the servant aside, he proceeded silently towards the | lady's boudoir, the door of which he found shut. Pausing a moment, he heard as he imagined two voices within exchanging words of most particular endearment, and something in the pause that sounded like kissing. Human nature could stand it no longer. He peeped through the key-hole, where he saw a sight that drove him to madness. The lady was sitting by the light of a fire which was fast going out, caressing and fondling a figure, the whiteness of whose head too well indicated his detestable powdered rival. From time to time he heard the words amativeness, adhesiveness, hope, secretiveness, and elopement, or something that sounded very like it. The thing was perfectly plain-they were exchanging professions of love and planning an elopement. The sight and the conviction was no longer to be borne. He burst open the door furiously, and being in full uniform as an officer of the guards, drew his sword, and making a desperate blow at the powdered head, it flew off the shoulders and rolled upon the floor. The lady shrieked and sunk from her seat; and the jealous lover hearing a noise in the outward apartments, and supposing he had done the gentleman's business pretty effectually, bethought himself that it was high time to take care of himself. He accordingly made the best of his way out of the house, towards the gate St. Honoré, through which he hurried into the country, nor stopped till he had safely lodged himself within his castle of Normandy. From thence he wrote a letter filled with the most cutting reproaches-charging his mistress with falsehood, cruelty, deceit, and all sorts of villainy, and vowing on the cross of his sword, never to see her more. The lady laughed two full hours on the receipt of this defiance. When she had done laughing, as she really had a regard for her admirer, she sat down and wrote him the following reply: "Good Monsieur Jealousy "You are welcome to call me what you will, except it be old or ugly. However, I forgive you, and so does the formidable rival whose head you so dexterously severed from his body, and who I give you my honor is not the least the worse for the accident. I solemnly assure you, you may come back to Paris without the least danger of being prosecuted by the family of Monsieur M-, or being received by me with ill humor, for I shall laugh at you terribly. Your Friend, N. N." caused him fifty sensations in a minute. First he This epistle puzzled the lover not a little, and would return to Paris, and then he would notthen he resolved never to see his mistress againand next to mount his horse, return immediately, look her stone dead, and then set out on his travels ried the day, and he forthwith returned to Paris in as great a hurry as he had left it. When the lady saw him, she was as good as her word-she laughed her, the louder she laughed. However, as anger herself out of breath, and the more he reproached and laughter can't last for ever, a truce took place in good time, and the lady addressed her lover as to the interior of Africa. This last resolution car follows: "Cease thy reproaches, my good friend, and hear me. I am determined to give you the most convincing proof in the world of my truth and attachment, by delivering your rival into your hands, to is now concealed in this very room." be dealt with as you think proper. Know that he "Is he?" replied the other in a rage-" then by heaven, he has not long to live-I shall take care to cut off his head so effectually this time that the most expert surgeon in Paris shall not put it on again-where is the lurking caitiff? But I need not ask-I see his infernal powdered head peeping from under the sofa-come out, villain, and receive the reward of thy insolence in rivalling me." head, and to his astonishment drew it forth without So saying, he seized the treacherous powdered any body to it. He stood aghast-and the lady threw herself on the sofa, and laughed ten times louder than before. "What in the name of woman," cried he at last, "is the meaning of all this mummery?" "It means that I am innocent-and that your fit, and whom folly and vanity combined, are perworship is jealous of the skull, or what is worse, petually stimulating to act in direct opposition to the plaster counterfeit of the skull of your great-nature or destiny. He was contemptible in his pergrandmother, the immortal author of the Grand Cyrus. I was but admiring the beautiful indication of the amative organ, from which it plainly appears impossible that any other person could have written such prodigiously long developments of the tender passion." "But why did you kiss the filthy representation of mortality?" "You were mistaken," answered the lady-"as the room was rather dark, I placed my face close to it in order the better to see and admire its beaut:ful cerebral development." "Its what?" replied the lover impatiently. "Its phrenological indications." "And what in the name of heaven are these?" cried the lover, in some alarm for the intellects of his fair mistress. The lady then proceeded to explain to him the revolution in science which had taken place during his absence; and a reconciliation being the consequence, that night took him to the doctor's lecture that he might no longer be an age behind the rest of the world. The story got abroad-indeed the lady could not resist telling it herself to a friend, with strict injunctions of secrecy -and all Paris became still more devoted to the sublime science for having afforded such an excellent subject for a joke. son-yet he set up for a beau and Adonis-he was still more contemptible in mind-yet he never rested till he had bought the title of Mæcenas and a savan, of an industrious manufacturer of ultra doggerel rhymes, whom he had got into the National Institute. He was, moreover, born for a valet, or at best, a pastry cook-yet he aspired to the lofty chivalry and inflexible honor of a feudal baron; and he became a soldier, only, as it would seem, because he was the greatest coward in all Paris. It was well known that he gave five hundred francs to a noted bully to let him beat him at a public coffee house, and afterwards allowed his brother, a tall grenadier, a pension not to kill him for it. The Viscount had likewise been absent some months at a small town, in one of the northern departments, whither he had gone to suppress an insurrection, began by two or three fish-women, stimulated, as was shrewdly suspected, by an old gardener, who had, as was confidently asserted, been one of Napoleon's trumpeters. On his return, he for the first time heard of the sublime science and its progress among the beau-monde. The Viscount hated all innovations in science, or indeed any thing else. He aspired to be a second Joshua, and to make the sun of intellect at least stand still, if he could not make it go backwards, as he had good hopes of doing. Without waiting to hear any of the particulars of our exhibition, he hastened, armed and in uniform as he was, to the hotel where the doctor was at that moment just commencing a lecture. The other story relates to a young nobleman whose situation near the king, and orthodox ultraism, made him a very distinguished person in the beau-monde. But he was distinguished only in a certain way; that is, he was a sort of butt, on whose shoulders every ridiculous incident was regularly fathered, whether it owed its paternity to The valiant Viscount advanced with great intrehim or not. As Pasquin stands sponsor for all the pidity close to the table, and leaning gracefully on wise sayings of Rome, so M. the Viscount came in his sword, listened in silence to discover whether for all the foolish actions of Paris. He was, as it there was any thing that smacked of democracy or were, residuary legatee to all the posthumous follies heterodoxy. At the proper moment I put my hand of his ancestors, as well as the living absurdities of into our Golgotha, and leisurely drew forth the farhis noble contemporaries. He was one of those famed skull of Varus, who I have always considerpeople who fancy themselves most eminently quali-ed the most fortunate man of all antiquity, in havfied for that for which they are most peculiarly un- ing been surprised and slain in the now more me morable than ever forest of Teutoburgium. As we scientific gentlemen have a hawk's eye for a new comer, one of whom is worth a host of old faces at a lecture, I took care in bringing the cerebral development forth, to thrust it directly towards the face of the viscount with the teeth foremost. The viscount fell back, fainted, and lay insensible for some minutes. But the moment he revived, he started upon his legs in a frenzy of terror, and began to lay about him with his good sword so valiantly that nobody dared to come near him. First he attacked the doctor and myself, whom he charged with the massacre of the eleven thousand virgins, and the introduction of infidel skulls into France, which was tantamount to preaching infidelity. The innocent cerebellum of poor Varus, next felt the effects of his terror-inspired valor. He hacked it until the cerebral development was entirely destroyed, and then proceeded in like manner to make an example of the contents of the bag, which he shivered without mercy, with his invincible sword. In short, before he fairly came to his senses, the worthy gentleman had demolished almost every thing in the room-put out the lights, and frightened every soul from the lecture. The solitude and darkness which succeeded, brought him gradually to his recollection, when finding himself thus left alone with the ruins of so many pagan skulls, he gave a great shriek, scampered out of the room, and did not stop until he had sheltered himself in the very centre of a corporal and his guard, belonging to his regiment, who all swore they would stand by him to the last drop of their blood. This adventure was fatal to my master, Dr. Gallgotha. In the first place, it deprived him of nearly the whole of his phrenological specimens, and without these he was like a workmen despoiled of his tools. Besides, the viscount had the very next morning demanded an audience of the king, in which he denounced the doctor, as tinctured very strongly with liberalism, and its invariable concomitants of sacrilege and impiety. Now I will venture to affirm, that the good doctor was not only perfectly ignorant of the very meaning of the word liberal, but that he was equally innocent of the other two charges. The truth is, all his organs of faith, morality, and politics, were swallowed up, or elbowed out of the cerebellum, by the prodigious expansion of the organ of ideality or invention. However this may be, the king was more afraid of the three abominations of liberalism, than of plague, pestilence, and famine. He consulted the Jesuits, who forthwith decided upon taking the poor doctor and all his works into custody. The valiant viscount, who always volunteered in all cases of liberalism and impiety, undertook the task, aided by a guard of soldiers armed in proof, for he did not know but the doctor might have another bag full of pericraniums. Advancing with great caution, they surrounded the house, while the captain of the guard, with three stout resolute fellows, entered for the purpose of reconnoitring the ground, and especially of ascertaining that there were no skulls to frighten the viscount. That gallant soldier, having settled the latter point to his satisfaction, charged bayonet, in the rear of his guards, and rushing up stairs in spite of Varus and his legions, detected the doctor in the very act of committing to memory a new lecture he had just composed for the purpose of demonstrating that there was a certain organ of the cerebellum, the enlarged development of which always entailed upon its possessor the absolute necessity of committing murder. The doctor and I were clapped up in prison, and his lecture carried to court to undergo a strict examination by the king's confessor and the Jesuits. It was some time before these expert mousers of radicalism and infidelity could make any thing of the doctor's lecture, or discover any offence to church or state. At length, they came to that part where, in summing up the subject, he laid down the doctrine of the actual necessity certain persons labored under of committing murder, and that the rule applied as well to kings as to their subjects. He inculcates the doctrine of equality," cried one-" he denies the divine right of kings." "He is a republican," cried a second. "He is a traitor," cried a third. A little farther on, they found the following assertion:-"I deny that the three legions of Varus formed one body." "Behold!" said the confessor, "he denies the trinity-he maintains that three is not one-enough, let us burn the book and hang the doctor." Some of the more moderate counsellors, however, as I aftewards learned, petitioned for a mitigation of the sentence, which was finally commuted into perpetual banishment. We were sent for to hear our doom, and the viscount, who always liked a good-natured errand, was the bearer of the message. As we followed him into the palace, which we all entered uncovered, the doctor observed to me that the viscount had a most formidable development of the organ of self-esteem. The confessor lectured the doctor upon his vile infidelity, his liberalism, and disaffection to church and state, all which came as naturally together as so many chemical affinities. The doctor demanded the proof, and was referred to the passages I have just repeated. It was in vain that he referred in turn to the other members of the sentences thus garbled, to prove that he was neither alluding to religion nor politics in his lecture. No matter," said a cunning Jesuit, who could convert a wink of the eye into treason, and a nod of the head into blasphemy-"no matter-a proposition may be both treasonable and heterodoxical in itself, although it has no immediate application to either politics or religion. The assertion that three does not make one, is complete in itself, and requires no reference either to what precedes, or what follows. In two months you must be out of France." And thus were we banished from the paradise of lecturers, only because Doctor Gallgotha had wickedly and impiously asserted that the physical organs of kings were the same with those of cobblers, and that three legions, separately encamped, did not make one body. FINN'S BENEFIT.-The celebrated comedian, Finn, issued the following morceau the day previous to one of his benefits, at Tremont Theatre, in the city of Boston: "Like a grate full of coals, I burn A great, full house to see; And, if I prove not grateful too, But, ah, 'tis when stern winter, drear, EZEKIEL AND DANIEL.-The following anecdote | captain was a brave and good man, sir; and nobly of Mr. Webster is told by a correspondent of the Cleveland Herald, as an illustration of the uncertainty of worldly fame, and the folly of making it the controlling object of life:-"A few years since, but before the great Northern Railroad passed through his farm, he was on his way to the old homestead. He took the stage at Concord, New Hampshire, and had for a companion a very old man. After some conversation, he ascertained that the old man was from the neighboring town of Salisbury, and asked him if he ever knew Captain Webster. Surely I did,' said the old man; and the did he fight for us, with General Stark, at Benning- A SHARP WITTED SHAVER.-A grand melo-dra- | patient-the manager wrathful, demanding in a matic spectacle was being rehearsed in the Park Theatre a few years since, in which a magnificent car, drawn by horses, was to make its appearance on the stage through a trap-door. Mr. Manager S. supervised in person the rehearsal. The period arrived when the horses should appear dragging the gilded car-the stage was detained-the actors im loud voice of the man whose business it was to see all right below, in the regions of mystery and enchantment, why he delayed the car. "Somebody has cut the traces, sir." "Cut the traces?" asked the manager. Why, nobody's had access there to-day but yourself." They wasn't cut with ares, sir; they vas cut with a knife!" 66 |