These labors exhausted Jacques’s strength:  the little dog, too, was worn to a shadow, and so timid from ill-treatment that it was only when some great occasion called out his mettle that you saw what a noble little dog-heart he had.  He did his best to comfort his master, but when Jacques’s sandals were worn out and his cloak in rags, and when he looked forward and saw nothing yet of the holy city in view, though he still tried to go forward, Nature gave way:  he sank to the ground, and the little dog licked his hands in vain to awaken him.

There is a band of angels who each night descend the holy mount whereon is built the city, in search of such pilgrims as have failed through fatigue to reach the gate.  They are clothed in robes woven of good deeds, which never lose their lustre, for they are renewed every day.  It was this company which found Jacques in his swoon by the roadside.  One gently touched his tired body, and more than the vigor of youth leapt through his veins.  Another whispered “Come,” and he rose and walked with them.  As he moved on with eyes abashed, thinking of the rents in his garments and regretting their poverty, he noticed that they too were changed, and were as bright as those of his companions.  “Who has done this?” he said, venturing to address the one that walked at his right hand.  “You wore them always,” he answered with an angelic smile, “but it is this light which shows their beauty;” and he pointed to that which streamed from the celestial walls.

There was much applause.  I saw Afra wipe a tear from her eye; only, a thin-faced individual who sat near me whispered that it was too long.  The delicacy and pathos of expression and language it is impossible to give, and, though old in form, the story was skillfully new in incident; nor must I forget that the little dog slipped through the eternal gate with his master.  Some one asked the troubadour why he did not write it out.  He shook his head and threw up his hands as he replied, “I wrote one book and gave it to a literary man for correction.  You should have seen the manuscript when he sent it home:  not a page but was scarred and cut.  He called that ‘style.’  Now, what did I want with style?  I wanted to write as I talked.”

“Certainly,” said one.  “What did you do?”

“I quickly put Monsieur le Redacteur’s style out of my book; then I published it.  George Sand promised to write the preface, but some busybody told her that I was attacking the whole world, so she would have nothing to do with it.  She was misled:  I blamed nothing in my book but what deserved censure.”

Having heard this excellent representation of the ancient minstrel, we were shortly given a touch of the modern usurper of the name.  A gentleman was present who in the many turns of Fortune’s wheel had once found himself a follower of the burnt-cork persuasion.  He gave us a negro melody with a lively accompaniment on the guitar.  A melancholy Spanish song followed.  The company again dispersed into congenial groups, and in the long twilight you heard the murmur of voices broken by occasional snatches of melody or the nightingale’s song.