But except that one battle
the tragedy was not--eh--crude, like _grandpere's_; was not physical.
Once he said to me: 'There are things in life, in the refined life,
very quiet things, that are much more tragic than bloodshed or death or
the defying of death.'"

"In the refined life," Chester said musingly.

"Yes! and he _was_ refined, yet never weak. 'Strength,' he said,
'valor, truth, they are the foundations; better be dead than without
them. Yet one can have them, in crude form, and still better be dead.
The noble, the humane, the chaste, the beautiful, 'tis with them we
build the superstructure, the temple, of life--Mr. Chester, if you knew
French I could tell you that better."

"I doubt it. Go on, please, time's a-flying."

"Well, you see how tragic was that life! Papa saw it and said: 'It
shall not be tragic alone. I will build on it a comedy higher, finer,
than tragedy. That's what life is for; mine, yours, the world's,' he
said to me. Mr. Chester, you can imagine how a daughter would love a
father like that, and also how mamma loved him--for years--before they
could marry."

"Your mother was a Creole, I suppose?"

"No, mamma was French. After _grand'mere_ had followed
_grandpere_--above--papa, looking up some of the once employees of T.
Chapdelaine & Son, to raise the old concern back to life, arranged with
them that while they should reinstitute it here he would go live in
France, close to the producers of the finest goods possible. You see?
And he did that many years with a kind of success; but smaller and
smaller, because little by little the taste for those refinements was
passing, while those department stores and all that kind of thing--you
understand--h'm?"

The train stopped in Rampart Street, and when one aunt, with madame,
and one with monsieur, had followed the junior pair out of the
snarlings and hootings of Canal Street's automobiles and to the quiet
sidewalks of the old quarter----

"Well?" said Chester, slowing down, and----

"Well," said Aline, "about mamma: ah, 'tis wonderful how they were
suited to each other, those two. Almost from the first of his living
there, in France, they were acquainted and much together. She was of a
fine ancestry, but without fortune; everything lost in the German war,
eighteen seventy. They were close neighbor to a convent very famous
for its wonderful work of the needle and of the bobbin. 'Twas there
she received her education. And she and