Music Welcome to Snewscast, the podcast designed to help you fall asleep. Find us at snoozecast.com and if you enjoy our show, please share us with a friend. This episode is brought to you by The Humb of Existence. Tonight, we'll read the opening to Dr. Vermont's fantasy written by Hannah Lynch and published in 1896. Lynch was an Irish feminist, novelist, journalist, and translator. She spent much of her working

life in Paris, having also lived in both Spain and Greece. Lynch then returned to lecture

in Ireland and was a part of the Paris salons of the Belly Pouca, as well as the Irish

literary revival in Dublin.

Let's get cozy.

Cliffs your eyes.

Relax your body into the softness of your bed. Now take a few deep breaths. first. Mademazelle Lenormont, told by the traveler, the island. It was a warm autumn that year, a luminous exception upon which the last summer of the tree was born somewhat oppressively to the very verge of winter. The middle hours of the afternoon could be intolerable enough in a big, busy city while upon the confines of the south. The rush and war of looms was carried far upon the air, and even into the quietest streets wandered the noisy echoes of the boulevards. Yet, it was dull and flat for the solitary stranger, without interest in factories or provincial entertainment in friendship? It was doubly dull for a woman past youth and all its personal excitement to be extracted from fleeting curiosity and thrills of anticipation. by reason of sex, the stale delights of cafe lounges, and by reason of station the healthier and livelier hospitalities of cabaret and peasant reunions. Traveling back and portmanteau lay strapped in the hotel hall. The train for Paris would not leave until late that night, and to while away the intervening hours, I went forth beyond the town. I chose the farther end of the long boulevard, the middle of which I had not yet passed. down there, the brilliant air lost its clear-ness in a yellow mist, as if flung from the sky in a fine dust of powdered gold. Upon its edge hung the last visible arms of the trees on either side, lucidly of unwanted greenness, the green we note in painted French landscapes brightly touched with yellow. I felt that something fresh, cool and soft must lie behind that golden veil. It led my imagination as a child is led out of the real by the elusive promises of Fairyland. The sound was deadened, and city movements seemed to faint away upon the weariness of the long, hot day. I glanced back at the town. Behind me stretched the dust-eeple of art, and sharpened above it against the tremulous, pollucid blue of the heaven, the profile of quaint church spires and heavy masses of buildings. Ahead my way was blocked by the wide grey river, black where the shadows touched it, silver where the full light shone upon it.

A bridge of gray stone spanned it from the end of the boulevard to the other side, the unexplored. a bridge so old, so worn, so silent and empty, that it might appropriately be the path to the city cemetery. This bridge I crossed in all its glamour of sad enchantment. One of its arches was broken and made a dangerous gap up of the broad quiet waters. There were no lamps, no visible

indication of life about. I saw that it led to an island and circled by a battered and decayed dark wall, with little castulated ornaments that gave it the look of a futile fortress of unusual extent in dimensions. Midway, I stood upon the bridge, and wondered what sort of land might be before me. At first I believed it to be uninhabited, until much gazing discovered a thin curl of blue smoke far away beyond a square tower. It was nearing sunset now, and the island's lying west showed out more darkly from a broad band of reddish glory.

It wore all the more desolate air because of the floating and quickened light above it.

Have you ever, in some quaint French town washed by a wide river,

watched these lovely sunset contrasts on the blackened grain-ness of stone masses, and on the somber placidity of water. The best effects you will find upon the Lwarr, and if you can recall them, you will see better than words of mine can paint. The salient features of that riverview set with towers and a decayed old grey wall. I was saturated with it, and my glance was still wedded to its charm. When a blouse-peasant came out of the undershadows and luminous red upper sphere, like a cheerful, commonplace note in the picturesque mystery of the imagination. Very real he looked, and not in the least like a ghost from other centuries., too, as befits a peasant who has earned his right to nod to his betters, and may have clink-free and fraternal glasses with them. He came along, whistling a patriotic tune with his hands in his pockets, and his hat in villainous emphasis caulked over one ear. Can it be, I asked myself, in a pang of disappointment, that this enchanted island contains the ubiquitous cabaret and that the impossible legend of liberty, equality, and fraternity has penetrated into this home of silence and poetic decay. I interrupted my gloomy moralizing, for which, like all persons naturally gay, I flatter myself I have a decided turn, and hat metaphorically in hand, sued this roadside rascal for information. Yes, people live upon the island, not many, mostly women, long dresses upon the side that ran unprotected down to the water's edge. I might see their sheds if I made the round of the wall. There was a large Benedictine convent at one end, and a cemetery eastward, but no hotel accommodation, no shops, no vehicles of any sort, and but one miserable little wine shop where they sold the worst brandy in all France. Of this liquid I concluded the fellow had been drinking somewhat copiously and left him to push inquiries for myself. I know not why, but the moment I set foot upon the island and heard the slow swish of the eddying river against its projecting base, thought was checked upon mild and pleasurable suspense. Something unexpected must surely happen, I believed, and step by step, destiny seemed to impel me forward in its pursuit. My footfall rang sharply upon the empty path, and I felt it would be shameful to leave this strange spot until fate had spoken, and its voice been interpreted adequately for me by circumstance. How still everything was, and how softly the day's heat was stealing out of the atmosphere. One bright star shone like a lamp over a noble ruin, and for this I made, no sound of living voice, no clang of wooden shoe or beat of hoofs broke the heavy silence. And by this fact, I knew that I must still be remote from the washer women's quarter. There was a look about the low rocks that reached behind the ruins down to the black water, whose perilous stillness was unholsomely revealed by the margin of quivering light shed from the rosy sky. A few yards farther brought me to an open gate. I entered with a sense of the romantic appropriateness of its aspect. Who were those so forgotten, so near a busy city, and so remote from living man? Suddenly, my wandering fancy was visibly answered by sight of a slim old woman in black, who slowly came toward me by a narrow side path. I stopped her with an elaborate apology, and we speedily fell into talk. She had been born on this island 60 years before, when the city was entering its middle life, and now at its close, these had been the permanent limits of her vision. About a dozen times she may have crossed the bridge or walked the streets of the city under.

And only once had she gone down the river in a barge to have a peep at the real south, the ardent rose and lavender smelling south. I pray you, Madam, tell me who I am of restless vagabond, never three months happy in the same place.

Hell life! I pray you, Madam, tell me, who am a restless vagabond, never three months happy in the same place, how life looks to one like you, who have never left the boundary marks of birth, who have grown and lived amid unchanged scenes, and have been satisfied to look for sixty years upon these low grey walls, and the spires and chimneys of that distant city, I asked, profoundly astonished. In the old dams wrinkled parchment face, gleamed a pair of singularly vivid brown eyes that held, I suspect, more wisdom than my dissatisfied and traveled glance. She eyed me curiously one long, eloquent moment, and then remarked, with some astute-ness and much benevolence, the change brought idleness and monotony its own reward of ignorance and content. Further questions about the island led to an offer from her to show me where she lived, an her I accepted eagerly, and together we left. Now revealing all its melancholy charm in the last flushed smile of a lovely autumn sunset. Save for the glimmer of gold upon an uppercasement, the grey street was already cast until twilight gloom, and a faint ray here and there seemed to make its own pathway through the dim, troubled blue of the atmosphere. mistakenly evening was upon us, and the ghost of the imagination would surely soon be abroad among these scenes. But nobody could be less spectral than my companion, both in speech and in looks. She was communicative to rationalness, and when I asked where I could obtain lodging upon the island for a week or a month, as long as the Caprice pleased me, she fixed me in a mild interrogative way and paused as if equally in doubt of my discretion and of her own. There was no hotel, no lodgings that she knew of, but if Madame really desired it, if, in fact, she could trust Madame to be discreet and reserved, She did not know that it might not be managed somehow, but she would not engage herself. I pressed for an explanation, and so a flame was eye with sharp interest and curiosity, that I know not what wild pledges of reserve and discretion and prudent behavior I profored, willingly at that moment would I have undertaken to deny my whole past and give the lie direct to nature. What more potent than passionate sympathy and the old woman, I think, must have felt some desperate need for a willing ear in which to pour her pent-up confidences. The cup of silence to which experience had condemned her was full to overflowing, and my voice it seems shook the brim. She told me then that she was the confidential servant and sole companion of a maiden lady who lived alone with a little niece in a big barrack of a house below the Benedictine monastery. There was a story, of course, which perhaps one day I should hear, if matters could be so arranged that I might sojourn a while beneath her roof. But this also was a promise withheld. Nothing depended on her, though, she had influence. Naturally she added, with a look of meaning that set my heart in a flutter. I declare it made me feel young again, and full of thrilling alarm on the heels of romance in the quest of breathless adventure. I cannot explain how this old peasant had the knack of accentuating commonplace words and of lending them a significance far beyond that with which we are accustomed to associate them. But she did so, and there was a nameless charm and tremor conveyed in her added naturally with its accompanying suppressed intimation of glance. The Benedictine monastery lay in a massive gloom below, reaching an aerial coldness of sharp point and spire along its jagged tops. Fudel gashes in the arches led in large slips of sky and glimmering stars, and its rough stone wall along one side was the division between the convent and the garden of my companion's mistress. That old garden I saw had the beauty of neglect. There were arbors and stone seats and mossy wheat-grown paths. The underwood was impenetrabley thick and only the fine old trees lifted a calm front in different to man's unkindness. They needed no human hand to care them, and so they throw, and willingly gave grateful shade, and the splendor of their foliage, and the majesty of their form. of flowers there were none. A coating of moss bleached and faded had grown over the old sundial, which now was hidden under the branching trees. Some birds sang and chirped as I wandered through the dusky alleys while my guide went inside to consult her mistress. The empty garden showing no sign of care while within view of smoke and fear city activities, is surely not comparable with any other quiet in nature. Restriction adds to its intensity. The calmness becomes almost palpable from the hum of existence afar, and the spirit of the place seems more vividly personal by reason of the narrowness of vision. I was beginning to wonder if it would be possible for me to fulfill my contract should the lady of the house consent to share her roof with me? When I heard a child's clear, joyous laugh, it was a sound of heavenly music to me just then, and effectively disperse the mist which was enveloping my reason. When the old woman reappeared, I was back in the grip of fascinating excitement. We walked toward the house which showed nothing to match the mystery of the dark garden. Three broad steps led to the hall of the lower story, which was offered for my occupation, and inside the large stone hall I noted a little carriage and two wooden horses worked by springs. The sound of Gabrielle's carriage will not I hope disturb Madam. She generally plays here as there's not enough space upstairs. I expressed myself delighted to be in close neighborhood with the child's playground. I was content to reserve my curiosity for another moment and applied my attention exclusively to the question of my installation. vanity I will own was something flattered by its magnificence. There were two handsome salons, a bed and dressing room and a dining room all richly furnished in empire-style.

The best tastes may not have prevailed, but there could be no question of substantial

effectiveness, and already an heir of other days hung round it, and made an appeal to the judgment. As my companion showed me over the kitchen and pantries and other domestic offices, I noted on the farther side of the narrow passage beyond my bedroom, a closed door, which she did not offer to open. My sympathy with Bluebeard's wife was instantly awakened, and that door became an object of burning interest to me. the kitchen, she conducted me through the dining room window into a long, glass-roofed gallery, jutting out beyond the house and seeming to hang over the river, so completely hidden where the rocks below.

The city lights along the opposite bank were visible, and the heavy masses of boats and barges made moving shadows through the dusk. How lovely! I exclaimed, sniffing the soft air delightedly. Here will I sit and walk and read and muse. A month did I say I could cheerfully end my days here. We have no servant at your disposal, Madame. The old woman said, flachmatically checking my enthusiasm by a reminder of the trials of existence. But until you have procured one, I shall be glad to give you any assistance in my power." I thanked her heartily, and inquired if I could find a carriage to drive at once for my luggage to town. There was no such thing on the island she calmly informed me. Nothing in the shape of a wheeled object ever crossed the bridge from the city except the morning vans and the weekly butcher's cart. Once a week the Laundresses wheeled their barrels of linen into town and returned on the same day with the supply for the week's washing. She could recommend a little maid whose mother would no doubt be glad to undertake to market for me for a consideration. and her I could engage on my way to the hotel. I left the amiable old dame to prepare for my reception that night and set forth in the dropping twilight in search of the maid and my portmanteau.

I had the wisdom, however, to dine at the hotel before returning to the island. you you you you you