''But——' began Yon Berg.

''Not another word!' said the sorceress, 'I have said. Go, before you repent having come at all!'

''Madame,' I began to say, awed out of the feeling at least of equality which I should have felt to be proper under such circumstances, and only aware that Adolph, and possibly myself, had incurred the enmity of a being so near to the supernatural as to be at least dangerous—'Madame, I hope that you will not think——'

'But here she cut me short, as she had done Von Berg the instant before.

''Hope nothing, young artist!' she said, her voice perceptibly less harsh and brusque than it had been when speaking to my companion. 'Hope nothing and ask nothing until you may have occasion; then come to me.'

''And then?'

''Then I will answer every question you may think proper to put to me. Stay! you may have occasion to visit me sooner than you suppose, or I may have occasion to force knowledge upon you that you will not have the boldness to seek. If so, I shall send for you. Now go, both of you!'

'The dark curtain suddenly fell, and the singular vision faded with the reflected light which had filled the room. The moment after, I heard the shuffling feet of the slattern girl coming to show us out of the room, but, singularly enough, as you will think, not out of the house! Without a word we followed her—Adolph, who knew the customs of the place, merely slipping a five-franc piece into her hand, and in a moment more we were out in the street and walking up the Rue Saint Denis. It is not worth while to detail the conversation which followed between us as we passed up to the Rue Marie Stuart, I to my lodgings and Adolph to his own, further on, close to the Rue Vivienne, and not far from the Boulevard Montmartre. Of course I asked him fifty questions, the replies to which left me quite as much in the dark as before. He knew, he said, and hundreds of other persons in Paris knew, the singularity of the personal appearance of the sorceress, and her apparent power of divination, but neither he nor they had any knowledge of her origin. He had been introduced at her house several months before, and had asked questions affecting his family in Prussia and the chances of descent of certain property, the replies to which had astounded him. He had heard of her using marvelous and fearful incantations, but had never himself witnessed any thing of them. In two or three instances, before the present, he had taken friends to the house and introduced them under any name which he chose to apply to them for the time, and the sorceress had never before chosen to call him to account for the deception, though, according to the assurances of his friends after leaving the house, she had never failed to arrive at the truth of their nationalities and positions in life. There must have been something in myself or my circumstances, he averred, which had produced so singular an effect upon the witch, (as he evidently believed her to be,) and he had the impression that at no distant day I should again hear from her. That was all, and so we parted, I in any other condition of mind than that promising sleep, and really without closing my eyes, except for a moment or two at a time, during the night which followed. When I did attempt to force myself into slumber, a red spectre stood continually before me, an unearthly light seemed to sear my covered eyeballs, and I awoke with a start. Days passed before I sufficiently wore away the impression to be comfortable, and at least two or three weeks before my rest became again entirely unbroken.

'You must be partially aware with what anxiety we Americans temporarily sojourning on the other side of the Atlantic, who loved the country we had left behind on this, watched the succession of events which preceded and accompanied the Presidential election of that year. Some suppose that a man loses his love for his native land, or finds it comparatively chilled within his bosom, after long residence abroad. The very opposite is the case, I think! I never knew what the old flag was, until I saw it waving from the top of an American consulate abroad, or floating from the gaff of one of our war-vessels, when I came down the mountains to some port on the Mediterranean. It had been merely red, white and blue bunting, at home, where the symbols of our national greatness were to be seen on every hand: it was the only symbol of our national greatness when we were looking at it from beyond the sea; and the man whose eyes will not fill with tears and whose throat will not choke a little with overpowering feeling, when catching sight of the Stars and Stripes where they only can be seen to remind him of the glory of the country of which he is a part, is unworthy the name of patriot or of man!

'But to return: Where was I? Oh! I was remarking with what interest we on the other side of the water watched the course of affairs at home during that year when the rumble of distant thunder was just heralding the storm. You are well aware that without extensive and long-continued connivance on the part of sympathizers among the leading people of Europe—England and France especially—secession could never have been accomplished so far as it has been; and there never could have been any hope of its eventual success if there had been no hope of one or both these two countries bearing it up on their strong and unscrupulous arms. The leaven of foreign aid to rebellion was working even then, both in London and Paris; and perhaps we had opportunities over the water for a nearer guess at the peril of the nation, than you could have had in the midst of your party political squabbles at home.