"Our servants have all run away: they think mamma is compromised. Victor, our chasseur, broke open mamma's secretary and took his wages. She is almost beside herself. She wanted to send a letter to the post, and as it is steamer-day I thought papa had better know that thus far nothing has happened to us. There was nobody to take the letter: I said I would put it in the box in the Rue Ponthieu."

"And did you post it?"

"No: I could not get to the Rue Ponthieu. They were firing down the street, and now I dare not."

"Trust it to me, Miss Leare, and promise me to send for me if you have any more such errands. You must never run such risks again."

"I have to be the man of the family," she answered, almost with an apologetic air.

"Do not say that again. I shall come over three times a day while this thing lasts to see if you have any commissions."

She smiled and pressed my hand as she turned into her own porte-cochere. Frightened servants and their friends were in the porter's lodge, who gazed after her with exclamations as she went up the common stair.

The remainder of that day passed with very little fighting. Up to that time it had been a riot apropos of a change of ministry, but in the night the secret societies met and flung aside the previous question.

When we awoke on Wednesday morning, February 23d, we were struck by the strange quiet of the streets. No provisions entered Paris through the barrier, no vehicles nor venders of small wares. The absolute silence, save when "Mourir pour la Patrie" sounded hoarsely in the distance, was as strange as it was unexpected. I had always connected an insurrection with noise. It was rumored that Guizot the Unpopular had been dismissed, and that Count Mole, a man of half measures, had been called to the king's councils. The affair looked to me as if it were going to die out for want of fuel. But I was mistaken: the blouses, who had not had one gun to a hundred the day before, had been all night arming themselves by domiciliary requisitions. The national guard was not believed to be firm.

The night before, an hour after I had parted with Miss Hermione, I had made an attempt to see her and Mrs. Leare, without any success. Not even bribery would induce the concierge to let me in. His orders were peremptory: "Pas un seul, monsieur, personne"—madame received nobody.

Early on Wednesday morning I again presented myself: the ladies were not visible. Later in the day I called again, and was again refused. But several times Amy had seen Hermione at a window, and they had made signs across the street to one another. I began to understand that Mrs. Leare was overwhelmed by the responsibility she had incurred in opening her salon to men whom she now perceived to have been conspirators, and that she was obstinately determined not to compromise herself further by giving admittance to any one.

Our bonne had been able to ascertain from the concierge of the Leare house that madame was hysterical, and could hardly be controlled by mademoiselle.

I was in the streets till five o'clock on Wednesday, when, concluding all was over, I came home, intending to make another effort to see the Leares, and if possible to take Miss Hermione, with Ellen and Laetitia, to view the debris of the two days' fight—to let them get their first glimpse of real war in the Place de la Concorde, where a regiment was littering down its horses for the night, and a peep into the closed gardens of the Tuileries.

When I got up to our rooms I found my sisters at a window overlooking the courtyard of Mrs. Leare's hotel, and they all cried out with one voice, "Mrs. Leare's carriage is just ready to drive away."

I looked. A travelling-equipage stood in the courtyard. On it the concierge was hoisting trunks, and into it was being heaped a promiscuous variety of knick-knackery and wearing apparel. A country postilion—who, but for his dirt, would have looked more like a character in a comedy than a real live, serviceable post-boy—was standing in carpet slippers (having divested himself of his boots of office) harnessing three undersized gray Normandy mares to an elegant travelling-carriage.

Hermione herself, Claribel her little sister, Mrs. Leare and the old colored nurse got quickly in. Mrs. Leare was in tears, with her head muffled in a yard or two of green barege, then the distinctive mark of a travelling American woman. The child's-nurse had long gold ear-drops and a head-dress of red bandanna. There was not a man of any kind with them except the postilion. The concierge opened the gates of the courtyard.

"Stop! stop!" I cried, and rushed down our own staircase and out of our front door.

As I ran past their entrance a woman put a paper into my hand. I had no time to glance at it, for the carriage had already turned into the Rue Ponthieu. For some distance I ran after it, encountering at every step excited groups of people, some of whom seemed to me in search of mischief, while some had apparently come out to gather news. There were no other carriages in the streets, and that alone enabled me to track the one I was in chase of, for everybody I met had noticed which way it had turned. It wound its way most deviously through by-streets to avoid those in which paving-stones had been torn up or barricades been formed, and the postilion made all possible speed, fearing the carriage might be seized and detached from his horses. But the day's work was finished and the disorders of the night were not begun.

Forced at last to slacken my speed and to take breath, I glanced at the paper that I still held in my hand. It contained a few words from Hermione: "Thank you for all the kindness you have tried to show us, dear sir. My mother has heard that all the English in Paris are to be massacred at midnight by the mob, and directs me to give you notice, which is the reason I address this note to you and not to Amy. Mamma is afraid of being mistaken for an Englishwoman. We have secured post-horses and are setting out for Argenteuil, where we shall take the railway. Again, thank you: your kindness will not be forgotten by H. LEARE."

This note reassured me. I no longer endeavored to overtake the carriage, but I pushed my way as fast as possible beyond the nearest barrier. Once outside the wall of Paris, I was in the Banlieu, that zone of rascality whose inhabitants are all suspected by the police and live under the ban. Of course on such a gala-day of lawlessness this hive was all astir. At a village I passed through I tried to hire a conveyance to Argenteuil. I also tried to get some railway information, but nobody could tell me anything and all were ravenous for news. I secured, however, without losing too much time, a seat with a stout young country-man who drove a little country cart with a powerful gray horse, and was going in the direction I wanted to travel.

"What will be the result of this affair?" I said to him when he had got his beast into a steady trot.

He shrugged his shoulders. A French workingman has a far larger vocabulary at his command than the English laborer. "Bon Dieu!" he exclaimed: "who knows what will come of it? A land without a master is no civilized land. We shall fall back into barbarism. What there is certain is, that we shall all be ruined."

At length, to my great relief, we saw a carriage before us; and we drove into the railway-station at the same moment as the Leares.

Before the ladies could alight I was beside the window of their carriage.

"You here, Mr. Farquhar?" cried Hermione. "How good of you! You cannot guess the relief. Help me to get them out, these helpless ones."

We lifted Mrs. Leare on to the platform of the railway, weeping and trembling. The old colored nurse could not speak French, and seemed to think her only duty was to hold the hand of little Claribel and to stand where her young mistress placed her. All looked to Hermione. She carried a canvas bag of five-franc pieces and paid right and left. I tried to interfere, as she was giving the postilion an exorbitant sum.

"No, hush!" she whispered: "we can afford to pay, but in our situation we cannot afford to dispute."

She then deputed me to see after the "baggage," as she called the luggage of the party, and went with her mother into the glass cage that the French call a salle d'attente at a railway-station.

We had come from the seat of war, and every one crowded around us asking for news. I had little to tell, but replied that I believed the affair was nearly over. I did not foresee that two hours later a procession roaring "Mourir pour la Patrie" under the windows of the Hotel des Affaires Etrangeres would be fired into by accident, and that the emeute of February, 1848, would be converted into a revolution.

It was nine o'clock in the evening. The lamps were lighted in the station. The night was cloudy, but far off on the horizon we could see a gleam of radiance, marking the locality of the great city.

After an hour of very anxious waiting, during which Mrs. Leare was beside herself with nervous agitation, the locked doors of our prison were flung open and we were permitted to seat ourselves in a railway-carriage.

Hermione's tender devotion to her mother, the old servant and the child was beautiful to witness. Now that Mrs. Leare was helpless on her daughter's hands, they seemed to have found their natural relations. Hermione said few words to me, but a glance now and then thanked me for being with them. The train started. For about three miles all went on well, although we travelled cautiously, fearing obstructions. Suddenly the speed of our train was checked, and there was a cry of consternation as we rounded a sharp curve. The bridge over the Seine at its third bend was ablaze before us!

All the men upon the train sprang out upon the track as soon as the carriage-doors were opened, and in a few moments we were surrounded by ruffians refusing to let us go on.

"Back the train!" cried the railroad official in charge.

No, they were not willing to let us go back to Paris. Conspirators against the people might be making their escape. They had set fire to the bridge, they said, to prevent the train from passing over. It must remain where it was. If we passengers desired to return to Paris, we must walk there.

"Walk?" I exclaimed: "it is ten miles! Women—delicate ladies—children!"

My remonstrance was drowned in the confusion. Suddenly the party of women under my charge stood at my elbow: Mrs. Leare was leaning on Hermione's arm; Mammy Christine and Claribel cowered close and held her by her drapery.

"Make no remonstrances," she said in a low voice: "let us not excite attention. An Englishman never knows when not to complain: an American accepts his fate more quietly. These people mean to sack the train. We had better get away as soon as possible."

"But how?" I cried.

"I can walk. We must find some means of transporting mamma, Mammy Chris and Clary."

As Hermione said this she turned to an official and questioned him upon the subject. He thought that there was a little cart and horse which might be hired at a neighboring cottage.

"Let us go and see about it, Mr. Farquhar," said Hermione.

"I will."

"No: I put greater trust in my own powers of persuasion.—Mammy dear, take good care of mamma: we shall be back directly."

Her we was very sweet to me, and I shared her mistrust of my French and my diplomacy.

The glare of the burning bridge lighted our steps: the air was full of falling flakes of fire. The cottage was a quarter of a mile off. Hermione refused my arm, but, holding her skirts daintily, stepped bravely at my side. She exhibited no bashfulness, no excitement, no confusion, no fear: she was simply bent on business. We reached the peasant's farmyard. He and his family were outside the house. We like to say a Frenchman has no word for home. But the conclusion that the man of Anglo-Saxon birth deduces from this lack in his vocabulary is false: no man cares more for the domicile that shelters him. Hermione made her request with sweet persuasiveness. I saw at once it would have been refused if I had made it, but to her they made excuses. The old horse, they said, was very old, the old cart was broken.

"Let me look at it," said Hermione. At this they led us into an outhouse, where she assisted me to make a careful inspection. I might have rejected the old trap at once, but she offered a few suggestions, which she told me in an aside were the fruit of her experiences in Maryland and Virginia, and the cart was pronounced safe enough to be driven slowly with a light load.

A half-grown son of the house was put in charge of it. Hermione suggested he should bring the family clothes-line in case of a breakdown, and prevailed upon the farmer's wife to put in plenty of fresh straw, a blanket and a pillow. She made a bargain, less extravagant than I expected, with the peasant proprietor, promising, however, a very handsome pourboire to his son in the event of our good fortune. The farmer stipulated, in his turn, that cart, horse and lad were not to pass the barrier, that the boy should walk at the horse's head, and that the cart was to contain only two women and little Claribel.

It was harnessed up immediately. Hermione and I followed it on foot back to the little band of travellers waiting beside the railway.

"Can we not get some of your trunks out?" I said to her.

"No," she answered: "leave them to their fate. I dare not overload the cart, and I doubt whether those men with hungry eyes would let us take them. Mamma," she whispered, "has her diamonds."

"You will get into the cart, Miss Leare?" I said as I saw her motioning to the old colored woman to take the place beside her mother.

"No indeed," she replied: "our contract stipulated only for mamma, Mammy and Clary: Mammy is crippled with rheumatism. If you have no objection I will walk with you."

"Objection? No. But it is ten miles."

"A long stretch," she said with a half sigh, "but I am young, strong, and excitement counts for something: besides, there is no remedy. We must consider them."

There had been about fifteen other persons on the train. A dozen of these, finding we were going to walk back to Paris, proposed to join us. The night was growing dark, and we pushed on. There was no woman afoot but Hermione. "Madame" they called her, evidently taking her for my wife, but by no word or smile did she notice the blunder. After a while she accepted my arm, drawing up her skirts by means of loops or pins. We had one lantern among us, and from time to time its glare permitted me to see her dainty feet growing heavy with mud and travel.

It was not what could be called a lovers' walk, tramping in the dark through mud and water, on a French country road, at a cart's tail, and hardly a word was exchanged between us; yet had it not been for fears about her safety it would have been the most delightful expedition I had ever known.

From time to time Mrs. Leare and the old nurse in the cart complained of their bones. Hermione was always ready with encouragement, but she said little else to any one. She appeared to be reserving all her energies to assist her physical endurance and to strengthen her for her task of taking care of the others.

I had always seen my sisters and other girls protected, sheltered, cared for: it gave me a sharp pang to see this beautiful and dainty creature totally unthought of by those dependent on her. Nor did Mrs. Leare seem to feel any anxiety about my comradeship with her daughter. I could fully appreciate Hermione's remark about her chaperonage being very unsatisfactory.

Every now and then we passed through villages along whose straggling streets the population was aswarm, eager for news and wondering at our muddy procession. In one of the villages I suggested stopping, but Mrs. Leare was now as frantic to get home again as she had been to get away. She said, and truly, that it had been a wild plan to start from Paris—that if she had seen me and had heard that I thought the emeute was at an end and that the report about the English was untrue, she should never have left her apartment. She had been frightened out of her senses by some men en blouse who had made their way into her rooms and had carried off her pistol and a little Turkish dagger. Victor's theft of his own wages had upset her. She had insisted upon setting out. Hermione had got post-horses somehow: Hermione ought never to have let her come away.

About three in the morning we reached a larger village than we had hitherto passed. The inhabitants had been apprised of the events in the Rue Neuve des Capucines before the ministry of the Affaires Etrangeres, and the revolutionary element had increased in audacity. A crowd of turbulent-looking working-men dressed in blouses, armed with muskets, old sabres and all kinds of miscellaneous weapons, stopped our way. Some seized the head of the old horse, some gathered round the cart and lifted lanterns into the faces of the ladies. The French workman is a much more athletic man than the French soldier. I own to a sensation of deadly terror for a moment when I saw the ladies in the midst of a lawless rabble whose brawny arms were bared as if prepared for butchery of any kind. Far off, too, a low rattle of distant musketry warned us that the tumult in Paris was renewed.

"Mourir pour la Patrie" appeared to come from every throat, and many of the crowd were the worse for liquor. Indeed, these patriots had rendezvoused at a cabaret at the entrance of the village, and swarmed from its tables to intercept us. The ladies, they insisted, must alight and be examined. Mammy Chris was drawn out of the cart, looking as if her face had been rubbed in ashes: Mrs. Leare was nervously excited, Hermione went up to her, supported her and drew her bag of diamonds out of her hand. I took Claribel in my arms.

"Vos passeports," they demanded.

"Here are our American passports," said Hermione: "we are Americans."

"Yes, Americans, republicans!" cried Mrs. Leare: "we fraternize with all republicans in France."

"Aristos," said a man between his teeth, glancing at her dress and at that of Hermione.

"What does he say?" cried Mrs. Leare, who did not catch the word.

"Hush, mother!" said Hermione.

"But what did he say?" she shrieked. "Tell me at once: do not keep it from me."

Hermione replied (unwilling to use the word "aristocrat") by an American idiom: "He said we belonged to the Upper Ten."

"But we don't! Oh, Hermie, your father belongs to a good family in Maryland, but my grandfather made shoes. I was quite poor when he married me. I was only sixteen."

"What you say?" said a railroad-hand who knew a little English. "You say you are not some aristos?"

"No, sir," said I: "these ladies claim to be Americans and republicans."

"Vive la Republique!" cried the man.

"Vive la Republique!" quickly echoed Hermione.

"C'est bien! c'est bien!" cried another, raising his lantern to her blanched and beautiful face.

"You will let us all pass, monsieur?" she said persuasively: "you will even be our escort a little way. We will pay handsomely for your protection."

Before he could answer her two or three fellows, more drunk than the rest, burst out with a proposition: "She says they are not aristos, but republicans. Let her prove it. She cannot, if she be a true republican, refuse to kiss her fellow-patriots."

I started and was about to knock the rascal down with the bag of diamonds.

But Hermione laid a restraining hand upon my arm. "Gentlemen," she said in clear tones and perfect French, "it is quite true that we are Americans and republicans. We wish you well, and if it be for the good of France to be free under a republican form of government, no one can wish her prosperity more than ourselves. But in our free country, messieurs, a woman is held free to give her kiss to whom she will, and according to our custom she gives it only to her betrothed or to her husband." Here stooping she picked up a little boy who had worked himself into the forefront of the crowd, and before I knew what she was about to do she had lifted him upon the cart beside her. She looked a moment steadily at the men around her, holding the boy's hand in both her own, then turning toward him and pressing her lips upon his face, she said, "Messieurs, I kiss your representative: I cannot embrace a multitude;" and placed a piece of money in the gamin's hand.

For a moment there was some doubt what view the crowd might take of this, but her beauty, her fearlessness, and, above all, the awe inspired by her womanliness, prevailed. They shouted "Vive la Republique!"

"With all my heart," replied Hermione. "Now shout for me, gentlemen: Vive la Republique des Etats Unis!"

They were completely won. A French crowd is never dangerous or unmanageable till it has tasted blood, and besides it has—or at least in those days it used to have—sentiments, to which it was possible with a little tact to appeal successfully.

The opposition to our progress came to an end. Mrs. Leare and old Mammy were helped back into the cart, and a man offered them some wine. They brought some also to Hermione. I pressed her to drink it, which she did to their good health, and giving back the glass placed in it a napoleon. "Do me the favor, messieurs," she said, "to drink your next toast to our American republic."

Cheers rose for her. There was no longer any talk of detaining us: the old horse was urged forward. Hermione took my arm. We marched on, escorted by the rabble. At the end of the village-street they all gave us an unsteady cheer and turned back to their wine-tables. Hermione proceeded in silence a little farther. Then I felt her slipping from my arm, and was just in time to catch her.

Without compunction I requested Mammy Chris to get out of the cart and put her young lady in her place, pillowing her head as carefully as I could on my own coat, and proceeding in my shirtsleeves.

We were then not half a mile from the Banlieu, which we passed without adventure, much to my surprise, its inhabitants having taken advantage of the confusion to pour into Paris and infest its richer quarters.

The ladies were obliged to get out at the barrier and to send back the cart to its proprietor. Again I had the happiness of supporting Hermione while I carried little Claribel, and Mrs. Leare and Mammy walked on ahead.

"I feel humiliated," I said, "that the whole burden of those dreadful moments should have fallen upon you."

"And to avoid that feeling you were ready to knock down a drunken blouse in English style?" she said, smiling. "No, Mr. Farquhar, nothing but the power that a woman finds in her own womanhood could have brought us through safely. Those men had all had mothers, and each man had some sort of womanly ideal. I could not have managed a crowd of poissardes, but, thank Heaven, there is yet a chord that a woman may strike in the hearts of men."

The dawn of Thursday, February 24, 1848, was breaking at the eastward when I arrived with Mrs. Leare, Hermione, the nurse and child at their own apartment. I went up stairs with them. All was cold and cheerless in the rooms. There were no servants. Mrs. Leare sat down; the old nurse bemoaned her rheumatism and her aching bones; Hermione, with the assistance of the concierge's wife, lighted a fire, made some tea and waited on her mother.

For several days afterward she was very ill. She knew nothing of passing events—of the king's flight, of the triumphal and victorious processions that passed up the Champs Elysees, of the sudden impossibility of procuring supplies of change, and of the consequent difficulty of paying household bills with billets de mille francs without gold or silver.

Each day I went several times to make inquiries, and twice I saw Mrs. Leare in bed, but Hermione was invisible.

My father, an honorable British officer of the old school, perceived how things were with me. "My son," he said one clay, "there are two courses open to you. You have nothing but your profession. Your education and the premium on your admittance to the office of the great man for whom you work have been my provision for you: the little property I have to leave must support your sisters. You cannot under such circumstances address Miss Leare. You must either go back at once to your work in England and forget this episode, or you may go out to America and see her father. You can tell him you have nothing on which to support his daughter, and ask if he will give you leave to address the young lady. No son of mine, situated like yourself, shall offer himself in any other way to an heiress whose father is three thousand miles away, and who is supposed to have two millions of francs for her dowry."

I saw he was right, but, forlorn as the hope was of any appeal to Mr. Leare, I would not relinquish it. I resolved to go out to America and see him, and wrote to England to secure letters of introduction to the chief engineers in the United States and Canada. Meantime, my father proposed that we should go together and call upon Mrs. and Miss Leare.

Hermione received us in the boudoir, looking like a bruised lily: her mother came in afterward.

"We are going right straight home," she said, "the moment we can get money to get away. I have written to Mr. Leare that he must find some means to send me some."

"I am glad to hear you say this, madame," said my father. "My son has just made up his mind to go out to America and seek employment on one of your railways."

Hermione looked up with a question in her eyes: so did her mother.

"Why, Mr. Farquhar, that will suit us exactly," cried Mrs. Leare.—"Hermione, won't it be lovely if Mr. Farquhar takes care of us on the voyage?—You will engage your passage—won't you?—in the same steamer as we do?—No one was ever so good a squire of dames as your son, Captain Farquhar. Hermione and I shall never forget our obligations to him."

"No, madame," said my father; and he got up and walked to the fireplace, where in his embarrassment he laid his hand upon the ornamented box which held the cigarettes of the fast lady.

She rose up too and went hastily toward him, anxious he should not surprise her little frailty.

"The truth is, madame," whispered my father, who never could restrain his tongue from any kindly indiscretion, "the poor fellow is suffering too much from the attractions of Miss Leare. He has nothing but his profession, and I tell him he must not dare to address her in her father's absence."

"My dear captain, what does that matter? And I believe Hermione would have him too," said her mother.

"Disparity of means—" began my father.

"Oh, no matter," interrupted Mrs. Leare: "her father always told her just to please herself. Mr. Farquhar is an Englishman and of good family. He has his profession to keep him out of mischief, and Hermie will more than pay her own expenses. Indeed, I dare not go home without a gentleman to look after us on the passage: my nerves have been too shattered, and I never again shall trust a courier. Do let your son go back with us," she implored persuasively; and added, as she saw that he still hesitated, "Besides, what rich man in America knows how long he may be rich? 'Spend your money and enjoy yourself' has always been my motto."

Thus urged, what could my father do but suppose that Mrs. Leare knew Mr. Leare's views better than he did? He no longer held out on the point of honor.

In twenty-four hours Hermione and I were engaged to be married.

During the voyage to New York I learned to understand her father's character, and when he met us on the wharf I was no longer afraid of him.

Hermione's choice in marriage seemed to be wholly left to herself. Mr. Leare told me, when I had that formidable talk with him dreaded by all aspirants to the hand of a man's daughter, that Hermione had too much good sense, self-respect and womanliness to give herself away to a man unworthy of her. "That she can love you, sir," he said, "is sufficient recommendation."

That it might be sufficient in my case I hoped with all my soul, but felt, as Hermione had expressed it early in our acquaintance, that society in America must be founded upon very different opinions than our own in regard to the relations of men and women.

E.W. LATIMER.



THE AUTHORS OF "FROUFROU."

No doubt it will surprise some theatre-goers who are not special students of the stage to be told that the authors of Froufrou are the authors also of the Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein and of La Belle Helene, of Carmen and of Le Petit Duc. There are a few, I know, who think that Froufrou was written by the fertile and ingenious M. Victorien Sardou, and who, without thinking, credit M. Jacques Offenbach with the composition of the words as well as the music of the Grande Duchesse; and as for Carmen, is it not an Italian opera, and is not the book, like the music, the work of some Italian? As a matter of fact, all these plays, unlike as they are to each other, and not only these, but many more—not a few of them fairly well known to the American play-goer—are due to the collaboration of M. Henri Meilhac and M. Ludovic Halevy.

Born in 1832, M. Henri Meilhac, like M. Emile Zola, dealt in books before he began to make them. He soon gave up trade for journalism, and contributed with pen and pencil to the comic Journal pour Rire. He began as a dramatist in 1855 with a two-act play at the Palais Royal Theatre: like the first pieces of Scribe and of M. Sardou, and of so many more who have afterward abundantly succeeded on the stage, this play of M. Meilhac's was a failure; and so also was his next, likewise in two acts. But in 1856 the Sarabande du Cardinal, a delightful little comedy in one act, met with favor at the Gymnase. It was followed by two or three other comediettas equally clever. In 1859, M. Meilhac made his first attempt at a comedy in five acts, but the Petit fils de Mascarille had not the good fortune of his ancestor. In 1860, for the first time, he was assisted by M. Ludovic Halevy, and in the twenty years since then their names have been linked together on the title-pages of two score or more plays of all kinds—drama, comedy, farce, opera, operetta and ballet. M. Meilhac's new partner was the nephew of the Halevy who is best known out of France as the composer of the Jewess, and he was the son of M. Leon Halevy, poet, philosopher and playwright. Two years younger than M. Henri Meilhac, M. Ludovic Halevy held a place in the French civil service until 1858, when he resigned to devote his whole time, instead of his spare time, to the theatre. As the son of a dramatist and the nephew of a popular composer, he had easy access to the stage. He began as the librettist-in-ordinary to M. Offenbach, for whom he wrote Ba-ta-clan in 1855, and later the Chanson de Fortunio, the Pont des Soupirs and Orphee aux Enfers. The first very successful play which MM. Meilhac and Halevy wrote together was a book for M. Offenbach; and it was possibly the good fortune of this operetta which finally affirmed the partnership. Before the triumph of the Belle Helene in 1864 the collaboration had been tentative, as it were: after that it was as though the articles had been definitely ratified—not that either of the parties has not now and then indulged in outside speculations, trying a play alone or with an outsider, but this was without prejudice to the permanent partnership.

This kind of literary union, the long-continued conjunction of two kindred spirits, is better understood amongst us than the indiscriminate collaboration which marks the dramatic career of M. Eugene Labiche, for instance. Both kinds were usual enough on the English stage in the days of Elizabeth, but we can recall the ever-memorable example of Beaumont and Fletcher, while we forget the chance associations of Marston, Dekker, Chapman and Ben Jonson. And in contemporary literature we have before us the French tales of MM. Erckmann-Chatrian and the English novels of Messrs. Besant and Rice. The fact that such a union endures is proof that it is advantageous. A long-lasting collaboration like this of MM. Meilhac and Halevy must needs be the result of a strong sympathy and a sharp contrast of character, as well as of the possession by one of literary qualities which supplement those of the other.

One of the first things noticed by an American student of French dramatic literature is that the chief Parisian critics generally refer to the joint work of these two writers as the plays of M. Meilhac, leaving M. Halevy altogether in the shade. At first this seems a curious injustice, but the reason is not far to seek. It is not that M. Halevy is some two years the junior of M. Meilhac: it lies in the quality of their respective abilities. M. Meilhac has the more masculine style, and so the literary progeny of the couple bear rather his name than his associate's. M. Meilhac has the strength of marked individuality, he has a style of his own, one can tell his touch; while M. Halevy is merely a clever French dramatist of the more conventional pattern. This we detect by considering the plays which each has put forth alone and unaided by the other. In reading one of M. Meilhac's works we should feel no doubt as to the author, while M. Halevy's clever pictures of Parisian society, wanting in personal distinctiveness, would impress us simply as a product of the "Modern French School."

Before finally joining with M. Halevy, M. Meilhac wrote two comedies in five acts of high aim and skilful execution, and two other five-act pieces have been written by MM. Meilhac and Halevy together. The Vertu de Celimene and the Petit fils de Mascarille are by the elder partner—Fanny Lear and Froufrou are the work of the firm. Yet in these last two it is difficult to see any trace of M. Halevy's handiwork. Allowing for the growth of M. Meilhac's intellect during the eight or ten years which intervened between the work alone and the work with his associate, and allowing for the improvement in the mechanism of play-making, I see no reason why M. Meilhac might not have written Fanny Lear and Froufrou substantially as they are had he never met M. Halevy. But it is inconceivable that M. Halevy alone could have attained so high an elevation or have gained so full a comic force. Perhaps, however, M. Halevy deserves credit for the better technical construction of the later plays: merely in their mechanism the first three acts of Froufrou are marvellously skilful. And perhaps, also, his is a certain softening humor, which is the cause that the two later plays, written by both partners, are not so hard in their brilliance as the two earlier comedies, the work of M. Meilhac alone.

It may seem something like a discussion of infinitesimals, but I think M. Halevy's co-operation has given M. Meilhac's plays a fuller ethical richness. To the younger writer is due a simple but direct irony, as well as a lightsome and laughing desire to point a moral when occasion serves. Certainly, I shall not hold up a play written to please the public of the Palais Royal, or even of the Gymnase, as a model of all the virtues. Nor need it be, on the other hand, an embodiment of all the cardinal sins. The frequenters of the Palais Royal Theatre are not babes; young people of either sex are not taken there; only the emancipated gain admittance; and to the seasoned sinners who haunt theatres of this type these plays by MM. Meilhac and Halevy are harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: he has no liking for vice, but his virtue sits easily on him, and though he is sound on the main question, he looks upon the vagaries of others with a gentle eye. M. Halevy, it seems to me, is made of somewhat sterner stuff. He raises a warning voice now and then—in Fanny Lear, for instance, the moral is pointed explicitly—and even where there is no moral tagged to the fable, he who has eyes to see and ears to hear can find "a terrible example" in almost any of these plays, even the lightest. For the congregation to which it was delivered there is a sermon in Toto chez Tata, perhaps the piece in which, above all others, the Muse seems Gallic and egrillarde. That is a touch of real truth, and so of a true morality, where Tata, the fashionable courtesan, leaning over her stairs as Toto the school-boy bears off her elderly lover, and laughing at him, cries out, "Toi, mon petit homme, je te repincerai dans quatre ou cinq ans!" And a cold and cutting stroke it is a little earlier in the same little comedy where Toto, left alone in Tata's parlor, negligently turns over her basket of visiting-cards and sees "names which he knew because he had learnt them by heart in his history of France." Still, in spite of this truth and morality, I do not advise the reading of Toto chez Tata in young ladies' seminaries. Young ladies in Paris do not go to hear Madame Chaumont, for whom Toto was written, nor is the Varietes, where it was played, a place where a girl can take her mother.

It was at the Varietes in December, 1864, that the Belle Helene was produced: this was the first of half a score of plays written by MM. Meilhac and Halevy for which M. Jacques Offenbach composed the music. Chief among these are Barbe-bleue, the Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein, the Brigands and Perichole. When we recall the fact that these five operas are the most widely known, the most popular and by far the best of M. Offenbach's works, there is no need to dwell on his indebtedness to MM. Meilhac and Halevy, or to point out how important a thing the quality of the opera-book is to the composer of the score. These earlier librettos were admirably made: they are models of what a comic opera-book should be. I cannot well imagine a better bit of work of its kind than the Belle Helene or the Grande Duchesse. Tried by the triple test of plot, characters and dialogue, they are nowhere wanting. Since MM. Meilhac and Halevy have ceased writing for M. Offenbach they have done two books for M. Charles Lecoq—the Petit Duc and the Grande Demoiselle. These are rather light comic operas than true operas-bouffes, but if there is an elevation in the style of the music, there is an emphatic falling off in the quality of the words. From the Grande Duchesse to the Petit Duc is a great descent: the former was a genuine play, complete and self-contained—the latter is a careless trifle, a mere outline sketch for the composer to fill up. The story—akin in subject to Mr. Tom Taylor's fine historical drama Clancarty—is pretty, but there is no trace of the true poetry which made the farewell letter of Perichole so touching, or of the true comic force which projected General Bourn. Carmen, which, like Perichole, owes the suggestion of its plot and characters to Prosper Merimee, is little more than the task-work of the two well-trained play-makers: it was sufficient for its purpose, no more and no less.

Of all the opera-books of MM. Meilhac and Halevy, that one is easily first and foremost which has for its heroine the Helen of Troy whom Marlowe's Faustus declared

Fairer than the evening air, Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars.

In the Belle Helene we see the higher wit of M. Meilhac. M. Halevy had been at the same college with him, and they had pored together over the same legends of old time, but working without M. Meilhac on Orphee aux Enfers, M. Halevy showed his inferiority, for Orphee is the old-fashioned anachronistic skit on antiquity—funny if you will, but with a fun often labored, not to say forced—the fun of physical incongruity and exaggeration. But in the Belle Helene the fun, easy and flowing, is of a very high quality, and it has root in mental, not physical, incongruity. Here indeed is the humorous touchstone of a whole system of government and of theology. And, allowing for the variations made with comic intent, it is altogether Greek in spirit—so Greek, in fact, that I doubt whether any one who has not given his days and nights to the study of Homer and of the tragedians, and who has not thus taken in by the pores the subtle essence of Hellenic life and literature, can truly appreciate this French farce. Planche's Golden Fleece is in the same vein, but the ore is not as rich. Frere's Loves of the Triangles and some of his Anti-Jacobin writing are perhaps as good in quality, but the subjects are inferior and temporary. Scarron's vulgar burlesques and the cheap parodies of many contemporary English play-makers are not to be mentioned in the same breath with this scholarly fooling. There is something in the French genius akin to the Greek, and here was a Gallic wit who could turn a Hellenic love-tale inside out, and wring the uttermost drop of fun from it without recourse to the devices of the booth at the fair, the false nose and the simulation of needless ugliness. The French play, comic as it was, did not suggest hysteria or epilepsy, and it was not so lacking in grace that we could not recall the original story without a shudder. There is no shattering of an ideal, and one cannot reproach the authors of the Belle Helene with what Theophrastus Such calls "debasing the moral currency, lowering the value of every inspiring fact and tradition."

Surpassed only by the Belle Helene is the Grande Duchesse de Gerolstein. It is nearly fifteen years since all the world went to Paris to see an Exposition Universelle and to gaze at the "sabre de mon pere," and since a Russian emperor, going to hear the operetta, said to have been suggested by the freak of a Russian empress, sat incognito in one stage-box of the little Varietes Theatre, and glancing up saw a Russian grand duke in the other. It is nearly fifteen years since the tiny army of Her Grand-ducal Highness took New York by storm, and since American audience after audience hummed its love for the military and walked from the French Theatre along Fourteenth street to Delmonico's to supper, sabring the waiters there with the venerated weapon of her sire. The French Theatre is no more, and Delmonico's is no longer at that Fourteenth-street corner, and Her Highness Mademoiselle Tostee is dead, and M. Offenbach's sprightly tunes have had the fate of all over-popular airs, and are forgotten now. Ou sont les neiges d'antan?

It has been said that the authors regretted having written the Grande Duchesse, because the irony of history soon made a joke on Teutonic powers and principalities seem like unpatriotic satire. Certainly, they had no reason to be ashamed of the literary quality of their work: in its class it yields only to its predecessor. There is no single figure as fine as Calchas—General Boum is a coarser outline—but how humorous and how firm is the drawing of Prince Paul and Baron Grog! And Her Highness herself may be thought a cleverer sketch of youthful femininity than even the Hellenic Helen. It is hard to judge the play now. Custom has worn its freshness and made it too familiar: we know it too well to criticise it clearly. Besides, the actors have now overlaid the action with over-much "business." But in spite of these difficulties the merits of the piece are sufficiently obvious: its constructive skill can be remarked; the first act, for example, is one of the best bits of exposition on the modern French stage.

Besides these plays for music, and besides the more important five-act comedies to be considered later, MM. Meilhac and Halevy are the authors of thirty or forty comic dramas—as they are called on the English stage—or farce-comedies in one, two, three, four, and even five acts, ranging in aim from the gentle satire of sentimentality in La Veuve to the outspoken farce of the Reveillon. Among the best of the longer of these comic plays are Tricoche et Cacolet and La Boule. Both were written for the Palais Royal, and they are models of the new dramatic species which came into existence at that theatre about twenty years ago, as M. Francisquc Sarcey recently reminded us in his interesting article on the Palais Royal in The Nineteenth Century. This new style of comic play may be termed realistic farce—realistic, because it starts from every-day life and the most matter-of-fact conditions; and farce, because it uses its exact facts only to further its fantasy and extravagance. Consider La Boule. Its first act is a model of accurate observation; it is a transcript from life; it is an inside view of a commonplace French household which incompatibility of temper has made unsupportable. And then take the following acts, and see how on this foundation of fact, and screened by an outward semblance of realism, there is erected the most laughable superstructure of fantastic farce. I remember hearing one of the two great comedians of the Theatre Francais, M. Coquelin, praise a comic actor of the Varietes whom we had lately seen in a rather cheap and flimsy farce, because he combined "la verite la plus absolue avec la fantasie la plus pure." And this is the merit of La Boule: its most humorous inventions have their roots in the truth.

Better even than La Boule is Tricoche et Cacolet, which is the name of a firm of private detectives whose exploits and devices surpass those imagined by Poe in America, by Wilkie Collins in England, and by Gaboriau in France. The manifold disguises and impersonations of the two partners when seeking to outwit each other are as well-motived and as fertile in comic effect as any of the attempts of Crispin or of some other of Regnard's interchangeable valets. Is not even the Legataire Universel, Regnard's masterpiece, overrated? To me it is neither higher comedy nor more provocative of laughter than either La Boule or Tricoche et Cacolet; and the modern plays, as I have said, are based on a study of life as it is, while the figures of the older comedies are frankly conventional. Nowhere in Regnard is there a situation equal in comic power to that in the final act of the Reveillon—a situation Moliere would have been glad to treat.

Especially to be commended in Tricoche et Cacolet is the satire of the hysterical sentimentality and of the forced emotions born of luxury and idleness. The parody of the amorous intrigue which is the staple of so many French plays is as wholesome as it is exhilarating. Absurdity is a deadly shower-bath to sentimentalism. The method of Meilhac and Halevy in sketching this couple is not unlike that employed by Mr. W.S. Gilbert in H.M.S. Pinafore and The Pirates of Penzance. Especially to be noted is the same perfectly serious pushing of the dramatic commonplaces to an absurd conclusion. There is the same kind of humor too, and the same girding at the stock tricks of stage-craft—in H.M.S. Pinafore at the swapping of children in the cradle, and in Tricoche et Cacolet at the "portrait de ma mere" which has drawn so many tears in modern melodrama. But MM. Meilhac and Halevy, having made one success, did not further attempt the same kind of pleasantry—wiser in this than Mr. Gilbert, who seems to find it hard to write anything else.

As in the Chateau a Toto MM. Meilhac and Halevy had made a modern perversion of Dame Blanche, so in La Cigale did they dress up afresh the story of the Fille du R'egiment. As the poet asks—

Ah, World of ours, are you so gray, And weary, World, of spinning, That you repeat the tales to-day You told at the beginning? For lo! the same old myths that made The early stage-successes Still hold the boards, and still are played With new effects and dresses.

I have cited La Cigale, not because it is a very good play—for it is not—but because it shows the present carelessness of French dramatists in regard to dramatic construction. La Cigale is a very clever bit of work, but it has the slightest of plots, and this made out of old cloth; and the situations, in so far as there are any, follow each other as best they may. It is not really a play: it is a mere sketch touched up with Parisianisms, "local hits" and the wit of the moment. This substitution of an off-hand sketch for a full-sized picture can better be borne in a little one-act play than in a more ambitious work in three or four acts.

And of one-act plays Meilhac and Halevy have written a score or more—delightful little genre pictures, like the Ete de Saint-Martin, simple pastels, like Toto chez Tata, and vigorous caricatures, like the Photographe or the Bresilien. The Frenchman invented the ruffle, says Emerson: the Englishman added the shirt. These little dramatic trifles are French ruffles. In the beginning of his theatrical career M. Meilhac did little comedies like the Sarabande and the Autographe, in the Scribe formula—dramatized anecdotes, but fresher in wit and livelier in fancy than Scribe's. This early work was far more regular than we find in some of his latest, bright as these are: the Petit Hotel, for instance, and Lolotte are etchings, as it were, instantaneous photographs of certain aspects of life in the city by the Seine or stray paragraphs of the latest news from Paris.

It is perhaps not too much to say that Meilhac and Halevy are seen at their best in these one-act plays. They hit better with a single-barrel than with a revolver. In their five-act plays, whether serious like Fanny Lear or comic like La Vie Parisienne, the interest is scattered, and we have a series of episodes rather than a single story. Just as the egg of the jelly-fish is girt by circles which tighten slowly until the ovoid form is cut into disks of independent life, so if the four intermissions of some of Meilhac and Halevy's full-sized plays were but a little longer and wider and deeper they would divide the piece into five separate plays, any one of which could fairly hope for success by itself. I have heard that the Roi Candaule was originally an act of La Boule, and the Photographe seems as though it had dropped from La Vie Parisienne by mistake. In M. Meilhac's earlier five-act plays, the Vertu de Celimene and the Petit fils de Mascarille, there is great power of conception, a real grip on character, but the main action is clogged with tardy incidents, and so the momentum is lost. In these comedies the influence of the new school of Alexandre Dumas fils is plainly visible. And the inclination toward the strong, not to say violent, emotions which Dumas and Angier had imported into comedy is still more evident in Fanny Lear, the first five-act comedy which Meilhac and Halevy wrote together, and which was brought out in 1868. The final situation is one of truth and immense effectiveness, and there is great vigor in the creation of character. The decrepit old rake, the Marquis de Noriolis, feeble in his folly and wandering in helplessness, but irresistible when aroused, is a striking figure; and still more striking is the portrait of his wife, now the Marquise de Noriolis, but once Fanny Lear the adventuress—a woman who has youth, beauty, wealth, everything before her, if it were not for the shame which is behind her: gay and witty, and even good-humored, she is inflexible when she is determined; hers is a velvet manner and an iron will. The name of Fanny Lear may sound familiar to some readers because it was given to an American adventuress in Russia by a grand-ducal admirer.

After Fanny Lear came Froufrou, the lineal successor of The Stranger as the current masterpiece of the lachrymatory drama. Nothing so tear-compelling as the final act of Froufrou had been seen on the stage for half a century or more. The death of Froufrou was a watery sight, and for any chance to weep we are many of us grateful. And yet it was a German, born in the land of Charlotte and Werther,—it was Heine who remarked on the oddity of praising the "dramatic poet who possesses the art of drawing tears—a talent which he has in common with the meanest onion." It is noteworthy that it was by way of Germany that English tragedy exerted its singular influence on French comedy. Attracted by the homely power of pieces like The Gamester and Jane Shore, Diderot in France and Lessing in Germany attempted the tragedie bourgeoise, but the right of the "tradesmen's tragedies"—as Goldsmith called them—to exist at all was questioned until Kotzebue's pathetic power and theatrical skill captured nearly every stage in Europe. In France the bastard offspring of English tragedy and German drama gave birth to an equally illegitimate comedie larmoyante. And so it happens that while comedy in English literature, resulting from the clash of character, is always on the brink of farce, comedy in French literature may be tinged with passion until it almost turns to tragedy. In France the word "comedy" is elastic and covers a multitude of sins: it includes the laughing Boule and the tearful Froufrou: in fact, the French Melpomene is a sort of Jeanne qui pleure et Jeanne qui rit.

So it happens that Froufrou is a comedy. And indeed the first three acts are comedy of a very high order, full of wit and rich in character. I mentioned The Stranger a few lines back, and the contrast of the two plays shows how much lighter and more delicate French art is. The humor to be found in The Stranger is, to say the least, Teutonic; and German humor is like the simple Italian wines: it will not stand export. And in The Stranger there is really no character, no insight into human nature. Misanthropy and Repentance, as Kotzebue called his play (The Stranger was Sheridan's title for the English translation he revised for his own theatre), are loud-sounding words when we capitalize them, but they do not deceive us now: we see that the play itself is mostly stalking sententiousness, mawkishly overladen with gush. But in Froufrou there is wit of the latest Parisian kind, and there are characters—people whom we might meet and whom we may remember. Brigard, for one, the reprobate old gentleman, living even in his old age in that Bohemia which has Paris for its capital, and dyeing his few locks because he feels himself unworthy to wear gray hair,—Brigard is a portrait from life. The Baron de Cambri is less individual, and I confess I cannot quite stomach a gentleman who is willing to discuss the problem of his wife's virtue with a chance adorer. But the cold Baronne herself is no commonplace person. And Louise, the elder daughter of Froufrou, the one who had chosen the better part and had kept it by much self-sacrifice,—she is a true woman. Best, better even than Brigard, is Gilberte, nicknamed "Froufrou" from the rustling of her silks as she skips and scampers airily around. Froufrou, when all is said, is a real creation, a revelation of Parisian femininity, a living thing, breathing the breath of life and tripping along lightly on her own little feet. Marrying a reserved yet deeply-devoted husband because her sister bid her; taking into her home that sister, who had sacrificed her own love for the husband; seeing this sister straighten the household which she in her heedless seeking for idle amusement had not governed, then beginning to feel herself in danger and aware of a growing jealousy, senseless though it be, of the sister who has so innocently supplanted her by her hearth, and even with her child; making one effort to regain her place, and failing, as was inevitable,—poor Froufrou takes the fatal plunge which will for ever and at once separate her from what was hers before. What a fine scene is that at the end of the third act, in which Froufrou has worked herself almost to a frenzy, and, hopeless in her jealousy, gives up all to her sister and rushes from the house to the lover she scarcely cares for! And how admirably does all that has gone before lead up to it! These first three acts are a wonder of constructive art. Of the rest of the play it is hard to speak so highly. The change is rather sudden from the study of character in the first part to the demand in the last that if you have tears you must prepare to shed them now. The brightness is quenched in gloom and despair. Of a verity, frivolity may be fatal, and death may follow a liking for private theatricals and the other empty amusements of fashion; but is it worth while to break a butterfly on the wheel and to put a humming-bird to the question? To say what fate shall be meted out to the woman taken in adultery is always a hard task for the dramatist. Here the erring and erratic heroine comes home to be forgiven and to die, and so after the fresh and unforced painting of modern Parisian life we have a finish full of conventional pathos. Well, death redeems all, and, as Pascal says, "the last act is always tragedy, whatever fine comedy there may have been in the rest of life. We must all die alone."

J. BRANDER MATTHEWS.



THE KING'S GIFTS.

Cyrus the king in royal mood Portioned his gifts as seemed him good: To Artabasus, proud to hold The priceless boon, a cup of gold— A rare-wrought thing: its jewelled brim Haloed a nectar sweet to him. No flavor fine it seemed to miss; But when the king stooped down, a kiss To leave upon Chrysantas' lips, The jewels paled in dull eclipse To Artabasus: hard and cold And empty grew the cup of gold. "Better, O Sire, than mine," cried he, "I deem Chrysantas' gift to be." Yet the wise king his courtiers knew, And unto each had given his due.

To all who watch and all who wait The king will come, or soon or late. Choose well: thy secret wish is known, And thou shalt surely have thine own— A golden cup thy poor wealth's sign, Or on thy lips Love's seal divine.

EMILY A. BRADDOCK.



BAUBIE WISHART.

"I have taken you at your word, you see, Miss Mackenzie. You told me not to give alms in the street, and to bring the begging children to you. So here is one now."

Thus introduced, the begging child was pushed forward into the room by the speaker, a lady who was holding her by one shoulder.

She was a stunted, slim creature, that might have been any age from nine to fourteen, barefooted and bareheaded, and wearing a Rob Roy tartan frock. She entered in a sidelong way that was at once timid and confidently independent, and stared all round her with a pair of large brown eyes. She did not seem to be in the least frightened, and when released by her guardian stood at ease comfortably on one foot, tucking the other away out of sight among the not too voluminous folds of her frock.

It was close on twelve o'clock of a March day in the poor sewing-women's workroom in Drummond street. The average number of women of the usual sort were collected together—a depressed and silent gathering. It seemed as if the bitter east wind had dulled and chilled them into a grayer monotony of look than usual, so that they might be in harmony with the general aspect which things without had assumed at its grim bidding. A score or so of wan faces looked up for a minute, but the child, after all, had nothing in her appearance that was calculated to repay attention, and the lady was known to them all. So "white seam" reasserted its old authority without much delay.

Miss Mackenzie laid down the scissors which she had been using on a bit of coarse cotton, and advanced in reply to the address of the newcomer. "How do you do? and where did you pick up this creature?" she asked, looking curiously at the importation.

"Near George IV. Bridge, on this side of it, and I just took hold of her and brought her off to you at once. I don't believe"—this was said sotto voce—"that she has a particle of clothing on her but that frock."

"Very likely.—What is your name, my child?"

"Baubie Wishart, mem." She spoke in an apologetic tone, glancing down at her feet, the one off duty being lowered for the purpose of inspection, which over, she hoisted the foot again immediately into the recesses of the Rob Roy tartan.

"Have you a father and mother?"

"Yes, mem."

"What does your father do?"

Baubie Wishart glanced down again in thought for an instant, then raised her eyes for the first time directly to her questioner's face: "He used to be a Christy man, but he canna be that any longer, sae he goes wi' boords."

"Why cannot he be a Christy man any longer?"

Down came the foot once more, and this time took up its position permanently beside the other: "Because mother drinks awfu', an' pawned the banjo for drink." This family history was related in the most matter-of-fact, natural way.

"And does your father drink too?" asked Miss Mackenzie after a short pause.

Baubie Wishart's eyes wandered all round the room, and with one toe she swept up a little mass of dust before she answered in a voice every tone of which spoke unwilling truthfulness, "Just whiles—Saturday nichts."

"Is he kind to you?"

"Ay," looking up quickly, "excep' just whiles when he's fou—Saturday nichts, ye ken—and then he beats me; but he's rale kind when he's sober."

"Were you ever at school?"

"No, mem," with a shake of the head that seemed to convey that she had something else, and probably better, to do.

"Did you ever hear of God?" asked the lady who had brought her.

"Ay, mem," answered Baubie quite readily: "it's a kind of a bad word I hear in the streets."

"How old are you?" asked both ladies simultaneously.

"Thirteen past," replied Baubie, with a promptness that made her listeners smile, suggesting as it did the thought that the question had been put to her before, and that Baubie knew well the import of her answer.

She grew more communicative now. She could not read, but, all the same, she knew two songs which she sang in the streets—"Before the Battle" and "After the Battle;" and, carried away by the thought of her own powers, she actually began to give proof of her assertion by reciting one of them there and then. This, however, was stopped at once. "Can knit too," she added then.

"Who taught you to knit?"

"Don' know. Wis at a Sunday-schuil too."

"Oh, you were? And what did you learn there?"

Baubie Wishart looked puzzled, consulted her toes in vain, and then finally gave it up.

"I should like to do something for her," observed her first friend: "it is time this street-singing came to an end."

"She is intelligent, clearly," said Miss Mackenzie, looking curiously at the child, whose appearance and bearing rather puzzled her. There was not a particle of the professional street-singer about Baubie Wishart, the child of that species being generally clean-washed, or at least soapy, of face, with lank, smooth-combed and greasy hair; and usually, too, with a smug, sanctimonious air of meriting a better fate. Baubie Wishart presented none of these characteristics: her face was simply filthy; her hair was a red-brown, loosened tangle that reminded one painfully of oakum in its first stage. And she looked as if she deserved a whipping, and defied it too. She was just a female arab—an arab plus an accomplishment—bright, quick and inconsequent as a sparrow, and reeking of the streets and gutters, which had been her nursery.

"Yes," continued the good lady, "I must look after her."

"Poor little atom! I suppose you will find out where the parents live, and send the school-board officer to them. That is the usual thing, is it not? I must go, Miss Mackenzie. Good-bye for to-day. And do tell me what you settle for her."

Miss Mackenzie promised, and her friend took her departure.

"Go and sit by the fire, Baubie Wishart, for a little, and then I shall be ready to talk to you."

Nothing loath apparently, Baubie established herself at the end of the fender, and from that coign of vantage watched the on-goings about her with the stoicism of a red Indian. She showed no symptom of wonder at anything, and listened to the disquisitions of Miss Mackenzie and the matron as to the proper adjustment of parts—"bias," "straights," "gathers," "fells," "gussets" and "seams," a whole new language as it unrolled its complexities before her—with complacent indifference.

At last, all the web of cotton being cut up, the time came to go. Miss Mackenzie buttoned up her sealskin coat, and pulling on a pair of warm gloves beckoned Baubie, who rose with alacrity: "Where do your father and mother live?"

"Kennedy's Lodgings, in the Gressmarket, mem."

"I know the place," observed Miss Mackenzie, to whom, indeed, most of these haunts were familiar. "Take me there now, Baubie."

They set out together. Baubie trotted in front, turning her head, dog-fashion, at every corner to see if she were followed. They reached the Grassmarket at last, and close to the corner of the West Bow found an entry with the whitewashed inscription above it, "Kennedy's Lodgings." Baubie glanced round to see if her friend was near, then vanished upward from her sight. Miss Mackenzie kilted her dress and began the ascent of the stairs, the steps of which, hollowed out as they were by the tread of centuries of human feet, afforded a not too safe footing.

Arrived at the third floor, she found Baubie waiting for her, breathless and panting.

"It's here," she said—"the big kitchen, mem."

A long, narrow passage lay before them, off which doors opened on all sides. Precipitating herself at one of these doors, Baubie Wishart, who could barely reach the latch, pushed it open, giving egress to a confusion of noises, which seemed to float above a smell of cooking, in which smell herrings and onions contended for the mastery.

It was a very large room, low-ceilinged, but well enough lighted by a couple of windows, which looked into a close behind. The walls had been whitewashed once upon a time, but the whitewash was almost lost to view under the decorations with which it was overlaid. These consisted of pictures cut out of the illustrated weekly papers or milliners' books. All sorts of subjects were represented: fashion-plates hung side by side with popular preachers and statesmen, race-horses and Roman Catholic saints; red-and white-draped Madonnas elbowed the "full-dress" heroines of the penny weeklies. It was a curious gallery, and a good many of the works of art had the merit of being antique. Generations of flies had emblazoned their deeds of prowess on the papers: streaks of candle-grease bore witness to the inquiring turn of mind, attracted by the letter-press, or the artistic proclivities of Kennedy's lodgers. It was about two, the dinner-hour probably, which accounted for the presence of so many people in the room. Most, but not all, seemed to be of the wandering class. They were variously employed. Some were sitting on the truckle-beds that ran round the walls; one or two were knitting or sewing; a cripple was mending baskets in one of the windows; and about the fire a group were collected superintending the operations which produced, though not unaided, the odors with which the room was reeking.

Miss Mackenzie stood for a few minutes, unnoticed apparently, looking about her at the motley crowd. Baubie on entering the room had raised herself for a second on tiptoe to look into a distant corner, and then, remarking to herself, half audibly, "His boords is gane," subsided, and contented herself with watching Miss Mackenzie's movements.

There seemed to be no one to do the honors. The inmates all looked at each other for a moment hesitatingly, then resumed their various occupations. A young woman, a sickly, livid-faced creature, rose from her place behind the door, and, advancing with a halting step, said to Miss Mackenzie, "Mistress Kennedy's no' in, an' Wishart's oot wi's boords."

"I wanted to see him about this child, who was found begging in the streets to-day."

Miss Mackenzie looked curiously at the woman, wondering if she could belong in any way to the Wishart family. She was a miserable object, seemingly in the last stage of consumption.

"Eh, mem," she answered hurriedly, and drawing nearer, "ye're a guid leddy, I ken, an' tak' t' lassie away oot o' this. The mither's an awfu' wuman: tak' her away wi' ye, or she'll sune be as bad. She'll be like mysel' and the rest o' them here."

"I will, I will," Miss Mackenzie said, shocked and startled, recoiling before the spirit-reeking breath of this warning spectre. "I will, I will," she repeated hastily. There was no use remaining any longer. She went out, beckoning to Baubie, who was busy rummaging about a bed at the top of the room.

Baubie had bethought her that it was time to take her father his dinner. So she slipped over to that corner of the big kitchen which was allotted to the Wishart family and possessed herself of a piece of a loaf which was hidden away there. As she passed by the fire she profited by the momentary abstraction of the people who were cooking to snap up and make her own a brace of unconsidered trifles in the shape of onions which were lying near them. These, with the piece of bread, she concealed on her person, and then returned to Miss Mackenzie, who was now in the passage.

"Baubie," said that lady, "I will send some one here about you. Now, don't let me hear of your singing in the streets or begging again. You will get into trouble if you do."

She was descending the stairs as she spoke, and she turned round when she had reached the entry: "You know the police will take you, Baubie."

"Yes, mem," answered Baubie, duly impressed.

"Well, now, I am going home. Stay: are you hungry?"

Without waiting for her answer, Miss Mackenzie entered a tiny shop close by, purchased a mutton-pie and handed it to Baubie Wishart, who received it with wondering reverence. Miss Mackenzie took her way home westward up the Grassmarket. She turned round before leaving it by way of King's Stables, and caught sight of Bauble's frock by the entry of Kennedy's Lodgings—a tiny morsel of color against the shadow of the huge gray houses. She thought of the big kitchen and its occupants, and the face and words of the poor girl, and promised herself that she would send the school-board officer to Kennedy's Lodgings that very night.

Baubie waited till her friend was well out of sight: then she hid her mutton-pie in the same place with the onions and the piece of bread, and started up the Grassmarket in her turn. She stopped at the first shop she passed and bought a pennyworth of cheese. Then she made her way to the Lothian road, and looked up and down it anxiously in search of the walking advertisement-man. He was not there, so she directed her course toward Princes street, and after promenading it as far east as the Mound, she turned up into George street, and caught sight of her father walking along slowly by the curbstone. It was not long before she overtook him.

"Od, lassie, I wis thinkin' lang," he began wearily as soon as he realized her apparition. Baubie did not wait for him to finish: with a peremptory nod she signified her will, and he turned round and followed her a little way down Hanover street. Then Baubie selected a flight of steps leading to a basement store, and throwing him a look of command flitted down and seated herself at the bottom. It was sheltered from the cold wind and not too much overlooked. Wishart shifted the boards from about his shoulders, and, following her, laid them against the wall at the side of the basement-steps, and sat down heavily beside her. He was a sickly-looking man, sandy-haired, with a depressed and shifty expression of face—not vicious, but weak and vacillating. Baubie seemed to have the upper hand altogether: every gesture showed it. She opened the paper that was wrapped about her fragment of rank yellow cheese, laid it down on the step between them, and then produced, in their order of precedence, the pie, the onions and the bread.

"Wha gied ye that?" asked Wishart, gazing at the mutton-pie.

"A leddy," replied Baubie, concisely.

"An' they?" pointing to the onions.

A nod was all the answer, for Baubie, who was hungry, was busy breaking the piece of loaf. Wishart with great care divided the pie without spilling much more than half its gravy, and began on his half of it and the biggest onion simultaneously. Baubie ate up her share of pie, declined cheese, and attacked her onion and a great piece of crust. The crust was very tough, and after the mutton-pie rather dry and tasteless, and she laid it down presently in her lap, and after a few minutes' passive silence began: "That," nodding at the cheese, or what was left of it rather, "wis all I got—ae penny. The leddy took me up till a hoose, an' anither are that wis there came doon hame and gaed in ben, an' wis speirin' for ye, an' says she'll gie me till the polis for singin' an' askin' money in t' streets, an' wants you to gie me till her to pit in schuil."

She stopped and fixed her eyes on him, watching the effect of her words. Wishart laid down his bread and cheese and stared back at her. It seemed to take some time for his brain to realize all the meaning of her pregnant speech.

"Ay," he said after a while, and with an effort, "I maun tak' ye to Glasgae, to yer aunt. Ye'll be pit in schuil if yer caught."

"I'll no bide," observed Baubie, finishing off her onion with a grimace. The raw onion was indeed strong and hot, even for Bauble's not too epicurean palate, but it had been got for nothing—a circumstance from which it derived a flavor which many people more dainty than Bauble Wishart find to be extremely appetizing.

"Bide!" echoed her father: "they'll mak' ye bide. Gin I had only the banjo agen!" sighed the whilom Christy man, getting up and preparing to adjust the boards once more.

The last crumb of the loaf was done, and Bauble, refreshed, got up too. "Whenll ye be hame?" she questioned abruptly when they had reached the top of the steps.

"Seven. Gaeway hame wi' ye, lassie, noo. Ye didna see her?" he questioned as he walked off.

"Na," replied Bauble, standing still and looking about her as if to choose which way she should take.

He sighed deeply, and moved off slowly on his way back to his post, with the listless, hopeless air that seems to belong to the members of his calling.

Bauble obeyed her parent's commands in so far as that she did go home, but as she took Punch and Judy in her course up the Mound, and diverged as far as a football match in the Meadows, it was nearly seven before Kennedy's Lodgings saw her again.

The following morning, shortly after breakfast, Miss Mackenzie's butler informed her that there was a child who wanted to speak with her in the hall. On going down she found Bauble Wishart on the mat.

"Where is your father? and why did he not come with you?" asked Miss Mackenzie, puzzled.

"He thoucht shame to come an' speak wi' a fine leddy like you." This excuse, plausible enough, was uttered in a low voice and with downcast eyes, but hardly was it pronounced when she burst out rapidly and breathlessly into what was clearly the main object of her visit: "But please, mem, he says he'll gie me to you if ye'll gie him the three shillin's to tak' the banjo oot o' the pawn."

This candid proposal took Miss Mackenzie's breath away. To become the owner of Baubie Wishart, even at so low a price, seemed to her rather a heathenish proceeding, with a flavor of illegality about it to boot. There was a vacancy at the home for little girls which might be made available for the little wretch without the necessity of any preliminary of this kind; and it did not occur to her that it was a matter of any moment whether Mr. Wishart continued to exercise the role of "sandwich-man" or returned to his normal profession of banjo-player. Baubie was to be got hold of in any case. With the muttered adjuration of the wretched girl in Kennedy's Lodgings echoing in her ears, Miss Mackenzie determined that she should be left no longer than could be helped in that company.

How earnest and matter of fact she was in delivering her extraordinary errand! thought Miss Mackenzie to herself, meeting the eager gaze of Baubie Wishart's eyes, looking out from beneath her tangle of hair like those of a Skye terrier.

"I will speak to your father myself, Baubie—tell him so—to-morrow, perhaps: tell him I mean to settle about you myself. Now go."

The least possible flicker of disappointment passed over Baubie's face. The tangled head drooped for an instant, then she bobbed by way of adieu and vanished.

That day and the next passed before Miss Mackenzie found it possible to pay her long-promised visit to Mr. Wishart, and when, about eleven in the forenoon, she once more entered the big kitchen in Kennedy's Lodgings, she was greeted with the startling intelligence that the whole Wishart family were in prison.

The room was as full as before. Six women were sitting in the middle of the floor teasing out an old hair mattress. There was the same odor of cooking, early as it was, and the same medley of noises, but the people were different. The basket-making cripple was gone, and in his place by the window sat a big Irish beggar-woman, who was keeping up a conversation with some one (a compatriot evidently) in a window of the close behind.

The mistress of the house came forward. She was a decent-looking little woman, but had rather a hard face, expressive of care and anxiety. On recognizing her visitor she curtsied: "The Wisharts, mem? Yes, they're a' in jail."

"All in jail?" echoed Miss Mackenzie. "Will you come outside and speak to me? There are so many people—"

"Eh yes, mem: I'm sure ye fin' the room closs. Eh yes, mem, the Wisharts are a' in the lock-up."

They were standing outside in the passage, and Mrs. Kennedy held the door closed by the latch, which she kept firmly grasped in her hand. It struck Miss Mackenzie as being an odd way to secure privacy for a privileged communication, to fasten the door of their room upon those inside. It was expressive, however.

"Ye see, mem," began the landlady, "Wishart's no a very bad man—jist weak in the heid like—but's wife is jist something awfu', an' I could not let her bide in a decent lodging-house. We hae to dra' the line somewhere, and I dra' it low enough, but she wis far below that. Eh, she's jist terrible! Wishart has a sister in Glasgae verra weel to do, an' I h'ard him say he'd gie the lassie to her if it wer na for the wife. The day the school-board gentleman wis here she came back: she'd been away, ye ken, and she said she'd become a t'otaller, an' so I sed she micht stay; but, ye see, when nicht came on she an' Wishart gaed out thegither, an' jist to celebrate their bein' frien's again she an' him gaed intil a public, an' she got uproarious drunk, an' the polis took her up. Wishart wis no sae bad, sae they let him come hame; but, ye see, he had tasted the drink, an' wanted mair, an' he hadna ony money. Ye see, he'd promised the gentleman who came here that he widna send Baubie oot to sing again. But he did send her oot then to sing for money for him, an' the polis had been put to watch her, an' saw her beg, an' took her up to the office, an' came back here for Wishart. An' so before the day was dune they were a' lockit up thegither."

Such was the story related to Miss Mackenzie. What was to be done with Baubie now? It was hardly fair that she should be sent to a reformatory among criminal children. She had committed no crime, and there was that empty bed at the home for little girls. She determined to attend the sheriff-court on Monday morning and ask to be given the custody of Baubie.

When Monday morning came, ten o'clock saw Miss Mackenzie established in a seat immediately below the sheriff's high bench. The Wisharts were among the first batch tried, and made their appearance from a side-door. Mrs. Wishart came first, stepping along with a resolute, brazen bearing that contrasted with her husband's timid, shuffling gait. She was a gypsy-looking woman, with wandering, defiant black eyes, and her red face had the sign-manual of vice stamped upon it. After her came Baubie, a red-tartan-covered mite, shrinking back and keeping as close to her father as she could. Baubie had favored her mother as to complexion: that was plain. The top of her rough head and her wild brown eyes were just visible over the panel as she stared round her, taking in with composure and astuteness everything that was going on. She was the most self-possessed of her party, for under Mrs. Wishart's active brazenness there could easily be seen fear and a certain measure of remorse hiding themselves; and Wishart seemed to be but one remove from imbecility.

The charges were read with a running commentary of bad language from Mrs. Wishart as her offences were detailed; Wishart blinked in a helpless, pathetic way; Baubie, who seemed to consider herself as associated with him alone in the charge, assumed an air of indifference and sucked her thumb, meantime watching Miss Mackenzie furtively. She felt puzzled to account for her presence there, but it never entered her head to connect that fact with herself in any way.

"Guilty or not guilty?" asked the sheriff-clerk.

"There's a kin' lady in coort," stammered Wishart, "an' she kens a' aboot it."

"Guilty or not guilty?" reiterated the clerk: "this is not the time to speak." "She kens it a', an' she wis to tak' the lassie."

"Guilty or not guilty? You must plead, and you can say what you like afterward." Wishart stopped, not without an appealing look at the kind lady, and pleaded guilty meekly. A policeman with a scratched face and one hand plastered up testified to the extravagances Mrs. Wishart had committed on the strength of her conversion to teetotal principles.

Baubic heard it all impassively, her face only betraying anything like keen interest while the police-officer was detailing his injuries. Three months' imprisonment was the sentence on Margaret Mactear or Wishart. Then Wishart's sentence was pronounced—sixty days.

He and Baubie drew nearer to each other, Wishart with a despairing, helpless look. Baubie's eyes looked like those of a hare taken in a gin. Not one word had been said about her. She was not to go with her father. What was to become of her? She was not long left in doubt as to her fate.

"I will take the child, sheriff," said Miss Mackenzie eagerly and anxiously. "I came here purposely to offer her a home in the refuge."

"Policeman, hand over the child to this lady at once," said the sheriff.—

"Nothing could be better, Miss Mackenzie. It is very good of you to volunteer to take charge of her."

Mrs. Wishart disappeared with a parting volley of blasphemy; her husband, casting, as he went, a wistful look at Miss Mackenzie, shambled fecklessly after the partner of his joys and sorrows; and the child remained alone behind. The policeman took her by an arm and drew her forward to make room for a fresh consignment of wickedness from the cells at the side. Baubie breathed a short sigh as the door closed upon her parents, shook back her hair, and looked up at Miss Mackenzie, as if to announce her readiness and good will. Not one vestige of her internal mental attitude could be gathered from her sun-and wind-beaten little countenance. There was no rebelliousness, neither was there guilt. One would almost have thought she had been told beforehand what was to happen, so cool and collected was she.

"Now, Baubie, I am going to take you home. Come, child."

Pleased with her success, Miss Mackenzie, so speaking, took the little waif's hand and led her out of the police-court into the High street. She hardly dared to conjecture that it was Baubie Wishart's first visit to that place, but as she stood on the entrance-steps and shook out her skirts with a sense of relief, she breathed a sincere hope that it might be the child's last.

A cab was waiting. Baubie, to her intense delight and no less astonishment, was requested to occupy the front seat. Miss Mackenzie gave the driver his order and got in, facing the red tartan bundle.

"Were you ever in a cab before?" asked Miss Mackenzie.

"Na, niver," replied Baubie in a rapt tone and without looking at her questioner, so intent was she on staring out of the windows, between both of which she divided her attention impartially.

They were driving down the Mound, and the outlook, usually so far-reaching from that vantage-ground, was bounded by a thick sea-fog that the east wind was carrying up from the Forth and dispensing with lavish hands on all sides. The buildings had a grim, black look, as if a premature old age had come upon them, and the black pinnacles of the Monument stood out sharply defined in clear-cut, harsh distinctness against the floating gray background. There were not many people stirring in the streets. It was a depressing atmosphere, and Miss Mackenzie observed before long that Baubie either seemed to have become influenced by it or that the novelty of the cab-ride had worn off completely. They crossed the Water of Leith, worn to a mere brown thread owing to the long drought, by Stockbridge street bridge, and a few yards from it found themselves before a gray stone house separated from the street by a grass-plot surrounded by a stone wall: inside the wall grew chestnut and poplar trees, which in summer must have shaded the place agreeably, but which this day, in the cold gray mist, seemed almost funereal in their gloomy blackness. The gate was opened from within the wall as soon as Miss Mackenzie rang, and she and Baubie walked up the little flagged path together. As the gate clanged to behind them Baubie looked back involuntarily and sighed.

"Don't fear, lassie," said her guide: "they will be very kind to you here. And it will be just a good home for you."

It may be questioned whether this promise of a good home awoke any pleasing associations or carried with it any definite meaning to Baubie Wishart's mind. She glanced up as if to show that she understood, but her eyes turned then and rested on the square front of the little old-fashioned gray house with its six staring windows and its front circumscribed by the wall and the black poplars and naked chestnuts, and she choked down another sigh.