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GRAHAM’S MAGAZINE.

BY N. P. WILLIS.

The sun was rising (I think this promises well)—leisurely rising was the sun on the opposite side of the Susquehannah. The tall corn endeavored to lift its silk tassel out of the sloppy fog that had taken upon itself to rise from the water and prognosticate a hot fair day, and the driver of the Binghamton stage drew over his legs a two-bushel bag as he cleared the street of the village, and thought that, for a summer’s morning, it was “very cold”—wholly unaware, however, that, in murmuring thus, he was expressing himself as Hamlet did while waiting for his father’s ghost upon the platform.

Inside the coach were three passengers. A gentleman sat by the window on the middle seat, with his cloak over his lap, watching the going to heaven of the fog that had fulfilled its destiny. His mind was melancholy—partly for the contrast he could not but draw between this exemplary vapor and himself, who was “but a vapor,”^[1] and partly that his pancreas began to apprehend some interruption of the thoroughfare above—or, in other words, that he was hungry for his breakfast, having gone supperless to bed. He mused as he rode. He was a young man, about twenty-five, and had inherited from his father, John Leathers, a gentleman’s fortune, with the two drawbacks of a name troublesome to Phœbus, (“Phœbus! what a name!”) and premature gray hair. He was, in all other respects, a furnished and well conditioned hero—tall, comely, courtly, and accomplished—and had seen the sight-worthy portions of the world, and knew their differences. Travel, indeed, had become a kind of diseased necessity with him—for he fled from the knowledge of his name and from the observation of his gray hair, like a man fleeing from two fell phantoms. He was now returning from Niagara, and had left the Mohawk route to see where the Susquehannah makes its Great Bend in taking final leave of Mr. Cooper, who lives above; and at the village of the Great Bend he was to eat that day’s breakfast.

On the back seat, upon the leather cushion, behind Mr. Leathers, sat two other chilly persons, a middle aged man and a girl of sixteen—the latter with her shawl drawn close to her arms, and her dark eyes bent upon her knees, as if to warm them, (as unquestionably they did.) Her black curls swung out from her bonnet, like ripe grapes from the top of an arbor—heavy, slumberous, bulky, prodigal black curls—oh, how beautiful! And I do not know that it would be a “trick worth an egg” to make any mystery of these two persons. The gentleman was John Mehidy, the widowed tailor of Binghamton, and the lady was Nora Mehidy, his daughter; and they were on their way to New York to change the scene, Mrs. Mehidy having left the painful legacy of love—her presence—behind her. For, ill as he could afford the journey, Mr. Mehidy thought the fire of Nora’s dark eyes might be put out with water, and he must go where every patch and shred would not set her a weeping. She “took it hard,” as they describe grief for the dead in the country.

The Great Bend is a scene you may look at with pleasure, even while waiting for procrastinated prog, and Hypolet Leathers had been standing for ten minutes on the high bank around which the Susquehannah sweeps, like a train of silver tissue after a queen turning a corner, when past him suddenly tripped Nora Mehidy bonnetless, and stood gazing on the river from the outer edge of the precipice. Leathers’ visual consciousness dropped into that mass of clustering hair like a ring into the sea, and disappeared. His soul dived after it, and left him with no sense or remembrance of how his outer orbs were amusing themselves. Of what unpatented texture of velvet, and of what sifting of diamond dust were those lights and shadows manufactured! What immeasurable thickness in those black flakes—comparing with all other locks that he had ever seen as an edge of cocoa-meat, fragrantly and newly broken, to a torn rose leaf, limp with willing. Nora stood motionless, absorbed in the incomparable splendor of that silver hook bent into the forest—Leathers as motionless, absorbed in her wilderness of jetty locks, till the barkeeper rang the bell for them to come to breakfast. Ah, Hypolet! Hypolet! what dark thought came to share, with that innocent beefsteak, your morning’s digestion!

That tailors have, and why they have, the handsomest daughters, in all countries, have been points of observation and speculation for physiology, written and unwritten. Most men know the fact. Some writers have ventured to guess at the occult secret. But I think “it needs no ghost, come from the grave,” to unravel the matter. Their vocation is the embellishment—partly indeed the creation—of material beauty. If philosophy sit on their shears, (as it should ever) there are questions to decide which discipline the sense of beauty—the degree in which fashion should be sacrificed to becomingness, and the resistance to the invasion of the poetical by whim and usage, for example—and as a man thinketh—to a certain degree—so is his daughter. Beauty is the business thought of every day, end the desire to know how best to remedy its defects is the ache and agony of the tailor’s soul, if he be ambitious. Why should not this have its exponent on the features of the race, as other strong emotions have—plastic and malleable as the human body is, by habit and practice. Shakspeare, by the way, says

and I own to the dullness of never till now apprehending that this remarkable passage typifies the steeping of superfine broadcloth (made into superfine habits) into the woof and warp of the tailor’s idiosyncrasy. Q.E.D.

Nora Mehidy had ways with her that, if the world had not been thrown into a muss by Eve and Adam, would doubtless have been kept for queens. Leathers was particularly struck with her never lifting up her eyelids till she was ready. If she chanced to be looking thoughtfully down when he spoke to her, which was her habit of sadness just now, she heard what he had to say and commenced replying—and then, slowly, up went the lids, combing the loving air with their long lashes, and no more hurried than the twilight taking its fringes off the stars. It was adorable—altogether adorable! And her hands and lips, and feet and shoulders had the same contemptuous and delicious deliberateness.

On the second evening, at half past five—just half an hour too late for the “Highlander” steamer—the “Binghamton Stage” slid down the mountain into Newburgh. The next boat was to touch at the pier at midnight, and Leathers had six capacious hours to work on the mind of John Mehidy. What was the process of that fiendish temptation, what the lure and the resistance, is a secret locked up with Moloch—but it was successful! The glorious cheodure of the victim (sweet descriptive word—cheodure!)—the matchless locks that the matchlocks of armies should have defended—went down in the same boat with Nora Mehidy, but tied up in Mr. Leathers’ linen pocket handkerchief! And, in one week from that day, the head of Hypolet Leathers was shaven nude, and the black curls of Nora Mehidy were placed upon its imitated organs in an incomparable wig!!

A year had elapsed. It was a warm day, in No. 79 of the Astor, and Hypolet Leathers, Esq., arrived a week before by the Great Western, sat aiding the evaporation from his brain by lotions of iced lavender. His wig stood before him, on the blockhead that was now his inseparable companion, the back toward him; and, as the wind chased off the volatile lavender from the pores of his skull, he toyed thoughtfully with the lustrous curls of Nora Mehidy. His heart was on that wooden block! He dressed his own wig habitually, and by dint of perfuming, combing and caressing those finger-like ringlets—he had tangled up his heart in their meshes. A phantom, with the superb face of the owner, staid with the separated locks, and it grew hourly more palpable and controlling. The sample had made him sick at heart for the remainder. He wanted the rest of Nora Mehidy. He had come over for her. He had found John Mehidy, following his trade obscurely in a narrow lane, and he had asked for Nora’s hand. But though this was not the whole of his daughter, and he had already sold a part of her to Leathers, he shook his head over his shiny shears. Even if Nora could be propitiated after the sacrifice she had made, (which he did not believe she could be) he would as lief put her in the world of spirits as in a world above him. She was his life, and he would not give his life willingly to a stranger who would take it from him, or make it too fine for his using. Oh, no! Nora must marry a tailor, if she marry at all—and this was the adamantine resolution, stern and without appeal, of John Mehidy.

Some six weeks after this, a new tailoring establishment of great outlay and magnificence, was opened in Broadway. The show-window was like a new revelation of stuff for trowsers, and resplendent, but not gaudy, were the neckcloths and waistcoatings—for absolute taste reigned over all. There was not an article on show passable to William Street—not a waistcoat that, seen in Maiden Lane, would not have been as unsphered as the Lost Pleiad in Botany Bay. It was quite clear that there was some one of the firm of “Mehidy & Co.” (the new sign) who exercised his taste “from within, out,” as the Germans say of the process of true poetry. He began inside a gentleman, that is to say, to guess at what was wanted for a gentleman’s outside. He was a tailor gentleman, and was therefore, and by that quality only, fitted to be a gentleman’s tailor.

The dandies flocked to Mehidy & Co. They could not be measured immediately—oh no! The gentleman to be built was requested to walk about the shop for a half hour, till the former got him well in his eye, and then to call again in a week. Mean time, he would mark his customer in the street, to see how he performed. Mehidy & Co. never ventured to take measure for terra incognita. The man’s gait, shrug, speed, style and quality, were all to be allowed for, and these were not seen in a minute. And a very sharp and stylish looking fellow seemed that foreman to be. There was evidently spoiled some very capable stuff for a lord when he was made a tailor.

And, faith! it was a study to see him take a customer’s measure! The quiet contempt with which he overruled the man’s indigenous idea of a coat!—the rather satirical comments on his peculiarities of wearing his kerseymere!—the cool survey of the adult to be embellished, as if he were inspecting him for admission to the grenadiers! On the whole, it was a nervous business to be measured for a coat by that fellow with the devilish fine head of black hair!

And, with the hair upon his head, from which Nora had once no secrets—with the curls upon his cheek and temples which had once slumbered peacefully over hers, Hypolet Leathers, the foreman of “Mehidy & Co.,” made persevering love to the tailor’s magnificent daughter. For she was magnificent! She had just taken that long stride from girl to woman, and her person had filled out to the imperial and voluptuous model indicated by her deliberate eyes. With a dusky glow in her cheek, that looked like a peach tinted by a rosy twilight, her mouth, up to the crimson edge of its bow of Cupid, was moulded with the slumberous fairness of newly wrought sculpture, and gloriously beautiful in expression. She was a creature for whom a butterfly might do worm over again—to whose condition in life, if need be, a prince might proudly come down. Ah, queenly Nora Mehidy!

But the wooing—alas! the wooing throve slowly! That lovely head was covered again with prodigal locks, in short and massive clusters, but Leathers was pertinacious as to his property in the wig, and its becomingness and indispensableness—and to be made love to by a man in her own hair!—to be obliged to keep her own dark curls at a respectful distance!—to forbid all intercourse between them and their children-ringlets, as it were—it roughened the course of Leathers’ true love that Nora must needs be obliged to reason on such singular dilemmas. For, though a tailor’s daughter, she had been furnished by nature with an imagination!

But virtue, if nothing more and no sooner, is its own reward, and in time “to save its bacon.” John Mehidy’s fortune was pretty well assured in the course of two years, and made, in his own line, by his proposed son-in-law, and he could no longer refuse to throw into the scale the paternal authority. Nora’s hair was, by this time, too, restored to its pristine length and luxuriance, and, on condition that Hypolet would not exact a new wig from his new possessions, Nora, one summer’s night, made over to him the remainder. The long exiled locks revisited their natal soil, during the caresses which sealed the compact, and a very good tailor was spoiled the week after, for the married Leathers became once more a gentleman at large, in two instalments, having bought, at an expense of a hundred dollars, a heart, and two years of service, one of the finest properties of which Heaven and a gold ring ever gave mortal the copyhold!

BY T. B. READ.

BY MRS. FRANCES S. OSGOOD, AUTHOR OF “THE CASKET OF FATE,” ETC.

Cold and white as the bridal blossoms in her hair was the youthful cheek, which a glow of love and pride should have kindled into color—for Harriet Percy, though about to become the bride of one of the most admired and distinguished men in the country, was too well convinced of his indifference to be happy in the prospect. She knew that with him it was a marriage of expediency. That he was poor—that he required means to further his ambitious views, and that, though uniformly kind and respectful in his manner when they met, he had scarcely bestowed a thought upon her mind, heart or person, during the three weeks which intervened between their introduction to each other and this their bridal morning.

For years before that introduction, even from childhood, she had worshiped his lofty genius, and admired at a distance his noble form. He was the idol of her every dream—her hero—her ideal! His haughty bearing, his coldly intellectual expression, which would have repelled a less ardent and romantic heart, had for her an inexpressible charm. And when, at a party given by a mutual, match-making friend, during the first season of her entrance into society, he had been introduced to her, she was so agitated and confused by her various emotions, that she could only blush and reply in monosyllables to his polite attempts at conversation.

Poor Harriet was angry and mortified at herself; and utterly unsuspicious, in her own guileless truth, of any mercenary motive on his part, she was not less amazed than delighted when, after two or three interviews of the same description, he formally proposed to her father for her hand, and was at once accepted. Exulting in her conquest, yet awed by his distant demeanor, she hardly knew at first whether to be happy or the contrary; but loving and gentle as she was, there was a latent spirit of pride and lofty resolution in her soul, which she had never dreamed of till it was awakened by her present situation.

With a woman’s instinct, she learned to read his heart. She saw that the demon Ambition had obscured, without obliterating, its nobler and more tender feelings, and she trusted to time and her own truth to conquer the one and arouse the other.

But in the mean time she would be no pining victim to neglect. Her sweet lip curled—her dark eyes flashed—her high spirit revolted at the thought! She would sooner die than humble herself in his eyes! She would love him, it is true, dearly, deeply, devotedly; but it should be in the silent depths of a soul he could not fathom. Not till he should own a love, fervent and devoted as her own, would she yield to the tenderness he inspired. Not till then should be unveiled to him the altar on which his image dwelt enshrined like a deity of old, with the breath of affection for its incense, ever burning over and around it, and the fruits and flowers of feeling and of thought—its sacrifice.

She would wed him, because her fortune could assist his efforts for the good of his country and his own distinction. She would have bestowed that fortune upon him without her hand, but she knew his pride too well to dream he would accept it, and her resolution was taken.

For his life Mr. William Harwood could not have told whether his intended bride had any claims to beauty or to talent. He saw that her manners were refined, he knew that her fortune was immense, and he was satisfied. He heeded not—he never dreamed of the riches of her heart and mind. But while ambition and selfishness blinded his eyes to her superiority, it was not so with others. A dazzlingly fair complexion, soft, wavy hair, of the palest brown, hazel eyes, intensely dark and fringed with long, thick lashes of the same hue, a straight Greek nose, a mouth of exquisite beauty, in the expression of which sweetness and spirit were charmingly combined, a light and gracefully moulded form—these were the least of her attractions. A thousand nameless graces, a thousand lovely but indescribable enchantments in manner, look and tone, betrayed the soul within; and yet, with all this, she was so modest, so timid, so thoroughly feminine and gentle in all her ways and words, that the world never dreamed of calling her a beauty, or of making her a belle. It was those she loved that she enchanted.

She stood like a beautiful statue by his side. She quelled her tears—she hushed her heart, and spoke in accents calm and cold as his own the vows which were to bind them for life unto each other. She received the congratulations of friends and acquaintances without a sigh, a blush, a sign of emotion—modestly but coldly. Even Harwood himself wondered at her strange self-possession, and while he wondered rejoiced that she had so little feeling to trouble him with. But when her father approached to say farewell, and lead her to the carriage, which was to bear her far from home, her proud resolve gave way! She threw herself on his breast and sobbed passionately and wildly, like a grieved and frightened child, till her husband, astonished at such a display of emotion in one usually so quiet and subdued, drew her gently away, and seating himself beside her in the carriage, ordered the driver to proceed.

Harriet withdrew from his arm, pleaded fatigue, covered her face with her veil, and soon succeeding in conquering every outward sign of emotion, sat still and silent during the journey.

It was the evening of the wedding-day. The bride had retired to dress for dinner, and Harwood sat dreaming before his library fire, when a note was put into his hand by a footman. What was his surprise at the contents!

Harwood stared at the paper in astonishment at first; but he had always looked upon Harriet as a child, and he soon began to consider this as some childish and romantic whim, which required his indulgence.

Amused, perplexed, and, if the truth must be told, a little piqued withal, he hastily wrote on a slip of paper—“Be it so!” and folding it, laid it on the table by the side of her plate.

Harriet blushed as she entered, but took her seat quietly and silently. She glanced at the paper, and with a trembling hand unfolded it. Her cheek and eye kindled as she read, and her pretty lip quivered for a moment. The next she put the billet by, and proceeded, with calm and graceful self-possession, to the duties of the table. And Mr. Harwood thinking to himself, for the first time, that his wife was a remarkably pretty woman, dismissed the subject from his mind, and discussed his dinner with great goût, and the political topics of the day with still greater.

Fair reader! you will say that Mr. William Harwood was a most unfeeling person. But that was by no means the case. He had been, from childhood, so devoted to intellectual pursuits, that he had never found time even to think of love. Had his good angel but whispered to him, at that moment, that his beautiful vis-à-vis loved him as her life, and that her full heart was waiting and expecting his love in return, he would have given it as to honor bound, and have wondered that he never thought of it before; but the trouble was, he didn’t happen to think any thing about it; and I, for one, cannot find it in my heart to scold him, for if he had thought I should have had no story to tell.

Seeing Harriet only at meals, and absorbed in his ambitious schemes, Harwood at last almost forgot that he had a wife, and the poor girl strove to content herself in her own silent and secret worship of her husband—

She mingled sometimes with the gay; but society had no excitement for a mind like hers. She could not long enjoy a conversation in which her heart was not in some way interested. For, while the poetry of feeling was her element, Harriet was not an intellectual person—she was more spiritual than intellectual—her heart supplied the place of a mind.

One evening, at a party, a young English officer approaching Harwood exclaimed, “My dear sir! do you know, can you tell me the name of that beautiful creature leaning by the window? There, that pale, dark-eyed girl in white! You ought to know, for she has been looking at you, with her whole soul in the look, for the last five minutes.”

Harwood looked up; he caught the eloquent gaze of those beautiful eyes; he saw her start and instantly avert them, with a sudden blush, as if detected in a crime, and strange and new emotions thrilled his heart. The hour had come. Love, the high-priest, had suddenly appeared at the altar, and the fire was kindled at length, never again to be wholly extinguished. For the first time aroused to a sense of her singular loveliness, for the first time suspecting her hidden passion for himself, he colored, smiled, and seemed so confused that his friend was turning away in surprise. But Harwood recovered himself, and taking his arm, led him forward and introduced him to his wife.

As we have said before, Harwood was by no means without a heart, but his giant intellect and his situation in life had hitherto rendered him unconscious of so valuable a possession. After listening for a few moments impatiently to Harriet’s graceful and naive conversation with the handsome young officer, he drew her hand within his arm, and pressing it tenderly, whispered “Let us go home, dear Harriet; I am weary of this scene.”

“Dear Harriet!” Was she dreaming! the words, the tone, the look, the light caress, all thrilled to her inmost heart. Her eyes filled with tears, and trembling with the heavenly ecstasy of the moment, almost fainting, indeed, from excess of emotion, she murmured,

“Yes, let us go at once.”

He sprung into the carriage after her, and drew her to his heart. “Oh, William! do you—do you love me? Can it indeed be true?”

“My wife!”

The scene is sacred—let the curtain fall.

At an unusually early hour, the next evening, Harwood returned to his now happy home, and, hastening up the stairs, paused at the door of his wife’s boudoir, arrested by her voice within. She was singing, in a low and touching voice, and with exquisite taste, a simple song which he had never heard before. Though naturally very fond of music, it had happened by some strange chance that he had not heard Harriet play or sing, indeed he did not know that she possessed the accomplishment. The words of the song went straight to his heart, and thus they ran:

Echoing, with his rich, manly voice, the last five words, Harwood opened the door and held out his arms, and his happy and beautiful wife flew to his embrace, with a fresh and artless delight, peculiarly fascinating to the world-worn man she worshiped.

For three months, Harwood was a devoted lover and husband, and Harriet was happy in his love; but he could not all at once, and forever, forego the glorious dreams of his youth—and by degrees he returned to his political duties, and grew gradually stately and cold, and apparently indifferent as before.

And now Harriet was more wretched than ever. Now, that she had once experienced the happiness of being loved, caressed, admired, she could not endure life unblessed by tenderness and hope. By nature, ardent, susceptible, dependent upon those around her for happiness, and clinging to all who could offer her affection, it had been only by a violent struggle that she had forced herself into a state of apparent apathy, during the first few weeks of her marriage; but, once aroused from it, she had abandoned her whole being to the enchantment of Love’s happy dream, and henceforward life was lost without it.

Her husband’s returning coldness and neglect had wounded, but not subdued her heart; and what was the wife to do with all the now unemployed feeling and fancy awakened in its depths.

The interesting young officer, before mentioned, had fallen in love with Harriet at first sight, ere he knew she was the bride of his friend; and, though distinguished in the field by his bravery and skill, self-conquest was an art he had neither learned nor dreamed of. Visiting from time to time at the house, he soon saw her unhappiness, and penetrated its cause. His sympathy was excited—his visits grew more frequent—with refined and subtle tenderness, almost irresistible to a heart like hers, he entered earnestly into her pursuits—read with her, walked with her sang with her—praised her mind and heart—called her “the sister of his soul,” and so adapted himself to her tastes and her affections that Harriet found herself on the verge of a precipice, ere she was aware she had overstepped the limits of propriety and discretion. It was a sort of spiritual magnetism, which she tried in vain to resist.

Harriet would never have been guilty of actual crime—she was too proud and too pure for that; but in a soul so highly toned, so delicately and daintily organized as hers, the slightest aberration, in thought, look or deed, from the faith which was due to her husband, produced a discord, involving the loss of self-respect, and consequent misery and remorse.

And now Love and Sorrow swept the strings, and awakened a melody sweet, but plaintive as the sound of an Æolian harp. They had made her a poet, and she poured forth, in frequent verse, the various emotions they aroused.

Mr. Harwood had just returned from a long journey. He had been unsuccessful in two or three important projects, and, disgusted with the uncertainty attending his pursuits, he had suddenly determined to abandon politics altogether. His heart yearned toward his sweet wife as it had never yearned before. He had been away from her so long! He needed her love now, he needed her soft voice to soothe and comfort him, and he came prepared, not only to receive but to give consolation. He entered her boudoir softly, intending to surprise her. She was reclining on the sofa asleep—pale and sad, with tears still lingering on her lashes, and her fair hair streaming from her childish brow—her lips half parted, and sighing as she slept, she looked so enchantingly lovely that he sprung forward to awaken her with a kiss, when a paper, lying loosely in her hand, arrested his attention. He drew it softly from her. It was addressed “To My Husband,” and thinking himself thus justified in reading it, he did so, with what emotions may be better imagined than told. It was as follows:

Jealousy, anger, pity, remorse and love were at war in the breast of Harwood but, with a moment’s reflection through the past, upon his own conduct, the three latter conquered, and, kneeling by her side, he pressed his lips upon her brow. She murmured softly in her sleep, “Dear, darling husband! do you love me?” and the color trembled in her cheek like the rosy light of morning on the snow.

Harwood pressed her passionately to his heart, and she awoke terrified, ashamed, penitent, yet happy at length beyond expression, for she forgave and was forgiven. She had overrated, in her sensitive conscientiousness, the extent of her error. Her fancy, her mind, rather than her affections, had been beguiled. Harwood felt at once that the dewy bloom of purity had not been brushed from the heart of his fragile flower, by the daring wing of the insect that had sought it, and henceforth it was cherished in its proper home—his own noble and faithful breast!

BY WILLIAM H. C. HOSMER.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

NOTES.

A few years since, the skeleton of a mammoth was exhumed within two miles of the site of the Great Oak of Geneseo, from a marshy spot, near a spring on the upland height, near where Temple Hill Academy now stands. The bones were too much decayed for preservation, except the teeth which may still be seen.

There is a tradition among the Senecas that a people formerly lived in the Genesee Valley who tilled the earth like the white man, and who were skilled in many useful and ornamental arts. Remains of their pottery may be still seen. They were exterminated by tribes of the Algonquin stock, who were in turn subdued by the conquering Iroquois, styled by the Jesuits the Romans of the West.

“The Virginia Indians gave them the name of Massawourekes. The Dutch called them Maqueas, or Makakuase, and the French Iroquois. Their appellation at home was the Mingoes, and sometimes the Aganuschion, or United People.”—Clinton.

“The lights were instantly extinguished, and one Captain Wadsworth, of Hartford, in the most silent and secret manner carried off the Charter, and secreted it in a large hollow tree.”—Con. His. Coll.

In reply to an inquiry respecting this tree (says Dr. Holmes) a daughter of Secretary Wyllys wrote to me from Hartford. “That venerable tree which concealed the Charter of our rights, stands at the foot of Wyllys’ Hill. The first inhabitants of that name found it standing in the height of its glory. Age seems to have curtailed its branches, yet it is not exceeded in the height of its coloring, or richness of its foliage. The trunk measures 21 feet in circumference, and near 7 in diameter. The cavity which was the asylum of our Charter, was near the roots, and large enough to admit a child. Within a space of eight years, that cavity has closed, as if it had fulfilled the divine purpose for which it had been reared.”

BY F. E. F.

“Mamma, Mrs. Grant is down stairs,” said Nora Vere to her mother.

“Dear me!” exclaimed Mrs. Vere, in a tone of vexation, “what can bring her out this damp morning—just as I am in the midst of cutting out this work, too. Well! I suppose I must go down.”

“I believe she always chooses disagreeable weather on purpose,” rejoined Nora, “for the sake of catching us unprepared. I had just time to make my escape before she was shown in.”

And in another moment Mrs. Vere was in the parlor receiving her friend with all the cordiality in the world, as if she had been the very person above all others that she had most desired to see; and Nora too, her dislike of Mrs. Grant being conquered by her love of gossip and desire to hear the particulars of the last night’s ball which she had been prevented from attending, joined them presently.

“I am sorry, Nora,” said Mrs. Grant “that you were not at Mrs. Kendal’s last evening. It was the gayest party we have had this season.”

“I was sorry indeed,” said Nora, “not to be there. We were engaged with some friends at home. Who was the belle?”

“Oh, Miss Linden, of course. She is always the prettiest, best dressed and most admired girl whereever she is. Young Hamilton was devoted to her.”

Now, as Miss Linden was Nora’s avowed rival, and “favorite aversion,” and Mr. Hamilton her own particular admirer, she well knew that Mrs. Grant gave her this agreeable piece of information in the hope of saying something disagreeable, so she answered, with the frankest expression and most cordial tone,

“She always looks beautifully, and I know Mr. Hamilton admires her.”

Had she lived in the Palace of Truth, which, fortunately for her and the rest of us, none of us do, she would have replied,

“She never looked pretty in her life, and Hamilton don’t admire her at all, and I doubt whether he even danced with her last night.” She however contented herself with asking Miss Grant, who danced wretchedly and seldom got partners, whether she had waltzed a great deal, to which the young lady replied,

“No, she seldom waltzed. It laid one open to so many observations.”

Nora, who waltzed like a sylph, could not let that pass, and she replied, with spirit, that she did not think so. Once upon a time it might have been so, but all that was old fashioned and considered in bad taste now, and proceeded to eulogize the waltzing of a fashionable foreigner whom she pronounced beside (as if that were quite secondary) “very agreeable,” and asked if Miss Grant did not find him so.

Miss Grant, who spoke French very imperfectly—which Nora shrewdly suspected when she asked the question—although she set up for a linguist and a blue, said that she did not take much interest in these foreigners, as she thought they generally were very frivolous; when the conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Mrs. Belmont, who was a mutual friend of both families, whereupon a very general and spirited critique was passed upon all their friends and acquaintances at large.

“Nora,” continued Mrs. Belmont, “your dress at the assembly was perfect—your flowers exquisite—I never saw you look better.” Whereupon Mrs. Grant turned her cold gray eyes on Nora, and, scrutinizing every article she had on, from her collar to her shoe strings, as if she were taking an inventory of every thread she wore, and wondered where the money came from, said, slowly and not over approvingly,

“Yes, Nora is always exquisitely dressed,” rose and took her leave.

“That is more than can be said for her or Lucy,” said Nora, ere the door had quite closed upon her parting visiters.

“You may say that, my dear,” rejoined Mrs. Belmont, laughing. “You ought to have seen them last night.”

“What did they wear?” asked Nora, with the utmost interest and animation.

“What did they not rather,” returned Mrs. Belmont. “Droll as Mrs. Grant’s caps usually are, I think she rather outdid herself last night.”

“What was it?” asked Mrs. Vere, to whom the very word “cap” always carried a deep interest.

“Oh, I can’t describe it,” replied her friend. “Such a concatenation of ends of gimp and gold lace and mussy flowers I never saw, even on her head, before. I don’t know where she could have had it made.”

“She made it herself, of course,” said Nora, with infinite contempt. “Does she not make every thing? She prides herself on being what she calls ‘smart,’ and I never knew one of your ‘smart’ women who did not dress vilely.”

“I agree with you,” answered Mrs. Belmont. “Better be simple and unpretending, if you can’t afford to go to Lawson’s and buy the real thing at once. But Mrs. Grant thinks she can imitate almost any imported head-dress she sees.”

“Yes,” joined in Nora; “and, when she has made something outlandish, thinks it looks French.” And, from Mrs. Grant’s caps, they passed to Miss Grant’s frocks and flowers, which did not fare much better, and, by the time they had fully discussed their mutual friends, the interest and animation of the conversation dying away, Mrs. Belmont bade them good morning.

“I wonder what pleasure a woman of Mrs. Belmont’s age can take in going to parties night after night, as she does,” said Nora to her mother, after that lady’s departure.

“I own I am surprised at it,” answered Mrs. Vere, “as she has no daughter to matronize. If I did not consider it my duty to go with you, I am sure nothing would induce me to submit to such fatigue and wear and tear of body and mind. But Mrs. Belmont has extraordinary spirits. She is constitutionally gay.”

“Well,” continued Nora, “that may be a happy constitution, but it is not a dignified one. I like to see a woman fall into the ‘sear and yellow leaf’ gracefully, not be dancing and dressing like a young girl and out every night as long as she is asked.”

“I think, Nora,” said her little brother, looking up from his slate as his mother quitted the room, “that ours must be the only perfect family in town.”

“The only perfect family? Why, what do you mean, Tommy?”

“Why,” returned the child, with much simplicity, “I have been listening to you and mamma, and it seems to me that every body has got so many faults except us that we must be the only perfect people you know.”

Nora laughed heartily as she answered, “I don’t know that we are perfect, Tommy. Perhaps if we were to hear other people talk of us we might find that we had some faults too.”

Had Nora and Tommy had the gift of clairvoyance and could in spirit have followed Mrs. Belmont down Broadway, as she overtook Mrs. Grant, they would speedily have discovered that Nora’s conjecture was not as impossible as it at first struck Tommy’s young mind.

“You are going to Mrs. Vere’s next Monday, I suppose?” said Mrs. Grant.

“Oh, of course. They entertain a good deal this winter, don’t they?”

“A great deal. I don’t know how they manage it,” continued Mrs. Grant. “With Mr. Vere’s limited means and their expensive habits, how they contrive to dress and spend as they do is more than I can comprehend.”

“I know,” continued Mrs. Belmont, dropping her voice to the true confidential pitch, “from what Mrs. Vere told me, that they are very much pressed for money,” and then she proceeded to mention some little circumstances that Mrs. Vere had inadvertently let drop, in relation to their family affairs, adding, “I should not, of course, mention these things did I not know the strong interest” (curiosity would have been the better word) “you take in the family, and all that relates to them.”

“Oh, certainly, certainly,” answered Mrs. Grant. “You may safely talk to me, I am so much attached to them all, and only mention these things with regret.”

“Of course,” rejoined Mrs. Belmont. “One cannot see a family like the Veres committing such extravagances without pain. They have noble qualities, but it is a pity they are so imprudent.”

Mrs. Grant chorused in, as to their “noble qualities,” and the ladies praised their friends vaguely and in generals for a few minutes, when they returned to their failings with renewed vigor, leaving generals for details and particulars.

“Indeed,” said Mrs. Grant, “I don’t know how Mrs. Vere can reconcile it to her conscience to dress Nora as she does. If her object is Hamilton, I think she is sadly mistaken in the means. Young men don’t fall in love with a girl because she dresses well. Indeed, in times like these, it is calculated to have a contrary effect. They can’t afford to marry expensive wives, who bring nothing;” to which Mrs. Belmont, who had neither sons nor daughters grown up, answered carelessly, “That’s true.”

“But Hamilton is rich,” and, having reached Stewart’s, where she wished to make some purchase, bid her friend good morning.

Now what was the tie that bound these three families together—for a week never passed that either the Veres did not spend an evening with the Grants, or the Grants drop in at Veres, and Mrs. Belmont was forever at both places.

It is very evident that, though the intimacy was great, the friendship did not amount to much. Habit and the love of gossip can only explain the enigma, for an enigma it does seem, at first sight, that two families who certainly did not like each other, and to both of whom the third party was indifferent, should be upon terms of such mutual intimacy as existed in this little clique.

Mrs. Vere and Mrs. Grant had known each other early, when their small children and small incomes had been rather subjects of mutual sympathy and interest, and, living much out of society, they had been what might really be termed friends. But as time progressed, and their children grew up, different views and feelings were developed, and the friendship degenerated into intimacy, and the interest into curiosity, and thus, as is too often the case, the form lasted after the sentiment had departed, and what was once sympathy bore now very much the aspect of antipathy. Nora Vere looked upon Lucy Grant as a girl who, being ugly, wanted to pass for clever or “intellectual,” as she would say, and laughed at her pretensions and quizzed her German and pronounced her “a humbug.” Lucy, on her part, indignant at seeing the lovely Nora’s beauty, waltzing and dressing prove so much more attractive than her more solid (not to say heavy) acquirements, spoke of her as “vain and frivolous.” The young Veres voted the Grants “dull priggs,” (for the whole family were smitten with the desire for literary distinction) and what term the solemn Grants found profound enough to indicate their contempt of the careless off-hand Veres has not yet come to our knowledge.

Nora Vere was a very pretty creature, with her clear hazel eyes and bright chestnut hair and sylph-like figure the very personification of youth, health and happiness; and if she was somewhat given to the two sins of fashionable life, ridicule and extravagance, she was yet at heart a high-spirited, sweet-tempered, warm-hearted girl, and did not ridicule her friends, only those who passed for such. At any rate, Frederick Hamilton, being young himself, would not have changed her faults for the Grants’ virtues, and so, notwithstanding the moral that should “adorn this tale,” (for we must own the truth,) he did admire her the more for her very pretty dressing. Unfortunately, even in these hard times, young men will worship beauty and admire effect, and a brighter fairy was never seen in a ball room than Nora Vere; and so, in spite of all Mrs. Grant’s prophetic, not to say triumphant, anticipations, Frederick Hamilton, deeming himself rich enough to please himself, did offer hand and heart to the acceptance of the proud and happy Nora.

“And what did Mrs. Grant say, mamma?” was the eager inquiry of the bride elect, on her mother’s return from a visit to that lady to announce the engagement, for Mrs. Vere’s happiness was never perfect until she had the triumph of communicating it to her friend, nor her mortifications and sorrows complete while she could conceal them from Mrs. Grant. And when Nora returned her bridal visits in her own carriage, no where did she leave her card as “Mrs. Frederick Hamilton” with such entire satisfaction as at Mrs. Grant’s.

“And now, Nora,” said her husband, as they drove away from the door, “let us have little or nothing to do with that woman.”

“With all my heart,” she replied. “I don’t like any of them.”

“It is not the people so much,” he replied, “whom I dislike, as the terms you are on. For, Nora, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, I don’t think that species of skirmishing and sharp-shooting that existed between you either womanly or lady-like.”

“That it is not lady-like I fully agree with you,” replied Mrs. Hamilton, “but oh,” she continued, laughing, “it is very womanly.”

BY CAROLINE ORNE.

ILLUSTRATION OF A PICTURE.

BY ALFRED B. STREET.

BY MISS C. MITCHELL.

BY T. C. GRATTAN.

(Concluded from page 240.)

CHAPTER IX.

“Welcome, welcome!” said Julie, as she embraced her lover with all the subdued ardor of a warm heart and a modest mind—for she felt and admitted him to be her lover, without any of those checks which may possibly arise between my readers and my hero, in consideration of the discrepancies existing between him and his mistress. It must however be recollected that Julie was ignorant of many of them. Long habit from childhood up had almost wholly worn out the sentiment of respectful repugnance—so to express it—which at first interposes between a young person and one so much more advanced in life; and as for the very first impression, that of terror and loathing, excited in Julie’s mind against Balmat on the occasion which introduced them to each other, I have already shown that it was totally effaced almost as soon as conceived. She had known him now for several years, as her steady friend, and, by the concurrent testimony of every one, as a man of habits, temper, and desires wholly reformed. She knew this good work to be of her doing, and she was naturally proud to magnify the favorable qualities and slur over the blemishes in a character which was in a measure of her own creating.

So it was that when she now met Balmat, after some weeks of separation and anxiety for his safety, she did not suspect in this expression of his countenance the diabolical feeling of which it was the index. While the other young persons present shuddered with terror at his aspect, she attributed to bad health or over fatigue the paleness of cheek, the lividness of lip and the nervous energy of eye which she could not fail to observe.

“You are ill, Gabriel?” said she, tenderly.

“Somewhat ill at ease, perhaps,” replied he.

“What troubles you, my friend? Oh, let me share your anxiety?”

“Who is that Frenchman, Julie? and how came he here, and on such terms of unseemly familiarity with you?”

“Unseemly!”

“Yes—who and what is he?”

“Your answer is brief—your questions sternly put, Gabriel—”

“Who is he?”

“He is a wounded soldier, left on parole in my father’s care, an amiable and friendly youth, whose situation and manners claim kindness and lead to intimacy.”

“So it appears from the fervor with which he kissed your hand. If he goes so far in public, on what terms are ye together privately?”

“On none that are unbefitting me as his friend, nor dishonoring to you as my future husband. He approaches—I beg you to recover yourself.”

The tones and the looks of the two speakers in this short colloquy must be imagined from the reader’s knowledge of their separate characters, and of their position toward each other. Julie, with the instinctive tact of womanhood and good sense, saw at once the first symptoms of the fiend that had taken possession of her lover’s mind. To drive the devil out was her only thought. She never imagined the possibility of combatting the false notion by any roundabout means, and she therefore resolved not to use another word in argument or opposition. She paused and stood aloof while her father and mother came up, and, after the usual greeting, presented the two strangers to each other. Balmat, thoroughly brought to himself by Julie’s decided manner and convincing words, had recovered his usual color, and turned the naturally saturnine expression of his countenance into a smile. He gave his hand to Lavalette, and, after a word or two of commonplace civility, he said with as much graciousness of air as he could assume,

“Sir, the friend of my friends becomes in virtue of that title my own; I shall be glad if my coming can in any way promote your pleasure in these parts.”

The gay and unsuspecting Frenchman, deceived by the words and air, and looking only for blunt frankness in the mountain warrior, took for granted what was said, and replied, laughingly,

“I shall be too proud of so gallant and estimable a neighbor, but your first approach was really a little too close to me—the whistling of your bullet awhile ago was not, I confess, as pleasant as the tones of your voice are now.”

“Why the fact is,” said Balmat, “these Savoyard rifles of ours are so accustomed to be leveled at your countrymen’s heads, that it was with difficulty I pointed mine an inch or two at one side of yours when I fired my salute. But such a mistake shall not occur again, I promise you.”

These ambiguous words passed unheeded, or were taken as a joke, and the deadly smile which accompanied them was rightly read by no one present. Conversation went on, the groups collected together, and after awhile all moved toward the house, where a homely but solid repast was partaken of with hearty appetites; and a couple of flasks of Rhenish, produced to do honor to the health of Gabriel, completed the exhilaration of the good spirits of all present.

Balmat watched the stranger closely; and the result of his observation was his conviction that however Julie might be unaffected by the Frenchman’s attentions, the latter was beyond doubt deeply enamored of her, and resolved to supplant him in her regard. His dull and dogged mind could conceive no less serious object in the light gallantries of passing compliments which Lavalette lavished as usual on whatever female pleased him and that chance threw him near. Had he known the mischief he was preparing for himself he would have suppressed his attentions.

After supper the whole party were soon again in the open air; and Julia took the earliest opportunity of addressing Balmat on the subject which had for the last two hours entirely occupied her mind. The straightforwardness of her character made her on this, as on every other occasion, reject all those subterfuges of conversations by which a person having an object in view endeavors to draw another into the mention of something that may lead to it, and thus give an appearance of accidental coincidence to what was the result of premeditated plan. She despised all cunning devices; and it was to the simple energy of her mind that was owing the influence which she exercised over that of Balmat, from the very first days of their acquaintanceship. She now passed her arm under his, and, leading him a little way aside from the rest of the party, she said,

“Gabriel, we have never yet had a doubt of each other, and scarcely a slight difference of opinion—a rare thing, they tell me, between lovers—and I am resolved that there shall be no cause of quarrel between us if I can help it. Therefore——”

“What do you mean, Julie?” asked he, in affected surprise, for he feared yet did not like to admit that in all his assumed politeness toward Lavalette and in his efforts to appear cheerful he had been unable to impose on his penetrating mistress.

“Therefore,” continued she, “I am resolved that our French guest must find some other lodging this very evening, and that I see him no more till we are married, Gabriel.”

Had Julie seen the smile of ghastly delight which broke on her companion’s countenance, would she have understood the heart-workings of which it was the type? Probably not. She would have mistaken it, as my readers must not, for the natural expression of pleasure at being relieved from a troublesome suspicion, or at discovering a new trait of delicacy toward him in her who was about to join her destiny with his. Such feelings might have had some slight effect, but they were as naught to the absorbing sentiment which suddenly possessed him, and which must be divined from the sequel of my story.

“Yes,” said Julie, uninterrupted by a word from Gabriel—for he could not speak even had he essayed it—“it is clear, even to my faint knowledge of the human heart, that the presence of this stranger annoys you, to say the least. I can fancy your thinking our intimacy sudden, and perhaps a little too close. But if you knew how animated and how frank his manners have been, how great his gratitude for our care of him, and what an interest he feels in the whole family, you would make allowance for what may appear too rapid or indecorous. Why, even the very action, that so much displeased you, his kissing my hand, was only performed as a sort of seal set on a compact of alliance between him and me and you, Gabriel, as my husband—for he knew every thing of our engagement and our projects, and our whole conversation was about you. I trust, this explanation will please you—why, Gabriel, you do not listen to me!”

“Eh!” exclaimed he, starting and turning his looks full on Julie. “Please me? oh, yes—much, very much! You say he will go this evening?”

“Yes; but I have said much since I said that. You have not heard me—you are ill, Gabriel—you look now just as you did when I first met you after you discharged your rifle. What ails you, my friend? Let us return to the house—my mother will give you some cordial—pray, Gabriel, tell me what ails you?”

“Nothing in the world, dearest; I am subject to sudden change of looks of late, ever since this war broke out, but I am well, very well—this evening, you said, eh?”

“That was not what I said last, Gabriel, but I did say that I wish Monsieur Lavalette could be provided for elsewhere this very evening.”

“He shall! Yes, Julie, under all the circumstances I think it better he should remove at once. The gossips’ talk of the valley must not be excited. But where can he find a lodging—such a one as will ensure his comfort, and in some measure repay him for the loss of all he has been accustomed to here? Can you think of no place suited to him, Julie—can you suggest no domicile?”

Julie was struck by the impatient, yet manœuvering utterance of Balmat. She saw there was more in his mind than his words expressed. She suspected that he was dissatisfied with her half-heard explanation of the Frenchman’s intimacy, and that he was now striving to lead her on by his questions into some expression of anxiety or interest for the object of his unreasonable jealousy. The rapidity of her thoughts prevented in a great measure the pain arising from them, but she resolved to give no hint nor offer any opinion that might confirm the suspicion she was so convinced she had discovered.

“It is not for me to suggest a fitting place for this young man,” said she. “It is enough that I am anxious he should change his quarters from our house——”

“To become a guest in mine,” said Balmat, no longer able to restrain the expression of his already formed resolutions, and finding that he could not succeed in getting Julie to make the proposal which, for his own reasons, he did not wish to have originated with him.

“What! will you take this trouble on your own hands, Gabriel! This is indeed being kind to us all. My father and mother will feel deeply indebted to you for this act of hospitality. You must mention the matter and arrange it with them, so as that no wound may be given to the feelings of Monsieur Lavalette.”

“I should rather the affair were settled by them than me, Julia. It might look officious and particular if I proposed it, and you know I am not fond of appearing to do good natured things?”

“No, unfortunately you are not, Gabriel. And great injustice do you do yourself by the objection to put your good qualities forward, and the wish to make your faults seem worse than they are.”

“You are too indulgent to me Julie,” replied Balmat, with a thoughtful air; and he paused a moment, as though a struggle were taking place in his mind. Perhaps a feeling of compunction, a dread of consequences—not for himself but for her—rose between him and the deed he contemplated. But if so, they were faint and brief, compared with the deadly resolutions he had formed. The demon within hurried him remorselessly along. He therefore abruptly resumed:

“You must settle this point with your father—he must propose the change—and I will now go home and prepare for the reception of my guest—but, pray, do not let it seem as if I either urged or wished his coming, for I cannot bear to become the subject of praises and thanks.”

“But you will come back, Gabriel, to conduct Monsieur Lavalette to his new quarters?”

“Most certainly.”

When Balmat returned, after a short absence, he found that every necessary arrangement had been made. Paul Corryeur had, at Julie’s request, broken to Lavalette the subject of her conversation with Gabriel, and said that it was rather at her suggestion than his wish that the change was proposed. Lavalette, with the careless confidence of youth and of his national character, acceded cheerfully to the plan for his removal, the particular motive for which he did not scrutinize, and to which, at all events, he felt he had no right to object, half prisoner as he considered himself. No stronger feeling existed to make it any but a matter of indifference to him, and he made ready his knapsack with alacrity and speed. Night had now fallen, and every thing outside Corryeur’s house was dark and dismal. There was a drizzling rain, and but little inducement for any of the family to volunteer a walk of a quarter of a mile and back. Yet so anxious was every male member of it to pay a mark of respect and kind feeling to their guest on this occasion of his quitting their hospitable roof, that they one and all proposed to accompany him and Balmat. But Paul interposed, and, insisting on his right to pay alone this mark of honor to his young friend, and having a good deal of the patriarchal punctiliousness of character appertaining to his country, he would allow no one to interfere with what he considered a very material point of homely etiquette. He therefore decided that he alone should form the escort; and, as his word was law with his sons, they, however reluctantly, acquiesced and gave up their intention. Their explanation was quite satisfactory to Lavalette, who was but little inclined to give any one trouble or inconvenience, and he begged, but in vain, that the father would relinquish his part of the ceremonious intention which he would not suffer his sons to complete. But on this point Corryeur was inflexible, and the trio prepared to set out.

While the discussion went on Julia had given her entire observation to Balmat, remarking in him a concentrated abstraction of manner, as though his whole thoughts were fixed on one remote point. Yet there was a side-long kind of attention paid by him to what was going on, which might be scarcely discerned and could not be described. It did not, however, escape the keen glance of Julie. She was uneasy and dissatisfied, she knew not why, and dared not inquire even of herself. A strange presentiment of ill seemed to possess and cling to her. She endeavored to shake it off, and by personal action to counteract the painful agitation of her mind. She bustled about on various small pretences, but she never let her eye wander for a moment from the object of her scrutiny.

She at length, with a thrill of surprise and fear that almost paralyzed her, saw him furtively take a large bladed knife from a side table where it had lain since supper time, and, while he seemed carelessly regarding the family group occupied with its leave-taking of Lavalette, he quietly slipped the weapon into the breast of his jacket, and carefully concealed it with the lapel. In a minute or two more, he, Paul Corryeur and the Frenchman were on the point of quitting the house together, when he said, with an air of most honest simplicity,

“Mr. Corryeur, you will permit me leave my rifle here till morning—the rain would do it no good, and, as we are all friends, I shall not want it on the way home.”

With these words he placed the fusil in a corner, the youths promising to take care of it, and Lavalette, on observing this, was unable to refrain from a feeling of satisfaction and increased confidence—he knew not why, for he was not conscious of any actual doubt of his new acquaintance from the moment of their introduction to each other. He slung his knapsack across his shoulder, repeated his adieu to every member of the family, and coming the last to Julie—as she stood with her head placed, as if for support, on the back of a chair, her cheeks pale and her eyes fixed—he started in astonishment and almost in alarm; but not without a mixture of pleasant feeling to temper those ingredients of uneasiness. For the first time during his intercourse with Julie, he was now struck with the conviction that she loved him. The circumstances of the case were too rapid to allow of his nicely weighing or estimating at their real value the feelings which combined to produce this sudden conviction. Deceived as he certainly was, he had nevertheless many excuses for his hasty notions, and even if vanity had its share in producing the mistake, appearances were strong enough to justify it. Such an impression as that which glanced across his mind is, in any case, too gratifying not to give pleasure to the individual who receives it unexpectedly. Lavalette’s being a Frenchman was perhaps no bar to his susceptibility of such an error, but the buoyant egotism of his countrymen is not one whit more likely to lead to it than the supercilious self-sufficiency so common among our own. At any rate, a Frenchman in such a case was little likely to take an ungenerous advantage of such a discovery, imagined or real, on the present occasion. Lavalette only pressed Julie’s hand with a more respectful tenderness than usual, bade her good night in a suppressed but significant tone, and vowed in his own mind to be at her feet as early as possible the next morning.

Julie was almost unconscious of this more than common warmth of manner. She could only mark its effect on Balmat, and she inwardly shrunk from while she fixed her fascinated gaze on the fearful expression of his scowling brow. An impatient gesture seemed to hurry his right hand toward his breast, where the knife lay concealed. With the other he caught Lavalette’s arm, exclaiming abruptly,

“Come, sir, it is too soon—or too late—for these fooleries. Mr. Corryeur waits, and the rain increases,—come!”

The sudden grasp and the rude voice brought the Frenchman to himself. He turned round quickly, and in a moment more the trio had left the house. They walked along the path by the river side, Balmat maintaining a strict silence, and Corryeur alone giving any evidence of a wish for conversation. He spoke in his usual kind manner to his late guest, whom he considered as rather unceremoniously removed from those quarters where his presence had been a source of a little trouble it was true, but which was amply repaid by his gentle and amiable manners, and his many agreeable qualities. Lavalette acknowledged those friendly proofs of consideration by brief replies, for his mind was preoccupied, and, though without any actual or marked anxiety, not quite at ease. They passed on through a dark thick copse, about half way between the two mills, and in a few minutes more they were at the door of Balmat’s house. He knocked loudly and impatiently. In a little the door was opened by a tottering, feeble, half blind, and nearly deaf old woman, whom a former acquaintance after an absence of ten years would scarcely have recognized for the Jeannette of the first part of this story. She, however, it was who, having lingered in the service of her master through age and infirmity, still lived to witness this night of deepest gloom in the dark destiny of him she served so long and so faithfully.

“To bed, to bed,” said Balmat, in that authoritative tone so familiar and so absolute to the long accustomed crone, who, having placed her lamp in her master’s hand, and muttered some words of civility or ill-temper—it was impossible to distinguish which—hobbled away, leaving Balmat and the others to complete the events of that portentous hour without hindrance or observation from her.

“Good night, good night, my young friend. We shall soon see you,” said Corryeur, grasping Lavalette’s hand. The latter flung his knapsack within the threshold of his newly appointed residence, and gaily exclaimed,

“No, no, Corryeur, we must not part here. It would ill beseem a youth like me to be outdone in civility by one from whom I have met with so much kindness. You have given me an escort to my new home. Now I must do as much by you, and see you safely back again to your house. You were positive, so must I be. Not a word! Here, take my arm this time—I insist on it!”

“Poh! poh! This must not be—I cannot allow it. You are still weak and delicate, and the rain increases. You must not, Lavalette! Gabriel, aid me in persuading this foolish boy to go quietly to bed. He is now your guest and in your safe keeping. Good night, good night!”

While Corryeur attempted to move away alone, and Lavalette pertinaciously caught his arm and drew it within his own, Balmat neither spoke nor stirred. Had there been light enough and an observer at hand, his face had no doubt shown one of those expressive gleams of ferocious joy of which it was at times so susceptible; or his very attitude have betrayed the inflexible resolution with which he contemplated the deed, the completion of which accidental causes seemed now to favor and facilitate. Corryeur, finding resistance useless, yielded to the forced escort of his young friend, and, as they finally walked off together, the former, half laughing, half angry, said to Balmat,

“Well, Gabriel, you see he will not be shaken away from me. But you must pay him off for this bye-and-bye—you must punish him for the mischief he is doing himself.”

Whatever was Balmat’s intended reply, it “stuck in his throat.” But he followed on the steps of the two men as closely as he could do without being seen or heard by them.

CHAPTER X.

The quick but stealthy step of Balmat was not heard by those whom he followed, for their own brief but animated conversation absorbed the attention of each. Lavalette, deceived by the promptness of observation which often mistakes the meaning of the symptoms it discovers, and hurried on by the impetuosity of character which betrays its purpose before securing success, had at once and in ardent terms proceeded to explain to Paul Corryeur his mistaken belief in Julie’s affection and his own till then unacknowledged regard for her, and in glowing terms to implore the father’s consent to his visiting the family the following morning in the capacity of an admitted suitor. Corryeur, astonished and afflicted at this burst of unexpected intelligence, stopped short, and, in a few embarrassed expostulating phrases, begged his young companion to give him time for reflection and inquiry into the state of his daughter’s feelings, adverting to the long contracted engagement between her and Gabriel, and expressing his terror at the bare idea of rousing the latter’s vengeance. Lavalette replied by a light and disparaging epithet applied to his rival; and Corryeur cut short the colloquy by insisting on his companion’s instant return to his night’s quarters in the house of the man to whom he meant so deep an injury, and expressing a hope that the enjoyment of his hospitality would rouse a better feeling, to overcome the light fancy he had formed, and to put a stop to any measures which might produce misery and ruin to all involved in his pretensions.

“Well, well, Mr. Corryeur, let us at least part friends for to-night,” said Lavalette, “to-morrow we will talk more of this. Don’t be angry with me—I did not think you would consider matters in so serious a light—and, in mark of friendship, let’s shake hands on parting.”

“Yes, Henri, I have a great friendship for you—we all have—and, as a token of mine, here, take this handkerchief—I have two, and your neck is bare—tie it on, and hurry home through the rain as fast as you can—and remember the rights of your host, and forget all you have been just saying to me, and—”

“No more, no more, my kind friend!” exclaimed the Frenchman, carelessly tying the handkerchief round his neck. “This token of friendship shall appear against you in the morning—I take it as a proof of your consent! Good night, good night.”

Before Corryeur could repeat his remonstrances his companion turned away, and he then, perplexed and agitated, bent his footsteps toward home, where he arrived in a few minutes, and, finding that all the family had gone to bed, he retired to his chamber, after having for half an hour paced anxiously up and down the floor of the common sitting room.

As Lavalette resumed his way back toward Balmat’s mill, he fancied he heard another footstep close beside him, pattering on the slippery path. He paused, but the impenetrable darkness was not to be pierced. Again he stepped forward—again he heard the tread close following, like the echo of his own. He suddenly stopped again and stretched out his arms, but nothing met his touch. A startling thrill of terror ran through his blood. The vague feeling of a close and mysterious danger oppressed him. He remembered the rifle shot that evening—his intended wrong to Balmat, and fear and conscience worked together in his brain and heart. Once more he moved onward, and once more the closing step of his unseen follower was heard distinctly on his path.

“Who’s there! stand back!” exclaimed he, in nervous agitation, turning round, with the words, and stamping his foot involuntarily on the ground.

“Traitor! Take that!” murmured a hoarse voice now behind him—proving that he had turned toward an imagined, and only left himself more exposed to a real foe—and, with the words, a knife blade was plunged into his body deep between his shoulders. He fell, uttering a cry of alarm and pain. His assailant bent down after him toward the earth, and instantaneously struck again on the prostrate body. A stifled scream followed this second blow.

“Ha! what a woman’s voice you have, French dog!” cried the ferocious Gabriel, again drawing back the weapon and a third time raising his arm to strike. But, at the moment, a crashing sound close by, as if some heavy substance fell among the copsewood, arrested his attention.

“What devil is that!” exclaimed he, starting up from his kneeling posture, but at the same time grasping tight the handkerchief tied round his victim’s neck. The dead silence was only broken by the gurgling of the blood in the young Frenchman’s throat. This sound was shocking, even to the ruthless murderer, thus doubly interrupted in his cruel work.

“Some straggling chamois,” muttered he, turning his head aside from the suffocating man, and straining his ears for further evidence of this explanation of the first intrusive noise. But no leaf rustled—and a sense of supernatural dread rushed through the heart so dead to human fear. His fingers instinctively loosened their grasp of the handkerchief, and the body which he had by this means held partly up now fell heavy and senseless down again.

“ ’Twas quickly done!” said he, in stifled tones of still unsubdued ferocity. “Let this finish it well!” and, as he spoke, he made one more random stab, leaving the knife in its fleshy sheath. He then, with unsteady arms, dragged the body aside from the path and flung it among the bushes, close to the spot from which the unexplained sound had erewhile proceeded. He then quitted the scene of his exploit with hurried steps, and he often turned his ear to listen, but death seemed reigning around. Within five minutes more he was at home. There all was still and dreary. He had no observation to fear. He recovered his somewhat scattered thoughts, carefully washed the blood from his hands and his dress, which had been stained in three or four places. Thus guarding against direct evidence, he made some artful dispositions of negative disproof to provide against the anticipated morning’s inquiry, and then he sought his homely bed with a hard heart and an unmurmuring conscience. He slept soon and soundly.

In the mean time, Paul Corryeur, with nothing on his conscience, meriting no reproach from others or from himself, unstained with guilt, and as nearly faultless as an individual in his station could well be, was nevertheless as disturbed and wretched in his mind as though some committed crime had brought down its own punishment. He in vain sought repose. Restless and agitated, fearful of disturbing his wife, yet, finding it impossible to lie still in his uneasy bed, he resolved to get up and dress himself again, and, at once, to bring relief to his mind—even in the certainty of what he apprehended—by going directly to his daughter’s room, and ascertaining, from her own lips, the truth or error of Lavalette’s assertion as to the state of her affections. Not venturing to strike a light lest it might awaken his helpmate, he hurried on his clothes and groped his way to Julie’s room. Opening the door softly, he called her by name, but receiving no answer he approached her bed, and put forward his hand with the view of breaking what he supposed her profound and innocent slumber. He shrunk back, almost as much scared as though a lifeless body had arrested his touch, on finding the cold pillow unoccupied by his daughter’s head. A moment or two more convinced him she was not there; and then the whole host of nervous apprehensions which sweep so rapidly through the brain of the sensitive portion of mankind reveled uncontrolled in the mind of the agitated father.

He left the untenanted room, and passed in quick succession to all the others in the house, rousing by his lamentations every member of the family, of whom he made repeated but fruitless inquiries for his missing child. The mother, startled into the consciousness of a thousand fears, joined her cries to the accents of general surprise and alarm. Her thoughts flew back to the time when Julie was before missed and sought for so long in vain. Now, as then, the mother’s fears fixed intuitively, she knew not how or why, on Gabriel Balmat, as the author of some mysterious mischief hovering over her daughter’s head. Aye, even now, affianced and pledged as Julie was, sure as her intended husband must be of the possession of the long cherished treasure on which his heart seemed fixed, still did Madame Corryeur, indespite of all reasonable belief, persist in asserting her conviction that Gabriel had enticed Julie away, to lead her into some ill, or to do her some harm.

There was, however, no time left for the indulgence of those nervous speculations. An instant search was resolved on. The whole family—father, mother, sons and servants, all prepared to sally forth, provided with lanterns and pine-wood torches, and various of those household weapons which come ready to the hand of men rushing out with the imagined probability of violence to be encountered. The party scattered wide from the house as they turned out into the open air—but all seemed instinctively and without previous concerted plan to take the road toward Balmat’s mill; and seven or eight persons abreast, with some yards of interval between each, left no possibility of a missing individual being passed undiscovered on the route. The rain came down in torrents, and almost extinguished the torches which the bearers waved to and fro in the thick gloom, while its heavy fall on the pathway and the trees nearly stifled the voice of Paul Corryeur as he loudly uttered his daughter’s name.

At length they reached the fatal copse; and there two or three of the party at once came to the term of their search, by discovering the body of Lavalette weltering in gore, and, within a few yards of it, within the brush wood and young trees, that of Julie, prostrate on the earth, drenched with rain, and quite insensible. It is hard to detail the various sensations, movements and expressions which form the materials of a scene like this. The horror and grief paralyzing some, exciting others, and confusing almost all—the precious time lost in exclamations, wringing of hands and covering of faces—the little good done by bursts of feeling, and the mischief arising from want of presence of mind, are all displayed in nine cases out of ten of abrupt disclosures or sudden accidents, and most particularly if bodily hurts are accompanied by blood.

Shocked as the whole party was at the sight of the ghastly wounds and distorted countenance of the young Frenchman, still the horror struck parents were naturally more dismayed by the view of their child who appeared to have shared his fate, as her garments also showed sanguined marks, and, more strange and appalling still, her right hand was covered by the crimson stain. A silent and mysterious awe now seized on all the bystanders.

“Home! Home! Let us bear her home,” said the agonized father, lifting up Julie in his arms and tottering under the load.

“And the murdered body, what must be done with it?” asked one of the workmen, who was the first to recover in some degree his self-command.

“Take it to the house of the murderer, to be sure!” exclaimed Madame Corryeur, in frantic tones. “To him who has destroyed not only this poor youth but his own affianced wife—to Gabriel Balmat!”

On these words being pronounced the whole party looked round on each other with glances of alarm, as though the utterance of the terrible name might call up its ferocious owner, ready armed to immolate new victims to his rage.

“Hush, hush, madame!” exclaimed the man who had before spoken; “nobody must be accused without proof. Let the magistrate be roused up, and a due inquiry begun. In the mean time, go some one to Balmat’s house and call him to the spot.”

“Call him to the spot!” echoed the half-distracted mother. “And what fool expects to find him to answer to the call? The double murderer has not waited for the call of justice, I’ll warrant him. You may seek, but never hope to find him. Oh, Julie, Julie, my child, my child!” and, shrieking with the anguished tone of a bereft parent, she followed the hurried but uncertain steps of her husband, who was lighted on his way by his sons and the women servants; two men waiting under the influence of the former spokesman, to whose directions they submitted in the management of the following circumstances of the sad affair.

“What’s to be done, Simon?” asked one of the others.

“Why, I’m thinking”—replied he—“yes!—it is, after all, better to carry the body to Balmat’s house. There are many ways in which a murderer maybe discovered. Come, let’s lift it up, Jacques, you and I; and do you, Pierre, run to the village and bring the bailli to meet us at the mill.”

In a very short time the bearers of the awful burthen had reached Balmat’s house, in which they perceived a light; and they knocked at the door, which was in a minute or two opened by Gabriel himself, who, while he was in the act of doing so, said, in a jocular tone, loud enough to be heard by those outside,

“Ha, ha, Monsieur Lavalette, you are come back at last, are you? I had left the lamp alight, but I suppose you found a pair of bright eyes to shine on your path, eh?”

“Yes, Balmat, your guest is come back—look at him!” said Simon, loosening his hold, and letting the body fall at Gabriel’s feet. The latter held his lamp close down, with an air of gloomy curiosity, to the face of the prostrate man, and then exclaimed, with an emphasis of assured conviction,

“He is dead!”

“He is, indeed! Touch him—you have no objection?” said Simon.

“Poor fellow!” uttered Balmat, at the same time stooping and moving the body on one side.

“By heavens, the wounds bleed afresh! Mark that, Jacques!” cried Simon, as the blood gushed out on the floor.

“Why, what is all this? There has been murder done here!” said Balmat, in a cold and callous tone.

“I believe there has, Gabriel! and, before more is said on the subject, I recommend you to wait till the magistrate comes. He will be here soon.”

“This is a sad business, Simon—we must enter on the inquiry calmly. Wait, my brave fellows, till I hurry on my clothes—step into the parlor, you will find a fire there, and the supper I had prepared for my unfortunate guest.”

“What! Do you think that Jacques or myself could sit down to eat in the parlor, while such a spectacle as this lay close by us in the hall?”

“Poh, poh! Simon, a man is but a man; and a little blood is not so very shocking, particularly if it be an enemy. When the French invaders shot your brother at Chamouny they were not so squeamish.”

“Aye, Gabriel, but shooting in fair fight and stabbing in the dark are different things.”

“Why, as for that, if death is in the wind it matters little whether it comes in daylight or darkness. There is a doom in those things, my good Simon, and no doubt your master thinks of the matter as I do—but wait awhile, we will talk it over by-and-bye.”

As Balmat retired to his sleeping room, the two men cast significant glances of disgust and doubt toward each other and after him. After some time, he came back dressed, and with an air of indifference.

“You have not hurried yourself, Gabriel,” said Simon, with a sarcastic air.

“I never do any thing in a hurry, Simon—nor your master either, it seems, when a thing is to be done well.”

“What do you mean by coupling my master’s name this way with your own cold blooded manner of thinking and acting? I don’t understand you, Gabriel.”

“Yes, you do, Simon! Come, come, my lads, you know I am Paul Corryeur’s sworn friend, besides being his countryman and his son-in-law, that is to be—so there is no use in playing so deep a game with me. Perhaps I would myself have done as he has, and not made any fuss about it afterward.”

Before any answer could be given to this deeply insidious remark, a clatter of footsteps announced the arrival of the magistrate and some of his myrmidons from Chamouny. Balmat, with stern civility, stood forth to meet him, and he gazed on the several individuals, official and not official, who crowded into his house, his countenance the only one which did not betray some active emotion, his the only voice which was steady and unbroken in all that was said throughout the agitated scene.

The bailli, a sturdy, clear-headed villager, without fear, favor or affection, for any one, entered on his official duty, determined to see justice done. He began the inquiry in a cautious, matter-of-fact way, and listened attentively to the answers made to him—a most important means, too often overlooked by zealous functionaries, for finding out the truth. The statements of the men who discovered the body were marked and noted down by his attendant clerk. The body was then examined carefully, the wounds described, and then a somewhat desultory series of remarks were put forth by the bystanders, lending toward a clearing up of the mysterious affair. The general impression, at first, was that Balmat was the murderer. But this arose rather from preconceived notions as to his readiness to perpetrate such a deed, rather than from any evidence, direct or circumstantial, likely to criminate him; and his imperturbable silence and indifference of manner, the bleeding body before him, made it hard to believe that he had struck the blows. When he, in his turn, calmly and deliberately made his statement of what had passed, when he gave his testimony as to the young Frenchman having been abruptly expelled the previous evening from the house of Paul Corryeur, and of his offering him shelter in his own, when he gave his version of the conversation which took place on their all arriving at his house, artfully observing that Corryeur peremptorily objected to his sons’ accompanying them, and making it appear that it was for the arguing out of a dispute that Corryeur drew Lavalette slowly away toward the copse in serious altercation, that he himself had, from delicacy, retired and occupied himself in preparing materials for supper for his guest, and that, after waiting a considerable time, he had gone to bed, leaving the lamp lighted ready for his return, his excited audience, ready for a prompt impression, received one, in their own despite, decidedly against the last man in the neighborhood who, in ordinary circumstances, would have been deemed capable of doing the bloody work in question. But finally, when the handkerchief round the Frenchman’s neck was recognized as belonging to Corryeur, Balmat declaring that Lavalette wore none such when they left his house together, and when the green-hafted knife with which the crime was consummated was acknowledged by the men who picked it up beside the body to be one of their master’s set—none like it being found in Balmat’s house—was it surprising that the latter was declared innocent and Paul Corryeur denounced as the guilty man?

One feature only was wanting to complete this picture of mistaken opinion, and almost excusable injustice. Simon, Jacques, and the other man who, having roused up the magistrate, had, by his directions, sought the village surgeon, and now appeared with him, felt it necessary, in the present stage of the inquiry, to state what, from a feeling of regard to their young mistress, they had hitherto forborne from mentioning—and they, through their spokesman Simon, simply and truly related the fact of Julie having been found prostrate, senseless, and marked with blood close beside the Frenchman’s body, and being carried home from the fatal scene by her father and brothers.

Painful as was the conviction to the minds of the assembled groups, no doubt now remained that Paul Corryeur had, in a moment of furious resentment, killed the Frenchman with his own hand, his daughter having, from some unexplained mysterious circumstance, been present, and in some way compromised in the transaction. Loud were the exclamations of Simon mixed with indignation at this general belief, accompanied by sundry gesticulations and movements of limbs and features, the broad indices which tell the secret of human passions and feelings. There was but one exception present. That one may be imagined; pale, silent, immovable the workings of his heart, too deep and dark to let their slightest indignation reach his countenance, the purposes of his mind too inflexible and stern to betray themselves by the movement of a single member or the quivering of a muscle. The colorless cheek spoke emotions, it is true. But did it tell its own nature? No! While the observers, whose sympathy for their species overcame their repugnance to the individual, one and all pitied “poor” Balmat at this discovery of his affianced wife’s complicity in the hideous crime, he had but one thought preying, vulture-like, upon his heart. “It was, then, Julie who was close by when I did the deed! It was her faint scream of horror that I took for my victim’s cry of pain! She heard me speak and strike! She saw not, but in her mind’s eye. Yet she sunk senseless before my guilt, and the blood of him I immolated has fallen on her, to stain at once her pure person and her spotless reputation.” Such was the thought that transfixed the culprit, and plunged its sting into his conscience.

While Balmat stood thus entranced, the magistrate detached two of his official attendants, who were accompanied by several volunteer associates, on the mission of arresting Paul Corryeur on the charge of murder, and conveying him to the village prison, until more regular depositions could be taken on the dark affair, and measures carried into effect for the better security of the suspected prisoner. This portion of the proceedings finished, the doctor, whose services had been called into action, proceeded to take a professional view of the gashes inflicted on the body before him. Having probed and measured methodically the two least important of those, he no sooner attempted the same operation on the first inflicted and deadliest of the three, than the slight quivering of nerve and faint moan of pain told that the vital spark was not yet quite extinct.

“The man is not quite dead,” said the doctor, turning to the bailli and the few persons who still remained, among whom was Simon; for he, in spite of all proof, convinced of his master’s innocence and equally so of Balmat’s guilt, (so strong is the impression of an ancient grudge) had resolved to wait and watch the latter closely—and not for the first time, as my readers will remember when they recall the circumstances of his adventure in the pine wood, between Chamouny and Montauvert, so many years before, and learn that he still bore the marks of Gabriel’s cudgel on his skull.

“Indeed! Is it possible?” exclaimed the bailli.

“Not dead!” echoed Simon to the doctor’s announcement, in a tone loud enough to rouse Balmat from his reverie, and at the same time fixing his eyes on him in keen scrutiny.

“No, he still breathes and his pulse beats,” repeated the doctor; and, as he spoke, his words seemed to startle Gabriel Balmat into an utterly new existence. His face was suddenly lighted up by a blended glance of terror and of joy so rapid as to defy separation, and both so fearful in their expression that even Simon shrunk for a moment from it. A convulsive spasm of features spoke the fierce pang of excitement that galvanized the sufferer’s torpid feelings. He sprung forward from his rigid position, and, with arm momentarily outstretched, as though to clasp close some coveted possession, he exclaimed,

“What! still breathing! Quick, then, let’s put him to bed—I will myself take care of his recovery!”

“This prompt offer does honor to your humanity, Gabriel,” said the bailli. “Come, my lads, lift up the wounded man carefully and carry him to where Mr. Balmat points out.”

“His chamber is all ready here, close at hand—I will place him in his bed—I will watch by him. Is there any chance of his recovery, doctor?” said Balmat, in impatient and almost agitated tones.

“It is a hundred to one against him—but the power of skill is almost infinite—we must never despair.”

Any one accustomed to the language of the faculty would have reduced those odds at least ninety per cent. Balmat had but little intercourse with physicians, and therefore took the calculation as it was offered.

“No, no, we must never despair,” said he, his heart relieved from a heavyweight, by learning the almost total hopelessness of the case. And he at once recovered his former impassible appearance; having in these abrupt transitions of feeling escaped attracting notice, except from the individual who had, as it might be said, an instinct of hatred and suspicion toward Balmat working in his mind.

Poor Lavalette, who had by this time displayed evident symptoms of life, was now carefully raised from the floor by the men who, following the doctor’s directions, prepared to carry him into the room to which Balmat led the way. But in consequence of a few words whispered cautiously by Simon to the bailli, the latter interfered, declaring with the peremptory air of official authority that the wounded man, being now under the peculiar guardianship of the laws and the government, he, as the representative of both, must secure him in his own safe custody until the ends of justice were entirely satisfied. He therefore insisted that the senseless body should be removed to the village hospital, there to be tended until death or recovery should settle the question.

But here the interposition of the doctor again changed the question, he protesting with all the due pomposity of science that removal from the house would be instant death to the patient. And therefore a warm dispute took place between the magistrate and the physician, during which Balmat, immovable and silent once more, inwardly prayed that the bleeding sufferer would moan away his life, so miraculously respited, as it were, to inflict on the murderer the tortures of protracted suspense. The discussion was warmly carried on the while, and existence might have oozed away from the unfortunate subject of dispute had not Simon made a proposition to which both parties acceded and which satisfied all present, under the plea that the life of his master being at stake it behoved him to look to the possible recovery of the Frenchman, he claimed the right of watching at his side accompanied by one of the magistrate’s men, at least until returning reason and the power of expressing himself allowed the patient to declare the truth. The bailli, whose suspicions of Balmat had been aroused by the powerful appeal whispered into his ear by Simon, was well satisfied with this arrangement, and, the doctor having carefully prescribed every measure to be taken, the scarcely breathing Lavalette was finally placed in bed, with his careful guardians close beside him; and the living types of justice and medicine having at length withdrawn with the remaining attendants, Balmat was left to pace his parlor in deep and solitary reverie.

CHAPTER XIII.

Great was the astonishment, indignation and grief excited in Paul Corryeur’s family when the official messengers of the bailli, and the group of persons who followed them, appeared for the purpose of arresting and conveying him to prison. He was himself calm and undismayed. Having ascertained that his daughter had sustained no bodily harm, and being convinced that her mental sufferings were not associated with any feeling of remorse, he held lightly the charge which appearances in some degree justified. When his sons and his workmen offered to oppose force to the authority which dared to lay hands on him, he peremptorily forbade it; and when the official instruments of his arrest, turned from their natural proneness to severity by his open bearing, gave him evident opportunities for escape, he spurned the chances of evasion which would have compromised his character. The only expression which fell from him during the scene which could by any means be tortured into a meaning of admitted guilt was on its being remarked that his handkerchief was found twisted round the Frenchman’s neck, evidently for the purpose of aiding the stabs by producing strangulation. On this he exclaimed, more to himself than to those about him,

“Ah! He prophesied that that handkerchief would tell against me! Little did he think—unfortunate boy!”

This low murmured expression of feeling was eagerly caught up by one of the satellites of justice, who all, from the highest to the lowest in foreign countries, have an intuitive greediness for whatever may criminate an accused person, however high their individual opinion of his worth, or however strong the general proofs of his innocence. And on this slender thread of suspicion did the too acute observer mentally string a whole series of anticipated interrogatories, accusations, and condemnations, such as find parallels in almost every process of criminal justice, as the torturing practice of continental courts is mistakenly named.

No sooner was Corryeur removed from the house, and walking, his sons by his side, with a firm and rapid pace toward the place destined for an incarceration which he contemplated with indifference or contempt, than his wife, hitherto restrained by his presence and his strict orders against any outbreak of declamation which might have disturbed Julie, burst into a loud and furious torrent of rage and grief, unable longer to bear the thought of her excellent husband’s being accused and dragged along as a felon, while the man whom in her heart’s conscience she believed to be guilty was left at large, and while her own roof contained a living evidence of the truth, she hurried to her daughter’s room, accompanied by the two maids, and approached the bed where Julie lay, her young sister sitting beside it, bathed in tears.

From the time of Julie’s being discovered in the copse she had never spoken. Sense and recollection had both returned under the influence of motion, and aroused by the loud talk of those who bore her along and by whom she was surrounded subsequently to her arrival at her father’s house. As the truth of her situation, and the memory of the scene in which she had acted so important yet so negative a part gradually broke on her, reason had nearly fled from the shock she experienced. Yet she uttered no scream, acted none of the violent scenes which a common mind involuntarily exhibits on such occasions, asked no questions and made no revelations. Silent, but not the less intensely agitated, she listened to all that was now said, ran over in her mind all that she had erewhile heard, saw in the broad light of her imagination the fearful scene that had passed close by her side, and from all those ready materials worked up a vivid picture of horror, on which her thoughts seemed to rest with an intensity that was akin to the obstinate fidelity with which madness attaches itself to some fixed idea.

Who may describe the fevered flush, or the icy chill, the suffocating gasp, the nervous shudder which one and all make sport of the frame when the mind is a prey to such agony as this? There was no relief for her. A word, an exclamation might bring ruin on the head of him she knew to be guilty—him whom she at once loved and loathed, for horror at his cowardly crime had not yet torn up the roots which gratitude and affection had struck into her heart. Tears! she had none. Horror had frozen them at their source. She might have torn her hair, or beat her breast, or wrung her hands. But such vulgar remedies do not suggest themselves to a person acting in unison with such a mind as here. She neither spoke nor stirred. So that to those around she appeared to have not recovered her perception, while in truth she was more alive to all that was done or said in reference to the frightful transaction than any of those who talked it over, or interfered in it.

When, then, her mother entered her room, with half-distracted gestures, and abruptly informing her of her father’s arrest, she loudly implored her who knew the truth to tell it, acquitting her of all blame, nor throwing a shadow of suspicion on the mysterious circumstances under which she herself had been found, Julie at once saw the whole bearing of this new turn in the affair, and made up her mind as to the course she had to pursue.

“Will you not, Julie, will you not save your father’s honor and life! Will you not, my child, fearlessly avow the truth, and let justice be done even though your heart may suffer a pang in the struggle? Oh, my child, what can be so dear to you as your parent’s safety and reputation? Believe me, Julie, every thing else should be as naught in comparison with those. It is only to speak one word to avenge the murdered man, to snatch your father from his threatened fate, to punish the wretch who did the cruel deed. When you have done this how easy will your conscience be—how light your heart! You will rejoice in your own escape, and will be really our child once more, free and unshackled and happy!”

“Mother!” said Julie, speaking in a tone of sudden solemnity that made all present start back, as though it were a voice from the grave, “Mother, my father shall have justice. For all the rest let me implore you to leave it between Heaven and me.”

With these words she sprung from her bed, rejecting the assistance of the other women, and proceeded to hurry on her clothes, with an energy which showed that some new action of the mind had restored the physical powers to all their accustomed force and vigor. Her dressing finished, she had only one request to make, and she made it in a tone of such mingled peremptoriness and supplication that her mother saw she must be at once indulged and obeyed. All Julie asked was to be left uninterrupted to go her own way and follow her own course, pledging herself for her father’s safety and her own. No remonstrance was offered nor obstacle opposed to her, when she wrapped her cloak hastily around her and left the house, unaccompanied, and declining all explanation of the purpose on which she was about to act.

I need scarcely describe her hurried walk from her father’s house to that which a few hours before she considered as her second home, in which she had anticipated the remainder of a happy life—a home already endeared by even stronger ties than those which had bound her to the residence of her infancy. Every one who has studied the human heart will readily imagine the place to which Julie’s steps were bound, as well as the state of mind in which she trod the accustomed path. Day was now dawning, and there was light enough to show every object on the way. Who cannot picture the agitated girl involuntarily shutting her eyes and turning her head aside as she passed the spot where the bloody deed had been acted? Or the sinking of heart which repressed for awhile her energy of spirit as she stood at the threshold of Gabriel Balmat’s door, and felt as though some invisible but potent hand opposed itself to her resolution of entering the house. In vain did a prophetic voice seem to whisper in her brain warnings against so perilous a step. In vain did the picture of the fierce assassin stalking uncontrolled in his den rise on her mind’s eye. Other and more powerful suggestions spoke to her conscience; while the image of her imprisoned father and her wretched mother displaced the hideous portrait which had haunted her, and virtue and justice lent their united aid in carrying her on her course.

The door lay open, and on the floor, just within it, was a pool of blood, while all across the corridor were marks of the many feet which had dabbled in it. Heart sickness and disgust had now no influence on Julie. She firmly, though with shuddering, walked through the terrible evidence, and, as she passed another open door on her right hand, she saw the livid face of Lavalette on the bed where they had laid him, and the backs of the two men who silently bent down over what she believed to be his corpse. Her purpose was not with the dead. She moved on a little further, and then stopped for a moment at the door of the parlor, the handle of which she had not for awhile the courage to turn. For within she heard the heavy footstep, which her quick and familiar ear instantly recognized as his. Her brain reeled—she was on the point of falling—she leaned for an instant against the wall—and she strove to utter the name of Jeanneton. But the old woman still slept, having never been disturbed during the previous busy hours; and Julie felt that a strong effort was necessary to prevent herself from again sinking, and thus risking, if not ensuring, the total defeat of her now absorbing object. Giving a new proof of the powerful impulse of mind over physical infirmity, she sprung up, and promptly turning the handle of the door, entered the parlor.

When Balmat saw her glide into the room he started back with fright and shame. Julie came upon him like an accusing angel, but she was so wan and haggard, and her noiseless step fell so awfully silent on the floor, that she seemed for a moment to his distempered mind more like a spectre from the grave than a being of the skies. He soon recovered from this first impression and was roused to the reality of the scene. The horrid images of disgrace and punishment which had been for some time passing before him, as he had paced his room in gloomy perplexity, came now as it were in a tangible form to hurry on his doom. He stood for a moment powerless and without motion; and he gazed on Julie as she calmly fastened the door and then dropped on the nearest chair. A rush of deep emotion suddenly subdued his fierce despair. He approached a few paces toward her, with faltering steps, and with half stiffed breath he spoke.

“Julie—dare I still say my own Julie?—why are you here?—to accuse, to overwhelm me? Why are you here?”

“Mark me, Gabriel—but give me time—I am faint and half mad with misery. I know every thing—I have heard all—”

“You saw nothing, Julie—you cannot be sure who did it—you can prove nothing!”

“Oh, Gabriel, I have seen as well as heard too much—his dead body, your passion-choked voice—I saw you take up the knife—oh God! I heard you strike the fatal blows—would they had fallen on me, and spared me this agony of thought and memory.”

“Julie, you will not come forward to prove against me? You will not be the means of my destruction? You will not separate us for ever!”

“Gabriel, can I see my father perish? And are we not separated forever?”

She covered her face with her hands and sobbed aloud; while the stern murderer, as though the better impulse which had by its prompt action softened and soothed his soul was all at once turned into guilt again, looked on her with a fiendish glare, and said in harsh accents,

“So, then, you pronounce your own doom as well as mine—your whole thoughts are for your father—whom I hate—and you renounce me altogether?”

“Gabriel,” replied Julie, shocked but not terrified at his abrupt ferocity, “you sealed our fate with that guilty hand. Chance made me a witness of the dreadful act. I saw, I feared your purpose, I followed in the hope of averting it. Trembling for you—not daring to utter to my father the suspicion which would have compromised you—a coward silence sealed my lips, and deprived me of all power of action during the time I trod on your path, all of you three, you and your two victims. When he—the first of them—was left alone, and walked back unconscious of his fate, I was close to him—but I could not sound the warning that would have probably saved him, but at the same time branded you. Alas! one word might have saved both! I was at hand when the blow was struck. Oh! how it seemed to pierce my heart as well as his! Your terrible voice was as the voice of death to me. I sunk down senseless. How long I lay so I know not, but coming to myself again, and stretching out my hand to rise from the drenched earth, it fell on the body by my side—it passed over his face, and I felt the warm stream that flowed from his wounds. Oh, that warm feel of blood! How deadly sick it made me! I sunk down once more—and only awoke to reason to find myself in bed, and all my family around me. You may judge the rest that has followed so quickly—my father’s arrest—my mother’s despair—my cruel suffering. And here I am, Gabriel, alone with you, and unknown to every one—for I slipped into the room unseen—the sole witness of the deed—not to reproach, denounce, or do you ill, but only to secure your safely from danger and dishonor both, and to implore your mercy for my innocent father and on me his wretched child.”

“My mercy! What mockery do you make of me.”

“Yes, Gabriel, yes—your mercy! You surely would not let him suffer for your act—you would not withhold the truth and let him perish!”

“What, then, you would have me confess!”

“Oh yes, yes! Ease your conscience of at least one heavy load, and save an innocent man—”

“Julie, you said just now you were the sole witness against me. You were wrong to tempt me so. Why did you come here? Why did you trust yourself with me alone? Was it not braving fate?”

The deep accents in which this fierce questioning was uttered, the scowl that stole across his brow, the measured step with which he strode forward, the nervous clenching of his hands—all these fearful symptoms of a desperate purpose failed to produce one feeling of terror in Julie. She looked on him with sad emotion, but with no expression of fear. As wild beasts are tamed by a look of courage, so was this savage man subdued by this air of virtue. He stopped and gazed upon the face which he had so long admired, the form he had so long coveted, and he saw in its full force that unassuming heroism of character which he had so long worshiped, the same in this dark hour as in those far distant days when the intrepid child threw herself before his ferocious rage, or subsequently encountered, undismayed, the elemental crash which made even him to tremble.

In one of those irresistible impulses of feeling, which, as has been already seen, exerted at times so powerful an effect on him, Balmat threw himself on his knees before her whom, but a moment gone, he was on the point of immolating to the fierce instinct of self-preservation. As though a minute had done the work of years of penitence, he bent his face on her knees, and catching her hands in his—while she shrunk and trembled at the murderer’s touch—he burst into an uncontrollable and unbroken flood of tears.

Julie knew not the previous workings of his mind. Having had no apprehensions for her own safety, she was unconscious of her escape. She thought it was remorse for the crime he had committed which had already bent the culprit’s stubborn heart; and she doubly rejoiced in his sudden repentance and the security it seemed to give that her father would have the benefit of a full confession. Yet she felt an instant pang of doubt lest Balmat might relapse into his former mood.

“Now, now, Gabriel,” said she, “now is the moment, while Heaven is working in your heart, to do a great act of justice. Now, this very moment, write down your full confession of the deed, and save my father.”

“Be satisfied, Julie; your father is already saved. You shall live to prove his innocence—and know that the Frenchman is not dead.”

“Not dead! Alas! I saw him even now—”

“Faint, dangerously hurt, but not yet dead—and with every chance of revival enough at least to seal my fate by a disclosure.”

“Heaven be praised! Then the crime of murder is not on your soul—he may live—he may recover altogether!”

“The crime!” said Balmat with a contemptuous sneer. “That I hold lightly—but the punishment and the disgrace—how are they to be avoided?”

“By instant flight. Quick, Gabriel, ere a fatal turn may take place in the wounded man. Did you believe I would have counseled aught that would not save you and my father both? No, no! I know your desperate hardihood, and that without my persuasion you would have stood your dangerous ground. Write, Gabriel, write a full confession—acquit my father—extenuate as you may the rash and fatal deed—then fly far into those mountain fastnesses, where no man’s foot may track you, and then across the frontier, where you may wait in safety the Frenchman’s fate.”

“Will you fly with me, Julie? Say yes, and I consent.”

Had Julie stood before the altar of her faith in sacred communion with Heaven, her vow had not been more solemn nor more irrevocable than the hurried resolution she now swore in her heart’s depths, never to unite her hand with that which was stained with the blood of an intended murder. But her prompt and energetic spirit was alive to the danger of forcing to desperation the being she had now to deal with, in this crisis of his fate.

“With you!” exclaimed she in admirable self-command, “and leave your name to be the sport of every tongue, and the ban to be pronounced against you without a voice to plead your cause or uphold your fame! Would this be wise, Gabriel? Would it be worthy of your affianced bride?”

“Most admirable creature!” cried he, “there is yet the hope of redemption in your love. Oh, Julie, how entirely you have been and are yet every thing to me. The only drop of balm in the bitter mixture of my mind, the only ray of light in my dark nature, has been my passionate love for you. Heaven made me a wretch—your virtue re-created me. I have lapsed again into my original doom—but even now you step between me and the gulf—and I feel as though saved once more. You will follow me, then? You promise that?”

“Follow you, Gabriel? Where? How? Why at such a moment as this, when all is yet doubt and gloom, put questions or conditions on the subject of our common safety? I will do all I can or ought to do.”

“Enough! and until we meet again, you swear—even should this miscreant Frenchman recover—you will be only mine—nothing shall tempt you—”

“Nothing on earth shall make me break my plighted faith while you are on it, Gabriel!”

Here he would have embraced her, but she shudderingly avoided the attempt, and placing before him the writing materials from his open escritoire, he wrote, at her dictation, a short but full avowal of his crime, wholly acquitting Paul Corryeur of any complicity in it; and he then signed the paper and addressed it to the village magistrate, scorning to offer any motive for the deed, or to put forth one word in extenuation. This done, he took with him his watch, some pieces of gold, and his walking staff; and urged on by Julie, who called his attention to the groans of the wounded man—those fearful warnings of his possible recovery—he stepped through the open window on the lawn outside, and was lost in a few moments to the gaze of the once more exhausted girl. She placed the important document in her bosom, and with one faint exclamation—“They are both saved!” a hysterical laugh told the crisis of her agitation, and she sunk on the floor grasping the precious paper in her hand.

At this moment Simon, who, hearing the latter part of the murmured conversation between her and Balmat, had stood close at the door, entered the apartment, and by loud calls arousing the old woman, means were soon taken for Julie’s relief. The opportune return of the doctor, to examine the state of Lavalette, completed her recovery, and with the joyous hope of his escape from death, and accompanied by the trusty Simon, she hurried to the bailli’s house, produced Balmat’s confession, and made her own deposition as to the affair; while Simon’s statement of the conversation he overheard between her and Balmat, left no hesitation on the magistrate’s mind as to the justice of releasing Corryeur. The day had not passed over without Lavalette’s having regained sufficient strength and recollection to swear to the facts of the attempt upon his life, and to his perfect recognition of Balmat’s voice accompanying the assassin’s stroke. In a few days he was pronounced out of danger. In a little more he was convalescent; and within two months he had taken his leave of Chamouny, on his return to France; Julie having firmly rejected the offers of his hand and heart, in terms which left him no hopes of a possible revocation of the sentence.

In the mean time no tidings came to her of the wretched Gabriel. Weeks, months and years rolled on. His name was no longer the theme of public talk. The memory of the desperate deed was almost fading away. The law had done its duty. As an amply convicted and self-confessed felon, his property was confiscated to the state. He had no heirs but the public, and they rejected the revolting inheritance of his former possessions. No one would occupy his dwelling. No purchaser could be found for “the bloody mill.” But the curious would go at times to peep through the crevices of the decaying door, or through the broken windows at its side, to gaze on and shudder at the deep stains on the floor, which gave the place its awful appellation.

For twelve years Julie continued in her state of dark uncertainty and obstinate celibacy. At length a strange discovery released her from her vow. A crystal hunter of the valley, in one of his arduous and perilous excursions across the Mer de Glace, was horror struck at perceiving, close above a narrow fissure in that solemn desolation, a skeleton hand, held up as if to mark the fearful grave of some long lost wanderer. Assistants from the valley soon repaired with him to the spot; and the discovery of Gabriel Balmat’s watch amongst the remnants of clothes hanging to a skeleton in the cavity, proved beyond doubt that he had been the wretch who, struck by the hand of Providence on his attempted escape from justice, had slipped as he traversed the dangerous path, and left his bleaching bones in the desert.

No moral need sententiously be pointed out, to wind up this true and dismal story. Let those who might otherwise pass unheeding by the scene where it is laid, gaze on Gabriel Balmat’s ruined house and mill, and read a lesson from his fate, while a cheering compensation for the gloomy thoughts they may suggest is near at hand, for several of the Corryeur family are still to be found in the paternal abode; and, above all—literally so in years, in worth and in virtues—is Julie—Julie Corryeur still—in all the estimable energy of an independent spirit, and a mind unshaken by the early trials which might have subverted one less sound and pure than hers.

BY FRANK FORESTER.

It wanted scarce an hour of sunset, on a calm, bright October evening—that season of unrivaled glory in the wide woodlands of America, wherein the dying year appears to deck herself, as it is told of the expiring dolphin, with such a gorgeousness of short-lived hues as she had never shown in her full flush of summer life and beauty—it wanted, as I have said, scarce an hour of sunset, and all the near and mountainous horizon was veiled as it were by a fine, gauze-like drapery of filmy yellow mist, while every where the level sunbeams were checkering the scenery with lines of long rich light and cool blue shadow, when a small four-wheeled wagon, with something sportsman-like and rakish in its build, might have been seen whirling at a rapid rate over one of the picturesque uneven roads, that run from the banks of the Hudson, skirting the lovely range of the Western Highlands, through one—the fairest—of the river counties of New York. This little vehicle, which was drawn by an exceedingly clever, though somewhat cross-made, chestnut cob, with a blaze on his face, and three white legs, contained two persons, with a quantity of luggage, among which a couple of gun-cases were the most conspicuous, and a brace of beautiful and high bred English pointers. The driver was a smart, natty lad, dressed in a dark gray frock, with livery buttons, and a narrow silver cord for a hat-band; and, while he handled the ribbons with the quick finger and cool head of an experienced whip, he showed his complete acquaintance with the way, by the readiness and almost instinctive decision with which he selected the right hand or the left of several acute and intricate turns and crossings of the road. The other was a young gentleman of some five or six-and-twenty years, finely and powerfully made, though not above the middle height, with curly light-brown hair and a fair, bright complexion, indicative of his English blood. Rattling along the limestone road, which followed the course of a large rapid trout stream, that would in Europe have been termed a river, crossing it now and then on rustic wooden bridges, as it wound in broad, devious curves hither and thither through the rich meadow-land, they reached a pretty village, embosomed in tall groves and pleasant orchards, crowning a little knoll with its white cottages and rival steeples; but, making no pause, though a neat tavern might well have tempted the most fastidious traveler, they swept onward, keeping the stream on their right hand, until, as they came to the foot of a small steep ascent, the driver touched his hat, saying—“We have got through our journey now, sir; the house lies just beyond the hill.” He scarce had finished speaking, before they topped the hillock, and turning short to the right hand pulled up before a neat white gate in a tall fence, that separated the road from a large piece of woodland, arrayed in all the gorgeous colors wrought by the first sharp frost of autumn. The well kept winding lane, to which the gate gave access, brought them, within a quarter of a mile, to a steep rocky bank feathered with junipers, and here and there a hickory or maple shadowing the dense undergrowth of rhododendrons, kalmias and azalias that sprung in rich luxuriance from every rift and cranny of the gray limestone ledges. Down this the road dived, by two rapid zig-zags, to the margin of the little river, which foamed along its base, where it was spanned by a single arch, framed picturesquely of gnarled unbarked timber, and then swept in an easy curve up a small lawn, lying fair to the southern sun, to the door of a pretty cottage, which lay midway the northern slope of the valley, its rear sheltered by the hanging woodlands, which clothed the hills behind it to their very summit. A brilliant light was shining from the windows to the right of the door, as if of a merry fire and several candles mingled; and, in a minute or two after the wheels of the wagon rattled upon the wooden bridge, it was evident that the door was thrown open; for a long stream of mellow light burst out on the fast darkening twilight, and the next moment a tall figure, clearly defined against the bright background, was seen upon the threshold. A minute more and the chestnut cob was pulled up in front of the neat portico, and the young Englishman leaped out and darted up the steps.

“Well, Fred, you’re here at last—”

“Harry, old fellow, by Jupiter! but I’m glad to see you!”

“And so am I right glad, Fred; and really obliged to you for coming up to see me here in the mountains. I would have come down to the river myself for you, but I had to ride over into Deer Park after breakfast, to get a match for Master Bob there”—pointing as he spoke to the chestnut cob, which, not a whit the worse for his long rapid drive, stood champing his light bit and pawing up the gravel, as if he had but just been brought out of his stable. “I hope he brought you up in good style, Fred?”

“That he did, Harry; that he did in prime style! Two hours and forty minutes from—Newburg don’t you call it?—up to your gate here; and that’s twenty-eight good miles, I fancy—”

“Thirty, Fred, thirty; every yard of it. It’s twenty-eight and better to the village—but come in, come in; and, you sir, get out all the traps and put them in the hall till Timothy has time to look to them, and take Bob round to the stables and go to work upon him. What are those—pointers, Fred? Exactly! well, put them in the little kennel by themselves, and see they are well fed and bedded. Pointers are no use here, Fred. English-broke pointers, I would say—they range too high, and cannot face our coverts. But come in. I was just taking a cup of coffee and a weed; for I dined early, knowing that you could not be here in time; and we will have some supper by and by, and in the mean time you shall either join me in the Mocha, or have a long cool drink, or something short, just as you fancy it.”

And with the words, my old friend Harry Archer—for the host was no other than that worthy, who had exchanged his menage in the city for a snug shooting-box among the hills of Warwick—led his old friend, who had but lately landed from the Boston steamer, through a small vestibule adorned with stands of myrtle and geranium and two or three camellias, into a narrow hall or passage, the walls of which were decked with several pairs of red deer antlers—whence swung full many a sylvan implement—a map or two of the adjoining states, and several of Herring’s life-like portraits—the champions of the English turf, the winners of the Leger and the Derby.

“This is but a little box, Heneage,” said Harry as they entered—“My one spare bed is literal. There were but four rooms in the house when I bought it; unless you count the garrets, which are not habitable; but I have built a kitchen and two or three servants’ rooms behind; and so we must make shift till I get rich enough to add some more bed-chambers—the people hereabout swear that I am crazy, and that I lodge my horses and my dogs better than I do myself. But if it is small, Fred, it is snug and clean;” and with the word he threw open a door to the right, and leading his friend into a little library—“This is my snuggery,” he added, “and that,” pointing to a door opposite the windows, which were two in number, reaching to the ground and overlooking the lawn and river, “that is my bed-room. Across the hall, as we call it by a liberal courtesy, is the dining-room, and behind it, your dormitory. Now, then, take this armchair by the fire—and here comes Timothy—you’ve not forgotten Timothy, Fred? It’s Mister Heneage, Tim!”

“Nay! but ay’s vara glad to see thee,” exclaimed Harry’s inimitable Yorkshireman, pulling his toplock with his left hand, while he thrust out the other horny paw with a grin of unfeigned delight—“Ay’s vara glad to see thee i’ these pairts—noo, damn me if ay isn’t! An’ hoo’s they aw i’ Yor’shire?”

“Right well, Tim; all of our friends; all that I think of, that’s to say—but I see you stick to Mr. Archer yet, Tim!”

“Stick tull him—weel ay wot—he wad na get along at aw without me. He’s got faive horses oot i’ t’ stable, and seven dogs i’ t’ kennel; forbye auld Charon—for he gangs whaure he wull—and hoo’d he do withoot Tim Matlock? Nay, nay! ay’s niver quit him, Measter Heneage; but ay’ll gung noo and fetch oop soom hot coffee—or mayhap, sur, you’d lak a soop o’ t’ auld Shrub or Glenlivat.”

“No! no, Tim, coffee by all means—and now I’ll blow a cloud, so hand me—ha! do you stick to the Manillas as of old? Well, it is certainly impossible for any thing to be nicer or more comfortable than this.”

And well might he say so; for though the room was small, not above eighteen feet by sixteen, with a low ceiling and large projecting mantel-piece, and though the furniture was simple and by no means expensive, nothing could be more truly or more tastefully complete. A large book-case of the black walnut of the country filled the recesses on either hand the fire-place, their glass doors showing a well chosen library of something more than a thousand volumes, classics and history, and the best English poets and romances, with a few French and Italian writers, in elegant and costly bindings. The space above the fire-place was filled, instead of a mirror, by a large case with a sliding front of plate glass, containing an arm-rack lined with crimson velvet, well garnished with two superb twin double-barreled guns, by Purdy, a heavy ounce-ball rifle, by the same prince of makers, a short but large-bored twelve-pound duck gun, a case of nine-inch pistols, by old Kuchenreüter, a smaller brace, by Nanton; and three or four hunting knives, of various sizes and construction. On either side the door which led to the bed-chamber, stood a small slab or table, the one arranged with inkstandish, portfolio, presse papier and all the apparatus of the scribe; the other covered with powder-flasks and shot-pouches, screw-drivers, dog-whips, drinking-flasks, and, in short, every thing a sportsman could require, not thrown about at random, but all displayed symmetrically, and bright, and free from dust. The walls were hung with several excellent line engravings, from sporting subjects, by Landseer. The floor was carpeted with a grave but rich Brussels, which was not unpleasantly relieved by the deep crimson curtains and cushions of the massive old fashioned settees and sofas, with which the room was bountifully furnished. A large round centre-table, with a crimson cloth, supported a tall brass reading-lamp, and was strewn thickly with portfolios of good engravings, an annual or two, the Spirit of the Times, and the last numbers of the Turf Register, with several English Sporting Magazines, and other periodicals; but it was now pushed back from the fire toward the large, soft-cushioned sofa which occupied the whole length of the opposite wall, and its place taken for the nonce by a small trivet, on which stood an antique salver, with a coffee pot and sugar dish of richly chased and massive silver, a cut glass cream jug, with a small stand of liqueurs, two tiny glasses, and two coffee cups of Sevres China. A pile of hickory logs was crackling and flashing cheerfully upon the hearth; a pair of wax candles were blazing on the mantel-piece; the superannuated Russian setter, to whom Tim had alluded, was dozing on the rug; and, heedless of the neighborhood of her natural foe, a beautiful, soft, tortoise-shell cat sat purring on the arm of Harry Archer’s own peculiar settle. Such was the aspect of the room, which Heneage, fresh as he was from London and all the finished comforts of English country-houses, in the first month of his first visit to America, pronounced the very acme of perfection, as a bachelor’s establishment.

“Wait till you see my stables, and my kennel, my quail-house, where I save them through the winter, my little flower garden, and my dairy, and my ice-house. We have turned Jacks of all trades, Timothy and I. And now, with the exception of my old woman, for—this is a very moral country, and I am, you know, a very moral man—to save my character, I got the ugliest and oldest cook in all America—upon my soul I sometimes fancy she must have been in the ark with Noah!—with the exception, as I say, of my old woman, you have seen all the members of my menage. She cooks and makes the beds, and cleans the chambers, as she persists in calling the bed-rooms, being of course a Yorkshire woman—Tim would have died had I got even a Northumbrian—and Timothy is butler, and stud-groom, and valet, and gamekeeper, and, of late, I believe, head gardener; and that imp, Dick, who drove you up, with an extraordinary negro genius, who never takes his clothes off from one year’s end to the other, or sleeps in a bed, summer or winter, preferring the hay-loft at all seasons, do all the work of the house, garden, kennel, stable, and of my little farm; just twenty acres, Fred! on which I feed two Alderneys, and fatten yearly a dozen or two of right black-faced Moorish mutton.”

Meantime, the friends discussed their coffee, and puffed their favorite cheroots, and, meeting now for the first time in many years, chatted of many things, and called old scenes to mind, and asked and received tidings of many an ancient friend, and passed, in short, two hours as pleasantly as could have been devised if they had planned it, until the door was opened, and Timothy thrust in his sleek black head at the aperture, informing them that “T’ soopper was ready noo, and wad be cold if they waited ony langer”—a piece of information which brought them to their legs with speed; and not them only, but Master Charon likewise, who, though he had been voted slow and superfluous in the field, had yet abated nothing in the keenness of his nose, so far at least as meal times were concerned, come they as often as they might. The dining-room, which was precisely of the same dimensions with the library, was furnished with the same nice attention to details, the same harmonious taste, which imparted an appearance of luxury and richness to articles in themselves by no means extraordinary. The curtains and all the furniture, as in the other room, were crimson, the hues of the carpet in some sort matching them; a large sideboard of black walnut faced the fire-place, glittering with fine cut glass and a small but beautiful selection of old fashioned silver, among which shone resplendent a superb cup, or vase, won by the prowess of the owner at the Red House, against no few or mean competitors in pigeon shooting, and two tall richly gilded tankards, watching like sentries on the flanks of the array. The table was drawn up close to the fire, which blazed with a fierceness that would have been almost intolerable, but for a screen that intercepted a portion of its heat, and was covered by a cloth of dazzling whiteness, whereon was arranged a supper service with two covers, in a style so accurate and tempting as to have pleased the sagest gourmet, while the morocco armed chairs, which stood at either end, promised a world of voluptuous comfort. The whole room was one blaze of light, and nothing could by any means have been conceived more cheerful than the aspect of the whole.

“Now, Fred,” said Harry as they entered, “I trust your drive has given you an appetite, for I have no doubt Timothy has got us something tolerably eatable. What is it, hey, Tim?”

“Nay, sur, ay’s sure ay canna tell ye; for ay’s been sorting Measter Heneage’s things loike, and suppering oop t’ twa pointer dogs he brought wi’ him.”

“Well, well, take off the covers and let us see. Broiled wood duck here; which I can recommend, Fred; they are as good a bird as flies, excepting always the royal canvas-back—let me give you half a one; with a squeeze of that lemon, and a dash of Cayenne, you’ll find it more than passable. There, cover those cock up again, Tim, and put them by the fire—are those the birds I shot yesterday? Exactly! that’s right!—let’s see those side dishes—ha! cauliflowers a la crême and stewed cellery. Now then, Fred, what wine? There’s some dry, still Champaign in ice there, if you like it; and some pale Sherry here, that I think good; there’s claret in the cellar; but I think the weather’s too cold for the Bourdeaux—Port does not suit this climate; but I’ve got some Madeira that will do your heart good.”

“Oh! Champaign, Harry, Champaign for supper always. Your Sherry and Madeira are dinner wines, me judice.”

“I agree with you, Fred; open that long neck, Timothy. Well, now, what think you of the wood duck?”

“Excellent—good indeed—but why do you call it wood duck, Harry?” answered Heneage, with his mouth half full of the tender, juicy broil.

“Because they live in woods, Fred; and perch, and build their nests in trees.”

“Oh! humbug! that’s a touch too much of a good thing, old fellow.”

“It’s true, though, every word of it. You’ll find game here one thing, and game in England quite another, I can tell you, Master Fred—aye! and covert shooting here in these wild swamps and wooded hills a very different sort of matter from a Norfolk battu. The big glasses, Tim, the long-stemmed beakers!” he interposed; and his orders were speedily obeyed; and the rich, dry Champaign stood mantling, with no cream, and a few bead-like bubbles only floating around the brim, in two tall half pint goblets of Venetian crystal.

“By George! but that is splendid, Harry,” exclaimed Fred Heneage, as the seductive liquor disappeared. “Yes! half a woodcock, if you please.”

“No half about the matter, Fred; they are but little chaps, these woodcocks of America—not half so big as ours. But then, they positively swarm here.”

“Why aye!” responded Heneage, receiving the whole bird, which Harry sent to him, with all complacency. “Why aye! Frank Forester, whom I saw for an hour or two in New York, told me as much—by the way, I forgot to tell you that he says he will be here on Friday. Where will you stow him?”

“O, I make point de façon with Master Frank. He will take Tim’s room, I suppose; who will turn Dick out; that is to say, if he does not prefer a room at old Tom Draw’s, in the village. I often stow my supernumeraries there. What did he tell you anent the woodcock?”

“Oh, I don’t know—some wondrous yarn or other; I did not pay very much attention, or believe one half of what he said—something about killing them by hundreds in a day.”

“Well, so we do; the commodore and I bagged last year, between sunrise and sunset, one hundred and fifteen.”

“Not really! And how many shall we get to-morrow?”

“Try another glass of Champaign, Fred, and then I’ll explain. Do you think this too cold?”

“No! perfection. A bit of that cauliflower, if you please. Now, then, about to-morrow.”

“Why, Fred, this is fall shooting, as we call it here; and, in the autumn, birds are not to be found in such swarms as in July—nevertheless, it is a very good year—there has been quite a sharp frost these last three nights, to the northward, and they are coming in fast. I have killed none to speak of yet, and not a gun but mine has been fired in the valley these two months. So I think we are pretty sure of sport. I shall kill from twenty-five to thirty cock off my own gun to-morrow, and Frank would do nearly as much, if he were up here. You, I suppose, will get fifteen—”

“Cool that, by Jupiter!” replied Fred Heneage—“why, I can beat Frank Forester like bricks!”

“You could—you mean to say—you could beat him three years ago in a Norfolk turnip field.”

“Yes could I, or on a Scottish moor, or in an Irish bog.”

“I dare say—I dare say,” responded Harry, very coolly; “but you see, Fred, a Scottish moor and an Irish bog are vastly different things from a Yankee swamp, as you will find before you have been out an hour to-morrow. The first requires, I admit, the wind and sinews of a mountaineer, the pluck of a prize fighter, and the endurance of a Captain Barclay,—the second cannot be braved with impunity but by one who can ‘bound from hag to bag,’ as Scott has said it, ‘like any Bilhope stag,’ but the unstable bottom, the fallen trunks, the mossy tussocks under foot, the tangled vines and thorny briers woven in strange inextricable mazes about your knees and thighs, and even up to your breast and face, the dense impenetrable foliage over head, the impossibility of seeing your dog half the time, although he may be on a dead point ten feet from you—the necessity of firing nine shots out of ten, even when pointed, as if they were chance shots—of killing above half your birds, if you kill them at all, by firing on an instinctive calculation of their line, seeing them only ‘with the eye of faith,’ as poor J. Cypress, Jr. used to call it—all these things, and the farther fact that two at least of the winged game of those regions—the quail, namely, and the ruffed grouse—are the quickest and strongest on the wing, the hardest to hit at all, and the most difficult to stop by hitting of any birds that fly—make the odds so very great that the best English shot will bungle it cruelly for the first season; and if he shoot well on the second, I call him a right apt disciple. And so I say that if you could beat Frank like bricks three years ago, he can beat you three times as badly now. His first year he shot shamefully, though he, like you, had the advantage of beginning in the autumn, when most of the leaf was down. I, on the contrary, commenced in July, when every thing is in full leaf, and such a flush of foliage as you cannot conceive from any thing you ever saw at home. Now Frank shoots quite as well again as he did when he left home, and you will not shoot half as well as you did, at least for the first year—after that you will improve at once, and if you stay here three or four seasons you will astonish yourself when you get home, or, what is the same thing, when you by accident get any open shooting.”

“Well, it may be so—I suppose it is, if you say so, but I don’t know. Did you ever shoot badly here?”

“Not badly—no, Fred,” answered Harry, “badly is not the word at all—infamously!—I shot infamously the first year.”

“And do you really shoot better now than you did at home?—you were a good shot always.”

“So much so that I very often think it would be impossible for me to miss a shot at all in partridge shooting, or one in six in battu. But come, we have got through our game. Timothy, look alive, man—bring the caviare, and deviled biscuits, and what will you have by way of tipple, Fred?—a bowl of mulled wine, or some hot rum punch? I’ve got some very old pine-apple rum, or simple whiskey toddy—the Ferintosh is undeniable, I tell you.”

“Why, Harry, I believe the rum punch is the thing.”

“Very well—see here, Timothy, hand this caviare to Mr. Heneage, and fill us out a thimble full a piece of that curious white cogniac; and then look sharp, and bring a tankard full of water screeching hot, and a flask of the rum from the second locker, a bottle of Scotch whiskey, sugar and lemons, and the cigar box. Now then, take a bit of the biscuit, Fred, and a taste of caviare—wash it down with that brandy—that is a curiosity; white brandy is rare in this country, but I imported this myself. And now, when Timothy comes back, we’ll transplant ourselves to the chimney corner—have a small trivet just to hold our glasses and materials, and blow a cloud till bed time.” Many minutes did not elapse before these preparations were effected, the supper table cleared, the smoking punch and toddy brewed to the several tastes of the companions, the choice manillas lighted, and a small cloud of thin gray smoke curling in lazy wreaths about the heads of either friend. For some brief space they sat in silence, both wrapped, as it appeared, in a voluptuous calm abstraction, the natural consequence perhaps of satiated appetite, aided by the soft influence of the soothing weed; but both in reality thinking, and that too rather deeply, on matters growing out of their late conversation. Harry was pondering in his mind whether of two beats would be the preferable for to-morrow; the one being by far the better for woodcock, but in bad rotten ground and exceedingly thick covert; the other much opener and easier shooting, but not by any means so favorite lying for the long billed birds of passage; while Heneage was ruminating on all that he had heard, and marveling not a little, and half doubtful whether he was not the subject of some wilful mystification, touching American field sports on the part of his companion. After awhile, however, he raised his eyes to a large and fine oil painting which hung over the fire-place, and which, from the accidental position of both the argand lamps on one—and that the right—end of the mantle-piece, was clearly visible in its best light. At first his eyes fell on it by mere chance, and then were riveted by the grand massing of the light and shadow, before he had so much as observed the subject of the painting. He was then on the point of speaking, and asking his friend something of the artist, when an idea struck him, and he examined it, not with a critic’s only, but with a sportsman’s eye; for, like most of the decorations of Harry’s shooting box, it was connected with those matters that were for the most part uppermost in the mind of the owner. It was a large and nobly executed piece—a view of a narrow woodland lane expanding in the foreground of the piece into an open meadow, where it was closed by a set of strong timber bars. The wood and winding lane were actually natural—the gnarled and mossy trunks of the large trees just gilded on their western edges by the ruddy beams of the declining sun, the rich autumnal foliage over head here opening to let in long penciled rays of livid yellow lustre, these blackening into twilight shades, impervious to the strongest light; the mossy greensward checkered with slant gleams and long shadows, and the sandy lane most naturally varying from the brightest tints of ochre to the deepest umber, as it was touched by sunshine, or overhung by heavy foliage. The left hand foreground of the picture was occupied by a tall oak, its deep brown coppery umbrage casting a massive gloom over the earth below it, while here and there a flickering glance of gold glinted on its rough boll between the sere leaves. In the front of this, brought into strong and palpable relief, for it was in broad light, stood a stout built gray pony, with a long tail and heavy tangled mane, looking out of the corner of his eye with a half vicious glance, as if more than half inclined to kick at a small spaniel, which seemed to be tickling his forelegs by the feathery motion of his thick silky tail. A saddle lay ungirt by the dog, with all its trappings, crupper and stirrups and surcingle, cast in disorder on the ground, as it had been flung down by the smock-frocked urchin who leaned against the rails, holding the bridle carelessly in one hand thrust under his frock, and watching the actions of the principal personage, a stout, athletic man, with shooting jacket, game bag, boots and leather leggins, who was employed a little way advanced before the rest in smoothing down the feathers of a superb cock-pheasant, which he was holding up by the neck with his right hand, its varying and gorgeous hues glittering and glowing in rare mimicry of life. A large hare and small rabbit hung by their heels from the top rails of the fence, while a great pile of game, composed of hares and pheasants only, was heaped up at the sportsman’s feet, his double-barreled gun leaning against a post in the extreme right foreground, a bright and golden glitter falling upon the yellow bank and the light foliage of the bushes just behind it, and sleeping lovingly upon the sere and faded herbage that lay below, with every blade of grass, and shivered stick, and small white pebble, laughing out all distinct and sharp in the soft sunset. No words, however, can describe, so as to convey an idea of its vraisemblance, its strong reality, and truthfulness, that noble picture; and Harry Archer, as he observed his friend, whom he knew to be an amateur and connoisseur of no mean judgment or ability, said nothing, but, supposing only that he was admiring its very visible and striking beauties, relapsed into his own revery, from which he was aroused at length by a loud burst of laughter from Fred Heneage. Looking up, not amazed a little at this sudden interruption, he was encountered by an expression so funnily and joyously triumphant in the face of Fred, that he too was constrained to laugh, as he asked,

“What now—what the devil’s in the wind now, Heneage?”

“So you’ve been humbugging as usual—stuffing me—at your old tricks—hang it!—but I’ll pay you for it.”

“Now what do you mean in the name of all that’s wonderful?” Harry exclaimed, himself quite mystified. “I have not stuffed you; and, in truth, I cannot even guess what you are driving at.”

“Oh! no—not you, I warrant you—here you’ve been cramming me all night about ruffed grouse, and quail, and wood ducks, and Heaven only knows what else; and making me eat snipe under the name of woodcock—though they were mighty large snipe, I must acknowledge—just for the sake of cramming me that woodcock in America were not woodcock. I suppose you think I have never read about pheasant shooting in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and partridge shooting in Virginia and New York. But no you don’t—no you don’t, master judge! I am not to be had to night!”

“Faith! but you are had pretty thoroughly. Oh! how I wish Frank Forester were here—but I’ll tell him—I’ll tell him if I die for it, and he shall cook it up for some of the magazines, that’s poz. But how did you find out that you were had, Fred?”

“Why, I tell you, I have read books about America, if I never have been here before, and I know that there are pheasants in Pennsylvania, and partridges in New York and Virginia.”

“Well, well, I grant that—I grant that—but did you chance to read, too, that the partridge of New York is not the partridge of Virginia—and farther yet, that the partridge of New York is the pheasant of Pennsylvania, and New Jersey? And farther, once again, that neither the partridge of New York nor the partridge of Virginia is a partridge at all—nor the pheasant of any place on this side the Atlantic a pheasant?”

“No, Harry, I never did read that—and you may just as well stop stuffing me, when I sit here with the proof of your villainy before my eyes.”

“Where, Fred—where is the proof—hang me if I know where you are in the least!—where is the proof?”

“Why this is too much! Do you think I’m blind, man—there!—there in that picture!—don’t I see pheasants there, and hares too?”

“Oh! yes, Fred—yes, indeed!” shouted Archer, choking down a convulsive laugh that would burst out at times almost overpowering him. “Yes, that is it, certainly—and those are hares and pheasants—and that’s a right smart Jersey trotter, I some guess—a critter that can travel like a strick—and the boy holding him—that’s a Long Island nigger, now I calkilate,—oh, ya—as! and that’s a Yorker on a gunnin’ scrape, stringin’ them pheasants! ya—as;” and he spoke with so absurd an imitation and exaggeration of the Yankee twang and drawl, that he set Heneage laughing, though he was still more than half indignant.

“No!” he said, when he recovered himself a little,—“no, I didn’t say that—the boy is not a nigger.”

“A white nigger, I some think!” responded Archer, still on the broad grin.

“No, not a nigger at all—and that does not look much like an American fast trotter either—nor has that man much the cut of a New Yorker.”

“No. I should think not very much. Negroes are not for the most part white—and, as you say, American trotters have not in general quite so much hair about their fetlocks, or quite such lion manes—it might do for a Canadian, though—but then unluckily they are not apt to be white!—and certainly you might travel from Eastport to Green Bay and not meet a man with laced half boots and English leggins, unless you chanced to stumble on your most obedient; and as to a blue Leicester smock-frock, such as that lad has got on, there most unquestionably is not such a thing on this side the Atlantic—but never mind. Fred, never mind. That gray cob is quite as much like Ripton or Americus, and that little fat faced chaw bacon is as much like a Long Island nigger, and that broad shouldered Yorkshire gamekeeper more like a New York gunner, than those long-tailed, green-headed, golden-breasted pheasants to any American fowl, be he called what he may. Why Heaven preserve your wits, Fred! That is an English picture, by an exceeding clever Royal Academician. See!—Fred, you must have heard of him! ‘A Day in the Woods’ he called it, and a right good day’s work he has made of it. Now, listen to me; there is not one wild bird or beast in America, unless it be a few ducks, that is precisely similar to its European congeners. The woodcock is a distinct variety, Scalopax minor, rarely exceeding eight and never eleven ounces—he is red breasted, and is in the northern states a summer bird of passage; coming early in the spring, sometimes before the snow is off the ground, laying, rearing its young, and going off when the winter sets in to the rice fields, and warm wet swamps of Georgia and the Carolinas. The bird called in the eastern states the partridge, and every where southward and westward of New Jersey the pheasant, is, in reality, a grouse—the ruffed or tippet grouse—Tetrao umbellus—a feather-legged, pine-haunting, mountain-loving bird, found in every state, I believe, of the Union, in the Canadas, and even up to Labrador. There are many other grouse in North America, of which none are found in the states except the great abundance in Long Island, New Jersey, and the pinnated grouse, or prairie fowl, formerly found in northeastern parts of Pennsylvania, though on Long Island it is now quite extinct, and nearly so in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. They are still killed on Martha’s Vineyard, a little island off the coast of Massachusetts, where they are now very rigorously preserved; and in Ohio, Illinois, and all the western states, they literally swarm on the prairies. The spruce grouse, a small and very rare kind, is found in Maine occasionally, and in a portion of New York, between the head waters of the Hudson and the Canada frontier. Four or five other species are found in Labrador, and on the Rocky Mountains, but none of these, though well known to the ornithologist, can be included in the sportsman’s list of game. The partridge of Virginia is the quail of New York; commonly known as pedrix Virginiana—though of late there has been a stiff controversy as to his name and genus. It is proved, I believe, beyond cavil, that he is not exactly a quail, nor a partridge either, but a sort of half-way link between them; the modern naturalists call him an ortyx—a very silly name, by the way! since it is only the Greek for quail, to which he is in truth the more nearly connected. His habits are far more like those of the quail than of the partridge, and he should be called quail in the vernacular. If you want to get at the merits of this case, I will lend you a book, written by my old friend, J. Cypress, Jr., and edited by Frank Forester, in which you will find the controversy I have mentioned. These three birds we shall kill to-morrow, and you will be convinced of the truth of what I tell you. Properly speaking, there is no rabbit in America—the small gray fellow, who is commonly so called, sits in a form, and never burrows, nor does he live in congregations—while the large fellow, who is found only in the eastern states, and some parts of New York and Jersey, turns white in winter, and is in fact a variety of the Alpine Hare. The first, I dare say, we may kill to-morrow, certainly not the latter. The snipe, moreover, which is called English, to distinguish him from all the thousand varieties of sandpipers, shore birds, and plovers, which are called bay snipe, indiscriminately; and from the woodcock, which the country folks call mud snipe, blind snipe, and big-headed snipe, just as their fancy prompts, is not—so say the ornithologists,—exactly the same bird as his English brother; although his habits, cry, feeding ground, and so forth, are exactly similar, except, by-the-by, that here he perches on trees sometimes.”

“Heavens and earth, what a whopper!” interrupted Heneage.

“Just so I told Sam B—d—t when he told me so six years ago, and ten days afterward I saw it myself, in company with Mike Sanford. Bill R——, of Newark, knows it right well, and has seen them do so himself, and so does Frank!”

“You be hanged!” answered Fred.

“You think so now,” said Harry, “but you’ll know better one of these days. Mean time I have about finished my yarn. All I have got to say more is, that the only birds I have found precisely similar here and in England are the mallard and duck—the teal, which is called here the green-winged, in contradiction to our garganey, which these folks call the blue-winged, teal. And now, ring the bell, and fill up a fresh glass of punch.” So said so done; and, ere the tumbler was replenished, Tim made his entry.

“Now, Tim,” said Archer, “we shall want breakfast before day break—say half past five o’clock. Do you drink tea or coffee, Fred—oh, either—very well, then black tea, Timothy—dry toast—no hot meat—that cold quail pie will do. The double wagon, with Lucifer and Pluto, at six precisely—we shall want Dick to bring the nags home, and you to go with us. Some luncheon in the game bag—the flasks all filled. I will shoot over Sancho and Jem Crow and Shot to-morrow—do you understand?”

“Ay, ay! sur,” answered Tim, and exit.

“And now, Fred, this is your bed-room—all’s right, I fancy—you shall be called at five to-morrow, and, please the pigs, I’ll let you know, and that before sunset, that a day’s tramping in the swamps of Warwick is quite another thing from our friend Lee’s ‘Day in the Woods.’ ”

BY W. E. BURTON.

THE RETREAT.

In the gray of the morning of Christmas Day, in the year 1793, a young man, in the ordinary costume of a French peasant, with a bright red handkerchief bound round his head, stepped cautiously from a bushy shelter on the summit of a precipitous cliff that banked the current of the river Loire. His attention had been aroused by a slight splashing of the water below, and he vainly endeavored to distinguish in the rising mist the cause of his alarm. He poised a huge and rusty musket on his knee, drew his nail across the edge of the flint and loosened the caked powder that filled the pan. In a few moments, a man was seen swimming in the river’s brink, and endeavoring to find a foothold among the rocks; he had scarcely effected his hazardous landing, ere the watcher, having descended the cliff, hailed him in the rude patois of Bretagne.

The swimmer paused, gazed anxiously around, and fell exhausted on the beach.

“Here, Jean Brive,” shouted the watcher, “leave your hiding place in the bush—crawl down, and help me to assist a brother unfortunate.”

Another figure appeared descending the cliff: a frightful wound deformed his youthful face, and streaks of gore stained his dress.

The historical reader will at once perceive that our actors are fugitive Vendeans from the fatal battle of Savenai.

“Peste!” exclaimed the swimmer, as he revived under the exertions of his comrades, “had the Loire been fifty yards wider I should, by this time, have been feeding its fishes. ’Tis a perilous swim on a wintry day.”

“But why cross the river at this point, so far from the field of battle? We must travel along the northern bank, on our road to Nantes, to avoid the numerous streamlets that intersect this shore.”

“Why, then, are you here?” said Raoul Moyse, the new comer. “How were you enabled to cross the Loire in the neighborhood of Savenai, when our whole force were not sufficient to command the pass?”

“We jumped into a ferry boat that was leaving the shore, during the thickest part of the pursuit. We thought we were unobserved, but the cowardly blue-coats fired after us, although the rest of the passengers were women and children. One of the hired slaves of the convention, a dragoon, dashed his horse into the river, and swam some distance after the boat. We could easily have stopped his progress, but the girls pressed round us, and held our arms. The ruffian fired into the group, and killed a lovely creature—one who had been most earnest to save his life. We fired in return, and the dragoon, and the nobler brute, the horse, both sunk beneath the stream.”

“You were right, André Bezas, in crossing the river at your earliest chance. The northern shore swarms with legions of the blues. I have been hunted by the demons during the entire night; and when the first glimpse of light exhibited a body of the enemy in advance on the east, I resolved to attempt the passage of the Loire, dangerous as it was, rather than run the risk of falling into the hands of the butchers.”

A consultation was then held by the trio, respecting the method of procedure, when it was resolved to throw away their muskets, to avoid the banks of the river, to make a detour to the southeast, till they struck upon the only great road in the Bocage,^[2] leading from Rochelle to Nantes. A passage on this road, by unarmed peasants, would not be a suspicious event; but, in case the troops of the convention were likely to be troublesome, a knowledge of the by-ways of the Bocage would enable the Vendeans in a few days to strike the river to the east of the city of Nantes, when, descending the stream in a market boat, they could not be suspected of participation in a battle fought many miles to the west, should the authorities deem it necessary to interfere.

“I can promise you both shelter,” said Jean Brive, the man with the gash in his face, “should we gain the city. My sister, Pernelle, inhabits a small house built on the ruins of the old ramparts. The remains of a covered way pass under the house to an unexplored extent; at all events, there is room for a couple of runaway Vendeans, and I’ll be bound that Pernelle will not let us starve.”

“What reason can you assign for returning without your youngest sister, the pretty Benotte?”

“Pernelle knows why Benotte followed our people into the field. Patriotism is a pretty excuse for the love of a dashing young officer. Guillaume Roland has received a violent hurt—Benotte hastened to tend his wounds; and if he is captured by the enemy, she will not hesitate to share his imprisonment.”

The hardy Vendeans proceeded to put their plan into execution. The wounds of Jean Brive were washed and bandaged—he had received the thrust of a pike in one of his cheeks, and a carbine bullet had gone through the flesh of his arm—yet he scorned to complain, and cheerfully essayed the long and toilsome march. A rough cross was erected by the river side; prayers were addressed to the Savior, and the aid of the Virgin Mary claimed in their behalf. A scant breakfast was extracted from the knapsack of André Bezas, and the trio set forth with cheerful and resolved minds. Their muskets were detained until they neared the great road, when a farmer gladly filled their knapsacks with the best of provisions in exchange for their arms. In due time they reached the city of Nantes, and, with but little difficulty, gained the friendly roof of Pernelle Brive.

THE PRO-CONSUL OF THE CONVENTION.

After the disastrous battle of La Mans and Savenai, which occurred within a few days of each other, the Vendean chiefs meditated a concentration at Nantes, and the discomfited royalists hastened to obey their leaders. The republican troops offered no opposition to the progress of the sons of the Bocage, and thousands of the fugitives gathered together in the capital of the old duchy of Bretagne. But the emissaries of the Convention had possession of the plans of the royalist, and the Nantese authorities gave up the control of the city to a pro-consul sent from Paris with power to punish and to slay. The Vendean fugitives were arrested, and the jails were crowded with their thousand victims.

“Jean Baptiste Carrier, the pro-consul, might,” to quote the language of Sir Walter Scott, “have summoned hell to match his cruelty without a demon venturing to answer his challenge.” He was originally a low, unprincipled attorney in one of the Auvernoise villages, and early distinguished himself by his ferocious conduct during the various movements of the Revolution. He joyfully accepted the mission to Nantes, and bade his colleagues mark the energy of his acts. Informal trials gave his victims to the guillotine in daily crowds; the inhabitants wept at the unprecedented slaughter, but the insatiate Carrier grumbled at the inanity of his death dealings, and dispensing with all show of trial, doomed thousands to the grave.

Collot d’ Herbois, Joseph Lebon, Maignet Robespierre—nay, the whole mass of the sanguinary ruffians of the Revolution were excelled in individual cruelty by this Carrier. Anecdotes of occasional mercy, of minute workings of human nature, of irresolution in the execution of their dreadful deeds, are related of many of the most conspicuous among the blood-stained crowd; but not a single point can be urged in Carrier’s favor. He lavished death with a gôut that characterized him alone; blood seemed necessary to relish his daily bread; and the workings of an active imagination were employed to vary the monotonous doings of the executioner—to excite and gratify the appetite that reveled with a fiend’s delight in the annihilation of his fellow creatures.

The three Vendean soldiers were concealed in the covered way of the old ramparts by the girl, Pernelle Brive, at the hazard of her life. This heroic creature obtained a poor living by trimming the better kind of hats of Nantese manufacture, famous throughout the west of France. Her scanty means were unable to furnish the additional food required by the new comers; and she was ultimately compelled to state her impossibility of providing another meal. It was resolved that one of the party should venture from the place of concealment, and, in disguise, perambulate the city, to obtain, if possible, the means of existence for his starving comrades.

The choice fell upon André Bezas, who returned empty-handed from his day’s stroll. He had been unable to procure the requisite change of clothing to effect a perfect disguise; he was therefore fearful of venturing in the crowded avenues, lest he should be recognized by the busy foe. He was too proud to beg, and too honest to rob, even for the bread of life.

Jean Brive’s wounded face was reckoned too remarkable to be trusted in the public streets. The third peasant, Raoul Moyse, unwillingly went forth, with many an oath, upon the necessary but fearful task. He returned with a basket of the choicest food—with a hamper of wine—with a purse of gold! He refused to explain to his comrades the cause of his success; and, despite their honest cautions, boldly ventured to walk the busiest streets at all hours of the day.

Pernelle Brive was a well-made buxom lass, and her cheerful looks and kind attentions made a powerful impression on the plastic mind of André Bezas. The horror of the times had driven the timid Cupid from the haunts of men; but in the damp recesses of the ancient war paths the little god found welcome. André told his amorous plaint in the secrecy of his dark hiding place, and saw not the blush that irradiated Pernelle’s brown cheek when she listened to his welcome tale of love. Her brother gave his sanction to Andre’s claim, and the willing maiden consented to bestow her hand whenever her lover dared boldly to claim his prize.

Raoul Moyse had also beheld the ruddy beauties of Pernelle with an amorous eye, and scrupled not to prefer his claim. He offered her a variety of choicest trinkets—jewels that the richest of the Nantese ladies might have worn with pride—but the honest girl rejected his present and his vows. The fellow pointed to the tri-colored cockade, which he had been compelled to assume in his disguise, and, with a grin of peculiar malignity, went forth into the crowded square.

THE CARNAGE.

Few persons in the Vendean army knew the particulars of Raoul’s life. He claimed La Vendee as his birth place, and it was known that he had done good service to the cause. One of the small islands on the western coast was in fact his natal spot; and for many years he belonged to a gang of desperate wreckers that haunted the troubled shores of the Bay of Biscay. When the civil war first reared its head in La Vendee, he joined the banner of the royalists at the command of a seigneur, to whom he had been obliged for protection in more than one of his suspicious deeds. The excitement of a soldier’s life gratified his active disposition; and, as the peculiar mode of warfare adopted by the Vendeans permitted him to change his leader at his will, he rambled from post to poet unquestioned, and at last achieved a character for patriotism and bravery.

On the day when he first quitted the vaults to seek for food, he encountered one of his brother islanders, who was then high in command in the army of the Convention, and deep in the confidence of Carrier, the pro-consul of the doomed city. Raoul kept his own secret, and his friend made him an offer of service. Ere the day had passed, Raoul was an officer in Carrier’s own corps—a corps composed of Parisian thieves, convicts released from jail, galley slaves, the refuse of the provincial cities, the scum of the Revolutionary army—the executioners of rapine and of murder!

It has been remarked among the peculiarities attending the doings of the Reign of Terror, that timid and tender-hearted men became, without any stage of intermission, the most blood-thirsty and ferocious in their acts, when possessed of power over their fellow creatures. A score of names may be cited as authorities. Raoul Moyse had never exhibited any powerful traits of a sanguinary nature during the exterminating contest in which he had been engaged; but, when appointed to a command among the ruffian corps, he emulated the bloody fame of Carrier himself.

On the morning of the twenty-first of January, 1794, Carrier was standing in one of the public squares of Nantes, superintending the execution of nearly two hundred human beings of all ages. The condemned were placed in columns, to be mowed down by grape shot—in line, to be murdered by the musketry of his pets, as he denominated the assassins under his command. The word was given—the cannon roared—a band of music struck up a gay and martial air, to drown the victims’ shrieks. The musketeers poured in their fire—the cavalry dashed in among the dying and the dead, and, with their sabres, cut the maimed sufferers to the earth. The servile wretches that composed the staff of Carrier turned pale with horror and affright. A smile of triumph lighted the eyes of the chief demon of the group, and his thin lips quivered with joy.

An old man, a decrepit, time-bowed wretch, with a seamed and wrinkled face, and long white hair, now dabbled with his blood, escaped the aim of the marksmen with a flesh wound, and skillfully parried with his staff the sabre of the dragoon who tried to cut him down. He staggered to the feet of Carrier, and implored, not mercy, but time for one brief prayer to God!

“There is no God!” said the atheist, with a sneer. “The Convention has decreed that there is no God!—prayer therefore would be a waste of time.”

Two of Carrier’s ruffians drove their bayonets into the old man’s body, as he knelt at Carrier’s feet.

The old man started up, and his life-blood trickled unchecked from his gaping wounds. His piping treble seemed changed to the rich, full voice of his youth, as he said—

“I stand on the threshold of eternity! There is a God! He has summoned me to his presence, and I summon thee to meet me there ere another year be added to thy life!”^[3]

For a moment the old man wavered as he stood. A smile enlivened his worn and pallid lineaments; the vividness of death passed away, and he dropped motionless at Carrier’s feet.

The group stood aghast! The chief placed his foot upon the old man’s corpse, and, taking a pinch of snuff, quietly exclaimed—

“My pets must be looked to—they are becoming careless, or this poor wretch would not have escaped to trouble us with his nonsense. Take care, gentlemen, or your feet will get wet;” and he pointed to the creeping gore of the old man as it was winding its little stream among his murderers as they stood.

“The soldiers are too well paid,” said Raoul Moyse. “We have difficulties innumerable in keeping them to their duties. Women and wine will ruin them.”

“Ah, they must have wine—their business requires it. The women will but soften their hearts. Let every fille de joie in Nantes be arrested, and their gallants shall shoot them down here, in open day, in my presence. This is not a time for love making.”

The horrors of that day ended not with the slaughter of the people by the soldiery; the guillotine pursued its unceasing work upon the quay, and a stream of blood filled the kennels of the street. The assistant executioners refused to proceed; they were worn out with fatigue. The chief executioner, a man gray in the service of the law, once more ascended the scaffold. He was to slay a group of women and children! Babes at the breast were there—girls budding into womanhood, the teeming wife, the widow, and the matron, alike unconscious of a crime to either God or man.

The executioner refused to slay again. His trade was death, but he was a father—a husband! He went home, and died that night from horrible agony of mind!

The city authorities remonstrated with the pro-consul, but he threatened them with the guillotine, and issued an edict forbidding, on pain of death, any interference on behalf of the accused.

The legion of ruffians that constituted the corps of military executioners, had been despatched on errands of rapine and murder to several of the chateaux near Nantes. The regular troops refused to fire upon the untried victims, and rumors of dissatisfaction among the officers were currently afloat. Colonel Legare, a man of influence with the Convention, was desired to have his men in parade order in the University Square early the next morning.

“Citizen Carrier,” was the reply, “let me advise you to wait till your own hang-dogs are at leisure. My men are soldiers, not executioners; they have expressed a pretty bold opinion of passing events. I am under your command; my men are at the disposal of my will. If you desire it, I shall parade them in the morning; but if they are ordered to fire, I cannot be answerable for the destination of their bullets.”

It was at this moment, when the stream of blood seemed almost checked in its course, that Raoul Moyse stepped forward, and bound the pro-consul in the ties of service. He volunteered his aid in working the guillotine; he suggested other plans of extermination, and undertook the control of Carrier’s proudest manœuvre, the establishment of the Noyades, a scheme that was to be attempted that evening for the first time.

THE NOYADES.

The curés of the various seigneuries in La Vendee were of much importance in these intestine struggles, and ranked, in the estimation of the peasantry, with the leaders of the partisan bands. Throughout the Bocages the worthy pastors espoused the side of the royalists; and, having incited their flocks to action, accompanied the levies into the field of battle. Nearly a hundred of these reverend victims filled the walls of L’Entrepôt, and Carrier resolved to make their fate an example to the ministers of the repudiated creed. He sneered at their threats of excommunication; the Convention had abolished the Catholic religion, by its decree of the tenth of November, when the worship of Reason was imposed upon the true republican. The dominion of the new goddess was characteristically short—for, in the ensuing May, the Convention deemed it necessary to issue a public acknowledgment of the existence of a Supreme Being!

But while Carrier despised the tenets of the priests, he pretended to dread their ecclesiastical influence; he promised to rescue them from the hands of the Convention—to enable them to cross the Loire on the road to their beloved La Vendee—desiring only the prayers of the holy men as a reward.

Raoul Moyse was intrusted with the care of the embarkation. The moon gave a brilliancy to the stone-walled buildings as he journeyed from the ramparts toward the jail. He still dwelt with the maiden Pernelle; for her charms yet held possession of his heart. On the steps, and beneath the walls of the jail, in the shade of the ancient trees—wherever, in fact, a glimpse of the prison windows could be obtained—sat hundreds of women, watching with the fond agony of love, for a sight—a glance only—of the husbands, fathers, sons, brothers and lovers, who were immured within the cells. The whips of the jailers, who several times essayed to clear the avenue—the bayonets of the guard—the piercing blasts of a January night—were all alike unheeded. Many victims were picked from the groups and thrust into noisome cells, to await a certain death, for uttering treasonous expressions—but the body of the watchers moved not; their all of love, of life, was locked within the jail, and the trusting heart of woman heeded not the pains of self.

The midnight bell sounded, and Raoul led the procession of the expectant curés from the portals of the jail. A spacious open barge awaited them below the range of lengthy bridges that span the bosom of the Loire. Raoul, from his coast-born experience, had arranged the manner of the proceeding with a cunning that defied defeat. He entered a boat with half a dozen of his Island comrades, and towed the barge to the very centre of the stream. Casting off the tow-rope, he passed his boat along the side of the barge, and removed various plugs which projected a few inches below the water-mark. The departure of the boat for the city shore, and the rushing of the water into the barge, told the unhappy priests their doom. A wild shriek gave vent to their despair—it was answered by a shout from the murderous Carrier and his staff. A silence of a few awful moments then ensued, when the solemn peal of “Jubilate” ascended from the doomed barge, and continued to swell the echoes of the night, till a sudden silence following a rushing surge, told the end of La Vendee’s holy sons.

The success of this scheme delighted Carrier; it was repeated nightly, till the river was gorged with dead. Flocks of ill-omened birds hovered over the city, and were seen on the banks of the Loire tearing and devouring the putrid corpses of the drowned. The municipal authorities forbade the introduction of the river fish in the markets; the doctors declared that the waters were infected with the putridity of the slain; and famine threatened its severest trials. The farmers dreaded contact with the horrors of the city, and refused to supply the markets with the produce of the land.

Carrier proceeded with his exterminations. The thousands of citizens who had been sacrificed, had left behind them several hundreds of orphan children. The Nantese would have adopted them, but Carrier determined to crush the spawn of the viper with the viper’s self. Above six hundred children, all of them under the age of fourteen years, were assembled in the quarries of Gigan; the artillery were ordered to fire upon this group of innocents. The gunners had not sufficiently depressed their pieces, and the balls dashed out the brains of a few of the tallest victims, but touched not the multitude. The children rushed forward ere the cannon could again be loaded; they clung to the knees of the soldiery; they screamed for life and liberty—but Carrier let loose his pets, and the poor infants were bayoneted and sabred as they stood. The soldiers refused to bury the remains of these murdered children; a superstitious dread infected even the boldest of the ruffians; and the corpses were left above ground to rot, and taint the air. An epidemic raged with fearful violence; but the murderers halted not in their career; hundreds of victims were stabbed in the cells of the prisons, and their carcases were thrown into the streets.

THE IDIOT GIRL.

The destruction of the filles-de-joie consummated the deeds of horror conceived by the demon Carrier. Above three hundred of these unfortunates, divested of every particle of clothing, were driven at the bayonet’s point into the river, in open daylight. The banks of the Loire were crowded with the pro-consul’s ruffians, who fired at the females that succeeded in struggling toward the shore. The pets grumbled audibly at being compelled to murder their mistresses; but Carrier quieted them by allowing each revolutionary soldier the privilege of selecting a wife, at will, from the crowds of the noyades that were daily doomed.

Raoul Moyse, who was termed by Carrier le grand amiral, conducted in person, under the pro-consul’s supervision, the whole of these hideous details. At one point of the quay the drowned bodies were washed into a heap, and one of the girls struggled with the water till she attained a seat on the corpses of her companions. She soon attracted the attention of the soldiery by the extravagance of her actions. It was evident that her sense of reason had departed—a dozen muskets were leveled at her, when the voice of command was given by Raoul, and the gibbering idiot was borne ashore.

Raoul placed the rescued female in a covered fourgon and drove to the house of Pernelle Brive. A few words of explanation sufficed; she recognized in the idiot the person of her sister Benotte, who had accompanied the royalists in their perilous campaign.

The history of this poor girl, and it is a matter-of-fact narration, combines a singular mixture of devoted love, courage and superstition. She had placed her affections on Guillaume Roland, a handsome domestic in the service of the seigneur or lord of the domain. He feasted with her at les rilles, sat in the same pew at church, and danced with her on the Sabbath evenings. When the tocsin sounded, she determined to follow her lover to the wars. Previous to the disastrous battle of La Mans, Guillaume received a severe kick from a horse, and was unable to share in the perils of the war. The faithful Benotte, strong in her virtuous love, sat by the side of his cottage couch, and listened to the clamors of the battle field. The victory was gained by the republicans; the owner of the cottage fled from his home in fear, but Benotte refused to quit the guardianship of the man she loved.

The priests of the Bocage, with the peculiar licence of their creed, had promised miracles in support of their cause. The war was for a holy purpose, inasmuch as the first cause of dissatisfaction in La Vendee was the removal of the curés to make place for the creatures of the Convention. A joyful resurrection was to be the fate of all who fell in this sacred fight; the understanding of the peasantry gave but one well-known meaning to the phrase, and the pastors confirmed the people in the error. In three days the slain warrior was to rise again from the dead!

Benotte gazed on her wounded lover, and feared that he would die. His hurt had not been received in battle; the enemies of his party had not dealt the blow; he had no claim to the honors of martyrdom, and dare not anticipate a restoration to life. Flying parties of the blue-coated troops of the Convention were seen searching the adjacent wood for the defeated Vendeans. A thought darted across her mind, and the ignorant and superstitious girl received it as an emanation from Heaven—would it not ensure the future life of her beloved Guillaume if she could induce the Republican soldiers to slay him in his weakness—as an enemy—a warrior in the holy cause? Her determination was soon made. She loaded her lover’s musket, and with a cool and deliberate aim, fired from the window at a party of the enemy who were passing within a few yards of the collage. She saw a soldier fall. She dropped the musket, and hid herself beneath the bed, unheeding the feeble inquiries of the alarmed Guillaume. In one minute the blue-coats burst into the cottage; the musket on the floor told the tale; and Benotte heard the discharge of the gun that announced the fate of her lover; his death struggles shook the bed above her, as he writhed under the thrusts of the soldiers’ bayonets.

With a throbbing heart, Benotte gazed at the mutilated form of him she loved. His manly features were sadly mangled by the furious doings of the enemy, but she wiped the gore from his wounds, and sat down satisfied with the result of her plan. It was a piteous sight to behold that fond but erring creature, confiding absolutely in the promise of her priest, watching for many a weary hour in the dull chamber of that lonely hut, for the advent of the returning spirit of her beloved one. On the evening of the third day, having removed every trace of blood from the chamber, she illuminated the little room of the cottage, and donning her prettiest gown and showiest toque, awaited the resuscitation of that cold and scarred corpse. The night was passed in excitement bordering on delirium, and when the morning sun convinced her that the flesh’s decay forbad the possibility of restoration to life, her overworked imagination gave way; the dreadful nature of her act rushed upon her mind, and she fled from the hut a cureless idiot.

How she contrived to reach the city could never be discovered. She was seen rambling about the streets on the night the girls were arrested, and with them she was thrust into the common jail.

THE MARRIAGE IN DEATH.

“I have saved your sister from a dreadful death, Pernelle,” said Raoul Moyse. “I have kept secret the hiding place of the smooth spoken André Bezas, lest his discovery should affect the safety of your brother Jean, and do an injury to you. I have done all this, at the imminent risk of my own life, to win your love. Shall I not be paid for my labor?”

Pernelle knew not what to say. Raoul spoke the truth; but with the patriotic daring of a Vendean she despised the traitor, and wished to tell him so.

“The nation must rule the few, an ’twere folly longer for the Vendeans to contend with the army of the Convention. Persuade Jean to join with me in service to Carrier. I stand high in his favor. I am rich. I have made some handsome pickings lately; and am to command a party of investigation about to proceed to Paimboeuf. I love you—will make you happy—”

“Happy, and the wife of a common executioner! Love a man crimsoned with the blood of his countrymen! Wed a traitor and a murderer! I would sooner die the horrid death from which you rescued yonder senseless girl.”

“Come, come, Pernelle, you know not what you say. What if I leave the service of Carrier?”

“Raoul, I never can be yours. My hand is sworn to André Bezas, a man I am not ashamed to love.”

Raoul strode rapidly from the house. His plans of revenge were speedily formed. He would denounce the whole party to Carrier—the fugitive Vendeans would be instantly doomed to death, and the girl Pernelle would grace the list of the noyades for having harbored the rebellious peasants.

“Let the men drown—I care not. I can demand the girl as my wife, even on the river’s brink. They must give her to me, and she dare not refuse my claim.”

In the course of the next hour, Pernelle Brive and her idiot sister, her wounded brother, and the brave André, were stretched on the rotten straw of the crowded jail.

The privilege granted by Carrier to each republican soldier, of saving the life of any woman that pleased his fancy, even at the gate of death, was much practiced by the sans culottes of the Loire; and many a lovely daughter of a noble house was torn from the side of her dying parents to receive the embraces of their murderers. With demoniac mirth, Carrier resolved to extend the mockery of marriage to the whole body of the Noyades. A young girl and aged priest were stripped and tied together; they received a nuptial benediction; and amid the shouts of the soldiery were thrust into the waves. The most opposite and ill-assorted matches excited the loudest mirth—the death shrieks of the doomed were lost in the laughter of the executioners.

“A lovely morning this for a water party!” said Raoul Moyse, as he stepped aboard the bateau with his victims. “Come, cheer up, citizens; do not look so gloomy on your wedding-day.”

Despite this attempt at folâtrerie, Raoul was unable to meet the calm gaze of the maid Pernelle, or encounter the stern but honest looks of his former companions in arms.

Carrier had given orders to prepare a large vessel for the reception of this party of Noyades, and in compliance with the requisition of the municipality, the craft was moored some distance below the city bridges, in the deepest water of the Loire. Above two hundred of the doomed were to be immured in the hold of this vessel; the hatches were to be fastened down, and the waters were to be admitted by means of holes previously prepared in the sides of the ship.

The sun shone cheerily, and the ripples of the river gave their silver edges merrily to the light, as boat succeeded boat, in delivering their freights of human suffering to the care of the officer commanding the larger craft. Raoul Moyse banded his party up the vessel’s side, and whispering in Pernelle’s ear, said—

“I have brought you thus far, Pernelle, on the way to death, that you may more deeply appreciate the value of my interference. I claim you as my wife. Nothing else can save you from instant annihilation. Bid your brother and sister farewell, and hasten back with me.”

Pernelle threw herself into the manacled arms of her lover André, and said, “I would rather die.”

“I have no time to lose with this sickly sentiment,” said Raoul. “Take this woman back to the boat—I claim her as my wife. Tie this wounded man to his idiot sister—such unions are not forbidden in our marriage code. Couple this scowling fellow with the old hag in yonder boat. My friend André is anxious to be wedded; and as I am depriving him of one wife, it is but honorable that I should provide him with another.”

Jean Brive and the idiot Benotte were fastened together and thrust below. André Bezas, bearing a heavy load of fetters, the peculiar favor of Raoul, watched the motions of his enemy with a keen observance. The ruffian stood leaning on the bulwark, bearing the senseless form of Pernelle in his arms, and shouting to his men to bring up his boat, which had fallen astern from the action of the tide. With dreadful oaths he hurried them in their work, and went to the open gangway to enforce his orders. The ruffians on dock were about to seize the devoted André, and tie him to his noyade bride—but with an agile bound he eluded their grasp, rushed fiercely on Raoul Moyse, and seizing him with an iron gripe, threw himself over the vessel’s side. The open gangway afforded no protection; Raoul was unable to withstand the impetus, and retaining the girl Pernelle in his arms, was dragged into the waters of the Loire. The weight of Andre’s chains prevented the possibility of rescue—a loud splash, and the tale was told! The lover retained his grasp, and the stream flowed quietly over the bodies of the lover, the rival and the bride.

BY MRS. LYDIA H. SIGOURNEY.

BY MRS. EMMA C. EMBURY.

Of the many forms which ascetic zeal has assumed among those who “think to merit heaven by making earth a hell,” there is perhaps none which appeals so directly to the heart, and satisfies so well the understanding as the various establishments of the Sisters of Charity. The vows which condemn an intellectual and sentient being to the monotonous and inert life of the cloister may be utterly repugnant to our ideas of active usefulness; but there is something sublime in that devotion which, while it denies every selfish gratification, subjugates every earthly passion, and crushes every heart-springing affection, yet consecrates one’s whole existence to the active benevolence, the Christian charity, the self-forgetting ministry of good which is so peculiarly suited to woman’s nature. How beautiful is the union of perfect purity of feeling with earnest sympathy! how noble the sacrifice of youth and health, and every selfish scheme of happiness to a sense of Christian duty! how grand that elevation of character which, while it can afford the aid of its compassionate tenderness to all who suffer, yet asks nothing for itself—which, secure in guarded innocence, can tread unscathed the burning ploughshare over whose fiery path all those must pass who encounter the world’s ordeal—which can give out freely, and without stint, the fullness of human sympathy, while it rises superior to the yearning want of such sympathy for its own trials and temptations. A timid, tender woman, binding herself by a vow which shuts her forever from the enjoyment of every earthly affection, and keeping that vow, not in the dull and uneventful life of cloistered seclusion, but amid the dangers of the world of sin and sorrow which lies beyond her convent walls—a weak and feeble woman going forth, amid all that can excite her tenderness, ministering to the sick and the afflicted, bending over the couch of suffering, binding up the broken heart, and healing the wounded spirit, yet bearing within her a talisman which keeps her unspotted from the world—wearing that upon her bosom which enables her to touch pitch and yet not be defiled—such a creature is invested with a degree of sublimity which places her but little lower than the angels.

What wonder is it if, among the many who aspire to such a state of perfection, but few should be found equal to its attainment? What wonder if the spirit which would fain soar to such a height, sometimes finds that its feeble pinions have only borne it to the altar of an earthly idol?

Early in the summer of 182—, a diligence filled with passengers was overturned just as it was entering the city of Brussels. The accident was a most frightful one; every person in the vehicle was badly injured, and some so seriously as to be left apparently lifeless. In accordance with their usual benevolent zeal, les Sœurs Noires, or the Sisters of Charity, hurried to the spot, and, ere the sufferers had found the hospitable shelter of a friendly roof, each had been already provided with a tender nurse. Among those who were bereft of sense and almost of life on this occasion was a young Englishman, who had traveled alone, and of whom nothing was known excepting the name written in his passport. He was carried to the nearest inn, which, fortunately for him, happened to be one of the best in Brussels, and every means that medical skill could devise was employed in his behalf. Several days elapsed ere any hopes of his life were entertained, and even when he was at length aroused from the deep stupor into which he had been thrown by the severe concussion, it was only to relapse into the delirium of a violent access of fever. His bruises were numerous, and the care required by the compound fracture of a limb, together with his aberration of mind, afforded full employment to the garde malade who had been deputed to attend him.

La Sœur Thérèse had grown up from childhood amid the associations of religious life. Her education had been entrusted to the Sisters of Charity, and when she arrived at an age which entitled her to choose her vocation, she sought the shelter of the black veil, not from any disgust to the world, but simply from a love of the gentle and kindly and pious influences of a conventual life. Her docility, her quickness of perception, her neat-handed skill in the preparation of medicaments for the sick, had been tested long before she could claim the right to minister in person at the couch of suffering, and now five years of experience, since the assumption of her vows, had made her a most skillful and tender nurse. Her attention to the sick stranger was unbounded. Day and night she watched beside him, bathing his fevered brow, soothing the burning anguish of his wounds, smoothing his uneasy pillow, and calming the ravings of his frenzy by the tones of her sweet and musical voice.

The most devoted personal affection could suggest nothing which la Sœur Thérèse did not devise, yet in her heart piety and the tender sympathy of a pitying nature were the only prompters. What did it matter to the gentle religieuse that the stranger was a man of goodly presence, young, stately, and as beautiful of feature as of form? She would have ministered as piously to the veriest wretch that ever wrestled upon a bed of pain. She had often done as much for the mendicant and the profligate, the branded in visage and the seared in conscience. Alas! alas! it was a wiser than man who said that “the heart is deceitful above all things.” Would the hand of the holy sister have lingered as tenderly amid the matted locks of the beggar, as it was wont to do in the bright curls which clustered round the broad and open brow of the stranger? Yet what could she—the pure, the calm, the quiet nun, what could she know of

How little could she image that world of heart,

Weeks passed away without restoring the stranger to his consciousness of outward things. But at length his illness reached its crisis, the most deadly lassitude took the place of his feverish restlessness, and his physician administered a sleeping potion from the effects of which he assured Thérèse he would awake either to life or death. The good sister watched beside the pillow of the feeble slumberer until she observed the deep shadow of profound repose settle on his brow, then, withdrawing from his side, she hastened to prepare the reviving draught which would be required on his awaking. The weather was oppressively warm, and Thérèse flung the heavy veil or hood which usually enveloped her, while at the same time she loosened the ungraceful folds of the linen which shrouded her neck, and laid aside her cap. Her hair, of that dark rich color which takes a tinge of gold as the light breaks upon it, was clustered in short close curls, that seemed to bid defiance to all conventual rules, and beautifully did they contrast with the exquisite fairness of a brow and throat which neither sun nor air had ever rudely kissed. As she sat with her head bent down, the perfect outline of her classical features and the beautiful curve of her graceful neck clearly defined against the dark wainscoted wall behind her, while the glow of a sunset cloud irradiated the apartment, and diffused a roseate halo around her whole person, she seemed scarcely a being of this living and breathing world. It was precisely at this moment that the sick man awoke from his deep and stony sleep. But the excessive feebleness of his worn frame gave to his returning reason a dreaming which he could not resolve into reality. His eyes opened slowly and almost reluctantly, while the object upon which they first rested—the beautiful and unconscious maiden—seemed to him only the vision of an excited brain. Long and earnestly did he gaze in silence unbroken by even a breath, and it was not until Thérèse replaced her ungraceful cap and coif ere she approached his bedside, that he could arouse himself from the vagueness of his fancies.

From that moment, Charles Nugent (for such was the name by which the stranger was known) seemed rapidly to improve. As soon as he was enabled to observe and appreciate the kindness of his gentle nurse, her ministry seemed to produce an effect doubly beneficial. He loved to take his food only from her hand, to feel her soft and dewy fingers upon his heated brow, to listen to the tones of her voice as she read to him from the missal which was her bosom companion, or sang the touching melodies of her church with a thrilling sweetness and pathos. Excessively enfeebled in body, and scarcely yet stronger in mind, it is not strange that Nugent should have yielded himself up without restraint to the sweet influences of beauty and pitying tenderness. He sought not to analyze the feeling which sent the blood like molten lava through every vein when he felt her touch; he asked not of his heart the meaning of its wild and sudden thrills when her fair pale cheek was bending over the lips which burned to impress the brand of passion upon its snow. It was enough for him to enjoy her presence, to luxuriate in this new and wild excitement, which was the sweeter for its close and guarded concealment. Gratitude for all her kindness, a sense of her perfect purity, a respect for the genuine modesty which needed no false shame to guard its delicacy, and that deep tenderness whose most endearing trait is its timid and delicate forbearance—such were the feelings which sealed the lips and governed the conduct of Nugent even while his heart was consuming within him.

There was something inexpressibly beautiful in the perfect unconsciousness of Thérèse to all this hidden passion. It was like the purity and sinlessness of childhood blended with the tenderness of matured womanhood. She had passed the season of girlishness, and the lapse of four and twenty summers had ripened the fine proportions of her noble form while it touched with a deeper, holier expression her beautiful face. Yet, her countenance bore the impress of that childlike simplicity, that sweet frankness which is so soon lost by those who mingle with the world, and amid its varied temptations are compelled to learn the existence of evil from the necessity of its avoidance. She was so quiet, too, in her sweet ministry, so gentle in every movement, and her attentions had so much of that charm which seems to belong only to anticipating affection, while she was totally free from the restless disquietude with which yearning tenderness so often mars its own efforts to relieve suffering.

Oh! beautiful indeed is that single moment in woman’s life when her feelings are matured, and her affections are awakened while passion still slumbers in profound repose—the moment when she stands on the threshold of Love’s temple, unconscious that the withdrawal of the veil which screens the “holy of holies” from her view, will blast her with excess of light, if it do not blight her with consuming fires. It comes but once in life, that delicious moment—and oh how much do they lose who, in the madness of their dream of passion, would shorten the duration of that brief season of perfect unalloyed happiness.

Charles Nugent had led the life of a man of the world; for his wealth, his station, and his advantages of person and mind had exposed him to temptations which his moral nature had not always been able to resist. But there was a principle of good in his heart, an innate sense of religious truth and reverence for virtue which no collision with the world could efface. He had passed the springtime of life, and when he had counted his thirtieth summer, he summed up the amount of real happiness which he could claim, and found that while he could number his riches by thousands, his associates by hundreds and his friends by tens, his genuine enjoyment of all these advantages was but as a cypher. Wearied and sated with what the world calls pleasure, he suddenly left England, and set out upon his travels alone, and destitute of all those luxurious appliances to which he was accustomed. The accident that had befallen him, and the state of utter unconsciousness in which he had so long lain, seemed to have made an impassable gulf between the present and the past. The life he had heretofore led was like a bewildering dream to him, and, in the stillness of his sick chamber, the voice of his better nature spoke to his heart in seraph tones. He had left his home a wiser man, he was now a better one also, and his fervent nature seemed to have imbibed a portion of the purity which made an atmosphere around the gentle religieuse.

Time passed on, and Nugent was now able to leave his couch, though still too feeble to dispense with the presence of his sweet attendant. Then it was, during the lazy lagging hours of convalescence, that he found ample leisure to drink full draughts of love. Then it was that the sweet beguilement led him to explore the mysteries of a silent and voiceless heart. The transparent truthfulness of Thérèse’s character enabled him to look into her pure nature, even as one might behold the depths of a mountain lake. She listened to his tales of the world of gayety and fashion with almost infantine curiosity, but when he unfolded to her the world of intellect—when he taught her the magic of mental power—when he infused into her thoughts something of the sweet romance of poetry, the bosom of the gentle sister throbbed with a new and strange sense—half painful and half glad—a sense of that blending of inferiority and of capacity which is ever awakened by a high and holy love.

Pure and sinless as the tenderness of infancy was the love of la Sœur Thérèse for the gifted and graceful being who had thus opened to her a new existence; and carefully did he guard from her the knowledge of its real nature. He was too refined and epicurean in sentiment to tear rudely from her eyes the delicate veil which hid from her the wild and warm impulses of her heart. To outward seeming both were still unchanged; there was nothing in his manner to disturb her self-repose, and yet he knew that a change had come over her feelings. The hand which now lay upon his brow thrilled beneath his touch—the check which now bent over his pillow flushed as his warm breath swept over it, and the voice that responded to his had gained a deep and heart-echoing tone, such as never belongs to the gleeful accents of unappropriated affection. He knew that Thérèse loved him—he knew it, and the first sweet consciousness brought with it the deepest joy; but, in the secret chambers of his heart, conscience still kept her watch, and a feeling of deep and bitter pain—the pain of a remorseful spirit—tortured him. Why had he called into life feelings which could only bring wretchedness to her who had been the preserver of his life? Why had he suffered his shadow to darken the pure current of her life? Why, like the serpent in Eden, had he bade her to pluck from the tree of knowledge the poisoned fruit of death?

At length the time came when other duties claimed the cares of la Sœur Thérèse. She received a summons to leave the English stranger, and bestow her cares on another, who needed more her skill. But ere she could comply with the requisition, Nugent was again prostrated by a sudden and strange illness, which forbade her to leave him in the hands of strangers. Even then Thérèse was utterly unsuspicious of the true nature of his unaccountable ailment, but when, after his rapid recovery, a second summons produced exactly the some result, and again, when the third peremptory recall was followed by the avowal of his resolution to become incurable, since this alone could ensure her presence, she could no longer doubt the truth. Bitter was the agony of her heart when first her eyes were opened. Terrible was the conflict of her feelings when she looked into her heart and beheld its secret recesses filled with an earthly passion. But with the consciousness of her guilt came a sense of her great peril. The arms of him who had never before ventured to profane the purity of her nature, were enfolded around her at the moment when the truth first flashed upon her mind; his eyes were gleaming upon her with a light which seemed to scorch her very soul, and as his lips pressed her shrinking brow, it needed only the instinct of a womanly nature to teach Thérèse that the moment had come when they must part forever.

She uttered no reproach on him who had thus darkened her life with sorrow—the dream, bright, beautiful and brief, had passed away, and now she was left to waking loneliness and misery. But she had borrowed a strength from sorrow, and nobly did she resist the temptations of her own heart. In vain did her lover, forgetting all his better impulses, urge her to abandon the vocation which was now but as a thraldom to her awakened nature—in vain did he depict the perfect happiness of self-sacrificing, self-devoting passion. In unutterable anguish of spirit she turned from the voice of the charmer, and bidding a last farewell to him who had so wronged her heart, she hid her sufferings within her convent home. Alas! for her a glory had departed from every thing in life—the sunshine of a sinless heart no longer brightened the gloom of monastic duty, the spirit had gone out from its abiding place in search of strange gods, and now it could no longer bow down in the sanctuary it had desecrated. The image of him whom she had lost forever—the frank and noble face which haunted her troubled dreams—the thrilling words which had found an echo in her own bosom—the wild fancies of what might have been which came thronging around her in the vagueness of her solitary hours—these were but evil companions for her in her hours of prayer and penance.

Absorbed in her own bitter thoughts, Thérèse saw not the cold looks and changed demeanor of those who had heretofore been as kindred to her. She marked not the stately pride of la Superieure, she heeded not the shrinking contempt of the sisters, she recked not of the pitying glances which a few kindlier hearts bestowed when she returned sad and sorrowful to the convent. A cloud was hanging over her, which she saw not, but which was destined to blast her with its lightnings. They only delayed their vengeance—those cold and passionless beings—they only waited until they could be assured that the English stranger had left Brussels, and then, when no human aid was near, did they visit upon Sister Thérèse the error of which she had been guilty. Fearful indeed to her anguished soul was the ordeal to which she was exposed. In the deepest recesses of the convent, at the solemn hour of midnight, all the terrors of an ecclesiastical tribunal were enacted, and every engine of mental torture was put in operation to force from the unhappy woman a confession of her guilt. Overcome with remorse and fear, Thérèse did confess every thing. She told of the love which had grown up in her heart toward the stranger; she revealed the devices which Nugent had practiced to retain her in his society, and she acknowledged her tacit consent to the deception which so prolonged his apparent illness; she painted in the strong and glowing colors of truth the purity as well as the intensity of her new emotions, and she implored that she might be allowed to atone, by heavy penance, for thus desecrating the vow, which yet she had not broken. But their marble hearts, on which her impassioned words fell like water drops on the rock, could little comprehend her true nature. They were of that grosser clay which knows but of outward temptations and sins, and they could not believe in the tale of sinfulness of thought which grew not into sinfulness of deed. They could not, or would not, think that in heart only had she offended, and cold stony eyes looked calmly upon her agony while she listened to the doom which consigned her to contumely and to death.

Senseless, and almost lifeless, Thérèse was borne from the presence of her inhuman judges. For three days she lay within a noisome cell, deprived of food and debarred from the light of day, then, when totally exhausted with her sufferings, she was again brought before the eyes of the assembled sisterhood. At the hour of midnight, a solemn mass was said, and the anathema maranatha was pronounced against her, as she knelt on a jagged and pointed stone in the nave of the darkened chapel. A requiem, not tender and mournful, but filled with a fearful looking for of judgment, was then chanted, and the wretched woman was led away. A moment passed and she was again presented to the view of the terrified Sisters—the robes of her order had been rudely torn off, and now, wrapped in a coarse sheet, as her only protection against the inclemency of a night of intense cold, she was borne to the door of the chapel, and thrust out alone into the dark and deserted street. Half senseless from the exhaustion of mind and body, Thérèse had no power to remonstrate or to resist. As the rude ministers of the church’s vengeance flung her from the porch, she tottered a few steps, and fell motionless upon the frozen earth.

Ten years had elapsed since the events just recorded, and la Sœur Thérèse had become but a name “to point a moral and adorn a tale,” while her story, with various embellishments, had become the property of every “stranger’s guide” in the city of Brussels, when, on a certain day, two traveling carriages, not to be mistaken for any other than English, stopped at the Belle Vue Hotel. The waiter bowed obsequiously as he flung down the steps of the first equipage, and, to a request made by the tall and handsome man who descended first from the carriage, he replied,

“Yes, sir, certainly—the blue room if you desire it—but the golden chambers are the finest in the house—they are just empty, sir—have them ready in five minutes—oh, very well, my lord, just as your lordship pleases—the blue room certainly, if you prefer it;” and away he bustled, wondering at the perverse taste of mi lord Anglais in insisting upon a room which did not look out upon the public promenade. But a short time elapsed ere the tall gentleman, with a lady of exceeding beauty, but whose form showed the rich development of matronly years, and two lovely and merry children were comfortably settled in the suite of rooms which had been so strongly insisted upon.

“So you really gained your point, Charles, and obtained this very room; it will only remind you of unpleasant scenes, and perhaps of unpleasant changes,” said the lady, half archly, while a sigh quickly followed her words.

“Confess now, Thérèse,” was the reply, “that you were just as desirous as I to revisit scenes where we had known so much of joy and sorrow. Time seems to have flown on eagle’s wings since I used to recline in the recess of yonder window, while you busied yourself in ministering to my helplessness.”

“I wonder you were not superstitious about coming to this place, since both your previous visits were marked with disasters.”

“Aye, but those disasters led only to happiness, dearest. My first mischance placed me within the influence of your gentle care, and, if I had not afterward been plundered on the road, and obliged to return to Brussels on the track of the robbers, I should not have been lingering near your prison-house at the moment when you were ready to perish. Good heavens! it makes me shudder even now to remember my sensations when I found you lying like a crushed flower at my very feet, in the deep, dark midnight, and then your long and cruel illness—”

“Nay, love, all that is past like a wild and painful dream; let us remember only to what sweet consciousness of bliss I awoke when I found myself in dear England, under the tender guardianship of your excellent sister; let us think only of the affection which made me your dear and honored wife—of the love which has measured my every hour by blessings.”

“Brother—brother, do come and help me to laugh,” exclaimed a merry voice, as a joyous-looking elderly lady entered the apartment; “I have just been listening to our landlord’s story of the black nun. To be sure I was mischievous enough to tempt him into telling it, by my inquisitive curiosity respecting the Holy Sisters. Your history has become quite a traveler’s tale, and, I warrant me, it is served up to every stranger with the same garnishing of supernatural horrors as it was proffered to me. Mine host avers that nothing was ever seen of Sister Thérèse save her rosary, which was found lying on the ground; hence he infers that she was carried away bodily by the demon who had tempted her, while it has now become one of the articles of the poor man’s faith that the handsome Englishman was no other than Satan in disguise.”

“And pray, what did you answer to all this farrago?”

“I perfectly agreed with him in opinion, you may be sure. Indeed I avowed my belief that Sister Thérèse would never again be heard of, and that Charles Nugent had never existed, for I am very certain that Lord Ellerton feels no desire to resume his former nom-de-voyage, and I doubt whether even ten years’ experience in the cares of wedded life would now reconcile my good lady sister to the serge robe of les Sœurs Noires.”

BY FRANCIS J. GRUND.

A year ago, while sitting with some friends round the great table at the gentlemen’s casino, in Stuttgart, I was struck with the rather dejected appearance of a middle aged person, who was wont to be the soul of the little party which assembled there regularly every evening. The group was a remarkable one, considering that Stuttgart is an out of the way place, in the south of Germany, built in a sort of caldron, formed by a branch of the Swabian Alps, at a distance of about four miles from the Neckar. To be sure, Stuttgart is a residence; but the whole kingdom of which it is the capital, though as thickly settled as the most populous English shire, is not yet equal in population to the State of Pennsylvania. On my right sat the grave diplomatist, Geheimerath von K——, a gentleman well known in the literary world, who had spent the better part of his life in Rome, and, as the agent of his government, succeeded much better with his Holiness and the celebrated secretary of state, Cardinal Lambruschini, than Chevalier Bunsen, the late Prussian envoy, who has simply made himself ridiculous. Next to him, Wolfgang M——, the historian, whose works have lately been translated in England, had posted himself. He, too, seemed to be in a pensive mood, much against his custom; for in the evening these professional sages lay aside scholarship, and make it their business to talk about trifles. Dr. K——, a pupil of the great Schlosser of Heidelberg, and author of “The History of the Civil Wars of Mexico,” was in close conversation with Professor G——r, the king’s librarian and author of that strange work, “Origin of Christianity,” written in opposition to both Strauss and Professor Paulus. On my left was Dr. G——e, the editor of “The Upper German Gazette,” one of the few political writers of Germany who have a plan and some idea of the means necessary to put it in execution. The chemist B——, a pupil of the celebrated Gmehlin, and Col. M——, one of the few that returned from the battle of the Berezina, completed the background. There surely were no elements of superstition in this company. All but the soldier were scientific or literary men, in the habit of reasoning by induction; most of them had traveled, and, with the exception of the editor, who was the dejected person above referred to, were known to me as gentlemen of a lively disposition, and sanguineous temperament.

“What is the matter with you all?” said I, addressing myself to the professor.

“Nothing,” he replied, “except that G—— and K—— here have seen the ghost of that scoundrel, Hammer, whose body was, the other day, found in the woods. Only think, the old miser had not even changed his garments after death!”

“What,” I cried, “are you in earnest?”

“Why, certainly,” exclaimed the editor; “and I am only angry at myself for not having had sufficient force of will to keep him at a greater distance than ten paces.”

“You are surely crazy,” I rejoined.

“And why so?” interrupted the professor. “There can be nothing more natural than that the souls of the dead should come back, when they are unfit to go hence. I should be sorry to believe any thing else.”

“The thought is certainly poetical,” remarked the geheimerath, whom I will in future call by his English title, ‘counsellor of legation.’ “The Italians, who have much more imagination than the people of Saxon origin, cherish a similar belief.”

“And, were not the Romans,” gravely remarked the historian M——, “whose warlike spirit certainly knew no fear, and who scoffed the Jews and the early Christians on account of their belief in supernatural beings, addicted to the same superstition?”

“It can hardly be called superstition,” replied the counsellor of legation; “for it produced a real effect on the diplomatic transactions of such a man as Cicero, and on the military achievements of Brutus.”

“Sure enough,” cried the editor; “Brutus saw Cæsar’s ghost at Philippi.”

“As large as life,” vociferated the doctor; “without that ghost, Augustus would never have swayed the destinies of Rome.”

“It is certainly strange,” observed the historian, “that either a real or imagined ghost should have been able to produce such an effect on Brutus, and that Cæsar’s ghost should have appeared to him, not as the children of Henry VI and the Duke of Clarence did to the Duke of Gloster, in a dream; but in plain daylight, amidst a scene of action, at a moment when the whole soul of Brutus was absorbed in the one great thought of saving the republic!”

“And it is truly wonderful,” added the doctor, “that Shakspeare should have seized upon that moment with so much poetical truth and justice. The immortal William hit off historical cause and effect with greater accuracy than many a compiler of chronicles. Cæsar’s ghost is one of the principal actors in that play, and the whole conduct of Brutus would be unintelligible without it. Schlegel was right when he called Shakspeare ‘the philosopher of superstition.’ He has invented a peculiar language for demons, (for it is very clear that these cannot communicate with men in the usual manner) and created always such a combination of circumstances as make the appearance of his ghosts the only natural means of accounting for the event that follows. His ghosts are unavoidable, logical interpolations of the mind, in the same manner as mathematicians have invented imaginary quantities to solve real problems. Cæsar’s ghost, like Hamlet’s and Banquo’s, is of that sort. They are causes of action, striking and incomprehensible if you please, but necessary for the action of the play, and not a whit better explained by substituting any other real person in their stead. For if a thing that was can affect our senses like something that is, it becomes in fact present, and is, to all intents and purposes, a reality. This exact fitness of Shakspeare’s ghosts is the reason why none of our modern philosophers has, as yet, been struck with the absurdity of introducing improbabilities on the stage which could only serve to destroy the illusion. Shakspeare’s ghosts, if I am allowed the expression, are all in character, whereas Voltaire’s ghost in Semiramis is a mere supernumerary. Voltaire was an unbeliever, and could, as such, produce nothing but a common stage ghost, without cause or effect.”

“Precisely so,” interrupted the professor; “there is nothing so absurd as to suppose a ghost to do things which might just as well be done by man. It is no more appropriate than a thunderstorm on a frosty day.”

“And, then,” replied the editor, “the Greeks had the same notions of ghosts—of people coming back from the grave; though they clad their belief in a more poetical garment. Many that Charon rowed across the Styx, he brought back again from the Elysian fields.”

“That’s what I wished to refer to,” rejoined the professor; “a similar belief has existed among all people of antiquity, and has only been modified—not destroyed—by modern civilization. We believe in it in spite of ourselves. I, for my part, am always glad to meet a man who has seen a ghost. I saw the first one in the old convent, at Tubingen, and it was quite a comfort to me. It confirmed my belief in the immortality of the soul; for a cause that produces no effect remains, philosophically speaking, a mere hypothesis. These ghosts, or what people take for them, are, after all, the most palpable evidence that there is something besides matter which is not destroyed by death—a proof à posteriori that there is a hereafter—an existence which, though different from our former one, is still capable of effecting the internal sense. For it is very evident that these phantoms are not subject to the general laws of matter, and are therefore not perceptible by every one. We must be predisposed for them, as a patient is, by sickness, predisposed for Animal Magnetism.”

“Precisely so,” here exclaimed the editor. “The body must have received an injury somewhere. There must be some physical decline—a hole, if you please, for the soul to look through, and become cognizant of phenomena which it cannot perceive through the ordinary medium of the senses. Such is ‘the second sight’ of the Scotch, and the prophetic power of many persons of advanced age. Imaginative people are naturally more disposed for what the vulgar call ‘superstition.’ But imagination, after all, is the highest attribute of the soul, and the only one of which there is not a trace to be found in animals. The power of the imagination, to body forth phantoms, is as inexplicable as the appearance of a supernatural being, especially when the imaginative power is exerted by causes independent of the individual.”

“You have a singular idea of the soul and of its immortality,” here observed the chemist, blowing a cloud of tobacco smoke from his mouth. “I, for my part, have my own notions about these things. I believe we take all our properties, like Prometheus, from the earth, and can no more quit it than a single atom of which it is composed. There is, according to my notion, proportionally just as much time in the human skeleton as in the ribs or mountains of our globe, and without this analogy, not only as regards that element, but every other substance contained simultaneously in the human body and in the earth, the equilibrium would be destroyed, and life itself become extinct. You call the resolution of the body into its elements, that state in which the elements are permitted to enter new combinations, according to their respective affinities. In this sense, you may say the elements of which the body is composed are immortal—that is, imperishable. Suppose, now, that there exists a close analogy between the body and the mind, and that after death a similar disposition may be made of the intellectual atoms; would it not follow that the elements of the human mind, though imperishable, would no longer exist in their collective capacity as an individual? Mind and matter would, in this case, be assuredly enduring, but subject to continual transition.”

The pause which here followed lasted some time, and was only interrupted by the historian. “I have heard so much of that mysterious fellow haunting the neighborhood of our town,” he said, “that, instead of all further discussion, I should really like to hear some facts stated, such as a man may believe in, and might be vouched for by gentlemen.”

“You can be gratified,” replied the editor. “I was myself one of the party that went in search of him; but I must preface my account of that, by the story of the miser’s life.

“On the other side of the Forked Mountain, (Gabeleberg)” he commenced, after filling his pipe and blowing half a dozen puffs across the table, “stands a house at a short distance from the village, and about a hundred yards off the public road. That’s the place which is now haunted. Its inhabitant was once a poor boy, whose parents had no means of educating him, and treated him so severely that he ran away, begged his way as far as the Rhine, and took passage on board of one of our lumber traders down to Holland. From Rotterdam, it is believed, he sailed, with one of the ships of the Dutch East India Company, to Batavia, where he remained a good many years, and whence he at last returned, with a considerable fortune, to this neighborhood. He purchased the site on which that house now stands, erected himself the building, and lived there, retired from all the world, until the hour of his death. He was never known to speak to a neighbor or to give a kreutzer to a poor man, and refused even to see his relations for fear he might be called upon to assist them. Nobody believed he came by his money in an honest way; especially when they observed him talking to himself, and gesticulating at times like a madman. At last he was taken sick, but refused to see a physician, and accused the old housekeeper, the only person that waited on him, of being bribed, by his brother, to poison him. In the same manner, he objected to making a will, until he grew so weak that he was not expected to survive. His frightened housekeeper then came to town, in search of Dr. M——, the king’s physician, who, accordingly, proceeded to see the patient. On arriving at the house, however, he found the latter locked up in his room, uttering the most dreadful oaths that none should obtrude on his privacy. This was the last they heard of him; for from that moment he even refused to see his housekeeper. Three days he remained, in that condition, without food, when the good woman, becoming alarmed, forced the door open, and, to her utter astonishment, found the room empty.

“The alarm was soon given that the miser had been murdered; but the officers of justice, repairing to the spot, found every thing in the most perfect order. No marks of violence or blood could be discovered—his writing desk and his money chest were locked, and, on being broke open, were found to contain a large amount of gold and Dutch securities. The housekeeper swore that none of his relations had been to see him, and that she could in no way account for the absence of her master. A week from that time, his body was discovered in a most singular manner.”

“I presume,” interrupted the chemist, “that the natural decomposition which took place was sufficient to indicate the place where it was concealed.”

“Certainly; but yet unaccountably so,” replied the editor. “The body was discovered by a stranger who had resided here for some time, and been in a habit of taking nightly walks across the mountains. On one of these occasions he chose Gabeleberg for his excursion; but what was his astonishment when, at a distance of about a hundred yards from the miser’s house, which, at that time, was entirely deserted, he saw the very man, dressed as he had always been, coming toward him.

“ ‘Here,’ said he to himself, ‘is the person they have been seeking for the last week. What could have induced him to leave his house?’ He made a few steps forward, and, perceiving that the miser stood still, ‘Hollo, my friend!’ he exclaimed, ‘you have been playing pretty pranks. Where have you been all the while?’

“Instead of an answer, the miser turned from the road, and, with the seeming purpose of avoiding him, took a footpath leading to the Oak-Grove. The stranger, piqued by this surly conduct, followed him; but the former walked so fast that the latter had to use great exertions not to be distanced. In this manner they walked on for nearly half an hour; the miser looking back from time to time, to see whether the stranger had come up with him, and redoubling his efforts whenever he seemed in danger of being overtaken. The stranger, who had always been accounted one of the best pedestrians, found his legs grow unaccountably heavy, and begun, in his heart, to curse the old villain who, at such an advanced age, was yet able to keep ahead of him. It was now clear that the death of the miser was a mere hoax—that he was carrying on some unlawful business—probably that of coining base money, in some cave or sequestered spot in the woods. The old housekeeper was his accomplice. There was but one way to discover all, and that was to apparently desist from the chase, and yet to follow the old man to his hiding place. This he resolved to do, and, slacking his pace a little, took a direction different from that of his victim, but yet such a one as enabled him to observe the latter closely. The miser instantly perceived the drift, and, turning suddenly round, made straight toward him.”

“You are becoming excessively tedious,” here again interrupted the chemist. “Why don’t you cut the matter short?”

“It would not do,” rejoined the editor. “My story is my defence, and the basis of my creed.”

“Go on, then,” cried the company.

“Well,” continued the editor, “the stranger was not armed, except with a large cane, which he now most firmly grasped, feeling assured that, if the miser had no fire arms, he would prove more than a match for him. No sooner, however, had he formed that resolution than the miser paused, turned round, and again pursued his first course. ‘Very extraordinary fellow,’ muttered the stranger, ‘shaking his head, as if he could decipher my thoughts! Were I not afraid, I believe I am now near enough to hit him with a stone.’ At this moment, the miser came running toward him at full speed. ‘Not so fast,’ cried the stranger, making ready for him with his massive cane, and aiming a terrible blow at him, which must have stunned any ordinary human being, but which glanced harmless from the bony head of the old man. A second blow had no better effect, and a third, from the enormous resistance of the miser, deprived the stranger of the use of his arm. The cane dropped from his hand, and was, in an instant, applied to his own head. In another moment he was senseless. In this state the miser left him. When he recovered he found himself in the middle of a thick forest, with a bright July sun shining through the foliage. He had evidently been sleeping, and was just awaking from a dream. Still there was something unaccountable in all this—although he admitted that he had been drinking an extra bottle of Hock on the preceding evening—the aching of all his limbs, and an intolerable odor, similar to that of a charnel house, which proceeded from the body of the old miser, that was evidently in an advanced state of decomposition.”

“Well,” exclaimed the chemist, “didn’t I tell you so? I knew it would end in the most natural manner in the world. The fellow was tipsy, had the nightmare, and, his imagination being heated by the story of the mysterious disappearance of the miser, it was again natural enough that he should dream of him.”

“I thought so myself,” resumed the editor; “but, then, that he should have walked in his dream to the precise spot where the dead body lay, that’s the difficulty I cannot solve. But hear me out. The stranger was, of course, taken into custody, and the body of the miser examined medically; but no marks of violence being found upon it, he was immediately discharged. The authorities concluded that the miser must have left the house to avoid the importunities of his relatives, and died from exhaustion on the way. The physicians were of the same opinion, and the whole matter was almost forgotten, when all at once the report was circulated that the miser’s house was haunted.”

“Which is natural enough, after the stranger’s story,” exclaimed the chemist, taking the pipe out of his mouth and emptying the ashes.

“Agreed,” rejoined the editor; “but, then, the miser has since been seen by at least a hundred different people.”

“Of lively imagination,” added the chemist.

“Not more so than mine,” replied the editor, coolly. “I can prove the miser’s appearance by such witnesses as would be believed in any court of justice, if the evidence were not ruled out by the preconceived impossibility of the case. Parties of more than twenty persons, among whom there were men of education and learning, and none of whom were even known to be in the least degree superstitious, were formed for the purpose of making midnight excursions across the mountains, and never did they miss him. He appeared, however, never to more than one person at the time,” he added, after a short pause.

“Who was probably the only impostor among them,” again interrupted the chemist.

“Not exactly,” observed the editor in his usual quiet manner; “on the contrary, it is quite unaccountable that there never should have been more than one such person in the party. I think that fact is rather against the natural explanation of the phenomenon. I reconnoitered the spot myself, the other night, with about a dozen resolute young men, and shall never forget the singular sensation I experienced. On approaching the mountain I felt as sleepy as if I had taken opium. My eyes became fixed, as my companions afterward assured me, and, instead of sharing in the general conversation, I stared before me like a sleep-walker. I remember distinctly that I mustered all my strength to keep awake, and that I struggled with the apparition which now stole upon my dream—it was the old miser, just as he was dressed when living. I made a desperate effort to keep him off; and remembering the force of the human will, as exhibited in the phenomena of Mesmerism, concentrated all my power of volition upon him. With this I succeeded to keep him at a distance of about ten paces. When we had descended the mountain I awoke, and was nearly simultaneously asked what I had seen, so certain was the whole company, from my extraordinary behavior, that I must have labored under a spell, and that the miser must have been playing his tricks on me. I did not, of course, reply to their inquiries, but pretended to have been fast asleep, in order to avoid their ridicule. Yet it appeared strange to me that none of the company beside myself should have been similarly affected. For awhile I tried to reason myself out of it, or concluded that the apparition, or whatever you may please to call it, must have been what logicians call purely subjective; but this involved me in another difficulty; namely, how to account for the fact that so many other persons had alternately experienced the same sensation. There must be one common cause productive of all these effects—and some continuous law which governs them.”

“This is certainly very strange,” here observed the counsellor of legation; perceiving that the chemist was no longer disposed to continue the argument, and my old story of the Hôtel de l’Europe, seems to be the very type of that of the miser.

“What story is that?” demanded the chemist.

“Why, it is a very simple one. Two ladies, mother and daughter, traveling in the diligence, in the south of France, lodged, for a night only, in the Hôtel de l’Europe, in Marseilles. Being much fatigued by the journey, they withdrew early to their chamber, and after carefully examining the premises and locking and bolting the door, retired quietly to bed. The mother soon fell asleep; but the daughter felt unusually restless. At first her head began to ache, then she was seized by a cramp in her limbs, and at last she felt a sharp pain across her chest, as if a rope were tied fast round her body. The pain increasing and becoming so intense as to render respiration difficult, she tried to make a light; but, strange to say, found it impossible to move! She now attempted to wake her mother, but had no command over her arm for the purpose. Chained as she now appeared to be to her bed, she glanced her eye on the door, which, by the light of the moon that had just risen, and was now shining through fleeting clouds, she discovered to be half open. Who could have done that? She remembered distinctly to have locked it. Who could have withdrawn the bolt? There must be some one concealed in the room; but then she had examined every part of it before going to bed! Perhaps the wind has blown it open—it blew a gale. Crash! the door flew wide open, and a man with a razor in his hand entered the apartment. He did not look ferocious, but rather sorrowful. His gaze showed that he must be a madman escaped from some lunatic asylum in the neighborhood. ‘The Lord have mercy upon me!’ shrieked the young lady.

“What’s the matter?” inquired the old lady, rubbing her eyes.

“Nothing, my dear mother; but I had such an awful dream. I dreamt of a madman coming toward me with a razor. And I have such a pain in my breast!”

“It’s the rheumatism,” replied the mother. “The weather is damp and I think there must be a pane broken in the window. I feel myself a little chilly.”

On examining the windows it was found that one of them had, by the negligence of the chamber-maid, been left half open—the door was in precisely the same state they had left it when retiring to bed. The mystery being now explained, the window was quietly secured and the parties once more endeavored to catch a few hours’ rest. The mother was soon fast asleep; but the daughter felt the same pain across the chest, and the same numbness of her limbs. What could be the cause now? Another crash of the door, and the same madman, only with a wilder stare, stood before her. She tried to scream, but in vain—to pray, but could not. He still held the razor in his hand, which he now brandished in the air. The cold perspiration was running down the forehead of the unfortunate girl. The madman approached the bed—in vain did she attempt to wake her mother; her limbs refused the office. He now bent over her mother to see if she were asleep—then he looked under the bed, and at last applied his dreadful weapon to her throat. At this moment filial love overcame every obstacle, and with a mighty effort of the will she seized the madman’s hand, and—

“Do you mean to kill me!” gasped the old lady.

“Certainly not,” stammered the poor girl, “I wished to prevent you from being hurt by that dreadful madman!”

“You must have had another frightful dream?”

“The same I had before. Nothing on earth will tempt me to go again to bed in this house.”

The old lady now made a light, and they sat up the remainder of the night.

“What is the matter with this room; are the windows properly secured?” demanded the old lady of the waiter who served the breakfast.

“I always try to secure them,” he replied, turning pale.

“It’s no matter; at what hour does the diligence depart for Aix?”

“At six, precisely, madam.”

“Well, then, have me booked.”

At six, precisely, the names were called, and having early taken my place in the coupé, I was pleased to find that my two traveling companions were Madame de T—— and her beautiful daughter, whose acquaintance I had made in the baths of Pyrmont.

“You have not rested well,” I observed, after the usual ceremonies of recognition.

“Non, monsieur! I have had an exceedingly bad night,” replied the young lady.

“No wonder,” said the conductor, who had overheard us, as he fastened the door, and was about to jump on the imperial. “Mademoiselle slept in the Hôtel de l’Europe. N’est ce pas?”

“Oui, monsieur le conducteur! number twenty.”

“That’s it,” cried the postilion, hitting his leaders a furious blow with his whip; “that’s the room in which that English lady and her daughter had their throats cut.” . . .

“Do you see?” exclaimed the professor. “These ghosts do not appear as beings of flesh and blood; neither do they affect our external senses as was once believed by the vulgar; but communicate with us when the external senses—the positive poles of our existence—are closed. How often do we not dream of friends and relations that are in the grave—and how vivid and striking is not their apparition!”

“And it may be remarked,” observed the editor, “that this capacity for dreaming is always greater in people inhabiting mountainous districts, as if there were some magnetic attraction in the hills which disturbs the equilibrium between the internal and external senses.”

“Those countries are certainly exposed to greater changes of temperature,” remarked the chemist; “and as great and sudden changes of temperature in one and the same body are, according to Oerstedt, capable of producing the electric and magnetic phenomena, the thing may perhaps be explained that way.”

“Magnetism must have something to do with it,” rejoined the counsellor of legation. “I shall never forget what effect the ‘Seer of Prevost,’^[4] so often quoted in the Reverend Dr. Townshend’s interesting work on Animal Magnetism, recently published in London, produced on me. You all know that the clairvoyante prophesied the very day and hour of the late king’s death.^[5] Well, I never believed in it. But being at the time in Rome, I told a friend who was with me that, if I mistook not, this was the very hour he was to depart this life. By due course of mail I received the news of his demise, and precisely under the circumstances she had foretold. Such a woman would in former times have been burned for a witch.”

“Very true,” said the historian; “but they tell other stories about the late king.”

“Who does not know them?” cried the professor, “who does not know that our late king, God forgive him! was a cruel master, especially on the peasants, and that he was extravagantly fond of the chase? Well, he has been condemned to hunt through the mountains, and is frequently seen, at midnight, coming out of the royal castle, and galloping with his old pack of hounds through the Königsgate. The sentinel on duty then cries, to arms, and the soldiers present arms; but it is only the sentinel who sees him. The first who saw him and called out the guards, was severely punished for his impious jest; but the thing being so often repeated, by men of the most excellent conduct and unquestioned loyalty, the officers shut their eyes, and kept the secret as well as they could to themselves.”

“Come,” cried the counsellor of legation; “I do not like to draw our sovereign into the conversation. If our present kind and noble lord were to hear that his august father is still haunting this place, it would break his heart. He is a good man, and has never seen his father since his death.”

“I agree with the counsellor,” ejaculated the historian; “and think that it is best for us to retire for the evening.”

“That I shall not do for awhile yet,” remarked the professor, who was a remarkably stout and lusty person; “I mean first to say good-bye to the miser.”

“To the miser?” demanded the company.

“Certainly. I have already seen him more than twenty times; but he treats me with great respect. Unless I choose, he never comes near me. I can do with him whatever I please, in the same manner that I could magnetize you, and put you all to sleep in less than five minutes.” . . . .

“Singular fellows!” thought I, as I walked home to my lodgings; but it is just as Goethe says—“Superstition is the last stage of infidelity, and the first which serves again as an introduction to religion.”

BY M. TOPHAM EVANS.

Whatever clouds have rested heretofore upon the fair fame and poetical abilities of Ben Jonson have vanished. Before the brilliant defence of his character by Mr. Gifford, all the aspersions previously cast upon it by malice and ignorance have faded into thin air. Ancient and deep-rooted prejudices have been grubbed up by the sturdy critic. The long neglected tomes, redundant with learning and poesy, again embellish the shelves of the lovers of the ancient drama, and our admiration of the man’s abilities daily heightens. The opinion, long maintained, of the plumbean characteristics of Jonson’s verse, has been abandoned by every man who pretends to good taste and solid discretion. His dramas are read and studied. If he lacks the vivacity and copiousness of Shakspeare, he is nevertheless a deep, accurate, self-revolving observer of human nature. If his mind was of too solemn and grave a cast to take delight in the frivolities of love, it was capable of grasping the boldest as well as the nicer shades of the masculine character. If his verse is deficient in the glorious and starry effulgence of the lines of Shakspeare, it bears the impress of profound accuracy, not the less pleasing to the reflecting student because it carries the evidence of painful revisal, and of patient labor. Well did Jonson know that his poetry was destined for the eye of posterity. He was well aware that he gave birth to no ephemera—no mere creatures of a day. His sense of his own innate worth breaks ever forth. We cannot open a comedy which bears not this token with it. Cavilers may call this overweening self-love, and have called it so. But if a due sense of one’s personal merit be considered as illiberal and unlaudable, the greatest poets of antiquity—the very cotemporaries of Jonson himself—the bards of later date—even the impeccable and infallible Shakspeare, must be classed in the category of egotists.

It is not however of the drama of Jonson that we are now to speak. We wish to exhibit him in another, and, perhaps, in an unaccustomed and somewhat surprising point of view, to those who are strangers to his productions. We have spoken above of the absence of vivacity from his dramatic verse, but we claim for him a due proportion of the poetic fire in his fugitive pieces, and, above all, in his Masques. To those unacquainted with the splendor of the English court in the days of James the First, and of his successor Charles, it may seem somewhat apocryphal when the statement is made, that in refined taste, elegance of entertainment and regal splendor, the English court of those days infinitely surpassed every thing previous, as well as all that has succeeded. Among the royal amusements of that age the masque was conspicuous. Poets of the first talent composed the verse. Musicians, dancers, painters and mechanists of the most cultivated genius united in adding brilliance to the scene. It was presented by the noblest of the kingdom. Every attraction was brought into play by which its charms could be enhanced. The flower of the nobility did not disdain to appear in the several characters; nor, indeed, was there discredit in speaking the composition of Jonson, or giving life to the notes of Ferrabosco and the dances of Hierome Herne. Inigo Jones did not refuse to furnish the historical decorations, although at that time he enjoyed the appellation of the Vitruvius of Europe. In fact, all that was great and noble, all that was graceful and elegant, all that was talented and eminent, were united in one grand galaxy to give the due effect to an amusement which may truly be denominated “regal.” In the words of Thompson

In the selection of any particular masque, where all are so enchanting, I am somewhat restrained by the fear of appearing invidious. Throughout the entire succession of these splendid entertainments there is so much and so various learning, so many poetical gems, and so great a profusion of invention displayed, that no analysis of a single piece can give the most remote idea of the beauties of the rest. To give an idea, and no more, is, in fact, the whole extent of information that a paper so cursory as the present can be expected to do. Perhaps the masque selected, the “Masque of Queens,” will effect this purpose as well, if not better, than any other in the volumes before me, displaying, as it does, the great learning, the copious invention and splendid versification lavished upon these productions. “When spleen and malice,” says the editor, “have done their worst, the magical part of the Masque of Queens will still remain a proof of high poetic powers, of a vigorous and fertile imagination, and of deep and extensive learning, managed with surprising ease, and applied to the purposes of the scene with equal grace and dexterity.”

The moving moral of the masque represents the triumph of Fame over Calumny and Suspicion. The masque is usually divided into two parts, one of which is the main masque, and the other the anti-masque, a burlesque digression or departure from the proper progress of the scene. The anti-masque must have been a very grateful and amusing introduction to the audiences of those days, as well as an ingenious respite to the actors in the main scene. It was usually presented by the king’s servants or players, or by the inferior officers of the household; and in one of the masques before us, “The Fortunate Isles,” Sir Geoffrey Hudson, the celebrated dwarf of Queen Henrietta, was introduced as Tom Thumb, being drawn from the pocket of the gigantic porter, Evans, who personated the character of Doctor Rat. Buffoonery was the characteristic of the anti-masque, although in the piece before us it is made essentially subservient to the conduct of the entertainment.

The Masque of Queens accordingly opens with an entry of witches, (ridiculously supposed by Malone to be a “sneer” upon the Witches in Macbeth) from the jaws of Orcus. The pains bestowed upon the propriety of the mise en scène may be readily imagined, when we are informed, upon the authority of the poet himself, that their very attire was only adopted after a laborious investigation of “ancient and late writers,” and was devised and modeled by the celebrated Inigo Jones.

Upon the publication of this piece, a wish was expressed by Prince Henry, the eldest son of James I., that Jonson should annex to his text a list of the various authorities upon which his verse was founded. This wish was obeyed by the poet, and in the voluminous notes which accompany the piece, it is astonishing to perceive the vast extent of Jonson’s reading, occupying, with an amazing avidity, works not only the most profound, but the veriest trivialities which ever dropped from the press. The work of James upon Demonology, (which, however, that monarch lived long enough to repudiate and to repent,) Delrio, Apulcius, Bartholus de Spina, Paracelsus, Baptista Porta, Agrippa upon Occult Philosophy, Remigius, Bodin, Porphyrio, and a host of writers upon necromancy and magic, of whose ponderous tomes no vestiges remain, are quoted chapter and section, with the same accuracy and hand in hand with Pliny, Athenæus, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Lucan, Theocritus, Seneca, and a perfect storm of classical authorities. So great was the capacity of this immortal man for study! To compare him with the writers of the present day were to compare a moth with a Hercules!

To the incantations of the hags the dame answers, and makes her appearance. Some powerful verses here occur.

To this succeeds an interrogation, upon the part of the dame, as to the occupations in which this venerable sisterhood have been engaged. This portion of the masque has been copied, with approbation upon the part of the learned editor, into Percy’s Reliques of Ancient British Poetry. To be sure, its admittance is qualified with the remark that the learned and reverend bishop could find nothing else in Jonson worthy the honor of being associated with the other productions embalmed in that excellent collection; but the bishop could not have read the “Masque of Blackness,” “Oberon,” “The Vision of Delight,” or the “Masque of Beauty,” else he would have chanced upon gems of poetry, far more worthy of the honor which has strangely been assigned to the quatrains of the witches. The invocation proceeds:

Compare this with Macbeth:

“Jonson’s Masque,” cries Mr. Malone, and the whole series of Shakspearian commentators join in the stupid shout, was written “on account of the success of Shakspeare’s witches, which alarmed the jealousy of a man who fancied himself his rival, or rather his superior.” Now to the proof. All that we know of the chronology of Macbeth is simply that the play existed in 1610. The quarto edition of the Masque of Queens appeared in 1609. In a comparison of the verse, Jonson certainly excels Shakspeare in descriptive merit, and even Shakspeare is here but an imitation of Middleton. This is one of many similar errors that disgrace the pages of Mr. Malone, and is by no means the most innocent among that batch of folly and misrepresentation.

It would lead to limits far beyond those which are purposed to be embraced in this paper, were I to extract from the subsequent invocations every passage of beauty and polished taste which is to be found there. The rhythm is perfect; admirably adapted to the scene and to the sentiment. The effect of the entertainment, aided by all the powers of appropriate music, pictorial representation, and correct costume, may be readily imagined by those who are acquainted with the illusions of the modern stage. The entry of the main masque is described by Jonson as follows: The witches, failing in the success of their incantations, “with a sudden and strange music, fell into a magical dance, full of preposterous change and gesticulation.

“In the heat of their dance, on the sudden was heard a sound of loud music, as if many instruments had made one blast; with which not only the hags themselves, but the hell into which they ran quite vanished, and the whole face of the scene altered, scarce suffering the memory of such a thing; but in the place of it appeared a glorious and magnificent building, figuring the House of Fame, in the top of which were discovered the twelve masquers, sitting upon a throne triumphal, erected in form of a pyramid, and circled with all store of light. From whom a person by this time descended, in the furniture of Perseus, and, expressing heroic and masculine virtue, began to speak.”

The speech of Perseus is written in the best style of our poet. Sonorous and masculine in versification, it is well adapted to the sentiments expressed, and a good specimen of the diction of Jonson, which often rises to a tragic sublimity worthy the imitation of the ancient tragedians. The masquers represent the female worthies and queens, who have distinguished themselves by their actions, and have received the meed of their virtue at the hands of the olden bards. To give an idea of the splendor of this spectacle, “I know no worthier way,” to use the phrase of Jonson, than to insert the names of the presenters, many of which are enrolled upon the page of history; and that of one (the Countess of Essex) with too scandalous a notoriety. The presenters were the Queen, the Countesses of Arundel, Derby, Huntingdon, Bedford, Essex, and Montgomery, Ladies Elizabeth Guilford, Anne Winter, Lady Windsor, and Lady Anne Clifford, the flowers of English beauty.

The description of the scene, which was the design of Inigo Jones, may interest the curious in such matters. The lower columns of the temple were the statues of the most excellent poets. The upper, the heroes of old, which statues were as of massy gold. Between the pillars, in brass, heightened with silver, were designs of land and sea fights, triumphs, &c. Above were seated the masquers, over whose heads the figures of Honor and Virtue composed an arch. The friezes were filled with divers colored lights, as emeralds, rubies, sapphires, &c., “the reflex of which, with the lights, placed in the concave, upon the masquers’ habits, was full of glory.”

The masque concludes with a triumphal entry, in chariots drawn by eagles, griffins, and lions, preceded by Fame, the hags being drawn in as captives. The effect of this display, attended by numerous torch bearers, must indeed have been dazzling. To this succeeded the dances, and the music, composed by Ferrabosco. As a specimen of Jonson’s taste, we subjoin the last song.

In the foregoing slight sketch which we have traced of this masque, the reader must be astonished at the magnificence lavished by the British court upon these entertainments. And yet we are annoyed by the everlasting cry “the pedantic—the tasteless James.” Even Sir Walter Scott, who should have known better, has depicted this monarch as a childish, stupid pedant. The reverse is the case. James was an accomplished scholar, and an excellent man. His queen, Anne, drew about her all that was talented and attractive. The British court circle never shone more brightly than during that reign. The preceding remarks must have convinced our readers of the fact, that the king had other amusement than that of acting Solomon when “half fuddled.” The masques of Jonson are ineffaceable monuments of his appreciation of the grand and of the beautiful. The pleasures of Carlton House, during the reign of George the Regent and George the King, show wretchedly when compared with the more refined pastimes of James the First. But with the martyrdom of the royal sufferer, Charles, those refinements disappeared. Even the muse of Milton failed to resuscitate them, and Cornus, the most admirable composition of this sort which has been produced since the days of Jonson, only received its due appreciation at the hands of posterity. To the silent gloom of Whitehall during its occupation by the regicide, succeeded the brutal and blasphemous orgies of Buckingham, Rochester, Sedley and Killigrew. The masque of Jonson inculcated wholesome truths, and rarely failed to impart some salutary lesson. These would have fallen dead upon the ears of that profligate crew.

But the masque, with all its glories, its brilliant lights, its glittering decorations, its enlivening dance, is, to all ages successive to that which bore and fostered it, as a dead letter. We have refined upon it, for we have fancy balls and divers rare shows of a similar species. Ours is peculiarly the age of intelligence and of refinement. The noble and graceful who figured in those magical scenes have long since departed—some upon the bloody fields of Edgehill and Marston Moor—some broken hearted and ruined in worldly estate, ejected from their ancestral towers, and from the fair domains of their lineage. All that is left to point out the glories of those days is to be found in the verse of a poet, whose worth will be appreciated by the judicious, until time shall bring together the admired and the admirer. Emphatically “the age of chivalry is past.”

BY S. D. PATTERSON.

I.

II.

III.

Such a quiet attribute as taste is not very efficient at a period like the present. And yet it is one of those qualities which go far toward perpetuating a poem as well as a statue or painting. We are now so accustomed to look for the rare and striking in literature, that the very principle which harmonizes and stamps with enduring beauty the effusions of mind, is scarcely appreciated. It is chiefly to the past that we must look for poetic taste. Recent bards have but seldom done justice to the form and manner of their writings. There is something, however, in a refined style and tasteful execution not unworthy the highest genius. It is due at least to that magic vehicle of ideas which we call language, that it should be wrought and polished into a shape fitted to enshrine the glowing image and the lofty thought. Many a work, the sentiment of which is without significance in this busy age, continues to delight from its artistical excellence, and much of the literature of the day, that bears the impress of genius, is destined to speedy oblivion, from its unfinished and ill-constructed diction. There is no little scope for sweet fancy and delicate feeling in the use of language. Not in his ideas and figures alone is the poet manifest. Indeed, it is as rare to find a good artist in the sphere of words and sentences as in that of marble and colors. Some ingenious philosophers have pointed out analogies between styles of writing and character, which suggest a much more delicate relation between the mind and its verbal expression than we generally suppose. Taste is no minor element of poetry; and the want of it has often checked the musical flow of gifted spirits, and rendered their development wholly unattractive. The epithet healthy has been applied with great meaning to a book. Of the same efficacy is taste in poetic efforts. It renders them palatable and engaging, it wins our regard immediately and gives double zest to the more imposing charms of the work. It is like a fine accompaniment in music; the sentiment of the song is heightened, and we cannot thenceforth even read it without a peculiar association of pleasure. Rogers is distinguished by no quality more obviously than that of taste. His general characteristics are not very impressive or startling. There are few high reflective beauties, such as win reverence for the bard of Rydal Mount, and scarcely an inkling of the impassioned force of Childe Harold. We are not warmed in his pages, by the lyric fire of Campbell, or softened by the tender rhapsodies of Burns; and yet the poetry of Rogers is very pleasing. It gains upon the heart by gentle encroachments. It commends itself by perfect freedom from rugged, strained and unskillful versification. It is, for the most part, so flowing and graceful that it charms us unaware. Without brilliant flashes or luxuriant imagery, it is still clear, free and harmonious. It succeeds by virtue of simplicity, by unpretending beauty, in a word, by the genuine taste which guides the poet both in his eye for the beautiful and the expression of his feelings. Great ideas are not often encountered in his poems, but purity of utterance and a true refinement of sentiment everywhere abound.

There is perhaps no Englishman who, by such universal consent, is more worthy the appellation of a man of taste. This tone of mind is the more remarkable, inasmuch as it has no connection with professional life. The ostensible pursuit of Mr. Rogers has no reference to his intellectual bias, except in having furnished him the means of mental gratification. Like his transatlantic prototype in the brotherhood of song, a good portion of his life is, or has been,

His taste is the spontaneous and native quality of a refined mind. It has made him a discriminating collector of literary treasures and trophies of art, the liberal patron of struggling genius, the correspondent of the gifted and the renowned, and the centre of a circle where wit and wisdom lend wings to time. It is in contemplating such a life as this that the most philosophic and unworldly may be forgiven for breathing a sigh for that wealth, which a cultivated man can thus render the source of such noble enjoyment. And yet the very feeling that such an example awakens is an evidence of its rarity. How seldom in a mercantile community do we find fortune associated with taste, a competence with a mind able to enjoy and improve leisure, the means of dispensing worthy delight, with a benevolent and judicious character! An exception to the prevailing rule is presented by our poet; and even those who have not participated in his elegant hospitality and graceful companionship, may realize that pervading taste whence is derived their peculiar charm, by communing with the mind of the classic banker, in the sweet effusions of his muse.

The excellent taste of Rogers is exhibited in his simplicity. He does not seek for that false effect which is produced by labored epithets and unusual terms. He is content to use good Saxon phraseology, and let his meaning appear through the transparent medium of common but appropriate words. He recognizes the truth that distinct and clear enunciation of thought is the most beautiful, and that a writer’s superiority is best evinced by the nice adaptation of language to sentiment. Obvious as such a principle is, there is none more commonly violated by the more showy minstrels of this generation, who seem to place great reliance on a kind of verbal mysticism, a vagueness of speech which, upon examination, proves but the dazzling attire of commonplace ideas. Instances of this simplicity are of frequent occurrence in the poems of Rogers. Their value is illustrated by the quiet emphasis of single lines, which, like a masterly stroke of the pencil, appear so felicitous that no revision can improve them. A few random examples will suffice—

With all due admiration for the loftier flights of the Muse, we cannot revert to the purer school of poetic diction which Rogers represents, without a feeling of refreshment. The simple, the correct, the clear and nervous style of versification has an intrinsic charm. The genuine taste in which it originates and to which it ministers, is an instinct of refined natures. It is the same principle that makes a Grecian temple more truly admirable in its chaste proportions and uniform tint, than all the brilliant hues and combinations of a Catholic church; and renders a classic statue more pleasing and impressive than the most ingenious mechanism. And it is from the same cause that the paintings of the Roman and Tuscan schools leave more vivid traces on the memory than the gorgeous triumphs of Venetian art. By virtue of their confidence in the feeling or thought to be presented, men of real taste are ever true to simplicity. They rely on the plain statement and the reader’s imagination, and produce by a single comparison or remark an impression which more elaborate terms would greatly weaken. For instance, when Rogers describes the scenery of the Alps, speaking of one of those pools that have so dark an appearance amid the surrounding whiteness, he says—

How completely is a sense of the dreariness and ebon hue of these mountain ponds conveyed, and by what natural illustrations. The diminutive size of St. Helena is thus indicated—

The wild solitude of the convent of St. Bernard has been often described, as well as its awful place of sepulture. Do not these few lines gives us a remarkably vivid idea of those who “perished miserably?”

Speaking of the festive preparations on St. Mary’s Eve, how expressive is this single circumstance—

Whoever has visited that extraordinary city will feel that it is pictured by Rogers, not in the most glowing, yet in a style of graphic truth, which accords perfectly with the real scene—

In an argument we have need of strong epithets, and to rouse men on an abstract theme, fervid appeals are unavoidable, but in view of the marvels of art or the sublimities of nature, what call is there for exaggeration? To the true soul is not the fact sufficient? Can expletives and strained metaphors add to the native interest of such objects? Are they not themselves poetry? Is not the poet’s office in relation to them, to give us as true a picture as may be, that we too may thrill with wonder or revel in beauty? Even in portraying deep emotion our great dramatist was satisfied to place in Macduff’s mouth—“He has no children!” And it is equally true to human nature, for Rogers to speak of Ginevra’s bereaved father as

Another evidence of the good judgment of Rogers may be found in the fact that he has published so little. It is the fashion to chide the authors of a few successful poems for their idleness. Some deem it a very pretty compliment to say of a poet that his only fault is that he has not written more. But such praise is equivocal, to say the least. It betrays a singular ignorance of the very nature of poetry, which may be defined as an art above the will. Doubtless if fine poems were as easily produced as fine rail-roads, it would be incumbent on the makers thereof to be very industrious in their vocation. But as the activity of the fancy and the flow of thought are but occasionally felicitous, some degree of reverence should be accorded the poet who having once struck the lyre to a masterly strain, thenceforth meekly refrains from any rash meddling with its chords, without that authority which his own heart can alone vouchsafe. Occasional witticisms have been indulged in reference to the coyness and care with which the bard of Memory woos the Muses. To a delicate and considerate mind such a course approves itself far more than the opposite. How many desirable reputations have been sacrificed to the morbid vanity of unceasing authorship! The creative power of every intellect is limited, its peculiar vein is soon exhausted, and its most ethereal powers not to be too frequently invoked without vapid results. We have heard of an old lady who had a celebrated bishop to dine with her every Sunday, and invariably on these occasions, his worship inquired how her ladyship would have the punch made; to which polite query, the good woman always gave the same judicious reply—“Make a little, bishop, but make it good.” Such a rule would often serve as well for poetry as for punch.

Rogers, in point of execution, belongs to the same category as Goldsmith. He has the requisite insight to copy from nature what is really adapted to poetical objects, to harmonize and enliven his pencilings with genial sentiment, and finally to present them in a form that charms the ear and imagination. The spirit of his poetry is not of the highest order. His talent is artistical rather than inventive. He is a clear delineator rather than a creative genius. A remarkable contrast is presented by his “Italy” and the fourth canto of Childe Harold. The former gives us a just and sweet picture of the graces and griefs of that beautiful land, as they were reflected in the mind of on amiable man of taste; the latter displays the same country, seen through the medium of an impassioned and self-occupied soul. Rogers looked upon the vale and river, the palace and the statue, the past and present associations of Italy, from the calm watch-tower of a serene consciousness; Byron surveyed those scenes as a restless seeker for peace, with a mind too excited and unsatisfied not to mingle with and color every fact and object with which it came in contact. There is a wild and melancholy beauty in Harold’s musings that appeals to our deepest sympathy; repose and pleasurable calm in those of Rogers, that soothes and diverts us. Something of tragic impression and strong personal interest carries us along with Byron in his pilgrimage, while a quiet attachment and agreeable fellowship win us to follow the steps of Rogers.

The blank verse of “Italy” is of a somewhat uncommon description. In English poetry, this species of metre has generally been written in a sustained and dignified manner, and some passages of Shakspeare and Milton prove that there is no style so fitted for sublime effect. Rogers essayed to give a more easy and familiar construction to blank verse, and the attempt was remarkably successful. Occasionally the lines are prosaic, and scarcely elevated to the tone of legitimate verse; but often there is a natural and sweet cadence which is worthy of the most harmonious bard. The example, too, has obviously tended to chasten and render more simple the management of this kind of verse. In this respect, Rogers has illustrated blank verse as Hunt has the heroic measure. They have exemplified a less stilted and artificial use of poetic language. The poem of the former has, indeed, an epistolary character. It is precisely such a series of genial sketches as an artist might send his friends from a foreign country—light, graceful and true to nature, but pretending to no great or elaborate conceptions. In this, as in his other efforts, Rogers is often somewhat tame, and frequently lacks fire and point; but the mass of what he has published is conceived and executed in such an unassuming and tasteful spirit, that the reader has no disposition to magnify his defects. His minor poems have a very unpretending air, and remind us somewhat of the “copies of verses” that cavaliers were accustomed to indite for the gratification of friend or mistress. The prettiest and most characteristic of these occasional poems is, perhaps, that entitled “A Wish.”

To Rogers we must accord a true moral feeling. The cordial friend, the man of native literary sympathies and domestic tastes, are ever reflected in his pages. He has a kindly and liberal heart as well as an intellectual spirit. There are more imposing names on the scroll of poetic fame, but few who have a better claim to love and respect. He is not without a poet’s ambition—

The latter aspiration has already met its fulfillment. The clearness and elegance, the quiet ardor and urbane sentiment that appear in his verse, are too candid and winning not to excite interest. Our attachment to the higher and more affecting species of poetry does not militate with, but rather enhances our sympathy with the quiet graces of his muse. The delight with which we tread the sea-shore and listen to the dashing billows does not prevent us from reposing with pleasure beside the calm lake, to watch the clouds reflected in its bosom, or the flowers that hang their fragrant urns around its brink.

It has always been sufficiently well understood that “The Author of Ahasuerus” is Mr. Robert Tyler, the son of the President; and this understanding, while it has given currency to his poems, has stood very much in the way of a fair appreciation of the poet. By the enemies of the administration, the announcement of “Ahasuerus” was the signal, we are really ashamed to say, for every variety of prospective squib, and, by its friends, we are also very much ashamed to say, for every variety of prospective puff. When published, the poem, almost as a matter of course, was extravagantly lauded by the one party, and outrageously condemned by the other; and, so far as our own knowledge extends, there was really no attempt at purely literary criticism in the case. This, the author himself could not have failed to see; and it must have been to him a source of no ordinary regret that the circumstances of his political, rendered it impossible that he should obtain, in America at least, a distinct view of his poetical, position. For ourselves, in the few words we have to say, we profess an absolute impartiality; but, as similar professions have been made, either directly or indirectly, by nearly all who have preceded us upon this topic, we can scarcely expect to be believed on the ground of the simple profession. Thus it shall be our endeavor to make our comments speak for themselves; our sole purpose being to present an intelligible view of the book—that is to say, of “Medorus’ Dream;” for the time has gone by when a criticism upon “Ahasuerus” might come with propriety, under the heading of our “Review of New Books.”

“Death, or Medorus’ Dream,” then, is an irregular poem, chiefly iambic, and consisting of some twelve hundred lines. It is divided into three parts—with no very ostensible reason for the division. The theme may be thus stated:—Medorus, a misanthrope, deeply imbued with a sense of the horrors of the grave, laments the sad destiny of Man, in being subjected to Death. While thus lamenting, Fancy descends to his aid, and consoles him by opening to his view the mysteries of Knowledge and of Love. She instructs him that the Death so dreaded is but a mode of progress from lesser to greater capacities of enjoyment and of power, until the soul finally returns to its august source in the Godhead itself. Medorus, in awaking from his dream, finds that the terror of Death is dispelled.

These allegorical subjects are faulty in themselves, and it is high time they were discarded. The best allegory is a silly conceit, so far as the allegory itself is concerned, and is only tolerable when so subjected to an upper current of obvious or natural meaning, that the moral may be dispensed with at pleasure—the poem being still good, per se, when the moral, or allegory, is neglected. When this latter is made to form on under-current—that is to say when an occasionally suggested meaning arises from the obvious one—then, and then only, will a true taste endure the allegorical. It can never properly be made the main thesis. In the present instance, however, it is not only so made, but handled in the crudest, most inartificial, and most commonplace manner. And this, too, for no purpose—with no object, since the end desired would have been equally, and far more naturally attained by the machinery of an ordinary dream. The only apology which can be suggested is, that the poem is intended rather less as a poem than as a philosophical essay in verse; but, then, there should be no such anomalies as philosophical essays in verse.

Apart from this leading error, the chief defects of “Medorus’ Dream” are to be found in an unpleasant “far-fetchedness” of versification, in confusion of metaphor, and in a too frequent introduction of epithet.

Of the general character of the versification, the lines annexed will convey an idea:

These are merely iambic lines, unrhymed, and varying in length from four to six and ten syllables—that is to say, from two to three and five feet. The effect in general has nothing beyond its oddity to recommend it. Occasionally, however, it assumes much force; as, for example, here:

Nevertheless, we should have been better pleased with something in the way of rhyme; and, in fact, there is no metre which may not derive vigor from its employment. The Heroic, or Iambic Pentameter, can best dispense with it; but we know no instance, even of this stately rhythm, which would not be improved, even in its distinctive feature of stateliness, by the admission of well-managed rhyme.

In respect to the point of “confusion of metaphor,” Mr. Tyler is far more objectionable than in his metre. For example:

Here we have fire touching a stagnant heart, and, in this way, melting certain chains that curb its swelling tide—that is, the swelling tide of a stagnant heart. Observe!—first we have the idea of fire applied to water, (conveyed by the term “stagnant”) this is one incongruity; then we have chains curbing a tide, a second incongruity; then we have the third incongruity of the “stagnant” heart’s possessing a “swelling tide.” Mixed metaphors like these abound in the poem.

As for the third count of our indictment—the excessive use of epithets—the opening passage of “Medorus’ Dream” will afford us a good exemplification:

The ill effect of these frequent adjectives is heightened, here, by the similarity of those used at the termination of the second, third, and fourth lines, where we have a “darkening sky,” a “gathering gale,” and a “shuddering soul.”

These, we say, are the chief defects of the poem, and they are defects of a minor kind. The merits are, first, a certain nobility and dignity of tone pervading every page, and betokening lofty aspiration and chivalry of heart in the poet; secondly, a rich and imaginative sense of the beautiful, with a capacity for its expression. Of course, it is only by a perusal of the whole poem that the reader can be made to feel the first of these merits; but, without instancing at this point, we may be permitted to say that the general philosophy of “Death,” as well as of “Ahasuerus” is, if not in all cases logical, still, at all times, noble, elevated, thoughtful, and worthy of the highest respect.

We conclude this notice with an extract which will go far to exemplify our allusion to the poet’s “sense of the beautiful,” and his “capacity for its expression:”

TRANSCRIBER NOTES

Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors occur.

Some photographs have been enhanced to be more legible.

Footnotes have been numbered sequentially throughout the magazine.

A Table of Contents has been added for reader convenience.

[The end of Graham’s Magazine, Vol. XXIII, No. 6, December 1843, by George Rex Graham]