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CHAPTER XIV.

MORE PREPARATIONS FOR PENITENCE.

WE left Trelane in the last chapter of the narrative in a state of almost feverish anxiety to obtain the information which had been promised to him, on the sole condition that he should attend a certain masked ball given at Brussels on the occasion of the carnival which is usually held in that city.

The desire to gain that knowledge which the mischievous Pierrot of the morning had pledged herself to impart to him, was a feeling which now held undivided sway in his mind. The sensation of curiosity which had once mingled to some slight extent with this desire to know, was now removed. It was no longer a question who the mysterious masque could be. This doubt, which had perplexed our Englishman so long, and had, to some extent, rendered him incredulous as to Pierrot's power of enlightening him, was altogether removed; and now that he knew that his tormentor was no other than the mercurial Ponsard, he felt sure that the information he required 37

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was really hers to give, and he also felt a tolerable certainty that the woman was too good-natured, and too anxious to bring about a meeting between himself and Madeleine, to withhold it. All he feared now was lest some unforeseen accident should keep Madame Ponsard from fulfilling her promise.

And lucky it was for Trelane that the good woman was still entirely unconscious that the secret of her identity was in his hands. Behind the shelter of a disguise she could do anything. As a Pierrot, or whatever character else she might be at the time personating, she was one person; as Madame Ponsard the dress-maker, she was another. In this last capacity she would have felt it to be utterly im-. possible to have tormented the English gentleman, who was the friend of her employer and patroness, Madame d'Elmar. She would have felt it to be even a liberty. But as a disguised masquer she did not care what tricks she played with one who was himself identified to some extent with the carnival sports, by the mere fact of his being present at them. She was a Pierrot, and not Madame Ponsard again till the carnival was over and Lent begun. Had she known that she was now, in the English gentleman's eyes, purely and simply Madame Ponsard, I repeat that the chances would have been against her having the courage to face him.

The principal streets of Brussels were comparatively deserted when Trelane passed through them

on his way from his hotel to the theatre. One large portion of the population was engaged in dressing up for the masquerade, while a second, the looking-on division, was already in the theatre, having hurried there under the impression that the seats would be apportioned on the "first-come, first-served" principle; a third set was stationed along the line of streets which gave immediate access to the building, anxious to get an eleemosynary glimpse of the dresses of the

masquers.

We have thus disposed of a tolerable portion of the population of the town, without counting the numerous individuals who, too poor to have anything to say to the first-class entertainment in the Place de la Monnaie, had wandered off to the third and fourth rate dancing establishments which were open that night in different parts of the little city and its suburbs, and where persons of the most limited incomes and the most defective wardrobes might still find facilities for making fools of themselves as well as their betters. When all's told the people who paid down their ten or twenty franc pieces, and those who disbursed merely a fifty-centime coin, were pretty much on a par in that one respect, only differing in the amount which they paid away for the right of saying and doing a great many idiotic things, and earning the inestimable privilege of a seedy morrow. How many glittering coins do we all of us pay away, how much trouble do we all take, what inconveniences and even humilia

tions do we put up with, every one of us, in the course of our respective careers, with no much better reward!

Trelane was at the theatre long before there was anything doing there. The workmen were not all out of the building, though only engaged in giving a new turn to some fold of hanging drapery, or looping up some festoon which had escaped from bondage. Everything else, as far as the eye could see, was ready; but from regions to which that organ could not penetrate, there came, of course, the sound of that inevitable hammer which on these occasions is never silenced till the overture begins, and not always then. The Englishman was, however, very far from being a solitary spectator of what was going on. A large part of the audience-that portion which meant to assist at the ball by looking on at it-the wise people who preferred seeing others sacrificing their dignity to compromising their own-were assembled in force, and all the best places were already secured. This mattered little, however, to Trelane, who intended to lead a wandering life that evening, and who, if he had had the most advantageous seat in the house, was in much too fidgety a condition to have remained in it for any length of time.

So, first from one part of the building and then from another, our Englishman watched what was going on, observing how, by almost imperceptible degrees, the theatre began to fill-how a few persons

began now to appear in the region dedicated to dancing, the pit, that is to say, and the stage, both conveniently floored over. He observed, moreover, that, at last, some of these new-comers appeared in costume, and that they were overwhelmed by their own self-consciousness, and were prone to get into corners and behind buttresses and pillars, waiting till more of their kind should arrive before they dared to emerge into the open country.

At last the great sloping orchestra, which had been erected between the pit and the stage, began to be populated. One after another the heads of the different musical geniuses popped up the companion ladder which conducted to the depths beneath. One after another, spectacled, for the most part, and hugging the cases which contained their instruments, they rose to the surface, and then ascended to their different positions in the structure, seating themselves with a disgusting composure before their desks, arranging their sheets of music conveniently, screwing together all sorts of mysterious tubes and incongruous mouth-pieces, packing away their green-baize bags under their chairs, and making all snug for the night, with a provoking indifference to theatres and masked balls, and a want of curiosity with regard to the coming wonders of the evening, which was enough to have sent the assembling company home again to their beds. This effect, however, was not produced by the proceedings of these gentlemen.