Cecil Castlemaine's Gage, Lady Marabout's Troubles, and Other Stories

inze was present, with all the powdered marquises, the titled wits, the glittering gentlemen of the Court of Versailles; but no presence stayed the shout of adoration with which the p

s growing envious of his favorite's favor with l

n which only the eyes of grands seigneurs who could dress Cupidon in a court habit parfilé d'or were allowed to gaze closely, as she left the Fran?ais, after her unmatched and uninterrupted triumphs, and went to her carriage with Richelieu. The suppers of Thargélie Dumarsais were renowned through Paris; they equalled in magnificence the suppers of the Regency, rivalled them for license, and surpasse

is salons is not worth one glance at la Dumarsais. Mon ami! you will be converted to Paris when once y

eat against his once more under the vine shadows of Lorraine. No new magic, however seductive, should have stren

e table, with its wines, and fruits, and flowers, its gold dishes and Bohemian glass. The air was heavily perfumed, and vibrating with laughter. The guests were Richelieu, Bièvre, Saxe, D'Etissac, Montcrif, and lovely Marie Camargo, the queen of the coulisses who introduced the "short skirts" of the ballet, and upheld her innovation so stanchly amidst the outcries of scandalized Jansenists and journalists. But even Marie Camargo herself paled-and would have paled ev

e light flashed on the King's diamond, to which Richelieu pointed, with a wicked whisper; for the Marshal was getting tired of his own reign, and his master might pay his court when he would. Thargélie Dumarsais, more beautiful still at

mpertinence forbidden at my court. I shall sup in future with

e echoing laughter, stopping her ow

u, c'est

of a dagger had struck her; the color fled from her lips, and underneath the de

ette! Who ca

breaking in on the wit, the license, the laughter of her midnight supper, as the subdued and mournful s

ped convulsively on the King's diamond. A vague, speechless terror held mastery over her, an awe she could not shake off had fastened upon her, as though the dead had risen from their graves, and come thither to rebuke h

ed again. "It is so many yea

er to move and startle her. Richelieu alone, leaning back in his chair, leisurely picked

anged comedy, ma chère? Ought one to cr

out her. Actress by profession and by nature, she rallied with a laugh, puttin

e so long been an exile, one may pardonably be startled by your apparition, and take you for a ghost! I suppose you never dreamed of meeting Favette Fontanie under my nom de théatr

dden and violent blow, his head bowed, a mortal pallor changing his face to the hues of death, the f

gony with which a man calls wildly and futilely on the beloved d

have never the presumption to dream of keeping their places, but learn to give them graciously up!-shall I

ippant sneer would have had no power to sting him then. Regardless of the

s how w

terrified, she scarce knew why, a

haze of years, as distant chimes ring over the water from lands we have quitted, reaching us when we have floated far away out to sea-memories of an innocent and untroubled life, when she had watched the woodl

d guilty, beneath his gaze; then she looked up, laughing

e away from Madame la Marquise, and made, after a little probation at the Foire St. Laurent, her appearance at the Fran?ais as Thargélie Dumarsais? Allons donc! have I lost my beauty, that you look at me thus? You should be reminding me of the proverb, 'On revient toujours

nce-stricken-gazed down on the sorceress beauty to which the innocent loveliness of his Lorraine flower had changed. Was this woman, with the rouge upon her cheeks, the crimson roses in her hair, the mocking light in her eyes, the wicked laugh on her lips, the diamond glittering like a serpent's eye in her bosom

I had died bef

ace-a smile that touched and vaguely terrified a

ful. I love but one, and I have lost her; Favette is dea

and left her-never t

joy were stricken from this man's life; and-reality of feeling was an exile so universally banished from the gay s

ter among the elm-boughs, and the water ripple over the wild thyme; she was feeling the old priest's good-night kiss upon her brow, and her own hymn rise and mingle with the ch

n saucer of cherries once mo

harming little story for Versailles. Dieu! how Louis will laugh when I tell it him! I fear though, ma c

ng-eh, ma chère?" laughed Marie Camargo.

I see plainly you love this rude lover of bygone

g off unwelcome memories once for all, and looking down at the King's diamond gleam

iend, I shall die with envy of your g

DLY

OLD ON TH

choly, that will only dissipate itself under a prolonged regimen of S. and B., seidlitz well dashed with Amontillado, or certain heavenly West Indian decoctions;-this

the swells!" and a tintamarre of roaring conductor and bellowing greengrocer, and infuriated females, through which you dashed somehow with a cheer-more shame for you-and a most inappropriate l'Africaine chorus from the men on your drag. There is the milder form, which is only the rueful recollection of seeing, in a wild ecstasy, the chestnut with the white blaze sweep with his superb stride to the front, and of having, in your moment of rapturous gratitude to the red and blue, rushed, unintentionally, during the discussion of Fortnum and Mason's hamper, into a promise to take Euphrosyne Brown to Baden in August, where you know very well she will cost you more than all your sums netted through Gladiateur. There are the slenderer touches of the malady, which give you, over your breakfast coffee, a certain dolorous meditation as to how you could have been such a fool as to

Twenty-four hours and the Oaks, if properly prepared for by a strictly medicinal course of br?les-gueules, as the Chasseurs say, smoked perseveringly, will bring all patients round on the Friday; but

, learn what ails him. As far as I was concerned, I was much too sympathetic with the sufferer to be down upon him with the triumphant reminder that I had cautioned him all along not to place his trust in Russley. I, instead, prescribed him cool wines, and led him on to talk of other people's misfortunes, the very best way to get reconciled with your own. We talked of old times, of old memories, of old acquaintance, in the twilight, betw

between long draughts of iced drinks, what I write now. I alter his tale in nothing, save in filling in with words the gaps and blanks that he made, all-eloquent in his halting oratory, by meditative, plaintive, moralizing puffs from his tonic, the br?le gueule, and

Ravensworth Stakes, or the Puppy Cup and Goblet. He was proud of it, and had only one regret, that he lived in the dead days of the duel, and could only go out when he was on French soil. In dare-devilry of every sort he out-Heroded Herod, and distanced any who were mad enough to try the pace with him in that steeple-chase commonly called "going to the bad." It was a miracle how often he used to reach the stage of "complete ruin" that the Prince de Soubise once sighed for as an unattainable paradise; and picked himself up again, without a hair turned, as one may say, and started off with as fresh a pace as though nothing had knocked him over. Other men got his speed sometimes; but nobody could ever equal his stay. For an "out and out goer" there was nobody like Deadly Dash; and though only a Captain of Horse, with few "expectations," he did what Dukes daren't

hen. I had gone through a classic course of yellow covers from Jeffs' and Rolandi's, and I had a vague impression that a man who had had a dozen barrière affairs abroad, and been "enfant" to every lovely lionne of his day, must of necessity be like the heroes of Delphine Demireps'

y dying hard among the red rank grasses, had gamed so deep twenty-four hours at a stretch that the most reckless galérie in Europe held their breath to watch his play; had had a tongue of silver for his intrigues and a nerve of steel for his vendetta; had lived in reckless rioting and drunk deep; but the Demirep would not have had him at any price in her romance; he looked so simply and quietly thorough-bred, he was so utterly guiltl

ike a wit. Would the most dunder-headed Cain in Christendom, I should be glad to know, be such an ass as to go about town with the brand on his forehead, when he could turn down Bond Street any day and get a dash of the ladies' pearl powder? Who ever shows anything now, my good fellow

l wh

he talent damn you as they like. Still you know as he killed Charlie,-" and the Guardsman stuck a great cheroot in his mouth, in doubt as to whether, after all, it wasn't humbug, and an uncalled-for sacrifice, rather scenic and sentimental, to drop an expert at Cura?oa brew, and a sure prophet for Croxton Park, just because in a legitimate fashion

who had their characters shattered by a silvery sneer from a voice that was as soft, in its murderous slander, as in its equally murderous wooing; and all the rest, who, in some shape or another, owed ruin to that Apollo Apollyon-Deadly Dash. Ruin which at last became so wide and so deep, that even vice began to look virtuous when

crimes and crimcons, though as scarlet, would have been held but the crimson gold-dotted fruit adorning the strawberry-leaves; Deadly Dash, a Light Dragoon whose name was signed to plenty of "floating little bills," could not bid high enough to purchase his pardon from society, which says to its sinners with austere front of virtue, "Oblivion cannot be hired,-unless," adds Soci

he man would give his last sou to get you out of any difficulty, and would carry off your mistress, or beggar you at chicken-hazard, with the self-same pleasant air the next day: and I could not help being sorry that things had come to this pass with him. He shot so superbly! Put him where you would, in a warm corner while the bouquets of pheasants were told off; in a punt, while a square half-mile of wild-ducks whirred u

ries, or Caffres. The authorities instead, made him send in his papers, not knowing the grand knack of turning a scamp into a hero-a process that requires some genius and some clairvoyance in the manipulator,-and Deadly Dash, with his lightest and airiest laugh, steamed down channel one late autumn night, marked, disgraced, and o

rely be sure of any who will be sorry to miss us; but we can always be certain of some to be glad we are gone. And in the Killer's case these last were legion. Here and

if he furnish talk for a day he has had very distinguished and lengthened obsequies as friendship goes in this world. Now and then in the course of half-a-dozen years I remembered him, when I looked up at the head of a Royal over my mantelpiece, with thirteen points, that he had stalked once in Ayrshire and given to me; but nobody else gave a thought to the Killer. Time passed, and whether he had been killed fighting in Chili or Bolivia, shot himself

ths' tour there. It was after Lee's raid across the border and the days of Gettysburgh. I had run the blockade in a fast-built clipper, and pushed on at once into the heart of Virginia, to be in the full heat of whatever should com

and, with nothing else to break it, brooding quietly over square leagues of swamp. The orioles were singing their sweetest, wildest music overhead; sign of war there was none, save to be sure, now and then when I came on a black, arid circle, where a few charred timbers showed where a hut had been burnt down and deserted, or my horse shied and snorted uneasily, and half stumbled over some shapeless log on the ground-a log that when you looked closer was the swollen shattered body of a man who had died hard, with the grasses wrenched up in his fingers that the ants had eaten bare, and the hollows of his eyes staring open where

ng, firing from the west that lay on my left. The gray, used to powder, pointed his ears and quickened his pace. Though a weedy, fiddle-headed beast, his speed was not bad, and I rattled him over the ground, crashing through undergrowth and wading through pools, with all my blood up at the tune of those ringing cheery shots; the roar growing louder and louder with ever

onsular Guard at Marengo, but so surrounded by the Northern host, that they looked like a little island circled round by raging breakers. Glancing down on the plain as my horse scoured and slid along the incline, the nucleus of Southerners looked hopelessly lost amidst the belching fire and pressing columns of the enemy. The whole was surrounded and hidden by the whirling clouds of dust and smoke that swirled above in a white hea

through the Federal ranks, and was near the gray plume and fighting for the Old Dominion before you could have shouted a stave of "Dixie." I was a "non-combatant," I was a "neutral"-delicate Anglo-euphemism for coward, friend to neither and trait

abre seemed flashing unceasingly in the air, so often was it raised to come down again like lightning through a sword-arm, or lay open a skull to the brains; the shots ploughed up the earth round him, and rattled like hail through the air, a score of balls were aimed

t, and his eyes had a flash in them like steel. "Charge! and cut through!" he shouted, his voice rolling out like a clarion, giving an order that it seemed could be followed by nothing short of supernatural aid. The Southrons thought otherwise; they only heard to obey; they closed up as steadily as though they were a squadron on parade, despite the great gaps between them of dying chargers, and of heaped-up killed and wounded, that broke their ranks like so much piled s

ime; but I never knew anything that for pace

he said, quietly taking aim-still without checking his speed-at the knot of staff-officers that now were scarce more than specks in a blurred mass of mist. He fired; and the centre figure in that indistinct and fast-vanishing group fell from the saddle, while the yell of fury that the wind faintly floated nearer told us that the shot had been deadly. The Gray Feather laughed, a careless airy laugh of triumph, while he swept on at topmost pace; a

d just cut our way? That the little desperate band "died hard," I need not say; but the vast weight of the fresh squadrons pressed our little knot in as if between the jaws of a trap, crushing it like grain between two iron weights. The Gray Feather fought like all the Knights of the Round Table merged in one, till he streamed with blood from head to foot, and his sabre was hacked and bent like an ash-stick, as did a man near him, a tall superb Virginian, handsome as any Vandyke or Velasquez picture. At last both the Gray Feather and he went down, not by death-it would not come to them-but literally hurled out of their stirrup-leathe

carred and stained just now with the blood of undressed wounds and the dust of the combat, for there was no one merciful enough there to bring a stoup of water; it was rougher, darker, sterner, and yet, with it all, nobler, too, than the face that I had known. I lay and stared blankly at it: it was the face of the Southern Lea

then, with a single stride, he reached the straw I lay on, holding my hands in his, looking on me with the kindly eyes that had used to make me like the Killer, and greeting me with a warmth that was only damped and darkened by regret that my battle done for fair Virginia had laid me low, a prisoner with

hear all that I would tell him of my own affairs and of his old friends in England, but of himself he would not speak; he simply said he had been fighting for the Confederacy ever since the war had begun; and I saw that he strove in vain to shake

nd with his broken left arm hanging shattered, lay on the bare earth in a far-off corner motionless and silent, with his lips pressed tight under their long black moustaches, and such a mute unutterable agony in his eyes as I never saw in any human face, though I have seen deaths enough in the field and the sick-ward. The rest

and intense, I saw it in the Killer's look as his glance flashed once more on to the motionless form of the handsomest, b

ht so; he fought magnificently. How wretched

f his bride. He marr

was between these two comrades in arms and companions in adversity? I wondered if it were so, even in that moment of keen and heavy anxiety for us all, as I looked at the face that bent very kindly over the straw to which a shot in the knee and a deep though not dangero

hat had cost the Killer's handful of Horse so fearfully dear. We were prisoners, and escape was impossible. All arms of course had been removed from us; most, like myself, were too disabled by wounds to have been able to avail ourselves of escape had it been possible; and the guard was doubled both in and out the shed; there was nothing before any of us but the certainty of imprisonment in all its horrors in some far-off fortress or obscure jail. There was the possible chance that, since certain officers on whom the Northerners set great store had lately fallen into Southern hands, an exchange might be effected; yet, on the other side, graver apprehensions still existed, since we knew that the General into whos

shudder shook him whenever it did so. The Virginian never moved; no sign of any sort escaped him; but the passionate misery that looked out of his eyes I never saw equalled, except, perhaps, in the eyes of a stag that I once shot in Wallachia, and that looked up with just such a look before

have ten times redoubled power to see and hear and feel; I was aware of all that passed, with a hundredfold more susceptibility to it than I ever felt in health. I remember a total impossibility that came on me to decide whether I was dreaming or was actually awake. Twilight fell, night came; there was a change of sentries, and a light, set up in a bottle, shed a flickering, feeble, yellow gleam over the interior of the shed, on the da

d a haze the more to my senses. By this time I had difficulty to hold together the thread of how, and when, and why I had thus met again the face that l

ives. I knew, but only dreamily still, that these men were the holders of our fate, and would decide on it then and there. I felt a listless indifference, utter and opium-like, as to what became of me, and I remember that Stuart Lane, and Dash himself, rose together, and stood looking with a serene and haughty disdain down o

cers they wanted out of the Southerners' hands, ten were to be transmitted to the prisons of the North,-three were to be s

ed: the prisoners, to a man, heard impassively, with a grave and silent dignity, that t

ns of this new Rouge et Noir; gambling in lives was a little refreshing change that s

on my own hook, and would have killed thirty more had I had the chance; but I was perhaps incoherent in the fever that was fast seizing all my limbs from the rack of undressed wounds; at any rate, the Northerners took no heed, save to force me into silence, and the drawing began. As long as I live I shall see that night in remembrance with hideous distinctness: the low blackened shed with its f

st them faltered or paused one moment; each went,-even those most exhausted, most in agony,-with a calm and steady step, as they would have marched

reless without bravado, simply, entirely indifferent. They took his paper and read the words of safety and of life-

l drew the fiat for detention;

, bold cavalry step, and his head haughtily lifted; the proud, fiery, dauntless Cavalier

the silence like the hiss of a

s if in assent, and stepped

passed, passed quickly: Dash's head sank on his chest, and on his face there was the shadow, I think, of a terrible struggle-the sha

s in its first fond hours would all be quenched in him as though they had never been; but he was a soldier, and he gave no sign that his death-warrant was not as dear

ng; all had been done in perfect silence on the part of the condemned; not one seemed to think or to feel for himself, and in those who were sent out to their

Lane paused slightly, and signed to his chief to approach him; he held out his hand to Dash, and his voice was very low, though it came to my ear where they stood beside me: "We were rivals once, but

great silent sob; his guard forced him on, and his listener had made him no promise, no farewell;

ief of those to be exchanged on the morrow under a white flag of pa

u alone, General,"

r of horse, whose gray feather had become known and dreaded, thought of possibl

s many of your staff about you as you please, but le

e Southerners who were condemned to death and detention looked after him with a long, wistful, dog-like look. They had been with him in so many spirit-stirring days and nights of peril, and

have slept for my ransom. Though life had hardened me, and made me sometimes, as I fear, callous enough, I could not forget those who were to die when the sun rose; specially, I could not forget that gallant Virginian to whom life was so precious, yet who gave himself wi

ful to see a familiar face from home than to see his through the long watches of that burning, heavy, interminable night. He refused to rest; he sat by me, tending me as gently as a woman, though he was suffering acutely himself from the injuries received in the course of the day; he watche

he had lost, whose love was the doomed soldier's, and would never be his own, though the grave closed over his rival wi

ve that wom

tly, as though rather to his own thoughts than my words,-"Yes: I love her-as I

d s

t one thought i

now grated with dull, dra

eauty that she tou

a faint, mournful sm

rare charm. She is a woman for whom a man would live

except his memory of her, and where he sat with his eyes fixed outward on the drifting clouds that floated across the stars,

t at the deep still woods, and the serene and lustrous skies, till the first beams of the sun shone over

ards me, and the kindly eye

expects me at dawn. I must lea

ingeringly, a little wistfully, then he turned and went out with his g

hat the sun had risen wholly; and I thought o

rge being rammed down: with a single leap, as though the bullets were through me, I sprang, weak as I was, from my wretched pallet, and staggered to the open doorway, leaning there against the entrance powerless and spell-bound. I saw the file of soldiers loading; I saw the empty coffin-shells; I saw three men standing bound, their forms distinct against the clear, bright haze o

s early hours, and I was held there to look on,-its witness, yet powerless to arrest it! I heard the formula-so hideous then!-"Make ready!"-"Present!"-"Fire!" I saw the long line of steel tubes belch out

lay; he was not quite dead yet; the balls had passed through his lungs, but he breathed still; his ey

d for her," he said softly, while his gaze looked

lips;-and I knew no more, for I fell like a man stunned down by him where he

thern lines during the night, told by the Northerners that he was pardoned on his parole to return in his stead a distinguished Federal officer lately captured by him. He knew nothing, dreamt nothing, of the exchange by which h

would see no good in him; sins were on him heavily, and vices lay darkly at his door; but when I think of that grave in the South where the grass grows so rankly

nt woods many tales of sacrifice as generous, of fortitude as great. That when he had related it he was something ashamed of having felt it so much, is true; and you must refer th

RAL'S MA

R

AND CO

e kitchen fire preparatory to the Spring Meetings. In Switzerland there's nothing fit to eat. Spain might be the ticket-the Andalusians are a good-looking lot, but they haven't a notion of beer. Scotland I daren't enter, because I know I should get m

, having passed up to Kings, discussing ham-pie and audit, devils an

a man, coming in. Oak was never sported by Sydie, except when he was r

ne, is that

nsomuch as Keane was already i

n your breakfast! I have finishe

urbelow. We all go in for the dolce here except you, and you're such a patent machine for turning out Q. E. D.s by the dozen, that you can no more help working than the bed-maker can help taking my tea an

oline, or a trout-stream, or a pack of hounds within a hundred miles; the middle of Stonehenge, for exampl

ead and puffed gr

genius. As for the classics, they won't help me to ask for my dinner at Tortoni's, nor to ingratiate myself with the women at the Maison Dorée; and I prefer following Ovid's counsels, and enjoying the Falernian of life represented in these days by milk-punch, to plodding through the De Officiis. As for mathematics, it may be something very grand to

o my moor, of course, for the 12th, but until then I haven't made up my mind. I think I shall scamper over South Americ

natural prey he becomes, and the hotel-keepers, who fasten on him to suck his life-blood, and there are the mosquitoes, and other things less minute but not less agonizing; and there are guides and muleteers, and waiters and ciceroni-oh, hang it! travelling's a dreadful bore, if it were only

t chatter

ernor has been bothering my life out to go down to St. Crucis; he's an old brick, you know, and has the primest dry in the kingdom. I wish you'd come, will you? There's capital fishing and

for me, as my companions through life will always be my ink-stand, my terrier, and my papers. I have never wi

beer and Brown's for a change. Well, I shall take y

s to plunge into the intricacies of Fourrier and Laplace, or give the vigor of his brain to stuffing some young goose's em

erdus in the shades of Holy Henry? Keane, however, was the one exception to the rule. He was dreadfully wild, as ladies say, for his first term or two, though equally eloquent at the Union; then his family exulting in the accuracies of their prophecies regarding his worthlessness, and somebody else daring him to go in for honors, his pluck was put up, and he set him

r Thorwaldsen's statues; but as he was a great favorite with the under-grads, and always good-natured

uncle was a millionnaire-the dearest fellow in the world, according to all the Cambridge young ladies-the darling of all the milliner and confectioner girls in Trumpington Street and Petty Cury-the best chap going among the kindred spi

lope of the Matterhorn, when the boy had saved the elder man's life, had riveted

mire in the trees, and grass, and river, minus outriggers and collegians. There was a general exodus: Masters' red hoods, Fellows Commoners' gold-lace, Fellows' gown and mortar boards, morning chapel surplices, and under-grads' straw-hats and cutaway coats, all vanished from court and library, street and cloister. Cambridge was empty; the married Dons and their families went off to country-houses or Rhine steamers; Fellows went touring with views to medi?val architecture, Roman remains, Greek inscriptions, Paris laisser aller, or Norwegian fishing, according to their tastes and habits; under-grads scattered themselves over the face of the globe, and w

over those dreadful nervous Eastern Counties tenders, through that picturesque and beautiful country that does permutations with such laudable pers

his curry at the Beeches. You'll like the old boy; he's as hot and choleric, and as genial and good-hearted, as any old brick that ever walked. He was born as sweet-tempered and soft-mouthed as mamma when an el

ow to govern India,' and recollections of 'When I served with Napier.' What a fool I was

mmended, so that the house and the estate present a peculiar compendium of all theories of architecture, and a general exhibition of all sorts of tastes. He's his hobbies; pouncing on and apprehending small

re, I s

o lively a young lady to run in harness for anybody, though she's soft-mouthed enough when she's led. Mare! No, Fay's his niece-my cousin. Her fat

wish I'd known that. One of those Indian girls, I bet, tanned brown as a berry, flirts à outrance, has run the gauntlet o

g in the midst of Creswickian landscapes, with woodlands, and cottages, and sweet fresh stretches

lory, to the box, than which no imperial throne could have offered to him one-half so delightful a seat. "Governor never keeps screws. What a crying shame we're not allowed to keep the sorries

flying up in small simoons, and the rooks cawing in supreme

my life, the old place looks very jolly. What have you hung all that armor up for;-to make believe our ancestors dwelt in these marble halls?

tatic delight, and throwing herself into the Cantab's arms, who received her with no less cordi

o come and see my aviary, and to teach me pistol-shooting (because Julia Dupuis can shoot splendidly, and talks of joining the Rifles), and to show me how to do Euclid, and to amuse me, and to play with me, and to tell me which is the prettiest of

in public, Little Fay in private life. There, you know one anoth

most welcome to the Beeches, and my uncle will scold me frightfully for giving

or Sydie myself," smiled Keane. "I am sure he is v

ersions. He looked at Fay Morton, however, and saw she was not an Indianized girl after all. She was

with little

English air c

vernor, Fay?" r

l you look! Confound you, why didn't you tell me what train you were coming by? Devil take you,

is Sydie's friend, Mr. Keane; you

, hale, handsome old fellow, with gray moustaches and a high

I thinking? I was pleased to see that boy, I suppose. More fool I, you'll say, a lazy, good-for-nothing young dog like him. Don't let me keep you standing in the hall. Cursed cold, isn't it? and there's Little Fay in muslin! Ashton, send some hot wate

he had consented to pronounce judgment on the puppies, "what a splendid head that man has you broug

, Bion, Theophrastes, and Co.; such a giant of mathematical knowledge, and all other knowledge, too, that every day, when he passes under Bacon'

little thing with the black nose best, dear.) Who is he? Wha

years older than you. His name on the rolls is Gerald, I believe, and he dwells in the shadow of Mater, beyond the rea

ome. It was stupid

ladies are too insignificant atoms of creation for him to criticise.

ike fun and nonsense, I pity him; but if he despise me ever so much for it, I shall enjoy myself before him, and in spite of

of him, Fay, a

"and I will smoke a cigar with him afte

f gloves you do no su

hat little liver-colored darling is too pretty to be kille

ses with the deepest affection, and was c

d you must make allowances. I call her the fairy of the Beeches, God bless her! She nursed me last winter, when I was at death's door from these cursed cold winds, sir, better than Miss

hem up, Genera

l shook wi

uncommonly glad to leave it off and lock it out of sight when they can. What do you think of the kennels? I say, Sydie, confound

his back after examination of the pups; "can't

ag, then?" deman

is to the Spring Meetings, and his grays are the sweetest pair of goers-the leaders especially-that ever you saw in harness. We came

ed you meant what you said, and I had Harris in about it, and he swore the coach-house was as full of traps as ever it could hold, so I had my tax-cart and Fa

dear go

wn words? Here it is in black and white.-'P. S. I shall bring my Coach down with me.' There, what do you say now? Confound you, what are you laughing at? I don't see anything to laugh at. In my day, young fel

and now keeps ahead of all other vehicles on all highways. A first-class Coach, that will tool me through the tortuous lanes and treacherous pitfalls of the Greats with flying colors. My Coach! Bravo, General! that's t

o all your confounded slang? How could I know? Devil take you, Sydie, why can't you write common English? You young

cool of you, Master Sydie, to have forced me on t

blanche to ask whom he would, and unexpected guests are always most welcome; not that you

e quarters for him," said Miss Fay, with a glance at The Coach to see h

have to say to me as poor Voltaire to his troublesome abbé, 'Don Quichotte prenait l

s do, however grand and supercilious he may look. He has lived among all those men and books

enough of her thoughts, "that if your uncle is glad to see me, you are not, and that Sydie was very stupid not to bring down on

but I was not thinking exactly that; I don't want any of Sydie's friends-I detest boys-but I certainly was thinking that as you look down on everyth

smiled

her, to be able to judge what you like and what you don't like; but certainly I must admit, that caressing the little round heads o

up at him a

it not an open question whether the live dog or sheepsk

acaulay's or Arago's brain weighs

andy; that Richelieu had the weakness to be prouder of his bad poems than his magnificent policies; and that Pope and Byron had the folly to be more tenacious of a glance at their

peech from this volatile little puss, an

ey cannot judge of his fault. Richelieu, in all probability, amused himself with his verses as he amused himself with his white kitten and its cork, as a délassement; had he piqued himself upon his poetry, as they say, he would have turned poetaster instead of politician. As for the other two, you must remember that Pope's deformity made him a subject of ridicule to the woman he was fool enough to worship, and Byron, poor fellow, was over-susceptible on all points, or he would scarcely

inute, then she flashed he

your love for mathematics is wise, and my love for Snowdrop foolish; it may be

rotting up; "your tongue would run on forever if nobody stopp

e la

s, was cut too far in her infancy, and the

ay. "Nobody has put the curb on

y does wonders with the wildest fillies. Som

your toilette. I never have my soup cold and my curry overdone. To wait for his dinn

iant-colored garden, and the walls echoing with the laughter of Sydie and his cousin, the young lady keeping true to her avowal of "not caring for Plato's presence." "Plato," howev

d of him, Fay," whispered Sydie, bend

empt. Neither the whisper nor the moue escaped Kean

ed the General, after dessert

ce, she put one in her own mouth, struck a fusee, and, handing the case to Keane, said, with a saucy smile

a sublunary indulgence, wil

w; "and if you would like to further rival George Sand, I

ibbon-ties the seal of those but a trifle better than Mephistopheles, I don't think I will change it," responded Littl

aid the little lady, v

see, you've never had anybody to be afra

rejoined Fay, disdainfully; "only I do wish, Sydie, that yo

quite otherwise; nor yet the gove

domestic women; that he thought girls should be very subdued and retiring; that they should work well, and not care much for society; at all of which, being her extreme antipodes, Little Fay would be vehemently wrathful. She would get on her pony without any saddle in her evening dress, and ride him at the five-bar gate in the stable-yard; she would put on Sydie's smoking-cap, and look very pretty in it, and take a Queen's on the divan of the smoking-room, reading Bell's Life, and asking Keane how much he would bet on the Octo

ton. Those horses are not fit to be driven by any one,

he groom that came with them told her they were almost more than he could manage, their own coachman begged and implored, Keane reasoned quietly, all to no purpose. The rosebud had put out its little wilful thorns; Keane's words added fuel to the fire. Up she sprang, lo

sh air, and capable of enjoying them still more but for an inward misgiving. His presentiment was not without its grounds. He had walked about a mile and a half round the avenue, when a cloud of dust told him what was up, and in the distance came the

it but to stand straight in the animals' path, catch their heads, and throw them back on their haunches. Luckily, his muscles were like iron-luckily, too, the colts had come a long way, and were not fresh. He stood like a rock, and checked them; running a very close risk

desirous of breaking your neck, will you e

generous and brave of you to have rescued me at such risk to yourself. I feel that I can never

hat fact i

do feel very grateful, and I would tell you so, if you would let me; but if

up after her, she had caught the reins from the groom, and started

the governor with a few vehement sentences, which gave him a vague idea that Keane was murdered and both Fay's legs broken, and then had a private cry all to herself, with her arms round Snowdrop'

the General was saying, "but you mus

ays to them-who keep all the frowns for mothers and servants, and are as serene as a c

; "and she tells 'em pretty freely, too. Bless the child, s

ess natural and wilful. Grapes growing wild are charming-grapes trained to a stake are ruined. I assure you, if I were you, I would not scold her for driving those col

"God bless the child, she's one among a thousand, sir. Cogna

e also; and Fay kissed the spaniel with eve

n't hate him any mo

r wrote him that it was a horribly bad rainy season in Invernessshire; the trout and the rabbits were very good sport in a mild way here. Altogether, K

hether it is very wise to spend all this glorious morning shut

u been spend

ng Jocelyn under the limes in the shrubberies-all very puerile, but all very pleasant. Pe

ge? Will you take

of Armida, any more than you would admit me into your Schools

ro. But you would not come to the Ac

him half shyly, h

look down on me as Richelieu migh

his own toil and turmoil, regretting, perhaps, the time when trifles made his joy as the

ld speak to me as if I were an intelli

know I think

u think all

sign a treaty of peace. Take me under the limes. I want some fresh air after writing all day

y. Then she threw back her he

ung lady you are. Come, show me your shr

grounds, filled his hands with flowers, showed him her aviary, read some of Jocelyn to him, to show him, she said, that Lamartine was better than the [OE]d

intelligent as this fair-haired one. Fay was quick and clever; she was stimulated, moreover, by his decree concerning the stupidity of all women; she really worked a

nets and councils; and Little Fay, with her flowers and fun, mischief and impudence, and that winning wilfulness which it amused him gradually to tame down, unbent the ch

ng from me, your most interested, anxious, and near and dear relative. Whenever the governor looks particularly stormy I see the signs of the times, that if I do not f

d Fay, impatiently, with a glance at K

write. I wonder if Fay were a little beggar, how much of it all would stand the test? But we know a trick w

hile Fay blushed scarlet, a trick of which she was rarely guilty; Sy

t hard for a man not to be able to sit at his breakfast in peace. Good Heavens! what will come to the country, if all those little dev

, upsetting three dogs, two kittens, and a stand of flowers in his exi

use me, Fay, I must go and hear him blow up that boy sky-high,

the kittens' minds, and restoring the dethroned geraniu

t for a quarter of an hour, a miracle that has never h

ot want t

ane. "I thought we were good friends. Have you

d kneeling down by him, she went throug

is volatile little thing's capacity for mathematics. "I think you will b

you, I always admired you; but I was afraid of

You have no cause. You can do things few girls can; but they are pretty in you, where they might b

Oh, I love

away, and rose, as t

my walk all for nothing, too. That cursed little idiot wasn't trespassing after all. Stephen had

he partridges right and left, enjoying a cold luncheon under the luxuriant hedges, and going home for a dinner, full of laughte

ou, Keane?" said the General,

d startled

ghtily. "That Miss Morton is ver

en-in ones, who wear the harness so respectably, and are so wicked and vicious in their own minds. And what do

eat favorite there, and he is-the best things he

They're both exactly all I wished them to be, dear children; and I must say I am deli

, General,

s in their way. Youth's short enough, Heaven knows; let 'em enjoy it, say I, it don't come back again. Don't say anything to him about it; I want to have some fun with him. They've settled it all, of course, long ago; but he hasn't conf

is cap over his eyes. The sun

t?" cried Fay, r

id Keane, coldly,

er, but the frost had gathered round him that the sunny atmosphere of the Beeches had melted; and Fay, though she tried to tease, and to coax, and to win hi

that night, he heard S

eyes; but, nevertheless, I must go and see Kingslake from John's next Tuesday, because I've prom

th with a bitter sig

have loved you more

with a shock to discover, too late, that she had stolen from him unawares the heart he had so long refused to any woman. With his high intellect and calm philosophy, after his years spent in severe science and cold solitude, the hot wel

lippers and his dressing-gown round him, smoking his last cheroot

shooting-box that's to let four miles off; that'll be plenty large enough for me and my old chums to smoke in and chat over bygone times, and it will do our hearts good-freshen us up a bit to see those young things enjoying themselves. My Little Fay will be the pre

the Beeches again. He went back to his rooms, whose dark monastic gloom in the dull October day seemed to close round him like an iron shroud. Here, with his books, his papers, his treasures of intellect, science and art, his "mind a kingdom

r, "I've seen your game, though you thought I didn't. How

because, you see, if you let me have a few cool hundreds I can

ying hide-and-seek with me; I can always see through a milestone when Cupid is behind it; and there's no need to beat round the bu

d the Cantab threw himself back and laughed till he cried, and Snow

ie-I don't know what you are laughing at, do you

ou're laboring under a

ul, I don't think you know what you a

, but there it is-you've an idea that Fay and I are in love with one

aring at him, and looking decidedly apoclep

r she likes. Is it possible that two people who broke each other's toys, and teased each other's lives out, and caught the measles of each other, from their cradle upwards, should fall in love with each other when they grow up? Besides, I don't intend to marry for the next twenty years,

you won't marry your cou

or-ten times over, no! I wouldn't marr

re no more worthy of the affection and the interest I've been fool enough to waste on you than a tom-cat. You're an abominably selfish, ungrateful, unnatural boy; and though you are poor Phil's son, I will tell you my mind, sir; and I m

"but Fay cares no more for me than for those geraniums. We a

about it. You know well enough that it has been the one delight of my life, a

is hand affectionately on the General's shoulder, "did it never occur to you that though the pretty castle's knocked down, there may be much nicer

u and she are two heartless, selfish, u

Gene

osed to her in a corner, thinking to get some of my money. Some swindler, or Italian refugee, or blackleg, I'll be bound-taken her in, made her think him an angel, and will persuade her to run

a swindler or a

eral, pausing in the mid

respond

he might as well have fallen in love with the man in the

s self, 'tisn't likely the govern

teful little jade, how dare she go and smash all my plans like that? and if I ever set my heart on anything, I set it on that match. Keane! he'll no more love anybody than the stone cherubs on the terrace. He's a splendid head, but his heart's every atom as cold as granite. Love her? Not a bit of it. When I told him you were going to

idn't he go off like a shot two days after, when we meant him to stay on a month longer? Can't

don't believe in anything, I hate everybody and everything, I tell you; and I'm a gr

she will, you

she won't, and th

d darted out of the bay-window to cool himself. Half way a

y Keane cares a str

say. It's

o allow her to be so much with him!" growled the General, with many grunts and half-audible oaths,

is own room looked sombre and dark, without any sunshine on its heavy oak bookcases, and massive library-table, and dark bronzes. His pen moved quickly, his head was bent over the paper, his mouth sternly set,

ff his gown, tossed up his cap, and performed a pas d'extase on the spot. Isn't it delightful to be so beloved? Granta looks very delicious to-da

tty

le and iron. I say. What do you think

can I

for a hundred years! By George! nothing less than tha

n of his Times. For the life of him, with all

dea! I never was so astonished in all my days. Mar

tranquilly, though the rapid glance and invol

le monkey, and I'm very fond of her, but I wouldn't put the halter round my neck for any woman going

nothing for

l too like one another, too full of devilry and carelessness, to assimilate. Isn't it the delicious contrast and fiz of the sparkling acid of divine lemons with the contrariety of the fiery spirit of beloved rum that makes the delectable union known

roit manner in which he had cut the Gordian knot that the General

on the sloppy streets; the youth he thought gone for ever was come back to him. Oh, strange stale story of Hercules and Omphale, old as the hills, and as eternal! Hercules goes on in his strength slaying his hydra and his Laomedon

What Will He Do With It?" or the "Feuilles d'Automne," for the sake of that clear autograph, "Gerald Keane, King's Coll.," on its fly-leaf. A pretty picture she made, with her handsome spaniels; and she was so inten

hands and dre

t hate me

on one side with

and hardly bid me good-bye. You would not have

oluntarily, and

Fay, my own darling, will you come and brighten my life? It has been

d acknowledged her master. She loved him, and told him so with that frankness and fo

afraid of me," whispere

, n

ad never brought me here to

laintively. "I was a child then,

months ago, may I a

pered Fay, lifting her face to his, "to be petted

have the heart to find fault

hat's this?" cried a

g-pot in the other, too astonished to keep his amazement to himself. Fay would fain have turned

forgive me? I have a great deal to say to you, but I must ask

ul, Keane, I should as soon have thought of one of the stone cherubs, or that bronze Milton. Never mind, one lives and learns. Mind? Devil take me, what am I talking ab

mischief, but a new blush, "as he h

Keane's hands vehemently. "I was a great fool, sir, and I dare say you've managed much better. I did set my heart on the boy, you know, but it can't be helped now, and I don't wish it should. Be

wn rooms with half a dozen spirits like himself, a delicious aroma surrounding them of Ma

young fellow. "I should as soon have thought of the

m," sneered Henley of

mfortable," rejoined Sydie. "He did, to be sure, when he was trying

g," said Somerset of King's. "I

gs and putting down his pipe, "she-the

he dress.

scription of it to enlighten your minds, and it was harder to learn than six books of Horace. The bridesmaids wore tarlatane à la Princesse Stéphanie, t

languages are bad enough to learn, but women's living language of fashion is ten hundred times worse. T

de it rather a damp affair. One would scarcely think women were so anxious to marry, to judge from the amount of grief they get up at a friend's sacrifice. It looks uncommonly like envy; but it isn't, we're sure! The ball was like most other balls: alternate waltzing and flirtation, a vast lot of nonsense talked, and a vast lot of champagne drunk-Cupid running about in every direction, and a tremendous run on all the amatory poets-Browning and Tennyson being worked as hard as cab-horses, and used up pretty much as those quadrupeds-dandies suffering self-inflicted torture from tight boots, and saying, like Cra

OF A CRA

R

WN LEAF IN A

tars shining out from a purple mist on to the Campanile near, and the slopes of Bellosguardo in the distance. It was intensely hot; not all the iced wines on his table could remove the oppressive warmth of the evening air, which made both

a vagrant Bohemian instead of an English peer, there might have been pictures on the walls of the R. A. to console one for the meretricious daubs and pet vulgarities of nursery episodes, hideous babies, and third-class carriage interiors, which make one's accustomed annual visit to the rooms that once saw the beauties of Reynolds, an

ty, with a low Greek brow and bronze-dark hair, and those large, soft, liquid eyes that you only see in a Southern, and that looked at you from the sketch with an earnest, wistful regard, half childlike, half

ays gone by, a souvenir of one of his loves more lasting than souvenirs of such episodes in one's life often are, if merely trusted to that inconstant capricieuse

y, as he took it from me and put it behind him, with its face

? I had not half done looking

't care to

cau

e gives me a twinge of what I oug

any woman

e w

ntalize over it, and make it a stalking-horse whereby to magnify our sins and consign us more utterly to perdition, while they do for themselves a little bit of poetic morality cheaply; but in reality there are uncomm

d women, perhaps, and it was not of

t sort,

h deeper gloom on his face than I remembered to have seen there any time before. I was sorry I had chanced to light upon a sketch that had brought him back such pa

n you can tell me whether I was a fool who made one grand mistake, or a sensible man

ed round Giotto's Tower, where, in centuries past, the Immortal of Florence had sat dreaming of the Paradiso, the mortals passing by whispering him as "the man who had seen hell," and the light wi

to spend my days in the mountains with my sketching-block and my gun. But I did not like Eaux Bonnes; it was intensely warm. There were several people who knew me really; no end of others who got hold of my name, and wanted me to join their riding-parties, and balls, and picnics. That was not what I wanted, so I left the place and went on to Luz, hoping to find solitude there. That valley of Luz-you know it?-is it not as lovely as any artist's dream of Arcadia, in the evening, when the sunset light has pas

working for till one's death; a man should never give up the field while he has life left in him. Well! I went to Luz, and spent a pleasant week or so there, knocking over a few chamois or izards, or sketching on the sides of

to linger over the prelude to his story, and shrink from going on with

in that part of the Midi at all, so I went. The gods favored me, I remember; there were no mists, the sun was brilliant, and the great amphitheatre was for once unobscured; the white marble flashing brown and purple, rose and golden, in the light; the cascades tumbling and leaping down into the gigantic basin; the vast plains of snow glittering in the sunshine; the twin rocks standing in the clear air, straight and fluted as any two Corinthian columns hewn and chiselled by man. Good Heaven! before

ow or other, I lost the way, and could not tell where I was, whether St. Sauveur was to the left or the right, behind me or in front of me. The horse, a miserable little Pyrenean beast, was too frightened by the lightning to take the matter into his hands as he had done on the road through the Chaos, and I saw nothing for it but to surrender and come to grief in any way the elements best pleased; swearing at myself for not having stayed at the inn at Gavarnie or Gedre; wishing myself at the vilest mountain auberge that ever sheltered men and mules pêle-mêle; and calling myself hard names for not having listened to my landlady's dissuasions of that morning as I left her door, from my project of going to Gavarnie without a guide, which seemed to her the acme of all she had ever known or heard of English strangers' fooleries. The storm only increased, the great black rocks echoing the roll of the thunder, and the Gav

hospitable roof that would not admit me under it. I knocked again, inclined to pick up a piece of granite and beat the panel in; and at last a face-an old wo

t my way coming from Gavarnie, and am drenched through. I will pay y

ike coals through

r an inn? Come in if you want shelter, in Heaven's name

h looked like part, and a very ruined part, too, of what had probably been, in the times of Henri-Quatre and his grandfather, a feudal chateau fenced in by natural ramparts from the rocks that surrounded it, shutting in the green slope on which it stood, with only one egress, the path through which I had ascended, into the level plain below. She marshalled me through this covered way into an interior passage, dark

ger qui vient chercher un abri pou

t of a child, looking up in my face with her soft clear eyes. She was like--No matter! you have seen that crayon-head, it is but a portrayal of a f

with relu

brook and

and childh

ays, except in a moment of weakness. Caramba! why has one any weaknesses at all? we ought not to have any; we live in an atmosphere that would kill them all if they were not as obstinate and indestructible as

ured on its way, and the dusky, sultry clouds brooded nearer the earth, and the lights were lit in the distant windows of the palace of the Marchese Ac

arkened again by the shadow cast on it from the pilla

uld be either daughter or grand-daughter, or any relation at all to her. In that room she looked more as one of these myrtles might do, set down in the stifling gloomy horrors of a London street than anything else, save that in certain traces about the chamber, as I told you, there were relics of

you will,' she said, coming forward to me timidly yet frankly. 'Cazot tells me

irthplace, the girl forgot that I was a foreign tourist, unknown to her, and indebted to her for an hour's shelter, and before my impromptu supper was over I had drawn from her, by a few questions which she was too much of a child and had too little to conceal not to answer with a child's ingenuousness, the whole of her short history, and the explanation of her anomalous position. Her name was Florelle de l'Heris, a name once powerful enough among the nobles of the Midi, and the old woman, Madame Cazot, was her father's foster-sister. Of her family, beggared in common with the best aristocracy of France, none were now left; they had dwindled and fallen away, till of the once great house of L'Heris this child remained alone its representative: her mother had died in her infancy, and her father, either too idle or too broken-hearted to care to retrieve his fortunes, lived the life of a hermit among these ruins where I now found his daughter, educating her himself till his death, which occurred when she was only twelve years old, leaving her to poverty and obscurity, and such protection and companionship as her old nurse Cazot could afford her. Such was the story Florelle de l'Heris told me as I sat there that evening waiting till the clouds should clear and the mists roll off enough to l

inual refrain, and the soft gazelle eyes of my young chatelaine glancing from my sketches to me with that mixture of shyness and fearlessness, innocence and candor, which gave so great a charm to her manner. She was a new study to me, both for my palette and my mind-a pretty fresh toy to amuse me

m Luz, I fear,' she said, na?vely, looking up at me with her large clear fawn-like eyes-eye

g-hound at her feet, and the setting sun, all the brighter for its past eclipse, bathing her in light. I can al

have any, m'sieu? Those that would suit me would be bad company for Ma'amselle Florelle, and those that should seek her never do. I recollect the time, m'sieu, when the highest in all the departments were glad to come to the bidding of a De l'Heris; but generations have gone since then, and lands and gold gone too, and, if you cannot feast them, what care people for you? That is true in the Pyrenees, m'sieu,

als of that fair young life that had just sprung up, and was already destined to wither away its bloom in a convent. Any destiny would be better to proffer to her than that. She interested me already by her childlike loveliness and her strange solitude of posit

etain much patience for the meditative life, the life of trees and woods, sermons in stones, and monologues in mountains. I am a restless, ambitious man; I must have a pursuit, be it of a great aim or a small, or I grow weary, and my time hangs heavily on hand. Already having found Florelle de l'Heris among these hills reconciled me more to my

in oil or water colors, and its larches and beeches drooping over into the waters of the Gave. In such a home, with no companions save her father, old Cazot, and her great stag-hound, and, occasionally, the quiet recluses of St. Marie Purificatrice, with everything to feed her native poetry and susceptibility, and nothing to teach her anything of the actual and ordinary world, it were inevitable that the character of Florelle should take its coloring from the scenes around her, and that she should grow up singularly childlike, imaginative, and innocent of all that in any other life she would unavoidably have known. Well educated she was, through her father and the nuns, but it was a semi-religious and peculiar education, of which the chief literature had been the legendary and sacred poetry of France and Spain, the chief amusement copying the illuminated missals lent her by the nuns, or joining in the choral services of the convent; an education that taught h

his thanks for an hour's shelter and a supper of roasted chestnuts. She was a simple-minded, good-hearted old woman, who had lived all her life among the rocks and rivers of the Hautes-Pyrenées, her longest excursion a market-day to Luz or Bagnères. She looked on her young mist

ua d'Oro yonder, in her softest moments, when she plays at sentiment. She had great natural talent for art, hitherto uncultivated, of course, save by such instructions as one of the women at the convent, skilful at illuminating, had occasionally given her. I amused myself with teaching her to transfer to paper and canvas the scenery she loved so passionately. I spent many hours training this talent of hers that was of very unusual calibre, and, with due culture, might have ranked her with Elisabetta Sirani or Rosa Bonheur. Sitting with her in the old room, or under the beech-trees, or by the side of the torrents that

in innocent admiration of its loveliness, if she was indeed like that?-This night is

nder my power at once, plastic to mould as wax, ready to receive any impressions at my hands, and moulded easily to my will. Florelle had read no love stories to help her to translate this new life to which I awoke her, or to put her on her guard against it. I went there often, every day at last, teaching my pupil the art which she was only too glad and too eager to learn, stirring her vivid imagination with descriptions of that brilliant outside world, of whose pleasures, gayeties and pursuits she was as ignorant as any little gentian flower on the rocks; keeping her spell-bound with glimpses of its life, which looked to her like fairyland, bizarre bal masqué though it be to us; and pleasing myself with awakening new thoughts, new impressions, new emotions, which swept over her tell-tale face like the lights and shades over meadow-land as the sun fades on and off it. She was

na memoria, una speranza, un punto,' writes the fool of a poet, as though the bygone memories and the unrealized hopes were worth a straw! It is that very present 'instant' that he despises which is avai

I had thought I knew every phase, and had exhausted every reading. I taught Florelle to love me, but I would not give her a name to my teaching till she found it herself. I returned it? O yes, I loved her, selfishly, as most people, men or women, do love, let them say what they will; very selfishly, perhaps-a love th

untain passes near her home. The dreariest fens and flats might have gathered interest from such a guide, and the glorious beauties of the Midi, well suited to her, gained additional poetry from her impassioned love for them, and her fond knowledge of all their legends, su

clear gazelle eyes that met mine so brightly and trustfully, watching the progress of her brush, and throwing twigs and stones into the spray of the torrent. I can remember the place as though it were yesterday, the splash of the foam over the rocks, the tinkle of the sheep-bells from the hil

ort of life could not go on for ever; that even she would not reconcile me long to the banishment from my own world, and that in the nature of things we must either become more to each other than we were now, or part as strangers, whom chance had thrown together for a little time. She loved me, but, as I say, so innocently and uncalculatingly, that she never knew it till I spoke of leaving her; then she grew very pale, her eyes fille

farewell. For the first time her eyes sank beneath mine, and a hot painful color flushed over her face. Poor child! if ever I have been loved by any woman, I was loved by her. Then I woke her heart from its innocent peaceful rest, with words that spoke a language utterly new to her. I sketched to her a life with me that made her cheeks glow, and her lips quiver, and her eyes grow dark. She was lovelier in those moments than any art could ever attempt to picture! She loved me, and I made her tell me so over and over again. She put her fate unhesitatingly in

r two with Florelle. I took her to her home, parted with her for a few hours, and went down the path. I remember how she stood looking after me under the heavy gray stone-work of the gateway, the tendrils of the ivy hanging do

e chords of her young heart into acute pain or into as acute pleasure with one word of mine-of how utterly I could mould her character, her life, her fate, whether for happiness or misery, at my will. I loved her well enough, if only fo

tez-moi vous par

at her usual task, washing linen in the Gave, as it foamed and rushed over its stones. She raised herself from her work and looked up at me, shading her eyes from the light-a sunburnt, wrinkled, hardy old woman, with her scarlet

nd stopped to hear what it might be she had to say. She was but a peasant woman, but she had a certain dign

sant woman. Nevertheless, I must speak. I have a charge to which I shall have to answer in the oth

ck. But she placed herself in the path-a narrow path-on which two people could not have stood without one or other going

I knew that you must love my little lady, or, at least, must have made her love you. I have thought her-living always with her-but a beautiful child still; but you have found her a beautiful woman, and loved her, or taught her love, m'sieu. Pardon me if I wrong your honor, but my maste

old woman, nothing daunted, spoke as though the blood of a race of kings ran in her veins. I laughed a little at the absurdity of this cross-questio

ve Ma'amselle Florelle-you

d involu

d of the institution. You mean well, I know; at the same time, you are deucedly impertinent

chest, quivering from head to foot with passion, her dee

ng yonder, years ago, that I would serve the child he left, as my forefathers had served his in peace and war for centuries, and keep and guard her as best I might dearer than my own heart's blood. Listen to me. Before this love of yours shall breathe another word into her ear to scorch and sully

ugh it was, and a certain wild dignity about her through the very earnestness and passion that inspired her. I told her she was mad, and would have put her out of my path, but, planting h

, new excitement-you must know that you will, or why should you shrink from the bondage of marriage?-you will weary of her; you will neglect her first and desert her afterwards; what will be the child's life then? Think! You have done her cruel harm enough now with your wooing words, why will you do her more? What is your love beside hers? If you have heart or conscience, you cannot dare to contrast them together; she would give up everything for you, and you would give up nothing! M'sieu, Florelle is not like the women of your world; she is innocent of evil as the holy sa

to my love for Florelle, that to the hospitality I had so readily received I had, in truth, given but an ill return, and that I had deliberately taken advantage of the very ignorance of the world and faith in me which should have most appealed to my honor. I knew that what she said was true, and this epithet of 'coward' hit me harder from the lips of a woman, on whom her sex would not let me avenge it, with whom my conscience would not let me dispute it, than it would have done from any man. I called a coward by an old peasant woman! absurd idea enough, wasn't it? It is a more abs

eu, and go?' asked old Cazot, mor

re my horse was left cropping the grass on the level ground beneath a plane-tree, and rode

Cazot had protected her. Don't you think I was a fool, indeed, for once in my life, to listen to an old woman's prating? Call me so if y

he more I regretted having given her up-perhaps on no better principle than that on which a child cares most for the toy he cannot have; perhaps because, away from her, I realized I had lost the purest and the strongest love I had ever won. In the whirl of my customary life I sometimes wondered how she had received my letter, and how far the iron had burnt into her young heart-wondered if she had joined the Sisters of Sainte Marie Purificatrice, or still led her solitary life among the rocks and beech-woods of Nid de l'Aigle. I often thought of her, little as the life I led was conducive to regretful or romantic thoughts. At length my desire to see her again grew ungovernable. I had never been in the habit of refusing myself what I wished; a man is a fool who does, if his wishes are in any degree attainable. And at the end of the season I went over to Paris, and down again once more into the Midi. I reached Luz, lying in the warm golden Pyrenean light as I had left it, a

rew ungovernable. The door stood open. I groped my way through the passage and pushed open the door of the old room. Under the oriel window, where I had seen her first, she lay on a little couch. I saw her again-but how! My God! to the day of my death I shall never forget

e. Look on your work-look well at it-

d my neck, clinging to me with her little hands, and crying to me deliriously not to leave her while she lived-to stay with her till death should take her; where had I been so long? why had I come so late? So late!-those piteous words! As I held her in my arms, unc

as before some altar, praying to Heaven to take care of me, and bless me, and let her see me once again before she died. Consumption had killed her mother in her youth; during the chill winter at the Nid de l'Aigle the hereditary disease settled upon her. When I found her she was dying fast. All the medical aid, all the alleviations, luxuries, resources, that money could procure, to ward off the death I would have given twenty years of my life to avert, I lavished on her, but they were useless; for my consolation the

ent faith, believed and hoped, according to the promise of her creed!-died with her hands clasped round my neck, and her eyes looking up to mine, till the last ra

from me, and his voice quivered painfully as he spoke the last words of his story. He was silent for many minutes, and so was I, regretting that my careless question had unfolded a page out of his life's history written in characters so painful to him. Such skeletons dwell in the heart

is lips looked white as death as he d

mba! why need you have pitched upon that portfolio?-There are the lights

im feel, she was quite certain, pretty complimentary nonsense though he often talked. What would the Marchesa and the Comtesse have said, I wonder, had I told them of that little grave under the Pyrenean beech-woods? So much does the world know of

, the pictures in the portfolio, the doubled-down pages in the locked diary, and go to Beatrice Acqua d'Oro's

race of a da

r come ba

ospection is very idle, my good fellow, and regret is as bad as the tic, and flirting is deucedly pleasant; the white Hermitage we drank to-night is gone, we know, but are there no other bottl

TY OF VI

R

LL A PROP

you never see any beauty in refined women!" Who, if you incline towards a pretty little ineligible, rakes up so laboriously every scrap of gossip detrimental to her, and pours into your ear the delightful intelligence that she has been engaged to Powell of the Grays, is a shocking flirt, wears false teeth, is full five years older than she says she is, and has most objectionable connections? Who, I should like to know, does any and all of these things, my good fellow, so amiably and unremittingly as your sisters? till-some day of grace, pe

covering Constance, a stately brunette, with a mortifying amount of confusion, by asking her, as she welcomed a visitor with effusion, why she said she was delighted to see her when she had cried "There's that odious woman again!" as we saw the carriage drive up. I have a criminal recollection of taking Gwendolina's fan, fresh from Howell and James's, and stripping it of its gold-powdered down before her face ere she could rush to its rescue, as an invaluable medium in

e they can pass through it; at the other, the poor human animal kneels down to be loaded with all his ere he is permitted to enter), does pass my comprehension, I confess. I might amply avenge the injuries of my boyhood received from mesdemoiselles mes s[oe]urs. Could I not tell Gwendolina of the pot of money dropped by her caro sposo over the Cesarewitch Stakes? Could I not intimate to Agneta where her Right Honorable lord and master spent the small hours last night, when popularly supposed to be nodding on

world to perfection; indeed, for talent in refrigerating with a glance; in expressing disdain of a toilette or a ton by an upraised eyebrow; in assuming a various impenetrable pla?t-il? expression at a moment's notice; in sweeping past intimate friends with a charming unconsciousness of their existence, when such unconsciousness is expedient or desirable; in reducing an unwished-for intruder into an instantaneous and agonizing sense of his own de trop-ism and insignificance-in all such accomplishments and acquirements necessary to existence in all proper worlds, I think they may be matched with the best-bred lady to be found any day, from April to August, between Berkeley Square and Wilton Crescent. Constance, now Lady Maréchale, is of a saintly turn, and touched with fashionable fanaticism, pets evangelical bishops and ragged school-boys, drives to special services, and is called our noble and Christian patroness by physicians and hon. secs., holds doctrinal points and strong tracts, mixed together in equal proportion, an infallible chloride of lime for t

globe. Lady Maréchale dies for entrance to certain salons which are closed to her; she is but a Baronet's wife, and, though so heavenly-minded, has some weaknesses of earth. Mrs. Protocol grieves because she thinks a grateful country ought to wreathe her lord's brow with laurels-Anglicè, strawberry-leaves-and the country remains ungrateful, and the brows bare. Lady Frederic frets because her foe and rival, Lady Maria Fitz-Sachet, has footmen an inch taller than her own. They haven't all their ambitions satisfied. We are too occupied with kicki

eric gives them both one little supercilious expressive epithet, "précieuses;" Mrs. Protocol considers Lady Maréchale a "pharisee," and Lady Frederic a "butter

eir nat

se for the bellicose propensities of the canine race, but which i

g-points in common, and when it comes to the question of extinguishing an ineligible, of combining a sneer with a smile, of blending the unexceptionably-courteous with the indescribably-contemptuous, of calmly shutting their doors

n the prettiest women of my acquaintance, over the coffee at Lady Frederic's; are none of them particularly inviting or alluring. And as they or similar conversational confections are invariably included in each of the three ladies' entertainments en petit comité, it isn't wonderful if I forswear their drawing-rooms. Chères dames, you complain, and your chosen defenders for you, that men don't affect your society nowadays save and except when making love to you. It isn't our fault, indeed: y

ree yet from the hand of the spoiler, and is charming-its vine-clad hills stretching up in sunny slopes; its little homesteads nestling on the mountains' sides among the pines that load the air with their rich heavy perfume; its torrents foaming down the ravines, flinging their snowy spray far over the bows of arbutus and mountain-ash that bend across the brinks of their rushing courses; its dark-eyed peasant girls that dance at sunset under the linden-trees like living incarnations of Florian's pastorals; its sultry brilliant summer nights, when all is still, when the birds are sleeping among the ilex-leaves, and the wind barely stirs the tangled boughs of the woodland; when night is down on the mountains, wrapping hill and valley, crag and forest in one soft purple mist, and the silence around is only broken by the mystic music of the rushing waters, the soft whirr of the night-birds' wings, or the distant chime of a village clock faintly tolling through the air:--Caramba, messieurs! I beg your pardon! I don't know why I poetize on Vicq d'Azyr. I went there to slay, not to sketch, with a rifle, not with a stylus, to kill izzards and chamois, not to indite a poem à la mode, with double-barrelled adjectives, no metre, and a "purpose;" nor to add my quota to th

ittle toy duchy on the other side of the Rhine, when they should have finished with the wilder beauties and more unknown charms of Vicq d'Azyr and its environs. Each lady had her little train of husband, courier, valet, lady's-maid, small dog, and giant jewel-box. I

ild disdain, that the other's malady was "purely nervous, entirely exaggerated, but she will dwell on it so much, poor darling!" Each related to you how admirably they would have travelled if her counsel had been followed, and described how the other would take the direction of everything, would confuse poor Chanderlos, the courier, till he hardly knew where he was, and would take the night express out of pure unkindness, just because she knew how ill it always made her (the speaker) feel to be torn across any country the whole night at that dreadful pace; each was dissatisfied with everything, pleased with nothing, and bored, as became ladies of good degree; each found the sun too h

ng homewards down the hill-side paths, and the vesper-bells softly chiming from the convent-tower rising yonder above its woods of linden and acacia-at the Toison d'Or, just alighting with the respective suites aforesaid, and all those portable embarrassments of books, tiger-skin rugs, fl

le dear, he's been barking the whole way because he couldn't see out of the window. Ah, Major Dunbar, charmed to see you! What an amusing rencontre, is it not?" And Lady Maréchale, slightly ou

s all right. Sport good, here? Glad to hear it. The deuce take

o me stronger language than I may commit to print, though, consid

onstance, putting up her glass as she entered the long low room where the humble table d'h?te of the Toison d'Or was spread. Lady Maré

. Protocol pets Rouges and Republicans of every country, talks liberalism like a feminine Sièyes or John Bright, projects a Reform Bill that shall bear the strongest possible family resemblance to the Décrets du 4 Ao?

ing herself in readiness, after the custom of English ladie

ent which announces a woman's prescience of something antagonistic to her, that is to be repelled d'avance, as surely as a he

handsome woman?" whi

ng creature!"

s in search of that piscatory cheer at his stall. Heaven forbid we should give the abused and degenerate title to any woman deserving of the name! Generalize a thing, and it is vulgar. "A gentleman of my acquaintance," says Spriggs, an auctioneer and house-agent, to Smith, a collector of the water-rate. "A man I know," says Pursang, one of the Cabinet, to Greville Tempest, who is heir to a Dukedom, and has intermarried with a royal house. The reason is plain enough. Spriggs thinks it necessary to inform Smith, who otherwise might remain ignorant of so signal a fact, that he actually does know a

under their arched pencilled eyebrows, quite an unhoped godsend in Vicq d'Azyr, where only stragglers resort as yet, though-alas for my Arcadia-my sister's pet physician, who sent them thither, is about, I believe, to publish a work, entitled "The Water-S

eputation of another without speech; they had taken her measurement by some method of feminine geometry unknown to us, and the result was apparently not favorable to her, for over the countenances of the two ladies gathered that expression of stiff dignity and virtuous disdain, in the assuming of which, as I have observed before, they are inimitable proficients. "Evidently not a proper person!" was writt

er, with a charming smile, of Lady Maréchale-a pleasant little overture to

hich our countrymen and women are continentally renowned, she bent her head with stately stiffness, indulged herself with a haughty

nothing better than goat's milk in the house! What could Dr. Berkeley be thinking of

nto the sparkling, yet langui

oman who has seen the world and knows it. Dunbar adored her, at first sight; he is an inflammable fellow, and has been ignited a thousand times at far less provocation. Maréchale prepared for himself fifty conjugal orations by the recklessness with which, under the very eyes of madame, he devoted himself to another woman. Even Albany Protocol, dull, somnolent, and superior to such weaknesses, as becomes a president of many boards and a chairman of many committees, opened his eyes and glanced at her; and some young Cantabs and artists at the other end of the table stopped their ow

se ladies are iced. He tried Paris, but only elicited a monosyllabic remark concerning its weather; he tried Vicq d'Azyr, and was rewarded for his trouble by a withering sarcasm on the unlucky Toison d'Or; he tried chit-chat on mutual acquaintances, and the unhappy people he chanced to name were severally dismissed with a cutting

em so much at Baden last year, was, as of course Dunbar knew, Master of the Horse to the Prince of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz; they would be well received at the Court. Which last thing, however, they did not say, though they might imply, and assuredly fully thought it; since Lady Maréchale already pictured herself gently awakening his Serene Highness to the spiritual darkness of his soul in legitimatizing gaming-tables in his duchy, and Mrs. Protocol already beheld herself closeted with his Firs

out her beauty," said Dunbar, finding he had hit at last on an acceptable subject, and pursuing it with more zeal

miled, and both assented. "Oh

ave heard," went on Dunbar, blandly, unconscio

ly!" sighe

!" smiled th

to the subject he was discussing. "She's copied the Trianon, hasn't she?-has fêtes and pastorals there, acts in

tue and dignified censure of a British matron and a mod

ced in exalted positions, it is most deeply to be deplored. The evil and contagion of its example become incalculable; and even when, which I believe her excusers are wont to assert of Princess

(a dress I heard her describe as "very plain!-serviceable for travelling"), and glanced at my opposite neighbor

ery well. She laughed a little-a sweet, low, ringing laugh-(I was rather in

did not advise, too, that people should not go

ber two with a curl of her li

rd and appreciated by the audience. And yet my sisters are thought very admirably bred women, too! But then,

y, to cover his wife's sneer. He's a very good fellow, and finds the constant and inevitable society of a sa

en her, mo

second Marie

, showing her bea

Savoie-a second Duchesse de Chevreuse-nay, a second Lucrezia Borgia, some would tell you. She likes plea

bly bold person!"

meet this style of peo

more starch; and we know that British whea

less of madame's frown. "You know this

think her, as you say, a second Marie Antoinette, who is surrendered to dissipation and levity, cares for nothing, and would dance and laugh over the dead bodies of the people. Others judge her as others judged Marie Antoinette; discredit t

chale and Mrs. Protocol sat throughout the remainder of the meal in frozen dignity and unbreakable silence, while the lovely

etest rays fell upon me, I swear, whether you consider the oath an emanation of personal vanity or not, my good sir. My sisters returned her

oh, sin unpardonable!-the beauty of the incognita's eyes, touched the valve and unloosened the hot springs that were seething below in silence. "A handsome woman!-oh yes, a gentleman's beauty, I dare say!-but a very odd person!" commenced Mrs. Protocol. "A very strange person!" assented Mrs. Maréchale. "Very free manners!" added Agn

and stood sipping my coffee and looking lazily over the landscape wrapped in sunset haze, over the valley where the twilight shado

a little more kindly to say of a stranger who has never done you

l never be thoroughly broken in-"bravo! women are always studying to make themselves attractive; it's a pity

eaned back with the air of a martyr, and drawing in her lips with a smile

er were ever heard to unite in upbraiding a wife and a sister with her disincli

y you are so desperately bitter upon has any fault at all, save the worst fault in her

e not those who are calculated to give you very much appreciation for the more refined classes of our sex! Very possibly the person in question is what you, and Sir George too, perhaps, find charming; but you must excuse me if I really cannot, to oblige you, stoop to countenance any one whom my intuition and my knowledge of the world both declare so very

se, and followed me. Lo! on the part of the balcony that ran under her windows, leaning on its balustrade, her white hand, white as the flowers, playing with the clematis tendrils, the "paste" diamond flashing in the last rays of the setting sun, stood our "dame d'industrie-or worse!" She was but a few feet farther on

a miracle, mon Dieu! Tell your friends from me not to speak so loudly when their windows

mbrance, but do not give me too much praise for so simple a service; the clu

s tinted! Heaven forgive the malice of women!) She broke off a sprig of the clema

flatter yourself-do not thrust it in your breast; it is no gage d'amour! it is only a reward for loyal service, and a souvenir to

and that had given m

u, as your words threaten, till the clematis be faded and myself forgo

proud, surprised gesture; then she laughe

ure to hazard; it is always the best philosophy. Au r

Maréchale's led her, or assuredly should I have followed the donor of the clematis, despite her prohibition. Even with my "intuition" pointing where it did, I am not sure wha

heard theirs, I cannot say, but they looked trebly refrigerated, had congealed themselves into the chilliest human ice that is imaginable, and comported themselves towa

chale, in her favorite stage aside to Mrs. Protocol; t

handerlos her name-couriers know everything generally-but neither Mills nor Chanderlos gave me any information. The people of the house did not know, or said they did not; they only kn

ersiennes with a semi-presentiment that it was my sweet foreigner who was leaving ere I could presume on my clematis or improve our acquaintance. True e

press herself into your acquaintance,' as you were dreading last night, and won't excite M

idly; by which I suppose she had not been above

at deal of eau-de-Cologne and sal-volatile, I am afraid, last night. Do you think she contaminated the a

hat stamp," rejoined Lady Maréchale, with immense

te, 'or worse' still, then? I hoped her dashing equipage might have done someth

arch of Lucretian virtue and British-matronly dignity, which did not grow limp again throughout breakfast, while she found fault with the chocolate, considered the petits pains execrable, condemned the sardines

the Baroness Liebenfrauenmilch, Mistress of the Robes to Princess Hélène, and to being very intimate at the Court, while the Pullingers (their bosom-friends and very dear rivals) would be simply presented, and remain in chagrin, uninvited to the state balls

heir sayings and doings in that fashionable little city whither they were bound, and into which they had so many invaluable passports. They were impatient to be journeying from our humble, solitary val

waken his Serene Highness to a sense of his moral guilt in not bringing to instant capital punishment every agent in those Satanus-farmed banks that throve throughout his duchy. Lady Maréchale and Mrs. Protocol assented, and to the little miniature gayly-decorated Opera House we drove. They were in the middle of the second act of "Ernani." "Ernani" was stale to us all, and we naturally lorgné'd the boxes in lieu of the stage. I had turned my glass on the left-hand st

hearing, not a proper per

n intrigante! a dame d'indus

e paste

from the R

ted to k

wouldn'

ere sat the "adventuress-or worse!" of Vicq d'Azyr; the "evidently a not proper person" of my discerning sisters-H.S.H. Princess Hélène, Grand-Duchess of Lemongenseidlitz-Phizzstrelitz! Great Heavens! how had we never guessed her before? How had we never divine

such delighted acrimony, from the murderous mortar of malice, recoiling back upon her head for once, and crushing her to powder. What reception would they have now at th

dames?" asked M. de la Croix-et-Cordons. "How did it happen you were not at the Duchess's ball last night?" asked "those odious Pullingers." And what had my sister to say in reply? My clematis secured me a charming reception-how charming I don'

LA LOUIS

A PORTRAIT

e the altar in the Rue St. Jacques; not Henriette d'Angleterre, when she listened to the trouvères' romances sung under her balcony at St. Cloud, before her young life was quenched by the hand of Morel and the order of Monsieur; not Athéna?s de Mortemart, when the liveries of lapis lazuli blue dashed through the streets of Paris, and the outriders cleared her path with their whips, before the game was lost, and the iron spikes were fastened inside the Montespan bracelets;-none of them, her contemporaries and acquaintances, eclipsed in loveliness Madame la Marquise. Had she but been fair instead of dark,

gardens, and terraces designed by Le N?tre; for though she was alone, and there was nothing but her little dog Osmin to admire her white skin, and her dark eyes, and her beautiful hands and arms, and her diamond pendants that glittered in the moonlight, she

ity of going into mourning, but if the Bourbon eye had fallen on his wife, would have said, like a loyal peer of France, that all his household treasures were the King's. Disagreeables fled before the scintillations of her smiles, as the crowd fled before her gilded carriage and her Flanders horses; and if ever a little fit of piety once in a while came over her, and Conscience whispered a mal à propos word i

lustrade, shook off their bowed head drops of dew, that gleamed brightly as the diamonds among the curls of the woman who leaned above, resting her delicate rouged cheek on her jewelled hand, alone-a very rare circumstance with the Marquise de la Rivière. Os

in!-here

g up the terrace-steps, stood near her-a man, young, fair, handsome, whose age and form the uniform of a Captain of the Guards would have suited far better than the dark rob

in obeying my co

her diamond pendants shaking among her hair, and her arched eyebrows lifted imperiously! But he did; his lips pressed closer, his eyes gleaming brighter. She changed her tone; it was soft, seductive, reproachful,

ve you?

her fascinations and intrigues, in the lovers that crowded round her in the salons within, or at Versailles, ove

the sharp points of the diamond rings

have no mercy, that with crowds round you daily worshipping your slightest smile, you must needs bow me down before your glance, as you bow those who have no oaths to bind them, no need to scourge themselves in midnight solitude for the mere crime of Thought? Had you no mercy, that with all hearts yours, you must have mine to sear it and destroy

on generally full as well as the tempters!" th

train? Possibly it was very new to her, such energy as this, and such an outbreak of passion amused her. At any rate she only drew her hands away, and her brilliant brown eyes filled with tears;-tear

ove be angel or devil; he seems either or both! But you love me little, unl

d his eyes shone and gleamed like fire, whi

have I that you give it me back? How do I know but that even now you are trifling with me, mocking at me, smiling at the beardless priest who is unlearned in all

his lips, stirred the stillness of the summ

not lo

irious to the senses as magician's perfumes. His lips lingered on hers, and felt the loud fast throbs of the heart she had won as he bent over her, pressing her closer and closer to him-vanquished and conquered, as men in all ages and of all creeds have been va

eware what you do, my life lies in your hand

welled hand on his lips, her hair softly brushing his cheek, with a touch as

ssumed to please her, of the Brinvilliers' Poudre de Succession, of the new chateau given to Père de la Chaise, of D'Aubigny's last extravagance and Lauzun's last mot, and the last go

, le Vicomte de Saint-Elix, as he struck t

and dropped dead on the grass beneath, laughing at the story of the box D'Artagnan had found in Lauzun's rooms when he seized his papers, containing the portraits of sixty women of high degree who had worshipped the resistless Captain of the G

ickle of butterflies-female fidelity; he had heard Ninon de Lenclos try to persuade Scarron's wife to become a coquette, and Scarron's wife in turn beseech Ninon to discontinue her coquetteries; had seen

l's pa

l himself. From the ascetic gloom of that Languedoc convent he had been brought straight, by superior will, into the glare of the life at Versailles, that brilliant, gorgeous, sparkling, bizarre life, scintillating with wit, brimful of intrigue, crowded with the men and women who formed the Court of that age and the History of the next; where he found every churchman an abbé galant, and heard those who performed the mass jest at it with those who attended it; where he found no lines marked of right and wrong, but saw them all fused in a gay, tangled web of two court colors-Expediency and Pleasure. A life that dazzled and tired his eyes, as the glitter of lights in a room dazzles and tires the eyes of a man who comes suddenly in from the dar

gold bonbonnière. But many a paradise like it has dawned an

e three nobles rushed to pick up the handkerchief of that royal confessor, who washed out with holy water the royal indiscretions, as you wash off grains of dust with perfumed water; where the great and saintly Bishop of Condom could be checked in a rebuking harangue, and have the tables turned on him by a mischievous reference to Mademoiselle de Mauléon; where life was intrigue for churchmen and laymen alike, and where the abbé's rochet and the cardinal's scarlet covered the same vices as were openly blazoned on the gold aiglettes of the Garde d

ed to her by her negro, Azor, brought over in the suite of the African embassy from Ardra, full of monkeyish espièglerie, and covered with gems-a priceless dwarf, black as ink, and but two feet high, who could match any day with the Qu

he was very handsome, and would have charming manners if he were not so grave and so silent," the women averred; while the young nobles swore that these meddling churchmen had always the best luck, whether in amatory conquest, or on fat lands and rich revenues. What the Priest of Lang

oughts, its rigid creed. It had sunk away as the peaceful gray twilight of a summer's night sinks away before the fiery burst of an artificial illumination, and a new life had dawned for him, radiant, tumultuous, conflicting, delicious-that dazzled his eyes with the magnificence of boundless riches and unrestricted extravag

had arisen for him, and Gaston de Launay, waking from the semi-slumber of the living death he had endured in Languedoc, and liked because he knew no other, was happy-happy as a prisoner is

send it in exile to Pignerol, as they have just done Lauzun. Love in earnest? We should lose the best spice for our wine, the best toy for our games, and, mon Dieu! what embroilments there would be! Love in earnest? Bagatell! Louise de la Vallière show

'aime, mais av

where the breeze chooses to waft it. But poor Gaston! how make him comprehend that?" thought Madame la Marquise, as she turned, and smiled, and held out her warm, jewelled hands, and lis

e would ask, resting his l

oftly answer Ma

s into which he had fallen, at the sin into which, a few months before, haughty and stern in virtue against the temptation that had never entered his path, he would have defied devils in legion to have lured him, yet into which he had now plunged at the mere smile of a woman! Out of her presence, out of her spells, standing by himself under the same skies that had blooded over his days of peace in Languedoc, back on his heart, with a sickening anguish, would come the weight of his sin; the burden of his broken oaths, the scorch of that curse ete

d set fashions much more likely to find disciples, without reverting to anything so eccentric, plebeian, and out of date. Love one for ever! She would have thought it as terrible waste of her fascinations, as for a jewel

oulières and De Sévigné, despite their esprit, alone of all Paris and the Court could see no beauty), and glanced in the mirror at her radiant face, her delicate skin, her raven curls, with their pe

s on reputations only second to Lauzun's, and men of the world, who laughed at this new caprice of Madame la Marquise, alike bore no good will to this Languedoc priest, and gave him a signific

d not the sword and the license of a soldier to strike them on the lips with his glove for the smile with which they dared to speak her name; to make them wash out

iest; she has smiled on no other for two months! What unparalleled

s bonbonnière. "Take comfort: when the weather has been so long fixed, it is always near a cha

he never dreamt slumbered within him, woke up into dangerous, vigorous life. Had he lived in the world, its politic reserve, its courtly sneer, its light gallantries, that passed the time and flattered amour-propre, its dissimulated hate that smiled while plotting, and killed with poisoned bonbons, would never have been learnt by him; and having long lived out of it, having been suddenly plunged into its whirl, not guessing its springs, ignorant of its diplomacies, its suave lies, termed good breeding, its légères philosophies, he knew nothing of the wisdom with which its wise men forsook their loves and concealed their hatreds. Both passions now sprung up in him at on

ke all things, gets tiresome when it has lasted some time. What does not? Poor Gaston, it is his provincial ideas, but he will soon rub such off, and find, like us all, that sincerity is troublesome, ev

uronne d'Agrippine her friend Athéna?s had just shown her; wished Le Brun were not now occupied on the ceiling of the King's Grande Galerie, and were free to paint the frescoes of her own new-built chapel; wished a thousand unattainable thing

of the pet Montespan poodle; there was La Montespan herself, with her lovely gold hair, her dove's eyes, and her serpent's tongue; there was Madame de Sévigné and Madame de Grignan the Duchesse de Richelieu and the Duchesse de Lesdiguières; there was Bussy Rabutin and Hamilton. Who was there not that was brilliant, that was distinguished, that was high in rank and famed in wit at the fête of Madame la Marquise?-Madame la Marquise, who floated through the crowd that glittered in her salon and gardens, who laughed and smiled, showing her dazzling white teeth, who had

Rohan-Soubise, on the boy Vermandois,-on any who sought them. Once he addressed her. Madame la Marquise shrugged her snow-white shoulders, and arched her eyebrows with petulant irritation, and turned to laugh gayly at Saint-Elix, who was amusing her, and La Montespa

d Saint-Elix, after other whispers, in the ear of Madame la Marquise. The Vicomte

quise l

that I would conquer him. I have won now. Hush

noble, the heart of a man, you fight me t

ds, laughed scornfully, and signed th

we do not fight with

their gorgeous liveries, their outriders, and their guards of honor, had rolled from the gates of Petite Forêt to the Palace of Versailles. Madame la Marquise stood alone once more in the balcony of her salons, leaning her wh

shone on diamonds and pearl-broidered trains, on softly rouged cheeks, and gold-laced coats, on jewelled swords and broideries of gold, the gray hue of the breaking day now only fell on the s

you permit m

d held them tight in his, while his voice sounded, eve

ou love me

nswer questions put t

held them in a fierce grasp till her rings

ng! Answer

ll have the truth, do not blame me if you

reeled back, staggered

ou love me no longer! A

cry of a man in agony, and she saw, even by the dim twilight of dawn, how livid his lips turned, how a

disguised; but if people will not comprehend a delicate suggestion, they must be wounded by plainer truths-it is their own fault. Did you think I was like a

ce broken and hoarse, a

se oaths are perjury! At your smile, I have flung away eternity; for your kiss, I have risked my life here, my life hereafter; for your love, I held no price too vast to pay; weighed with it, honor, faith, heaven, all seemed valueless-all were forgotten! You lured me from tranquil calm, you broke in on the days of peace which but for you were unbroken still,

en a lover has ceased to please he has to blame his own lack of power to retain any love he may have won, and is far too well-bred to utter a complaint? Your

of irony, full of malice. As he beheld it, the scales fell at last from the eyes of Gaston de Laun

la Marquise stood playing with the pearl-and-coral chain, and smiling the malicious and m

ont fous!" laughed

the dawn, with her rich dress, her gleaming diamonds, her wicked smile,

sin has brought

like fire, holding her in one last embrace, that cl

his for what I have deemed

unconscious violence, and l

ed petals; the blossoms of the limes fell in a fragrant shower on the turf below, and the boughs, swayed softly by the wind, brushed their leaves against the sparkling waters of the fountains; the woods and gardens of Petite Forêt lay, bright and laughing, in the mellow sunlight of the new day to which the world was waking. And with his face tur

idered handkerchief, and called Azor, and bade him bring her her flask of scented waters, and bathed her eyes, and turned them dazzling bright on Saint-Elix, and stirred her chocolate and asked the news. "On peut être êmue aux larmes et aimer le chocolat,

brilliant eyes flashing defiance, irony, and coquetry as of yore, when she reigned amidst the beauties of Versailles;-and in the gardens beyond in the summer nights, the lime-boughs softly shake their fragrant flowers on the

riber'

tion errors hav

oll the mouse over the word and the original text will appear. Other than those, prin

eproduced in this electronic version, the alternative text for these images is set to * * * * *. Rea