The Elephant Island Chronicles

Presents

The Question Of Latinby Guy de Maupassant

Translated by ALBERT M. C. Mcmaster, B.A.; A. E. HENDERSON, B.A.; MME. QUESADA And Others

Narration by Eleven Labs

Forward by Gio Marron

Foreword

In The Question of Latin, Guy de Maupassant turns his sharp satirical eye toward the rigid structures of classical education and the bureaucracies that uphold them. Written during a period when Latin was still considered the pinnacle of academic achievement in French schools, the story exposes the absurd lengths to which educational authorities will go to preserve appearances, even in the face of failure.

What unfolds is not just a critique of outdated pedagogy, but a broader indictment of a system more concerned with optics than with learning. The child's inability to answer a question becomes less important than the officials’ eagerness to reframe ignorance as virtue. Maupassant, with characteristic irony, reveals how social prestige, institutional pride, and empty decorum often conspire to obscure truth.

Though specific in its cultural setting, the story remains strikingly relevant today—as debates over educational relevance, performance-based evaluation, and institutional credibility continue. This brief tale reminds us that the true farce is not ignorance itself, but the elaborate fictions we create to conceal it.

Gio Marron

The Question Of Latin

by Guy de Maupassant

Translated by AlbertM. C. Mcmaster, B.A.; A. E. Henderson, B.A.; MME. Quesada And Others

This subject of Latin that has been dinned into our ears for some time past recalls to my mind a story—a story of my youth.

I was finishing my studies with a teacher, in a big central town, at the Institution Robineau, celebrated through the entire province for the special attention paid there to the study of Latin.

For the past ten years, the Robineau Institute beat the imperial lycee of the town at every competitive examination, and all the colleges of the subprefecture, and these constant successes were due, they said, to an usher, a simple usher, M. Piquedent, or rather Pere Piquedent.

He was one of those middle-aged men quite gray, whose real age it is impossible to tell, and whose history we can guess at first glance. Having entered as an usher at twenty into the first institution that presented itself so that he could proceed to take first his degree of Master of Arts and afterward the degree of Doctor of Laws, he found himself so enmeshed in this routine that he remained an usher all his life. But his love for Latin did not leave him and harassed him like an unhealthy passion. He continued to read the poets, the prose writers, the historians, to interpret them and penetrate their meaning, to comment on them with a perseverance bordering on madness.

One day, the idea came into his head to oblige all the students in his class to answer him in Latin only; and he persisted in this resolution until at last they were capable of sustaining an entire conversation with him just as they would in their mother tongue. He listened to them, as a leader of an orchestra listens to his musicians rehearsing, and striking his desk every moment with his ruler, he exclaimed:

“Monsieur Lefrere, Monsieur Lefrere, you are committing a solecism! You forget the rule.

“Monsieur Plantel, your way of expressing yourself is altogether French and in no way Latin. You must understand the genius of a language. Look here, listen to me.”

Now, it came to pass that the pupils of the Institution Robineau carried off, at the end of the year, all the prizes for composition, translation, and Latin conversation.

Next year, the principal, a little man, as cunning as an ape, whom he resembled in his grinning and grotesque appearance, had had printed on his programmes, on his advertisements, and painted on the door of his institution:

“Latin Studies a Specialty. Five first prizes carried off in the five classes of the lycee.

“Two honor prizes at the general examinations in competition with all the lycees and colleges of France.”

For ten years the Institution Robineau triumphed in the same fashion. Now my father, allured by these successes, sent me as a day pupil to Robineau's—or, as we called it, Robinetto or Robinettino's—and made me take special private lessons from Pere Piquedent at the rate of five francs per hour, out of which the usher got two francs and the principal three francs. I was then eighteen, and was in the philosophy class.

These private lessons were given in a little room looking out on the street. It so happened that Pere Piquedent, instead of talking Latin to me, as he did when teaching publicly in the institution, kept telling me his troubles in French. Without relations, without friends, the poor man conceived an attachment to me, and poured out his misery to me.

He had never for the last ten or fifteen years chatted confidentially with any one.

“I am like an oak in a desert,” he said—“'sicut quercus in solitudine'.”

The other ushers disgusted him. He knew nobody in the town, since he had no time to devote to making acquaintances.

“Not even the nights, my friend, and that is the hardest thing on me. The dream of my life is to have a room with my own furniture, my own books, little things that belong to myself and which others may not touch. And I have nothing of my own, nothing except my trousers and my frock-coat, nothing, not even my mattress and my pillow! I have not four walls to shut myself up in, except when I come to give a lesson in this room. Do you see what this means—a man forced to spend his life without ever having the right, without ever finding the time, to shut himself up all alone, no matter where, to think, to reflect, to work, to dream? Ah! my dear boy, a key, the key of a door which one can lock—this is happiness, mark you, the only happiness!

“Here, all day long, teaching all those restless rogues, and during the night the dormitory with the same restless rogues snoring. And I have to sleep in the bed at the end of two rows of beds occupied by these youngsters whom I must look after. I can never be alone, never! If I go out I find the streets full of people, and, when I am tired of walking, I go into some cafe crowded with smokers and billiard players. I tell you what, it is the life of a galley slave.”

I said:

“Why did you not take up some other line, Monsieur Piquedent?”

He exclaimed:

“What, my little friend? I am not a shoemaker, or a joiner, or a hatter, or a baker, or a hairdresser. I only know Latin, and I have no diploma which would enable me to sell my knowledge at a high price. If I were a doctor I would sell for a hundred francs what I now sell for a hundred sous; and I would supply it probably of an inferior quality, for my title would be enough to sustain my reputation.”

Sometimes he would say to me:

“I have no rest in life except in the hours spent with you. Don't be afraid! you'll lose nothing by that. I'll make it up to you in the class-room by making you speak twice as much Latin as the others.”

One day, I grew bolder, and offered him a cigarette. He stared at me in astonishment at first, then he gave a glance toward the door.

“If any one were to come in, my dear boy?”

“Well, let us smoke at the window,” said I.

And we went and leaned our elbows on the windowsill looking on the street, holding concealed in our hands the little rolls of tobacco. Just opposite to us was a laundry. Four women in loose white waists were passing hot, heavy irons over the linen spread out before them, from which a warm steam arose.

Suddenly, another, a fifth, carrying on her arm a large basket which made her stoop, came out to take the customers their shirts, their handkerchiefs, and their sheets. She stopped on the threshold as if she were already fatigued; then, she raised her eyes, smiled as she saw us smoking, flung at us, with her left hand, which was free, the sly kiss characteristic of a free-and-easy working-woman, and went away at a slow place, dragging her feet as she went.

She was a woman of about twenty, small, rather thin, pale, rather pretty, with a roguish air and laughing eyes beneath her ill-combed fair hair.

Pere Piquedent, affected, began murmuring:

“What an occupation for a woman! Really a trade only fit for a horse.”

And he spoke with emotion about the misery of the people. He had a heart which swelled with lofty democratic sentiment, and he referred to the fatiguing pursuits of the working class with phrases borrowed from Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and with sobs in his throat.

Next day, as we were leaning our elbows on the same window sill, the same woman perceived us and cried out to us:

“Good-day, scholars!” in a comical sort of tone, while she made a contemptuous gesture with her hands.

I flung her a cigarette, which she immediately began to smoke. And the four other ironers rushed out to the door with outstretched hands to get cigarettes also.

And each day a friendly intercourse was established between the working-women of the pavement and the idlers of the boarding school.

Pere Piquedent was really a comical sight. He trembled at being noticed, for he might lose his position; and he made timid and ridiculous gestures, quite a theatrical display of love signals, to which the women responded with a regular fusillade of kisses.

A perfidious idea came into my mind. One day, on entering our room, I said to the old usher in a low tone:

“You would not believe it, Monsieur Piquedent, I met the little washerwoman! You know the one I mean, the woman who had the basket, and I spoke to her!”

He asked, rather worried at my manner:

“What did she say to you?”

“She said to me—why, she said she thought you were very nice. The fact of the matter is, I believe, I believe, that she is a little in love with you.” I saw that he was growing pale.

“She is laughing at me, of course. These things don't happen at my age,” he replied.

I said gravely:

“How is that? You are all right.”

As I felt that my trick had produced its effect on him, I did not press the matter.

But every day I pretended that I had met the little laundress and that I had spoken to her about him, so that in the end he believed me, and sent her ardent and earnest kisses.

Now it happened that one morning, on my way to the boarding school, I really came across her. I accosted her without hesitation, as if I had known her for the last ten years.

“Good-day, mademoiselle. Are you quite well?”

“Very well, monsieur, thank you.”

“Will you have a cigarette?”

“Oh! not in the street.”

“You can smoke it at home.”

“In that case, I will.”

“Let me tell you, mademoiselle, there's something you don't know.”

“What is that, monsieur?”

“The old gentleman—my old professor, I mean—”

“Pere Piquedent?”

“Yes, Pere Piquedent. So you know his name?”

“Faith, I do! What of that?”

“Well, he is in love with you!”

She burst out laughing wildly, and exclaimed:

“You are only fooling.”

“Oh! no, I am not fooling! He keeps talking of you all through the lesson. I bet that he'll marry you!”

She ceased laughing. The idea of marriage makes every girl serious. Then she repeated, with an incredulous air:

“This is humbug!”

“I swear to you, it's true.”

She picked up her basket which she had laid down at her feet.

“Well, we'll see,” she said. And she went away.

Presently when I had reached the boarding school, I took Pere Piquedent aside, and said:

“You must write to her; she is infatuated with you.”

And he wrote a long letter, tenderly affectionate, full of phrases and circumlocutions, metaphors and similes, philosophy and academic gallantry; and I took on myself the responsibility of delivering it to the young woman.

She read it with gravity, with emotion; then she murmured:

“How well he writes! It is easy to see he has got education! Does he really mean to marry me?”

I replied intrepidly: “Faith, he has lost his head about you!”

“Then he must invite me to dinner on Sunday at the Ile des Fleurs.”

I promised that she should be invited.

Pere Piquedent was much touched by everything I told him about her.

I added:

“She loves you, Monsieur Piquedent, and I believe her to be a decent girl. It is not right to lead her on and then abandon her.”

He replied in a firm tone:

“I hope I, too, am a decent man, my friend.”

I confess I had at the time no plan. I was playing a practical joke a schoolboy joke, nothing more. I had been aware of the simplicity of the old usher, his innocence and his weakness. I amused myself without asking myself how it would turn out. I was eighteen, and I had been for a long time looked upon at the lycee as a sly practical joker.

So it was agreed that Pere Piquedent and I should set out in a hack for the ferry of Queue de Vache, that we should there pick up Angele, and that I should take them into my boat, for in those days I was fond of boating. I would then bring them to the Ile des Fleurs, where the three of us would dine. I had inflicted myself on them, the better to enjoy my triumph, and the usher, consenting to my arrangement, proved clearly that he was losing his head by thus risking the loss of his position.

When we arrived at the ferry, where my boat had been moored since morning, I saw in the grass, or rather above the tall weeds of the bank, an enormous red parasol, resembling a monstrous wild poppy. Beneath the parasol was the little laundress in her Sunday clothes. I was surprised. She was really pretty, though pale; and graceful, though with a rather suburban grace.

Pere Piquedent raised his hat and bowed. She put out her hand toward him, and they stared at one another without uttering a word. Then they stepped into my boat, and I took the oars. They were seated side by side near the stern.

The usher was the first to speak.

“This is nice weather for a row in a boat.”

She murmured:

“Oh! yes.”

She dipped her hand into the water, skimming the surface, making a thin, transparent film like a sheet of glass, which made a soft plashing along the side of the boat.

When they were in the restaurant, she took it on herself to speak, and ordered dinner, fried fish, a chicken, and salad; then she led us on toward the isle, which she knew perfectly.

After this, she was gay, romping, and even rather tantalizing.

Until dessert, no question of love arose. I had treated them to champagne, and Pere Piquedent was tipsy. Herself slightly the worse, she called out to him:

“Monsieur Piquenez.”

He said abruptly:

“Mademoiselle, Monsieur Raoul has communicated my sentiments to you.”

She became as serious as a judge.

“Yes, monsieur.”

“What is your reply?”

“We never reply to these questions!”

He puffed with emotion, and went on:

“Well, will the day ever come that you will like me?”

She smiled.

“You big stupid! You are very nice.”

“In short, mademoiselle, do you think that, later on, we might—”

She hesitated a second; then in a trembling voice she said:

“Do you mean to marry me when you say that? For on no other condition, you know.”

“Yes, mademoiselle!”

“Well, that's all right, Monsieur Piquedent!”

It was thus that these two silly creatures promised marriage to each other through the trick of a young scamp. But I did not believe that it was serious, nor, indeed, did they, perhaps.

“You know, I have nothing, not four sous,” she said.

He stammered, for he was as drunk as Silenus:

“I have saved five thousand francs.”

She exclaimed triumphantly:

“Then we can set up in business?”

He became restless.

“In what business?”

“What do I know? We shall see. With five thousand francs we could do many things. You don't want me to go and live in your boarding school, do you?”

He had not looked forward so far as this, and he stammered in great perplexity:

“What business could we set up in? That would not do, for all I know is Latin!”

She reflected in her turn, passing in review all her business ambitions.

“You could not be a doctor?”

“No, I have no diploma.”

“Or a chemist?”

“No more than the other.”

She uttered a cry of joy. She had discovered it.

“Then we'll buy a grocer's shop! Oh! what luck! we'll buy a grocer's shop. Not on a big scale, of course; with five thousand francs one does not go far.”

He was shocked at the suggestion.

“No, I can't be a grocer. I am—I am—too well known: I only know Latin, that is all I know.”

But she poured a glass of champagne down his throat. He drank it and was silent.

We got back into the boat. The night was dark, very dark. I saw clearly, however, that he had caught her by the waist, and that they were hugging each other again and again.

It was a frightful catastrophe. Our escapade was discovered, with the result that Pere Piquedent was dismissed. And my father, in a fit of anger, sent me to finish my course of philosophy at Ribaudet's school.

Six months later I took my degree of Bachelor of Arts. Then I went to study law in Paris, and did not return to my native town till two years later.

At the corner of the Rue de Serpent a shop caught my eye. Over the door were the words: “Colonial Products—Piquedent”; then underneath, so as to enlighten the most ignorant: “Grocery.”

I exclaimed:

“'Quantum mutatus ab illo!'”

Piquedent raised his head, left his female customer, and rushed toward me with outstretched hands.

“Ah! my young friend, my young friend, here you are! What luck! what luck!”

A beautiful woman, very plump, abruptly left the cashier's desk and flung herself on my breast. I had some difficulty in recognizing her, she had grown so stout.

I asked:

“So then you're doing well?”

Piquedent had gone back to weigh the groceries.

“Oh! very well, very well, very well. I have made three thousand francs clear this year!”

“And what about Latin, Monsieur Piquedent?”

“Oh, good heavens! Latin, Latin, Latin—you see it does not keep the pot boiling!”

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this short story by Guy de Maupassant. Until next time, stay curious.

Voice-over provided by Eleven Labs or Amazon Polly

The Cipher of Rue Royal

A Mimi Delboise Mystery

By Gio Marron

The brass nameplate on the door read "M. Delboise, Private Investigations" in letters that caught the morning light filtering through the French Quarter's narrow streets. Mimi Delboise adjusted the tilt of her hat and checked her pocket watch—eight-thirty sharp. Punctuality was a virtue she demanded of herself, if not always of her clients.

The woman waiting in her small office was clearly nervous, her gloved hands worrying the clasp of an expensive leather purse. She couldn't have been more than twenty-five, with the pale complexion of someone who spent little time in New Orleans' unforgiving sun. Her dress was fashionable but not ostentatious—the carefully calculated appearance of new money trying not to appear too eager.

"Mrs. Boudreaux, I presume?" Mimi settled behind her desk, noting how the woman's eyes darted to the window overlooking Royal Street before returning to meet her gaze.

"Yes, though I... I wasn't certain you would see me. Some of the ladies at the Literary Society suggested that perhaps a woman detective might not be... suitable for such matters."

Mimi had heard variations of this conversation many times. She leaned back in her chair, allowing a slight smile to play at the corners of her mouth. "And yet here you are. Which suggests your need outweighs your social circle's reservations."

A flush crept up Mrs. Boudreaux's neck. "My husband is receiving threatening letters. The police dismiss them as pranks, but..." She reached into her purse and withdrew a folded paper. "This arrived yesterday."

Mimi accepted the letter, immediately noting the quality of the paper—expensive but not the finest available. The handwriting was educated, with the slight flourishes suggesting European training, but something was deliberately theatrical about the script.

Your accounts must be settled before the moon wanes, or your secrets will illuminate the shadows where your reputation now hides.

"Cryptic," Mimi observed, turning the paper to examine the watermark. "But not particularly threatening. Has your husband any idea what accounts might be referenced?"

"He claims ignorance entirely. Says it's merely some competitor trying to unnerve him before the cotton exchange votes on new regulations." Mrs. Boudreaux's voice carried the careful neutrality of a wife who had practiced believing her husband's explanations.

"But you suspect otherwise."

"I suspect my husband keeps ledgers I've never seen." The admission came quietly, followed by a quick glance toward the door as if Gabriel Boudreaux might materialize to overhear his wife's disloyalty.

Mimi studied the young woman's face, noting the faint shadows beneath her eyes that suggested sleepless nights. "Mrs. Boudreaux, before we proceed, I must ask—are you prepared for the possibility that your suspicions may prove correct? My investigations have a tendency to uncover truths that clients sometimes wish had remained buried."

The silence stretched between them, filled with the distant sounds of the French Quarter awakening—street vendors calling their wares, the clip-clop of horses on cobblestones, the musical cadence of Creole French drifting through the open window.

"I need to know," Mrs. Boudreaux said finally. "Whatever it is, I need to know."

Two hours later, Mimi stood in the shadow of the Cabildo, watching the morning's commerce unfold in Jackson Square. The letter had yielded several clues to someone trained in observation: the particular shade of blue ink suggested a specific type of pen, likely German-made and expensive. The paper's watermark belonged to a shop on Royal Street that catered to the city's more discerning letter-writers. Most intriguingly, the phrasing carried the careful cadence of someone whose first language was not English—French, most likely, though she detected hints of Spanish influence in the sentence structure.

The watermark led her first to Papeterie Dubois, a narrow shop squeezed between a millinery and a dealer in rare books. The proprietor, Monsieur Dubois, was an elderly Creole gentleman whose careful manners barely concealed his assessment of Mimi's unconventional appearance.

"Bonjour, Madame. You inquire about our correspondence papers?"

Mimi produced the letter, keeping the text carefully folded away. "This particular stock. Do you recall who might have purchased it recently?"

Dubois examined the paper with the solemnity of a wine connoisseur evaluating a vintage. "Ah, yes. Our finest grade. We sell perhaps twenty sheets per month of this quality." He paused, his eyes meeting hers. "You are investigating some matter of consequence?"

"A private matter for a client. Nothing that need concern the authorities." The assurance seemed to ease his reluctance.

"There have been three purchases this month. Madame Thibodaux for her weekly correspondence with her sister in Baton Rouge—but she has used this paper for twenty years, since her dear husband's passing. Monsieur Beauregard purchased two packets last week, but his secretary collects his supplies on the fifteenth of each month, regular as clockwork."

"And the third?"

"A gentleman I did not recognize. Well-dressed, spoke French with an accent I could not place. Perhaps from the islands? He purchased only one packet, paid in cash, and seemed... nerveux. Nervous, you understand."

Mimi nodded, filing away the description. "When was this?"

"Voyons... three days ago. Tuesday morning, just after we opened."

Tuesday. The same day the first letter had arrived, according to Mrs. Boudreaux. The timing was too convenient to be coincidence.

Her next stop took her deeper into the Vieux Carré, to a café on Chartres Street where she had arranged to meet Marie Trosclair. Marie operated a small but successful dressmaking establishment and, more importantly for Mimi's purposes, possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Quarter's gossip networks.

"Chère Mimi," Marie called out as she approached the small table tucked into the café's courtyard. "You look like a woman with questions that need answers."

Mimi settled into the wrought-iron chair, grateful for the shade provided by the ancient oak tree that dominated the courtyard. "When do I not? What do you know about Gabriel Boudreaux?"

Marie's eyebrows rose slightly. "The cotton factor? New money, from up north somewhere. Married that pretty Treme girl—Céleste—last spring. Big wedding at the Cathedral, reception at the St. Charles Hotel." She paused, sipping her café au lait. "Why do you ask?"

"Professional curiosity. Has he any particular enemies? Business rivals who might wish him ill?"

"Mais non, nothing like that. Though..." Marie leaned forward, lowering her voice despite the courtyard's relative privacy. "I heard from Madame Reeves, who does alterations for some of the American wives, that he's been seen at Baccarat Bob's establishment rather frequently."

Mimi knew the name—Robert Baccarat ran one of the Quarter's more exclusive gambling houses, catering to gentlemen who could afford to lose substantial sums without damaging their social standing. "Recently?"

"The past month or so. And you know what they say about cotton factors and gambling debts."

Indeed she did. The cotton trade was notoriously volatile, fortunes made and lost on the fluctuations of global markets. A man facing significant gambling debts might find himself making increasingly desperate financial decisions.

"Marie, have you heard anything about someone new in the Quarter? A gentleman, well-dressed, speaks French with an island accent?"

Marie considered this, tapping one finger against her cup. "There's been talk of a Haitian gentleman staying at the Pension Marigny. Calls himself Monsieur Dubois—no relation to the paper seller, I assume. Keeps to himself mostly, pays his bills promptly. Madame Marigny says he's been here about two weeks."

The pieces were beginning to form a picture, though Mimi suspected the complete image would prove more complex than these initial fragments suggested.

The Pension Marigny occupied a corner lot on Ursulines Street, its Creole cottage architecture typical of the Quarter's residential buildings. Madame Marigny herself answered Mimi's knock—a woman of indeterminate age whose sharp eyes suggested she missed little of what transpired in her establishment.

"I'm inquiring about one of your guests," Mimi began, presenting her card. "A Monsieur Dubois?"

Madame Marigny examined the card with the same attention she might give a suspicious bank note. "You are a detective, vraiment? A woman detective?" The concept seemed to both surprise and intrigue her.

"I am investigating a matter involving threatening letters. Nothing that reflects poorly on your establishment, I assure you."

This seemed to satisfy her concerns about propriety. "Monsieur Dubois has been a model guest. Quiet, courteous, pays in advance. He keeps regular hours—leaves each morning after breakfast, returns before dinner."

"Has he received any visitors? Or sent any correspondence?"

"No visitors that I've observed. As for correspondence..." She paused, clearly weighing discretion against curiosity. "He did ask about a reliable messenger service yesterday. Said he had several letters to deliver but preferred not to entrust them to the postal service."

Another piece fell into place. "Did he say anything about the nature of these letters?"

"Only that they concerned debts of honor. I assumed he meant gambling debts—such things are common enough among gentlemen of a certain class."

Mimi thanked Madame Marigny and made her way back toward the river, her mind working through the connections she had uncovered. A Haitian gentleman with access to expensive paper, sending letters about debts to Gabriel Boudreaux, who had been frequenting the city's gambling houses. The outline of the situation was becoming clearer, but several crucial questions remained unanswered.

Baccarat Bob's establishment occupied the upper floors of a building on Royal Street, its entrance marked only by a discrete brass plaque and a doorman whose intimidating presence discouraged casual visitors. Mimi had no intention of attempting to enter—such places did not welcome women, regardless of their professional credentials—but she knew someone who could provide the information she needed.

She found Thomas Lafitte two blocks away, tending bar at a establishment that catered to river men and dock workers. Despite his surname, Thomas claimed no relation to the famous pirate brothers, though his knowledge of the Quarter's less respectable enterprises was comprehensive.

"Gabriel Boudreaux?" Thomas wiped down a glass with more attention than it required. "Yeah, I know him. Been coming around the past month or so, playing higher stakes than a smart man ought to."

"How much higher?"

"Started with twenty-dollar pots, worked his way up to hundreds. Last week, I heard he dropped near two thousand in a single evening." Thomas set down the glass and leaned against the bar. "Word is, he's been trying to chase his losses with bigger bets. Never works out well."

Two thousand dollars was a substantial sum—more than many working men earned in a year. "Has he been paying his debts?"

"That's where it gets interesting. Bob usually don't extend credit past thirty days, but Boudreaux's been getting special consideration. Seems he's got something Bob wants besides money."

Mimi felt her detective instincts sharpen. "What kind of something?"

"Cotton Exchange information. Advance word on votes, regulatory changes, that sort of thing. Bob's got business interests that benefit from knowing which way the wind's blowing before it starts blowing."

The situation was more complex than simple gambling debts. Gabriel Boudreaux wasn't just losing money—he was trading insider information to cover his losses, which meant the threatening letters might be about far more than unpaid gambling debts.

She returned to her office as the afternoon heat was settling over the Quarter like a heavy blanket. The shutters were drawn against the sun, leaving the room in comfortable dimness. Mimi settled behind her desk and spread out the information she had gathered, looking for the pattern that would reveal the true nature of the threat against Gabriel Boudreaux.

The door opened without ceremony, and a man stepped inside. He was well-dressed, as Dubois had described, with the bearing of someone accustomed to deference. His skin suggested mixed heritage—likely African and European, common enough in New Orleans but carrying social complications that varied depending on which community claimed him.

"Madame Delboise? I am Henri Dubois. I believe you have been inquiring about me."

Mimi didn't reach for the small pistol in her desk drawer, but she calculated the distance between her position and the weapon. "Indeed I have, Monsieur Dubois. Please, sit."

He took the chair recently vacated by Mrs. Boudreaux, his movements careful and controlled. "You are investigating the letters I have sent to Monsieur Boudreaux."

"I am investigating threats made against my client's husband. Whether those threats originated with you remains to be determined."

Dubois smiled, though there was no warmth in the expression. "You are careful with your words. Wise, in a woman who has chosen such an... unconventional profession."

"My profession requires precision, Monsieur Dubois. Perhaps you could provide some precision regarding your business with Gabriel Boudreaux?"

"Gladly." He reached into his coat—slowly, keeping his hands visible—and withdrew a leather portfolio. "I represent certain interests in Haiti. Coffee growers, sugar producers, merchants who trade with New Orleans. We have been... disadvantaged by recent changes in cotton exchange regulations."

He opened the portfolio and removed several documents. "Monsieur Boudreaux provided advance information about these regulatory changes. Information that allowed certain competitors to adjust their positions while our clients suffered substantial losses."

Mimi examined the documents—shipping manifests, letters of credit, trading records that showed a pattern of perfectly timed market transactions. "You're accusing him of insider trading."

"I am stating a fact. The question is what remedy might be appropriate for such... indiscretions."

"And the remedy you propose involves threatening letters?"

"The letters were intended to encourage voluntary restitution. My clients would prefer to resolve this matter privately, without involving either the authorities or the Cotton Exchange's disciplinary committee."

Mimi leaned back in her chair, reassessing the situation. "How much restitution are we discussing?"

"Fifty thousand dollars."

The sum was staggering—more than enough to destroy Gabriel Boudreaux financially and socially. "And if he refuses?"

"Then my clients will pursue other remedies. The Cotton Exchange takes violations of fiduciary duty very seriously. Criminal charges might also be appropriate."

Mimi studied Dubois's face, looking for tells that might indicate his intentions beyond what he was stating directly. "You've done your research, Monsieur Dubois. You know that fifty thousand dollars exceeds what a cotton factor might reasonably be expected to pay."

"Indeed. Which is why my clients might be willing to accept... alternative forms of compensation."

"Such as?"

"His cooperation. Advance information about future regulatory decisions. Monsieur Boudreaux has proven quite useful to others in this regard."

The true nature of the situation crystallized. This wasn't about punishment for past indiscretions—it was about ensuring future compliance. Dubois wasn't just collecting a debt; he was recruiting a permanent agent within the Cotton Exchange.

"I see." Mimi closed the portfolio and slid it back across the desk. "Thank you for your candor, Monsieur Dubois. I believe I understand the situation now."

"I hope you do, Madame. It would be unfortunate if misunderstandings led to... complications."

After he left, Mimi sat in the gathering darkness, considering her options. Gabriel Boudreaux was guilty of insider trading, but he was also being coerced into ongoing criminal activity. His wife had hired her to investigate threats, but the threats were legitimate responses to her husband's crimes. The case had no clean resolution—only choices between different types of damage.

Mrs. Boudreaux returned the following morning, her nervousness replaced by a determined calm that suggested she had spent the night preparing herself for unpleasant truths.

"You've discovered something," she said, settling into the same chair she had occupied two days earlier.

"I have." Mimi chose her words carefully. "Your husband has been gambling heavily and losing substantially. To cover his debts, he has been trading Cotton Exchange information to parties who use that information for illegal market manipulation."

Mrs. Boudreaux absorbed this without visible reaction. "How much does he owe?"

"The gambling debts are manageable—perhaps three thousand dollars. The larger problem is that he's being blackmailed by the parties who lost money due to his insider information. They want fifty thousand dollars or his cooperation in future market manipulation schemes."

"Fifty thousand..." Mrs. Boudreaux's composure finally cracked slightly. "We don't have fifty thousand dollars."

"Which is precisely the point. They don't want the money—they want your husband as a permanent source of inside information."

The silence stretched between them, filled with the weight of choices that had no good outcomes. Finally, Mrs. Boudreaux spoke.

"What are my options?"

"Limited. Your husband could confess to the Cotton Exchange and face disciplinary action, which would likely end his career but might provide some legal protection. He could attempt to continue the cooperation, which would eventually lead to more serious criminal charges. Or..."

"Or?"

"He could disappear. Leave New Orleans, assume a new identity, start over somewhere else."

Mrs. Boudreaux considered this. "What would you do, Madame Delboise?"

Mimi thought of her own husband, of the choices that had led to his death, of the compromises that seemed reasonable until their consequences became clear. "I would choose the option that allowed me to sleep at night. Money can be replaced. Reputations can be rebuilt. But moral compromises have a way of compounding until they destroy everything you thought you were protecting."

Two weeks later, Mimi read in the Times-Picayune that Gabriel and Céleste Boudreaux had departed New Orleans for an extended honeymoon in California. Their house in the Garden District had been quietly sold, their affairs settled through intermediaries. The Cotton Exchange noted his resignation with polite regret.

Henri Dubois had checked out of the Pension Marigny the same day, leaving no forwarding address.

Mimi's fee had been paid in full, along with a brief note thanking her for her discretion and expressing hope that she and Gabriel might find in California the fresh start that New Orleans had been unable to provide.

She folded the letter and placed it in her files, then turned her attention to the new case that had arrived that morning—something about a missing painting and a suspicious art dealer. Simple theft, most likely, though experience had taught her that in New Orleans, nothing was ever quite as simple as it first appeared.

Outside her window, the French Quarter continued its daily dance of commerce and intrigue, secrets and revelations, the eternal cycle of human ambition and consequence that provided the backdrop for her chosen profession. Somewhere in those narrow streets, another mystery was taking shape, another client was discovering that the truth they sought might not be the truth they wanted to find.

Mimi Delboise adjusted the tilt of her hat, checked her pocket watch, and prepared to meet whatever complications the day might bring.

The End.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this original short story by Gio Marron. Until next time, stay curious.

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Three Miles OutBy Gio Marron

Voice-over provided by Eleven Labs

The Ship

The USS Theodore Roosevelt dropped anchor three miles off the coast of Virginia, hull cutting a stark silhouette against the dawn sky. Not far enough to forget land, not close enough to touch it. Virginia Beach shimmered on the horizon like a mirage—real, but out of reach. Petty Officer Third Class Michael Reese stood motionless at the port side rail, the salt-heavy air filling his lungs after months of desert sand.

The Hopeful Voice: He stood at the rail in the pale light of early morning, watching the coastline sharpen as the day began. Home. Not metaphorical—actual, American home. The scent of boardwalk fries and saltwater taffy seemed to drift across the water. That was the moment. The crossing back. Six months of carrier ops in the Persian Gulf dissolved into this single point of return. He'd made it. The war was behind him now, three miles of calm water separating then from now.

The Realist Voice: No, it wasn't a return. It was a holding pattern. A bureaucratic pause designed by people who'd never had to wait. Like someone put a bookmark in his life and forgot to come back to it. The ship hung in the water like a question with no answer—not there, not here. Just suspended. The land looked almost painted onto the horizon, unreal and mocking.

He counted jet skis, speedboats, gulls. Anything that moved. Everything moved—except the ship. Fifteen jet skis. Twenty-three gulls. Four fishing boats. He counted because counting was control, and control was all he had left.

"Hey, Reese," someone called behind him. Collins approached, that familiar half-smile on his face. "Beautiful view, right? Almost like we're home."

"Almost," Reese replied, the word hollow.

Collins leaned against the rail. "I could make that swim," he said, nodding toward shore. "Bet you fifty I could make that swim."

"Save your money, Collins." Reese managed a short laugh but it wasn't funny. Nothing about being stuck in sight of home was funny.

The Hopeful Voice: He imagined the swim. Not as escape—but arrival. A baptism, almost. A way to feel the distance with his body instead of pretending it didn't matter. He'd done tougher swims in training. Three miles was nothing compared to what he'd already accomplished. He'd cut through the water, each stroke carrying him closer to solid ground, to reality, to a life where the horizon didn't always hide threats.

The Realist Voice: He imagined the swim because it was the only way he could believe he'd ever reach shore. The Navy had brought him to war and nearly brought him back—but not all the way. Three miles might as well have been three hundred. The water between ship and shore wasn't just water—it was time, it was protocol, it was everything that separated what he'd become from what he'd been. And nobody was building a bridge across that gap.

The Hopeful Voice: Of course they'd notice if he tried. You don't just slip off a carrier unnoticed. The watch would spot him. They'd probably laugh, understand the impulse. Maybe even cheer him on a little before fishing him out. The guys in his division would never let him hear the end of it— "Remember when Reese tried to swim home?"—but it would be a good story. Something to tell at reunions.

The Realist Voice: But would they stop him? Or would they just watch, the way everyone watches everything out here—with detached professional interest, marking coordinates, reporting position, never actually engaging. He knew the regs better than most. Man overboard. Full stop. Retrieval protocols. But he wondered sometimes if anyone would really care beyond the paperwork it would generate.

He stayed there a long time, gripping the rail like it held him to the world, the metal warm under his palms. He told himself he was just watching the coastline wake up. He told himself he wasn't angry. He told himself a lot of things.

The Hopeful Voice: He'd come back changed. Everyone says that about deployment. But really—he'd just come back aware. Aware of the absurdity of time and distance. Aware of how much he'd taken for granted before. Aware of the nearness of things, and how unreachable they could still be. It was a good kind of awareness—the kind that made you appreciate small moments. The kind that would make civilian coffee taste better, civilian beds feel softer.

The Realist Voice: He came back knowing the war would always arrive faster than the welcome. That's what they didn't tell you in the recruitment office or the deployment briefs. They talked about readjustment periods and decompression time. They didn't mention the way the world splits into before and after, or how sometimes you get stuck in the space between, watching both sides from a distance. They didn't tell you that coming home was its own kind of deployment—uncertain, dangerous in ways you couldn't prepare for.

Pier, No Trumpets

They finally brought the ship in two days later. Norfolk Naval Station, Pier 12 North. The gangway lowered with the usual hydraulics and yelling, nothing ceremonial about it. The Chief bellowing orders. Sailors in dress whites scrambling to make fast the lines. It was bright, stupidly bright. Concrete and sea spray and sun in his eyes. And people—God, so many people crowded against the barriers, a wall of color and noise after months of khaki and steel.

The Hopeful Voice: They came for their sons, husbands, brothers, and fathers. The crowd waited like something sacred was about to happen. Balloons twisted in the breeze. Camcorders catching every moment. Some of the signs had glitter on them, sparkling in the morning light—"Welcome Home Daddy," "My Hero Returns," "Finally Complete Again." People whooped when the first sailors hit the pier, a sound of pure joy that seemed to lift everyone higher. This was what homecoming looked like. This was the moment they'd all dreamed about during midnight watches and long deployments.

The Realist Voice: Not for him. There was no sign. No one waiting. Just a wall of other people's joy that he had to navigate through, shoulders squared, eyes forward. He scanned the crowd anyway. Some reflex you can't turn off, like checking corners when you enter a room or counting exits in a restaurant. But there was nothing to find. No familiar face in the sea of strangers celebrating reunions that weren't his.

"Heading straight out, Reese?" Lieutenant Jameson stopped beside him, sea bag in hand.

"Yes, sir. Flight leaves in three hours."

The Lieutenant nodded. "Good deployment, Reese. Get some real rest."

"Thank you, sir." The brief exchange felt both normal and strange—like speaking a language he was rapidly forgetting.

He adjusted his cover, slung his sea bag over his shoulder, and walked. One foot after another. Move tactically through the minefield of embracing couples and crying children. Don't make eye contact. Don't get caught in someone else's moment.

The Hopeful Voice: He was tired, yes. But not broken. He'd done his part—six months of catapult launches, mine watches, midnights in full gear for drills that always felt a little too real. One hundred and twelve days without setting foot on solid ground. He didn't need a parade. Just a cab and a bed and maybe a beer that hadn't been stored in a ship's hold. He'd earned that much, at least. And there was something dignified about walking off alone, handling his own homecoming in his own way.

The Realist Voice: He needed something. Someone to say, "There you are." Someone to look like they'd been watching the horizon for him every day since he left. But the crowd opened around him like he wasn't there. He was just another uniform walking past the real reunions, the ones that mattered. The ones with beginnings and middles and ends, like proper stories.

He paused at the edge of the pier where the cement met the first stretch of actual land. People were hugging, crying, lifting toddlers in the air. One woman clung to her husband like she was afraid he'd disappear again if she loosened her grip. A little girl wore a t-shirt that said "Half my heart has been in the Persian Gulf." He watched it like TV, like something happening to other people in other lives.

The Hopeful Voice: He smiled at that. That's the stuff you remember. That's the good part. Not the long watches or the midrats in the galley or the endless briefings. But this—people finding each other again. He smiled because it meant something was still working right in the world. And because next time, maybe there'd be someone waiting for him too. Maybe he'd call Rebecca when he got to a phone. They'd left things "on pause" before deployment, but maybe now...

The Realist Voice: He didn't smile. Not really. What his face did was something else—a reflexive tightening of muscles that had nothing to do with joy. He adjusted his grip on the sea bag until the strap cut into his shoulder, a discomfort to focus on. It was all fine. No one owed him anything. He'd volunteered, after all. Signed the papers. Taken the oath. He repeated that to himself until he believed it for a full three seconds.

A yellow cab pulled up at the pickup point, and he raised a hand. The driver didn't even get out to help with the bag. Just popped the trunk with a lever and waited, meter already running.

Cab Ride

The cab smelled faintly of cigarettes and old coffee, upholstery worn thin by thousands of nameless passengers. The driver didn't say much, just checked the mirror once—taking in the uniform, the close-cropped hair, the sea bag—and pulled out from the curb, merging into the traffic crawling away from the piers.

"Airport?" the driver asked, voice thick with an accent Reese couldn't place.

"Yeah. Norfolk International."

"Coming home or going away?"

"Both, I guess."

The driver nodded like this made perfect sense and fell silent again.

The world outside the window was impossibly green after months of desert colors and open ocean. Lawn sprinklers casting rainbows in suburbia. Minivans carrying soccer teams. Mailboxes shaped like lighthouses. A whole ecosystem of normal life continuing as if nothing had happened.

The Hopeful Voice: He sat back and tried to relax. Leave had started. He could finally let his mind wander where it wanted instead of keeping it locked on checklists and protocols. Two weeks of freedom earned by six months of long days and longer nights. He thought about what he'd do first—maybe sleep until noon, or just listen to nothing at all. Maybe drive down to Virginia Beach and walk barefoot in the sand, feeling solid ground shift beneath him. Simple pleasures that meant more now.

The Realist Voice: He didn't relax. He watched the street signs slip past, scanning for threats out of habit. His head felt full of static, like a radio caught between stations. Every time the cab hit a pothole, something in his shoulders clenched, his body still anticipating the next impact. Six months of hypervigilance didn't dissolve just because you crossed a pier.

The driver switched on the radio. Someone was talking about the war—about ships, about homecomings, about heroes. A politician thanking "our brave men and women in uniform" while debating the latest spending bill. The words floated disconnected from any reality he recognized. He leaned forward and asked that he turned it off, the silence settling like another passenger between them.

"Sorry," Reese said, not sure why he was apologizing.

"No problem," the driver shrugged. "Your ride, your music."

The Navy was never really quiet, not even at sea. There was always the whine of turbines, the clang of hatches, and the distant shuffle of boots at midnight. In the desert, the sky was black and full of aircraft on launch, orange flares reflected off the water, and the comms crackled in the ready room. On station, everyone moved like a machine, everything timed and measured and checked twice, a choreography of purpose that never stopped, even in sleep.

The Hopeful Voice: He remembered the rhythm of flight ops, the catapults launching birds into the night. The pride of watching the jets come back, sometimes scorched, always alive. That sense of purpose was something you carried, even when the rest faded. He could almost hear the launch officer's hand signals, the final thumbs up, the steam and thunder of another plane lauching from the deck. There was something pure about it—all that training, all that technology, all that human skill focused on a single point. Whatever else the war was or wasn't, those moments had been real.

The Realist Voice: He remembered the monotony—the endless searching for sea mines, the drills at all hours, the silent meals eaten shoulder to shoulder but never truly together. He remembered the fatigue that gnawed at his bones, the sweat that never quite dried, the constant tension, the waiting for alarms that sometimes came and sometimes didn't. He remembered the night they lost Wilson's plane, the endless hours of search patterns, the rescue helicopters coming back empty, the personal effects packed up without ceremony. Sometimes, in the middle of it all, he'd catch himself staring at the empty sea and feel nothing but distance, as if he was already gone. As if he'd left his body at some checkpoint and kept moving through the motions, a ghost performing duties by rote.

The cab pulled onto the interstate, merging with a river of cars headed everywhere but where he'd just come from. The wheels hummed against the asphalt, a different rhythm than the constant vibration of the carrier. The base exchange passed on the right, a place of momentary respit when in port.

Plane Ride

At the airport, with a ticket home he'd bought with the card he'd barely used during deployment. The terminal was all linoleum and fluorescent lights, tired chairs filled with people rushing to go places they'd never really see. He found his gate, slung his sea bag at his feet, and waited for boarding, the PA system announcing departures to cities that felt increasingly unreal. Atlanta. Chicago. Denver. Places that existed on maps but not in any geography that mattered anymore.

The Hopeful Voice: He watched the families, the businessmen, the kids chasing each other around the waiting area. He felt invisible but also safe—no one expected anything from him here. He'd blend in, just another tired traveler. No rank to maintain, no example to set, no responsibilities beyond showing up at the right gate with the right documents. There was freedom in that anonymity. He could be anyone now, not just Petty Officer Reese with his division to worry about.

The Realist Voice: He was out of place. The lights were too bright. The chatter too normal. Every loudspeaker announcement set his teeth on edge. He kept his back to the wall, out of habit, watching the crowd flow past with their rolling suitcases and their casual indifference. A child dropped an ice cream cone and wailed like it was the end of the world. A couple argued about rental cars and dinner reservations. He felt like he was watching a foreign film without subtitles—recognizing the shapes of things but unable to extract meaning.

An elderly man in a Korean War veteran's cap stopped in front of him.

"Navy?" the man asked, gesturing at Reese's uniform.

"Yes, sir."

"Just get back?"

"This morning."

The old veteran nodded. "Welcome home, son." He extended a weathered hand.

Reese shook it, feeling suddenly exposed. "Thank you, sir." "Gets easier," the man said. "Not right away. But it does."

Before Reese could respond, the veteran moved on, disappearing into the flow of travelers.

On board, the engines hummed, and the windows filled with clouds. He looked out, trying to place himself somewhere between the ship and the shore, the war and the waiting room. Thirty thousand feet between nothing and something. The flight attendant's voice explaining safety procedures he could recite in his sleep. Oxygen masks. Emergency exits. Flotation devices. The vocabulary of potential disaster that nobody really listened to.

The Hopeful Voice: He closed his eyes and drifted. He remembered standing on the flight deck at dusk, the sun sinking behind a distant storm, turning the whole world gold and purple. Salt in the air. The sound of waves hitting steel. The endless horizon curving slightly at the edges.

Someone had laughed that night, a real laugh—maybe the only one he'd heard in weeks. Chief Mendoza, telling a story about his kid's science project gone wrong. It had felt like permission to breathe. A reminder that somewhere, normal life was still happening, still waiting. That moment had carried him through three bad days afterward.

The Realist Voice: He remembered the nights when sleep never came, just the rattle of pipes and the endless checklist of what could go wrong. He remembered the smell of jet fuel, the constant alertness, the way his hands sometimes shook for no reason. He remembered letters that felt written by someone else, full of reassurances he didn't believe even as he wrote them. "Everything's fine here." "Don't worry." "It's not like what you see on TV."

Every time the plane banked, he gripped the armrest—reminded again that land and sky were never solid for long. That gravity was just an agreement that could be broken. That falling was always one mechanical failure away.

The flight attendant offered coffee, but he just shook his head. The minutes ticked by marked by the slow crawl of shadow across the clouds below. The seatbelt light blinked on. The descent began, that sickening lurch as the plane dropped through layers of atmosphere, reality rushing up to meet them.

The Hopeful Voice: He pictured the airport at the other end, the moment he'd walk out of the tunnel and see the faces that meant home. Two weeks to let the world feel small again. Maybe even normal. He'd sleep in his old bedroom with the model ships he'd built as a kid still on the shelves. He'd let his mother cook too much food. He'd help his father fix that leaky gutter he'd been complaining about for years. He'd sit on the porch and watch the neighbors walk their dogs, mow their lawns, live lives untouched by distant conflicts. He'd remember how to be part of that again, even if just for a little while.

The Realist Voice: He wasn't sure what he'd find. Maybe just the same feeling of watching from a distance, part of things but not really in them. Maybe that's what coming home was—close, but not quite there. Another holding pattern, just at a different altitude. He'd smile when he was supposed to smile. He'd answer the questions people could handle hearing answers to. He'd measure the distance between what they thought they were welcoming home and what was actually arriving. He'd learn to live in the gap.

The plane touched down, rolling to the gate. He waited for the line to shuffle forward, sea bag at his feet, the smell of recycled air and jet fuel sharp in his nose. All around him, people retrieved belongings, checked watches, and planned next steps as if they knew exactly where they were heading.

He stood, adjusted his cover, and stepped into the jetway. As he emerged into the gate area, he scanned the waiting crowd automatically. His mother had written that they'd be there to meet him, but in the sea of faces...

Then he saw them: his mother in her red sweater clutching a small welcome home sign, and his father standing tall beside her, eyes searching the deplaning passengers. They hadn't spotted him yet.

For a brief moment, he could observe without being observed—one final moment of distance before he'd have to step back into a life that might still feel like it belonged to someone else. The space between departure and arrival stretched like an ocean three miles wide, but he was swimming now. And there on the shore, people were waiting.

Maybe that was enough for today—to keep moving, to acknowledge both voices in his head, and to trust that even if he never fully arrived, he wasn't standing still anymore.

He took a deep breath and walked forward.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this original short story by Gio Marron. Until next time, stay curious.

The Elephant Island Chronicles

Presents

Don Juan's Most Beautiful Love

By Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

Translated by Gio Marron

Translation Note

This translation of Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's "Le plus bel amour de Don Juan" represents a collaborative effort between myself, Gio Marron, with assistance from AI language models including Claude, ChatGPT, and Perplexity.

The translation process involved multiple iterations, with initial drafts produced through AI assistance, followed by substantial literary refinement to capture the nuanced tone, style, and period-appropriate language of Barbey d'Aurevilly's distinctive prose. As primary translator, I focused on preserving the original's ornate, decadent literary style while ensuring readability for contemporary English-speaking audiences.

Special attention was given to maintaining the psychological complexity and subtle irony that characterize Barbey d'Aurevilly's work, particularly the supernatural elements that transform this tale from a conventional seduction narrative into something more metaphysical and profound.

The translation aims to serve both general readers interested in 19th-century French literature and scholarly audiences familiar with the Decadent movement and the evolution of the Don Juan archetype in European literary tradition.

Gio Marron May 2025

Don Juan's Most Beautiful Love

By Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly

In this masterpiece of psychological insight and irony, Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly transforms the Don Juan legend into a tale of supernatural suggestion. When a aging seducer recounts his "most beautiful love" to a circle of aristocratic women, the revelation subverts all expectations—proving that the most powerful conquests happen in the realm of imagination rather than the bedchamber. A brilliant exploration of innocence, corruption, and the mystical dimensions of desire from one of 19th-century France's most provocative writers.

I

The devil's finest delicacy is an innocence. (A.)

So he still lives, that old scoundrel?

"By God, indeed he lives! — and by God's decree, Madame," I added, checking myself, for I remembered she was devout, and from the parish of Sainte-Clotilde no less—the parish of dukes! "The king is dead! Long live the king!" they used to say under the old monarchy before it shattered like Sèvres porcelain. Don Juan, democracy be damned, remains a monarch who will never be broken.

"Indeed, the devil is immortal!" she remarked, as if confirming something to herself.

"He has even—"

"Who? The devil?"

"No, Don Juan... supped, three days ago, in high spirits. Guess where?"

"At your dreadful Maison-d'Or, no doubt."

"Fie, Madame! Don Juan no longer goes there... nothing there to fricassee for his grandeur. Lord Don Juan has always been somewhat like that famous monk of Arnaud de Brescia who, according to the Chronicles, lived solely on the blood of souls. That's what he likes to tint his champagne with—and such fare hasn't been found in courtesans' cabarets for quite some time!"

"I suppose," she resumed with irony, "he must have supped at the Benedictine convent with those ladies..."

"Of Perpetual Adoration, yes, Madame! For the adoration that devil of a man once inspired seems to me to last in perpetuity."

"For a Catholic, I find you rather profane," she said slowly, though visibly tense, "and I ask you to spare me the details of your harlots' suppers, if speaking of Don Juan tonight is merely your invented way of reporting on their activities."

"I'm inventing nothing, Madame. The harlots of the supper in question, if harlots they are, aren't mine... regrettably..."

"Enough, Monsieur!"

"Allow me to be modest. They were—"

"The mille e tre?" she asked, curiosity rekindling her almost-amicable manner.

"Oh! not all of them, Madame... Only a dozen. That's already quite respectable..."

"And disreputable too," she added.

"Besides, you know as well as I that not many can fit into Countess de Chiffrevas's boudoir. Grand things may have transpired there, but the boudoir itself is decidedly small..."

"What?" she exclaimed, surprised. "So it was in the boudoir that they supped?"

"Yes, Madame, in the boudoir. And why not? Men dine on battlefields. They wanted to give an extraordinary supper to Lord Don Juan, and it was worthier of him to offer it in the theater of his glory, where memories bloom in place of orange trees. A lovely notion, tender and melancholic! It wasn't the victims' ball; it was their supper."

"And Don Juan?" she asked, as Orgon says "And Tartuffe?" in the play.

"Don Juan received the affair splendidly and supped magnificently,

He, alone, before them all!

in the person of someone you know... none other than Count Jules-Amédée-Hector de Ravila de Ravilès."

"Him! He is indeed Don Juan," she said.

And, though she had outgrown the age of reverie, this sharp-beaked, sharp-clawed devotee began to dream of Count Jules-Amédée-Hector—of that man of the Juan bloodline—that ancient, eternal Juan lineage, to whom God has not given the world, but has permitted the devil to bestow it upon him.

II

What I had just told the old lady was the unvarnished truth. Barely three days had passed since a dozen women of the virtuous Faubourg Saint-Germain (rest assured, I shall not name them!) who, all twelve, according to the dowagers' gossip, had been on the most intimate terms (a charming old expression) with Count Ravila de Ravilès, had conceived the singular idea of offering him supper—with him as the only man—to celebrate... what? They didn't say. Such a supper was bold, but women, cowardly individually, are audacious in groups. Perhaps not one of this feminine banquet would have dared to offer it at her home, tête-à-tête, to Count Jules-Amédée-Hector; but together, bolstering one another, they had not feared to form the chain of Mesmer's tub around this magnetic and compromising man, Count de Ravila de Ravilès...

"What a name!"

"A providential name, Madame... Count de Ravila de Ravilès, who, incidentally, had always obeyed the imperatives of this commanding name, was indeed the incarnation of all seducers spoken of in novels and history. Even the Marquise Guy de Ruy—that discontented old woman with cold, sharp blue eyes, though less cold than her heart and less sharp than her wit—herself admitted that in these times, when the woman question daily loses importance, if anyone could recall Don Juan, surely it was he! Unfortunately, it was Don Juan in the fifth act. Prince de Ligne could never comprehend how Alcibiades might reach fifty. Yet in this respect too, Count de Ravila would forever remain Alcibiades. Like d'Orsay, that dandy carved from Michelangelo's bronze who remained handsome until his final hour, Ravila possessed that beauty peculiar to the Juan race—that mysterious lineage which proceeds not from father to son like others, but which appears sporadically, at certain intervals, among humanity's families.

It was true beauty—insolent, joyful, imperial, Juanesque beauty; the word says everything and dispenses with description. And—had he made a pact with the devil?—he retained it still... Only, God was exacting his due; life's tiger claws were beginning to score his divine brow, crowned with the roses of so many lips, and on his broad impious temples appeared the first white hairs announcing the approaching barbarian invasion and the Empire's end... He wore these, moreover, with the impassivity of pride intensified by power; but the women who had loved him sometimes regarded them with melancholy. Who knows? Perhaps they were reading the hour striking for themselves upon that brow. Alas, for them as for him, it was the hour of that terrible supper with the cold Commander of white marble, after which comes only hell—the hell of old age, until the real one arrives! And that is perhaps why, before sharing this bitter and final supper with him, they thought to offer him theirs, crafting it into a masterpiece.

Yes, a masterpiece of taste, delicacy, patrician luxury, refinement, and exquisite conception; the most charming, delicious, dainty, intoxicating, and above all most original of suppers. Original! Consider—usually joy and the thirst for amusement inspire a supper; but here, it was memory, regret, almost despair—though despair in evening dress, concealed beneath smiles or laughter, still craving this final feast or folly, this last escapade toward youth returned for an hour, this final intoxication before bidding it farewell forever!

The Amphitryonesses of this incredible supper, so incongruous with the trembling customs of their society, must have experienced something akin to Sardanapalus on his pyre, when he heaped upon it his women, slaves, horses, jewels—all his life's opulence to perish with him. They too heaped at this burning supper all their own opulence, bringing everything they possessed of beauty, wit, resources, adornment, and power, to pour it all, at once, into this supreme conflagration.

The man before whom they draped themselves in this final flame meant more to their eyes than all Asia did to Sardanapalus. They were coquettish for him as no women had ever been for any man—let alone for one seated among twelve—and this coquetry they inflamed with that jealousy normally hidden in society, yet which they needn't conceal, for they all knew this man had belonged to each of them, and shame shared is shame dispelled... Among them all, each competed to engrave her epitaph deepest in his heart.

He, that night, savored the satiated, sovereign, nonchalant, connoisseur's voluptuousness of both the nuns' confessor and the sultan. Seated like a king—like the master—at the table's center, facing Countess de Chiffrevas, in that boudoir the hue of peach blossom—or perhaps of sin itself (the spelling of that boudoir's color was never quite settled), Count de Ravila embraced with his hell-blue eyes, which so many poor creatures had mistaken for heaven's blue, that radiant circle of twelve women, dressed with genius, who at that table laden with crystal, lit candles, and flowers, displayed all the nuances of maturity, from the vermilion of the open rose to the softened gold of amber-colored grapes.

There were no tender green youths there, no little misses whom Byron detested, smelling of tarts and still mere peeled twigs in figure, but splendid and savory summers, bountiful autumns, blossomings and plenitudes, dazzling bosoms heaving majestically at bodices' uncovered edges, and beneath the cameos of bare shoulders, arms of every form—especially powerful arms, those biceps of Sabine women who had wrestled with Romans, capable of interlacing themselves to halt the very spokes of life's chariot wheel.

I mentioned ideas. One of the most charming of this supper was to have it served by chambermaids, so none could say anything had disturbed the harmony of a feast where women reigned supreme, since they were its hostesses... Lord Don Juan—from the Ravila branch—could thus bathe his tawny gaze in a sea of luminous, living flesh as Rubens places in his plump, robust paintings, while also plunging his pride into the more or less limpid, more or less troubled ether of all these hearts. For at bottom, despite all evidence to the contrary, Don Juan is a fierce spiritualist! He resembles the devil himself, who loves souls even more than bodies, and who prefers that commerce to any other, the infernal slave trader!

Spiritual, noble, with the quintessential Faubourg Saint-Germain tone, yet that night as bold as pages of the King's household in days when kings and pages existed, they achieved an incomparable scintillation of wit, movement, verve, and brio. They felt superior to all they had ever been in their most brilliant evenings, enjoying an unknown power released from deep within themselves, one they had never before suspected.

The happiness of this discovery, the sensation of life's tripled forces, alongside physical influences so decisive upon nervous beings—the brilliance of lights, the penetrating fragrance of flowers swooning in the atmosphere heated by these beautiful bodies with effluvia too potent for the blossoms, the spur of provocative wines, the idea of this supper with precisely the piquant merit of the sin the Neapolitan woman demanded of her sherbet to find it exquisite, the intoxicating thought of complicity in this little crime of a daring supper—yes! But one that didn't descend vulgarly into Regency debauchery; one that remained a Faubourg Saint-Germain, nineteenth-century supper, where from all these adorable bodices, lined with hearts that had witnessed passion and still enjoyed kindling it, not a single pin fell... All these elements, acting in concert, stretched the mysterious harp each of these marvelous temperaments carried within, as taut as possible without breaking, reaching sublime octaves and ineffable crescendos... It must have been a sight, mustn't it? Will Ravila ever write this extraordinary page of his Memoirs? That remains a question, but only he could write it... As I told the Marquise Guy de Ruy, I was not present at this supper, and if I relate some details and the story of its conclusion, it's because I have them from Ravila himself, who, faithful to the traditional and characteristic indiscretion of the Juan race, took the trouble one evening to recount them to me.

III

It was late, then—or rather, early! Morning approached. Against the ceiling and at a certain spot on the hermetically sealed pink silk curtains of the boudoir, one could see an opal drop forming and rounding, like a growing eye—day's curious eye peering through to observe the proceedings in this inflamed boudoir. Languor was beginning to overcome these Round Table knights, these female diners so animated moments before. We know that moment in all suppers when the fatigue of emotion and the night passed seems to cast itself over everything—over collapsing hairdos, burning vermilioned or pale cheeks, weary gazes in darkened eyes growing heavy, and even over the widening, creeping lights of the thousand candles in the candelabra, those fire bouquets with stems of sculpted bronze and gold.

The general conversation, long sustained with animation, a shuttlecock game where each had extended her racket stroke, had fragmented and crumbled. Nothing distinct could be heard amid the harmonious murmur of those aristocratic voices, mingling and chattering like birds at dawn on a woodland edge... when one of them—a head voice, that one!—imperious and almost impertinent, as a duchess's voice should be, suddenly said above the others to Count de Ravila words that were doubtless the conclusion of a private conversation between them, which none of these women, each chatting with her neighbor, had overheard:

"You who are reputed to be the Don Juan of our time, you should tell us about the conquest that most flattered your masculine pride and which you judge, in the light of this moment, the most beautiful love of your life."

And the question, like the voice that spoke it, cut sharply through the noise of all these scattered conversations, suddenly imposing silence.

It was the voice of the Duchess of ***. I shall not lift her mask of asterisks, but perhaps you'll recognize her when I tell you she is the palest blonde in both complexion and hair, with the blackest eyes beneath long amber eyebrows, in all the Faubourg Saint-Germain. She sat like a righteous soul at God's right hand—at Count de Ravila's right, the god of this feast who no longer required his enemies to serve as footstools; slender and ideal as an arabesque, as a fairy, in her green velvet gown with silver reflections, whose long train twisted around her chair, rather perfectly representing the serpent's tail that ended Melusine's charming haunches.

"Now there's an idea!" said Countess de Chiffrevas, as if to support, in her capacity as hostess, the duchess's desire and motion. "Yes, of all loves, inspired or felt, which would you most wish to relive, if possible?"

"Oh! I would relive them all!" exclaimed Ravila with that insatiability of a Roman Emperor that these thoroughly jaded men sometimes possess. He raised his champagne glass—not the crude, pagan goblet that has replaced it today, but the true flute of our ancestors, perhaps named so for the celestial melodies it often pours into our hearts. Then he embraced with a circular glance all these women forming such a magnificent belt around the table. "And yet," he added, replacing his glass before him with an astonishing melancholy for such a Nebuchadnezzar who had thus far eaten no herb but the tarragon salads of Café Anglais, "and yet it's true that among life's passions, one always shines stronger in memory than the others as life advances—one for which a man would sacrifice all the rest!"

"The diamond of the jewel box," said Countess de Chiffrevas pensively, perhaps examining the facets of her own.

"And from my country's legend," Princess Jable added in turn, who hails from the Ural Mountains' foothills, "that famous and fabulous diamond, pink at first, which later turns black, yet remains a diamond—even more brilliant black than pink..." She said this with the strange charm peculiar to her, that Bohemian! For she is indeed a Bohemian, married for love by the handsomest prince of the Polish emigration, who appears every bit as much a princess as if born beneath the Jagellons' canopies.

Then came an explosion! "Yes," they all cried. "Tell us, Count!" they added passionately, already imploring, with curiosity's quivers even in the curls at the napes of their necks; pressing together, shoulder against shoulder; some with cheek in hand, elbow on table; others leaning back against chair backs, open fans over mouths; all firing at him with their bright, inquisitive eyes.

"If you absolutely insist..." said the Count with the nonchalance of one who knows that waiting intensifies desire.

"Absolutely!" declared the duchess, looking like a Turkish despot examining the edge of his scimitar—the golden edge of her dessert knife.

"Listen, then," he concluded, still nonchalant.

They melted with attentiveness, watching him. They devoured him with their eyes. Any love story interests women, but perhaps this one's charm lay, for each of them, in the thought that the story he would tell might be her own... They knew him too much the gentleman, too steeped in society's ways, not to trust he would conceal names and thicken, when necessary, details too transparent; and this idea, this certainty, only heightened their desire for the story. They felt more than desire; they felt hope.

Their vanity discovered rivals in this memory evoked as the most beautiful in the life of a man who must have had so many splendid ones! The old sultan was about to toss the handkerchief once more—which no hand would retrieve, yet which she to whom it was thrown would feel falling silently into her heart...

Now here, contrary to their expectations, is the little unexpected thunderclap he sent rolling across all those attentive foreheads:

IV

"I have often heard moralists, great experimenters of life," said Count de Ravila, "claim that the strongest of all our loves is neither the first nor the last, as many believe, but the second. Yet in matters of love, everything is both true and false, and at any rate, this wasn't so for me... What you ask of me, Ladies, what I have to tell you tonight, dates to the most beautiful moment of my youth. I was no longer precisely what one calls a young man, but I was a young man, and, as an old uncle of mine, a Knight of Malta, used to say to designate that period of life, 'I had completed my caravans.' In full vigor, then, I also found myself in what the Italians so charmingly call 'full relation' with a woman whom you all know and have all admired..."

Here the look they all exchanged simultaneously, each with all the others, this group of women drinking in the words of this old serpent, was something one must witness, for it defies description.

"This woman was indeed," continued Ravila, "everything you might imagine most distinguished, in every sense that word permits. She was young, wealthy, of a superb name, beautiful, witty, with a broad artistic intelligence, and natural with it all, as one is in your world when one truly is... Besides, having, in that world, no other aspiration than to please me and devote herself—to appear to me the most tender of mistresses and the best of friends.

I was not, I believe, the first man she had loved... She had already loved once, and it wasn't her husband; but it had been virtuously, platonically, idealistically, with that love which exercises the heart more than it fills it, which prepares its strengths for another love that must always soon follow; with that trial love, finally, which resembles the white mass young priests say to practice saying, without error, the true mass, the consecrated mass... When I entered her life, she was still only at the white mass. I became the real mass, and she then celebrated it with all the ceremony required and as sumptuously as a cardinal."

At that word, the prettiest circle of smiles turned on these twelve delicious attentive mouths, like a circular ripple on a limpid lake's surface... Rapid, but enchanting!

"She was truly a singular being!" resumed the Count. "Rarely have I seen more genuine goodness, more compassion, more excellent sentiments, even in passion which, as you know, isn't always kind. Never have I seen less artifice, less prudery and coquetry—those two qualities so often entangled in women like a skein through which a cat's claw has passed... There was no cat in this one... She was what these infernal bookmakers, who poison us with their manners of speaking, would call a primitive nature, adorned by civilization; but she had only its charming luxuries, and not a single one of those little corruptions which seem to us even more charming than these luxuries..."

"Was she brunette?" interrupted the duchess suddenly and directly, impatient with all this metaphysics.

"Ah! your vision isn't keen enough!" said Ravila shrewdly. "Yes, she was brunette, brunette of hair to the blackest jet, the most mirror-like ebony I've ever seen gleam on the voluptuous convexity of a woman's lustrous head, but she was blonde of complexion—and it's by complexion, not hair, that one must judge whether one is brunette or blonde," added the great observer, who hadn't studied women merely to paint their portraits. "She was a blonde with black hair..."

All the blonde heads at this table, blonde only by their hair, made an imperceptible movement. Evidently for them, the story's interest was already waning.

"She had Night's hair," resumed Ravila, "but upon Dawn's face, for her visage was resplendent with that incarnadine, dazzling, and rare freshness that had withstood everything in that nocturnal Parisian life she had led for years, which burns so many roses in its candelabra flames. Hers seemed merely to have caught fire, so luminous was the carmine on her cheeks and lips! Their double brilliance harmonized well with the ruby she habitually wore on her forehead, for in those days women wore ferronières, creating in her face, with her two incendiary eyes whose flame concealed their color, a triangle of three rubies! Slender but robust, even majestic, built to be a cuirassier colonel's wife—her husband was then merely a squadron leader in the light cavalry—she possessed, great lady though she was, a peasant woman's health, one who absorbs sunlight through her skin, and she possessed likewise the ardor of this imbibed sun, as much in her soul as in her veins—yes, present and always ready... But here's where the strangeness began! This powerful and ingenuous being, this crimson and pure nature like the blood watering her beautiful cheeks and rosying her arms, was... would you believe it? awkward in her caresses..."

Here some eyes lowered, but rose again, mischievous...

"Awkward in her caresses as she was imprudent in life," continued Ravila, placing no more emphasis on the information. "The man she loved had constantly to teach her two things she never learned... how not to ruin herself before a world always armed and implacable, and how to practice in intimacy love's great art, which prevents love from dying. She possessed love, however; but love's art eluded her... The opposite of so many women who possess only the art! Now, to understand and apply the Prince's politics, one must already be Borgia. Borgia precedes Machiavelli. One is the poet; the other, the critic. She was not at all Borgia. She was an honest woman in love, naive despite her colossal beauty, like the little girl in the overdoor painting who, being thirsty, tries to cup water from the fountain in her hand, and who, breathless, lets everything slip through her fingers, remaining confused...

It was almost charming, moreover, this contrast between confusion and awkwardness in this tall passionate woman who, seeing her in society, would have deceived so many observers—who had everything of love, even happiness, but lacked the power to return it as it was given. Only I wasn't then contemplative enough to content myself with this artistic charm, and it's even the reason which, on certain days, made her anxious, jealous, and violent—all that one becomes when in love, and she loved! But jealousy, anxiety, violence, all perished in the inexhaustible goodness of her heart at the first harm she wished or thought to inflict, as maladroit at wounding as at caressing! A lioness of an unknown species, who imagined she had claws, but who, when she wished to extend them, never found any in her magnificent velvet paws. With velvet she scratched!

"Where is he going with this?" said Countess de Chiffrevas to her neighbor, "for truly, this cannot be Don Juan's most beautiful love!"

All these complicated women couldn't believe in such simplicity!

"We lived, then," said Ravila, "in an intimacy occasionally stormy but never torn, and this intimacy was, in that provincial town called Paris, a secret to no one... The Marquise... she was a marquise..."

There were three at this table, also dark-haired. But they didn't flinch. They knew too well he wasn't speaking of them... The only velvet they collectively possessed was on one's upper lip—a voluptuously shaded lip which, at that moment, I swear, expressed considerable disdain.

"And thrice marquise, as pashas can be three-tailed pashas!" continued Ravila, whose verve was rising. "The Marquise belonged to that class of women who can hide nothing and who, even if they wished, could not. Her own daughter, a thirteen-year-old child, despite her innocence, perceived all too clearly her mother's feelings for me. I don't know which poet asked what daughters think of us who have loved their mothers. A profound question! which I've often asked myself when surprised by the spy's gaze, black and threatening, ambushing me from the depths of this girl's large dark eyes. This child, fiercely reserved, who usually left the salon upon my arrival and placed herself as far from me as possible when forced to remain, harbored for me an almost convulsive horror... which she sought to conceal, but which, stronger than herself, betrayed her... This revealed itself in imperceptible details, not one of which escaped me. The Marquise, no observer herself, nevertheless constantly told me: 'We must be careful, my friend. I believe my daughter is jealous of you...'

"I exercised far more caution than she.

This child could have been the devil incarnate, I would have defied her to read my game... But her mother's game was transparent. Everything showed in the purple mirror of that face, so often troubled! From the daughter's apparent hatred, I couldn't help thinking she had discovered her mother's secret through some expressed emotion, some involuntarily drenched look of tenderness. She was, if you care to know, a sickly child, entirely unworthy of the splendid mold from which she came, ugly even by her mother's admission, who only loved her more for it; a little burnt topaz... what shall I say? a kind of bronze maquette, but with black eyes... Magical! And who, since..."

He stopped after this flash... as if wanting to extinguish it, having said too much... Interest had returned, general, noticeable, intense, to every face, and the countess had even muttered between her beautiful teeth the word of enlightened impatience: "At last!"

V

"When I first began my liaison with her mother," resumed Count de Ravila, "I had shown this little girl all the caressing familiarities one has with all children... I brought her bags of sweets. I called her 'little mask', and very often, while chatting with her mother, I amused myself by smoothing her headband at the temple—a band of unhealthy hair, black, with tinder reflections—but the 'little mask', whose wide mouth offered a pretty smile to everyone else, withdrew her smile for me alone, fiercely knitting her eyebrows, and, through sheer tension, transformed from a 'little mask' into a truly wrinkled mask of a humiliated caryatid, seeming, when my hand passed over her forehead, to bear an entablature's weight beneath it.

So, encountering this sullenness always in the same place, appearing almost hostile, I eventually abandoned this sensitive plant, marigold-colored, which contracted so violently at the slightest caress... I no longer even spoke to her! 'She senses well that you're stealing from her,' the Marquise would tell me. 'Her instinct warns her you're taking a portion of her mother's love.' And sometimes, in her straightforwardness, she added: 'This child is my conscience and my remorse, her jealousy.'

Once, wishing to question her about this profound estrangement she felt toward me, the Marquise received only broken, stubborn, stupid responses, which must be extracted with a corkscrew of repeated questions from all children unwilling to speak... 'There's nothing... I don't know,' and seeing this little bronze's hardness, she ceased questioning her and, weary, turned away...

I forgot to mention that this bizarre child was intensely devout, with a somber, Spanish, medieval, superstitious devotion. She twisted around her lean body all kinds of scapulars and plastered on her chest, flat as the back of a hand, and around her tanned neck, heaps of crosses, Virgins, and Holy Spirits! 'You are unfortunately an impious man,' the Marquise told me. 'Perhaps while chatting you've scandalized her. Be careful of everything you say before her, I beg you. Don't aggravate my wrongs in this child's eyes, toward whom I already feel so guilty!' Yet as the child's conduct never changed, never softened: 'You'll end up hating her,' added the anxious Marquise, 'and I couldn't blame you.' But she was mistaken: I felt merely indifferent toward this sullen little girl, except when she exasperated me.

I maintained between us the politeness that exists between adults, particularly adults who dislike each other. I treated her ceremoniously, addressing her pompously as 'Mademoiselle', while she returned an icy 'Monsieur'. She refused to do anything before me that might reveal her—I won't say in a favorable light, but simply outside herself... Her mother could never persuade her to show me a drawing or play piano for me. When I surprised her at it, practicing with great ardor and concentration, she would stop abruptly, rise from the stool, and play no more...

Once, her mother insisting (there were people present), she positioned herself before the open instrument with a martyred air that, I assure you, held nothing sweet about it, and began some piece or other with abominably contradictory fingers. I stood at the fireplace, observing her obliquely. Her back was turned to me, with no mirror before her in which she might see me watching... Suddenly her back (she habitually carried herself poorly, her mother often saying: 'If you always hold yourself so, you'll develop a chest ailment'), suddenly her back straightened as if my gaze had broken her spine like a bullet; and violently slamming down the piano lid, which made a dreadful noise in falling, she fled the salon... They went to find her, but that evening they could never induce her to return.

"Well, it seems the most conceited men are never conceited enough, for this shadowy child's conduct, which interested me so little, gave me nothing to think about regarding her feelings toward me. Nor did it strike her mother. The Marquise, jealous of every woman in her salon, was no more jealous than I was vain concerning this little girl, who eventually revealed herself in an incident that the Marquise, effusiveness itself in intimate moments, still pale from the terror she had experienced yet laughing heartily at having felt it, had the imprudence to relate to me."

He emphasized by inflection the word "imprudence" as the most skillful actor might have done—a man who knew that his entire story's interest now hung by that single word's thread!

But apparently that sufficed, for these twelve beautiful women's faces had reignited with a feeling as intense as Cherubim's faces before God's throne. Is not the feeling of curiosity in women as intense as the feeling of adoration in Angels?... He regarded them all, these Cherubim faces not ending at the shoulders, and finding them sufficiently primed for what he must tell them, resumed quickly without further pause:

"Yes, she was laughing heartily, the Marquise, just thinking about it! But she hadn't always laughed!—she told me some time later, reporting the incident. 'Imagine,' she said (I'll try to recall her exact words), 'I was sitting exactly where we are now'—(on one of those settees called dos-à-dos, furniture best conceived for sulking and reconciling without changing places)—'But you weren't where you are now, thankfully! when they announced... guess who?... you'd never guess... the parish priest of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Do you know him?... No! You never attend mass, which is terribly wrong... How could you know this poor old priest, a saint who never sets foot in any parish woman's house except for collections for his poor or his church? I initially thought that was his purpose.

He had once prepared my daughter for her first communion, and she, who took communion often, had kept him as her confessor. For this reason, I had many times invited him to dinner, always in vain. When he entered, he appeared extremely troubled, and I noticed on his ordinarily placid features an embarrassment so poorly concealed and so profound that it couldn't possibly stem from mere shyness, compelling me to immediately ask: Goodness! what's the matter, Father?

—What's the matter, Madame, he replied, is that you see before you the most embarrassed man alive. For over fifty years I've served in holy ministry, yet never have I been charged with a more delicate commission nor one that I understood less than the one I must now carry out for you...'

'And he sat down, asking me to have my door closed for the duration of our conversation. You can well imagine that all these solemnities frightened me a little... He noticed it.

— Do not be so alarmed, Madame, — he continued; — you need all your composure to listen to me and to help me understand the unheard-of matter at hand, which in truth I cannot accept... Your daughter, on whose behalf I come, is, you know as well as I, an angel of purity and piety. I know her soul. I have held it in my hands since she was seven years old, and I am persuaded that she is mistaken... perhaps through excess of innocence... But this morning, she came to declare to me in confession that she was, you will scarcely believe it, Madame, nor do I, but I must speak the word... pregnant!'

'I uttered a cry...

— I cried out just as you did in my confessional this morning, the priest continued, at this declaration made with all the marks of the most sincere and most terrible despair! I know this child thoroughly. She is ignorant of everything in life and sin... She is certainly of all the young girls I confess the one for whom I would most answer before God. That is all I can tell you! We priests are the surgeons of souls, and we must deliver them of the shames they conceal with hands that neither wound nor stain them. I therefore questioned this despairing child with every possible precaution, pressed her with questions, yet once she had spoken, once the fault was confessed—which she calls a crime and her eternal damnation, for she believes herself damned, poor girl!—she answered me no more and obstinately enclosed herself in a silence broken only to beg me to come to you, Madame, and inform you of her crime, — for mama must know, — she said, — and I will never have the strength to confess it to her!'

'I listened to the priest of Saint-Germain-des-Prés. You can imagine with what mixture of stupefaction and anxiety! Like him and even more than he, I believed myself certain of my daughter's innocence; but innocents often fall, even through innocence... And what she had told her confessor was not impossible... I didn't believe it... I didn't want to believe it; but nevertheless it wasn't impossible!... She was only thirteen, but she was already a woman, and this very precocity had frightened me... A fever, a surge of curiosity seized me.

I want and will know everything! — I said to this bewildered priest before me who, as he listened, was overflowing with embarrassment from his hat. — Leave me, Father. She wouldn't speak before you. But I'm certain she'll tell me everything... that I'll extract it all from her, and then we'll understand what is now incomprehensible!'

'And the priest departed on that note, — and as soon as he had gone, I hurried to my daughter's room, lacking the patience to have her summoned and wait for her.

I found her prostrate before the crucifix above her bed, not kneeling but prostrate, pale as death, her eyes dry yet very red, like eyes that have wept abundantly. I took her in my arms, seated her beside me, then upon my knees, and told her I couldn't believe what her confessor had just told me.

But she interrupted me to assure me with heartbreaking tones and expressions that it was true, what he had said, and it was then that, increasingly anxious and astonished, I asked her the name of the one who...

I didn't finish... Ah! that was the terrible moment! She buried her head and face on my shoulder... but I could see the fiery flush at the back of her neck, and I felt her trembling. The silence she had opposed to her confessor, she now maintained with me. It was impenetrable.

— It must be someone far beneath you, for you to feel such shame?... — I said, hoping to make her speak by provoking her pride, for I knew she was proud.

But it was still the same silence, the same burying of her head against my shoulder. This lasted what seemed an eternity to me, when suddenly she said without raising herself: 'Swear to me that you will forgive me, mama.'

I swore everything she wanted, even at the risk of a hundred perjuries—I cared so little! I was impatient. I was seething... It seemed my forehead would burst open and release my brain...

— 'Well! it is Monsieur de Ravila', she said in a low voice; and she remained as she was in my arms.

— 'Ah! the effect of that name, Amédée! I received in a single blow, straight to the heart, the punishment for the great sin of my life! You are, in matters of women, such a formidable man, you have made me fear such rivalries, that the horrible 'why not?' said about the man one loves and of whom one doubts, rose within me... What I felt, I had the strength to hide from this cruel child, who had perhaps divined her mother's love.

— Monsieur de Ravila! — I said, with a voice that seemed to me to reveal everything, — but you never speak to him?' — You avoid him, — I was about to add, for anger was beginning; I felt it rising... You are both so deceptive then? — But I suppressed that... Didn't I need to learn the details, one by one, of this horrible seduction?... And I asked them of her with a gentleness I thought would kill me, when she freed me from this vise, from this torture, by saying to me naively:

— 'Mother, it was one evening. He was in the large armchair at the corner of the fireplace, opposite the settee. He remained there a long time, then he rose, and I had the misfortune to sit down after him in this armchair he had vacated. Oh! mama!... it was as if I had fallen into fire. I wanted to get up, I couldn't... my heart failed me! and I felt... here, mama... that what I had... was a child!...'

The Marquise had laughed, said Ravila, when she recounted this story to him; but none of the twelve women seated around this table thought of laughing—nor did Ravila himself.

"And that is, Ladies, believe it if you will," he added by way of conclusion, "the most beautiful love that I have inspired in my life!"

And he fell silent, as did they. They were pensive... Had they understood him?

When Joseph was a slave at Potiphar's house, he was so handsome, says the Koran, that, from reverie, the women he served at table cut their fingers with their knives while gazing at him. But we are no longer in Joseph's time, and the preoccupations one has at dessert are less intense.

"What a great fool, with all her wit, your Marquise was, to have told you such a thing!" said the Duchess, who permitted herself to be cynical, but who cut nothing at all with the gold knife she still held in her hand.

Countess de Chiffrevas was gazing attentively into the depths of a Rhine wine glass, emerald crystal, as mysterious as her thought.

"And the little mask?" she asked.

"Oh, she had died, very young and married in the provinces, when her mother told me this story," replied Ravila.

"Otherwise!..." said the pensive Duchess.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this short story by Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly. Until next time, stay curious.

The Dancer

by Rosauro Almario

Translated from the Tagalog (1910 Edition) by Gio Marron with AI assistance from ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity

Narration by Eleven Labs

Foreword

The Dancer (Ang Mánanayaw) by Rosauro Almario, first published in 1910 by Aklatang Bayan in Manila, is a short Tagalog novel that serves as both a literary work and a moral allegory. Written during the early American colonial period in the Philippines, it stands as a window into a society undergoing cultural, political, and moral upheaval. This translation seeks to preserve not just the story, but the rhetorical force, social commentary, and emotional tone of the original.

The novel follows Sawî, a provincial youth newly arrived in the city, and his fateful entanglement with Pati, a beautiful but cunning dancer in Manila. Their story is more than a tale of seduction and downfall; it is an exploration of urban corruption, class vulnerability, and the slow erosion of character under the pressure of illusion, lust, and modernity.

Almario writes with didactic urgency. The prose is steeped in the influence of Spanish literary traditions, evident in its rhetorical flourishes and formal tone, but it also draws from native Tagalog moral storytelling. This dual heritage reflects the transitional identity of early 20th-century Filipino literature, which sought to both entertain and instruct in a time of national redefinition.

The Dancer is not subtle. It is polemical, almost theatrical in its structure and tone, designed to shock, warn, and moralize. But in its theatricality lies its power. The dance halls of Manila become battlegrounds of virtue and vice. Pati, though framed as a femme fatale, is in fact a product of social decay—a survivor using what tools she has in a world that offers her few options. Sawî, for his part, is not simply a victim of seduction but of his own romantic delusions and failure to discern appearances from substance.

This translation uses modern English dialogue conventions and idioms while preserving the formal diction and tonal gravity of the original. Where the Tagalog text relies on repetition or florid metaphor, the English renders those ideas with clarity but does not omit them. The goal is not modernization but accessibility—to bring Almario's moral vision and artistic voice to readers unfamiliar with early Tagalog prose.

In its time, Ang Mánanayaw was part of a larger project by Aklatang Bayan: to use literature as a weapon in the fight against moral decline, colonial disorientation, and cultural amnesia. Today, it stands as a potent reminder of the tensions that defined Filipino identity in the shadow of empire, and the enduring battle between desire and dignity.

Gio Marron

The Dancer

Jóvenes qué estais bailando, al infierno vais saltando.[^1]

Chapter One: Beginning

Pati: A dancer. Of indeterminate stature; neither short nor tall; her body robust, full of vitality, radiantly fresh; her large bluish eyes like twin windows from which a burning soul gazed out, a soul ablaze with the flames of passion flowing with momentary pleasures—pleasures that could drown, irritate, and ultimately destroy any soul foolish enough to immerse itself in them.

Sawî[^2]: Born in the provinces, a young man pursuing his studies in Manila. Coming from a good family of means, Sawî was raised amidst plenty and comfort: timid, exceedingly shy, with somewhat delicate mannerisms, entirely unlike those city youths whose sole aspiration was to flit about like butterflies or bees, forever seeking new flowers from which to draw fragrance.

Tamád[^3]: A wastrel, a good-for-nothing, as the common folk called him. Orphaned of both father and mother. Without wife, child, sibling, or any relation except for one: "Joy"—a joy that, for him, could never be found in any place or corner save for billiard halls, cockpits, gambling dens, dance houses, and those ever-hungry jaws of hell that always stood ready to receive him.

"Tamád, how's the bird?" Pati inquired.

"Good news, Pati—he's becoming quite tame now," Tamád replied.

"Ready to enter the cage, then?"

"Oh, without a doubt he'll enter it willingly!"

"What has he said to you about me?" she probed further.

Tamád flashed a mischievous smile. "The same as when I first introduced you at that party. He declares you're beautiful as Venus herself, radiant as the Morning Star. He's already fallen for you! You can be certain he's ensnared in your net."

Pati parted her crimson lips to release a resonant laugh.

"So he's in love with me already, is he?"

"And he'll be searching for you later tonight."

"Where? Where did you tell him I would be?"

"At the dance hall."

"Then he already knows I'm a dancer?" she asked with feigned concern. "And what was his reaction? Hasn't he read those newspaper reports claiming that women who dance at subscription parties aren't women at all but merely a bundle of leeches in skirts?"

"He... he mentioned something of that nature," Tamád acknowledged. "But I assured him such rumors might occasionally hold truth, but not invariably. 'Pati,' I told him, 'that young woman I introduced at the party is living proof that a beautiful pearl may yet be found amidst the mud...'"

Tamád paused momentarily to swallow before continuing:

"And Sawî—our bird in question—believed me entirely. He's convinced you're a 'rare pearl,' a modest young woman of virtue and dignity."

"And didn't he question why I found myself in a dance hall?" Pati asked.

"He did ask—how could he not?" replied Tamád. "But the tongue of Tamád—your faithful procurer—created such elaborate dreams in that moment, painting images so lifelike they appeared as truth itself, witnessed by my own eyes. I told him, my voice nearly breaking with emotion: 'Oh, Sawî, if you only knew the complete history of Pati—the beautiful Pati whom you so admire—you would surely see her in your mind's eye as nothing less than a virtuous woman, a paragon of maidenhood. For she,' I continued dramatically, 'is an orphan who has endured considerable misfortune in life, reduced to begging, to pleading for alms, and when those she approached no longer extended their compassion, she was forced into servitude, selling her strength to a wealthy man... but...'"

"What happened next in this fabrication of yours?" Pati asked with an arched eyebrow.

"The wealthy man," Tamád continued with theatrical flair, "confronted with your unrivaled beauty, developed designs to violate your honor."

"Violate!" Pati scoffed. "You've quite a talent for weaving falsehoods. And what heroic action did I supposedly take?"

"You resisted his base desires with unwavering virtue."

"And then?"

"You departed from the house where you served to enter—by necessity—the profession of dancing."

"So in summary," Pati concluded with sardonic precision, "in Sawî's imagination, I am a virtuous woman, an orphan mistreated by Fate, who became a beggar, then a supplicant, a servant, essentially a slave; and because I defended my honor, I left the wealthy man's house to enter a different profession. Is that the fiction you've constructed?"

"Precisely so," Tamád affirmed with satisfaction.

Oh, if only God had ordained that lies, before leaving the lips of liars, should first transform into flames...!

Pati, to those of us who truly knew her, was nothing but a baitfish[^4]—outwardly displaying only the glittering shimmer of scales while harboring nothing but fetid mud within. She was not merely flirtatious or fickle; she was something far more dangerous—a predator, an executioner of souls unfortunate enough to fall into her embrace.

Even as a young girl—barely blossoming into womanhood—Pati had already inspired fear among the young men in her neighborhood. How could they not be wary when she would consent to anyone's advances, make promises to everyone, swear oaths to all comers? Each promise and oath was sealed with some token or pledge extracted from her victims—deposits that could never be reclaimed once given.

But now Tamád was speaking again. Let us listen to his words:

"Pati," he said with a smirk, "later tonight I shall certainly bring your bird to you."

"When you arrive," she replied coolly, "the cage will be ready and waiting."

And with that exchange, they parted ways.

Chapter Two: The Cage Opens

They had already arrived at the first step of the stairway that led into Pluto's realm[^5]: the dance hall. Tamád led the way, the tempter, while Sawî followed timidly behind him.

The Temple of the cheerful goddess Terpsichore[^6], at that moment, transformed into a veritable Garden of Delights: everywhere the eye turned, it beheld nothing but modern-day Eves and latter-day Adams. Throughout this Eden, flowers seemed to have scattered themselves of their own accord, while human butterflies flitted to and fro, dancing around one another in perpetual motion.

Upon the arrival of Sawî and Tamád at the dance hall, Pati, who had been waiting for them, cheerfully came forward and, with a smile and a laugh, greeted them:

"You've wandered in here..."

Sawî did not respond. Pati's words, those utterances that seemed as if dipped in sweetness, reached one by one into the heart of the stunned young man. How beautiful Pati looked at that moment!

Inside her dress that shimmered with light, in Sawî's vision she resembled what Flammarion saw in his dream: a person made of light, and her hands were two wings.

Tamád, seeing his companion freeze like this, winked once at Pati and secretly pointed to him: "He's truly awkward!"

Just then, a signal from the orchestra was heard:

"Waltz!" called out the impatient dancers in unison.

And the large hall echoed with the scuffing of shoes.

Pati, who had moved away from the two companions, at the beginning of the dance approached Sawî again:

"Would you like to dance?" she asked affectionately.

"No... it's up to you... perhaps later." And he stood up as if warmed by sitting too long; he took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat that was beading on his forehead.

"Too shy for your own good!" murmured the beautiful dancer. And she turned her back on the young man, almost stomping. She seemed angered by such a refusal from her invitee.

Sawî noticed this, so he whispered to himself as he sat down:

"I think she's angry!"

And this worry grew even more when he saw Pati being taken by an elegant dancer:

"What a shame I didn't dance with her!"

Who was the man who took his beautiful dancer?

Could he already be her suitor?

Could he already be her lover?

Such thoughts traced through the young man's mind, when Tamád's question pierced his hearing.

"Why didn't you dance?" And without giving the one being questioned time to answer, Tamád continued his teasing:

"Do you believe that only people of no importance attend dance halls?"

"It's not that, friend..."

"Do you believe," Tamád repeated, "that only God-forsaken people frequent dance houses? Ah, those who hold such beliefs are mistaken, and solid evidence of this error is what you see now, friend Sawî. That gentleman dancing with Pati is a lawyer known in these parts of Manila... that gentleman—and he pointed to one whirling around, also embracing a woman with a long face and narrow eyes—that gentleman is a pharmacist; and this one, this one passing by us now with a flower pinned to his chest, is a wealthy merchant..."

And so each person there was introduced by Tamád to Sawî: there were law students, medical students, merchants, politicians, and other "hopes of the Nation," as our Great Hero once said.

But such introductions by Tamád seemed unnoticed by the one he was addressing, for after he stopped, there was no other response except:

"Who is dancing with Pati?"

Such indifference from his companion did not anger Tamád. Rather, it delighted him! He noticed that in Sawî's heart, at those moments, there was nothing filling it but the image of his candidate, and the young man neither heard nor saw anything else but the soft scraping of Pati's shoes on the hall's floor and her enchanting posture.

Sawî, whose heart was always closed to the lure of sin, was now slowly opening to a new feeling, a feeling he didn't know what it was, yet he knew, yes, that this feeling was no different from the coal that gives heat to a boiler, a fire awakening what was once asleep and giving vigor to a formerly cold heart.

The flower that once feared the kiss of the sun was now blooming in the storm.

While the couples swirled, in the middle of the hall; while the couples endlessly whispered, nudged, winked, pinched, and sometimes exchanged more than just words; Sawî, in the seat where he sat, thought of nothing else but "how he should convey to the enchanting lady the beating of his soul."

"Tamád," he called again to his seatmate, "I want you to be truthful with me: what is Pati's real situation? Single or married? Free or with a suitor?"

"Have you already forgotten the quick answer I gave when you asked these same questions the first time we were together?"

"Perhaps... what did you tell me then?"

"I told you Pati is single and unmarried, free and without a suitor."

"Therefore..."

"Therefore," Tamád quickly added, "therefore Pati is free, free as a fish in water, a butterfly in a garden, a bird in the clouds."

"What if I were to offer her..."

Tamád grinned, cutting him off.

"Why not? Why couldn't you offer her your love? Aren't you a man, and isn't she a woman? Aren't you a handsome young man, and isn't she a beautiful lady? Why not...?"

"Friend Tamád, it seems you're teasing me."

"Teasing you? I haven't even told you everything I know about that woman, because I'm truly worried that you might be overwhelmed..."

"Overwhelmed?"

"If I tell you that Pati seems... seems..."

"Seems what?"

"Seems to be growing fond of you..."

"Growing fond! Is it true? Is it true that Pati is growing fond of me?"

"And why do you say this?" he questioned with a mixture of eagerness.

"Why not, when I observe her every movement?"

Just then, as if to confirm it, Pati looked at Sawî. Tamád noticed this. He nudged his companion and said with a smile:

"Did you see that... just now she looked at you again!"

"It's true!" Sawî whispered to himself. "And what a tender glance it was, how sweet, how delightful!"

The first waltz ended.

At the second signal from the orchestra announcing a fine two-step, Sawî could no longer resist:

"I want to dance with her!"

And he left his seat, quickly approached Pati, and respectfully asked:

"Would you honor me with this dance?"

To this question from the young man, Pati did not even open her mouth; but she answered with her small white hand, which she immediately linked through the arm of her suitor.

Eyes that could read a man's heart would have already glimpsed Pati's approaching victory:

"The bird is caught, caught, caught!" she whispered to herself.

And when they began to dance, she allowed her small and slender waist to play so freely in the hands of her partner.

Sawî, under this woman's scheme, was gradually diminishing like a candle being consumed by the wind.

And the intoxicating fragrance of jasmine he was inhaling at those moments was slowly penetrating to the depths of his feelings.

He was in love now... and in love with a thorough, ardent, passionate love, like a blaze in the breath of wind, like a fire in the flow of gas!

Each smile of Pati, each enticing glance she fixed on him, deeply penetrated, burrowed, wounded the chest of the endangered Sawî, like the penetration, burrowing, and wounding of a savage arrow.

"Miss Pati," he timidly called to his dance partner, "if I were to come here every night, would I be able to dance with you?"

"Why not?" was the sweet reply of the one being asked.

Our young man, the awkward Sawî, in response to this affirmative from Pati, had nothing else to say but a gentle:

"Thank you."

And he did not speak again until the end of the dance. Simoun, the fearsome Simoun in Rizal's Filibusterismo, after the doors of Terpsichore's Temple closed, displayed on his trembling lips a mocking smile; and then said:

"Buena está la juventud!..."

Chapter Three: Entangled

Sawî could no longer contain his love for Pati.

Every passing moment became like an arrow striking him, each moment gone leaving another wound in his breast.

"Oh, Pati!" he thought. "When will you come to know how deeply I love you? When will you discover that my heart has become a sacred shrine housing your precious image? When will you understand that I have nothing left to pray for, nothing left to whisper but your name—the sweetest name that has ever graced my ears?"

His tongue, timid and bound by excessive reverence, compelled him to contain his feelings within sighs and yearning breaths. To confess to Pati? The thought alone made him tremble.

"What if she should mock me? What if she refused to take my love seriously? What if she scorned the very feelings that consume me? Ah!..."

But, if he had realized that Pati was a merciful woman who denied no one her love, if he had realized that Pati was a merciful woman who withheld her compassion from no one, if he had realized that Pati was waiting for nothing more than a nudge, a word to fully entrust to him her soul, her body; such anguish and doubt would not have crossed his mind.

But Sawî was still inexperienced; that's why he didn't know that, in Manila, the word "dancer" corresponds to the words "bandit under the law," "thief inside the house."

If he had known that in dance halls they don't use words to say: "I love you," "I want to devour you," but that glances, winks, and nudges are enough, perhaps Pati would have long been his, or to speak more truly and precisely, he would have belonged to Pati.

However, his lamentations did not last very long, for one night when Pati was leaving the dance hall to go home, he had the fortune—thanks to the help and mercy of his friend Tamád—to accompany her.

"Miss Pati," the young man called, when they were alone in the midst of darkness, "would you be angry if I said something to you?"

"If it would make me angry..." came the seemingly playful reply from the one asked.

Sawî froze.

What should he do now?

Where should he go from here?

The hole he wished to enter had been covered before he could knock.

He remained silent for a long time.

Confronted with this situation, Pati secretly smiled:

"He truly is inexperienced!" she said to herself.

When the young man still would not speak, it was Pati herself who took the trouble to lay a trap.

"Mr. Sawî," she began, "if I'm not mistaken, I think I've seen you before, before you arrived at our dance hall."

"Where?" quickly asked the young man. "In the province perhaps, in the poor province where I first saw light?"

"No, here in Manila... I just don't know where and when; but I have seen you."

"Great is my fortune if that's so."

"It's I who am truly wretched, since I saw you but went unnoticed."

"Unnoticed! Miss Pati! Miss Pati! I didn't notice you? But how could that be? How could you go unnoticed by me?"

"Truly, it's just that someone as small as I am..."

"So small! How can that be, that one who is served is smaller than one who serves?"

"One who is served, you said?"

Sawî's heart fluttered, and he worried that he might have been too forward... but, hope and courage! What had been traversed could no longer be retraced. "Adelante!" as Golfin says in Galdós's Marianela, "adelante, siempre adelante!"

"Yes," he confirmed without his tongue faltering, "served, that's what I said."

"I am served! And by whom?"

"B-b-by me."

Pati secretly laughed.

Sawî secretly trembled.

"I think I'm being too bold?"

And he waited for the young woman to answer, like a defendant awaiting a judge's verdict.

Sawî's fate, at that moment, hung on Pati's lips. What would she say to him? Yes? Oh, heaven!... No? Oh, death!

Pati, after pressing her stomach that also ached from suppressed laughter, uttered these words:

"Mr. Sawî: are you perhaps mocking me?"

"No, truly, truly what I said is true. Oh, if only my heart could be opened!..."

Their conversation continued.

From afar, in a corner of the sky, a mountain-like shape the color of smoke appeared above their sight, the cloud, the thick cloud, herald of impending rain.

At that moment, the walkers were just arriving at a small upstairs house located on the left side of the broad avenue of Azcárraga.

"Come up first," Pati invited the young man, "it's still early anyway."

Still early!

"Still early," said that woman, even though it was almost one in the morning?

"Manila women are indeed very different from provincial women!..." he whispered to himself, unable to contain his wonder at what he heard.

Nevertheless, he replied with a sincere thanks to his inviter. And he made as if to turn away to go home; but, coincidence! at that moment, the rain began to pour.

A triumphant smile bloomed on Pati's lips:

"The bird will truly be caught!"

And again and again she invited the young man until he finally yielded:

"Since you permit it..." was the soft reply that Pati barely heard.

Pati ascended first. Behind her followed Sawî.

Upstairs, the first thing Sawî noticed was the orderly ornaments hanging there, the paintings competing in beauty, the portraits, landscapes, and other things that could delight the eye.

A young child met them in this house, Pati's servant.

"Bulilít," the homeowner called to her servant upon reaching the top step, "give our visitor a chair."

The one commanded promptly obeyed.

Sawî sat down; and the child disappeared from his sight.

While the young man crossed his hands in his seat, Pati entered the house's room to fix her hair that had been disarranged at the dance hall, and to powder her face which was now streaming with sweat.

And before coming out again, she repeatedly assessed her appearance and asked herself if her current look was enough to make a man's heart leap from its place. And when she seemed satisfied, only then did she sit in a chair just an arm's length away from her guest.

How beautiful Pati looked then in Sawî's eyes!

"Oh," he said to himself, "even if it were the bald-headed St. Peter, or the drowsy-eyed St. John, or the gentle-faced St. Pascal, before such beauty they would be compelled to marry! And he, a mere ordinary man, how could he resist temptation?..."

"Pati! Miss Pati!..." he called repeatedly, his entire body trembling.

The one called did not answer. But she smiled secretly, for now she sensed that the intoxicating heat of her body was affecting Sawî's heart.

And Pati moved closer to her companion, and laughed, with glances supremely delightful.

Sawî trembled more.

Pati moved even closer to him, made her smile even more affectionate, made her gaze even more enticing.

Sawî wanted to run, wanted to shout, wanted to escape, to avoid temptation.

He was burning with heat!

But at that moment, Pati's pale candle-like fingers touched his hand, followed by the affectionate question:

"What's wrong with you? You're freezing!"

"Yes... yes... I am cold indeed."

And simultaneously he stood up from his seat, opened his arms and wrapped them around Pati's neck, and pleaded with a broken voice:

"Pati, Pati, forgive me...!"

Chapter Four: Descent

From the very first night he inhaled the warmth of Pati's embrace, Sawî swore loyalty to the goddess of the dance floor—Terpsichore. He didn't whisper it aloud, but his soul had already defected.

He had become a regular. A fixture.

The books that once kept him company at night were now his enemies, collecting dust, forgotten. He no longer spared them even a glance, not a moment of listening or reflection.

All his time belonged to fleeting pleasures.All his spirit, like a malnourished body, began to starve.His soul dimmed, collapsed, corroded by the fog that now veiled the sky of his conscience.

He drank now, not from truth or wisdom, but from the lips of Pati. Thin, red lips. Lips that burned.

To him, Pati was everything: his hope, his joy, his love, his heaven.

Oh, what a venomous seed love becomes when it grows in the heart of a woman like her.

One day, as they sat together, he turned to her—earnest, trembling.

"Pati, my Pati, do you truly love me?"

She paused, almost stifled a laugh, then caught herself.

"Answer me," he pleaded. "Please."

"Yes," she said sweetly. "Yes, my Sawî, I love you."

"Like I love you?"

"More," she said, putting her hand on his. "A thousand times more. I love you like a blind man loves the sun, like a fish loves water, like a saint loves God. Are you satisfied now?"

"Pati, Pati, is that really true?"

"As true as night is dark, as the sun is hot, as the moon is cold. As true as my heart beats and your liver trembles, as true as you are handsome and I... am not."

"Pati... Pati," he whispered, pressing his hand against his chest as if to keep it from bursting.

He wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her on the forehead—long, soft, trembling.

"Do you hear that?" he asked, voice low. "That fast beating? That's my soul speaking. It says you're my life, my happiness, my heaven..."

"Of course," she replied.

"And it says," he continued breathlessly, "that it has built a shrine, deep inside me, a secret sanctuary filled with white jasmine flowers, burning with incense. And there it worships an image: a woman, a saint, my beautiful Pati."

The leech, after a week of sipping from his blood, could no longer hold back.

"It's time you paid," she thought.

"Sawî, my darling," she said aloud, "could you give me five pesos? I need to buy a new blouse."

He opened his hand without hesitation.

"Here, my treasure. Take it."

The first day passed. Then the second.

"Sawî, love," she said again, "could you give me ten pesos? I need a skirt."

Ten now. Not five.

Still, he didn't refuse.

"Here, sweetheart. Take it."

And on the third day, she pressed harder—more cunning, more demanding.

"Love, I need twenty pesos this time—for shoes, powder, perfume, stockings..."

Twenty.

Sawî, still glowing, reached into his purse.

"Take it, my love. Anything for you."

But the bites weren't confined merely to his flesh. Pati's teeth—sharp and cunningly hidden—were penetrating to the bone.

Once, as he tenderly cradled her soft cheeks in his hands and covered them with kiss after kiss, she asked with a half-mocking tone:

"How many kisses have you given me?"

He laughed softly, intoxicated by her presence. "One... two... three... four... ten... fifteen—oh, too many to count! I've lost track entirely."

"Each kiss costs one peso."

"One peso?!" he exclaimed, startled.

What purse, however well-filled, could possibly endure such a drain?

Just as a barrel, no matter how abundantly full, must eventually run dry if its leak remains unsealed, so it was with Sawî. His wealth—once substantial—trickled away slowly at first, then rushed out all at once. Gradually but inexorably, he descended into the abyss of poverty—down into that dark kingdom ruled by want and shadowed by shame.

Now what? Should he borrow? Pawn something? Beg?

Each one scraped against his pride.

But... how could he leave Pati?

How could he live without her?

He could starve. He could go barefoot. But abandon her?Never.

She was his hope. His glory. His life.She was the sun that gave his soul its warmth.The fire that kept his heart alive.

Oh, she was a vine. And his heart—a patch of earth.And the vine had rooted so deep, he could not pull it out without tearing up the soil.

A few days passed—days of silence, days of poverty. He didn't visit her.

Where would he even find the money to meet her demands?

"I'll pawn something," he decided.

He did. And it ran out.

He borrowed. That ran out too.

He begged. Same result.

"What now?" he asked himself.

Write to his parents?They were gone—either dead or done with him. Family? None left. He had become a burden to them all.

Who wouldn't turn their back on a son like him?A disgrace. He squandered the savings earned by honest toil.Dragged his family's name through the streets.He'd turned their love into ridicule. Their sacrifice into waste.

And worse—he became unrecognizable. To his old classmates, his old friends, he was now a stranger. A ghost.

Once they called him "friend."Now, they avoided him like a plague.

The deepest sting came when he passed familiar faces in the street—once-kind, now curled into smirks and sneers. Sometimes, they'd point. Sometimes, they'd whisper.

"There goes the bum."

Each word was a dart in his chest. A fresh wound.

"Maybe I should forget her," he whispered one night, lying alone.

But just then—a knock.

"Who is it?" he called.

He opened the door—and froze.

Tamád.

The man who had ruined him.

His fists clenched. His brow darkened. His eyes blazed.

"Tamád!" he roared. "Get out of my house!"

Tamád blinked. "What the hell?"

"Get out!" Sawî shouted again. "Now!"

The layabout looked confused. "I didn't come here for me..."

"Then for who?"

"She sent me," Tamád said quietly, his voice lowering. "She sent me, okay?"

Sawî's anger softened—slightly.

Pati.

That name—still sweet, still poisonous.

Tamád saw the shift in his face.

"She told me to tell you... that you've been acting proud."

"Proud?!"

"She's cried over you, you know. For days. Do you realize that?"

"She cried... for me?"

"She did. And I think—I think she's still waiting."

Sawî swallowed. "What else did she say?"

"She gave me this," Tamád said, pulling a folded letter from his pocket. "Here."

And with that, he left.

Sawî ripped the letter open.

Inside, the handwriting curled like smoke:

My Bird,

It's almost been a week now that you've orphaned me in the midst of sighs and tears. One week without seeing you, for me is like one week of God's death!

Have you forgotten the unfortunate Pati? Have you forgotten the wretched dancer, after stealing her HONOR? Have you forgotten the magnificent moments experienced in her company? Have you forgotten the touch of your lips imprinted on my cheeks, touches that until now I feel as if they're still burning with the fire of love? Have you forgotten the moments savored in my embrace, in the flame of my glances, in the sweetness of my smiles, in the sound of my kisses?

Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten that night when you lay in my arms while, once, twice, and thrice Cupid SANG his victories? Have you forgotten the moment when you sipped from my lips the incomparably sweet honey of love? Have you forgotten those moments extracting from my lips the wine that intoxicates Cupid?

Have you forgotten?

Have you forgotten the moments when, in the surge of your burning passion, you said to me: "Pati, you are my heart, you are my life, you are my goddess"?

Where is the fulfillment of these promises?

Ah, Sawî! Ah, my bird! Come and at all hours you will find open the cage that became the nest of our golden dreams, of our joys and comforts!

YOUR DOVE.

These words—like pins pressed into his chest. Each one waking the beast in his heart, the beast he thought was dying.

The memories returned. One by one. Like ghosts summoned by a spell.

The beast reared up again—growled, shook, and roared.

He stood.

"Pati," he whispered. "I'm coming back..."

Chapter Five: Ending

Midnight.

The sky was black and heavy, smothered by thick clouds. The wind howled like a beast, its furious gusts lashing at every rooftop, rattling every shutter like a hand demanding entry.

Lightning cut across the sky in violent arcs—golden snakes chasing one another through the clouds. Thunder cracked the silence with the fury of a broken god.

On the wide plaza of Azcárraga, beneath that furious storm, a figure walked alone.

Who was he?What soul dares cross the world on a night like this?

His steps were fast. His head low. His path unbending.

He reached a house on the left side of the avenue—a house faintly lit, its windows pulsing with dim, flickering yellow.

He approached the door.

Before he could knock, it creaked open. A shadow peered out—slender, veiled, feminine.

Pati.

"Do you think he'll still come?" asked another voice, the same one who had opened the door.

"I don't think so," Pati answered, "not with this rain. Come in."

And the voice obeyed.

Outside, Sawî froze.

He?He who?

He bit his lip hard enough to taste blood.

Are they mocking me?

He moved closer. His heart pounded.

Who had she let in?

The figure had moved like a man—stood like a man—spoken like a man.

She betrayed me. Pati—she betrayed me.

He took another step forward.

Outside the door now.

He pushed gently. It swung open with a groan.

He crept up the stairs, breath tight in his throat.

From beyond the hallway, he heard the murmur of voices. A woman. A man.

Pati.

And...

Tamád.

A flash of lightning lit the room. In that instant, he saw them together.

The betrayal was not a guess. It was a fact.

Sawî staggered, then stormed in like a demon loosed from hell.

Pati didn't even scream.Tamád flinched.Sawî's eyes burned.

He strode forward and spat on them both—once on her face, once on his.

Then, with each hand, he grabbed their throats.

"God—" Pati gasped.

Sawî's teeth clenched. His mouth foamed with rage.

"To you!" he shouted at Tamád. "Coward!"

To Pati: "Traitor!"

Pati said nothing.

Tamád tried to pull away. He reached to run.

But Sawî struck him hard across the face.

"Son of Lucifer! You want to flee now? Ah, coward!"

"Forgive me—"

"Forgive you? Forgive you after you have degraded my being? Forgive you after I have been cast into hell, after I have been tempted, and have been deceived?"

"No more..."

"No more... no more, after my essence has been drained, after I have suffered, after I have been corrupted in the embrace of this woman?"—and he pointed at Pati, who was trembling with fear.

"And you," he turned to her, "who have been the cause of all my suffered misfortunes; you, who have been the reason for my estrangement from my former friends; you, who have been the reason for my distance from father and mother, for their withdrawal of love for me; where was your heart that you would repay me with such betrayal? A fine payment for my silver that you dissolved; a fine payment for my blood that you drank!"

Pati, trembling, answered:

"Forgive me!"

"Do you know, Pati," Sawî continued, "do you know how much my love for you has cost me? Silver, much silver... gold, handfuls of gold. Gold and silver, each piece representing a drop of sweat, a drop of blood from my virtuous parents."

"And my name," he added, almost choking on the spasms of words rushing forth, "my name that is now the target of all criticism, that is now a thicket despised by all lips, like the revulsion for a pusalì, for a heap of stinking garbage? Where have you placed my humanity?"

Pati did not answer.

Sawî continued:

"Ah, now I fully believe what the newspapers say—that in the fishponds (dance halls) where you swim, nothing is seen but baitfish, fish that display only the glitter of scales on the outside, but are filled with mud inside!"

"Sawî, forgive me... I am without sin!"

"Without sin!"

And then it struck him—sharp and clear.

"You're right," he whispered. "You didn't pull me in."

"I dove."

Pati opened her mouth. She may have said something. But Sawî wasn't listening.

He had already turned.

Outside, the rain still fell in torrents.

He walked into the storm, unblinking, unsheltered, soaking wet.

Every drop stabbed his skin like needles.

He didn't stop. He didn't turn.

He walked into the blackness, into the wide night, into silence.

The street swallowed him.

Only the wind followed.

End.

[^1]: Spanish proverb meaning "Young people who are dancing, to hell you are jumping" - a common warning in conservative Catholic societies about the moral dangers of dancing.

[^2]: The name "Sawî" in Tagalog suggests someone who is unlucky or ill-fated, foreshadowing the character's destiny.

[^3]: "Tamád" means "lazy" in Tagalog, indicating the character's nature as a layabout.

[^4]: "Isdâng kapak" in the original Tagalog—a fish with attractive exterior but worthless insides, a common metaphor for beautiful but corrupt people.

[^5]: A reference to Pluto (Hades), god of the underworld in Greek mythology, suggesting the dance hall is viewed as a morally corrupting place, an earthly entrance to hell.

[^6]: In Greek mythology, Terpsichore was the Muse of dance and chorus, her name meaning "delight in dancing." This classical reference elevates yet simultaneously condemns the dance hall in the narrative.

Literary and Historical Commentary

Ang Mánanayaw by Rosauro Almario

A Window Into 1910s Manila

Ang Mánanayaw exemplifies early 20th-century Tagalog literature through its melodramatic style, moral didacticism, and distinctly urban focus. Written during the American colonial period (1898-1946), it portrays Manila as a modernizing metropolis that enticed provincial newcomers with its bright lights and novel pleasures, only to consume their moral virtue and financial resources.

The novel emerged from Aklatang Bayan (People's Library), a nationalist literary press explicitly dedicated to "fighting against corrupt morals, false beliefs, and social decay"—a mission Almario articulates in his foreword. This publishing house pursued not merely artistic expression but ideological intervention, conceptualizing literature as a weapon in the battle for moral and cultural preservation during a period of profound social transformation.

Themes: Seduction, Ruin, and Social Class

At its foundation, Ang Mánanayaw functions as a morality tale with clear didactic purpose. Sawî, whose name literally translates as "unfortunate" or "ill-fated," embodies the vulnerable provincial elite—sufficiently wealthy to become prey to urban temptations, yet too innocent to recognize the danger. His downfall stems not merely from sin itself, but from a triad of fatal weaknesses: naïveté regarding Manila's moral landscape, misplaced idealism about love, and romantic illusions that blind him to Pati's true nature.

Pati, the eponymous dancer, defies simple categorization as a femme fatale in the Western literary tradition. Instead, she represents a pragmatic survivalist operating within a harsh social economy. In Almario's conceptual framework, she functions as a powerful symbol of modernity's corrupting influence. Her calculated duplicity operates as a business transaction; her charm deployed with mechanical precision. She entices Sawî not from passion or desire—but for practical acquisition of wealth, influence, and security.

This dynamic illuminates a profound cultural anxiety permeating Almario's era: the increasingly fraught collision between provincial moral purity and metropolitan corruption. The Manila portrayed in Ang Mánanayaw emerges as a landscape of moral dissolution, with dance halls (bailes[^7]) serving as potent symbols of Western-style permissiveness—a cultural development regarded with profound apprehension by conservative Filipino intellectuals of the period.

[^7]: Dance parties, often subscription-based events where men would pay to dance with women, representing modern Western influence that was viewed with suspicion by traditional Filipino society.

Language and Form

Composed in elevated yet accessible Tagalog, the novel demonstrates both Spanish prose influences (particularly in its rhetorical flourishes and dialogue formatting) and the moral didacticism characteristic of traditional Tagalog kathang buhay[^8] ("life stories" or realistic fiction). Almario masterfully synthesizes these diverse traditions with an unmistakable sense of urgency. His sentences pulsate with moral judgment; his characters speak in passionate absolutes.

[^8]: A traditional Filipino literary form focusing on realistic depictions of life with strong moral messages.

Despite this overt moralizing, Sawî's progressive deterioration is portrayed not with ridicule but with genuine pathos. Almario reserves his deepest critique not exclusively for individual characters like Pati or Tamád, but for the broader social conditions that force women like Pati to survive through seduction, deception, and exploitation.

Cultural Function

During an era when nobelang Tagalog[^9] (Tagalog novels) circulated widely in inexpensive editions among the increasingly literate working and middle classes, this work performed dual functions: entertaining engagement and moral instruction. It served particularly as a cautionary tale directed at provincial youth—especially young men—warning them against the seductive but spiritually perilous enticements of the capital city.

[^9]: Popular Tagalog-language novels of the early 20th century, usually published in inexpensive formats for mass consumption.

Beyond this obvious cautionary purpose, the novel also operated as a subtle critique of American colonial capitalism. The traditional social structure was undergoing rapid transformation, and conventional Filipino masculinity—historically anchored in notions of honor, family responsibility, and personal restraint—faced reconstruction under the influence of novel temptations, economic pressures, and unfamiliar modes of failure.

Legacy

While Ang Mánanayaw may not share the canonical status of José Rizal's Noli Me Tangere or Lope K. Santos's Banaag at Sikat, it represents a valuable historical and literary artifact. It reveals how nationalist writers of Almario's generation employed fiction not merely as entertainment but as a means to guide a generation navigating between competing worlds: between rural tradition and urban modernity, between Spanish Catholic heritage and American secular influences, between moral virtue and hedonistic pleasure.

In today's Philippines, the work continues to illuminate the anxieties, compromises, and cultural negotiations that characterized the formative period of modern Filipino national identity.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this novella by Rosauro Almario. Until next time, stay curious.

The Elephant Island ChroniclesPresents

The CastawayRabindranath Tagore

Narration by Eleven Labs

Foreword

In The Castaway, Rabindranath Tagore harnesses the quiet violence of human longing and the moral ambiguities of kindness to deliver one of his most psychologically intricate and emotionally potent stories. Set against the monsoon-churned banks of the Ganges, the story begins with a literal storm—yet the real turbulence brews within a household, beneath the surface of affection, class, duty, and misunderstanding.

Tagore presents Nilkanta not as a simple waif but as a symbol of the precarious outsider—the emotionally rich but socially disposable figure whose very presence unsettles the structures of domestic comfort. Through him, the author interrogates how quickly charity can curdle into suspicion, and how affection, unmoored from comprehension, can drift into tragedy. That Nilkanta is both a source of joy and a catalyst for quiet ruin is no accident. Tagore writes him with a tenderness that never slips into sentimentality and with a critique that never hardens into cruelty.

Kiran, the woman whose sympathy becomes the fulcrum of the boy’s fate, is not simply a “nurturing presence.” She is something more complex: a person capable of both great warmth and great blindness. Her kindness is instinctive, but it is not always just. Her protectiveness, though sincere, lacks understanding of the deeper conflicts swelling within the boy she has unwittingly mothered, idealized, and misread.

Tagore understood well the quiet wars of the heart—the ways in which loneliness, adolescence, jealousy, and misplaced love can twist a moment of impulse into a life-shaping event. What makes The Castaway endure is its refusal to resolve that tension. Nilkanta is not vindicated, nor is he condemned. He disappears, leaving behind not a lesson but a wound—one that reminds us of how easily love can misfire when wielded without full attention to the soul it tries to save.

Written with restraint and irony, The Castaway remains one of Tagore’s most haunting pieces. It resists closure, denies the reader a villain, and instead invites us to consider our own roles in the lives of those we claim to care for. In doing so, it speaks not only to the social mores of colonial Bengal, but to timeless truths about the costs of misunderstanding and the limits of even the most well-meaning compassion.

Gio Marron

The Castawayby Rabindranath Tagore

Towards evening the storm was at its height. From the terrific downpour of rain, the crash of thunder, and the repeated flashes of lightning, you might think that a battle of the gods and demons was raging in the skies. Black clouds waved like the Flags of Doom. The Ganges was lashed into a fury, and the trees of the gardens on either bank swayed from side to side with sighs and groans.

In a closed room of one of the riverside houses at Chandernagore, a husband and his wife were seated on a bed spread on the floor, intently discussing. An earthen lamp burned beside them.

The husband, Sharat, was saying: "I wish you would stay on a few days more; you would then be able to return home quite strong again."

The wife, Kiran, was saying: "I have quite recovered already. It will not, cannot possibly, do me any harm to go home now."

Every married person will at once understand that the conversation was not quite so brief as I have reported it. The matter was not difficult, but the arguments for and against did not advance it towards a solution. Like a rudderless boat, the discussion kept turning round and round the same point; and at last threatened to be overwhelmed in a flood of tears.

Sharat said: "The doctor thinks you should stop here a few days longer."

Kiran replied: "Your doctor knows everything!"

"Well," said Sharat, "you know that just now all sorts of illnesses are abroad. You would do well to stop here a month or two more."

"And at this moment I suppose every one in this place is perfectly well!"

What had happened was this: Kiran was a universal favourite with her family and neighbours, so that, when she fell seriously ill, they were all anxious. The village wiseacres thought it shameless for her husband to make so much fuss about a mere wife and even to suggest a change of air, and asked if Sharat supposed that no woman had ever been ill before, or whether he had found out that the folk of the place to which he meant to take her were immortal. Did he imagine that the writ of Fate did not run there? But Sharat and his mother turned a deaf ear to them, thinking that the little life of their darling was of greater importance than the united wisdom of a village. People are wont to reason thus when danger threatens their loved ones. So Sharat went to Chandernagore, and Kiran recovered, though she was still very weak. There was a pinched look on her face which filled the beholder with pity, and made his heart tremble, as he thought how narrowly she had escaped death.

Kiran was fond of society and amusement; the loneliness of her riverside villa did not suit her at all. There was nothing to do, there were no interesting neighbours, and she hated to be busy all day with medicine and dieting. There was no fun in measuring doses and making fomentations. Such was the subject discussed in their closed room on this stormy evening.

So long as Kiran deigned to argue, there was a chance of a fair fight. When she ceased to reply, and with a toss of her head disconsolately looked the other way, the poor man was disarmed. He was on the point of surrendering unconditionally when a servant shouted a message through the shut door.

Sharat got up and on opening the door learnt that a boat had been upset in the storm, and that one of the occupants, a young Brahmin boy, had succeeded in swimming ashore at their garden.

Kiran was at once her own sweet self and set to work to get out some dry clothes for the boy. She then warmed a cup of milk and invited him to her room.

The boy had long curly hair, big expressive eyes, and no sign yet of hair on the face. Kiran, after getting him to drink some milk asked him all about himself.

He told her that his name was Nilkanta, and that he belonged to a theatrical troupe. They were coming to play in a neighbouring villa when the boat had suddenly foundered in the storm. He had no idea what had become of his companions. He was a good swimmer and had just managed to reach the shore.

The boy stayed with them. His narrow escape from a terrible death made Kiran take a warm interest in him. Sharat thought the boy's appearance at this moment rather a good thing, as his wife would now have something to amuse her, and might be persuaded to stay on for some time longer. Her mother-in-law, too, was pleased at the prospect of profiting their Brahmin guest by her kindness. And Nilkanta himself was delighted at his double escape from his master and from the other world, as well as at finding a home in this wealthy family.

But in a short while Sharat and his mother changed their opinion, and longed for his departure. The boy found a secret pleasure in smoking Sharat's hookahs; he would calmly go off in pouring rain with Sharat's best silk umbrella for a stroll through the village, and make friends with all whom he met. Moreover, he had got hold of a mongrel village dog which he petted so recklessly that it came indoors with muddy paws, and left tokens of its visit on Sharat's spotless bed. Then he gathered about him a devoted band of boys of all sorts and sizes, and the result was that not a solitary mango in the neighbourhood had a chance of ripening that season.

There is no doubt that Kiran had a hand in spoiling the boy. Sharat often warned her about it, but she would not listen to him. She made a dandy of him with Sharat's cast-off clothes, and gave him new ones also. And because she felt drawn towards him, and had a curiosity to know more about him, she was constantly calling him to her own room. After her bath and midday meal Kiran would be seated on the bedstead with her betel-leaf box by her side; and while her maid combed and dried her hair, Nilkanta would stand in front and recite pieces out of his repertory with appropriate gesture and song, his elf-locks waving wildly. Thus the long afternoon hours passed merrily away. Kiran would often try to persuade Sharat to sit with her as one of the audience, but Sharat, who had taken a cordial dislike to the boy, refused; nor could Nilkanta do his part half so well when Sharat was there. His mother would sometimes be lured by the hope of hearing sacred names in the recitation; but love of her mid-day sleep speedily overcame devotion, and she lay lapped in dreams.

The boy often got his ears boxed and pulled by Sharat, but as this was nothing to what he had been used to as a member of the troupe, he did not mind it in the least. In his short experience of the world he had come to the conclusion that, as the earth consisted of land and water, so human life was made up of eatings and beatings, and that the beatings largely predominated.

It was hard to tell Nilkanta's age. If it was about fourteen or fifteen, then his face was too old for his years; if seventeen or eighteen, then it was too young. He was either a man too early or a boy too late. The fact was that, joining the theatrical band when very young, he had played the parts of Radhika, Damayanti, and Sita, and a thoughtful Providence so arranged things that he grew to the exact stature that his manager required, and then growth ceased.

Since every one saw how small Nilkanta was, and he himself felt small, he did not receive due respect for his years. Causes, natural and artificial, combined to make him sometimes seem immature for seventeen years, and at other times a mere lad of fourteen but far too knowing even for seventeen. And as no sign of hair appeared on his face, the confusion became greater. Either because he smoked or because he used language beyond his years, his lips puckered into lines that showed him to be old and hard; but innocence and youth shone in his large eyes. I fancy that his heart remained young, but the hot glare of publicity had been a forcing-house that ripened untimely his outward aspect.

In the quiet shelter of Sharat's house and garden at Chandernagore, Nature had leisure to work her way unimpeded. Nilkanta had lingered in a kind of unnatural youth, but now he silently and swiftly overpassed that stage. His seventeen or eighteen years came to adequate revelation. No one observed the change, and its first sign was this, that when Kiran treated him like a boy, he felt ashamed. When the gay Kiran one day proposed that he should play the part of lady's companion, the idea of woman's dress hurt him, though he could not say why. So now, when she called for him to act over again his old characters, he disappeared.

It never occurred to Nilkanta that he was even now not much more than a lad-of-all-work in a strolling company. He even made up his mind to pick up a little education from Sharat's factor. But, because he was the pet of his master's wife, the factor could not endure the sight of him. Also, his restless training made it impossible for him to keep his mind long engaged; sooner or later, the alphabet did a misty dance before his eyes. He would sit long enough with an open book on his lap, leaning against a champak bush beside the Ganges. The waves sighed below, boats floated past, birds flitted and twittered restlessly above. What thoughts passed through his mind as he looked down on that book he alone knew, if indeed he did know. He never advanced from one word to another, but the glorious thought, that he was actually reading a book, filled his soul with exultation. Whenever a boat went by, he lifted his book, and pretended to be reading hard, shouting at the top of his voice. But his energy dropped as soon as the audience was gone.

Formerly he sang his songs automatically, but now their tunes stirred in his mind. Their words were of little import and full of trifling alliteration. Even the feeble meaning they had was beyond his comprehension; yet when he sang — Twice-born bird, ah! wherefore stirredTo wrong our royal lady?Goose, ah, say why wilt thou slayHer in forest shady?

then he felt as if transported to another world and to fear other folk. This familiar earth and his own poor life became music, and he was transformed. That tale of the goose and the king's daughter flung upon the mirror of his mind a picture of surpassing beauty. It is impossible to say what he imagined himself to be, but the destitute little slave of the theatrical troupe faded from his memory.

When with evening the child of want lies down, dirty and hungry, in his squalid home, and hears of prince and princess and fabled gold, then in the dark hovel with its dim flickering candle, his mind springs free from its bonds of poverty and misery and walks in fresh beauty and glowing raiment, strong beyond all fear of hindrance, through that fairy realm where all is possible.

Even so, this drudge of wandering players fashioned himself and his world anew, as he moved in spirit amid his songs. The lapping water, rustling leaves, and calling birds; the goddess who had given shelter to him, the helpless, the God-forsaken; her gracious, lovely face, her exquisite arms with their shining bangles, her rosy feet as soft as flower-petals; all these by some magic became one with the music of his song. When the singing ended, the mirage faded, and the Nilkanta of the stage appeared again, with his wild elf-locks. Fresh from the complaints of his neighbour, the owner of the despoiled mango-orchard, Sharat would come and box his ears and cuff him. The boy Nilkanta, the misleader of adoring youths, went forth once more, to make ever new mischief by land and water and in the branches that are above the earth.

Shortly after the advent of Nilkanta, Sharat's younger brother, Satish, came to spend his college vacation with them. Kiran was hugely pleased at finding a fresh occupation. She and Satish were of the same age, and the time passed pleasantly in games and quarrels and reconciliations and laughter and even tears. Suddenly she would clasp him over the eyes from behind with vermilion-stained hands, or she would write "monkey" on his back, or else she would bolt the door on him from the outside amidst peals of laughter. Satish in his turn did not take things lying down; he would steal her keys and rings; he would put pepper among her betel, he would tie her to the bed when she was not looking.

Meanwhile, heaven only knows what possessed poor Nilkanta. He was suddenly filled with a bitterness which he must avenge on somebody or something. He thrashed his devoted boy-followers for no fault, and sent them away crying. He would kick his pet mongrel till it made the skies resound with its whinings. When he went out for a walk, he would litter his path with twigs and leaves beaten from the roadside shrubs with his cane.

Kiran liked to see people enjoying good fare. Nilkanta had an immense capacity for eating, and never refused a good thing however often it was offered. So Kiran liked to send for him to have his meals in her presence, and ply him with delicacies, happy in the bliss of seeing this Brahmin boy eat to satiety. After Satish's arrival she had much less spare time on her hands, and was seldom present when Nilkanta's meals were served. Before, her absence made no difference to the boy's appetite, and he would not rise till he had drained his cup of milk and rinsed it thoroughly with water.

But now, if Kiran was not present to ask him to try this and that, he was miserable, and nothing tasted right. He would get up, without eating much, and say to the serving-maid in a choking voice: "I am not hungry." He thought in imagination that the news of his repeated refusal, "I am not hungry," would reach Kiran; he pictured her concern, and hoped that she would send for him, and press him to eat. But nothing of the sort happened. Kiran never knew and never sent for him; and the maid finished whatever he left. He would then put out the lamp in his room, and throw himself on his bed in the darkness, burying his head in the pillow in a paroxysm of sobs. What was his grievance? Against whom? And from whom did he expect redress? At last, when no one else came, Mother Sleep soothed with her soft caresses the wounded heart of the motherless lad.

Nilkanta came to the unshakable conviction that Satish was poisoning Kiran's mind against him. If Kiran was absent-minded, and had not her usual smile, he would jump to the conclusion that some trick of Satish had made her angry with him. He took to praying to the gods, with all the fervour of his hate, to make him at the next rebirth Satish, and Satish him. He had an idea that a Brahmin's wrath could never be in vain; and the more he tried to consume Satish with the fire of his curses, the more did his own heart burn within him. And upstairs he would hear Satish laughing and joking with his sister-in-law.

Nilkanta never dared openly to show his enmity to Satish. But he would contrive a hundred petty ways of causing him annoyance. When Satish went for a swim in the river, and left his soap on the steps of the bathing-place, on coming back for it he would find that it had disappeared. Once he found his favourite striped tunic floating past him on the water, and thought it had been blown away by the wind.

One day Kiran, desiring to entertain Satish, sent for Nilkanta to recite as usual, but he stood there in gloomy silence. Quite surprised, Kiran asked him what was the matter. But he remained silent. And when again pressed by her to repeat some particular favourite piece of hers, he answered: "I don't remember," and walked away.

At last the time came for their return home. Everybody was busy packing up. Satish was going with them. But to Nilkanta nobody said a word. The question whether he was to go or not seemed to have occurred to nobody.

The subject, as a matter of fact, had been raised by Kiran, who had proposed to take him along with them. But her husband and his mother and brother had all objected so strenuously that she let the matter drop. A couple of days before they were to start, she sent for the boy, and with kind words advised him to go back to his own home.

So many days had he felt neglected that this touch of kindness was too much for him; he burst into tears. Kiran's eyes were also brimming over. She was filled with remorse at the thought that she had created a tie of affection, which could not be permanent.

But Satish was much annoyed at the blubbering of this overgrown boy. "Why does the fool stand there howling instead of speaking?" said he. When Kiran scolded him for an unfeeling creature, he replied: "My dear sister, you do not understand. You are too good and trustful. This fellow turns up from the Lord knows where, and is treated like a king. Naturally the tiger has no wish to become a mouse again. And he has evidently discovered that there is nothing like a tear or two to soften your heart."

Nilkanta hurriedly left the spot. He felt he would like to be a knife to cut Satish to pieces; a needle to pierce him through and through; a fire to burn him to ashes. But Satish was not even scared. It was only his own heart that bled and bled.

Satish had brought with him from Calcutta a grand inkstand. The inkpot was set in a mother-of-pearl boat drawn by a German-silver goose supporting a penholder. It was a great favourite of his, and he cleaned it carefully every day with an old silk handkerchief. Kiran would laugh, and tapping the silver bird's beak would say —

Twice-born bird, ah! wherefore stirred To wrong our royal lady?

and the usual war of words would break out between her and her brother-in-law.

The day before they were to start, the inkstand was missing and could nowhere be found. Kiran smiled, and said: "Brother-in-law, your goose has flown off to look for your Damayanti."

But Satish was in a great rage. He was certain that Nilkanta had stolen it—for several people said they had seen him prowling about the room the night before. He had the accused brought before him. Kiran also was there. "You have stolen my inkstand, you thief!" he blurted out. "Bring it back at once." Nilkanta had always taken punishment from Sharat, deserved or undeserved, with perfect equanimity. But, when he was called a thief in Kiran's presence, his eyes blazed with a fierce anger, his breast swelled, and his throat choked. If Satish had said another word, he would have flown at him like a wild cat and used his nails like claws.

Kiran was greatly distressed at the scene, and taking the boy into another room said in her sweet, kind way: "Nilu, if you really have taken that inkstand give it to me quietly, and I shall see that no one says another word to you about it." Big tears coursed down the boy's cheeks, till at last he hid his face in his hands, and wept bitterly. Kiran came back from the room and said: "I am sure Nilkanta has not taken the inkstand." Sharat and Satish were equally positive that no other than Nilkanta could have done it.

But Kiran said determinedly: "Never."

Sharat wanted to cross-examine the boy, but his wife refused to allow it.

Then Satish suggested that his room and box should be searched. And Kiran said: "If you dare do such a thing I will never forgive you. You shall not spy on the poor innocent boy." And as she spoke, her wonderful eyes filled with tears. That settled the matter and effectually prevented any further molestation of Nilkanta.

Kiran's heart overflowed with pity at this attempted outrage on a homeless lad. She got two new suits of clothes and a pair of shoes, and with these and a banknote in her hand she quietly went into Nilkanta's room in the evening. She intended to put these parting presents into his box as a surprise. The box itself had been her gift.

From her bunch of keys she selected one that fitted and noiselessly opened the box. It was so jumbled up with odds and ends that the new clothes would not go in. So she thought she had better take everything out and pack the box for him. At first knives, tops, kite-flying reels, bamboo twigs, polished shells for peeling green mangoes, bottoms of broken tumblers and such like things dear to a boy's heart were discovered. Then there came a layer of linen, clean and otherwise. And from under the linen there emerged the missing inkstand, goose and all.

Kiran, with flushed face, sat down helplessly with the inkstand in her hand, puzzled and wondering.

In the meantime, Nilkanta had come into the room from behind without Kiran knowing it. He had seen the whole thing and thought that Kiran had come like a thief to catch him in his thieving,—and that his deed was out. How could he ever hope to convince her that he was not a thief, and that only revenge had prompted him to take the inkstand, which he meant to throw into the river at the first chance? In a weak moment he had put it in the box instead. "He was not a thief," his heart cried out, "not a thief!" Then what was he? What could he say? That he had stolen, and yet he was not a thief? He could never explain to Kiran how grievously wrong she was. And then, how could he bear the thought that she had tried to spy on him?

At last Kiran with a deep sigh replaced the inkstand in the box, and, as if she were the thief herself, covered it up with the linen and the trinkets as they were before; and at the top she placed the presents, together with the banknote which she had brought for him.

The next day the boy was nowhere to be found. The villagers had not seen him; the police could discover no trace of him. Said Sharat: "Now, as a matter of curiosity, let us have a look at his box." But Kiran was obstinate in her refusal to allow that to be done.

She had the box brought up to her own room; and taking out the inkstand alone, she threw it into the river.

The whole family went home. In a day the garden became desolate. And only that starving mongrel of Nilkanta's remained prowling along the river-bank, whining and whining as if its heart would break.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this short story by Rabindranath Tagore. Until next time, stay curious.

The Elephant Island Chronicles

Presents

Two Pair of Truants

By Beach and Bog-Land Some Irish Stories

By Jane Barlow

Foreword by Gio Marron

Foreword

In an age of national revival and literary gravitas, Jane Barlow stood apart—not by rejecting Ireland’s rural life, but by portraying it with clarity, affection, and mischief. “Two Pair of Truants”, nestled within her 1905 collection By Beach and Bog-Land, is one of her most deftly balanced pieces: humorous without malice, provincial without condescension, and vividly local without descending into caricature.

Barlow was among the few late-Victorian Irish writers to center her fiction on the domestic and social rhythms of the countryside without the scaffolding of myth or melodrama. Rather than depicting Ireland as a political chessboard or romantic ruin, she offered it as a living, breathing, wonderfully muddled place—where children skip school, mothers fret, policemen misidentify toddlers, and donkeys refuse to cooperate.

In “Two Pair of Truants,” we follow two overlapping misadventures: one by Minnie and Baby Lawlor, little girls who seize an accidental holiday to chase glimpses of aristocratic grandeur; the other by Mick and Rosanna Tierney, would-be fairgoers who ditch their siblings at a police barracks to enjoy the pleasures of Killavin Fair unburdened. The ensuing chaos—of lost children, mistaken identities, and a community’s hilariously misplaced reactions—becomes a canvas for Barlow’s quiet satire.

What gives the story its enduring charm is not just the plot, but the way Barlow inhabits her world. Her ear for Hiberno-English is pitch-perfect, her eye for social foibles sharp, and her tone unsentimental yet humane. The children here are not angels nor moral lessons in motion; they are mischievous, imaginative, and gloriously flawed. The adults, for their part, are equal parts worried, clueless, and stubborn. Authority figures fumble, assumptions pile up, and what should be a crisis dissolves into a comedy of errors.

Behind the humor, however, is a subtle commentary on adult hypocrisy and the blurry lines between order and disorder in small communities. Barlow doesn’t scold; she observes. And what she observes is both timeless and particular: the petty tyrannies of domestic life, the fleeting thrills of forbidden adventure, and the constant tension between propriety and freedom.

“Two Pair of Truants” deserves renewed attention not just as a charming children's caper, but as a finely constructed piece of realist storytelling that gently mocks the structures of rural life while celebrating its characters’ irrepressible vitality. Jane Barlow’s fiction, long overshadowed by her more canonical contemporaries, rewards us with an Ireland not torn by rebellion or framed in Celtic mist—but by laughter, misunderstanding, and the ever-complicated art of getting children to school on time.

By Beach and Bog-Land: Some Irish Stories“Two Pair of Truants”by Jane Barlow

Ever since little Minnie Lawlor, accompanied by her mother and younger sister, had come to live with her grandmother in a gate-lodge of Shanlough Castle, her great wish had been to visit the castle itself, which was always whetting her curiosity by showing just the rim of one turret, like the edge of a crinkled cloud, over the rounded tree-tops in the distance. But it was not until some months had passed that she found an opportunity. Then, on a showery May morning, her mother set off early to Killavin Fair; her grandmother was pinned to the big chair in the chimney-corner by an access of rheumatics; Lizzie Hackett, the cross girl who scrubbed for them, sent word that she could not come till noon; and, as the last link in this chain of lucky chances, the rope-reins of Willie Downing’s ass-cart snapped right in front of the lodge gate just when Minnie and Baby were setting off for school. “Bad manners to you, Juggy, for a contrary ould baste!” Willie was saying as he halted for repairs. “Would nothin’ else suit you but to set me chuckin’ th’ ould reins till they broke on us in a place where a man hasn’t so much as a bit of string?” Willie, being twelve years old, seemed of formidable age and size to Minnie, who was seven: but the good-natured expression of his face, where large freckles made a well-covered pattern, emboldened her to propose the plan which had occurred to her at the sight of the empty ass-cart. As a preliminary, however, she supplied him with the longest bit of twine she could twitch from the thrifty wisp hung on the hook of a dresser. After which, “Is it anywheres near the castle you’ll be drivin’ to?” she inquired, pointing in that direction.

“I’m apt to be passin’ it pretty middlin’ near,” said Willie, struggling to knot a pair of rather skimpy ends.

“And do you think you could be takin’ me and Baby along wid you that far?” said Minnie.

“What for at all?” he said, looking doubtful.

“To see the grandeur that’s in it,” replied Minnie.

“Up at th’ ould place?” said Willie. “I never heard tell there was any such a thing in it.”

“Well, there’s grand people in it, at all events,” said Minnie. “Me grandmother does be sayin’ the Fitzallens hasn’t their equals next or nigh them. Lords of the land they are, and the top of everythin’. I’d like finely to be seein’ them, and so would Baby. But if we’ve any talk of walkin’ a step up the avenue, me grandmother always says: ‘On no account suffer them, Maria; it mightn’t be liked by the Family.’ So we do be stoppin’ in the little ugly shrubbery.”

“I dunno is there e’er a lord in it,” said Willie, doubtfully. “If there is, I never laid eyes on him.” This was disappointing.

“I suppose you’re very ignorant,” Minnie remarked after a slight pause, as if she had sought and found a satisfactory explanation.

“Pretty middlin’ I am, sure enough,” Willie said more decidedly, and then added, as if he, too, had hit upon a probable conjecture: “Belike yous would be wantin’ to see Mrs O’Rourke, th’ ould housekeeper?” Minnie might have replied truly that she had never heard tell of any such person; but as the idea seemed to remove her new acquaintance’s difficulties she answered: “Ay, sure we could go see her if you took us along. I can step in meself over the wheel, and you can aisy give Baby a heft up.” “But in my belief it’s goin’ to school the two of yous had a right to be,” Willie said, relapsing into doubt again as he glanced at their small bundle of ragged-edged books.

“Och, me mother’d say we might have a holiday this minyit, only she’s went to the fair,” Minnie affirmed confidently, though she might have had some difficulty in reconciling this belief with her gladness that there was not present anybody whose permission need be asked. “I’ll get in first.”

“Themselves inside there might be infuriated wid the whole of us,” said Willie, still unconvinced.

“Sure you’re not a tinker, are you?” Minnie said, ostentatiously surveying the no-contents of the cart. “They do be biddin’ us have nothin’ to say to tinkers, but ne’er a tin can or anythin’ I see in it.” As Willie’s objections seemed to be over-ruled by this argument, she continued: “So Baby and I’ll run in and leave our books, and get our good hats; we’ll be back agin you have the reins mended—mind you wait for us.”

Her anxiety about her appearance before the eyes of the grand people made her risk losing the chance of seeing them at all as she hurried herself and her sister into their best jackets and new hats trimmed with pink gauze and daisies; while a wild hope she secretly entertained that they would be offered hospitality up at the castle led her to discard the basket containing their dinners. Baby, indeed, was inclined to demur at this, so Minnie compromised the matter by extracting the two oranges which crowned the menu, and Baby, bearing the golden balls, followed as contented as any ordinary queen.

The ass-cart had obligingly waited for them, and Willie Downing had spread a sack for them to sit on at the back. He also helped Baby to scramble up, but unfortunately said to Minnie, “You’d better be keepin’ a hold on her, for ones of that size don’t have much wit. She’d drop off as aisy as a sod of peat, and be delayin’ me to pick her up”—a remark which Baby resented, as albeit three years short of Minnie’s age, and thrice as young as Willie, she had a strong sense of her own dignity. Otherwise the drive was very thoroughly enjoyable. The cart was not, indeed, a luxurious vehicle, being simply a flat wooden tray on wheels, with no springs to soften its jolts, and no rail to prevent one of them from jerking out an unwary passenger. But the little girls thought it a most desirable substitute for their stuffily stupid schoolroom, and when they were rocked as if in a boat on a choppy sea, Minnie said that it was as good as going two ways at once. Juggy’s pace was slow, as suited her venerable appearance, for many years had made her as white as if she had been bleached and as stiff as if she had been starched. Willie had a thick ash stick, with which he every now and then made a loud rattling clatter on the front board of the cart. “You might as well,” he explained, “be batin’ ould carpets as Juggy, but the noise keeps her awake sometimes.” Minnie and Baby, however, had so much to look at in the strange bog-land through which the cart was passing that they were in no hurry for the end of their drive. In fact, even Minnie felt a little forlorn when Willie drew up at a small gate in a high stone wall and said: “I’ll be droppin’ yous here. It’s the nearest I can be bringin’ yous to the castle. You’ll find your ways to it pretty middlin’ aisy by them shrubbery paths, unless you take the wrong turn; you might ready enough, for there’s a dale of diff’rint walks through it, but they’ll bring you somewheres anyhow. Git along out of that, Juggy.” For then it suddenly occurred to her that they had come a long way, which they must travel back all by themselves. Willie’s directions, too, were not by any means as clear as she could have wished, but no more were to be had, as Juggy started perversely without her usual delay; and although he shouted something as he jogged away, they could make out only the words “pretty middlin’,” and it was useless to call “what?” Soon the sounds of the creaking wheels and clattering stick died out of hearing; so Minnie took Baby in tow and ran into the shady shubberies, hoping rather uneasily for the best.

Now, on this same May morning, and in the same neighbourhood, two other young persons were planning an adventurous expedition. Mick and Rosanna Tierney, who lived in the village of Glasdrum, not far from Shanlough Castle, were bigger children than Minnie and Baby Lawlor, and attended the white-washed school near the Lawlor’s gate-lodge, but less regularly than they would have liked to do. For when they were kept at home it was by no means to amuse themselves, and they much preferred their holidays at school. On this morning, however, although they grumbled over their tasks, it was not because they were prevented from pursuing their studies, but because they particularly wanted to go and spend their pennies at Killavin Fair. Mick had five and Rosanna had four, partly in halfpence, so that when their wealth was all spread out on the top of the low yard wall, the row of coins looked long enough to buy almost anything. And at Killavin Fair wonderful purchases might be made. The young Tierneys had heard that you could get four sugar-sticks, “the len’th of your arm,” for one penny, and there were swinging boats, and a theatre, and other shows to which the same sum would procure admission. Accordingly, they had set their hearts firmly upon it. But unluckily Mrs Tierney had been told that “great bargains entirely” would appear there in the shape of “rael grand blankets, that heavy you could scarce believe the weight of them, wid a quare raisonable price on them whatever,” and having scraped together a few shillings she was very anxious to inspect these wares. To Mick and Rosanna, in this warm May weather, heavy blankets seemed highly uninteresting, but their mother saw further and considered her business of more importance than sugar-sticks or merry-go-rounds. Thus it happened that Rosanna and Mick were required to stay at home minding Biddy and Peter. The charge seemed to saddle them with quite disabling incumbrances; for Peter was subject to panics at anything new and strange in his eighteen months’ experience of life, and would certainly roar without ceasing if brought in among the marvels of the fair, while three-year-old Biddy, though quiet and tractable, was too little to walk, and too heavy to be carried, a couple of Irish miles. “Sure, you might as well be liftin’ a sack of pitaties,” said Rosanna; and Mick added: “Ay, bedad, and you could aisy be shyin’ a one of them down the road as far as she’d go without whingein’ to rest.” Yet though matters looked so hopeless the day was still young when a promising scheme presented itself to them. Mick had just captured Peter, who was in the act of toddling off up the street on some excursion of his own, and who loudly resented his arrest.

“Och, now, whisht bawlin’,” Mick said to Peter. “Was it losin’ yourself you wanted to be? Bobby Byrne was tellin’ me,” he remarked to Rosanna, “that they got a stray kid out on the bog one day last week. Belongin’ to the tinkers they thought it was.”

“And what did they do wid it?” Rosanna inquired.

“Brought it to the Shanlough Barracks down below there till the polis would be findin’ out who owned it.”

“I wish to goodness we could be lavin’ these two there,” said Rosanna.

“I wish we could so,” said Mick.

“We could carry them that far ready enough—it’s only a shortish step,” Rosanna went on slowly, as if she were considering something really possible; “and then, if we’d left them down there, we might skyte over the bog to Killavin, that’s the nearest way, and see the fair, and pick them up again when we would be comin’ back, as handy as anythin’. The polis ’ud mind them first-rate; it’s their business to look after whatever’s gone lost.”

“But sorra a bit of these ones is lost,” objected Mick.

“And sure, couldn’t we very aisy lose them,” said Rosanna, “somewheres convanient to the barracks?”

“The ould lads,” Mick said, meaning the police, “would know right well whose childer they are, and where they come from.”

“And what great harm if they did, you gaby?” said Rosanna. “And besides, aren’t they a new set that’s only a few weeks in it? Very belike they never laid eyes on either of them.”

“Gaby yourself,” Mick said, “but Biddy’d be apt to tell them anyhow. She’s gettin’ to spake terrible plain.”

“Biddy niver say’s e’er a word except ‘Yis’ when she’s wid strange people; she’s a good child,” Rosanna said with confidence. “But I was thinkin’ if we might by chance run up agin mother in the fair, and then where’d we be?”

“Och, for the matter of that we could dodge her aisy enough in the crowds there’ll be in it,” said Mick.

“Let’s thry, at all events,” said Rosanna, suddenly, pursing up her mouth, and eyeing him with the expression of a magpie who is not sure how near he may venture to hop. And Mick said, “We will, bedad.”

Not very long afterwards, Police-Sergeant Corry, sitting with his pipe and newspaper in the porch of Shanlough Constabulary Barracks, saw crawl in at the gate a small child, who was followed on foot by another somewhat bigger. “Run away with you,” he called to them, and resumed his reading. But when he finished his column he perceived that they had sat down half way up the flagged path to the door, with no apparent intention of moving on. So he went to investigate.

His inquiry was on the whole unsuccessful. The baby’s evidence was quite inarticulate, and the little girl replied “Yis” to all his questions in a manner which made her a most unsatisfactory witness. It was a lonely place, on the edge of the bog, with no other houses near, and nobody else in sight; though, if he had only known, two pairs of eyes were all the while watching him through the thick fuschia hedge. “They don’t belong to tramps,” he said to himself, “for they’ve got very respectable boots on them, and dacint hats. Tell me, now, which way you’re after comin’ along here, there’s a good child,” he said to Biddy, and Biddy said “Yis.” Just then it began to rain violently, which led the Sergeant to bring them indoors to his wife, who was sewing in the little parlour. “Here’s a couple of childer that can’t give an account of theirselves,” he said to her. “We’d better keep them a bit, and as like as not we’ll presently have somebody peltin’ in with inquiries.” Whereupon Mrs Corry, having had some experience of such cases, gave them slices of sugar-sprinkled bread, and several empty spools to play with in a corner, while immediately afterwards two figures might have been espied running off at full speed across the bog, among the grey curtains of the shower.

About this time Tom Flannery was digging in his potato-patch at the fork of the Letteresk and Glasdrum roads. “Faix now, but Lizzie Hackett’s in a fine hurry, whatever ails her,” he said to himself as he became aware of a young woman trotting along the dyke. “Where at all are you takin’ off wid yourself to?” he shouted as soon as she was near enough; and Lizzie shouted back across the low stone wall: “Sure, they’re in great distraction above at the lodge. The two childer’s lost. They went out this mornin’ early, but a while ago the schoolmistress looked in wid word they’d niver been next or nigh her. Stole they are by them tinkers, I’ll bet you anythin’, and their poor mother away at the fair, and the ould woman shakin’ in her chair fit to thrimble the house down on her head. But runnin’ up to Connolly’s farm I am, for Minnie and Baby’s went there a few times along wid me, and its mostly the only place they know their way to hereabouts. You didn’t be chance see them goin’ by this mornin’?”

“Sorra a stim, this mornin’ nor that mornin’,” said Tom. “But if they’re strayed or stole you’d a right to lave word with the polis.”

“Och, lave word with them yourself,” Lizzie said, setting off again, partly because she never liked taking advice, and partly because she did not now wish to lengthen her hot race by calling at the barracks.

Tom rejoined: “Bedad, I’ve somethin’ else to do, me dear!” But when, by-and-by, he finished his job, he turned a bit out of his homeward way that he might pass the police-station. Sergeant Corry was looking over the arched gate into the road. “Dry weather, Sergeant, when it isn’t wet,” said Tom. “Did you hear tell anythin’ of two children bein’ lost?”

“What sort of childer now?” said the Sergeant. “Well, I dunno very rightly,” said Tom. “I never seen them; but they’re out of the lodge over there at the castle entrance, and ould Mrs Lawlor’s expectin’ her death wid the fright. A little girl and a baby, I think, they said.”

“Sure enough they answer to that description, the two I have inside here. The small one’s no size to spake of, and the other’s a girl, though she hasn’t got the gift of the gab yet. I’ll send them over to the lodge with Doyle and Atkinson that’s about settin’ off pathrollin’. It ’ill be a good job to get them shifted into their own quarters before night.”

To the lodge, accordingly, two tall constables carried the little Tierneys, encountering by the way a fierce shower, which twisted Biddy’s black locks into dripping rats’ tails, and soaked Peter’s fluff of fair hair till it shrunk into nothing, like a wisp of wet thistledown. Their arrival caused bitter disappointment to Mrs Lawlor, junior, who had lately returned to her despoiled home. She vehemently declared the forlorn-looking bundles to be no children of hers, nor anyways like them, and was disposed to resent the constables’ conjecture that Minnie and Baby had just run off for diversion with some of their schoolfellows to the fair. However, she consented to keep these strange children while a search was being made, and she beguiled her suspense by getting them into dry garments, outgrown by the probable victims of tinkers and tramps.

Meanwhile, Minnie and Baby had in reality been experiencing many vicissitudes. At first all had gone fairly well with them. After some roaming they had emerged from the shrubberies on to a sloping lawn, whence they had a grand view of the castle with its turrets and towers. It pleased them so much that they sat down on a bench beneath a big sycamore to enjoy the prospect and their oranges. This was the highest point of their success; for when they had just finishing peeling, and the grass all around them was thickly strewn with shreds of white-lined golden rind, suddenly there appeared to them an elderly, angry man in a straw hat, who wanted to know what they meant by trespassing on his grounds, and bade them clear up that disgraceful litter at once, and stood pointing his stick and glaring dreadfully at every single scrap of peel until it was picked up; and then, as they fled away like scared rabbits, shouted that he would give notice to the police to keep an eye on them. Thenceforward troubles gathered and gloom. When they escaped from the labyrinth of shrubberies they found themselves in strange fields, where they met with herds of what were certainly beasts, and, in Minnie’s opinion, most likely bulls. They were hunted out of a rickyard by a barking dog, and in their flight Baby lost a shoe, which they dared not turn back to discover. Soon afterwards she ran a thorn into her unshod foot and could hardly hobble along. It came on to rain so heavily that their new hats were battered and drenched out of all shape and hue, and Minnie tore a sleeve of her good jacket into ribbons scrambling through a hedge. As time elapsed they felt more and more thoroughly lost, and their terrors were increased by a dread that all the while they might perhaps be trespassers with the eye of the police upon them.

But at last, when they had almost despaired of ever, as Baby said, “bein’ anywhere again,” as they stumbled along the edge of a ploughed field, they were met by a big boy carrying a bunch of bright tinware. Minnie had luckily still sense enough left to explain that they were looking for a gate-lodge of the castle; upon hearing which the boy just caught each of them by an arm and swung them through a gap in the ragged hedge, setting them down plump in the middle of a muddy lane. “Sure, there’s one widin’ a couple of stones’ throws off you, only you was headin’ the wrong way to get to it,” he said, pointing along the lane. “Them’s the gate-posts glimpsin’ at you out of the trees.” And the children perceived with relief and amazement that so it actually was. Full of joy and confidence they started again, but before they had gone many steps they met Lizzie Hackett setting out to see if there were any signs of the constables coming back with news of what, in her own mind, she called “them young torments.”

“Saints and patience!” she said when she saw them, “and so there you are. I declare to goodness I thought it was a couple of beggar childer comin’ along, you’re that quare shows. Where in the earthly world have you been the whole day?”

“We just took a bit—a bit of a walk like,” Minnie said, beginning to feel that their difficulties might not yet be all at an end.

“Well, to be sure—a fine bit of a walk,” said Lizzie, “wid your poor granny and your poor ma terrified out of their sivin sinses, and meself kilt stravadin’ over the parish after you. A race’s runnin’ on you for a couple of as bould childer as there is in Ireland.” Lizzie, being out of humour with everybody, preferred the chance of paying out the truants for the trouble they had caused her to the excitement of announcing their return, so she continued: “Howsome’er, you’ve no call to be hurryin’ yourselves now. You can be stoppin’ away as long as you plase, and longer after that again, for your ma says she won’t be bothered any more to put up wid the likes of such ungovernable brats, and she’s got herself a couple of nice, good little childer to keep that won’t be annoyin’ her losin’ themselves about the country instead of goin’ to their school. And she’s after dressin’ them illigant in the cloth cape that was belongin’ to you, Miss Minnie, and a one of Baby’s cotton frocks, and the two of them’s sittin’ this minyit as grand as anythin’ at all before the fire in the parlour. Pettin’ them finely herself is and not thinkin’ a thraneen of yous. It’s in your beds that them ones ’ill be sleepin’ this night. But sure you’d rather be tearin’ about under the rain in the fields like the rabbits,” said Lizzie, pulling her shawl over her head and walking on. “And it pitch dark,” she added over her shoulder.

If Minnie had been in her ordinary frame of mind she would have perceived how improbable this story sounded, and would have said to Baby: “Och, never mind; she’s only romancin’.” Just then, however, she was too tired and bewildered to take a sensible view of anything, and what Lizzie asserted alarmed and enraged them both. Still they more than half hoped that they would find it was not true at all. But as they trotted and hobbled past the parlour window they got a glimpse into the fire-lit room, and there, sure enough, two horrid little children were seated before the hearth, one wearing a pink frock, the other Minnie’s well-known brown cape. And he—which was the worst part of it—sat on Minnie’s mother’s knee, with a bitten biscuit in his hand. “’Deed she has really got them,” Minnie said to Baby with a sort of groan. “There’s no good in us goin’ in any more.” And both the little girls flung themselves down on a mossy log, which had been made into a seat, beneath an old laurel bush near the door. They had not noticed the sound of footsteps that were following them, but just then two figures came rushing by and darted into the house. In the parlour Mrs Lawlor heard the patter of feet, which she had been listening for so long, and she jumped up very quickly, only to meet with another disappointment.

Mick and Rosanna Tierney had enjoyed their time at the fair. They saw two shows, and bought as many sweets as possible with their remaining pennies. They were careful not to meet their mother, nor did they forget how desirable it was that they should be at home again before her. The heavy rain, too, made it easier for them to tear themselves away from among the stalls and booths and carts and set off across the bog to pick up Biddy and Peter at the barracks. Rosanna had three fruit drops and half a peppermint sugar-stick tied up for them in a corner of her wet pinafore. Mick had meant to bring Biddy a bull’s-eye, but he put it into his mouth just to taste, and forgot to take it out until it was too late.

At the police barracks the rain had driven Sergeant Corry indoors, but he came out when he heard the children clattering into the porch.

“If you plase, sir,” Mick said, panting, “we want the couple of childer we left—I mane we lost—here this mornin’ going to Killavin—a little one, and a bigger little girl—dark hair she has, the same as her.” “They’ve straw hats on them,” Rosanna struck in, “and the youngster has a grey flannen frock, and Biddy’s is blue, and she’s black stockin’s. She wouldn’t tell you her name, or say anythin’ only ‘Yis.’”

“Them’s the very two we had here till a while ago I packed them off to Mrs Lawlor up there at the castle lodge. Bedad,” said the sergeant, “it’s the wrong children I’m after sendin’ her. And what do you mean, I should like to know, by leaving them crawling about here and giving trouble and annoyance?”

But the Tierneys were not waiting to listen. “Come along, Rosanna,” said Mick, “we might be in time to get them yet if we hurry.” And they did hurry with an impetuosity which brought them head foremost into the Lawlors’ kitchen.

“What brings you here at all?” poor Mrs Lawlor said in much vexation when she saw who they were not. “It seems to me every strange child in the parish is takin’ upon itself to come tumblin’ in on top of us except me own little girls, and the deer knows where they may be.”

“We was only wantin’ to fetch away our two,” said Mick. “The sergeant sent you the wrong childer. That’s Peter you’ve got, ma’am—och, and there’s Biddy. You take hold of her, Rosanna; I’ve took him. And I seen a couple of little girls sittin’ roarin’ on the sate there next door, and we runnin’ in, that might be your ones, ma’am.”

Out sped Mrs Lawlor, hopeful again, and this time not in vain. “Children dear, what happint you at all?” she said, “and where have you been?”

“We got into an ould donkey-cart,” Minnie said deplorably, “and then we lost our ways—and an ould man’s after settin’ the police to keep an eye on us—and Baby’s one shoe is off her, so the other’s no good; and she’s run a thorn into her foot; and I’ve tore the cuff off of me sleeve; and our hats is destroyed. But we thought there wasn’t any use goin’ in, for Lizzie tould us you’d took them other ones instead.”

“A donkey-cart!” said Mrs Lawlor. “I always said those thieves of tinkers were at the bottom of it. But come in, me jewels; sure you’re drowned and perished. The polis ought to be ashamed of theirselves for not minding their business better.”

And in Mrs Lawlor’s mind, indeed, the blame was permanently shared by the tinkers and the police, which was of course convenient for her children, and probably did not in any way affect either the police or the tinkers.

As for the young Tierneys, they got home with such guilty expedition that they were all discovered innocently safe and dry by their own fireside when Mrs Tierney returned, with sugar-sticks, from the fair. And thus we must fear that the episode ended in a lamentable failure of poetical justice to all parties concerned.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this short story by Jane Barlow. Until next time, stay curious.

When We Are ReadyBy Gio Marron

Voice-over provided by Eleven Labs

Silas woke as the shadows stretched long across his father's study. The room, draped in twilight, carried the soft hush of books lining walls that seemed to lean inward as if listening. Dust motes drifted lazily through streams of waning light, dancing like tiny spirits caught between worlds. His heartbeat, soft yet insistent, matched the measured ticking of the antique clock on the mantle—an heirloom older than his oldest memories.

He lay there, suspended between sleep and wakefulness, when the study’s quiet insistence began to draw him from his troubled reverie. The day had been waiting for him, hiding in corners, whispering from beneath loose floorboards, coiled in the scent of leather bindings and aging parchment. For months, perhaps years, he had avoided entering this room—a sanctum of history and haunting echoes of laughter, secrets, and unfulfilled promises. Its air held the residue of conversations left unfinished, of gentle mirth now reduced to murmurs, of questions that refused to be answered. A weight of silence pressed upon him, a palpable presence woven from strands of nostalgia and regret.

Slowly, almost reverently, Silas rose from the bed and made his way toward his father’s old mahogany desk. Each step was measured, tentative, like the careful unspooling of a long-forgotten melody. The carpet beneath his feet was worn thin by countless afternoons filled with the muted rituals of life—a tapestry of countless memories, both bright and sorrowful, interlaced with the soft tread of his own hesitant passage.

At the desk, he paused before a stack of notebooks, each bound in the firm leather that his father had prized above all else. The notebooks were not merely repositories of thoughts but relics of a meticulous mind that had once wandered fearlessly across both tangible and imagined realms. Silas’ hand trembled as it reached for the topmost notebook. He recalled the many evenings his father had sat beside him, sharing stories of forests that whispered secrets and oceans that concealed otherworldly creatures. Those conversations had always bordered on the mystical—fleeting glimpses of a world beyond the pragmatic, glimpses that had made Silas’ heart flutter with wonder, even as they evoked a quiet ache of loss.

The notebook fell open as if by its own accord, pages yellowed and delicate with time. His father’s handwriting, so neat and deliberate, stretched out before him—a labyrinth of ink that spanned realms both known and unknown. Words flowed like a gentle stream, describing forests never trod by mortal feet, seas whose depths were guarded by elusive spirits, and creatures that dwelled in the interstices of light and dark. Silas’s eyes wandered over phrases that evoked secret clearings, hidden gateways, and rivers that wound endlessly toward horizons shrouded in mystery.

As he traced the fading ink with his fingertips, memories surged forth with the subtle insistence of an autumn tide. He remembered his father’s warm hand upon his shoulder, the weight of unspoken knowledge in his steady gaze, and the moments laden with meaning—experiences that had defined a lifetime yet remained tantalizingly incomplete. With each tick of the clock, time seemed to slow and stretch simultaneously, drawing him into a liminal space where past and present intermingled.

A subtle change began to unfurl in the room. The familiar scent of old paper and cedar was now laced with hints of pine, sea salt, and rain-soaked earth. A soft breeze stirred the heavy drapes, sending the pages of the notebook into a gentle, rhythmic flutter—a cadence that resonated with the quiet murmur of the earth outside. Compelled by a force both external and deeply internal, Silas rose and moved toward the tall window. He pulled back the heavy velvet curtains, and in that instant, a new world revealed itself—a landscape transformed by the dying light of dusk.

Outside, the scene was unrecognizable from the familiar garden he had known. The suburban street had vanished, replaced by rolling hills enshrouded in a dense, ethereal mist. Trees stood like silent sentinels against a blurred horizon, their forms outlined in the soft glow of twilight. In the reflective surface of the glass, he caught sight of his own face—a visage younger than memory, eyes wide with a mingling of fear and wonder. The coolness of the glass beneath his fingertips seemed to echo the tremor of his soul, as if acknowledging the threshold he was about to cross.

The notebook slipped from his fingers, landing on the rich wood of the desk with a muted, fated thud. As its pages fluttered open, one sketch in particular drew his gaze: a gateway formed by interlacing branches, veiled in shadow and crowned by figures that hovered at the edge of sight—silent watchers whose forms were both hauntingly familiar and profoundly alien. Beneath the sketch, his father’s delicate script read simply: “They come to face us when we are ready.”

For a moment, Silas hesitated, caught between the allure of the known and the mystery of what lay beyond. The study around him seemed to pulse with a slow, measured rhythm, as if the room itself were breathing in time with the eternal clock. The boundaries between the tangible and the ephemeral began to blur, and the air thickened with a promise of transformation. He felt the room tilt gently, the very fabric of reality stretching like fine silk under a tender, unseen hand.

It was then that he noticed the doorway depicted in the sketch—a portal, impossibly near, hovering just beyond the windowpane. It beckoned with an allure both magnetic and menacing, a threshold that invited yet warned. His pulse quickened, a staccato beat of trepidation and anticipation. The ghostly forms he had seen in the sketch began to materialize in the corners of his vision, lingering at the threshold of perception. They were not the monsters of nightmares, but rather the embodiment of all that he had repressed: the fears, regrets, and unspoken longings that lay buried deep within.

Steeling himself with a deep, steadying breath, Silas opened the window and stepped onto the dew-laden grass. The cool night air embraced him, the mist curling about his form like a long-forgotten friend. With each step toward the gateway, his surroundings transformed. The once-familiar grounds yielded to a landscape both wild and uncharted, where every blade of grass shimmered with the iridescence of unspoken truths and every rustle of wind carried the sound of ancient lullabies.

The mist thickened as he advanced, wrapping him in a cocoon of ephemeral light. His footsteps, though hesitant at first, grew more assured, as if the path itself were urging him onward. The spectral figures emerged along the periphery—wisps of light and shadow, half-formed images that flickered in and out of existence. They were as varied as the memories they represented: fragments of laughter and sorrow, moments of tenderness and isolation, whispers of hope mingled with the residue of despair.

In the midst of this shifting tableau, a single figure approached—clearer, more distinct, and imbued with a radiance that belied its spectral nature. The figure’s eyes, deep and knowing, mirrored his own in a way that transcended time. It was his father, yet not as he remembered him in the final, fading days of mortal life, but vibrant, whole, and suffused with a gentle, eternal light. His smile was soft and kind—a silent benediction that conveyed understanding beyond words.

No conversation ensued. No words were needed; the silent communion between them was profound and all-encompassing. In that suspended moment, Silas felt the cumulative weight of every fear and regret, every unspoken sorrow, and every fragment of hope dissolve into a luminous embrace. The specters around him were no longer adversaries but kin—each a reflection of a part of himself, shaped by the passage of time and the accumulation of experiences.

For a long, suspended moment, Silas stood at the threshold of this metaphysical landscape, his inner world unfurling like an ancient map rediscovered. Each figure around him embodied a facet of his existence—a tapestry of emotions and memories that he had long sought to escape. His father’s presence was a beacon of reassurance, guiding him toward the realization that these shadows were not enemies to be vanquished but long-forgotten aspects of a self in need of healing.

As he extended a trembling hand toward the apparition of his father, a warmth spread from the point of contact, radiating through him like the gentle glow of a rising sun. It was a warmth that penetrated the deepest recesses of his soul, dissolving the cold barriers of fear and regret. With that simple, silent act, Silas embraced not only the specter before him but the entirety of his inner landscape—the monstrous, the beautiful, and the mysterious all intertwined in a delicate dance.

Stepping forward, he crossed the threshold. The gateway, alive and pulsating with quiet power, closed softly behind him, and he found himself no longer on the familiar earth but in a realm where the boundaries between time and space had melted away. Here, the ground beneath his feet was soft and yielding—a mosaic of memories and dreams, of moments long past and those yet to come. The sky above shimmered with hues of indigo and gold, and distant voices, like a chorus of forgotten legends, wove through the air.

In this liminal space, Silas wandered through landscapes both surreal and intimately familiar. There were corridors lined with mirrors reflecting not just his image but countless other possibilities, corridors where each step echoed with the laughter of his childhood and the whispered confessions of hidden sorrows. He traversed meadows where the grasses sang in gentle harmonies, fields dotted with luminescent flowers that bloomed in patterns reminiscent of ancient runes and long-lost lullabies.

One such meadow was bathed in a pale, otherworldly glow, where each petal of every blossom shimmered as if dusted with stardust. Here, in the quiet solitude of this dreamlike expanse, Silas encountered figures that were both ephemeral and eternal. In one fleeting moment, a young girl appeared—a mirror of innocence and wonder—her eyes reflecting a universe of possibilities. In another, an old man, his face carved with the lines of many lifetimes, offered a silent nod of acknowledgment, as if to say that every journey, no matter how arduous, was a pilgrimage toward self-discovery.

Silas moved among them, sometimes exchanging a look, sometimes merely sharing the space in a silent communion of souls. With each encounter, the fragments of his past—the regrets, the unspoken apologies, the lingering hopes—began to realign into a tapestry of understanding. He recalled moments of quiet solitude in his youth when the night had seemed endless, and the stars had whispered secrets only he could hear. In these memories, he found solace, realizing that the monsters he had feared were but shadows cast by the bright light of life’s intricate beauty.

The passage of time in this realm was fluid, and as he journeyed deeper, the contours of his inner landscape became ever more vivid. At one point, he came upon a vast lake whose surface was as smooth as glass, reflecting the myriad colors of the sky and the swirling constellations above. Sitting at the edge of the lake was a solitary figure, bent over the water in quiet contemplation. Silas approached cautiously, drawn by a sense of familiarity that was almost maternal. The figure slowly turned, revealing a visage both enigmatic and comforting—a version of himself, yet imbued with the wisdom of ages.

In the silent communion that followed, no words were exchanged, yet the unspoken understanding was palpable. The reflection in the water shimmered and shifted, and with it, Silas perceived the interplay of light and shadow that had defined his very existence. He realized that every fear, every regret, every monstrous echo was an essential part of the intricate mosaic of his soul. They were the night that gave meaning to the dawn, the silence that amplified the beauty of the spoken word, and the darkness that defined the brilliance of the light.

As the hours melted into one another, the landscape began to transform. The vibrant meadows gave way to ancient ruins overgrown with ivy and wildflowers—a city of memories where time itself had crumbled into delicate shards of reminiscence. Here, in the heart of this forgotten metropolis, Silas encountered a vast library carved into the stone of a long-vanished civilization. Within its echoing halls, scrolls and manuscripts lay scattered, bearing the wisdom of countless souls. Each text seemed to pulse with the heartbeat of existence, a reminder that life was an ever-evolving narrative of pain, joy, loss, and redemption.

Drawn by an irresistible compulsion, Silas stepped into the library. The air was thick with the scent of aged paper and incense, and the soft glow of phosphorescent light illuminated passages of text that spoke of ancient rites and modern sorrows alike. He ran his fingers along the spines of the books, feeling as if he were absorbing the stories of lives both lived and imagined. In one particularly weathered tome, he discovered a passage that resonated with a profound truth: every soul must face its own inner monsters before it can truly be free.

This revelation stirred something deep within him—a subtle yet undeniable shift in his inner world. It was as though the act of confronting these buried truths was unlocking a door within his heart, a door long sealed by fear and self-doubt. In the quiet solitude of that ancient library, Silas began to piece together the fragmented parts of his identity, accepting that every shadow within him was a necessary counterpart to the light.

Outside the crumbling walls of the library, night had deepened into an endless expanse of stars. The mist, now tinged with silver under the moonlight, swirled around him like a gentle embrace. With newfound resolve, Silas retraced his steps toward the gateway that had first beckoned him from his father’s study. Yet this return was not a retreat but a continuation—a movement deeper into the labyrinth of his soul, where each corridor led to revelations and every turn held the promise of transformation.

At the threshold of the final passage, he paused again. The spectral figures, now more distinct in their clarity, gathered around him in a silent vigil. They were his fears, his sorrows, the unspoken parts of him that had long been relegated to the shadows. But now, standing amidst the remnants of his former self, he felt no shame or terror. Instead, he experienced a quiet, profound acceptance.

A voice—neither young nor old, neither male nor female—whispered through the darkness, a murmur that seemed to emanate from everywhere and nowhere at once: “You are ready.” The words were not a command, but a gentle affirmation, like the soft exhalation of the wind through ancient trees. With this quiet benediction, Silas stepped forward, leaving behind the confines of a world bound by regret and fear, and entering a realm where every fragment of his being was acknowledged and embraced.

In that transformative moment, as the boundary between the tangible and the metaphysical dissolved, Silas discovered that the true monsters were not external beasts but the reflections of his own inner turmoil. They were the echoes of his vulnerabilities, the shadows of his past missteps, and the manifestations of every moment he had ever hesitated to live fully. And in embracing them, he found a strange, unanticipated liberation—a release from the chains of self-doubt and the burden of unspoken grief.

The landscape around him shifted once more, and he found himself standing at the edge of an ancient forest. The trees towered overhead, their branches interlocking in intricate patterns that filtered the moonlight into silvery streams. Each tree seemed to pulse with life, as if carrying the memories of countless generations. The forest exuded a sense of mystery and quiet authority, as if it were the final arbiter of the journey he had embarked upon. Here, the whisper of leaves and the murmur of unseen creatures became a symphony of the past and the future intertwined.

Silas wandered along a narrow, winding path, the soft earth beneath his feet reminding him of the countless steps that had led him to this threshold. As he ventured deeper into the forest, the air grew charged with an energy that felt almost sentient—a silent promise that every step forward was a step toward an ever-unfolding truth. The interplay of light and shadow on the forest floor created fleeting images, spectral reflections of faces and forms that vanished as soon as they were seen. In those moments, he sensed the presence of souls long passed, guiding him with their silent counsel.

At the heart of the forest, where the trees opened into a small clearing, Silas found a quiet pond. Its surface was as still as glass, mirroring the luminous sky above. In the reflective water, he saw not only his own visage but a collage of memories: his father's gentle smile, the fleeting glance of a stranger on a rainy day, the echo of a long-forgotten lullaby. Each image was a fragment of his identity, a mosaic of moments that together formed the tapestry of his existence.

He sat by the edge of the pond, letting the stillness seep into him. In that silence, every fear and every regret softened into insignificance. The pond was a mirror to his soul—a reflection of all that he had been and all that he was becoming. As he gazed into its depths, he felt the stirring of an ancient recognition: the understanding that the journey through darkness was an inescapable prelude to the light.

Memories and visions swirled before his eyes. He recalled the gentle cadence of his father’s voice recounting tales of otherworldly adventures, the comforting weight of his hand on Silas’s shoulder during moments of uncertainty, and the silent reassurance that, even in the depths of solitude, he was never truly alone. The pond, in its stillness, held a secret promise—that the most profound transformations are born from the acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s inner shadows.

Time, in this realm of dreams and memories, took on an elastic quality. Hours, or perhaps lifetimes, slipped by in a series of delicate revelations. Silas felt himself drifting between moments of raw, unfiltered emotion and a serene, reflective calm. The spectral figures, once formidable in their ambiguity, now receded into the gentle embrace of twilight, their presence merging with the natural rhythms of the forest. The realization settled in him that every creature—every fearsome, monstrous aspect of himself—was merely a note in the grand, unending symphony of life.

As the first hints of dawn began to creep over the horizon, the spectral figures gathered once again at the edge of the clearing. They stood as silent witnesses to his transformation, each a living testament to the myriad experiences that had forged his being. His father’s presence, still radiant and serene, offered a final, wordless farewell—a gentle smile that conveyed both pride and an invitation to continue the journey alone.

Silas rose slowly from the pond’s edge, the chill of the early morning mingling with the residual warmth of the night’s revelations. With each step away from the clearing, the metaphysical landscape began to yield to the tangible world he had left behind. Yet even as the familiar contours of his former reality reasserted themselves, he carried within him the profound, transformative truths gleaned from the threshold of his inner world. The monsters he had once feared had become inseparable parts of his soul, and in their acceptance lay the promise of healing, growth, and a deeper connection to the beauty of existence.

In the soft, muted light of dawn, Silas returned to the study—a place that had once been a repository of haunting echoes and unspoken sorrows. But now, as he crossed the threshold, the room seemed transformed by his newfound understanding. The antique clock still ticked its relentless rhythm, but its sound now resonated as a comforting heartbeat, a reminder that time was not an adversary but a faithful companion on the journey of self-discovery.

He approached his father’s desk once more, this time with a quiet certainty that belied the uncertainty of his earlier steps. The notebooks lay neatly arranged, silent yet eloquent witnesses to the past. Silas picked up the familiar notebook, his fingers caressing its worn cover as if in communion with the spirit of the man who had once guided him. The words on the pages seemed to glow with a subtle light, each sentence imbued with a depth of meaning that transcended the mere passage of time.

In that moment, the study transformed into a sanctuary—a place where the boundaries between memory and possibility blurred into a seamless continuum of existence. The echoes of past conversations, the lingering laughter, and the silent promises now merged with the vibrant pulse of life. Silas realized that the metaphysical journey he had embarked upon was not confined to a single, isolated moment but was an eternal odyssey—a continuous exploration of the inner realms where light and shadow danced in perpetual harmony.

The study, with its timeless ambiance and quiet authority, became the nexus between two worlds. Here, amid the whispers of ancient books and the soft tick of the clock, Silas understood that every moment was an invitation to face the inner monsters and, in doing so, embrace the fullness of his humanity. The specters of fear and regret, now transmuted into quiet allies, served as constant reminders of the transformative power of self-acceptance.

In the final rays of dawn, as the room filled with a gentle, golden light, Silas closed the notebook with a quiet resolve. The journey was far from over, yet he had taken the first vital steps toward reconciling with the past and embracing the uncertain promise of the future. The study, once a repository of haunting memories, now stood as a testament to the resilience of the human spirit—a sanctuary where even the darkest shadows could be illuminated by the soft glow of understanding and love.

As he left the study that morning, Silas carried with him the silent chorus of all that he had encountered—the whisper of ancient trees, the gentle murmur of the pond, the spectral echoes of a father’s love, and the myriad fragments of a soul that had learned to see beauty in every shadow. Each step he took was imbued with a newfound clarity, a quiet confidence born of having faced the monsters within and emerged transformed.

The journey, like the unceasing flow of time, continued unabated. The world outside was vast and unpredictable, yet Silas now understood that the true measure of one’s life was not the avoidance of fear but the courage to confront it. In every whispered memory, every lingering regret, and every hopeful glance toward the horizon, he recognized the eternal truth that the monsters we face are, in truth, the mirror of our own inner light.

And so, as the sun climbed higher in the sky, casting long, shifting shadows across a world reborn each day, Silas stepped forward—into the brilliance of the present and the promise of tomorrow—carrying within him the quiet, unyielding knowledge that he had finally found the courage to face himself, and in doing so, to embrace the infinite tapestry of life.

Over the course of that seemingly endless night, the boundaries of Silas’s inner world had shifted dramatically. In the lingering hours between darkness and dawn, he had traversed realms that defied the simple logic of the waking world—a metaphysical journey that wove together the threads of memory, myth, and raw, unfiltered emotion. The whispers of those spectral figures, the soothing presence of his father’s apparition, and the quiet revelations borne from the ruins of ancient libraries had fused into a single, coherent truth: that to live fully is to confront the vast, sometimes terrifying spectrum of one’s inner life.

In the days and weeks that followed, Silas found himself returning to that threshold time and again. The study, once shrouded in regret and fear, became a sanctuary where he could revisit the lessons of the night—a quiet haven where the ink of his father’s notebook served as a constant reminder of the transformative power of facing one’s inner monsters. He began to document his own journey in a new notebook, one that he kept hidden in a drawer, a private record of every revelation, every fear faced and every hope embraced. Its pages soon filled with descriptions of the metaphysical landscapes he had traversed: the luminous meadows, the reflective pond, the ancient library, and the forest that held the whispers of forgotten souls.

Each entry was a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, a record of the quiet victories that came from embracing both light and darkness. In writing, Silas discovered a form of communion—a dialogue between his present self and the myriad voices of his past. The process of transcribing his inner journey became an act of defiant hope, a way to reclaim the parts of him that had long been lost in the labyrinth of regret. Every word was a step toward healing, every sentence a bridge between what had been and what might yet be.

As the seasons changed, so too did Silas. The once-overwhelming specter of fear that had haunted his every step gradually transformed into a subtle, guiding presence. He found that in the quiet solitude of early mornings and the hushed hours of twilight, the metaphysical realm would gently unfurl before him—a realm where the echoes of lost time intermingled with the vibrant pulse of the present. In these moments of introspection, Silas felt an abiding connection not only to his father and the countless memories they had shared, but also to every soul who had ever dared to face their own inner darkness.

In time, Silas began to understand that the journey he had undertaken was universal—a pilgrimage that transcended the boundaries of personal grief and individual regret. It was the journey of every human heart, the silent voyage of souls that sought to reconcile with the shadows and to find beauty in the midst of chaos. The monsters he had once feared were, in truth, the companions of every step along that arduous path—a testament to the depth and complexity of a life fully lived.

One crisp autumn evening, as the leaves turned fiery hues and the wind carried with it the scent of change, Silas returned once more to the study. The room, now bathed in the soft, diffused light of a setting sun, seemed to exhale a quiet welcome. He sat at the desk, the notebook open before him, and allowed his thoughts to flow freely onto the pages. In the interplay of shadow and light, he began to write not merely a record of his journey but a meditation on the nature of fear, love, and the eternal quest for inner truth. His words were deliberate, each sentence a careful brushstroke painting the vast canvas of the human condition.

That evening, as the night crept steadily upon the world outside, Silas found himself immersed in a dialogue with the past—a conversation with the spectral echoes of those he had loved and lost, and with the inner demons that had, over time, revealed themselves to be as much a part of him as his very heartbeat. It was a conversation both painful and liberating, one that required the courage to face not only the beauty of what had been but also the inevitable sorrow that accompanies growth. Yet in that mingling of joy and grief, of light and shadow, Silas discerned a singular truth: that the journey inward was the most courageous act of all.

In that silent communion with himself, he recognized that every moment of hesitation, every flicker of doubt, was an invitation—a call to awaken to the fullness of his own existence. And so, with each new day, Silas continued to walk that fine line between the tangible and the transcendent, carrying within him the quiet assurance that even the darkest night gives way to the promise of dawn.

For in embracing the monsters, he had discovered a profound, enduring lesson: that every shadow is but a necessary counterpart to the light, every fragment of regret a seed of future hope. And as he looked out at a world reborn in the soft glow of morning, Silas knew that the path he trod was not one of despair, but of quiet, unyielding transformation—a journey that, in its endless unfolding, was as eternal as the very stars that had once whispered their secrets in a study filled with fading light.

Thus, Silas stepped into the day with a heart unburdened by fear and a spirit emboldened by the quiet wisdom of his inner voyage. He carried with him the echoes of every lesson learned in the realm of metaphors and memory, a silent litany of love and loss that would forever guide him through the shifting landscapes of existence. In that timeless moment, he understood that the monsters were not his enemies but his silent teachers, each one offering a mirror in which he could glimpse the infinite tapestry of his own soul.

And so, the journey continued—a perpetual dance between shadow and light, between the ghosts of yesterday and the promise of tomorrow. With every step forward, Silas embraced the mystery of being, ever mindful of the delicate balance between fear and hope, between the transitory and the eternal. The study, the notebook, the spectral figures, and the countless reflections of his own being were all threads in the vast, intricate fabric of life—each one essential, each one a silent hymn to the enduring, unyielding beauty of the human spirit.

In the quiet hours that followed, as the day unfolded with gentle inevitability, Silas carried with him a profound truth: that the journey toward self-acceptance was not marked by the absence of monsters, but by the courage to confront them, to listen to their silent counsel, and to transform their haunting whispers into the soft, sustaining glow of inner light.

And so, beneath the ever-changing tapestry of dawn and dusk, Silas moved through the world with a quiet, resolute grace. Each new day became a canvas upon which he painted the delicate interplay of memory and possibility, of loss and redemption. In the interplay of his inner life and the world around him, he found that every shadow, every echo, was but a fragment of a grand, ineffable design—a design that promised that, even in the face of our deepest fears, the light of understanding and love would ultimately prevail.

The metaphysical journey of that transformative night had not ended with a single step across a threshold, but continued to evolve with every breath, every heartbeat, every whispered memory. And as Silas embraced the quiet power of his own reflection, he understood that to live was to face the endless spectrum of our own inner landscapes—to meet the monsters at the gates of our hearts and to discover, in the soft, unyielding glow of self-awareness, that they were the very keepers of our hidden strength.

In that luminous quietude, where the tangible and the metaphysical converged, Silas’s journey became not just his own, but a timeless ode to the human spirit—a declaration that in every soul, however scarred, there lies an infinite capacity for renewal, for love, and for the quiet, eternal embrace of light.

The study, once a realm of shadow and unspoken grief, now pulsed with the vibrant, unyielding heartbeat of a life transformed. Silas closed the door behind him as he stepped out into the crisp morning air, the memory of his father’s gentle smile and the echo of ancient whispers lingering like a soft benediction. With the notebook safely tucked under his arm and the silent promise of countless new beginnings swirling around him, he walked toward a future no longer defined by regret but illuminated by the timeless truths discovered in the depths of his own soul.

In that enduring moment, as the sun ascended high in a boundless sky, Silas embraced the beauty of impermanence and the eternal dance of light and shadow—a dance that, in every trembling heartbeat, echoed the profound, unspoken promise of life itself.

Thus, Silas’s journey into the heart of his inner cosmos continued—a journey marked by quiet bravery, an unyielding quest for truth, and the soft, luminous understanding that every monster we face is but a stepping stone toward the infinite horizon of our own becoming. And in that never-ending odyssey, the whispers of the past and the promise of tomorrow merged into a single, unbroken refrain—a timeless hymn to the enduring, transcendent beauty of a soul unafraid to be fully, magnificently alive.

The End.

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this original short story by Gio Marron. Until next time, stay curious.

Finding Marigold

By Sibylla

Narration by Eleven Labs

The sky's color reminded her of old bruises. Purple faded to yellow at the edges, where clouds scudded past like torn cotton. Sarah counted her steps, each footfall marking time in the way her mother had taught her—one Mississippi, two Mississippi—until the numbers blurred together like watercolors left in the rain. The goat had been gone for three days now.

"It's just a goat," her father had said that morning, his coffee cup leaving rings on yesterday's newspaper. "We can get another one." But he didn't understand that Marigold wasn't just a goat. She was the color of autumn leaves and smelled like grass after rain, and she would press her warm head against Sarah's hip while she did her homework in the barn.

The search had taken her farther than she'd ever ventured alone: past Thompson's fallow field, where sunflowers had once grown tall as giants, and beyond the creek that divided the county like a crooked smile. The late September air carried hints of woodsmoke and decay, and Sarah pulled her red wool sweater closer. Her mother's voice echoed in her head: "Don't go past the creek, baby. That's where the old mines are."

But Marigold was out there somewhere, and Sarah had seen her mother sometimes look at empty chairs as if expecting them to be filled. She understood the importance of looking for lost things.

A crow watched her from a fence post, its head cocked at an angle that reminded her of her third-grade teacher considering a wrong answer. "Have you seen my goat?" she asked it, feeling foolish but desperate enough to try. The crow made a sound like rusty hinges and flew away, leaving her alone with the wind and the endless sky.

The ground changed beneath her feet as she walked, from packed dirt to loose shale that shifted and clicked with each step. Old timber frames stuck out of the hillside like broken ribs, and Sarah thought about the stories her grandmother used to tell about the mining days, when men went down into the earth and sometimes didn't come back up.

"Sarah Elizabeth Martinez!" The voice carried across the valley. She turned to see Mrs. Thompson standing in her yard, clutching a dish towel in her weathered hands. "Does your mama know where you are?"

Sarah considered lying, but Mrs. Thompson had known her since she was born, had helped deliver her on a night when the ambulance couldn't make it through the snow. "No, ma'am. But I'm looking for Marigold."

The old woman's face softened. She walked to the fence line, her rubber gardening boots leaving prints in the damp earth. "Come here, child. Tell me about it."

Sarah trudged back, the weight of three days' worry on her feet. Mrs. Thompson smelled like bread and lavender soap, and her kitchen was warm and yellow like a summer afternoon. She set a mug of hot chocolate in front of Sarah, topped with the tiny marshmallows she'd been buying, especially since Sarah was small enough to need help climbing into the kitchen chairs.

"Now then," Mrs. Thompson said, settling into the chair across from her. "Tell me about Marigold."

"She's been gone three days," Sarah said, wrapping her cold fingers around the mug. "Dad says she probably just wandered off, but she wouldn't. She always comes when I call her. Always."

Mrs. Thompson nodded, her eyes distant. "Sometimes things wander because they're looking for something. Like my Henry used to do, near the end. He'd get up in the middle of the night, put on his work boots, tell me he had to go check the corn." She smiled, but it was the kind of smile that held pain in its corners. "We hadn't had corn for twenty years by then."

"But Marigold isn't sick," Sarah protested. "She's just... lost."

"Maybe," Mrs. Thompson said. "But sometimes being lost isn't about where you are. It's about what you're looking for." She got up and went to a drawer, returning with a folded paper. "The Sullivan boys said they saw a goat up by their place yesterday. Drew me a map."

Sarah unfolded the paper with trembling fingers. The map was crude, drawn in blue ballpoint pen, but she recognized the landmarks—the lightning-struck oak, the abandoned Peterson place with its sagging roof, the stone wall that ran along the ridge like a forgotten sentence.

"That's two miles past the creek," she said quietly.

Mrs. Thompson's hand was warm on her shoulder. "Your mama's going to be worried sick."

"I know." Sarah traced the path with her finger. "But I have to find her."

"Then we better call your mama first. And you better take my thermos and some of these cookies. Getting lost takes it out of you, whether you're a girl or a goat."

The phone call was difficult. Her mother's voice crackled with static and worry, but in the end, she understood—she always did. "Be back before dark," she said. And Sarah? Sometimes, the things we lose find their way back on their own."

The path to the Sullivan place wound up into hills that seemed to hold their breath. As Sarah walked, the thermos bumped against her leg, and she thought about Marigold. She remembered how she used to stand on her hind legs to reach the highest leaves on the apple tree, how she would bleat softly in her sleep like she was talking to someone in her dreams.

The abandoned Peterson house loomed ahead, its windows dark, watching her pass. Sarah had heard stories about it at school—how old man Peterson had lost everything in the market crash, how he'd walked into the woods one winter morning and never walked out, how his wife had packed a single suitcase and taken the train west, leaving everything else to dust and memory.

A movement caught her eye—something pale against the darkness of the open doorway. Sarah's heart jumped, but it was only a piece of torn and dirty curtain dancing in the wind like a ghost trying to remember how to walk.

The Sullivan place was another mile up, past a stand of pine trees that whispered secrets to each other. Sarah stopped to rest, drinking from the thermos and eating one of Mrs. Thompson's cookies. They were oatmeal raisin, the kind her grandmother used to make, and the taste brought unexpected tears to her eyes.

A sound made her look up—a bleating, distant but distinct. Sarah was on her feet before she realized she'd moved, the thermos forgotten in the grass. "Marigold!"

She followed the sound up a narrow trail, her feet slipping on pine needles. The bleating came again, closer now, but different somehow. Younger, more frightened. Sarah rounded a bend and stopped short.

It wasn't Marigold.

A small kid, no more than a few months old, stood trembling in a clearing. Its coat was the color of storm clouds, and one of its legs was wrapped in what looked like an old dish towel. Behind it, half-hidden by brambles, was the entrance to what must have been one of the old mining tunnels.

"Hello, little one," Sarah said softly, approaching with her hand outstretched. The kid watched her with eyes like amber but didn't run. When she got closer, she saw that the dish towel was actually one of her mother's good napkins, the ones with the embroidered edges that only came out at Christmas.

The kid let her approach and run her hands over its quivering sides. It was thin, but someone had been feeding it—fresh hay stalks were scattered nearby, and a dented bowl of water was nearby.

"Marigold?" Sarah called, her voice echoing off the hillside. "Are you here?"

For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, from the darkness of the tunnel entrance, came a familiar bleat.

Sarah's legs went weak with relief. "Marigold, come here, girl. Come on."

But Marigold didn't come. She bleated again, insistent, almost scolding. Sarah took a step toward the tunnel, then another. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could make out her goat's form, standing guard over something she couldn't quite see.

"What is it, girl? What did you find?"

The kid followed close behind as Sarah entered the tunnel. The air was cool and damp, smelling of earth and time and something else—something warm and alive. As she got closer, she understood.

Two more kids, even smaller than the first, huddled against Marigold's side. One was pure white, the other dappled like sunlight through leaves. Both looked up at Sarah with their mother's eyes.

"Oh," Sarah said softly. "Oh, Marigold."

The goat pressed her head against Sarah's hip, just like she used to do during homework time, but there was something different in it now—not seeking comfort, but offering it. Sarah sank to her knees in the soft dirt, and Marigold's kids came to investigate her with their tiny hooves and curious noses.

"You weren't lost at all, were you?" Sarah whispered. "You were just becoming something else. Something more."

When they finally made their way home, Sarah, Marigold, and three wobbling kids, the light was starting to fade. They stopped at Mrs. Thompson's first to return the thermos and share the news. The old woman stood in her doorway, watching them pass, and Sarah thought she saw her wipe her eyes with her dish towel.

Her parents were waiting on the porch, worry dissolving into amazement as they watched the small parade approach. Her father got up to help her get the kids settled in the barn, shaking his head and smiling.

"Not just a goat after all," he said quietly.

Later, after the kids were bedded down in fresh hay and Marigold was back in her familiar stall, Sarah sat with her mother on the porch steps. The sky was the color of old pennies, and the first stars were beginning to appear.

"You know," her mother said, "when I was your age, I lost something too."

Sarah leaned against her mother's shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her coconut shampoo. "What was it?"

"My grandmother's ring. I'd been told not to play with it, but of course I did. Took it out to the garden one day and it slipped right off my finger. I looked for weeks, dug up practically every flower bed we had."

"Did you ever find it?"

Her mother was quiet for a moment. "No. But the next spring, right where I'd been digging, the most beautiful iris grew. Purple and gold, like a sunset. And every year after that, it came back bigger and brighter." She kissed the top of Sarah's head. "Sometimes the things we lose make room for something new to grow."

Sarah thought about Marigold in the barn with her babies, about Mrs. Thompson's Henry checking phantom corn, about the Peterson house with its curtain reaching for something just out of grasp. She thought about loss and finding, about the way things change and grow and become something else, like the sky at sunset or leaves in autumn or little girls who go looking for lost goats and find something they didn't know they were searching for.

"Mom?" she said after a while.

"Hmm?"

"Can we plant some irises tomorrow?"

Her mother's laugh was soft in the gathering dark. "Yes, baby. We can plant some irises."

In the barn, Marigold bleated softly to her babies, and somewhere in the distance, a crow called out like it was sharing a secret with the night. Sarah closed her eyes and listened to the sound of things growing, changing, becoming what they were always meant to be.

The moon rose like a question mark above the hills, and in its light, the world was full of possibilities, each one as bright and fragile as hope, as sturdy as love, as real as a goat who wasn't lost at all, but simply finding her way to something new.

And in the morning, they would plant irises.

The End

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this original short story by Sibylla. Until next time, stay curious.

The Elephant Island Chronicles

Presents

THE RED-HOT DOLLAR

By H. D. UMBSTAETTER

Narration by Eleven Labs

Foreword by Gio Marron

When The Red-Hot Dollar first appeared in the pages of The Black Cat magazine in October 1895, it captured readers' imaginations with its unique blend of humor, intrigue, and social commentary. Written by H. D. Umbstaetter, a pioneer of popular short fiction, this story exemplifies the era's fascination with everyday mysteries and their potential to unravel extraordinary truths. In it, a simple silver dollar, by design and defect, becomes the linchpin of a high-stakes narrative involving chance, persistence, and justice.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly modernizing late 19th-century America, The Red-Hot Dollar reflects a time when the nation's currency system was still evolving, and fears of counterfeiting were both real and pervasive. Umbstaetter masterfully taps into these anxieties, using the counterfeit coin not merely as a plot device but as a symbol of the period's larger concerns about integrity, trust, and the price of deception.

The story also reveals much about the author’s style and his magazine’s mission to deliver stories that were, as the editor put it, "worth telling." Umbstaetter's pacing and sharp observations keep the reader engaged, while his wit ensures the tale is both entertaining and thought-provoking. Through the character of Ansel Hobart, we are reminded that even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant objects can hold the key to unraveling much larger mysteries.

More than a century later, The Red-Hot Dollar still resonates, not just as a clever piece of detective fiction but as a window into the values and concerns of its time. As you read, consider how the story intertwines human curiosity, moral choices, and the inexorable pull of fate. It remains a testament to how great storytelling can make even the most ordinary of objects extraordinary.

H. D. Umbstaetter invites us into a world where chance meetings and sharp minds collide, crafting a narrative that feels as fresh and relevant today as it did over a hundred years ago. May this tale and the enigmatic coin at its center remind you that sometimes, the most unexpected paths lead to the most remarkable destinations.

Gio

THE RED-HOT DOLLAR

By H. D. UMBSTAETTER

It lacked three minutes of five by the big clock in the tower when the east-bound Chicago express rumbled into the station at Buffalo. The train had not yet come to a standstill when a hatless man jumped from the platform of the rear sleeping-car and ran across the tracks into the depot restaurant. A few minutes later he reappeared, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.

With these he hurriedly made his way back to the car through a straggling procession of drowsy tourists, who were taking advantage of the train's five minutes' stop to breathe the crisp morning air. The last of these had already resumed his seat when the man without a hat again appeared at the lunch counter, returned the borrowed dishes, and ordered coffee for himself. He had just picked up the cup and was raising it to his lips when the conductor's "All aboard" rang through the station.

Leaving the coffee untouched, he thrust a five-dollar bill at the attendant, grabbed his change, and started in pursuit of the moving train. He had almost reached it when an unlucky stumble sent the coins in his hand rolling in all directions along the floor. Quickly recovering himself and paying no heed to his loss, he redoubled his efforts, and, though losing ground at every step, kept up the hopeless chase to the end of the station. There he stopped, panting for breath. The slip had proved fatal. He had missed the train!

As he stood staring wildly through the clouds of dust that rose from the track, a young woman, evidently deeply agitated, suddenly appeared in the doorway of the vanishing car. Upon seeing him, she made frantic attempts to leap from the platform, when she was seized by a man and pulled back into the car. When the door had closed upon the two the bareheaded man in the station faced about and philosophically muttered:—

"It's fate!"

Then, after pausing a few moments, as if to collect his thoughts, he slowly retraced his steps to the scene of his mishap and began calmly searching for his lost change. Circling closely about, his eyes scanning the floor, he succeeded in recovering first one and then another of the missing coins, until finally, after repeated rounds, he lacked only one dollar of the whole amount. At this point he paused, clinked the recovered coins in his hand, looked at his watch, and then started on a final round. As this failed to reveal the missing piece, he gave up the search, transferred the contents of his hands to his trousers' pocket, and started in the direction of the telegraph office.

He had proceeded perhaps twenty paces when it occurred to him to turn about and cast one more look along the floor. As he did so his eye fell upon a shining object lodged in an opening between the rail and planked floor, a few feet from where he stood. He stooped to examine it, and, seeing that it was the missing coin, reached for it, but found the opening too narrow to admit his fingers. He tried to recover the piece with his pocket-knife, and, failing in this attempt, took his lead-pencil, with which, after repeated attempts, he succeeded in tossing it upon the floor.

With an air of subdued satisfaction, he walked away, and was about to convey the coin to his pocket when a sudden impulse led him to examine it. Holding it up before his eyes, he stopped, scrutinized every detail, and as he turned it over and over the puzzled look on his face changed to one of rigid astonishment. For fully a minute he stood as if transfixed; then, rousing himself and looking anxiously about as if to see if any one had observed him, he hurried to the cashier's desk in the restaurant, and, producing the bright silver dollar, asked the girl if she happened to remember from whom she received it.

She didn't remember, but would exchange it for another, she said, if he wished. Politely declining the offer and apologizing for having troubled her, he said that, as the coin he held in his hand was separating a loving wife from her husband, he wished very much to find some trace of its former owner. The girl looked up, thought for a moment, then, pulling out the cash drawer, and examining its contents, said she might have received it from the conductor of the Lake Shore express which had left for Cleveland at 3.15. She now recalled that when she came on duty at midnight there was no silver dollar among the change in the cash drawer, and that the only one she remembered receiving was from Sleeping-Car Conductor Parkins.

The man thanked her and hastened to the telegraph office, where he sent this message:—

"Conductor, East Bound Chicago Express,Utica, N. Y.

"Please ask lady in section seven of sleeping-car Catawba to await her husband at Delavan House, Albany.

"A. J. Hobart."

After requesting the operator to kindly rush the despatch, he proceeded to the ticket office, procured a seat in the 5.45 fast mail for Cleveland, and, with his hand clutching the coin in his pocket and his eyes fixed upon the floor, meditatively paced up and down the platform, waiting for the train to arrive.

As he did so he was disconcerted to find himself the object of wide-spread curiosity; even the newsboys with the morning papers favored him with an inquiring stare as they passed. Wondering what was amiss, he suddenly put his hand to his head, which furnished an instant explanation. He was hatless.

Looking at the big clock, he saw that it lacked ten minutes of train time, and, hastily crossing over to the farther track, he disappeared through the west end of the station.

Among the passengers who boarded the 5.45 fast mail for Cleveland when it thundered into the station, ten minutes later, was the bareheaded gentleman of a few minutes ago, now wearing a stylish derby. Once in the train, he settled himself in his seat with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. Not until then did the really remarkable character of the situation dawn upon him. On the very day which he had hailed as one of the happiest of his life he was traveling at the rate of about sixty miles an hour away from the girl he loved devotedly and to whom he had been married just seventeen hours. A queer opening of his honeymoon! In his anxiety to get a cup of coffee for his wife, he had lost his hat, then lost his change, and, lastly, lost the train.

Why did he not follow his bride at once? What mysterious spell had come upon this seventeen-hour bridegroom that he should fly from her as swiftly as the fast express could carry him? His hand held the solution of the problem—simple, yet unexplainable—a silver dollar! It held the secret he must unravel before he could return to her; it was not then that he loved her less, but that this bit of precious metal had suddenly developed an occult power that had turned their paths, for the present, in opposite directions.

At the first stopping place he sent another message, which read as follows:—

"Mrs. A. J. Hobart, Delavan House,Albany, N. Y.

"Cannot possibly reach Albany before to-morrow morning.

"Ansel."

With his brain filled with excited thoughts, the young man entered the sleeping-car office at Cleveland four hours later and asked for Conductor Parkins. He was told that this official would not be on duty before night, though possibly he might be at his home on St. Clair Street.

To the address given him the indefatigable young man repaired at once, and found the genial gentleman for whom he sought breakfasting with his family. He kindly gave audience at once to his visitor.

"This coin, which you gave the cashier of the restaurant in Buffalo," said the latter, revealing it in the palm of his hand; "can you tell me from whom you received it?"

Parkins remembered receiving cash from but two passengers the night before, one a traveling man who got off in Cleveland, and the other a woman whose destination was Erie. The stranger might ascertain their names by consulting the car diagram at the ticket office. "You seem interested in the coin," he added, smiling.

"I am, for a good reason," laughed the young man in reply. "It is separating a man from his wife." And with these enigmatical words he made his adieu, with thanks, hastened to the ticket office, and an hour later was scouring the city for one Richard Spears.

The register of the Stillman House contained the freshly written name of "Richard Spears, Providence, R. I.," but that gentleman, when found in his room showing samples of hardware to a prospective buyer, regretted that he could not throw any light on the particular dollar his visitor held up to his gaze, and remembered distinctly that he had given the conductor a two-dollar bill in payment for his berth. He came from a section, he said, where people took no stock in silver dollars.

It was three o'clock in the afternoon when a man got off the train at Erie and inquired of the cabmen and depot master regarding a lady who had arrived on the early train from Buffalo. An hour later he was driving along a country road some miles south of the town inquiring for the Wickliffe farm.

As he finally drove up to the house which was his destination he was conscious of a strange excitement. This, he realized, was probably his only remaining chance to trace the coin by whose mysterious power he had been drawn into this wild chase with the hope of identifying its former owner. He took a hasty note of the general features of the place. It had a comfortable, well-to-do look; a two-story house, white, with green blinds. Most of these were closed, as is customary with country houses, but the windows at the right of the big front door, opening on a small porch, were shaded only by white curtains. There was a sound of voices within as he stepped up to the door and rapped.

Mrs. Wickliffe, a pleasant-faced little woman, sat surrounded by three children and a neighbor's wife, to whom she was displaying some purchases. As one of the children opened the door, admitting the stranger into this animated scene, she was standing before a mirror trying on a new bonnet, which was eliciting extravagant praises from the neighbor.

After listening to his story, Mrs. Wickliffe said that her memory was so treacherous that she really couldn't say for certain whether or not she gave the conductor the shining dollar, but that if she did she must have received it from her son in Germantown, Pa., from a visit to whose house she had just returned, and who before her departure had exchanged some money for her. She added that, as she took no interest in coin collecting, a dollar was simply a dollar to her and that she thought a woman was very foolish to take up with a fad which might ruin her happiness.

Her unknown caller thought so, too, admired her taste in millinery, took the address of her son, and, clutching the fatal coin more firmly than ever, drove back to Erie, where he boarded the New York night express.

To the young man who still clutched the silver dollar sleep was impossible. A multitude of exciting fancies crossed his brain. The developments he hoped to bring about, the curious solution of the problem, its effect upon his future, and the future of one so dear to him,—all this murdered sleep for him as effectually as did the crime on Lady Macbeth's soul. It drove him into the smoking-car, where he sank into a seat and planned and conjectured between puffs of Havana smoke until the train reached Albany. So completely absorbed had he become in the solution of this knotty problem in which his accident of the morning had involved him, and so convinced was he that the information must be for the time kept a secret, that he actually began to dread what was clearly inevitable,—the explanation he must shortly make to his wife.

His inclination was to tell her all. His duty to others forbade this. After pondering over the matter, he decided to explain that he had a happy surprise in store for her, one that had an important bearing on their future, and which unfortunately necessitated a change in their plans for a honeymoon in Europe.

This, on reaching the Delavan House, he expressed to a very pretty and very anxious little woman who was awaiting him, together with a good many other things not necessary to this story. And, instead of the steamer for Europe, the reunited pair took a train for Philadelphia. Early the next day the young man presented himself at the office of Dr. James Wickliffe, at Germantown, who smilingly admitted having given the shining dollar to his mother two days before. He had received the coin from a patient, a letter-carrier named John Lennon, and remembered it because of the following strange story, related to him by Lennon himself.

A few days before, the carrier was engaged in delivering mail from door to door along Vine Street, Philadelphia, when a zigzag trip across the street and back again brought him to the narrow stairway of a dingy brick house, in front of which hung an enormous brass key bearing the word "Locksmith." Here he paused to draw a little parcel from his bundle. As he did so he heard something fall with a metallic clink upon the stone pavement. He looked and saw that it was a silver dollar, which rolled toward the gutter and came to a stop close by the curb. Hastening to pick it up, he instantly dropped it with a cry of pain.

The coin was almost red hot!

The letter-carrier stood nursing his hand and thinking for two or three minutes. Silver dollars do not commonly drop out of the sky. But that this one should thus fall like a meteorite in a condition too heated for handling was certainly more than surprising—it was astounding! The man looked up at the dingy brick house and examined it attentively, noting that the ground floor was occupied as a green grocery and that all of the windows were shut save one in the third story.

Then he kicked the mysterious coin into a puddle, fished it out again with his fingers, and put it into his trousers' pocket. He was about to investigate further, when some small boys called his attention to the fact that it was the first day of April, whereupon he proceeded on his way. He gave no further thought to the matter until that night, when he found that his thumb and fore-finger had been so badly burned as to require treatment.

The next morning he called upon the doctor, who dressed the painful hand and received the mysterious coin in payment for his services.

That night, behind locked doors in one of the officers' rooms of the United States Mint in Chestnut Street, two men were engaged in a long whispered conference. The wife of one of the men, as she sat in her room in the Continental Hotel, anxiously waiting for her husband, was beginning to wonder whether, after all, marriage was a failure!

Two days later, in speaking of the seizure of over forty thousand bogus silver dollars and the clever capture of three of the most dangerous counterfeiters that ever attacked the currency of the United States, the Daily News said:—

"The most remarkable part of the whole story is that one of the coins, fresh from the machine of one of the counterfeiters, fell out of a third-story window near which he was working, was picked up while almost red hot by a letter-carrier, and passed as genuine through various hands until it reached Buffalo, where, by the merest accident, it came into the possession of Mr. Ansel Hobart of the Secret Service. That gentleman noticed an imperfection at one point of its rim, and succeeded in tracing the coin to the headquarters of the gang on Vine Street in this city, where, under the cloak of a locksmith shop and green grocery business, six hundred of the spurious coins were turned out daily. So admirably were these counterfeits executed as to defy scrutiny save by experts of the Government. The coins were not cast in molds after the ordinary fashion, but were struck with a die, and plated so thickly with silver as to withstand tests by acids. The defect which led to the discovery was found only in the one coin already spoken of, and it is supposed that it was this defect that caused the piece to spring from the finishing machine and fall out of the window."

And the New York newspapers of three days later contained the intelligence that the White Star steamer "Majestic," which sailed for Liverpool that day, had among her passengers Mr. and Mrs. Ansel J. Hobart, of Chicago, Illinois.

The End

From all of us here at the Elephant Island Chronicles, we hope you have enjoyed this classic short story by H. D. Umbstaetter. Until next time, stay curious.