*

*

*

The Bloody Tribunal sat at the Luxembourg. Short and sharp were its decisions. Prisoner after prisoner walked through as it were walked like the Venetians of old into the Council of the Ten to pass out by the staircase which descended beneath the Bridge of Sighs. Comte Robert de Rochmont claimed a little more time than his fellows, on account of some questions as to his polit ical opinions which were put by one of the judges, and which made it appear that he was of liberal tendencies. These questions roused Fouquier-Tinville, who darted upon the said judge a look of dangerous scorn, and called the chief witness, Collot-Fournier, who deposed that his master bad fled from Lyons carrying his treasures with him, which treasures he had made away with in a manner unknown to the deponent, with a view to escaping out of France and joining the emigrés; that he had been arrested on the order of Collot-d'Herbois but had got away in a wood by reason of the very culpable neglect of the gendarmes who had him in charge, while he, who had alone followed him with a view to his arrest, had been shot and left for dead by the prisoner. Tinville turned from the witness to the jury and simply shrugged his shoulders. The verdict was instantaneous, and De Rochmont moved back to the Conciergerie, there to pass the last few hours of his life.

Collot left the court alone. He might have posed with the tricoteuses as a hero, but he feared public approval, which has a knack of marking a man and keeping him in view; whereas he only wished to get away down south to a certain hid den treasure, now left at his absolute disposal. He therefore slunk away through the gardens of the Luxembourg into the Quartier Latin, and thence through several courts into the neighbor hood of the Odéon, where he entered a third-class restaurant and called for his

dinner. It was a dark and dismal hole of a place, but large and full of people, wno had only twenty sous to spend on three courses and a dessert, wine included. Of course he did not notice-why should he?-two other men, who entered soon after himself, and sat down as he had done to their dinner, nor was he conscious of a third who sat at a table alone very busy with the latest revolutionary journal. Collot was in no hurry to move. He had done his day's work and had no very particular occupation until to-morrow morning at eight A. M., when he hoped to assist at the last scene of a drama in which he had taken a rather prominent part. He called for another bottle of wine, lighted his pipe, rolled about in his chair with the air of a bon vivant who saw his way to many another dinner of a more sumptuous character. About seven P.M. he paid his bill and went out to a neighboring Jacobin club with which he had become affiliated, and applauded with the best of them, all the while quite unconscious of certain citizens who, sitting a little behind, were as prodigal of applause as himself. The club broke up about eleven at night, and Collot paced his way reluctantly toward his garret. Neither then was he aware of the interest which he excited, nor did he notice that ere he entered his abode, one dark form had glided in before him and pressed hastily up the stairs, nor did he see another pass in after him with noiseless tread, nor did it concern him at all that a third outside went in search of a cab as soon as he had entered. Only he was conscious as he reached his own door, and was in the act of turning the key in the darkness-for gas was not invented in those days-of a certain sledge-hammer-like blow on his head, which felled him down like an ox; beyond this he was not conscious at all for at least half an hour after the event, when he awoke to find himself in the presence of two strangers, who seemed very kind to him, for one had brandy and a glass which he offered to him with many protestations against the violence of the times and the brutality of the man who had been arrested as he fled down-stairs after dealing the citizen a blow. Collot asked him who he was, to which he replied that he was a police agent who had assisted to catch

the fellow as he was escaping, and had now come in to see what he could do. This quieted the sufferer, who immediately took a good draught of the brandy which the kindly Samaritan offered him, and felt so much better that he could stand up, and began to sing facetious songs. He hardly knew how it happened, but he soon found himself tottering down-stairs between the two police agents and seated in a cab on his way to make his deposition about the assault at the police station, which seemed to him a very imposing building, before which was posted a sentry, talking to another gentleman in official garments, nor was he very much astounded when the same official, producing a bunch of keys, opened the door of an immense hall in which he dimly saw many men and women, and passed him rapidly into a little apartment where he supposed he was to meet the superintendent or night magistrate, only he felt very dizzy and tottery on account of his recent sledgehammer experience. But he was excessively amazed, and thought his mind must be failing or his head much injured, when in that little room he stood face to face with his late master, Robert Comte de Rochmont. The door had been shut behind him. The shock gathered into a focus his dazed faculties, and he quite understood the awful words which that master addressed to him: Collot, you were my servant; you owed me fidelity and service, you paid me with treachery and deceit. Now I reward you as all unfaithful servants will be rewarded in the last great day of judgment--I condemn you, as your judge, to die in my stead on the guillotine, and my only regret is that you will die under a great name instead of your own vile and cursed patronymic. Collot, to-morrow you will die in my stead; you have testified against your own life, and may God have mercy on your soul." Then the light was extinguished, the door opened, and a fit of dizziness overtook the culprit from which he did not recover until a certain eventful moment which this history shall reveal.

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As three men had entered, so three men left the Conciergerie by favor of the sentinel, and when no eyes were watch ing, somewhere about an hour after midnight. Next morning punctually at

eight A.M. the governor appeared at the door of the great hall and called over the names of the unfortunates who one by one passed out to take their places in the tumbrils which were to carry them to that great political persuader of the day, commonly called the guillotine. When the name of the citizen Robert de Rochmont was called, no one answered, and there was a stir among the officials. Roux made his way to a Ittle room near the door and called out that the prisoner seemed to be dead or dying, upon which the governor pressed in, and casting his bloodshot eyes upon a man lying with his face to the floor, dressed as the Count had been over night, gave the body a kick with his heavy boot, but it moved not, which seemed to put him in a passion.

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Curse the aristocrat, he shall not escape for all his dodges; pitch him into the cart and tell Samsom to cut off his head, dead or alive.'

Roux without hesitation grasped the limp body, lifted it on his shoulder, and pitched it into the tumbril, where it fell among the legs of the other passengers and subsided into the dirty straw.

These poor wretches scarce noticed their companion, amid the din and confusion of a strong military guard on the inside, and a stronger population guard on the outside which conducted them to the place of execution.

Before, however, they reached Samson's headquarters there was a stirring beneath their feet in the straw, and presently a head with a white face lifted itself up with a stare of mingled confusion and horror. The head turned round and round as if seeking to find out where it was, and at last, seeming to become conscious of its situation, cried out: Where am I?"""

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Alas! alas!'' replied a poor fellowsufferer, you are in the death tumbril on the way to the guillotine.'

Guillotine!" shrieked the head, "why, I am Collot-Fournier, cousin of Collot-d' Herbois; I have never been judged or condemned.

Poor man, said the others one to another, poor Count, he has lost his senses.

'I am not a count, but a good citizen,'' again shrieked the head.

Quiet there in the cart," replied the soldier nearest the head.

ing something more than a nuisance; it is said to be a threatening danger which before long it will be necessary either to overcome or be vanquished by; and unfortunately the enemy is still gaining ground with immense strides, every year paying us longer visits at less frequent intervals. Without anticipating the dismal ending prophesied in the well-known pamphlet, The Doom of the Great City, most of us must look forward with increasing anxiety to each successive year, wondering if the winter is coming at last wherein the climax will be reached of no sky being visible at all from the last days of autumn to well on in so-called spring.

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The question has of late years been much debated, and theories of many kinds put forward, till one is almost tempted to agree with the argument that, theory or no theory, the fogs still come, and, therefore, we had better just make up our minds to their existence and endurance. But it may be new to some readers to know that fog can exist altogether without smoke-can, indeed, be as frequent and dense in the total absence of the latter as with it; though, of course, in the yellow or black fogs which cast their gloom over our towns smoke forms a large constituent. Nevertheless fogs, pure and simple, are not caused by smoke, but by dust, not the dust of the streets or chimneys, but the dust of invisible atmospheric molecules.

The same sense of infinite wonder that is excited by the knowledge that the miles and miles of chalk clifts along our southern shores have been formed by the microscopically minute bodies of incalculable numbers of insect toilers-that in every drop of stagnant water in the thousands of pools and streams scattered everywhere there is life in abundance, is stimulated by an acquaintance with what the results of recent scientific inquiry lay before us respecting the properties and place in the world's economy of dust. What then is this material which at once occupies such importance, and at the same time is arraigned as the main cause of what makes our winters so disagreeable? The question is one natural to rise on the first inquiry into the subject, although as yet science has been unable to give a reliable and definite reply; but one thing is certain, and that is that the

atmospheric dust, which is always and everywhere around us, consists of minute particles naturally thrown off from many substances, and is altogether dissociate from anything artifically created by the inventions and usages of man. Few can have failed to notice how, on entering a darkened room, the track of any stray sunbeam is at once discernible, apparently the ray being filled with dancing motes; these golden-hued particles are known to be dust, made visible by their transparent films reflecting the light of the beam through which they pass. But one beam only shows the hundreds of motes within its own compass, so that it is not at once realizable that the whole room, from floor to ceiling, is similarly thronged; and as it is in a darkened room so it is, in varying degrees, in that greater room of which the sea and dry land are the floor and the heavens the covering. This dust, minute, even microscopical as it is, is destructible, either by being heated to a very high temperature or passed through a flame, in either case the resu't being that the path of the sun's rays becomes invisible.

It may surprise some to learn that in all probability one of the chief sources of atmospheric dust is the ocean-spray, drawn up and refined by the sun's heat till nothing but a fine salt dust is left, this being created ceaselessly from the vast surfaces of unmeasured oceans, and as ceaselessly tranfused throughout space with the incalculable "waste" of other similar particles endlessly in action, such as those from desert places or those given off by meteoric bodies, by condensed natural gases, and by volcanic agencies. In saying that this dust, as perceptible in a sunbeam in a darkened room, was destructible, I should have added destructible in so far as rendering it invisible for Mr. Aitkin has proved, to use his own words,* that "heating the air may cause the dust motes to become invisible; but so far as my experiments go, they prove that the heating of the air. by the flame does not remove the dust, but rather acts in the opposite way, and increases the number of the particles.

*This article is based throughout upon two most interesting and important Papers by Mr.

John Aitken, F.R.S.E., read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Subject, "On Dust, Fog, and Clouds."