La Pola was but fourteen years old when she obtained her first glimpse of the great man in whose cause she had already been employed, and of whose deeds and distinctions she had heard so much. By the language of the Spanish tyranny, which swayed with iron authority over her native city, she heard him denounced and execrated as a rebel and marauder, for whom an ignominious death was already decreed by the despotic viceroy. This language, from such lips, was of itself calculated to raise its object favorably in her enthusiastic sight. By the patriots, whom she had been accustomed to love and venerate, she heard the same name breathed always in whispers of hope and affection, and fondly commended, with tearful blessings, to the watchful care of Heaven. She was now to behold with her own eyes this individual thus equally distinguished by hate and homage in her hearing. Bolivar apprised his friends in Bogota that he should visit them in secret. That province, ruled with a fearfully strong hand by Zamano, the viceroy, had not yet ventured to declare itself for the republic. It was necessary to operate with caution; and it was no small peril which Bolivar necessarily incurred in penetrating to its capital, and laying his snares, and fomenting insurrection beneath the very hearth-stones of the tyrant. It was to La Pola's hands that the messenger of the Liberator confided the missives that communicated this important intelligence to her father. She little knew the contents of the billet which she carried him in safety, nor did he confide them to the child. He himself did not dream the precocious extent of that enthusiasm which she felt almost equally in the common cause, and in the person of its great advocate and champion. Her father simply praised her care and diligence, rewarded her with his fondest caresses, and then proceeded with all quiet despatch to make his preparations for the secret reception of the deliverer. It was at midnight, and while a thunder-storm was raging, that he entered the city, making his way, agreeably to previous arrangement, and under select guidance, into the inner apartments of the house of Zalabariata. A meeting of the conspirators—for such they were—of head men among the patriots of Bogota, had been contemplated for his reception. Several of them were accordingly in attendance when he came. These were persons whose sentiments were well known to be friendly to the cause of liberty, who had suffered by the hands, or were pursued by the suspicions of Zamano, and who, it was naturally supposed, would be eagerly alive to every opportunity of shaking off the rule of the oppressor. But patriotism, as a philosophic sentiment, to be indulged after a good dinner, and discussed phlegmatically, if not classically, over sherry and cigars, is a very different sort of thing from patriotism as a principle of action, to be prosecuted as a duty, at every peril, instantly and always, to the death, if need be. Our patriots at Bogota were but too frequently of the contemplative, the philosophical order. Patriotism with them was rather a subject for eloquence than use. They could recall those Utopian histories of Greece and Rome which furnish us with ideals rather than facts, and sigh for names like those of Cato, and Brutus, and Aristides. But more than this did not seem to enter their imaginations as at all necessary to assert the character which it pleased them to profess, or maintain the reputation which they had prospectively acquired for the very commendable virtue which constituted their ordinary theme. Bolivar found them cold. Accustomed to overthrow and usurpation, they were now slow to venture property and life upon the predictions and promises of one who, however perfect in their estimation as a patriot, had yet suffered from most capricious fortunes. His past history, indeed, except for its patriotism, offered but very doubtful guarantees in favor of the enterprise to which they were invoked. Bolivar was artful and ingenious. He had considerable powers of eloquence—was specious and persuasive; had an oily and bewitching tongue, like Balial; and if not altogether capable of making the worse appear the better cause, could at least so shape the aspects of evil fortune, that, to the unsuspicious nature, they would seem to be the very results aimed at by the most deliberate arrangement and resolve. But Bolivar, on this occasion, was something more than ingenious and persuasive, he was warmly earnest, and passionately eloquent. In truth, he was excited much beyond his wont. He was stung to indignation by a sense of disappointment. He had calculated largely on this meeting, and it promised now to be a failure. He had anticipated the eager enthusiasm of a host of brave and noble spirits ready to fling out the banner of freedom to the winds, and cast the scabbard from the sword forever. Instead of this, he found but a little knot of cold, irresolute men, thinking only of the perils of life which they should incur, and the forfeiture and loss of property which might accrue from any hazardous experiments. Bolivar spoke to them in language less artificial and much more impassioned than was his wont. He was a man of impulse rather than of thought or principle, and, once aroused, the intense fire of a southern sun seemed to burn fiercely in all his words and actions. His speech was heard by other ears than those to which it was addressed. The shrewd mind of La Pola readily conjectured that the meeting at her father's house, at midnight, and under peculiar circumstances, contemplated some extraordinary object. She was aware that a tall, mysterious stranger had passed through the court, under the immediate conduct of her father himself. Her instinct divined in this stranger the person of the deliverer, and her heart would not suffer her to lose the words, or if possible to obtain, to forego the sight of the great object of its patriotic worship. Beside, she had a right to know and to see. She was of the party, and had done them service. She was yet to do them more. Concealed in an adjoining apartment—a sort of oratory, connected by a gallery with the chamber in which the conspirators were assembled—she was able to hear the earnest arguments and passionate remonstrances of the Liberator. They confirmed all her previous admiration of his genius and character. She felt with indignation the humiliating position which the men of Bogota held in his eyes. She heard their pleas and scruples, and listened with a bitter scorn to the thousand suggestions of prudence, the thousand calculations of doubt and caution with which timidity seeks to avoid precipitating a crisis. She could listen and endure no longer. The spirit of the improvisatrice was upon her. Was it also that of fate and a higher Providence? She seized the guitar, of which she was the perfect mistress, and sung even as her soul counseled and the exigency of the event demanded. Our translation of her lyrical overflow is necessarily a cold and feeble one.

It was a dream of freedom— A mocking dream, though bright— That showed the men of Bogota All arming for the fight; All eager for the hour that wakes The thunders of redeeming war, And rushing forth with glittering steel, To join the bands of Bolivar.

My soul, I said, it cannot be That Bogota shall be denied Her Arismendi, too—her chief To pluck her honor up, and pride; The wild Llanero boasts his braves That, stung with patriot wrath and shame, Rushed redly to the realm of graves, And rose, through blood and death, to fame.

How glads mine ear with other sounds, Of freemen worthy these, that tell! Ribas, who felt Caraccas' wounds, And for her hope and triumph fell; And that young hero, well beloved, Giraldat, still a name for song; Piar, Marino, dying soon, But, for the future, living long.

Oh! could we stir with other names, The cold, deaf hearts that hear us now, How would it bring a thousand shames, In fire, to each Bogotian's brow! How clap in pride Grenada's hands; How glows Venezuela's heart; And how, through Cartagena's lands, A thousand chiefs and hero's start.

Paez, Sodeno, lo! they rush, Each with his wild and Cossack rout; A moment feels the fearful hush, A moment hears the fearful shout! They heed no lack of arts and arms, But all their country's perils feel, And sworn for freedom, bravely break, The glitering legions of Castile.

I see the gallant Roxas grasp The towering banner of her sway; And Monagas, with fearful clasp, Plucks down the chief that stops the way; The reckless Urdaneta rides, Where rives the earth the iron hail; Nor long the Spanish foeman bides, The stroke of old Zaraza's flail.

Oh, generous heroes! how ye rise! How glow your states with equal fires! 'Tis there Valencia's banner flies, And there Cumana's soul aspires; There, on each hand, from east to west, From Oronook to Panama, Each province bares its noble breast, Each hero—save in Bogota!

At the first sudden gush of the music from within, the father of the damsel started to his feet, and with confusion in his countenance, was about to leave the apartment. But Bolivar arrested his footsteps, and in a whisper, commanded him to be silent and remain. The conspirators, startled, if not alarmed, were compelled to listen. Bolivar did so with a pleased attention. He was passionately fond of music, and this was of a sort at once to appeal to his objects and his tastes. His eye kindled as the song proceeded. His heart rose with an exulting sentiment. The moment, indeed, embodied one of his greatest triumphs—the tribute of a pure, unsophisticated soul, inspired by Heaven with the happiest and highest endowments, and by earth with the noblest sentiments of pride and country. When the music ceased, Zalabariata was about to apologize, and to explain, but Bolivar again gently and affectionately arrested his utterance.

"Fear nothing," said he. "Indeed, why should you fear? I am in the greater danger here, if there be danger for any; and I would as soon place my life in the keeping of that noble damsel, as in the arms of my mother. Let her remain, my friend; let her hear and see all; and above all, do not attempt to apologize for her. She is my ally. Would that she could make these men of Bogota feel with herself—feel as she makes even me to feel."

The eloquence of the Liberator received a new impulse from that of the improvisatrice. He renewed his arguments and entreaties in a different spirit. He denounced, in yet bolder language than before, that wretched pusillanimity which quite as much, he asserted, as the tyranny of the Spaniard, was the cause under which the liberties of the country groaned and suffered.

"And now, I ask," he continued, passionately, "men of Bogota, if ye really purpose to deny yourselves all share in the glory and peril of the effort which is for your own emancipation? Are your brethren of the other provinces to maintain the conflict in your behalf, while, with folded hands, you submit, doing nothing for yourselves? Will you not lift the banner also? Will you not draw sword in your own honor, and the defence of your fire-sides and families. Talk not to me of secret contributions. It is your manhood, not your money, that is needful for success. And can you withhold yourselves while you profess to hunger after that liberty for which other men are free to peril all—manhood, money, life, hope, every thing but honor and the sense of freedom. But why speak of peril in this. Peril is every where. It is the inevitable child of life, natural to all conditions—to repose as well as action, to the obscurity which never goes abroad, as well as to that adventure which forever seeks the field. You incur no more peril in openly braving your tyrant, all together as one man, than you do thus tamely sitting beneath his footstool, and trembling forever lest his capricious will may slay as it enslaves. Be you but true to yourselves—openly true—and the danger disappears as the night-mists that speed from before the rising sun. There is little that deserves the name of peril in the issue which lies before us. We are more than a match, united, and filled with the proper spirit, for all the forces that Spain can send against us. It is in our coldness that she warms—in our want of unity that she finds strength. But even were we not superior to her in numbers—even were the chances all wholly and decidedly against us—I still cannot see how it is that you hesitate to draw the sword in so sacred a strife—a strife which consecrates the effort, and claims Heaven's sanction for success. Are your souls so subdued by servitude; are you so accustomed to bonds and tortures, that these no longer irk and vex your daily consciousness? Are you so wedded to inaction that you cease to feel? Is it the frequency of the punishment that has made you callous to the ignominy and the pain? Certainly your viceroy gives you frequent occasion to grow reconciled to any degree of hurt and degradation. Daily you behold, and I hear, of the exactions of this tyrant—of the cruelties and the murders to which he accustoms you in Bogota. Hundreds of your friends and kinsmen, even now, lie rotting in the common prisons, denied equally your sympathies and every show of justice, perishing, daily, under the most cruel privations. Hundreds have perished by this and other modes of torture, and the gallows and garote seem never to be unoccupied. Was it not the bleaching skeleton of the venerable Hermano, whom I well knew for his wisdom and patriotism, which I beheld, even as I entered, hanging in chains over the gateway of your city? Was he not the victim of his wealth and love of country? Who among you is secure? He dared but to deliver himself as a man, and as he was suffered to stand alone, he was destroyed. Had you, when he spoke, but prepared yourselves to act, flung out the banner of resistance to the winds, and bared the sword for the last noble struggle, Hermano had not perished, nor were the glorious work only now to be begun. But which of you, involved in the same peril with Hermano, will find the friend, in the moment of his need, to take the first step for his rescue? Each of you, in turn, having wealth to tempt the spoiler, will be sure to need such friendship. It seems you do not look for it among one another—where, then, do you propose to find it? Will you seek for it among the Cartagenians—among the other provinces—to Bolivar without? Vain expectation, if you are unwilling to peril any thing for yourselves within! In a tyranny so suspicious and so reckless as is yours, you must momentarily tremble lest ye suffer at the hands of your despot. True manhood rather prefers any peril which puts an end to this state of anxiety and fear. Thus to tremble with apprehension ever, is ever to be dying. It is a life of death only which ye live—and any death or peril that comes quickly at the summons, is to be preferred before it. If, then, ye have hearts to feel, or hopes to warm ye—a pride to suffer consciousness of shame, or an ambition that longs for better things—affections for which to covet life, or the courage with which to assert and to defend your affections, ye cannot, ye will not hesitate to determine, with souls of freemen, upon what is needful to be done. Ye have but one choice as men; and the question which is left for ye to resolve, is that which determines, not your possessions, not even your lives, but simply your rank and stature in the world of humanity and man."

The Liberator paused, not so much through his own or the exhaustion of the subject, as that his hearers should in turn be heard. But with this latter object his forbearance was profitless. There were those among them, indeed, who had their answers to his exhortations, but these were not of a character to promise boldly for their patriotism or courage. Their professions, indeed, were ample, but were confined to unmeaning generalities. "Now is the time, now!" was the response of Bolivar to all that was said. But they faltered and hung back at every utterance of his spasmodically uttered "now! now!" He scanned their faces eagerly, with a hope that gradually yielded to despondency. Their features were blank and inexpressive, as their answers had been meaningless or evasive. Several of them were of that class of quiet citizens, unaccustomed to any enterprises but those of trade, who are always slow to peril wealth by a direct issue with their despotism. They felt the truth of Bolivar's assertions. They knew that their treasures were only so many baits and lures to the cupidity and exactions of the royal emissaries, but they still relied on their habitual caution and docility to keep terms with the tyranny at which they yet trembled. When, in the warmth of his enthusiasm, Bolivar depicted the bloody struggles which must precede their deliverance, they began indeed to wonder among themselves how they ever came to fall into that mischievous philosophy of patriotism which had involved them with such a restless rebel as Bolivar! Others of the company were ancient hidalgos, who had been men of spirit in their day, but who had survived the season of enterprise, which is that period only when the heart swells and overflows with full tides of warm and impetuous blood.

"Your error," said he, in a whisper to Senor Don Joachim de Zalabariata, "was in not bringing young men into your counsels."

"We shall have them hereafter," was the reply, also in a whisper.

"We shall see," muttered the Liberator, who continued, though in silence, to scan the assembly with inquisitive eyes, and an excitement of soul, which increased duly with his efforts to subdue it. He had found some allies in the circle. Some few generous spirits, who, responding to his desires, were anxious to be up and doing. But it was only too apparent that the main body of the company had been rather disquieted than warmed. In this condition of hopeless and speechless indecision, the emotions of the Liberator became scarcely controllable. His whole frame trembled with the anxiety and indignation of his spirit. He paced the room hurriedly, passing from group to group, appealing to individuals now, where hitherto he had spoken collectively, and suggesting detailed arguments in behalf of hopes and objects, which it does not need that we should incorporate with our narrative. But when he found how feeble was the influence which he exercised, and how cold was the echo to his appeal, he became impatient, and no longer strove to modify the expression of that scorn and indignation which he had for some time felt. The explosion followed in no measured language.

"Men of Bogota, you are not worthy to be free. Your chains are merited. You deserve your insecurities, and may embrace, even as ye please, the fates which lie before you. Acquiesce in the tyranny which offends no longer, but be sure that acquiescence never yet has disarmed the despot when his rapacity needs a victim. Your lives and possessions—which ye dare not peril in the cause of freedom—lie equally at his mercy. He will not pause, as you do, to use them at his pleasure. To save them from him there was but one way—to employ them against him. There is no security against power but in power; and to check the insolence of foreign strength you must oppose to it your own. This ye have not soul to do, and I leave you to the destiny you have chosen. This day, this night, it was yours to resolve. I have periled all to move you to the proper resolution. You have denied me, and I leave you. To-morrow—unless indeed I am betrayed to-night"—looking with a sarcastic smile around him as he spoke—"I shall unfurl the banner of the republic even within your own province, in behalf of Bogota, and seek, even against your own desires, to bestow upon you those blessings of liberty which ye have not the soul to conquer for yourselves."

Hardly had these words been spoken, when the guitar again sounded from within. Every ear was instantly hushed as the strain ascended—a strain, more ambitious than the preceding, of melancholy and indignant apostrophe. The improvisatrice was no longer able to control the passionate inspiration which took its tone from the stern eloquence of the Liberator. She caught from him the burning sentiment of scorn which it was no longer his policy to repress, and gave it additional effect in the polished sarcasm of her song. Our translation will poorly suffice to convey a proper notion of the strain.

Then be it so, if serviles ye will be, When manhood's soul had broken every chain, 'T were scarce a blessing now to make ye free, For such condition tutored long in vain, Yet may we weep the fortunes of our land, Though woman's tears were never known to take One link away from that oppressive band, Ye have not soul, not soul enough to break!

Oh! there were hearts of might in other days, Brave chiefs, whose memory still is dear to fame; Alas for ours!—the gallant deeds we praise But show more deeply red our cheeks of shame: As from the midnight gloom the weary eye, With sense that cannot the bright dawn forget, Looks sadly hopeless, from the vacant sky, To that where late the glorious day-star set!

Yet all's not midnight dark, if in your land There be some gallant hearts to brave the strife; One single generous blow from Freedom's hand May speak again our sunniest hopes to life; If but one blessed drop in living veins Be worthy those who teach us from the dead, Vengeance and weapons both are in your chains, Hurled fearlessly upon your despot's head!

Yet, if no memory of the living past Can wake ye now to brave the indignant strife, 'T were nothing wise, at least, that we should last When death itself might wear a look of life! Ay, when the oppressive arm is lifted high, And scourge and torture still conduct to graves, To strike, though hopeless still—to strike and die! They live not, worthy freedom, who are slaves!

As the song proceeded, Bolivar stood forward as one wrapt in ecstasy. The exultation brightened in his eye, and his manner was that of a soul in the realization of its highest triumph. Not so the Bogotans by whom he was surrounded. They felt the terrible sarcasm which the damsel's song conveyed—a sarcasm immortalized to all the future, in the undying depths of a song to be remembered. They felt the humiliation of such a record, and hung their heads in shame. At the close of the ballad, Bolivar exclaimed to Joachim de Zalabariata, the father:

"Bring the child before us. She is worthy to be a prime minister. A prime minister? No! the hero of the forlorn hope! a spirit to raise a fallen standard from the dust, and to tear down and trample that of the enemy. Bring her forth, Joachim. Had you men of Bogota but a tithe of a heart so precious! Nay, could her heart be divided amongst them—it might serve a thousand—there were no viceroy of Spain within your city now!"

And when the father brought her forth from the little cabinet, that girl, flashing with inspiration—pale and red by turns—slightly made, but graceful—very lovely to look upon—wrapt in loose white garments, with her long hair, dark and flowing, unconfined, and so long that it was easy for her to walk upon it[4]—the admiration of the Liberator was insuppressible.

"Bless you forever," he cried, "my fair Priestess of Freedom! You, at least, have a free soul, and one that is certainly inspired by the great divinity of earth. You shall be mine ally, though I find none other in all Bogota sufficiently courageous. In you, my child, in you and yours, there is still a redeeming spirit which shall save your city utterly from shame!"

[Footnote 4: A frequent case among the maids of South America.]

While he spoke, the emotions of the maiden were of a sort readily to show how easily she should be quickened with the inspiration of lyric song. The color came and went upon her soft white cheeks. The tears rose, big and bright, upon her eyelashes—heavy drops, incapable of suppression, that swelled one after the other, trembled and fell, while the light blazed, even more brightly from the shower, in the dark and dilating orbs which harbored such capacious fountains. She had no words at first, but, trembling like a leaf, sunk upon a cushion at the feet of her father, as Bolivar, with a kiss upon her forehead, released her from his clasp. Her courage came back to her a moment after. She was a thing of impulse, whose movements were as prompt and unexpected as the inspiration by which she sung. Bolivar had scarcely turned from her, as if to relieve her tremor, when she recovered all her strength and courage. Suddenly rising from the cushion, she seized the hand of her father, and with an action equally passionate and dignified, she led him to the Liberator, to whom, speaking for the first time in that presence, she thus addressed herself:

"He is yours—he has always been ready with his life and money. Believe me, for I know it. Nay, more! doubt not that there are hundreds in Bogota—though they be not here—who, like him, will be ready whenever they hear the summons of your trumpet. Nor will the women of Bogota be wanting. There will be many of them who will take the weapons of those who use them not, and do as brave deeds for their country as did the dames of Magdalena when they slew four hundred Spaniards".[5]

"Ah! I remember! A most glorious achievement, and worthy to be writ in characters of gold. It was at Mompox where they rose upon the garrison of Morillo. Girl, you are worthy to have been the chief of those women of Magdalena. You will be chief yet of the women of Bogota. I take your assurance with regard to them; but for the men, it were better that thou peril nothing even in thy speech."

The last sarcasm of the Liberator might have been spared. That which his eloquence had failed to effect was suddenly accomplished by this child of beauty. Her inspiration and presence were electrical. The old forgot their caution and their years. The young, who needed but a leader, had suddenly found a genius. There was now no lack of the necessary enthusiasm. There were no more scruples. Hesitation yielded to resolve. The required pledges were given—given more abundantly than required; and raising the slight form of the damsel to his own height, Bolivar again pressed his lips upon her forehead, gazing at her with a respectful delight, while he bestowed upon her the name of the Guardian Angel of Bogota. With a heart bounding and beating with the most enthusiastic emotions—too full for further utterance, La Pola disappeared from that imposing presence, which her coming had filled with a new life and impulse.

[Footnote 5: This terrible slaughter took place on the night of the 16th June, 1816, under the advice, and with the participation of the women of Mompox, a beautiful city on an island in the River Magdalena. The event has enlisted the muse of many a native patriot and poet, who grew wild when they recalled the courage of

"Those dames of Magdalena, Who, in one fearful night, Slew full four hundred tyrants, Nor shrunk from blood in fright."

Such women deserve the apostrophe of Macbeth to his wife:

"Bring forth men children only."]

It was nearly dawn when the Liberator left the city. That night the bleaching skeleton of the venerable patriot Hermano was taken down from the gibbet where it had hung so long, by hands that left the revolutionary banner waving proudly in its place. This was an event to startle the viceroy. It was followed by other events. In a few days more and the sounds of insurrection were heard throughout the province—the city still moving secretly—sending forth supplies and intelligence by stealth, but unable to raise the standard of rebellion, while Zamano, the viceroy, doubtful of its loyalty, remained in possession of its strong places with an overawing force. Bolivar himself, under these circumstances, was unwilling that the patriots should throw aside the mask. Throughout the province, however, the rising was general. They responded eagerly to the call of the Liberator, and it was easy to foresee that their cause must ultimately prevail. The people in conflict proved themselves equal to their rulers. The Spaniards had been neither moderate when strong, nor were they prudent now when the conflict found them weak. Still, the successes were various. The Spaniards had a foothold from which it was not easy to expel them, and were in possession of resources, in arms and material, derived from the mother country, with which the republicans found it no easy matter to contend. But they did contend, and this, with the right upon their side, was the great guaranty for success. What the Colombians wanted in the materials of warfare, was more than supplied by their energy and patriotism; and however slow in attaining their desired object, it was yet evident to all, except their enemies, that the issue was certainly in their own hands.

For two years that the war had been carried on, the casual observer could, perhaps, see but little change in the respective relations of the combatants. The Spaniards still continued to maintain their foothold wherever the risings of the patriots had been premature or partial. But the resources of the former were hourly undergoing diminution, and the great lessening of the productions of the country, incident to its insurrectionary condition, had subtracted largely from the temptations to the further prosecution of the war. The hopes of the patriots naturally rose with the depression of their enemies, and their increasing numbers and improving skill in the use of their weapons, not a little contributed to their endurance and activity. But for this history we must look to other volumes. The question for us is confined to an individual. How, in all this time, had La Pola redeemed her pledge to the Liberator—how had she whom he had described as the "guardian genius of Bogota," adhered to the enthusiastic faith which she had voluntarily pledged to him in behalf of herself and people?

Now, it may be supposed that a woman's promise, to participate in the business of an insurrection, is not a thing upon which much stress is to be laid. We are apt to assume for the sex a too humble capacity for high performances, and a too small sympathy with the interests and affairs of public life. In both respects we are mistaken. A proper education for the sex would result in showing their ability to share with man in all his toils, and to sympathize with him in all the legitimate concerns of manhood. But what, demands the caviler, can be expected of a child of fifteen; and should her promises be held against her for rigid fulfillment and performance? It might be enough to answer that we are writing a sober history. There is the record. The fact is as we give it. But a girl of fifteen, in the warm latitudes of South America, is quite as mature as the northern maiden of twenty-five; with an ardor in her nature that seems to wing the operations of the mind, making that intuitive with her, which, in the person of a colder climate is the result only of long calculation and deliberate thought. She is sometimes a mother at twelve, and, as in the case of La Pola, a heroine at fifteen. We freely admit that Bolivar, though greatly interested in the improvisatrice, was chiefly grateful to her for the timely rebuke which she administered, through her peculiar faculty of lyric song, to the unpatriotic inactivity of her countrymen. As a matter of course, he might still expect that the same muse would take fire under similar provocation hereafter. But he certainly never calculated on other and more decided services at her hands. He misunderstood the being whom he had somewhat contributed to inspire. He did not appreciate her ambition, or comprehend her resources. From the moment of his meeting with her she became a woman. She was already a politician as she was a poet. Intrigue is natural to the genius of the sex, and the faculty is enlivened by the possession of a warm imagination. La Pola put all her faculties in requisition. Her soul was now addressed to the achievement of some plan of co-operation with the republican chief, and she succeeded where wiser persons must have failed in compassing the desirable facilities. Living in Bogota—the stronghold of the enemy—she exercised a policy and address which disarmed suspicion. Her father and his family were to be saved and shielded, while they remained under the power of the viceroy, Zamano, a military despot who had already acquired a reputation for cruelty scarcely inferior to that of the worst of the Roman emperors in the latter days of the empire. The wealth of her father, partly known, made him a desirable victim. Her beauty, her spirit, the charm of her song and conversation, were exercised, as well to secure favor for him, as to procure the needed intelligence and assistance for the Liberator. She managed the twofold object with admirable success—disarming suspicion, and under cover of the confidence which she inspired, succeeding in effecting constant communication with the patriots, by which she put into their possession all the plans of the Spaniards. Her rare talents and beauty were the chief sources of her success. She subdued her passionate and intense nature—her wild impulse and eager heart—employing them only to impart to her fancy a more impressive and spiritual existence. She clothed her genius in the brightest and gayest colors, sporting above the precipice of feeling, and making of it a background and a relief to heighten the charm of her seemingly willful fancy. Song came at her summons, and disarmed the serious questioner. In the eyes of her country's enemies she was only the improvisatrice—a rarely gifted creature, living in the clouds, and totally regardless of the things of earth. She could thus beguile from the young officers of the Spanish army, without provoking the slightest apprehension of any sinister object, the secret plan and purpose—the new supply—the contemplated enterprise—in short, a thousand things which, as an inspired idiot, might be yielded to her with indifference, which, in the case of one solicitous to know, would be guarded with the most jealous vigilance. She was the princess of the tertulia—that mode of evening entertainment so common, yet so precious, among the Spaniards. At these parties she ministered with a grace and influence which made the house of her father a place of general resort. The Spanish gallants thronged about her person, watchful of her every motion, and yielding always to the exquisite compass, and delightful spirituality of her song. At worst, they suspected her of no greater offence than of being totally heartless with all her charms, and of aiming at no treachery more dangerous than that of making conquests, only to deride them. It was the popular qualification of all her beauties and accomplishments that she was a coquette, at once so cold, and so insatiate. Perhaps, the woman politician never so thoroughly conceals her game as when she masks it with the art which men are most apt to describe as the prevailing passion of her sex.

By these arts, La Pola fulfilled most amply her pledges to the Liberator. She was, indeed, his most admirable ally in Bogota. She soon became thoroughly conversant with all the facts in the condition of the Spanish army—the strength of the several armaments, their disposition and destination—the operations in prospect, and the opinions and merits of the officers—all of whom she knew, and from whom she obtained no small knowledge of the worth and value of their absent comrades. These particulars, all regularly transmitted to Bolivar, were quite as much the secret of his success, as his own genius and the valor of his troops. The constant disappointment and defeat of the royalist arms, in the operations which were conducted in the Province of Bogota, attested the closeness and correctness of her knowledge, and its vast importance to the cause of the patriots.

Unfortunately, however, one of her communications was intercepted, and the cowardly bearer, intimidated by the terrors of impending death, was persuaded to betray his employer. He revealed all that he knew of her practices, and one of his statements, namely, that she usually drew from her shoe the paper which she gave him, served to fix conclusively upon her the proofs of her offence. She was arrested in the midst of an admiring throng, presiding with her usual grace at the tertulia, to which her wit and music furnished the eminent attractions. Forced to submit, her shoes were taken from her feet in the presence of the crowd, and in one of them, between the sole and the lining, was a memorandum designed for Bolivar, containing the details, in anticipation, of one of the intended movements of the viceroy. She was not confounded, nor did she sink beneath this discovery. Her soul seemed to rise rather into an unusual degree of serenity and strength. She encouraged her friends with smiles and the sweetest seeming indifference, though she well knew that her doom was certainly at hand. She had her consolations even under this conviction. Her father was in safety in the camp of Bolivar. With her counsel and assistance he would save much of his property from the wreck of confiscation. The plot had ripened in her hands almost to maturity, and before very long Bogota itself would speak for liberty in a formidable pronunciamento. And this was mostly her work! What more was done, by her agency and influence, may be readily conjectured from what has been already written. Enough, that she herself felt that in leaving life she left it when there was little more left for her to do.

La Pola was hurried from the tertulia before a military court—martial law then prevailing in the capital—with a rapidity corresponding with the supposed enormity of her offences. It was her chief pang that she was not hurried there alone. We have not hitherto mentioned that she had a lover, one Juan de Sylva Gomero, to whom she was affianced—a worthy and noble youth, who entertained for her the most passionate attachment. It is a somewhat curious fact, that she kept him wholly from any knowledge of her political alliances; and never was man more indignant than he when she was arrested, or more confounded when the proofs of her guilt were drawn from her person. His offence consisted in his resistance to the authorities who seized her. There was not the slightest reason to suppose that he knew or participated at all in her intimacy with the patriots and Bolivar. He was tried along with her, and both condemned—for at this time condemnation and trial were words of synonimous import—to be shot. A respite of twelve hours from execution was granted them for the purposes of confession. Zamano, the viceroy, anxious for other victims, spared no means to procure a full revelation of all the secrets of our heroine. The priest who waited upon her was the one who attended on the viceroy himself. He held out lures of pardon in both lives, here and hereafter, upon the one condition only of a full declaration of her secrets and accomplices. Well might the leading people of Bogota tremble all the while. But she was firm in her refusal. Neither promises of present mercy, nor threats of the future, could extort from her a single fact in relation to her proceedings. Her lover, naturally desirous of life, particularly in the possession of so much to make it precious, joined in the entreaties of the priest; but she answered him with a mournful severity that smote him like a sharp weapon,

"Gomero! did I love you for this? Beware, lest I hate you ere I die! Is life so dear to you that you would dishonor both of us to live? Is there no consolation in the thought that we shall die together?"

"But we shall be spared—we shall be saved," was the reply of the lover.

"Believe it not—it is false! Zamano spares none. Our lives are forfeit, and all that we could say would be unavailing to avert your fate or mine. Let us not lesson the value of this sacrifice on the altars of our country, by any unworthy fears. If you have ever loved me, be firm. I am a woman, but I am strong. Be not less ready for the death-shot than is she whom you have chosen for your wife."

Other arts were employed by the despot for the attainment of his desires. Some of the native citizens of Bogota, who had been content to become the creatures of the viceroy, were employed to work upon her fears and affections, by alarming her with regard to persons of the city whom she greatly esteemed and valued, and whom Zamano suspected. But their endeavors were met wholly with scorn. When they entreated her, among other things, "to give peace to our country," the phrase seemed to awaken all her indignation.

"Peace! peace to our country!" she exclaimed. "What peace! the peace of death, and shame, and the grave, forever!" And her soul again found relief only in its wild lyrical overflows.

What, peace for our country! when ye've made her a grave, A den for the tyrant, a cell for the slave; A pestilent plague-spot, accursing and curst, As vile as the vilest, and worse than the worst.

The chain may be broken, the tyranny o'er, But the sweet charms that blessed her ye may not restore; Not your blood, though poured forth from life's ruddiest vein, Shall free her from sorrows, or cleanse her from stain!

'Tis the grief that ye may not remove the disgrace, That brands with the blackness of hell all your race; 'Tis the sorrow that nothing may cleanse ye of shame, That has wrought us to madness, and filled us with flame.

Years may pass, but the memory deep in our souls, Shall make the tale darker as Time onward rolls; And the future that grows from our ruin shall know Its own, and its country's and liberty's foe.

And still in the prayer at its altars shall rise, Appeal for the vengeance of earth and of skies; Men shall pray that the curse of all time may pursue, And plead for the curse of eternity too!

Nor wantonly vengeful in spirit their prayer, Since the weal of the whole world forbids them to spare; What hope would there be for mankind if our race, Through the rule of the brutal, is robbed by the base?

What hope for the future—what hope for the free? And where would the promise of liberty be, If Time had no terror, no doom for the slave, Who would stab his own mother, and shout o'er her grave!

Such a response as this effectually silenced all those cunning agents of the viceroy who urged their arguments in behalf of their country. Nothing, it was seen, could be done with a spirit so inflexible; and in his fury Zamano ordered the couple forth to instant execution. Bogota was in mourning. Its people covered their heads, a few only excepted, and refused to be seen or comforted. The priests who attended the victims received no satisfaction as concerned the secrets of the patriots; and they retired in chagrin, and without granting absolution to either victim. The firing party made ready. Then it was, for the first time, that the spirit of this noble maiden seemed to shrink from the approach of death.

"Butcher!" she exclaimed, to the viceroy, who stood in his balcony, overlooking the scene of execution. "Butcher! you have then the heart to kill a woman!"

These were the only words of weakness. She recovered herself instantly, and, preparing for her fate, without looking for any effect from her words, she proceeded to cover her face with the saya, or veil, which she wore. Drawing it aside for the purpose, the words "Vive la Patria!" embroidered in letters of gold, were discovered on the basquina. As the signal for execution was given, a distant hum, as of the clamors of an approaching army, was heard fitfully to rise upon the air.

"It is he! He comes! It is Bolivar! It is the Liberator!" was her cry, in a tone of hope and triumph, which found its echo in the bosom of hundreds who dared not give their hearts a voice. It was, indeed, the Liberator. Bolivar was at hand, pressing onward with all speed to the work of deliverance; but he came too late for the rescue of the beautiful and gifted damsel to whom he owed so much. The fatal bullets of the executioners penetrated her heart ere the cry of her exultation had subsided from the ear. Thus perished a woman worthy to be remembered with the purest and proudest who have done honor to nature and the sex; one who, with all the feelings and sensibilities of the woman, possessed all the pride and patriotism, the courage, the sagacity and the daring of the man.



TO THE EAGLE.

BY MRS. E. C. KINNEY.

Imperial bird! that soarest to the sky— Cleaving through clouds and storms thine upward way— Or, fixing steadfastly that dauntless eye, Dost face the great, effulgent god of day! Proud monarch of the feathery tribes of air! My soul exulting marks thy bold career, Up, through the azure fields, to regions fair, Where, bathed in light, thy pinions disappear.

Thou, with the gods, upon Olympus dwelt, The emblem, and the favorite bird of Jove— And godlike power in thy broad wings hast felt Since first they spread o'er land and sea to rove: From Ida's top the Thunderer's piercing sight Flashed on the hosts which Ilium did defy; So from thy eyrie on the beetling height Shoot down the lightning-glances of thine eye!

From his Olympian throne Jove stooped to earth For ends inglorious in the god of gods! Leaving the beauty of celestial birth, To rob Humanity's less fair abodes: Oh, passion more rapacious than divine, That stole the peace of innocence away! So, when descend those tireless wings of thine, They stoop to make defenselessness their prey.

Lo! where thou comest from the realms afar! Thy strong wings whir like some huge bellows' breath— Swift falls thy fiery eyeball, like a star, And dark thy shadow as the pall of death! But thou hast marked a tall and reverend tree, And now thy talons clinch yon leafless limb; Before thee stretch the sandy shore and sea, And sails, like ghosts, move in the distance dim.

Fair is the scene! Yet thy voracious eye Drinks not its beauty; but with bloody glare Watches the wild-fowl idly floating by, Or snow-white sea-gull winnowing the air: Oh, pitiless is thine unerring beak! Quick, as the wings of thought, thy pinions fall— Then bear their victim to the mountain-peak Where clamorous eaglets flutter at thy call.

Seaward again thou turn'st to chase the storm, Where winds and waters furiously roar! Above the doomed ship thy boding form Is coming Fate's dark shadow cast before! The billows that engulf man's sturdy frame As sport to thy careering pinions seem; And though to silence sinks the sailor's name, His end is told in thy relentless scream!

Where the great cataract sends up to heaven Its sprayey incense in perpetual cloud, Thy wings in twain the sacred bow have riven, And onward sailed irreverently proud! Unflinching bird! No frigid clime congeals The fervid blood that riots in thy veins; No torrid sun thine upborne nature feels— The North, the South, alike are thy domains.

Emblem of all that can endure, or dare, Art thou, bold eagle, in thy hardihood! Emblem of Freedom, when thou cleav'st the air— Emblem of Tyranny, when bathed in blood! Thou wert the genius of Rome's sanguine wars— Heroes have fought and freely bled for thee; And here, above our glorious "stripes and stars," We hail thy signal wings of LIBERTY!

The poet sees in thee a type sublime Of his far-reaching, high-aspiring Art! His fancy seeks with thee each starry clime, And thou art on the signet of his heart. Be still the symbol of a spirit free, Imperial bird! to unborn ages given— And to my soul, that it may soar like thee, Steadfastly looking in the eye of HEAVEN.



_FIEL A LA MUERTE, OR TRUE LOVE'S DEVOTION.

A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS QUINZE.

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF "THE ROMAN TRAITOR," "MARMADUKE WYVIL," "CROMWELL," ETC._

(Continued from page 12.)

PART II.

The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with its gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the verge of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever the wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of the tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and burst in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so high by the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain, upon the esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its cold mists.

For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing was to be seen but the saliant angles or deep recesses formed by the dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and abrupt into the water, which, by its dark green hue indicated to the practiced eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very shore.

In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to the vast ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches, the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land, roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some strong prisoner, Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the rock on the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into this the billows rushed with rapidity so tumultuous and terrible that the fishers of that stormy coast avowed that a vortex was created in the bay by their influx or return seaward, which could be perceived sensibly at a league's distance; and that to be caught in it, unless the wind blew strong and steadily off land, was sure destruction. However that might be, it is certain that this great subterranean tunnel extended far beneath the rocks into the interior of the land, for at the distance of nearly two miles from the castle, directly eastward, in the bottom of a dark, wooded glen, which runs for many miles nearly parallel to the coast, there is a deep, rocky well, or natural cavity, of a form nearly circular, which, when the tide is up, is filled to over-flowing with bitter sea-water, on which the bubbles and foam-flakes show the obstacles against which it must have striven in its landward journey. At low water, on the contrary, "the Devil's Drinking Cup," for so it is named by the superstitious peasantry of the neighborhood, presents nothing to the eye but a deep, black abyss, which the country folks, of course, assert to be bottomless. But, in truth, its depth is immense, as can easily be perceived, if you cast a stone into it, by the length of time during which it may be heard thundering from side to side, until the reverberated roar of its descent appears to die away, not because it has ceased, but because the sound is too distant to be conveyed to human ears.

On this side of the castle every thing differs as much as it is possible to conceive from the view to the seaward, which is grim and desolate as any ocean scenery the world over. Few sails are ever seen on those dangerous coasts; all vessels bound to the mouth of the Garonne, or southward to the shores of Spain, giving as wide a berth as possible to its frightful reefs and inaccessible crags, which to all their other terrors add that, from the extraordinary prevalence of the west wind on that part of the ocean, of being, during at least three parts of the year, a lee shore.

Inland, however, instead of the bleak and barren surface of the ever stormy sea, indented into long rolling ridges and dark tempestuous hollows, all was varied and smiling, and gratifying to every sense given by nature for his good to man. Immediately from the brink of the cliffs the land sloped downward southwardly and to the eastward, so that it was bathed during all the day, except a few late evening hours, in the fullest radiance of the sunbeams. Over this immense sloping descent the eye could range from the castle battlements, for miles and miles, until the rich green champaign was lost in the blue haze of distance. And it was green and gay over the whole of that vast expanse, here with the dense and unpruned foliage of immemorial forests, well stocked with every species of game, from the gaunt wolf and the tusky boar, to the fleet roebuck and the timid hare; here with the trim and smiling verdure of rich orchards, in which nestled around their old, gray shrines the humble hamlets of the happy peasantry; and every where with the long intersecting curves, and sinuous irregular lines of the old hawthorn hedges, thick set with pollard trees and hedgerow timber, which make the whole country, when viewed from a height, resemble a continuous tract of intermingled glades and copices, and which have procured for an adjoining district, the well known, and in after days, far celebrated name of the Bocage.

Immediately around the castle, on the edge as it were of this beautiful and almost boundless slope, there lay a large and well-kept garden in the old French style, laid out in a succession of terraces, bordered by balustrades of marble, adorned at frequent intervals by urns and statues, and rendered accessible each from the next below by flights of ornamented steps of regular and easy elevation; pleached bowery walks, and high clipped hedges of holly, yew and hornbeam, were the usual decorations of such a garden, and here they abounded to an extent that would have gladdened the heart of an admirer of the tastes and habits of the olden time. In addition to these, however, there were a profusion of flowers of the choicest kinds known or cultivated in those days—roses and lilies without number, and honeysuckles and the sweet-scented clematis, climbing in bountiful luxuriance over the numberless seats and bowers which every where tempted to repose.

Below this beautiful garden a wide expanse of smooth, green turf, dotted here and there with majestic trees, and at rarer intervals diversified with tall groves and verdant coppices, covered the whole descent of the first hill to the dim wooded dell which has been mentioned as containing the singular cavity known throughout the country as the "Devil's Drinking Cup." This dell, which was the limit of Count de St. Renan's demesnes in that direction, was divided from the park by a ragged paling many feet in height, and of considerable strength, framed of rough timber from the woods, the space within being appropriated to a singular and choice breed of deer, imported from the East by one of the former counts, who, being of an adventurous and roving disposition, had sojourned for some time in the French settlements of Hindostan. Beyond this dell again, which was defended on the outer side by a strong and lofty wall of brick, all over-run with luxuriant ivy, the ground rose in a small rounded knoll, or hillock of small extent, richly wooded, and crowned by the gray turrets and steep flagged roofs of the old chateau d'Argenson.

This building, however, was as much inferior in size and stateliness to the grand feudal fortalice of St. Renan, as the little round-topped hill on which it stood, so slightly elevated above the face of the surrounding country as to detract nothing, at least in appearance, from its general slope to the south-eastward, was lower than the great rock-bound ridge from which it overlooked the territories, all of which had in distant times obeyed the rule of its almost princely dwellers.

The sun of a lovely evening in the latter part of July had already sunk so far down in the west that only half of its great golden disc was visible above the well-defined, dark outline of the seaward crags, which relieved by the glowing radiance of the whole western sky, stood out massive and solid like a huge purple wall, and seemed so close at hand that the spectator could almost persuade himself that he had but to stretch out his arm, in order to touch the great barrier, which was in truth several miles distant.

Over the crest, and through the gaps of this continuous line of highland, the long level rays streamed down in the slope in one vast flood of golden glory, which was checkered only by the interminable length of shadows which were projected from every single tree, or scattered clump, from every petty elevation of the soil, down the soft glimmering declivity.

Three years had elapsed since the frightful fate of the unhappy Lord of Kerguelen, and the various incidents, which in some sort took their origin from the nature of his crime and its consequence, affecting in the highest degree the happiness of the families of St. Renan and D'Argenson.

Three years had elapsed—three years! That is a little space in the annals of the world, in the life of nations, nay, in the narrow records of humanity. Three years of careless happiness, three years of indolent and tranquil ease, unmarked by any great event, pass over our heads unnoted, and, save in the gray hairs which they scatter, leave no memorial of their transit, more than the sunshine of a happy summer day. They are, they are gone, they are forgotten.

Even three years of gloom and sorrow, of that deep anguish which at the time the sufferer believes to be indelible and everlasting, lag on their weary, desolate course, and when they too are over-passed, and he looks back upon their transit, which seemed so painfully protracted, and, lo! all is changed, and their flight also is now but as an ended minute.

And yet what strange and sudden changes altering the affairs of men, changing the hearts of mortals, yea, revolutionizing their whole intellects, and over-turning their very natures—more than the devastating earthquake or the destroying lava transforms the face of the everlasting earth—have not been wrought, and again well nigh forgotten within that little period.

Three years had passed, I say, over the head of Raoul de Douarnez—the three most marked and memorable years in the life of every young man—and from the ingenuous and promising stripling, he had now become in all respects a man, and a bold and enterprising man, moreover, who had seen much and struggled much, and suffered somewhat—without which there is no gain of his wisdom here below—in his transit, even thus far, over the billows and among the reefs and quicksands of the world.

His father had kept his promise to that loved son in all things, nor had the Sieur d'Argenson failed of his plighted faith. The autumn of that year, the spring of which saw Kerguelen die in unutterable agony, saw Raoul de Douarnez the contracted and affianced husband of the lovely and beloved Melanie.

All that was wanted now to render them actually man and wife, to create between them that bond which, alone of mortal ties, man cannot sunder, was the ministration of the church's holiest rite, and that, in wise consideration of their tender years, was postponed until the termination of the third summer.

During the interval it was decided that Raoul, as was the custom of the world in those days, especially among the nobility, and most especially among the nobility of France, should bear arms in active service, and see something of the world abroad, before settling down into the easier duties of domestic life. The family of St. Renan, since the days of that ancestor who has been already mentioned as having sojourned in Pondicherry, had never ceased to maintain some relations with the East Indian possessions of France, and a relation of the house in no very remote degree was at this time military governor of the French East Indias, which were then, previous to the unexampled growth of the British empire in the East, important, flourishing, and full of future promise.

Thither, then, it was determined that Raoul should go in search of adventures, if not of fortune, in the spring following the signature of his marriage contract with the young demoiselle d'Argenson. And, consequently, after a winter passed in quiet domestic happiness on the noble estates, whereon the gentry of Britanny were wont to reside in almost patriarchal state—a winter, every day of which the young lovers spent in company, and at every eve of which they separated more in love than they were at meeting in the morning—Raoul set sail in a fine frigate, carrying several companies of the line, invested with the rank of ensign, and proud to bear the colors of his king, for the shores of the still half fabulous oriental world.

Three years had passed, and the boy had returned a man, the ensign had returned a colonel, so rapid was the promotion of the nobility of the sword in the French army, under the ancient regime; and—greatest change of all, ay, and saddest—the Viscount of Douarnez had returned Count de St. Renan. An infectious fever, ere he had been one year absent from the land of his birth, had cut off his noble father in the very pride and maturity of his intellectual manhood; nor had his mother lingered long behind him whom she had ever loved so fondly. A low, slow fever, caught from that beloved patient whom she had so affectionately nurtured, was as fatal to her, though not so suddenly, as it had proved to her good lord; and when their son returned to France full of honors achieved, and gay anticipations for the future, he found himself an orphan, the lord in lonely and unwilling state of the superb demesnes which had so long called his family their owners.

There never in the world was a kinder heart than that which beat in the breast of the young soldier, and never was a family more strictly bound together by all the kindly influences which breed love and confidence, and domestic happiness among all the members of it, than that of St. Renan. There had been nothing austere or rigid in the bringing up of the gallant boy; the father who had at one hour been the tutor and the monitor, was at the next the comrade and the playmate, and at all times the true and trusted friend, while the mother had been ever the idolized and adored protectress, and the confidante of all the innocent schemes and artless joys of boyhood.

Bitter, then, was the blow stricken to the very heart of the young soldier, when the first tidings which he received, on landing in his loved France, was the intelligence that those—all those, with but one exception—whom he most tenderly and truly loved, all those to whom he looked up with affectionate trust for advice and guidance, all those on whom he relied for support in his first trials of young manhood, were cold and silent in the all absorbing tomb.

To him there was no hot, feverish ambition prompting him to grasp joyously the absolute command of his great heritage. In his heart there was none of that fierce yet sordid avarice which finds compensation for the loss of the scarce-lamented dead in the severance of the dearest natural bonds, in the possession of wealth, or the promise of power. Nor was this all, for, in truth, so well had Raoul de Douarnez been brought up, and so completely had wisdom grown up with his growth, that when, at the age of nineteen years, he found himself endowed with the rank and revenues of one of the highest and wealthiest peers of France, and in all but mere name his own master—for the Abbe de Chastellar, his mother's brother, who had been appointed his guardian by his father's will, scarcely attempted to exercise even a nominal jurisdiction over him—he felt himself more than ever at a loss, deprived as he was, when he most needed it, of his best natural counsellor; and instead of rejoicing, was more than half inclined to lament over the almost absolute self-control with which he found himself invested.

Young hearts are naturally true themselves, and prone to put trust in others; and it is rarely, except in a few dark and morose and gloomy natures, which are exceptions to the rule and standard of human nature, that man learns to be distrustful and suspicious of his kind, even after experience of fickleness and falsehood may have in some sort justified suspicions, until his head has grown gray.

And this in an eminent degree was the case with Raoul de St. Renan, for henceforth he must be called by the title which his altered state had conferred upon him.

His natural disposition was as trustful and unsuspicious as it was artless and ingenuous; and from his early youth all the lessons which had been taught him by his parents tended to preserve in him unblemished and unbroken that bright gem, which once shattered never can be restored, confidence in the truth, the probity, the goodness of mankind.

Some ruder schooling he had met in the course of his service in the eastern world—he had already learned that men, and—harder knowledge yet to gain—women also, can feign friendship, ay, and love, where neither have the least root in the heart, for purposes the vilest, ends the most sordid. He had learned that bosom friends can be secret foes; that false loves can betray; and yet he was not disenchanted with humanity, he had not even dreamed of doubting, because he had fallen among worldly-minded flatterers and fickle-hearted coquettes, that absolute friendship and unchangeable love may exist, even in this evil world, stainless and incorruptible among all the changes and chances of this mortal life.

If he had been deceived, he had attributed the failure of his hopes hitherto to the right cause—the fallacy of his own judgment, and the error of his own choice; and the more he had been disappointed, the more firmly had he relied on what he felt certain could not change, the affection of his parents, the love of his betrothed bride.

On the very instant of his landing he found himself shipwrecked in his first hope; and on his earliest interview with his uncle, in Paris, he had the agony—the utter and appalling agony to undergo—of hearing that in the only promise which he had flattered himself was yet left to him, he was destined in all probability to undergo a deeper, deadlier disappointment.

If Melanie d'Argenson had been a lovely girl, the good abbe said, when she was budding out of childhood into youth, so utterly had she outstripped all the promise of her girlhood, that no words could describe, no imagination suggest to itself the charms of the mature yet youthful woman. There was no other beauty named, when loveliness was the theme, throughout all France, than that of the young betrothed of Raoul de Douarnez. And that which was so loudly and so widely bruited abroad, could not fail to reach the ever open, ever greedy ears of the vile and sensual tyrant who sat on the throne of France at that time, heaping upon his people that load of suffering and anguish which was in after times to be avenged so bitterly and bloodily upon the innocent heads of his unhappy descendants.

Louis had, moreover, heard years before, nay, looked upon the nascent loveliness of Melanie d'Argenson, and, with that cold-blooded voluptuary, to look on beauty was to lust after it, to lust after it was to devote all the powers his despotism could command to win it.

Hence, as the Abbe de Chastellar soon made his unfortunate nephew and pupil comprehend, a settled determination had arisen on the part of the odious despot to break off the marriage of the lovely girl with the young soldier whom it was well known that she fondly loved, and to have her the wife of one who would be less tender of his honor, and less reluctant to surrender, or less difficult to be deprived of a bride, too transcendently beautiful to bless the arms of a subject, even if he were the noblest of the noble.

All this was easily arranged, the base father of Melanie was willing enough to sell his exquisite and virtuous child to the splendid infamy of becoming a king's paramour, and the yet baser Chevalier de la Rochederrien was eager to make the shameful negotiation easy, and to sanction it to the eyes of the willingly hoodwinked world, by giving his name and rank to a woman, who was to be his wife but in name, and whose charms and virtue he had precontracted to make over to another.

The infamous contract had been agreed upon by the principal actors; nay, the wages of the iniquity had been paid in advance. The Sieur d'Argenson had grown into the comte of the same, with the governorship of the town of Morlaix added, by the revenues of which to support his new dignities; while the Chevalier de la Rochederrien had become no less a personage than the Marquis de Ploermel, with a captaincy of the mousquetaires, and heaven knows what beside of honorary title and highly gilded sinecure, whereby to reconcile him to such depth of sordid infamy as the meanest galley-slave could have scarce undertaken as the price of exchange between his fetters and his oar, and the great noble's splendor.

Such were the tidings which greeted Raoul on his return from honorable service to his king—service for which he was thus repaid; and, before he had even time to reflect on the consequences, or to comprehend the anguish thus entailed upon him, his eyes were opened instantly to comprehension of two or three occurrences which previously he had been unable to explain to himself, or even to guess at their meaning by any exercise of ingenuity. The first of these was the singular ignorance in which he had been kept of the death of his parents by the government officials in the East, and the very evident suppression of the letters which, as his uncle informed him, had been dispatched to summon him with all speed homeward.

The second was the pertinacity with which he had been thrust forward, time after time, on the most desperate and deadly duty—a pertinacity so striking, that, eager as the young soldier was, and greedy of any chance of winning honor, it had not failed to strike him that he was frequently ordered on duty of a nature which, under ordinary circumstances, is performed by volunteers.

Occurrences of this kind are soon remarked in armies, and it had early become a current remark in the camp that to serve in Raoul's company was a sure passport either to promotion or to the other world. But to such an extent was this carried, that when time after time that company had been decimated, even the bravest of the brave experienced an involuntary sinking of the heart when informed that they were transferred or even promoted into those fatal ranks.

Nor was this all, for twice it had occurred, once when he was a captain in command of a company, and again when he had a whole regiment under his orders as its colonel, that his superiors, after detaching him on duty so desperate that it might almost be regarded as a forlorn hope, had entirely neglected either to support or recall him, but had left him exposed to almost inevitable destruction.

In the first instance, not a man whether officer or private of his company had escaped, with the exception of himself. And he was found, when all was supposed to be over, in the last ditch of the redoubt which he had been ordered to defend to the uttermost, after it had been retaken, with his colors wrapped around his breast, still breathing a little, although so cruelly wounded that his life was long despaired of, and was only saved at last by the vigor and purity of an unblemished and unbroken constitution. On the second occasion, he had been suffered to contend alone for three entire days with but a single battalion against a whole oriental army; but then, that which had been intended to destroy him had won him deathless fame, for by a degree of skill in handling his little force, which had by no means been looked for in so young an officer, although his courage and his conduct were both well known, he had succeeded in giving a bloody repulse to the over-whelming masses of the enemy, and when at length he was supported—doubtless when support was deemed too late to avail him aught—by a few hundred native horse and a few guns, he had converted that check into a total and disastrous route.

So palpable was the case, that although Raoul suspected nothing of the reasons which had led to that disgraceful affair, he had demanded an inquiry into the conduct of his superior; and that unfortunate personage being clearly convicted of unmilitary conduct, and having failed in the end which would have justified the means in the eyes of the voluptuous tyrant, was ruthlessly abandoned to his fate, and actually died on the scaffold with a gag in his mouth, as did the gallant Lally a few years afterward, to prevent his revelation of the orders which he had received, and for obeying which he perished.

All this, though strange and even extraordinary, had failed up to this moment to awaken any suspicion of undue or treasonable agency in the mind of Raoul.

But now as his uncle spoke the scales fell from his eyes, and he saw all the baseness, all the villany of the monarch and his satellites in its true light.

"Is it so? Is it, indeed, so?" he said mournfully. And it really appeared that grief at detecting such a dereliction on the part of his king, had a greater share in the feelings of the noble youth than indignation or resentment. "Is it, indeed, so?" he said, "and could neither my father's long and glorious services, nor my poor conduct avail aught to turn him from such infamy! But tell me," he continued, the blood now mounting fiery red to his pale face, "tell me this, uncle, is she true to me? Is she pure and good? Forgive me, Heaven, that I doubt her, but in such a mass of infamy where may a man look for faith or virtue? Is Melanie true to me, or is she, too, consenting to this scheme of infamous and loathsome guilt?"

"She was true, my son, when I last saw her," replied the good clergyman, "and you may well believe that I spared no argument to urge her to hold fast to her loyalty and faith, and she vowed then by all that was most dear and holy that nothing should induce her ever to become the wife of Rochederrien. But they carried her off into the province, and have immured her, I have heard men say, almost in a dungeon, in her father's castle, for now above a twelvemonth. What has fallen out no one as yet knows certainly; but it is whispered now that she has yielded, and the court scandal goes that she has either wedded him already, or is to do so now within a few days. It is said that they are looked for ere the month is out in Paris."

"Then I will to horse, uncle," replied Raoul, "before this night is two hours older for St. Renan."

"Great Heaven! To what end, Raoul. For the sake of all that is good! By your father's memory! I implore you, do nothing rashly."

"To know of my own knowledge if she be true or false, uncle."

"And what matters it, Raoul? My boy, my unhappy boy! False or true she is lost to you alike, and forever. You have that against which to contend, which no human energy can conquer."

"I know not the thing which human energy cannot conquer, uncle. It is years now ago that my good father taught me this—that there is no such word as cannot! I have proved it before now, uncle abbe; I may, should I find it worth the while, prove it again, and that shortly. If so, let the guilty and the traitors look to themselves—they were best, for they shall need it!"

Such was the state of St. Renan's affections and his hopes when he left the gay capital of France, within a few hours after his arrival, and hurried down at the utmost speed of man and horse into Bretagne, whither he made his way so rapidly that the first intimation his people received of his return from the east was his presence at the gates of the castle.

Great, as may be imagined, was the real joy of the old true-hearted servitors of the house, at finding their lord thus unexpectedly restored to them, at a time when they had in fact almost abandoned every hope of seeing him again. The same infernal policy which had thrust him so often, as it were, into the very jaws of death, which had intercepted all the letters sent to him from home, and taken, in one word, every step that ingenuity could suggest to isolate him altogether in that distant world, had taken measures as deep and iniquitous at home to cause him to be regarded as one dead, and to obliterate all memory of his existence.

Three different times reports so circumstantial, and accompanied by such minute details of time and place as to render it almost impossible for men to doubt their authenticity, had been circulated with regard to the death of the young soldier, and as no tidings had been received of him from any more direct source, the last news of his fall had been generally received as true, no motive appearing why it should be discredited.

His appearance, therefore, at the castle of St. Renan, was hailed as that of one who had been lost and was now found, of one who had been dead, and lo! he was alive. The bancloche of the old feudal pile rang forth its blithest and most jovial notes of greeting, the banner with the old armorial bearings of St. Renan was displayed upon the keep, and a few light pieces of antique artillery, falcons and culverins and demi-cannon, which had kept their places on the battlements since the days of the leagues, sent forth their thunders far and wide over the astonished country.

So generally, however, had the belief of Raoul's death been circulated, and so absolute had been the credence given to the rumor, that when those unwonted sounds of rejoicing were heard to proceed from the long silent walls of St. Renan, men never suspected that the lost heir had returned to enjoy his own again, but fancied that some new master had established his claim to the succession, and was thus celebrating his investiture with the rights of the Counts of St. Renan.

Nor was this wonderful, for ocular proof was scarce enough to satisfy the oldest retainers of the family of the young lord's identity; and indeed ocular proof was rendered in some sort dubious by the great alteration which had taken place in the appearance of the personage in question.

Between the handsome stripling of sixteen and the grown man of twenty summers there is a greater difference than the same lapse of time will produce at any other period of human life. And this change had been rendered even greater than usual by the burning climate to which Raoul had been exposed, by the stout endurance of fatigues which had prematurely enlarged and hardened his youthful frame, and above all by the dark experience which had spread something of the thoughtful cast of age over the smooth and gracious lineaments of boyhood.

When he left home the Viscount de Douarnez was a slight, slender, graceful stripling, with a fair, delicate complexion, a profusion of light hair waving in soft curls over his shoulders, a light elastic step, and a frame, which, though it showed the promise already of strength to be attained with maturity, was conspicuous as yet for ease and agility and pliability rather than for power or robustness.

On his return, he had lost, it is true, no jot of his gracefulness or ease of demeanor, but he had shot up and expanded into a tall, broad-shouldered, round-chested, thin-flanked man, with a complexion burned to the darkest hue of which a European skin is susceptible, and which perhaps required the aid of the full soft blue eye to prove it to be European—with a glance as quick, as penetrating, and at the same time as calm and steady as that of the eagle when he gazes undazzled at the noontide splendor.

His hair had been cut short to wear beneath the casque which was still carried by cavaliers, and had grown so much darker that this alteration alone would have gone far to defy the recognition of his friends. He wore a thick dark moustache on his upper lip, and a large royal, which we should nowadays call an imperial, on his chin.

The whole aspect and expression of face, moreover, was altered, even in a greater degree than his complexion, or his person. All the quick, sparkling play and mobility of feature, the sharp flash of rapidly succeeding sentiments, and strong emotions, expressed on the ingenuous face, as soon as they were conceived within the brain—all these had disappeared completely—disappeared, never to return.

The grave composure of the thoughtful, self-possessed, experienced soldier, sufficient in himself to meet every emergency, every alternation of fortune, had succeeded the imaginative, impulsive ardor of the impetuous, gallant boy.

There was a shadow, too, a heavy shadow of something more than thought—for it was, in truth, deep, real, heartfelt melancholy, which lent an added gloom to the cold fixity of eye and lip, which had obliterated all the gay and gleeful flashes which used, from moment to moment, to light up the countenance so speaking and so frank in its disclosures.

Yet it would have been difficult to say whether Raoul de St. Renan, grave, dark and sorrowful as he now showed, was not both a handsomer and more attractive person than he had been in his earlier days, as the gay and thoughtless Viscount de Douarnez.

There was a depth of feeling, as well as of thought, now perceptible in the pensive brow and calm eye; and if the ordinary expression of those fine and placid lineaments was fixed and cold, that coldness and rigidity vanished when his face was lighted up by a smile, as quickly as the thin ice of an April morning melts away before the first glitter of the joyous sunbeams.

Nor were the smiles rare or forced, though not now as habitual as in those days of youth unalloyed by calamity, and unsunned by passion, which, once departed, never can return in this world.

The morning of the young lord's arrival passed gloomily enough; it was the very height of summer, it is true, and the sun was shining his brightest over field and tree and tower, and every thing appeared to partake of the delicious influence of the charming weather, and to put on its blithest and most radiant apparel.

Never perhaps had the fine grounds, with their soft mossy sloping lawns, and tranquil brimful waters and shadowy groves of oak and elm, great immemorial trees, looked lovelier than they did that day to greet their long absent master.

But, inasmuch as nothing in this world is more delightful, nothing more unmixed in its means of conveying pleasure, than the return, after long wanderings in foreign climes, among vicissitudes and cares, and sorrows, to an unchanged and happy home, where the same faces are assembled to smile on your late return which wept at your departure, so nothing can be imagined sadder or more depressing to the spirit than so returning to find all things inanimate unchanged, or if changed, more beautiful and brighter for the alteration, but all the living, breathing, sentient creatures—the creatures whose memory has cheered our darkest days of sorrow, whose love we desire most to find unaltered—gone, never to return, swallowed by the cold grave, deaf, silent, unresponsive to our fond affection.

Such was St. Renan's return to the house of his fathers. Until a few short days before he had pictured to himself his father's moderate and manly pleasure, his mother's holy kiss and chastened rapture at beholding once again, at clasping to her happy bosom, the son, whom she sent forth a boy, returned a man worthy the pride of the most ambitious parent.

All this Raoul de St. Renan had anticipated, and bitter, bitter was the pang when he perceived all this gay and glad anticipation thrown to the winds irreparably.

There was not a room in the old house, not a view from a single window, not a tree in the noble park, not a winding curve of a trout-stream glimmering through the coppices, but was in some way connected with his tenderest and most sacred recollections, but had a memory of pleasant hours attached to it, but recalled the sound of the kindliest and dearest words couched in the sweetest tones, the sight of persons but to think of whom made his heart thrill and quiver to its inmost core.

And for hours he had wandered through the long echoing corridors, the stately and superb saloons, feeling their solitude as if it had been actual presence weighing upon his soul, and peopling every apartment with the phantoms of the loved and lost.

Thus had the day lagged onward, and as the sun stooped toward the west darker and sadder had become the young man's fancies; and he felt as if his last hope were about to fade out with the fading light of the declining day-god. So gloomy, indeed, were his thoughts, so sadly had he become inured to wo during the last few days, so certainly had the reply to every question he had asked been the very bitterest and most painful he could have met, that he had, in truth, lacked the courage to assure himself of that on which he could not deny to himself that his last hope of happiness depended. He had not ventured yet even to ask of his own most faithful servants, whether Melanie d'Argenson, who was, he well knew, living scarcely three bow-shots distant from the spot where he stood, was true to him, was a maiden or a wedded wife.

And the old servitors, well aware of the earnest love which had existed between the young people, and of the contract which had been entered into with the consent of all parties, knew not how their young master now stood affected toward the lady, and consequently feared to speak on the subject.

At length when he had dined some hours, while he was sitting with the old bailiff, who had been endeavoring to seduce him into an examination of I know not what of rents and leases, dues and droits, seignorial and manorial, while the bottles of ruby-colored Bordeaux wine stood almost untouched before them, the young man made an effort, and raising his head suddenly after a long and thoughtful silence, asked his companion whether the Comte d'Argenson was at that time resident at the chateau.

"Oh, yes, monseigneur," the old man returned immediately, "he has been here all the summer, and the chateau has been full of gay company from Paris. Never such times have been known in my days. Hawking parties one day, and hunting matches the next, and music and balls every night, and cavalcades of bright ladies, and cavaliers all ostrich-plumes and cloth of gold and tissue, that you would think our old woods here were converted into fairy land. The young lady Melanie was wedded only three days since to the Marquis de Ploermel; but you will not know him by that name, I trow. He was the chevalier only—the Chevalier de la Rochederrien, when you were here before."