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guessed from the look of her. She is strong and stocky, with the powerful knotted hands of one that has done

rough work, and a coarse-featured, wrinkled face, with deep-set, quick-glancing, intelligent eyes. I made friends with her and she told me the story of her life.

It seems she was daughter to the burgomaster of an ancient ville. From her account I picture him dimly as a man all beard and chest and gold-headed cane. In the prime of his life he had the honor of reading an address of welcome to the great Napoleon himself, and of being cut short and severely snubbed by the Imperial lips. He never recovered from the effects of that day of glory, and well-nigh made the lives of his fellow-citizens intolerable by his reminiscences of the event-I subjoin this last without the authority of Marie, but I have no doubt that it is true.

In this good man's life were two crosses: one, that until he drew near the confines of age he had no child to inherit after him; the other, that when his long-ailing patrician wife finally allowed him to lay immortelles on her tomb, and to wed the housekeeper whose delicate cooking alone had for some years kept his body and soul together, she produced no more satisfactory heir than Marie. He fairly broke his heart over the matter, and died soon after of an apoplexy, leaving a sufficient and even pleasing fortune to his widow.

With this she purchased a patisserie in Bruges and the owner thereof, and moreover laid aside a dot for Marie and a surplus sum to be invested in lottery tickets.

I cannot tell you much of Marie's youth; but I know that a toy kitchen. was her first treasure, that she had a pot on the fire long before she could toddle, and that the chief accidents of her childhood were a series of distressing burns caused by her early interference in the conduct of the patisserie. And I know that while she was growing into womanhood the shop of her parents was spreading its reputation abroad through Bruges. And, again, since fortune follows the lucky, their lottery tickets, purchased unfailingly season

after season for twenty-one years, won four several times considerable sums.

The result of all this was that when in the course of time her parents died, Marie awoke one day, as she was adding chicken bones to the pot au feu, to the fact that she was sole mistress of the patisserie and of a fortune.

Accordingly, she told me she had many suitors, chiefly of the apprentice kind, lively young fellows who longed to set up for themselves in fine pastry with a smooth-haired, red-cheeked girl to sell the same. But her ambition soared above the counter; she wanted scope and the free use of her money in the exercise of her one great talent. She sold the patisserie to great advantage, and retired to the country with her money-bags literally piled in the bottom of a donkey-cart.

She chuckled in her old age at the memory of how she had outwitted them all-greedy 'prentices, penniless officers, and the various rag-tag and bobtail that sought to wed the burgomaster's daughter, who owned a pastry-shop and a fortune.

There were rumors enough afloat, and tongues wagged scandalously in Flemish as well as in French: she had eloped with an English milord; she was fled to Paris to be a grande dame; she was lying murdered for her riches at the bottom of a well. . . . Marie could not remember a quarter of the tales that old Vrouw Smits brought back on market-days to the little farm where the truant hugged herself in joy over her escape, and gave herself unmolested to the delights of cookery.

After all, the plan was childishly simple. Vrouw Smits in her youth had been Marie's bonne; in her middle age she was a widow left with a tiny marketgarden on the road to Sluys. Every Saturday she drove a donkey-cart into Bruges, supplementing her green stuff with home-made spice-bread. And until Marie fled to her she lived quite alone. What better opportunity and outlet for her abilities could Marie have hoped to find than this?

No seven-league pen could get over the list of delicacies that she conceived and created. She knew no books and

few rules; but she had an instinct for the blending of elements, a nice touch. for proportion and measure and weight. She all but achieved the impossible in making something out of nothing; that was perhaps her chief pride.

Be it understood that she had no joy in cooking for herself. Nor could she do much for poor old Vrouw Smits, in that, being practically toothless and frail of digestion, the widow subsisted for the most part upon pap and milk sop, broth and coffee.

Lacking an appreciative family, Marie therefore cooked for the public. This does not mean that she sold her goods in open market. Not at all. She knew dimly that such a process would be like casting pearls before swine. No; she was a burgomaster's daughter, and she dispensed her rare dishes in charity.

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Now you may well conceive that these donations created some disturbance in the ancient borough of Bruges. Saturday morning, wooden-faced Vrouw Smits had, in addition to her ordinary stock in trade, a vast basket of dainties that she found the means to send to some worthy institution (favoring each in turn), without bringing upon herself the gibes and inquisitive questions of the market folk. At close of day she rode again along the Sluys road, her basket full of spices and condiments and strange expensive materials, with now and again a copper saucepan, or a cooking-dish of fine glazed earthenware, or a new-fangled culinary implement. You must never forget, as I was never allowed to do, that Marie's father had been burgomaster.

I began to say that these mysterious gifts caused disturbance; they were at times positively embarrassing. Alas for the old lace-makers of St. Julien ! There was an epidemic of indigestion among them the one and only time they were allowed to partake of pâté de foie gras. The patients at the hospital of St. Jean suffered perilously the one day that the basket of Vrouw Smits ran the gauntlet of watching doctors. The orphans of St. Sauveur sickened of their daily fare after a banquet of candied figs and chestnut paste. Even the high-minded Béguines were corrupted from their ancient simplicity, and warmed-over entré s

might have been seen upon the tables of their midday meal. As to the outside poor, I cannot attempt to say-nor could Sister, though she shook her head as she alluded to the topic-how much havoc dear innocent Marie wrought among them with her rich and succulent dainties. But I gather that if fate had not intervened, the population of Bruges would have lessened in number, increased in bulk, and developed into a decaying race of gormands.

It is idle now to speculate why Marie was not discovered. Belgians were not enterprising in those days. The laity was content to swallow greedily; the clergy protested now and again, not against quantity, but against exceeding richness of quality. With the armor of a close mouth, Vrouw Smits parried such questions as were asked; and so for more than twenty years Marie continued her good works undiscovered. Her secret charities had become an institution in Bruges, when suddenly one morning she awoke to the fact that she had opened up her last money-bag. She could not in any wise understand how that which had seemed to her endless could so have wasted itself away; but the bare fact overwhelmed her. She did not cook on that day, but sat in the fireless kitchen among her copper and earthenware brooding and wondering, until even stupid old Vrouw Smits had pity of her state, and, although it was not a Saturday, harnessed the ancient donkey to the unsteady cart and drove along the Sluys road to the convent of St. Julien to take counsel with the Mother Superior.

She was awestruck and frightened as she followed the Sister along the tapestried passage to the dim little room where the Mother received her guests. There, when, after long telling of her beads, she was admitted to an interview, she for the first time in twenty years unsealed her lips and told Marie's tale.

I take it that this Mother Superior is not devoid of humor, for when she had heard the whole, she said dryly: "Bring her to us and she shall learn to make lace. For the good of our souls and her own salvation we must not let her cook."

This was well said, good Mother Supe

rior; but when Marie herself jogged along in the donkey-cart, none too willingly coming to the convent of which she had been an unknown benefactress these many years past—when she came thus and, with the full consciousness of the charity she had bestowed, refused to lay finger on a bobbin, what was to do then?

You could not turn out, penniless, shelterless, into the streets, a woman who had so often fed your poor. You could not let her sit idle as a bad example to the others. You could not compel her to make lace when she refused to learn. Ah! one day there came to the Mother a direct inspiration, and she murmured a thankful prayer that her problem was solved.

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Marie," she said, pausing by the burgomaster's daughter, who sat apart from her companions and sulked, "it was the sin of pride that brought you low, but by humility you shall be raised. After to-day you shall cook again. You shall go to the woodshed and boil the turnips and potatoes for the pigs."

Marie but half understood. Small blame to her if she interpreted this speech to mean that one day she might be raised, step by step, until she came to preside over the nuns' kitchen. How far the Mother was moved by moral purpose, how far by a sense of humor, how far by direct inspiration, I am unable to say; but the immediate result was altogether outside the limits of her prophetic powers.

The next morning Marie was taken out into the shed, with its heaps of wood and vegetables, which was to be her new kitchen, and which, together with the hen-house and the pig-sty, lent a familiar domestic air to the convent inclosure.

Picture her thus: an interior by Teniers or Ryckaert, smoky, dark, untidy, and a bent, withered woman in a scant gown of faded butcher's blue, with a little black shawl on her shoulders and a knitted black cap over her ears-a short, clumsy woman shuffling about in her sabots, now stooping to blow up a sullen fire, now stirring the untempting mess, her face sharpened, I fear me, with bitterness at her present lot.

But, you will say, she could not always

be boiling pottage for the pigs. By no means! Like many another inspiration, the good Mother's idea spread. Marie was set to cook the clothes and the starch of a Monday, to cook the coppers at cleaning time, to cook the glue if by chance it was needed, to cook the paste when the nuns were papering; to cook anything and everything that could not be eaten. It was Nemesis upon hera brilliant, perhaps a just, Nemesis; but say it was hard.

I

A clear, frosty morning in February, when she had been but a few weeks in her new humility, she was coughing in her outhouse, her eyes reddened and watery with smoke, her heart rebelling against the hand that consented to stir pigs' porridge after concocting delicacies for charitable donations-that very morning into her hour of trial came relief through the convent carpenter.

He looked in and saw her stooping over her task, coughing for the reek of the place, and opened acquaintance.

Now you must know that, as the only man allowed on the premises, the carpenter was a peculiar and carefully selected personage. He could not have told you how old he was; nor will I venture to guess, further than that he was safely past his threescore.

He was not, as you might well suppose, a bachelor, a misogynist. On the contrary, he had been much married, having buried his third wife many years before he entered the service of the convent. For the rest, he was lame and sufficiently unprepossessing in appearance and manner to be secure against turning the head of the most romantic novice that ever entered whitewashed cell.

On this February morning he came in to light his pipe and to grumble at the smoke that drifted out upon him as he repaired the old hen-house. Perhaps by virtue of having listened to his complaints, Marie felt free to begin upon hers. He had small sympathy, being a firm and devoted adherent of the Reverend Mother. Moreover, he was skeptical about her prowess. Any woman could cook-his three wives had been marvels in the kitchen. Onlywhat good was it to him when they all

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"And what is it that I can make of nothing?" Her accents were despairing. What herbs he had brought I cannot tell; but it seems that they were all wrong, and that there was no reasonable hope of anything more coming from the concoction than another pigs' mess.

Perhaps the fine irony of the last thought was lost upon Benoist, for he observed, meditatively: "My second knew all that is to be known of omelettes."

Clash went the saucepan on the coals. How Marie managed this particular triumph I do not know; but I have seen her in the divine madness at other times. In the end she set it smoking before Benoist and stood with her arms

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a good woman and "-he finished the dish-" a good cook."

"Do you pretend to me, maker-ofhen-houses-me, daughter of a burgomaster-?"

"Madame "-he bowed as he had seen the gentry do-"I do you homage. In omelettes I am willing to say you are a woman of mark.”

Marie threw out tragic hands: "But, in the name of God, what is it that I cannot make? Bring me and you shall see."

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From that day forth Benoist had a hot midday meal instead of cold. sausage or cheese; and the pigs squealed fifteen minutes, sometimes half an hour, before the mess of turnips appeared.

No one can doubt that it was wicked

very wicked. Even if it may not be classed strictly among the mortal sins, it was one that cried aloud for confession and penance. There were three distinct grounds on which the cook should have been stung by remorse: she was deceiving the Mother and the Sisters; she was awakening in the abstemious Benoist, long inured to gruel and cold sausage, a new love for fleshpots; she was sadly neglecting the pigs.

It was wicked, Marie knew very well. Confession bubbled to her lips, but she hardened her heart and refrained. And all the while that the vernal sun was turning to the earth and sweetening the grasses, the carpenter puttered at the old hen-house and various odd jobs about the buildings, his heart warmed and lightened by Marie's skill; and she stole away to the secret bliss of her cookery and purchased her happiness with the pigs' discomfort.

But no happiness is static in this pendent world, least of all that which is plucked slyly aside from the path of duty. There came a day when the Reverend Mother, looking from her window, observed that the hen-house progressed

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"Benoist !" gasped the Mother. "Yes, yes, Reverend Mother. I say it is not so. Besides, we are old enough. I will buy her food and she shall cook for me. A good bargain-not? And then you will have so much room for another, you see."

The Mother perceived clearly that there was sense in his words, and, with a little gesture of washing her hands, left them to their fate.

Marie was still awe-struck, and would have run after to implore pardon; but Benoist jerked her roughly to the right. about and pulled her arm through his. "Come," says he. "And where?" "To the notary." As in a dream, she went.

But do you think that this is the end of her story? By no means! Her little day of bliss was tempered with remorse; for so thoroughly did the gormand tastes of Benoist return under her skillful care that they imperiled his old age, and, after some ten years or so, made an end of him altogether.

And when Marie had buried him safely, what was there for her to do but to sell out her few sticks and go back to her old prison?

The Mother Superior was older by this time and perhaps wiser. She looked at the refugee kindly but sadly.

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So, Marie, you are come back to us once more? But I said I would never let you feed the pigs again, and lace you will not learn, and there must be no

"She is to come home with me," idlers here, so what can I do with you?" mumbled the carpenter.

"It is not for me to choose, Reverend Mother. I have lived my life and I am old now. I will do what you wish. I will scrub the floors, or wash the cups, or I will learn the lace."

"I suppose it is true," mused the

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