suit, which gave a value to every book and an object to every inquiry the preface of a new edition announced my design, and I dropped without reluctance from the age of Plato to that of Justinian. The original texts of Procopius and Agathias supplied the events and even the characters of his reign; but a laborious winter was devoted to the codes, the pandects, and the modern interpreters, before I presumed to form an abstract of the civil law. My skill was improved by practice, my diligence perhaps was quickened by the loss of office; and, excepting the last chapter, I had finished the fourth volume before I sought a retreat on the banks of the Leman lake.

In the fifth and sixth volumes the revolutions of the Empire and the world are most rapid, various, and instructive; and the Greek or Roman historians are checked by the hostile narratives of the barbarians of the East and the West.

It was not till after many designs, and many trials, that I preferred, as I still prefer, the method of grouping my picture by nations; and the seeming neglect of chronological order is surely compensated by the superior merits of interest and perspicuity. The style of the first volume is, in my opinion, somewhat crude and elaborate; in the second and third it is ripened into ease, correctness, and numbers; but in the three last I may have been seduced by the facility of my pen, and the constant habit of speaking one language and writing another may have infused some mixture of Gallic idioms. Happily for my eyes, I have always closed my studies with the day, and commonly with the morning; and a long but temperate labor has been accomplished without fatiguing either the mind or body; but when I computed the remainder of my time and my task, it was apparent that, according to the season of publication, the delay of a month would be productive of that of a year. I was now straining for the goal, and in the last winter many evenings were borrowed from the social pleasures of Lausanne. I could now wish that a pause, an interval, had been allowed for a serious revisal.

I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake,

and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future date of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.

CAGLIOSTRO'S PREDICTIONS.

BY ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PÈRE.

(From "The Queen's Necklace.")

[Alexandre DUMAS, PÈRE, French novelist and dramatist, was born July 24, 1803; his grandmother was a Haytian negress. His youth was roving and dissipated; the few years after he became of age were spent in Paris experimenting in literary forms; at twenty-six he took the public by storm with his play "Henry III. and his Court." He was probably the most prolific great writer that ever lived, his works singly and in collaboration amounting to over two thousand volumes; he had some ninety collaborators, few of whom ever did successful independent work. A catalogue of his productions would fill many pages of this work. The most popular of his novels are: "The Three Musketeers" series (including "Twenty Years After" and "The Viscount de Bragelonne ") and "The Count of Monte Cristo." He died December 5, 1870.]

It was the beginning of April, 1784, between twelve and one o'clock. Our old acquaintance, the Marshal de Richelieu, having with his own hands colored his eyebrows with a perfumed dye, pushed away the mirror which was held to him by his valet, the successor of his faithful Rafté, and shaking his head in the manner peculiar to himself, "Ah!" said he, "now I look myself;" and, rising from his seat with juvenile vivacity, he commenced shaking off the powder which had fallen from his wig over his blue velvet coat, then, after taking a turn or two up and down his room, called for his maître d'hôtel.

In five minutes this personage made his appearance, elaborately dressed.

The marshal turned towards him, and, with a gravity befitting the occasion, said, "Monsieur, I suppose you have prepared me a good dinner?”

"Certainly, monseigneur."

"You have the list of my guests?"

"I remember them perfectly, your grace; I have prepared a dinner for nine."

"There are two sorts of dinners, monsieur," said the marshal.

"True, monseigneur, but”

The marshal interrupted him with a slightly impatient movement, although still dignified.

"Do you know, monsieur, that whenever I have heard the word 'but,' - and I have heard it many times in the course of eighty-eight years,

it has been each time, I am sorry to say,

"In the first place, at what time do we dine?"

66 Monseigneur, the citizens dine at two, the bar at three, the nobility at four."

"And I, monsieur?"

"Monseigneur will dine to-day at five."

"Oh, at five!"

"Yes, monseigneur, like the king."

"And why like the king?"

"Because, on the list of your guests is the name of a king." "Not so, monsieur, you mistake; all my guests to-day are simply noblemen."

"Monseigneur is surely jesting; the Count Haga, who is among the guests

"Well, monsieur!"

"Monseigneur must pardon me then," said the maître d'hôtel, bowing, "but, I believed, supposed ——"

"Your business, monsieur, is neither to believe nor to suppose; your business is to read, without comment, the orders I give you. When I wish a thing to be known, I tell it; when I do not tell it, I wish it unknown."

The maître d'hôtel bowed again, more respectfully, perhaps, than he would have done to a reigning monarch.

"Therefore, monsieur," continued the old marshal, “you will, as I have none but noblemen to dinner, let us dine at my usual hour, four o'clock."

At this order the countenance of the maître d'hôtel became

clouded, as if he had heard his sentence of death; he grew deadly pale, then, recovering himself with the courage of despair, he said, "In any event, your grace cannot dine before five o'clock."

"Why so, monsieur?" cried the marshal. "Because it is utterly impossible."

"Monsieur," said the marshal, with a haughty air, "it is now, I believe, twenty years since you entered my service?" "Twenty-one years, a month, and two weeks."

"Well, monsieur, to these twenty-one years, a month, and two weeks, you will not add a day, nor an hour. You understand me, monsieur," he continued, biting his thin lips and depressing his eyebrows; "this evening you seek a new master. I do not choose that the word 'impossible' shall be pronounced in my house; I am too old now to begin to learn its meaning."

The maître d'hôtel bowed a third time.

"This evening," said he, "I shall have taken leave of monseigneur, but at least up to the last moment my duty shall have been performed as it should be;" and he made two steps towards the door.

"What do you call as it should be?" cried the marshal. "Learn, monsieur, that to do it as it suits me is to do it as it should be. Now, I wish to dine at four, and it does not suit me when I wish to dine at four to be obliged to wait till five."

"Monseigneur," replied the maître d'hôtel, gravely, "I have served as butler to his Highness the Prince de Soubise, and as steward to his Eminence the Cardinal de Rohan: with the first, his Majesty, the late King of France, dined once a year; with the second, the Emperor of Austria dined once a month. I know, therefore, how a sovereign should be treated. When he visited the Prince de Soubise, Louis XV. called himself in vain the Baron de Gonesse ; at the house of Monsieur de Rohan, the Emperor Joseph was announced as the Count de Packenstein; but he was none the less Emperor. To-day, monseigneur also receives a guest who vainly calls himself Count Haga, Count Haga is still King of Sweden. I shall leave your service this evening, but Count Haga will have been treated like a king.'

"But that," said the marshal, " is the very thing that I am tiring myself to death in forbidding; Count Haga wishes to preserve his incognito as strictly as possible. Well do I see

through your absurd vanity; it is not the crown that you honor but yourself that you wish to glorify with our crowns."

"I do not imagine," said the maître d'hôtel, morosely, "that monseigneur is in earnest when he speaks thus to me of money."

"No, no," said the marshal, somewhat abashed. "No, monsieur; money,- why in the devil's name speak of money? Do not beg the question. As I said before, my one object is to prevent the king's presence here from being suspected." "What, then, does monseigneur take me for? Do you think I am blind? It is not that I wish it known that there is a king here."

"Then, in Heaven's name, do not be obstinate, but let us have dinner at four."

"But at four o'clock, monseigneur, what I am expecting will not have arrived."

"What are you expecting? a fish, like Monsieur Vatel?" "Monsieur Vatel! Monsieur Vatel!" murmured the maître

d'hôtel.

"Well, are you horrified at the comparison?

"No; but Monsieur Vatel has been immortalized merely on account of a sword thrust which he gave himself through his body."

"Ah! ah! And you think that your fellow-artist has purchased glory at too small a price, monsieur?"

"No, monseigneur; but how many others, in our profession, suffer far more than he, and swallow insults and griefs one hundred times worse than a mere sword thrust, and still have never been immortalized."

"But, monsieur, do you not know that it is requisite for one to be either a member of the Academy, or dead, before one can be immortalized?"

"If that is the case, monseigneur, I should think it would be better to be alive, and to do one's duty. I shall not die, and my duty shall be as faithfully performed as that of Monsieur Vatel would have been, had Monsieur le Prince de Conde been patient enough to have waited half an hour."

"Oh, monsieur, you are promising me miracles. You are clever."

"No, monsieur; no miracles."

"But what, then, are you awaiting?"

"Does monseigneur wish that I should tell you?"

"On my faith, I am curious."