THE BROTHERS OF DIJON.

HE President of the Parliament

THE

of Dijon and the Bishop of Beauvais disputed one evening on the strange and desperate actions frequently committed by men of characters long ap proved and generally exemplary. "I have thought of this inconsistency," said the President, "till I have almost convinced myself that we have two souls; one which directs or attends only the mechanical and every day business of our bodies, and a superior one which never acts unless excited by some peculiar things addressed to our feelings or passions. You and I must remember, that we have often wrote, read aloud, drawn, ate, talked, and dressed ourselves without any consciousnesss or idea: and these operations appear to me directed by what I fancifully call the soul of our bodies, while the soul of our minds is otherwise employed. If the notion or name of two souls displeases you, we will call them habit and impulse; but I conceive the last to be the result of our thoughts and feelings, the other of mere mechanical instinct. And I conceive this impulse or soul of our thoughts to be as capable of suddenly inciting actions contrary to our general habits, as those habits are often B ATHENEUM VOL. 8.

practised without the assent and presence of our thoughts."

The Bishop was offended by this metaphysical subtlety. "Do you mean to tell me," said he, "that the natural impulses of men are wicked, whatever may be their general habits, and that such impulses are beyond controul?"

"I mean," continued the President, "that the sudden actions of men proceed from the general bent of their thoughts, not of their common conduct; therefore I judge by such actions of a man's real temper, rather than by his every-day duties and behaviour. And knowing that we are too apt to give our secret thoughts full licence, provided our actions are well regulated, I am not surprised when sudden temptation produces violent and scandalous acts in those whose ordinary conduct is decent, because premeditated or method."

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The Prelate shook his head. "Perhaps," he replied, 66 I ascribe too much influence to reason, and you too little to temptation. We may both see and experience occasions when temptation creates thoughts never felt or indulged before, and when opportunity steps before judgment. I humbly trust to right habits as the best preservative from wrong impulses, and I leave you to de

termine your belief by facts: though it is my belief, no less than your's, that no man's habits will be consistently and constantly good, whose thoughts are wandering and unregulated."

Soon after this conversation the Bishop left his brother, and returned to his hotel, or temporary residence, in Dijon. On the threshold, under the light of a few straggling lamps, he saw a stranger of mean appearance, who put a small billet into his hand, and waited respectfully while he looked into it. It was badly spelt and written, but purported to be from a dying woman in great need of spiritual help, and specially desirous to communicate with him at the corner house of the rue St. Madelaine. The Bishop knew this street to be situated at no great distance, in an honest though poor suburb, and the requested visit could be attended by no danger. Even if it had, the prelate had enough of benevolent courage to hazard something in his professional duty, and he desired the stranger to conduct his coachman. Alighting at the entrance of the narrow lane which led to the rue St. Madelaine, and was too narrow to admit his equipage, the Bishop desired his servants to await him there; for though he had too much charitable delicacy to desire parade in his visits of bounty, he also felt that his official station as a public instructor required him to shun all mysterious or questionable acts. Therefore directing his guide to take a flambeau from his lacquey, he followed him to the appointed door, and more particularly noticing the house, observed that its back wall overlooked the garden of a mansion occupied by a family he knew the family, in short, from which his brother had selected his future wife, Therese Deshoulieres, a woman of noted beauty and high pretension. Perhaps this circumstance diverted his ideas so far as to prevent him from remarking the disappearance of his guide when he had unlocked a door, which the Bishop entering, found himself in a room very dimly lighted, and without furniture, except a bench on which a woman was sitting. She was muffled in a veil which she drew still

closer to her face, but he immediately recognized the air and figure of Therese Deshoulieres. She appeared no less dismayed and confounded, though she found courage to accost him— "Ah, my lord!-do not believe that I meet you intentionally the man who just now brought you, decoyed me here by this forgery"--and she put into his hand a billet which seemed the counterpart of that he had received. It was in the same hand-writing, and nearly the same words; but the confusion in the Bishop's ideas made him return it in silence. "My servant accompanied me," continued the lady," and is waiting in the house-surely, my lord, you have not devised this scene to afflict me!-The people I expected to see were sick and in distress, and I came because I feared nothing from honest poverty." Therese," said the Bishop sorrowfully, "if you had not once feared honest poverty, we need not have feared to meet each other now."-The lady wept; and though he began to doubt whether the whole was not the finesse of some feminine purpose, her tears were not without effect. But he did not misplace his confidence in the influence of right habits against sudden impulse; for his thoughts of Therese Deshoulieres had been so long governed and corrected, that this unexpected test did not disorder them. "I have nothing," he added, "to say to my brother's betrothed wife in fear and in secret ;-nor any thing to desire from her, except that ring which she accepted once for a different purpose, and ought not to wear with her husband's." And, as he spoke, he approached to draw the ring from her finger on which he saw it glistening. A dimness came over Therese's eyes; and when it vanished, the Bishop was gone, but had not taken the ring from the hand she held out to him. She sat down on the only bench in the room, and wept a long time bitterly and trembling. In a few moments more, she remembered that her servant had been ordered to wait till the clock struck seven before he enquired for her. Her repeater sounded that hour, but Mitand did not appear. She dared not open

the door to go alone into the street, but the casement was unbarred, and it looked into her father's garden. She climbed out, and by the help of a few shrubs clinging to the wall, descended in safety, and made haste to the house, hoping her absence was undiscovered. But Mitand had already reached it, and alarmed her family by saying that he had expected to find his young mistress returned. Therese answered her fath er's angry questions by stating the simple truth-that she had been induced to visit the poor gardener's widow by a billet begging her immediate presence for a charitable purpose, and had found the little lodge empty of all furniture: but a young man who called himself her grandson, had requested Therese to wait a few moments while the widow came from her bed in an upper room. Mitand informed his master that he had waited at the door till a man in a gardener's habit bade him return home, as his lady would go by a back way through her father's garden. M. Desboulieres blamed his old servant's careless simplicity, and asked his daughter if no other person had appeared. The rese faltering, and with a failing heart, replied, that a man had entered and demanded her ring; but being informed that her servant was stationed within hearing, had departed without further Outrage. This prevarication, so near the truth, yet so fatally untrue, was the impulse of the moment. Therese had never before uttered a falsehood on an important occasion, but her thoughts had been long familiar with the petty finesses of female coquetry; and the step from small equivocations to direct untruth only required a spur.

To colour her evasion, Therese had concealed her ring among the garden shrubs; and professing that she had willingly yielded it to the thief as a bribe for his quiet departure, she entreated her father not to make such a trifle the subject of serious investigation. M. Deshoulieres, seeing no reason to doubt her sincerity, and fearing that an appeal to the police might compromise her reputation, agreed to suppress the matter. But he communicated it to his intended

son-in-law, the President of the provincial Parliament, who looked very gravely at the forged billet, and asked a particular description of the ring. Then, as he gallantly said, to atone for her loss, he sent Therese a splendid casket of jewelry, which, with some gratified vanity, she added to the celebrated set she inherited from her mother. And a few days after, she accompanied him to the church of St. Madelaine, where the Bishop, who had visited Dijon for that purpose, performed the nuptial ceremony.

One of the most splendid fetes ever seen in that province distinguished the bridal evening. The President, high

in public esteem and flourishing in fortune, was attended, according to the custom of his country on such occasions, by the principal persons of his own class, and by all his kindred and friends in the neighbourhood. The Bishop remained in the circle till a later hour than usual, and perhaps with a more than usual effort, because he was aware a few persons in that circle knew the attachment of his youth to Therese Deshoulieres. But even his brother did not know that, being a younger son, he had been induced, for the benefit of his family, to enter the church, and renounce a woman whose pretensions were far above his honest poverty. Therefore on this occasion be affected, with some little pride, an air of perfect serenity; and though he had felt his forehead burn and freeze by turns, he knew his voice had never faltered while he pronounced a benediction on the marriage. He was pledging his brother after supper, when cries of fire were heard in the house. The great profusion of gauze ornaments and slight erections for the ball made the flames rapid beyond all help. Even the croud of assistants prevented any successful aid; for the number of timid women covered with combustible finery, and men unfitted by wine for personal exertion, disturbed those who came to be useful. "Is Therese safe?” was every body's cry, and every body believed she was, till the outline of a woman seen among the flames and