dwarf bookcases, as yet occupied by few day in a lively author some pleasant rebooks, most of them books of reference, marks on the effects of médisance or calothers cheap editions of the French clas- umny upon our impressionable Parisian sics in prose-no poets, no romance- public. If,' says the writer, I found writers with a few Latin authors also myself accused of having put the two in prose - Cicero, Sallust, Tacitus. He towers of Notre Dame into my waistcoatwas engaged at his desk writing a book pocket, I should not dream of defending with its leaves open before him, "Paul myself; I should take to flight. And, Louis Courier," that model of political adds the writer, 'if my best friend were irony and masculine style of composition. under the same accusation, I should be There was a ring at his door-bell. The so afraid of being considered his accomVicomte kept no servant. He rose and plice that I should put my best friend answered the summons. He recoiled a outside the door.' Perhaps, M. Hennefew paces on recognizing his visitor in M. quin, I was seized with the first alarm. Hennequin. Why should I blame you if seized with the second? Happily, this good city of Paris has its reactions. And you can now offer me your hand. Paris has by this time discovered that the two towers of Notre Dame are not in my pocket." There was a pause. De Mauléon had resettled himself at his desk, bending over his papers, and his manner seemed to imply that he considered the conversation at an end.

The Préfet this time did not withdraw his hand; he extended it, but it was with a certain awkwardness and timidity.

"I thought it my duty to call on you, Vicomte, thus early, having already seen M. Enguerrand de Vandemar. He has shown me the copies of the pièces which were inspected by your distinguished kinsmen, and which completely clear you of the charge that, grant me your pardon when I say, seemed to me still to remain unanswered when I had the honour to meet you last night."

"It appears to me, M. Hennequin, that you, as an avocat so eminent, might have convinced yourself very readily of that fact."

"M. le Vicomte, I was in Switzerland with my wife at the time of the unfortunate affair in which you were involved." "But when you returned to Paris, you might perhaps have deigned to make inquiries so affecting the honour of one you had called a friend, and for whom you had professed". De Mauléon paused; "an eternal grati

he disdained to add tude."

Hennequin coloured slightly, but replied with self-possession.

"I certainly did inquire. I did hear that the charge against you with regard to the abstraction of the jewels was withdrawn that you were therefore acquitted by law; but I heard also that society did not acquit you, and that, finding this, you had quitted France. Pardon me again, no one would listen to me when I attempted to speak on your behalf. But now that so many years have elapsed, that the story is imperfectly remembered that relations so high-placed receive you so cordially, now, I rejoice to think that you will have no difficulty in regaining a social position never really lost, but for a time resigned."

-

"I am duly sensible of the friendly joy you express. I was reading the other

But a pang of shame, of remorse, of tender remembrance, shot across the heart of the decorous, worldly, self-seeking man, who owed all that he now was to the ci-divant vaurien before him. Again he stretched forth his hand, and this time grasped De Mauléon's warmly. "Forgive me," he said, feelingly and hoarsely; "forgive me. I was to blame. By character, and perhaps by the necessities of my career, I am over-timid to public opinion, public scandal-forgive me. Say if in anything now I can requite, though but slightly, the service I owe you.'

De Mauléon looked steadily at the Pré

fet, and said slowly, "Would you serve me in turn? are you sincere?"

The Préfet hesitated a moment, then answered firmly, "Yes."

66

Well, then, what I ask of you is a frank opinion- not as lawyer, not as Préfet, but as a man who knows the present state of French society. Give that opinion without respect to my feelings one way or other. Let it emanate solely from your practised judgment."

"Be it so," said Hennequin, wondering what was to come.

De Mauléon resumed.

"As you may remember, during my former career I had no political ambition. I did not meddle with politics. In the troubled times that immediately succeeded the fall of Louis Philippe I was but an epicurean looker-on. Grant that, so far as admission to the salons are concerned,

Of course, in my capacity of Préfet, I have no small influence in my department in support of a Government

"Unless there happen one of those revolutions in which the scum comes uppermost."

"Adieu, my dear Hennequin. My respectful hommages à Madame."

"No fear of that. The subterranean candidate. But I do not think that the barracks and railway have ended forever Imperial Government could, at this time the rise of the scum-the reign of the caespecially, in which it must be very cau-naille and its barricades." tious in selecting its candidates, be induced to recommend you. The affair of the jewels would be raked up - your vin- After that day the writings of Pierre dication disputed, denied — the fact that Firmin in "Le Sens Commun,” though for so many years you have acquiesced in still keeping within the pale of the law, that charge without taking steps to refute became more decidedly hostile to the it-your antecedents, even apart from Imperial system, still without committhat charge your present want of prop- ting their author to any definite proerty (M. Enguerrand tells me your in-gramme of the sort of government that come is but moderate)- the absence of should succeed it. all previous repute in public life. No; relinquish the idea of political contest it would expose you to inevitable mortifications, to a failure that would even jeopardize the admission to the salons which you are now gaining. You could not be a Government candidate."

"Granted. I may have no desire to be one; but an opposition candidate, one of the Liberal party?"

CHAPTER IV.

THE weeks glided on. Isaura's MS. had passed into print; it came out in the French fashion of feuilletons — a small detachment at a time. A previous flourish of trumpets by Savarin and the clique at his command insured it attention, if not from the general public, at least from critical and literary coteries. Before the "As an Imperialist," said Hennequin, fourth instalment appeared it had outsmiling gravely, "and holding the office I grown the patronage of the coteries; it do, it would not become me to encourage seized hold of the public. It was not in a candidate against the Emperor's Gov- the last school in fashion; incidents were ernment. But speaking with the frank- not crowded and violent - they were few ness you solicit, I should say that your and simple, rather appertaining to an chances there are infinitely worse. The elder school, in which poetry of sentiment opposition are in a pitiful minority-the and grace of diction prevailed. That most eminent of the Liberals can scarcely very resemblance to old favourites gave gain seats for themselves; great local it the attraction of novelty. In a word, popularity or property, high established re- it excited a pleased admiration, and great pute for established patriotism, or proved curiosity was felt as to the authorship. talents of oratory and statesmanship, are When it oozed out that it was by the essential qualifications for a seat in the young lady whose future success in the opposition, and even these do not suffice musical world had been so sanguinely for a third of the persons who possess predicted by all who had heard her sing, them. Be again what you were before, the interest wonderfully increased. Petithe hero of salons remote from the turbu- tions to be introduced to her acquaintance lent vulgarity of politics." were showered upon Savarin: before she scarcely realized her dawning fame, she was drawn from her quiet home and retired habits; she was fêtee and courted in the literary circle of which Savarin was a chief. That circle touched, on one side, Bohemia; on the other, that realm of politer fashion which, in every intellectual metropolis, but especially in Paris, seeks

"I am answered. Thank you once more. The service I rendered you once is requited now."

“No, indeed—no; but will you dine with me quietly to-day, and allow me to present to you my wife and two children, born since we parted? I say to-day, for to-morrow I return to my Préfecture."

every chapter, still more interesting; the poor child had a singularly musical gift of style -a music which lent itself naturally to pathos. Every very young writer knows how his work, if one of feeling, will colour itself from the views of some truth

to gain borrowed light from luminaries in art and letters. But the very admiration she obtained somewhat depressed, somewhat troubled her; after all, it did not differ from that which was at her command as a singer. On the one hand, she shrank instinc-in his innermost self; and in proportion tively from the caresses of female authors as it does so, how his absorption in the and the familiar greetings of male au- work increases, till it becomes part and thors, who frankly lived in philosophical parcel of his own mind and heart. The disdain of the conventions respected by presence of a hidden sorrow may change sober, decorous mortals. On the other the fate of the beings he has created, and hand, in the civilities of those who, while guide to the grave those whom, in a hapthey courted a rising celebrity, still held pier vein, he would have united at the altheir habitual existence apart from the tar. It is not till a later stage of experiartistic world, there was a certain air of ence and art that the writer escapes from condescension, of patronage towards the the influence of his individual personality, young stranger with no other protector and lives in existences that take no colbut Signora Venosta, the ci-devant publicouring from his own. Genius usually singer, and who had made her début in a must pass through the subjective process journal edited by M. Gustave Rameau, before it gains the objective. Even a which, however disguised by exaggerated Shakespeare represents himself in the terms of praise, wounded her pride of Sonnets before no trace of himself is visi woman in flattering her vanity as author.ble in a Falstaff or a Lear. Among this latter set were wealthy, high- No news of the Englishman - not a born men, who addressed her as woman word. Isaura could not but feel that in —as woman beautiful and young - with his words, his looks, that day in her own words of gallantry that implied love, but garden, and those yet happier days at certainly no thought of marriage: many Enghien, there had been more than friendof the most ardent were indeed married ship: there had been love-love enough already. But once launched into the to justify her own pride in whispering to thick of Parisian hospitalities, it was dif- herself, “And I love too." But then that ficult to draw back. The Venosta wept last parting! how changed he was — -how at the thought of missing some lively cold! She conjectured that jealousy of soirée, and Savarin laughed at her shrink-Rameau might, in some degree, account ing fastidiousness as that of a child's for the coldness when he first entered the ignorance of the world. But still she had room, but surely not when he left; surely her mornings to herself; and in those not when she had overpassed the reserve mornings, devoted to the continuance of of her sex, and implied by signs rarely her work (for the commencement was in misconstrued by those who love, that he print before a third was completed), she had no cause for jealousy of another. forgot the commonplace world that re- Yet he had gone-parted with her pointceived her in the evenings. Insensibly edly as a friend, a mere friend. How to herself the tone of this work had foolish she had been to think this rich changed as it proceeded. It had begun ambitious foreigner could ever have seriously, indeed, but in the seriousness meant to be more! In the occupation of there was a certain latent joy. It might her work she thought to banish his be the joy of having found vent of utter-image; but in that work the image was ance; it might be rather a joy still more never absent; there were passages in latent, inspired by the remembrance of Graham's words and looks, and by the thought that she had renounced all idea of the professional career which he had evidently disapproved. Life then seemed to her a bright possession. We have seen that she had begun her roman without planning how it should end. She had, however, then meant it to end, somehow or other, happily. Now the lustre had gone from life-the tone of the work was saddened it foreboded a tragic close. But for the general reader it became, with

which she pleadingly addressed it, and then would cease abruptly, stifled by passionate tears. Still she fancied that the work would reunite them; that in its pages he would hear her voice and comprehend her heart. And thus all praise of the work became very, very dear to her.

At last, after many weeks, Savarin heard from Graham. The letter was dated Aix-la-Chapelle, at which the Englishman said he might yet be some time detained. In the letter Graham spoke chiefly of the

dignity of letters when he goes to dine with the duchesses who are some day or other to invite him. Yet I admire his self-confidence, though I laugh at it. A man gets on by a spring in his own mechanism, and he should always keep it wound up. Rameau will make a figure. I used to pity him. I begin to respect; nothing succeeds like success. But I see I am spoiling your morning. Au revoir, mon enfant."

new journal: in polite compliment of Savarin's own effusions; in mixed praise and condemnation of the political and social articles signed Pierre Firmin praise of their intellectual power, condemnation of their moral cynicism. "The writer," he said, "reminds me of a passage in which Montesquieu compares the heathen philosophers to those plants which the earth produces in places that have never seen the heavens. The soil of his experience does not grow a single Left alone, Isaura brooded in a sort of belief; and as no community can exist mournful wonderment over the words rewithout a belief of some kind, so a poli- ferring to herself in Graham's letter. tician without belief can but help to de- Read though but once, she knew them by stroy; he cannot reconstruct. Such heart. What! did he consider those writers corrupt a society; they do not re- characters she had represented, as wholly form a system." He closed his letter with imaginary? In one - the most promia reference to Isaura: "Do, in your re-nent, the most attractive — could he deply, my dear Savarin, tell me something tect no likeness to himself? What! did about your friends Signora Venosta and he consider so "over-romantic and exthe Signorina, whose work, so far as yet aggerated"-sentiments which couched published, I have read with admiring as- appeals from her heart to his? Alas! in tonishment at the power of a female writ-matters of sentiment it is the misfortune er so young to rival the veteran practi- of us men that even the most refined of tioners of fiction in the creation of us often grate upon some sentiment in a interest in imaginary characters, and in sentiments which, if they appear somewhat over-romantic and exaggerated, still touch very fine chords in human nature not awakened in our trite everyday existence. I presume that the beauty of the roman has been duly appreciated by a public so refined as the Parisian, and that the name of the author is generally known. No doubt she is now much the rage of the literary circles, and her career as a writer may be considered fixed. Pray present my congratulations to the Signorina when you see her."

Savarin had been in receipt of this letter some days before he called on Isaura, and carelessly showed it to her. She took it to the window to read, in order to conceal the trembling of her hands. In a few minutes she returned it silently.

"Those Englishmen," said Savarin, "have not the art of compliment. I am by no means flattered by what he says of my trifles, and I daresay you are still less pleased with this chilly praise of your charming tale; but the man means to be civil."

66 Only think of Rameau," resumed Savarin ; on the strength of his salary in the 'Sens Commun,' and on the châteaux en Espagne which he constructs thereon he has already furnished an apartment | in the Chaussée d'Antin, and talks of setting up a coupé in order to maintain the

woman, though she may not be romantic - not romantic at all, as people go,some sentiment which she thought must be so obvious, if we cared a straw about her, and which, though we prize her above the Indies, is, by our dim, horn-eyed masculine vision, undiscernible. It may be something in itself the airest of trifles; the anniversary of a day in which the first kiss was interchanged, nay, of a violet gathered, a misunderstanding cleared up; and of that anniversary we remem ber no more than we do of our bells and coral. But she-she remembers it; it is no bells and coral to her. Of course, much is to be said in excuse of man, brute though he be. Consider the mul tiplicity of his occupations, the practical nature of his cares. But granting the validity of all such excuse, there is in man an original obtuseness of fibre as regards sentiment in comparison with the delicacy of woman's. It comes, perhaps, from the same hardness of constitution which forbids us the luxury of ready tears. Thus it is very difficult for the wisest man to understand thoroughly a woman. Goethe says somewhere that the highest genius in man must have much of the woman in it. If this be true, the highest genius alone in man can comprehend and explain the nature of woman; because it is not remote from him, but an integral part of his masculine self. I am not sure, however, that it necessitates the highest genius, but rather a special idio

beauty of form which clothed them; his heart envied the ideal that inspired them. But they seemed so remote from him; they put the dream-land of the writer farther and farther from his work-day real life.

syncrasy in genius which the highest ideal, already seen perhaps, compared to may or may not have. I think Sopho- which how commonplace am I!" and cles a higher genius than Euripides; but thus persuading himself, no wonder that Euripides has that idiosyncrasy, and Soph- the sentiments surrounding this unrecogocles not. I doubt whether women would nized archetype appeared to him overaccept Goethe as their interpreter with romantic. His taste acknowledged the the same readiness with which they would accept Schiller. Shakespeare, no doubt, excels all poets in the comprehension of women, in his sympathy with them in the woman-part of his nature which Goethe ascribes to the highest genius; but, putting aside that "monster," I do not re- In this frame of mind, then, he had member any English poet whom we written to Savarin, and the answer he reshould consider conspicuously eminent ceived hardened it still more. Savarin in that lore, unless it be the prose poet, had replied, as was his laudable wont in nowadays generally underrated and little correspondence, the very day he received read, who wrote the letters of Clarissa Graham's letter, and therefore before he Harlowe. I say all this in vindication of had even seen Isaura. In his reply, he Graham Vane, if, though a very clever spoke much of the success her work had man in his way, and by no means unin- obtained; of the invitations showered structed in human nature, he had utterly upon her, and the sensation she caused failed in comprehending the mysteries in the salons; of her future career, with which to this poor woman-child seemed to need no key for one who really loved her. But we have said somewhere before in this book that music speaks in a language which cannot explain itself except in music. So speaks, in the human heart, much which is akin to music. Fiction (that is, poetry, whether in form of rhyme or prose) speaks thus pretty often. A reader must be more commonplace than, I trust, my gentle readers are, if he suppose that when Isaura symbolized the real hero of her thoughts in the fabled hero of her romance, she depicted him as one of whom the world could say, “That is Graham Vane." I doubt if even male poet would so vulgarize any woman whom he thoroughly reverenced and loved. She is too sacred to him to be thus unveiled to the public stare; as the sweetest of all ancient love-poets says well

a

Qui sapit in tacito gaudeat ille sinu. But a girl, a girl in her first untold timid love, to let the world know," that is the man I love and would die for!”—if such a girl be, she has no touch of the true woman-genius, and certainly she and Isaura have nothing in common. Well, then, in Isaura's invented hero, though she saw the archetypal form of Graham Vane

hope that she might even rival Madame de Grantmesnil some day, when her ideas became emboldened by maturer experience, and a closer study of that model of eloquent style,- saying that the young editor was evidently becoming enamoured of his fair contributor; and that Madame Savarin had ventured the prediction that the Signorina's roman would end in the death of the heroine, and the marriage of the writer.

From Good Words.

THE COLLIERS OF CARRICK.

COMPARATIVELY few of the many hundreds of tourists who flock every summer to that part of Scotland which the guidebooks have styled "The Land of Burns" find their way farther south than "Alloway's auld haunted kirk" and the famous "brig" which lay so opportunely in Tam o'Shanter's line of retreat. When the weather is clear, they get a distant_view of the hills, which rise beyond the Doon with no striking outlines, nor with sufficient loftiness to form a notable feature in the remoter landscape. And yet if the visitor whose time and route are at his own disposal will bravely penetrate these saw him as in her young, vague, romantic far uplands, he will find much, both in dreams, idealized, beautified, transfigured the way of scenery and of historic and - he would have been the vainest of legendary interest, to reward his entermen if he had seen therein the reflection prise. It is a lonely pastoral region, of himself. On the contrary, he said, in deeply trenched with long and narrow the spirit of that jealousy to which he was valleys, which in their seaward portions too prone, "Alas! this, then, is some are always well-wooded, and then contrast LIVING AGE. VOL. II. 88