sible influence keeping him away from one in relation to whom the blaspheming world might impute a mercenary motive, so long as he felt what he regarded merely as a disposition and tendency to love, and not as the divine passion itself. The very fact, too, of the circumstances which had created the disparity in this respect, enriching her on the basis of his poverty, rather increased this influence-might it not look as if he would thus reclaim what he regretted to have surrendered?-or like an abuse of the vantage ground given him by that former justice of his own, in which even he could not but feel that there was no small proportion of generosity mingled, by extorting as it were from gratitude that which should only be voluntarily bestowed by love?-or-in short he reasoned and acted very much like a simpleton, and was justly punished accordingly. The consequence was eventually what we have seen. Mary's health had never been quite satisfactory since the date of the opening of this history; and she insensibly consumed herself away, till she at last reached the state in which we have again found her, and which, alas! too sadly justified her mother's apprehensions that she might not be able to endure the exertion of that voyage which afforded the sole means of attaining her only apparent chance of restoration. There was but this one subject on which there was any want of confidence on her part with her mother. It was a fault for which she suffered severely-perhaps not unjustly. The latter, however, entertained a suspicion but little short of moral certainty. Yet how could she interfere ?-What could she do?-passive as the female side of the question is always bound to be in these matters. Her invitation to Charles Fitzgerald, which we have seen to lead to all this disentanglement, was made without Mary's knowledge, and had for its object that which she professed, the desire to see him before a parting which would probably be for ever; together with that of again pressing upon him the acceptance of a portion of the wealth whose amount, already even largely increased by an enhancement of values, was fourfold more than sufficient for their most freely indulged wishes. The latter duty indeed had been strongly urged on her by Mary herself, though he was never to know of any participation of hers in the affair. Whether at the bottom of the good old lady's heartwith all her stateliness and all the positiveness with which she would have disclaimed it-whether there was not, I say, some slight, half-formed idea, or hope, or notion, that by some possibility of possibility, the result of this interview might be somewhat in the direction we have actually seen it to take-will only be known in that day when even the subtlest secret, lurking beneath the deepest fold of unconsciousness in the very heart harboring it, will be brought forth to the radiance of a stronger light than our sun. On the next morning, and every succeeding day, the neighbors might have remarked, and no doubt did, that another physician besides good, dear, and invaluable old Dr. F, had been called in to a consulting attendance on the invalid at No. And certainly no physician in the city was ever half so devoted in the frequency and length of his visits, as young Dr. Fitzgerald. That is one advantage of the young medicos, who have plenty of time on hand to do full justice to every one of the few patients whose summons make their "angel visits" to the cobwebbed solitude of their offices. As third parties, especially of the masculine gender, are usually excluded from the professional interviews between "the doctor" and a fair and young patient, I am unable to give the reader any account of what took place on any of these occasions,-nor should I if I could. On the morning of the 1st, the day fixed for the departure for Europe, a singular scene was visible to the eyes of a very small number of persons present, in the front parlor in St. John's square. Those witnesses consisted of a half-dozen intimate friends, including the Rev. Dr. E―, who was in his robes. The last stroke of the hour of ten had scarcely died away on the ear, when the door opened, and Mary Hentered, supported-nay, almost carried-between Charles Fitzgerald and her mother. Alas, how changed! yet still how lovely, though in that marble beauty which seems to belong to the Angel of Death alone! They led her to a seat prepared for her reception, and she smiled with a faint, sweet brightness on those around, which, with the thought of her condition and inevitable prospect, brought tears into every eye. Could it be possible? Had she indeed come thus, as though in a shroud for her white wedding garment, to be married? It was even So. She had not even the strength to stand upright for the performance of the solemn and melancholy joy of the ceremony, and she remained sitting, while Charles stood by her side. When it was concluded, and those whom God had joined together were now beyond the power of man to sunder, though death seemed almost waiting at the door to part them-so far as death can part that holy and mystic Dual Unity-as the Husband bent over to impress his first kiss on the pallid lips of his Wife, even while his tears streamed warm and fast over the transparent whiteness of her forehead, she whispered in his ear, in a tone tremulous as well from delight as from weakness: "I am content to die now!" Before the sun of that day had set, they were far away on the heaving bosom of the Atlantic. One exact year from the date of the above occurrence, on a soft and warm autumn afternoon beneath the deep blue of an Italian sky, two persons might have been seen lingering some time after a number of other visitors, travellers apparently like themselves, within the solemn grandeur of the Coliseum's stupendous enclosure. The one of them, a lady, bore the marks of a certain delicacy of health, though there was still no want of color in her cheeks and tender lips, of a roundness in the light grace of her form, or of buoyancy in its wavy movement. She leaned on the arm of her companion as they sauntered around silently, as though both were under the spell of the awful genius of the place, with that quiet and confiding repose which always so beautifully bespeaks the happy wife. He at last led her to a fragment of a broken column which afforded a very convenient seat for two. "You are fatiguing yourself too much, Mary," he said; "and you must remember that this day twelve months I was admitted to the double authority of your travelling physician as well as that dearer title which I would not exchange for the throne of all this magnificent Europe. I therefore prescribe that you sit down and rest on this pillar, and listen to a story I have brought you here to tell you.' "Provided it is a short one, for mother will be lonely and anxious, if we remain much longer," was the answer, in a voice whose clear and firm though soft melody of tone was very different from the feeble whisper which was the last sound we heard from it. "Very well-it's short enough. This is the very spot, this very fallen fragment of a column, where I once imagined that ideal of which I have now the dear real actually in my arms. Helen S- sat precisely where you do now;"-(he smiled as his wife involuntarily moved her seat as far as its limited space permitted)-“Ah, what a fascinating creature she was! But she could never have got beyond the threshold of the temple in whose inmost depth you are now enshrined. That was but the first nascent blossom in the yearning soil of the young heart-I have now reaped the rich and blessed maturity of the fruit!" Charles Fitzgerald (of course I have disguised the real name) is living now, with the beautiful and lovely wife whom he sometimes points to with pride as a living trophy of his skill and care in his old profession, which he no longer practises otherwise than occasionally. From the portico of a beautiful residence on the banks of the North River, she can now enjoy, no longer alone and no longer through tears, the contemplation of those fading glories of the day which on our first acquaintance with her she was gazing upon through the dingy panes of a little miserable attic window. If she has lost the other of the two companions who were then the inmates with her of that unforgotten abode of virtuous suffering and striving, other objects of the happiest and tenderest affections have come to compensate and console the heart of the mother for the affliction of the daughter. And surrounded by her and them, I have never heard Charles Fitzgerald complain of the brave sacrifice he once made to preserve his Honor Bright. EL VERDUGO.* THE Clock of the little town of Menda had just struck midnight. At that moment, a young French officer was leaning over the parapet of a terrace which bordered the gardens of the castle of Menda, plunged in a profounder depth of abstraction than seemed habitual to the thoughtlessness of military life,but never were hour, site and circumstances more propitious to meditation. Above his head, the beautiful sky of Spain stretched its dome of dark azure. The twinkling of the stars and the soft radiance of the moon cast a capricious light over an exquisite valley which lay in all its wealth of loveliness at his feet. Resting upon an orange-tree in full blosson, the young chef-de-bataillon could see, a hundred feet below, the town of Menda, which seemed to have nestled itself for shelter from the north winds at the foot of the cliff on which the castle was built. Turning his head, he could behold the sea, whose sparkling waters enclosed the landscape like a broad belt of silver. The castle itself was illuminated. The joyous confusion of sounds from a ball, the music of the orchestra, the laughter of some of the officers and their partners in the dance, reached his ear, softened into harmony by the distance, and blended with the far-off murmur of the waves. The fresh coolness of the night infused a new energy into his frame exhausted by the heat of the day; while the gardens were planted with trees so odoriferous and flowers of such exquisite sweetness, that the young man fancied himself, as it were, plunged in a bath of every delicious perfume. The castle of Menda belonged to a grandee of Spain, who, at that period, was residing in it with his whole family. During the whole of this evening, the eldest of his daughters had directed her looks towards the officer with an interest blended with so deep a sadness, that the sentiment of pity expressed by the beautiful Spanish girl might well have given rise to the young Frenchman's revery. Yet how dare to imagine the possibility that the daughter of the most haughty and fastidious noble in Spain could ever be bestowed on the son of a Parisian shop-keeper! The French were held in detestation. The marquis having been suspected by General G-, the governor of the province, of being engaged in plotting an insurrection in favor of Ferdinand VII., the battalion commanded by Victor Marchand had been placed in cantonments in the little town of Menda, to hold in check the surrounding country, which belonged to the Marquis de Léganès. A recent despatch from Marshal Ney gave reason even to apprehend that the English might shortly land on the coast, and pointed out the marquis as a man engaged in correspondence with the cabinet of London. So that, notwithstanding all the hospitable welcome with which the latter had received Victor Marchand and his soldiers, the young officer kept himself vigilantly on his guard. While directing his steps towards that terrace, to which he went for the purpose of observing the state of the town and the country entrusted to his supervision, he had meditated on the problem how he ought to interpret the friendship which the marquis had never ceased to manifest towards him, and how to reconcile the tranquillity of the country with the anxieties of his general; but, for the last few minutes, all these thoughts had been driven from the mind of the young commandant by a feeling of prudential caution and by a very legitimate curiosity. He had just observed a considerable number of lights in the town. Now, notwithstanding it was the festival of St. James, he had that very morning commanded that every fire should be extinguished at the usual hour prescribed by his general regulations. The castle alone had been exempted from that order. He could perceive, From the French of Balzac. indeed, here and there the gleam of his sentries' bayonets at their accustomed posts; but there was something solemn in the silence that prevailed, and nothing announced that the Spaniards were plunged in the intoxication of a festival. After seeking in vain to explain this general violation of his orders on the part of the inhabitants, the offence seemed to him the more strangely mysterious as he reflected that he had entrusted to some officers the charge of the police and the rounds of the night. With the impetuosity of youth, he was about to leap down by a breach in the terrace to effect more rapidly the descent of the rocks, and the sooner reach a little post of the guard which was stationed at the entrance of the town, on the side next the castle, when he was arrested by the sound of a slight noise. He fancied that he heard the gravel of the alleys grate beneath the light step of a woman. He turned his head back, but saw nothing; his eyes were struck, however, by the extraordinary whiteness of the ocean. He suddenly perceived there so fatal a spectacle, that he stood motionless with surprise, accusing even his senses of deception. The glancing rays of the moon enabled him to distinguish a crowd of sails at a considerable distance. A thrill shot through his frame, and he tried to convince himself that this terrible vision was only some optical illusion produced by the capricious play of the waves and the moonlight. At that moment a hoarse voice uttered his name. The officer looked toward the breach, and he there saw the head of the soldier by whom he had been attended to the castle raised slowly and cautiously in the air. "Is that you, mon commandant ?" "Yes. Well, what?" answered the young man in a low tone, warned by a sort of presentiment to act with mystery. "Those scamps down there are twisting about like worms!-and I have hastened to communicate to you, if you will permit me, the little observations I have made." "Speak," replied Victor Marchand. "I have just been following one of the people of the castle who directed his steps this way with a lantern in his hand. Now a lantern is a devilishly suspicious thing, for I have no idea that that good Christian there has any occa sion to light pious tapers at this hour of the night. They want to devour us, said I to myself, and I set about eyeing him pretty closely. And so, mon commandant, I discovered, hardly three paces from here, on a platform of rock, a certain pile of faggots A terrible cry echoed through the town and interrupted the soldier. A sudden glare flashed over the face of the commandant. The poor grenadier at the same instant received a bullet in his head and fell dead. A fire of straw and dry wood blazed like a conflagration within ten steps of the young man. The musical instruments and the laughing voices were hushed in the saloon of the ball. The festal gaiety had suddenly given place to a silence as of death, interrupted only by groans. The report of a cannon boomed over the ocean's plain of light. A cold sweat started to the young officer's forehead. He was unarmed. He understood at once that all his soldiers had perished and that the English were about to land. He saw himself dishonored if he survived-he saw himself dragged before a council of war-and then he measured with his eye the depth of the valley. He was in the act of plunging off, when his hand was seized by that of Clara. "Fly!" she said, "my brothers are behind me. At the foot of the rock, down there, you will find Juanito's swift Andalusian. Fly!" The She pushed him forward. young man, half stupified, looked at her for a moment. But presently, yielding to the instinct of self-preservation which never abandons even the strongest man, he plunged among the trees in the direction indicated, and sprang across the wall, before trodden by no other feet than those of the wild goats. He heard Clara crying to her brothers to pursue him he heard the steps of his assassins-he heard the bullets of several shots whizzing by his ears-but he succeeded in reaching the valley, found the horse, leaped upon him, and disappeared with the rapidity of lightning. In a few hours the young officer arrived at the head-quarters of General G. The latter was at table with his staff. "I bring you my head!" cried the chef-de-bataillon, as he made his appearance pale and exhausted. |