how much I am to be pitied; if you could look for one moment into this lonely and blighted heart; if you could trace, step by step, the progress I have made in folly and sin, you would see how much of what you now condemn and despise I have owed to circumstances, rather than to the vice of my disposition. I was born a beauty, educated a beauty, owed fame, rank, power to beauty; and it is to the advantages I have derived from person that I owe the ruin of my mind. You have seen how much I now derive from art; I loathe myself as I write that sentence, but no matter: from that moment you loathed me too. You did not take into consideration that I had been living on excitement all my youth, and that in my maturer years I could not relinquish it. I had reigned by my attractions, and I thought every art preferable to resigning my empire; but, in feeding my vanity, I had not been able to stifle the dictates of my heart. Love is so natural to a woman, that she is scarcely a woman who resists it; but in me it has been a sentiment, not a passion.

Sentiment, then, and vanity, have been my seducers. I said that I owed my errors to circumstances, not to nature. You will say that, in confessing love and vanity to be my seducers, I contradict this assertion. You are mistaken. I mean, that though vanity and sentiment were in me, yet the scenes in which I have been placed, and the events which I have witnessed, gave to those latent currents of action a wrong and a dangerous direction. I was formed to love; for one whom I did love I could have made every sacrifice. I married a man I hated, and I only learned the depths of my heart when it was too late.

Enough of this: you will leave this country; we shall never meet again, never! You may return to Paris, but I shall then be no more; n'importe,· I shall be unchanged to

the last. Je mourrai en reine.

As a latest pledge of what I have felt for you, I send you the enclosed chain and ring; as a latest favor, I request you to wear them for six months, and, above all, for two hours in the Tuileries to-morrow. You will laugh at this request; it seems idle and romantic, - perhaps it is so. Love has many exag

gerations in sentiment, which reason would despise. What wonder, then, that mine, above that of all others, should conceive them? You will not, I know, deny this request. Farewell! in this world we shall never meet again. Farewell! E. P.

"A most sensible effusion," said I to myself, when I had read this billet; "and yet, after all, it shows more feeling and more character than I could have supposed she possessed." I took up the chain; it was of Maltese workmanship, not very handsome, nor, indeed, in any way remarkable except for a plain hair ring which was attached to it, and which I found myself unable to take off without breaking. "It is a very singular request," thought I, "but then it comes from a very singular person; and as it rather partakes of adventure and intrigue I shall at all events appear in the Tuileries to-morrow, chained and ringed."

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Thy incivility shall not make me fail to do what becomes me: and since thou hast more valor than courtesy, I for thee will hazard that life which thou wouldst take from me. - Cassandra, "elegantly done into English by Sir Charles Cotterell."

He

ABOUT the usual hour for the promenade in the Tuileries I conveyed myself thither. I set the chain and ring in full display, rendered still more conspicuous by the dark-colored dress which I always wore. I had not been in the gardens ten minutes before I perceived a young Frenchman, scarcely twenty years of age, look with a very peculiar air at my new decorations. passed and repassed me, much oftener than the alternations of the walk warranted; and at last, taking off his hat, said in a low tone, that he wished much for the honor of exchanging a few words with me in private. I saw at the first glance that he was a gentleman, and accordingly withdrew with him among the trees, in the more retired part of the garden.

"Permit me," said he, "to inquire how that ring and chain came into your possession?"

"Monsieur," I replied, "you will understand me, when I say that the honor of another person is implicated in my concealment of that secret."

"Sir," said the Frenchman, coloring violently, "I have seen them before, in a word, they belong to me!" I smiled, my young hero fired at this. "Oui,

Monsieur," said he, speaking very loud, and very quick, "they belong to me, and I insist upon your immediately

VOL. I. 10

restoring them, or vindicating your claim to them by

"You leave me but one answer, Monsieur," said I; "I will find a friend to wait upon you immediately. Allow me to inquire your address?" The Frenchman, who was greatly agitated, produced a card. We bowed and separated.

I was glancing over the address I held in my hand, which was C. de Vautran, Rue de Bourbon, Numéro when my ears were saluted with,—

"Now do you know me?- thou shouldst be Alonso."

I did not require the faculty of sight to recognize Lord Vincent. "My dear fellow," said I, “I am rejoiced to see you!" and thereupon I poured into his ear the particulars of my morning adventure. Lord Vincent listened to me with much apparent interest, and spoke very unaffectedly of his readiness to serve me, and his regret at the occasion.

"Pooh!" said I, "a duel in France is not like one in England; the former is a matter of course; a trifle of common occurrence; one makes an engagement to fight, in the same breath as an engagement to dine; but the latter is a thing of state and solemnity, long faces, early rising, and will-making. But do get this business over as soon as you can, that we may dine at the Rocher afterwards."

Well, my dear Pelham," said Vincent, "I cannot refuse you my services; and as I suppose Monsieur de Vautran will choose swords, I venture to augur everything from your skill in that species of weapon. It is the first time I have ever interfered in affairs of this nature, but I hope to get well through the present.

'Nobilis ornatur lauro collega secundo,'

as Juvenal says: au revoir," and away went Lord Vincent, half forgetting all his late anxiety for my life in his paternal pleasure for the delivery of his quotation.

Vincent is the only punster I ever knew with a good heart. No action, to that race in general, is so serious an occupation as the play upon words; and the remorseless habit of murdering a phrase, renders them perfectly obdurate to the simple death of a friend. I walked through every variety the straight paths of the Tuileries could afford, and was beginning to get exceedingly tired, when Lord Vincent returned. He looked very grave, and I saw at once that he was come to particularize the circumstances of the last extreme. "The Bois de Boulogne-pistols-in one hour," were the three leading features of his detail.

"Pistols!" said I; "well, be it so. I would rather have had swords, for the young man's sake as much as my own; but thirteen paces and a steady aim will settle the business as soon. We will try a bottle of the Chambertin to-day, Vincent." The punster smiled faintly, and for once in his life made no reply. We walked gravely and soberly to my lodgings for the pistols, and then proceeded to the engagement as silently as philosophers should do.

The Frenchman and his second were on the ground first. I saw that the former was pale and agitated, not, I think, from fear, but passion. When we took our ground, Vincent came to me, and said, in a low tone, "For Heaven's sake, suffer me to accommodate this, if possible!"

"It is not in our power," said I, receiving the pistol. I looked steadily at De Vautran, and took my aim. His pistol, owing, I suppose, to the trembling of his hand, went off a moment sooner than he had anticipated,