Monsieur Maurice by Edwards, Amelia Ann Blanford, 1831-1892

I felt myself colour crimson.

"But--but indeed I would care to come, Monsieur Maurice, if you had nothing at all to show me," I said, half hurt, half angry.

He gave me a strange look that I could not understand, and stroked my hair caressingly.

"Come often, then, little one," he said. "Come very often; and when we are tired of pictures and microscopes, we will sit upon the floor, and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings."

Then, seeing my look puzzled, he laughed and added:--

"'Tis a great English poet says that, Gretchen, in one of his plays."

Here a shrill trumpet-call in the court-yard, followed by the prolonged roll of many drums, warned me that evening parade was called, and that as soon as it was over my father would be home and looking for me. So I started up, and put out my hand to say good-bye.

Monsieur Maurice took it between both his own.

"I don't like parting from you so soon, little Maedchen," he said. "Will you come again to-morrow?"

"Every day, if you like!" I replied eagerly.

"Then every day it shall be; and--let me see--you shall improve my bad German, and I will teach you French."

I could have clapped my hands for joy. I was longing to learn French, and I knew how much it would also please my father; so I thanked Monsieur Maurice again and again, and ran home with a light heart to tell of all the wonders I had seen.

4

From this time forth, I saw him always once, and sometimes twice a day--in the afternoons, when he regularly gave me the promised French lesson; and occasionally in the mornings, provided the weather was neither too cold nor too damp for him to join me in the grounds. For Monsieur Maurice was not strong. He could not with impunity face snow, and rain, and our keen Rhenish north-east winds; and it was only when the wintry sun shone out at noon and the air came tempered from the south, that he dared venture from his own fire-side. When, however, there shone a sunny day, with what delight I used to summon him for a walk, take him to my favourite points of view, and show him the woodland nooks that had been my chosen haunts in summer! Then, too, the unwonted colour would come back to his pale cheek, and the smile to his lips, and while the ramble and the sunshine lasted he would be all jest and gaiety, pelting me with dead leaves, chasing me in and out of the plantations, and telling me strange stories, half pathetic, half grotesque, of Dryads, and Fauns, and Satyrs--of Bacchus, and Pan, and Polyphemus--of nymphs who became trees, and shepherds who were transformed to fountains, and all kinds of beautiful wild myths of antique Greece--far more beautiful and far more wild than all the tales of gnomes and witches in my book of Hartz legends.