notes from Léon-he had no time for more-and we could not write to him, as he was constantly on the march.

At last, on the 28th of July, the Emperor and his boy-the child of so many hopes and fearsleft Paris amidst shouts of "A Berlin! à Berlin! Vive l'Empereur !" Did any shadows of his impending fate rest on his spirit as he looked his last on the fair city that had grown into such queenly beauty under his hand, upon whose people he was about to bring so terrible a doom? I think it must have been so. To me, at least, an under-tone of disquiet seemed to run through the martial notes of his address to his soldiers. Perhaps that was because my mind ever received the imprint of Léon's thoughts, and because it was so unusual to hear the coming struggle spoken of as one in any wise likely to be "long and arduous.”

We thought compassionately of the burden that must rest on the royal heart left desolate amidst the splendours and loneliness of its palace halls; for that royal heart was a woman's, and that woman a wife and a mother. So her sorrow was a common sorrow; but not so her burden. How heavily must the sceptre of France have weighed in the hands that had so lately been occupied in the homely, loving task of preparing her boy's outfit! People told how each article had been laid in its place by those hands alone. Hearts sore with the anguish of the wrenching of their own tendrils from the daily presence of beloved ones, could scarcely fail to sympathize with those who on their lonely heights of greatness must stand calm, unmoved, in the sight of a nation's eyes, when their heartsweak human hearts still, if beating under imperial purple-are wrung with anguish.

So they parted, those royal hearts. Men have told us lately how they met again, discrowned, exiled, amidst the rude gaze of half-sympathizing, half-curious multitudes, on the crowded pier at Dover. But they have met again: diadem and sceptre and purple, indeed, buried in the grave of the Past, but their home-band unbroken. Do no nightmare visions of the untold thousands of homes in France, by whose blood-stained hearths desolation and anguish sit brooding over graves holding other treasures than those, rise

before their pillows in the silent night-watches? If the blame rests with him who led a nation blindfold to its doom, has it not been bitterly atoned for? Will it not be a haunting memory throwing its weird shadows on the down-hill of life?

sorrows,

Perhaps not. I suppose not. It is not of hearts and homes, not of individual joys and that those placed on the slippery heights of power think. Necessarily not. People, and classes, and armies are to them but pieces to be moved on the chess-board of politics. The fallen Emperor risked his all upon one desperate move, and lost. His all was throne and fame; but for those upon whom it fell to carry out that game, life and limb, and the love that is dearer than life. It is scarcely to be wondered at that, in her frenzy of amazed despair, poor, bleeding, deluded France should forget her own share in the matter, and proclaim herself betrayed, dishonoured, ruined by him whose hand held the helm when the barque was hurried into the fray amidst the defiant shouts of an excited and rejoicing people.

Not that I, or any of us, sympathized with the blind rage that laid all blame at one door, because that one bore the imperial eagle. We are no Imperialists, no advocates for the glittering tinsel that covered the corruption, and oppression, and extravagance, and paltriness of the Second Empire. I say we, meaning we De Labordes. Politics are not woman's spherethey certainly are not mine; but these have been times in which even a thoughtful child must learn something of them. The traditions of our family are all of the old régime of Franceas tinsel, and certainly more oppressive, than the last. My father and uncle clung always to the old royal stock-my Uncle Lucien does still; but both were good subjects of the Empire, or rather true sons of France, ready to put aside all personal prejudices and feelings for her sake. Victor's dream was a republic; but Léon said France ever needed a firm grasp on the reins, and that revolution meant anarchy.

We females troubled ourselves little on these points. I suppose the gift of individualizing is peculiar to women; it certainly is to some women. The armies, and brigades, and bat

talions, and companies of which men spoke so glibly as of certain parts of war machinery, were to us individual men-husbands, fathers, brothers, sons: to my mother, and Nina, and me, and to some other women we knew. Thus it was, I suppose, that when on the day after the Emperor left news was flashed into the city of a skirmish at Niederbronn, in which we had been victorious, our hearts sunk within us. Only a skirmish, it was owned, but men exulted over it as a bright augury of coming success. But the first drops of the coming storm of iron hail had done their deadly work-there were "killed and wounded." Only a few; but the world was darker to many even through them. And it was our first experience of the sickening dread and crushing anxiety that is the lot of those left behind in the quiet of ordinary life, while their nearest and dearest are lost from their sight in the smoke of distant battle-fields.

Poor Madame de l'Orme came in that evening in a deplorable state of nervous terror. We knew it was improbable that the regiment that was the centre of her hopes and fears-and of ours could have been the one engaged; and Victor was able to give the name and number of the one which had been, so her fears were in measure allayed. But her look of settled agony of dread, as she took leave of me at the door, to which I had accompanied her, and said, or rather wailed, "O Renée! my boy! my boy! shall I ever see his bright face again?" filled me as much with fear as with compassion. If her boy should fall, I feared it would cost her her reason or her life.

The excitement in the city increased. All ears were strained to catch the first swell of the shout of victory that was so soon, it was thought, to be borne from beyond the Rhine. And on the 3rd of August news came of a victory, and of a town taken: Saarbrück was taken, and the Germans driven back. Then days passed, and no more tidings. Our armies, it was whispered, were strangely inactive. Days were being lost, each one of which was of untold value to the Germans. What could be the reason, when, by the assurances of our sovereign and his ministers, all was ready? People grew angry, and some doubtful.

"

No letter came from Léon. It already seemed weeks instead of days since he had left us. We missed him sorely. My mother bore up wonderfully, but the anxiety and separation from him told upon her feeble strength. Augustine exerted himself to supply as far as possible his place, and was more like himself. Victor's gay spirits were raised at that time to a higher pitch than usual by excitement and delight in the war. But his ways with my mother and me, always affectionate and winning, were still more so as he marked our evident depression. His coming home was like a breath of fresh air let into a close chamber, and never failed to bring new life to us by the force of that mysterious sympathy with which mind answers to mind.

At last news came from the seat of war, but not the tidings that had been listened for. The arms of France had sustained a reverse at Weissenberg. There were darkening brows and angry voices on the boulevards and in the squares of Paris that evening; pale faces and troubled eyes round social and family boards. Angry questionings, passionate accusations, bitter reproaches, frantic invectives mingled from the lips of an indignant and disappointed people.

But over the surging tide of resentment and passion the star of hope shone with ever-brightening radiance. Soon the unanimous verdict was that all would, must yet be well. Our leaders had erred by allowing the Prussians time to gather their forces for one great effort. They would be wiser now: in a few days we should hear of a glorious revenge. But a few looked grave and anxious; and we at home remembered Léon's words, and watched for, yet dreaded, the publication of the official list of "killed and wounded." When it came, no names familiar to us were there; but we knew those Jules, and Louis, and Augustes, and Baptistes meant to other hearts and homes what Léon did to ours, and wept over their sorrow, which so soon might be our own.

The chameleon moods of the population of Paris had gone through the phases of passion, anger, depression, hope, and had arrived at the highest pitch of confidence, before new and heavier tidings reached us: tidings of the terrible heights of Spicheren, dearly bought by the despe

rate foe at the cost of hecatombs of victims; and of the fatal field of Wörth, steeped with the lifeblood of thousands of our bravest and best.

Not all at once was the full extent of the disaster realized; nor, indeed, was it ever duly estimated till after-events revealed it. First came rumours that all was not going well; then whispers of what no one cared to be the first to speak of openly; then the official intimation of defeat and loss-guarded, indeed, but the truth, if the truth veiled-and the Emperor's assurance that "all might yet be retrieved." He, at least, spoke the truth; the only one of our rulers, perhaps, that has had the courage to do so since the laurels began to be stripped from the brow of France in the slow agony of this bitter and unequal struggle. Till the last leaf was gone, and Paris in the hands of the enemy, how have we been duped and deceived by those who have called themselves our guides and defenders! Humoured like children!—till such as were not children, but men, among the spoiled and degenerate masses that form the population of gay, beautiful, folly-loving Paris, turned away in scornful discredence from all their proclamations and assurances.

Long and full of anxious thought had been the few days that elapsed between the receipt of the news of the battles of Weissemberg and Wörth. Could they have been only three? Every one seemed to hold his breath in a hush of fearful expectancy I speak rather of ourselves at home so much hung upon the burden of the next despatches. I spent many hours each day with Madame de l'Orme. Nina and my mother clung very much together; and the manner of the former was more like what it had been in mamma's illness-gentle, and quiet, and sweetand together they would talk of Léon. I think Nina felt I knew too much of the true state of things, and her womanly instincts kept her reserved. I was sure she grieved still over her unkindness to him that last night.

Many little things assured me of it. Among others, this. One day, going suddenly into the library, where Léon had spent most of his quiet hours, I discovered her sitting on the floor, with her arms round the neck of Fidèle, Léon's favourite dog, and her head resting on them.

Poor Fidèle seemed to understand as well as any of us that something was wrong about his master's absence; and the wistful look of his large soft eyes, as he laid his great head on my knee, and looked appealingly into my face, often brought tears into my own. He would prick up his ears when a step was heard on the stairs; but when he found it not the one he was watching for, would lay down his head again with a low, plaintive whine, answered by many a responsive sigh. When I entered, Nina sprang up, with crimsoned, laughing face, and saying something about Fidèle's being such a ridiculous old dog, it was impossible to help being ridiculous with him, hurried from the room. But Fidèle's rough head was wet with many tears.

Ah, Nina, I have been guilty of the same folly myself. When the overburdened heart shrinks from pouring any of the bitter drops of its own sorrow into the brimming cups of those who have already received full measure, or when its grief is one that will not bear the cold clearness of every-day light, is it not a solace and relief to lay one's heavy, listless hands upon the head of some dumb, faithful creature, whose mute caresses and wistful looks tell of sympathy for sorrow felt while not understood?

Poor Madame de l'Orme! Each day, through heat and rain, her weary feet carried her feeble frame through the narrow, gloomy streets leading to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. The reason of this daily pilgrimage was to induce the Virgin to protect and restore her son. Vainly I urged her not to walk, as the fatigue, for which her delicate frame was at all times unfitted, was telling sadly upon her health, weakened also by sleeplessness and anxiety. "Nothing, nothing could be too great a sacrifice for such an end, Renée," she would answer; "and it is all I can do. When the Blessed Mother sees I spare no effort to gain her pity and help-her help, which is the only help that can avail my boy—she will surely plead for me with her Son."

So, though each day the effort became more painful, she rigidly fulfilled her purpose. The day before I received Léon's third letter, and the one on which rumours were afloat of some disaster having again befallen us, conflicting with vague reports of success and triumph, I went with her,

It was with difficulty Madame de l'Orme reached her home, which was close to ours. It was a comfort to me afterwards that that day my mother was unusually well, and spent some of the cool evening hours with her sorrowful and lonely friend; and her words, as she tenderly took leave of her, are to me a faint ray of light and hope glimmering through midnight darkness. She said, "Adieu, dear Célestine; remember the Lord Christ was a man on earth himself once. He died for us, and such a death of torture! Love alone can have made him do that, and love such as that cannot surely have died out. But if, as you say, he died because his Father sent him to do so, because he loved his Father, and not us, it was still for us, and God must surely care for those for whom he gave such a gift. The Lord Christ, and the good God, and the Holy Virgin comfort and help you, and bring your Henri back to you!"

I did not hear the rest of the conversation: I had only gone to bring my mother home; but I have ever hoped that one spark of divine life may have been kindled that night in that troubled heart, "tempest-tossed, and not comforted."

The next day the gloomy tidings of disaster were more than confirmed, and the excited populace filled the streets like the surging waves of an angry sea. But the early morning had brought me a bitter task-a task whose results shut us in that day from the hubbub without. The first post brought a few hurried lines from Léon. I will copy them here.

"Dearest mother, and all," he wrote, "you will have heard ere this of our misfortunes at Wörth and Spicheren. We were outnumbered. The German troops under the Crown Prince are said to have been treble the number of ours. Our troops behaved splendidly. I have no time but for these few lines, and I write to give you, Renée, a painful commission,-to tell poor Madame de l'Orme that her gallant boy went down in the thickest of the fight, charging at the head of

save her the terrible shock of hearing officially of her loss that I hasten to beg you to break it to her tenderly. I was with him when he died, after the battle, but on the spot where he fell. And with him was one who spoke such words to him as I pray God may fall on my ear when I shall be as he was then. He was conscious to the last, and sent his love and a lock of his hair to his mother, begging me to try and have the shock broken for her. You will do it, Renée, I know. I am well and unhurt, and will write again when it is possible." Then came some loving messages and tender inquiries; and in a postscript, "Do you remember our talk at the window the night of the Declaration, Renée? I was right."

Oh, I cannot do

O war, war! how fearful is the draught from thy crimson cup, from the first sip to the bitter dregs! I read Léon's letter first, after my mother, to whom, of course, it was addressed. I had carried it to her with so joyful a heart. "Mamma, it will kill her!" I exclaimed. it!" But when I unfolded the paper in which the short lock of soft brown hair was wrapped, a torrent of tears fell from my eyes, and the rising tide of sympathy and compassion swept over, and effaced for the moment all other feelings.

In saddened silence Léon's note was passed from one to the other when we all met below. The shadow of a great sorrow fell over our own joy at our Léon's preservation. Nina stood apart in a window, and Victor returned the letter to me when he and Augustine had read it together. I went up to her and gave it her. She took it quietly; but when she came to the close, and read Léon's kind message to herself, she threw down the letter, burst into a passion of tears, and left the room. I followed her, and when we reached her room, she threw herself into my arms, exclaiming, "O Renée, it might have been Léon! Instead of that, it is poor Henri, and Léon is unhurt. But, Renée, if Léon should— should be "she could not speak the word— "it will be my fault, to punish my sin. How I teased him, scorned him, grieved him, and he was so good, so kind! God may well punish me by-O Renée, Renée, if those days were only back again!”