The Law does not recognise passion,' said Messer Nellemane coldly, and the brigadier dared say no more lest he should be reported to his commanding officer, away in the city, as lax in his discipline and an aider and abettor of offenders.

Thus does a single strong will govern others.

N the month that Toppa was murdered and his young master im

prisoned for avenging him there

was an appeal to the country; that is to say, a vast number of attorneys, an equal number of adventurers, several Jews and a few gentlemen asked the natives of Italy to send them up to Montecitorio.

The Ministry had been defeated on the burning question of a poll-tax on cows, their husbands, and their children. The Ministry was convinced that all the bovine race should be taxed per head at the place they lived in,

as well as taxed at the gates when driven through them for sale, and taxed at the market when changed into meat; all bulls, cows, and calves were to pay a poll-tax of twenty francs a head annually, and as this was considered only to hurt the agricultural interest which a progressive Ministry naturally considered of no account at all, it had been asserted that the tax would be accepted and become law.

There was, however, in the Chambers an ex-notary who cared not at all for bulls, cows, and calves, and as little for the agricultural interest, but cared very much for himself. He had been Home Minister once for six weeks; he had ceased to be it on account of a ridiculous fuss that was made in the papers about his buying a piano with the public money for a lady whose character was light as a syllabub; naturally he always

burned to become it once more, and have his own way with pianos and all other articles, including the nation. So he had turned against his old friends, who had not supported him loyally in the matter of the piano, and had set up for himself in business, as it were, and had a separate set of principles and a separate little party, which was to the Chamber in general as is the gadfly to the horse.

With the separate little party he vigorously attacked the cow-tax; bulls, he said, might be called on to support their share in the maintenance of the national expenses, but cows, never! He drew such a touching picture of the cruelty in taxing the milk-giving mothers of the herd, to whom so many human infants, bereft of their natural food, owed life itself, &c., that the ladies in the gallery all wept, and the few gentlemen

in the Chamber who owned land took heart of grace, and these being further strengthened by the very large minority who hated the Ministry for the best an 1 fiercest of all reasons, that they wanted to be in its place, the bill was thrown out amidst hooting and groaning and screaming, and the Ministry desired, or at least offered, to resign.

But the King, who was tired to death of all parties, and of their squabbling, told the House to go to the country, and dissolved Parliament. Thereupon all the attorneys, adventurers, and Jews became hopeful and riotous, and the few gentlemen very anxious, being sadly conscious that every year they grew less and less influential against the noise and the intrigues of the others.

Now Pomodoro had the right to send a deputy for the district in which the