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kneeling against the bed; her attitude was almost supplication, and her haughty loveliness was abased and dejected; for she had worn her diadem long and proudly, and it was bitter to the Queen of Fashion to have her sceptre wrenched and her purples torn aside for all to see the secret of the discrowned.

"Why not now, Vavasour?" she whispered eagerly, while her lips were hot and parched. "It would be so little to you; it would spare me so much. Now-now, before it is too late! I can purchase inviolate secresy

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The dying man interrupted her with his stifled, ghastly laugh rattling in his throat, while his sunk eyes leered maliciously, and his hand feebly played with the diamond circlet of her marriage finger-the badge, she had whispered to Strathmore on the rose-terrace of Vernonçeaux, as the badge of Servitude and Silence.

No! I am

"I dare say! and ma belle veuve would then win, perhaps, M. D'Etoile, who knows? As it is, she will have to be only his mistress! not in the mood! You think one en moribond ought to lend himself as a lay figure? Ah! there you are wrong, ma belle; you must ask the favour of some one of your old lovers, that man with the Vandyke face, who killed his friend for your beaux yeux; or one of the new ones, perhaps, may pay the price more graciously."

Again the horrid, unfitting laugh, chuckling and rattling in his throat, sounded through the stillness of the death-chamber; Lord Vavasour had eaten his last pâté of nightingales, but he had still palate and power to enjoy what he and most men with him find of still sweeter flavour-the pleasure of Malice. And leaning there against the costly draperies of the bed, in her lace, her jewels, her delicate floating dress which that day had given out the fashion of the year to Paris, in her lovely womanhood, in her haughty grace, Marion Lady Vavasour-who wore no mask with him-sank forwards, thinking nothing of her husband before her, but with her white hands clenched, her teeth set tight, her fair face blanched, her rich hair pushed back in its masses from her temples, eating in all their bitterness of the ashes of Humiliation, tasting in all their cruelty the death-throes of Abdication.

WAR.

BY NICHOLAS MICHELL.

O WAR, howe'er we gild thee, foulest form
That walks our beautiful and favoured world!
Ay, blacker made for glory, that around thee
Darts brilliant beams to veil thy hideousness,
And places on thy head a crown that looks
Of laurel formed, but, ah! of poison-leaves,
Weeping more venom than the upas-bough-
A funeral wreath, and dabbled all with blood.

But thou must live, O hydra-headed War!
Despite our maledictions; Virtue rears

The trenchant sword, but, less than Hercules,
She cannot lop thy hundred heads away:
Love cannot charm thee, deadly monster, War,
To trance that long endures; calm Wisdom fails
To smoothe the horrors of thy stormy front;
And e'en Religion may not drive thee back
To thy primeval hell. While Crime stalks here,
Thou, her grim offspring, wilt be rampant too.
Thou liv'st on human passions, hence thy food,
Since passions still must rage, shall never fail:
So long as man doth scheme to rise o'er man,
And restless Avarice grasps what is not his,
Thy reign will last, earth's fiery spirits doomed
Thy sport, thy victims, and, like Indian priests,
Following, well-pleased, to death, thy blood-stained car.

The deadly struggle on that Southern plain
Had ceased its terrors; lines of furious men

No longer clashed with lines; the sword no more

Hewed crimson rents through which men's souls might pass, Before their time, into eternity.

No longer to the shaken, answering hills,

The fire-mouthed cannon roared; the smoke's dun veil,
Drawn o'er the field by Havoc's joyous hand,

To hide the bleeding hecatombs of death,
Had melted off, like some black nightmare-dream.
Now came the sight more horrible, more dread,
Than e'en the battle's tumult. Now white Pain
Lay writhing on the soil, where late in pride
The victim struck for glory; now the groans
Of dying men, called heroes, murmured low,
Broken anon by some sharp, sudden shriek
Of agony, no effort might control;
With fruitless cries for help, and cries of thirst
From men in bleeding torture. Looks from some
Harrowed e'en more than sight of body's pangs-
Looks that betrayed the soul's intense despair.
Here mourned the stripling, who would never now
The dear-loved maiden to the altar lead;
There wept the son, who never more should see
The aged sire, or kiss the mother's cheek;
And there the father, never more to clasp
The babes that would be orphans. Livid heaps
Of what that morn were bounding, joyous frames,
With hearts brisk-beating to the voice of hope,
Lay stark and cold-poor hands and icy brows,
Dabbled with blood, and eyes, so, glassy-still,
Fixed by the thought in which the sufferer died.

Thou moon, uprising with calm, silvery ray,
Pause on thy course, withhold thy gentle light;
"Tis not for thee, sweet vestal, with thy brow
Of meekness, peace, and purity, to view
Such scene of fear and horror. Veil your eyes,
Ye wakening stars! nor let your holy beams,
Meet to illume Elysium, tremble here.
Come, saddest spectres from Cimmerian realms!
Come, blackest clouds that curtain Hades' gulf!
And pall the scene that deadly War hath made.

THE QUEST.

III.

1 AM INTRODUCED.

It was some days after this before I called at the Rue d'Argenteuil on Jourdain. Indeed, the interest I had felt for a time in the Man of the Morgue had begun to evaporate, and the hundred napoleons I had gained, left me at liberty to amuse myself in a way that made the time not so tedious as it had been. I played a good deal at chess, took short excursions into the country, and spent the evenings either in the theatre or in the cafés of the Italien-on the whole, living very much the same life as the visible Parisians do.

One day, as I passed the Rue d'Argenteuil, on the way to that café which has adopted the name of the now-demolished Café de Régence, and which with the name has taken up its chess connexion, I thought, as I had some time to spare before the hour I had fixed to meet my antagonist, I might as well see Monsieur Jourdain.

I found him at home, and was introduced to his wife and to the apart ments he had to let. The rooms, three in number, were comfortable and picturesque. A hundred years ago, No. 59 was the hotel of some great family. The floors were of polished oak, and the walls panelled with dark mahogany. Opening from the walls were a number of curious presses, which you could never have discovered had they not been pointed. out to you. Each room had an old cabinet, a relic of aristocratic days, with multitudinous small drawers suggestive of hidden treasure. The mantelpieces were of massive black marble, over spacious fireplaces. The furniture was old, quaint, and substantial.

Three of the presses and two of the cabinets were locked. They contained, according to Jourdain, clothes and other things belonging to Laporte.

I made an attempt to extract some information from him regarding Laporte, but without success. I was more successful with his wife.

Laporte, she said, was a tall, melancholy-looking man, who lived a quiet and blameless life during the four years he had been with them. He had no friends, except the children in the neighbourhood, to whom he was very kind. No one had ever called on him except the lady who had come the year before in her carriage. "There was something," Madame Jourdain said, 66 on the poor gentleman's heart. He was always sad, and I often heard him pacing his rooms when he should have been asleep. He used to read old letters, of which he had nearly a cart-load, and they seemed to do him good; but one day he burned them, and he was never himself after that.'

"How was he off for money?" I asked.

"He spent little," said madame, "and I think he got his supplies in letters which he received once a month. These letters, however, seemed always to make him sadder."

"Would you describe," said I, "the lady who called on him. Your husband can give me no information, but I am sure you can."

"My husband is a fool," said madame, and it was clearly not the first time he had heard that pleasant piece of intelligence from her. "You can never get anything out of him. She admired his rooms, that is all he can tell you. The lady was tall and stately, her hair had been jet black, but here and there appeared a grey hair. She had a fine face, and I have no doubt had been a beauty in her day, though I don't think a very amiable one. She had blue eyes, a high nose, and a small mouth, with compressed lips, which did not give her a good-natured expression, and as to her dress

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But here Madame Jourdain entered into a technical description utterly unintelligible to me, and of which I recollect nothing. The carriage my lady had come in was a splendid one, the horses superb, and the two livery servants-for it was in this magnificent state the lady had come to visit poor Laporte-were the grandest dressed people Madame Jourdain had ever seen.

Such was all the information I could extract of and concerning the Man of the Morgue from the Jourdains.

On my return to my hotel, I found to my surprise Albert Trelles waiting for me. I should not have known him again. The reckless haggard look he had at the salon in the Rue St. Honoré had disappeared. He was composed and in good spirits. Albert was decidedly goodlooking-an oval face, a somewhat aquiline nose, dark eyes, a delicatelyformed mouth with Grecian lips, an olive complexion, dark brown hair allowed to curl, a silky brown moustache, and lastly a figure about the middle height, well formed, light, and active, constituted altogether a form on which most people, male or female, would look with pleasure. His dress was quiet but fashionable.

Our greeting was friendly, indeed affectionate. He thanked me simply, but evidently from the heart, for the service I had conferred on him, the value of which, he said, I never could estimate.

Albert and I went that night to the Théâtre-Français.

I was in no mood to attend to the play, and did not at first find it very amusing to scan the faces of some two or three hundred by no means good-looking strangers, but at last my attention was arrested.

Looking up from my seat in the parterre to one of the boxes, I saw a face, then as now the only face to me in the world. It was that of the girl I had rescued from the ice.

She was sitting next another lady, about middle age, tall, and with good features, and who might still lay claim to considerable beauty, were it not that there was something about her one did not like. She put one in mind of our English dames of high ton, who seem so self-possessed that nothing which might happen could disturb or interest them.

I had ample time to observe both ladies. The elder neither attended to the play nor the audience, and did not notice my prolonged scrutiny of her box; and the other was too intent on the play to see anything else. This was also the case with Albert. Both of them, happy children, were of that age when dramatic representation is intensely interesting, because the scenes acted on the stage are believed to be more romantic, tragic, or comic, than anything in real life, and in truth are so to their experience. But at the end of the third act Albert spoke to me, and getting no reply, he followed the direction of my eyes, and discovered the cause of my inattention.

"Ah," said he, "there is my aunt and cousin, and I see you are admiring one of them. She is a pretty girl, my cousin, and a good one too, and as for my aunt, she is not a bad-looking woman either; but as to her goodness-well, I have my doubts."

"Your cousin!" said I. "And her name—what is it?"

"Her name—I mean my cousin's name- —is Adèle Lachapelle, and my aunt's name is Madame Lagrange. But come," he continued, " they have recognised me, and I must at least pay my respects, and it will do you no harm to come with me. I demurred to this. The thought of what was, and that it was worse than folly to give way to feelings I could not indulge, made me hesitate. I made some excuse. I did not wish, I said, to make any lady acquaintance; I was not in the humour, and I would not go. But I looked up to the box, and a glance of not unpleased recognition met my eyes, and my scruples vanished.

I

A minute more and I was in the box, introduced to Madame Lagrange as a friend of Albert's, an Englishman; after which I was introduced to his cousin. She smiled sweetly as she held out her hand.

"This is not the first time," she said, "I have seen monsieur. under the greatest obligations to him."

I am

Albert's frank face showed extreme surprise, and Madame Lagrange's marble expression relaxed for a moment.

"This is the gentleman," said the young girl," who saved my life when I fell through the ice on the pond. I recognise him now, though I think I met him since that very cold adventure. You were at Versailles last Sunday, were you not?"

66

Yes, mademoiselle," said I, "and my awkwardness then must have made as striking, though not so favourable, an impression as the slight service I was so lucky to render on the first occasion."

"Scarcely," said she. "One does not like a Sunday dress torn, but, for my own part, I like an ice-bath still less, and I am not yet tired of the world."

66

"This is very extraordinary," broke in Albert. "Do you know, cousin, this gentleman has done me a service which- "He hesitated. Well, it is not of so romantic a nature as what he did for you, but it lays me under a greater obligation even than saving a pretty cousin. That exploit brought its own reward, and cancelled the obligation. I dare say I would have done as much myself."

"What has he done for you?" said Adèle, in unaffected surprise. "That," said Albert, "is my secret, which I will tell you this day twenty years."

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"I will get it from you to-morrow," said she, smiling; “but, meantime, although I cannot allow anything he may have done for you to be so great a service even to you as saving my life, we agree for the first time on one point, namely, that we are both obliged to Mr. Smith." "As to the common obligation, I with you, agree said Albert; "but as to the other matter, much as I like you, I confess to a slight partiality to myself, and, in order to repay the obligation, I must beg of you, aunt, to take us home with you to supper after the play. I would like to introduce my friend to uncle."

Madame had not spoken a word, and, indeed, had shown little interest in our conversation. She now said, coolly :

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