the
stairs. The outer door closed, and I rushed to the window. In the misty
dawn I could see nothing but water. The house was completely hemmed in
by a noiseless sheet of sullen dirty water. Not a soul was in sight, and
almost believing that I had been the victim of a nightmare, I went back
to my bed and fell asleep. I was awakened by loud halloas and rude
poundings at my window. A man was looking in at me: "Hurry up, stranger;
you haven't long to wait. The water is up to the top of the porch. Get
your clothes on and come into my boat!"

It did not take me hours to obey this hint, and I stepped from the
window to the deck of a schooner. The meadows had utterly disappeared.
Nothing but water glistened in the sunlight. When I reached the mainland
I looked back at the house. I could just descry the roof.

Little Holland was very wet.

A CHOPIN OF THE GUTTER

J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un theatre banal
Qu'enflammait l'orchestre sonore
Une fee allumer dans un ciel infernal
Une miraculeuse aurore;

J'ai vu parfois au fond d'un theatre banal
Un etre qui n'etait que lumiere, or et gaze,
Terrasser l'enorme Satan;
Mais mon coeur que jamais ne visite l'extase,

Est un theatre ou l'on attend.
Toujours, toujours en vain l'etre aux ailes gaze.

--BAUDELAIRE.

They watched him until he turned the corner of the Rue Puteaux and was
lost to them.

He moved slowly, painfully, one leg striking the pavement in
syncopation, for it was sadly crippled by disease. He twisted his thin
head only once as he went along the Batignolles. It seemed to them that
his half face was sneering in the mist. Then the band passed up to the
warmer lights of the Clichy Quarter, where they drank and argued art far
into the night They one and all hated Wagner, adoring Chopin's morbid
music.

Minkiewicz walked up the lower side of the little street called Puteaux
until