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ment's reflection I rushed down the passage and was free. I meant to have merely cast one look upon the Place, and have returned immediately. I thought it might be possible that in this illness I might die, and it was very hard that I should leave a world, which they tell me God has made so full of beauty, without having beheld aught besides this dull old pile; so I stepped out into the street with more delight than I ought to have done, considering that I was doing that which was reprehensible. I buried my head in my capuchon, and turned boldly down the street to the left; but I had not gone far before I perceived that I must have taken the wrong direction, for as I drew near to the end I saw not the fine 1 square which I had been promised, but another street, more dirty and more dull than the one I had just traversed. During the walk I did not meet a soul or I think I should have fainted, for it was not till I thus stood for the first time alone and unaided that I remembered that my dress must at once betray me. I was resolved to return at once, but in the meanwhile this storm of rain came suddenly beating down with such intense fury that my dress was wet through in an instant. I ran with all the swiftness of which I was capable, to regain this dark passage; but judge of the agony of affright that I experienced on beholding the door which I had closed, and of which I had taken the key, fastened on the inside! Mother Jeanne must have perceived the absence of the key, and have bolted it within. Oh, I am lost! She has doubtless already been to tell our lady mother. They will all know 'tis I who am the guilty one, for every body else will be at matins !'

"As the poor girl concluded her story she again burst into a paroxysm of grief. The young seminariste endeavoured to soothe her, and offered to go round to the great gate to try and obtain admittance there, but the trembling child clung to him with such energy that he could not tear himself away.

"No, no, do not leave me now,' exclaimed she. 'I dare not be left thus alone. What shall I say when they come and find me here? They will come, I know, directly, and bear me back with hootings and with

shame.'

"As she spoke, so great was her terror that she shook like the aspen leaf, and her companion was obliged to support her by placing his arm gently round her waist, or she would have fallen. He then perceived with great distress that this violent trembling was the spasmodic shuddering of fever; and as she placed her hand upon her bosom to still the convulsive throe, he beheld with yet greater horror that she wore nothing beneath her robe but the night dress which she had on when she left her bed. His heart was wrung at the thought of that delicate creature abroad thus-burnt with fever, and wet to the skin. It must be death to so frail and fragile a being. Something however must be done. He durst not leave her. She was in that state of mind that she might have fallen senseless to the earth if she had been left alone; neither could he drag her with him the whole length of the street through the pouring rain, in order to arrive at the great gate of the convent. The scandal would have been terrific, had they been seen together in the costume which they each wore. In the midst of this painful embarrassment, like the drowning man who clings at a straw, he went up to the door and turned the key. There was no impediment in the lock. He

shook the door violently, then pushed it with all his might. Oh, God of mercy, it yields! It is not bolted, for daylight may be seen through the opening. Once more he brings all his strength to bear against the iron studded door. The drops of sweat stand like beads upon his forehead, with the anxiety of the moment and the violence of his exertions. But he is presently rewarded by the grating noise caused by the removal of the obstacle within, and the faint shriek of joy which escaped the lips of the sweet Constance. She sees it all now! Mother Jeanne, in her rage for cleaning, had moved the old oaken bench from the archway of the cloister, and had placed it crosswise before the door, where it had resisted all her own puny efforts, as though it had been a wall of iron; and now her laugh of delight is so convulsive that it is more painful than were her tears and sobs. Meanwhile young Talleyrand had pushed open a space sufficient for her passage into the cloister, and he assisted her to mount the bench and pass through. The hand which she gave him, and which but a little while before had startled him by its burning touch, was now as cold as marble! He imprinted one pure and holy kiss upon it ere he closed the door for ever; and when he found that she withdrew it not, but thanked him, and blessed him fervently, and called him her deliverer, and said that he had saved her life,' he shut the door abruptly, for he could bear no more. He stood for a moment listening at the keyhole for the sound of her retreating step. It must have been very light, however, for he heard it not. He then walked slowly home to the seminaire, insensible now to either wind or rain.

"The books which the young student had brought from the Sorbonne were unperused that day. His mind was too much absorbed with the memory of that beauteous maiden, and with the undefined terror which he experienced for her sake. On the morrow he

walked several times completely round the convent walls, but he saw not an evidence that the building was inhabited by a single human being. On the third day he could not control his impatience, and bestowed a silver crown on the commissionaire to go and ask, as if despatched by some great lady, whose name he was to forget, for news of the health of Mademoiselle Constance de V. The answer he brought back was that: Mademoiselle Constance de V., in an attack of fever, being for a few moments unwatched, had risen from her bed and gone down into the cloisters, no doubt feeling grievously ill, and in search of assistance. It was supposed that she had wandered for some time in the quadrangle, for she was found lying drenched with wet upon the oaken bench, by the porte de service of the outer court. She was without sense or motion when taken up, and it was certain that she had already been dead for some time (this was the private opinion of the tourière), although the superior would insist on having the viaticum administered all the same. She had been buried that very morning at daybreak, and Mademoiselle de Breteuil, the favourite pensionnaire of the abbess, had got the promise of her cell to keep her birds in, until the arrival of another pensionnaire to occupy it. The abbess was very angry with sister Marthe for having left the bedside of Mademoiselle de V., but could not punish her, it having been proved that she had only gone to matins.'

"Such had been the fate of that beauteous girl! The earth already covered her, before she had even seen the light. That stealthy walk

-along the dreary street amid the cold and pelting rain, was all the experience she had carried to the grave of the world she had longed so ardently to see, and when the seminariste thought on the story of her life, and compared it with his own, he felt that he no longer had a right to complain. He had spent his childhood at least amid fresh air and free exercise wholesome to the body, and also amid the rude kindness and overwhelming affection wholesome to the mind; while the poor child whose dying grasp he almost fancied that he could still feel, had never been allowed to roam beyond the gloomy precincts of her prison-house. With her innocence and loveliness she had been suffered to grow like some rank weed which springs amid the crevice of the pavement stone of the foul goal yard, and which struggles but in vain to catch a gleam of sunshine or a breath of air until, wearied with the effort, it sinks back dead into the crevice from which it sprang.

應

This event made a great impression upon M. de Talleyrand, and sobered him for some time after its occurrence. He took to studying more diligently than hitherto, and shone among his competitors as brilliantly as he had already done at Louis le Grand. His speeches at the conferences which were held every month at Saint Sulpice, were judged to be masterpieces of reasoning and logic, and were thought worthy of being preserved among the records of the seminaire-an immense honour for so young a man. He was now seventeen: it was judged advisable that he should go to finish his theological studies' en Sorbonne,' and it was during the short interval which elapsed between leaving the seminaire and entering the Sorbonne, that he first lodged at home. Note this when ye talk of the 'good old times:'-the Prince de Talleyrand was seventeen years of age before he had slept one single night beneath his father's roof! Well might Jean Jacques thunder forth his maledictions upon the fine ladies, the 'marâtres sans entrailles' of his day!"

My friend here paused to my great sorrow, with all the self-complacency of a professed lion exhibitor, to descant upon the beauty of the landscape as seen from the point to which we had attained. Of course there were the well known wonders familiar to all natural-beauty-hunters ever since the world began-the seeing into so many departments-the commanding a view of so many parishes, but which always worry me to death.

"What is that ruin ?" said I, pointing to a pile of rubbish which lay close at hand.

6

"Ah, that is no ruin," replied C., laughing, "it is just the contrary, for it is an unfinished building. The history of that ruin' would amuse you, more than all the history of the person whose work it was. prince calls it the 'Folie Princesse,' and you shall have the story as we go home."

(To be continued.)

The

July.-VOL. LXXI. NO. CCLXXXIII.

2 B

THE LIBELLED BENEFACTOR.

BY HORACE SMITH.

THEY warn'd me by all that affection could urge,
To repel his advances and fly from his sight;
They call'd him a fiend, a destroyer, a scourge,
And whisper'd his name with a shudder of fright.

They said that disease went as herald before,
While sorrow and severance follow'd his track,
They besought me if ever I came to his door,
Not a moment to pause, but turn instantly back.

"His breath," they exclaim'd-" is a pestilence foul,
His aspect more hateful than language can tell,
His touch is pollution-no Gorgon or Ghoul,

In appearance and deeds is more loathsome and fell.”

Such stern prohibitions, descriptions so dire,

By which the most dauntless might well be dismay'd, In me only waken'd a deeper desire

To gaze on the monster so darkly portray'd.

I sought him-I saw him-he stood by a marsh,

Where henbane and hemlock with poppies entwined;

He was pale, he was grave, but no feature was harsh,
His eye was serene, his expression was kind.

"This stigmatised being," I cried in surprise,

"Wears a face most benignant; but looks are not facts Physiognomy often abuses our eyes,

I'll follow his footsteps and judge by his acts."

There came from a cottage a cry of alarm,
An infant was writhing in agonies sore,

His hand rock'd the cradle, its touch was a charm,
The babe fell asleep, all its anguish was o'er.

He reach'd a proud mansion where, worn by the woe
Of consumption, a beauty lay wither'd in bed,
Her pulse he compress'd with his fingers, and lo!

The complaint of long years in a moment had fled!

;

He paused where he heard the disconsolate moan

Of a widow with manifold miseries crush'd ;Where a pauper was left in his sickness to groan,

Both were heal'd at his sight and their sorrows were hush'd.

He sped where a king, sorely smitten with age,

In vain sought relief from the pangs he endured. your woes to assuage:" He spoke, and the monarch was instantly cured.

"I come," said the stranger, <<

Astounded by deeds which appeared to bespeak

In the fiend a benevolent friend of mankind, From himself I resolved a solution to seek

Of the strange contradiction that puzzled my mind.

"Chase, mystical being!" I cried, "this suspense;

How comes it thou'rt blacken'd by every tongue, When in truth thou'rt the champion, the hope, the defence, Of the king and the beggar, the old and the young?"

"Thou hast witness'd," he answered (his voice and his face Were all that is musical, bland, and benign,)

Who

"Not a tithe of the blessings I shed on the race,
my form and my attributes daily malign.
"All distinctions of fortune, of birth, of degree,
Disappear where my levelling banner I wave;
From his desolate dungeon the captive I free,
His fetters I strike from the suffering slave.

"And when from their stormy probation on earth,
The just and the righteous in peace I dismiss,
I give them a new and more glorious birth
In regions of pure and perennial bliss."

"Let me bless thee," I cried, "for thy missions of love;
Oh! say to what name shall I fashion my breath ?"
"THE ANGEL OF LIFE, is my title above,

But short-sighted mortals have christen'd me DEATH!"