"How old are you precisely?"

'I could scarcely forbear laughing at such an interrogation, made in so imperative a form. Sir," replied I, smiling-in such guise, alas! as one can smile at my age; and perhaps my smile was not even perceptible to him-"I cannot tell you precisely my age. I was born in a castle of La Maine."

"Ah, yes," said he, interrupting me brusquely; "in your time the civil registers were either badly kept, or else altogether neglected." And then he resumed his interrogatories in a magisterial tone. "Where do you live?"

"In the Hôtel de Créquy."

"Ah diable! And in what quarter ?"

'I could not understand this fancy to know where I resided; but am told that it is a sort of curiosity which he feels with regard to all those who approach him. It also perplexed me to know wherefore he addressed me as Mme la Maréchale; but on learning that he had bestowed equally inappropriate titles on other people, it occurs to me that he wishes perhaps to create an illusion to himself as to the date, origin, and nature of his consular authority. On learning that I resided in the Rue de Grenoble

"Rue de Grenoble! There was a tumult in your quarter yesterday. Were you frightened? It was on account of the price of bread."

"The rioters were not numerous, and I did not trouble myself about the matter."

"There can be no disturbances under my government; no serious ones at least! There may be an uproar now and then; but France is not the less happy and contented. Don't let people deceive themselves; a little clamour is no proof of dissatisfaction among the people. Happiness does not go about and make a noise in the streets a few restless spirits make a vast commotion. Is it not so?"

"Oh, assuredly; three women who set about screaming, make more noise than three thousand men who hold their peace."

"What you say, then, is very good; very good indeed, do you know?"

And I answered him quite simply, as Colinette would have done at court, "You are very kind, sir!"

The weather being dark and showery, with gusts of cold wind, "I am sorry to have made you come out today," said he, smiling; "the weather is arbitrary," laying an accent on the last word. "We see a relative of yours frequently."

"Who can that be?" I inquired with an air of surprise, and in as familiar a tone as that which he used. He replied it was Mme de Mirande. "I did not know we were relations! I am the Duchess of Miranda in Spain, and this perhaps has occasioned her mistake." But the First Consul looked so annoyed at the deception, that I was sorry to have said so much; for in truth I did not wish this gasconne any harm.

"You have seen Louis XIV.?" continued he in an elevated tone; "have you also seen Peter the Great, Mme la Maréchale?"

"I have not had that honour, for I was in my province when"

"I know that you were intimate with Cardinal de Fleury; is it true that he expected to obtain the imperial crown for Louis XV.? Had Louis any chance of being emperor?"

"It was believed, general, that his success was certain, but for the bad faith of Frederick, king of Prussia, whose treachery Fleury never forgave."

"Frederick was cleverer than Fleury, but not more astute: old Fleury was a cunning one. Have you suffered much from the Revolution?" he inquired dryly. 'Believing he would be glad to escape a long list of grievances, I mentioned my losses as briefly as possible; alluding especially to the forests of Versailles and St Pol, and the wood of Valenciennes. His answer was vague; for he evidently responded to his own thoughts rather than to my words. Madame, the desire to do

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good in a time of revolution is like writing upon the sand by the sea-shore; what is spared by the winds is effaced by the waves." After a moment's pause, he inquired, "Did you know Dubois and Cartouche?"

'Instead of answering a word, I looked at him with so severe an expression, that it surprises me now to think upon it. Most probably he became sensible of the impropriety of having summoned the Dowager Marquise de Créquy into his presence for the sake of asking news about Cartouche; and he smiled so naïvely, that I felt at once disarmed.

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"Allow me, madame," said he, "to kiss your hand.” 'I began to pull off my mitten as hastily as the occasion required. "Leave on your glove, my good mother," added he with an air of respectful solicitude; and then he pressed my poor decrepit centenary fingers firmly to his lips. He granted me the restitution of our forests with the best grace imaginable; and then spoke of the noble conduct of the Duke de Créquy Lesdiguiéres at Rome, adding, that France was wrong in allowing the destruction of this pyramid, which testified the reparation offered by Rome to her ambassador.

'Alas! what avails me this noble name of Créquy, which I shall be the last to bear; and which must very shortly be noted down for the last time in a dirty register, among the names of an undistinguished multitude!

'I have remarked in the character and conduct of Bonaparte many things which are abhorrent to me, one thing that perplexes me, and one that I approve of. It is needless to enumerate the causes of my dislike; but the motive of my approbation consists in his unconquerable perseverance. He never retreats before any opposition; and in great affairs, as well as in little ones, he who is the most resolute will infallibly succeed. As for the matter which perplexes me, if Bonaparte be indeed desirous to reign over France, the enigma may be partly solved-Wherefore does he seek so earnestly to win over to his interest the high nobility of France, who never can be of any service to him? Heirs of their unworthy sires, most of our young nobility have been educated without piety, and too early plunged into the corrupting vortex of the world: an enervated and degenerate race, they are unfit to govern. Wherefore, among the nobles who have distinguished themselves during the Revolution by ability or self-devotion, has there not been found even one of our grand seigneurs? Wherefore have they made themselves remarkable only by their disloyalty or their want of intelligence?

'I believe that the impiety and profligacy of the Regency, and of the closing years of Louis XV., have produced the dissolution of society in France; and that our country needed to be purified in a bath of her own blood. I believe that Bonaparte has been raised up to exterminate the assassins, and to dissipate revolutionary illusions. I think it very probable that his head may be turned by success; and perhaps this man of victory may so far forget the mission he has received, that his ambition may be severely chastised. Laurels are a perfect symbol; they yield shade, and nothing more.'

THE MIDNIGHT JOURNEY.

BY LEITCH RITCHIE.

I HAVE lived a very wandering life. When quite a boy, I was taken from school to be consigned to the care of a near kinsman in the West Indies. In two years this gentleman died insolvent, and I tried successively several of the greater islands without finding a permanent place for my foot. I next found my way to the Spanish main, but in the company of loose and daring speculators, rather than in the regular mercantile employment for which I had been intended; and several years were passed in a course of adventure and vicissitude, many portions of which would seem too wildly improbable for romance. In the other division of the new world, I was carried by my wandering destiny along the whole of the Mexican range of coast, and passed nearly two years

in California. In the course of this time I visited several of the islands both in the North and South Pacific, and at a subsequent period hunted the sea otter, with a crew composed chiefly of Aleutian savages, in the ocean that separates Asiatic from American Russia.

All this had done nothing for me in the way of fortune. Indeed I cannot be said to have ever thought seriously of the future. Like the wild companions among whom my lot had been cast, I was satisfied with the bounties of the passing hour; spending gaily, whenever we had opportunity, the money earned at the constant risk of life and limb. But at length a circumstance occurred which made me think. When poring one day over an old newspaper in the cabin of an English ship, I observed with a surprise and incredulity-at first manifested by a fit of laughter-that the world had not altogether forgotten the poor, friendless, reckless adventurer of the Pacific. A series of unexpected deaths, as it appeared, had taken place; and the boy who had been shipped away at such early years from his home and country, in the hope of securing for him in the new world a provision, which in the old could only be the result, if it ever came at all, of the struggles of years, was now the heir of an independent property!

These particulars have nothing to do with an adventure (if it can be called an adventure) which I fell in with immediately on my return to England, and which I now sit down to sketch for the amusement of my new friends. But I give them in order to account for the wildness of certain hallucinations which beset me, and which would otherwise be considered merely an instance of bad taste, rather than traced to a habit of mind engendered by the extraordinary scenes that had formed my every-day life since the days of boyhood. Even the long homeward voyage had no effect in tranquillising my nerves; for it was a voyage of storm and other disaster, including hunger, and its frequent concomitant, mutiny. When at length the white cliffs of my country rose upon the horizon, steeped in the mellowed sunlight of these temperate latitudes, I felt an unaccustomed yearning after repose. My unquiet bosom grew calm; my wild eyes filled with tears; and I called upon the winds to swell our lagging canvas, that I might flee away and be at rest.

What a contrast was my life now about to present! What a novelty was even the physical aspect of the country about to disclose to my eyes! How should I fall in with the measured tread of that calm and orderly population of which I was to form a unit? How could I even walk steadily upon the level roads and smooth fields that awaited me? Presently, as these inquiries crowded into my mind, there mingled with my new-born longings after rest a kind of misgiving that I was not fitted for its enjoyment; and as the night began to close dark and heavy around while we were nearing the coast, I felt almost happy in the idea that another day was to dawn before I should enter upon my new course of tame, quiet, methodical, prosaic existence.

But this interval was not destined to occur. As lights rose here and there upon the dark mass before us, in clustering groups, long lines, or solitary stars, they rekindled my excitement. The voices of the land called me from a hundred points, and my heart answered to the hail. It seemed an adventure to plunge into that world of shadows, studded with so many gems that sparkled without illumining; and in the morning, it would be an amusement to observe into what common forms the phantasmagoria of my imagination had resolved. A conveyance, I was told by the revenue officers who boarded us, would set out in two or three hours from a neighbouring town, towards the distant part of the country which was my destination; and I suddenly determined to go on shore, and make as much progress on my journey as I could accomplish in the night.

On landing, I could form no distinct idea of the character of the country, for my vision was unable to penetrate more than a few yards around me. These few yards, however, were tame and civilised, just as I had

expected; and being informed at the Customs' station that I should find the road good and direct towards the next town, I at once shouldered my knapsack-for my worldly goods were then packed in small compass-and set out on the few miles' walk. The wind was against me, and felt keener and colder than I had known it under the tropics; and by and by it came on to rain, and the drops dashed in my face as if they would have cut the skin. Altogether, my walk was somewhat uncomfortable; and although it was impossible to wander from a narrow road that was bounded on both sides by a thick hedge, blinded as I was by the rain, and confused by the gust, I found the way a little longer than I expected.

I at length reached the town. The streets were already deserted; not a sound was heard but the wind moaning through them; and as I passed between rows of lamps, of what seemed to me an unearthly brilliance, I could have supposed that I had entered some dead city of enchantment. After wandering on for a considerable distance, I at length reached an open door of what proved to be a house of entertainment; and having signified to the people what I wanted, and whither I was going, and desired to be called in time for the conveyance, I sat down to a substantial and not unwelcome meal. This was indeed rest. I was alone in the room: the house, like the street, was profoundly silent: and as the servant-woman glided in and out to attend to my requirements, she seemed afraid to disturb by voice or footfall the repose of the scene. She at length left me, signifying that I should be called 'in time to start;' and while mechanically satisfying my appetite, I gave full reins to my excursive imagination.

It was still cold, although not late in the autumn; and in order to restore the circulation to my limbs, I drank a little spirits and water. This circumstance would not be worth mentioning; but my habits being strictly temperate, I am inclined to hope that I may thus in some measure account for a state of mind which I should be loath to describe as delirium. However this may be, I either fell asleep after supper, or into that trance-like reverie which can hardly be distinguished from a dream. I was still roaming by the cliffs of the Pacific, through the primeval forests of America, amid the breakers of Behring's Sen. I was still searching for gold (which had at one time been my occupation) among the mountains of the south-west, and listening to the wild legends of the place, as I paused at the opening of some tomb-like cavern, said by the natives to communicate, through the bowels of the earth, with lands beyond the ocean. But my reverie had not the effect of reality. I knew at the time that it was my imagination that thought, while my judgment watched its aimless gambols with a sense of languid amusement. Ever and anon, however, England mingled in my dream. From each loftier cliff, from the summit of each wilder wave, I saw spread out in the distant sea its green and level fields, bathed in the pale sunlight of the north, and slowly traversed with methodical steps by an industrious and orderly population.

I was at length suddenly awakened from my trance by the noise of heavy footsteps, clanging doors, and calling voices; but so imperfectly awakened, that I have only a confused recollection of having been told that it was time to set out on my journey, of being flooded along the street in a hurrying crowd, and of having paid, in the midst of a scene of tumult, some money, which I understood was to be the price of my transport. I may have been partly asleep, and partly under the influence of the unaccustomed glass of spirits and water; yet, after all, this confusion of mind is perhaps not very surprising in a stranger from the wilds of the Pacific set suddenly down in the heart of a distant country, and in the midst of an entirely new form of society. But mark the sequel.

I was hardly seated in the public vehicle, when it rolled off, leaving the tumult behind in an instant. A female, in the corner opposite to mine, was the only

other passenger; and by the light of a lamp which we passed now and then in the earlier part of the journey, I saw that she was young and fair, but pale, cold, mute, and passionless as a statue. Not a trace of excitement caught from the hurry and the crowd, or the romance of a midnight journey, was on that marble brow, or in those lovely but soulless eyes. They were fixed on mine, as her head leant back, with a look which confounded me by its utter want of human sympathy; and then, having wandered for an instant over my foreign garb, and my knapsack, which lay on the seat beside me, they withdrew so coldly and lifelessly, that when a hand was protruded from her cloak, to arrange with listless motions its folds about her neck, and exhibited not one trace of blood in its long, tapering fingers, that gleamed like snow in the darkness, I could have supposed her to be some preternatural being in whose custody I was travelling! There was no amusement without. We seemed to be journeying between two shadows, the denser being the earth, and the rarer the heavens; and again and again I turned to look at my companion. Sometimes, though rarely, I met the dead eyes as before; but at length they closed, and she was all statue.

The form of the denser shadow without now began to change, being half disclosed by a pale gleam from above, which seemed to indicate the quarter of the sky where the moon lay under her pall of clouds. The shadow grew loftier and more rugged, and then appeared to come out in cliffs and heights. These presently began to close in upon our path; and the sound of our rushing wheels, before partially lost in the surrounding atmosphere, was converted, by the interruption, into groans and screams. On flew the vehicle, shrieking as it flew, and answered by the thousand voices of the rocks, as they gathered closer and closer, till they seemed to totter over our heads. Nor was this idea so absurd as you may suppose; for as I thrust my head in alarm out of the window, there was a yawning gulf before us, into which we were obviously hurrying.

Was I still in the midst of my dream? Was this the Gold-seeker's cave, through which my 'extravagant and erring spirit' was to be transported beneath the foundations of the sea? I had hardly time to ask myself the question, ere the screams and groans of the vehicle, becoming more agonised every instant, were broken by an unearthly yell, which quivered in the ear for more than a minute, and then, with a rush and a roar, received with a sound of mingled laughter and sobbing, we plunged madly into the abyss.

new were so strangely jumbled in my imagination, that I could not have determined, with any feeling of certainty, in which quarter of the globe our journey lay. All on a sudden, a wan, spectral light broke into the cave, and but for the wild absurdity of the supposition, I could have really supposed that I caught a glimpse of the moon emerging from her pall of clouds. This I knew to be impossible, although the other details of the scene were so terribly real, that I was sometimes fully persuaded I was awake! On, however, we rushed, in utter darkness as before, and for so long a time, that, worn out and stupified by the over-excitement, it was with a feeling of little more than languid curiosity I saw not by the approach of light, but rather by a steady change in the darkness-that we neared the end of our subterranean career, and were at length vomited forth into the upper world. I beheld nothing distinctly for several minutes. My companion was asleep, or at least motionless; and, as if controlled by some strange fascination, I felt my own eyes growing heavy; when, all on a sudden, the moon burst forth, and lighted up a scene of such surpassing splendour, that I uttered an involuntary cry of admiration. We were in a deep glen, or rather gorge, the sides of which appeared to be formed of majestic cliffs of white marble, hung here and there with a drapery of woods. The summits were inconceivably various in their outlines: sometimes representing castles and towers; sometimes battlemented steeps; sometimes fringes of tall trees, that held up their finger-like branches between us and the moonlight. In the distance, the ravine, at a place where it sunk sheer down from the base of a lofty mountain, was spanned by an aerial bridge, that appeared to me like a path by which the sons of God might have descended to visit the daughters of men. My cry had aroused the female statue, and she even raised her head for an instant; but there was nothing unnatural to her in this spectral show, and in another moment she leant back in the carriage, although I could see her strange eyes gleaming upon me for some time through the gloom.

Onward we rushed through the gorge, now plunging into solemn woods, and now skimming along the extreme edge of steeps, from which I could see, through the tops of tangled trees, the gleam of a torrent far below. But presently, as we appeared to be issuing through the narrow portal of the ravine into a more open country, the moon was again hidden, and a thicker shadow than before descended upon our path. At this moment I received an impression which I shall long remember, for its remarkable consistency with the scene. My eyes were attracted to the opposite window of our headlong vehicle by a sudden and momentary gleam of red light, accompanied by a sound like the sweep of a tempest, and-smile if you will at the superstition!— I beheld a crowd of spectral faces glaring in upon us for an instant, and then vanishing in the night.

After our egress from the enchanted valley, we ap

How long this subterraneous course went on I cannot say. I lost account of time. We had set out from the mountains of Mexico, and for aught I knew, we were now beneath the Pacific, and destined to rise in the deserts of Australia. In fact, the old world and the

were either crossing the sea, or traversing a flooded district. Water was around us as far as the eye could reach, studded here and there with small islands, each bearing a hut, a rick of corn, or a few solitary trees, in the midst of which we continued our career without appearing to disturb the slumbrous wave by our rushing wheels. It seemed as if we skimmed along the surface of the liquid expanse without touching it. At this part of the journey, the marble fingers again stole out, to draw closer the drapery about the marble chin: my companion apparently felt the chilness of the air, but it gave her no farther trouble to find herself out of sight of the mainland.

Not the least extraordinary circumstance attending this extraordinary journey, was the rapidity of transition from one level and from one character of scenery to another, without our receiving any distinct impressions from the act of climbing or descending. It may be, however, that the monotony of the water-course lulled my over-excited senses into a temporary oblivion; but at anyrate, the next change I perceived was the moon completely free from the imprisoning clouds, and her faint beams struggling with the first rays of the dawn. We were now rushing through a wild and rugged country, evidently of considerable elevation, with here and there the adjuncts of wood and water giving variety and interest to the scene. Suddenly, however, as I leant out of the window to refresh my fevered brow with the morning air, I could perceive, by an appearance in the misty distance, that our journey was in all probability drawing to a close. A deep valley, if it would not rather prove to be a chasm in the mountains, extended at right angles with our course; and in order to pursue our career, it would now be necessary, instead of running, as we had hitherto done, pretty nearly as the crow flies, either to turn sharply away, or fling ourselves headlong over the steep.

It was with intense interest I watched the event; which became more and more puzzling, as I saw that there was no mass of houses giving indication of our having reached the goal. To turn away along the brink of the valley, would be contrary to the whole scheme of our journey; and as we approached nearer and nearer, it was obvious that to plunge into that gulf of tumbling shadows, on which the gray light of the dawn had as yet but little influence, was entirely out of the question. My agitation appeared to arouse in some measure even my strange companion; at least she leant languidly forward to give a single glance out of the window, and then returned to her marble repose. How I wished that I could see more clearly!—but perhaps the wish was imprudent. Nearer and nearer we came to the edge of the chasm; deeper and more sudden appeared the precipice to fling itself into the misty gloom; swifter and wilder flew the wheels of the desperate vehicle: we are at hand; we are on the brink: my eyes closed-but not till I had seen that we were no longer on the firm earth. We had darted out into space, like an arrow from the bow. We had swerved neither to the right nor the left, neither upwards nor downwards. We had scorned the depths of the valley, just as we had laughed at the impediments of cliff and mountain; and now we appeared to be skimming through the air, with the same indomitable will, the same headlong impulse, with which we had thundered through the living rock!

The first edge of the sun arose as we flew, and the shadows of the valley disappeared. A beautiful and fertile plain stretched far beneath us both to right and left, diversified by woods and waters, farms and cottages, fields and gardens; and here and there we could see men and women, horses and oxen, coming forth to their daily employment. We were nothing to them. We did not belong to their world. A face may have been turned up for an instant, a finger extended; but the peasant returned the next moment to his cheerful toil, without a thought of whence we had come or whither we were going.

We had left this scene long behind before my bewildered senses revived; but at length I was aroused by the stopping of the vehicle, and I found myself suddenly in the midst of a crowd and bustle similar to that which I had witnessed at our departure. The mysterious female at once started into life. Her manner thawed; her complexion lost its marbly tint, and became human; and her beautiful face was lighted up with smiles.

'I see,' replied she, smiling, 'you are a foreigner, and do not take well to the rail. It is very dull and stupid, I must needs confess, but I usually manage to sleep a little. However, I shall not find it quite so tame tomorrow when returning in daylight.' 'You return to-morrow?'

'Yes; I have only come down to dine to-day with some friends, who have made up a little party for a trip to America to see the Falls.'

'You do not go with them?'

'Alas, no! I am such a weak creature-so childishly nervous; and they say Niagara is so odd! In your country, too, I daresay there are wonderful sights, and strange adventures, and all sorts of things to keep one awake. Here we only spin cotton! Good-morning.' And with a kindly smile, and a graceful bend, the young lady tripped away, and was lost among the crowd.

Such was my first journey after my return to England; and it served to dissipate many delusions. I found every-day life a poem, a romance, compared with which the adventures of the Pacific are tame and commonplace. Even the cotton manufactories, so disdainfully referred to by my fellow-traveller, present scenes unparalleled for wonder and excitement, danger and hairbreadth 'scapes. But the magic with which my countrymen are surrounded is their own. A tunnel through a mountain, or a viaduct across a valley, is no marvel to them, because they know the amount and kind of labour which produced it, and the sum of money it cost. For my part, my impressions are as yet free from such associations, and I still walk about like a man in a dream. I went abroad in search of fortune, and found only danger and toil; I returned home for repose, and find nothing but headlong hurry and wild excitement. Science has changed the face of the world; and I am as a man called up by enchantment from the sleep of ages to find himself a stranger upon the earth.

MAN AND WIFE.

A TALE.

BY ANNA MARIA SARGEANT.

'You wish to delay your decision until you have had an opportunity of further consulting your wife, I presume?' This observation was addressed by a house agent to a young tradesman with whom he had for some time past been in treaty respecting the lease of a shop.

'Consult my wife!' repeated Bradshaw in a tone indicative of surprise and indignation. No; I would never consult a woman upon a matter of business.'

'Oh, I beg your pardon,' hastily rejoined the wary house agent, secretly rejoicing at having at length discovered the weak side of the man he was dealing with; but I thought you might possibly like Mrs Bradshaw to see the house. I know the ladies like to have a voice in such matters.'

'I tell you I don't ask her advice in any matter,' the young man sharply retorted; and to prove to you, Mr Hutchingson, that I don't boast of an independence I do not really possess, I'll strike the bargain at once.'

The house agent had previously tried all the usual methods of drawing the business to a close. He had assured him that his rival draper, Mr Dawkins, had been after it, and that several other persons were eager to have it. These, however, had failed. Bradshaw still had scruples regarding the prudence of the affair; for the rent and taxes were exorbitant, and the terms of the lease far from favourable; but no sooner was it hinted that he was waiting for his wife's consent, than Hutchingson's end, as he had acutely perceived would be the case, was accomplished.

Give your ticket!' said she, teaching me by her example, as a functionary came to the door.