and Madame la Maréchale, of the present | ties so becoming a cousin. But seat Duchesse herself, and of some of the yourselves here, Messieurs, close to my principal ladies of the Court. arm-chair, causons."

The Duchesse spoke with a warmth of emotion which startled and profoundly affected Alain. He remained silent, leaving it to Enguerrand to answer.

the midst of her need than I am,— I, a | IV., and has a right to reign. Madame, woman who can but talk and weep.' you appeal to us as among the representatives of the chivalrous deeds and loyal devotion which characterized the old nobility of France. Should we deserve that character if we forsook the unfortunate, and gained wealth and honour in forsaking?"

not

Dear Madame," said the latter, "I do not see how either myself or our kinsman can merit your reproach. We are legislators. I doubt if there is a single department in France that would elect us, if we offered ourselves. It is not our fault if the various floods of revolution leave men of our birth and opinions stranded wrecks of a perished world. The Emperor chooses his own advisers, and if they are bad ones, his Majesty certainly will not ask Alain and me to replace them."

"Your words endear you to me. I am proud to call you cousin," said the Duchesse. "But do you, or does any man in his senses believe that if you upset the Empire you could get back the Bourbons? that you would not be in imminent danger of a Government infinitely more opposed to the theories on which rests the creed of Legitimists than that of Louis Napoléon? After all, what is there in the loyalty of you Bourbonites that has "You do not answer - you evade me," in it the solid worth of an argument said the Duchesse, with a mournful smile. which can appeal to the comprehension "You are too skilled a man of the world, of mankind, except it be the principle of M. Enguerrand, not to know that it is not a hereditary monarchy? Nobody nowaonly legislators and ministers that are days can maintain the right divine of a necessary to the support of a throne, and single regal family to impose itself upon the safeguard of a nation. Do you not a nation. That dogma has ceased to be see how great a help it is to both throne a living principle; it is only a dead remand nation, when that section of public iniscence. But the institution of monopinion which is represented by names archy is a principle strong and vital, and illustrious in history, identified with rec- appealing to the practical interests of vast ords of chivalrous deeds and loyal devo- sections of society. Would you sacrifice tion, rallies round the order established? the principle which concerns the welfare Let that section of public opinion stand of millions, because you cannot embody aloof, soured and discontented, excluded it in the person of an individual utterly from active life, lending no counterbal- insignificant in himself? In a word, if ance to the perilous oscillations of demo-you prefer monarchy to the hazard of cratic passion, and tell me if it is not an republicanism for such a country as enemy to itself as well as a traitor to the principles it embodies ?"

France, accept the monarchy you find, since it is quite clear you cannot rebuild "The principles it embodies, Madame," the monarchy you would prefer. Does said Alain," are those of fidelity to a race it not embrace all the great objects of kings unjustly set aside, less for the for which you call yourself Legitimist? vices than the virtues of ancestors. Louis Under it religion is honoured, a national XV. was the worst of the Bourbons,-he Church secured, in reality if not in name; was the bien aimé,- he escapes; Louis under it you have united the votes of XVI. was in moral attributes the best of millions to the establishment of the the Bourbons, he dies the death of a throne; under it all the material interests felon; Louis XVIII., against whom much of the country, commercial, agricultural, may be said, restored to the throne by have advanced with an unequalled rapidity foreign bayonets, reigning as a disciple of progress; under it Paris has become of Voltaire might reign, secretly scoffing the wonder of the world for riches, for alike at the royalty and the religion which splendour, for grace and beauty; under were crowned in his person, dies peace- it the old traditional enemies of France fully in his bed; Charles X., redeeming have been humbled and rendered impothe errors of his youth by a reign untar- tent. The policy of Richelieu has been nished by a vice, by a religion earnest achieved in the abasement of Austria; and sincere, is sent into exile for defend- the policy of Napoléon I. has been coning established order from the very in- summated in the salvation of Europe from roads which you lament. He leaves an the semi-barbarous ambition of Russia. heir against whom calumny cannot invent England no longer casts her trident in a tale, and that heir remains an outlaw the opposite scale of the balance of simply because he descends from Henry European power. Satisfied with the hon

"I am glad to think he is under so salutary an influence," said the Duchesse ; and seeing that Alain remained silent and thoughtful, she wisely changed the subject, and shortly afterwards the two friends took leave.

CHAPTER IV.

our of our alliance, she has lost every advice to him is not hostile to your exother ally; and her forces neglected, her hortations." spirit enervated, her statesmen dreaming believers in the safety of their island, provided they withdraw from the affairs of Europe, may sometimes scold us, but will certainly not dare to fight. With France she is but an inferior satellite, without France she is nothing. Add to all this a Court more brilliant than that of Louis XIV., a sovereign not indeed without faults and errors, but singularly mild in his nature, warm-hearted to friends, forgiving to foes, whom personally no one could familiarly know and not be charmed with a bonté of character lovable as that of Henri IV.,- and tell me what more than all this could you expect from the reign of a Bourbon?

"With such results," said Alain, " from the monarchy you so eloquently praise, I fail to discover what the Emperor's throne could possibly gain by a few powerless converts from an unpopular, and you say, no doubt truly, from a hopeless cause.'

THREE days elapsed before Graham again saw M. Lebeau. The letter-writer did not show himself at the café, and was not to be found at his office, the ordinary business of which was transacted by his clerk, saying that his master was much engaged on important matters that took him from home.

Graham naturally thought that these matters concerned the discovery of Louise Duval, and was reconciled to suspense. At the café, awaiting Lebeau, he had slid into some acquaintance with the ouvrier Armand Monnier, whose face and talk had before excited his interest. Indeed, "I say monarchy gains much by the loy- the acquaintance had been commenced by al adhesion of any man of courage, ability, the ouvrier, who seated himself at a table and honour. Every new monarchy gains near to Graham's, and after looking at him much by conversions from the ranks by earnestly for some minutes said, "You which the older monarchies were strength-are waiting for your antagonist at domened and adorned. But I do not here in- inoes, M. Lebeau -a very remarkable voke your aid merely to this monarchy, man.' my cousin; I demand your devotion to the interests of France; I demand that you should not rest an outlaw from her service. Ah, you think that France is in no danger-that you may desert or oppose the Empire as you list, and that society will remain safe! You are mistaken. Ask Enguerrand."

I

66

'Madame," said Enguerrand, "you overrate my political knowledge in that appeal; but, honestly speaking, I subscribe to your reasonings. I agree with you that the Empire sorely needs the support of men of honour: it has one cause of rot which now undermines it dishonest jobbery in its administrative departments; even in that of the army, which apparently is so heeded and cared for. agree with you that France is in danger, and may need the swords of all her better sons, whether against the foreigner or against her worst enemies the mobs of her great towns. I myself received a military education, and but for my reluctance to separate myself from my father and Raoul, I should be a candidate for employments more congenial to me than those of the Bourse and my trade in the glove-shop. But Alain is happily free from all family ties, and Alain knows that my

"So he seems. I know, however, but little of him. You, perhaps, have known him longer?"

"Several months. Many of your countrymen frequent this cafe, but you do not seem to care to associate with the blouses."

"It is not that; but we islanders are shy, and don't make acquaintance with each other readily. By the way, since you so courteously accost me, I may take the liberty of saying that I overheard you defend the other night, against one of my countrymen, who seemed to me to talk great nonsense, the existence of le Bon Dieu. You had much the best of it. I rather gathered from your argument that you went somewhat farther, and were not too enlightened to admit of Christianity."

Armand Monnier looked pleased — he liked praise; and he liked to hear himself talk, and he plunged at once into a very complicated sort of Christianity — partly Arian, partly St. Simonian, with a little of Rousseau and a great deal of Armand Monnier. Into this we need not follow him; but in sum it was a sort of Christianity, the main heads of which consisted in the removal of your neighbour's land

The next evening, just before dusk, Graham Vane was seated musingly in his own apartment in the Faubourg Montmartre, when there came a slight knock at his door. He was so wrapt in thought that he did not hear the sound, though

marks in the right of the poor to appro- | to the Englishman and joined a group at priate the property of the rich in the the other end of the room. right of love to dispense with marriage, and the duty of the State to provide for any children that might result from such union, the parents being incapacitated to do so, as whatever they might leave was due to the treasury in common. Graham listened to these doctrines with melan-twice repeated. The door opened gently, choly not unmixed with contempt. "Are these opinions of yours," he asked, "derived from reading or your own reflection?"

and M. Lebeau appeared on the threshold. The room was lighted only by the gaslamp from the street without.

Startled then by the voice so near him, Graham raised his head, looked round, and beheld very indistinctly the person seated so near him.

"M. Lebeau ?"

Lebeau advanced through the gloom, "Well, from both, but from circum- and quietly seated himself in the corner stances in life that induced me to read of the fireplace opposite to Graham beand reflect. I am one of the many vic-fore he spoke. “A thousand pardons for tims of the tyrannical law of marriage. disturbing your slumbers, M. Lamb." When very young I married a woman who made me miserable, and then forsook me. Morally, she has ceased to be my wifelegally, she is. I then met with another woman who suits me, who loves me. She lives with me; I cannot marry her; she has to submit to humiliations, to be called contemptuously an ouvrier's mistress. Then, though before I was only a Republican, I felt there was something wrong in society which needed a greater change than that of a merely political government; and then, too, when I was all troubled and sore, I chanced to read one of Madame de Grantmesnil's books. A glorious genius that woman's!"

"She has genius, certainly," said Graham, with a keen pang at his heart; Madame de Grantmeşnil, the dearest friend of Isaura! "But," he added, "though I believe that eloquent author has indirectly assailed certain social institutions, including that of marriage, I am perfectly persuaded that she never designed to effect such complete overthrow of the system which all civilized communities have hitherto held in reverence, as your doctrines would attempt; and after all, she but expresses her ideas through the medium of fabulous incidents and characters. And men of your sense should not look for a creed in the fictions of poets and romancewriters."

"Ah," said Monnier, "I daresay neither Madame de Grantmesnil nor even Rousseau ever even guessed the ideas they awoke in their readers; but one idea leads on to another. And genuine poetry and romance touch the heart so much more than dry treatises. In a word, Madame de Grantmesnil's book set me thinking; and then I read other books, and talked with clever men, and educated myself. And so I became the man I am." Here, with a self-satisfied air, Monnier bowed

"At your service. I promised to give an answer to your question: accept my apologies that it has been deferred so long. I shall not this evening go to our cafe; I took the liberty of calling "M. Lebeau, you are a brick.'

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A what, Monsieur ! a brique?" "I forgot you are not up to our fashionable London idioms. A brick means a jolly fellow, and it is very kind in you to call. What is your decision?"

"Monsieur, I can give you some information, but it is so slight that I offer it gratis, and forego all thought of undertaking farther inquiries. They could only be prosecuted in another country, and it would not be worth my while to leave Paris on the chance of gaining so trifling a reward as you propose. Judge for yourself. In the year 1849, and in the month of July, Louise Duval left Paris for Aixla-Chapelle. There she remained some weeks, and then left it. I can learn no farther traces of her movements."

"Aix-la-Chapelle !—what could she do

there?"

others? You tell me she was awfully reasons that forbid me to offer any very belle she might have attracted ad