And he commenced humming the refrain of a ballad in the old Provençal dialect. It was evidently well known to Louise. She shook her head, and pressed her hand before her eyes as if to shut out some sad image that her ideas had conjured up.

"You have heard that before?" asked the man.

"Very often-I know it well.”

"You heard it from a man, then, I will be sworn; and perhaps a faithless one. He wrote well, long, long ago, who said, that those who were gifted with music and singing, loved our Languedocian romances, and travelled about the earth that they might betray women. My marotte to an old sword-belt that the tune sang itself in your ears all the way to Paris. Was it not so?'

"

The girl returned no answer, but remained silent, with her eyes fixed upon the ground.

you

"Well, well-we will not press for a reply. But shall come with me this night, ma bonne, for I will not leave you so. Only let me take you to where our mules' lodging is situated, and then I will bring you back to my own."

He scarcely waited for her acquiescence, but lifting her gently in his arms, placed her on the waggon. And then he gave his signal to the mules, and they moved along the carrefour, over which the darkness was now stealing.

They passed along the quays and the Port au Foin, now dimly lighted by the few uncertain and straggling lanterns before alluded to, until the mules turned of their own accord into a court of the Rue St. Antoine. A peasant in wooden shoes clumped forward to receive them, with whom the charlatan exchanged a few words previously to conducting his companion back again, nearly along the same route by which they had arrived at the stables.

Do

"You may call me Benoit," he said, as he perceived that the girl was sometimes at a loss how to address him. "Benoit Mousel. not stand upon adding 'maître' to it. We are compatriots, as I have told you, and therefore friends. The quays are dark at night, but the river is darker still. You made a good choice of two evils in keeping out of it."

They walked on, barely lighted through the obscurity, until they came to the foot of the Pont Notre Dame-the most ancient of those still existing at Paris. It is now, as formerly, on the line of thoroughfare running from the Rue St. Jacques, in the Quartier Latin to the Rue St. Martin. The modern visitor may perhaps recall it to mind by a square tower built against its western side, flanked by two small houses raised upon piles, beneath which are some wheels, by whose working some thirty of the fountains in the streets of Paris are supplied with water. This mechanism was not constructed until a few years after the date of our story. Before that, the Pont Notre Dame, in common with the other bridges we have mentioned, was covered with houses, which remained in excellent condition, to the number of sixty-eight or seventy, up to the commencement of the last century. They were then destroyed; and now the parapets are covered with boxes of old books ranged in graduated prices; whilst shoe-blacks, lucifer-merchants, and beautifiers of lap-dogs occupy the kerb of the pavement.

Benoit descended some rude steps leading from the quay to the river, guiding Louise carefully by the hand; and dragging a boat

towards them, which was lying there in readiness, embarked with his trembling companion, as if to cross the river. But he stopped half way, close to the pier of the bridge, and then the girl saw that they had touched a long low range of what appeared to be houses, which looked as if they floated on the water. And, in effect, they did so; their continuous vibration and the rushing of the river between certain divisions in their substructure, showing that they were boat-mills.

Where are you taking me?" asked Louise timidly.

"To our house,” replied Benoit. "You have nothing to fear. I told you it was an odd dwelling. Now mind how you place your foot on the timber. So: gallantly done."

He assisted her from the boat, which was rocking on the dark stream of the river as it rushed through the arches, on to a few frail steps of wood which hung down from one of the buildings to the water. Then making it fast to one of the piles, he passed with her along a small gallery of boards, and, pushing a door open, entered the floating house.

They were in a small apartment, forming one of a long range which had apparently been built in an enormous lighter; and in one of these the large shaft of a mill-wheel could be seen turning heavily round, as it shook the building, whilst the whole mass oscillated with the peculiar vibration of a floating structure. At a small table in the middle of this chamber, a buxom-looking female, in a half-rustic, half-city attire, was busily at work with her needle, at a rude table. There was little other furniture in this ark. A small stove, some seats, and a few hanging shelves, on which were placed some bottles of coloured fluids, retorts, and little earthenware utensils, used in chemical analysis, completed the list of all that was movable in the room. But the circumstance that struck Louise most upon entering, was the sharp, pungent atmosphere which filled the floating apartment-so noxious that it produced a violent fit of coughing as soon as she inhaled it. Nor was her conductor much less affected.

"Paff!" he exclaimed, as soon as he could speak; "our master is at his work again, brewing devil's drinks and fly-powder. Never mind, ma pauvrette: you will be used to it directly."

The woman had risen from her seat when they entered, and was now casting a suspicious glance at Louise, and an inquiring one at her husband alternately.

"Oh! you have nothing to be jealous of, Bathilde," he continued, addressing his better half. "Here is a country-woman from Béziers, without a friend, and dying for love, for aught I know to the contrary. We must give her a lodging for to-night at least."

"Do not let me intrude," said Louise, turning to the female. "I fear that I am already doing so. Let me be taken on shore again, and I will not put you to inconvenience."

"Not a word of that again, or I shall swear that you are no Languedocian. A pretty journey you would have, admitting you went to your lodgings, from here to the rue Mouffetard-for I suppose you live near the Gobelins. There are dangerous vagabonds at night in the Faubourg Saint Marcel; and they say the young clerks of Cluny study more graceless things in the streets, than learned ones at their college. A woman, young and comely like yourself,

was found in the Bièvre the other morning. I saw them carrying the body to the Val de Grace, myself."

While Benoit was thus talking, his wife had been doing the humble honours of their floating establishment towards their new guest. She had placed her own seat near the fire for Louise; for the evening was chilly, the more so on the river; and next proceeded to lay their frugal supper on the table, consisting of dried apples, a long log of bread, and a measure of wine.

"You will not incommode us, petite," said Bathilde. "You can sleep with me, and Benoit will make his bed amongst the sacks, where he dozes when he has to keep up the doctor's fires all night long."

Bathilde was not two years older than Louise; yet she felt that, being married, she had the position of a matron, and so she patronized her. But it was done with an innocent and good heart.

"Aye, I could sleep anywhere near the old mill-wheel," said Benoit. "Its clicking sends me off like a cradle. The only time I never close my eyes, is at the Toussaint; and that is because I've stopped it. Look at it there! plodding on just as if it were a living thing."

The charlatan's assistant looked affectionately at the beam which was working at the end of the chamber; and then wishing to vent the loving fullness of his heart upon something more sensible of it, he pinched his wife's round chin, and kissed her rosy face with a smack that echoed again.

"Hush!" cried Bathilde; "you will disturb the doctor." And she pointed to a door leading from the apartment.

"Is there any one else here, then?" asked Louise.

"Only my master," replied Benoit. "He came to lodge here when he first arrived in Paris, because he did not want to be disturbed, as he said. Well, he has his wish. His rent pays ours, and I get a trifle for playing his fool. Mass! think of this attire in Languedoc!"

They proceeded with their supper. Benoit fell to it as though he had fasted for a week, but Louise tasted nothing, in spite of all the persuasions of her honest entertainers. She sipped some wine which they insisted on her taking; and then remained sad and pale, in the deepest despondency.

Her gloom appeared to affect the others. The charlatan looked but sadly for his calling; and every now and then, Bathilde turned her large bright eyes from Benoit to Louise, and then back again to Benoit, as if more fully to comprehend the unwonted introduction of her young guest. And sometimes she would assume a little grimace, meant for jealousy, until her husband reassured her with a pantomimical kiss blown across the table.

At last Benoit and his helpmate thought it would be kinder to leave her to her sorrow; and they began, as was their custom, to talk about the events of the day. The interruption of the two young cavaliers was of course mentioned, and was exciting the earnest attention of Louise, when the conversation was broken by the door opening suddenly, at the end of the apartment; and the physician of the Carrefour du Châtelet, passed hastily out, and approached the table.

"Hist! Benoit!" he exclaimed, in a low and somewhat flurried

tone;

some one has gained the mills besides ourselves. Who is that girl?" he said sharply, as his eye fell upon Louise.

A poor country woman whom I have given a lodging to for the night. She works at the Gobelins."

The physician moved towards Louise, and clutching her arm with some force, glared at her with terrible earnestness, as he continued, "You know how this has come about. Who is it?-answer on your sacred soul."

The terrified girl, for a minute, could scarcely reply, until the others repeated his question, when she exclaimed,

"I do not understand you, monsieur.

I have no one in Pa

ris with whom I can exchange a word none, but these good people."

"I do not see how any one could have got to the mill," said Benoit. "I brought over the boat myself from the quay."

"And you have not moved from this room?"
"Never, since I disembarked with this maiden."

"It is strange," said the physician. "I had put out my lamp, the better to watch the colour of a lambent violet flame that played about the crucible. The lights from the bridge fell upon the window, and I distinctly saw the shadow of a human being, if human it were, pass across the curtain on the outside. Hark! there is a noise above!"

There could be now no doubt: the shuffling of feet was plainly audible on the roof of the floating house; but of feet evidently moved with caution.

"I will go and see," cried Benoit, taking down the lamp, which was suspended from one of the beams. "If they are intruders, I can soon warn them off."

"No, no!" cried the chemist eagerly: barricade the door; no one must enter."

"do not leave the room;

"We have nothing to barricade it with," replied Benoit, getting frightened himself at the anxiety of his master. "Oh dear! oh dear! we shall be burnt for witches on the Grêve. I see it all."

"Pshaw! imbecile," cried the other. "Here, you have the table, these chairs. Bring sacks, grain, anything!"

The women had risen from their seats, and retreated into a corner of the apartment near the stove. The physician seized the table, and, implicitly followed by Benoit, was moving towards the door, when there was a violent knocking without, and a command to open it immediately.

It is by the king's order," said Benoit :

66 we cannot resist." He reached the door, and unfastened it before the physician could pull him back, although he attempted to do so. It flew open, and a party of the Guet Royal entered the room, headed by the chief of the marching watch of Paris.

"Antonio Exili," said the captain, pointing his sword towards the physician, "commonly known as the Doctor St. Antonio, a rrest you in the king's name!"

"Exili!" ejaculated Benoit, gazing half aghast at his master.

CHAPTER III.

The Arrest of the Physician.

THE name pronounced was that of an Italian, terrible throughout all Europe; at the mention of whom even crowned heads quailed, and whose black deeds, although far more than matters of surmise, had yet been transacted with such consummate skill and caution as to baffle the keenest inquiries, both of the police and of the profession. Exili, who had been obliged to fly from Rome, as one of the fearful secret poisoners of the epoch, was instructed in his hellish art, it has been presumed, by a Sicilian woman named Spara. She had been the confidante and associate of the infamous Tofana, from whom she acquired the secret at Palermo, where the dreaded preparation which bore her name was sold, with little disguise, in small glass phials, ornamented with some holy image.

Be

Six years previous to the commencement of our romance, a number of suspicious deaths in Rome caused unusual vigilance to be exercised by the police of that city, little wanting at all times in detective instinct; and the result was, the detection of a secret society (of which Spara was at the head, ostensibly as a fortuneteller), to whose members the various deaths were attributed; inasmuch, amongst other suspicious circumstances, as Spara had frequently, in her capacity of sybil, predicted their occurrence. trayed through the jealousy of one of the party, all in the society were arrested, and put to the torture; a few were executed, and others escaped. Amongst these last Exili eluded the punishment no less due to him than to the rest, and flying from Italy, came into France, and finally established himself at Paris, under an assumed name; but his real condition was tolerably well understood by the police, although his depth and care never gave them tangible ground for an arrest. He practised as a simple physician. In this portion of his career little occurred to throw suspicion on his calling; but, driven at length by poverty to sink his dignity in a less precarious method of gaining a livelihood, he had appeared as the mere charlatan, and it was now hinted, that whilst he sold the simplest drugs to the people, poisons of the most subtle and violent nature could be obtained through his agency. Where they came from no one was aware, but their source was attributed, like many other uncertain ones, to the devil. These suspicions were, however, principally confined to the police; the mass looked upon him as an itinerant physician of more than ordinary talents.

Those, indeed, to whom he had administered potions had been known to die; but his skill in pharmacy enabled him to produce his effects as mere aggravated symptoms of the disease he was ostensibly endeavouring to cure. And chemical science, in those days, was so far behind its modern state, that no delicate tests of the presence of poisons-even of those offering the strongest precipitates -were known. At the present time, our poisons have increased to tenfold violence and numbers: yet in no instance, scarcely, could an atom be now administered, without its presence, decomposed or entire, being laid bare on the test-glass of the inquirer.

"Exili," again gasped Benoit, as he drew nearer his wife and Louise; in an agony of fear, also, that the part he bore in the pub