Motion Picture Story Magazine (Feb-Jul 1911)

94 THE MOTION PICTURE STORY MAGAZINE. "If the gracious lady pleases/' he ventured, "this is naught but a little petition which gives us leave to organize and defend our poor homes from the bandits. The lady's signature would carry so much weight " The young Countess shook her head impatiently. "I tell you, Jacques,"' she replied, "as I have said to all of them, that you must depend upon us and the troops of His Majesty the King to keep peace in the land. What can a crowd of dirty peasants do against armed men? Once and for all, no !" She put aside the paper disdainfully with her whip. The Countess must not be judged hard-hearted for a girl of twenty-two. The relations of the last bewildered immigrant who has been but ten minutes on our soil with the President of the United States are intimate compared to those between the French aristocrats of the Eighteenth Century and the peasants. The gulf between them was so vast that it is almost beyond the conception of the present world in which a man may aspire to anything. The young Countess spoke as she had been taught. It seemed to her an immutable law of nature. Her next words proved her kindness of heart. "But, Jacques," she said gently, "you must clothe your children. They are in rags ; they must be cold." She took her purse from her girdle, and flung the peasant some silver coins. He grasped at them eagerly, and his look was grateful but still determined. "The gracious lady is kind," he muttered stubbornly, "but I am but one whom you see. How shall the thousands you do not see clothe their children and guard their homes?" He thrust the petition at her again, and even caught hold of a fold of her dress in his eager supplication. A wave of indignation passed over the Countess. She felt polluted by the plebeian touch. Angrily reining in her pawing horse, she gave him a swift cut with her ricling-crop. The next minute she was vanishing in a cloud of dust followed by her cousin and jeering servants. The old man raised his knotted fist, and shook it in helpless imprecation. "You are proud, my lady," he muttered fiercely, "but the time will come, the time will come !" The Countess Helene rode blythely on, unconscious of the brewing storm. Already she had forgotten the additional straw that she had added to the smouldering flame of discontent. She was far more exercised when her handsome steed stumbled on a stone in the road. She pulled it up sharply, but when it moved again, it was with an obvious limp. A scarlet-coated equerry was at her side in an instant, examining the horse's feet. "What is it, Jean?" she questioned sharply. "I never knew Eeuil to stumble so." "Alas, my mistress, the horse has cast a shoe." The beautiful girl bit her lips with vexation. "And we have not yet had a single gallop, cousin," she said. "Is there no blacksmith who dwells nearby?" "Bernard le Fer is just across the river," said Jean. "He is a pretty hand at the forge and anvil." "Come," said the Countess. "We will have our ride out yet." Bernard le Fer was a magnificent "animal." He had not felt the pinch of poverty like the peasants about him, for in that age of iron when the chief arguments of mankind were swords and guns, he had no lack of work for his smithy. And in all the countryside none wielded the hammer as cunningly as he. Even in repose the great corded muscles stood out on his arms, bare to the shoulder, as he sat on a rock near his rude shed reading a book. For if he had not felt the pinch of poverty he had seen it and sympathized. Many a hard-earned penny had found its way from the pocket beneath his sooty leather apron to the grateful palms of his peasant neighbors. And great, inchoate thoughts were slowly trying to formulate themselves in his handsome head. Why -all this inequality? Why should one per