Margaretha's flight she had secretly placed a letter in the otherwise empty letter-box before his door, begging that he would adopt the boy, thereby showing some shrewd knowledge of character in trusting to his benevolence. His wife was dead: his only child, a little daughter, at that time hardly seven years old, was being brought up by relatives in France, as his bachelor housekeeping would have made it difficult for him to give the child proper care. Thus widowed and solitary, afflicted moreover with a great heart that needed love, and had never all his life long been satisfied, he took the boy to himself without any overnice reasoning upon the subject.

"Come to breakfast," he said quite simply, took the orphan by the hand and led him into his own dwelling.

When the meal was over, and while M. Delileo, with that rage for systematizing which often distinguishes especially unpractical people, was bending over his writing table, making out a plan of education, a division of hours, and finally a long list of things which Gesa might possibly need within the next ten years, the boy slipped curiously around in the little room, and examined its arrangement. The furniture was a decayed mixture of stiff, military Empire, and pretentious, crooked Louis-Philippe. On the walls hung a few sketches by once celebrated masters, with dedications "à mon chère ami, etc.," a few poet's autographs in little black frames, and besides these the rapidly executed portrait of a very beautiful woman, in a white satin dress with a great many strings of pearls around her neck, and a little crown on her head. "Is that the queen?" asked Gesa of his new protector.

Whereupon the "droevige Herr," rising up from his occupation, answered, not without a certain solemnity, "That, my child, that was the Gualtieri!"

"Ah!" said Gesa, and was exactly as wise as before. How indeed was he to know that the Gualtieri in her time had been one of the most famous, and alas! one of the most infamous artistes in the world?

"She was a queen too,--a queen of song," added Delileo after a pause.

"And did you know her?" asked Gesa, still absorbed in staring at the romantically costumed lady.

"She was my wife," answered Delileo with emphasis, and an eloquent gesture.

"Ah! then she must have loved you very much," observed Gesa, seriously, wishing to say something pleasant. But Delileo shrank and turned away his head.

Beneath this portrait, day after day, on a shabby black marble-top table, stood fresh flowers in a crumbling blue delft pitcher.

V

Immediately upon the beginning of their life together, Delileo made a correct estimate of his protégé's musical gifts, and thanks to some artist connections that still remained to him, he procured instruction for Gesa from one of the most famous violinists at that time established in the Brussels Conservatory. He cared for the rest of Gesa's education himself. A curious education, truly! "Correct spelling and an extensive knowledge of literature," he would assert, "are two absolute necessities of a gentleman's culture, further than that he needs nothing." Gesa's orthography, in spite of his instructor's praiseworthy efforts, remained somewhat uncertain, his knowledge of literature on the contrary made astonishing progress, and soon reached from the "Essais de Montaigne," Delileo's first hobby, to Delileo's own romance--his second hobby.

This romance, which was called "The Twilight of the Gods," and had been waiting ten years in vain for a publisher, formed a striking counterpart to Delileo's Carbonari cloak. Like that romantic article of apparel it smelled of mould, and the breath of superannuated philanthropic theories hovered about it. It began with a legend and ended with an ode. Many an evening the elder spent in reading this nondescript production to his protégé, Gesa always attending with the devout fervor which believing natures bring to mysteries they do not understand.

An odd couple they made, the broken man with his nervous restlessness, the restlessness of one who has accomplished nothing, and who sees the grave before him--and the vigorous young fellow, with his healthy laziness, the self-confident laziness of one who feels a great talent within him and to whom life seems as if it could never end. The weary spirit of one strayed constantly back, from the hopeless insipidity of his present, to an Utopia of the year thirty: the other's imagination, meanwhile, crippled by no sort of experience, galloped confidently out into the future, behind a double team of fresh young chimeras! Enthusiasts were they both,--Delileo the more unpractical of the two.

Poor Gaston Delileo! He belonged in the category of universal geniuses; for which reason he had brought his genius to the attainment of absolutely nothing in the universe! Music, painting, literature, political economy,--he had pursued them all, one after the other or simultaneously, just as it happened, and all with the greatest zeal. He had believed with devout idealism in the capacity of society for improvement. He had adopted the theories of St. Simon, and had worn with enthusiasm the vest laced up behind of that brotherhood, and a headband on which his name was embroidered. History relates that the St. Simonian Brotherhood, with their practical division of labor, limited his activity in the beginning to the contribution of money and the brushing of boots! Later they enrolled him the memorable "Three hundred," who set forth to seek the mother of the sect in foreign lands, after Madame de Stael had declined that post of honor.

His money was gone, his illusion had changed to disgust. He had withdrawn in melancholy from the world, seeking to hide himself and his disappointment. He wished nothing but to forget and be forgotten:--that is in the present; from the future, a far-off, misty future, he still hoped something--for his romance. Meanwhile he supported existence by copying notes,--like Rousseau. Two, three years passed by, Gesa became as handsome as a youth in a picture. At Delileo's side he could not fail to gain cultivation of mind and heart, but associated with the eccentric St. Simonian he remained a stranger to all discipline of character. More and more there was revealed a want of concentration, and a vague dreaminess in his nature which to a practiced observer, would have boded no good for his future. He could never maintain a medium between relaxed indolence and exhausting ardor: in tough, persistent capacity for work he failed altogether, and whatever did not come to him by inspiration, he acquired with greater difficulty than did the most commonplace pupil of the conservatory.

Upon all this, however, his violin-professor made no reflections. Gesa not only played his instrument with a skill unheard of for his years, but he also improvised with wonderful originality, at least, so said the professor--who marked nothing but the gigantic strides of the boy's progress, was proud of his pupil and presented him to one amateur after another.

The phlegmatic Brusselers were enchanted by his musical extravagances, because he was named Gesa, had a handsome brunette face, and was said to have sprung from Hungarian origin. Their enthusiasm at his performance always culminated in the same words--"how gipsy-like! Comme c'est tsigane!"

At last came a day when Gesa was to play for the first time at a public concert. With the colossal conceit of youth, he rejoiced at the thought of his debut The apprehensive Gaston Delileo on the contrary, lost appetite and sleep.

Anxiously anticipating a disappointment for the boy, he spent most of his time in exhorting Gesa not to care much for a fiasco; an exhortation which the young musician