"fashions! Yes, sir, and some of us are simple enough to boast of it, as if we were a nation of tailors."

Here the little man in goslin green pulled up the horns of his cotton dicky.

"I recollect," said I, "that your Madame de Pompadour in one of her letters says something to this effect-' We furnish our enemies with hair-dressers, ribbons, and fashions, and they furnish us with laws.''

"That is not the only silly thing she said in her lifetime. Ah! sir, these Pompadours, and Maintenons, and Montespans were the authors of much woe to France. Their follies and extravagances exhausted the public treasury, and made the nation poor. They built palaces, and covered themselves with jewels, and ate from golden plate; while the people who toiled for them had hardly a crust to keep their own children from starvation! And yet they preach to us the divine right of kings!"

My radical had got upon his high horse again; and I know not whither it would have carried him, had not a thin man with a black seedy coat, who sat at his elbow, at that moment crossed his path, by one of those abrupt and sudden transitions which leave you aghast at the strange association of ideas in the speaker's mind.

"Apropos de bottes !" exclaimed he, "speaking of boots, and notaries public, and such matters-excuse me for interrupting you, sir-a little story has just popped into my head which may amuse the company; and as I am not very fond of political discussions- no offence, sir-I will tell it, for the sake of changing the conversation."

Whereupon, without further preamble or apology, he proceeded to tell his story in, as nearly as may be, the following words.

THE NOTARY OF PERIGUEUX.

Do not trust thy body with a physician. He'll make thy foolish bones go without flesh in a fortnight, and thy soul walk without a body a se'nnight after.

SHIRLEY.

You must know, gentlemen, that there lived some years

ago, in the city of Périgueux, an honest notary. public, the descendant of a very ancient and broken-down family, and the occupant of one of those old weather-beaten tenements which remind you of the times of your greatgrandfather. He was a man of an unoffending, sheepish disposition; the father of a family, though not the head of it-for in that family "the hen over-crowed the cock," and the neighbours, when they spake of the notary, shrugged their shoulders, and exclaimed, "Poor fellow! his spurs want sharpening." In fine-you understand me, gentlemen-he was a hen-pecked man.

Well, finding no peace at home, he sought it elsewhere, as was very natural for him to do; and at length discovered a place of rest far beyond the cares and clamours of domestic life. This was a little cafe estaminet, a short way out of the city, whither he repaired every evening to smoke his pipe, drink sugar-water, and play his favourite game of domino. There he met the boon companions he most loved; heard all the floating chit-chat of the day; laughed when he was in merry mood; found consolation when he was sad; and at all times gave vent to his opinions without fear of being snubbed short by a flat contradiction.

Now, the notary's bosom friend was a dealer in claret and cognac, who lived about a league from the city, and always passed his evenings at the estaminet. He was a gross, corpulent fellow, raised from a full-blooded Gascon

breed, and sired by a comic actor of some reputation in his way. He was remarkable for nothing but his good humour, his love of cards, and a strong propensity to test the quality of his own liquors, by comparing them with those sold at other places.

As evil communications corrupt good manners, the bad practices of the wine-dealer won insensibly upon the worthy notary, and before he was aware of it, he found himself weaned from domino and sugar-water, and addicted to piquet and spiced wine. Indeed, it not unfrequently happened that, after a long session at the estaminet, the two friends grew so urbane that they would waste a full halfhour at the door in friendly dispute which should conduct. the other home.

Though this course of life agreed well enough with the sluggish phlegmatic temperament of the wine-dealer, it soon began to play the very deuce with the more sensitive organization of the notary, and finally put his nervous system completely out of tune. He lost his appetite, became gaunt and haggard, and could get no sleep. Legions of bluedevils haunted him by day, and by night strange taces peeped through his bed-curtains, and the nightmare snorted in his ear. The worse he grew the more he smoked and tippled; and the more he smoked and tippled-why, as a matter of course, the worse he grew. His wife alternately stormed-remonstrated-entreated; but all in vain. She made the house too hot for him-he retreated to the tavern; she broke his long-stemmed pipes upon the hand-irons-he substituted a short-stemmed one, which, for safe keeping, he carried in his waistcoat pocket.

Thus the unhappy notary ran gradually down at the heel. What with his bad habits and his domestic grievances, he became completely hipped. He imagined that he was going to die; and suffered in quick succession all the diseases that ever beset mortal man. Every shooting pain

was an alarming symptom-every uneasy feeling after dinner a sure prognostic of some mortal disease. In vain did his friends endeavour to reason, and then to laugh him out of his strange whims; for when did ever jest or reason cure a sick imagination? His only answer was, "Do let me alone; I know better than you what ails me."

Well, gentlemen, things were in this state, when one afternoon in December, as he sat moping in his office, wrapped in an overcoat, with a cap on his head, and his feet thrust into a pair of furred slippers, a cabriolet stopped at the door, and a loud knocking without aroused him from his gloomy revery. It was a message from his friend the wine-dealer, who had been suddenly attacked the night before with a violent fever, and, growing worse and worse, had now sent in the greatest haste for the notary to draw up his last will and testament. The case was urgent, and admitted neither excuse nor delay; and the notary, tying a handkerchief round his face, and buttoning up to the chin, jumped into the cabriolet, and suffering himself, though not without some dismal presentiments and misgivings of heart, to be driven to the wine-dealer's house.

When he arrived, he found everything in the greatest confusion. On entering the house, he ran against the apothecary, who was coming down stairs, with a face as long as your arm, and a pharmaceutical instrument somewhat longer; and a few steps farther he met the housekeeperfor the wine-dealer was an old bachelor-running up and down, and wringing her hands, for fear that the good man should die without making his will. He soon reached the chamber of his sick friend, and found him tossing about under a huge pile of bed-clothes, in a paroxysm o iever, calling aloud for a draught of cold water. The notary shook his head; he thought this a fatal symptom; for ten years back the wine-dealer had been suffering under a species of hydrophobia, which seemed suddenly to have left him.

When the sick man saw who stood by his bedside, he stretched out his hand and exclaimed—

"Ah! my dear friend! have you come at last? You see it is all over with me. You have arrived just in time to draw up that-that passport of mine. Ah, grand diable! how hot it is here? Water-water-water! Will nobody give me a drop of cold water?"

As the case was an urgent one, the notary made no delay in getting his papers in readiness; and in a short time the last will and testament of the wine-dealer was drawn up in due form, the notary guiding the sick man's hand as he scrawled his signature at the bottom.

As the evening wore away, the wine-dealer grew worse and worse, and at length became delirious, mingling in his incoherent ravings the phrases of the Credo and Paternoster with the shibboleth of the dram-shop and the card-table.

"Take care! take care! There, now-Credo in-pop! ting-a-ling-ling! give me some of that. Cent-é-dize! Why, you old publican, this wine is poisoned-I know your tricks! Sanctam ecclesiam Catholicam. Well, well, we shall see. Imbecile! To have a tierce-major and a seven of hearts, and discard the seven. By St. Anthony, capot! You are lurched-Ha! ha! I told you so. I knew very well— there-there-don't interrupt me-Carnis resurrectionem et vitam eternam!"

With these words upon his lips, the poor wine-dealer expired. Meanwhile the notary sat cowering over the fire, aghast at the fearful scene that was passing before him, and now and then striving to keep up his courage by a glass of cognac. Already his fears were on the alert; and the idea of contagion flitted to and fro through his mind. In order to quiet these thoughts of evil import, he lighted his pipe, and began to prepare for returning home. At that moment the apothecary turned round to him and said—

"Dreadful sickly time this! The disorder seems to be spreading."