CHAPTER XXXVII.

Solitude and silence, and bitter thought are great tamers of the human heart. "As ye sow, so shall ye reap," says the Apostle, and John Ayliffe was now forced to put in the sickle. Death was before his eyes, looming large and dark and terrible, like the rock of adamant in the fairy tale, against which the bark of the adventurous mariner was sure to be dashed. Death for the first time presented itself to his mind in all its grim reality. Previously it had seemed with him a thing hardly worth considering--inevitable--appointed to all men--to every thing that lives and breathes--no more to man than to the sheep, or the ox, or any other of the beasts that perish. He had contemplated it merely as death--as the extinction of being--as the goal of a career--as the end of a chase where one might lie down and rest, and forget the labor and the clamor and the trouble of the course. He had never in thought looked beyond the boundary--he had hardly asked himself if there was aught beyond. He had satisfied himself by saying, as so many men do, "Every man must die some time or another," and had never asked his own heart, "What is it to die?"

But now death presented itself under a new aspect; cold and stern, relentless and mysterious, saying in a low solemn tone, "I am the guide. Follow me there. Whither I lead thou knowest not, nor seest what shall befall thee. The earth-worm and the mole fret but the earthly garment of the man; the flesh, and the bones, and the beauty go down to dust, and ashes, and corruption. The man comes with me to a land undeclared--to a presence infinitely awful--to judgment and to fate; for on this side of the dark portal through which I am the guide, there is no such thing as fate. It lies beyond the grave, and thither thou must come without delay."

He had heard of immortality, but he had never thought of it. He had been told of another world, but he had never rightly believed in it. The thought of a just judge, and of an eternal doom, had been presented to him in many shapes, but he had never received it; and he had lived and acted, and thought and felt, as if there were neither eternity, nor judgment, nor punishment. But in that dread hour the deep-rooted, inexplicable conviction of a God and immortality, implanted in the hearts of all men, and only crushed down in the breasts of any by the dust of vanity and the lumber of the world, rose up and bore its fruits according to the soil. They were all bitter. If there were another life, a judgment, an eternity of weal or woe, what was to be his fate? How should he meet the terrors of the judgment-seat--he who had never prayed from boyhood--he who through life had never sought God--he who had done in every act something that conscience reproved, and that religion forbade?

Every moment as he lay there and thought, the terrors of the vast unbounded future grew greater and more awful. The contemplation almost drove him to frenzy, and he actually made an effort to rise from his bed, but fell back again with a deep groan. The sound caught the ear of good Jenny Best, and running in she asked if he wanted any thing.

"Stay with me, stay with me," said the unhappy young man, "I cannot bear this--it is very terrible--I am dying, Mrs. Best, I am dying."

Mrs. Best shook her head with a melancholy look; but whether from blunted feelings, from the hard and painful life which they endured, or from a sense that there is to be compensation somewhere, and that any change must be for the better, or cannot be much worse than the life of this earth, or from want of active imagination, the poorer and less educated classes I have generally remarked view death and all its accessories with less of awe, if not of dread, than those who have been surrounded by luxuries, and perhaps have used every effort to keep the contemplation of the last dread scene afar, till it is actually forced upon their notice. Her words were homely, and though intended to comfort did not give much consolation to the dying man.

"Ah well, sir, it is very sad," she said, "to die so young; though every one must die sooner or later, and it makes but little difference whether it be now or then. Life is not so long to look back at, sir, as to look forward to, and when one dies young one is spared many a thing. I recollect my poor eldest son who is gone, when he lay dying just like you in that very bed, and I was taking on sadly, he said to me, 'Mother don't cry so. It's just as well for me to go now when I've not done much mischief or suffered much sorrow.' He was as good a young man as ever lived; and so Mr. Dixwell said; for the parson used to come and see him every day, and that was a great comfort and consolation to the poor boy."

"Was it?" said John Ayliffe, thoughtfully. "How long did he know he was dying?"

"Not much above a week, sir," said Mrs. Best; "for till Mr. Dixwell told him, he always thought he would get better. We knew it a long time however, for he had been in a decline a year, and his father had been laying by money for the funeral three months before he died. So when it was all over we put him by quite comfortable."

"Put him by!" said John Ayliffe.

"Yes, sir, we buried him, I mean," answered Mrs. Best. "That's our way of talking. But Mr. Dixwell had been to see him long before. He knew that he was dying, and he wouldn't tell him as long as there was any hope; for he said it was not necessary--that he had never seen any one better prepared to meet his Maker than poor Robert, and that it was no use to disturb him about the matter till it came very near."

"Ah, Dixwell is a wise man and a good man," said John Ayliffe. "I should very much like to see him."

"I can run for him in a minute sir," said Dame Best, but John Ayliffe replied, in a faint voice, "No, no, don't, don't on any account."

In the mean while, the very person of whom they were speaking had descended from the up-stairs room, finished his breakfast in order to give the surgeon time to fulfil his errand, and then putting on his three-cornered hat had walked out to ascertain at what house Mr. Short had stopped. The first place at which he inquired was the farm-house at which the good surgeon had stabled his horse on the preceding night. Entering by the kitchen door, he found the good woman of the place bustling about amongst pots and pans and maidservants, and other utensils, and though she received him with much reverence, she did not for a moment cease her work.

"Well, Dame," he said, "I hope you're all well here."

"Quite well, your reverence--Betty, empty that pail."

"Why, I've seen Mr. Short come down here," said the parson, "and I thought somebody might be ill."

"Very kind, your reverence--mind you don't spill it.--No, it warn't here. It's some young man down at Jenny Best's, who's baddish, I fancy, for the Doctor stabled his horse here last night."

"I am glad to hear none of you are ill," said Mr. Dixwell, and bidding her good morning, he walked away straight to the cottage where John Ayliffe lay. There was no one in the outer room, and the good clergyman, privileged by his cloth, walked straight on into the room beyond, and stood by the bedside of the dying man before any one was aware of his presence.

Mr. Dixwell was not so much surprised to see there on that bed of death the face of him he called Sir John Hastings, as might be supposed. The character which the surgeon had given of his patient, the mysterious absence of the young man from the Hall, and the very circumstance of his unwillingness to have his name and the place where he was lying known, had all lent a suspicion of the truth. John Ayliffe's eyes were shut at the moment he entered, and he seemed dozing, though in truth sleep was far away. But the little movement of Mr. Dixwell towards his bedside, and of Mrs. Best giving place for the clergyman to sit down, caused him to open his eyes, and his first exclamation was, "Ah, Dixwell! so that damned fellow Short has betrayed me, and told when I ordered him not."

"Swear not at all," said Mr. Dixwell. "Short has not betrayed you, Sir John. I came here by accident, merely hearing there was a young man lying ill here, but without knowing actually that it was you, although your absence from home has caused considerable uneasiness. I am very sorry to see you in such a state. How did all this happen?"

"I will not tell you, nor answer a single word," replied John Ayliffe, "unless you promise not to say a word of my being here to any one. I know you will keep your word if you say so, and Jenny Best too--won't you, Jenny?--but I doubt that fellow Short."

"You need not doubt him, Sir John," said the clergyman; "for he is very discreet. As for me, I will promise, and will keep my word; for I see not what good it could be to reveal it to any body if you dislike it. You will be more tenderly nursed here, I am sure, than you would be by unprincipled, dissolute servants, and since your poor mother's death--"

John Ayliffe groaned heavily, and the clergyman stopped. The next moment, however, the young man said, "Then you do promise, do you?"

"I do," replied Mr. Dixwell. "I will not at all reveal the facts without your consent."

"Well, then, sit down, and let us be alone together for a bit," said John Ayliffe, and Mrs. Best quietly quitted the room and shut the door.

John Ayliffe turned his languid eyes anxiously upon the clergyman, saying, "I think I am dying, Mr. Dixwell."

He would fain have had a contradiction or even a ray of earthly hope; but he got none; for it was evident to the eyes of Mr. Dixwell, accustomed as he had been for many years to attend by the bed of sickness and see the last spark of life go out, that John Ayliffe was a dying man--that he might live hours, nay days; but that the irrevocable summons had been given, that he was within the shadow of the arch, and must pass through!

"I am afraid you are, Sir John," he replied, "but I trust that God will still afford you time to make preparation for the great change about to take place, and by his grace I will help you to the utmost in my power."

John Ayliffe was silent, and closed his eyes again. Nor was he the first to speak; for after having waited for several minutes, Mr. Dixwell resumed, saying in a grave but kindly tone, "I am afraid, Sir John, you have not hitherto given much thought to the subject which is now so sadly fixed upon you. We must make haste, my good sir; we must not lose a moment."

"Then do you think I am going to die so soon?" asked the young man with a look of horror; for it cost him a hard and terrible struggle to bring his mind to grasp the thought of death being inevitable and nigh at hand. He could hardly conceive it--he could hardly believe it--that he who had so lately been full of life and health, who had been scheming schemes, and laying out plans, and had looked upon futurity as a certain possession--that he was to die in a few short hours; but whenever the wilful heart would have rebelled against the sentence, and struggle to resist it, sensations which he had never felt before, told him in a voice not to be mistaken, "It must be so!"

"No one can tell," replied Mr. Dixwell, "how soon it may be, or how long God may spare you; but one thing is certain, Sir John, that years with you have now dwindled down into days, and that days may very likely be shortened to hours. But had you still years to live, I should say the same thing, that no time is to be lost; too much has been lost already."

John Ayliffe did not comprehend him in the least. He could not grasp the idea as yet of a whole life being made a preparation for death, and looked vacantly in the clergyman's face, utterly confounded at the thought.

Mr. Dixwell had a very difficult task before him--one of the most difficult he had ever undertaken; for he had not only to arouse the conscience, but to awaken the intellect to things importing all to the soul's salvation, which had never been either felt or believed, or comprehended before. At first too, there was the natural repugnance and resistance of a wilful, selfish, over-indulged heart to receive painful or terrible truths, and even when the obstacle was overcome, the young man's utter ignorance of religion and want of moral feeling proved another almost insurmountable. He found that the only access to John Ayliffe's heart was by the road of terror, and without scruple he painted in stern and fearful colors the awful state of the impenitent spirit called suddenly into the presence of its God. With an unpitying hand he stripped away all self-delusions from the young man's mind and laid his condition before him, and his future state in all their dark and terrible reality.

This is not intended for what is called a religious book, and therefore I must pass over the arguments he used, and the course he proceeded in. Suffice it that he labored earnestly for two hours to awaken something like repentance in the bosom of John Ayliffe, and he succeeded in the end better than the beginning had promised. When thoroughly convinced of the moral danger of his situation, John Ayliffe began to listen more eagerly, to reply more humbly, and to seek earnestly for some consolation beyond the earth. His depression and despair, as terrible truths became known to him were just in proportion to his careless boldness and audacity while he had remained in wilful ignorance, and as soon as Mr. Dixwell saw that all the clinging to earthly expectations was gone--that every frail support of mortal thoughts was taken away, he began to give him gleams of hope from another world, and had the satisfaction of finding that the doubts and terrors which remained arose from the consciousness of his own sins and crimes, the heavy load of which he felt for the first time. He told him that repentance was never too late--he showed, him that Christ himself had stamped that great truth with a mark that could not be mistaken in his pardon of the dying thief upon the cross, and while he exhorted him to examine himself strictly, and to make sure that what he felt was real repentance, and not the mere fear of death which so many mistake for it in their last hours, he assured him that if he could feel certain of that fact, and trust in his Saviour, he might comfort himself and rest in good hope. That done, he resolved to leave the young man to himself for a few hours that he might meditate and try the great question he had propounded with his own heart. He called in Mistress Best, however, and told her that if during his absence Sir John wished her to read to him, it would be a great kindness to read certain passages of Scripture which he pointed out in the house Bible. The good woman very willingly undertook the task, and shortly after the clergyman was gone John Ayliffe applied to hear the words of that book against which he had previously shut his ears. He found comfort and consolation and guidance therein; for Mr. Dixwell, who, on the one subject which had been the study of his life was wise as well as learned, had selected judiciously such passages as tend to inspire hope without diminishing penitence.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Continued from page 488, vol. iii.

THE CASTLE OF BELVER.

AN INCIDENT IN THE LIFE OF ARAGO.

The castle of Belver is the state prison of the island of Majorca. The Rev. Henry Christmas, F.R.S., has just published in London three volumes entitled _The Shores and Islands of the Mediterranean_, in which he gives the following account of the confinement within its walls of the illustrious Arago:

"Charged by the Emperor Napoleon with the admeasurement of the meridian, Arago was in 1808 in Majorca, and occupying a cottage on the mountain called Clot de Galatzo, when the news came to the island of the recent events at Madrid, and the carrying away of the king. The populace of Palma, never very favorably disposed towards the French, and altogether incapable of comprehending either the merits or the mission of Arago, easily mistook the great astronomer for a political spy, and exasperated at the insult offered to their king and country, determined to take a signal vengeance on the only Frenchman within their power. They took their way in great numbers towards the mountain on which Arago had taken up his abode, fortified in their belief of his evil designs by the fact that he frequently made fires on the mountain-side, and which they took for signals to an imaginary French fleet just about to land an army for the reduction of the island.

"The mountain rises just above the coast on which Don Jaime the Conqueror made his descent, and thus it will seem that the islanders were not destitute of some grounds for the suspicions which they entertained, nor without some palliating circumstances in the outrage which they contemplated. It was, however, happily only a design, for M. Arago, warned in time, left his mountain, and directed his steps towards Palma. The person who advertised him of his peril was a man named Damian, the pilot of the brig placed by the Spanish Government at the disposal of the philosopher. Himself a Majorcan, he was taken into the counsel of the plotters, and was thus enabled to save the life of his master.

"Dressed in the clothes of a common seaman, with which Damian had provided him, he met on his way the mob, who were bent on his destruction, and who stopped him to inquire about that _maldito gabacho_, of whom they meant to rid the island. As he spoke the language of the country fluently, he gave them that kind of information which was most desirable both to him and to them, and as soon as he arrived at Palma, he made his way to the Spanish brig; but the captain, Don Manual de Vacaro, a Catalonian, (his name ought to be known, to his disgrace, as well as that of Damian to his credit,) absolutely refused to take the astronomer to Barcelona, alleging that he was at Palma for a specific purpose, and could not leave without orders from his Government. When Arago pointed out the danger which threatened his life, and of which the captain was as well aware as himself, the latter coolly pointed out a chest, in which he proposed that M. Arago should take refuge. To this Arago replied by measuring the chest, and showing that there was not room for him in the inside. The next day a frantic mob was assembled on the shore, and it became clear that it was their intention to board the brig. Alarmed now for himself as well as for his colleague, Don Manual assured Arago that he would not answer for his life, and recommended him to constitute himself a prisoner in the castle of Belver, offering to conduct him hither in one of the ship's boats. Seeing what kind of a man, as well as what kind of a mob, he had to do with, Arago accepted the proposal, and just arrived time enough to hear the castle gates closed against his furious pursuers. It seems that all the motions of those on board were watched from the shore, and as soon as the boat was seen to depart, and to take the direction of Belver, the populace poured forth, towards the castle, and had not Arago been a little in advance, his life would have been sacrificed.... He was there as a prisoner two months.

"During that time he was told, and he seems to have believed the report, that the monks in the island had attempted to bribe the soldiers to poison him, but that the latter would not consent. It is likely enough that monks, considered as monks, would think it rather meritorious than otherwise to destroy a Frenchman, and a free-thinker, but it would be less probable of Majorcan monks than of any other, and poisoning is not the custom of the island. At the same time the very vehement feeling of the people against him, might put it into the minds of the monks to use monastic arts, and there is an additional probability given to the notion by the conduct of the Captain-general, who, after two months of captivity, sent a message to the prisoner that he would do well to make his escape, and that if he did, it would be winked at. Arago took this excellent advice, sent for M. Rodriguez, who had been appointed by the Spanish Government to aid him in his scientific labors, and by his aid opened a communication with Damian. This worthy man procured a fishing-boat, and took him to Algiers, not daring to land him in France or Spain, and absolutely refusing very large offers made to him for that purpose."

THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[2]

TRANSLATED FOR THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY MAGAZINE FROM THE FRENCH OF M. DE ST. GEORGES.

XVI.--MADEMOISELLE CREPINEAU'S LOVER.

About the end of May, 1819, on one of those bright sunny days which bring out the blossoms of the lilac, make invalids strong, and young girls healthy, the Duchess of Palma was sitting in the garden of her hotel, in the same place and under the same tree in which we saw her take refuge, to conceal her sorrow and tears, a few months before, on the evening of the brilliant festival when all the principal personages of our story met. A general languor and oppression with complete weakness, the ordinary consequences of her unhappy attempt to commit suicide, had ensued. The deep distress which gnawed at her heart added moral to physical tortures. The Duke of Palma at last perceived the deep indifference of La Felina towards him, and without divining the cause, said that having married without love, all his cares and tenderness had not sufficed to win her heart. He therefore said, that he should be a fool to devote himself any longer to her, and to consecrate his life to a woman to whom, notwithstanding the prejudices of the world, he had given his title and name, without having, as yet, received the most trifling acknowledgment in return!

Yet young, immensely rich, volatile and handsome, it was probable that the Duke would not look in vain for some one to console him for the severity of his Duchess. Like many other persons in Paris, the Duke lived _en garcon_ with two houses, two establishments, and, morally speaking, two wives. His second wife was a celebrated _danseuse_ of the Royal Academy of Music, Mlle. G., known as a very agreeably thin woman, and arms rather larger than the true academic proportions--which, however, enabled her to entwine her partner, with an _undulous grace_ that highly excited the old _habitues_ of the opera. The reign of Louis XVIII. was also emphatically the reign of the _danseuses_. Princes, marshals, generals, and nobles, selected their mistresses in the _seraglio_ of the opera. The reign of these ladies was, however, almost _emphyteotic_, that is to say, permanent, and often resulted in the consecration of illegitimate pleasures. MM. de Lauraguais, de Conti, de Letoriers, and others, would have laughed at this. The external life of the Duke was full of attention to the Duchess, with whom he dined regularly. He never, however, breakfasted at the embassy, nor was he there except at his regular receptions. The pious people who had been so shocked at his marriage, took care to say that the Duchess's conduct was the sole cause of her husband's misbehavior. There was nothing, though, in the world to sustain this; for no one had the slightest idea of the secret _liaison_ of Monte-Leone and the embassadress. That was a transient affair, and the shores of the _Lago di Como_ alone had been witnesses of it. Some excuse, however, was indispensably necessary for him.

La Felina, as isolated as ever, then sat in a beautiful garden which overlooked the _Champs Elysees_, on the morning we have described. Her face was pale and wearied, and her eyes red from want of sleep. With her head resting on her chest, she seemed a prey to the greatest sorrow. Just then they came to tell her of the visit of Taddeo Rovero.

"At last," said she, gladly, "I will know all."

Taddeo was close behind the servant who had announced him. He could not repress his surprise, when he saw how changed the Duchess was. The latter saw it and said, "You did not expect, signor, to see an old and ugly woman instead of her you once thought, so beautiful. I have, however, suffered a great deal during the three months you have been away. Without meaning to reproach you, let me say it is three months since I saw you."

"Ah! Signora, to me you may assume any guise you please; for neither my eyes, nor heart, distinguish any alteration."

"So much the better," said the Duchess with a smile, "for you are perhaps the only person who think me as beautiful as once was. It is something to be thought beautiful when we are not. What, though, is come over you? Why have you been so long in Italy?"

"Alas! Signora, bad inducements took me from Paris and from yourself."

"All they say, then, is true?" said the Duchess, making Taddeo sit by her; "the Marquise de Maulear has lost her husband? She is a widow?" said she, sadly, and with an effort.

"The Marquis died three months since at Rome," said Taddeo.

"It is terrible," said the ambassadress, "public rumor said so--I, though, live so much alone that I know nothing more. Excuse me, if I inquire into family secrets--were it not for the interest I entertain for your sister and yourself, I would not do so--"

"The death of the Marquis," said Taddeo, "is really a family secret. There is no reason, however, why you should not know it. I am aware to whom I confide it, and have no hesitation in doing so. My story will be brief. The Marquis and I set out for Rome three months ago, to receive the estate of my uncle, Cardinal Felippo Justiniani. We met with many difficulties, but eventually received it. The total was a million of francs, in bonds of the principal bankers of Rome. The half of this sum was paid in cash. I was in mourning, and did not go into society. Besides," added Taddeo, looking tenderly at La Felina, "I had left my heart in Paris--and society and the Carnival pleasures had no charms for me. The Marquis seemed more anxious for amusement than propriety permitted. A few days after having received the half of our inheritance, of which the Marquis had possession, I was surprised to hear that he had not returned home at night. I did not, however, dare to question him; for I thought that he had been tempted by some pleasure party and might be unwilling to answer me. I pretended not to be aware that he was away. For several successive nights this occurred, and at last I ventured to speak to him, telling him what danger he exposed himself to, by straying thus in the streets of Rome. 'I am well armed,' said he, 'and can protect myself against robbers.' Day after day the Marquis seemed more and more engaged. He avoided me, and scarcely ever returned home. One day he was absent. Afraid lest he might have been attacked in the night, I went to the French minister's and caused a minute search to be made--and learned that my brother-in-law had put an end to his own life. He had been enticed by some of his French friends into a gaming house, which foreign speculators had obtained leave to open during the Carnival, and had there lost the five hundred thousand francs which belonged to his wife. In his despair he had drowned himself in the Tiber."

"This is terrible," said the Duchess, "are you sure this is so?"

"Too sure," said Taddeo, "for not long after, the discovery of the body put all beyond doubt. These, Signora, are the facts of the case; though to save the Marquise's honor we attribute his death to a natural cause."

"I thank you, Signor, for your confidence; especially since it gives me a right to pity the sister you love so well, yet more--and also to console you for the death of M. de Maulear. But when did you return?"

"A few days ago. I was forced to remain yet longer in Rome to get possession of the remnant of the Cardinal's fortune. My mother also came to Rome to tell Aminta of her misfortune."

"How cruelly the young _Marquise_ must suffer," said the Duchess; "how she must need compassion and care!"

"She will have ours; and her father-in-law, overcoming his own sorrow, is as tender and fond of her as ever."

"Then," said the Duchess, concealing a distress she could not lay aside, "she yet has true and excellent friends--the Count Monte-Leone, for instance, who was so fond of her--"

"The Count," said Taddeo, looking strangely at the Duchess, who did not meet his glance, "was received a few days ago by the Marquise."

"He will make up for lost time," said La Felina, bitterly, "for now, or perhaps some day, his old hopes may again arise, and perhaps be realized."

Taddeo understood why she spoke thus. For a long time his forbearance had been pushed to extremities, and this passion of the Duchess for his friend had given rise to new tortures, too severe to repress the idea of vengeance. He was cruel and barbarous; but he had too severely suffered from La Felina. By a violent course, also, he perhaps wished to crush the love which tortured him.

He remarked: "Even though I afflict you, I must say your fancy is likely enough to be realized. The Count possesses rank and a spotless reputation--for without the latter--"

"With but the latter," said the Duchess, "he could not enter our family."

"Certainly, the Count prepares the Marquise for a future courtship by very constant visits now."

"He comes every day to the Hotel to see the Prince and myself. My sister loves to hear him speak of Italy, of which you know he talks so well."

La Felina could bear no more. She gave her hand to Taddeo, and with a voice trembling with emotion said: "For the present, adieu! You owe me some compensation for your long absence, and if the lonely life I lead does not afflict you, if you are not too much afraid of an anchorite, come to see me, and you will find me always glad to see you."

Taddeo kissed her hand and left her, almost repenting in his generous mind that he had spoken as he did. He was fully avenged, for the Duchess's grief was so great that she felt her heart grow chilled, her limbs stiffen, and her eyes close. Her conversation with Taddeo soon returned to her mind, and she uttered a cry of agony. Her _femme de chambre_ bore her to the Hotel. When alone in her room she said to herself: "He swore to me that he would never be her lover. She may now be his wife. Ah!" continued she, "with cruel and sombre fury, it would have been better for both of us had he let me die."

"Tell him who waits to come," said she to the servant.

The woman left, and soon after came in with a man whom the Duchess made sit beside her. The woman left the room. We will leave the Duchess with the stranger and go to No. 13 _rue de Babylonne_, where one month after we shall find Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, a prey to the tenderest emotions. We must say for about two months the heart of that lady had been speaking. This lady's heart, like that of old thorough-bred horses, of whom we read every once in a while, had a return of ardor, and laid aside all its ascetic devotion to become intense living and burning, as it had been in youth. This was the sure premonition of old age. If anything could justify this resurrection, it is what we are about to tell.

A new star shone in _la rue de Babylonne_. A beautiful stranger calling himself a Spaniard, a statement made probable by his dark complexion, sun-burnt brow, black hair, and brilliant eyes, established himself in a modest garret of No. 12, just opposite the house of the _hangman_, now occupied by Matheus. The charming Spaniard had no decided profession. His dress was that of an artisan in his Sunday best: and his velvet vest covered a prominent and Herculean _torso_. He was tall; and walked squarely on his large feet; a circumstance which made Mlle. Crepineau think him majestic. He said he was a bear-hunter from the Pyrenees, who had been forced to expatriate himself because _in a duel he had wounded the governor of his province_. It may be imagined that so rare a profession excited much admiration among the natives of _la rue Babylonne_, especially as the famous Nimrod passed his time at the door of No. 12, under the pretext that he was accustomed to the pure mountain air, and that he did not wish any of the neighbors anxious to make inquiries about his terrible profession, to have the trouble of asking for him. At one of these hall-door entertainments one summer night, the handsome Nunez saw and captivated Mlle. Celestine Crepineau. Do not let any one fancy the modest girl had given any encouragement to the stranger. They had restricted themselves to glances, _double entendres_, and the countless amiable pioneers of the army of Cupid. Mlle. Crepineau saw the stranger come every day to assist her in opening the heavy door of No. 13. Nunez took charge of the watering pot of which the commissaries are so fond, and dispersed an agreeable freshness in front of the house during the warm hours of the day, to protect, he said, the color and complexion of his mistress. Often Mlle. Celestine's nerves were refreshed by a delicate perfume which strayed through the bars of her lodge, and on inquiry saw a sprig of some sweet and odorous plant which had been placed there by the Spaniard. At last Mlle. Crepineau gave him permission to visit her. This was an important favor, and was the passage of the rubicon. By doing so, Celestine placed her reputation in the power of her evil-disposed neighbors. She was, however, in love. "Besides," said she, with noble pride, "my conscience sustains me, and envy will fall abashed before the sacred torch of hymen." This _respectable_ phrase was the last remnant of the romances of Ducray-Dumenil, the first books Celestine ever read when she was cook of the advocate her god-father.

But this interesting love passion was suddenly brought to a close by a very painful circumstance for the vanity of the young lady. Whether Mlle. Crepineau had laced herself more tightly even than usual, or that in aspirations after sylphic grace, she had been rather too active when Senor Nunez was by--she was seized one fine day with a pain in the small of her back, translatable only by the word rheumatism--a constant attendant of her delicate organization. A forced construction was put on the pain--which became a cold or a strain, but she had, in spite of the effort to get rid of it by an _euphonism_, to go to bed. Then the devotion of the Spaniard became heroic. He was unwilling that Mlle. Celestine should intrust any one else with her daily occupation, and undertook to replace her in the menage of Doctor Matheus. The proposition did not awaken much of the doctor's gratitude; and though he accepted the substitute, he promised to watch him very closely. One morning the doctor was forced to leave very suddenly, just as the Spaniard was cleaning and dusting the consultation room. Matheus had been sent for by the Duke d'Harcourt, and apprehending some new indisposition of his young patient, Von Apsberg, for the first time left the Senor Nunez in his room.

For a few moments, the Spaniard continued his occupation. When, however, he saw the doctor leave, and from the window saw him turn down the _rue de Bac_, he said, "Now what I have so long sought for is in my grasp." Looking on every side of the room, lifting up the papers, opening the portfolios and examining the furniture, he discovered a secret drawer in a bureau, within which he found a key.

"Here," said he, "is the key of the laboratory--of the mysterious room in which I shall find all I need. This is it," said he, looking anxiously at the key, "I know it by its shape." Hurrying to the third floor of the house, he paused at the door. His hand trembled--the key entered--turned--the wards moved, and the stranger entered the laboratory.

The table which, when we paid our first visit to Matheus, was covered with maps, pamphlets, etc., now had nothing on it. "All is locked up," said the man. "I have bad luck." He soon, however, aroused himself, and taking a ball of wax from his pocket, and pointing to a massive secretary, said, "There they are--there are their plans and papers, their lists and names." Approaching the secretary again, he took an exact impression of the lock, and also made a copy of the key of the laboratory. He then uttered a cry of joy. "I have them all," said he. "I am their master, and not one of the accursed Carbonari can escape me." He then left the room as expeditiously as he had entered, went to the first story, replaced the key where he had found it in the secret drawer, and hurried to find Mlle. Celestine Crepineau, who had become very uneasy about her lover.

XVIII. RUIN.

A few days after the pretended bear-hunter, the handsome Spaniard, adored by the amiable Mlle. Crepineau, had gone stealthily into the studio of Dr. Matheus to obtain possession of the secrets of the Carbonari, our three friends Taddeo Rovero, Von Apsberg, and the Vicomte d'Harcourt, were at the Count's hotel. The house of Monte-Leone was in Verneuil street. It was small, mysterious, and recherche. The court-yard was of modest size, with turf in the centre, and sanded walks around it. The steps had a balcony at the top and several marble vases, from which grew geraniums in summer and heath in the winter. It was a regular bachelor's house, having every thing demanded by the exigencies of a tenant of that condition. It had all the broad, tall, low, narrow, visible, and invisible doors, for troublesome cases and exits, for the actors and actresses of the every day drama of the life of a young, rich, and independent man. No love drama was ever performed, though, on this theatre. One of another and more brilliant kind was being prepared. He gave a dinner to young men, a regular one, without a single woman. Men alone were welcomed by the noble Amphytrion. The house was furnished as luxuriously as possible, for only recently have people conceived the happy idea of making dining-rooms comfortable. Of this our fathers were entirely ignorant. Once people eat much or little, well or badly; they breakfasted, dined, or took tea--that was all. They sat on straw or hair chairs; they were warmed by bad stoves, the smell of which was intolerable; the feet rested on marble blocks, bright, but cold as ice. Such was the gastronomical trilogy of Parisians. The large hotels, and even the smaller establishments of our renowned libertines had a more splendid refectory, which, however, was not more favorable to the comfort of the guests. The dark and rich tapestries which hung on the walls, the marble on the floor, the pictures, though by Boucher or Watteau, were artistic and costly, but nothing less than the eyes of La Guimard, the lips of Sophie Arnould, those of La Maupin or La Duthe, could warm those cold arenas, where Bernis, Larenaudie, Fronsac, Bouret, and Beaujon sacrificed to Comus in the company of the Loves. Now all is changed. Not only gastronomy, but the art of living well has been discovered not to exist alone in wines and cookery, and it has become a proverb, that "beans in china are better than truffles in earthenware." In 1819 Count Monte-Leone had a presentiment of our taste in 1848, and he was therefore spoken of as a foreign sybarite, whose extravagant tastes never would be imitated. Though people blamed, they envied, and _tried to imitate_.

The dining-room of the Count, therefore, glittered with lights, and around a table filled with the rarest glass, from which was exhaled the perfume of a dinner fit for Lucullus, were about a dozen men, some of whom, Matheus, Taddeo, and d'Harcourt, we know already. The others, of whom we will hereafter speak more fully, were famous Carbonari, the founders of the French order, General A...., the banker H...., Count de Ch...., the merchant Ober, the _Avocat_ C...., and the illustrious Professor C.... Two of these gentlemen had come from Italy, and brought to Monte-Leone new orders from the central Venta of Naples, and also curious details about the progress or rather maturity of Carbonarism in the Two Sicilies and the neighboring countries. It had however been by common consent determined among the guests that none of the grave secrets of the order should be revealed at their joyous repast--that political questions should be postponed to more serious conferences: not that the members were not satisfied of the prudence of each other, but inquisitive ears hovered around this table, and with the exception of those of the prudent old Giacomo none could be trusted. There was especial reason for this, as vague rumors had for some time made the Carbonari distrustful. It was said that the Minister of Police had placed Count Monte-Leone under the strictest surveillance in consequence of his previous history. The objects of this dinner, which beyond doubt was subjected to some particular notice, was to prove that all the persons assembled were men of pleasure, and not agents of discord or conspirators.

"To our host," said d'Harcourt, filling his glass, "to his loves and conquests!"

"You will get drunk," said one of the guests, "if you drink to all of his conquests."

"All calumny," said Matheus. "The conversion of St. Augustine is no miracle since that of Monte-Leone. The gallant Italian is now a fresh anchorite, avoiding the pomps of Satan and the opera in this _Thebais_. With his friends he atones for past errors."

"The fact is, no one knows any thing about the Count's amours," said one of the guests.

"Well, then," said another, "that for one in society, as Monte-Leone is, he makes bad use of his eyes. The very mention of his Neapolitan adventures would turn the heads of ten Parisian women."

"You are wrong, my dear B....," said the Count. "The women of Paris are not so headlong as you think. They reason with their hearts, and pay attention to convenances without regard to inclination. Besides, the man they love occupies only the second place in their hearts. _They_ come first and _he_ afterwards. Often, too, the toilette occupies the second place with amusements and pleasures. They prefer the attention of one to the love of all. _Liasons_ in France are elegant, _recherche_, and refined. They never violate good taste, and even in their despair French women are charming. They quarrel behind a fan, tear a bouquet to pieces, and shred the lace of a handkerchief. They weep, and stop soon enough not to stain the eyes, and when they have fainting-fits, are very careful not to disturb their curls. Great suffering just stops short of a nervous attack, and fury never breaks either china bracelets or jewelry, though it is merciless on lovers' miniatures. Three months after, if the offended lady meet the gentleman in a drawing-room, she will ask the person next her, 'Pray tell me who that gentleman is, I think I have seen him somewhere.' In Spain and Italy they avenge themselves, and do not pardon men who are inconstant until they too are false. Woe to him whose love is the first to end. He henceforth has but the storm and the thunder-bolt. Hatred and vengeance--the first is found in France--women in Italy kill. I tell you your countrywomen are not romantic, and suffer themselves to be led astray only after due reflection."

"Well, for my own part," said d'Harcourt to Monte-Leone, "I know a woman who adores you in secret, who never speaks of you without blushing, who looks down when your name is mentioned, and who looks up when she sees you."

Taddeo looked at the Vicomte with surprise. Two names occurred to him, that of the Duchess, and yet of another person. Monte-Leone, like Taddeo, was afraid that the young fool, whose greatest virtue was not temperance, would be indiscreet.

"Gentlemen," said he, "the Vicomte is about to be stupid. In the name of our friendship I beg him to be silent."

"Bah, bah!" said d'Harcourt, becoming yet more excited, and draining his glass of champagne, _in vino veritas_. "The proof of what I say is that Monte-Leone is afraid. I shall name the victim of the passion he has inspired. I wish to reinstate him in your eyes, for he has represented himself as deserted and abandoned by the fair sex, when one of the fairest adores him, and would sacrifice name and rank for him."

"Vicomte," said Monte-Leone, enraged and rising, "do not make me forget my intimacy with you of five years' duration."

"You will not forget it--you will like me all the better for what I am about to say. Besides it is nothing but humanity. You would not let the poor woman die when you can save her?"

"Again I ask you to stop," said Monte-Leone.

"You are too late," said the Vicomte, taking another glass of wine. "I drink to the Attala, the Ariana, the Psyche of our illustrious host, to a charming widow we all admire, to _Madame de Bruneval_."

One shout of joy burst from all. Monte-Leone felt a burden of trouble lifted from him, and Taddeo breathed more freely.

"Gentlemen," said Monte-Leone, resuming his _sangfroid_, "I protest that I was not aware of the happiness with which I am menaced. Though I do justice to the precious qualities of Mme. de Bruneval--to her lofty virtue, with which all of you are familiar--I should be afraid of following in the footsteps of the illustrious dead. Since, however, the widow has been spoken of, I will propose a toast to the speedy cure of her heart, provided I am not expected to become its surgeon."

All drank; and amid the sound of their laughter, Giacomo entered, and on a salver handed the Count a letter. "It is from Naples," said he; and having opened, he read it. As he did so he grew pale.

"Any bad news?" said Matheus.

"No," said Monte-Leone, with an effort to restrain himself; "no, my friends"--taking advantage of the temporary absence of the servants, who had placed the dessert on the table, and who then retired, as is the custom in all well regulated households--"No bad news to our cause. This letter is on private business. I have another toast," said he, in a lower tone. "To the brethren who are my guests to-day!"

"To the absent!" said Taddeo.

"Well, well," said Dr. Matheus, looking uneasily around; "let us have done with toasts. As a doctor, I may speak. Too many of this kind may endanger _our lives_," added he, emphasizing the last words. "Let us enjoy the pleasures heaven has granted us. Our first masters in good cheer, the Greeks and Romans, surrounded their tables with flowers and crowned their cups with roses. Let us laugh, then, my friends, at fools, intriguers, and apostates. Let us laugh at each other, and especially at unreasonable d'Harcourt, who can drown his own mind in a single bottle of champagne, and which makes him about as sensible as a fly."

The sallies and follies of after dinner followed this pompous harangue of Matheus. Had any one witnessed this scene, they would have fancied the actors a party of young mousquetaires of the regency, rather than conspirators who aspired to convulse the world. When the guests of Monte-Leone were gone, and only d'Harcourt, Matheus, and Taddeo remained, the Count took his dispatch out of his bosom, and bade the latter read it. It was as follows:

"NAPLES, September 10, 1819.

"COUNT:--I am sorry to inform you that the banker Antonio Lamberti, to whom you had confided your fortune, and with whom you bade me deposit the price of your palace, sold for six hundred thousand francs, has failed, and fled with all your fortune.

"Your respectful attorney,

"GUISEPPE FARNUCCI."

The three friends embraced Monte-Leone, and Von Apsberg said, "You knew this, yet could share our gayety. Did you not say yourself laughter is as necessary for digestion as it is to the heart?"

"I fulfilled my duties of host to the letter. I needed all my courage, though, having lost more than my fortune--my happiness. The morning's papers will announce the failure of Antonio Lamberti, and all Paris will know of the ruin of the brilliant Count Monte-Leone."

With fortune, the Count had also lost the hope of happiness. The widowhood of the Marquise de Maulear had revived all his hopes, as La Felina had foreseen, and his rank and title enabled him again to aspire to Aminta's hand. All this prospect his misfortune annihilated. What had he to offer now to Aminta? The name, the eclat of which he could sustain no longer--an existence endangered by a political plot, the triumph of which was far from certain--sumptuous tastes, which he would not be permitted to gratify--privations, especially cruel as they would follow closely on luxury and opulence, of which he had, so to say, built himself a temple.

Ten months had passed by since the Marquis's death, and the grief of his widow had been most sincere. Though Aminta had never entertained a very profound love for her husband, she had been much attached to him from a reason common enough: she was strong and he unusually weak. When, therefore, a terrible vice had seized on him, and sought, as it were, to wrest him from her arms, not a reproach had been uttered by Aminta against the sacrifice of her money and his neglect to an ignoble propensity. She forgave the gamester who was faithful to her, and had wept over him when she would have had no tears for the unfaithful husband. This soul so full of love was not slumbering in the arms of marriage. The energetical character which Aminta had often exhibited would, had it found traits of manhood properly expanded in her husband, have possibly modified her feelings, if he had possessed that burning imagination, that secret imagination which creates deep love, and for which too she seemed to have been created. She might have said this. She was too chaste to do so. Yet sometimes, in her long and dreamy solitudes, an image rose before her, especially when her husband was away. She dreamed of an exalted love, full of ardor and devotion, indomitable courage, sacrifice of life to duty, a noble and generous soul, which divined her own, and linked itself to it. All this assumed the form of the man she had rejected, of whom she had been afraid, and for her ingratitude to whom she now blushed.

The Count had been received by Aminta, in the early months of her widowhood, but he had refrained, from respectful motives, to allude to his feelings. His visits to the Marquise were short and ceremonious, feeling that love should not be veiled by the crape of mourning. Like the Prince de Maulear, and all Paris in fact, Aminta had heard of the Count's misfortune, and the blow made a deep impression on her. The absence of the Count became prolonged. He had not visited her since his misfortune, and she could not but feel a deep interest for him to whom fate reserved such severe trials. One evening, when she was more melancholy than usual, and sat in the saloon with her head leaning on her hand, and dreaming over the incidents of her life in which Monte-Leone had figured, she thought without remorse of scenes it had been once her duty to forget. A stifled sigh escaped from her bosom, and a kind of moan near her induced her to shake off her reverie. She saw Scorpione lying at her feet as he used to, and looking fixedly and sadly at her.

Tonio, whom, like the children of Sorrento, we have often called Scorpione, after having wandered along the sea-shore at the time of Aminta's marriage, had been found exhausted on the sands, and been taken to Signora Rovero, on the very day that Aminta set out for France. Since then, vegetating rather than living with the mother of Aminta, Signora Rovero was unwilling to trust her daughter's preserver to servants, when she heard of the death of her son-in-law. Signora Rovero had such delicate health as to be unable to bear the climate of Paris, and had six months before returned to Italy; but Tonio was unwilling to leave her, and yielding to his mute prayers, Aminta had consented for him to remain, for his sufferings to save her had made a deep impression on her. Tonio was in fact but the shadow of himself, the soul alone seeming to support him. Even his soul was changed. Fearful and timid when with Aminta, the passion the unfortunate boy had once experienced for her became humble and respectful submission. His very mind became extinct; and the only glimmerings of it now seemed to be a kind of instinctive sympathy with his mistress. He smiled when the Marquise did, and that was but rarely. He wept when tears hung on her eyelids. When he looked as we have described at Aminta, her sadness was perfectly mirrored on his face. Scorpione was, in fact, less than man, and more than a brute--he was an idiot.

"You suffer, because I suffer," said Aminta.

He replied, "Yes."

By one of those ideas which take possession of the time, but which it shrinks to confess, she said in a weak and almost tender voice to the idiot, as children do to toys, "If I were happy, would you be?" Scorpione looked fixedly at her, as if trying to understand her; and she added, "If any one loved me, and I loved him also, would you wish me to be happy?" blushing as she spoke.

Heavy tears rolled down his cheeks, and he said, taking Aminta's hand, "Yes."

"Poor child!" said she, with tears also, "once he loved me for his own sake--now he loves me for my own."

"Yes," said the idiot, hiding his face with his hands.

Just then the Prince de Maulear was announced.

XVIII. THE KING.

The Prince adored his daughter-in-law, and with tears in his eyes he besought Signora Rovero not to take her from him. "Remember," said he, "that I am old, and have but a few years more to live before I reach the end of my journey, to which the death of my unfortunate son has brought me years nearer. Do not, Signora, deprive me of the only being I love on earth. Make this sacrifice to Rovero's friend. In his name I ask you to do so. Have a little patience with the old man, and let Aminta close his eyes. I will soon restore her to you."

The mother made this sacrifice to the broken-hearted father, who almost on his knees besought her to give him her daughter to replace his lost son. In his suffering the Prince seemed to become doubly fond of the young woman. Her own father could not have been more anxious to spare her pain and to satisfy her least desires.

"She is my Antigone," said he, proudly, to all who met him leaning on the Marquise's arm. "I am, though, happier than Oedipus, for I can look at and admire her."

"When the Prince came into the drawing-room of his daughter he seemed excited. The Marquise bade Scorpione leave her, and the idiot crawled rather than walked to the door, through which he disappeared; not, however, until he had cast one glance on the young woman, as if to become satisfied that her features expressed neither menace nor anger.

"Good and kind as ever," said the Prince to Aminta; "you certainly appear to advantage with that hideous and deformed being. No one but a person generous as you are would keep so awful a being by you."

"To do so, father, I need only appeal to memory, and that will aid me. I cannot forget that I am indebted to him for my life, and above all, for the boon of being loved by you."

"Certainly," said the Prince, "I know all that; but you might take care of and watch over him, and make his life pleasant, without keeping him ever before you. I, who am not at all timid, assure you that I never see him without apprehension at your feet, hugging the fire like a serpent to quicken the icy blood in his veins."

"I will send him away if you wish me to."

"I wish you to do as you please. That you know well enough, my child. Keep the Scorpione, as you sometimes call him, and nurse up any horrible monster you please besides, and I will think it charming, or at least will not reproach you. My dear child, I have few amusements for you, and now your life must be sad indeed."

"No, no! dear father, I do not complain. The hotel is only sad when you are not here."

"Alas!" said the Prince, "there can be found but little interest in one as old as I am, and so unhappy too. Listen to me, Aminta, it is cruel to make children die before their parents. It reverses the order of nature to see the flower wither while the parent stem is green. I spoke to you of fate, because I was unwilling to mention God. Grief makes us pious. I dare not object to your decrees."

"Have you not yet a daughter?" said Aminta, passing her arm around the Prince's neck; "have you not a daughter who loves you?"

"Yes, yes, _my daughter_." The Prince laid an emphasis on the last word. "You are now my only child, and I wish to secure your happiness; and for that purpose will consecrate to you the remnant of my life. Yet I do not know what to do."

The young woman blushed--for perhaps she could have made a suggestion. The Prince, though, did not remark it, and continued:

"Our life is sadder even than it was. The friends of this world are like bees who hover only around flowers when they bloom, and scorn those which begin to wither. They avoid this house--"

"All friends do not act thus," said Aminta, concealing her emotion; "one of them, one who pleases you most, whom you love, Signor Monte-Leone, often comes hither to see you alone--"

"To see me?" said the Prince, looking shrewdly at his daughter-in-law; "perhaps he comes to see you. Since, however, his misfortune, the Count never comes near us. Perhaps he judges us incorrectly. He may have fancied the loss of fortune involved the sacrifice of our friendship. It is a bad judgment, and I say it with regret, of a bad heart."

"Ah father," said Aminta, "the Count must have had another reason to keep him away."

"Certainly," said M. de Maulear, "but these reasons have not kept him from seeing me. During the last fortnight, I have been ten times to his house. I am, however, glad he has acted thus, for his conduct will diminish my sorrow at his departure--"

"His departure?" said Aminta, unable to restrain an expression of surprise.

"His departure for Italy," said the Prince; "he was ordered this morning, by the French government, to leave France within twenty-four hours."

"And why?" said Aminta.

"He is accused," said Maulear, "of being concerned in some conspiracy contrary to the safety of the country."

"Ah, my God!" said the young woman, "then he is exiled and expelled from the kingdom."

"Decidedly; and he is forbidden ever to return."

Aminta, as she heard these words, felt as if her heart would burst. The Prince saw her agitation.

"What is the matter my child?" said he. "Why are you so sad?"

"Nothing, nothing, but a nervous attack, to which I am used."

Maulear looked at the Marquise for a few moments, and then said: "My child, there is no true love without confidence. My love gives me sacred rights over you. Do not be afraid to confide in me. Let not even the memory of the departed restrain you. You are twenty years of age; and your life has not approached its end. I am now about to tell you what I have often intended to: your happiness is the main object of my life, and never forget that, whatever may be your name, I shall always look on you as a daughter!"

Aminta threw herself into the Prince's arms and hid there her tears of gratitude and her blushes. De Maulear took his beautiful daughter-in-law on his knee, as he would have taken a child, and then lifting up Aminta's head with exquisite kindness, said: "Does he love you?"

"He did before I was married," said the young woman, looking down.

"And since then?"

"He has never spoken of love."

"He should not have done so," said the Prince; "often, though, the eyes say such things; and his, probably, are not inexpressive."

Aminta did not reply.

"All is clear," said the Prince; "the Count avoids us from a sentiment of delicacy which does him honor. He has no longer reason to hope, being ruined, for what, when rich, he would have given his life and fortune."

"He will go," said Aminta faintly.

"He will not, he shall not go. This conspiracy is, after all, only one of the phantoms ever arising before a terrified government. If the really revolutionary mind of Count Monte-Leone has involved him, I will promise to make him listen to reason, especially if you will aid me--as for this order to leave so abruptly, I hope my arm is long enough to interpose."

"What then will you do?" asked Aminta, anxiously.

"_Parbleu!_ I will go to the King himself--not to the ministers, but to the KING--to GOD, not to the saints. Mind, for the proverb's sake alone I apply that word to those gentry. The King is an old friend, a brother in exile. I never asked a favor of him, though he has often asked me to do so. We will see if he will refuse me."

"But," said Aminta, "time is short."

"Then," said the Prince, "to-morrow morning I will go to the Tuileries, and we will see what the minister will say when he hears Louis XVIII. say, _I will!_"

"Think you he will say so?"

"He must," said the Prince, kissing her; "for you and I say, _we will_. What a woman wills----To-morrow you shall have good news." He went away....

At that time the appearance of the Tuileries was very imposing. To the forms of the empire had succeeded the more luxurious and aristocratic ones of the restoration.

The stern military garb of the Imperial Guard, and of the Dragoons of the Empress, was replaced by the brilliant uniforms of the King's body-guards, of the _hundred Swiss_, an old name now replaced by the almost grotesque appellation of the _Gardes a pied ordinaires du corps du roi_, a species of giants, commanded by the Count of Tisseuil, a person only about four feet high, but an excellent soldier for all that. Then came the Swiss, the Royal guard, and on days of public ceremonies, the _Gardes de la Manche_, whose duty had special relation to the religious ceremonies of the chapel of the palace. The reception rooms, the great gallery, the hall of the marshals, glittered with embroidered dresses, _cordons_, collars and orders of every kind, both French and foreign. There were the stars of the empire--those of the monarchy--Russian, English, Austrian, Italian--the stars of all Europe. A large portion of the continent was in Paris. This portion was the most brilliant of all; for having tasted of Parisian refinement it was not at all anxious to return home. His majesty Louis XVIII., dressed in blue and wearing the royal cordon of the Saint Esprit, with his hair _a l'oisseu-royal_, and his legs hidden in broad pantaloons, which concealed their size, with his feet in shoes of buckskin, and pleasant and agreeable as ever, had been rolled by his footman from the room where he breakfasted, to his study. MM. de Blacas, d'Escars, and de Damas, his gentlemen in waiting, and many courtiers, had followed his majesty's chair to the very door of his study, where they paused. Then the human horses, who dragged the chair, having turned him around _on his own pivot_, bore him into the recesses of the room. The object of the manoeuvre we have described was to place the King vis-a-vis to his courtiers, to whom he bowed graciously. This was a signal for them to leave. The doors then closed with not a little noise, and this was all the public knew of royal life. Private matters, interviews with the ministers, audiences, had particular modes of entrance leading to the King's rooms and office. The latter was the sanctuary of royal thought, where great and petty acts were consummated, and where many confessions and audiences had been heard and given. There this literary King, better educated than half of his academy, had made commentaries on many learned Latins, especially on Horace. The King appropriated several hours of every day to study. To derange the distribution of this time, to take him from Juvenal, Tacitus, or Cicero, to discuss a plan of Villele or Angles, was almost high treason. One person alone dared to do this, and this person was above law. The reason was, he was more powerful than the King, having even majesty in subjection. The name of this man was Father Elysee. It was his business to keep the King alive. This was, as will be seen, a very important matter.

This man went into the King's room without notice, and without even tapping at his door. He did so, by virtue of the sovereign power of the patient over the invalid--by virtue of science over suffering humanity. The King, however, sometimes used to say, when Elysee made a very _brusque_ entrance: "_I only wish one thing, that disease may not break in on me brusquely as you do_."

As a fine and acute courtier, as an old slouth-hound of the palace with a keen scent, the Prince de Maulear went to Father Elysee for the purpose of obtaining a speedy audience.

"Is it you?" said the King, behind whom opened a door looking into the reception room.

"Yes," said the doctor, "I wish your majesty would not pay too much attention to your Latin and study. Nothing injures the digestive organs like study, especially after meals. Mind and matter then contend, and the body is almost always overcome."

"If I had to do only with my old friends, Horace and Petronius," said the King, "my digestion would be all right. Unfortunately I have found a few modern subjects well calculated to annoy Master Gaster--for the vermin of Juvenal and Persius would be honey of Hymethus compared with the bile of the books I speak of--"

The King pointed out to the doctor a few open pamphlets which lay about the table.

"_Norman Letters. The Man in the Grey Coat_--MINERVA," said the doctor, looking at them; "who dared to bring these books hither?"

"My majesty dared. I am as good a doctor as you are, but I have more patients. I have a whole nation to cure, and to administer a tonic we must at least be aware of the debility. Look hither," said the King, "here is an antidote to poison. _The Conservative_, edited by the most learned doctors of the political faculty--by de Chateaubriand, de Bonald, de Villele, Fievee. Castelbajac, and a certain Abbe de Lamennais, an eloquent, sharp, and able man, I am sure, who has, though, one fault, he is a greater royalist than his King."

"And may I venture to ask your majesty how the works of Etienne, Jay, Jony and company, came hither?"

"Smuggled in," said Louis XVIII., with a smile; "F----, one of my _valets de chambre_, whom I have placed at the head of what I call my secret ministry, brings them to me. The fellow has taste. He said to me the other day: '_I have something devilish good here. The scoundrels do not spare your majesty_.' But," continued the King, "no man can be great to his valet or his physician, and I will therefore confess that the works of these liberal gentlemen trouble my digestion not a little, and I wish my good friend the Duke d'Escars to bring me back that _puree de cailles truffees_, of which he is the inventor. He is the Prince of Gourmands."

"Then," said Pere Elysee, glad to be able thus to pass to the principal object of his visit, "I am just in time to amuse your majesty, and to announce the visit of one of your best friends--the Prince de Maulear."

"Just in time," said the King; "he is a gentleman of the old school, and has chosen _for fifty years_ to be such. He yet believes in a King of France, fully, perhaps more fully, than he does in God. He is a true enemy of the Jacobins and Revolutionists. Tell him to come in, doctor, and we will be able to bear up against the attacks of the authors of those books."

The doctor soon brought the Prince de Maulear, and then left.

"Come in, my dear Prince," said the King; "you do not spoil your friends, and I see you too rarely, as I see others too frequently, to be able to forget you."

Kings, however unpleasant they may be, have this analogy with the sun, all come to warm themselves by his rays.

"I thank your majesty for your kind reception."

"You were my friend and shared my exile."

"It was a sad season," said the Prince, sitting on the chair the King pushed towards him.

"Not so, Prince; then we had no cares and no enemies, above all we had no court. We were independent, calm, and happy."

"Perhaps you had health, but you had no crown."

"Think you that a great misfortune?"

"Perhaps not to your majesty, but it was to France."

"How? Does our friend the Prince de Maulear, contrary to every expectation, become a flatterer in his old age? In what part of the Tuileries did he contract that disease? Listen, my dear de Maulear. You as well as I know that _love of France_ is but a word. Once in France, people loved the King--now, though, France above all other things loves itself. This love is, if you please, egotistical, but after all it is the only real positive good in this selfish age. Mind I speak only of the owners, and therefore conservatives of the kingdom. The other portion of the kingdom, anxious at any risk to acquire, estimates the country cheaply. A few faithful hearts who welcomed me as a Messiah expected for twenty years, true and noble believers, looked on my return as the realization of their long and secret hopes. To the majority of my people the Bourbon lily has been only the olive-branch of peace purchased by twenty years of war. This peace I would not have brought back by the bayonets of the Austrians and Russians. But God, Buonaparte, and the Allies, so willed it. You see, my dear Prince, that I am not mistaken in relation to my subjects' love, and that the gems of a crown do not conceal its thorns."

"The King," said M. de Maulear, "at least deigns to reckon me among the faithful subjects of whom he spoke just now?"

"Yes, yes," said the King, "among the most faithful and most disinterested. When I came back, there was established a very partition of offices and places, or honors, titles, crosses and stars, in which you took no part. Now you know you are one of those to whom I could refuse nothing."

"Well," said the Prince, "your majesty gives me courage to make one request, to obtain which I come hither."

"Bah!" said the King, "speak out my old friend, if the matter depends on me--"

"Cannot the King do any thing?" said the Prince.

"The King can do very little," said Louis XVIII.

"When your majesty says 'I will--'"

"Others say, 'We will not.'"

"Who will dare to use such language?"

"The true Kings of France--the ministers--for they are responsible while I am not. To tell the fact, though, I have credit with them and will use it--"

"Yet the King is King," said the Prince.

"Ah, Prince!" said Louis XVIII, "I see plainly enough that you do not read my books. What could you say worse to an author? Open the charter and look--here it is: '_He reigns, but does not govern_.' This is my Bible, my code--and I can accuse no one but myself, if I do sigh sometimes. For all this emanates from me, and was conceived and written by my own hand. Unfortunately," said he, with bitterness, "in France every thing is interpreted literally."

"The favor I ask your majesty to grant me will I hope be within your reserved powers. Count Monte-Leone, a noble Neapolitan of my acquaintance, has been accused, beyond doubt unjustly, of political plots, and been abruptly ordered to leave France. I come to ask the king to remit this mortification."

"Ah, ah!" said Louis XVIII, gravely, "an anarchist. This is serious, very serious. Perhaps the safety of the monarchy depends on this, as the _Timid_[3] say. My dear brother retails a conspiracy a day to me; perhaps, after all, he is not far wrong. I will see, Prince. I will examine and consult a very important personage, without whom I cannot act."

"Will his Majesty," said the usher, who had just arrived, "receive the prime minister?"

"Exactly," said the King, "that is the person of whom I spoke."

"Go in there," said the King to the Prince, pointing to the waiting-room. "You shall have my, or rather his, answer, in a quarter of an hour. The result though will be the same."

The Prince obeyed, and his excellency the prime minister was received.

XIX. A REVELATION.

The audience the King gave his prime minister lasted nearly an hour. M. de Maulear began to grow impatient at his long delay, when the usher came to tell him the King waited for him....

When the Prince entered, Louis XVIII. had a smile on his lips. A skilful observer of countenances would however have remarked a shade of malice.

"You are then very fond of Count Monte-Leone?" said the King to the Prince, again telling him to be seated.

"Very, Sire," said the Prince. "Signor Monte-Leone is really a nobleman, with old blood, a kind heart, brilliant mind, and elegant manners. One of a race now rare. If your Majesty would but permit me to present him to you--"

"No, no," said the King; "I had rather not. Besides," continued he, "with his reputation as a dreamer and a revolutionist, as an enemy of our cousin Fernando of Naples--"

"The Count is in the way of conversion, Sire; and if the important person to whom your Majesty yields will suffer us to keep the Count in Paris, I am sure we will soon be able to restore him to favor."

"The _important person_," said Louis, with a smile, "was very much inclined to send your dear friend to his own country. New information in relation to this honorable and loyal noble," continued the King, "has completely changed the intentions entertained in relation to him."

"Indeed," said the Prince, with delight; "and will your Majesty deign to tell me what this information is?"

"No, no, my dear friend. This is strictly a political question, which cannot be divulged. One thing is certain, the Italian is no longer our enemy, but is devoted to us. He is a lamb in a lion's hide. Not only will we keep him in France, but will grant him immunity for all he may do in future and has done as yet. Thus you see," said the King, "I have done more than you asked."

"Such kindness," said the Prince, "overwhelms me with pleasure and gratitude."

"Ah, Prince," said the King, ironically, "how you love your friends! Yet distrust your heart in relation to these Italians. They are cunning, and sometimes treacherous, but always mild and winning, so as to lead astray our French honesty. They do not wear at their belt their most dangerous stiletto, but have another between their jaws which is often poisoned. God keep me from saying this of your dear Count. I would not hurt him at all, but on the other hand wish him to be well received and to be honored every where. This advice, however, I wish you to consider general, and not with reference to any particular case."

"Count Monte-Leone," continued the Prince, "is worthy of your Majesty's kindest wishes. He has only the noble qualities of his nation, energy, enthusiasm, and courage. His is an exalted mind, which a cruel family sorrow may for a time have led astray, but I will answer for him as I would for myself."

"Ah," said the King, "that is indeed saying much."

"Not enough for his merit. I would be proud if I resembled him."

At this the King could not repress his laughter, and the Prince looked at him with surprise, and almost with anger. The King soon resumed. "Excuse me, Prince, but you exhibited so extravagant an anxiety--no, no, virtuous as Monte-Leone may be, I like you as you are. Do not therefore envy his devotion, great as that may be to us. I like yours best."

"I will then tell the Count," said the Prince, "the favor your Majesty has deigned to grant him."

"No, no--not I. With affairs of that kind I have nothing to do. I leave that honor to the minister. Adieu, Prince," said he, "and come soon to see me again. Then ask something of me which may be worth granting." The Prince bowed respectfully, and left.

"Excellent man," said Louis XVIII., as he left. "He would have been surprised had I told him.... That Italian has bewitched him...."

On the evening before the day on which this scene took place, a man wrote in his office by the light of a shaded lamp, which made every thing but half visible. It was ten o'clock. A door opened, and an officer of one of the courts appeared. M. H...., the chief of the political police of whom we have already spoken, lifted up his head.

"What is the matter? and who is now come to interrupt me?" said he, with marked ill-humor.

The officer who had come in, and who was a _Huissier_, said, "'The Stranger,' and as Monsieur receives him always--"

"Let him come in," said M. H...., eagerly. "You were right to announce him."

The person whom we have previously seen with a mask at the house of M. H...., entered, and looked carefully around to see that he was with the Chief of Police alone. Many months had passed, and all we have described had taken place. For since then, we have gone, like a sound logician, backwards, in order to expose our _data_ distinctly before we proceed to define their consequences. Now the first appearance of the masked man in the cabinet of M. H.... coincided with the painful scene in which Taddeo Rovero had crushed the hopes of the Duchess of Palma by revealing to her the probability of the marriage of Monte-Leone and Aminta.

"Monsieur," said the stranger to M. H...., "have I kept my promise?"

"Yes," said H....

"Have I unfolded the plot of Carbonarism?"

"You have satisfied me of the existence of the French Venta, and of their identity with those of Italy and Spain. We have written to the police of those nations, and all was discovered to be exact, so that in a few days the governments of those countries will have acted."

"Have I named you the chief Carbonari in Paris?"

"You have."

"Have I given you their secret notes and books?"

"In relation to that, I am but partially satisfied, but I do not need the copies but the documents themselves, in the handwriting of their authors."

"You will have them--but there is an Italian proverb, _Chi va piano, va sano! e chi va sano, va lontano_. I told you the fruit was not yet ripe. I think, however, the time is approaching to gather it, and in a month I will--"

"But," said H...., "does not this delay endanger all? May they not act, while we pause?"

"Do you wish to know by your own observation who are the conspirators?" said the stranger.

"I do," said H....

"Do you wish to see--to hear them?"

"Yes, and to arrest them."

"Not yet--it is too soon. While your fowlers entrapped a few fledgelings the rest of the covey would escape."

"How can I see and hear them?"

"I alone can enable you to do so, or rather not I, but the person whose agent I am."

"And when?" said M. H...., impatiently.

"In three days. It is, however, first necessary to repair a grave error which endangers all our hopes."

"What fault?"

"The Minister of the Interior," continued the man, "has ordered three foreigners, a German, a Spaniard, and an Italian, to leave France. Those persons are Dr. Spellman of Berlin, the Duke D.... of Madrid, and Count Monte-Leone of Naples."

"True," said M. H.... "This is at the request of the ministers of those three nations."

"Well," said the mysterious man, "it must be at once revoked."

"Why?"

"Because, if one of these men leave Paris, you have nothing to expect from me."

"What say you?" asked H...., with surprise.

"I am," said the stranger, in a low tone, "as I told you, the agent of one of those strangers. In his name alone I can tell you what you are so anxious to know--without him I can do nothing. The elevated position of this man, his rank, his connection with Carbonarism, enable him to hear and know all. Without him I am reduced to silence and inertness; for I repeat to you, that he is the thought of which I am the action. Destroy him, and the other is valueless, and you return to ignorance--become especially dangerous as the time approaches for the mine to explode beneath your feet and those of the French monarchy."

"Why not name that man? why does he not name himself?"

"Because he wishes to preserve his reputation--because he would rather die than avow his services."

"Ah, indeed!" said H.... "The matter is difficult. The minister will not revoke these orders: for, while one of the men ceases to be an enemy of the country, the other two yet are."

"More than two--twenty of the most powerful, and two hundred thousand others to follow them."

"But what interest," asked M. H...., who hoped to arrive by a round about way at a discovery of the one of the three, the presence of whom was so necessary at Paris. "What reason can your _patron_ have to serve us, if he asks for neither gold, place, nor favor?"

"A far deeper interest than any of them. That I can confide to you--revenge."

"On whom?"

"His associates--ungrateful men, who have humiliated him in his self-esteem."

"How?"

"That is my secret and his."

"Well," said H...., "I can understand that. Hatred and revenge make as many informers as cupidity. Our criminal archives prove that."

"Well, to the purpose."

"All three will leave Paris to-morrow."

"Then with one of them will go the safety of France. His name must be a mystery. Revoke the orders, so that our man may remain, unless you prefer by their departure to break the only thread to guide you in this inextricable labyrinth."

"But you are here," said H...., unable to repress his anger, and wearied of the bravado and menaces of the man. "What can be obtained neither by money nor by persuasion, is often to be had by rigor."

"Very well, Monsieur," said the stranger. "I forgot I was in a country of treason, and you forget that you swore to use neither violence nor trickery. You can act as you please. I will however tell you what will be the result of your investigations. I am an humble man, and belong to my employer as the body does to the soul, as the hand does to the arm. It will be useless to follow me, for I have no objection to tell you whither I go. You may inquire into my past life; that will be vain, for I will tell you all. You may inquire into my resources, but you will lose your time, for I will satisfy you myself. There, however, you will lose your guide--all else will be a mystery to you, my relations with this man being of such a nature that God alone knows them. They can be penetrated only by my consent."

"Listen to me," said M. H...., changing his tone: "I was wrong--I was wrong to menace you, for I am weak, and you are strong. I have nothing, and you have every thing. I have only control of a few people whom I suspect, unauthenticated documents, and mere suspicions. In a time when party spirit runs as high as it does now, after the too frequent mistakes of our police, we must act on facts and evidence. I see that I need you. My power, however, gives way to that of another, and the minister alone can revoke the order of expulsion. Perhaps I may be able to cause him to revoke it, but I must enforce that demand by a serious motive, and must satisfy him of the necessity of resisting the demands of the allied sovereigns, and of keeping two dangerous men in Paris as the price of one useful one. I now understand the meaning of the mystery which surrounds your patron, and to prevent suspicion there must be three pardons. Give me then an argument which cannot be contradicted. Give me the name which you now keep secret. You know that I have kept my first oath with you, and I swear the minister alone shall be informed of the secret."

As he listened to M. H..., the stranger thought profoundly. He then seemed to adopt an energetic resolution, and uttered these strange words--"True, the higher the eminence from which a body falls, the more crushing the blow."

"What do you say?" said H...

"That your idea is correct, and changes my plan. When I came hither, I thought your will alone could correct the mistake which has been made. I now see it cannot, and have made up my mind. Sit there," said he to H...., who was astonished at his unceremonious tone, "sit there." He pointed out an arm-chair before the desk.

"What do you want now?" said H....

"What the favor you have asked from me authorizes me to demand. An arm," said he, "the blows of which cannot be parried. I wish you to sign me a letter of mark or a pass, as you please to call it, which permits those whom you employ to pass without disturbance."

"Beautiful!" said M. H...., with a smile; "now I understand you."

He wrote: "I recognize as a member of my police, employed by me, Monsieur...." He paused, and looked anxiously at the stranger. The latter leaned towards the Chief of Police, and in so low a tone that H.... could scarcely hear him, uttered a name which made the latter drop his pen. He however rallied himself, and wrote down the name. This document he afterwards authenticated by the seal of the police, and gave to the stranger.

"This is well," said the latter, as he received it. "Now be quick, for time presses, and the three persons will in a few hours have left Paris."...

When the man had left, and was alone, an atrocious smile appeared on his lips. This smile, however, was interrupted by an acute pain in his left arm. Then taking the paper which H.... had given him, he placed it on the wound, and said, "This is a cure for a wound I thought incurable--for steel and poison."

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Continued from page 504, vol. iii.

[3] At this time one or the ultra-royalist factions, called _Les Timides_.

From Fraser's Magazine.

A TROT ON THE ISLAND.

BY CHARLES ASTOR BRISTED.

Ashburner did leave Oldport, after all, before the end of the season, being persuaded to accompany a countryman and schoolmate of his (whom he had last seen two years before in Connaught, and who now happened to pass a day at Oldport, on his way Canada-ward from the south) in a trip to the White Mountains of New-Hampshire; though his American acquaintances, especially the ladies, tried hard to dissuade him from starting before the grand fancy ball, with which the season terminated, assuring him that most of "our set" would come back, if only for that one night, and that it would be a very splendid affair, and so forth. Nature had more charms for him than art, and he went away to New Hampshire, making an appointment with Benson by letter to meet him at Ravenswood early in September. But a traveller cannot make sure of his movements a fortnight ahead. On his return from the White Mountains, Ashburner had his pocket picked at a railway station (these little incidents of highly civilized life are beginning to happen now and then in America. The inhabitants repudiate any native agency therein, and attribute them all to the swell-mob emigrants from England), and, in consequence, was obliged to retrace his steps as far as New-York to visit his banker. Almost the first person he ran against in the street was Harry Benson.

"This _is_ an unexpected pleasure!" exclaimed the New-Yorker. "I never thought to see you here, and you, I presume didn't expect to see me." Ashburner explained his mishap. "Well, I meant to go straight over to Ravenswood after the ball, but we had to come home--all of us this time--on business. Lots of French furniture arrived for our town house. Mrs. B. couldn't rest till she had seen it all herself, and had it properly arranged. So here have I been five days, fussing, and paying, and swearing (legally, you understand, not profanely) at the custom-house, and then 'hazing'--what you call slanging upholsterers; and now that the work is all over, I mean to take a little play, and am just going over to see Lady Suffolk and Trustee trot on the island. Come along. It's a beautiful drive of eight miles, and I have a top-wagon. It is to meet me at the Park in a quarter of an hour." Ashburner assented. "I want to buy some cigars; you have no objection to accompany me a moment."

So they turned down one of the cross-streets running out of the lower part of Broadway (which, it may be here mentioned, for the benefit of English readers and writers, is not called _the_ Broadway), and entered a store five or six stories high, with two or three different firms on each floor; and Benson led the way up something between a ladder and a staircase into a small office, with "Bleecker Brothers" dimly visible on a tin plate over the door. Three-fourths of the apartment were filled up with all manner of inviting samples, every wine, liquor, and liqueur under the sun, in every variety of bottle or vial, thick with the dust of years, or open for immediate tasting; and through the dingy panes of a half glass door a multitudinous array of bottles might be seen loading the numerous shelves of a large store-room beyond. In a small clearing at one corner, where a small desk was kept in countenance by a small table, and three or four old chairs, with a background of shelves groaning under the choicest brands of the fragrant weed, sat the presiding deities of the place--the two little Bleeckers--the dark brother of thirty-five, and the light brother of twenty, like two sketches of the same man in chalk and charcoal; both elegantly dressed--white trousers, patent leather shoes, exuberant cravats, massive chains, and all the usual paraphernalia of young New-York--altogether looking as much in place as a couple of butterflies in an ant-hill.

"Good morning, gentlemen," said Benson. "Here's our friend Ashburner," and he pushed forward the Englishman. The brothers rose, laid down the morning journals over which they had been lounging, and welcomed the stranger to their place of business. "What's the news this morning?"

"Nothing at all, I believe," replied the elder. "South Carolina has been threatening to dissolve the Union again--and that's no news. Stay, did you see this about Bishop Hughes and Sam Thunderbolt, the Native American member of Congress from Pennsylvania?"

"I haven't seen even a newspaper for the last three days."

"Well, '+ John of New-York,'--_cross John_, as your brother Carl used to call him--was in the same rail-car with Thunderbolt, coming from Philadelphia to New-York; and the Congressman didn't know who he was, but probably suspected he was a priest."

"Yes, you can generally tell a priest by his looks. Even an intelligent horse will do that. Once I was riding with one of our bishops near Boston, and his nag shied suddenly at a man in a broad-brimmed hat. Says the right reverend (we don't call 'em 'my lord' in this country, you know, Ashburner), 'I shouldn't wonder if that was a Romish priest;' and we looked again, and it was. There was a Protestant horse for you! What a treasure he would have been to an Orangeman!"

"So Thunderbolt began to abuse the Roman Catholics generally, and the priests particularly, and that brawling bigot Johnny Hughes most particularly. Hughes, who is a wary man, polite and self-possessed, sat through it all without saying a word; till another gentleman in the car asked Thunderbolt if he knew who that was opposite him. He didn't know. 'It's Bishop Hughes,' says the other, in a half whisper. 'Are you Bishop Hughes?' exclaims the native, quite off his guard. 'They call me so,' answered the other, with a quiet smile, expecting to enjoy the humiliating confusion of his denouncer; and the other passengers shared in the expectation, and were prepared for a titter at Thunderbolt's expense. But instead of attempting any apology, or showing any further embarrassment, he pulled out an eyeglass, and after looking at the Jesuit through it for some time, thus announced the result of his inspection--'Oh, you are, are you? Well, you're just the kind of looking loafer I should have expected Johnny Hughes to be.'"

"I don't believe Hughes was much disconcerted either," said the elder brother; "he doesn't lose his balance easily. I never heard of his being put out but once, and that was when Governor Bouck met him. He was a jolly old Dutchman, Mr. Ashburner, who used to go about electioneering, and asking every man he came across--how he was, and how his wife and family were. When Bishop Hughes was introduced to him, they thought the governor would know enough to vary the usual question a little; but he didn't, and asked after the Romish bishop's wife and family with all possible innocence; and Hughes, for once in his life, was nonplussed what to answer."

"Ah, but you haven't told the end of that," put in Benson. "When the governor's friends tried to explain to him the mistake he had made, and the category the Romish ecclesiastics were in, he said, 'O yas, I see, I should have asked after de children only, and said nossing about de woman.' As you say, Hughes generally has his wits about him, no doubt. He played our custom-house a trick that they will not forget in a hurry. Soon after General Harrison and the Whigs came in, and Curtis was made collector of our port, there arrived a great lot of what the French call _articles de religion_, robes, crucifixes, and various ornaments, for Hughes' cathedral. Now these were all French goods, and subject to duty, and a notification to that effect was sent to the proper quarter. Down comes Hughes in a great rage. 'Mr. Curtis, Mr. Curtis, we never had to do this before. Your predecessor, Mr. Hoyt, always let our articles of religion in free of duty.' 'Can't help what my predecessor, Mr. Hoyt, used to do,' says Curtis; 'the law is so and so, as I understand it, and these articles are subject to duty. If you like, you may pay the duties under protest, and bring a suit against Uncle Sam[4] to recover the money.' (You see, the Loco Focos had always favored the Romish priests to get the Irish vote. The Whigs didn't in those days--it was before our side had been corrupted by Seward, and such miserable demagogues; and Curtis wasn't sorry to see his political opponent the Bishop in a tight place.) After Hughes had blustered awhile, and found it did no good, he tried the other tack, and began to expostulate. 'Is there no way at all, Mr. Curtis,' says he, 'by which these articles may be passed, free of duty?' 'None at all,' says the other, 'unless'--and he paused, hardly knowing whether it would do to hint at such a thing, even in jest--'unless, bishop, you are willing to swear that these are _tools of your trade_.' 'And sure they are that!' quoth Hughes, snapping him up, 'bring on your book;' and he had the goods sworn through in less than no time, before Curtis could recover himself."

"Not a bad hit," said the Englishman. "Tools of his trade! So they were, sure enough; but one would not have expected him to own it so coolly."

"Unless there was something to be got by it," continued Benson. "Now this is true--every word of it, though it _has_ been in the newspapers; and the way I came to find it out was this. One day I saw in the advertising columns of the _Blunder and Bluster_, a circular from the _Secretary of the Treasury_, stating that 'crucifixes, whether of silver or copper, images, silk and velvet vestments, and theological books, did not come under the head of _tools of trade_, but were subject to duty.' It was a funny looking notice, and there was evidently something behind it; so I took the trouble to inquire, and found that the cause of the order was this clever stroke of Hughes. Going to the trot to-day?"

The younger brother was going, and it was near the time when he expected his wagon. Dicky wasn't. He had given up trots ten years ago--thought them low.

"Give me a few cigars before we go," said Benson. "What have you here that's first rate? Carbagal, Firmezas, Antiguedad. H--m. I'll take a dozen Firmezas, and you may send me the rest of the box."

"Don't you want some champagne--veritable Cordon Bleu--only fourteen dollars a dozen, and a discount if you take six cases?"

"And if you wish to secure some tall Lafitte, we bought some odd bottles at old Van Zandt's sale the other day. You remember drinking that wine at Wilson's last summer?"

Benson remembered it perfectly, and would take the Lafitte by all means. "Put that down, Mr. Snipes;" and for the first time, Ashburner was aware of the clerk--a very young gentleman, who appeared from behind the desk, and booked the order at it. "And how about the champagne?"

"_J'y penserai._ Time to go. _Vamos._" And Benson carried off his friend.

"You were a little taken aback, weren't you?" he asked, as they went in quest of the wagon. "When you saw these men figuring in the German cotillion, and helping to lead the fashion at Oldport, you hardly expected to encounter them in such a place. Well, now, let me tell you something that will astonish you yet more. So far from its being against these brothers in society that they are, what you would call in plain English a superior order of grocers, it is positively in their favor; that is to say, they are more respected, better received, and stand a better chance of marrying well, than if they did nothing. They might do nothing if they chose. They had enough to live very well on _en garcon_. The Bleeckers are of our best known and most thoroughly respectable families. The sons had no taste for books; they have a very good taste for wine and cigars, and have undertaken what they are best fit for. It's better than being nominal lawyers?"

"Pecuniarily, no doubt; but is it as good for the whole development of the man? Was it you, or your friend Harrison, who instanced Richard Bleecker as a man who had made no progress in any thing manly for fifteen years?"

"That is the fault of his natural disposition, which would not be bettered by his making believe to be a professional man, or being an avowedly idle one. He is frivolous and ornamental for a part of his time--during the rest, he has his business to occupy him. If he had not that, he would spend all his time in elegant idleness, and know no more than he does now. His pursuits bring him in money, which will be a comfort to his wife and family when he marries--though, to be sure, he is rather ancient for that; a single man at thirty-five is with us a confirmed old bachelor. But his brother is in a fair way to form a nice establishment."

"Now tell me another thing. Suppose the Bleeckers had chosen to become jewellers, or merchant tailors--they might be good judges of either business, and make money by it--how would that affect their position?"

"Unfavorably, I confess," replied Benson. "But we Gothamites have so thorough a respect for, and appreciation of, good wine and cigars, that the importation of them is considered particularly laudable."

Any further discussion was stopped by their arrival at that dreary triangular square (_more hibernico loqui_) called the Park, where Benson's wagon awaited him--not the red-wheeled one; this vehicle was of a uniform dark green, furnished with a top (a desirable appendage when the thermometer stands 85 deg. in the shade,) and lined throughout with drab. The ponies were carefully enveloped to the very tips of their ears in white fly-nets. As the groom saw Benson approaching, he put himself and the top through a series of queer evolutions, which ended in the latter being lowered--a very necessary operation, to allow any one to get in with comfort; and after Benson and Ashburner were in, he put it up again with some ado, and then went his way, the concern only holding two. Then Benson turned the wagon round by backing and locking, and making it undergo a series of contortions as if he wanted to double it up into itself, and run over himself with his own wheels, and drove to the Fulton Ferry; for to arrive at the Centreville Course on Long Island--familiarly designated as _the_ island--you first pass through Brooklyn, that trans-Hudsonian suburb of New York, which thirty years ago was a miserable little village, and now contains upwards of ninety thousand inhabitants.

"And how did the ball go off?" asked Ashburner, as they rolled up the main avenue of Brooklyn, at the slowest possible trot, according to the well known rule, always to take a fast horse easy over pavement. On board the ferry-boat there had not been much conversation, the horses being so worried by the flies as to require all Benson's attention.

"Oh, it was rather a _fiasco_, but we had some fun. Some predicted that the fashionables would come back, but they didn't, except a few of the young men; and all of our set that were there threatened to go out of costume; but then we recollected that would have been a very Irish way of serving out Mr. Grabster, as by the established regulation in such cases, we should have had to pay double for tickets; so most of us took sailors' or firemen's dresses--the cheapest and commonest disguises we could get; and the ladies made some trivial addition to their ordinary ball-dresses--a wreath or a few extra flowers--and called themselves brides, or Floras, and so on. And some of the crack Bostonians blasphemed the expense, and went in plain clothes. So we had the consolation of making fun of all the outsiders, and their attempts at costume--such supernumeraries as most of them were! And none of the _comme-il-faut_ people would serve on the committee, so Grabster had nobody to get up the room in proper style, and it looked like a 'Ripton' ball-room; and _The Sewer_ reporters were there, in all their glory. The Irishman had borrowed or stolen a uniform somewhere, and the Frenchman was appropriately arrayed in red as a devil, and he went about taking notes of all the people's dresses, especially the ladies'; and as our ladies were not in costume, he thought he must have something to do with them, and so presented some of them with bouquets, which they wouldn't take, of course; and the young men trod on his toes and elbowed him off till he swore he would put them all in his paper. And we danced away, notwithstanding _The Sewer_ and all its works. Tom Edwards was accoutred as Mose the fireman, and Sumner had an old French _debardeur_ dress of his, just the thing for the occasion, only his shoes were too big; and after tripping up himself and his partner four times, he kicked them off clean into the orchestra, and fearfully aggravated the fiddlers; and he took it as coolly as he does every thing--put on a pair of ordinary boots, and was polking away again in five minutes. And we kept it up till two in the morning, polka chiefly, with a sprinkling of _deuxtemps_, and then had a very bad supper, and some very bad wine, of Mr. Grabster's providing--genuine New Jersey champagne. How we looked after the dancing! Sumner's _debardeur_ shirt might have been wrung out, it was so wet; and Mrs. Harrison--she had got herself up as Undine--was dripping enough for half-a-dozen water-nymphs; and Miss Friskin had a shiny green silk dress; we had been polking together, and my white waistcoat, and pants, and cravat, were all stained green, as if I had been playing with a gigantic butterfly. And then after supper, when there was no one but our German cotillion set left, and just as we had put the chairs in order, the musicians struck work, and would not play any more (you know what an impracticable, conceited, obstinate brute a third-rate German musician is), saying they were only bound to play just so long; so I gave them a good slanging in their own tongue (I know German enough to blow up a man, and a fine strong language it is for the purpose); and White swore it was too bad, and Edwards tried to make them a conciliatory speech--only he was too tipsy to talk straight; and Sumner offered them fifty dollars to go on playing. Thereupon, up and spake the big bass-viol,--'We ton't want your money; we want to be dreated like chentlemens;' and then Frank lost his temper. 'I'll treat you,' says he; and with that he delivered right and left into the bass-viol, and knocked him through his own instrument; and then some one knocked Sumner over the head with a trombone;--then we all set to, and gave the musicians their change (we owed them a little before, for it wasn't the first time they had been saucy to us,) and we thrashed them essentially, and comminuted a few of their instruments. And half-a-dozen of the Irish waiters came out, with their sleeves rolled up, to fight for the honor of the house, and protect Mr. Grabster's property--meaning the musicians, I suppose;--and Haralson of Alabama, one of your regular six-feet-two-in-his-stockings South Western men, who had come North to learn the polka, and become civilized--Haralson pulled out a Bowie and swore he would whistle them up if they didn't make themselves scarce. By Jove! you should have seen the Paddies scud! And I caught _The Sewer_ reporter (the Irish one) in the _melee_, and let him have a kick that landed him in the middle of the floor, telling him he might put that into his next letter, and afterwards go to a place worse even than _The Sewer_ office. Then, after all the enemy were fairly routed, we adjourned to my parlor. I had some good champagne of my own, and a _pate_ or two, and some Firmezas, and we held a jolly revel till four o'clock, and then the ladies retired, and we quiet married men did the same, and the boys went to fight the tiger, and Edwards lost 1400 dollars, and some of them took to running foot-races for a bet on the post-road. Haralson outran all the rest--and his senses too--and was found next evening about five miles up the road with no coat or hat, and one stocking off and the other stocking on, like my son John in the nursery rhyme, and his watch and purse gone. And _The Sewer_ and _Inexpressible_ said that it was the most brilliant ball that had occurred within the memory of the oldest inhabitants. And that's a pretty fair synopsis of the whole proceedings."

By this time they were off the pavement,--a change very sensible and desirable to man and horse, for an American pavement is something beyond imagination or description, and must be experienced to be understood. The ponies, without waiting for the word, went off on their long steady stroke at three-quarters speed, and though the day was warm and the road heavy, stepped over the first three miles in twelve minutes, as Benson took care to show Ashburner by his watch. They challenged wagon after wagon, but no one seemed inclined to race at this stage of the proceedings, and they glided quietly by every thing. Only once was heard the sound of competing feet, when a black pacer swept up, with two tall wheels behind him, and a man mysteriously balanced between them. "After the sulky is manners," said Harry, slackening his speed, and giving the pacer a wide berth; and the man on the wheels whizzed by like a mammoth insect, and was soon lost to view amid a cloud of dust.

And now they arrived at a tavern where the owners of "fast crabs" were wont to repose, to water their horses, and brandy-and-water themselves. The former operation is performed very sparingly, the supply of liquid afforded to the animals consisting merely of a spongeful passed through their mouths; the latter is usually conducted on more liberal principles. But as our friends felt no immediate desire to liquor, Benson amused himself while the horses rested by putting down his top, for the sky had slightly clouded over,--a favorable circumstance, he remarked, for the trot. Just as he was starting his ponies, with a chirrup, a tandem developed itself from under the shed, and its driver greeted him with a friendly nod.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Losing," quoth Harry, raising his whip-hand in answer to the salute; then, _sotto voce_ to Ashburner, "a Long-Island fancy man: lots of money, and no end of fast horses."

Mr. Losing had a thin hatchety face, and a very yellow complexion, with hair and beard to match. He wore a yellow straw-hat, and a yellowish-gray summer paletot, with yellowish-brown linen trousers. His light gig (of the kind technically called a double-sulky) was painted a dingy yellow-ochre; the horses were duns, the fly-nets drab, and what little harness there was, retained the original law-calf color of its leather; in short, the whole concern had a general pervading air of dun, which but for the known wealth of its owner might have been suggestive of unpleasant Joe-Millerisms. The only exception was his companion, a gay horse-dealer and jockey, who acted as amateur groom on this occasion. Mr. Van Eyck had sufficient diversity of color in his dress to relieve the monotony of a whole landscape,--blue coat and gilt buttons, lilac waistcoat and ditto, red cravat and red-striped check shirt, white hat and trousers. His apparel might have been a second-hand suit of Bird Simpson's. As the gig came out close at the wheels of the wagon, the two whips interchanged glances, as much as to say, "Here's at you!" and "Come on!" and Losing tightened his reins; then, as his leader ranged up alongside Benson's horses, the latter drew up his lines also, and the teams went off together.

A good team race is more exciting to both the lookers-on and the performers than any contest of single horses; there is twice as much noise, twice as much skill in driving, and apparently greater speed, though in reality less. Neither had started at the top of their gait, but they kept gradually and proportionally crowding the pace, till they were going about seventeen miles an hour, and at that rate they kept for the first half-mile exactly in the same relative position as they had started. No one spoke a word; the close contact of horses in double harness excites them so, that they require checking rather than encouragement; but Benson with a rein in his hand was feeling every inch of his ponies, and watching every inch of the road. Losing sat like a statue, and his horses seemed to go of themselves. Then, as the ground began to rise, Losing drew gradually ahead, or rather Benson's team came back to him; still it was inch by inch; in the next quarter the wheeler instead of the leader was alongside the other team, and that was all Losing had gained. Then Harry, with some management, got both reins into one hand, and lifted his nags a little with the whip. At the same time Losing altered his hold for the first time, and shook up his horses. There was a corresponding increase of speed in both parties, which kept them in the same respective position, and so they struggled on for a little while longer, till just before the road descended again, Benson made another effort to recover his lost ground. In so doing, he imprudently loosened his hold too much, and his off horse went up.

The moment Firefly lost his feet Benson threw his whole weight upon the horses, and hauled them across the road, close in behind Losing's gig, the break having lost him just a length, so that when they struck into their trot again they were at the Long-Islander's wheel. Down the hill they went, faster than ever; the wagon could not gain an inch on the gig, or the gig shake the wagon off. But Losing had manifestly the best of it, as all his dust went into the face of Benson and Ashburner, enveloping and powdering them and their equipage completely. Their only consolation was, that they were bestowing a similar one on every wagon that they passed. As both teams were footing their very best, Benson's only chance of getting by was in case one of the tandems should happen to break, a chance which he kept ready to take advantage of. By and by the leader went up, but Losing, who had his horses under perfect command, let him run a little way, and caught him again into his trot without losing any thing. Nevertheless Benson, who had seen the break, made a push to go by, and with a great shout crowded his team up to the wheeler, but there they broke,--this time both horses,--and before he could bring them down he was two lengths in the rear. Then Losing drew on one side, and slackened his speed, and Benson also pulled up almost to a walk.

"His double sulky is lighter than my wagon," said Harry, "even without the top, and the top makes fifty pounds difference. The machine is built a little heavier than the average, purposely because it rides easier, and shakes the horses less when there are inequalities in the road, so that besides being pleasanter to go in, a team can take it along about as fast as any thing lighter for a short brush, but when the horses are so nearly equal, and you have some miles to go on a heavy road, the extra weight tells. However, it is no disgrace to be beaten by Losing, any way, for his horses are his study and _specialite_. Every fortnight the bolts and screws of his wagon are re-arranged; his collars fit like gloves; he has a particular kind of watering-pot made on purpose to water his horses' legs. Every trifle is rigorously attended to. You ought to visit his, or some other sporting man's stable here, just to note the difference between that sort of thing with us and with you. Instead of hunters and steeple-chasers, you will see fine trotters together that can all beat 2' 50''."

The road happened just then to be pretty clear, so they proceeded leisurely for some miles further, till just as they were quitting the turnpike for a lane which led to the course, the rattle of wheels and the shouts of drivers came up behind them. Benson, not disposed to swallow any more of other people's dust if he could help it, waked up his horses at once, and they clattered along the lane, up hill and down, and over a railroad track, and past numerous wagons, at a faster rate than ever. "_Do_ get out of the way!" shouted Henry to one primitive gentleman, with a very tired horse, who was occupying exactly the centre of the road. "You go to ----." The individual addressed was probably about to say something very bad, when Benson, who was a moral man, and had the strongest wheels, cut short any possible profanity for the moment by driving slap into him, and knocking him into the ditch, with the loss of a spoke or two. This collision hardly delayed their speed an instant; and though some of the pursuers were evidently gaining, no one overhauled them for three-quarters of a mile, at the end of which Starlight and Firefly swept proudly up to the course, with a long train in their rear.

All the vicinity of the Centreville Course--not the stables and sheds merely, but the lanes leading to it, the open ground about it, the whole adjacent country, one might almost say--was covered with wagons stowed together as closely as cattle in a market. If it had been raining wagons and trotters the night before just over the place, like showers of frogs that country editors short of copy fill a column with, or if they had grown up there ready harnessed, there could not have been a more plentiful supply. Wagons, wagons, wagons everywhere, of all weights, from a hundred and eighty pounds to four hundred, with here and there a sulky for variety--horses of all styles, colors, and merits--no sign of a servant or groom of any kind, but a number of boys, mostly blackies, about one to every ten horses, who earned a few shillings by looking after the animals, and watching the carpets, sheets, and fly-nets. The only other movables, the long-handled short-lashed whips, were invariably carried off by their proprietors. Whips and umbrellas are common property in America; they are an exception to the ordinary law of _meum_ and _tuum_, and strictly subject to socialist rules. Woe to the owner of either who lets his property go one second out of his sight!

"Now then, Snowball!" quoth Benson, as a young gentleman of color rushed up on the full grin, stimulated to extra activity by the recollection of the past and the vision of prospective "quarters,"--"take care of the fliers, and don't let any one steal their tails! I ought to tell you," he continued to Ashburner, leading the way towards the big, dilapidated,[5] unpainted, barn-like structure, which appeared to be the rear of the grandstand, "you won't find any gentlemen here--that is, not above half-a-dozen at most."

"I was just wondering whether we should see any ladies."

Benson pointed over his left shoulder; and they planked their dollar a-piece at the entrance.

Ashburner's first impression, when fairly inside, was that he had never seen such a collection of disreputable looking characters in broad daylight, and under the open sky. All up the rough broad steps, that were used indifferently to sit or stand upon; all around the oyster and liquor stands, that filled the recess under the steps; all over the ground between the stand and the track, was a throng of low, shabby, dirty men, different in their ages, sizes, and professions; for some were farmers, some country tavern-keepers, some city ditto, some horse-dealers, some gamblers, and some loafers in general; but alike in their slang and "rowdy" aspect. There is something peculiarly disagreeable in an American crowd, from the fact that no class has any distinctive dress. The gentleman and the working-man, or the "loafer," wear clothes of the same kind, only in one case they are new and clean, in the other, old and dirty. The ragged dress-coats and crownless beavers of the Irish peasants have long been the admiration of travellers; now, elevate these second-hand garments a stage or two in the scale of preservation--let the coats be not ragged, but shabby, worn in seam, and greasy in collar; the hats whole, but napless at edge, and bent in brim; supply them with old trousers of the last fashion but six, and you have the general costume of a crowd like the present. But ordinary collections of the [Greek: oi polloi] are relieved by the very superior appearance of the women; pretty in their youth, lady-like and stylish even when prematurely faded, always dressed respectably, and frequently dressed in good taste, they form a startling relief and contrast to their cavaliers; and not only the stranger, but the native gentleman, is continually surprised at the difference, and says to himself, "Where in the world could such nice women pick up those snobs?" Here, where there is not a woman within a mile (unless that suspicious carriage in the corner contains some gay friends of Tom Edwards'), the congregated male loaferism of these people, without even a decent looking dog among them, is enough to make a man button his pockets instinctively.

Amid this wilderness of vagabonds may be seen grouped together at the further corner of the stand the representatives of the gentlemanly interest, numbering, as Benson had predicted, about half-a-dozen. Losing, with his yellow blouse and moustache to match; Tom Edwards, in a white hat and trousers, and black velvet coat; Harrison, slovenly in his attire, and looking almost as coarse as any of the rowdies about, till he raises his head, and shows his intelligent eyes; Bleecker, who had just arrived; and a few specimens of Young New-York like him. Benson carries his friend that way, and introduces him in due form to the Long Islander, who receives him with an elaborate bow. Ashburner offers a cigar to Losing, who accepts the weed with a nod of acknowledgment (for he rarely opens his mouth except to put something into it, or to make a bet), and offers one of his in return, which Ashburner trying, excoriates his lips at the first whiff, and is obliged to throw it away after the third, for Charley Losing has strong tastes, will rather drink brandy than wine, any day, and smokes tobacco that would knock an ordinary man down.

The stranger glances his eye over the scene of action. A barouche and four does not differ more from a trotting wagon, or a blood courser from a Canadian pacer, than an English race-course from an American "track." It is an ellipse of hard ground, like a good and smooth piece of road, with some variations of ascent and descent. The distance round is calculated at a mile, according to the scope of turning requisite for a horse before a sulky--that being the most usual form of trotting; for a saddle-horse that has the pole,[6] it comes practically to a little less; for a harness-horse (especially if to a wagon) with an outside place, to a little, or sometimes a good deal more. Around the inclosure, within the track (which looks as if it were trying hard to grow grass and couldn't), a few wagons, which obtained entrance by special favor, are walking about; they belong to the few men who have brought their grooms with them. Harrison's pet trotter is there, a magnificent long-tailed bay, as big as a carriage-horse, equal to 2' 50'' on the road before that wagon, and worth fifteen hundred dollars, it is said. Just inside the track, and opposite the main stand outside, is a little shanty of a judge's stand, and marshalled in front of it are half a dozen notorious pugilists, and similar characters, who, doubtless on the good old principle of "set a thief," &c., are enrolled for the occasion as special constables, with very special and formidable white bludgeons to keep order, and precise suits of black cloth to augment their dignity.

"To come off at three o'clock," said the handbills. It is now thirty-five minutes past three, and no signs of beginning. An American horse and an American woman always keep you waiting an hour at least. One of the judges comes forward, and raps on the front of the stand with a primitive bit of wood resembling a broken boot-jack. "Bring out your horses!" People look towards the yard on the left. Here is one of them just led out; they pull off his sheets, his driver climbs up into the little seat behind him. He comes down part of the stand at a moderate gait. Hurrah for old Twenty-miles-an-hour! Trustee! Trustee!

The old chestnut is half-blood; but you would never guess it from his personal appearance, so chunky, and thick-limbed, and sober-looking is he. His action is uneven, and seemingly laborious; you would not think him capable of covering _one_ mile in three minutes, much less of performing twenty at the same rate. No wonder he hobbles a little behind, for his back sinews are swelled, and his legs scarred and disfigured--the traces of injuries received in his youth, when a cart ran into him, and cut him almost to pieces. Veterinary surgeons, who delight in such relics, will show you pieces of sinew taken from him after the accident. That was six or seven years ago: since then he has solved a problem for the trotting world.

"There," says Benson, with a little touch of triumph, "is the only horse in the world that ever trotted twenty miles in an hour. I saw it done myself. He was driven nearly two miles before he started, to warm him up, and make him limber. When the word was given, he made a skip, and though his driver, not the same that he has now, caught him before he was fairly off his feet, he was more than three minutes doing the first mile, which looked well for the backers of time; but as the old fellow went on, he did every mile better than the preceding, and the last in the best time of all, winning with nearly half a minute to spare."

"Has the experiment been often tried?"

"Not more than two or three times, I believe; and the horses who attempted it broke down in the eighteenth or nineteenth mile. Nevertheless, I think that within the last twelve years we have had two or three horses beside Trustee who could have accomplished the feat; but as such a horse is worth two thousand dollars and upwards, a heavy bet would be required to tempt a man to risk killing or ruining his animal; and our sporting men, though they bet frequently, are not in the habit of betting largely. That is one reason why it has not been tried oftener; and I am inclined to think that there is another and a better motive. The owner of a splendid horse does not like to risk his life; and it is a risk of life to attempt to trot him twenty miles an hour."

Pit, pat! pit, pat! The old mare is coming down to the score. A very ordinary looking animal in repose, the magnificence of her action converts her into a beauty when moving. How evenly her feet rise and fall, regularly as a machine, though she is nearly at the top of her speed! She carries her head down, and her neck stretched out, and from the tip of her nose to the end of her long white tail, that streams out in the breeze made by her own progress, you might draw a straight line, so true and right forward does she travel. Perched over her tail, between those two tall, slender wheels, sits her owner, David Bryan, the only man that ever handles her, in something like a jockey costume, blue velvet jacket and cap to match, and his white hair, whiter than his horse's tail, streaming in the wind--a respectable and almost venerable looking man; but a hard boy for all that, say the knowing ones. Great applause from the Long Island men, who swear by "the Lady," and are always ready to "stake their pile" on her, for her owner is a Long-Islander, and she is a Suffolk county, Long-Island mare. Some eight years ago Lady Suffolk was bought out of a baker's cart for 112 dollars, and since then she has won for "Dave" upwards of 30,000 dollars. That is what the possessor of a fast trotter most prides himself on--to have bought the animal for a song on the strength of his own eye for his points, and then developed him into a "flier." When a colt is bred from a trotting stallion, put into training at three or four years old, and sold the first time for a high price, if he turns out well there is no particular wonder or merit in it; if he does not, the disappointment is extreme.

Ah, here comes Pelham at last--a clean little bay, stepping roundly, and lifting his legs well; you might call it a perfect action, if we had not just seen Lady Suffolk go by--but _so_ wicked about the head and eyes! Behind the little horse sits a big Irishman, in his shirt sleeves; and they are hauling away at each other, pull Pat, pull Pelham, as if the man wanted to jerk the horse's head off, and the horse to draw the man's arms out. You see the driver is holding by little loops fastened to the reins, to prevent his grasp from slipping. Pelham is a young horse for a trotter, say seven years old, and has already done the fastest mile ever made in harness; but his temper is terribly uncertain, and to-day he seems to be in a particularly bad humor.

Trustee, who requires much warming up, goes all round the track, increasing his speed as he goes, till he has reached pretty nearly his limit. Pelham also completes the circuit, but more leisurely. The Lady trots about a quarter of a mile, then walks a little, and then brushes back. Her returning is even faster and prettier than her going. "2' 33''," says Losing, speaking for the first time, as she crosses the score (the line in front of the judge's stand). His eye is such that, given the horse and the track, he can tell the pace at a glance within half a second.

The gentry about are beginning to bet on their respective favorites, and some upon time--trifling amounts generally--five, ten, or twenty dollars; and there is much pulling out, and counting, and depositing of greasy notes. Bang! goes the broken boot-jack again. This time it is not "Bring _out_ your horses!" but "Bring _up_ your horses!"--a requisition which the drivers comply with by turning _away_ from the stand. This is to get a start, a _flying start_ being the rule, which obviously favors the backers of time, and is, in some respects, fairer to the horses, but is very apt to create confusion and delay, especially when three or four horses are entered. So it happens in the present instance: half way up the quarter, the horses turn, not all together, but just as they happen to be; and off they go, some slower and some faster, trying to fall into line as they approach the score. "Come back!" It's no go, this time; Pelham has broken up, and is spreading himself all over the track. Trustee, too, is a length or more behind the gray mare, and evidently in no hurry. They all go back, the mare last, as she was half-way down the other quarter before the recall was understood.

"What a beauty she is!" says Harry. "And she has the pole too."

"Will you bet two to three on her against the field?" asks Edwards, who knew very well that Trustee is the favorite. Benson declines. "Then will you go on time? Will you bet on 7' 42'', or that they don't beat 7' 47''" (three mile heats, you will recollect, reader). No, Harry won't bet at all; so Edwards turns to Losing. "Will you bet three to five in hundreds on the Lady?" Losing will. They neither plank the money, nor book the bet, but the thing is understood.

Pelham's driver has begged the judges to give the word, even if he is two lengths behind; he would rather do that than have his horse worried by false starts. So this time, perhaps, they will get off. Not yet! Bryan's mare breaks up just before they come to the score. Harrison hints that he broke her on purpose, because Trustee was likely to have about a neck advantage of him in the start. "Of course they never go the first time," says Benson, "and very seldom the second."

"I saw nine false starts once, at Harlaem," says Bleecker, "where there were but three horses. Better luck next time."

It is better luck. Pelham lays in the rear full two lengths, but Trustee and the mare come up nose and nose to the score, going at a great pace. "Go!" At the word Trustee breaks. "Bah! take him away! Where's Brydges?" The superior skill of his former driver, is painfully remembered by the horse's friends. But he soon recovers, and catches his trot about two lengths behind the mare, and as much in advance of Pelham; for the little bay is going very badly, seems to have no trot in him, and his driver dares not hurry him. In these respective positions they complete the first quarter.

As they approach the half mile, the distance renders their movements indistinct, and their speed, positive or relative, difficult to determine. You can only make out their position. Pelham continues to lose, and Trustee has gained a little; but the gray mare keeps the lead gallantly.

"I like a trot," says Benson, "because you can watch the horses so long. In a race they go by like a flash, once and again, and it's all over."

In the next quarter they are almost lost to view, and then they appear again coming home, and you begin once more to appreciate the rate at which they are coming. Still it is not the very best pace; the Lady is taking it rather easy, as if conscious of having it all her own way; and her driver looks as careless and comfortable as if he were only taking her out to exercise, when she glides past the stand.

"2' 35''," says Losing. He doesn't need to look at his watch; but there is great comparing of stop-watches among the other men for the time of the first mile. Hardly half a length behind is Trustee; he has been gradually creeping up without any signs of being hurried, and, clumsily as he goes, gets over the ground without heating himself.

"John Case knows what he's about, after all," Edwards observes, "He takes his time, and so does the old horse; wait another round, and, at the third mile, they'll be _there_."

"But where's Pelham? Is he lost? No, there he comes; and, Castor and Pollux, what a burst! Something has waked him up after the other horses have passed the stand, and while he is yet four or five lengths from it. There's a brush for you! Did you ever see a horse foot it so?--as if all the ideas of running that he may ever have had in his life were arrested, and fastened down into his trot. How he is closing up the gap! If he can hold to that stroke he will be ahead of the field before the first quarter of this second mile is out. A mighty clamor arises, shouts from his enemies, who want to break him, cheers from his injudicious friends. There, he has lapped Trustee--he has passed him; tearing at the bit harder than ever, he closes with Lady Suffolk. Bryan does not begin to thrash his mare yet, he only shows the whip over her; but yells like a madman at her, and at Pelham, whose driver holds on to him as a drowning man holds on to a rope. They are going side by side at a terrific pace. It can't last; one of them must go up. The bay horse does go up just at the quarter pole, having made that quarter, Benson says, in the remarkably short time of thirty-six seconds and a half."

Pelham's driver can't jerk him across the track; by doing so, he would foul Trustee, who is just behind; so he has to let the chestnut go by, and then sets himself to work to bring down his unruly animal; no easy matter--for Pelham, frightened by the shouting, and excited by the noise of the wheels, plunges about in a manner that threatens to spill or break down the sulky; and twice, after being brought almost to a full stop, goes off again on a canter. Good bye, little horse! there's no more chance for you. By this time, the Lady is nearly a quarter of a mile ahead, and going faster than ever. Somehow or other, Trustee has increased his speed too, and is just where he was, a short half-length behind her. The way in which he hangs on to the mare begins to frighten the Long-Islanders a little, but they comfort themselves with the hope that she has something left, and can let out some spare foot in the third mile, or whenever it may be necessary.

Some forty seconds more elapse; a period of time that goes like a flash when you are training your own flier, or "brushing" on the road, but seems long enough when you are waiting for horses to come round, and then they appear once more coming home. The mare is still leading, with her beautiful, steady, unfaltering stroke; but she is by no means so fresh-looking as when she started; many a dark line of sweat marks her white hide. Close behind her comes Trustee; the half-length gap has disappeared, and his nose is ready to touch Bryan's jacket. There is hardly a wet hair discernible on him; he goes perfectly at his ease, and seems to be in hand. "He has her now," is the general exclamation, "and can pass her when he pleases." As the mare crosses the score, (in 2' 34'', according to Edwards's stop-watch,) Bryan "looks over his left shoulder," like the knights in old ballads, and becomes aware for the first time that the horse at his wheel is not Pelham, as he had supposed, but Trustee.

The old fellow is another man. His air of careless security has changed to one of intense excitement. Slash! slash! slash! falls the long whip, with half a dozen frantic cuts and an appropriate garnish of yells. Almost any other trotter would go off in a run at one such salute, to say nothing of five or six; but the old mare, who "has no break in her," merely understands them as gentle intimations to go faster--and she does go faster. How her legs double up, and what a rush she has made! There is a gap of three lengths between her and Trustee. He never hurries himself, but goes on steadily as ever. See, as he passes, how he straddles behind like an old cow, and yet how dexterously he paddles himself along, as it were, with one hind foot. What a mixture of ugliness and efficiency his action is! At the first quarter the Lady has come back to him. Three times during this, the last and decisive mile, is the performance repeated. You may hear Bryan's voice and whip completely across the course, as he hurries his mare away from the pursuer; but each succeeding time the temporary gap is shorter and sooner closed.

Now they are coming down the straight stretch home. The mare leads yet. Case appears to be talking to his horse, and encouraging him; if it is so, you cannot hear him, for the tremendous row Lady Suffolk's driver is making. She had the pole at starting, has kept it throughout, and Trustee must pass her on the outside. This circumstance is her only hope of winning. All her owner's exertions, and all the encouraging shouts of her friends, which she now hears greeting her from the stand, cannot enable her to shake off Trustee, but if she can only maintain her lead for six or seven lengths more, it is enough. The chestnut is directly in her rear; every blow gets a little more out of her. Half the short interval to the goal is passed, when Trustee diverges from his straight course, and shows his head along side Bryan's wheel. Catching his horse short, Case puts his whip upon him for the first time, shakes him up with a great shout, and crowds him past the mare, winning the heat by a length.

The little bay was so far behind at the end of the second mile, that no one took any notice of him, and he was supposed to have dropped out somewhere on the road. His position, however, was much improved on the third mile; still, as there was a strong probability of his being shut out, the judges dispatched one of their number to the distance-post with a flag; a very proper proceeding, only they thought of it rather late, for the judge arrived there only just before Pelham, and also just before Trustee crossed the score; in fact, the three events were all but simultaneous; the judge dropped the flag in Pelham's face, and Pelham in return nearly ran over the judge. This episode attracted no attention at the time of its occurrence, all eyes being directed to the leading horses; but now it affords materials for a nice little row, Pelham's driver protesting violently against the distance. There is much thronging, and vociferating, and swearing about the judge's stand, into which our burly Irishman endeavors to force his way. One of the specials favors him with a rap on the head, that would astonish a hippopotamus. Pat doesn't seem to mind it, but he understands it well enough (the argument is just suited to his capacity), and remains tolerably quiet. Finally, it is proclaimed that "Trustee wins the heat in 7' 45'', and Pelham is distanced."

"Best three miles ever made in harness," says Harrison, "except when Dutchman did it in 7' 41''."

Edwards doubts the fact, and they bet about it, and will write to the _Spirit of the Times_ (the American _Bell's Life_).

Ashburner and Benson descended from the stand. The horses, panting and pouring with sweat, are rubbed and scraped by their attendants, three or four to each. Then they are clothed, and walked up and down quietly. They have a rest of nominally half-an-hour, and practically at least forty minutes. Some of the crowd are eating oysters, more drinking brandy and water, and a still greater number "loafing" about without any particular employment. There are two or three thimble-riggers on the ground, but they seem to be in a barren county; nobody there is green enough for them; the very small boys take sights at them. There is a tradition that Edwards once in his younger days tried his fortune with them. He looked so dandified, green, and innocent, that they let him win five dollars the first time, and then, on the rigger's proposing to bet a hundred, his supposed victim applied the finger of scorn to the nose of derision, and strutted off with his V.,[7] to the great amusement of the bystanders. Tom is very proud of this story, and likes to tell it himself. That, and his paying a French actress with a check when he had nothing at his banker's, are two of the great exploits of his life.

"This _is_ rather a low assemblage, certainly," says Ashburner, after he has contemplated it from several points of view, and observed a great many different points of character. "Do they ever have races here?"

"Yes, every spring and fall, here, or on the Union Course adjoining. They are rather more decently attended, but not over respectable, much less fashionable. At the South, it is different; there ladies go, and the club races are some of the most marked features of their city life. I recollect when I was a boy, that these trotting matches were nice things, and gentlemen used to enter their own horses; but gradually they have gone down hill to what they are now, and the names of the best trotters are associated with the hardest characters and the most disreputable species of balls."

"And when they race, do the horses run on ground like _this_?" asked Ashburner, stamping on the track, which was as hard as Macadam.

"Precisely on this, and run four-mile heats, too, and five of them sometimes."

"_Five_ four-mile heats on ground like this?" The Englishman looked incredulous.

"Exactly. It has happened that each of three has won a heat, and then there was one dead heat. You will remember, though, that we run old horses, not colts. There is no extra weight for age; they begin at four or five years old, and go on till twelve or fourteen."

"But they must be very liable to accidents, going on such hard soil."

"Yes, they do break their legs sometimes, but not often. Our horses are tougher than yours."

As they stroll about, Benson points out several celebrated fliers that have gained admission inside of the stand, but prefer remaining outside the track; some pretty well worn-out and _emeriti_ like Ripton, an old rival of Lady Suffolk (the mare has outlasted most of her early contemporaries), some in their prime, like the trotting stallion, Black Hawk, beautifully formed as any blood-horse, but singularly marked, being white-stockinged all round to the knee. "There," says Harry, "is a fellow that belies the old horse-dealer's rhyme:

'Four white legs and a white nose, Take him away, and throw him to the crows.'" Time is up, and they return to the stand. Edwards is bantering Losing, and asks him if he will repeat his bet on this heat. He will fast enough, and double it on the final result. Edwards wants nothing better.

This time, for a wonder, the horses got off at the first start, and a tremendous pace they make, altogether too much for Trustee, who is carried off his feet in the first half-quarter, and the Lady goes ahead three, four, five lengths, and has taken the pole before he can recover. Bryan continues to crowd the pace. The mare comes round to the score in 2' 33'', leading by four lengths, and her driver threshing her already. "She can't stand it," say the knowing ones; "she must drop out soon." But she doesn't drop out in the second mile at least, for at the end of that, she is still three lengths in advance, and Trustee does not appear so fresh as he did last heat. The Long-Islanders are exultant, and the sporting men look shy. When they come home in the last quarter, the chestnut has only taken one length out of the gap; nevertheless, he goes for the outside, and makes the best rush he can. It's no use. He can't get near her; breaks up again, and crosses the score a long way behind. Much manifestation of boisterous joy among the farmers. Edwards looks sold, and something like a smile passes over Losing's unimpassioned countenance. It is plain sailing for the judges this time. "Lady Suffolk has the heat in 7' 49''," and there is no mistake or dispute about it.

Another long pause. Eight minutes' sport and three quarters of an hour intermission among such a company begins to be rather dull work. All the topics of interest afforded by the place have been exhausted. Harrison and Benson begin to talk stocks and investments; the juveniles are comparing their watering place experiences during the summer. Ashburner says nothing, and smokes an indefinite number of cigars; Losing says rather less, and smokes more. Edwards has disappeared; gone, possibly, to talk to the doubtful carriages. It is growing dark before they are ready for the third and decisive heat.

One false start, and at the second trial they are off. The mare has the inside, in right of having won the preceding heat. She crowds the pace from the start, as usual; but Trustee is better handled this time, and does not break. Case allows the Lady to lead him by three lengths, and keeps his horse at a steady gait, in quiet pursuit of her. For two miles their positions are unaltered; Bryan's friends cheer him vociferously every time as he comes round; he replies by a flourish of his long whip and additional shouts to his mare. In the third mile, Trustee begins to creep up, and in the third quarter of it, just before he gets out of sight from the stand, is only a length and a half behind. When they appear again, there are plenty of anxious lookers-out; and men like our friend Edwards, who have a thousand or more at stake on the result, cannot altogether restrain their emotions. Here they come close enough together! Trustee has lapped the mare on the outside; his head is opposite the front rim of her wheel. Bryan shouts and whips like one possessed; Case's small voice is also lifted up to encourage Trustee. The chestnut is gaining, but only inch by inch, and they are nearly home. Now Case has lifted him with the whip, and he makes a rush and is at her shoulder. Now he will have her. Oh, dear, he has gone up! Hurrah for the old gray! Stay! Case has caught him beautifully; he is on his trot again opposite her wheel. One desperate effort on the part of man and horse, and Trustee shoots by the mare; but not till after she has crossed the score. Lady Suffolk is quite done up; she could not go another quarter; but she has held out long enough to win the heat and the money.

And now, as it was somewhere in the neighborhood of seven, and neither Ashburner nor Benson had eaten any thing since eight in the morning, they began to feel very much inclined for dinner, or supper, or something of the sort; and the team travelled back quite as fast as it was safe to go by twilight; a little faster, the Englishman might have thought, if he had not been so hungry. Then, after crossing the Brooklyn ferry, Benson announced his intention of putting up his horses for the night at a livery stable, and himself at Ashburner's hotel, as it was still a long drive for that time of night to Devilshoof; which being agreed upon, they next dived into an oyster cellar, of which there are about two to a block all along Broadway, and ordered an unlimited supply of the agreeable shellfish, broiled;--_oyster chops_, Ashburner used to call them; and the term gives a stranger a pretty good idea of what these large oysters look like, cooked as they are with crumbs, exactly in the style of a _cotelette panee_. And they make very nice eating, too; only they promote thirst and induce the consumption of numerous glasses of champagne or brandy and water, as the case may be. Whether this be an objection to them or not, is matter of opinion. Then having adjourned to Ashburner's apartment in the fifth story of the Manhattan hotel (it was a room with an alcove, French fashion), and smoked numerous Firmezas there, the Englishman turned in for the night; and Benson, who had no notion of paying for a bed when he could get a sofa for nothing, disposed himself at full length upon Ashburner's, without taking off any thing except his hat, and was fast asleep in less time than it would take _The Sewer_ to tell a lie.

FOOTNOTES:

[4] The United States government, (U. S.)

[5] A very critical friend wants to know if the term _dilapidated_ can, with strict propriety, be applied to a _wooden_ building.

[6] A horse will "go the pole" in such a time, means that he will go in double harness. A horse "has the pole," means that he has drawn the place nearest the inside boundary fence of the track.

[7] A five-dollar bill is so called from the designation in Roman numerals upon it.

From Chamber's Edinburgh Journal.

PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF A DUTCH POET.

The name of Wilhelm Bilderdyk is scarcely known beyond the boundaries of his own country; and yet those who are conversant with the Dutch language place him in a very high rank as a poet. The publication of his first poem, _Elicus_, formed quite an era in the history of Dutch literature. It was speedily followed by a faithful and spirited translation of the _Oedipus_ of Sophocles, and versions of other Greek writers. Besides his imaginative pursuits, he engaged with ardor in the study of geology, and almost rivalled Cuvier in his acquaintance with natural history. War and invasion, however, interrupted the labors of Bilderdyk. He quitted Holland, travelled through Germany, crossed over to England, and finally spent some time amongst the Scottish Highlands, where he employed himself in translating Ossian's poems into Dutch verse. He then went to the principality of Brunswick, and there composed a very extraordinary work, _The Maladies of Wise Men_, a poem whose mild, lofty sublimity, unearthly interest, and grasp of gloomy thought, entitle it to rank with the Inferno of Dante.

Bilderdyk at length was able to return to his country. Louis Napoleon, who then reigned at the Hague, chose him as his instructor in the Dutch language, and named him president of the second class in the Institute of Amsterdam. About this time he married a beautiful and clever girl, named Wilhelmina; and for several years they enjoyed together as perfect happiness as this world can give--she occupied in domestic and maternal duties, and he adding to his fame and fortune by the publication of several works. But at length death visited their dwelling, and removed within a brief space three lovely children. Their loss was commemorated in two poems--_Winter Flowers_, and _The Farewell_. Not long afterwards, public misfortune came to aggravate his private sorrows. Louis Napoleon left Holland, and Bilderdyk took refuge at Groningen, where he stayed for some time, and then, rejecting a liberal offer of employment made him by William of Orange, he set out for France, accompanied by his wife.

When they entered the diligence, they found it occupied but by one person, a young female of mild and engaging appearance. No sooner did the heavy machine begin to move than she began to scream, and testified the most absurd degree of terror. Public carriages then were certainly far inferior, both in safety and accommodation, to those of modern times; yet the probable amount of danger to be apprehended did not by any means justify the excessive apprehension manifested by the fair traveller. On arriving at Brussels, the lady was so much overcome that she announced her intention of stopping some days in that city to recruit her strength before venturing again to encounter the perils of a diligence; and taking leave of Bilderdyk and his wife, she gratefully thanked the latter for the kind attention she had shown her during the journey. The two Hollanders proceeded on their way to Paris, laughing heartily from time to time at the foolish cowardice of a woman who saw a precipice in every rut, and a certain overturn in every jolt of the wheels.

Arrived at their journey's end, the travellers took up their abode in a humble dwelling in the Rue Richelieu, and commenced with the utmost delight visiting all the wonderful things in Paris. Bilderdyk soon found himself completely in his element. He breakfasted with Cuvier at the Jardin des Plantes, passed his afternoon at the Bibliotheque Richelieu, dined in the Faubourg St. Germain with Dr. Alibert, and finished the evening at the play or the opera. One day he and his wife were given excellent places for witnessing the ascent in a balloon of a young woman, Mme. Blanchard, whose reckless courage enabled her to undertake aerial voyages, despite the sad fate which befell Pilastre de Rosiers, her own husband, and several other aeronauts. Our Hollanders amused themselves for some time with watching the process of inflating the balloon, and following with their eyes the course of the tiny messenger-balloons sent up to ascertain the direction of the upper currents of wind. At length all is ready, the band strikes up a lively air, and Mme. Blanchard, dressed in white and crowned with roses, appears, holding a small gay flag in her hand. With the most graceful composure she placed herself in the boat, the cords were loosed, and the courageous adventuress, borne rapidly upwards in her perilous vehicle, soon appeared like a dark spot in the sky.

When he returned to his lodging, Bilderdyk composed a poem in honor of the brave woman who adventured her life so boldly, rivalling the free birds of heaven in her flight, and beholding the stars face to face. Next morning he hastened to get his production printed, and without considering that Mme. Blanchard most likely did not understand Dutch, he repaired to her lodgings with a copy of the poem in his hand, intending to ask permission to present it to her. He was courteously invited to enter the drawing-room, and there, to his great amazement, he found himself _tete-a-tete_ with the silly, frightened lady, whose nervous tremors in the Brussels diligence had afforded so much amusement to him and his wife. Surprised and disconcerted, he was beginning to apologize, when the lady interrupted him.

"Monsieur," she said, "you are not mistaken. I am Mme. Blanchard. You see how possible it is for the same person to be cowardly in a coach, and courageous in a balloon."

A good deal of conversation ensued, the poem was timidly offered, and graciously accepted; and the fair aeronaut accepted an invitation to dine that day with Bilderdyk and his wife. In the course of the evening Mme. Blanchard related to them some curious circumstances in her life. Her mother kept a humble wayside inn near La Rochelle, while her father worked in the fields. One day a balloon descended near their door, and out of it was taken a man, severely but not dangerously bruised. Her parents received him with the utmost hospitality, and supplied him with all the comforts they could give. He had no money wherewith to repay them, but as he was about to depart, he remarked that the mistress of the house was very near her confinement, and he said: "Listen, and mark my words. Fortune cannot always desert me. In sixteen years, if alive, I will return hither. If the child who will soon be born to you should be a boy, I will then adopt him; if a girl, I will marry her!"

The worthy peasants laughed heartily at this strange method of paying a bill; and although they allowed their guest to depart, they certainly built very little on his promise. The aeronaut, however, kept his word, and at the end of sixteen years re-appeared at the inn, then inhabited by only a fair young girl, very lately left an orphan. She willingly accepted Jean Pierre Blanchard as a husband, and for a short time they lived happily together; but during an ascent which he made in Holland, he was seized with apoplexy, and fell to the ground from a height of sixty feet. The unhappy aeronaut was not killed on the spot, but lingered for some time in frightful torture, carefully and fondly attended by his wife, whom at length he left a young and penniless widow.

Marie Madeleine Blanchard, despite her natural timidity, resolved to adopt her husband's perilous profession. Pride and necessity combined do wonders; and not only did she succeed in maintaining perfect composure while in the air, but she also displayed wonderful presence of mind during the time of danger. On one occasion she ascended in her balloon from Nantes, intending to come down at about four leagues from that town, in what she believed to be a large meadow. While rapidly descending, the cordage of the balloon became entangled in the branches of a tree, and she found herself suspended over a vast green marsh, whose treacherous mud would infallibly ingulf her. Drawn to the spot by her cries, several peasants came to her assistance, and with considerable difficulty and danger succeeded in placing her on terra firma.

On the day following the one on which she dined with M. and Mme. Bilderdyk, Mme. Blanchard left Paris, promising her two friends, as she bade them farewell, that she would soon return. Time passed on, however, and they heard nothing of her. They were preparing to return to Holland, when some of Bilderdyk's countrymen residing in Paris resolved to give him a banquet on the eve of his departure.

The entertainment took place at a celebrated restaurant, situated at the angle formed by the Rue Cauchat and the Rue de Provence. While enjoying themselves at table, the guests suddenly perceived the windows darkened by the passing of some large black object. With one accord they rose and ran out: a woman lay on the pavement, pale, crushed, and dead. Bilderdyk gave a cry--it was Mme. Blanchard! In what a guise to meet her again! Encouraged by the constant impunity of her perilous ascensions, the unhappy aeronaut (the word I believe has no feminine), finding a formidable rival in Mlle. Garnerin, resolved to surpass her in daring by augmenting the risk of her aerial voyages. For this purpose she lighted up her balloon car with colored lamps, and carried with her a supply of fireworks. On the sixth of July, 1819, she rose from amid a vast concourse of spectators. The balloon caught in one of the trees in the Champs-Elysees, but without regarding the augury, Mme. Blanchard threw out ballast, and as she rose rapidly in the air she spilled a quantity of lighting spirits of wine, and then sent off rockets and Roman candles. Suddenly, with horror, the mass of upturned eyes beheld the balloon take fire. One piercing shriek from above mingled with the affrighted cries of the crowd below, and then some object was seen to detach itself from the fiery globe. As it came near the earth, it was recognized as the body of the ill-fated Mme. Blanchard.

Weeping and trembling, Bilderdyk aided in raising the disfigured corpse, and wrapped it up in the net-work of the balloon, which the hands still grasped firmly. The shock, acting on his excitable temperament, threw him into a dangerous illness, from which, however, he recovered, and returned to his native country. There he published an admirable treatise, "The Theory of Vegetable Organization," and a poem entitled, "The Destruction of the Primeval World." A French critic has placed this latter work in the same rank with "Paradise Lost," and says: "Old Milton has nothing finer, more energetic, or more vast, in his immortal work." An English critic, however, would probably scarcely concur in this judgment.

Bilderdyk died in the town of Haarlem on the 18th of December, 1831.

From Household Words.

OUR PHANTOM SHIP: CHINA.

Since a typhoon occurs not much oftener than once in about three years, it would be odd if we should sail immediately into one; but we are fairly in the China seas, which are the typhoon's own peculiar sporting ground, and it is desperately sultry, and those clouds are full of night and lightning, to say nothing of a fitful gale and angry sea. Look out! There is the coast of China. Now for a telescope to see the barren, dingy hills, with clay and granite peeping out, with a few miserable trees and stunted firs. That is our first sight of the flowery land, and we shall not get another yet, for the spray begins to blind us; it is quite as much as we can do to see each other. Now the wind howls and tears the water up, as if it would extract the great waves by their roots, like so many of old Ocean's teeth; but he kicks sadly at the operation. We are driven by the wild blast that snaps our voices short off at the lips and carries them away; no words are audible. We are among a mass of spars and men wild as the storm on drifting broken junks; a vessel founders in our sight, and we are cast, with dead and living, upon half a dozen wrecks entangled in a mass, upon the shore of Hong Kong;--ourselves safe, of course, for we have left at home whatever could be bruised upon the journey. How many houses have been blown away like hats, how many rivers have been driven back to swell canals and flood the fields, (whose harvest has been prematurely cropped on the first warning of the typhoon's intended visit,) we decline investigating. The evening sky is very wild, and we were all last night under the typhoon at sea; to-night we are in the new town of Victoria, and will be phantom bed-fellows to any Chinaman who has been eating pork for supper. The Chinese are very fond of pork, or any thing that causes oiliness in man. A lean man forfeits something in their estimation; for they say, "He must have foolishness; why has he wanted wisdom to eat more?"

Hong Kong was one of the upshots of our cannonading in the pure and holy Chinese war; and as for the new town of Victoria, we shall walk out of it at once, for we have not travelled all this way to look at Englishmen. The island itself is eight or ten miles long, and sometimes two or sometimes six miles broad. It is the model of a grand mountain region on a scale of two inches to the foot. There are crags, ravines, wild torrents, fern-covered hills; but the highest mountain does not rise two thousand feet.--We stand upon it now. Quite contrary to usual experience, we found, in coming up, the richest flowers at the greatest elevation. The heat and dryness of the air below, where the sun's rays are reflected from bare surfaces, is said to be oppressive, and perhaps the flowers down there want a pleasant shade. From our elevation we can see few patches of cultivation, but leaping down the rocks are many picturesque cascades. Hong Kong is christened from its own waters, its name signifying in Chinese "the Island of Fragrant Streams." There is a goat upon the nearest rock; but look beyond. On one side is the bay, with shipping, and behind us the broad expanse of the ocean; and before us is the sea, studded as far as our eyes can reach with mountainous islands, among which we must sail to reach Canton. Now we float onward in the Phantom, and among these islands our sharp eyes discover craft that have more hands on board than usually man an honest vessel. In the holes and corners of the islands pirates lurk to prey upon the traffic of Canton. We pass Macao on our way into the Canton river. Portugal was a nation of quality once, with a strong constitution, and in those days, once upon a time, wrecked Portuguese gained leave to dry a cargo on the Island of Macao. They erected sheds a little stronger than were necessary for that temporary purpose; in fact, they turned the accident to good account, and established here an infant settlement, which soon grew to maintain itself, and sent money home occasionally to assist its mother. Twice the Emperor of China offered to make Macao an emporium for European trade; the Portuguese preferred to be exclusive. So the settlement fell sick, and since the English made Hong Kong a place of active trade, very few people trouble themselves to inquire whether Macao be dead yet, or only dying. The Portuguese town has a mournful aspect, marked as it is by strong lines of character that indicate departed power.

Still sailing among islands, mountainous and barren, we soon reach the Bocca Tigris, or mouth of the Canton river, guarded now with very formidable forts. The Chinese, since their war with England, have been profiting by sore experience. If their gunnery be as completely mended as their fortifications, another war with them would not be quite so much like an attack of grown men upon children. The poor Chinese, in that war, were indefatigable in the endeavor to keep up appearances. Steam ships were scarcely worth attention--they had "plenty all the same inside:" and when the first encounter, near the spot on which we are now sailing, between junks and men-of-war, had exhibited the tragedy, in flesh and bone, of John Bull in a China-shop, the Chinese Symonds, at Ningpo, was ordered to build ships exactly like the British. He could not execute the order, and played, therefore, executioner upon himself. Cannon were next ordered, that should be large enough to destroy a ship at one burst. They were made, and the first monster tried, immediately burst and killed its three attendants; nobody could be induced to fire the others. One morning, a British fleet was very much surprised to see the shore look formidable with a line of cannon mouths. The telescope, which had formed no part of the Chinese calculations, discovered them to be a row of earthern pots. Forts, in the same way, often turned out to be dummies made of matting, with the portholes painted; and sometimes real cannon, mere three pounders, had their fronts turned to the sea, plugged with blocks of wood, cut and so painted as to resemble the mouths of thirty-two pounders shotted. However, we have passed real strong forts and veritable heavy cannon, to get through the Bocca Tigris. Nothing is barren now; the river widens, and looks like an inland sea; the flat land near the shores is richly cultivated; rice is there and upon the islands, all protected with embankments to admit or exclude the flood in its due season, or provided with wheels for raising water where the land is too high to be flooded in a simpler manner. The embankments, too, yield plantain crops. The water on each side is gay with water lilies, which are cultivated for their roots. Banyan and fig-trees, cypress, orange, water-pines, and weeping willows, grow beside the stream, with other trees; but China is not to be called a richly timbered country; most of its districts are deficient in large trees. There is the Whampoa Pagoda; there are more pagodas, towers, joss-houses; here are the European factories, and here are boats, boats, boats, literally, hundreds of thousands of boats--the sea-going junk, gorgeous with griffins, and with proverbs, and with painted eyes; the flower boat; boats of all shapes, and sizes, down to the barber's boat, which barely holds the barber and his razor. There is a city on the water, and the dwellers in these boats, who whether men or women, dive and swim so naturally that they may all be fishes, curiously claim their kindred with the earth. On every boat, a little soil and a few flowers, are as essential as the little joss-house and the little joss. Canals flow from the river through Canton; every where, over the mud, upon the water side are wooden houses built on piles. But here we will not go ashore; the suburbs of Canton are full of thieves, and little boys who shout _fan-qui_ (foreign devil) after all barbarians, and we should not be welcome in the city; so we will not go where we shall not be welcome. After floating up and down the streets and lanes of water made between the boats upon the Canton river, pleased with the strange music, the gongs, and the incessant chattering of women, (Chinese women are pre-eminent as chatterers,) we sail away. We do not wait even till night to wonder at the scene by lantern light; but returning by the way we came, repass the rice fields, the water lilies, and the forts, the islands, and Macao, and Hong Kong, and have again before us the expanse of ocean. Canton lies within the tropic; sugar-cane grown in its vicinity yields brown sugar and candy; but our lump sugar is a luxury to which the Chinese have not yet attained. Canton lying within the tropic, we shall change our climate on the journey northward. An empire that engrosses nearly a tenth part of the globe, and includes the largest population gathered under any single government, will have many climates in its eighteen provinces. Now we are sailing swiftly northward by a barren rocky coast, with sometimes hills of sand, and sometimes cultivated patches, and, except for the pagodas on the highest elevations, we might fancy we were off the coast of Scotland.

Five ports are open to our trade upon the coast of China; one of these, Canton, we have merely looked at, and the next, Amoy, we pass unvisited in sailing up between the mainland and Formosa. Amoy produces the best Chinese sailors, and it is in this port that the native junks have most experience of foreign trade; it is a dirty, densely-peopled town, too distant from the tea and silk regions to be of prominent importance to the Europeans. As soon as we have passed through the Formosa channel, we direct our course towards the river Min, and steering safely among rocks and sand-banks, among which is a rock cleft into five pyramids, regarded with a sort of worship by the sailors, we float up the river to the third of the five cities, Foo-chow-foo. The river varies in width, sometimes a mile across, where it is flowing between plains, sometimes confined between the hills; a hilly country is about us, with some mountains nearly twice as high as those up which we clambered at Hong-Kong. We pass, after a few miles' sail, the little town and fort of Mingan; we sail among pagodas and temples, near which the priests plant dark spreading fig-trees, terraced hills, yielding earth-nuts and sweet potatoes; we see cultivation carried up some mountain sides beyond two thousand feet, and barren mountains, granite rocks, islands, and villages; here and there more wooded tracts than usually belong to a Chinese landscape, rills of water and cascades that tumble down into the Min. We have sailed up the river twenty miles, and here is Foo-chow-foo. We have met on our way a good many junks, having wood lashed to their sides; and here we see acres of wood (chiefly pine) afloat before the suburbs, for here wood is a main article of trade. We pass under the bridge Wanshow ("myriads of ages"), which connects the suburbs on each bank; it is a bridge of granite slabs, supported upon fifty pillars of strong masonry, the whole about two thousand feet in length. The suburbs happen just now to be flooded, and the large Tartar population here delights in mobbing a barbarian. This inhospitable character repels men, while the floods and rapids of the river and its tributaries, causes an uncertainty of transit, tend also to keep European traders out of Foo-chow-foo. True, the bohea tea hills are in the vicinity, but their bohea tea has not a first-rate character, and the great seat of the tea trade is yet farther north. The city walls are eight or nine miles in circumference; but we will not enter their gates for all Chinese cities have a close resemblance to each other; it is enough to visit one, and we can do better than visit this. We sail back to the sea again, and there resume our northward voyage. We have seen part of the mountainous or hilly half of China; farther north, between the two great rivers, and beyond them to the famous Wall, is a great plain studded in parts with lakes or swamps, and very fertile.

Far westward, we might journey to the high central table-land of Asia, where there are extensive levels; but the seaward provinces are the most fertile; and as for the Chinese themselves, they are in all places very much alike--in body as in character. But sailing in our ship, and talking of those plains, we may naturally recall to our minds those ancient days when the Chinese, civilised then as now, guided their chariots across a pathless level on the land by the same instrument that guides our ship across a pathless level on the water.

The coast by which we sail is studded with islands, and to reach Ningpo, the fourth of the five ports, we pass between the mainland and the island of Chusan. The water here is quite hemmed in with islands forming the Chusan Archipelago. Chusan is like a piece of the Scotch Highlands, twenty miles long, and ten or twelve broad, with rich vegetation added. Forty miles' sail from Chusan brings us to Ningpo. Amongst the numerous islands past which we have floated, we should have found, on many, characters not quite Chinese. One island, visited for water by one of our ships, was said to be an Eden for its innocence. Crime was unknown among the islanders: and at a grave look or a slight tap with a fan, the wrong-doer invariably desisted from his evil course. The simplicity of the natives here consisted in the fact, that they expected credit for the character they gave themselves. On another island, the natives entertained snug notions of a warm bed in the winter. Their bed was a stone trough; in winter they spread at the bottom of this trough hot embers, and over these a large stone, over that their bedding, and then tucked themselves comfortably in.

Ningpo, with its bridge of boats and Chinese shipping and pagodas, has a picturesque appearance from the river. It is large, populous, and wealthy; a place to which the merchant may retire to spend his gains, more than a port for active and hard working commerce. That is the reason why we will not land at Ningpo. Where, then, shall we land? If you have no objection, at Shangae, the fifth and most important, although not the largest, of these ports. But sea life is monotonous, and therefore we will take five minutes' diversion ashore, after we have sailed some twenty miles up this canal. Here we will land under an avenue of pines, and walk up to a Buddhist temple. We are in the centre of the green-tea district.

The priests, belonging, for a wonder, to a simple-minded class, receive us, of course hospitably. The stranger is at all times welcome to a lodging, and to his portion of the Buddhist vegetable dinner. These priests are like some of our monks in mendicancy charity, and superstition. In the pagodas they always have a meal prepared for the arrival of a hungry traveller. But hungry we are not; and we came hither to see the tea-plantations; these we now seek out. They are small farms upon the lower slopes of hills; the soil is rich; it must be rich, or the tea-plant would not long endure the frequent stripping of its leaves, which usage does of course sooner or later kill it. Each plant is at a distance of about four feet from its neighbors, and the plantations look like little shrubberies. The small proprietors inhabit wretched-looking cabins, in which each of them has fixed a flue and coppers for the drying of his tea. In the appearance of the people there is nothing wretched; old men sit at their doors like patriarchs, expecting and receiving reverence; young men, balancing bales across their shoulders, travel out, and some return with strings of copper money; the chief tea-harvest is over, and the merchants have come down now to the little inns about the district, that each husbandman may offer them his produce. There are three tea-making seasons. The first is in the middle of April, just before the rains, when the first leaves of spring are plucked; these make the choicest tea, but their removal tries the vigor of the plant. Then come the rains; the tea-plant pushes out new leaves, and already in May the plantation is again dark with foliage; that is the season of the second, the great gathering. A later gathering of coarse leaves yields an inferior tea, scarcely worth exporting. It should be understood that although black and green tea are both made from the same kind of leaf, there really are two tea-plants. The plant cultivated at Canton for black tea, and known in our gardens as _Thea Bohea_, differs from the _Thea viridis_, which yields the harvest here. The Canton plant, however, is not cultivated in the North; on the Bohea hills themselves, speaking botanically, there grows no Bohea tea; the plant there, also, is the _Thea viridis_. The difference between our green and black tea is produced entirely in the making. Green tea is more quickly and lightly dried, so that it contains more of the virtues of the leaf. Black tea is dried more slowly; exposed, while moist, on mats, when it ferments a little, and then subjected in drying to a greater heat, which makes it blacker in its color. The bright bloom on our green tea is added with a dye, to suit the gross taste of barbarians. The black tea will keep better, being better dried. There is a kind of tea called Hyson Pekoe made from the first young buds which keeps ill, being very little fired, but when good it is extremely costly. As for our names of teas,--of the first delicate harvest, the black tea is called Pekoe, and the green, Young Hyson; Hyson being the corruption of Chinese words, that mean "flourishing spring." The produce of the main or second harvest yields, in green tea, Hyson; out of which are picked the leaves that prove to be best rolled for Gunpowder, or as the Chinese call it, pearl-tea. Souchong ("small or scarce sort") is the best black tea of the second crop, followed by Congou (koong-foo, "assiduity"). Twankay is imported largely, a green tea from older leaves, which European retailers employ for mixing with the finer kinds. Bohea, named from the hills we talked of, is the lowest quality of black tea, though good Bohea is better than a middling quality of Congou. The botanical _Thea Bohea_ comes into our pots, with refuse Congou, as Canton Bohea. At Canton, however, Young Hyson and Gunpowder are manufactured out of these leaves, chopped and painted; and this branch of the fine arts is carried on extensively in Chinese manufactories established there. As the tea-merchants go out to collect their produce of the little farmers; so the mercers in the Nankeen districts leave their cities for the purchase, in the same way, of home-woven cloth. It is the same in the silk districts. If we look now into a larger Chinese farm on our way back to the Phantom, we shall find the tenants on a larger scale supplying their own wants, and making profit of the surplus. On such a farm we shall find also familiar friends, fowls, ducks, geese, pigs, goats, and dogs, bullocks, and buffaloes; indoors there will be a best parlor in the shape of a Hall of Ancestors, containing household gods and an ancestral picture, before which is a table or altar with its offerings. There is the head of the family, who built a room for each son as he married, and left each son to add other rooms as they were necessary, till a colony arose under the common roof about the common hall, in which rules, as a high priest and patriarch, the living ancestor. Respect for the past is the whole essence of Chinese religion and morality. The oldest emperors were fountain-heads of wisdom, and he who imitates the oldest doctrine is the wisest man. The tombs of ancestors are visited with pious care; respect and worship is their due. This had at all times been the Chinese principle, to which Confucius added the influence of a good man's support. No nation has been trained into this feeling so completely as the Chinese, and as long as they saw nothing beyond themselves, and were taught to look down upon barbarians out of the heights of their own ignorance concerning them, they were contented to stand still. But the Chinese are a people sharply stimulated by the love of gain; they despised what they had not seen, yet it is evident that they have not been slow to profit by experience of European arts. An emigrant Chinese became acquainted with a Prussian blue manufactory, secretly observed the process of the manufacture, took his secret home, and China now makes at home all the Prussian blue which was before imported. The Chinese emigrant is active, shrewd. In Batavia he ko-toos to the Dutch, and lets his tail down dutifully. In Singapore he readily assumes a freer spirit, keeps his tail curled, and walks upright among the Englishmen.

We are now sailing towards Shangae, no very long way northward from Ningpo, to the last of the five ports we came out to visit. It is not necessary to return to the Yellow Sea, for all this part of China is so freely intersected with canals that we may sail to Shangae among farms and rice-grounds. While among the farmers, we may call to mind that the great lord of the Chinese manor is the Emperor, to whom this ground immediately belongs, and who receives as rent for it a tenth of all the produce. A large part of this tenth is paid in kind. The Emperor is the great father also; his whole care of his enormous family distinctly assumes the paternal form, and embodies a good deal of the maxim, that to spare the rod will spoil the child. To govern is expressed in Chinese by the symbols of bamboo and strike; and the bamboo does, in the way of striking a vast deal of business. The central legislation is as a rule beneficent, and based upon an earnest desire to do good; for the father is answerable for the welfare of his children. National calamities have, at all times, been ascribed by the Chinese directly to their Emperors; who must by personal humiliation appease the anger of the gods. So large a household as this father has to care for requires many stewards, mandarins, and others; all these officers of state are those sons who have proved themselves to be the wisest, on examination into their attainments. A grand system of education pervades China; and, above the first school, to which all are sent, there is a series of four examinations, through which every Chinese may graduate if he will study. Not to pass the first is to be vile, and the highest degrees qualify for all the offices of state; but Chinese education means, after reading and writing, and moral precepts of Confucius, little beside a knowledge of Chinese ancient history and literature. The Emperor, belonging to a Tartar dynasty, bestows an equal patronage on Tartars and Chinese. The officers throughout the provinces are, as a further precaution, obliged to serve in places distant from their own connections, in order that no private feelings may destroy their power to be just. They are scantily paid, however; and, as a Chinese likes profit with his honor, the minor officials drive a trade in bribery, which often nullifies the central edicts, and which very directly helped to bring about the Opium war. The Emperor himself is, of course, too sublime a person to be often seen; the Son of Heaven, he robes himself in the imperial yellow, because that is the hue of the sun's jacket; but, once a year, in enforcement of a main principle of the Chinese political economy--Honor to Agriculture--he drives the plough before a state procession; and the grain sown in those imperial furrows is afterwards bought up by courtiers, at a most flattering price.

Where are we now?--we have shot out upon a grand expanse of water, like an inland sea. An horizon of water is before us--we cannot see the other bank of the Yang-tse-Kiang, the "child of the ocean," the great river of China; the greatest river in the old world, and surpassed only by two on the whole globe. Here, eighty miles above the sea, it is eight miles in breadth, and sixty feet deep, flowing five miles an hour; and far up, off the walls of Nankin, its breadth is three thousand six hundred feet, and its depth twenty-two fathoms, at a distance of fifty paces from either shore. Well, this is something like a river; from its source to its mouth, in a straight line, the distance is one thousand seven hundred and ninety-six miles; and the windings nearly double its real length, making three thousand three hundred and thirty-six English miles; of which two thousand, from the mouth upwards, are said to be quite free from all obstruction. At its mouth it is, comparatively, shallow; much of this vast body of water is diverted from its course and carried through the country in canals. We are not far, now, from the great canal which cuts across this river and the Hoang-Ho, another grand stream farther northward, with a course of two thousand six hundred and thirty miles. Between the Yang-tse-Kiang and Hoang-Ho the country is so flat that, if we may judge by the scene from the mast-head of the Phantom, not a hillock breaks the level waste of fertile land. In ancient times this country was subjected to desolating floods, which, in fact, caused the removal of the capital. The canal system was commenced, then, as a means of drainage, by a wise man, who was made an emperor for his sagacity. Now the canals serve the purposes of commerce, and agriculture also, since water, in abundance, is essential for the irrigation of the rice-fields. We are sailing up the Shangae river, a tributary of the Yang-tse-Kiang; this river, at Shangae, we perceive is about as broad as the Thames at London Bridge; for we are at Shangae. We sail through a water-gate into the centre of the town, and land beside a fleet of junks, into which heaps of rice are being shot; these are grain junks sent from Pekin to receive part of the imperial tribute.

Narrow, dirty streets, low houses, brilliant open shops, painted with red and gold. Here is a fragrant fruit-shop, where a poor Chinese is buying an iced slice of pine-apple for less money than a farthing. Here is the chandler's, gay with candles of the tallow-tree coated with colored wax. The chandler deals in puffs; and what an un-English appeal is this from the candle-maker on behalf of his wares--"Late at night in the snow gallery they study the books." Study the books! Yes; through the crowd of Chinese, in their picturesque familiar dresses, look at that man, with books upon a tray, who dives into house after house. He lends books on hire to the poor people and servants. Who is the puffer here? "We issue and sell Hong Chow tobacco, the name and fame of which has galloped to the north of Kechow; and the flavor has pervaded Keangnan in the south." Here we have "Famous teas from every province;" and you see boiling water handy in the shop, wherewith the customer may test his purchases. Here, on the other side of this triumphal arch, we peep through a gateway hung with lanterns into a small paved paradise with gold fish, (China is the home of gold fish), and exotics, and trellis-work, and vines, and singing birds; that is a mercer's shop, affecting style in China as in England, only in another way. We will walk through the paradise into a grand apartment hung with lanterns, decorated also with gilded tickets, inscribed "Pekin satins and Canton crapes," "Hang-chow reeled silks," and so on. Here a courtly Chinese, skilled in the lubrication of a customer, produces the rich heavy silks for which his country is renowned, the velvets or the satins you desire, and shaves you skilfully. Talking of shaving, and we run against a barber as we come out of the silk shop. He carries a fire on his head, with water always boiling; on a pole over his shoulder he balances his water, basin, towels, razors. Will you be shaved like a Chinese? he picks you out a reasonably quiet doorway, shaves your head, cleans your ears, tickles your eyes, and cracks your joints in a twinkling. Where heads are shaved, the wipings of the razors are extensive; they are all bought up, and employed as manure. The Chinese have so many mouths to feed, that they can afford to lose nothing that will fertilize the ground. Instead of writing on their walls "Commit no nuisance," they place jars, and invite or even pay the pilgrim.

The long tail that the barber leaves is to the Chinese his sign of manhood. Beards do not form a feature of Mongolian faces; a few stray coarse hairs are all they get, with their square face, high cheek bones, slanting eyes, and long dark hair upon the head. A plump body, long ears, and a long tail, are the respectabilities of a Chinese. The tail is magnified by working in false hair, and it generally ends with silk. There is a man using his tail to thrash a pig along; and one traveler records that he has seen a Chinese servant use the same instrument for polishing a table. It is, of course, the thing to pull at in a street fight. Here is a phrenologist, with a large figure of a human head mapped into regions, inviting Chinese bumpkins to submit to him their bumps. Here is a dentist showing his teeth. Here--we must stop here--with a gong for drum, but raised on the true pedestal, with a man inside, who knows the veritable squeak, are Punch and Judy, all alive. This is their native land. "Pun-tse," the Chinese call our friend, because he is a little puppet, after all--Puntse meaning in Chinese, "the son of an inch." Here is the very Chinese bridge that we have learned by heart along with the pagoda, from a willow-patterned soup-plate; steps up, steps down, and a set of Chinese lanterns. Here is a temple, flaming with red paint. Let us go in. Images, votive candles burning on an altar, and a woman on her face wrestling in prayer. After praying in a sort of agony for a few minutes, she has stopped to take a bit of stick, round on one side, for she purposes therewith to toss up and see whether her prayer is granted. Tails! She loses! She is wrestling on her knees again--praying, doubtless, for a "bull child." Girls are undesirable, because they are of no use except for what they fetch in marriage gifts, and to fetch much they must be good-looking. Poor woman--tails again! Never mind, she must persevere, and she will get heads presently. Here comes a grave man, who prays for half a minute, and pulls out one from a jar of scrolls. Having examined it, he takes one of the little books that hang against the wall, looks happy, and departs. He has been drawing lots to see whether the issue of some undertaking will be fortunate. Poor woman--tails again! We cannot stop for the result; but I have no doubt that if she persevere she will get heads up presently. Here is a man in the street with a whole bamboo kitchen on his head, nine feet long, by six broad, uttering all manner of good things. The poor fellow who drove the pig stops in the street to dine. What a Soyer that fellow is, with his herbs, and his peppers, and his magic stove, and what a magnificent stew he gives the pig driver! Do you know, I doubt whether the Chinese are fools. What place have we here steaming like a boiler? This, sir, is one of the public bath establishments, where a warm bath, towels, and a dressing closet are at the service of the pig driver after his dinner, for five _le_--less than a farthing. There, too, his wife may go and obtain boiling water for the day's tea, which is to that poor Chinaman his beer, and pay for it but a single _le_. It would cost far more to boil it for herself; fuel is dear, and except for cooking or for manufactures, is not used in China. There are neither grates nor stoves in any Chinese parlor. The continent of Asia, and with it China, has a climate of extremes, great summer heat and an excessive winter cold; so that even at Canton, within the tropic, snow falls. But the Chinaman warms not his toes at a fire; he accommodates his comfortable costume to the climate; puts on more clothes as the cold makes itself felt, and takes some off again if he should feel too warm. That building on the walls is the temple of Spring, to which ladies repair to dress their hair with flowers when the first buds open. This handsome structure is the temple of Confucius. Yonder is the hall of United Benevolence, which supports a free hospital, a foundling hospital, and makes other provision for the poor. The Chinese charities are supported generously; the Chinese are a liberal and kindly race. Here is a shoemaker's shop, with a huge boot hung over the door, and an inscription which might not suit lovers of a good fit, "All here are measured by one rule." "When favored by merchants who bestow their regards on us, please to notice our sign of the Double Phoenix on a board as a mark; then it will be all right." These signs are in common use on shops in China as they were formerly in England. In this shop there is a wild fellow, who is beating a gong fearfully, and who has rubbed himself with stinking filth, that he may be the greater nuisance. This is his way of extorting charity. That shopkeeper, not having compounded with the king of the beggars for immunity from customers of this kind, seldom lives a day without being compelled to pay as he is now paying for a little peace. The beggar takes his nuisance then into another shop. This is a vast improvement upon our street fiddle and organ practice. There is a pawnbroker's three-per-cent. per month shop. Here is a tea-house, surrounded with huge vases for rain-water which is kept to acquire virtue by age--of course imaginary virtue--for the making of celestial tea. In that house there is the oven for hatching eggs. Gateways are fitted at the end of the wide streets, locked at night to restrain thieves; and in the first house through the gateway here a girl is screaming dreadfully. Very likely it is a case of sore feet. The small feet of the Chinese women--about three inches long--are essential, for without them a girl cannot get a husband; as a wife, she is her husband's obedient, humble servant, but as a spinster she is her parents' plague. The operation on the feet takes place when the girl is seven or eight years old. A young naval surgeon, in his walks, heard screams (like those) proceeding from a cottage, and went in; he found a little girl in bed, with her feet bandaged; he removed the bandage, found the feet of course bent, and ulcerated. He dressed the wounds, and warned the mother. Passing, another day, he found the child still suffering torment, and in a hectic fever. He again removed the bandages, and warned the mother that her child's life would be sacrificed if she continued with the process. The next time he went by he saw a little coffin at the door.

The tea-gardens are in the centre of the town; we will go thither and rest. We might have dined with a hospitable townsman, where we could have been present at a theatrical entertainment, in which the Chinese delight like children. But a dinner in this country is a work of many hours; the list is very long of things that we should have to touch or eat. Chinese eat almost any thing; their carte includes birds' nests, delicate meal-fed puppies, sea-slugs, sharks' fins and tails, frogs, snails, worms, lizards, tortoises, and water-snakes, with many things that we should better understand, and a great many disguised vegetables. A Chinese dinner is so tediously long that we escape it altogether. Milk is not used; it is thought improper to take it from the calves; and meat plays no very large part of the Chinese diet. During our late war it was seriously stated, by several advisers of the Emperor, that to forbid the English tea and rhubarb would go a great way to destroy the nation; "for it is well known that the barbarians feed grossly on the flesh of animals, by which their bodies are so bound and obstructed," that rhubarb and warm tea were necessary to be taken, daily, as correctives. Now we are in the tea-gardens, and have passed through a happy crowd, sipping tea, smoking, eating melon pips, walking or looking at the jugglers. Into a fairy-like house of bamboo, perched over water, we ascend. Here is an elegant apartment, which we claim as private. We recline, and take our cups of tea; the cups that have been used are wiped, not washed; for washing, say the people here, would spoil their capacity for preserving the pure flavor of this delicate young Hyson; upon a spoonful of which, placed in the cup, hot water is now poured. Opium pipes, bring us! Ha! a hollow cane, closed at one end, with a mouthpiece at the other; near the centre is the bowl, of ample size, but with an outward opening no bigger than a pin's head. We recline luxuriously--looking down on the gay colors of the Chinese crowd, we take our long stilettos, prick off a little pill of opium from its ivory reservoir, and burn it, dexterously, in the spirit lamp; then twist it, judiciously, about the pin's head orifice. Three whiffs, and it is out, and we are more than half deprived of active consciousness. Let us repeat the operation. Practised smokers will go on for hours; a few whiffs are enough for us. Another languid gaze at the pagodas, and the flowers, and the water, and the Chinamen; now some more opium to smoke!

The Phantom finding us intoxicated, like a good servant may have brought us home; for, certainly, we are at home.

From "Reminiscences of an Attorney" in Chambers's Edinburgh Miscellany.

THE CHEST OF DRAWERS.

I am about to relate a rather curious piece of domestic history, some of the incidents of which, revealed at the time of their occurrence in law reports, may be in the remembrance of many readers. It occurred in one of the midland counties, and at a place which I shall call Watley; the names of the chief actors who figured in it must also, to spare their modesty or their blushes, be changed; and should one of those persons, spite of these precautions, apprehend unpleasant recognition, he will be able to console himself with the reflection, that all I state beyond that which may be gathered from the records of the law courts will be generally ascribed to the fancy or invention of the writer. And it is as well, perhaps, that it should be so.

Caleb Jennings, a shoemender, or cobbler, occupied, some twelve or thirteen years ago, a stall at Watley, which, according to the traditions of the place, had been hereditary in his family for several generations. He may also be said to have flourished there, after the manner of cobblers; for this, it must be remembered, was in the good old times, before the gutta-percha revolution had carried ruin and dismay into the stalls--those of cobblers--which in considerable numbers existed throughout the kingdom. Like all his fraternity whom I have ever fallen in with or heard of, Caleb was a sturdy Radical of the Major Cartwright and Henry Hunt school; and being withal industrious, tolerably skilful, not inordinately prone to the observance of Saint Mondays, possessed, moreover, of a neatly-furnished sleeping and eating apartment in the house of which the projecting first-floor, supported on stone pillars, overshadowed his humble work-place, he vaunted himself to be as really rich as an estated squire, and far more independent.

There was some truth in this boast, as the case which procured us the honor of Mr. Jennings's acquaintance sufficiently proved. We were employed to bring an action against a wealthy gentleman of the vicinity of Watley for a brutal and unprovoked assault he had committed, when in a state of partial inebriety, upon a respectable London tradesman who had visited the place on business. On the day of trial our witness appeared to have become suddenly afflicted with an almost total loss of memory; and we were only saved from an adverse verdict by the plain, straight-forward evidence of Caleb, upon whose sturdy nature the various arts which soften or neutralize hostile evidence had been tried in vain. Mr. Flint, who personally superintended the case, took quite a liking to the man; and it thus happened that we were called upon some time afterwards to aid the said Caleb in extricating himself from the extraordinary and perplexing difficulty in which he suddenly and unwittingly found himself involved.

The projecting first floor of the house beneath which the humble workshop of Caleb Jennings modestly disclosed itself, had been occupied for many years by an ailing and somewhat aged gentleman of the name of Lisle. This Mr. Ambrose Lisle was a native of Watley, and had been a prosperous merchant of the city of London. Since his return, after about twenty years' absence, he had shut himself up in almost total seclusion, nourishing a cynical bitterness and acrimony of temper which gradually withered up the sources of health and life, till at length it became as visible to himself as it had for some time been to others, that the oil of existence was expended, burnt up, and that but a few weak flickers more, and the ailing man's plaints and griefs would be hushed in the dark silence of the grave.

Mr. Lisle had no relatives in Watley, and the only individual with whom he was on terms of personal intimacy was Mr. Peter Sowerby, an attorney of the place, who had for many years transacted all his business. This man visited Mr. Lisle most evenings, played at chess with him, and gradually acquired an influence over his client which that weak gentleman had once or twice feebly but vainly endeavoured to shake off. To this clever attorney, it was rumored, Mr. Lisle had bequeathed all his wealth.

This piece of information had been put in circulation by Caleb Jennings, who was a sort of humble favorite of Mr. Lisle's, or, at all events, was regarded by the misanthrope with less dislike than he manifested toward others. Caleb cultivated a few flowers in a little plot of ground at the back of the house, and Mr. Lisle would sometimes accept a rose or a bunch of violets from him. Other slight services--especially since the recent death of his old and garrulous woman-servant, Esther May, who had accompanied him from London, and with whom Mr. Jennings had always been upon terms of gossiping intimacy--had led to certain familiarities of intercourse; and it thus happened that the inquisitive shoemender became partially acquainted with the history of the wrongs and griefs which preyed upon, and shortened the life of, the prematurely-aged man.

The substance of this everyday, common-place story, as related to us by Jennings, and subsequently enlarged and colored from other sources, may be very briefly told.

Ambrose Lisle, in consequence of an accident which occurred in his infancy, was slightly deformed. His right shoulder--as I understood, for I never saw him--grew out, giving an ungraceful and somewhat comical twist to his figure, which, in female eyes--youthful ones at least--sadly marred the effect of his intelligent and handsome countenance. This personal defect rendered him shy and awkward in the presence of women of his own class of society; and he had attained the ripe age of thirty-seven years, and was a rich and prosperous man, before he gave the slightest token of an inclination towards matrimony. About a twelvemonth previous to that period of his life, the deaths--quickly following each other--of a Mr. and Mrs. Stevens threw their eldest daughter, Lucy, upon Mr. Lisle's hands. Mr. Lisle had been left an orphan at a very early age, and Mrs. Stevens--his aunt, and then a maiden lady--had, in accordance with his father's will, taken charge of himself and brother till they severally attained their majority. Long, however, before that she married Mr. Stevens, by whom she had two children--Lucy and Emily. Her husband, whom she survived but two months, died insolvent; and in obedience to the dying wishes of his aunt, for whom he appears to have felt the tenderest esteem, he took the eldest of her orphan children into his home, intending to regard and provide for her as his own adopted child and heiress. Emily, the other sister found refuge in the house of a still more distant relative than himself.

The Stevenses had gone to live at a remote part of England--Yorkshire, I believe--and it thus fell out, that till his cousin Lucy arrived at her new home he had not seen her for more than ten years. The pale, and somewhat plain child, as he had esteemed her, he was startled to find had become a charming woman; and her naturally gay and joyous temperament, quick talents, and fresh young beauty, rapidly acquired an overwhelming influence over him. Strenuously but vainly he struggled against the growing infatuation--argued, reasoned with himself--passed in review the insurmountable objections to such a union, the difference of age--he leading towards thirty-seven, she barely twenty-one; he crooked, deformed, of reserved, taciturn temper--she full of young life, and grace and beauty. It was useless; and nearly a year had passed in the bootless struggle when Lucy Stevens, who had vainly striven to blind herself to the nature of the emotions by which her cousin and guardian was animated towards her, intimated a wish to accept her sister Emily's invitation to pass two or three months with her. This brought the affair to a crisis. Buoying himself up with the illusions which people in such an unreasonable frame of mind create for themselves, he suddenly entered the sitting-room set apart for her private use, with the desperate purpose of making his beautiful cousin a formal offer of his hand. She was not in the apartment, but her opened writing-desk, and a partly-finished letter lying on it, showed that she had been recently there, and would probably soon return. Mr. Lisle took two or three agitated turns about the room, one of which brought him close to the writing-desk, and his glance involuntarily fell upon the unfinished letter. Had a deadly serpent leaped suddenly upon his throat, the shock could not have been greater. At the head of the sheet of paper was a clever pen-and-ink sketch of Lucy Stevens and himself; he, kneeling to her in a lovelorn ludicrous attitude, and she laughing immoderately at his lachrymose and pitiful aspect and speech. The letter was addressed to her sister Emily; and the enraged lover saw not only that his supposed secret was fully known, but that he himself was mocked, laughed at for his doting folly. At least this was his interpretation of the words which swam before his eyes. At the instant Lucy returned, and a torrent of imprecation burst from the furious man, in which wounded self-love, rageful pride, and long pent-up passion, found utterance in wild and bitter words. Half an hour afterwards Lucy Stevens had left the merchant's house--for ever, as it proved. She, indeed, on arriving at her sister's, sent a letter supplicating forgiveness at the thoughtless, and, as he deemed it, insulting sketch, intended only for Emily's eye; but he replied merely by a note written by one of his clerks, informing Miss Stevens that Mr. Lisle declined any further correspondence with her.

The ire of the angered and vindictive man had, however, begun sensibly to abate, and old thoughts, memories, duties, suggested partly by the blank which Lucy's absence made in his house, partly by remembrance of the solemn promise he had made her mother, were strongly reviving in his mind, when he read the announcement of her marriage in a provincial journal, directed to him, as he believed, in the bride's handwriting; but this was an error, her sister having sent the newspaper. Mr. Lisle also construed this into a deliberate mockery and insult, and from that hour strove to banish all images and thoughts connected with his cousin from his heart and memory.

He unfortunately adopted the very worst course possible for effecting this object. Had he remained amid the buzz and tumult of active life, a mere sentimental disappointment, such as thousands of us have sustained and afterwards forgotten, would, there can be little doubt, have soon ceased to afflict him. He chose to retire from business, visited Watley, and habits of miserliness growing rapidly upon his cankered mind, never afterwards removed from the lodgings he had hired on first arriving there. Thus madly hugging to himself sharp-pointed memories which a sensible man would have speedily cast off and forgotten, the sour misanthrope passed a useless, cheerless, weary existence, to which death must have been a welcome relief.

Matters were in this state with the morose and aged man--aged mentally and corporeally, although his years were but fifty-eight--when Mr. Flint made Mr. Jennings's acquaintance. Another month or so had passed away when Caleb's attention was one day about noon claimed by a young man dressed in mourning, accompanied by a female similarly attired, and from their resemblance to each other he conjectured brother and sister. The stranger wished to know if that was the house in which Mr. Ambrose Lisle resided. Jennings said it was; and with civil alacrity left his stall and rang the front-door bell. The summons was answered by the landlady's servant, who, since Esther May's death, had waited on the first-floor lodger; and the visitors were invited to go up-stairs. Caleb, much wondering who they might be, returned to his stall, and thence passed into his eating and sleeping room just below Mr. Lisle's apartments. He was in the act of taking a pipe from the mantel-shelf in order to the more deliberate and satisfactory cogitation on such an unusual event, when he was startled by a loud shout, or scream rather, from above. The quivering and excited voice was that of Mr. Lisle, and the outcry was immediately followed by an explosion of unintelligible exclamations from several persons. Caleb was up stairs in an instant, and found himself in the midst of a strangely-perplexing and distracted scene. Mr. Lisle, pale as his shirt, shaking in every limb, and his eyes on fire with passion, was hurling forth a torrent of vituperation and reproach at the young woman, whom he evidently mistook for some one else; whilst she, extremely terrified, and unable to stand but for the assistance of her companion, was tendering a letter in her outstretched hand, and uttering broken sentences, which her own agitation and the fury of Mr. Lisle's invectives rendered totally incomprehensible. At last the fierce old man struck the letter from her hand, and with frantic rage ordered both the strangers to leave the room. Caleb urged them, to comply, and accompanied them down stairs. When they reached the street, he observed a woman on the other side of the way, dressed in mourning, and much older apparently--though he could not well see her face through the thick veil she wore--than she who had thrown Mr. Lisle into such an agony of rage, apparently waiting for them. To her the young people immediately hastened, and after a brief conference the three turned up the street, and Mr. Jennings saw no more of them.

A quarter of an hour afterwards the house-servant informed Caleb that Mr. Lisle had retired to bed, and although still in great agitation, and, as she feared, seriously indisposed, would not permit Dr. Clarke to be sent for. So sudden and violent a hurricane in the usually dull and drowsy atmosphere in which Jennings lived, excited and disturbed him greatly: the hours, however, flew past without bringing any relief to his curiosity, and evening was falling, when a peculiar knocking on the floor overhead announced that Mr. Lisle desired his presence. That gentleman was sitting up in bed, and in the growing darkness his face could not be very distinctly seen; but Caleb instantly observed a vivid and unusual light in the old man's eyes. The letter so strangely delivered was lying open before him; and unless the shoemender was greatly mistaken, there were stains of recent tears upon Mr. Lisle's furrowed and hollow cheeks. The voice, too, it struck Caleb, though eager, was gentle and wavering. "It was a mistake, Jennings," he said; "I was mad for the moment. Are they gone?" he added in a yet more subdued and gentle tone. Caleb informed him of what he had seen; and as he did so, the strange light in the old man's eyes seemed to quiver and sparkle with a yet intenser emotion than before. Presently he shaded them with his hand, and remained several minutes silent. He then said with a firmer voice: "I shall be glad if you will step to Mr. Sowerby, and tell him I am too unwell to see him this evening. But be sure to say nothing else," he eagerly added, as Caleb turned away in compliance with his request; "and when you come back, let me see you again."

When Jennings returned, he found to his great surprise Mr. Lisle up and nearly dressed; and his astonishment increased a hundred-fold upon hearing that gentleman say, in a quick but perfectly collected and decided manner, that he should set off for London by the mail-train.

"For London--and by night!" exclaimed Caleb, scarcely sure that he heard aright.

"Yes--yes, I shall not be observed in the dark," sharply rejoined Mr. Lisle; "and you, Caleb, must keep my secret from every body, especially from Sowerby. I shall be here in time to see him to-morrow night, and he will be none the wiser." This was said with a slight chuckle; and as soon as his simple preparations were complete, Mr. Lisle, well wrapped up, and his face almost hidden by shawls, locked his door, and assisted by Jennings, stole furtively down stairs, and reached unrecognized the railway station just in time for the train.

It was quite dark the next evening when Mr. Lisle returned; and so well had he managed, that Mr. Sowerby, who paid his usual visit about half an hour afterwards, had evidently heard nothing of the suspicious absence of his esteemed client from Watley. The old man exulted over the success of his deception to Caleb the next morning, but dropped no hint as to the object of his sudden journey.

Three days passed without the occurrence of any incident tending to the enlightenment of Mr. Jennings upon these mysterious events, which, however, he plainly saw had lamentably shaken the long-since failing man. On the afternoon of the fourth day, Mr. Lisle walked, or rather tottered, into Caleb's stall, and seated himself on the only vacant stool it contained. His manner was confused, and frequently purposeless, and there was an anxious, flurried expression in his face which Jennings did not at all like. He remained silent for some time, with the exception of partially inaudible snatches of comment or questionings, apparently addressed to himself. At last he said: "I shall take a longer journey to-morrow, Caleb--much longer: let me see--where did I say? Ah, yes! to Glasgow; to be sure to Glasgow!"

"To Glasgow, and to-morrow!" exclaimed the astounded cobbler.

"No, no--not Glasgow; they have removed," feebly rejoined Mr. Lisle. "But Lucy has written it down for me. True--true; and to-morrow I shall set out."

The strange expression of Mr. Lisle's face became momentarily more strongly marked, and Jennings, greatly alarmed, said: "You are ill, Mr. Lisle; let me run for Dr. Clarke."

"No--no," he murmured, at the same time striving to rise from his seat, which he could only accomplish by Caleb's assistance, and so supported, he staggered indoors. "I shall be better to-morrow," he said faintly, and then slowly added: "To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow! Ah me! Yes, as I said, to-morrow, I"----He paused abruptly, and they gained his apartment. He seated himself, and then Jennings, at his mute solicitations, assisted him to bed.

He lay some time with his eyes closed; and Caleb could feel--for Mr. Lisle held him firmly by the hand, as if to prevent his going away--a convulsive shudder pass over his frame. At last he slowly opened his eyes, and Caleb saw that he was indeed about to depart upon the long journey from which there is no return. The lips of the dying man worked inarticulately for some moments; and then, with a mighty effort, as it seemed, he said, whilst his trembling hand pointed feebly to a bureau chest of drawers that stood in the room: "There--there for Lucy; there, the secret place is"----Some inaudible words followed, and then, after a still mightier struggle than before, he gasped out: "No word--no word--to--to Sowerby--for her--Lucy."

More was said, but undistinguishable by mortal ear; and after gazing with an expression of indescribable anxiety in the scared face of his awestruck listener, the wearied eyes slowly reclosed--the deep silence flowed past; then the convulsive shudder came again, and he was dead!

Caleb Jennings tremblingly summoned the house-servant and the landlady, and was still confusedly pondering the broken sentences uttered by the dying man, when Mr. Sowerby hurriedly arrived. The attorney's first care was to assume the direction of affairs, and to place seals upon every article containing or likely to contain any thing of value belonging to the deceased. This done, he went away to give directions for the funeral, which took place a few days afterwards; and it was then formally announced that Mr. Sowerby succeeded by will to the large property of Ambrose Lisle; under trust, however, for the family, if any, of Robert Lisle, the deceased's brother, who had gone when very young to India, and had not been heard of for many years--a condition which did not at all mar the joy of the crafty lawyer, he having long since instituted private inquiries, which perfectly satisfied him that the said Robert Lisle had died, unmarried, at Calcutta.

Mr. Jennings was in a state of great dubiety and consternation. Sowerby had emptied the chest of drawers of every valuable it contained; and unless he had missed the secret receptacle Mr. Lisle had spoken of, the deceased's intentions, whatever they might have been, were clearly defeated. And if he had _not_ discovered it, how could he, Jennings, get at the drawers to examine them? A fortunate chance brought some relief to his perplexities. Ambrose Lisle's furniture was advertised to be sold by auction, and Caleb resolved to purchase the bureau chest of drawers at almost any price, although to do so would oblige him to break into his rent-money, then nearly due. The day of sale came, and the important lot in its turn was put up. In one of the drawers there were a number of loose newspapers, and other valueless scraps; and Caleb, with a sly grin, asked the auctioneer if he sold the article with all its contents. "Oh yes," said Sowerby, who was watching the sale; "the buyer may have all it contains over his bargain, and much good may it do him." A laugh followed the attorney's sneering remark, and the biddings went on. "I want it," observed Caleb, "because it just fits a recess like this one in my room underneath." This he said to quiet a suspicion he thought he saw gathering upon the attorney's brow. It was finally knocked down to Caleb at L5, 10s., a sum considerably beyond its real value; and he had to borrow a sovereign in order to clear his speculative purchase. This done, he carried off his prize, and as soon as the closing of the house for the night secured him from interruption, he set eagerly to work in search of the secret drawer. A long and patient examination was richly rewarded. Behind one of the small drawers of the _secretaire_ portion of the piece of furniture was another small one, curiously concealed, which contained Bank-of-England notes to the amount of L200, tied up with a letter, upon the back of which was written, in the deceased's handwriting, "To take with me." The letter which Caleb, although he read print with facility, had much difficulty in making out, was that which Mr. Lisle had struck from the young woman's hand a few weeks before, and proved to be a very affecting appeal from Lucy Stevens, now Lucy Warner, and a widow, with two grown-up children. Her husband had died in insolvent circumstances, and she and her sister Emily, who was still single, were endeavoring to carry on a school at Bristol, which promised to be sufficiently prosperous if the sum of about L150 could be raised, to save the furniture from her deceased husband's creditors. The claim was pressing, for Mr. Warner had been dead nearly a year, and Mr. Lisle being the only relative Mrs. Warner had in the world, she had ventured to entreat his assistance for her mother's sake. There could be no moral doubt, therefore, that this money was intended for Mrs. Warner's relief; and early in the morning Mr. Caleb Jennings dressed himself in his Sunday's suit, and with a brief announcement to his landlady that he was about to leave Watley for a day or two on a visit to a friend, set off for the railway station. He had not proceeded far when a difficulty struck him: the bank-notes were all twenties; and were he to change a twenty-pound note at the station, where he was well known, great would be the tattle and wonderment, if nothing worse, that would ensue. So Caleb tried his credit again, borrowed sufficient for his journey to London, and there changed one of the notes.

He soon reached Bristol, and blessed was the relief which the sum of money he brought afforded Mrs. Warner. She expressed much sorrow for the death of Mr. Lisle, and great gratitude to Caleb. The worthy man accepted with some reluctance one of the notes, or at least as much as remained of that which he had changed; and after exchanging promises with the widow and her relatives to keep the matter secret, departed homewards. The young woman, Mrs. Warner's daughter, who had brought the letter to Watley, was, Caleb noticed, the very image of her mother, or rather of what her mother must have been when young. This remarkable resemblance it was, no doubt, which had for the moment so confounded and agitated Mr. Lisle.

Nothing occurred for about a fortnight after Caleb's return to disquiet him, and he had begun to feel tolerably sure that his discovery of the notes would remain unsuspected, when, one afternoon, the sudden and impetuous entrance of Mr. Sowerby into his stall caused him to jump up from his seat with surprise and alarm. The attorney's face was deathly white, his eyes glared like a wild beast's, and his whole appearance exhibited uncontrollable agitation. "A word with you, Mr. Jennings," he gasped--"a word in private, and at once!" Caleb, in scarcely less consternation than his visitor, led the way into his inner room, and closed the door.

"Restore--give back," screamed the attorney, vainly struggling to dissemble the agitation which convulsed him--"that--that which you have purloined from the chest of drawers!"

The hot blood rushed to Caleb's face and temples; the wild vehemence and suddenness of the demand confounded him; and certain previous dim suspicions that the law might not only pronounce what he had done illegal, but possibly felonious, returned upon him with terrible force, and he quite lost his presence of mind.

"I can't--I can't," he stammered. "It's gone--given away"----

"Gone!" shouted, or more correctly howled, Sowerby, at the same time flying at Caleb's throat as if he would throttle him. "Gone--given away! You lie--you want to drive a bargain with me--dog!--liar!--rascal!--thief!"

This was a species of attack which Jennings was at no loss how to meet. He shook the attorney roughly off, and hurled him, in the midst of his vituperation, to the further end of the room.

They then stood glaring at each other in silence, till the attorney, mastering himself as well as he could, essayed another and more rational mode of attaining his purpose.

"Come, come, Jennings," he said, "don't be a fool. Let us understand each other. I have just discovered a paper, a memorandum of what you have found in the drawers, and to obtain which you bought them. I don't care for the money--keep it; only give me the papers--documents."

"Papers--documents!" ejaculated Caleb in unfeigned surprise.

"Yes--yes; of use to me only. You, I remember, cannot read writing; but they are of great consequence to me--to me only, I tell you."

"You can't mean Mrs. Warner's letter?"

"No--no; curse the letter! You are playing with a tiger! Keep the money, I tell you; but give up the papers--documents--or I'll transport you!" shouted Sowerby with reviving fury.

Caleb, thoroughly bewildered, could only mechanically ejaculate that he had no papers or documents.

The rage of the attorney when he found he could extract nothing from Jennings was frightful. He literally foamed with passion, uttered the wildest threats; and then suddenly changing his key, offered the astounded cobbler one--two--three thousand pounds--any sum he chose to name--for the papers--documents! This scene of alternate violence and cajolery lasted nearly an hour; and then Sowerby rushed from the house, as if pursued by the furies, and leaving his auditor in a state of thorough bewilderment and dismay. It occurred to Caleb, as soon as his mind had settled into something like order, that there might be another secret drawer; and the recollection of Mr. Lisle's journey to London returned suggestively to him. Another long and eager search, however, proved fruitless; and the suspicion was given up, or, more correctly, weakened.

As soon as it was light the next morning, Mr. Sowerby was again with him. He was more guarded now, and was at length convinced that Jennings had no paper or document to give up. "It was only some important memoranda," observed the attorney carelessly, "that would save me a world of trouble in a lawsuit I shall have to bring against some heavy debtors to Mr. Lisle's estate; but I must do as well as I can without them. Good morning." Just as he reached the door, a sudden thought appeared to strike him. He stopped and said: "By the way, Jennings, in the hurry of business I forgot that Mr. Lisle had told me the chest of drawers you bought, and a few other articles, were family relics which he wished to be given to certain parties he named. The other things I have got: and you, I presume, will let me have the drawers for--say a pound profit on your bargain?"

Caleb was not the acutest man in the world; but this sudden proposition, carelessly as it was made, suggested curious thoughts. "No," he answered; "I shall not part with it. I shall keep it as a memorial of Mr. Lisle."

Sowerby's face assumed, as Caleb spoke, a ferocious expression. "Shall you?" said he. "Then, be sure, my fine fellow, that you shall also have something to remember me by as long as you live!"

He then went away, and a few days afterwards Caleb was served with a writ for the recovery of the two hundred pounds.

The affair made a great noise in the place; and Caleb's conduct being very generally approved, a subscription was set on foot to defray the cost of defending the action--one Hayling, a rival attorney to Sowerby, having asserted that the words used by the proprietor of the chest of drawers at the sale barred his claim to the money found in them. This wise gentleman was intrusted with the defence; and, strange to say, the jury, a common one--spite of the direction of the judge, returned a verdict for the defendant, upon the ground that Sowerby's jocular or sneering remark amounted to a serious, valid leave and license to sell two hundred pounds for five pounds ten shillings!

Sowerby obtained, as a matter of course, a rule for a new trial; and a fresh action was brought. All at once Hayling refused to go on, alleging deficiency of funds. He told Jennings that in his opinion it would be better that he should give in to Sowerby's whim, who only wanted the drawers in order to comply with the testator's wishes. "Besides," remarked Hayling in conclusion, "he is sure to get the article, you know, when it comes to be sold under a writ of _fi. fa._" A few days after this conversation, it was ascertained that Hayling was to succeed to Sowerby's business, the latter gentleman being about to retire upon the fortune bequeathed him by Mr. Lisle.

At last Caleb, driven nearly out of his senses, though still doggedly obstinate, by the harassing perplexities in which he found himself, thought of applying to us.

"A very curious affair, upon my word," remarked Mr. Flint, as soon as Caleb had unburdened himself of the story of his woes and cares; "and in my opinion by no means explainable by Sowerby's anxiety to fulfil the testator's wishes. He cannot expect to get two hundred pence out of you; and Mrs. Warner, you say, is equally unable to pay. Very odd indeed. Perhaps if we could get time, something might turn up."

With this view Flint looked over the papers Caleb had brought, and found the declaration was in _trover_--a manifest error--the notes never admittedly having been in Sowerby's actual possession. We accordingly demurred to the form of action, and the proceedings were set aside. This, however, proved of no ultimate benefit: Sowerby persevered, and a fresh action was instituted against the unhappy shoemender. So utterly overcrowed and disconsolate was poor Caleb, that, he determined to give up the drawers, which was all Sowerby even now required, and so wash his hands of the unfortunate business. Previous, however, to this being done, it was determined that another thorough and scientific examination of the mysterious piece of furniture should be made; and for this purpose, Mr. Flint obtained a workman skilled in the mysteries of secret contrivances, from the desk and dressing-case establishment in King-street, Holborn, and proceeded with him to Watley.

The man performed his task with great care and skill: every depth and width was gauged and measured, in order to ascertain if there were any false bottoms or backs; and the workman finally pronounced that there was no concealed receptacle in the article.

"I am sure there is," persisted Flint, whom disappointment as usual rendered but the more obstinate; "and so is Sowerby; and he knows, too, that it is so cunningly contrived as to be undiscoverable, except by a person in the secret, which he no doubt at first imagined Caleb to be. I'll tell you what we will do: you have the necessary tools with you. Split the confounded chest of drawers into shreds: I'll be answerable for the consequences."

This was done carefully and methodically, but for some time without result. At length the large drawer next the floor had to be knocked to pieces; and as it fell apart, one section of the bottom, which, like all the others, was divided into two compartments, dropped asunder, and discovered a parchment laid flat between the two thin leaves, which, when pressed together in the grooves of the drawer, presented precisely the same appearance as the rest. Flint snatched up the parchment, and his eager eye scarcely rested an instant on the writing, when a shout of triumph burst from him. It was the last will and testament of Ambrose Lisle, dated August 21, 1838--the day of his last hurried visit to London. It revoked the former will, and bequeathed the whole of his property, in equal portions, to his cousins Lucy Warner and Emily Stevens, with succession to their children; but with reservation of one-half to his brother Robert or children, should he be alive, or have left offspring.

Great, it may be supposed, was the jubilation of Caleb Jennings at this discovery; and all Watley, by his agency, was in a marvelously short space of time in a very similar state of excitement. It was very late that night when he reached his bed; and how he got there at all, and what precisely had happened, except, indeed, that he had somewhere picked up a splitting headache, was, for some time after he awoke the next morn, very confusedly remembered.

Mr. Flint, upon reflection, was by no means so exultant as the worthy shoemender. The odd mode of packing away a deed of such importance, with no assignable motive for doing so, except the needless awe with which Sowerby was said to have inspired his feeble-spirited client, together with what Caleb had said of the shattered state of the deceased's mind after the interview with Mrs. Warner's daughter, suggested fears that Sowerby might dispute, and perhaps successfully, the validity of this last will. My excellent partner, however, determined, as was his wont, to put a bold face on the matter; and first clearly settling in his own mind what he should and what he should _not_ say, he waited upon Mr. Sowerby. The news had preceded him, and he was at once surprised and delighted to find that the nervous, crestfallen attorney was quite unaware of the advantages of his position. On condition of not being called to account for the moneys he had received and expended, about L1200, he destroyed the former will in Mr. Flint's presence, and gave up at once all the deceased's papers. From these we learned that Mr. Lisle had written a letter to Mrs. Warner, stating what he had done, where the will would be found, and that only herself and Jennings would know the secret. From infirmity of purpose, or from having subsequently determined on a personal interview, the letter was not posted; and Sowerby subsequently discovered it, together with a memorandum of the numbers of the bank-notes found by Caleb in the secret drawer--the eccentric gentleman appears to have had quite a mania for such hiding-places--of a writing-desk.

The affair was thus happily terminated: Mrs. Warner, her children, and sister, were enriched, and Caleb Jennings was set up in a good way of business in his native place, where he still flourishes. Over the centre of his shop there is a large nondescript sign, surmounted by a golden boot, which, upon close inspection, is found to bear some resemblance to a huge bureau chest of drawers, all the circumstances connected with which may be heard, for the asking, and in much fuller detail than I have given, from the lips of the owner of the establishment, by any lady or gentleman who will take the trouble of a journey to Watley for that purpose.

MY NOVEL:

OR, VARIETIES IN ENGLISH LIFE,[8]

BY PISISTRATUS CAXTON.