"Monsieur has been inquiring," said he, "after a body which was exposed here a few days ago. Will monsieur," continued he, referring to a book he carried with him, " repeat the description ?"

I had no difficulty in doing so, as the features of the dead man had made an impression on me.

"My relative," said I, was a man upwards of sixty. His hair, originally brown, had become grizzled. He wore whiskers coming close into the ends of his mouth. He had a slightly aquiline nose, and a good forehead, marked with signs of care and anxiety, for he had not been lucky in life. Indeed," I continued, "his misfortunes, and the settled melancholy they had induced, were the reasons which made me suspect he might have committed suicide."

"Was he a Frenchman?" said the gendarme.

No," said I; "but he had been long abroad, and might have been mistaken for a Frenchman; but, in reality, he was an Englishman." "His name?" said the gendarme.

"His name," I replied,

rent names."

was John Brown, but he had assumed diffe

"When did you see him last?"

"About a fortnight ago," said I. "He came with me from England." "Were there any marks on his clothes?" said the gendarme, again applying to his book.

"He had, I know, some of his things

I cannot say," I replied. marked with his crest- -a hand with a flag." "Quite satisfactory," said the sergeant.

:

"And now one more ques

tion what is your own name, and what your relationship to the dead man ?”

"My name," said I, unhesitatingly, "is John Smith. I am nephew to the dead man if he was John Brown."

The gendarme was probably not aware that the description would have suited half the men in the London Directory. He contented himself with asking me to subscribe my name to an inventory of the clothes which had been found on the dead man, and, having folded these neatly up in a parcel, he allowed me to take them away.

A closer inspection led to no further discovery. The cypher on the handkerchief was the only new clue I had got. It was, however, something, and I determined to prosecute my inquiries.

For this purpose I went back to Père la Chaise. I found my friend, the gravedigger, at his post. I asked him for the immortelle. "He had kept it in the hut with his tools, and he now produced it. As he could thus remove it from the grave to which it belonged, it struck me that by a little management I might get possession of it altogether. The man's countenance favoured the attempt. His nose showed he was not exempt from an infirmity common to gravediggers all over the world.

I got the immortelle half price, but then I had a quasi right of property to it, having made myself heir to the unfortunate man over whose grave it had been deposited.

On getting home I examined it carefully. The hair, forming the middle circle, was secured by a thread sewed in and out and round the thin fillet of silver. I removed the thread, and opened up the tress of hair. It was fine as silk, and glossy, nearly jet black, except that here

and there appeared a white hair. Evidently it had belonged to a lady. Inside I found a small slip of paper, on which was written "M. L. to L. D." The fillet of silver I closely examined, but could find no trade mark. I carefully replaced the hair in the chaplet, keeping out the scrap of paper, and locked the immortelle up with the clothes of my adopted uncle.

On returning to my hotel, I was startled on being told that an inspector of the police was in my room, and desired to see me. He turned out to be the sergeant whose examination I had already successfully undergone at the Morgue, promoted by my landlord for the credit of his house to the dignity of inspector. He said the object of his visit was to inform me that another had been inquiring after my deceased relative, or, at least, after a man who was missing, and whose description coincided with that of the man at the Morgue. The applicant, said the gendarme, is a lodging-house keeper, No. 95, Rue d'Argenteuil, and his name is Jules Jourdain. He had lost one of his lodgers, who had been absent for some days, and, never having been in the custom to be away above a day, he had got anxious, and, fearing the worst, had come to the Morgue. "I gave him your name," said the gendarme, "and I have no doubt he will call on you.'

This was all he had to say, and I felt relieved and encouraged. John Smith had been accepted, without hesitation, as a bonâ fide name, and my incognito promised to remain intact.

In the course of next day I was favoured with a call from Monsieur Jourdain. He was an important person, and had a high appreciation of the in which he discharged his functions. "There were no such

way

apartments in Paris," he said, "as those at 95, Rue d'Argenteuil. They were arranged and furnished after a system of his own. His lodgers, consequently, had always been the best, and none had been better than my relative, who, he told me, was named Laporte. "He was a model lodger, quiet, regular, and a good payer."

"What sort of a man was he?" I inquired. "He was a sad mau," said Jourdain.

"He must have had a love

affair in his youth, for he spoke very little, and never smiled; but he was a very good lodger, and Madame Jourdain and I liked him much.” Had he any friends ?"

"None that I recollect," said he. "He was quite a solitary-spoke little, and would shut himself up for days in his rooms. Ah! but now I recollect," M. Jourdain continued, "about a year ago a lady called on him in a carriage, but he was out, and she did not leave her name. was the only one who ever asked for Monsieur Laporte."

She

This was all I could extract from Jourdain. He could tell me nothing about the lady, except that she particularly admired his rooms.

I showed my visitor the clothes I had brought from the Morgue, and he had no difficulty in identifying them as those of his lodger. I explained, as I had done to the gendarme, my intimate relationship with his late lodger, and gave him also the benefit of my name. I promised to call, and said it was not unlikely I might ask him to do me the favour of permitting me to succeed my uncle as his lodger.

II.

I MAKE A FRIEND.

It

THAT night I passed in a gambling-house in the Rue St. Honoré. was not a fashionable hell, but of tolerable standing. The presiding priestesses were two ladies of rank, and of engaging manners, and easy disposition.

Gambling-houses are illegal, and therefore in this mansion there was a salon for the reunion of ladies and gentlemen devoted to botany, lectures on which instructive science, it was well known to the members of the club, who were selected with due regard to scientific requirements and position in society, were given every evening at eight o'clock. It was one of these lectures I had obtained a ticket to attend.

I found the botanists seated round a table in the centre of a room

brilliantly lit up with gas and mirrors. On another table was an elegant supper, served in dishes of chased silver, burgundy and champagne in Bohemian decanters, and fruit and flowers.

No one, however, partook of these refreshments. The company were grouped round the other table, at which the interesting science they had met to cultivate was illustrated by a variety of beautiful and instructive experiments made with two packs of cards, two sets of dice, and a philosophical instrument, called in our country a teetotum.

It may be asked why I should join such an expensive class, and what interest I had in botany, or, to call things by their real names, now that we are inside and have no fear of the police, why did I go to a gamblinghouse when there was so little between me (only twenty-two napoleons) and actual want? My answer is, that was the chief reason that induced me to go. A week or two sooner, what did it matter, and fortune might befriend me. There is no better frame of mind for a successful gambler. You lay against destruction, and therefore you lay recklessly and coolly. No one, however, knew the state of my finances. I was a rich Englishman, a tyro in the game, whom it might be proper to encourage.

The luck was in my favour, but as I went on each time adding my winnings to my stake, the faces of my brother and sister botanists began to grow serious. I protest I have not the least intention to insinuate anything against the fairness of their play. The house, as I said before, is not fashionable, but it is respectable; and if you get an introduction, you can even now meet at the salon some of the best company in Paris. But on this occasion, by a strange reverse of fortune, it did happen that after having gained two thousand napoleons, the luck went decidedly against me. My adversaries always threw fives or sixes, and the teetotum even deserted me. The first streaks of daylight, however, appeared before ill luck had done its worst, and when the meeting broke up, about half-past six in the morning, I was still nine hundred napoleons richer than when I entered.

It struck me as a remarkable circumstance that fortune had so managed it that the whole of the money had been lost by one individual. I had been attracted by his appearance from the first. Youth, ingenuousness, impulsiveness, spoke in every feature; he had conducted himself with less propriety than any one in the room; he was excited when he

gained, and inclined to quarrel when he lost, but as it was no one's interest to quarrel with him, he tried to drown his vexation by frequent appeals to the burgundy and champagne. Clearly he was only a beginner.

When the play finished he seemed anxious and depressed, though he made gallant attempts to appear indifferent; but from the clutching of his hands and the firm set mouth, I could easily see that he was tasting, perhaps for the first time, the pleasant sensations of ruin. I followed him out into the street, for I knew the dangers of the crisis. He took his way south, regardless of all around him, and not aware that I followed. I heard his broken exclamations : My mother, my poor mother! What, oh what will I do!"

66

We walked on, he in front, I close behind, till we reached the quay near to the suggestive Morgue. The morning was dark, and the drifting snow had banished the few who at that early hour would have been found on the quay. The young Frenchman and I were alone. The day was one to intensify bitter thoughts. He looked at the water and then at the sky, as if trying to penetrate the veil of snow-flakes; then he put his hands to his eyes and sobbed like a child. That mood did not last long, and I heard him say, "Yes, it will do, she will think I was robbed!"

I caught him as he made a rush to the river, and dragged him to the faint gas-light issuing from a shop-window. It was some time before he recognised me; when he did, an expression of loathing and dislike passed over his handsome features. "It is you," said he "you who have ruined me, and do you prevent me hiding my disgrace where alone it can be hidden? Let me go, and I will bless you. Hold me, and the curse of a ruined man be on you and yours."

"My dear fellow," said I, "well do I know your feelings. I too have had a mother-but I will not speak of her. Let me atone for the evil I have done, by giving you a chance which I did not get the chance of profiting by experience before it is too late. You have lost a thousand napoleons-I have gained nine hundred. Here are eight hundred back, take them as a warning and a purchase-a warning of what might have happened, and a purchase by me from you of a promise never to gamble again."

I do not know if there was anything in my voice which touched his heart. I was much moved, for there were still within me the remains of a better nature, which sometimes, to my surprise, showed themselves. However it might be, I gained my purpose; with true French effusion he threw his arms round my neck and wept like a child.

I walked home with him. He stayed in the Faubourg St. Germain, in a house which, judging from its exterior, had seen better days. We spoke little to one another. He told me his name, Albert Trelles, and we parted at the court door. I had made a friend for life.

FRANCE AND ITS JOURNALISM.*

THE work of which the foregoing is the title is one of considerable interest as well as novelty on this side of the Straits of Dover. The journalism of France is an extensive subject, and highly important, if on the ground alone that it is not in the hands of unacknowledged writers, as in England, but in those well known to the public as individuals of distinguished talent. Such, but in a less degree, was formerly the case with the journalism of this country when the spirit of political party ruled, and newspapers were governed by principle, in place of that pecuniary gain alone which leads them to change sides with any wind that will "work the mill to profit." The mission of an enlightened press, in that state of usefulness which constitutes its noblest end, is to lead the public by means of those qualified by intellect, and enlarged by study, to higher and better views of things than it can acquire amid cares and toils, and even an absorption altogether in pursuits that contribute most to the worship of the "least exalted spirit that fell." The little time we can spare for ripening our judgment upon important public questions through superior minds should be directed to study that class of mind alone in its productions. We do not hold that, except in matters of feeling, the multitude is always in the right. We incline to the sense conveyed in the passage, "Going with the multitude to do evil," applying it to all questions in which an uncultivated judgment is called into action, as well in the mass as in the individual. The press, therefore, that takes its tone from, and follows, in order to suit the abject taste of the masses, in place of instructing them, is a venal press, and has no right to claim a position beyond that of an attendant upon the crowd" to turn its penny. It is, in the latter case, a mere record of events and of passing intelligence, and a follower of the fluctuating caprice of the hour, and its trifling spirit, in place of an instructor. It is by a higher cultivation of the mental faculties, through a knowledge acquired by study and experience in its articles, that the newspaper should be best known. Some public men tell us this is superfluous, and that before long there will be nothing more of the press extant than this kind of journalism, because men in busy life will not have time to devote to any other class of works, that alone being foremost in utility, and sufficing for all the requirements of the sons of traffic in a nation where wealth governs the social body, and that therefore there is a point made by convenience where the acquirement of any superior degree of knowledge will cease.

However accommodating this view of the press may be, it is not the case in France, nor would it ever have been imagined here had not certain truths given way to expediency among one class of our politicians, and the contests for them been terminated at last by the tacit assent of a great leading party to those measures of its antagonists, which it had for a long time vituperated. A war must die out, where the passions of its combatants cease to exist, for want of the cause they had before cham

* Modern France: its Journalism, Literature, and Society. By A. V. Kirwan, Esq. London: Jackson and Co.