Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851.

by Various

PART THE SECOND—NOON.

V.

To reason upon the effects of the discovery, or confession of our feelings, was not a process for which either of us was qualified by temperament or inclination. We did not pause to consider whether it was prudent to take our hearts and natures for granted all at once, and risk upon the strange delight of a single moment of luxurious emotion the happiness, perhaps, of a whole lifetime. We did not stop to ask if there were any obstacles in the way, any jarring chords to be attuned, any thing to be known or thought of into which our position demanded a scrutiny. We resigned ourselves at once to our impulses. We believed that we had seen enough of the world, and were strong enough in our self-sustaining power, and clear enough in our penetration, to dispense with ordinary safeguards, and act as if we were superior to them. We made our own world, and so went on as if we could control the planet in which we lived at our own will and pleasure.

I soon perceived that my attentions to Astræa had become a subject of much remark. The peering coterie about us were so vigilant in matters of that kind, that, as it appeared afterward, they had found out the fact before it had taken place. For my own part, there was nobody half so much surprised at the circumstance as I was myself. I believed that the heart, like that plant which is said to blow once and die, was incapable of a second growth of love; but I now felt the fallacy of that doctrine, and was at first humiliated by the discovery. It struck me like a great heresy against truth and purity; it seemed to lay bare before me the corruptibility and feebleness of poor human nature. To strive against it, however, was idle. The second growth was in full flower, yet with a difference from the first, which I could detect even against the grain of the passion that was subjugating me. I felt that the second growth was less simple and devotional than the first; that it had more exuberance, and was of a wilder character; that it struck not its roots so deeply, but spread its blossoms more widely; that it was less engrossing, but more agitating; that it was cultivated with greater consciousness and premeditation, risked with more caution, fed with more prudence, and tended more constantly—but all with a lesser waste of the imagination; that its delights were more fervid but less appeasing; that it looked not so much into the future with hope and promise, as it filled the present with rapture; that its memories were neither so sad nor so vivid, and that it let in caprice, and vanity, and unreasonableness, and self-love, and the world's esteem, which are all as dust in the balance, or a feather in the whirlwind, to impetuous love. I was amazed to find myself a daily waiter upon beauty. Yet so it was. The vision of Gertrude was now gone from my path—the spectre had vanished in the broad light of the new passion.

Still, while I paid my court to Astræa, it was not with any intention of publicity, but furtively, as if a private dread hung over us, or as if we thought it pleasanter to vail our feelings from observation. We understood each other in silent looks, which we supposed to be unintelligible to every body else; she seemed to avoid, designedly, all appearance of interest in me, and sometimes played the part to such admiration, as to give me not a few passing pangs of doubt and uneasiness; and I, seeing how scrupulous she was on that point, and not choosing to incur rude jests at her expense, was equally unwilling to betray a feeling which was rendered the more delicious by secrecy. We imagined ourselves secure; but neither of us could have had much worldly sagacity or we must have known that all our caution was fruitless. Basilisks' eyes were around us, and we trod a path beset with serpents. Fortunately we were both looked up to as persons who could not be approached with familiarity; and that preserved us from the open badinage to which others, in similar circumstances, might have been subjected.

Alone, and liberated from this vexatious surveillance, we gave free vent to our thoughts. The suddenness of our new confidence, and the rapidity with which we already shaped its issues, bewildered us by the intensity of the emotions that came crowding for speech and explanation. Astræa sometimes had misgivings, although she never knew how to give them a definite form. One day she said to me, "We are wrong in giving way to this feeling. It is not a love likely to procure us peace. I say this to you because I feel it—perhaps, because I know it; but I confess myself unable to argue upon a question upon which my reason, my whole being is held in suspense. I say so, simply because I ought to say so, and not because I am prepared of myself to act, or even to advise. I am like a leaf in a tempest, and can not guide myself. I yield to the irresistible power that has swept me from the firm land, and deprived me of the strength to regain it."

I fancied that this left me but one course to take, and I replied, "We have pronounced our destiny, Astræa, for good or for evil. We ought to have no choice but to abide by it. If you do not fail in your faith, mine is irrevocable."

At these words she looked gravely at me, and answered,

"My faith dies with me. It is a part of my life. It was not taken up in an hour, to be as lightly thrown aside. Without it, life would be insupportable; with it, life in any shape of seclusion, privation, banishment, contains all the blessings I covet upon earth. It was not for that, or of that I spoke. Understand me clearly, and put no construction on my words outside their plain and ordinary meaning. All I ask, all that is necessary for me is your society; to hear you speak, to drink in the words of kindness and power that flow from your lips, to be ever near you, to tend, solace, and console you. I should be content to enjoy the privilege of seeing that you were happy, without even aspiring to the higher glory of creating happiness for you. That is my nature—capable of a wider range, and a loftier flight, but happiest in its devotion. In any capacity I will serve you—and feel that the servitude of love is dominion!"

So firm and constant was the character of Astræa, tinged with a romantic inspiration, that all this homage was serious and real, and issued gravely from her heart through her lips. She meant every syllable she spoke in its true sense; and I felt that she was ready to fulfill it, and sustain it to the end. She believed that all endurances were possible for love's sake, and that she could even enact miracles of stoicism in the strength of her fidelity.

For many months our intercourse, always thus sophisticating its aims and interpretations, was carried on in secret. We had become necessary to each other; but being still shut up in our mystery, we had not made as much advance toward any definite result as one single moment of disclosure to the people we were among would have inevitably compelled us to decide upon. We were very prudent in our outward bearing, and hardly aware of the avidity with which the concealed passion was devouring our hearts.

The dwarf followed me, and hovered about me more than ever. But I learned to bear with him on account of his being in the house with Astræa. Any body who was constantly in her society, and admitted to terms of intimacy with her, was welcome to me—as relics from the altar of a saint are welcome to the devotee, or a leaf snatched, from a tree in the haunts of home is welcome to the exile. It was a pleasure when I met him even to ask for Astræa, to have an excuse for uttering her name, or to hear him speak of her, or to speak of her myself, or to talk of any thing that we had before talked of together. Such are the resources, the feints, the stratagems, the foibles of love!

VI.

One night my indefatigable Mephistophiles took me to a tavern. He was in a vagrant mood, and I indulged him.

"Come, we shall see life to-night," he said.

"With all my heart," I replied. It was not much to my taste, but I fancied there was something unusual in his manner, and my curiosity was awakened to see what it would lead to.

We entered a bustling and brilliantly-lighted house. Numerous guests were scattered about at different tables, variously engaged in getting rid of time at the smallest possible cost of reflection. The dwarf sauntered through the room, whispered a waiter, and, beckoning me to follow, led the way up-stairs to a lesser apartment, where we found ourselves alone.

"You will not see much life here," I observed, rather surprised at his selection of a secluded room in preference to the lively salon through which we had just passed.

"We can make our own life," he answered, with a sarcastic twinge of the mouth, "and imagine more things in five minutes than we should see or hear below in a month."

I thought this very odd. It looked as if he had some concealed motive; but I acquiesced in his notion, and was secretly pleased, not less at the exchange of the din and riot for ease and quietness, than at the opportunity it opened to him for the free play of the humor, whatever it was, that I could plainly see was working upon him.

We drank freely—that was a great resource with him when he was in a mood of extravagance—talked rapidly about a chaos of things, laughed loudly, and in the pauses of the strange revel relapsed every now and then into silence and abstraction. During these brief and sudden intervals, the dwarf would amuse himself by drawing uncouth lines on the table, with his head hanging over them, as if his thoughts were elsewhere engaged, and the unintelligible pastime of his fingers were resorted to only to hide them.

I could not tell why it was, but I felt uneasy and restless. My companion appeared to me like a man who was mentally laboring at some revelation, yet did not know how to begin it. He was constantly talking at something that was evidently troubling his mind, yet he still evaded his own purpose, as if he did not like the task to which he had set himself. Throughout the whole time he never mentioned Astræa's name, and this circumstance gave me additional cause for suspicion.

At last, summoning up all his energy, and fixing himself with the points of his elbows on the table, and his long, wiry hands, which looked like talons, stretched up into his elfin hair at each side of his face, while his eyes, shooting out their malignant fires, were riveted upon me to scan the effect of what he was about to say, he suddenly exclaimed,

"You have been remarked in your attentions to Astræa."

The mystery was out. And what was there in it, after all? I was a free agent, and so was Astræa. Why should he make so much theatrical parade about so very simple a business?

"Well!" I exclaimed, scarcely able to repress a smile, which the exaggerated earnestness of his manner excited.

"Well! You acknowledge that it is so?"

"Acknowledge? Why should I either acknowledge or deny it? There is no treason in it; the lady is the best judge—let me add, the only judge—of any attentions I may have paid to her."

"But I say you have been remarked—it has been spoken of—it is already a common topic of conversation."

"Indeed! A common topic of conversation! Well, I have no objection, provided my good-natured friends do not say any thing injurious, or wound the lady's feelings by an improper use of my name."

He paused for a moment, and lowering his voice, then went on,

"You never said any thing of this before."

"Why should I? The inquiry was never made of me before."

"I have made no inquiry," he retorted. "I didn't ask you to confess. You have avowed it all yourself, unconsciously."

I felt that the dwarf was getting serious, and that he was likely to make me more in earnest before he was done than I had at first anticipated. I saw the necessity of showing him at once that I would not brook his interference, and I addressed him in a more deliberate tone than I had hitherto adopted.

"Allow me to ask," I demanded, "what interest you may take in this matter, and by what right you assume the office of interrogating me so authoritatively?"

"By what right?" he answered. "My right to do so is rather clearer than your right to refuse an explanation. You met her at my mother's house—you meet her there. She is under our roof, under our guardianship and protection. That gives me the right. It is not pleasant to interfere in this way; but I am called upon to do so by my position, and I delayed it in the hope that you would render it unnecessary."

"Why should you hope so? Why should you desire any explanation on the subject? The lady is her own mistress: she is under your roof, it is true; but not under your control. The same thing might happen under any other roof, and nobody would thereby acquire a right to interfere in a matter that concerns her alone. You will surely see the propriety of not suffering your curiosity to meddle any further in the affair?"

"Meddle!" he reiterated; "control! Are these the phrases with which you taunt me? But," dropping his voice again, he added, "you are right in suggesting that I have discharged my office when I demand, to what end those very marked attentions are paid to Astræa?"

"You make an unwarrantable demand, and you shall have a fitting answer to it; and my answer is, that to Astræa alone will I confide my confession, as you call it. She is old enough and wise enough to think and act for herself; nor will I consent to compromise my respect for her understanding by admitting that she requires an arbitrator—perhaps I ought to say, champion."

"Have a care," he replied, kindling up all at once into a sort of frenzy—"have a care what you say or do. You move in darkness—you tread on smothered fire."

"Do you threaten me?" said I.

"No; I do not threaten you. Look at your arm and mine—compare your muscles with my shrunken and stunted frame," he cried, with an expression of pain and bitterness; "I do not threaten you, but I warn you—mark me, I warn you! Heed my warning, I beseech, I implore you—nay, heed it for your life!"

I could not but admire the sibyl-like grandeur of his head and outstretched arms as he uttered these strange words. His voice was hoarse with some surging emotion; and if so poor a creature could have been the recipient of a supernatural inspiration, he might have sat at that moment for the portrait of one of the deformed soothsayers in a tale of magic.

"Do I understand you correctly?" said I; "or are you only playing off some new freak upon me? Answer me frankly one question, and I shall be better able to comprehend the meaning of your mysterious menace. Are you—but I know it is absurd, I feel that the question is very ridiculous, only that your reply to it will, perhaps, set us both right—do you love Astræa? I really can not conceive any thing short of some such feeling to justify this violence."

"Love her? I love Astræa? If there be a mortal I hate in the core of my heart, it is Astræa. Are you satisfied?" he replied, with an expression of fiendish satisfaction in his face, as if he were glad of the excuse for giving vent to his malignity.

"Hate her?" said I, calmly; "that is unreasonable: but the whole discussion is unreasonable. I have given you my answer; none other shall you have from me. So, good-night."

"One word," he said, leaping out of his chair into the middle of the room. "One word before you go. I am a dwarf—do not delude yourself into any contempt of me on that account. I know as well as you do my disadvantages in the world; I am as conscious as you are of my physical defects and shortcomings, my distorted spine, and the parsimony of nature in all particulars when she made me. But I have passions like other men; and I pursue them like other men, only, as I am shut out from the summary and open process, I am compelled, perchance, to the choice of dark and crooked means. Perhaps, too, my passions are all the more turbulent and dangerous because they are pent up in an incapable frame, and denied the vents and appliances which men like you have at their command. Mark me! see Astræa no more. Let your last interview with her be your last forever. Enter our house no more; that interdict, at least, I have a right to pronounce. But for myself, and from myself, and apart from the privilege of my own roof, I warn you at your peril, and on my own responsibility, never to see Astræa again."

"Are you mad?" I exclaimed. "Never to see Astræa again! To forsake her society at your bidding! Wherefore do you make this monstrous demand? Do you not feel how preposterous it is to thrust yourself into a quarrel with me in a matter which not only does not concern you, but which involves the feelings, perhaps the whole future happiness, of a person whom you have just ostentatiously declared is the object of your hate?"

"I make no quarrel with you," he answered; "I will not quarrel with you. I should be mad, indeed, if I did. What! set myself against your thews and sinews? No, no—I break no bones with you—but I tell you, once again, your fate is in my hands. I am your destiny, if you will have it so. You may trample on the oracle; but you can not, with all your show of bravery and your proud pretensions, with the lady, too, in triumph on your side, escape its denunciations."

"Did you, or did you not," I inquired, bewildered by his language, and not quite satisfied that he was in possession of his senses, "did you, or did you not, observe those attentions some months ago of which you now complain for the first time?"

"I did," he answered.

"And why did you not then speak to me on the subject?"

"Because it wasn't ripe!"

"Ripe? If you have any meaning in these obscure hints, why do you not explain it for your own sake, since you can not believe that I will submit patiently to your insane threats? Again I ask you, did you, or did you not, promote these attentions by every artifice and suggestion in your power?"

"I did."

"Did you not watch them anxiously, forward them daily, and exult in their progress, until you became secretly convinced that both Astræa's feelings and mine were engaged beyond recall?"

"I did—I did—I did!" roared the dwarf.

"Did you not produce this very result yourself? Did you not seek it, urge it, fan it to its height, and even glory in the flame you had nursed so cunningly?"

"I did—I did—I did!" he shrieked, his whole body seeming to take part in the frenzy that convulsed him.

"Fiend!" I cried; "inexplicable devil! what would you have, then? What is your aim in thus coming with your curses between us?"

"You shall never know," he replied, "unless to deplore it to the last hour of your life. You can never know unless you outrage my will. I have the power to make you wretched forever, to blight and destroy you. And if you treat my warning with contempt, I will do it without fail, without mercy, without remorse. The jester who has contributed so largely to your entertainment, and furnished such a delectable theme for your secret and cowardly mockery, will shoot a bolt of a graver cast when you least expect it, and think yourself most secure. Mark me—note me well. These are not words of rage, or transient passion: remember them, be wise, and look to your safety. See Astræa no more. With this I leave you. Our next meeting must be of your making."

I was alone. Overwhelmed and awed by the demoniacal maledictions of the wretched creature whom I had hitherto so intensely despised, I knew not what to think, or how to act. He had assumed a fresh shape, more marvelous than any he had hitherto put on in the whole round of his extraordinary mummery. The raillery and tipsy recklessness which appeared constitutional in him had suddenly passed away, leaving not a solitary trace behind. Even his figure, while he had been speaking, seemed to heave with a new life, and to dilate into unnatural dimensions. I was perplexed to the last extremity; not that the malice of the demon could scare me from my resolves, but that his motives were so impenetrable as to suffer no clew to escape by which I could discover the evil purpose that lay at the bottom.

It was not the machination or revenge of a disappointed suitor. He never could have aspired to a hope of Astræa, and he avowed his aversion to her. She was ignorant of all this bravado about her; and would be even more indignant to hear of it than I was to suffer it. I resolved, therefore, not to insult her by revealing it to her. Fortunately, I had made an appointment to meet her alone on the following day. That meeting would decide every thing. She might, perhaps, throw some light upon what was at present a profound mystery to me. At all events, my course was clear. Under the circumstances in which I was placed, I felt that there lay but one alternative before me.

VII.

My resolution was taken, as I thought, very composedly. I tried to persuade myself that I was not in the least ruffled or agitated by the scene I had passed through; but I was secretly conscious, notwithstanding, of a vague dread which I endeavored in vain to stifle. The defiance which the dwarf had so insolently flung at me, the contrast he drew between his shriveled frame and my physical advantages, and the Satanic pride with which he rose superior to his wretched deformities, gave me no slight cause for uneasiness, although I could not analyze the nature of the fear that possessed me. All through the night I abandoned myself to the wildest speculations upon the unaccountable conduct and designs of my arch-enemy; but as morning advanced that oppressive train of reflections gave way to more agreeable thoughts, just as the hideous images of the night-mare vanish before the approach of day.

The prospect of meeting Astræa excluded all other considerations. As impediments to the flow of a current only serve to increase its force, so the opposition which the dwarf had thrown in my way gave an additional impetus to my feelings. The very publicity which our intercourse had attracted altered our relations to each other. It was no longer possible to indulge in the romantic dreams, secret looks, and stolen conversations with which we had hitherto pampered our imagination; it was necessary to act. I felt the responsibility that was thus cast upon me; and I confess that I was rather obliged to my villainous Mephistophiles than angry with him for having, as it were, brought all my wayward raptures to so immediate and decisive a conclusion. As to his anathemas and warnings, I treated them as so much buffoonery on the wrong side of the grotesque. In short, I was too much engrossed by the approaching interview, and too much intoxicated by the contemplation of the result to which it inevitably led, to think at all about that imp of darkness and his ludicrous fulminations. Astræa occupied brain and heart, and left no room for my tormentor.

I fancied she looked unusually happy that morning; but not so happy as I was, not so disturbed and unsettled by happiness. She was perfectly tranquil, and it was evident that nothing had transpired in the interval to awaken a suspicion of what had occurred between me and the dwarf. She observed at once that a change had taken place in my manner.

"You are in marvelously high spirits to-day," she said; "but this exuberant gayety is not quite natural to you."

"High spirits! I am not conscious of it."

"So much the worse," she replied; then, placing her hand upon my arm, and looking earnestly at me, she added, "something has happened since I saw you. What is it? It would be wrong, and useless as well as wrong, to affect to deny it."

I had noticed at times in Astræa an air of solemnity, which would fall upon her face like a shadow, slowly receding again before its habitual, but always subdued brightness; and occasionally I imagined that I detected a sudden and brief sternness in her eyes, which conveyed an impression that she was interrogating with their concentrated rays, the concealed thoughts of the person upon whom they were directed. These were some of the outward signs of that mystery of her nature which I never could penetrate. Upon this occasion a world of latent doubts and suspicions appeared to be condensed in her look. It seemed as if in that single glance she read the whole incident which, to spare her feelings, I was so unwilling to disclose.

"What do you suppose, Astræa," I inquired, "can have happened since I saw you?"

"You are not candid with me," she returned. "I ask you a question, and you answer by asking me another. If nothing has happened, you can easily satisfy me; if it be otherwise, and you are silent, I must draw my own conclusions."

"Whatever conclusions you draw, Astræa, I know you have too firm a reliance on my truth and devotion not to believe that I am actuated by the purest motives. Have I not always been sincere and frank with you?"

"Always."

"Have you not an implicit confidence in the steadfastness of my love?"

"Were it otherwise, should I be now standing here questioning you, or should there be need of questions of this kind between us? Confidence! Why am I so sensitive to the slightest fluctuations of tone and manner I observe in you, and where do I derive the intuitive perception of their meanings? Love must have confidence! But it has instincts also. I feel there is something—I am sure of it—but I will urge you no further. It is not, perhaps, for your happiness or mine that I should seek to know."

"Astræa," I exclaimed, passionately, "there is nothing I would conceal from you that I think you ought to know, or that would make you happier to know; and if I have any reserve from you, it is for your sake, and you must ascribe it to the tenderness of my regard for you."

"For my sake?" she repeated, with a slightly terrified and curious expression.

"Now listen to me; I have something to say to you which is of more importance to us both than these wise, loving conjectures of yours. Take my arm, and let us get into the Park."

We were near one of the inclosures of the Regent's Park; and when we reached a more secluded place, I resumed:

"First of all, I should like to have your own unbiased opinion about your friends with whom you are residing. Have you observed any change in their manner toward you?"

"Change? None whatever."

"Do you think—I mean from any thing you have yourself noticed—that they have watched our actions or been inquisitive in our affairs?"

She looked inquiringly at me, and hesitated.

"I think it would be impossible to be much with them and escape their persiflage, let us act as we might. But beyond that sort of idle criticism which they deal out indiscriminately to every body, I have observed nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Because I have reason to believe that my attentions to you have attracted more observation than either of us suspected; and that, in fact, they have made such remarks on us as no longer leaves our future course at our own time or option."

"You have reason to believe this?"

"The best possible reason."

"Who is your authority?"

"Will you not accept my own authority, without seeking further?"

"No. It is not a time to hold back from any false delicacy to me, or any mistaken respect for the confidence of others. Beware of such confidences, if there be any. They are not meant for your peace or mine, but to plunge us both into an abyss in which we shall be left to perish. I must know all. I am entitled to know it. If your love be a hundredth part as strong and devoted, and as prepared for sacrifice as mine, you will place a full and entire trust in me."

"And I do. You shall know all; but I must exact a solemn promise from you, before I tell you how, and in what manner, this information was communicated to me. It is impossible for me to foresee how it may affect or wound your feelings; and it is due to me, if I yield to your request against my own judgment, that you should pledge yourself, be the consequences what they may, to give me a public right to protect you against the further malignity—I can not call it by any milder term—of your enemies and mine."

She was deeply affected by this request, which was spoken in so low and tremulous a voice, so burdened with a painful earnestness, that she appeared to gather from it the final conviction that upon her answer depended the future happiness or misery of our lives. I confess, for my own part, that the pause which ensued, during which she almost unconsciously repeated to herself, "Be the consequences what they may!" was to me harrowing beyond expression. It seemed as if there was some sinister influence at work to destroy us both; and that even the immediate prospect of our union was not sufficient to allay the terror that influence inspired, and into the causes and springs of which I now began to imagine she had a clearer insight than I had previously suspected. But I was steeped in a tumultuous passion, which would not suffer me to investigate intervening difficulties. What the source of her terror was I knew not; mine arose only from the apprehension of losing her; and to have secured her at that moment, looking as she did, in the agitation that gave such a wild lustre to her eyes, more lovely than ever, I would have cheerfully relinquished every thing else in the world. So far from being anxious to have the cause of her fears and hesitation cleared up, I was in the utmost alarm lest she should enter upon an explanation that might delay the consummation of my wishes. I sought only an affirmative reply to my request, which, come what might, would make her mine forever.

She loosened herself from my arm, and walked apart from me in silence. This action, and the sort of panic it indicated, filled me with alarm.

"Astræa, you have not answered my question. What is the reason of your silence?"

"Be the consequences what they may!" she reiterated. "I did not think of that, but it is right I should. I should have thought of it before—I did think of it; but of what avail, while I suffered myself to indulge in a dream which that thought ought to have dispelled?"

"You speak in a language that is unintelligible to me; but there is no time now for explanations. We must decide, Astræa, at once, for to-day and forever. I only ask your explicit pledge. Let us reserve explanations for hereafter."

"You say this in ignorance of what awaits you. I feel that I ought not to make any pledge until—" and she hesitated again.

"If I am satisfied to take your pledge, and all consequences with it, and to repay it with the devotion of my life, why, beloved Astræa, should you hesitate? Let the responsibility fall on me—of that another time. Every hour is precious now, and you will understand why I urge you so impatiently when I tell you that I can never again enter the house where you are now residing."

"I knew it. I saw it clearly from the first word you uttered. It was revealed to me in the very tone of your voice. Now hear me patiently. Your peace, your honor, all feelings that contribute to the respect and happiness of life, are at stake upon this moment."

The determination of her manner left me no choice but to listen.

"Are you prepared to risk all other ties, obligations, and prospects, in the consummation of this one object? to hazard friends, opinion, the world—perhaps it may be, to sacrifice them for the love that has grown up between us, and which, for good or evil, must this day bind us together, or sever us for the rest of our lives?"

"What a question to put to me! The 'world!' it is ashes without you. I tell you, Astræa, that if the choice lay between the grave and the single word that would sunder us, I would die rather than utter it. I don't know what your question implies—I don't seek to know; and would prefer to remain ignorant of it, that I may the more clearly prove to you the depth of my trust and devotion, which will be satisfied with the simple pledge that makes you mine. That, at least, you have in your own power; let me answer for the rest."

"Consider well what you are saying. Is your love strong enough to bear the hazards I have pointed out? Search your own nature—look into your pride, your sensitiveness to neglect and censure, your high sense of personal dignity. I have seen how ill you can brook slight affronts—do you believe that your love will enable you to bear great ones—scorn, contumely, perhaps opprobrium? Think, think, and weigh well your decision."

"Astræa, you put me upon the rack. I have no other answer to give. For you, and for your sake, come what may, I am ready to risk all!"

"For me and for my sake, if it be necessary, to forsake the world? to relinquish friends and kindred? to dedicate yourself in solitude to her who, in solitude, would be content to find her whole world in you? To do this, without repining, without looking back with anguish and remorse upon the sacrifices you had made, without a regret or a reproach? A woman can do this. Is it so sure there lives a man equal to such trials?"

"If these sacrifices be imperative upon us, we make them together. There can be nothing for either of us to reproach the other with. And as to the solitude you speak of, my heart yearns for it. It is in that solitude we can the more fully understand and develop the profound devotion that shall have drawn us into it. I am sick of the world—weary and tired of it, and longing for the repose which you alone can consecrate. It will be no sacrifice to abandon the world for you. Sacrifice, my Astræa? it will be the crowning happiness of my life!"

"And you are confident that you can depend upon the firmness of your resolution? I do not ask this for my own sake—for I know myself, what I can suffer and outlive—but for yours."

"I solemnly and finally answer, that no earthly influence can shake my resolution."

"Then," said Astræa, placing her hand in mine, and in a grave voice, laden with emotion, "I am yours forever. Henceforth, I owe no allegiance elsewhere—here, in the sight of Heaven, I pledge my faith to you, and hold the compact as binding as if at this moment it were plighted at the altar."

I was transported with the earnestness of these words, and covering her hand with kisses, I exclaimed—

"And I ratify it, Astræa, my own Astræa, with my whole heart. Now, who shall divide us? We are one, and no human power can part us."

I then related to her the circumstances that had taken place the preceding evening. She heard me throughout with a calmness that surprised me. I expected that the extraordinary conduct of the dwarf would have excited her indignation; but she seemed to know him better than I did, and although I could perceive a heavy flush sometimes rush into her cheeks, and a sudden pallor succeed it, the narrative of his mysterious menaces did not appear to produce half as much astonishment in her mind as it did in mine.

"We will talk of this another time," she observed; "at present we must think of ourselves. I know his character—I know the demoniac revenge he is capable of; and, for our own safety, we must avoid him."

"Revenge!" I echoed. The phrase coming from Astræa fell strangely on my ears.

"I will leave the house to-morrow; but, for your sake, I will hold no communication with you till I am beyond his reach. Once assured of that, I will write to you, and you will come to me. This is the only act I will ask to take upon my own responsibility, and I do so because it will secure our mutual safety. From that hour I shall be implicitly guided by you."

I should have been glad to have adopted a different course, and to have claimed her openly. My pride, wounded by the insolent denunciations of the dwarf, demanded a more public vindication of her independence and mine; and this stolen flight, and the necessity it imposed upon me of observing a similar caution in my own movements, looked so like fear and evasion that I submitted to it very reluctantly. The notion of concealment and secrecy galled me, and even at this moment, when my happiness was on the eve of consummation, it gave me a thrill of uneasiness that cast an oppressive shadow over the future. Astræa, however, had evidently a strong reason for insisting on privacy, and I was too anxious about hastening our union to throw any new obstacle in the way of its accomplishment.

We separated in the Park, Astræa being unwilling to suffer me to escort her any further lest we should be seen together. This little incident, trifling as it was, increased the nervous annoyance and sense of humiliation I felt at being required to act as if I had any fear of the results; nor could I comprehend why she should be so much alarmed at being seen walking with me alone, when she knew that in a few days we should be indissolubly united. But I submitted to her wishes. Passion is willful and unreasonable, and takes a wayward pleasure in shutting its eyes, and rushing onward in the dare. I stifled my vexation in the anticipation of the joy that lay before me, which would be victory enough over the impotent hatred of Mephistophiles.

VIII.

Throughout the whole of the next day I waited anxiously in the expectation of hearing from Astræa. Evening came and passed, and there was no communication. When the last post-hour was gone by, and all hope of a letter was at an end, I ventured into the streets, hoping to gather some signs of her movements from the outside of her house. The blinds were down as usual in the drawing-room windows, and there seemed to be rather an extraordinary flush of lights within, as if some commotion was going forward. I could see huge, shapeless shadows of people moving about the room, in great bustle and excitement; and it appeared to me, from the frequency and confusion of then: motions, that the ordinary family party was augmented by additional numbers. The gathering, whatever it might have been, was not for festivity; and the constant swaying backward and forward, and vehement tossing of long streaks of heads and arms on the blinds, resembled the action of a violent domestic scene, in which the angry passions were strenuously engaged. I hardly knew what to conclude from this incoherent pantomime. Either Astræa was there, in the midst of a stormy contention; or she had left the house, and they were disputing furiously over the causes of her departure.

After I had been some time watching this unintelligible phantasmagoria, and vainly endeavoring to collect a meaning for it, the hall-door opened, and in the momentary gleam of light that shot into the street I saw the dwarf issuing out, muffled to the ears in a cloak. He stood for a moment on the pavement, and adjusting his cloak more carefully about his face, and crushing his hat down over his eyes, he set off at a quick pace in an opposite direction to that part of the street where I was standing. I confess I felt ashamed of the espionage in which I was occupied, and although I followed my mercurial fiend at a safe distance, for the distinct purpose of earthing him wherever he was going, I by no means liked the office which a sort of fatality had forced upon me. But I was somewhat reconciled to it by a secret conviction that the abominable little demon had himself come out upon an equally discreditable expedition, which I soon detected from the infinite pains he took to elude observation.

Instead of keeping in the public streets, he darted down numerous dark alleys and lanes, and once with considerable difficulty I chased him through the unsavory depths of a straggling mews, where he doubled in an out with such rapidity as to render it no easy matter to keep upon his track without betraying myself. Two or three times I nearly lost sight of him; and it was not until he emerged out of a gloomy passage, of the existence of which I was until that moment ignorant, into the street where I lived, that I had the least suspicion of the direction he was taking. It was presently evident that his object had some reference to me, for he had no sooner entered the street than he darted into the deep recess of a hall-door, where he stood for full ten minutes crouched and transfixed, looking up at my windows, which were exactly opposite to him.

Fortunately I was able to note his movements without being myself perceived, as I lurked in the shadow of the passage from whence he had just issued.

The windows of my chambers being dark, I presume he concluded that I was from home; and under that impression, no doubt, he crossed over and knocked stealthily at the door—just as one would knock who did not wish to attract the attention of the inmates, but merely to convey an intimation to the servants. I was seized with a strong impulse to rush upon him suddenly, present myself as the door opened, and confound him on the spot; but I remembered how earnestly Astræa had urged upon me the prudence of avoiding him, and I restrained myself. Stepping cautiously into a doorway, I continued to watch his further proceedings.

The door was opened by a servant, and my dwarf, burying himself up to the eyes in his cloak, so that it was impossible to distinguish his features, appeared to enter into a confidential conversation with her. It seemed to me to last a long time; but my impatience, no doubt, exaggerated its duration. At length it drew to an end, and hastily nodding to the servant, who looked after him, as I thought with much curiosity and astonishment, he dropped down the street at the same flying pace with which he had entered it. That he had come to my house for the purpose of picking up some intelligence about me was clear; upon that point I was satisfied, and the discovery only served to heighten my anxiety to find out what he was going to do next.

As he darted along I could not help admiring his wonderful agility. There was a certain sort of confident swagger about his ordinary style of walking, such as you frequently observe in small vivacious men, who strut and swing through the streets as if the great globe itself were their private property; but upon this occasion it resolved itself into the swift and impetuous flight of a meteor. He shot from one angle of a street to another something in the manner of a will-o'-the-wisp, and it was almost as difficult to fix his course and follow him up. Thus hanging closely on his footsteps, I was not a little mortified to find, after all, that the trouble I had taken led to nothing. Striking out a different, but a much shorter route, the hideous creature went back to his own house. The lights were already extinguished in the drawing-room, and the windows, even to the dormitories, were in darkness. The domestics, apparently, had retired to bed; for the dwarf, hastily opening the door with a latch-key, vanished from my sight almost at the same instant that he ascended the steps. I lingered for A few moments at a distance, and then slowly returned home, congratulating myself on having detected his sinister expedition, and impatient to ascertain the substance of his conversation with the servant.

When I interrogated her on the subject, she betrayed a little fear and hesitation, but at last she told me every thing that had transpired. The strange gentleman, whom she had never seen before, and who so completely concealed his features that she should not be able to identify him again, asked her a great number of questions about my movements, and especially if I had been out during the day. He appeared surprised to learn that I had only just left home, and wanted to know whether I was expected back that night, and whether I was going out of town. It happened that I had occupied myself throughout the morning in packing my carpet-bag and portmanteau, so that I might be able to attend Astræa's expected summons at a moment's notice; and the servant, whose distrust was awakened by the urgent manner of the questioner, tried to fence off his inquiries about my traveling preparations, but his superior dexterity finally extracted the fact from her. Having obtained that significant clew to my intentions, he suddenly wished her good-night, and disappeared. The girl was so frightened by his mysterious air and abrupt interrogations, that I believe she fancied I was going to fight a duel; for about that time there had been a fatal duel, which furnished a topic of general conversation, and which, I suppose, put the sagacious suspicion into her head.

"Forewarned, forearmed," says the old proverb. I was now fairly apprised that the dwarf was upon my track, and I resolved, as a mere measure of precaution, ignorant as I was of the machinations I had to fear, that whatever course it might become necessary to adopt, should be carried out with the utmost secrecy.

The next morning came a letter from Astræa. No language can adequately depict the agitation with which I opened the envelope. I felt as if my fate was contained in the inclosure—as it was!

It consisted of only a single line, scrawled in haste over a great sheet of paper, at the top of which was an address in the country, in another hand-writing, with the following words beneath, written by Astræa:

"I am here: come to me quickly.—A."

The assurance which this brief intimation conveyed that Astræa had left London, relieved me of at least one source of anxiety; and all that now remained was to obey her mandate, and join her without loss of time in her retreat. I own that I felt rather like a culprit in the way in which I abandoned my chambers. Feeling assured that the dwarf, having once set himself as a spy upon my actions, would stop at no means of tracing me out of town, I determined to leave such an account of myself behind as should effectually put him upon a false scent. I accordingly informed the people of the house that I was going into Buckinghamshire for two days; and, as that was nearly the opposite direction to the route I was really about to take—for my destination lay among the sylvan valleys of Kent—I hoped to baffle him at the start. My arrangements were speedily completed, and, having made a hasty inspection of the street before I ventured out, I sprang into a cabriolet, and drove off.

The imperceptible degrees by which men, in the pursuit of passionate ends, suffer themselves to fall into deceptions, at which their reason and their probity would revolt in calmer moments, might suggest a useful train of reflections at this point of my narrative. But the moral is obvious enough, without requiring to be formally pointed. I shall only remark, that my ruminations in the post-chaise that carried me to Astræa ran chiefly upon the self-humiliation I felt in contemplating the mystery in which I had become entangled step by step, and the sort of guiltiness which my studious evasion of the dwarf seemed to argue to my own mind. Men who act openly never have any reason to entertain a fear of others, and may look the world boldly in the face. It is only men that commit themselves to actions which will not bear the light who resort to subterfuges and concealments, and are harrowed by apprehensions. My dilemma was a singular one. There was nothing I had done which I had the slightest reason to hide or feel alarm about; yet I was taking as cautious measures to avoid publicity as if I were flying from justice, and was haunted all the time by a thrill of terror which I could not assign to any intelligible cause.

In the dusk of the evening, I had the profound happiness of reaching my destination, and all inquietude was lulled into oblivion by the music of those tones which always went direct to my heart. The past and the future were equally absorbed in the luxury of Astræa's society, and I felt that if I needed an excuse for the strange circumstances in which I was placed, I had an ample one in the devotion of such a woman. The very danger—if danger it was, with which I was as yet unacquainted—the anxiety, the concealment, the flight we had passed through to secure our union, enhanced the rapture with which we now met never to be sundered again.

That evening I related to her what had happened the night before, and she gave me an account of the manner in which she had managed to escape from the dwarf's house; for, in spite of the self-possession with which she described the incident, it more nearly resembled an escape than a departure. In fact, she had left the house in the morning, on foot, and was expected back, as usual, to luncheon after her walk. But luncheon passed, and there were no tidings of her; and, at dinner-time, a brief note by the post announced her leave-taking, excusing its abruptness, on the ground of a sudden and urgent call into the country. This was, no doubt, the subject which the angry shadows on the blinds had been so vehemently discussing the night before. So violent an infraction of etiquette would have pained me seriously had it occurred under any other circumstances, or had it been inflicted upon any other persons than the members of that eccentric family. But we knew them well; how unlike they were to the rest of the world, and how slight an impression the mere breach of courtesy would make upon them, in comparison with the malicious curiosity it would awaken! They were like Bohemians in their habits and ways of thinking; and were themselves so accustomed to violate established usages, that the most extravagant irregularities could not very materially surprise them. This consideration reconciled me to a proceeding which must otherwise have been a source of regret to me, on Astræa's account; besides, I was by no means unwilling to accept the sacrifice she had thus made of her own independence as an additional proof of her attachment.

But what was the cause of all these stratagems and concealments? I should learn that the next day. I saw that Astræa was suffering under a despondency natural enough to her novel situation, and I patiently waited her own time for disclosures which I now began to look forward to with nervous apprehensions.

The house in which I found her lay buried in the foliage of a secluded valley. It was in the cottage style, covered with creepers that dropped in at the windows, and filled the rooms with scent; and it belonged to people in an humble rank of life, who had known Astræa from her infancy, and were devoted to her interest. Under the shelter of their roof, she was secure. The place was extremely picturesque on a small scale—a green glen, where the surrounding heights were broken into a variety of forms, and where the eye, on whatever spot it rested, caught some point of beauty. An impetuous little stream rushed from the jaws of a ravine that formed a sort of vista at one extremity, and, brawling away through the wooded depths of the valley, tossed itself into the air over a group of artificial rooks at the foot of the tiny lawn. Dark trees filled the openings in the hills, and the sward round their roots was dotted with clusters of wild flowers, like a garden. A rustic bridge spanned the water, and graceful willows dipped their tresses into the spray. Aquatic plants clung about the rocks—parasite tendrils climbed the ancient wood; and there was altogether a feeling of solitude and repose in the scene, that rendered it the most fitting seclusion on earth to ripen into a new life of love two ardent hearts like ours.

With what anxiety I looked forward to the next day, when Astræa and I, liberated from all eyes, should wander about these lonely paths! It came at last, and with it brought my doom!

(To be continued.)

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STORY OF SILVER-VOICE AND HER SISTER ZOE.

The phenomena of memory are singular objects of study. I have often thought that a certain class of ideas and observations could be so arranged as to form an orderly, connected chain, one link of which would bring home all the others, however deeply sunken in the mind. But experience teaches me that this is not the case. During my residence in the East, though I kept a careful journal of every thing that seemed interesting at the time, a thousand circumstances came to my notice which I did not set down; and when I have endeavored to recall them, many have stubbornly refused to appear when wanted. But suddenly, when I at least expect it, I now and then find myself irresistibly carried back to old times. Forms that had faded into distance—thoughts that had seemed dissolved into nothing—scenes and impressions which I had in vain sought to revive—obtrude themselves irresistibly on my notice. In general, the unexpected visitants are welcome; the fireside is rendered brighter and more cheerful by them; and their presence sends a glow through this northern atmosphere, which allows autumn to steal on unperceived.

I was prevented last night from sleeping by the perpetual recurrence in my reveries of the name of Lady Silver-Voice. I had forgotten her existence, as one is apt to forget a beautiful thing amidst the material cares of this life. Let me endeavor to tell her story as simply as it was told to me.

But first, how I came to see her—for I have had that privilege. It was one evening in winter-time, that, after a prolonged illness, I was taking a stroll on the roof of a palace-like mansion in Cairo. The sun had set for me; it had gone down behind the interminable sea of houses. But I could still see it shining on the forest of minarets that rose through the moist, balmy air, and on the vast dome of the mosque that now towers above the citadel. The terrace-roof on which I was, though commanded at a distance by much more lofty buildings, was far raised above the humble dwellings near at hand, so that I could look down and observe the movements of my neighbors, who were most varied in race and costume—Turks and Maltese, Arabs and Greeks, Armenians and Copts—to say nothing of "Jews and poultry," which my servant, who brought me a pipe, added to the enumeration.

I passed some time in examining the movements of these various personages, who all come out upon their terraces to enjoy the evening air; and though I did not observe any thing very characteristic, any thing which would necessarily go down in my journal, I was sufficiently interested not to notice the flight of time, and to allow complete darkness to gather round me while I still leaned over the parapet. Suddenly I was aroused from my contemplations by a snatch of a strange song sung in the most marvelously-sweet voice I had ever heard. I started, not exactly like a guilty thing, but transfixed, as it were, by an almost painful shaft of delight. The voice swelled up on the night air, until, in spite of its divine sweetness, it became almost a cry of sorrow, and then ceased, leaving a thrill running through my frame that gradually seemed to shrink back to my heart, and expire there in a feeling of mingled joy and pain. Perhaps the state of my health rendered me peculiarly susceptible of strong emotions: I am afraid I wept. The darkness, however, prevented this weakness from being witnessed by Ali, who came to announce that my dinner was ready. I went down the winding staircase to the vast lonely hall, where I usually ate alone—the master of the house being absent on a journey; but though my appetite was that of a convalescent, I am sure I did not enliven the meal for myself by my usual humorous observations: to the officer, for example, that I was doubtful whether the beef was camel, or the mutton was donkey. Ali seemed rather surprised, especially when I asked him, abruptly, who it was that sang so sweetly in the neighborhood.

He did not know! My curiosity was unsatisfied; but, perhaps, I went to bed that night with a fuller gush of happiness at my heart than if I had heard this prosy fellow's account of the matter. It is a frequent subject of meditation with me, whether or not I am constituted as other men are. Are others played upon in this way by some slight occurrence—by meeting with a face seen before only in a dream, by a peculiar smile, by a gesture, by a sigh, by a voice singing in the darkness? If not, who will understand the delicious watchful hours I passed that night, or the dreams, spangled with bright eyes, fairy forms, purple clouds, golden gleams, and buzzing with sweeter warblings than ever rolled in a nightingale's throat, that lured me on until morning?

Naturally, the first inquiries I made were about the voice; but I did not that day meet with any success. When evening approached, I again went up to the terrace; and, not to lengthen the story, I did see, just as the sun went down upon a low house not very far off, but looking into another street, a little fairy figure walking up and down, and leading a child by the hand. A kind of instinct told me that the voice was embodied before me; and, presently, all doubt was set at rest. The same silver tones rose upon the air; and this time I recognized that the song was in the Greek language. I remained looking intently in that direction, until the form faded into a mere shadow; and then, as darkness increased, seemed to multiply before my aching eyes, and assume all sorts of fantastical shapes. Every now and then, a couplet, or a stanza, came sweeping up. It was evident the lady, whoever she might be, was not singing merely to amuse the child. The notes were sometimes lively, but, in general, sad and plaintive. I listened long after the last quaver had died away; and was rather sulky when Ali came with the persevering joke that "the camel was getting cold!"

Next day I suddenly remembered that an old Greek priest had frequently invited me to go to his house; and reproaching myself with the want of politeness I had hitherto exhibited, I ordered my donkey to be saddled, and started off. The ride was only of a few streets; it seemed to me quite a journey. On arriving, the worthy papa was fortunately at home, and by himself. He was delighted with my visit; and, after a small altercation with his servant, succeeded in getting me some coffee and a pipe. I admired the art with which I wound toward my query. The old gentleman suspected nothing; but when I casually asked if he knew who it was among his countrymen who sang like an angel, he quickly replied, "It must be Silver-Voice, as she is called among the Moslem!"

I overturned my pipe on the mat in my eagerness to turn round and listen. Excellent old man! instead of clapping his hands for the servant, he went down upon his knees to collect the scattered tobacco, and replace it in the bowl, and silenced my excuse with as mild an "It is no matter, my son!" as ever passed the lips of one of our species. He grew before my eyes in that humble posture; and when he returned to his seat, seemed fifty times as venerable as before. The same spirit would have led him to wash the feet of the poor.

He then told me the story of Silver-Voice and her sister:

"Many years ago, a Greek merchant was walking through the slave-market, when he beheld for sale a little girl, so beautiful, and yet so sad, that though he was on the way to conclude a bargain for fifty thousand ardebs of beans, he could not prevail on himself to pass indifferently on.

"'Of what country?' he inquired.

"'A Candiote,' replied the slave-dealer. She was from his own beloved island.

"'How much?'

"'Five thousand piastres.'

"'I will pay the price.' The bargain was concluded on the spot. Another merchant got the beans; but Kariades took home the Silver-Voice to his house.

"The girl followed him silently, hanging down her head, and refusing to answer the questions he put in his kind, bluff way. Some great sorrow evidently weighed upon her, and she refused to be comforted. When, however, Kariades presented her to his wife, and said, 'This shall be our daughter,' the child opened her mouth and cried, 'Wherefore, oh father, didst thou not come to the slave-market one short hour before?' He asked her meaning, and she explained that her sister had been separated from her, and sold to a Turk; 'and,' cried she, 'I will not live unless Zoë be brought back to my side.' Kariades smiled as he replied, 'I went forth, this day to buy beans, and I have come back with a daughter. Must I needs go and fetch another?' 'You must!' said the girl, resolutely.

"From that hour forth she was the queen in the house. Kariades returned to the slave-market, but, strange to say, could find no clew to the fate of Zoë, although he offered double her price to the dealer. It was believed that she had been bought by a stranger merely passing through Cairo, and making no stay; for the public crier was employed to go about the streets and proclaim that whoever would produce the girl should receive whatever he demanded. All was in vain. Time passed on; and the active grief of the Silver-Voice sobered down into steadfast melancholy. She continued living as the daughter or rather as the mistress of the house, knowing no want but that of her sister, and enchanting every one with the magnificence of her singing, until she reached the age of sixteen years.

"One day Kariades said to her, 'My child, I must seek a husband for thee among the merchants of my people.' But she firmly refused, declaring that there could be no joy for her unless she knew that her sister was not living in wretched thralldom in the house of some cruel Turk.

"'But,' said he, 'what if death have overtaken her?'

"'We promised, as we lay folded in each other's arms the night before we were parted, to be happy or sorrowful together—to laugh at the same time, to weep at the same time—and if one died, the other was never to cease grieving. I remember that, as they were dragging Zoë away, she turned her pale face, all sparkling with tears, toward me, and cried, forever!'

"'Meaning that you were parted forever?'

"'No; but that we were to be faithful to our vow forever. I never shall forget the agonizing expression of that face. How can I? I see it every night in my dreams; and painful though it be, I rush into sleep as eagerly to behold it as if I were going into Paradise. No: I will never marry while that face threatens to interpose between my husband and me.'

"'Then this vision torments thee?'

"'Ah, father!' and she shuddered, and bent her head.

"It was evident that her mind was weakened by too much contemplation of one idea.

"Kariades yielded before a will stronger than his own, and nothing more was said either about marriage or the lost Zoë for nearly a year. At the end of this time, Silver-Voice appeared before the good old man, and said, 'Father, give me money; I have thought of a means by which I may find my sister Zoë.' He looked sadly at her, but gave her what she required. Next day she disappeared, and was not heard of for several weeks. Then she returned, consoled her adopted parents by her presence for a while, and again departed without giving the least indication of how she employed her time. Nor did they ask her, confident that all she did was prompted by that most powerful of all loves—the love of a sister supplying a mother's place. "The truth was, that she had hired a number of houses in various parts of Cairo, and visited them alternately, in order to pass the evenings singing on the terrace. Despite the failure of the researches made by Kariades, she remained persuaded that Zoë was in Cairo, and hoped that the echoes of her magnificent voice might at length go as messengers into the depths of every harem, and make known her presence. The whole city was by turns rendered happy by the Silver-Voice; but as it was heard now in the Citadel, now near the Bisket-el-Fil, anon at the Bab Zuweileh, men began to think strange things. It was curious, indeed, to hear the speculations of the gossiping Turks about this ubiquitous voice. I remember laughing much at the wise arguments by which one of them, who had heard the fable of Memnon's statue, demonstrated to me that the sound came from no human organ at all, but was produced by the rays of the setting sun striking in some peculiar way upon the minarets.

"A whole year passed in this manner without bringing any thing new; but the beautiful patience of the Silver-Voice was at length after a fashion rewarded. Better had it been, perhaps, for her, had her soul been wafted away in some sad song. She was standing one evening, long after the sun had set, filling the air with her plaintive notes, and calling, as usual, upon her sister; suddenly there rose a cry—a piercing, terrible cry, such as no mortal ever utters but when the sanctuary of life is invaded. At that awful sound the Silver-Voice was struck dumb. She stood listening like a gazelle when it hears the howl of a wolf afar off upon the desert. The wild accents seemed to hang for a moment over her, and then fell into her ear, moulding, as they fell, into the words, "My sister!" How it came to pass she could not tell: over the parapet, along a crumbling wall, across a ruined house, she passed as if by magic, until she fell like a moonbeam through an open window, and saw upon a rich couch the form of an expiring woman lying. It was her sister Zoë. The blow had been too well aimed: it had gone to her heart, and the life-blood bubbled rapidly forth between her white fingers, which she pressed, to her side. One eloquent glance, in which eyes mingled with eyes, while lips hung upon lips, was exchanged. There was not time, neither was there need, to tell their stories in any other way. The dying woman made one effort, pointed to a cradle that stood under a cloud of gauze curtains in a corner, then smiled a long, impassioned smile of recognition, of gratitude, and of love, seemed to wander a little back in memory, murmured some pleasant sounds, and was still.

"The Silver-Voice rose solemnly, and casting her eyes about, beheld a man crouching in a corner weeping. 'It is all over!' she said. 'All over!' he replied, looking up. But I will not weary you with the scene in which the wretched man—a Greek renegade—related how he had bought Zoë—how he had loved her, and made her his wife—how they had traveled in far countries—how he was jealous, ever, as he acknowledged, without cause—and how, in a fit of madness, he had slain the mother of his child. When he had finished, he led the bewildered Silver-Voice to the cradle, and thrusting aside the curtains, disclosed the miniature counterpart of Zoë, sleeping as if it had been lulled into deeper slumber by its mother's death-cries. Then, stealing toward the corpse with the step of one about to commit a new crime, he snatched a hasty kiss, and rushed away. What became of him was never known. Silver-Voice performed the last duties for poor Zoë, and took the child under her care. Since that time she has almost always continued to live in the house from the roof of which she heard her sister's cry; and though apparently rational in every thing else, never fails to go up each evening and sing the song she used to sing of old, though in a more plaintive and despairing tone. If asked wherefore she acts in this wise, her reply is, that she is seeking for her sister Zoë, and nobody attempts to contradict the harmless delusion. Several years have now passed away since this event, and the child has become a handsome boy. You may see them both at the church to-morrow."

I thanked the worthy papa for his story more warmly, perhaps, than he expected. He had been as much pleased by narrating as I had been by listening; but he was not very particular about the quality of his facts, and unintentionally made me do penance for the excessive pleasure I had experienced by giving me an account—two hours long, and with equal unction—of a tremendous controversy then raging as to the proper form of electing the sub-patriarch of Cairo. It would have been ungrateful to interrupt him, although there seemed no end to his garrulity. Fortunately, two or three people at length came in; I compromised my dignity as a heretic by kissing his hand, and escaped, to turn over this curious story in my mind. Next day I went to the Greek church, and saw a melancholy-looking face through the bars of the cage-like gallery in which the women sit. I am quite certain it was that of Lady Silver-Voice, but no one whom I asked seemed to know her. The boy did not show himself. It was my intention to go another Sunday, and observe more accurately, for I really felt a deep interest in this unfortunate lady. But other thoughts and occupations came upon me, and it was only by an accident that, as I have said, these circumstances recurred last night to my mind.

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THE CROCODILE BATTERY.

In the summer of 1846, when every body in England was crazy with railway gambling, I was sojourning on the banks of the Rohan, a small stream in one of the northwestern provinces of India. Here I first became acquainted, with the Mugger, or Indian crocodile. I had often before leaving England, seen, in museums, stuffed specimens of the animal, and had read in "Voyages and Travels," all sorts of horrible and incredible stories concerning them. I had a lively recollection of Waterton riding close to the water's edge on the back of an American cayman, and I had a confused notion of sacred crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. I always felt more or less inclined to regard the whole race as having affinities with Sinbad's "roc," and the wild men of the woods, who only refrained from speaking for fear of being made to work.

My ideas respecting the natural history of crocodiles were in this stage of development when, one day, while paddling up the Rohan, I saw what appeared to be a half-burned log of wood lying on a sand-bank. I paddled close up to it. To my astonishment, it proved to be a huge reptile. The old stories of dragons, griffins, and monsters, seemed no longer fables; the speculations of geologists concerning, mososaurians, hylæsaurians, and plesiosaurians, were no longer dreams. There, in all his scaly magnificence, was a real saurian, nearly eighteen feet long. For a while I stood gazing at this, to me, new fellow-citizen of the world, and speculating on his mental constitution. The monster was, or pretended to be, asleep. I wondered if he dreamt, and what his dreams or reveries might be about; possibly he was dreaming of the same old world with which I associated him—possibly of the fish who were swimming in the waters below: or, he might be thinking of the men and women he had swallowed in the course of his existence. There was a snort; perhaps that was occasioned by the bugles and heavy brass ornaments which had adorned the limbs of some Hindoo beauty he had eaten, and which were lying heavy and indigestible on his stomach. But presently the brute lay so still, and seemed so tranquil and placid in his sleep, that it was difficult to imagine him guilty of such atrocities. He did not appear to be disturbed by remorse, or the twitchings of a guilty conscience: it may have been all a slander. I felt so kindly disposed toward him, that I could not imagine it possible that if awake he would feel disposed to eat me. Let us see! so making a splash with my paddle, I wakened the sleeping beauty. He instantly started up, and opened, what appeared—what indeed proved to be—an enlarged man-trap; disclosing a red, slimy cavern within, fringed with great conical fangs. He closed it with a snap that made me shudder, and then plunged into the water, his eyes glaring with hate and defiance.

Some days after I had made this new acquaintance, I was sitting at home talking with my brother, when a native woman came crying and screaming to the bungalow door, tearing her hair out in handfuls; she got down on the veranda floor and struck her head against it, as if she really meant to dash her brains out. A crowd of other women stood at a short distance, crying and lamenting as if they were frantic. What was the matter? Half-a-dozen voices made answer in a discordant chorus, that while the poor woman was washing her clothes by the river side, her child—an infant about a year old—had been seized and swallowed by a Mugger. Although convinced that aid was now impossible, we took our guns and hastened to the spot where the accident happened; but all was still there, not a wavelet disturbed the surface of the stream. A small speckled kingfisher was hovering overhead, as if balanced in the air, with its beak bent down on its breast, watching the fish beneath; presently it darted like an arrow into the water; returned with an empty bill, and then went off, with its clear, sharp, twittering note, as if to console itself for the failure.

One day I was sitting on the high bank of the river, taking snap shots with my gun at the large fish who were every now and then leaping out of the water. A favorite spaniel was bringing a fish out of the water that I had hit. It had swam already half way across the stream, when the water about six yards below her became suddenly disturbed; and, to my horror, up started the head and open jaws of an enormous crocodile. The dog gave a loud shriek, and sprang half out of the water. The Mugger swam rapidly, and had got within a yard of his intended victim, when I raised my gun, and took aim at the monster's head. A thud, a splash, a bubble, and a dusky red streak in the water, was all that ensued. Presently, however, Juno's glossy black head emerged from the water; and, to my delight, began to make rapid progress toward me, and landed safely. The poor brute, wet and shivering, coiled herself up at my feet, with her bright hazel eyes fixed on mine with ineffable satisfaction. Poor Juno subsequently fell a victim to the Muggers, when her master was not at hand to succor her. I mention these facts, to show that the diabolical revenge with which I afterward assisted in visiting these monsters, was not groundless. But the strongest occasion of it remains to be told.

Just as the "rains" were beginning, my neighbor, Mr. Hall, sent me word that he intended paying me a short visit, and requested me to send a syce (groom), with a saddle-horse, to meet him at a certain place on the road. The syce, Sidhoo, was a smart, open-chested, sinewy-limbed little fellow, a perfect model of a biped racer. He could run—as is the custom in the East—alongside his horse at a pace of seven or eight miles an hour, for a length of time that would astonish the best English pedestrian I ever heard of.

Toward evening, Mr. Hall rode up to the bungalow, dripping with water, and covered with mud. I saw at once that some accident had happened, and hastened to assist him.

As soon as he got inside, he said, in answer to my bantering about his "spill"—

"I am in no humor for jesting. Your syce is lost!"

"Drowned?"

"No; eaten!—by an enormous crocodile!"

He added that, on arriving at a small nulla about two miles off, he found it so much swollen by rain, that he had to swim his horse across it, holding one end of the cord which Sidhoo, in common with most Hindoos, wore coiled round his waist, and which was used in pulling water from the deep wells of the country. Hall got safely across, and then commenced pulling Sidhoo over by means of the cord. The black face, with the white teeth and turban, were bobbing above the muddy water, when all at once the groom threw up his arms, gave a loud shriek, and sank below the surface. Mr. Hall, who had doubled the cord round his hand, was dragged into the water; where he got a momentary glimpse of the long serrated tail of a Mugger, lashing the water a short way ahead of him. In his efforts to save himself, he lost his hold of the string, and with much difficulty clambered up the slippery bank of the nulla. All was now still. Only Sidhoo's turban was to be seen floating loosely, a considerable way down the stream. Hall ran toward it, with the sort of feeling which makes a drowning man catch at a straw; and, by means of a stick he succeeded in fishing it out, and brought it with him, as the only remnant of Sidhoo he could give an account of.

Bad news soon spreads in an Indian village, and Sidhoo's fate was soon made known to his wife; and in a short time she came crying and sobbing to the bungalow, and laid her youngest child at our friend's feet. The tears glistened in the poor fellow's eyes as he tried to soothe and console her; which he did by promising to provide for her and her children.

Although Hall was generally running over with fun, we smoked our cheroots that evening in silence; except when we proposed schemes for the annihilation of the crocodiles. A great many plans were discussed—but none that offered much chance of success. The next day, after breakfast, I was showing my visitor a galvanic blasting apparatus, lately received from England, for blowing up the snags (stumps of trees) which obstruct the navigation of the river. I was explaining its mode of action to him, when he suddenly interrupted me—"The very thing! Instead of snags, why not blow up the Muggers?"

I confessed that there could be no reason why we should not blast the Muggers. The difficulty was only how to manage it; yet the more we talked of it, the more feasible did the scheme appear.

The brutes keep pretty constant to the same quarters, when the fish are plentiful; and we soon ascertained that poor Sidhoo's murderer was well known in the neighborhood of the nulla. He had on several occasions carried off goats, sheep, pigs, and children; and had once attempted to drag a buffalo, whom he had caught drinking, into the water; but, from all accounts, came off second best in this rencontre. There not being enough of water in the nulla to drown the buffalo, the Mugger soon found he had caught a Tartar; and after being well mauled by the buffalo's horns, he was fain to scuttle off and hide himself among the mud.

I had observed, when blasting the snags, that the concussion produced by the discharge had the effect of killing all the fish within a range of some twenty or thirty yards. After every explosion, they were found in great numbers, floating on the surface of the water with their bellies uppermost. It now occurred to me, that if we could only get within a moderate distance of the Mugger, if we did not blow him to pieces, we would at all events give him a shock that would rather astonish him. An explosion of gunpowder under water communicates a much severer shock to the objects in its immediate vicinity, than the same quantity of powder exploded in the air; the greater density of the water enabling it, as it were, to give a harder blow.

Having made our arrangements, Mr. Hall, my brother, and myself, got into a small canoe, with the blasting apparatus on board, and dropt down the stream to where the nulla discharged its waters into the Rohan. He then got out and proceeded to a village close by, where we obtained for a few annas, the carcass of a young kid. A flask with about six pounds of gunpowder, and having the conducting wires attached, was then sewn into the kid's belly. Two Strong ropes were also tied to this bait; and, to one of these, the conducting wire was firmly bound with small cord. The ropes were about thirty yards long, and had each attached to its extremities one of the inflated goat-skins used by water-carriers. Hall, with his goat-skin under his arm, and a coil of loose rope in his hand, took one side of the nulla, while my brother, similarly provided took the other. My brother's rope contained the wire; so I walked beside him, while two coolies, with the battery ready charged, and slung to a pole which rested on their shoulders, accompanied me. A small float was also attached by a string to the kid, so as to indicate its position.

These arrangements being made, we commenced walking up the nulla, dragging the carcass of the kid in the stream, and moving it across, from side to side, so as to leave no part of the bed untried; and, as the nulla was only about twelve yards wide, we felt pretty confident that, if the Mugger were in it, we could scarcely fail of coming in contact with him. We had proceeded only about a quarter of a mile, when the float suddenly dipt. My brother and Hall threw the loose coil of ropes they carried on the water, along with the inflated skins. These made it soon evident by their motion that the Mugger had seized the kid. He was dashing across, in a zig-zag direction, down the stream. I ran after him as fast as I could; and paying out the cord from the reel, when I found it impossible to keep up with him. On reaching a place where the banks were steeper than usual, he came to a stand still. I got on the top of the bank, and commenced hauling in the rope. I did not, however, venture to lift the skin out of the water, for fear of disturbing him, until the coolies with the battery had time to come up. This was a very anxious time; for, if the Mugger had shifted his quarters before they came up, a fresh run with him would have ensued, with the chance of his breaking the wires with his teeth. After a while I heard the coolies approaching, and my brother scolding them, and urging them to hasten on. Just as their heads appeared above the bank, the foremost coolie tripped his foot and fell—I groaned with disappointment—presently, my brother came along with them, and brought the battery to my feet; a good deal of the acid had been spilt, but, with the aid of a bottle of fresh acid we had brought along with us, we soon got the battery up to the requisite power. Every thing being now in order, I commenced pulling up the rope with the wire. I proceeded as cautiously as possible for fear of disturbing the Mugger; but, in spite of all my efforts, the inflated skin, in coming up the bank, dislodged some loose pieces of earth, and sent them splashing into the water. Fortunately, however, the Mugger had made up his mind to digest the kid where he was. I could not help chuckling when I at length got hold of the end of the wires. While my brother was fastening one of them to the battery, I got the other ready for completing the circuit. The Mugger all the while lying still at the bottom of the nulla with, most likely, a couple of fathoms of water over his head, unconscious of danger, and little dreaming that the two-legged creatures on the bank had got a nerve communicating with his stomach, through which they were going to send a flash of lightning that would shatter his scaly hulk to pieces.

Every thing being now ready, I made the fatal contact. Our success was complete! We felt a shock, as if something had fallen down the bank—a mound of muddy water rose, with a muffled, rumbling sound, and then burst out to a column of dark smoke. A splashing and bubbling succeeded, and then a great crimson patch floated on the water, like a variegated carpet pattern. Strange-looking fragments of scaly skin were picked up by the natives from the water's edge, and brought to us amidst a very general rejoicing. The exploded Mugger floated down the stream, and the current soon carried it out of sight. We were not at all sorry, for it looked such a horrible mess that we felt no desire to examine it.

Our sense of triumphant satisfaction was, however, sadly damped about a week afterward, when we received the mortifying announcement, that Sidhoo's Mugger was still alive, and on his old beat, apparently uninjured. It was evident that we had blasted the wrong Mugger! We consoled ourselves with the reflection, that if he were not Sidhoo's murderer, it was very likely he was not wholly innocent of other atrocities, and therefore deserved his fate.

Of course it was impossible to rest while Sidhoo's Mugger remained alive, so we were not long in preparing for a second expedition. This time we took the precaution of not charging the battery until we were certain that the bait was swallowed. The acid, diluted to the necessary strength, was, therefore, carried in one of those brown earthenware jars called gray-beards, which had come out to us full of Glenlivet whisky. We commenced dragging the kid up the stream, as before; but, having walked more than a mile without getting a bite, we were getting rather disheartened, and sat down to rest, struck a light, and smoked a cheroot. Hall laid down, having manufactured an impromptu easy chair out of his coil of rope, with the inflated goat-skin placed above it. My brother was not long in imitating his example, and I laid down under the shade of some reeds, near to the water's edge. The heat was oppressive, and we were discussing the probability of getting a bite that day, and lamenting that we had not brought some pale ale along with us, when, when, all at once, I got a sharp blow on the leg, while my brother came spinning down the bank like a teetotem—a companion picture to Hall; who was revolving down the opposite bank. The ropes and skins went rushing down the nulla at a tremendous pace. As soon as we recovered from the laughter into which we were thrown by this droll contretemps, we set off in pursuit, guided by the track which the inflated skins made in the water. On they went, dashing from side to side, as they had done in our first attempt. On coming to a place where the nulla made a sharp turn, they stood still under the high bank, on the inner curve of the bend. It unfortunately happened that the bank, near to which the skins were floating, was too precipitous for us to get near them, without starting the Mugger from his present position. With much labor, we detached some loose sods from the top of the bank, and sent them with a loud splash into the water, directly over where we imagined him to have taken up his quarters. This had the desired effect, for the skins began to move slowly down the stream, as if the Mugger were crawling leisurely along the bottom.

Leaving my brother with the coolies in charge of the battery, I ran on to where the bank was more shelving. By good luck, the stream was rushing up, after its sudden sweep, and sent a strong current against this bank. I had not waited many minutes, before the skins came floating round the corner, to where I was standing. I seized the one to which the wire was attached, desiring my brother to charge the battery, and bring it down. This he did much sooner than I could have expected; for, as the battery was now empty, one coolie was able to carry it on his head, while my brother took the jar of acid in his hand. It was evident from the motion of the other skin in the water that the Mugger was still moving—so no time was to be lost. I made the connection with the battery with one of the wires; in another instant the circuit was complete, and the Mugger's doom sealed.

There was a momentary pause—owing, I suppose, to some slight loss of insulation in the wires—then came the premonitory shock, then the rumble, the smoke, and the sparks; and a great bloated mass of flesh and blood rose to the surface of the water. Hall called out to us to drag it ashore, and see whether we could get any trace of poor Sidhoo. We tried by means of a bamboo pole to pull it to the bank, but the glimpse we got of it as it neared was so unutterably disgusting, that we pushed it off again, and allowed it to float away down with the current.

That this was Sidhoo's Mugger, there could be no doubt; for he was never seen or heard of in the neighborhood again.

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A CHAPTER ON DREAMS.

When we picture to ourselves a person lying in a state of profound sleep—the body slightly curved upon itself; the limbs relaxed; the head reclining on its pillow; and eyelids closed—it is wonderful to think what strange and startling imagery may be passing through the brain of that apparently unconscious being. The events of his whole life may hurry past him in dim obscurity; he may be revisited by the dead; he may be transported into regions he never before beheld; and his ideas visibly assuming phantasmal shapes, may hover round him like shadows reflected from another and more spiritual state of existence.

Let us draw the curtains gently aside, and study the physiognomy of sleep.

The countenance may, occasionally, be observed lighted up, as it were, from within by a passing dream—its expression is frequently one of peculiar mildness and benignity; the breathing may be slow, but it is calm and uniform: the pulse not so rapid as in the waking state, but soft and regular; the composure of the whole body may continue trance-like and perfect. There is, indeed, no sign of innocence more touching than the smile of a sleeping infant. But, suddenly, this state of tranquillity may be disturbed; the dreamer changes his position and become restless; he moans grievously—perhaps sobs—and tears may be observed glimmering underneath his eyelids; his whole body now seems to be shaken by some inward convulsion; but, presently, the strife abates; the storm-cloud gradually passes; he stretches his limbs, opens his eyes, and, as he awakes, daylight, in an instant, dispels the vision, perhaps leaving not behind the faintest trace or recollection of a single incident which occurred in this mysterious state.

But what are dreams? Whence come they? What do they portend? Not man only, but all animals, it is presumed, dream, more or less, when they are asleep. Horses neigh, and sometimes kick violently; cows, when suckling their young calves, often utter piteous lowings; dogs bark in suppressed tones, and, from the motions of their paws, appear to fancy themselves in the field of the chase; even frogs, particularly during summer, croak loudly and discordantly until midnight, and then retire, and become silent. Birds also dream; and will sometimes, when frightened, fall from their roosting-perch, or flutter about their cage, in evident alarm. A bullfinch, says Bechstein, belonging to a lady, was subject to very frightful dreams, which made it drop off its perch; but no sooner did it hear the voice of its affectionate mistress than it became immediately tranquil, and reascended its perch to sleep again. It is pretty certain that parrots dream. It is, indeed, a curious circumstance that the best way of teaching this bird to talk is to cover the cage over so as to darken it, and while he is going to sleep pronounce, audibly and slowly, the word he is to learn; if the winged pupil be a clever one, he will, upon the repetition of the lesson, in a morning or two, begin to repeat it.

Upon the same principle, school-boys commit their tasks to memory by reading them over the last thing before they go to bed. It is to be remembered that during sleep the mind may not be wholly under eclipse; for, although some of its faculties—such as perception, comparison, judgment, and especially the will, may be suspended—others (for example, memory and imagination), are often more active than in the waking state. But some persons, it is said, never dream. We are assured by Locke that he knew a gentleman who had an excellent memory, yet could not recollect ever having dreamed until his twenty-sixth year. Dr. Reid, for many years before his death, had no recollection of having ever dreamed. Dr. Eliotson also relates, apparently upon good authority, the case of a man who never dreamed until after he had a fever, in his fortieth year; and we ourselves know several persons who are not conscious of ever dreaming. Nevertheless, many contend that in all such cases dreams really occur, but that they escape the recollection; for they contend that it is impossible that the mind can, being an independent principle, ever be in a state of absolute rest. This is arguing within a very narrow circle. We must not forget that the intimate alliance of the mind with the body, subjects it to its general laws; the "heat-oppressed brain" requires rest to renew its energies, and the mind, of which it is the organ, in the mean time, may, as in profound sleep, remain perfectly quiescent. The lids of the outward senses are closed; a vail is drawn over the immaterial principle of our nature; and mind and body alike, for a period, lie in a state of utter unconsciousness.

Here, however, it may fairly be asked, how happens it that the same person will at one time remember, and, at another, forget his dreams? This circumstance may, we conceive, thus be explained:

Those dreams which occur in very deep sleep, and in the early part of the night, are not so likely to be remembered as those which happen toward morning, when the sleep is less profound; hence the popular notion that our morning dreams—which are always best remembered—are likely to prove true. Then, again, the imagery of some dreams is more striking, and actually makes a deeper impression than the incidents of other dreams. We are told by Sir Humphrey Davy, that, on one occasion, a dream was so strongly impressed upon his eye, that even after he had risen and walked out, he could not be persuaded of its unreal nature, until his friends convinced him of its impossibility. The effect of some dreams upon children is very remarkable; they are, it is believed, more liable to dreams of terror than grown persons, which may be accounted for by their being more subject to a variety of internal complaints, such as teething, convulsions, derangement of the bowels, &c.; added to which, their reasoning faculties are not as yet sufficiently developed to correct such erroneous impressions. Hence, sometimes, children appear, when they awake, bewildered and distressed, and remain for a considerable period in a state of agitation almost resembling delirium. The incidents which are conceived in dreams are indeed not unfrequently confounded by adults with real events; hence, we often hear people, in alluding to some doubtful circumstance, exclaim, "Well! if it be not true, I certainly must have dreamed it." We confess we have ourselves been puzzled in this way; the spell may be broken; but the impression made by the delusion still clings to us; its shadow is still thrown across our path.

The question therefore recurs, What are Dreams? Whence do they arise? We believe that the ideas and emotions which take place in the dreaming state may be ascribed to a twofold origin. They may arise from certain bodily sensations, which may suggest particular trains of thought and feeling; or they may be derived from the operations or activity of the thinking principle itself; in which case they are purely mental. The celebrated Dr. James Gregory—whose premature death was a great loss to science—states, that having gone to bed with a vessel of hot water at his feet, he dreamed of walking up the crater of Mount Etna, and felt the ground warm under him. He likewise, on another occasion, dreamed of spending a winter at Hudson's Bay, and of suffering much distress from intense frost; and found, when he awoke, that he had thrown off the bed-clothes in his sleep, and exposed himself to cold. He had been reading, a few days before, a very particular account of this colony. The eminent metaphysician, Dr. Reid, relates of himself that the dressing of a blister, which he had applied to his head, becoming ruffled, so as to produce pain, he dreamed that he had fallen into the hands of a party of North American Indians, who were scalping him. These were dreams suggested by sensations which, were conveyed from the surface of the body, through the nerves, until corresponding impression was produced on the mind. Upon the same principle, very strong impressions received during the day may modify and very materially influence the character of our dreams at night. Dr. Beattie states that once, after riding thirty miles in a very high wind, he passed a night of dreams which were so terrible, that he found it expedient to keep himself awake, that he might no longer be tormented with them. "Had I been superstitious," he observes, "I should have thought that some disaster was impending; but it occurred to me that the tempestuous weather I had encountered the preceding day might be the cause of all these horrors." Other and less obvious causes are in constant operation. A change in the weather—in the electrical state of the atmosphere—and its barometrical pressure—the temperature of the bedroom—arrangements of the bed-furniture—the adjustment of the bed-clothes—nay, the position of the sleeper, particularly if he cramp a foot or benumb an arm, will at once affect the entire concatenation and issue of his dreams.

Furthermore, impressions may be made on the mind during sleep, by speaking gently to a person, or even whispering in the ear. We ourselves, when in Italy, could on one occasion trace the origin of a very remarkable dream to our having heard, in an obscure and half-conscious manner, during sleep, the noise of people in the streets, on All Souls'-night, invoking alms for the dead. Dr. Beattie knew a man in whom any kind of dream could be produced if his friends, gently addressing him, afforded the subject-matter for his ideas. Equally curious is the circumstance that dreams may be produced by whispering in the ear. A case of this description is recorded by Dr. Abercrombie:

"An officer, whose susceptibility of having his dreams thus conjured before him, was so remarkable, that his friends could produce any kind of dream they pleased, by softly whispering in his ear, especially if this were done by one with whose voice he was familiar. His companions were in the constant habit of amusing themselves at his expense. On one occasion they conducted him through the whole progress of a quarrel, which ended in a duel; and when the parties were supposed to meet, a pistol was put into his hand, which he fired off in his sleep, and was awakened by the report. On another, they found him asleep on the top of a locker or bunker in the cabin, when, by whispering, they made him believe he had fallen overboard; and they then exhorted him to save himself by swimming. He immediately imitated the motions of swimming. They then suggested to him that he was being pursued by a shark, and entreated him to dive for his life. This he did, or rather attempted, with so much violence, that he threw himself off the locker, by which he was bruised, and, of course, awakened." Dr. Abercrombie adds, that the most remarkable circumstance connected with this case was, that after these and a variety of other pranks had been played upon him, "he had no distinct recollection of his dreams, but only a confused feeling of oppression or fatigue, and used to tell his friends that he was sure they had been playing some tricks upon him."

It appears, also—and the fact is very remarkable—that a similar kind of sensation will produce the same description of dream in a number of individuals at the same time. Hence different people will sometimes have the same dream. We read of a whole regiment starting up in alarm, declaring they were dreaming that a black dog had jumped upon their breasts and disappeared, which curious circumstance was explained by the discovery, that they had all been exposed to the influence of a deleterious gas, which was generated in the monastery. The effect of music, also, in exciting delightful dreams, has often been attested. A French philosopher whose experiments are reported by Magendie, according to the airs which he had arranged should be played while he was asleep, could have the character of his dreams directed at pleasure. "There is an art," says Sir Thomas Browne—in his usual quaint style—"to make dreams as well as their interpretations; and physicians will tell us that some food makes turbulent, some gives quiet dreams. Cato, who doated upon cabbage, might find the crude effects thereof; and Pythagoras might have had calmer sleeps if he had totally abstained from beans."

The influences of the day's occurrences, and the thoughts which have occupied the mind during the day, have been said to give a corresponding tone and coloring to our dreams at night. Thus the lover dreams of his mistress; the miser of his gold; the merchant of his speculations; the man of science of his discoveries. The poets of all ages and nations adopt this view. Virgil describes Dido forsaken by Æneas, wandering alone on a desert shore in pursuit of the Tyrians. Milton represents Eve relating to Adam the dreams which were very naturally the repetition of her waking thoughts. Petrarch invokes the beauty of Laura. Eloisa, separated from Abelard, is again happy in his company, even amid the "dreary wastes" and "low-browed rocks."

There can be no doubt that the dreams of many persons are very greatly influenced by the reflections and emotions they have experienced the preceding day; but this is by no means invariably the case. We have known persons whose dreams refer habitually to events which occurred to them, perhaps, twenty years ago, and upon whom recent events seem to possess no such influence. We have often been told by ladies happily and affectionately married, that while they were engaged, although their thoughts were naturally much set on their engagement, they never dreamed of their lovers. So, also, the father of a family, habitually impressed with a sense of his responsibility and affection toward his offspring, will sometimes dream often enough of his neighbor's children, but seldom or, perhaps, never, of his own. Try to dream on a given subject—resolve and fix the attention upon it—going to sleep, and no sooner are our eyelids closed, than fantastic fancy will conjure up the most opposite and incongruous imagery. We have heard this dream-problem explained by referring it to a principle of antagonism, which, waking or sleeping, may be observed in the animal economy. If a limb become fatigued by remaining too long in one position, it will be relieved by being thrown into the very opposite condition; if the eye fatigue itself by gazing intently on the disc of any bright color, and the eyelids close, the very opposite, or antagonistic color will be depicted upon the retina: in like manner, when our waking thoughts—in connection with the nerve matter, which is their material instrument—have exhausted their energy, we can easily conceive how the very opposite condition will be produced. Hence the most unconnected and preposterous train of imagery may arise from the very earnestness with which we desire a contrary effect. We dream of events which do not concern us, instead of those in which we are most deeply interested; we dream of persons to whom we are indifferent, instead of those to whom we are attached. But, in the midst of all this curious and perplexing contrariety, it is remarkable—and may be esteemed a proof of the immateriality of the mind—that we always preserve the consciousness of our own identity. No man dreams that he is a woman, or any other person than himself; we have heard of persons who have dreamed they were dead, and in a spiritual state; but the spirit was still their own—they maintained their identity. Sir Thomas Lawrence once made an interesting observation on this subject to Mrs. Butler—then Miss Fanny Kemble: he pointed out, in conversation, that he never heard of any lady who ever dreamed that she was younger than she really was. We retain in our dreams even the identity of our age. It has been said—we think by Sir Thomas Browne—that some persons of virtuous and honorable principles will commit, as they fancy, actions in their dreams which they would shudder at in their waking moments; but we can not believe that the identity of moral goodness can be so perverted in the dreaming state. We can, however, readily conceive that, when the mind is oppressed, or disturbed by the recollection of some event it dreads to dwell upon, it may be disturbed by the most terrific and ghastly images. A guilty conscience, too, will unquestionably produce restlessness, agitation, and awe-inspiring dreams. Hence Manfred, in pacing restlessly his lonely Gothic gallery at midnight, pictures to himself the terrors of sleep:

"The lamp must be replenished; even then
It will not burn so long as I must watch.
My slumbers, if I slumber, are not sleep,
But a continuance of enduring thought,
Which then I can resist not. In my heart
There is a vigil; and these eyes
But close to look within."

Contrition and remorse oppose his rest. If we remember right, it was Bishop Newton who remarked, that the sleep of innocence differed essentially from the sleep of guilt.

The assistance supposed to be sometimes furnished in sleep toward the solution of problems which puzzled the waking sense, opens up a curious subject of investigation. Cases of the kind have been recorded upon undoubted authority. Hence some philosophers, like Sir Thomas Browne and Addison, have been induced to suppose that the soul in this state is partially disengaged from the encumbrance of the body, and therefore more intelligent, which is a mere fancy—a poetical fiction. Surely it is absurd to suppose that the soul, which we invest with such high and perfect attributes, should commit such frivolous and irrational acts as these which take place so constantly in our dreams. "Methinks," observed Locke, "every drowsy nod shakes this doctrine." All we remark, is, that some of the ordinary mental faculties act in such cases with increased energy. But beyond this we can not go. We are informed by Cabains, that Franklin on several occasions mentioned to him, that he had been assisted in his dreams on the issue of many affairs in which he was engaged. So, also, Condillac, while writing his "Cours d'Etudes," states that he was frequently obliged to leave a chapter incomplete, and retire to bed: and that on waking, he found it, on more than one occasion, finished in his head. Condorcet, upon leaving his deep and complicated calculations unfinished, after having retired to rest, often found their results unfolded to him in his dreams. Voltaire assures us that he, like La Fontaine, composed verses frequently in his sleep, which he remembered on awaking. Doctor Johnson states that he once in a dream had a contest of wit with some other person, and that he was very much mortified by imagining that his opponent had the better of him. Coleridge, in a dream, composed the wild and beautiful poem of "Kubla Khan," which was suggested to him by a passage he was reading in "Purchas's Pilgrimage" when he fell asleep. On awaking he had a distinct recollection of the whole, and, taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines which have been so much admired.

One of the most striking circumstances connected with the human mind is the extreme lightning-like rapidity of its thoughts, even in our waking hours; but the transactions which appear to take place in our dreams are accomplished with still more incalculable rapidity; the relations of space, the duration of time, appear to be alike annihilated; we are transported in an instant to the most distant regions of the earth, and the events of ages are condensed into the span of a few seconds. The accidental jarring of a door, or any noise, will, at the same moment, it awakens a person, suggest the incidents of an entire dream. Hence some persons—Lord Brougham in particular—have supposed that all our dreams take place in the transition or interval between sleep and waking. A gentleman dreamt that he had enlisted as a soldier, joined his regiment, deserted, was apprehended, carried back, tried, condemned to be shot, and, at last, led out for execution. After all the usual preparations a gun was fired; he awoke with the report, and found that a noise in an adjoining room had, in the same moment, produced the dream and awakened him. The same want of any notion of the duration of time occurs, more or less, in all dreams; hence our ignorance when we awake of the length of the night. A friend of Doctor Abercrombie's dreamt that he crossed the Atlantic and spent a fortnight in America. In embarking, on his return, he fell into the sea, and, awakening with the fright, discovered he had not been ten minutes asleep. "I lately dreamed," says Dr. Macnish, "that I made a voyage—remained some days in Calcutta—returned home—then took ship for Egypt, where I visited the cataracts of the Nile, Grand Cairo, and the Pyramids; and to crown the whole, had the honor of an interview with Mehemet Ali, Cleopatra, and Alexander the Great." All this was the work of a single hour, or even a few minutes. In one of the dreams which Mr. De Quincey describes—when under the influence of opium—"The sense of Space and in the end of Time were," he states, "both powerfully affected. Buildings, landscapes, &c., were exhibited in proportions so vast as the bodily eye is not fitted to receive. Space swelled, and was amplified to a sense of unutterable infinity. This, however, did not disturb me so much as the vast expansion of Time; I sometimes seemed to have lived for seventy or one hundred years in one night; nay, sometimes had feelings representative of a millenium, passed in that time; or, however, of a duration far beyond the limits of any human experience." One of the miracles of Mohammed appears to be illustrative of the same phenomenon. We read, in the Koran, that the angel Gabriel took Mohammed, one morning, out of his bed to give him a sight of all things in the Seven Heavens and in Paradise; and, after holding ninety thousand spiritual conferences, he was brought back again to his bed; all which was transacted in so small a space of time that Mohammed, upon his return, found his bed still warm.

Are dreams so much varied as is generally supposed? Or, taking into consideration our different mental and physical constitutions, is there not rather a remarkable sameness in them? It is certainly a very unusual circumstance to hear of any dream that does violence to the common experience of mankind. One class of dreams, which may be termed Retrospective, is of frequent occurrence. These are characterized by the revival of associations long since forgotten. The faculty of Memory appears to be preternaturally exalted; the vail is withdrawn which obscured the vista of our past life; and the minutest events of childhood pass in vivid review before us. There can be no doubt that something analogous to this occurs in drowning; when, after the alarm and struggle for life has subsided, sensations and visions supervene with indescribable rapidity. The same very remarkable phenomenon takes place also sometimes in hanging; but is by no means uniformly produced. "Of all whom I have seen restored from drowning," observes Dr. Lettsom, "I never found one who had the smallest recollection of any thing that passed under water until the time they were restored." Persons must not, therefore, be deceived by imagining that an Elysium is to be found at the bottom of a garden-well, or a canal, or a river.

But to return—it is not only the very early incidents of childhood which may thus be recalled by our dreams, but recent events, which in our waking hours had escaped the memory, are sometimes suddenly recalled. In his "Notes to Waverley," Sir Walter Scott relates the following anecdote: "A gentleman connected with a Bank in Glasgow, while employed in the occupation of cashier, was annoyed by a person, out of his turn, demanding the payment of a check for six pounds. Having paid him, but with reluctance, out of his turn, he thought no more of the transaction. At the end of the year, which was eight or nine months after, a difficulty was experienced in making the books balance, in consequence of a deficiency of six pounds. Several days and nights were exhausted in endeavors to discover the source of the error, but without success; and the discomfited and chagrined cashier retired one night to his bed, disappointed and fatigued. He fell asleep and dreamed he was at his Bank, and once again the whole scene of the annoying man and his six-pound check arose before him; and, on examination, it was discovered that the sum paid to this person had been neglected to be inserted in the book of interests, and that it exactly accounted for the error in the balance." We read of another gentleman, a solicitor, who, on one occasion, lost a very important document connected with the conveyance of some property; the most anxious search was made for it in vain; and the night preceding the day on which the parties were to meet for the final settlement the son of this gentleman then went to bed, under much anxiety and disappointment, and dreamt that, at the time when the missing paper was delivered to his father, his table was covered with papers connected with the affairs of a particular client; and there found the paper they had been in search of, which had been tied up in a parcel to which it was in no way related.

There is another class of dreams which would appear to be much more extraordinary than these of a Retrospective Character, to wit: those in which the dreamer appears to take cognizance of incidents which are occurring at a distance, which may be designated Dreams of Coincidence. In the "Memoirs of Margaret de Valois" we read, that her mother, Catherine de Medicis, when ill of the plague at Metz, saw her son, the Duc d'Anjou, at the victory of Jarnac, thrown from his horse, and the Prince de Condé dead—events which happened exactly at that moment. Dr. Macnish relates, as the most striking example he ever met with of the co-existence between a dream and a passing event, the following melancholy story: Miss M., a young lady, a native of Ross-shire, was deeply in love with an officer who accompanied Sir John Moore in the Peninsular War. The constant danger to which he was exposed had an evident effect upon her spirits. She became pale and melancholy in perpetually brooding over his fortunes; and, in spite of all that reason could do, felt a certain conviction that, when she last parted from her lover, she had parted with him forever. In a surprisingly short period her graceful form declined into all the appalling characteristics of a fatal illness, and she seemed rapidly hastening to the grave, when a dream confirmed the horrors she had long anticipated, and gave the finishing stroke to her sorrows. One night, after falling asleep, she imagined she saw her lover, pale, bloody, and wounded in the breast, enter her apartment. He drew aside the curtains of the bed, and, with a look of the utmost mildness, informed her that he had been slain in battle, desiring her, at the same time, to comfort herself, and not take his death too seriously to heart. It is needless to say what influence this vision had upon a mind so replete with woe. It withered it entirely, and the poor girl died a few days afterward, but, not without desiring her parents to note down the day of the month on which it happened, and see if it would not be confirmed, as she confidently declared it would. Her anticipation was correct, for accounts were shortly afterward received that the young man was slain at the battle of Corunna, which was fought on the very day of the night of which his betrothed had beheld the vision. It is certainly very natural to suppose that there must be some mysterious connection between such a dream and the event which appears to have simultaneously taken place—but, upon reflecting further upon the subject, we shall find that the co-existence is purely accidental. If, as Sir Walter Scott observed, any event, such as the death of the person dreamt of, chance to take place, so as to correspond with the nature and time of the apparition, the circumstance is conceived to be supernatural, although the coincidence is one which must frequently occur, since our dreams usually refer to the accomplishment of that which haunts our minds when awake, and often presage the most probable events. Such a concatenation, therefore, must often take place when it is considered "of what stuff dreams are made," and how naturally they turn upon those who occupy our mind when awake. When a soldier is exposed to death in battle; when a sailor is incurring the dangers of the sea; when a beloved wife or relative is attacked by disease, how readily our sleeping imagination rushes to the very point of alarm which, when waking, it had shuddered to anticipate. Considering the many thousands of dreams which must, night after night, pass through the imagination of individuals, the number of coincidences between the vision and the event are fewer and less remarkable than a fair calculation of chance would warrant us to expect.

In addition to these, we sometimes hear of dreams which appear to reveal the secrets of futurity; and which may be designated Prophetic Dreams—unvailing, as they are supposed to do, the destiny which awaits particular individuals. The prophetic dream of Cromwell, that he should live to be the greatest man in England, has often been referred to as an example of special revelation; but surely there can be nothing very wonderful in the occurrence—for, after all, if we could only penetrate into the thoughts, hopes, and designs which inflamed the ambition of such men as Ireton, Lambert, and the like, we should find both their waking and sleeping visions equally suggestive of self-aggrandizement. The Protector himself was not the only usurper, in those troubled times, who dreamed of being "every inch a king;" but we want the data to compute the probabilities which the laws of chance would give in favor of such a prophecy or dream being fulfilled. The prophetic dream refers generally to some event which, in the course of nature, is likely to happen: is it, then, wonderful that it should occur? It would be curious to know how often Napoleon dreamed that he was the Emperor of the civilized world, or confined as a prisoner of war; how many thrones he imagined himself to have ascended or abdicated; how often he accomplished the rebuilding of Jerusalem. A few years ago, some very cruel murders were perpetrated in Edinburgh, by men named Burke and Hare, who sold the bodies of their victims to the Anatomical Schools. We had ourselves an interview with Burke, after his condemnation, when he told us that many months before he was apprehended and convicted, he used to dream that the murders he committed had been discovered; then he imagined himself going to be executed, and his chief anxiety was, how he should comport himself on the scaffold before the assembled multitude, whose faces he beheld gazing up and fixed upon him. His dream was, in every respect, verified; but who, for an instant, would suppose there could have been any thing preternatural, or prophetic, in such a vision? For the most part, dreams of this description are supposed to portend the illness, or the time of the death, of particular individuals; and these, too, upon the simple doctrine of chance, turn out, perhaps, to be as often wrong as right. It may be true, that Lord Lyttleton died at the exact hour which he said had been predicted to him in a dream; but Voltaire outlived a similar prophecy for many years. It must, however, be conceded, that persons in ill-health may have their death expedited by believing in such fatal predictions. Tell a timorous man that he will die; and the sentence, if pronounced with sufficient solemnity, and the semblance of its fore-knowledge, will, under certain circumstances, execute itself. But, on the other hand, the self-sustaining power of the will, with a corresponding concentration of nervous energy, will sometimes triumph over the presence of disease, and for awhile ward off even the hand of death. The anecdote is told of Muley Moloch, who, being informed that his army was likely to be defeated, sprang from his sick bed in great excitement, led his men on to victory, and, on returning to his tent, lay down and almost instantly expired.

But again it may be asked—what then do dreams portend? Do they admit of any rational interpretation? This branch of the art of divination, which was called formerly by the name of "Oneiromancy," has been practiced in all ages; and there is, perhaps, not a village in Great Britain, or on the great continent of Europe, India, or America, in which some fortune-telling old woman will not be found who professes to be an oracle in propounding their mystical signification. The magicians of old were supposed to be skillful interpreters of dreams, which, like the wiseacres of Christendom, they viewed under very contradictory aspects.

From one of the most ancient Arabic manuscripts on the subject, we learn that if you see an angel, it is a good sign; but if you dream that you converse with one, it forebodes evil—to dream you bathe in a clear fountain denotes joy—but if it be muddy, an enemy will bring against you some false accusation. To dream of carrying any weight upon the back denotes servitude, if you are rich—honor if you are poor. There is not an object in nature—not an event that can occur in life—that our modern fortune-tellers have not converted, when seen in a dream, into some sign ominous of good or of evil; and many even well-educated persons are in the habit of fostering their credulity by attaching an undue importance to their dreams. It is a curious circumstance, however, which militates against this mystic art, that the same sign in different countries carries with it a very contrary signification. The peasant girl in England thinks, if she dream of a rose, that it is a sure sign of happiness; but the paysanne in Normandy believes that it portends vexation and disappointment. The Englishman conceives that to dream of an oak-tree is a sign of prosperity; but in Switzerland, the same vision is thought to be a forewarning of some dreadful calamity.

The domestic superstitions which are connected with dreams, are sometimes favored by, and perhaps dependent upon a certain morbid condition or irritability of the nervous system, which suggests the dread of some impending calamity, a painful and indefinite sense of apprehension for which no ostensible reason can be assigned. Strange as it might appear, the influence of our dreams upon our waking state is very remarkable; we may awaken refreshed from a dream which has made us, in our sleep, superlatively happy; or we may rise with melancholic feelings after suffering intense affliction in some dream, and the details of both dreams may alike be forgotten. We can not, after being so much disturbed, at once regain our composure; the billows continue heaving after the tempest has subsided; the troubled nerves continue to vibrate after the causes that disturbed them have ceased to act; the impression still remains, and checkers the happiness of the future day. Even men of strong mind, who do not believe in the interpretation of dreams, may be so affected. When Henry the Fourth of France was once told by an astrologer that he would be assassinated, he smiled at the prediction, and did not believe it; but he confessed that it often haunted him afterward, and although he placed no faith in it, still it sometimes depressed his spirits, and he often expressed a wish that he had never heard it. In like manner, dreams, which persons do not believe in, will unconsciously affect the tenor of their thoughts and feelings.

There are many persons who appear to have habitually the most extraordinary dreams, and there is scarcely a family circle that assemble round the domestic hearth, in which some one or other of the party is not able to relate some very wonderful story. We have, ourselves, a répertoire, from which we could select a host of such narrations; but we have preferred, at the risk of being thought recapitulative, to dwell upon those which have been recorded upon unimpeachable authority. The dreams which men like Locke, Reid, Gregory, Abercrombie, Macnish, &c., have attested, come with a weight of evidence before us which the dreams of persons unknown in the scientific or literary world would not possess. The impressions produced by dreams are so fugitive—so easy is it for persons unintentionally to deceive themselves in recalling their dreams' experience—that Epictetus, long ago, advised young men not to entertain any company by relating their dreams, as they could only, he affirmed, be interesting to themselves, and perhaps would, after all their pains, be disbelieved by their auditors. Nevertheless, it would be well for all persons to study, whether waking or dreaming, the phenomena of their own minds. The ingenious naturalist, Doctor Fleming, suggests that persons should, in contra-distinction to a "Diary," keep a "Nocturnal," in which they should register their dreams. Doubtless such a journal might turn out to be a very amusing psychological record.

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A FAIR IN MUNICH.

I wonder when there is not a fair in Munich. This, however, was Die Drei Könige Dult, or the Fair of the Three Kings. By way of amusement, I thought I would go to it; but as I could not very well go alone, I invited Madame Thekla to accompany me, with which she was very well pleased, as I promised to treat her to the shows. As far as buying and selling, and the crowds of peasants, and townspeople, and students, and soldiers, go, it was like any other fair. At a little distance from the long array of booths, stood the shows—and thither we bent our steps.

The first thing we came upon was a small ladder-wagon, covered with an arched awning; and, bound to one side of the wagon, were tall poles, from which floated a series of ghastly pictures—hideous raw-head-and-bloody-bone pictures! There were murders, executions, be-headings in German fashion; the criminal extended on a horrid sort of rack, and his head being chopped off by a grim executioner, with a sword, while a priest stood by in his long robes; there were houses on fire; drownings, miraculous escapes; there were tall, smirking hussars, and weeping ladies in white—heroes and heroines in these bloody histories!

The subjects, the hideous drawing, the hard outlines, the goggle-eyes, the blood, the knives, the very fire, made you feel sick. A considerable crowd was collected, and listened breathlessly to the sounds of an organ, to which two Tyrolians sang their appalling tragedies. They sang in such clear, sweet, mountain tones, that you were strangely fascinated. Mournfully sang they, in a monotonous chaunt, of blood, and crime, and terror, till you felt your blood creep; and, by a frightful fascination, your eyes gloated on the disgusting pictures.

What a terribly immoral influence must such exhibitions have upon such an uneducated crowd as surrounded these sirens! Why should not a paternal government, which guards its people from immoral books and disgusting newspapers, not guard them equally from such a disgusting sight and sound as this Tyrolian exhibition? These Tyrolians sold printed histories of the fearful crimes and calamities which were depicted on their banners. These histories are very exciting and romantic reading, as you may believe when I give some of their titles:—"The History of the Great and Terrible Monster, who cruelly murdered his Beloved, his Child, his Father, his Mother, his two Sisters, and his Brother, on the 8th of July, 1850." "Heroic Self-sacrifice of a Bohemian Hussar Officer, and the Punishment of his Murderers." "A true and dreadful History which occurred on the 14th of March, 1850, in Schopka, near Milineck, in Bohemia." "The Might of Mutual Love: a highly remarkable event, which occurred at Thoulon, in the year 1849." "The Cursed Mill: a Warning from Real Life." "The Temptation; the Deed; the Consequences!"

If you care to know any thing of the style of these remarkable productions, I will give you a specimen. One begins thus:—"In Ross-dorf, in Hanover, lived the criminal Peter Natzer. He was by trade a glazier, his father having followed the same calling. Peter was five-and-twenty years old, and was, from his earliest youth, addicted to every species of crime. He had a sweetheart, named Lucie Braun, a poor girl, &c., &c."

Again:—"Silent sat the miller, Leverm, in his garden; thoughtfully gazed he into the distant valley. He was scarcely thirty years of age, but heavy cares had bowed him, and robbed him of his fresh, youthful bloom. Beside him sat his wife, who cast many an anxious but affectionate glance on her husband. How tender and lovely was this young wife! The inhabitants of the neighborhood called her 'The Rose of the Valley.'" In this way begins a most awful tragedy.

Of course we did not read these things in the fair. It was enough for us, there, to listen to the mournful chant of the mountaineers, till our blood was frozen in our veins. I took home with me these printed histories, as many another simple soul did; and now, after I have read them, and been filled with horror and disgust by them, I have put them away from me as unholy things. But think of the effect they will have in many a lonely village, this winter—in many a desolate farm-house or cottage—on the wide plain, or among the mountains! These papers are productive seeds of murder and crime; of that one may be certain.

The next wonder that stopped us in the fair, was a little fat man, who was shouting away at the top of his voice, while he briskly sharpened a knife on a long, rough board, which was smeared over with a black ointment. He was a vender of magical strop-salve! something in the fashion of Mechi. "Ladies and gentlemen;" shouted he, "witness my wonderful invention! The dullest knife, stick-knife, bread-knife, clasp-knife, table-knife, carving-knife, shaving-knife, (rasier-messer) pen-knife, pruning-knife, though dull as this knife—though dull as this knife!" and here he began hacking away upon the edge of a big knife with a strong piece of broken pitcher. "Yes, though dull, dull, dull as this knife!—when subjected to my wonderful salve," and here he smeared it with his black ointment, "will cut a hair, or the most delicate shaving of paper—as it now does!" and with that he severed paper shavings as if they had been nothing. If it was really the same knife, his was a wonderful invention, and beat Mechi hollow.

Next, I had my fortune told at three different places, for six kreutzers, or two-pence each, and as I was promised pretty much the same fortune by all, I suppose I ought to believe in the truth of it. They foretold me lots of trouble in the way of love-crosses, false friends, and unkind relations, and such small trifles; but were equally liberal of rich lovers, and plenty of them, plenty of money, and a good husband to crown all, and good children to be the props of my old age; so I think I had, after all, a good sixpenny-worth.

Next we came upon a little caravan, on the steps of which vociferated a most picturesque Tyrolian, in broad-brimmed sugar-loafed hat, adorned with chamois hair, and eagles' feathers; in broad-ribbed stockings, and with a broad, gayly-embroidened band round his waist, which half covered his chest. He assured the crowd below that there was not in the whole of Bavaria, any thing half as interesting, half as extraordinary, half as astounding as the singularly gifted, singularly beautiful, singularly intellectual being within; a being from another quarter of the globe, a being adapted to an entirely different mode of existence to ours; a being who could see in the dark, a being who only lived upon raw meat! A wonderful Albino who could speak the German tongue!

Of course we must see the Albino; so in we went, and some way or other I felt an unusual shock. There he sat, in a black velvet dress spangled with silver, the light coming in from the top of the caravan, and his transparent complexion, his burning, fiery eyes, like carbuncles, his long waves of white, silky hair, and his long, curling, snow-white, silky beard, gave him the appearance of some enchanted dwarf—some cobold or gnome out of a subterranean palace.

But I had not much time to lose myself in dreams about enchanted dwarfs or gnomes, for there was something else burning in the caravan besides the Albino's eyes, and that was Madame Thekla's grand silk cloak! She had come out with me in all her grandeur; and now, while we stood enchanted before the Albino, her fine silk cloak was singeing at a little iron stove that stood behind the door. Poor Madame Thekla! Out we rushed, and she revenged herself by vociferating to the crowd outside, as the Tyrolian had done just before, and by exhibiting her unlucky cloak in a sort of savage despair.

An hour afterward, we again passed the caravan, and the Tyrolian in the ribbed stockings was again holding forth on the steps, when, at sight of us, he interrupted his oration, and politely invited us to re-enter, and complete, free of cost, our inspection of the Albino. But Madame Thekla, pointing with stern dignity to her cloak, declined, and marched on.

After this we went to the wäffeln-booths, were we ate hot-baked wäffeln, a kind of gofre cake; and then, resisting a wonderful elephant show, we hastened to the monkey theatre, the poor elephant's rival exhibition; the "Grand Monkey Theatre from Paris," in which forty-two apes and poodles, the property of M. Le Cerf, would exhibit the most wonderful and artistic feats.

We had to wait some time till the four o'clock performance was over, which unfortunately had begun before we arrived; and while Madame Thekla and I stood impatiently waiting in the cold, up there came a merry-faced lad of about ten, and began, in great glee, to describe to us the glorious things that were performed by those "dear little monkeys and dogs." He was quite eloquent in his delight; and, "Oh!" said he, "if I had but another sechser (twopenny-piece), wouldn't I see it again!" "There is another sechser, then!" said I, and put one into his fat little hand. What an astonished, bright face looked up into mine; and he seized my hand in both his, and shook it almost off. And away he ran up the steps for his ticket, flying down again to us, and keeping as close to us as possible, talking all the time, and fairly dancing for joy.

"You've quite bewitched that little fellow," said Madame Thekla; and I seemed to have bewitched all the little lads in the fair, for, by a strangely-mysterious power, they were drawn toward us in crowds, from all hands—little fellows in blouses, little fellows in little green and brown surtouts, little fellows in old-fashioned and, in England, almost forgotten, buttoned-up suits—and all crept bashfully toward us! Oh, the wonderful magic of a twopenny-piece! Heaven only knows how the news of this munificent gift of a sechser had so swiftly spread through the fair! One little lad actually had the bravery to say to me that "children were admitted at half-price!" And was I not a cold-hearted wretch to reply, "Oh, indeed!" just as though it were a matter of perfect indifference to me, though, in truth, it was not; but I felt rather appalled at the sight of such a crowd of little eager heads, well knowing that my purse was not full to overflowing, even with twopenny-pieces!

At length we were seated in the little theatre; and, after a fearful charivari from the orchestra, the curtain drew up, and we beheld, seated at a long table, a company of monkeys! It was a table d'hôte. A dandified young fellow—perhaps Monsieur Le Cerf himself—in the most elegant of cravats, the most elegant white wristbands, the most elegant ring, and the most elegant moustache, performed the part of host; the waiter and waitress were monkeys. The waiter—a most drunken, good-for-nothing waiter he seemed—a fat, big ape—drank behind the backs of the guests the very wine he was serving them with; he seemed so very tipsy, that he could hardly walk; he staggered backward and forward, and leaned against the wall for support, as he emptied the bottle he was bringing for the company. But the little waitress! She was a little darling; the tiniest of little monkeys, and she came skipping on the stage in a little broad-brimmed straw hat, and a bright-colored little dress, with the daintiest of little white muslin aprons on; she looked just like a little fairy. Every body was enchanted with her. Even Monsieur Le Cerf himself caressed her, and gave her not only, every now and then, a nut, but a kiss. She behaved beautifully. But as to the guests! They quarreled, and even fought—Monsieur Le Cerf said it was about paying the bill.

I can't pretend to tell you half the clever things the monkeys did in the way of swinging, dancing, firing off muskets, riding on a pony, &c. Wonderful things, too, were performed by the dogs, splendid spaniels and setters. One large black-and-tan creature walked on his fore-legs, in the style of what children call "playing at a wheelbarrow," only he himself, poor wretch, had to wheel the barrow. He walked demurely round and round the stage, carrying his two unlucky hind-legs up in the air; then he walked on three legs, and then, the most difficult task of all for a dog, as we were assured, upon two legs on the same side. Another beautiful white spaniel came walking in most grandly on her hind legs, as Madame de Pompadour, in a long-trained dress which was borne by a tiny monkey in livery, bearing a little lantern in his hand.

The finale was the besieging of a fortress; and to see some twenty milk-white spaniels rushing up and down the stairs of the burning fortress, illumined by brilliant rose-colored, green, and blue lights, was very curious indeed. If I could have forgotten the terrible training through which these poor creatures must have gone, I should have enjoyed it much more. But I did not wonder, after seeing all their feats, that our little friend had been so enchanted. He sat behind us in the half-price seats, but for all that we continued to exchange many smiling glances during the performance. I only wished I could have seen a whole row of little fellows all equally delighted and surprised by their good fortune.

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THE WIFE'S STRATAGEM.

Captain Marmaduke Smith, is—judging from his present mundane, matter-of-fact character, about the last man one would suspect of having been at any time of his life a victim to the "tender passion." A revelation he volunteered to two or three cronies at the club the other evening undeceived us. The captain on this occasion, as was generally the case on the morrow of a too great indulgence, was somewhat dull spirited and lachrymose. The weather, too, was gloomy; a melancholy barrel-organ had been droning dreadfully for some time beneath the windows; and to crown all, Mr. Tape, who has a quick eye for the sentimental, had discovered, and read aloud, a common, but sad story of madness and suicide in the evening paper. It is not, therefore, so surprising that tender recollections should have revived with unusual force in the veteran's memory.

"You would hardly believe it, Tape," said Captain Smith, after a dull pause, and emitting a sound somewhat resembling a sigh, as he re-lighted the cigar which had gone out during Mr. Tape's reading—"you would hardly believe it, perhaps; but I was woman-witched once myself!"

"Never!" exclaimed the astonished gentleman whom he addressed. "A man of your strength of mind, captain? I can't believe it; it's impossible!"

"It's an extraordinary fact, I admit; and, to own the truth, I have never been able to account exactly for it myself. Fortunately, I took the disorder as I did the measles—young; and neither of these complaints is apt to be so fatal then, I'm told, as when they pick a man up later in life. It was, however, a very severe attack while it lasted. A very charming hand at hooking a gudgeon was that delightful Coralie Dufour, I must say."

"Any relation to the Monsieur and Madame Dufour we saw some years ago in Paris?" asked Tape. "The husband, I remember, was remarkably fond of expressing his gratitude to you for having once wonderfully carried him through his difficulties."

Captain Smith looked sharply at Mr. Tape, as if he suspected some lurking irony beneath the bland innocence of his words. Perceiving, as usual, nothing in the speaker's countenance, Mr. Smith—blowing at the same time a tremendous cloud to conceal a faint blush which, to my extreme astonishment, I observed stealing over his unaccustomed features—said, gravely, almost solemnly: "You, Mr. Tape are a married man, and the father of a family, and your own experience, therefore, in the female line must be ample for a lifetime; but you, sir," continued the captain, patronizingly, addressing another of his auditors, "are, I believe, as yet 'unattached,' in a legal sense, and may therefore derive profit, as well as instruction, from an example of the way in which ardent and inexperienced youth is sometimes entrapped and bamboozled by womankind. Mr. Tape, oblige me by touching the bell."

The instant the captain's order had been obeyed, he commenced the narrative of his love adventure, and for a time spoke with his accustomed calmness: but toward the close he became so exceeding discursive and excited, and it was with so much difficulty we drew from him many little particulars it was essential to hear, that I have been compelled, from regard to brevity as well as strict decorum, to soften down and render in my own words some of the chief incidents of his mishap.

Just previous to the winter campaign which witnessed the second siege and fall of Badajoz, Mr. Smith, in the zealous exercise of his perilous vocation, entered that city in his usual disguise of a Spanish countryman, with strict orders to keep his eyes and ears wide open, and to report as speedily as possible upon various military details, which it was desirable the British general should be made acquainted with. Mr. Smith, from the first moment the pleasant proposition was hinted to him, had manifested considerable reluctance to undertake the task; more especially as General Phillipon, who commanded the French garrison, had not very long before been much too near catching him, to render a possibly still more intimate acquaintance with so sharp a practitioner at all desirable. Nevertheless, as the service was urgent, and no one, it Was agreed, so competent as himself to the duty—indeed upon this point Mr. Smith remarked that the most flattering unanimity of opinion was exhibited by all the gentlemen likely, should he decline the honor, to be selected in his place—he finally consented and in due time found himself fairly within the walls of the devoted city. "It was an uncomfortable business," the captain said, "very much so—and in more ways than one. It took a long time to accomplish; and what was worse than all, rations were miserably short. The French garrison were living upon salted horse-flesh, and you may guess, therefore, at the condition of the civilians' victualing department. Wine was, however, to be had in sufficient plenty; and I used frequently to pass a few hours at a place of entertainment kept by an Andalusian woman, whose bitter hatred of the French invaders, and favorable disposition toward the British were well known to me, though successfully concealed from Napoleon's soldiers, many of whom—sous-officiers chiefly—were her customers. My chief amusement there was playing at dominoes for a few glasses. I played, when I had a choice, with a smart, goodish-looking sous-lieutenant of voltigeurs—a glib-tongued chap, of the sort that tell all they know, and something over, with very little pressing. His comrades addressed him as Victor, the only name I then knew him by. He and I became very good friends, the more readily that I was content he should generally win. I soon reckoned Master Victor up; but there was an old, wiry gredin of a sergeant-major sometimes present, whose suspicious manner caused me frequent twinges. One day especially I caught him looking at me in a way that sent the blood galloping through my veins like wildfire. A look, Mr. Tape, which may be very likely followed in a few minutes afterward by a halter, or by half-a-dozen bullets through one's body, is apt to excite an unpleasant sensation."

"I should think so. I wouldn't be in such a predicament for the creation."

"It's a situation that would hardly suit you, Mr. Tape," replied the veteran, with a grim smile. "Well, the gray-headed old fox followed up his look with a number of interesting queries concerning my birth, parentage, and present occupation, my answers to which so operated upon him, that I felt quite certain when he shook hands with me, and expressed himself perfectly satisfied, and sauntered carelessly out of the place,-that he was gone to report his surmises, and would be probably back again in two twos with a file of soldiers and an order for my arrest. He had put me so smartly through my facings, that although it was quite a cold day for Spain, I give you my honor I perspired to the very tips of my fingers And toes. The chance of escape was, I felt, almost desperate. The previous evening a rumor had circulated that the British general had stormed Ciudad Rodrigo, and might therefore be already hastening in his seven-league boots, toward Badajoz. The French were consequently more than ever on the alert, and keen eyes watched with sharpened eagerness for indications of sympathy or correspondence between the citizens and the advancing army. I jumped up as soon as the sergeant-major had disappeared, and was about to follow, when the mistress of the place approached, and said, hastily, 'I have heard all, and if not quick, you will be sacrificed by those French dogs: this way.' I followed to an inner apartment, where she drew from a well-concealed recess, a French officer's uniform, complete. 'On with it!' she exclaimed, as she left the room. 'I know the word and countersign.' I did not require twice telling, you may be sure; and in less than no time was togged off beautifully in a lieutenant's uniform, and walking at a smart pace toward one of the gates. I was within twenty yards of the corps-de-garde, when whom should I run against but Sous-lieutenant Victor! He stared, but either did not for the moment recognize me, or else doubted the evidence of his own senses. I quickened my steps—the guard challenged—I gave the words, 'Napoleon, Austerlitz!'—passed on; and as soon as a turn of the road hid me from view, increased my pace to a run. My horse, I should have stated, had been left in sure hands at about two miles' distance. Could I reach so far, there was, I felt, a chance. Unfortunately, I had not gone more than five or six hundred yards, when a hubbub of shouts, and musket-shots in my rear, announced that I was pursued. I glanced round; and I assure you, gentlemen, I have seen in my life many pleasanter prospects than met my view—Richmond Hill, for instance, on a fine summer day. Between twenty and thirty voltigeurs, headed by my friend Victor, who had armed himself, like the others, with a musket, were in full pursuit; and once, I was quite satisfied, within gun-shot, my business would be very effectually; and speedily settled.

"I ran on with eager desperation: and though gradually neared by my friends, gained the hut where I had left the horse in safety. The voltigeurs were thrown out for a few minutes They knew, however, that I had not passed the thickish clumps of trees which partially concealed the cottage; and they extended themselves in a semi-circle to inclose, and thus make sure of their prey. Juan Sanchez, luckily for himself, was not at home; but my horse, as I have stated, was safe, and in prime condition for a race. I saddled, bridled, and brought him out, still concealed by the trees and hut from the French, whose exulting shouts, as they gradually closed upon the spot, grew momently louder and fiercer. The sole desperate chance left was to dash right through them; and I don't mind telling you, gentlemen, that I was confoundedly frightened, and that but for the certainty of being instantly sacrificed, without benefit of clergy, I should have surrendered at once. There was, however, no time for shilly-shallying. I took another pull at the saddle-girths, mounted, drove the only spur I had time to strap on sharply into the animal's flank, and in an instant broke cover in full and near view of the expecting and impatient voltigeurs; and a very brilliant reception they gave me—quite a stunner in fact! It's a very grand thing, no doubt, to be the exclusive object of attention to twenty or thirty gallant men, but so little selfish, gentlemen, have I been from my youth up ward in the article of 'glory,' that I assure you I should have been remarkably well-pleased to have had a few companions—the more the merrier—to share the monopoly which I engrossed as I came suddenly in sight. The flashes, reports, bullets, sacrés, which in an instant gleamed in my eyes, and roared and sang about my ears were deafening. How they all contrived to miss me I can't imagine, but miss me they did; and I had passed them about sixty paces, when who should start up over a hedge, a few yards in advance, but my domino-player, Sous-lieutenant Victor! In an instant his musket was raised within two or three feet of my face. Flash! bang! I felt a blow as if from a thrust of red-hot steel; and for a moment made sure that my head was off. With difficulty I kept my seat. The horse dashed on, and I was speedily beyond the chance of capture or pursuit. I drew bridle at the first village I reached, and found that Victor's bullet had gone clean through both cheeks. The marks, you see, are still plain enough."

This was quite true. On slightly separating the gray hairs of the captain's whiskers, the places where the ball had made its entrance and exit were distinctly visible.

"A narrow escape," I remarked.

"Yes, rather; but a miss is as good as a mile. The effusion of blood nearly choked me; and it was astonishing how much wine and spirits it required to wash the taste out of my mouth. I found," continued Mr. Smith, "on arriving at head-quarters, that Ciudad Rodrigo had fallen as reported, and that Lord Wellington was hurrying on to storm Badajoz before the echo of his guns should have reached Massena or Soult in the fool's paradise where they were both slumbering. I was of course for some time on the sick-list, and consequently only assisted at the assault of Badajoz as a distant spectator—a part I always preferred when I had a choice. It was an awful, terrible business," added Mr. Smith, with unusual solemnity. "I am not much of a philosopher that I know of, nor, except in service hours, particularly given to religion, but I remember, when the roar and tumult of the fierce hurricane broke upon the calm and silence of the night, and a storm of hell-fire seemed to burst from and encircle the devoted city, wondering what the stars, which were shining brightly overhead, thought of the strife and dim they looked so calmly down upon. It was gallantly done, however," the veteran added, in a brisker tone, "and read well in the Gazette; and that perhaps is the chief thing."

"But what," I asked, "has all this to do with the charming Coralie and your love-adventure?"

"Every thing to do with it, as you will immediately find. I remained in Badajoz a considerable time after the departure of the army, and was a more frequent visitor than ever at the house of the excellent dame who had so opportunely aided my escape. She was a kind-hearted soul with all her vindictiveness; and now that the French were no longer riding rough-shod over the city, spoke of those who were lurking about in concealment—of whom there were believed to be not a few, with sorrow and compassion. At length the wound I had received at Lieutenant Victor's hands was thoroughly healed, and I was thinking of departure, when the Andalusian dame introduced me in her taciturn, expressive way to a charming young Frenchwoman, whose husband, a Spaniard, had been slain during the assault or sack of the city. The intimacy thus begun soon kindled on my part, into an intense admiration. Coralie was gentle, artless, confiding as she was beautiful, and moreover—as Jeannette, her sprightly, black-eyed maid informed me in confidence—extremely rich. Here, gentlemen, was a combination of charms to which only a heart of stone could remain insensible, and mine at the time was not only young, but particularly sensitive and tender, owing in some degree, I daresay, to the low diet to which I had been so long confined; for nothing, in my opinion, takes the sense and pluck out of a man so quickly as that. At all events I soon surrendered at discretion, and was coyly accepted by the blushing lady. 'There was only one obstacle,' she timidly observed, 'to our happiness. The relatives of her late husband, by law her guardians, were prejudiced, mercenary wretches, anxious to marry her to an old hunks of a Spaniard, so that the property of her late husband, chiefly consisting of precious stones—he had been a lapidary—might not pass into the hands of foreigners.' I can scarcely believe it now," added Mr. Smith, with great heat; "but if I didn't swallow all this stuff like sack and sugar, I'm a Dutchman! The thought of it, old as I am, sets my very blood on fire.

"At length," continued Mr. Marmaduke Smith, as soon as he had partially recovered his equanimity—"at length it was agreed, after all sorts of schemes had been canvassed and rejected, that the fair widow should be smuggled out of Badajoz as luggage in a large chest, which Jeannette and the Andalusian landlady—I forget that woman's name—undertook to have properly prepared. The marriage ceremony was to be performed by a priest at a village about twelve English miles off, with whom Coralie undertook to communicate. 'I trust,' said that lady, 'to the honor of a British officer'—I had not then received my commission, but no matter—'that he, that you, Captain Smith, will respect the sanctity of my concealment till we arrive in the presence of the reverend gentleman who,' she added, with a smile like a sunset, 'will, I trust, unite our destinies forever.' She placed, as she spoke, her charming little hand in mine, and I, you will hardly credit it, tumbled down on my knees, and vowed to religiously respect the dear angel's slightest wish! Mr. Tape, for mercy's sake, pass the wine, or the bare recollection will choke me!"

I must now, for the reasons previously stated, Continue the narrative in my own words Every thing was speedily arranged for flight. Mr. Smith found no difficulty in procuring from the Spanish commandant an order which would enable him to pass his luggage through the barrier unsearched; Jeannette was punctual at the rendezvous, and pointed exultingly to a large chest, which she whispered contained the trembling Coralie. The chinks were sufficiently wide to admit of the requisite quantity of air; it locked inside, and when a kind of sail-cloth was thrown loosely over it, there was nothing very unusual in its appearance. Tenderly, tremulously did the rejoicing lover assist the precious load into the hired bullock-cart, and off they started, Mr. Smith and Jeannette walking by the side of the richly-freighted vehicle.

Mr. Smith trod on air, but the cart, which had to be dragged over some of the worst roads in the world, mocked his impatience by its marvelously slow progress, and when they halted at noon to give the oxen water, they were still three good miles from their destination.

"Do you think?" said Mr. Smith, in a whisper to Jeannette, holding up a full pint flask, which he had just drawn from his pocket, and pointing toward the chest, "do you think?—Brandy and water—eh?"

Jeannette nodded, and the gallant Smith gently approached, tapped at the lid, and in a soft low whisper proffered the cordial. The lid was, with the slightest possible delay, just sufficiently raised to admit the flask, and instantly reclosed and locked. In about ten minutes the flask was returned as silently as it had been received. The enamored soldier raised it to his lips, made a profound inclination toward his concealed fiancée, and said, gently, "A votre santé, charmante Coralie!" The benignant and joyous expression of Mr. Smith's face, as he vainly elevated the angle of the flask in expectation of the anticipated draught, assumed an exceedingly puzzled and bewildered expression. He peered into the opaque tin vessel; pushed his little finger into its neck to remove the loose cork or other substance that impeded the genial flow; then shook it, and listened curiously for a splash or gurgle. Not a sound! Coralie had drained it to the last drop! Mr. Smith looked with comical earnestness at Jeannette, who burst into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

"Madame is thirsty," she said, as soon as she could catch sufficient breath: "it must be so hot in there."

"A full pint!" said the captain, still in blank astonishment, "and strong—very!"

The approach of the carter interrupted what he further might have had to say, and in a few minutes the journey was resumed. The captain fell into a reverie which was not broken till the cart again stopped. The chest was then glided gently to the ground: the driver, who had been previously paid, turned the heads of his team toward Badajoz, and with a brief salutation departed homeward.

Jeanette was stooping over the chest, conversing in a low tone with her mistress, and Captain Smith surveyed the position in which he found himself with some astonishment. No house, much less a church or village was visible, and not a human being was to be seen.

"Captain Smith," said Jeannette, approaching the puzzled warrior with some hesitation, "a slight contretemps has occurred. The friends who were to have met us here, and helped to convey our precious charge to a place of safety, are not, as you perceive, arrived: perhaps they do not think it prudent to venture quite so far."

"It is quite apparent they are not here," observed Mr. Smith; "but why not have proceeded in the cart?"

"What, captain! Betray your and madame's secret to yonder Spanish boor. How you talk!"

"Well, but my good girl, what is to be done? Will madame get out and walk?"

"Impossible—impossible!" ejaculated the amiable damsel. "We should be both recognized, dragged back to that hateful Badajoz, and madame would be shut up in a convent for life. It is but about a quarter of a mile," added Jeannette, in an insinuating, caressing tone, "and madame is not so very heavy."

"The devil!" exclaimed Mr. Smith, taken completely aback by this extraordinary proposal. "You can't mean that I should take that infer—that chest upon my shoulders!"

"Mon Dieu! what else can be done?" replied Jeannette, with pathetic earnestness: "unless you are determined to sacrifice my dear mistress—she whom you pretended to so love—you hard-hearted, faithless man!"

Partially moved by the damsel's tearful vehemence, Mr. Smith reluctantly approached, and gently lifted one end of the chest, as an experiment.

"There are a great many valuables there besides madame," said Jeannette, in reply to the captain's look, "and silver coin is, you know, very heavy."

"Ah!" exclaimed the perplexed lover. "It is deucedly unfortunate—still—Don't you think," he added earnestly, after again essaying the weight of the precious burden, "that if madame were to wrap herself well up in this sail-cloth, we might reach your friend the priest's house without detection?"

"Oh, no—no—no!" rejoined the girl. "Mon Dieu! how can you think of exposing madame to such hazard?"

"How far do you say it is?" asked Captain Smith, after a rather sullen pause.

"Only just over the fields yonder—half-a-mile perhaps."

Mr. Smith still hesitated, but finally the tears and entreaties of the attendant, his regard for the lady and her fortune, the necessity of the position, in short, determined him to undertake the task. A belt was passed tightly round the chest, by means of which he could keep it on his back; and after several unsuccessful efforts, the charming load was fairly hoisted, and on the captain manfully staggered, Jeannette bringing up the rear.

Valiantly did Mr. Smith, though perspiring in every pore of his body, and dry as a cartouch-box—for madame had emptied the only flask he had—toil on under a burden which seemed to grind his shoulder-blades to powder. He declares he must have lost a stone of flesh at least before, after numerous restings, he arrived, at the end of about an hour, at the door of a small house, which Jeannette announced to be the private residence of the priest. The door was quickly opened by a smart lad, who seemed to have been expecting them; the chest was deposited on the floor, and Jeannette instantly vanished. The lad, with considerate intelligence, handed Mr. Smith a draught of wine. It was scarcely swallowed when the key turned in the lock, the eager lover, greatly revived by the wine, sprang forward with extended arms, and received in his enthusiastic embrace—whom do you think?

"Coralie, half-stifled for want of air, and nearly dead with fright," suggested Mr. Tape.

"That rascally Sous-lieutenant Victor! half-drunk with brandy-and-water," roared Captain Smith, who had by this time worked himself into a state of great excitement. "At the same moment in ran Jeannette, and, I could hardly believe my eyes, that Jezebel Coralie, followed by half-a-dozen French voltigeurs, screaming with laughter! I saw I was done," continued Mr. Smith, "but not for the moment precisely how, and but for his comrades, I should have settled old and new scores with Master Victor very quickly. As it was, they had some difficulty in getting him out of my clutches, for I was, as you may suppose, awfully savage. An hour or so afterward, when philosophy, a pipe, and some very capital wine—they were not bad fellows those voltigeurs—had exercised their soothing influence, I was informed of the exact motives and particulars of the trick which had been played me. Coralie was Victor Dufour's wife. He had been wounded at the assault of Badajoz, and successfully concealed in that Andalusian woman's house; and as the best, perhaps only mode of saving him from a Spanish prison, or worse, the scheme of which I had been the victim, was concocted. Had not Dufour wounded me, they would, I was assured, have thrown themselves upon my honor and generosity—which honor and generosity, by-the-by, would never have got Coralie's husband upon my back, I'll be sworn!"

"You will forgive us, mon cher capitaine?" said that lady, with one of her sweetest smiles, as she handed me a cup of wine. "In love and war, you know, every thing is fair."

"A soldier, gentlemen, is not made of adamant. I was, I confess, softened; and by the time the party broke up, we were all the best friends in the world."

"And so that fat, jolly looking Madame Dufour we saw in Paris, is the beautiful Coralie that bewitched Captain Smith?" said Mr. Tape thoughtfully—"Well!"

"She was younger forty years ago, Mr. Tape, than when you saw her. Beautiful Coralies are rare, I fancy, at her present age, and very fortunately, too, in my opinion," continued Captain Smith; "for what, I should like to know, would become of the peace and comfort of society, if a woman of sixty could bewitch a man as easily as she does at sixteen?"

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THE CHAMPION.