there is one little thing you can do for me, if you will.”

"Can you doubt it?"

She put her hand into his clasped upon a little pistol. "I beg of you to put this to my heart - just here- and to fire. Now kiss me; say 'Good-bye, poor little Vivienne.”

"René- dear little brother!"

"You here, woman!" the young marquis spoke with angry agitation, and fell back, frowning and biting his lip.

"She wrote; but I saw her through the window. I heard her speak; it is you she wants, not me. She gives She turned her face aside and closed me up-well, she doesn't know; but her eyes. René — "

He snatched the pistol from her and flung it to the end of the cloister, with a stifled cry. Through his proof mail of egotistic vanity a poisoned dart had struck him. He caught her in his arms, the poor, broken-winged butterfly. The end had been written in the beginning, but Cassandra spoke in vain.

Five minutes later Salvy was in the midst of the Sections Committee. "Gentlemen," he said, “the game is serious; our opponents have a Head."

CHAPTER VI.

MADAME DE PALCIRE'S refuge was a small house behind walls in a quiet street in Paris. She thought she was dying. The proscribed nuns whom she protected thought the same, so did the physician. But she alone knew that her only disease was heart-hunger. She was alone in the world.

"Only God can cure me, little sister," she said on that same night of October 4th.

"Oh, but certainly, madame ! " "And death is his cure."

"Do not speak to me. You have dragged the honor of our house, and the name of the best of men, in the dust. He has been my best friend. I wash hands of you!"

"René, can you be cruel to your Vivienne?"

"For the sake of a low-bred, intriguing villain."

She uttered a low cry of pain. René went on indignantly, "You have blasted St. Mandé's happiness and disgraced me."

"Ah, René!" she turned away in despair.

He had the cruelty of youth. Years after he looked back and understood the tragedy embodied in that passive figure.

Looking frowningly down upon her he said: "Until he forgives you, hope for nothing from me. Gain his pardon, and you will not have long to wait for mine."

Then he turned his back, and began to pace up and down the yard.

Within the lighted room Madame de Palcire and her visitor, who was the Duc de Surcigny, had met in another sort of reunion.

At that moment the door-bell in the courtyard rang. Two gentlemen were admitted by the old porter, who hobbled "At last, duc, at last," Monique was across with his lantern. After a mur- saying, with a new light in her eyes. mured exchange of words, the elder" At last you have remembered me, and went into the house, the younger, who come to see me die." wore the Republican uniform, remained in the courtyard, which was dark but for a beam of light issuing from the window of Madame de Palcire's room. The young officer folded his arms, and looked up at the sky-half clouds, half

stars.

"No; to bid you live!" he replied, kissing her frail hand.

"But why so long without a sign? Is it possible

"All is possible to the boundless stupidity of man! At present I will not

"You know," she said softly, "that he is dead?"

"René!" he had heard no foot-speak of the past." step, and started violently at the sound of his name-in that voice. A few paces from him stood a little slight form. A wan, pale face looked out from under a hood.

"Nothing that concerns you is unknown to me, Monique. But it was not for selfish hopes, it was to restore to

"You have answered! This sacrifice of steps that leads to the church of St. for me, and yet you believed

Well, let all be forgotten! I must their men distrusted them. Had it not earn your forgiveness."

my husband-sent to im- who urged the faint-hearted, and jested plore that, all is now peace." with the resolute, those who answered the call to arms would have been fewer than they were. But instead of in

Concerning St. Mandé, whom I have learnt to value a certain dear rascal has been saved from himself and from creasing, the numbers were beginning scoundrels who would have preyed to melt away down back streets and upon his folly, and youth, by the watch- into cellars. fulness and kindness of his colonel."

that phrase!" Her face crimsoned, her | that a Breton guardsman started and voice rose to a shriek. "Let me tell crossed himself, swearing that he had you, I am your bride, your general, and seen one of his seven saints. moreover your military chest. You owe me everything!"

On came men-guns-bayonetssabres sweeping down, and pouring up over the struggling broken lines of the insurgents. The fight was sharp and short, the victory complete. The "Sections" fled, were sabred, or taken prisoners.

The troops of Buonaparte were in possession of St. Roche, and that meant Paris France.

Under the Doric columns, whence Faith and Hope, in marble, surveyed the carnage, and wondered what had become of sister Charity, was gathered a group of men.

St. Mandé kneeling, with a little fair dead face upon his breast a curious contrast to the grim swarthy dead soldiers lying around.

René was there in a frenzy of boyish grief and rage. Salvy was a prisoner, and wounded, between two soldiers.

"Shall I shoot the dog?" cried René passionately.

"He is your prisoner; spare him,” St. Mandé answered, in a calm, expressionless voice.

"One moment, gentlemen," Salvy said, stepping forward and looking down on Vivienne's white face.

Another roar of artillery crack, crack along the lines went the musketry fire. Muskets against grape shot, with that there can be but one end. The steps are strewn with dead men and marble splinters. Orders were given to charge with the forlorn hope of carrying the guns. They were brave men on both sides, and the blood-thirst was upon them, though Frenchmen and Re-"You cannot prevent me taking my publicans faced one another. farewell," he said. "She meant to die with me, and for me. I have her pardon to ask."

General Buonaparte was perfectly cool. Fire upon the leaders!" had been his order; "let no life be wasted." Another burst of artillery thunder, and some two hundred of the Sectionists lay dead.

"Charge! In close compact mass the troops of the Convention surged downwards through the clouds of smoke.

A moment before this a woman -a mere girl with soft fair hair fluttering round a small wan face, flitted into the open space before the steps, and passed up among the soldiers. So swiftly and quietly she slipped through the ranks

The marquis sprang between them, but he put him away with an iron hand.

From The Nineteenth Century. THE FRENCH EMPRESS AND THE GERMAN WAR.

stated in the baronetage to have been a Castelnau. Such evidence as this is conclusive; and Sir Richard, indeed, has disguised his identity so thinly that he might as well have allowed his name to go on the title-page of his book.

UNDER the unassuming title of "An Englishman in Paris," a book 1 has been published within the last few weeks, which throws a flood of light on the No Frenchman could know his Paris inner life of the French capital during better than this Englishman who was in the greater part of the reign of Louis essentials at least half a Frenchman, Philippe and the whole of the period and who describes himself on the eve of from his abdication to the end of the the Franco-German war as "probably Commune in May, 1871. The work is the only foreigner whom Parisians had both anonymous and posthumous, but agreed not to consider an enemy in disno mistake can be made in ascribing the guise." Through his pages, in which authorship of it to the late Sir Richard all moods vibrate from cynicism to symWallace, who, it is an open secret, was pathy, there defiles a long train of peran illegitimate son of that notorious sons of distinction in every sphereperson the third Marquis of Hertford princes, statesmen, grandes dames and Thackeray's Marquis of Steyne-and famous members of the demi-monde, the half-brother of the fourth Marquis poets, painters, soldiers, sculptors, auand Lord Henry Seymour, both of whom thors, officials, boulevardiers, lawyers, spent most of their lives in the French detectives; all of whom he knew with capital. Throughout the book the idengreater or less intimacy, all of whom in tity of the author discloses itself repeat- one sense or other were worth knowing, edly. He lives with, travels with, and of all of whom he has something to visits with, his "near relative," Lord tell that is new, bright, engaging, and to Hertford. It was in virtue of that rela- use the formula "to the best of depotionship that the highest circles were nent's knowledge and belief," true. open to him, that he was a guest at He had a legitimate and worthy curiCompiègne, the Tuileries, and the Châ-osity to learn what the Americans call teau d'Eu, with the entrée to every the "true inwardness" of the incidents great function and the fullest opportu- and events occurring around him, and nity as there was with him the the evidence of his pages is fairly keenest zest-for obtaining the best strong that he rarely failed to know information in regard to every subject most things that were to be known. of interest or importance. He reveals himself as having for a near relative" an officer on the staff of General Vinoy, whose aide-de-camp I knew as a young "Capitaine Edmond Richard Wallace," the son of the then Mr. Richard Wallace.

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Writing of events on the eve of the war, he alludes to a connection of mine by marriage" who was a general officer à la suite of the emperor. One of the few officers who accompanied Napoleon the Third when he came out of Sedan on the morning after the great defeat was pointed out to me as General Castelnau and further described as "the

brother-in-law of Richard Wallace;" and Lady Wallace, who still survives to lament the loss of husband and son, is 1 An Englishman in Paris (Notes and Recollections). 2 vols. Chapman & Hall, Lim. 1892.

Perhaps the most prominent figure of his second volume, which concerns itself with the period of the Empire, is the empress. An intimate of the emperor, a frequent visitor to Compiègne, bienvenu in all the ramifications of imperialistic and official circles and coteries, nobody could have better opportunities of judging of the character of Eugénie, and of the nature and weight of her influence on affairs, social and national alike. It is clear that the author considers the empress to have exercised the most important individual impression on the destinies of the Empire. I do not propose to formulate for him the conclusions to which his comments directly point, preferring in part to quote, in part to summarize, those comments, and so leave the reader to

form therefrom his opinion to what The author dilates freely on the impe

extent the responsibility for the ignoble collapse of the Second Empire rests on her whom the malcontent Parisians were wont to style "the Spanish woman."

rious temper of the parvenue empress. The slightest divergence of opinion was construed into an offence, and all who offended her suffered inexorable ostraIt is seemly, for obvious cism. The result was that in a few reasons, to treat of a bereaved and years the so-called counsellors around desolate lady solely in her province as the emperor were simply her abject empress, as the social ruler of France, creatures and puppets, moving solely at and as the strong consort of a pliable her will. Bold men who dared to differ and listless husband; and it is to be re- from her and think for themselves were gretted that the author has occasionally removed or were driven into fierce and permitted himself in this respect to bitter opposition, or else voluntarily transgress boundaries which he might withdrew from the court "sooner than have been expected to recognize. submit to a tyranny, not based, like that Apart from this his honesty and candor of Catherine the Second or Elizabeth, are conspicuous, and of this an illustra- upon great intellectual gifts, but upon tion may be given. The emperor was the wayward impulses of a woman in fond of ceremonious display, and had no way distinguished mentally from set his heart upon his bride having a the rest of her sex, except by an overbrilliant escort of fair and illustrious weening ambition and an equally overwomen on her marriage-day. There weening conceit." Of this tyrannical was no hope of such an escort from the intolerance he gives several remarkable old noblesse; and the honor was de- illustrations. One evening at court a clined even by the nobility who owed charade was being played, in the course titles and fortunes to the First Napo- of which some of the amateur performleon. There were, it was true, plenty ers, of both sexes, threw all decorum to of men and women ready to accept the winds, in their improvised dialogue. honors and titles in the suite of the In her Majesty's hearing an officer high brand-new régime, and to deck out in favor with her and the emperor gave their besmirched though very authentic expression to his disgust at such license scutcheons with them; but of these the of language in presence of the soverempress, at any rate, would have none." eigns. The empress turned upon him "Knowing what I do," continues the with terms of unrefined contempt for writer, "of Napoleon's private charac- his prudishness. "Vous n'êtes pas ter, he would willingly have dispensed content, colonel; hé bien! je m'en fiche, with the rigidly virtuous woman at the refiche et contrefiche" (words which Tuileries, then and afterwards. But at the editor translates, with the remark that moment he was perforce obliged" that his translation inadequately repre(at the instance of the lady whom he sents the vulgarity of the original, was about to espouse) "to make ad-"You don't like it, colonel; well, I vances to her, and the rebuffs received don't care a snap, nor two snaps, nor a in consequence were taken with a sang- thousand snaps "). The emperor, with froid which made those who adminis- a laugh, applauded his consort; the tered them wince more than once. At each renewed refusal he was ready with an epigram: "Encore une dame qui n'est pas assez sure de son passé pour braver l'opinion publique ; " " Celle-là, c'est la femme de César hors de tout soupçon, comme il y a des criminels qui sont hors la loi ; "Madame de il

n'y a pas de faux pas dans sa vie, il n'y a qu'un faux papa, le père de ses enfants."

colonel recognized the situation, and presented himself no more at court. One of the ablest soldiers in the army, he served in Mexico without promotion, and he was still a colonel when, after Gravelotte, he impressed on Bazaine the wisdom of leaving a garrison in Metz and breaking out with the army of the Rhine. I think I am not mistaken in identifying this officer as Colonel Lewal, who subsequently under the