"Lie, do I? Then there is ot a thousand pounds worth of the stolen notes concealed at this moment beneath the floor of your sitting-room, till an opportunity can be found of sending them abroad! That, unmatched villain that you are, is false, too, perhaps?"
She paused from sheer exhaustion, and for a brief space no one spoke, so suddenly had the blow fallen. Presently the officer said, "The game is up, you see, at last, Mr. Capel; you will go with me;" and he stepped toward the unhappy culprit. Capel, thoroughly desperate, turned, sprang with surprising agility over a dining-table, threw up a window-sash, and leapt into the street. The height was not so much, but his feet caught in some iron railing, and he fell head foremost on the pavement, fracturing his skull frightfully. Before an hour had passed, he was dead.
Brocard contrived to escape, but the evidence of Marie Deschamps and the finding of the stolen notes, in accordance with her statement, fully established the innocence of Travers, and he was restored to freedom and his former position in the world. He and Constance Hervey, to whom he owed so much, were married three months after his liberation, and I officiated, by particular desire, as bride's father.
I had lost sight of Marie Deschamps for some twelve or thirteen years, when I accidentally met her in Liverpool. She was a widow, having married and buried a M. L'Estrange, a well-to-do person there, who left her in decent circumstances. We spoke together of the events I have briefly but faithfully narrated, and she expressed much contrition for the share she had taken in the conspiracy against Travers. I fancied, too—it was perhaps an unjust fancy—that, knowing I had lately been promoted to four hundred a year, she wished to dazzle me with those still bright eyes of hers—a bootless effort, by whomsoever attempted. The talismanic image daguerreotyped upon my heart in the bright sunlight of young manhood, could have no rival there, and is even now as fresh and radiant as when first impressed, albeit the strong years have done their work, yet very gently, upon the original. It could scarcely be otherwise, living visibly, as she still does, in youthful grace and beauty in the person of the gay gipsy I am, please God, soon to "give away," at St. Pancras Church, as I did her grandmamma, more than forty years ago, at Kensington. Constance, this Constance is, as she well knows, to be my heiress. Travers, her grandfather, is now a silver-haired, yet hale, jocund, old man; and so tenderly, I repeat, has Time dealt with his wife—the Constance Hervey of this narrative—that I can sometimes hardly believe her to be more than about three or four and forty years of age. This is, however, perhaps only an illusion of the long and, whatever fools or skeptics may think, or say, elevating dream that has pursued me through youth and middle age, even unto confirmed old bachelorhood. Madame L'Estrange, as before stated, died a short time since at Liverpool; her death, by influenza, the paper noticed, was sudden and unexpected.
WONDERFUL TOYS.
Very wonderful things are told by various writers of the power of inventive genius in expending itself upon trifles. Philip Camuz describes an extraordinary automaton group that was got up, regardless, of course, of expense, for the entertainment of Louis the Fourteenth. It consisted of a coach and horses—what a modern coachman would designate "a first-rate turn-out." Its road was a table; and, at starting, the coachman smacked his whip, the horses began to prance; then, subsiding into a long trot, they continued until the whole equipage arrived opposite to where the King sat. They then stopped, a footman dismounted from the foot-board, opened the door, and handed out a lady; who, courtesying gracefully, offered a petition to his Majesty, and re-entered the carriage. The footman jumped up behind—all right—the whip smacked once more; the horses pranced, and the long trot was resumed.
Some of the stories extant, respecting musical automata, are no less extraordinary. D'Alembert gives an account, in the "Encyclopédie Methodique," of a gigantic mechanical Flute-player. It stood on a pedestal, in which some of the "works" were contained; and, not only blew into the flute, but, with its lips, increased or diminished the tones it forced out of the instrument, performing the legato and staccato passages to perfection. The fingering was also quite accurate. This marvelous Flautist was exhibited in Paris in 1738, and was made by Jacques de Vaucanson, the prince of automaton contrivers.
Vaucanson labored under many disadvantages in constructing this marvelous figure; among others, that of a skeptic uncle; who, for some years, laughed him out of his project. At length, fortune favored the mechanist with a severe illness; and he took advantage of it to contrive the automaton he had so long dreamt of. This was at Grenoble; and, as Vaucanson designed each portion of the figure, he sent it to be made by a separate workman; that no one should find out the principle of his invention. As the pieces came home, he put them together; and, when the whole was completed, he crawled out of bed, by the help of a servant who had been his go-between with the various operative mechanics, and locked his chamber door. Trembling with anxiety, he wound up the works. At the first sound emitted from the flute, the servant fell on his knees, and began to worship his master as somebody more than mortal. They both embraced each other, and wept with joy to the tune which the figure was merrily playing.
one of Vaucanson's imitators have been able to accomplish the organization by which his figure modified the tones, by the action of the lips; although several flute-playing puppets have since been made. About forty years ago there was an exhibition in London, of two mechanical figures, of the size of life, which performed duets. Incredulous visitors were in the habit of placing their fingers on the holes of the flutes, in order to convince themselves that the puppets really supplied the wind, which caused the flutes to discourse such excellent music.
A full orchestra of clock-work musicians is quite possible. Maelzel, the inventor of the Metronome, opened an exhibition in Vienna, in 1809, in which an automaton Trumpeter as large as life, performed with surprising accuracy and power. The audience first saw, on entering the room, a tent. Presently the curtains opened, and Maelzel appeared leading forward the trumpeter, attired in full regimentals of an Austrian dragoon. He then pressed the left epaulet of the figure, and it began to sound, not only all the cavalry flails then in use for directing the evolutions of the Austrian cavalry, but to play a march, and an allegro by Weigl, which was accompanied by a full band of living musicians. The figure then retired; and, in a few minutes, reappeared in the dress of a trumpeter of the French guard. The inventor wound it up on the left hip; another touch on the left shoulder, and forth came from the trumpet, in succession, all the French cavalry-calls, the French cavalry march, a march by Dussek, and one of Pleyel's allegros; again accompanied by the orchestra. In the Journal des Modes, whence this account is derived, it is declared that the tones produced by Maelzel's automaton were even fuller and richer than those got out of a trumpet by human lungs and lips; because a man's breath imparts to the inside of the instrument a moisture which deteriorates the quality of the tone.