her; but she was confused as usual by all | Where she has been living? Frances grew redder and hotter in the flush of indignation that went over her. But she It was balked, however, if it had any- could not stand up and proclaim that it thing to do with Mr. Ramsay, for it was was from her home, her dear loggia, the the other gentleman - the old gentleman, place she loved best in the world, that the as Frances called him in her thoughts- sketch was made. Already the bonds of who came up and took the vacant place. another life were upon her, and she dared The old gentleman was a man about forty, not do that. And then there was a little with a few gray hairs among the brown, chorus of praise, which silenced her still and a well-knit, manly figure, which showed more effectually. It was the group of very well between the delicate youth on palms which she had been so simply proud one hand and Markham's insignificance of, which — as she had never forgotten on the other. He was Sir Thomas, whom had made her father say that she had Lady Markham had declared to be of no grown up. Lady Markham had placed it particular interest to any one; but he on a small easel on her table; and Frances evidently had sense enough to see the could not help feeling that this was less charm of simplicity and youth. The at- for any pleasure it gave her mother, than tention of Frances was sadly distracted in order to make a little exhibition of her by the movements of Claude, who fidgeted own powers. It was, to be sure, in her about from one table to another, looking own honor that this was done, and what at the books and the nicknacks upon so natural as that the mother should seek them, and staring at the pictures on the to do her daughter honor? but Frances walls, then finally came and stood by was deeply sensitive, and painfully conMarkham's side in front of the fire. He scious of the strange, tangled web of modid well to contrast himself with Mark- tives, which she had never in her life ham. He was taller, and the beauty of known anything about before. Had the his countenance showed still more strik- little picture been hung in her mother's ingly in contrast with Markham's odd little bedroom, and seen by no eyes but her wrinkled face. Frances was distracted own, the girl would have found the most by the look which he kept fixed upon her- perfect pleasure in it; but here, exhibited self, and which diverted her attention in as in a public gallery, examined by admirspite of herself away from the talk of Siring eyes, calling forth all the incense of Thomas, who was, however, very nice, and she felt sure, most interesting, and instructive, as became his advanced age, if only she could attend to what he was saying. But what with the lively talk which her mother carried on with Markham, and to which she could not help listening all through the conversation of Sir Thomas, and the movements and glances of the melancholy young lover, she could not fix her mind upon the remarks that were addressed to her own ear. When Claude began to join languidly in the other talk, it was more difficult still. "You have got a new picture, Lady Markham," she heard him say; and a sudden quickening of her attention, and another wave of color and beat passing over her, arrested even Sir Thomas in the much more interesting observation which presumably he was about to make. He paused, as if he, too, wanted to hear Lady Markham's reply. "Shall we call it a picture? It is my little girl's sketch from her window where she has been living her present to her mother; and I think it is delightful, though in the circumstances I don't pretend to be a judge." praise, it was with a mixture of shame and resentment that Frances found it out. It produced this result, however, that Sir Thomas rose, as in duty bound, to examine the performance of the daughter of the house; and presently young Ramsay, who had been watching his opportunity, took the place by her side. "I have been waiting for this," he said with his air of pathos. "I have so many things to ask you, if you will let me, Miss Waring." "Surely," Frances said. "Your sketch is very sweet - it is full of feeling-there is no color like that of the Riviera. It is the Riviera, is it not?" "O yes," cried Frances, eager to seize the opportunity of making it apparent that it was not only where she had been living, as her mother said. "It is from Bordighera, from our loggia, where I have lived all my life." "You will find no color and no vegeta. tion like that in London," the young man said. To this Frances replied politely that London was full of much more wonderful things, as she had always heard; but felt somewhat disappointed, supposing that his communications to her were to be more interesting than this. And the climate is so very different," he continued. "I am very often sent out of England for the winter, though this year they have let me stay. I have been at Nice two seasons. I suppose you know Nice? It is a very pretty place; but the wind is just as cold sometimes as at home. You have to keep in the sun; and if you always keep in the sun, it is warm here." "But there is not always sun here," said Frances. "That is very true; that is a very clever remark. There is not always sun here. San Remo was beginning to be known, when I was there; but I never heard of Bordighera as a place where people went to stay. Some Italian wrote a book about it, I have heard to push it, no doubt. Could you recommend it as a winter place, Miss Waring? I suppose it is very dull, nothing going on?" 64 Oh, nothing at all," cried Frances eagerly. "All the tourists complain that there is nothing to do." "I thought so," he said; "a regular little Italian dead-alive place." Then he added after a moment's pause: "But of course there are inducements which might make one put up with that, if the air happened to suit one. Are there villas to be had, can you tell me? They say, as a matter of fact, that you get more advantage of the air when you are in a dull place." "There are hotels," said Frances, more and more disappointed, though the beginning of this speech had given her a little hope. "Good hotels?" he said with interest. "Sometimes they are really better than a place of one's own, where the drainage is often bad, and the exposure not all that could be desired. And then you get any amusement that may be going. Perhaps you will tell me the names of one or two? for if this east wind continues, my doctors may send me off even now." Frances looked into his limpid eyes and expressive countenance with dismay. He must look, she felt sure, as if he were making the most touching confidences to her. His soft, pathetic voice gave a faux air of something sentimental to those questions, which even she could not persuade herself meant nothing. Was it to show that he was bent upon following Constance wherever she might go? That must be the true meaning, she supposed. He must be endeavoring by this mock anxiety to find out how much she knew of his real motives, and whether he might trust to her or not. But Frances resented a little the unnecessary precaution. "I don't know anything about the ho tels," she said. "I have never thought of the air. It is my home - that is all." "You look so well, that I am the more convinced it would be a good place for me," said the young man. "You look in such thorough good health, if you will allow me to say so. Some ladies don't like to be told that; but I think it the most delightful thing in existence. Tell me, had you any trouble with drainage, when you went to settle there? And is the water good? and how long does the season last? I am afraid I am teasing you with my questions; but all these details are so important-and one is so pleased to hear of a new place." We "We live up in the old town," said Frances with a sudden flash of malice. "I don't know what drainage is, and neither does any one else there. have our well in the court - our own well. And I don't think there is any season. We go up among the mountains, when it gets too hot." "Your well in the court!" said the sentimental Claude, with the look of a poet who has just been told that his dearest friend is killed by an accident, "with everything percolating into it! That is terrible indeed. But," he said after a pause, an ethereal sense of consolation stealing over his fine features - "there are exceptions, they say, to every rule; and sometimes, with fine health such as you have, bad sanitary conditions do not seem to tell when there has been no stirring up. I believe that is at the root of the whole question. People can go on, on the old system, so long as there is no stirring up; but when once a beginning has been made, it must be complete, or it is fatal." will you He said this with animation much greater than he had shown as yet; then dropping into his habitual pathos: “If I come in for tea to morrow - Lady Markham allows me to do it, when I can, when the weather is fit for going out be so very kind as to give me half an hour, Miss Waring, for a few particulars? I will take them down from your lips it is so much the most satisfactory way; and perhaps you would add to your kindness by just thinking it over beforehand - if there is anything I ought to know." "But I am going out to-morrow, Mr. Ramsay." "Then after to-morrow," he said; and rising with a bow full of tender deference, went up to Lady Markham to bid her good-night. "I have been having a most interesting conversation with Miss Waring. She has given me so many ren seignements," he said. "She permits me to come after to-morrow for further particulars. Dear Lady Markham, good night, and au revoir." "What was it that Claude was saying to you, Frances?" Lady Markham asked with a little anxiety, when everybody save Markham was gone, and they were alone. "He asked me about Bordighera, mam ma. "Poor dear boy! About Con, and what she had said of him? He has a faithful heart, though people think him a little too much taken up with himself." "He did not say anything about Constance. He asked about the climate and the drains what are drains?-and if the water was good, and what hotel I could recommend." Lady Markham laughed and colored slightly, and tapped Frances on the cheek. "You are a little satirical! Dear Claude! | he is very anxious about his health. But don't you see," she added, "that was all a covert way of finding out about Con? He wants to go after her; but he does not want to let everybody in the world see that he has gone after a girl who would not have him. I have a great deal of sympathy with him, for my part." From The Gentleman's Magazine. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN. AMONG the most delightful, wholesome, and original novelists of our own day in our own land, we must place the twin authors Besant and Rice. Death has broken the link, and Mr. Besant writes now alone. In France is another twin pair of novelists, Erckmann and Chatrian, also delightful, wholesome, and original, the bond unbroken, differing chiefly from our English literary Damon and Pythias in the fact that these French novelists write with a deliberate political purpose; they are the novelists of republicanism, the panegyrists of the French Revolution. They have almost invariably worked together. In their photographs they appear arm in arm. We believe that the only independent work has been "Les_Brigands des Vosges," which was by Erckmann alone. Their first appearance was in short stories, strongly influenced by Hoffmann and Balzac; the latter especially, as in the story "Science et Génie," which appeared in 1850. A chemist, Dr. Spiridion, had discovered an elixir which petrified all it touched. He confided his secret to a friend, the sculptor Michael, who, thinking that now he had the power of imposing on the world as a transcendent artist, killed Spiridion, mastered his elixir, and petrified the woman he loved and then himself. In his "Brigands of the Vosges," Erckmann introduced a Dr. Matthæus, who makes studies in metempsychosis. As this romance did not attract much attention, he reintroduced Dr. Matthæus in another work, published in 1859, the first that attracted the attention of the public. It is the story of a metaphysical Don Quixote. Frances had no sympathy with him. She felt, on the other hand, more sympathy for Constance than had moved her yet. To escape from such a lover, Frances thought a girl might be justified in flying to the end of the world. But it never entered into her mind that any like Then came a series of wild stories: danger to herself was to be thought of." Contes Fantastiques," 1860; "Contes She dismissed Claude Ramsay from her de la Montagne," 1860; "Contes des thoughts with half resentment, half amuse- Bords du Rhin," 1861. These stories ment, wondering that Constance had not are full of imagination, often of a sometold her more; but feeling, as no such what Poe ghastliness. One will suffice. image had ever risen on her horizon be. A painter lives opposite a tavern that fore, that she would not have believed stands in very bad repute, because so Constance. However, her sister had hap- many of the sojourners there have hanged pily escaped, and to herself, Claude Ram- themselves. He suspects an old woman say was nothing. Far more important called "the bat," and at length discovers was it to think of the ordeal of to-morrow. how the suicides are brought about. She She shivered a little even in her warm has a room opposite the guest room in the as she anticipated it. England tavern, and she hangs a figure from a seemed to be colder, grayer, more devoid beam in her chamber; the guest sees of brightness in Portland Place than in this, watches it swing, is filled with an Eaton Square. irresistible desire to copy the proceeding, room "Well," said he, "how is the school going on?" and hangs himself. Then the painter | he studied law, and took his doctor's deworks upon the imagination of "the bat," gree. During the vacation he returned in a similar manner, and drives her to home, and called on his old master Persuicide. Erckmann and Chatrian did not rot. believe in the Napoleon myth. Their stories, "Histoire d'un Conscrit," 1864, "Waterloo," 1865, turned on the wars of Napoleon. "L'Histoire d'un Homme du Peuple," 1865, showed the political tendencies of the writers, and About was commissioned to write against them. Then came the famous "Histoire d'un Paysan," 1869, appearing on the eve of the great Franco-German war, and the fall of the empire. One of their most delightful stories, "Friend Fritz," has been dramatized, and makes a pleasant play. We have seen it admirably rendered at Munich. It was performed, but did not take, in London. "Alas! since you left," sighed Professor Perrot, "I have had no good scholars who have taken eagerly to their work, except perhaps one, come out of the glassworks. He has his wits about him, and is worth something better than blowing bottles. I'll ask him to supper, you must meet him, I like the lad." So Erckmann met Chatrian and they sat chatting together at the professor's till midnight, when they quitted without a thought of the close union that would one day subsist between them. Two years passed. During that time Chatrian had been in a glass-shop in Belgium, and had given it up and become Ausher in Perrot's school. Erckmann left the University of Paris and came to Pfalzburg, where he called on Perrot. His old master was reading a manuscript when Erckmann came in. Many of the stories of the twin authors have been translated into English, but have not, we believe, had a large sale. few have also been rendered into German. Some novels which appeared of late years under the separate name of Erckmann for a while led to the supposition that the union was broken, but this was not the case. These tales were by Jules Erckmann, a relative, and an admirer of Napoleon I., not by Emile the collaborator with Chatrian. In their more recent stories, they have shown a bitter hostility to Germany, due to their both being natives of Alsace. They are both, however, of Teutonic descent; Erckmann's mother tongue was German. He did not learn French till he was twelve. Both, to the present day, speak it with a strong Alsatian pronunciation. "Look here," said he. "Do you remember meeting a lad here at your last visit? That lad is now a teacher in my school, and is bent on entering the world of letters. In spite of his father's wishes, he has turned his back on bottles and tumblers, and taken in hand equally brittle materials. Look !" He held out a cahier. Erckmann took it; it was an essay on some social question, treated from a very liberal point of view. He read it then and there with interest. The opinions were his own. Old Professor Perrot shook his head. "You young firebrands will set the world in a blaze. I don't like your doctrines but alles! you are young and I am old; we see life from opposite sides." M. Erckmann was born on May 20th, 1822, at Pfalzburg, in lower Alsace, and till he was nineteen years old he was in the lyceum of Professor Perrot. Then Chatrian was in the same school. He Erckmann at once sought out Chatrian, was four years younger than Erckmann, and proposed to him to unite with him in and was born at Boldestenthal, near establishing a democratic paper, the forPfalzburg. His father had been engaged mer to find the funds, both to write the in glass works at Aberschweiler, but articles. They started their paper, which owing to the collapse of the business had was entitled the Démocrate du Rhin. It come to great poverty. Chatrian was in- ran through eight numbers and was then tended by his father to enter a glass fac suppressed by the police. Then they comtory; and after he left the school, his posed together a four-act drama, “Alsace father sent him to Belgium, where, how-in 1814," which was put in rehearsal. A ever, he did not remain long. He re- couple of days before its production, it turned to Pfalzburg, and, till he could find was vetoed by the prefect. an opening, took the place of under usher in the school where he had been a pupil. Emile Erckmann was the son of a bookseller, and after he had finished his studies at Pfalzburg he went to Paris, where Next year the friends went to Paris, and wrote some articles for the Revue de Paris; a fortnight after, the Revue de Paris was stopped by the government. Then the Moniteur Universel offered desire to know is, how do you and Erckmann manage your books, so that it is impossible for the keenest critic to say, this is Erckmann and that is Chatrian ?" them the lower portions of the paper, | pose. I have come here to see you, to At last they got into the Journal des Débats and the Revue des Deux Mondes, and their literary name was made. This is an age of interviewing. The Chatrian had obtained a situation on Chatrian smiled. "When two fellowworkers are moved by a common principle, have the same social, political, moral, and artistic sentiments, they must fuse their identity. We write, not to establish our names as authors, but to popularize and spread principles which are dear to us. We two were born under the same sky, saw the same scenes, were nurtured under the same influence, taught in the same school; we live together, talk, eat, smoke together. We have no differences." That was all the German journalist could extract, and that was about what he knew without asking. However, he would not be satisfied. "I am amazed," said he, "that you find time for such literary activity, while occupying an important position on the Chemin de Fer de l'Est." Chatrian smiled again, and said, "My duties on the line consist in seeing that others work. I have my own office, in which I am private." Nothing further was to be screwed out of him. At last, Chatrian stood up, lit his cigar, and with a bow took up his hat and left the établissement de bouillon. "M. Chatrian has just gone to break-interviewer had gone too abruptly to work. fast," was the answer. "Where?" "He is at M. Duval's établissement de bouillon, at the corner of the Boulevard Sébastopol." Accordingly our interviewer turned his steps in that direction. The établisse ments de bouillon are excellent institutions, where substantial and wholesome meals are to be had at a very modest charge; they are not, however, frequented by persons of the better class. Here, at a side table, sat a little man with dark, curly hair and high forehead, hard at work despatching a roast fowl. His features were marked, his moustache military, his eye dark and active. Round his neck he wore a tie, à la Byron. With the audacity which characterizes the professional interviewer, our German correspondent took a chair and placed himself at the same table. Chatrian looked sharply at him, and put down his knife and fork. "I have intruded on your breakfast," said the interviewer, "with deliberate pur The attempt had failed; perhaps our Chatrian had drawn the mantle closer around the mystery; he had not cast it aside. Nothing daunted, the interviewer started off for Raincy, where the fellowworkers lived. He had told Chatrian that he would do himself the honor of calling on Erckmann. "Humph," grunted the little man; "no good. The bonne will say will say, Monsieur est sorti, — and you will return no wiser." However, undeterred by the warning, the journalist started. Raincy lies a few miles to the east of Paris, on the Stras burg line. Raincy is neither a village nor a town. It was formerly a noble park that belonged to Louis Philippe. The second empire confiscated the estate, laid out boulevards through the midst of the romantic wilderness, and built villas and country houses along the boulevards and among the trees. A walk through the streets of Raincy shows a great variety of scene. Here we have charming gardens and labyrinthine walks among artificial shrubberies, or bits of wild park with for |