of an angel. I have never been very happy; I think sometimes, monsieur, that we others, who care much for art, are not permitted that. But certainly those few rapid days when she was a child were good; and yet they were the days of my defeat. I found myself out then. I was never to be a great artist, a maestro ; a second-rate man, a good music-teacher for young ladies, a capable performer in an orchestra, what you will, but a great artist, never! Yet in those days, even when ny opera failed, I had consolation. I could say, I have a child! I would have kept her with me always, but it could not be; from the very first she would be a singer. I knew always that a day would come when she would not need me. She was meant to be the world's delight, and I had no right to keep her, even if I could. I held my beautiful strange bird in her cage, until she beat her wings against the bars; then I opened the door. At the last, I think, that is all we can do for our children, our best beloved, our very heart-strings; stand free of them ; let them go. The world is very weary,

but we must all find that out for ourselves. Perhaps when they are tired they will come home; perhaps not, perhaps not. It was to the Conservatoire at Milan that I sent her finally, and it was at La Scala that she afterward appeared. And at La Scala too, poor child, she met her evil genius, the man named Romanoff, a baritone in her company, own son of the devil, whom she married. Ah, if I could have prevented it, if I could have prevented it!''

He lapsed into a long silence; a great weariness seemed to have come over him; and in the gray light which filtered in through the dingy window blinds his face was pinched and wasted, unutterably old

He stopped me with a solemn appealing gesture.

You are young, and you do not altogether understand. You must not judge her; you must not believe that she forgets, that she does not care. Only it is better like this, because it could never be as before. I could not help her. I want nothing that she can give me, no, not anything; I have my memories. I hear of her from time to time; I hear what the world says of her, the imbecile world, and I smile. Do I not know best ?-I, who carried her in my arms when she was that high !"

III..

I SAW him once more at the little restaurant in Soho, before a sudden change of fortune, calling me abroad for an absence, as it happened, of years, closed the habit of our society. He gave, me the God-speed of a brother artist, though mine was not the way of music, with many prophecies of my success; and the pressure of his hand as he took leave of me was tremulous.

66 I am an old man, monsieur, and we may not meet again in this world. I wish you all the chances you deserve in Paris; but I-I shall greatly miss you. If you come back in time you will find me in the old places; and if not-there are things of mine which I should wish you to have, that shall be sent you.

And indeed it proved to be our last meeting. I went to Paris; a fitful correspondence intervened, grew infrequent, ceased; then a little later came to me the notification, very brief and official, of his death in the French Hospital of pneumonia. It was followed by a few remem.. brances of him, sent at his request, I learned, by the priest who had administered to him the last offices: some books that he had greatly cherished, works of Gluck, for the most part; an antique ivory crucifix of very curious workmanship; and his violin, a beautiful instrument dated 1670 and made at Nuremberg, yet with a tone which seemed to me at least as fine as that of the Cremonas. had an intrinsic value to me apart from its associations, for I too was something of an amateur, and since this seasoned melodious wood had come into my possession, I was inspired to take my facility

It

more seriously. To play in public, indeed, I had neither leisure nor desire: but in certain salons of my acquaintance, where music was much in vogue, I made from time to time a desultory appearance. I set down these facts because, as it happened, this ineffectual talent of mine which poor Cristich's legacy had recalled to life was to procure me an interesting encounter. I had played at a house where I was a stranger, brought there by a friend, to whose insistence I had yielded somewhat reluctantly, although he had assured me and, I believe, with reason— that it was a house where the indirect or Attic invitation greatly prevailed-in brief, a place where one met very queer people. The hostess was American, a charming woman of unimpeachable antecedents, but whose passion for society, which, while it must always be interesting, need not always be equally reputable, had exposed her evenings to the suspicion of her compatriots. And when I had discharged my part in the programme and had leisure to look around me, I saw at a glance that their suspicion was justified; very queer people indeed were there. The large, hot rooms were cosmopolitan-infidels and Jews, everybody and nobody; a scandalously promiscuous assemblage! And there with a half start, which was not at first recognition, my eyes stopped before a face which brought me a confused rush of memories. It was that of a woman, who sat on an ottoman in the smallest room which was almost empty. Her companion was a small vivacious man, with a gray imperial and the red ribbon in his buttonhole, to whose continuous stream of talk, eked out with meridional gestures, she had the air of being listlessly resigned. Her dress, a marvel of discretion, its color the yellow of old ivory, was of some very rich and stiff stuff cut high to her neck; that, and her great black hair, clustered to a crimson rose at the top of her head, made the pallor of her face a thing to marvel at. Her beauty was at once sombre and illuminating, and youthful too. It was the woman of thirty; but her complexion, and her arms, which were bare, were soft in texture as a young girl's.

I made my way, as well as I could for the crowd, to my hostess, listened, with what patience I might, to some polite praise of my playing, and made my request.

66

"Oh, for that!" she smiled elliptically; yes, she is most dangerous. But I will introduce you; you shall tell me how you succeed."

I bowed and smiled; she laid a light hand on my arm, and I piloted her to the desired corner. It seemed that the chance was with me. The little, fluent foreigner had just vacated his seat; and when the prima donna had acknowledged the hasty mention of my name, with a bare inclination of her head, I was emboldened to succeed to it. And then I was silent. In the perfection of that dolorous face I could not but be reminded of the tradition which has always ascribed something fatal and inevitable to the possession of great gifts, of genius, or uncommon fortune, or a singular personal beauty, and the commonplace of conversation failed

me.

After a while she looked askance at me, with a sudden flash of resentment.

"You speak no French, monsieur ! And yet you write it well enough; I have read your stories."

I acknowledged Madame's irony, permitting myself to hope that my efforts had met with Madame's approval.

"A la bonne heure! I perceive you also speak it. Is that why you wished to be presented, to hear my criticisms?"'

"Let me answer that question when you have answered mine."

She glanced curiously over her feathered fan, then with the slightest upward inclination of her statuesque shoulders," I admire your books; but are you women quite just? I prefer your playing."

66

That is better, Madame! It was to talk of that I came.'

"Your playing?"

how ill you think of me. I beg you to keep it."

The music had died away suddenly, and its ceasing had been followed by a loud murmur of applause. The prima donna rose, and stood for a moment, observing me irresolutely.

"I leave you and your violin, mon. sieur ! I have to sing presently, with such voice as our talk has left me. I bid you both adieu."

"Ah, madame!" I deprecated, "you will think again of this. I will send it you in the morning. I have no right-" She shook her head; then with a sudden flash of amusement, or fantasy,“I agree, monsieur, on a condition. To prove your penitence you shall bring it me yourself.

me.

I professed that her favor overpowered She named an hour when she would be at home; an address in the Avenue Des Champs Elysées, which I noted on my tablets.

"Not adieu, then, monsieur; but au revoir !"

I bowed perplexedly, holding the curtain aside to let her sweep through; and once more she turned back, gathering up her voluminous train, to repeat with a glance and accent, which I found mystifying: "Remember, monsieur, it is only

au revoir !"

That last glimpse of her, with the strange mockery and an almost elfish malice in her fine eyes, went home with me later, to cause vague disquiet and fresh suspicion of her truth. The spell of her extraordinary personal charm removed, doubt would assert itself. Was she quite sincere ? Was her fascination not a questionable one? Might not that almost childish outburst of a grief so touching and at the time convincing, be, after all, fictitious; the movement of a born actress and enchantress of men, quick to seize as by a nice professional instinct the oppor

tunity of an effect? Had her whole attitude been a deliberate pose, a sort of trick? The sudden changes in her subtle voice, the undercurrent of mockery in an invitation which seemed inconsequent, put me on my guard, reinforced all my deepseated prejudices against the candor of the feminine soul. It left me with a vision of her, fantastically vivid, recounting to an intimate circle, to an accompaniment of some discreet laughter and the popping of champagne corks, the success of her imposition, the sentimental concessions she had extorted from a notorious student of cynical moods.

66

A dangerous woman!" cried Mrs: Destrier with the world, which might conceivably be right; at least, I was fain to add, a woman whose laughter would be merciless. Certainly I had no temper for adventures; and a visit to Madame Romanoff on so sentimental an errand seemed to me, the more I pondered it, to belong to this category, to be rich in distasteful possibilities. Must I write myself pusillanimous if I confess that I never made it; that I committed my old friend's violin into the hands of the woman who had been his pupil by the vulgar aid of a commissionaire?

Pusillanimous or simply prudent; or perhaps cruelly unjust to a person who had paid penalties and greatly needed kindness? It is a point I have never been able to decide, though I have tried to raise theories on the ground of her acquiescence. It seemed to me on the cards that my fiddle, bestowed so cavalierly, should be refused. And yet even the fact of her retaining it is open to two interpretations; and Cristich testified for her. Maurice Cristich! Madame Romanoff! the renowned Romanoff, Maurice Cristich ! Have I been pusillanimous, prudent, or merely cruel? For the life of me I cannot say !-Macmillan's Magazine.

I.

THE fate of the great expedition sent by Philip the Second to restore the Papal authority in England has been related

often in prose and verse. It is the most dramatic incident in our national history, and the materials for a faithful account of it in the contemporary narratives are unusually excellent. The English nature on

that occasion was seen at its very best. The days had not yet come of inflated self praise, and the spirit which produces actions of real merit is usually simple in the description of such actions. Good wine needs no bush. The finest jewels need least a gaudy setting; and as the newspaper correspondent was not yet born, and the men who did the fighting wrote also the reports, the same fine and modest temper is equally seen in both.

Necessarily, however, Englishmen could only tell what they themselves had scen, and the other side of the story has been left untold. The Spanish historians have never attempted to minimize the magnitude of their disaster, but they have left the official records to sleep in the shades of their public offices, and what the Spanish commanders might have them. selves to say of their defeat and its causes has been left hitherto unprinted. I discovered myself at Simancas the narrative of the Accountant-General of the Fleet, Don Pedro Coco Calderon, and made use of it in my own history. But Don Pedro's account showed only how much more remained to be discovered, of which I myself could find no record either in print or MS.

The defect has now been supplied by the industry and patriotism of an officer in the present Spanish Navy, who has brought together a collection of letters and documents bearing on the subject which is signally curious and interesting. Captain Fernandez Duro deserves grateful thanks and recognition, as enabling us for the first time really to understand what took place. But more than that, he reproduces the spirit and genius of the time; he enables us to see, face to face, the De Valdez, the Recaldes, the Oquendos, the De Ley Vas, who had hitherto been only names to us. The "Iliad would lose half its interest if we knew only Agamemnon and Achilles and knew nothing of Priam and Hector. The five days' battle in the English Channel in August 1588 was fought out between men on both sides of a signally gallant and noble nature; and when the asperities of theology shall have mellowed down at last, Spanish and English authorities together will furnish materials for a great epic poem.

Until that happy and still far-distant time shall arrive, we must appropriate and

The

take up into the story Captain Duro's contribution. With innocent necromancy he calls the dead out of their graves, and makes them play their drama over again. With his assistance we will turn to the city of Lisbon, on the 25th of April of the Annus Mirabilis. The preparations were then all but completed for the invasion of England and the overthrow of the Protestant heresy. From all parts of Catholic Europe the prayers of the faithful had ascended for more than a year in a stream of passionate entreaty that God would arise and make His power known. Masses had been said day after day on fifty thousand altars; and devout nuns had bruised their knees in midnight watches on the chapel pavements. event so long hoped for was to come at last. On that day the consecrated standard was to be presented in state to the Commander-in-Chief of the Expedition. Catholics had collected from every corner of the world: Spanish and Italian, French and Irish, English and German owning a common nationality in the Church. The Portuguese alone of Catholic nations looked on in indifference. Portugal had been recently annexed by force to Spain. The wound was still bleeding, and even religion failed to unite the nobles and people in common cause with their conquerors. But Lisbon had ceased to be a Portuguese city. Philip dealt with it as he pleased, and the Church of Portugal, at least on this occasion, was at Philip's disposition.

There was something of real piety in what was going on; and there was much of the artificial emotion which bore the same relation to piety which the enthusiasm of the Knight of La Mancha bore to true chivalry. Philip himself in certain aspects of his character was not unlike Don Quixote. He believed that he was divinely commissioned to extirpate the dragons and monsters of heresy. As the adventure with the enchanted horse had been specially reserved for Don Quixote, so the "Enterprise of England," in the inflated language of the time, was said to have been reserved for Philip; and as analogies are apt to complete themselves. the fat, good-humored, and entirely incapable Medina Sidonia had a certain resemblance to Sancho. The Duke of Medina had no ambition for such adventures; he would have greatly preferred