“It is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,” said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate1 her story, “that I rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I hope she will spare a grandmother’s feelings, if anything in the story she is about to tell is improper2 to be placed before the young. I have been so shocked by the stories of perfidy3 and baseness generally that have been published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra’s story which ought to be withheld4 from the public; a protest based upon my affection for posterity5, and in the interests of morality everywhere.”
“You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah,” said the prophetess. “What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even to the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration6 of man’s perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a little tale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of New England character.”
“Thank you for the load your words have lifted from my mind,” said Mrs. Noah, settling back in her chair, a satisfied expression upon her gentle countenance7. “I hope you will understand why I spoke8, and withal why modern literature generally has been so distressful9 to me. When you reflect that the world is satisfied that most of man’s criminal instincts are the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shift the responsibility for posterity to other shoulders than our own, you will understand my position. We were about the most domestic old couple that ever lived, and when we see the long and varied10 assortment11 of crimes that are cropping out everywhere in our descendants it is painful to us to realize what a pair of unconsciously wicked old fogies we must have been.”
“We all understand that,” said Cleopatra, kindly12; “and we are all prepared to acquit13 you of any responsibility for the advanced condition of wickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear grandma, and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no more attributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oyster14 cocktail15 is attributable to your lord and master.”
“Thank you kindly,” murmured the old lady, and she resumed her knitting upon a phantom16 tam-o’-shanter, which she was making as a Christmas surprise for her husband.
“When Captain Kidd began his story,” said Cassandra, “he made one very bad mistake, and yet one which was prompted by that courtesy which all men instinctively17 adopt when addressing women. When he entered the room he removed his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to convince me of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could see the workings of his mind. While you ladies were watching his lips or his eyes, some of you taking in the gorgeous details of his dress, all of you hanging upon his every word, I kept my eye fixed18 firmly upon his imagination, and I saw, what you did not, that he was drawing wholly upon that!”
“How extraordinary!” cried Elizabeth.
“Yes—and fortunate,” said Cassandra. “Had I not done so, a week hence we should, every one of us, have been lost in the surging wickedness of the city of Paris.”
“But, Cassandra,” said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to the beautiful city by the Seine, “he told us we were going to Paris.”
“Of course he did,” said Madame Récamier, “and in so many words. Certainly he was not drawing upon his imagination there.”
“And one might be lost in a very much worse place,” put in Marguerite de Valois, “if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris at all. I fancy that I know enough about Paris to find my way about.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Cassandra. “What a foolish little thing you are! You don’t imagine that the Paris of to-day is the Paris of your time, or even the Paris of that sweet child Trilby’s time, do you? If you do you are very much mistaken. I almost wish I had not warned you of your danger and had let you go, just to see those eyes of yours open with amazement19 at the change. You’d find your Louvre a very different sort of a place from what it used to be, my dear lady. Those pleasing little windows through which your relations were wont20 in olden times to indulge in target practice at people who didn’t go to their church are now kept closed; the galleries which used to swarm21 with people, many of whom ought to have been hanged, now swarm with pictures, many of which ought not to have been hung; the romance which clung about its walls is as much a part of the dead past as yourselves, and were you to materialize suddenly therein you would find yourselves jostled and hustled22 and trodden upon by the curious from other lands, with Argus eyes taking in five hundred pictures a minute, and traversing those halls at a rate of speed at which Mercury himself would stand aghast.”
“But my beloved Tuileries?” cried Marie Antoinette.
“Has been swallowed up by a play-ground for the people, my dear,” said Cassandra, gently. “Paris is no place for us, and it is the intention of these men, in whose hands we are, to take us there and then desert us. Can you imagine anything worse than ourselves, the phantoms23 of a glorious romantic past, basely deserted24 in the streets of a wholly strange, superficial, material city of to-day? What do you think, Elizabeth, would be your fate if, faint and famished25, you begged for sustenance26 at an English door to-day, and when asked your name and profession were to reply, ‘Elizabeth, Queen of England’?”
“Insane asylum,” said Elizabeth, shortly.
“Precisely. So in Paris with the rest of us,” said Cassandra.
“How do you know all this?” asked Trilby, still unconvinced.
“I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna,” said Cassandra. “I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patent detachable hypnotizer you had. I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind into the future. I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient Troy, and if my revelations had been heeded27 the Priam family would, I doubt not, still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr. Æneas would not have grown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride on the opening night of the horse-show, so graphically28 depicted29 by Virgil.”
“I never heard about that,” said Trilby. “It sounds like a very funny story, though.”
“Well, it wasn’t so humorous for some as it was for others,” sai............