66 ant in the armies of Napoléon the Third, It is absolutely necessary that I should -you, who of all men know how ruined be daily at my post on the Bourse, and are the fortunes of a Rochebriant-you, hourly watch the ebb and flow of events. feel surprised that he clings to the Under these circumstances I had countnoblest heritage his ancestors have left ed, permit me to count still, on your to him their sword! I do not under-presence in Bretagne. We have already stand you." begun negotiations on a somewhat exMarquis," said Duplessis, seating tensive scale, whether as regards the imhimself, and regarding Alain with a look provement of forests and orchards, or in which were blended the sort of admi- the plans for building allotments, as soon ration and the sort of contempt with as the lands are free for disposal - for which a practical man of the world, who, all these the eye of a master is required. having himself gone through certain I entreat you, then, to take up your resicredulous follies, has learned to despise dence at Rochebriant." the follies, but retains a reminiscence of sympathy with the fools they bewitch, "Marquis, pardon me; you talk finely, but you do not talk common-sense. I should be extremely pleased if your Legitimist scruples had allowed you to solicit, or rather to accept, a civil appointment not unsuited to your rank, under the ablest sovereign, as a civilian, to whom France can look for rational liberty combined with established order. Such openings to a suitable career you have rejected; but who on earth could expect you, never trained to military service, to draw a sword hitherto sacred to the Bourbons, on behalf of a cause which the madness, I do not say of France but of Paris, has enforced on a sovereign against whom you would fight to-morrow if you had a chance of placing the descendant of Henry IV. on his throne?" "I am not about to fight for any sovereign, but for my country against the foreigner." "An excellent answer if the foreigner had invaded your country; but it seems that your country is go ng to invade the foreigner a very different thing. Chut! all this is discussion most painful to me. I feel for the Emperor a personal loyalty, and for the hazards he is about to encounter a prophetic dread, as an ancestor of yours might have felt for Francis I. could he have foreseen Pavia. Let us talk of ourselves and the effect the war should have upon our individual action. You are aware, of course, that though M. Louvier has had notice of our intention to pay off his mortage, that intention cannot be carried into effect for six months; if the money be not then forthcoming, his hold on Rochebriant remains unshaken the sum is large." "Alas! yes." The war must greatly disturb the money-market, affect many speculative adventures and operations when at the very moment credit may be most needed. "My dear friend, this is but a kindly and delicate mode of relieving me from the dangers of war. I have, as you must be conscious, no practical knowledge of business. Hébert can be implicitly trusted, and will carry out your views with a zeal equal to mine, and with infinitely more ability." "Marquis, pray neither to Hercules nor to Hébert; if you wish to get your own cart out of the ruts, put your own shoulder to the wheel." Alain coloured high, unaccustomed to be so bluntly addressed, but he replied with a kind of dignified meekness "I shall ever remain grateful for what you have done, and wish to do, for me. But, assuming that you suppose rightly, the estates of Rochebriant would, in your hands, become a profitable investment, and more than redeem the mortgage, and the sum you have paid Louvier on my account, let it pass to you irrespectively of me. I shall console myself in the knowledge that the old place will be restored, and those who honoured its old owners prosper in hands so strong, guided by a heart so generous." Duplessis was deeply affected by these simple words; they seized him on the tenderest side of his character - for his heart was generous, and no one, except his lost wife and his loving child, had ever before discovered it to be so. Has it ever happened to you, reader, to be appreciated on the one point of the good or the great that is in you on which secretly you value yourself most-but for which nobody, not admitted into your heart of hearts, has given you credit? If that has happened to you, judge what Duplessis felt when the fittest representative of that divine chivalry which, if sometimes deficient in head, owes all that exalts it to riches of heart, spoke thus to the professional money-maker, whose qualities of head were so acknowledged that a compliment to them would be a hol low impertinence, and whose qualities of | heart had never yet received a compliment! Duplessis started from his seat and embraced Alain, murmuring, "Listen to me. I love you; I never had a son- be mine; Rochebriant shall be my daughter's dot." "Alain! Alain ! - but if you fall." "Valérie will give you a nobler son." Duplessis moved away, sighing heavily; but he said no more in deprecation of Alain's martial resolves. A Frenchman, however practical, however worldly, however philosophical he Alain returned the embrace, and then may be, who does not sympathize with the recoiling, said follies of honour- who does not concede "Father, your first desire must be hon-indulgence to the hot blood of youth when our for your son. You have guessed my he says, "My country is insulted and her secret I have learned to love Valérie. banner is unfurled" - may certainly be a Seeing her out in the world, she seemed man of excellent common-sense; but if like other girls, fair and commonplace such men had been in the majority, Gaul seeing her at your house, I have said to would never have been France Gaul myself, There is the one girl fairer than would have been a province of Germany. all others in my eyes, and the one indi- And as Duplessis walked homeward vidual to whom all other girls are com- he, the calmest and most far-seeing of monplace."" all authorities on the Bourse - the man who, excepting only De Mauléon, most decidedly deemed the cause of the war a blunder, and most forebodingly anticipated its issues-caught the prevalent enthusiasm. Everywhere he was stopped by cordial hands, everywhere met by congratulating smiles. "How right you have been, Duplessis, when you have laughed at those who have said, 'The Emperor is ill, decrepit, done up '!" "Is that true? — is it?" I 66 "True! does a gentilhomme ever lie? And out of that love for her has grown this immovable desire to be something worthy of her something that may lift me from the vulgar platform of men who owe all to ancestors, nothing to themselves. Do you suppose for one moment that I, saved from ruin and penury by Valérie's father, could be base enough to say to her, In return be Madame la Marquise de Rochebriant'? Do you suppose that I, whom you would love and respect, as son, could come to you and say, I am oppressed by your favours am crippled with debts-give me your millions and we are quits'? No, Duplessis! You, so well descended yourself -so superior as man amongst men that Entering his hotel, he went at once to you would have won name and position | Valérie's chamber. "Sleep well to-night, had you been born the son of a shoeblack, child; Alain has told me that he adores -you would eternally despise the noble thee, and if he will go to the war, it is who, in days when all that we Bretons that he may lay his laurels at thy feet. deem holy in noblesse are subjected to Bless thee, my child, thou couldst not ridicule and contempt, should so vilely have made a nobler choice." forget the only motto which the scutcheons of all gentilhommes have in common, 'Noblesse oblige! War, with all its perils and its grandeur-war lifts on high the banners of France, - war, in which every ancestor of mine whom I care to recall aggrandised the name that descends to Let me then do as those before me have done; let me prove that I am worth something in myself, and then you and I are equals ; and I can say with no humbled crest, Your benefits are accepted:' the man who has fought not ignobly for France may aspire to the hand of her daughter. Give me Valérie ; as to her dot-be it so, Rochebriant - it will pass to her children." "Vive l'Empereur! at last we shall be face to face with those insolent Prussians!" Before he arrived at his home, passing along the Boulevards, greeted by all the groups enjoying the cool night air before the cafés, Duplessis had caught the war epidemic. me. Whether, after these words, Valérie slept well or not 'tis not for me to say; but if she did sleep, I venture to guess that her dreams were rose-coloured. CHAPTER VII. ALL the earlier part of that next day Graham Vane remained indoors · - a lovely day at Paris that 8th of July, and with that summer day all hearts at Paris were in unison. Discontent was charmed into enthusiasm - Belleville and Montmartre forgot the visions of Communism and Socialism and other "isms" not to be realized except in some undiscovered Atlantis ! The Emperor was the idol of the day— had decoyed hers-what if, by a desertion she had no right to anticipate, he had blighted her future? What if this brilliant child of destiny could love as warmly, as deeply, as enduringly as any simple village girl to whom there is no poetry except love? If this were so - what became the first claim on his honour, his conscience, his duty? the names of Jules Favre and Gambetta | American - what if, in all these assumpwere bywords of scorn. Even Armand tions, he was wholly mistaken? What if, Monnier, still out of work, beginning to in previously revealing his own heart, he feel the pinch of want, and fierce for any revolution that might turn topsy-turvy the conditions of labour,-even Armand Monnier was found among groups that were laying immortelles at the foot of the column in the Place Vendome, and heard to say to a fellow-malcontent, with eyes uplifted to the statue of the First Napoleon, Do you not feel at this moment that no Frenchman can be long angry The force which but a few days ago with the little corporal? He denied La his reasonings had given to the arguLiberté, but he gave La Gloire." ments that forbade him to think of Isaura, Heeding not the stir of the world with-became weaker and weaker, as now, in an out, Graham was compelling into one altered mood of reflection, he re-sumresolve the doubts and scruples which moned and re-weighed them. had so long warred against the heart which they ravaged, but could not wholly subdue. All those prejudices — which had seemed to him such rational common-sense truths, when translated from his own mind into the words of Lady Janet's letter, was not Mrs. Morley right in denouncing them as the crotchets of an insolent egotism? Was it not rather to the favour than to the disparagement of Isaura, regarded even in the man's narrow-minded view of woman's dignity, that this orphan girl could, with character so unscathed, pass through the trying ordeal of the public babble, the public gaze command alike the esteem of a woman so pure as Mrs. Morley, the reverence of a man so chivalrously sensitive to honour The conversations with Mrs. Morley and Rochebriant had placed in a light in which he had not before regarded it, the image of Isaura. He had reasoned from the starting-point of his love for her, and had sought to convince himself that against that love it was his duty to strive. But now a new question was addressed to his conscience as well as to his heart. What though he had never formally declared to her his affection - never, in open words, wooed her as his own- — never even hinted to her the hopes of a union which at one time he had fondly enter-as Alain de Rochebriant? tained, still, was it true that his love had been too transparent not to be detected by her, and not to have led her on to return it? Certainly he had, as we know, divined that he was not indifferent to her; at Enghien, a year ago, that he had gained her esteem, and perhaps interested her fancy. Musing thus, Graham's countenance at last brightened-a glorious joy entered into and possessed him. He felt as a man who had burst asunder the swathes and trammels which had kept him galled and miserable with the sense of captivity, and from which some wizard spell that took strength from his own superstition had forbidden to struggle. He was free! and that freedom was rapture! - yes, his resolve was taken. We know also how he had tried to persuade himself that the artistic temperament, especially when developed in wo- The day was now far advanced. He men, is too elastic to suffer the things of should have just time before the dinner real life to have lasting influence over with Duplessis to drive to A, where happiness or sorrow, that in the pur- he still supposed Isaura resided. How, suits in which her thought and imagina-as his fiacre rolled along the well-rememtion found employ, in the excitement they bered road - how completely he lived in sustained, and the fame to which they that world of romance of which he denied conduced, Isaura would be readily con- himself to be a denizen ! soled for a momentary pang of disappointed affection. And that a man so alien as himself, both by nature and by habit, from the artistic world, was the very last person who could maintain deep and permanent impression on her actual life or her ideal dreams. But what if, as he gathered from the words of the fair Arrived at the little villa, he found it occupied only by workmen - it was under repair. No one could tell him to what residence the ladies who occupied it the last year had removed. "I shall learn from Mrs. Morley," thought Graham, and at her house he called in going back, but Mrs. Morley Not was was not at home; he had only just time, ' The moon in her scientific aspect has after regaining his apartment, to change, been sufficiently coy, however. his dress for the dinner to which he was withstanding her nearness and the seeminvited. As it was, he arrived late, and ingly favourable conditions under which while apologizing to his host for his want we study her, very much less has been of punctuality, his tongue faltered. At discovered respecting her than the farther end of the room he saw a face, anticipated when Galileo first observed paler and thinner than when he had seen Imagined lands and regions in her orb. -a face across which a something She remains in many respects a mystery of grief had gone. us. We see little in her structure to or aspect that is intelligible. Nevertheless, what has been learned is full of interest, even in its very strangeness, and in the perplexing problems which it suggests for our consideration. it last The servant announced that Monsieur was served. Mr. Vane," said Duplessis, “will you take in to dinner Mademoiselle Cicogna?" From The Cornhill Magazine. NEWS FROM THE MOON. THE Earl of Rosse, to whose father the world owes the telescope which turns its giant eye skywards from its underground home at Parsonstown, has recently published, in the Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society, the results of his successful efforts to measure the moon's heat. It is not our purpose to consider specially Lord Rosse's researches, which are indeed of such a nature as to be little suited for these pages. We propose rather to avail ourselves of the attention just now directed to our satellite, in order to discuss some of the most remarkable and interesting facts which have been learned respecting the moon, and especially of those which are least likely to be familiar to the general reader. But we cannot refrain from touching on a strange though not unexpected result which follows from Lord Rosse's researches. The cold, pale moon, that Climbs the sky So silently and with so wan a face, has been shewn to be in reality so warm, that no creature living on our earth could endure contact with that heated surface. The middle of the disc of the "white full It moon" is hotter than boiling water. has thus been the fate of science yet once again to destroy an illusion which had for ages suggested a favorite poetical image. Poets will continue, indeed, to sing of the cold moon, Chaste as the icicle That's curded by the frost from purest snow, but to the student of astronomy the con- Every one probably knows that the moon is nearly 240,000 miles from the earth; that she is about 2,100 miles in diameter, (which is less than the earth's diameter, about as 100 is less than 367); that the earth's surface exceeds hers about 13 1-2 times, while the earth's volume exceeds the moon's about 491–2 times. If to this we add that the moon is made of somewhat lighter material, or, to speak more exactly, that her mean density is somewhat less than the earth's, so that the earth exceeds her 81 times in mass or quantity of matter, we have indicated the principal circumstances which characterize the moon's globe as We shall compared with the earth's. have a word or two to add presently, however, about her probable shape. We commonly regard the moon as a The earth is not the body whose force was the earth were concealed from view while her satellite was thus watched, the moon would appear to circuit round the sun in an orbit which could not be distinguished from that which the earth herself pursues. It is only from our earth as a standpoint that the moon seems to have the earth as the centre round which she travels; and to show how readily we may be deceived when so viewing any celestial body, we need only remember that, as seen from the earth, even the sun seems to have her as the centre of his motion. It is well to know the true nature of the moon in this respect; because when, instead of regarding her as merely a satellite or attendant upon the earth, we regard her as a companion planet- the least of the sun's inner family of planets we perceive that in studying her we are making a first step towards the knowledge of other worlds than ours. strange circumstance that a fragment of a slab of green shale, pictured in Lyell's Geology, with casts of rain-prints left by a shower which fell ages on ages since, presents as true a picture of certain lunar tracts, as a model cast expressly to illustrate what is seen in an actual photograph (moon-painted) of one of those regions. Whatever opinion may be formed as to the significance of this fact, it is certain that the present aspect of the crater-covered regions is quite inconsistent with the idea that there was a single continuous era of crater formation. It is manifest that the contour of the whole surface has been changed over and over again by the forces which produced these craters. The most striking feature in the moon's telescopic aspect is the wonderfully disturbed condition of her surface. Her face is scarred and pitted all over: nay, this but faintly expresses her condition, Although we find little in the moon's since no one can examine the moon care- aspect which reminds us of features at fully with suitable telescopic power, with- present presented by the surface of the out being impressed by the conviction earth, we must not too confidently asthat she has, so to speak, passed many sume that the two globes have been extimes through the fire. There are great posed to quite dissimilar processes of seams, as if at some early stage of her change. It is very difficult, indeed, to existence her whole globe had been rent form clear ideas as to the real conformaapart by internal forces; and the duration of the earth's crust underneath those tion of this early stage would appear to layers which have been formed, directly have been considerable, since there are or indirectly, by the action of air and several systems of these seams crossing water. It requires but a slight study of and intercrossing. Then would seem to geology to recognize how importantly have come an age during which large re- such action has affected our earth. Ingions sank as the moon cooled and con-deed, there is not a square foot of the tracted, leaving other regions elevated, earth's surface which does not owe its as in the case of the great ocean valleys present configuration either directly to and continent elevations of our own earth. weather changes and the action of water With further contraction came the in the form of rain or snow or stream or formation of great corrugations, the flood, or else to processes such as vegelunar Alps and Apennines and other tation or the succession of various forms mountain ranges. But last of all, it may of animal life. In the moon, so far as be presumed (if the recent results of can be judged, we see the natural skeleMallet's researches into vulcanology are ton, as it were, of a planet, the rock surto be accepted), came the most wonder- face precisely as it was left when the inful of all the stages of disturbances, the ternal forces ceased to act with energy. great era of crater formation. One There has been no "weathering; would say that the surface of enormous wearing down of the surface by the aclunar tracts had bubbled over like some tion of water; no forests have formed seething terrestrial substance, were it carboniferous layers; no strata like our not that no materials known to us could chalk formations have been deposited; form coherent bubbles spanning circular vegetation does not hide any part of the spaces many miles in diameter. Yet no surface; no snows have fallen, and thereother description gives so just an idea of fore no glaciers grind down the rugged the actual appearance of extensive tracts surface of the lunar valleys. With one of the moon's surface, except one, equally exception, there is not, so far as can be or even perhaps more fanciful: if the judged, any process which is at work to whole of one of these regions, while still disintegrate or modify the sterile face of plastic from intensity of heat, had been the moon. The exception is the process rained upon by liquid meteoric masses of alternate expansion and contraction of many tons or even many hundreds of the moon's crust, as the lunar day and tons in weight, then something like the night pass on in slow succession. Unobserved appearance would probably questionably, the change from a heat of have resulted. Indeed, it is rather a some five hundred degrees at midday, to no |