the talk of the world as I have done
be exposed to the risk of insult as I
have been until she had the shelter
and protection denied to me. And I
having thus overleaped the bound that a
prudent mother would prescribe to her
child, have become one whose hand men
do not seek, unless they themselves take
the same roads to notoriety.
Do you
not think she was right?"

I see as from a tower the end of all. And now-kiss me, dearest - never a word again to me about this conversation: never a word about Mr. Vane-the dark curtain has fallen on the past."

CHAPTER XI.

"Not as you so morbidly put it, silly girl, certainly not right. But I do wish that you had the shelter and protection which Madame Savarin meant to express; I do wish that you were happily married to one very different from MEN and women are much more like Mr. Vane -one who would be more each other in certain large elements of proud of your genius than of your character than is generally supposed, beauty- one who would say, 'My name, but it is that very resemblance which safer far in its enduring nobility than makes their differences the more incomthose that depend on titles and lands-prehensible to each other; just as in which are held on the tenure of the pop-politics, theology, or that most disputaular breath must be honoured by pos- tious of all things disputable, metaphys terity, for She has deigned to make it ics, the nearer the reasoners approach hers. No democratic revolution can dis-each other in points that to an uncritical ennoble me." bystander seem the most important, the more sure they are to start off in opposite directions upon reaching the speck of a pinprick.

"Ay, ay, you believe that men will be found to think with complacency that they owe to a wife a name that they could not achieve for themselves. Pos- Now there are certain grand meetingsibly there are such men. Where? places between man and woman--the among those that are already united by grandest of all is on the ground of love, sympathies in the same callings, the and yet here also is the great field of same labours, the same hopes and fears, quarrel. And here the teller of a tale with the women who have left behind such as mine ought, if he is sufficiently them the privacies of home. Madame wise to be humble, to know that it is alde Grantmesnil was wrong. Artists most profanation if, as man, he preshould wed with artists. True true!" Here she passed her hand over her forehead it was a pretty way of hers when seeking to concentrate thoughtand was silent a moment or so.

sumes to enter the penetralia of a woman's innermost heart, and repeat, as a man would repeat, all the vibrations of sound which the heart of a woman sends forth undistinguishable even to her own ear.

I know Isaura as intimately as if I had rocked her in her cradle, played with her in her childhood, educated and trained her in her youth; and yet I can no more tell you faithfully what passed in her mind during the forty-eight hours that intervened between her conversation with that American lady and her reappearance in some commonplace drawing-room, than I can tell you what the Man in the Moon might feel if the sun that his world reflected were blotted out of creation.

"Did you ever feel," she then asked dreamily, "that there are moments in life when a dark curtain seems to fall over one's past that a day before was so clear, so blended with the present? One cannot any longer look behind; the gaze is attracted onward, and a track of fire flashes upon the future, - the future which yesterday was invisible. There is a line by some English poet - Mr. Vane once quoted it, not to me, but to M. Savarin, and in illustration of his argument, that the most complicated recesses of thought are best reached by the simplest forms of expression. I said to my- I can only say that when she reapself, I will study that truth if ever I peared in that commonplace drawingtake to literature as I have taken to room world, there was a change in her song;' and —yes—it was that evening face not very perceptible to the ordinary that the ambition fatal to woman fixed observer. If anything, to his eye she on me its relentless fangs at Enghien was handsomer the eye was brighter

CHAPTER XII.

-the complexion (always lustrous, i though somewhat pale, the limpid paleness that suits so well with dark hair) GUSTAVE recovered, but slowly. The was yet more lustrous, it was flushed physician pronounced him out of all iminto delicate rose hues - hues that still mediate danger, but said frankly to him, better suit with dark hair. What, then, and somewhat more guardedly to his pawas the change, and change not for the rents, "There is ample cause to beware." better? The lips, once so pensively "Look you, my young friend," he added sweet, had grown hard; on the brow that to Rameau, "mere brain-work seldom had seemed to laugh when the lips did, kills a man once accustomed to it, like there was no longer sympathy between you; but heart-work, and stomach-work, brow and lip; there was scarcely seen a and nerve-work, added to brain-work, fine thread-like line that in a few years may soon consign to the coffin a frame would be a furrow on the space between ten times more robust than yours. Write the eyes; the voice was not so tenderly as much as you will that is your vocasoft; the step was haughtier. What all tion; but it is not your vocation to drink such change denoted it is for a woman absinthe - to preside at orgies in the to decide- I can only guess. In the Maison Dorée. Regulate yourself, and meanwhile, Mademoiselle Cicogna had not after the fashion of the fabulous Don sent her servant daily to inquire after M. Juan. Marry live soberly and quietly Rameau. That, I think, she would have done under any circumstances. Meanwhile, too, she had called on Madame Savarin - made it up with her — sealed the reconciliation by a cold kiss. That, too, under any circumstances, I think, she would have done under some circumstances the kiss might have been less cold.

There was one thing unwonted in her habits. I mention it, though it is only a woman who can say if it means anything worth noticing.

and you may survive the grand-children of viveurs. Go on as you have done, and before the year is out you are in Père la chaise."

Rameau listened languidly, but with a profound conviction that the physician thoroughly understood his case.

Lying helpless on his bed, he had no desire for orgies at the Maison Dorée; with parched lips thirsty for innocent tisane of lime-blossoms, the thought of absinthe was as odious to him as the liquid fire of Phlegethon. If ever sinner became suddenly convinced that there was a good deal to be said in favour, of a moral life, that sinner at the moment I speak of was Gustave Rameau. Certainly a moral life "Domus et placens uxor, were essential to the poet who, aspiring to immortal glory, was condemned to the ailments of a very perishable frame. -on- Ah," he murmured plaintively to himself, "that girl Isaura can have no true sympathy with genius! It is no ordinary

-

For six days she had left a letter from Madame de Grantmesnil unanswered. With Madame de Grantmesnil was connected the whole of her innermost life from the day when the lonely desolate child had seen, beyond the dusty thoroughfares of life, gleams of the faery land in poetry and art-onward through her restless, dreamy, aspiring youth ward-onward- - till now, through all that constitutes the glorious reality that

we call romance.

66

man that she will kill in me!"

Never before had she left for two days And so murmuring he fell asleep. unanswered letters which were to her as When he woke and found his head pilSibylline leaves to some unquiet neophyte lowed on his mother's breast, it was much yearning for solutions to enigmas sug- as a sensitive, delicate man may wake gested whether by the world without or after having drunk too much the night by the soul within. For six days Ma- before. Repentant, mournful, maudlin, dame de Grantmesnil's letter remained he began to weep, and in the course of unanswered, unread, neglected, thrust out his weeping he confided to his mother of sight; just as when some imperious the secret of his heart. necessity compels us to grapple with a world that is, we cast aside the romance which, in our holiday hours, had beguiled us to a world with which we have interests and sympathies no more.

Isaura had refused him - that refusal had made him desperate.

"Ah! with Isaura how changed would be his habits! how pure! how healthful!" His mother listened fondly, and did her best to comfort him and cheer his drooping spirits.

She told him of Isaura's messages of

These poor Parisians! it is the mode to preach against them; and before my book closes I shall have to preach no, not to preach, but to imply - plenty of faults to consider and amend. Meanwhile I try my best to take them, as the philosophy of life tells us to take other people, for what they are.

dipped, not in ink, but in blood from a vein she had opened in her arm: "Trai tor!-I have not seen thee for three days. Dost thou dare to love another? If so, I care not how thou attempt to conceal it woe to her! Ingrat! woe to thee! Love is not love, unless, when betrayed by Love, it appeals to death. Answer me quick — quick. JULIE."

Poor Gustave thought of that letter and groaned. Certainly his mother was right-he ought to get rid of Julie; but he did not clearly see how Julie was to be got rid of. He replied to Madame Rameau peevishly, "Don't trouble your head about Mademoiselle Caumartin; she is in no want of money. Of course, if I could hope for Isaura — but, alas! I dare not hope. Give me my tisane.”

---

I do not think the domestic relations of the Parisian bourgeoisie are as bad as they are said to be in French novels. Madame Rameau is not an uncommon When the doctor called next day, he type of her class. She had been when looked grave, and, drawing Madame she first married singularly handsome. Rameau into the next room, he said, It was from her that Gustave inherited "We are not getting on so well as I had his beauty; and her husband was a very hoped; the fever is gone, but there is ordinary type of the French shop-keeper much to apprehend from the debility left very plain, by no means intellectual, behind. His spirits are sadly depressed." but gay, good-humoured, devotedly at Then added the doctor pleasantly, and tached to his wife, and with implicit trust with that wonderful insight into our comin her conjugal virtue. Never was trust plex humanity in which physicians excel better placed. There was not a happier poets, and in which Parisian physicians nor a more faithful couple in the quartier are not excelled by any physicians in the in which they resided. Madame Rameau world, - "Can't you think of any bit of hesitated when her boy, thinking of Julie, good news that 'M. Thiers raves asked if no one had done more than send about your son's last poem' that 'it is to inquire after him as Isaura had done. a question among the Academicians beAfter that hesitating pause she said, tween him and Jules Janin' or that "Yes a young lady calling herself Ma-the beautiful Duchesse de - has been demoiselle Julie Caumartin wished to instal herself here as your nurse. When I said, 'But I am his mother-he needs no other nurses,' she would have retreated, and looked ashamed-poor thing! I don't blame her if she loved my son. But, my son, I say this if you love her, don't talk to me about that Mademoiselle Cicogna; and if you love Mademoiselle Cicogna, why, then, your father will take care that the poor girl who loved younot knowing that you loved another not left to the temptation of penury."

is

Rameau's pale lips withered into a phantom-like sneer. Julie! the resplendent Julie! true, only a ballet-dancer, but whose equipage in the Bois had once been the envy of duchesses - Julie ! who had sacrificed fortune for his sake - who, freed from him, could have millionnaires again at her feet! - Julie! to be saved from penury, as a shop-keeper would save an erring nurse-maid Julie! the irrepressible Julie! who had written to him, the day before his illness, in a pen

placed in a lunatic asylum because she has gone mad for love of a certain young Red Republican whose name begins with R.'-can't you think of any bit of similar good news? If you can, it will be a tonic to the relaxed state of your dear boy's amour propre, compared to which all the drugs in the Pharmacopoeia are moonshine and water; and meanwhile be sure to remove him to your own house, and out of the reach of his giddy young friends, as soon as you possibly can."

When that great authority thus left his patient's case in the hands of the mother, she said—"The boy shall be saved."

CHAPTER XIII.

ISAURA was seated beside the Venosta, to whom, of late, she seemed to cling with greater fondness than ever, -working at some piece of embroidery-a labour from which she had been estranged for years; but now she had taken writ ing, reading, music, into passionate disgust. Isaura was thus seated, silently

intent upon her work, and the Venosta | that I have seen you. But, oh Mademoiin full talk, when the servant announced selle! pardon me do not withdraw Madame Rameau. your hand-pardon the mother who comes from the sick-bed of her only son and asks if you will assist to save him! A word from you is life or death to him!"

And Gustave himself, as he passes through the slow stages of convalescence, seems so gratefully to ascribe to her every step in his progress - seems so gently softened in character-seems so re

before my son is sufficiently convalescent | more by his mother's lips is impressed to dispense with a mother's care, and on her the belief that it is in her power resume his former life and occupation in to save a human life, and to animate its the great world. It is everything for us career towards those goals which are if we can coax him into coming under our never based wholly upon earth in the earown rooftree. This is difficult to do. It nest eyes of genius, or perhaps in the is natural for a young man launched into yet more upward vision of pure-souled the world to like his own chez lui. Then believing woman. what will happen to Gustave? He, lonely and heart-stricken, will ask friends, young as himself, but far stronger, to come and cheer him; or he will seek to distract his thoughts by the over-work of his brain; in either case he is doomed.fined from the old affectations, so ennoBut I have stronger motives yet to fix bled above the old cynicism — and, above him awhile at our hearth. This is just all, so needing her presence, so sunless the moment, once lost never to be re- without it, that- well, need I finish the gained, when soothing companionship, sentence? the reader will complete gentle reproachless advice, can fix him what I leave unsaid. lastingly in the habits and modes of life which will banish all fears of his future from the hearts of his parents. You at least honour him with friendship, with kindly interest - you would at least desire to wean him from all that a friend may disapprove or lament -a creature whom Providence meant to be good and perhaps great. If I say to him, It will be long before you can go out and see your friends, but at my house your friends shall come and see you- among them Signora Venosta and Mademoiselle Cicogna will now and then drop in my victory is gained, and my son is saved.""

"Madame," said Isaura, half sobbing, "What a bleasing to have a mother like you! Love so noble ennobles those who hear its voice. Tell your son how ardently I wish him to be well, and to fulfil more than the promise of his genius; tell him also this how I envy him his mother."

CHAPTER XV.

Ir needs no length of words to inform thee, my intelligent reader, be thou man or woman - but more especially woman of the consequences following each other, as wave follows wave in a tide, that resulted from the interview with which my last chapter closed. Gustave is removed to his parents' house; he remains for weeks confined within doors, or, on sunny days, taken an hour or so in his own carriage, drawn by the horse bought from Rochebriant, into by-roads remote from the fashionable world; Isaura visits his mother, liking, respecting, influenced by her more and more; in those visits she sits beside the sofa on which Rameau reclines. Gradually, gently—more and

Enough, that one day Isaura returned home from a visit at Madame Rameau's with the knowledge that her hand was pledged - her future life disposed of; and that, escaping from the Venosti, whom she so fondly, and in her hunger for a mother's love, called Madre, the girl shut herself up in her own room with locked doors.

Ah, poor child! ah, sweet-voiced Isaura! whose delicate image I feel myself too rude and too hard to transfer to this page in the purity of its outlines, and the blended softnesses of its huesthou who, when saying things serious in the words men use, saidst them with a seriousness so charming, and with looks so feminine - thou, of whom no man I ever knew was quite worthy -ah, poor, simple, miserable girl, as I see thee now in the solitude of that white-curtained virginal room! hast thou, then, merged at last thy peculiar star into the cluster of all these commonplace girls whose lips have said "Ay," when their hearts said "No"?-thou, oh brilliant Isaura! thou, oh poor motherless child!

She had sunk into her chair - her own

favourite chair, the covering of it had been embroidered by Madame de Grantmesnil, and bestowed on her as a birthday present last year-the year in which she had first learned what it is to lovethe year in which she had first learned what it is to strive for fame. And somehow uniting, as many young people do, love and fame in dreams of the future, that silken seat had been to her as the Tripod of Delphi was to the Pythian: she had taken to it, as it were intuitively, in all those hours, whether of joy or sorrow, when youth seeks to prophesy, and does but dream.