Chapter 5

VI.--THE MINIATURE.

Lucille had not, therefore, gained by her marriage the position to which her ambition aspired. She had made several ineffectual efforts to dissolve the spell of isolation which seemed to seclude the intercourse of the Chateau des Anges from all human ken and visitation as absolutely as the palace of a merman. With the exception, however, of a few visits from the great ladies who resided in the neighborhood, no casual beams from the brilliant world of rank and fashion without penetrated the dismal shadows of her gorgeous abode.

She was dissatisfied, angry, and resolved upon the earliest fitting occasion to rebel against the selfish tyranny which consigned her to solitude and monotony.

She had hitherto gained nothing by those little expedients, hints, and even entreaties, which are sometimes found so effectual in like cases. The old fermier-general was just as smiling and as promising as the Chateau des Anges itself, but, alas! as absolutely impenetrable. An iron will encountered and repressed all her shifts and struggles. She chafed and coaxed alike in vain. Whether the bird sang or fluttered, the bars of her cage were immovable.

Under these circumstances, no very cordial feelings began to animate the fiery girl respecting her resolute and reserved old helpmate.

Meanwhile the humble cottage in the park of Charrebourg was deserted, and permitted to fall to decay, for the old visconte, and even Marguerite, had been removed to the establishment at Des Anges, and so, in process of time, the little walks were overgrown with grass, the fences spread and straggled, dark green plants clambered to the roof, and weeds showed themselves over the tiled vestibule and even ventured into the inner chambers. Thus time and nature, in mournful alliance, began their obliterating work. But there were some plants and flowers which grew outside what had been for so long Mademoiselle Lucille de Charrebourg's window. They had been the objects of her care, and Gabriel!--sweet but sorrowful remembrance!--had been, in those happy times, privileged to tend them for her. Poor Gabriel was now desolate indeed, but he pleased himself with dressing those flowers, and watering, and weeding them day by day, just as if she were there; and he would then sit on the bank that bounded the bowling-green, and watch the desolate casement where he used so often to see that face that too probably was never more to beam on him. And thus hours would glide away, and, young as he was, he came to live chiefly in the past.

And generally when he rose, and with an effort, and many a backward look, lingeringly departed, he would strengthen his sinking heart with some such reflection as this:--

"She did not love the fermier-general--it was the visconte who made her marry him. This Monsieur Le Prun--what was he at first but a roturier--no better than myself--and made his own money--fortune may yet befriend me also. I have energies, and resolution, and courage, for her sake, to dare ten thousand deaths. I'll not despair. And then the old fellow can't live _very_ long--a few years--and so who knows yet what may befall?"

There was one beautiful rose which grew close to the window, and which Lucille herself had planted, and this tree Gabriel came gradually to regard as connected by some sweet and silent sympathy with the features and feelings of its mistress. When it drooped, she, he thought, was sick or in sorrow; when, on the contrary, it was covered with blossoms and fresh leaves, she was full of smiles and health; when a rough gust tore its slender sprays, some vexation and disappointment had fretted her; and when again it put forth new buds and sprouts, these were forgotten, and time had gathered round her new hopes and delights. Thus this tree became to him an object of strangely tender interest, and he cherished the fancy that, in tending and guarding it, he was protecting the fortunes and the happiness of poor Lucille.

Meanwhile, as a sort of beginning of that great fortune that awaited him, he obtained employment as an under-gardener at the Chateau de Charrebourg, which had just been let to a wealthy noble, whose millions had elevated him (like Monsieur le Prun) from the bourgeoisie to his present rank.

But we must return to the Chateau des Anges. Lucille's apartments were situated at a side of the chateau overlooking a small court communicating with the greater one at the front of the building; and this narrow area was bounded by a lofty wall, which separated the other pleasure-grounds from the park.

It was night; Lucille and her gentle companion, Julie, had been chatting together, as young-lady friends will do, most confidentially. The little maiden had detailed all her sadness and alarms. Her married companion had been fluent and indignant upon her wrongs and disappointments. Each felt a sort of relief, and drawn as it were into a securer intimacy, by the absence of Monsieur le Prun, who was that night necessarily absent upon business.

The conversation had now shifted to Julie's engagement.

"And so, I suppose, I must marry him. Is it not a cruel tyranny to compel one who desires nothing but to live and die among good Christians, in the quiet of a convent, to marry a person whom she does not or cannot love?"

"Yes, Julie, so it seems; but you may yet be happier so married, than leading the life you long for. Remember, Julie, he is not a man who has outlived the warmth, and tenderness, and trust of youth. He is still capable of a generous passion, and capable of inspiring one. There is no grief like the tyranny of one whom law and not love has made your master."

As they conversed, some cases of Lucille's lay open on the table before her companion, who had been amusing herself in girlish fashion by the varied splendor and exquisite taste of the jewelry they contained.

"This brooch," she said, taking up a miniature in enamel, representing some youthful tradition of Monsieur le Prun's person, set round with diamonds, "is set very like mine, but I hate to look at it."

"It represents, then----"

"The Marquis. Yes."

"The world calls him handsome, I am told."

"Yes, but somehow, if he be so, I can't perceive it; he does not please me."

"Well, then, bring me the miniature, and I will pronounce between you and the world."

With a melancholy smile Julie ran to her own apartment, hard by, and in a few minutes returned. With curiosity all alive, Lucille took the brooch and looked at it.

"Well, what say you?" asked Julie, who stood behind her chair, gazing at the trinket over her shoulder. Lucille was silent, although nearly a minute had elapsed.

"He certainly has the noble air," she continued; but still Lucille offered no criticism.

On a sudden she put down the miniature sharply on the table, and said, abruptly, "It is time to go to rest; let us go to bed."

She rose and turned full round on Julie as she spoke. Her face was pale as death, and her eyes looked large and gleaming. Her gaze was almost wild.

"Are you ill?" said Julie, frightened, and taking her hand, which was quite cold.

"O, no, no," said Lucille quickly, with a smile that made her pallor and her dilated stare more shocking. "No, no, no--tired, vexed, heart-sick of the world and of my fate."

Julie, though shocked and horrified, thought she had never seen Lucille look so handsome before. She was an apparition terrible, yet beautiful as a lost angel.

"You are, after all, right," she said suddenly. "I--I believe I _am_ ill."

The windows of the apartment descended to the floor, and opened upon a balcony. She pushed the casement apart, and stood in the open air. Julie had hurried to her assistance, fearing she knew not what, and stood close by her. Never was scene so fitted to soothe the sick brain, and charm the senses with its sad and sweet repose. The pure moon, high in the deep blue of the heavens, shed over long rows of shimmering steps, and urns, and marble images--over undulating woodlands, and sheets of embowered and sleeping water, and distant hills, a mournful and airy splendor.

It seemed as though nature were doing homage to so much beauty. The old forest wafted from his broad bosom a long hushed sigh as she came forth; the moon looked down on her with a serene, sad smile; and the spirits of the night-breeze sported with her tresses, and kissed her pale lips and forehead.

At least five minutes passed in silence. Lucille, on a sudden, said--

"So, at the end of a year you will be married?"

It seemed to Julie that the countenance that was turned upon her gleamed with an expression of hatred which froze her. But the moonlight is uncertain, and may play wild freaks with the character of an excited face.

"Yes, dear Lucille; alas! yes," she answered, in a tone that was almost deprecatory.

"Well, well, I am better now," she said, after a second interval. "My head, Julie--my poor head!"

"Have you a pain there, dear Lucille?"

"Yes, yes, it's all there," she said, abstractedly; and, returning, she kissed her gentle companion, bade her good night, and was alone.

Julie was strangely perplexed by the scene which had just occurred. She could account for it upon no theory but the supposition that some flickering vein of insanity was shooting athwart her reason, and as suddenly disappeared. As soon as she was partially composed, she kneeled down at the bedside, and prayed long and fervently; and for far the greater part of the time poor Lucille was the sole theme of her supplications. At last she lay down, and composed herself to sleep. Spite of the unpleasant images with which her mind was filled, slumber ere long overpowered her. But these painful impressions made teasing and fantastic shapes to themselves. Her pillow was haunted, and strange dreams troubled her slumbering senses. From one of these visions she awoke with a start, and found herself sitting upright in her bed, with her heart beating fast with terror. A burst of passionate wailing from Lucille's apartments thrilled her with a sort of terror at the same moment. In hushed uncertainty she listened for a repetition of the sound; but in vain. She was prompted to go and try whether she needed any help or comfort; but something again withheld her; and, after another interval of somewhat excited reflection, she once more gradually fell asleep. Again, however, hateful visions tormented her. She dreamed that a phantom, said to have haunted the chateau for ages, and known by the familiar title of "La Belle Colombe," was pursuing her from chamber to chamber, dressed in her accustomed shroud of white; and had at last succeeded in chasing her into a chamber from which there was no second door of escape--when she awoke with a start; and, behold! there was a light in the room, and a female form, dressed in white, standing between the bedside and the door. For some moments she fancied that she saw but the continuation of her dream, and awaited the further movements of the figure with the fascination of terror. But gradually her senses reported more truly, and she perceived that the figure in white was indeed Lucille--pale, haggard; while with one she held the candlestick, with the other she motioned slowly towards the bed, which she was approaching with breathless caution, upon tiptoe. With an effort Julie succeeded in calling her by name, almost expecting as she did so to see the whole apparition vanish into air.

"Awake, awake; how softly you breathe, Julie!" said Lucille, drawing close to the bedside, and drawing the curtains.

"Yes, dear Lucille; can I do any thing for you?"

"No, no--nothing but----"

"How do you feel now?--are you better?"

"Yes, better than I desire to be."

"But why are you here, dear Lucille? Has any thing--_frightened_ you?"

"Ha! then you heard it, did you?"

"Heard it? What?"

"Why, how long have you been awake--did you--did you hear music--singing?"

"No, no; but in truth, dear Lucille, I thought I heard you weeping."

"O, nonsense; who minds a girl's weeping. But you heard nothing else?"

"No, indeed."

Lucille appeared greatly relieved by this assurance. She stooped over her and kissed her; and it was not until her face was thus brought near that Julie could perceive how worn and wan with weeping it was.

"I have been dreaming, then; yes, yes, I suspected as much--_dreaming_," she said; and, as she reached her own room, she muttered--

"Well, God be thanked, she did _not_ hear it. But what can it mean? What madness and crime can have conjured up these sounds? What can it mean but guilt, danger, and despair?"

VII.--THE DEVIL'S COACH.

It seemed to Julie that Lucille was moody and abstracted next morning. Sometimes for a few moments she talked and smiled as before, but this was fitfully, and with an effort. She appeared like one brooding over some wrong that had taken possession of her thoughts, or some dark and angry scheme which engrossed her imagination. She soon left Julie and retired to her own apartments.

When Monsieur Le Prun returned, some time after noon, not finding his young wife in her usual chamber, he went up stairs to wish her good day in her own suite of rooms.

He was surprised at the sullen and stormy countenance with which she greeted him. She had not yet ventured to rebel against his authority, although she had frequently hinted her remonstrances and wrongs. But there was now a darkness charged with thunder on her brow, and the fermier-general began seriously (in nautical phrase) to look out for squalls.

"Good-day, my pretty wife."

"Good-day, sir."

"Are you well to-day?"

"No."

"Hey? that's a pity; what ails you, my charming little wife?"

"Solitude."

"Solitude! pooh, pooh! why, there is Julie."

"Julie has her _young_ lover to think of."

"And when you weary of her," he continued, resolved not to perceive the slight but malicious emphasis, "you have got your own sweet thoughts to retire upon."

"My thoughts are ill company, sir."

"Well, as it seems to me, the pretty child is out of temper to-day," he said, with evident chagrin.

"Perhaps I am--it is natural--I should be a fool were I otherwise."

"Par bleu! what new calamity is this?" he asked, with a smile and a shrug.

"Nothing new, sir."

"Well, what _old_ calamity?"

The past night had wrought a change in Lucille; and, little as she had ever liked M. Le Prun, she now felt a positive hatred of him, and she answered with a gloomy sort of recklessness--

"Sir, I am a prisoner."

"Tut, tut! pretty rogue."

"Yes, a prisoner; _your_ prisoner."

"A prisoner on parole, perhaps; but provided, pretty captive, you don't desert me, you may wander where you will."

"Pshaw! that is nonsense," she said sharply.

"Nonsense!" he repeated, testily; "it is no such thing, madame; you have the handsomest equipages in France. Pray, when did I refuse you carriages, or horses, or free egress from this place? par bleu! or lock the gates, madame? Treated as you are, how _can_ you call yourself a prisoner?"

"What advantage in carriages, and horses, and open gates, when we are surrounded by a desert?"

"A desert? what do you mean?"

"There is not a soul to speak to."

"Not a soul--why, you are jesting; pray, is the Marquise de Pompignaud nobody? is the Conte de la Perriere nobody?"

"_Worse_ than nobody, monsieur: I should prefer a desert to a wilderness haunted by such creatures."

"_Sacre!_ what does the child want?"

"What every wife in France commands--society, sir."

"Well, I say you have got it: independently of your immediate domestic circle, you have a neighborhood such as ought to satisfy any reasonable person. There are persons fully as well descended as yourself, and others nearly as rich as I am, all within easy visiting distance."

"The rich are all plebeians, and the nobles are all poor; there is and can be in a group so incongruous no cordiality, no gayety, no splendor; in a word, no such society as the last descendant of the Charrebourgs may reasonably aspire to."

"It is fully as numerous and respectable, notwithstanding, as the society which the last descendant of the Charrebourgs enjoyed in the ancestral park where first I had the honor of making her acquaintance."

"Yes; but not such as with my birth and beauty I might and _must_ have commanded, sir."

"Well, what do you expect? These people won't give fêtes."

"Bring me to Paris, sir; I wish to take my place among the noble society, where I may meet my equals; and at court, where I may, like all my ancestry, see my sovereign. Here, sir, my days fly by in melancholy isolation; I am kept but to amuse your leisure; this, sir, is not indulgence--it is selfish and tyrannical."

Monsieur Le Prun looked angrier and uglier than ever she had seen him before. His eyes looked more black and prominent, and his face a great deal paler. But he did not trust himself with an immediate answer; and his features, as if in the effort to restrain the retort his anger prompted, underwent several grotesque and somewhat ghastly contortions.

His handsome wife, meanwhile, sat sullen and defiant, daring, rather than deprecating, the menaced explosion of his wrath.

Their matrimonial bickerings, however, were not so soon to reach their climax. Monsieur Le Prun contrived to maintain a silent self-command--thrust his hands into his pockets, walked to the window humming an air, and after a few moments' pause, turned abruptly and left the room.

Near the stair-head he met old Marguerite on her way to Lucille's apartments. He signed to her to follow him, and entered a chamber there. She perceived the unmistakable traces of angry excitement in his face--always sinister in an old man, but in one so powerful, and about whom she had heard so many dark rumors, full of vague terrors. As soon as he had closed the door, he said to her--

"I hope they make you comfortable here, Marguerite?"

"Yes, sir, very comfortable," she replied, with a low courtesy, and trembling a good deal.

"Well, Marguerite, I suppose you would wish to make a suitable return. Now, some vile miscreant meddler, who has got the ear of your young mistress, has been endeavoring to make her unhappy in her present secluded situation--I think I could place my hand upon the culprit; but at all events, do _you_ lose no opportunity henceforward of cheering her, and reconciling your young mistress, to this most suitable residence."

It was perfectly plain from his looks, that Monsieur Le Prun suspected _her_ of being the "meddler" in question; but before she could muster presence of mind to attempt her exculpation, he was gone. The interview was like an ugly, flitting dream. His angry face and menacing croak had scared her senses but for a moment; the apparition had vanished, and, with a heart still beating fast, she went stealthily on her way.

Now Julie perceived that a change had taken place in Lucille--she was anxious and excited, and appeared morbidly and passionately eager to share in those amusements which before she had desired with comparative moderation.

"Julie, I _will_ mix in the world; I _will_ meet people and associate with my equals--I am resolved upon it. If Monsieur Le Prun persists in refusing my reasonable wishes, it will perchance be the worse for himself."

Such sentences she used to utter amidst blushes and pallor, and with a fire and agitation that painfully perplexed her gentle, but now somewhat estranged, little companion.

Her conduct, too, became eccentric and capricious; sometimes she appeared sullen and reserved--sometimes, at moments, as if animated with a positive hatred of her unoffending companion. Then, again, she would relent, and, in an agony of compunction, entreat her to be reconciled.

It happened, not unfrequently, that business compelled Monsieur Le Prun to pass the night from home. Upon one of these occasions Lucille had gone early to her bed, and old Marguerite, at her special desire, sat beside her.

"Well, Marguerite," said her young mistress, "I am going to exact the fulfilment of a promise you made me long ago, when first you came home, and before you became afraid of Monsieur Le Prun. You told me, then, that you knew some stories of him--come, what are they?"

"Hey dear, bless the pretty child!--did I though?"

"Yes, yes, Marguerite; and you must tell them now--I say you _must_--I _will_ have them. Nay, don't be afraid; I'll not tell them again, and nobody can overhear us here."

"But, my pretty pet, these stories----"

"Then there _are_ stories--see, you can't deny it any longer; tell them, tell them to me all."

"Why, they are nothing but a pack of nonsense. You would laugh at me. It is only about monsieur's father, and the wonderful coach they say he left to his son."

"Well, be it what it may, let me have it."

"Well, then, my pretty bird, you shall have it as they told it to myself."

She looked into the next apartment, and having satisfied herself that it was vacant, and shut the door of communication, she prepared for her narrative.

We have clipped the redundancies and mended the inaccuracies of honest Marguerite's phraseology; but the substance and arrangement of the story is recorded precisely as she gave it herself.

"Monsieur's father, they say, began with a very little money, madame, and he made it more by--by--in short, by _usury_; I beg pardon, but they say so, madame; and so finding as he grew old that he had a great deal of gold, and wishing to have some one of his own flesh and blood to leave it to, when he should be dead and buried, he bethought him of getting a wife. He must have been a shrewd man, I need not tell you, to have made so much money, so he was determined not to make his choice without due consideration. Now there was a farmer near them, who had a pretty and innocent daughter, and after much cautious inquiry and patient study of her character, old money-bags resolved that she was excellently suited for his purpose."

"She was young and pretty, and he old and ugly, but rich; well, what followed?"

"Why, she, poor thing, did not want to marry him at all; for though he was rich, he had a very ill name in the country, and she was afraid of him; but her father urged her, and the old man himself spoke her fair, and between them they overpowered her fears and scruples, and so she was married."

"Poor thing!" said Lucille, unconsciously.

"Well, madame, he married, and brought her home to his desolate old house, and there, they say, he treated her harshly; and, indeed he might there safely use her as he pleased, for there was not another house for a great way round to be seen: and nobody but his own creatures and dependents, who, they said, were just as bad as himself, could hear her cries, or witness his barbarities."

Lucille sat up in the bed, and listened with increased interest.

"Poor thing! it was there, in the midst of sufferings and cruelties, that she gave birth to a child, who is now Monsieur Le Prun, the great fermier-general; but her health, and indeed her heart, was broken; and, some rumor having reached her relations, that she was sick and unhappy, a cousin of hers, who, they said, was in love with her in their early days, brought the village physician with him to see her, though it was full three leagues and a half away."

"The cousin loved her; poor fellow, he was true," said Lucille, with a blush of interest.

"Ay, so they say; but Monsieur Le Prun, who was a jealous curmudgeon, would not admit him; but he did allow the physician to see her (himself standing by), because he was always glad to have the use of any body's skill for nothing--which, more than any love he bore his poor wife, was the reason of his letting him prescribe for her. Well, of course, she could not send any message to her friends, nor tell how she was treated, for old Le Prun was at her bedside; but the physician saw that she was ill, and he said to the old miser--'Your wife can't walk, and she must have air; let her drive every day in your coach.' 'I have no such thing,' said old Le Prun. 'But you are rich,' said the physician, 'you can afford to buy one; and it is your duty to do so for your wife, who will die else.' 'Let her die, then, for me--the devil may send her a coach to ride in, as they say he sent me my money; but I'll not waste my gold on any such follies.' So the physician went away, disappointed and disgusted, and her poor cousin was not able to effect any good on her behalf; but it seems the words of Monsieur Le Prun did not fall quite to the ground--they were heard in the quarter to where they were directed. That evening closed in clouds, and before twelve o'clock at night, they say, there came on such another thunder-storm as never was heard in the neighborhood, before or since. Nothing but thunder, roaring and crashing, peal upon peal, till the old house shook and trembled to its very base; and the blue lightning glared at every window, and split along the pavement in streams of livid fire; and all this time the rain was beating straight down in an incessant and furious deluge."

"And so, I suppose, the devil came in the midst of the tempest, and took him away bodily in a flash of lightning?"

"No, no, my pretty bird, not so fast. There was an old negro servant of his, a fellow just as wicked as himself, who was sitting in the kitchen, cursing the rain that was battering in huge drops down the chimney, and putting out the wood at which he was warming his shins, when, in the midst of the dreadful hubbub of the tempest, what should he hear but the rush of a great equipage, and wheels and horses clattering over the pavement, amidst the shouts of men and the sound of horns. Up jumped the black, and, listening, he heard a loud voice shouting through the storm, as if to summon some one to the door. Though they say he was a courageous old sinner, his heart failed him, for such sounds had not visited the old house within the memory of man in the day time, much less in the dead of night; and, instead of going to the door, he hurried away to the chamber where old Le Prun was cowering, screwed up in the middle of a great old fauteuil, and more frightened at the tempest than he would have cared to confess. So he told him of the sounds he had just heard, and he and his master mounted together to a small room in a gable over the hall-door, and from the casement of this they commanded a view of the paved court in front. It was so dark, however, that they could see nothing; and the thunder still echoing in loud explosions, and the rain battering at the windows, prevented their distinctly hearing the words which the voice was shouting outside. 'Shall we open the casement and ask him what they want?' said the old negro. 'Let it alone,' said his old master, shoving his arm back again, with a curse. At the same moment a vivid flash of lightning, or rather several in almost continuous succession, shed for some seconds a blue, pulsating illumination over the scene, and then they saw before their eyes a coach, with a team of horses and outriders, in the style of a royal equipage, drawn up before the hall door; and all the postillions and outriders were sitting motionless, with their whips pointing to the house, as if they were signing to the inhabitants to come out: and some one was looking from the window, and cried, in a tone like the shriek of the wind--'The coach that Monsieur Le Prun ordered this morning.' In the quivering blue light the whole thing looked like a smoky shadow, and was swallowed in darkness in a moment. Then came the bellowing thunder-burst, and a wild scream of winds rushed whooping, and sighing, and hissing through the tree-tops, and died away in the unknown distance. The two old sinners, master and man, crept away from the window, and stumbled their way back again to the chamber which Monsieur Le Prun had occupied before, and which, being in the rear of the house, and most remote from the sight that had scared them, was preferred by them to any other. In the morning a coach, of first-rate workmanship in all respects, was standing in front of the hall door, just where they had seen it on the night before, but no sign of horse, rider, or owner. For several days it remained in the same position, no one caring to touch it; but at the end of that time, having grown accustomed to its presence, and gradually less and less in awe of it, they lodged it in the coach-house; and so, after a considerable time, the old usurer's instincts prevailed, and he resolved to make trial of the vehicle, with a view to sell it in Paris. At first the horses snorted, and reared, and shyed, when they were attempted to be harnessed to it, but in a little while they too became reconciled to it, and Monsieur Le Prun made an experimental trip in it himself. Whatever passed upon that occasion, it certainly determined him against parting with it. And, it was said, whenever he was thenceforward in doubt about any purchase, or meditating any important financial _coup_, he invariably took a solitary drive in this preternaturally-acquired vehicle; and, in the course of that drive, his doubts, whatever they may have been, were invariably resolved, and some lucky purchase or successful operation upon 'Change was sure to follow. It was said that upon these occasions Monsieur Le Prun was always heard to converse with some companion in the coach; and the driver once avowed that, having been delayed by an accident on the road, as the darkness came on, he distinctly saw two shadowy outriders spurring duly in their van, and never lost sight of them until, with hair standing on end, and bathed in a cold sweat, he drew up in the court before his master's house."

"And what happened to old Le Prun?"

"When they returned from one of their drives, taken, Heaven bless us! for the purpose of consulting the Evil One, so to speak, face to face, they found old Le Prun quite dead, sitting back in his wonted attitude, and with his arm slung in the embroidered strap."

"And what has become of the wonderful coach?"

"That I have never heard; but they say that Monsieur Le Prun, the fermier-general, has it in one of his houses, either in the country or in Paris, and that, whenever he wants to consult the familiar demon of the family, he takes a drive in it alone; and this, they say, has been the cause of his great successes and his enormous fortune."

"I should like to ride in that coach myself," said Lucille.

"Heaven and all the saints forbid!"

"I want to know my destiny, Marguerite. Were I sure that all my days were to pass as at present, I would rather die than live."

"Oh, but sure my pretty bird would not ask her fortune of--of--"

"Yes, of any one--of any spirit, good or evil, that could tell it. I am weary of my life, Marguerite. I would rather beg or work with my liberty, and the friends I like, than see my days glide by in this dull, wealthy house, without interest, or hope, or--or _love_."

"But never desire, while you live, my child, the visits of the Evil One. Once asked for, it is said he never refuses them."

"Say you so? then I invite him with all my heart," she said, with a bitter pleasantry; "he can't be a great deal worse than the society I have sometimes had to share; and, if he discloses the futurity that awaits me, he will have been the most instructive companion that fortune ever lent me."

"Chut! madame, listen."

"What is the matter, Marguerite?"

"Did not you hear?"

"What?--whom?"

"There--there again; blessed Virgin shield us!"

"Psha! Marguerite; it is nothing but the moths flying against the window-panes; I have heard that little tapping a hundred times."

"Well, well, maybe so; but say your prayers, my dear, and ask forgiveness for your foolish words."

"No, Marguerite; for in truth I do wish my fortune were read to me, and care not by whom."

"Hey, what's that? Chut! in Heaven's name hold thy mad tongue," she cried, in the irritation of panic; "surely _that_ is no moth. May the saints guard your bed, my child. You heard it, did you not?"

"Hum--yes--there was a sound."

"I should think so, par bleu! something a size or two larger than a moth, too."

"It was a spray of one of the plants swung by the breeze against the window."

"Ma foi! it was no such thing, my sweet pet; no, no, something with a pair of wings fluttered up against it."

Had the old woman, in her trepidation, had leisure to study the countenance of her young mistress, she would have perceived that her cheeks were flushed with crimson. But she was too busy with her medley of prayers and protestations, and too fully preoccupied with the idea of an unearthly visitation.

"Well, well, Marguerite, be it as you say; I'll not dispute the point; but leave me now; I'm tired, and would sleep. Good night."

After the old woman had withdrawn some minutes, Lucille rose from her bed. She had only been partially undressed; and throwing on her dressing-gown, and putting her little ivory feet into her slippers, she glided to her chamber-door, which she secured, and then cautiously, and almost fearfully, stepped to the window, which she pushed open, and stood upon the balcony.

With a beating heart, and a cheek that momentarily changed color, she looked all along the edges of the court, and over the tall plants, and under the shadow of the lofty jessamine-covered wall. She listened with breathless and excited suspense--she waited for some minutes; but, having watched and listened in vain, she pressed her hand on her heart, and, with a deep and trembling sigh, turned back again. It was at this moment she saw something white, no bigger than a playing-card, lie at her feet. She picked it up, entered her room, and trembling violently, closed the window again, and was alone.

VIII.--THE ORDEAL.

The next morning came with sunshine, and the merry carols of all the sylvan choirs. It would have meetly ushered in a day of rejoicing; but joy seemed to have bid an eternal adieu to the luxurious solitudes of the Chateau des Anges.

Julie that morning remarked that Lucille remained unusually late in her own rooms. Fearing that she might be ill, she ventured to visit her in her apartments. It was past twelve o'clock when she knocked at her door. There was no answer; and she knocked repeatedly, but without success. At last she opened the door, but Lucille was not as usual in that room. She walked through it, and the apartment beyond it, without seeing her; but in her dressing-room, which lay beyond that again, she found her.

She was sitting in a loose morning-robe; her head was supported by her hand, and the open sleeve of heavy silk had fallen back from her white round arm. An open letter lay upon the table under her gaze. She had evidently been weeping, and was so absorbed either in her own reflections or the contents of the letter, that she did not perceive the entrance of Julie.

The visitor paused; but feeling that every moment of her undiscovered presence added to the awkwardness of her situation, she called Lucille by name.

At the sound of her name she started from her seat, and stood, pale as death, with all her dark hair shaken wildly about her shoulders, and her eyes gleaming with a malign terror upon the intruder. At the same moment she had clutched the letter, and continued to crumple it in her hand with a spasmodic eagerness.

Julie was almost as much confounded as Lucille. Both were silent for a time.

"I beg your pardon, dear Lucille; I fear my unperceived intrusion startled you."

"Yes, yes; I suppose I am nervous. I am not well. Oh, God! you did startle me very much."

To do her justice, she looked terrified; every vestige of color had fled from her face, even from her lips, and her eyes continued gleaming wildly and fixedly on her.

"Why did you come, then--what do you want of me?" she said, at last, excitedly, and even angrily.

"I came to ask how you are, Lucille--I feared you were ill."

"I--I ill? You know I was _not_ ill," she said hurriedly and impatiently, and either forgetting or despising her own excuse of but a moment before. "You came--you came for a _purpose_, Julie--yes, yes--do not deny it--there is perfidy enough already."

"You wrong me, Lucille; I told you the simple truth--why should I deceive you?"

"Why--why? Because the world is full of deceit, full of falsehood and treason--they are every where, every where."

She turned away, and Julie perceived that she was weeping.

She was pained and puzzled--nay, she was crossed every moment by the horrid fear that Lucille's mind was unsettled. Her strange agitation seemed otherwise unaccountable.

"Lucille--dear Lucille--surely you will not be angry with your poor little friend--surely you believe Julie."

She looked at her for a moment, and said--

"Yes, Julie, I do believe you;" and so saying, she kissed her. "But--but I am utterly, and I fear irremediably miserable."

"But what is the cause of your wretchedness, my dear Lucille?"

"This place--this solitude oppresses me; I cannot endure the isolation to which I am unnaturally and tyrannically condemned. Oh, Julie! there are circumstances, secrets, miseries, I dare not tell you; fate is weaving round me a net, to all eyes but my own invisible. But why do you look at me with those strange glances? Do not believe that I am _guilty_, because I am miserable--do not dare to touch me with such a thought."

She stamped her little foot furiously on the floor at these words, while her cheek and eye kindled with excitement. It speedily subsided, however, into a deep and sullen gloom, and she continued--

"I scarce know myself, Julie, what I am, or what I may be; but my heart is as full of tumult, of suffering, of hatred, as hell itself. I will at least be free--my captivity in this magician's prison shall terminate--I _will_ not endure it. It shall end soon, one way or another--I will liberate myself."

Lucille spoke with something more than passion--it was fierceness; and her gentle companion was filled with vague alarms. She had, as feeble natures often have, an instinctive appreciation of the superior energy and daring of her more fiery companion, and knew that she would, too probably, take some violent and irreparable step in furtherance of her resolution. It was, therefore, with feelings of anxiety and fear that she left her to the solitary influence of her own angry and excited thoughts.

Monsieur Le Prun did not arrive till night. As he and the Count de Blassemare rolled homeward, side by side in his carriage, under the uncertain moonlight, between the lordly rows of forest-trees that, like files of gloomy Titans, kept perennial guard along the approaches of the chateau, or, as Lucille has not unaptly styled it, "the magician's prison," they talked pretty much as follows:

"Le Prun, my good friend, you are jealous--jealous, by all the imps in true love's purgatory," said Blassemare.

"Not jealous, but cautious."

"A nice distinction."

"Why, when one has reached our time of life----"

"_Ours!_ you might be my father."

"Well, I can't deny it, for nobody knows _how_ old you are. But at my years a man with a young wife must exercise precaution. _Par bleu!_ we are neither of us fools, and I need not tell you that."

"Why, yes, we have had our experiences--I as a spectator--you as----"

"Of course--therefore this threatened irruption of frivolity and vice--"

"Say of youth and beauty; the other qualities--frivolity and vice--may coexist with age and ugliness, and, therefore, harmlessly."

"Well, what you will, it does not please me. But, under existing circumstances, with my application pending, you know it was impossible to deny the marchioness her whim."

"Of course; and so for a single night the Chateau des Anges becomes a fairy palace. Well, what harm--you can't apprehend that a single _fête_, however gay and spirited, will--_ruin_ you."

"Why, no; after all, it is, as you say, but a single _fête_, and then extinguish the lights, and lock the doors, and so the Chateau des Anges becomes as sober as before."

"And I wager a hundred crowns you will tell Madame Le Prun that you have given this _fête_ entirely on _her_ account."

"I thought of that," he replied, with a grin; "but it would not be wise."

"Why so?"

"Because it would make a precedent."

"And will you never again indulge her fancy for society?"

"By ---- my good friend, _never_. She fancies she has a great deal of spirit, and will contrive to rule me; but she does not know Etienne Le Prun--she does not know him--I will treat her like what she is--a child."

"And she will treat you, perhaps, like----"

"Like what?"

"Like what you are--a bridegroom of seventy."

"If she dares. Ay, Blassemare, I have just as little trust as you in what conventionality calls the _virtue_ of the sex. I rely upon my own strong will--the discipline I can put in force, and their salutary fears."

There was here a pause of more than a minute in the dialogue; each appeared to have enough to think of, and the carriage was driving nearly at a gallop under the funereal shadow of the dense and lofty trees. With a fierce start, Monsieur Le Prun cried, suddenly--

"What do you mean?"

"_I?_--nothing."

"Why do you say _that_?"

"What?"

"You said--Bluebeard."

"Hey?"

"Ay!--what the devil did you mean by that?"

"Upon my soul, I said no such thing," said Blassemare, with a hollow, satirical laugh.

Monsieur Le Prun glanced over his shoulder once or twice, and then hummed to himself for a time.

"Seriously," he repeated, "did you not call me by that name?"

"_I!_--no; I always call things by their name, and yours is gray."

"Hem!--what is he driving in this shadow for? Tell him to keep in the moonlight--one would think he wanted to break our necks."

Monsieur Le Prun, it was evident, had become fidgety and fanciful.

A few minutes' rapid driving brought the carriage to the hall-door of the chateau, and its wealthy, but, perhaps, after all, not very much to be envied, master conducted his familiar imp, Blassemare, into a saloon, where supper awaited them.

"I don't myself understand these things, Blassemare, but you will be my stage-manager, and get up the spectacle in the best style."

"Why, yes. I don't see why I should not lend a hand, that is to say, if nothing happens to call me away," said Blassemare, who delighted in such affairs, but liked a little importance also.

"How soon is it to take place?"

"She said in about three weeks."

"Ha! very good."

And the Count de Blassemare was instantaneously translated, in spirit, among feu d'artifice, water-works, arches, colored lamps, bands, and all the other splendors and delectations of an elaborate fête.

"I remember," said Le Prun, abruptly dispelling these happy and gorgeous visions with his harsh tones, "when I was at school, reading about Socrates and those invisible demons that were always hovering at his ears; it was devilish odd, Blassemare. But to be sure those were good-natured devils; ay, that is true, and meant him no harm."

"By my faith, I forget all about it; but what the devil connection have these demons, blue, black, or red, with your fête?"

"I sometimes think, Blassemare, you are a worse fellow than I am, for you have no qualms of conscience."

"No qualms of stomach, no fumes of indigestion; as for conscience, it is an infirmity of which we both stand equally acquitted."

"I did not speak of it in a good sense," said Le Prun, gloomily; "it may be remorse or superstition, but I fancy the man who has none of it is already dead, and under his coffin-lid, so far as his spiritual chances are concerned."

"Faith, it is a treat, Le Prun, to hear you talk religion. When do you mean to take orders? I should so like to see you, my buck, in a cassock and cowl begging meal, and telling your beads, and calling yourself brother Ambrose."

"I have not good enough in me for that," he replied, in a tone which might be earnest, or might be a sneer; "besides, I dare say that the grand _melange_ of rapture and diablerie they call religion is altogether true; but _par bleu!_ my good fellow, there is something more than this life--agencies, subtler and more powerful mayhap than those our senses are commonly cognizant of. I say I have had experience of this truth, and of them. You laugh! and I suppose will laugh on, until that irresistible old gentleman-usher, DEATH, presents you to other realities face to face."

"Well, so be it. If they have faces, I suppose they have mouths, and can laugh, and chat, and so, egad I'll make the best of them; it is one comfort, we shall all understand religion then, and need not plague our heads about it any further. But, in the mean time, suppose we have a game of piquet."

"Agreed! call for cards, and, by the time you have got them, I will return."

Le Prun took a candle, and opening a door which led through a passage to a back stair communicating with Lucille's apartments, he directed his steps thither for the purpose of announcing his arrival, and ascertaining at the same time the state of his wife's temper.

He tapped at the door, and, having received permission to enter, did so to the manifest surprise of the occupants of the chamber, who had expected to see one of the servants.

Julie, who was in the very middle of a story about the Marquis de Secqville, her intended husband, (to which Lucille was listening, as she leaned pensively back in her rich fauteuil, with downcast eyes,) suspended her narrative.

"Well, sir?"

"Well, madame?"

Such was the curt and menacing greeting exchanged between the fermier-general and his wife.

"You appear dissatisfied," he said, after an interval, and having taken a chair.

"I _am_ so."

"This is tiresome, _ma femme_."

"Yes, insupportably; _this_, and every thing else that passes here."

"It appears to me, you are somewhat hard to please."

"Quite the reverse. I ask but to mix in human society."

"You have society enough, madame."

"I have absolutely none, sir."

"I can't say what society you enjoyed in the Parc de Charrebourg, madame," he began, in an obvious vein of sarcasm. And as he did so, he thought he observed her eyes averted, and her color brighten for a moment. He did not suffer this observation to interrupt him, but he laid it up in the charnel of his evil remembrances, and continued: "I don't know, I say, what society you there enjoyed. It may have been very considerable, or it may have been very limited: it was possibly very dull, or possibly very delightful, madame. But if you _had_ any society there _whatever_, it was private, secret; it was neither seen nor suspected, madame, and, therefore, you must excuse me if I can't see what sacrifice, in point of society, you have made in exchanging your _cottage_ in the Parc de Charrebourg for a residence in the Chateau des Anges."

"Sir, I _have_ made sacrifices--I have lost my liberty, and gained you."

"I see, my pretty wife, it will be necessary that you and I should understand one another," he said, tranquilly, but with a gloom upon his countenance that momentarily grew darker and darker.

"That is precisely what I desire," replied his undaunted helpmate.

"Leave us, Julie," said the fermier-general, with a forced calmness.

Julie threw an imploring glance at Lucille as she left the room, for she held her uncle in secret dread. As she glided through the door her last look revealed them seated at the little table; he--ugly: black, and venomous; she--beautiful, and glittering in gay colors. It was like a summer fly basking unconsciously within the pounce of a brown and bloated spider.

"Depend upon it, madame, this will never do," he began.

"Never, sir," she repeated emphatically.

"Be silent, and listen as becomes you," he almost shouted, with a sudden and incontrollable explosion of rage, while the blood mounted to his discolored visage. "Don't fancy, madame, that I am doting, or that you can manage me with your saucy coquetry or sulky insolence. I have a will of my own, madame, under which, by Heaven, I'll force yours to bend, were it fifty times as stubborn as ever woman's was yet. You shall obey--you shall submit. If you will not practise your duty cheerfully, you shall learn it in privation and tears; but one way or another, I'll bring you to act, and to speak, and to _think_ as I please, or I'm not your husband."

"Well, sir, try it: and in the mean time, I expect----"

"What do you expect?" he thundered.

"I expect to receive a counterpart of this," she said, with deliberate emphasis, holding the magic vial steadily before his eyes.

For a second or two, the talisman appeared powerless, but only for so long. On a sudden his gaze contracted--he became fascinated, petrified--his face darkened, as if a tide of molten lead were projected through every vessel--and a heavy dew of agony stood in beads upon his puckered forehead. With all this horror was mingled a fury, if possible, more frightful still; every fibre of his face was quivering; the hand that was clenched and drawn back, as if it held a weapon to be hurled into her heart, was quivering too; his mouth seemed gasping in vain for words or voice; he resembled the malignant and tortured victim of a satanic possession; and this frightful dumb apparition was imperceptibly drawing nearer and nearer to her.

A sudden revulsion broke the horrid spell of which he was the slave; like one awaking from a nightmare, conscience-stricken, he uttered a trembling groan of agony, and with one hand upon his breast, the other clutched upon his forehead, he hurried, speechless, like a despairing, detected criminal, from the room.

IX.--THE UNTOLD SECRET.

Julie, who had heard high words as she traversed the apartments which lay _en suite_, paused in the lobby at the stair-head--a sort of _oeil de boeuf_, to which several corridors converged, and with a lofty lantern-dome above, from which swung a cluster of rose-colored lamps.

Here she sat down upon a sofa, ill at ease on account of the scene which was then going on so near her; and, in the midst of her reverie, raising her eyes suddenly, she saw Monsieur Le Prun, the thick carpets rendering his tread perfectly noiseless, gliding by her with a countenance guilty and terrible beyond any thing that fancy had ever seen.

Without appearing to see her, like a spectre from the grave he came, passed, and vanished, leaving her frozen with horror, as if she had beheld a phantom from the dead and damned.

With steps winged with hideous alarm she sped through the intervening chambers to that in which she had left Lucille.

She was standing with an ashy smile of triumph on her face, and in her hand was still mechanically grasped the queer little vial with its four spires of gold.

Monsieur Le Prun had recovered his self-possession to a certain extent by the time he reached the apartment where he had left Blassemare. But that observant gentleman did not fail to perceive, at a glance, that something had occurred to agitate his patron profoundly.

"Egad," he thought, "I should not be surprised if the girl were taken at disadvantage by his abrupt visit, and that the venerable Adonis saw something to justify his jealousy. A husband has no right to surprise his wife. Le Prun," he continued carelessly aloud, "I wonder why Nature, who has been so bounteous to the sex, has not furnished husbands, like certain snakes, with rattles to their tails, to give involuntary warning of their approach."

Le Prun poured out a glass of cold water and drank it. Blassemare observed, as he did so, that his hand trembled violently. The fermier-general was silent, and his flippant Mercury did not care just then to hazard any experiment upon his temper.

"Blassemare!" he exclaimed, abruptly arresting his glass, and eyeing his companion with a sort of brutal rage, "I ought to run you through the body, sir, where you stand, for your accursed perfidy."

"What! _me?_--by my soul, sir, I don't understand you," he replied, at once offended and amazed. "Why the devil should you murder me?"

"You have broken your word with me!"

"In what respect?"

"Exactly where it was most vitally needful to keep it, sir."

"Deuce take me if I know what you mean."

"You do--you _do_--a thousand curses! You _must_ know it."

"But hang me if I do."

"You have suffered that _calumny_ to reach her ears."

"What calumny?"

"She must have seen her."

"_Her!_--whom?"

"She must have spoken with her."

"Do say, plainly, what it _is_ all about?"

"About that--that d---- woman; there, is _that_ intelligible? She is at large, sir, in spite of all I've said--in spite of all you undertook, sir; and she has been filling my wife's ears with those hell-born lies that have been whispered to _you_, sir, and which it was your business to have suppressed and extinguished. By ----, Blassemare, you deserve my curses and my vengeance."

As he concluded, he struck the glass upon the table with a force that shivered it to pieces.

"Monsieur le Prun," said Blassemare, coolly, "I deprecate no man's vengeance, and fear no man's sword; but whatever be the ground of your present convictions, it is utterly fallacious. The person in question has never stirred abroad--you mean the _sister_ of course--since your marriage, except under close and trustworthy attendance; and the other--_that_ you know is out of the question."

"There has been mismanagement somewhere, or else some new device of infernal malice; I say the thing has been misconducted, with the same cursed blundering that has always attended that affair; and I would rather my wife were in her coffin than have seen what I have seen to-night."

"What! in her coffin!" echoed Blassemare, with a sort of fiendish satire.

"Ay, sir, in her coffin!" said Le Prun, with a black defiance which made Blassemare shrug his shoulders and become silent.

The chill and the smell of death seemed to him to have come with these words into the room. But he would not on any account have betrayed his sensations; on the contrary, he pointed gayly to the cards, and looked a smiling interrogatory towards the fermier. But that excellent gentleman was in no mood for picquet. He declined the challenge gloomily and peremptorily.

"_Ma foi!_ you suffer trifles to plague you strangely," said Blassemare, as they parted for the night. "What on earth does it signify after all? Thwart a woman, and she will strive to vex you--there's nothing new in that; why should not Madame Le Prun share the pretty weaknesses of her sex? On the other hand, indulge her, and she will flatter as much as she teased before. You are too sensitive, too fond, and, therefore, exaggerate trifles. Good night."

Monsieur Le Prun withdrew, and Blassemare muttered--

"Remorseless old criminal! I shall keep my eye close upon you, and if I see any sign of the sort----"

He set his teeth together, smiled resolutely and threateningly, and nodded his head twice or thrice in the direction of the door through which the fermier-general had just disappeared.

The violent explosion we have just described was not followed by any very decisive results. The fermier-general and his wife had not been upon very pleasant terms for some time previous to the scene which had so fearfully agitated the millionaire; and, whatever may have been the immediate promptings of his anger, his temper had cooled down sufficiently, before the morning, to enable him to carry the matter off, like a man of the world, with a tolerable grace. Whatever change for the worse had taken place in his feelings towards his wife, he was able to suppress the manifestation of it: but, as we have said, their relations had of late been by no means cordial, and Monsieur Le Prun did not think it necessary to affect any warmer sentiment toward his wife, nor any abatement of the sinister estrangement which had been gradually growing between them.

Meanwhile the preparations for the _fête_ proceeded at the Chateau des Anges upon a scale worthy of the rarity of the occasion and the vastness of the proprietor's fortune.

All these were carried on by Blassemare, who indulged his gallantry by consulting the beautiful young wife of the fermier-general upon every detail of the tasteful and magnificent arrangements as they proceeded.

Monsieur Le Prun had a special object in gratifying the great lady who had insisted upon this sacrifice. Blassemare had, therefore, a _carte blanche_ in the matter. There were to be musicians from Paris, bands of winged instruments among the trees, galleys and singers upon the waters, illuminated marquees and fanciful grottoes, feu d'artifice, and colored lamps of every dye, in unimaginable profusion, theatricals, gaming, feasting, dancing--in a word, every imaginable species of gayety, revelry, and splendor.

As these grand projects began to unfold themselves, Lucille's ill-temper began to abate. Her interest was awakened, and at last she became pleased, astonished, and even delighted.

Now at length she hoped that the long-cherished object of her wishes was about to be supplied, and that she was indeed to emerge from her chrysalis state, and enjoy, among the sweets and gayeties of life, the glittering freedom for which she felt herself so fitted, and had so long sighed in vain; and which, moreover, as the reader may have suspected, she desired also in furtherance of certain secret and cherished aspirations.

Monsieur de Blassemare found his æsthetic and festive confidences most encouragingly received by the handsome and imperious Madame Le Prun. The subject of his consultations delighted her; and knowing well the close relation in which he stood with her husband, she perhaps thought it no such bad policy to secure him, by a little civility, in her interest. She little imagined, perhaps, engrossed as she was with other images, to what aspiring hopes she was thus unconsciously introducing the Sieur de Blassemare. That gentleman was proud of his _bonnes fortunes_; and the rapid chemistry of his vanity instantaneously transmuted the lightest show of good-humor, in a handsome woman, into the faint but irrepressible evidences of a warmer sentiment of preference.

Perfectly convinced of the reality of the _penchant_ he believed himself to have inspired, you may be sure the lively scoundrel was not a little flattered at his imaginary conquest. He debated, therefore, in his self-complacent reveries, whether he should take prompt advantage of the weakness of his victim, or pique her by the malice of suspense. He chose the latter tactique, and, with a happy self-esteem, reserved the transports of his confession to reward the longings and agitations of a protracted probationary ordeal.

Thus Blassemare was in his glory, superintending the preparations for a _fête_, which left him nothing in prodigality and magnificence to desire; enjoying, at the same time, the delightful consciousness of having placed, without an effort, the prettiest woman in France at his feet, and the _piquant_ sense, beside, of his little treason against old Le Prun.

Thus matters proceeded; but, strange to say, while the evening for which all these preparations were being made was still more than a week distant, Madame Le Prun, whose impatience of even that brief delay had been unspeakable, on a sudden lost all her interest in the affair. Such, alas! is the volatility, the caprice, of women. The object for sake of which she had led poor Le Prun a dog's life for so long, was now presented to her, and she turned from it with indifference, if not with disgust. This would, indeed, have been very provoking to Le Prun himself, had he been just then upon speaking terms with his wife; but not happening to be so, and being in no mood to talk about her further to his gay familiar, Blassemare, he was wholly ignorant of those feminine fluctuations of interest and of liking which Blassemare himself did not fully comprehend. The change was so abrupt as to excite his surprise. Her apathy, too, was unaccompanied by ill-temper, and was obviously so genuine, that he could hardly believe it affected merely to pique him. We are disposed to think there was a powerful, but mysterious, cause at work in this change.

It was just about this time that one night, Julie, having sat up rather later than usual, and intending to bid Lucille good night, if she were still awake, entered her suite of apartments, and approached her dressing-room door. She heard her rush across the floor, as she did so, and, with a face of terror, she emerged from the door and stood before it, as if to bar ingress to the room.

Julie was disconcerted and agitated by this apparition; and Lucille was evidently, from whatever cause, greatly terrified. The two girls confronted one another with pale and troubled looks. Lucille was white with fear, and, alas! as it seemed to her companion, with the agitation of guilt. Julie looked at her all aghast.

"Good night, Julie, good night," she whispered, hurriedly.

"Good night," answered she; "I fear I have interrupted--I mean, startled you."

"Good night, good night," repeated Lucille.

As Julie retreated across the lobby, she was overtaken by Lucille, who placed her hand upon her shoulder.

"Julie, will you hate me if I tell you all?" she said, in great agitation, as she hurried with her into her apartment.

"_Hate_ you, Lucille! How could I hate my dear friend and companion?"

"Friend, O yes, _friend_; what a friend I have proved to you!"

"Come, come, you must not let yourself be excited; you know you are my friend, my _only_ friend and confidante, and you know I love you."

Lucille covered her face with her hands and sobbed or shuddered violently. Julie embraced and kissed her tenderly; but, in the midst of these caresses, her unhappy friend threw her arms about her neck, and, looking earnestly in her face for a few seconds, drew her passionately to her heart and kissed her, murmuring as she did so--

"No, no; she never could forgive me."

And, so saying, she mournfully betook herself away, leaving Julie a prey to all manner of vague and perplexing alarms.

Whatever was the cause of Lucille's profound mental agitation, it was an impenetrable mystery to Julie. Blassemare obviously did not know what to make of it; and as the fête drew near without eliciting any corresponding interest on her part, Julie, who had observed with pleasure the delight with which at first she had anticipated the event, was dismayed and astonished at the change. As often as she had endeavored to recall her to the topic so strangely approached, and inexplicably recoiled from, upon the occasion we have just described, Lucille repulsed her curiosity, or at least evaded it with entire and impenetrable secrecy. Finding, therefore, that the subject was obviously distasteful to her, she forbore to return to it, and contented herself with recording the broken conversation of the night in question among the other unexplained mysteries of her life.

"Well, Lucille," she said to her one day, as they were walking upon the terrace together, and interrupting by the remark a long and gloomy silence, "you do not seem to enjoy the prospect of the gay night which my uncle has prepared, now that it approaches, half so much as you did in the distance."

"Enjoy it? no, no."

"But you longed for such an occasion."

"Perhaps, Julie, I had reasons; perhaps it was not all caprice."

"But do you not still enjoy the prospect? surely it has not lost all its charms?"

"I say, Julie, I had reasons--that is, perhaps I had--for wishing it. I have none now."

"Well, but it seems to me it positively depresses you. Surely, if it were merely indifferent, it need not distress you."

"Ah, Julie, Julie, we are strange creatures; we know not ourselves, neither our strength nor our weakness, our good nor our evil, until time and combinations solve the problem, and show us the sad truth."

"It seems to me," said Julie, with a gentle smile, "you take a wondrous moral tone in treating of a ball, my pretty sage; and, notwithstanding all you say, I suspect you like a fête as well as most young women."

"Julie, when I tell you honestly I hate it--that I would gladly be hidden in the roof or the cellar of the loneliest tower in the chateau upon that evening, you will cease to suspect me of so poor a dissimulation. Honestly, then, and sadly, these crowded festivities, I expected but a short time since with so much delight, are now not only indifferent to me, but repulsive. I no longer wish to meet and mix with people; the idea, on the contrary, depresses, nay, even terrifies me."

"Lucille, you are hiding something from me."

"_Hiding!_--no, nothing--that is, nothing but my own thoughts, the images of my reflections; nothing, dear Julie, that it would not render you unhappy to hear. Why should I throw upon your mind the gloom and shadows of my own?"

"But perhaps your troubles are fantastic and unreal; and, were you to confide in me, I might convince you that they are so."

"Julie, they are real."

"So thinks every body who is haunted by chimeras."

"These are none. Oh, Julie! would I could tell you all. The agony of the relation would be in some sort recompensed by having one human being to tell my thoughts to. But it cannot be; it is quite, quite impossible."

"This impossibility is also one of the imagination."

"No, no, Julie; the effort to repose this confidence would destroy _all_ confidence between us. I have said enough--let us speak of other matters. My innermost grief, be it what it may, I must endure alone. Julie, it is a hard condition; but I must and will--alone."

Here they were interrupted by Blassemare, who gayly joined them, with a prayer that they would resolve a momentous difficulty, by deciding upon the best site for one of his principal batteries of fireworks; and so, with little good-will, they surrendered themselves for a quarter of an hour to the guidance and the light sarcastic conversation of the master of the revels, with whom for the present we shall leave them.

X.--THE FÊTE.

At length the eventful night arrived--a beautiful, still, star-lit night. You may fancy the splendor of the more than royal festivities. What a magnificent levee of gayety, rank, and beauty! What unexampled illuminations!--what fantastic and inexhaustible ingenuity of pyrotechnics! How the gorgeous suites of salons laughed with the brilliant crowd! How the terraces, arched and lined with soft-colored lamps, re-echoed with gay laughter or murmured flatteries! What an atmosphere it was of rosy hues, of music, and ceaseless hum of human enjoyment! For miles around, the wandering peasants beheld the wide, misty, prismatic circle that overarched the enchanted ground, and heard the silver harmonies and drumming thunders of the orchestras floating over the woods, and filling the void darkness with sounds of unseen festivities. In such a scene all are in good-humor--all wear their best looks. Each finds his appropriate amusement. The elegant gamester discovers his cards and his companions; the garrulous find listeners; the gossip retails, and imbibes, from a hundred sources, all the current scandal; vanity finds incense--beauty adoration; the young make love, or dance, or in groups give their spirits play in pleasantries, and raillery, and peals of animated laughter; their elders listen to the music, or watch the cards, or in a calmer fashion converse; while all, each according to his own peculiar taste, find whatever pleases their palate best. Whatever is rarest, most fantastic--things only dreamed of--the epicurean connoisseur has only to invoke, and, at a touch of the magic wand of Mammon, it is there before him. Wines, too,--what-not, est-est, tokay, and all the rest, flowing from the inexhaustible tap of the same Mephistopheles, with his golden gimlet. All the demons of luxury riot there, and at your nod ransack the earth for a flavor or a flask; and place it before you, almost before your wish is uttered. It is, indeed, the Mahomet's paradise of all true believers in the stomach, and worshippers of Bacchus. Thus in a realized dream all eddies on in a delicious intoxication, and each is at once the recipient of enjoyment and the dispenser of good-humor, imbibing through every sense enchanted fare, reflecting smiles, and radiating hilarity. Each, indeed, becomes, as it were, a single glowing particle in the genial and brilliant mass, and tends to keep alive the general fire, from which he derives and to which returns at once light and geniality. It is admitted that he who has discovered the grand arcanum, and has the philosopher's stone in his waistcoat-pocket, is, so to speak, _ex officio_, a magician. But M. Le Prun had no need of any such discoveries. He had the gold itself, and was, therefore, a ready-made magician, and as such was worshipped accordingly with an oriental fanaticism.

Monsieur le Prun had, like other favorites of fortune in the latter days of the monarchy, purchased his patent of noblesse. Every body knew that he was a _parvenu_; and rumor, as she is wont in such cases, had adorned his early history with so many myths and portents, that Niebuhr himself could hardly have distinguished between the fable and the truth. It was said and believed that he was a foundling--a Gipsy's son, a wandering beggar, a tinker. Others had seen him in rags, selling pencils at the steps between the Pont-Neuf and the Pont-au-Change. Others, again, maintained that he had for years filled the canine office of guide to an old blind mendicant, whose beat was about the Rue de Bauboug; and were even furnished with a number of pleasant anecdotes about his hardships and adroitness, while in this somewhat undignified position. Indeed, the varieties of positions though which good Mother Gossip sent him were such, and so interminable, that a relation of half of them would alone make a library of fiction. But fortune had consecrated this mean and smutty urchin. He stood now worshipped in the awful glory of his millions, pedestalled on his money-bags, gilded from head to heel; and what could the proudest noblesse upon earth do but forget and forgive the rags and hunger of his infancy, and come together, from the east and from the west, to drink of the cup of his enchantments, and cry, "Long live King Solomon in all his glory?"

"She is beautiful as a divinity," exclaimed the gallant old Marquess de Fauteuil, who had just completed an admiring survey of the fair Madame le Prun.

"Pretty--yes; but she has the manners of a _petite moine_," said the Duchess de la Cominade, an old flame of the marquis, who, in spite of her marriage and her mistakes, conceived her claims upon his devotions unabated.

"And her little gossip, too, Le Prun's niece, is a charming creature--an exquisitely contrived contrast. By my word, this place deserves its name--is it not truly the Chateau des Anges?"

"Who is that young person whom Le Prun is leading towards them? He is the only man I have seen to-night whose dress is perfect; and he looks like a hero of romance."

"That?--eh? Why that is the Marquis de Secqville."

"What! the horrid man who enslaves us all? I have not seen him for years--how very handsome he is!"

"Yes; and I fancy that melancholy air assists him very much in vanquishing the gentle sex. I once had a little vein of that myself."

"So you had," murmured the duchess, with a tender smile of memory, and a little sigh. "But is it not a madness of poor Le Prun to present that terrible man to his handsome young wife?"

"He is to marry the niece--the affair is concluded. Poor little thing! she looks so frightened; see--a little fluttered pigeon of Venus--it becomes her very much."

Meanwhile Le Prun and the marquis were approaching Lucille and Julie, who were seated together close to a window which opened to the floor, and admitted the soft summer air, charged with such sounds and perfumes as might have hovered among the evergreen groves of Calypso's island.

"He is coming," said Julie, "he is coming with my uncle."

"Who?" asked Lucille, looking coldly on the advancing figures.

"My--my fiancé, the Marquis de Secqville," whispered Julie, in trembling haste, blushing, and dropping her eyes.

"Oh, then, I must observe him carefully," said Lucille, with an arch smile.

"Do, and tell me honestly what you think of him."

"Ha! little rogue, I see you are not quite so indifferent as you pretend."

"My _heart_ is indifferent--but--but he is very handsome--don't you think so?"

"Hush! here he is."

"I have the happiness, madame, to present Monsieur le Marquis de Secqville, with whom, as you are aware, we are about to have the honor of being nearly allied."

So said Monsieur le Prun, with a smile of conjugal affection, which may, or may not, have been genuine.

"I was not until now aware of the full extent of the honor and the happiness involved in that alliance," said the marquis, with a glance of respectful admiration.

Madame le Prun acknowledged this little speech with a slight bow, and a cold and haughty smile.

"You have been in the south lately?"

"Yes, madame, with my regiment at Avignon."

"So he says," interrupted the fermier-general, with a cunning leer; "but his colonel swears he never saw him there."

"Then either you or your colonel must be wrong," said Madame le Prun, drily.

"No, no, madame; but Monsieur le Prun likes a jest at my expense."

"Not at all," said Le Prun, laughing; "I protest D'Artois, his colonel, vows he has not seen him for six months at least."

"They are in a conspiracy to quiz me."

"Then you _were_ at Avignon?"

"No such thing, I tell you; the fellow was about some mischief--ha! ha! ha!"

"He is resolved to laugh at me."

"Yes, yes, I say he is a mischievous fellow--the most dangerous dog in France; and so shy that, by my word, it requires a shrewd fellow like myself to discover his rogueries."

"And so he deserves not only _all_ my sins, but a great deal more."

"Stay--here is the Visconte de Charrebourg. Visconte, this is the Marquis de Secqville, my future nephew."

The old visconte looked closely and dubiously for a moment in the young man's face. The marquis, on the contrary, seemed to have some little difficulty in suppressing a smile.

"But that I know I have not had the honor of meeting you before, I should----but no doubt it is a family likeness. I knew your father when he was about your age, and a very handsome fellow, by my faith. Is his brother, the Conte de Cresseron, still living?"

The old gentleman drew the marquis away before he had had time to pay his devoirs to Julie, who had shrunk at his approach into the background, and left the little group to themselves.

"What do you think of him?" whispered Julie, resuming her place by Lucille.

"He is pretty well."

"Monsieur le Marquis is a handsome man," said Blassemare, who at that moment joined them; and, addressing Lucille, "You have seen him before?"

"_I?_--no. He has just been presented to me for the first time."

"And you think him----"

"Rather handsome--indeed, _decidedly_ handsome; but, somehow, his melancholy spoils him. But I forgot, Julie--I ask your pardon, my pretty niece, for criticising your hero. Remember, however, I admit his beauty, though I can't admire him."

There is no truth of which we have been reminded with such unnecessary reiteration, as the pretty obvious fact that every human enjoyment must, sooner or later, come to an end. The _fête_ at the Chateau des Anges had no exemption from this law of nature and necessity. Musicians, cooks, artists, and artisans of all sorts, gradually disappeared. At length the last equipage whirled down the great avenue, and a stillness and void, more mournful from the immediate contrast, supervened.

The windows were closed--the yawning servants betook themselves to their beds, and the angel of sleep waved his downy wings over the old chateau. The genius of Blassemare was of that electric sort which is not easily unexcited. He could no more have slept than he could have transformed himself into one of the stone Tritons of the fountain by which in the moonlight he now stood alone. Blassemare had had a magnificent triumph; so well-contrived an entertainment had never, perhaps, been known before; and, like certain great generals, he felt desirous to visit the field of his victory after the heat of action was over.

Monsieur Le Prun was also wide awake and astir from other causes. No vein of Blassemare's excitement--not even jealousy, nor conscience, nor any mental malady--kept him waking. The cause of his vigilance was, simply, his late supper and an indigestion.

Now it happened that both these worthies were walking unconsciously almost side by side--Le Prun along the summit, and Blassemare along the base, of the beautiful terrace which stretched in front of the windows of the chateau.

There was a little receding court which lay in front of Madame Le Prun's windows, which were furnished with a heavy stone balcony. On the side opposite was a high wall, which divided the pleasure-grounds from the wild, wooded park that lay immediately beyond, and in this was a door with a private key and a spring lock.

Now it happened that both Monsieur Le Prun and the Sieur de Blassemare, as they approached this point, amid the fumes of expiring lamps and the wreck of fireworks, heard certain sounds of an unexpected sort. These were, in fact, human voices, conversing in earnest but suppressed tones--so low, indeed, that were it not for the breathless stillness of the night they would have been unheard.

"Sacre!" muttered Le Prun, looking up like a toothless old panther.

"Ma foi! what's this?" whispered Blassemare, whose jealousy was also alarmed.

The sounds continued--the eavesdroppers quickened their paces. Le Prun was, however, unfortunately a little asthmatic, as sometimes happens to bridegrooms of a certain age, and, spite of all his efforts to hold it in, he could not contain a burst of coughing.

Its effect was magical. There supervened an instantaneous silence, followed by the dropping of a heavy body upon the ground, as it seemed, under Madame Le Prun's windows. The descent was, however, unfortunately made; a dog, evidently hurt, raised a frightful yelping, making the night additionally hideous. Blassemare hurried up the steps, and at the top encountered Le Prun, running and panting, with his sword drawn. There was a sound, as of hastily closing the casement above the balcony--a light gleamed from it for an instant, and was extinguished--and, at the same moment, they beheld the dim figure of a man hurrying across the court, and darting through the opposite door, which shut with a crash behind him.

"Thieves! robbers!" shouted Le Prun, dashing at the door.

"Robbers! thieves!" cried a shrill voice of alarm from Madame Le Prun's casement.

"Horns! antlers!" halloed Blassemare.

"Robbers! robbers!"

"Thieves! thieves!"

The lady screamed, Le Prun bawled, Blassemare laughed.

"He is gone, however," said the latter, as soon as the explosion had a little subsided. "Suppose we get the key, madame. Please throw us yours from the window. I promise to pink the burglar through the body. Quick--quick!"

"Ay, ay," thundered Le Prun, "the key! the key!"

Madame Le Prun was too much excited to get it in an instant. She ran here, and flew there--she screamed and rummaged. Le Prun stormed. A key was at last thrown out, amid prayers and imprecations. How provoking!--it was a wrong one. Another effort--a new burst of execration from Le Prun--another fit of laughter from Blassemare--more screaming and pressing from the window--and all accompanied by the sustained yelping of the injured lap-dog.

"Here it is--this must be it," and another key clangs and jingles on the ground.

"Yes, this time it is the right key." The door flies open--Le Prun rushes puffing among the bushes. Blassemare sees something drop glittering to the ground as the door opens--a button and a little rag of velvet; he says nothing, but pockets it, and joins the moonlight chase.

It is all in vain. Le Prun, perspiring and purple, his passion as swollen as his veins, knowing not what to think, but fearing every thing, staggered back, silent and exhausted; Blassemare also silent--no longer laughing--abstracted, walks with knit brows, and compressed lips, beside him.

"Of course," said Blassemare, "you have the fullest reliance upon the honor of your wife?"

Monsieur Le Prun growled an inarticulate curse or two, and Blassemare whistled a minuet.

"Come, my dear Le Prun," he resumed, "let us be frank; you are uneasy."

"About what?"

"Madame Le Prun."

"She is not injured?"

"No, but----"

"Ah, she's in league with the thieves, may be?" said Le Prun, with an agitated sneer.

"Precisely so," answered Blassemare, with a cold laugh.

"I know what you think, and I know what _I_ think," replied Le Prun, with suppressed fury.

His suspicions were all awake; he was bursting with rage, and looked truly infernal.

"On the faith of a gentleman," said Blassemare, with a changed tone, "I cannot be said to _think_ any thing about the affair. I have my doubts, but that is all. We men are naturally suspicious; but, after all, there are such things as thieves and housebreakers."

Le Prun said nothing, but looked black and icy as the north wind.

"At all events," said Blassemare, "we men of the world know how to deal with affairs of this sort; so long as any uncertainty exists, put ostensibly the best possible construction upon it. Thus much is due to one's dignity in the eyes of the public; and in private we may prosecute inquiries unsuspected, and with the greater likelihood of success."

"I know the world as well as you, Blassemare. I'm sick of your tone of superiority and advice. I know when to respect and when to defy the world. A man can no more make a fortune without tact than he can lose one without folly."

"Well, well," said Blassemare, who was used to an occasional rebuff, and regarded a gruff word from his principal no more than he did the buzz of a beetle, "I know all that very well; but you, robust fellows, with millions at your back, are less likely to respect those subtle and delicate influences which sometimes, notwithstanding, carry mischief with them, than we poor, sensitive valetudinarians, without a guinea in our pockets; and if you will permit me, I will, when I return to-day, sift the matter for you. I understand woman; it is an art in itself, though not, perhaps, a very high one. A careless conversation with Madame Le Prun will let me further into the mystery, than a year spent in accumulating circumstantial evidence. You may rely on the result."

The fermier-general uttered something between a growl and a grunt, which might or might not convey assent; and, waving Blassemare towards the house, walked along the terrace alone; and sat himself down upon the steps at the further end.

The mental torpor which supervenes under sudden disasters was not, in the case of the fermier-general, without its dreamy groups of ugly images in prospect. As the light broke, and the darkness began to melt eastward into soft crimson mists and streaks of amber, Monsieur Le Prun rose stiffly from his hard, cold seat, and, with the slow step of a man irresolute and oppressed with profound wrath and mortification, began to return homeward.

"Robbers!--thieves!" he muttered bitterly. "How glibly the traitress echoed the cry! The rascal Blassemare gave the true alarm--she did not echo _that_. D---- her, and d----him! Robbers, indeed! Thieves!--very like. I know what they came a thieving for. Upon her balcony--talking in murmurs--the candle extinguished in such a devil of a hurry--the ready cry of 'Thieves'--the spring door open for his flight--and the long delay to find the key. Bah! what proofs are wanting?"

He heard just at this point a cracked voice singing a gay love verse from an open window. He knew the voice; every association connected with the performance and the performer jarred upon his nerves.

It was indeed the Visconte de Charrebourg, some of whose early gayety had returned with his good fortune. He had, such was the pride of his rich son-in-law, a little household of his own, and kept his state and his own exorbitantly early hours in a suite of rooms assigned him, through one of whose windows, arrayed in a velvet cap and gown of brocade, he was rivalling the lark and greeting the rising sun, and, while sipping his chocolate in the intervals, moved, with the nimble irregularity of idle and active-minded age, about his apartment.

"Well, sir, a pleasant affair this!" cried a harsh voice, interrupting his cheery occupation; and on looking round he saw the purple and sinister face of the fermier-general looming through the window.

"What affair?" asked the visconte, in unfeigned astonishment, for he had been quite certain that his worthy son-in-law was quietly in his bed.

"Your daughter's conduct."

"What of her?"

"Just this--she is a ----!" and, with the term of outrage, Le Prun uttered a forced laugh of fury.

"I cannot have heard you aright: be kind enough to repeat that."

There was a certain air of pomp and menace in this little speech, which drove Le Prun beyond all patience. He repeated the imputation in language still grosser. This was an insult which the ancient blood of the Charrebourgs could not tolerate, and the visconte taunted him with the honor which one of his house had done him in mingling their pure blood with that of a "roturier." Then came the obvious retort, "beggar," and even "trickster," retaliated by a torrent of scarcely articulate scorn and execration, and an appeal to the sword, which, with brutal contempt, (while at the same time, nevertheless, he recoiled instinctively a foot or two from the window,) the wealthy plebeian retorted by threatening to arrest him for the sums he had advanced. Le Prun had the best of it; he left the outraged visconte quivering and shrieking like an old woman in a frenzy. It was some comfort to have wrapt another in the hell-fire that tormented himself.

[From the Examiner.]

MAZZINI ON ITALY.

We may--we do differ from Mazzini in many of his political views, and in our estimate of what may be the wisest policy for Italian liberals in existing circumstances. We think that he seeks to impart to politics a mathematical precision of which they are not susceptible, and does not sufficiently regard a principle the correctness of which has been admitted by himself, that the fact of a thing being true in principle cannot give the right of suddenly enthroning it in practice. But his errors are all on the large and generous side. He is too apt to attribute to society the precise convictions and spirit he feels within himself, and so to expect impossibilities, by impossible means. But there is a power of reasoning in Mazzini, an unsullied moral purity, a chivalrous veracity and frankness, an utter abnegation of self, and a courage that has stood the severest trials, which command not only respect but veneration. He belongs to the martyr age of Italian liberalism, and possesses himself the highest qualities of the martyr.

His declared object in publishing the small volume[27] before us is to correct public opinion in England as to the Italian movement in which he took part. But it is a statement of principles rather than a narrative of details. It is always dignified in tone, often singularly eloquent, and substantially it contains little which would be likely to draw forth an expression of willing disagreement from any well-educated, high-minded, liberal Englishman.

Mr. Mazzini thus declares his reasons

WHY THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE REPUBLICAN.

The Italian tradition is eminently republican. In England, the aristocratic element has a powerful influence, because it has a history: well or ill, it _has_ organized society: it has created a power, snatched from royalty, by conquering guarantees for the rights of the subject; it has founded in part the wealth and the influence of England abroad. The monarchical element has still great influence over the tendencies of France, because it also claims an important page in the national history; it has produced a Charlemagne, a Louis XI., a Napoleon; it has contributed to found the unity of France; it has shared with the communes the risks and the honors of the struggle against feudalism; it has surrounded the national banner with a halo of military glory. What is the history of the monarchy and of the aristocracy of Italy? What prominent part have they played in the national development? What vital element have they supplied to Italian strength, or to the unification of the future existence of Italy? The history of our royalty in fact commences with the dominion of Charles V., with the downfall of our liberties; it is identified with servitude and dismemberment; it is written on a foreign page, in the cabinets of France, of Austria, and of Spain. Nearly all of them the issue of foreign families, viceroys of one or other of the great powers, our kings do not offer the example of a single individual redeeming by brilliant personal qualities the vice of subalternity, to which his position condemned him; not a single one who has ever evinced any grand national aspiration. Around them in the obscurity of their courts, gather idle or retrograde courtiers, men who call themselves _noble_, but who have never been able to constitute an aristocracy. An aristocracy is a compact independent body, representing in itself an idea, and from one extremity of the country to another, governed, more or less, by one and the same inspiration: our nobles have lived upon the crumbs of royal favor, and if on some rare occasions they have ventured to place themselves in opposition to the monarch, it has not been in the cause of the nation, but of the foreigner, or of clerical absolutism. The nobility can never be regarded as an historical element: it has furnished some fortunate _Condottieri_, powerful even to tyranny, in some isolated town; it has knelt at the feet of the foreign emperors who have passed the Alps or crossed the sea. The original stock being nearly everywhere extinct, the races have become degenerated amidst corruption and ignorance. The descendants of our noble families at Genoa, at Naples, at Venice, and at Rome, are, for the most part specimens of absolute intellectual nullity. Almost every thing that has worked its difficult way in art, in literature, or in political activity, is plebeian.

In Italy the initiative of progress has always belonged to the people, to the democratic element. It is through her communes that she has acquired all she has ever had of liberty: through her workmen in wool or silk, through her merchants of Genoa, Florence, Venice, and Pisa, that she has acquired her wealth; through her artists, plebeian and republican, from Giotto to Michael Angelo, that she has acquired her renown; through her navigators,--plebeian,--that she has given a world to humanity; through her Popes--sons of the people even they--that until the twelfth century she aided in the emancipation of the weak, and sent forth a word of unity to humanity. All her memories of insurrection against the foreigner are memories of the people: all that has made the greatness of our towns, dates almost always from a republican epoch: the educational book, the only book read by the inhabitant of the Alps or the Transteverin who can read, is an abridgment of the history of the Ancient Roman Republic. This is the reason why the same men who have so long been accused of coldness, and who had in fact witnessed with indifference the aristocratic and royal revolutions of 1820 and 1821, arose with enthusiasm and with a true power of self-sacrifice at the cry of _St. Mark and the Republic, God and the People_! These words contained for them a guarantee. They awoke in them, even unconsciously to themselves, the all-powerful echo of a living past, a confused recollection of glory, of strength, of conscience, and of dignity.

With such elements how would it be possible to found a monarchy surrounded with an aristocracy? How can one speak of a balance of powers, where there are but two forces--foreign absolutism, and the people? How could one organize a constitutional monarchy where the aristocracy is without a past, and where royalty inspires neither affection nor respect?

It will surprise many candid readers to find Mr. Mazzini repeatedly declaring in this book that the republican, or, as he calls it, the national party, are not responsible for the disunion, which, at a time when the whole nation was armed against the foreigners and might have driven them from the country, turned its forces against its own citizens. He gives proof that his own advice was for union till the day of victory, and _not till then_ for discussion as to what party should reap its fruits. Whether to monarch, or to people, he affirms that he was ready to submit; he asserts repeatedly that it was only after having been betrayed that the national party set up for themselves; and he expresses his belief that even now, when a union of princes has been seen to be impossible, the leadership of a single prince would be accepted by all, supposing such a fitting leader could be found. He thus describes

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY AND THEIR DETRACTORS.

They have said, and they say again, without taking advantage of the favorable position in which events have placed them:--Let the nation arise; let her make herself mistress of her own territory; then, the victory once gained, let her freely decide who shall reap the fruits. Monarch or People, we will submit ourselves to the power she herself shall organize. Is it possible that so moderate and rational a proposition should be the object of such false interpretations, in a country which reveres the idea of right and of self-government? Is it possible that its leaders should be the object of so much calumny?

It is time that these calumnies should cease. It matters little to us, who act as our conscience dictates, without troubling ourselves as to the personal result; and to whom faith and exile have given the habit of looking higher than the praise or blame of this earth. But it should be recognized as most important by all who believe that political questions agitated by whole nations, are questions eminently religious. For religion, to all those who see more in it than the mere materialism of forms and formulæ, is not only a thought of heaven, but the impulse which seeks to apply that thought, as far as possible to government on earth, our rule of action for the good of all, and for the moral development of humanity. Politics then are like religion--sacred; and all good men are bound to see them morally respected. Every question has a right to serious, calm, and honest discussion. Calumny should be the weapon of those only who have to defend not ideas, but crimes.

It is immoral to say to men who have preached clemency throughout the whole of their political career, who have initiated their rule by the abolition of capital punishment, who, when in power, never signed a single sentence of exile against those who had persecuted them, nor even against the known enemies of their principle.--"You are the sanguinary organizers of _terror_, men of vengeance and of cruelty." It is immoral to ascribe to them views which they never had, and to choose to forget that they have, through the medium of the press here and elsewhere, attracted and refuted those communistic systems and exclusive solutions which tend to suppress rather than to transform the elements of society; and to say to them, "_You are communists, you desire to abolish property_." It is immoral to accuse of irreligion and impiety men who have devoted their whole lives to the endeavor to reconcile the religious idea, betrayed and disinherited by the very men who pretend to be its official defenders, with the National movement. It is immoral to insinuate accusations of personal interest and of pillage, against men who have serenely endured the sufferings of poverty, and whose life, accessible to all, has never betrayed either cupidity or the desire of luxury. It is immoral continually to proclaim, as the act of a whole party, the death of a statesman killed by an unknown hand, under the influence of the irritation produced by his own acts and by the attacks of another political party, many months before the Republican party recommenced its activity.

Mr. Mazzini charges no direct treachery against Carlo Alberto. He declares him to have been himself the victim of the weakness which caused others as well as himself so much loss and misery. For the impossible political project of a Kingdom of the North he was content to surrender the grand reality of a United People which fate had placed within his hands.

CHARLES ALBERT.

Genius, love, and faith were wanting in Charles Albert. Of the first, which reveals itself by a life entirely, logically, and resolutely devoted to a great idea, the career of Charles Albert does not offer the least trace; the second was stifled in him by the continual mistrust of men and things, which was awakened by the remembrance of an unhappy past; the last was denied him by his uncertain character, wavering always between good and evil, between _to do_ and _not to do_, between daring and not daring. In his youth, a thought, not of virtue, but of Italian ambition--the ambition however which may be profitable to nations--had passed through his soul like lightning; but he recoiled in affright, and the remembrance of this one brilliant moment of his youth presented itself hourly to him, and tortured him like the incessant throbbing of an old wound, instead of acting upon him as an excitement to a new life. Between the risk of losing, if he failed, the crown of his little kingdom, and the fear of the liberty which the people, after having fought for him, would claim for themselves, he went hesitating on, with this spectre before his eyes, stumbling at every step, without energy to confront these dangers, without the will or power to comprehend that to become King of Italy he must first of all forget that he was King of Piedmont. Despotic from rooted instinct, liberal from self-love, and from a presentiment of the future, he submitted alternately to the government of Jesuits, and to that of men of progress. A fatal disunion between thought and action, between the conception and the faculty of execution, showed itself in every act. Most of those who endeavored to place him at the head of the enterprise, were forced to agree to this view of his character. Some of those intimate with him went so far as to whisper that he was threatened with lunacy. He was the Hamlet of Monarchy.

A characteristic passage of the volume has relation to

LAMARTINE'S VIEWS OF ITALIAN INDEPENDENCE.

The war between the two principles was general in Europe--the enthusiasm excited by the movements in Italy, especially the Lombard insurrection and the prodigies of the five days, was immense; and Italy could, had she willed it and known how, have drawn thence sufficient force to counterbalance all the strength of hostile reaction. But to do this, it was necessary, whatever the mean policy of the _Moderates_ might fear, to give to the movement a character so audaciously national as to alarm our enemies, and to offer the most powerful element of support to our friends. Both felt the time was ripe, and began to believe that Italy would be but _Italy_, and not _the Kingdom of the North_. I remember the consoling words Lamartine addressed to me, at his house, on the eve of my departure for Italy, and in presence, amongst others, of Alfred de Vigny, and of the same Forbin Janson whom I was afterwards to meet preaching the papal restoration, and getting up various petty conspiracies and ridiculous intrigues at Rome.

"The hour has struck for you," said the minister, "and I am so firmly convinced of it, that the first words with which I have charged Monsieur d'Harcourt for the Pope are these; _Holy Father, you know that you ought to be the President of the Italian Republic_." But Monsieur d'Harcourt had quite other things to say to the Pope, on the part of that faction which involved Lamartine in its snares whilst he imagined that he could control it. For myself I attached no importance, except as a symptom, to these words of Lamartine, a man of impulse and of noble instincts, but unstable in belief, without energy for a fixed purpose, and without real knowledge of men and things. He was indeed the echo of a tendency all-powerful, in those moments of excitement, upon the French mind; and every re-awakening nationality, every political programme, which, if not absolutely republican, was like that, at least, of the Italian constituent, would have compelled the support of the most hesitating government in France.

From great things great things are born. The _dwarfish_ conception of the _Moderates_ froze up all souls, and imposed an utter change of politics upon France. The ITALIAN PEOPLE was an ally more than sufficiently powerful to preserve the Republic from all danger of a foreign war; a _Kingdom of the North_, in the hands of princes little to be relied upon, and hostile, by long tradition, to the Republicans of France, did but add a dangerous element to the league of kings. The French nation became silent, and left its government free to exist without any foreign policy, and to leave the destinies of the republic to the impenetrable future.

The incidents described in most detail are those immediately preceding and following the fatal surrender of Milan; and it is impossible not to be struck by the contrast of the royal and the republican party, assuming the statement to be in all respects correct. But passing this ignominious period, there ought to be small difference of opinion in a free and educated country as to where the right lay in the subsequent Roman struggle. What sensible or honest Protestant would not sympathize with the indignant eloquence of this earnest Italian protesting against the flimsy oratory of a Jesuit Frenchman?

MAZZINI TO MONTALEMBERT.

"You base your argument upon the void; you discuss that which was, not that which is. The Papacy is dead, choked in blood and mire; dead, because it has betrayed its own mission of protection to the weak against the oppressor; dead, because for three centuries and a half it has prostituted itself with princes; dead, because in the name of egotism and before the palaces of all the corrupt, hypocritical, and skeptical governments, it has for the second time crucified Christ; dead, because it has uttered words of faith which it did not itself believe; dead, because it has denied human liberty and the dignity of our immortal souls; dead, because it has condemned science in Galileo, philosophy in Giordano Bruno, religious aspiration in John Huss and Jerome of Prague, political life by an anathema against the rights of the people, civil life by Jesuitism, the terrors of the inquisition, and the example of corruption, the life of the family by confession converted into a system of espionage, and by division introduced between father and son, brother and brother, husband and wife; dead, for the princes, by the treaty of Westphalia; dead, for the peoples, with Gregory XI., in 1378, and with the commencement of the schism; dead, for Italy, since 1530, when Clement VII. and Charles V., the Pope and the Emperor, signed an infamous compact, and extinguished, at Florence, the dying liberties of Italy, as to-day you have attempted to extinguish her rising liberties in Rome; dead, because the people has risen, because Pius IX. has fled, because the multitude curses him, because those very men who for fifteen years have made war upon the priests, in the name of Voltaire, now hypocritically defend them, because you and yours defend them, with intolerance and by force of arms, and declare that the Papacy and liberty cannot live side by side? You ask Victor Hugo to point out to you an idea which has been worshipped for eighteen centuries. It is that idea which you have declared irreconcilable with the Papacy, and which was breathed into humanity by God; the idea which has withdrawn from Catholicism the half of the Christian world, the idea which has snatched from you Lammennais and the flower of the intellects of Europe, the idea of Christ, that pure, holy, and sacred liberty which you invoked for Poland some years back, which Italy invokes for herself to-day, under the form, and with the guarantee of nationality, and which you cannot pretend to be good for one country and bad for another, unless you believe it a part of religion to create a pariah people in the bosom of humanity."

Very admirably, too, and nobly written, are Mr. Mazzini's later remarks on the republican and anti-papal administration of Rome, and the coldness it met with in England and elsewhere. We must admit that it is hard for a people to struggle, suffer, and bleed alone, yet hold themselves in this temperate attitude. It is _not_ generous, as Mr. Mazzini too truly complains, in a nation having the enjoyment and the consciousness of liberty herself, to wait until the hour of victory has sounded for another nation before she stretches out a sister's hand towards her.

WHAT THE REPUBLICANS DID AND ENGLAND MIGHT HAVE DONE.

I affirm that with the exception of Ancona, where the triumvirate were obliged energetically to repress certain criminal acts of political vengeance, the republican cause was never sullied by the slightest excess; that no censorship was assumed over the press before the siege, and that no occasion arose for exercising it during the siege. Not a single condemnation to death or exile bore witness to a severity which it would have been our right to have exercised, but which the perfect unanimity which reigned amongst all the elements of the state rendered useless. I affirm that, except in the case of three or four priests, who had been guilty of firing upon our combatants, and who were killed by the people during the last days of the siege, not a single act of personal violence was committed by any fraction of the population against another, and that if ever there was a city presenting the spectacle of a band of brothers pursuing a common end, and bound together by the same faith, it was Rome under the republican rule. The city was inhabited by foreigners from all parts of the world, by the consular agents, by many of your countrymen; let any one of them arise and under the guarantee of his own signature deny, if he can, the truth of what I say. Terror now reigns in Rome; the prisons are choked with men who have been arrested and detained without trial; fifty priests are confined in the castle of St. Angelo, whose only crime consists in their having lent their services in our hospitals; the citizens, the best known for their moderation, are exiled; the army is almost entirely dissolved, the city disarmed, and the "factious" sent away even to the last man; and yet France dares not consult in legal manner the will of the populations, but re-establishes the papal authority by military decree. I do not believe that since the dismemberment of Poland there has been committed a more atrocious injustice, a more gross violation of the eternal right which God has implanted in the peoples, that of appreciating and defining for themselves their own life, and governing themselves in accordance with their own appreciation of it. And I cannot believe that it is well for you or for Europe that such things can be accomplished in the eyes of the world, without one nation arising out of its immobility to protest in the name of universal justice. This is to enthrone brute force, where, by the power of reason, God alone should reign; it is to substitute the sword and poniard for law--to decree a ferocious war without limit of time or means between oppressors rendered suspicious by their fears, and the oppressed abandoned to the instincts of reaction and isolation. Let Europe ponder upon these things. For if the light of human morality becomes but a little more obscured, in that darkness there will arise a strife that will make those who come after us shudder with dread.

The balance of power in Europe is destroyed. It consisted formerly in the support given to the smaller states by the great powers: now they are abandoned. France in Italy, Russia in Hungary, Prussia in Germany, a little later perhaps in Switzerland; these are now the masters of the continent. England is thus made a nullity; the "celsa sedet in Eolus in arce," which Canning delighted to quote, to express the moderating function which he wished to reserve for his country, is now a meaningless phrase. Let not your preachers of the theory of material interests, your speculators upon extended markets deceive themselves; there is history to teach them that political influence and commercial influence are closely bound together. Political sympathies hold the key of the markets; the tariff of the Roman Republic will appear to you, if you study it, to be a declaration of sympathy towards England to which your government did not think it necessary to respond.

* * * * *

And yet, above the question of right, above the question of political interest, both of which were of a nature to excite early the attention of England, there is, as I have said, another question being agitated at Rome of a very different kind of importance, and which ought to have aroused all those who believe in the vital principle of religious reformation--it is that of liberty of conscience. The religious question which broods at the root of all political questions showed itself there great and visible in all its European importance. The Pope at Gaeta was the theory of absolute infallible authority exiled from Rome for ever; and exiled from Rome was to be exiled from the world. The abolition of the temporal power evidently drew with it, in the minds of all those who understood the secret of the papal authority, the emancipation of men's minds from the spiritual authority. The principle of liberty and of free consent, elevated by the Constituent Assembly into a living active right, tended rapidly to destroy the absolutist dogma which from Rome aims more than ever to enchain the universe. The high aristocracy of the Roman Catholic clergy well know the impossibility of retaining the soul in darkness, in the midst of light inundating the intelligence of men; for this reason they carried off their Pope to Gaeta; for this reason they now refuse all compromise. They know that any compromise would be fatal to them; that they must re-enter as conquerors, or not at all. And in the same way that the aristocracy of the clergy felt this inseparability of the two powers, the French government, in its present reactionary march, has felt that the keystone of despotism is at Rome--that the ruin of the spiritual authority of the middle ages would be the ruin of its own projects--and that the only method of securing to it a few more years of existence was to rebuild for it a temporal domination.

England has understood nothing of this. She has not understood what there was of sublime and prophetic in this cry of emancipation, in this protestation in favor of human liberty, issuing from the very heart of ancient Rome, in the face of the Vatican. She has not felt that the struggle in Rome was to cut the Gordian knot of moral servitude against which she has long and vainly opposed her Bible Societies, her Christian and Evangelical Alliances; and that there was being opened, had she but extended a sisterly hand to the movement, a mighty pathway for the human mind. She has not understood that one bold word, "respect for the liberty of thought," opposed to the hypocritical language of the French government, would have been sufficient to have inaugurated the era of a new religious policy, and to have conquered for herself a decisive ascendency upon the continent.

The writer of such passages as these may nevertheless be of good heart. Though we may not think him exactly qualified to conduct to a successful issue practical political movements in the existing state of Italian society, we think him qualified for something far higher and nobler. Like Knox and Wicliffe, Huss and Luther, Mr. Mazzini is no maker of ephemeral arrangements and compromises; but like them he is the uncompromising asserter of principles, and the creator of a national sentiment, that will in time give law to the makers of such arrangements. Looking to the yet weak and timid condition of public opinion in Italy--looking to the narrow provincial views which still hamper general society--above all, looking to the limited power of its princes and prelates, and to the imbecile and demoralized characters of its Pio Nonos and Antonellis, we must confess that we see no hope of any immediate political settlement, the attainment of which need make it worth while for Mr. Mazzini to compromise or abandon for a moment his most extreme political opinions. Nothing is to be accomplished at present; and he is therefore more usefully employed in rallying his party by fervent reiteration of his principles, and in forming a pure and elevated public sentiment alike by his precepts and his example.

How masterly is this sketch of the career of

PIO NONO.

A Pope arose, by his tendencies, his progressive instincts and his love of popularity, an exception to the Popes of later times: to whom Providence, as if to teach mankind the absolute powerlessness of the institution, opened, in the love and in the illusions of the people, the path to a new life. So great is the fascination exercised by great memories--so great is the power of ancient customs--so feverish, in these multitudes who are said to be agitated by the breath of anarchy, is the desire for authority as the guide and sanction of their progress, that a word of pardon and tolerance from the Pope's lips sufficed to gather round him, in an enthusiasm and intoxication of affection, friends and enemies, believers and unbelievers, the ignorant and the men of thought. One long cry, the cry of millions ready to make themselves martyrs or conquerors at his nod, saluted him as their father and benefactor, the regenerator of the Catholic faith and of humanity. The experience of three ages and the inexorable logic of ideas, were at once forgotten; writers, powerful by their intellect and doctrines, until then dreaded as adversaries, employed themselves in founding around that _One_ man systems destined to prepare for him the way to a splendid initiative. The many advocates of liberty of conscience, weary of the spectacle of anarchy revealed by the Protestant sects, remained in doubt. The few believers in the future church remained silent and thoughtful. It might be that history had decided too rashly, it might be amongst the secrets of Providence that an institution, which had for ten centuries at least given life and movement to Europe, should rise again, reconciled with the life and movement of humanity, from its own tomb. The minds of the whole civilized world hung, troubled and excited, upon the _word_ which was to issue from the Vatican.

And where now is Pius IX.?

In the camp of the enemy: irrevocably disjoined from the progressive destinies of humanity; irrevocably adverse to the desires, to the aspirations which agitate his people and the people of believers. The experiment is complete. The abyss between Papacy and the world is hollowed out. No earthly power can fill it up.

Impelled by the impulses of his heart to seek for popularity and affection, but drawn on by the all-powerful logic of the principle that he represents, to the severity of absolute dictatorship; seduced by the universal movement of men's minds, by living examples in other countries, by the spirit of the age, to feel, to understand the sacred words of progress, of people, of free brotherhood, but incapable of making himself their interpreter; fearful of the consequences, and trembling like one who feels himself insecure, lest he should see the people, raised to a new consciousness of its own faculties and of its own rights, question the authority of the pontificate--Pius IX. vacillated contemptibly between the two paths presented to him, muttered words of emancipation, which he neither knew how nor intended to make good, and promises of country and independence to Italy which his followers betrayed by conspiring with Austria. Then, struck with sudden terror, he fled before the multitudes who cried aloud to him _courage;_ he sheltered himself under the protection of a Prince whom he despised--the executioner of his subjects; he imbibed his tendencies, and in order to revenge himself for the quiet with which Rome, provoked in vain to a civil war, was organizing a new government, he solicited foreign aid; and he who had, from a horror of bloodshed, shortly before endeavored to withdraw Roman assistance from the Lombard struggle, agreed that French, Austrian, Neapolitan, and Spanish bayonets should rebuild his throne. He now wanders amidst the fallacies of secret protocols, the servant of his protectors, the servant of all except of duty and of the wish of those who hoped in him, turning to the frontiers of Rome and yet not expecting to re-enter there, and as if kept back by the phantoms of the slain. The Louis XVI. of Papacy, he has destroyed it for ever. The cannon ball of his allies discharged against the Vatican, gave the last blow to the institution.

Whilst these things were happening, a Prince was pursuing in the north of our peninsula a similar course, accompanied by the same hopes, by the same illusions and delusions of the people. He was saluted by the title of the _Sword of Italy_. The choicest spirits from all parts pointed out to him Austria and the Alps, and suspended, in order to make the last trial of monarchy, the propagandism of their most cherished ideas. He was preceded by the encouragement of all Europe, and followed by a numerous and valiant army. Where died Charles Albert?

Thus has Providence shown to our people, desirous of the right, but lukewarm in faith and too credulous in the illusions of the old world, the powerlessness of monarchy to insure the safety of Italy, and the irreconcilability of papacy with the free progress of humanity. The dualism of the middle ages is henceforward a mere form without life or soul; the Guelph and Ghibelline insignia are now those of the tomb. Neither Pope, nor King! God and the people only shall henceforth disclose to us the regions of the future.

* * * * *

Future times--nay the present will do ample justice to Mazzini, as well as to Pio Nono. In the first will be frankly recognized one of those iron men who are able to beard tyranny and profligacy even while they stand alone, the apostles of reformation, the originators and heralds of after change. In the other--but the words just quoted anticipate as it seems to us, and in no ungenerous spirit, the verdict and language of history.

FOOTNOTES:

[27] Royalty and Republicanism in Italy; or Notes and Documents relating to the Lombard Insurrection, and to the Royal War of 1848. By Joseph Mazzini. Charles Gilpin.

[From the Keepsake for 1851.]

THE MOTHER'S LAST SONG.

BY BARRY CORNWALL.

Sleep!--the ghostly winds are blowing; No moon's abroad; no star is glowing; The river is deep, and the tide is flowing To the land where you and I are going! We are going afar, Beyond moon or star, To the land where the sinless angels are!

I lost my heart to your heartless sire; ('Twas melted away by his looks of fire;) Forgot my God, and my father's ire, All for the sake of a man's desire:-- But now we'll go Where the waters flow, And make us a bed where none shall know.

The world is cruel; the world's untrue; Our foes are many; our friends are few; No work, no bread, however we sue! What is there left for us to do-- But fly--fly, From the cruel sky, And hide in the deepest deeps--and die!

[From the Ladies' Companion.]

A DRIVE ABOUT MY NEIGHBORHOOD IN 1850.

BY MARY RUSSEL MITFORD.

If there be one thing more than another in the nice balance of tastes and prejudices (for I do not speak here of principles) which incline us now to the elegance of Charles, now to the strength of Cromwell,--which disgust us alternately with the license of the Cavaliers and the fanaticism of the Roundheads; it would be the melancholy ruin of cast-down castles and plundered shrines, that meet our eyes all over our fair land, and nowhere in greater profusion than in this district, lying as it does in the very midst of some of the most celebrated battles of the Civil Wars. To say nothing of the siege of Reading, which more even than the vandalism of the Reformation completed the destruction of that noble abbey, the third in rank and size in England, with its magnificent church, its cloisters, and its halls, covering thirty acres of buildings,--and such buildings! within the outer courts;--to say nothing of that most reckless barbarity just at our door--we in our little village of Aberleigh lie between Basting-House to the south, whose desperately defended walls offer little more now than a mere site,--and Donnington to the west, where the ruined Gatehouse upon the hill alone remains of that strong fortress, which overlooked the well-contested field of Newbury,--and Chalgrove to the north, where the reaper, as he binds his sheaf, still pauses to tell you the very place where Hampden fell; every spot has a history! Look at a wooden spire, and your companion shakes his head, and says that it has been so ever since the Cavaliers were blown up in the church tower! Ask the history of a crumbling wall, and the answer is pretty sure to be, Cromwell! That his Highness the Lord Protector did leave what an accomplished friend of mine calls "his peculiar impressions" upon a great many places in our neighborhood is pretty certain; on so many, that there is no actual or authentic catalogue of all; and in some cases there is nothing but general tradition, and the nature of the "impressions" in question, to vouch for the fact of their destruction at that period.

Amongst these, one of the edifices that must have been best worth preserving, and is even now most interesting to see, is the grand old castellated mansion, which in the reign of Elizabeth belonged to one of her favorite courtiers, and was known as Master Comptroller's House, at Grays.

The very road to it is singularly interesting. Passing through the town, which increases in growth every day, until one wonders when and where it will stop, and looking with ever fresh admiration at the beautiful lacework window of the old Friary, which I long to see preserved in the fitliest manner, by forming again the chief ornament of a church, and then driving under the arch of the Great Western Railway, and feeling the strange vibration of some monster train passing over our heads,--a proceeding which never fails to make my pony show off his choicest airs and graces, pricking up his pretty ears, tossing his slender head, dancing upon four feet, and sometimes rearing upon two,--we arrive at the long, low, picturesque old bridge, the oldest of all the bridges that cross the Thames, so narrow that no two vehicles can pass at once, and that over every pier triangular spaces have been devised for the safety of foot passengers. On the centre arch is a fisherman's hut, occupying the place once filled by a friar's cell, and covering a still existing chapel, dedicated to the Virgin Mary, now put to secular uses--a dairy or a cellar.

A little way down the river is one of the beautiful islands of the Thames, now a smooth and verdant meadow, edged round with old willow pollards calmly reflected in the bright, clear waters, but giving back in the twelfth century a far different scene. Here was fought a wager of battle between Robert de Montford, appellant, and Henry de Essex, hereditary Standard-bearer of the kings of England, defendant, by command, and in the presence of Henry the Second. The story is told very minutely and graphically by Stowe. Robert de Montford at length struck down his adversary, "who fell," says the old historian, "after receiving many wounds; and the King, at the request of several noblemen, his relations, gave permission to the monks to inter the body, commanding that no further violence should be offered to it. The monks took up the vanquished knight, and carried him into the abbey, where he revived. When he recovered from his wounds, he was received into the community, and assumed the habit of the order, his lands being forfeited to the King." I have always thought that this story would afford excellent scope to some great novelist, who might give a fair and accurate picture of monastic life, and, indeed, of the monastic orders, as landlords, neighbors, teachers, priests, without any mixture of controversial theology, or inventing any predecessors of Luther or Wicliffe. How we should have liked to have heard all about "The Monastery," about the "Abbot" and Father Eustace, untroubled by Henry Warden or John Knox! From the moment that they appear, our comfort in the book vanishes, just as completely as that of the good easy Abbot Boniface himself. There we are in the middle of vexed questions, with the beautiful pile of Melrose threatening every moment to fall about our ears!

Our business now, however, is to get over the bridge, which after the excitement of one dispute with a pugnacious carrier, and another with a saucy groom, whose caracoling horse had well nigh leaped over the parapets on either side; after some backing of other carriages, and some danger of being forced back to our own, we at last achieve, and enter unscathed, the pleasant village of Caversham.

To the left, through a highly ornamented lodge, lies the road to the ancient seat of the Blounts, another house made famous by Pope, where the fair ladies of his love, the sisters Martha and Teresa, lived and died. A fine old place it is; and a picturesque road leads to it, winding through a tract called the Warren, between the high chalk-cliffs, clothed with trees of all varieties, that for so many miles fence in the northern side of the Thames, and the lordly river itself, now concealed by tall elms, now open and shining in the full light of the summer sun. There is not such a flower bank in Oxfordshire as Caversham Warren.

Our way, however, leads straight on. A few miles further, and a turn to the right conducts us to one of the grand old village churches, which give so much of character to English landscape. A large and beautiful pile it is. The tower half clothed with ivy, standing with its charming vicarage and its pretty vicarage-garden on a high eminence, overhanging one of the finest bends of the great river. A woody lane leads from the church to the bottom of the chalk-cliff, one side of which stands out from the road below, like a promontory, surmounted by the laurel hedges and flowery arbors of the vicarage-garden, and crested by a noble cedar of Lebanon. This is Shiplake church, famed far and near for its magnificent oak carving, and the rich painted glass of its windows, collected, long before such adornments were fashionable, by the fine taste of the late vicar, and therefore filled with the very choicest specimens of mediæval art, chiefly obtained from the remains of the celebrated Abbey of St. Bertin, near St. Omers, sacked during the first French Revolution. In this church Alfred Tennyson was married. Blessings be upon him! I never saw the great Poet in my life, but thousands who never may have seen him either, but who owe to his poetry the purest and richest intellectual enjoyment, will echo and re-echo the benison.

A little way farther, and a turn to the left leads to another spot consecrated by genius,--Woodcot, where Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton passed the earlier years of his married life, and wrote several of his most powerful novels. I have always thought that the scenery of Paul Clifford caught some of its tone from that wild and beautiful country, for wild and beautiful it is. The terrace in the grounds commands a most extensive prospect; and beneath a clump of trees on the common behind the house, is the only spot where on a clear day Windsor may be seen on one side, and Oxford on the other,--looking almost like the domes, and towers, and pinnacles that sometimes appear in the clouds--a fairy picture that the next breeze may waft away! This beautiful residence stands so high, that one of its former possessors, Admiral Fraser (grandfather to that dear friend of mine who is the present owner), could discover Woodcot Clump from the mast of his own ship at Spithead, a distance of sixty miles.

Wyfold's Court, another pretty place a little farther on, which also belonged once to a most dear friend, possesses the finest Wych-elms in England. Artists come from far and near to paint these stately trees, whose down-dropping branches and magnificent height are at once so graceful and so rich. They are said always to indicate ecclesiastical possession, but no trace of such dependency is to be found in the title-deeds, or in the tenure by which in feudal times the lands were held,--that of presenting a rose to the King, should he pass by a certain road on a May-day.

And now we approach Rotherfield Grays,--its bowery lanes, its wild rugged commons, and its vast beech woods, from the edge of which projects every here and there a huge cherry-tree, looking, in the blossoming springtime, as if carved in ivory, so exquisite is the whiteness, casting upon the ferny-turf underneath showers of snowy petals that blanch the very ground, and diffusing around an almond-like odor, that mingles with the springing thyme and the flowering gorse, and loads the very air with heavy balm.

Exquisite is the pleasantness of these beech woods, where the light is green from the silky verdure of the young leaves, and where the mossy wood-paths are embroidered with thousands of flowers, from the earliest violet and primrose, the wood-anemone, the wood-sorrel, the daffodil, and the wild hyacinth of spring, to the wood-vetch, the woodroof, the campanulas, and the orchises of summer;--for all the English orchises are here: that which so curiously imitates the dead oak leaf, that again which imitates the human figure; the commonest but most pretty bee orchis, and the parallel ones which are called after the spider, the frog, and the fly. Strange freak of nature this, in a lower order of creation, to mimic her own handyworks in a higher!--to mimic even our human mimicry!--for that which is called the man orchis is most like the imitation of a human figure that a child might cut from colored paper. Strange, strange mimicry! but full of variety, full of beauty, full of odor. Of all the fragrant blossoms that haunt the woods, I know none so exquisite as that night-scented orchis which is called indifferently, the butterfly or the lily of the valley. Another glory of these woods, an autumnal glory, is the whole fungus tribe, various and innumerable as the mosses; from the sober drab-colored fungi, spotted with white, which so much resemble a sea-egg, to those whose deep and gorgeous hues would shame the tinting of an Indian shell. Truffles, too, are found beneath the earth; and above it are deposited huge masses of the strange compound called in modern geological phrase Agglomerate. Flint and coral, and gravel, and attrited pebbles enter into the combination of this extraordinary natural conglomeration, which no steel, however hardened, can separate, and which seems to have been imitated very successfully by the old builders in their cements and the substances used in the filling up of their grandest structures, as may be seen in the layers which unite the enormous slabs of granite in the Roman walls at Silchester, as well as in the works of the old monkish architects at Reading Abbey. Another beauty of this country is to be found in the fields,--now of the deep-red clover, with its shining crimson tops, now of the gay and brilliant saintfoin (the holy hay), the bright pink of whose flowery spikes gives to the ground the look of a bed of roses.

And now we reach the gate that admits us down a steep descent to the Rectory-house, a large substantial mansion, covered with Banksia roses, and finely placed upon a natural terrace,--a fertile valley below, and its own woods and orchard-trees above.

My friend the rector, raciest of men, is an Oxford divine of the old school; a ripe scholar; one who has travelled wide and far, and is learned in the tongues, the manners, and the literature of many nations; but who is himself English to the backbone in person, thought, and feeling. Orthodox is he, no doubt. Nowhere are church and schools, and parish visitings, better cared for; but he has a knack of attending also to the creature comforts of all about him, of calling beef and blankets in aid of his precepts, which has a wonderful effect in promoting their efficacy. Mansion and man are large alike, and alike overflowing with hospitality and kindliness. His original and poignant conversation is so joyous and good-humored, the making every body happy is so evidently his predominant taste, that the pungency only adds to the flavor of his talk, and never casts a moment's shade over its sunny heartiness.

Right opposite the Rectory terrace, framed like a picture by the rarest and stateliest trees, stands the object of my pilgrimage, Grays' Court, a comparatively modern house, erected amongst the remains of a vast old castellated mansion, belonging first to the noble family of Gray, who gave their name not merely to the manor, but to the district; then to the house of Knollys; and latterly to the Stapletons, two venerable ladies of that name being its present possessors.

All my life I had heard of Grays' Court; of the rich yet wild country in which it is placed; of the park so finely undulated, and so profusely covered by magnificent timber; of the huge old towers which seem to guard and sentinel the present house; of the far extended walls, whose foundations may yet be traced, in dry seasons, among the turf of the lawn; of the traditions which assign the demolition of those ancient walls to the wars of the Commonwealth; and of the strange absence of all documentary evidence upon the subject.

Another cause for my strong desire to see this interesting place, is to be found in its association with one of those historical personages in whom I have always taken the warmest interest. Lord Essex (whose mother was the famous Lettice Knollys, who had had for her second husband another of Queen Elizabeth's favorites, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester), when confined in London, a prey to the tyranny of Elizabeth, petitioned, in one of those eloquent letters to the Virgin Queen which will always remain amongst the earliest and finest specimens of English prose, to be allowed to repair, for the benefit of his health, "to Master Comptroller's house at Grays." Ah! we can fancy, when looking over this lovely valley, with its woods, its verdure, its sweep of hills, its feeling of the near river, we can well fancy how the poet-heart of the great Earl must have longed to leave the trial, the turmoil, the jangling, the treachery, the weary fears, the bitter humiliations of his London captivity, and to taste once more the sweet air, the pleasant sights, the calmness and the quiet of the country. Hope and comfort must have come with the thought. One of the prettiest pictures that I know, is an extract from a contemporary letter, in the first volume of Mr. Craik's most interesting book, the "Romance of the Peerage," telling of the Earl and Countess, during one of the daily visits that she was at one time permitted to pay him when he was a prisoner in Essex House, walking together in the garden, "now he, now she, reading one to the other." The whole taste and feeling of the man, the daily habit of his life, is shown in this little circumstance. And this is the brave soldier who, when examined before the Privy Council, a council composed of open enemies and treacherous friends, had been kept nearly all the day kneeling at the bottom of the table. Tyranny drove him into madness, and then exacted the full penalty of the wild acts which that madness prompted. But Essex was a man in advance of his age; the companion as well as the patron of poets; the protector of papist and puritan; the fearless asserter of liberty of conscience! He deserved a truer friend than Bacon, a more merciful judge than Elizabeth.

To the house of Knollys belongs another interesting association, that strangest of genealogical romances, the great case of the Banbury peerage. The cause was decided (if decided it can be called even now) by evidence found in the parish register of Rotherfield Grays.

The place has yet another attraction in its difficulty of access; the excellent ladies of the Court admitting few beyond their own immediate connections and nearest friends. One class, to be sure, finds its way there as if by instinct--the poor, who, as the birds of the air detect the grain under the surface in the newly sown ground, are sure to find out the soil where charity lies germinating. Few excepting these constant visitors are admitted. But, besides the powerful introduction of our mutual friend the rector, a nephew of theirs, and his most sweet and interesting wife, had for some time inhabited the house which had been the home of my own youth, so that my name was not strange to them; and they had the kindness to allow me to walk over their beautiful grounds and gardens, to see their charming Swiss dairy, with its marbles and its china, and, above all, to satisfy my curiosity by looking over the towers which still remain of the old castle,--piles whose prodigious thickness of wall and distance from each other give token of the immense extent and importance of the place. It is said to have been built round two courts. Alnwick and Windsor rose to my thoughts as I contemplated these gigantic remains, and calculated the space that the original edifice must have covered. One of these towers is still occupied by the well of the castle, a well three hundred feet deep, which supplies the family with water. It will give some idea of the scale of the old mansion, to say that the wheel by which the water is raised, is twenty-five feet in diameter. Two donkeys are employed in the operation. One donkey suffices for the parallel but much smaller well at Carisbrook, where the animal is so accustomed to be put in for the mere purpose of exhibiting the way in which the water is raised to the visitors who go to look at the poor king's last prison, that he just makes the one turn necessary to show the working of the machine, and then stops of his own accord. The donkeys at Grays, kept for use and not for show, have not had a similar opportunity of displaying their sagacity.

One cannot look at the place without a feeling of adaptedness. It is the very spot for a stronghold of the Cavaliers: a spot where Lovelace and Montrose might each have fought and each have sung, defending it to the last loaf of bread and the last charge of powder, and yielding at last to the irresistible force of Cromwell's cannonade.

[From the Keepsake for 1851.]

STANZAS.

Come not, when I am dead, To drop thy foolish tears upon my grave, To trample round my fallen head, And vex the unhappy dust thou wouldst not save. There let the wind sweep, and the plover cry; But go thou by.

Child, if it were thine error or thy crime I care no longer, being all unblest; Wed whom thou wilt; but I am sick of time, And I desire to rest. Pass on, weak heart, and leave me where I lie. Go by--go by!

ALFRED TENNYSON.

[From Blackwood's Magazine.]

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE.

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.

_Continued from page 120._