THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.

A
MONTHLY MAGAZINE
OF
General Literature and Science.

VOL. XXII.
OCTOBER, 1875, TO MARCH, 1876.

NEW YORK:
THE CATHOLIC PUBLICATION HOUSE,
9 Warren Street.
1876.

CONTENTS.

  • Allegri’s Miserere, [562].
  • Anglicans, Old Catholics, and the Conference at Bonn, [502].
  • Anti-Catholic Movements in the United States, [810].
  • Apostolic Mission to Chili, The, [548].
  • Are You My Wife? [13], [194], [309], [590], [735].
  • Basques, The, [646].
  • Birth-Place of S. Vincent de Paul, [64].
  • Castlehaven’s Memoirs, [78].
  • Chapter, A, in the Life of Pius IX., [548].
  • Charities of Rome, The, [266].
  • Christmas Vigil, A, [541].
  • Colporteurs of Bonn, The, [90].
  • Doctrinal Authority of the Syllabus, [31].
  • Duration, [111], [244].
  • Early Persecutions of the Christians, [104].
  • Eternal Years, The, [656], [841].
  • Finding a Lost Church, [282].
  • Freemasonry, [145].
  • Friends of Education, The, [758].
  • From Cairo to Jerusalem, [529].
  • Garcia Moreno, [691].
  • Gladstone Controversy, Sequel of the, [577], [721].
  • Grande Chartreuse, A Night at the, [712].
  • Historical Romance, A, [43], [162], [339], [614], [772].
  • Incident of the Reign of Terror, An, [260].
  • Indian Legend, [277].
  • Is She Catholic? [188].
  • King of Metals, The, [417].
  • Law of God, The, and the Regulations of Society, [223].
  • Lord Castlehaven’s Memoirs, [78].
  • Lost Church, Finding a, [282].
  • Louise Lateau before the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, [823].
  • Madame’s Experiment, [637].
  • Message, A, [445].
  • Midnight Mass in a Convent, [523].
  • Missions in Maine from 1613 to 1854, [666].
  • Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, [289].
  • Nellie’s Dream on Christmas Eve, [560].
  • New Hampshire, Village Life in, [358].
  • Night at the Grande Chartreuse, A, [712].
  • Palatine Prelates of Rome, [373].
  • Pious Pictures, [409].
  • Power, Action, and Movement, [379].
  • Precursor of Marco Polo, A. [210].
  • President’s Speech at Des Moines, The, [433].
  • President’s Message, The, [707].
  • Primitive Civilization, [626].
  • Progress versus Grooves, [276].
  • Protestant Episcopal Church Congress, The, [473].
  • Prussia and the Church, [678], [787].
  • Queen Mary, [1].
  • Questions Concerning the Syllabus, [31].
  • Recollections of Wordsworth, [329].
  • Reign of Terror, An Incident of the, [260].
  • Revival in Frogtown, A, [699].
  • Rome, The Charities of, [266].
  • Rome, The Palatine Prelates of, [373].
  • S. Agnes’ Eve Story, A, [637].
  • St. Jean de Luz, [833].
  • Search for Old Lace in Venice, A, [852].
  • Sequel of the Gladstone Controversy, [577], [721].
  • Sir Thomas More, [43], [162], [339], [614], [772].
  • Songs of the People, [395].
  • Story of Evangeline in Prose, The, [604].
  • Story with Two Versions, A, [800].
  • Summary Considerations on Law, [223].
  • Traces of an Indian Legend, [277].
  • Tennyson’s Queen Mary, [1].
  • Village Life in New Hampshire, [358].
  • Vincent de Paul, S., Birth-Place of, [64].
  • William Tell and Altorf, [127].
  • Wordsworth, Recollections of, [329].
  • Year, The, of Our Lord 1875, [565].
  • Yule Raps, [484].

POETRY.

  • Adelaide Anne Procter, [89].
  • Æschylus, [209].
  • Christmas Chimes, [501].
  • Free Will, [559].
  • Not Yet, [394].
  • “O Valde Decora!” [12].
  • Paraphrase from the Greek, A, [222].
  • Patient Church, The, [613].
  • S. Philip’s Home, [139].
  • S. Louis’ Bell, [527].
  • Seven Fridays in Lent, The, [734].
  • Sine Labe Concepta, [357].
  • Song, [275].
  • Sonnets in Memory of the late Sir Aubrey de Vere, [444].
  • Stars, The, [126].
  • Suggested by a Cascade at Lake George, [771].
  • Summer Storms, [416].
  • Sweet Singer, A, [89].
  • To-day and Yesterday, [564].
  • Unremembered Mother, The, [110].

NEW PUBLICATIONS.

  • Acta et Decreta Concilii Vaticani, [718].
  • Alcott’s Eight Cousins, [431].
  • Allibert’s Life of S. Benedict, [575].
  • American State and American Statesmen, [719].
  • Allies’ Formation of Christendom, [858].
  • American Catholic Quarterly Review, The, [859].
  • Baunard’s Life of the Apostle S. John, [573].
  • Bégin’s Le Culte Catholique, [286].
  • Bégin’s The Bible and the Rule of Faith, [288].
  • Birlinger’s Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, [718].
  • Boudon’s Holy Ways of the Cross, [717].
  • Buckley’s Supposed Miracles, [856].
  • Calderon’s Groesste Dramen religiösen Inhalts, [718].
  • Clarke’s Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, [575].
  • Coleridge’s Public Life of Our Lord, [717].
  • Constable and Gillies, Personal Reminiscences of, [720].
  • Cudmore’s Civil Government of the States, etc., [429].
  • Correction, A, [860].
  • Dix’s The American State and American Statesmen, [719].
  • Earle’s Light leading unto Light, [143].
  • Eight Cousins, [431].
  • Evidences of Catholicity, [574].
  • Exposition of the Church, An, etc., [419].
  • Exposition of the Epistles of S. Paul, etc., [144].
  • First Annual Report of the Chaplain of the Albany Penitentiary, [144].
  • Flowers from the Garden of the Visitation, [287].
  • Formation of Christendom, The, [858].
  • Full Course of Instruction in Explanation of the Catechism, [432].
  • Garside’s The Sacrifice of the Eucharist, [718].
  • Historical Scenes from the Old Jesuit Missions, [575].
  • History of the Protestant Reformation, [574].
  • Holland’s Sevenoaks, [430].
  • Holy Ways of the Cross, etc., [717].
  • Illustrated Catholic Family Almanac, [430].
  • Indoors and Out; or, Views from the Chimney Corner, [720].
  • Jannet’s Les Etats-Unis Contemporains, etc., [716].
  • Kavanagh’s John Dorrien, [287].
  • Kip’s Historical Scenes, [575].
  • Knight and Raikes’ Personal Reminiscences, [288].
  • Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others, Personal Recollection of, [428].
  • Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Protestantischen Kirchenrechts, [718].
  • Lonormant’s Madame Récamier and her Friends, [431].
  • Life and Letters of Paul Seigneret, [576].
  • Life of S. Benedict, [575].
  • Life of the Apostle S. John, [573].
  • Light leading unto Light, [143].
  • Lynch’s (Bishop) Pastoral Letter, [576].
  • MacEvilly’s Exposition of S. Paul’s Epistles, etc., [144].
  • Manual of the Sisters of Charity, [432].
  • Manual of Catholic Indian Missionary Associations, [859].
  • Medulla Theologiæ Moralis, [574].
  • Miller’s Ship in the Desert, [573].
  • Miscellanea, [432].
  • Mr. Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, [575].
  • Moriarty’s Wayside Pencillings, [431].
  • Morris’ The Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, [141].
  • Noethen’s Report of the Albany Penitentiary, [144].
  • Noethen’s Thirteen Sermons, etc., [144].
  • Pastoral Letter of Bishop Lynch, [576].
  • Perry’s Full Course of Instruction, etc., [432].
  • Persecutions of Annam, The, [719].
  • Personal Reminiscences by Knight and Raikes, [288].
  • Personal Recollections of Lamb, Hazlitt, and Others, [428].
  • Personal Reminiscences by Constable and Gillies, [720].
  • Public Life of Our Lord, [717].
  • Rohling’s Medulla Theologiæ Moralis, [574].
  • Sacrifice of the Eucharist, etc., [718].
  • Sadlier’s Excelsior Geography, [430].
  • Sevenoaks, [430].
  • Ship in the Desert, The, [573].
  • Shortland’s The Persecutions of Annam, [719].
  • Spalding’s Miscellanea, [432].
  • Spalding’s Evidences of Catholicity, [574].
  • Spalding’s History of the Reformation, [574].
  • Story of S. Peter, [718].
  • Supposed Miracles, [856].
  • Thirteen Sermons preached in the Albany Penitentiary, [144].
  • Three Pearls, The, [573].
  • Troubles of our Catholic Forefathers, The, [141].
  • Vering’s Lehrbuch des Katholischen und Protestantischen Kirchenrechts, [718].
  • Volksthümliches aus Schwaben, [718].
  • Wayside Pencillings, etc., [431].
  • Young Catholic’s Illustrated Table Book, etc., [430].

THE
CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. XXII., No. 127.—OCTOBER, 1875.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by Rev. I. T. Hecker, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

MR. TENNYSON’S QUEEN MARY.[1]

Mr. Tennyson has achieved a great reputation as a lyric poet. He urges now a higher claim. In the sunset of a not inglorious life, when we should have expected his lute to warble with waning melodies and less impassioned strains, he lays it aside as too feeble for his maturer inspirations, and, as though renewed with the fire of a second youth, he draws to his bosom a nobler instrument, and awakes the echoes of sublimer chords. He has grown weary of the lyric

“hœrentem multa cum laude coronam,”

and with some confidence claims the dramatic bays. Nay, he even invites a comparison with Shakspere. True to the temper of the times, his prestige follows him in so hazardous a competition, the accustomed wreaths are showered upon him with unreflecting haste, and the facile representatives of the most incapable of critics—public opinion—have already offered him that homage as a dramatist which had already been too lavishly offered to his idyllic muse.

It is an ungrateful task to go against the popular current, and it is an ungracious one to object to crowns which the multitude have decreed. But there is no help for it, unless we would stoop to that criticism of prestige which is so characteristic of the age, and would follow in the wake of the literary rabble, criticising the works by the author, instead of the author by his works.

We may as well say, at once, that we have never felt it in our power to acknowledge the poetical supremacy of the English poet-laureate.[2] It has always appeared to us that there is, in his poetry, a lack of inspiration. To borrow a too familiar but expressive metaphor, the coin is highly burnished, glitters brightly, and has the current stamp, but one misses the ring of the genuine metal. He sits patiently on the tripod, dealing forth phrases as musical as Anacreon’s numbers, and as polished as those of a Greek sophist, spiced with a refined humor, which has a special charm of its own. But his soul does not kindle at the sacred fire. We miss the divine frenzy. A passionateness of love of the beautiful does not appear to be the quickening inspiration of his creations. All alike show signs of extreme care and preparation. We do not forget the counsel of Horace. But that only refers to a distant revision of creations which an unchecked genius may have produced under the divine influence. Whereas, Mr. Tennyson’s poetry bears evidence of infinite toil in production. All his thoughts, ideas, and images, down to words and phrases, are too evidently, instead of the happy inspirations of genius, the labored workmanship of a polished, refined, and fastidious mind. They something resemble the tout ensemble of a petit maître who has succeeded in conveying to his dress an appearance of such consummate simplicity and unexceptionable taste that every one notices the result of hours before the mirror. His diction is pure and polished, his phrases simple and nervous, and the English language owes him much for what he has done towards neutralizing the injury inflicted on it by the gaudy phraseology of the “correct” poets, and the antithetical sesquipedalianism of such prose writers as Johnson and Gibbon, and for preserving it in its pure and nervous simplicity. But his soul is dull to the poetic meanings of nature. His natural scenery is rather descriptive than a creation, much as artists, of whom there are not a few, who reproduce with consummate skill of imitation objects in detail, and bestow infinite care upon color, shade, perspective, grouping, and all the other technical details of a picture, whilst comparatively indifferent to the subject, which ought to be the poetic meaning of creations of genius. And what are they but only fruitful manifestations of the love of the beautiful, and echoes of its creative word, not the mere manipulations of an artificer? Mr. Tennyson’s descriptions of nature owe their vividness to the brilliance of word-painting and a certain refined delicacy of touch; sometimes, even, and indeed very often, to a certain quaint humor which is inconsistent with the highest art—it is not a passionate love which regards the object beloved from a ridiculous point of view—as when he describes the willows living adown the banks of a streamlet as “shock-headed pollards poussetting down the stream.”

The sensations provoked by his poetry resemble those of one who has sauntered through a museum of precious stones of rare workmanship and purest water. Our æsthetic taste has been pleased by the glitter and the color and the brilliance, but our mind and heart have not been deeply moved. His poems are ablaze with detached thoughts of lofty meaning, and of a multitude of others whose meaning is not obvious, all alike expressed in vivid imagery, in the purest phraseology, and in rare melody of rhythm. But they are confused and cabalistic. He seems to be always laboring to be incomprehensible. He calls it “the riddling of the bards.” And he succeeds. The problem of the Sphinx, the emblematic warning sent by the Scythians to their Persian invader, the mute counsel sent by the Samian to the Corinthian tyrant, a Delphic oracle, all were clear and easy by comparison with Mr. Tennyson’s lyrics, alike in detached passages and in entire poems. None of woman born can fathom the meaning of the Idylls of the King.

This defect alone is fatal to poetry. So keenly did Spenser feel it that although the meaning of his allegory, The Faerie Queene, is obvious enough to any ordinary intelligence, he is careful to explain it in full in a letter dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh.

Mr. Tennyson, on the contrary, involves himself in the thickest mystery he can contrive, and expects his worshippers to take it for inspiration. Take the following, for example, from “The Coming of Arthur”:

“Rain, rain, and sun, a rainbow in the sky!

A young man will be wiser by-and-by,

An old man’s wit may wander e’er he die.

“Rain, rain, and sun, a rainbow on the lea!

And truth is this to me, and that to thee

And truth, or clothed or naked, let it be.

“Rain, sun, and rain! and the free blossom blows,

Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?

From the great deep to the great deep he goes.”

These are, no doubt, “riddling triplets,” as he himself calls them. The riddling of Shakspere’s fools, even the wanderings from the night of distraught Ophelia’s brain, are light itself by the side of them. We may well echo his invocation of “Sun, rain, and sun! and where is he who knows?” Whatever inspiration may be evident here, it is not that of the beautiful. And yet even this has snatches of meaning which many passages we might adduce have not; as the following, from “Gareth and Lynette”:

“Know ye not, then, the riddling of the bards?

Confusion, and illusion, and relation.

Elusion, and occasion, and evasion?”

It is almost a pity that the bard did not complete his “riddling” while he was about it. Another couplet:

Diffusion, and ablution, and abrasion.

Ablution, expectation, botheration,

would have rendered still more impenetrable the bardic mystery.

There is no resemblance in this studied concealment of meaning, if meaning there be, to that

“Sacred madness of the bards

When God makes music through them,”

of which he sings. It is more like the melodious confusion of the Æolian harp. Even if the poet have a definite meaning in his own mind, if he so express it that I cannot even guess it, to me it is nonsense; and nonsense, however melodious, although it may enchant my sense, cannot move my heart. Here and there, however, our poet sings snatches of real poetry, as Sir Bedivere’s answer to his king in “The Coming of Arthur”:

“I heard the water lapping on the craig

And the long ripple washing in the reeds.”

Upon the whole, Mr. Tennyson excels in a certain underlying vein of exquisitely refined humor. And when his subject admits of it, he is unrivalled. His is the poetry of humor. We would name as examples “The Northern Farmer” and the satirical poem, “Locksley Hall,” perhaps the most vigorous of all his productions; and, of his longer poems, The Princess. It is for this reason we think he is more likely to excel, as a dramatist, in comedy than in tragedy.

If our readers would estimate the full force of our remarks, we would invite them to read the works of any of the principal of our earlier lyrical poets, as, for example, Collins. We name him because he too excels in that melody of versification for which Mr. Tennyson is so distinguished. At times, as in his “Sonnet on Evening,” he surpasses the Laureate in that respect, although for sustained and unfailing rhythmical melody the latter bears away the palm from him, and perhaps from every other rival. But in profound sympathy with nature, in the fidelity of his creations, in the echoes of the beautiful which he provokes within the soul of the reader, the Poet-Laureate must yield to the Demy of Magdalen. Like Shakspere, he peopled inanimate nature with a fairy world, and amongst elves and genii and other dainty spirits he abandoned himself to that power of impersonation which is almost an attribute of a true poet.

Our space does not admit of illustrative quotations, but we would refer the reader inclined to institute the comparison suggested to the elegy over Fidele, in the play of Cymbeline, and to his Eclogues.

Mr. Tennyson’s poetry has beauties of its own peculiar kind of so remarkable and striking a description that we might have hesitated to take any exceptions whatsoever to his poetical genius. But his new poem, his first effort in dramatic poetry, seems to us to set all doubt at rest. It convinces us that, for whatever reasons, of the highest flights of poetic inspiration Mr. Tennyson is incapable. We are convinced that he lacks that which constitutes a great poet. However beautiful his poetry, we feel that it wants something which, however keenly we may be sensible of it, it is not easy either to analyze or explain.

For what is the inspiration of poetry but the echoes of the beautiful within the soul of man? The universe of things is the visible word of God. It is his essential beauty projected by an energy of creative love—the quickening spirit opening his wings over chaos—into an objective existence, on which its generator looked with complacency as “very good,” and which he generated in order that his creature, whom he had made in his own image, might, with himself, rejoice in its contemplation. He did not, at first, endow him with the power of beholding himself “face to face,” but only his reflex. We have the right to believe that, whilst in union with his Maker, he read at a glance the meaning of the word, he felt instantaneously the beauty of the image. His nature, into which no discord had as yet been introduced, uncondemned to the judgment of painful toil, did not acquire charity and knowledge by long and laborious processes, disciplinary and ratiocinative, but by intuition. Incapable as yet of the Beatific Vision, he comprehended the whole of the divine beauty as revealed in creation, and the comprehension itself was a transport of love. He saw, and knew, and loved, and the three were one simultaneous energy of the sonship of his nature. But, as now, “the greatest of these was charity.” It was the result and sum and end of the sight and knowledge. It was the feeling they inevitably and unremittingly occasioned. To speak as we can only speak in our actual condition, it was as those thuds of loving admiration with which our hearts throb when we look upon some surpassing embodiment of innocent and modest female loveliness. When the mind, jealous of pre-eminence, led captive, so to speak, the heart in revolt against the revealed law, the human being was no longer in union with himself, a war of impulses and of energies was set up within him, the image of God was defaced, his perception of created beauty became more and more obscure as he went further away from his original abode of innocence, until, finally, it was all but lost. The emotion, if we may describe it as such, which it was of its nature to suggest, could not perish, for it is imperishable. But it had lost its true object, and surveyed knowledge in a form more or less degraded.

Now out of this very faint and rapid sketch of a psychological theory which would require a volume for its development, we hope to be able to convey some idea, however vague, of the nature of the poetic spirit.

It is certain that the remains of the divine image have not since been alike and equal in all the individuals of the race. It may be asserted, on the contrary, that there are no two human microcosms in which the elements of the confusion introduced into them by the original infidelity exist in the same proportion. Those in whom the intelligence is the quickest to see, and the mind, heart, and soul to love in unison, the image of divine beauty revealed in creation—those, that is, in whom the divine image remains the most pronouncedly—are the truest poets.

When this echo of the soul to the beautiful does not go beyond the physical creation, the inspirations of love express themselves in lyric or idyllic poetry. The poet imitates the divine Creator in reproducing, even creating, images of his lower creation so faithful and suggestive that they who look upon them experience similar sensations and emotions to those provoked within them by the divine creation itself, nay, not unseldom, even profounder ones. He reveals the beautiful in similar images to those in which The Beautiful revealed himself to his creature; he is thus himself a ποιητὴς, or creator, and his work is a ποίησις, or creation. When his forms derive their inspiration only from the inferior creation, they are exclusively some form of idyls or lyrics. But when, soaring above the grosser medium of the merely material universe, and poising himself on wings tremulous with reverent joy at the confines of the invisible, his soul echoes the music of the beautiful issuing from that invisible creation; and that imitative energy which is of its essence, inspired by these reawakening inspirations, calls into being psychical individualities with their precise bodily expression and proper destinies—that is to say, with all the causes and results, ebb and flow, action and reaction, in human affairs, of every volition and energy, he reproduces the highest energy of the divine creative power, he evokes into sensible existence whole multitudes of fresh creatures made in the image of God, and, what is even yet more sublime, he evokes into equally sensible being the particular providence which overrules each and all—the one difference between the two creations being that one is original, the other imitative; one imaginary—that is, merely sensible; the other, not only sensible, but real also, and essential. Yet are the accidents of the former produced occasionally with such extraordinary fidelity that they have sometimes, as in the creations of Shakspere, for example, the same effect upon those who become acquainted with them as if they were in truth the latter.

Who that has ever studied the creations of that immortal dramatist has not them all, from high to low, treasured within his inner being as vividly as any other of his absent acquaintances, whom he has met in society, to whom he has been formally introduced, with whom he has eaten, drank, laughed, wept, walked, and conversed? Has not that remarkable genius transgressed even the imitative faculty—imitative, that is, of all the original creative energy that is known—produced original creations, and peopled the preter- rather than supernatural with beings which have no known existence, but whom nevertheless he surrounds with a distinct verisimilitude which ensures them easy admission into our minds and hearts, which presents them to our senses as concrete beings with as much positiveness, and even as clearly defined individuality, as if they were solid creatures of flesh and bone, and which makes us feel that if such beings did really exist, they would be none other than precisely those he has represented?

Of such sort, we take it, is the highest, or dramatic, poetry. And of it there is a manifest deficiency in this work, which its author terms, indeed, a drama, but which is in fact a tragedy.

Mr. Tennyson has not enough of the divine afflatus to write tragedy. If he has not sufficient love of the beautiful in inanimate nature for his soul to echo to it, and his heart to throb with the sense of it, with the rapidity of an intuition, so as to make unattainable to him the highest excellence in lyric poetry, how much more out of his reach must be a first rank in the tragic drama; where, if anywhere, an intuition of the beautiful amounting to an inspiration is demanded in that supreme creation of God which, as the consummation of his “work” and word, he has embodied in his own substance! In that profound and intuitive perception of the workings of man’s inner being, of the passions, emotions, feelings, appetites, their action and reaction, ebb and flow; of the struggle of the two natures, its infinite variety and play of life, under all conceivable conditions and vicissitudes, with much more than can be detailed here included in these, Mr. Tennyson is strikingly deficient.

In the tragedies of Shakspere, as in all his dramas, the distinct personality of every one of the characters, high and low, is impressed upon us with vivid distinctness. But the principal personages in the tragedies dilate before us in heroic proportions as the portentous struggle progresses. Whether it be King Lear, or King John, or King Richard, or Othello, or Lady Macbeth, or Lady Constance, or the widowed Princess of Wales, or Ophelia, or whoever else, we look on with bated breath, as did the spectators of the boat-race with which Æneas celebrated the suicide of his regal paramour, and we come away at its close a prey to the storm of emotions which the magic art of the island sorcerer has conjured up within us.

But the drama, or tragedy, as we prefer to call it, we read with but languid interest. The psychical struggle is neither very obvious nor very critical, there is no very striking revelation of the sublime beauty or tragic overthrow of human nature, and although the canvas is crowded with figures, not one of them impresses any very distinct image of his or her individuality on our mind and heart. Instead of, as Shakspere’s creations, retaining every one of them as a distinct and intimate acquaintance, whom we may summon into our company at will, we rise from the perusal of Queen Mary without having received any very definite impression of any, even the principal, personages, and we forget all about them almost as soon as we have read the play.

This vital defect in a drama the author has rendered doubly fatal through his having carried his imitation of Shakspere to the extent of adopting his simplicity of plot. Shakspere could afford to do this. The inspired verisimilitude of the struggle of the two natures in every one of his human creations, the profoundness of his development of the innermost working of the human microcosm, often by a few master-touches, surround every one of his dramatis personæ with all the rapt suspense and sustained interest of a plot. Every one of his characters is, as it were, a plot in itself. But it is quite certain that Mr. Tennyson—and it is no depreciation of him—has not this power. He has, therefore, every right to call to his aid the interest of an elaborate plot, which itself would also, we think, cause him to develop more vividly his characters. It is in this the late Lord Lytton, whose poetical pretensions are very much below Mr. Tennyson’s, achieved whatever success he had as a dramatist. Mr. Tennyson has not to depend on this solely, as was very nearly the case with Lord Lytton, but it would contribute very much to a higher success. The great dramatist he is unwise enough so avowedly to imitate peoples the simplest plot with a whole world of stirring destinies. He moves his quickening wand, and lo! as by the master-will of a creator, appear a Hamlet or a Malvolio, a Lady Macbeth or a Goneril or Miranda, an Ariel or a Caliban, contribute their precise share to the history, which would not have been complete without them, and then disappear from the scene, but never from our memory. A magic word or two has smitten them into it, and they live for aye in our mind and heart. His heroes and his heroines he clothes with such a majesty of poetry that we watch anxiously with bated breath their every gesture, word, or look; we cannot bear their absence, until, entranced into their destiny, and half unconscious, we watch them disappear in the catastrophe, our ears are blank, all voices mute, the brilliant theatre is the chamber of death, and they who, to us, were but now living flesh and blood, in whose destinies our innermost soul was rapt, have passed away, amidst a tempest of emotions, and are no more.

But Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War, either of the two great classic epics, or any striking historic passage in even so ungraphic a writer as Lingard, is more dramatic than this drama. The feeble plot gives birth to feebler impersonations. They come and go without making any deep impression upon us, or seizing our attention by any striking originality. Their features are indistinct, their actions insignificant. They are bloodless and colorless. They are ghosts, things of air, whom a feeble incantation has summoned from their slumber, who mutter a few laborious Spartanisms in a renewed life in which they seem to have no concern, and vanish without provoking a regret, nor even an emotion. We observe in them such an absence of verisimilitude, so marked a want of truth to nature, as very much to weaken, when it does not entirely destroy, the dramatic illusion. Nowhere is this more observable than where he intends most manifestly a rivalry of Shakspere. Shakspere not unseldom introduces the multitude into his poetic history. But when he does so, it seizes our interest as forcibly as his more important personages. With a few rapid touches he dashes in a few typical individuals, who reveal to us vividly what the whole kind of thing is of which they are prominent units. They are the mob of the very time and place to which they belong. Whether at Rome in the time of Julius Cæsar, or at Mantua or Verona in the Middle Ages, or in England during the time of the Tudors, we feel that they act and speak just as then and there they might have said and done. Every one, too, has his or her distinct individuality. And such a verisimilitude have they that even an occasional anachronism, such as, in Troilus and Cressida, making a Trojan servant talk of being in the state of grace, does not dispel the charm. But Mr. Tennyson’s mob-types have no more striking features to seize our interest than his more exalted creations, whilst his anachronisms are of a kind which send all verisimilitude to the winds. Joan and Tib, and the four or five citizens, have nothing in them for which they should be singled out of the very ordinary condition of life to which they belong. And we are tempted to sneer when we hear an Elizabethan mob talking like Hampshire or Yorkshire peasants of the present day.

For all that, Mr. Tennyson’s cockneys and rustics are not his most ineffective portraiture. We experience a slight sensation of their having been lugged in, perhaps because of the inevitable comparison with Shakspere they provoke, and we feel them to be too modern; but the poet’s sense of humor here serves him in good stead, and although, in this respect, immeasurably below Shakspere, he gives a kind of raciness to his plebeians which saves them from being an absolute failure.

It is, however, in the principal personages of the drama that we most miss the Promethean fire, and pre-eminently in the hero, if Cranmer is intended for such a dignity, and the heroine. Amongst these, the most lifelike are Courtenay and Sir Thomas Wyatt; because, in their creation, the peculiar vein of quaint irony and exceedingly refined humor, which is Mr. Tennyson’s most eminent distinction, comes to his aid. For the rest, up to the heroine herself and the canting and recanting Cranmer, they are colorless and bloodless. We scarcely know one from the other. And we do not care to. Noailles and Renard are but poor specimens of diplomatists. Their sovereigns, were the time the present, might pick up a dozen such any day in Wall Street. If the poet could embody no greater conception of two such men as Bonner and Gardiner than a couple of vulgar, self-seeking, blood-thirsty knaves, he should have dispensed altogether with their presence. He should have given to them some elevation, whatever history may say about it. A drama is a poem, not a history; and the poet may take the names of historic personages and, within certain limits, fit to them creations of his own. In Cardinal Pole he had an opportunity for a noble ideal. But all we have is an amiable dummy, an old gentleman, as ordinary and ineffective as the rest.

Facts have been so distorted by the influence which for so long had sole possession of literature, that there is plenty of room for taking great liberties with history. Mr. Tennyson has slightly availed himself of this, but in the wrong direction. Shakspere himself could not have made a saint of Cranmer. For poetry, there was nothing for it but to make him a more splendid sinner. To retain all his littlenesses and to array them in seductive virtues, is to present us with some such figure as the dusky chieftains decked in gaudy tinsel that solicit our admiration in front of the tobacconists’ shops. To attempt to give heroic proportions to a man whose profession of faith followed subserviently his self-interest until no hope remained, and then place in the hands of the burning criminal the palm of martyrdom, is to invite the love within us of the beautiful and the true to echo to a psychical impossibility, and that without an element of greatness.

Yet had the front figure of the history been a noble conception grandly executed all this might have been condoned. One might well have looked at them as a few rough accessories to heighten by their contrast the beauty of the central form. There was place for a splendid creation. No more favorable material for a tragic heroine exists than Mary Tudor—with the single exception of that other Mary who fell beneath the Puritans like a lily before the scythe of the destroyer. Around her history and person circle all the elements of the tenderest pathos, which is of the very essence of tragedy. That Shakspere did not use them is a proof he thought so. For “the fair vestal throned in the west” would have resented such a creation as his quickening genius would have called to life. A queen of noble nature gradually swept away by a resistless current of untoward circumstances, is a history capable of the sublimity of a Greek catastrophe, with the added pathos of Christian suffering. But who have we here? A silly woman, devoutly pious, and endowed with a conspicuous share of the family courage. But she is so weak that her piety has the appearance of superstition, and her fits of courage lose their royalty and fail to rescue her from contempt. Unattractive in person, she falls desperately in love with a man much younger than herself, and her woman’s love, ordinarily so quick to detect coldness in a lover, is blind to the grossest neglect; and yet not so blind but that a few words scrawled on a rag of paper, dropped in her way, could open her eyes on the spot. The tenderness of her love and the importunity of cruel-minded men, transform her almost suddenly from a gentle-natured woman to an unrelenting human tigress. And she, who would not allow the law to take its course on her most dangerous enemies, can exclaim of her sister Elizabeth,

“To the Tower with her!

My foes are at my feet, and I am queen.”

Afterwards of Guilford Dudley, the Duke of Suffolk, and Lady Jane Grey—

“They shall die.”

And again of her sister—

“She shall die.

My foes are at my feet, and Philip king.”

This is not the grandness of crime, as in Richard III., or even in Lady Macbeth. It is the petty despotism of a weak and silly woman. There is no greatness of any kind about it. It is the mere triumphant chuckle of an amorous queen, wooing a more than indifferent husband. It is little—little enough for a comedy. There is something approaching the tragic in the desolation of her last moments. Calais is lost, her husband hates her, her people hate her. But the poet has already robbed her of the dignity of her position. She has forfeited our esteem. We experience an ordinary sympathy with her. But her fate is only what was to be expected. And the highest pathos is out of the question. When, following the example of her injured mother in the play of Henry VIII., she betakes herself to lute and song, the author insists on a comparison with Shakspere, and beside the full notes of the Bard of Avon the petty treble of the Laureate pipe shrinks to mediocrity.

But the most unpardonable of Mr. Tennyson’s imitations of Shakspere are those in which he rings the changes on the celebrated passage about “no Italian priest shall tithe nor toll in our dominions,” which inevitably provokes the applause of those amongst a theatrical audience who do not know what it means—unpardonable, because it makes even Shakspere himself as ridiculous as a poor travesty cannot fail to do. He was content with one such passage throughout his many plays. If Terence had filtered the noble sentiment of his celebrated passage, “Ego homo sum, et nihil humanum a me alienum,” through a variety of forms, it would have excited the laughter instead of the plaudits of the Roman “gods.” But the author of Queen Mary is not afraid to pose his sentiment, itself borrowed in no less than three different attitudes in one play; committing the additional absurdity of thrusting it, like a quid of tobacco, into the cheek of two different personages. Gardiner uses it twice, Elizabeth once:

“Yet I know well [says the former]

Your people …

Will brook nor Pope nor Spaniard here to play

The tyrant, or in commonwealth or church”;

and again, with questionable taste:

“And see you, we shall have to dodge again,

And let the Pope trample our rights, and plunge

His foreign fist into our island church,

To plump the leaner pouch of Italy”;

whilst Elizabeth is made to vulgarize it beyond hope of redemption into a mere petty ebullition of splenetic womanly vanity:

“Then, Queen indeed! No foreign prince or priest

Should fill my throne, myself upon the steps.”

It must be owned, indeed, that this play lacks the highest poetry in its expression as much as in its conception. We occasionally come across passages of vivid and vigorous limning, as Count Feria’s reply to Elizabeth towards the end of the play, and Howard’s description to the Lord Mayor of the state of mind of the citizens. But even the force of this latter passage is not dramatic. There is none of the rush and movement of an excited populace. There are a few striking groups. But they are inactive. Theirs is a kind of dead life, if we may be pardoned such an expression. Rather, they are mere tableaux vivants. They inspire us with no fear for Mary’s throne. More near to dramatic power and beauty is Elizabeth’s soliloquy at Woodstock, suddenly lowered in the midst of its poetry, even to nursery familiarity, by the introduction of such a phrase as “catch me who can.”

But for one single effort of the highest poetic flight we look in vain.

Even the few snatches of his lyre which he introduces fail to woo us. They are not natural. If they are poetry, it is poetry in a court-dress. It is rich with brocade, and the jewels glitter bravely; it treads delicately, but its movements are artificial and constrained. Compare, for example, the song of the Woodstock milkmaid, wherein labor is visible in every line, with those gushes of nature with which the poet’s soul would seem to be bubbling over the brim of the visible in the various lyrical snatches of Ariel or with the song of Spring at the end of Love’s Labor Lost.

But what has more surprised us than the lack of the poetic inspiration in this drama is the occasional want of correct taste in a writer of such exceeding polish as Mr. Tennyson. Such a speech as

“And God hath blest or cursed me with a nose—

Your boots are from the horses,”

should not have been put in the mouth of a lady, still less a lady of the rank of Elizabeth, and that the less when she appeals to our sympathies from a kind of honorable imprisonment.

Lady Magdalen Dacres may have beat King Philip with a staff for insulting her, and have remained a lady, but we do not want to be told, in the midst of dramatic pathos,

“But by God’s providence a good stout staff

Lay near me; and you know me strong of arm;

I do believe I lamed his Majesty’s.”

Is our poet, again, so barren of invention that he could find no other way of portraying Philip’s indifference to his Queen than the following:

“By S. James, I do protest,

Upon the faith and honor of a Spaniard,

I am vastly grieved to leave your Majesty.

Simon, is supper ready?”

“Renard—Ay, my liege,

I saw the covers laying.”

“Philip—Let’s have it.”

Whatever may be the character he may have wished to depict in Philip, we expect a Spanish king to be a gentleman. And such an ending of a scene susceptible of the tenderest pathos, where the heroine and another of the principal personages of the drama are in presence, argues a wonderful dulness of perception of the beautiful.

Worse than all, however, is his treatment of Cardinal Pole.

Shakspere puts a few words of Latin into the mouth of Cardinal Wolsey in a scene in Henry VIII., in which he and Cardinal Campeggio are endeavoring to bend the queen to the king’s will. But it is a wonderful touch of nature. It is one of those profound intuitions for which the great dramatist is so distinguished. So seemingly simple an incident reveals, at a touch, as it were, the preoccupation of Wolsey’s mind, and the hollowness at once and difficulty of the duty he had suffered to be imposed upon him. They had paid her ostensibly a private visit, as friends. But Wolsey, oppressed with the difficulty of his undertaking, and meditating how he should set about it, forgets himself, the old habit crops up, and he begins as if he were beginning a formal ecclesiastical document:

“Tanta est erga te mentis integritas, regina serenissima.”

It is a slip. The queen stops him. He recollects himself, and we hear no more Latin.

But in this drama the poet literally makes a cardinal, and such a cardinal as Pole, address Queen Mary with the angelic salutation to the Blessed Virgin, and in Latin:

“Ave Maria, gratia plena, benedicta tu in mulieribus!”

Upon the whole, the defects of this drama are so many and so serious, so radical and fundamental, that no competent criticism can pronounce it other than a failure; and a failure more complete than would have been thought possible to a poet of so great a reputation as Mr. Tennyson.[3]

“O VALDE DECORA!”

Could I but see thee, dear my love!

That face—but once! Not dazzling bright—

Not as the blest above

Behold it in God’s light—

But as it look’d at La Salette;

Or when, in Pyrenean wild,

It beam’d on Bernadette,

The favor’d peasant child.

Once seen—a moment—it would blind

These eyes to beauty less than thine:

And where could poet find

Such theme for song as mine?

But if I ask what may not be,

So spell me with thy pictur’d face

That haunting looks from thee

May hold me like a grace.

ARE YOU MY WIFE?

BY THE AUTHOR OF “PARIS BEFORE THE WAR,” “NUMBER THIRTEEN,” “PIUS VI.,” ETC.

CHAPTER IX.

And now a new life began for Franceline.

“You must fly from idleness as from sin,” Father Henwick said; “you must never let a regret settle on your mind for an instant. It will often be hard work to resist them; but we are here to fight. You must shut the door in the face of idle thoughts by activity and usefulness. I will help you in this. You must set to work amongst the poor; not so as to fatigue yourself, or interfere with your duties and occupations at home, but enough to keep you busy and interested. At first it will be irksome enough, I dare say; but never mind that. By and by the effort will bring its own reward, and be a pleasure as well as a duty.”

He sat down and wrote out a time-table for her which filled up every hour of the day, and left not one moment for brooding. There were visits to the cottages and a class for children in the morning; the afternoon hours were to be devoted to helping her father, writing and copying for him, sometimes copying MSS. for Father Henwick, with no other purpose than to keep her mind and her fingers occupied.

But when the excitement caused by this change in her daily routine subsided, something of the first heart-sinking returned. Do what she would, thought would not be dumb. The external activity could not silence the busy tongues of her brain or deafen her to their ceaseless whisperings. It was weary work staggering on under her load, while memory tugged at her heart-strings and dragged its longings the other way. It was hard not to yield to the temptation now and then of sitting down by the wayside to rest and look back towards the Egypt that was for ever out of sight. But Franceline very seldom yielded to the treacherous allurement. When she caught herself lapsing into dreams, she would rise up with a resolute effort, and shake off the torpor, and set to work at something. When the torpor changed to a sting of anguish, she would steep her soul in prayer—that unfailing opiate of the suffering spirit, its chloroform in pain.

One day, about three weeks after Father Henwick’s return, she was coming home through the wood after her morning’s round amongst the cottages. She was very tired in mind and body. It was dull work dinning the multiplication-table into Bessy Bing’s thick skull, and teaching her unnimble fingers to turn the heel of a stocking; to listen to the widow’s endless lamentations over “the dear departed” and the good old times when they killed a pig every year, and always had a bit of bacon on the rack. Franceline came to the old spot where she used to sit and listen to the concert of the grove. The songsters were nearly all silent now, for the green was turning gold; but the felled tree was lying in the same place, and tempted her to rest a moment and watch the sun shooting his golden shafts through the wilderness of stems all round. Another moment, and she was in dreamland; but the spell had scarcely fallen on her when it was broken by the sound of footfalls crushing the yellow leaves that made a carpet on every path. She started to her feet, and walked on. A few steps brought her face to face with Father Henwick. He greeted her with a joyous exclamation.

“Here comes my little missionary! What has she been doing to-day?”

“She has achieved a great conquest; she has arrived at making Bessy Bing apprehend the problem that seven times nine and nine times seven produce one and the same total,” replied Franceline with mock gravity.

Father Henwick laughed; but the tired expression of her face did not escape him.

“I am afraid you will be growing too conceited if this sort of thing goes on,” he said. “But you must not overdo it, my dear child; it won’t do to wear yourself out in gaining arithmetical triumphs.”

“Better wear out than rust out.” And Franceline shrugged her shoulders; she had learned the expressive French trick from her father.

The priest bent his clear eyes on her for a second without speaking. She read, disappointment, and perhaps mild reproach, in them.

“I am sorry I said that, father; I did not mean to complain.”

“Why are you sorry?”

“Because it was cowardly and ungrateful.”

“To whom?”

“To you, who are so kind and so patient with me!”

“And who bids me be kind? Who teaches me to be patient with you?—poor little bruised lamb!”

“I know it, father; I feel it in the bottom of my heart; but one can’t always be remembering.” There was the slightest touch of impatience in her tone.

“How if God were some day to grow tired of remembering us, and bearing with us, and forgiving us?”

“I know. But I am not rebelling; only sickening and suffering. You have told me there was no sin in that?” The words came tremulous, as if through rising tears; but Franceline raised her head with a defiant movement, and forced the briny drops down. “I cannot help it!” she continued impetuously; “I have tried my best, and I cannot help it!”

Father Henwick heaved an almost inaudible sigh before he said: “What cannot you help, Franceline? Suffering?”

“No! I don’t care about that! Remembering I cannot forget.”

“My poor child! would to God I could help you! I would suffer willingly in your place!” The words came like a gush from his inmost heart. They broke down the sufferer’s proud resistance and let the tears have vent. He turned to walk back with her. For some time neither spoke; only the soft sobs that came unchecked from Franceline broke the temple-like stillness of the wood. Suddenly she cried out in a tone of passionate desperation: “O father! it is dreadful. It will kill me if it lasts much longer! The humiliation is more than I can bear! To feel that I am harboring a feeling that my whole soul rebels against, that is revolting in the eyes of God and of my conscience! And I cannot master it!”

“You will never master it by pride, Franceline; that very pride is your greatest hindrance in setting your heart free. Try and think more of God and less of yourself. There is no sin, as you say, in the suffering, any more than, if you strayed to the edge of a precipice in the dark, and fell over and were killed, you would be guilty of suicide. The sinfulness now is in your rebellion against the suffering simply because it wounds your pride.”

“It is not all pride, father,” she said meekly. Presently she turned and looked up at him through wet lashes. “Father, I must tell you something,” she said, speaking with a sort of timidity that was unusual with her towards him—“a thought that came to me this morning that never came to me before.…”

“What was it?”

“If his wife should die … he would be free?”

A dark shadow fell now on Father Henwick’s large, smooth brow. Franceline read his answer in the frown and the averted gaze; but he spoke soon, though he did not look at her.

“That was a sinful thought! You should have cast it behind you with contempt. Has it come to that with you, that you could look forward to the death of any one as a thing to be longed for?”

“I did not long for it. The thought came to me.”

“You should have hunted it out of your mind like an evil spirit, as it was. You must never let it near you again. He should be to you as if he were already dead. Whether his wife dies or not should not, and does not, concern you. Besides, how do you know whether she is not as young as yourself, and stronger? My child, such a thought as that would lead you to the brink of an abyss, if you listened to it.”

“I never will again, father,” she answered promptly. “I hardly know now whether I listened to it or not; only I could not help telling you.”

“You were right to tell me; and now banish it, and never let it approach you again.”

After a pause he resumed:

“You are sure that silence is best with M. de la Bourbonais?”

“Oh! yes. How can you ask me, father?” And Franceline looked up in surprise.

“Yet it cannot remain a secret from him for ever; he is almost certain to hear of it sooner or later, and it might save him a severe shock if he heard it from you. It would set his mind at rest about you?”

“It is quite at rest at present on that score. He has no idea that the discovery would be likely to affect me.”

“You are better able to judge of that, of course, than I am. But it grieves me to see you have a secret from your father; I wish it could be avoided.”

“But it cannot; indeed it cannot!” she repeated emphatically. “You may trust me to speak, if I thought it could be done without injury to both of us. It is much better to wait; perhaps by the time it comes to his ears I may be able to hear him speak of it without betraying myself and paining him.”

Father Henwick acquiesced, but reluctantly. He hoped she was right in supposing M. de la Bourbonais quite blind to what had been so palpable to a casual observer. But, making even the fullest allowance for the absent-minded habits of the studious man, this seemed scarcely probable. Franceline had affirmed it herself more confidently, perhaps, than was warranted. She had, however, succeeded in lulling her father into forgetfulness of his former conjectures and impressions; she was certain of this. It had been done at a terrible price of endurance and self-control; but she had succeeded, and it would be doubly cruel now to revive his suspicions and let him know the truth.

“I will trust you,” said Father Henwick; “it is indeed a mercy that he is not called upon to bear such a trial while he is yet so unprepared.”

There was an earnestness about him as he said this that would have caused Franceline a deeper emotion than curiosity if her mind were not fixed wide of the mark. She replied after a moment’s reflection: “If anything should occur to make it necessary to tell him, will you break it to him, father?”

“I will,” said the priest simply.

Franceline had not the least fear of Father Henwick. The severity of his passionless brow did not frighten her; it never checked the outflow of the thoughts and emotions that came surging up from her own perturbed heart. He seemed too far removed from strife himself to be affected by it, except as a pitying angel might, looking down from his calm heaven on poor mortals struggling and striving in the smoke and din of their earthly battle-field.

“Father,” said Franceline suddenly, “I wish I cared more for the poor! I wish I could love them and pity them as you do; but I don’t. I’m so shy of going amongst them. I’m sure I don’t do them any good, and they don’t do me any good, they’re so prosy and egotistical—most of them, at least.”

He turned an amused, indulgent smile on her.

“There was a time when I thought so too; but persevere, and the love will come after a little while. All that is worth having is bought with sacrifice. Oh! if we could only understand the blessedness of sacrifice! Then we should find the peace passing all understanding that comes of passion overcome, of sorrow generously accepted!”

He held out his hand to say good-by. Franceline laid hers in it; but did not remove it at once. “Father,” she said, with her eyes lifted in childlike fearlessness to his, “one would think, to hear you speak of passion overcome and sorrow accepted, that you knew something about them! I sometimes wish you did. It would make it easier to me to believe in the possibility of overcoming and accepting.”

A change came over Father Henwick’s face for one moment; it was not a cloud nor a tremor, but the shadow of some deep emotion that must pass away before he could answer. Then the words came with grave simplicity, and low, as if they were a prayer:

“Believe, then, my child, and take courage; I have gone through it all!”

He turned and walked back into the wood. Franceline stood looking after him through gathering tear-drops. Never had he seemed so far above her, so removed from human weakness, as at this moment, when he so humbly acknowledged kindred with it.

A pleasant surprise met Franceline on her return home. Sir Simon was at The Lilies, and loudly expressing his indignation at not finding her there to greet him. She arrived, however, before he had quite divested himself of a cargo of small boxes which he had carried down himself in order to have the delight of witnessing her curiosity and pleasure in their contents. There was hardly any event which could have given her so much pleasure in her present frame of mind as the sight of her kind old friend; and she satisfied him to the full by her affectionate welcome and her delight in all his presents. He had not forgotten her favorite friandise—chocolate bonbons—and she set to nibbling them at once, in spite of Angélique’s protest against such a proceeding close on dinner-time.

“Va, petite gourmande!” exclaimed the bonne, tramping off to her kitchen, in high glee to see Franceline’s gayety and innocent greediness over the dainty.

Sir Simon was, if possible, in brighter spirits than ever; like Job’s friends, he was “full of discourse,” so that there was nothing to do but listen and laugh as the current rippled on. He had a deal to tell about his rambles in the Pyrenees, and a whole budget of adventures to retail, and anecdotes about odd people he had come across in all sorts of out-of-the-way places. Nothing checked the pleasant flow until M. de la Bourbonais had the unlucky inspiration to inquire for Lady Rebecca’s health; whereupon the baronet raised his right hand and let it fall again with an emphatic gesture, shook his head, and compressed his lips in ominous silence. Raymond, who held the key of the pantomime, gathered therefrom that Lady Rebecca had for the six-and-thirtieth time rallied from the jaws of death, and plunged her long-suffering heir once more into dejection and disappointment. He knew what was in store for his private ear, and heaved a sigh. “But the present hour shall be a respite,” Sir Simon seemed to say; and he quitted the subject abruptly, and proceeded to catechise Franceline on her behavior since his departure. He was surprised and annoyed to find that she had been to no parties; that nothing more exciting than that short visit to Rydal had come of his deep-laid scheme with the dowager; and that there had been no rivalry of gallant suitors attacking the citadel of The Lilies. He had been rather nervous before meeting her; for, though it had been made quite clear to him by Raymond’s letters that he had received no crushing blow of any description, Sir Simon had a lurking fear that recent events might have left a deeper shadow on his daughter’s existence than he was conscious of. Her aspect, however, set him at ease on this score. He could hardly have lighted on a more favorable moment for the confirmation of his sanguine hopes regarding Franceline’s heart-wholeness. True, she had been crying, only half an hour ago, bitter, burning tears enough; but her face retained no trace of them, and it still held the glow of inward triumph that Father Henwick’s last words had called up into her eyes, and her cheeks had got a faint color from the rapid walking. Sir Simon breathed freely as he took note of these outward signs; he could indulge in a little chaffing without remorse or arrière-pensée. He wanted to know, merely as a matter of curiosity, how many hearts she had broken in his absence—how many unfortunates had been mortally struck as they passed within reach of her arrows on the wayside. Franceline protested that she carried no quiver, and had not inflicted a scratch on any one. Humph! Sir Simon invited her to convey that answer to the marines.

“And how about Ponsonby Anwyll? Has he been here lately?”

“No; he called twice, but papa and I were out.”

“Poor devil! so much the better for him! But he won’t have the sense to keep out of harm’s way; he’ll be at it again before long.”

Franceline gave one of her merry laughs—she was in a mood to enjoy the absurdity of the joke—and went to take off her things; for Angélique put in her head to say that dinner was ready.

Things fell quickly into their old course at the Court. There was a procession of morning callers every day, and pleasant friendly dinners, and a few men down in relays to shoot. Sir Simon insisted on M. de la Bourbonais coming to join them frequently, and bringing Franceline; he had established a precedent, and he was not going to let it drop. Franceline, on the whole, was glad of the excitement; she was determined to use everything that could help her good resolutions; and the necessity for seeming to enjoy soon led to her doing so in reality. After the stillness of her little home-life, filled as it was with restless voices audible to no ear but hers, the gay stir of the Court was welcome. It was a pleasurable sensation, too, to feel herself the object of admiring attentions from a number of agreeable gentlemen, to be deferred to and made much of, as if she were a little queen amongst them all. Sir Simon was more indulgent than ever, and spoiled her to his heart’s content. Father Henwick, who was kept au courant of what was going on, could not find it in his heart to oppose what seemed to be an innocent diversion of her thoughts.

It was, therefore, anything but a welcome break when Lady Anwyll came down one morning, accompanied by Sir Simon, to announce her intention of carrying off her friend the next day to Rydal. Franceline fought off while she could, but Sir Simon pooh-poohed her excuses about not liking to leave her father, and so forth; he was there now to look after him, and she must go. So she went. Rydal had a dreadful association in her mind, and she shrank from going there as from revisiting the scene of some horrible tragedy. She shrank, too, from leaving her father. Of late they had been more bound up in their daily life than ever; she had coaxed him into accepting her services as an amanuensis, and he had quickly grown so used to them that he was sure to miss her greatly at his work.

There was nothing, moreover, in the inmates of Rydal to compensate her for the sacrifice; they were not the least interesting. It was always the same good-natured petting from Lady Anwyll, as if she were a kitten or a baby. She knew exactly what the conversation would be—gossip about local trifles, about the family, especially Ponce, his boots, his eccentricities, his pet dishes, his pranks in the regiment; the old tune played over and over again on the same string. As to Ponce himself, Franceline knew the big hussar already by heart; he would do his best to be entertaining, and would only be awkward and commonplace. Nothing at Rydal, in fact, rose above the dead-level of Dullerton.

The dowager had some few young people in for a carpet-dance, in which Franceline had to take her part, and did without any repugnance. Dancing brought back certain memories that pierced her like steel blades; but her heart was proof against the thrusts, and she defied them to wound her. Lord Roxham was invited, and showed himself cordial and friendly, but nothing more. He said he had been called away to London soon after they last met, or else he would have profited by M. de la Bourbonais’ permission to call at The Lilies; he hoped that the authorization might still hold good.

“Oh! yes; do come. I shall be so glad to see you,” was the frank and unaffected reply.

Lady Anwyll had meantime felt rather aggrieved at Lord Roxham’s behavior. Her little scheme had gone off so swimmingly at first she could not understand why it had suddenly collapsed in its prosperous course, and come to a dead halt. At any rate, she would give him one more chance. The young legislator seemed in no violent hurry to improve it. He danced a couple of times with Franceline, and once with two other young girls, and then subsided to dummy whist with the rector of Rydal and his wife, leaving Franceline to the combined fascinations of Mr. Charlton and Ponce, who usurped her between them. The latter bestowed such an unequal share of a host’s courtesy on the young French girl, indeed, that his mother felt it incumbent on her to explain to the other young ladies that Mlle. de la Bourbonais was a foreigner; therefore Ponce, being so good-natured, paid her particular attention. And he certainly did—not only on that occasion, but while she remained. He was continually hovering about her like a huge overshadowing bird whose wings were always in the way of its movements. He tripped over footstools in attempting to place them under her feet; but then he was always so thankful that it was himself, not her, he nearly upset! He spilt several cups of tea in handing them to her, and was nearly overcome with gratitude when he saw the carpet had got the contents, and that her pretty muslin frock was safe! He would hold an umbrella open over her because it looked so uncommonly like rain; and it was such a mercy to have only spoiled her bonnet and made a hole in her veil, when he might so easily have run the point into her eye. Ponce, like many wiser men, had endless satisfaction in the contemplation of the blunders he might have committed and did not. Yet, with all his boyish awkwardness, Franceline was growing very fond of him. He was so thoroughly kind-hearted, and so free from the taint of conceit; and then there was an undeniable enjoyment in the sense of being cared for, and thought of, and watched over; and it was all done in a naïve, boyish way, and with a brotherly absence of compliment or constraint that left her free to accept it without any sense of undue obligation, or the fear of being called upon to repay it except by being pleased and grateful. When he followed her into the conservatory with a shawl and wrapped it round her unceremoniously, she looked up at his fresh, honest face, and said, almost as if he had been a woman: “I wish I had you for a brother, Captain Anwyll!” He got very red, and was fumbling somewhere in his mind for an answer, when his mother called to him for the watering-pot; Ponce seized it, and, dashing out a sudden shower-bath upon the dowager’s dress, narrowly escaped drenching Franceline’s. But it did escape. What a lucky dog he was!

How pleasant it was riding home in the fresh afternoon! Lady Anwyll came in the carriage, while Franceline and Capt. Anwyll cantered on before. Nothing was likely to have happened at The Lilies during her absence; but as they drew near she grew impatient and rode at a pace, as if she expected wonderful tidings at the ride’s end. The air was so clear that Dullerton, yet a mile off, sent its hum of life towards the riders with sharp distinctness. The panting of the train, as it moved out of the station, sounded close by; every street cry and tinkling cart-bell rang out like a chime. Soon the soft cooing of the doves came wafted above the distant voice of the town; and when the travellers came within sight of The Lilies, the flock flew to greet Franceline, wheeling round high up in the air several times before alighting on her shoulders and outstretched wrist. Then came her father’s delighted exclamation, as he hurried down the little garden-walk, and Angélique’s affectionate embrace. And once more the small, still home-life, that was so sweet and so rich in a restored joy, recommenced. Franceline devoted hours every day now to working with her father, and soon she became almost as much absorbed in the work as he was. Sometimes, indeed, she hindered rather than helped, stopping him in the midst of his dictation to demand an explanation; but Raymond never chided her or grudged the delay. Her fresh young eyesight and diligent, nimble hand were invaluable to him, and he wondered how he had got on so long without them.

Lord Roxham redeemed his promise of calling at The Lilies. He talked a good deal to Raymond about politics and current events, saying very little to Franceline, who sat by, stitching away at some bit of plain sewing. This was just what she liked. Her father was entertained and interested. A breeze from the outer world always refreshed him, though he was hardly conscious of it, still less of needing any such reviving incident in his quiet, monotonous existence; but Franceline always hailed it with thankfulness for him, and was well content to remain in the shade now while the visitor devoted himself to amusing her father. Was it fancy, or did she, on glancing up suddenly from her needle-work, detect an expression, half compassionate, half searching, in Lord Roxham’s face, as he looked fixedly at her? Whether it was fancy or not, her eyes fell at once, and the blood mantled her cheek; she did not venture to let her gaze light on him again, and it was with a sense of shyness that she shook hands with him at parting.

Ponsonby Anwyll was now a frequent visitor at The Lilies, sometimes coming alone, sometimes with Sir Simon; and it was a curious coincidence, if quite accidental, that he generally made his appearance as Franceline was on the point of starting for her ride; and as he was always on horseback, there was no conceivable reason why he should not join the party. The burly hussar was a safer companion in the saddle than in the drawing-room; he rode with the masterly ease of a cavalryman, and, the road being free from the disturbing influence of tea-trays and chairs, he spilt nothing and upset nobody, and Franceline was always glad of his company. She was too inexperienced and too much absorbed in other thoughts to forecast any possible results from this state of things. Ponsonby continued the same familiar, kind, brother-like manner to her; was mightily concerned in keeping her out of the bad bits of road, and out of the way of the cattle that might be tramping to market and prove offensive to her mettlesome pony. He never aimed at making himself agreeable, only useful. But the eyes of Dullerton looked on at all this brotherly attention, and drew its own conclusion. The Langrove young ladies, of whom somehow she had of late seen less than ever, grew excited to the highest pitch about it, and were already discussing how many of them would be bridemaids at the wedding, if bridemaids there were. Most likely Sir Simon would settle that and probably give the dresses. Even discreet Miss Merrywig could not forbear shaking her finger and her barrel curls at Franceline one day when the latter hurried off to get ready for her ride, with the excuse that Sir Simon and Capt. Anwyll were due at three o’clock. But Franceline knew by this time what Dullerton was, and what it could achieve in the way of gossip; spinning a yarn a mile long out of a thread the length of your finger. She only laughed, and mentally remarked how little people knew. They would be marrying her to Sir Simon next, when Ponsonby rejoined his regiment and was seen no more at her saddle-bow.

The three had set out for a ride one afternoon, when, as they were dashing along at full tilt, Sir Simon pulled up with a strong formula of exclamation.

“What’s the matter?” cried Sir Ponsonby, plunging back heavily, while Franceline reined in Rosebud, and turned in some alarm to see what had occurred.

“If I have not actually forgotten all about Simpson, who comes down from London by appointment this afternoon! I dare say he’s waiting for me by this, and he must return by the 5:20. I must leave you, and post home as quick as Nero will carry me.” And with a “by-by” to Franceline and a nod to Capt. Anwyll, coupled with an injunction not to let her ride too fast and to keep her out of mischief, the baronet turned his horse’s head and galloped away, desiring the groom to follow on with the others.

They went on at a good pace until they reached the foot of a gentle ascent, when both of one accord fell into a walk. For the first time in their intercourse Franceline was conscious of a certain vague awkwardness with Capt. Anwyll; of casting about for something to say, and not finding anything. The place was perfectly solitary, the woods on one side, the fields sloping down to the river on the other. The groom lagged respectfully a long way behind, quite out of ear-shot, often out of sight; for the road curved and wheeled abruptly every now and then, and hid the foremost riders from his view. Ponsonby broke the silence:

“Miss Franceline”—he would call her Miss Franceline, because it was easier and shorter—“I have something on my mind that I want badly to say to you. I’ve been wanting to say it for some time. I hope it won’t make you angry?”

“I can’t say till I hear it; but if you are in doubt about it, perhaps it would be safer not to say it,” remarked Franceline, beginning to tremble ominously.

“I wouldn’t vex you for anything in the world! ’Pon my honor I wouldn’t!” protested Ponce warmly. “But, you see, I don’t know whether what I’m going to say will vex you or not.”

“Then don’t say it; you are sure not to vex me then,” was the encouraging advice, and she devoutly hoped he would take it. But he was not so minded.

“That’s true,” he assented; “but then, you see, it might please you. I’m half afraid it won’t, though, only I can’t be sure till I try.” After musing a moment, in obvious perplexity, he resumed, speaking rapidly, as if he had made up his mind to bolt it all out and take the consequences. “I’m not a puppy—my worst enemy won’t accuse me of that; but I’m not a bad fellow either, as my mother and all the fellows in the Tenth will tell you; and the fact is, I’ve grown very fond of you, Miss Franceline, and if you’ll take me as I am I’ll do my best to be a good husband to you and to make you happy.”

He said it quickly, as if he were reciting a lesson got by heart, and then came to a dead halt and “paused for a reply.” He might have paused long enough, if he had not at last turned round and read his fate in Franceline’s scared, white face and undisguised agitation.

“Oh! now, don’t say no before you think it over!” entreated the young man. “I know you’re ten times too good for me; but, for that matter, you’re too good for the best fellow that ever lived. I said so myself to Sir Simon only this morning. But I do love you with all my heart, Franceline; and if only you could care for me ever so little to begin with, I’d be satisfied, and you’d make me the happiest man alive!”

Franceline had now recovered her self-possession, and was able to speak, though she still trembled.

“I am so sorry!” she exclaimed. “I never dreamed of this; indeed I did not! I dare say I have been very selfish, very thoughtless; but it was not wilful. I am very unhappy to have given you pain!”

“Oh! don’t say that. You’ll make me miserable if you say that!” pleaded Ponsonby. “Of course you never thought of it. It’s great impudence of me to think of it, I have so little to offer you! But if you don’t quite hate the sight of me, I’m sure I could make you a devoted husband, and love you better than many a cleverer fellow. I’ve been fond of you from the first, and so has my mother.”

“You are both very good to me; I am very, very grateful!” The tears rose to her eyes, and with a frank, impulsive movement she held out her hand to him. Ponsonby bent from the saddle and raised it to his lips, although it was gloved. If he had not been over-sanguine at heart and a trifle stupid, poor fellow, he would have felt that it was all over with him. The little hand lay with cold, sisterly kindness in his grasp, and Franceline looked at him with eyes that were too kind and pitying to promise anything more than sisterly pity and gratitude.

“I cannot, I cannot. You must never think of it any more. Do you not see that it is impossible? I am a Catholic!”

“Pshaw! as if that mattered a whit! I mean as if it need make any difference between us! I don’t mind it a pin—’pon my honor I don’t! I said so to the count. We’ve settled all that, in fact, and if he’s satisfied to trust me why will not you?”

“Then you have spoken to my father?”

“Oh! yes; that was the right thing, Sir Simon told me, as he was a Frenchman.”

“And what did he say to you?”

“He said that if you said yes, he was quite willing to give you to me. I wanted to come to settlements at once—I only wish I was ten times better off!—but he would not hear a word about that until I had consulted you. Only, he said he would be glad to receive me as his son; he did indeed, Franceline!” She was looking straight before her, her eyes dilated, her whole face aglow with some strong emotion that his words seemed to have stirred in her.

“You remember,” continued Ponsonby, “that you said to me once you would like to have me for a brother? Well, it will be nearly the same thing. You would get used to me as a husband after a while; you would, Franceline!”

“Never, never, never!” she repeated, not passionately, but with a calm emphasis that made Ponsonby’s heart die within him. He could not find a word to oppose to the strong, quiet protest.

“No, it is all a mistake,” said Franceline. “I don’t know who is to blame—I suppose I am. I should not have let you come so often; but you were so kind, and I have so few people to care for me; and when one is sad at heart, kindness is so welcome! But I should have thought of you; I have been selfish!”

“No, no, you have not been selfish at all; it’s all my doing and my fault,” affirmed the young man. “I wish I had held my tongue a little longer. My mother will come and see you to-morrow; she will explain it all, and how it sha’n’t make any trouble to you, my being a Protestant.”

“She must not come,” said Franceline with decision; “there is nothing to explain. I am sincerely grateful to her and to you; but I have only gratitude to give you. I hope with all my heart that you may soon forget me and any pain I am causing you, and that you may meet with a wife who will make you happier than I could have done.”

Ponsonby was silent for a few moments, and then he said, speaking with a certain hesitation and diffidence:

“I could be satisfied to wait and to go on hoping, if I were sure of one thing:… that you did not care for anybody else. Do you?”

She flashed a glance of indignant pride at him.

“What right have you to put such a question to me? I tell you I do not care for you, and that I will never marry you! You have no right to ask me any more.”

Ponsonby recoiled as if a flash of lightning had forked out of the cold, gray sky. “Good heavens! I did not mean to offend you. I declare solemnly I did not!”

But he had touched a vibrating chord unawares, and set every fibre in her heart thrilling and every pulse throbbing; and the disturbance was not to be laid by any words that he could utter. Franceline turned homewards, and they did not exchange a word until they reached The Lilies and Ponsonby was assisting her to alight.

“Say you forgive me!” he said, speaking very low and penitently.

She had already forgiven him but not herself.

“I do, and I am sorry for being so impetuous. Good-by!”

“And my mother may come and see you to-morrow?”

“No, no! It is no use; it is no use! I say again I wish you were my brother, Sir Ponsonby, but, as you care to remain my friend, never speak to me again of this.”

He pressed the hand she held out to him; the groom backed up to take the reins of her horse, and Ponsonby rode away with a thorn in his honest heart.

Miss Merrywig was within, chatting and laughing away with the count. Franceline was not in a mood to meet the garrulous old lady or anybody; so she went straight to her room, and only came down when the visitor was gone.

“Father,” she said, going up behind him and laying a hand on each shoulder, “what is this Sir Ponsonby tells me? That you are tired of your clair-de-lune, and want to get rid of her?”

M. de la Bourbonais drew down the two trembling hands, and clasped them on his breast, and lifted his head as if he would look at her.

“It would not be losing her, but gaining a son, who would take care of her when I am gone! She has not thought of that!”

“No; and she does not wish to think of it! I will live with you while I live. I don’t care to look beyond that; nor must you, petit père. But I am very sorry for Sir Ponsonby. You must write and tell him so, and that he must not come any more—until he has forgotten me; that you cannot give me up.”

“My cherished one! Let us talk about this matter; it is very serious. We must not do anything rashly.” He tried to unclasp her hands and draw her to his side; but she locked them tighter, and laid her cheek on his head.

“Petit père, there is nothing to talk about; I will never marry him or anybody!”

“My child, thou speakest without reflection. Captain Anwyll is a good, honorable man, and he loves thee, and it would be a great comfort to me to see thee married to him, and not to leave thee friendless and almost penniless whenever God calls me away. I understand it has taken thee by surprise, and that thou canst not accept the idea without some delay and getting used to it; but we must not decide so important a matter hastily. Come, sit down, and let us discuss it.”

“No, father,” she answered in a tone of determination that was quite foreign to her now, and reminded him of the wilful child of long ago; “there is no use in discussing what is already decided. I will never marry Ponsonby—or anybody. Why, petit père, do you forget that he is a Protestant?”

“Nay, I have forgotten nothing; that has been all arranged. He is most liberal about it; consents to leave you to … to have everything your own way in that respect, and assures me that it shall make no difference whatever to you, his not being of your religion.”

“No difference, father! No difference to a wife that her husband should be a heretic! You cannot be in earnest. What blessing could there be on such a marriage?”

“But you would soon convert him, my little one; you would make a good Catholic of him before the year was out,” said M. de la Bourbonais. “Think of that!”

“And suppose it were the other way, and that he made a good Protestant of me? It is no more than I should deserve for my presumption. You know what happens to those who seek the danger.…”

“Oh! that is a different thing; that warning applies to those who seek it rashly, from vain or selfish motives,” protested Raymond, moving his spectacles, as he always did instinctively when his argument was weak; and he knew right well that now it was slipping into sophistry.

“I cannot see anything but a selfish motive in marrying against the express prohibition of the church and without any affection for the person, but simply because he could give you a position and the good things of this life,” said Franceline.

“The prohibition is conditional,” persisted Raymond, “and those conditions would be scrupulously fulfilled; and as to there not being the necessary affection, there is enough on his side for both, and his love would soon beget thine.”

“Father, it is no use. I am grieved to contradict you; but I cannot, cannot do this to please you. You must write and say so to Capt. Anwyll; you must indeed.”

Raymond heaved a sigh. He felt as powerless as an infant before this new wilfulness of his clair-de-lune; it was foolish as well as imprudent to yield, but he did not know how to deal with it. There was honest truth on her side; no subterfuges could baffle the instinctive logic of her childlike faith.

“We will let things remain as they are for a few days, and then, if thou dost still insist, I will write and refuse the offer,” he said, seeking a last chance in temporizing.

“No, petit père; if you love me, write at once. It is only fair to Sir Ponsonby, and it will set my mind at rest. Here, let me find you a pen!” She chose one out of a number of inky goose-quills on the little Japan tray, and thrust it playfully between his fingers.

The letter was written, and Angélique was forthwith despatched with it to the pillar at the park gate.

During the remainder of the afternoon Franceline worked away diligently at the Causes of the French Revolution, and spent the evening reading aloud. But M. de la Bourbonais could not so lightly dismiss the day’s incident from his thoughts. He had experienced a moment of pure joy and unutterable thankfulness when Ponsonby had come in and stammered out his honest confession of love, and pleaded so humbly with the father to “take his part with Miss Franceline.” The pleasure was all the greater for being a complete surprise. Sir Simon had cautiously resolved to have no hand in negotiating between the parties; he had let things take their course from the first, determined not to interfere, but clearly foreseeing the issue. Raymond was bewildered by Franceline’s rejection of the proposed marriage. He did not try much to explain it to himself; it was a puzzle that did not come within the rule and compass of his philosophy—a young girl refusing to be married when an eligible husband presented himself for her father’s acceptance. He heaved many a deep sigh over it, as his anxious gaze rested on the golden-haired young head bent over the desk. But he did not ask any questions.

Sir Simon came down next morning in high displeasure. He was angry, disappointed, aggrieved. Here he had been at considerable pains of ingenuity and forethought to provide a model husband for Franceline, a young fellow whom any girl ought to jump at—high-principled, unencumbered rent-roll, good-looking, good-tempered—and the little minx turns up her nose at him, and sends him to the right-about! Such perverseness and folly were not to be tolerated. What did she mean by it? What did she see amiss in Anwyll? Sir Simon was for having her up for a round lecture. But Raymond would not allow this. He might groan in his inmost heart over Franceline’s refusal, but he was not going to let her be bullied by anybody; not even by Sir Simon. He stood up for his child, and defended her as if he had fully approved of her conduct.

“I’ll tell you what it is, Bourbonais, you’re just as great a fool as she is; only she is a child, and knows nothing of life, and can’t see the madness of what she is doing. But you ought to know better. I have no patience with you. When one thinks of what this marriage would do for both of you—lifting you out of penury, restoring your daughter to her proper position in the world, and securing her future, so that, if you were called away to-morrow, you need have no care or anxiety about her! And to think of your backing her up in rejecting it all!”

“I did not back her up in it. I deplore her having done so,” replied Raymond. “But I will not coerce her; her happiness is dearer to me than her interest or my own.”

“What tomfoolery! As if her interest and her happiness were not identical in this case! A man who is fond of her, and rich enough to give her everything in life a girl could wish for! What does she want besides?” demanded Sir Simon angrily.

“I believe she wants nothing, except to be left with her old father. She does not care for Capt. Anwyll,” said Raymond; but his French mind felt this was very weak argument.

“The devil she doesn’t! Who does she care for?” retorted the baronet. But he had no sooner uttered the words than he regretted them; they seemed to recoil on him like a stone flung too near. He seized his hat, and, muttering impatiently something about the nonsense of giving into childish fancies, etc., strode out of the cottage, and did not show himself there for several days.

He was pursued by that question of his own, “Who did Franceline care for?” and made uncomfortable by the persistency with which it kept dinning in his ears. He had made up his mind long ago that the failure of his first matrimonial plot had had no serious effect on her heart or spirits. She was looking very delicate when he came back, but that was the dulness of the life she had been leading during his absence. She had picked up considerably since then. It was plain to everybody she had; her spirits were better. There was certainly nothing wrong in that direction. How could there be when he, Sir Simon, so thoroughly desired the contrary, and did so much to cheer up the child—and himself into the bargain—and make her forget any impression that unlucky Clide might have made? Still, no matter how emphatically he answered it, the tiresome question kept sounding in his ears day after day. He could stand it no longer. He must go and see them at The Lilies—see Franceline, and read on her innocent young face that all was peace within, and cheer up his own depressed spirits by a talk with Raymond. Nobody listened to him and sympathized with him as Raymond did. He had no worries of his own to distract him, for one thing; and if he had, he was such a philosophical being he would carry them to the moon and leave them there. Sir Simon was blessed with no such happy faculty. He could forget his troubles for a while under the stimulating balm of cheerful society and generous wine; but as soon as he was alone they were down on him like an army of ants, stinging and goading him. Things were very gloomy just now, and he could less than ever dispense with the opiate of sympathetic companionship. Lady Rebecca had taken a fresh start, and was less likely to depart than she had been for the last ten years. The duns, who watched her ladyship’s fluctuations between life and death with almost as sincere and breathless an interest as her heir, had got wind of this, and were up and at him again, hunting him like a hare—the low, grasping, insolent hounds! His revived money annoyances made him the more irascible with Franceline for throwing away her chance of being for ever saved and protected from the like. But he would harp no more on that string.

He had been into Dullerton on horseback, and, overtaking the postman on his way home, he stopped to take his letters, and then asked if there were any for The Lilies. He was going there, and would save the postman the walk that far.

“Thank you, sir! There is one for the count.” And the man held up a large blue envelope, like a lawyer’s letter, which Sir Simon thrust into his pocket. He left his horse at the Court, and walked on through the park, reading his letters as he went. Their contents were not of the most agreeable, to judge by the peevish and angry ejaculations that the reader emitted in the course of their perusal. He had not done when he reached the cottage.

“Here’s a letter for you, Bourbonais; I’ll finish mine while you’re reading it.” He handed the blue envelope to his friend, and, flinging himself into a chair, became again absorbed and ejaculatory.

M. de la Bourbonais, meanwhile, proceeded to open his official-looking communication. He surveyed it with uplifted eyebrows, examined well the large red seal, and scrutinized the handwriting of the address, before he tore it open. His eye ran quickly over the page. A nervous twitch contracted his features; his hand shook as if a string at his elbow had been rudely pulled; but he controlled all further sign of emotion, and, after reading the contents twice over, silently folded the letter and replaced it in the envelope. Sir Simon had seen nothing; he was deep in suppressed denunciations of some rascally dun.

“Hang me if I know what’s to be the end of it, or the end of me—an ounce of lead in my skull, most likely!” he burst out, ramming the bundle of offending documents into his coat-pocket. “The brutes are in league to drive me mad!”

“Has anything new happened?” inquired the count anxiously. “I hoped things had arranged themselves of late?”

“Not they! How can they when these vampires are sucking the blood of one? It’s pretty much like sucking a corpse!” he laughed sardonically. “The fools! If they would but have sense to see that it is their own interest not to drive me to desperation! But they will goad me to do something that will make an end of their chance of ever being paid!”

M. de la Bourbonais ought to have been hardened to this sort of thing; but he was not. The vague threats and dark innuendoes always alarmed him. He never knew but that each crisis which called them out might be the supreme one that would bring about their fulfilment. At such moments he had not the heart to rebuke Sir Simon and add the bitterness of self-reproach to his excited feelings. His look of keen distress struck Sir Simon with compunction.

“Oh! it will blow off, as it has done so often before, I suppose,” he said, tossing his head. “Here’s a letter from L—— to say he is coming down next week with a whole houseful of men to shoot. I’ve not seen L—— for an age. He’s a delightful fellow; he’ll cheer one up.” And the baronet heaved a sigh from the very depths of his afflicted spirit.

“Mon cher, is it wise to be asking down crowds of people in this way?” asked Raymond dubiously.

“I did not ask them! Don’t I tell you they have written to invite themselves?”

It was true; but Sir Simon forgot how often he had besought his friends to do just what they were now doing—to write and say when they could come, and to bring as many as they liked with them. That had always been the way at the Court; and he was not the man to belie its old traditions. But Raymond, who had also his class of noble traditions, could not see it.

“Why not write frankly, and, without explaining the precise motive, say that you cannot at present receive any one?”

Sir Simon gave an impatient pshaw!

“Nonsense, my dear Bourbonais, nonsense! As if a few fellows more or less signified that”—snapping his fingers—“at the end of the year! Besides, what the deuce is the good of having a place at all, if one can’t have one’s friends about one in it? Better shut up at once. It’s the only compensation a man has; the only thing that pulls him through. And then the pheasants are there, and must be shot. I can’t shoot them all. But it’s no use trying to make you take an Englishman’s view of the case. You simply can’t do it.”

M. de la Bourbonais agreed, and inwardly hoped he never might come to see the case as his friend did. But, notwithstanding this, Sir Simon went on discussing his own misfortunes, denouncing the rascality and rapacity of the modern tradesman, and bemoaning the good old times when the world was a fit place for a gentleman to live in. When he had sufficiently relieved his mind on the subject, and drew breath, M. de la Bourbonais poured what oil of comfort he could on his friend’s wounds. He spoke confidently of the ultimate demise of Lady Rebecca, and expressed equal trust in the powers of Mr. Simpson to perform once again the meteorological feat known to Sir Simon as “raising the wind.” Under the influence of these soothing abstractions the baronet cheered up, and before long Richard was himself again. He overhauled Raymond’s latest work; read aloud some notes on Mirabeau which Franceline had taken down at his dictation the previous evening, and worked himself into a frenzy of indignation at the historian’s partiality for that thundering demagogue. Raymond waxed warm in defence of his hero; maintained that at heart Mirabeau had wished to save the king; and almost lost his philosophical self-control when Sir Simon called him the master-knave of the Revolution, a traitor and a bully, and other hard names to the same effect.

“I wash my hands of you, if you are going to play panegyrist to that pock-marked ruffian!” was the baronet’s concluding remark; and he flung out his hands, as if he were shaking the contamination from his fingers. Suddenly his eye fell upon the great blue letter, and, abruptly dismissing Mirabeau, he said: “By the way, what a formidable document that is that I brought you just now! Has it anything to do with the Revolution?”

Raymond shook his head and smothered a rising sigh.

“It has been as good as a revolution to me, at any rate.”

“My dear Bourbonais, what is it? Nothing seriously amiss, I hope?” exclaimed Sir Simon, full of alarmed interest.

The count took up the letter and handed it to him.

“Good heavens! Bankrupt! Can pay nothing! How much had you in it?”