I do not know; and I am weary-oh, so weary! of all this talk of war. Oh, for the dear old times when France was at peace, and her homes unshaded by battle banners! They say the feeling is very strong against peace in the city; but it is felt the siege cannot possibly last long.

Victor is very indignant at the cowardly conduct of some of the troops of the line at Châtillon. They are thoroughly demoralized, the scum of the old line soldiers; and, Léon used to say, one great error in our military administration was the neglect of those troops for the picked regiments. The latter are gone now almost to a man; and if the line soldiers fail us, what can we expect from the Mobiles and National Guard-peasants and citizens? Victor says, much from the former, nothing from the latter; Uncle Lucien says, everything from both. Mamma has looked better to-day; Nina, very pale and sad.

September 21.-I cannot understand Augustine. He appears to shun us all-even mamma -and sits cold and abstracted during any conversation when even strangers are present. What he thinks about our situation I cannot tell. Today, Paul de Méricourt said to him jestingly, "It is never too late to mend, Augustine; give up the prospective crosier for the bâton de maréchal' that every French soldier carries in his knapsack. Now is the time to win it, if ever. France wants soldiers, not priests!"

The words were lightly, carelessly spoken; and though, knowing Paul's infidel tendencies as we do, we all felt meaning lurked in them, Augustine's violent emotion startled us—that is, Nina, mamma, and me. Uncle Lucien is not a keen observer, and Victor was absent. The blood rushed crimson to his brow, his eyes shot fire, then the burning glow faded, leaving his face set and rigid; he made no answer, and in a few moments left the room.

I have never been used to give or receive confidence from Augustine. In spite of his unfailing gentleness and kindness, his thoughtfulness and gravity have always held me comparatively aloof, and since his manner has become so strangely reserved and depressed, I have never dared to break the ice. But now my heart

the great void caused by Léon's loss, for which, I know, he grieves bitterly. But that grief is not all. Perhaps he is going to be a monk. But if so, why should any of Victor's raillery, or such words as Paul de Méricourt's, irritate him? It is a great puzzle.

September 22.-The forests of Meudon, Clamart, and St. Germains have been burned. When will Paris recover from this miserable year? Not even in a lifetime will the traces of it be gone. Those fair woods, and lovely villas, and beautiful gardens, a desolate waste. And the waste places will be more and yet more, alas! for the mirage of coming peace has disappeared. The interview of Jules Favre with Count Bismarck has produced no results; only added bitterness and fresh resolution to the strife.

They met at Ferrières, the beautiful chateau of Baron Rothschild, but the German chancellor refused to grant other terms than such as France. humbled and stricken as she has been, could but scorn to accept-the cessation of Alsace and Lorraine, of the fortresses of Metz, Strasburg, and St. Valérien! And Jules Favre left him with the noble words, to which every true French heart must thrill: "Not one inch of our territory, not one stone of our fortresses." Yes, even women's hearts, sorely as we long for peace, we would not purchase it with the dishonour and dismemberment of our country. Not yet, at

least. Why do I write those words? I cannot tell, except that I can never quite silence the undertone of despondency that is ever whispering that the cup of misfortune has not yet been drained.

Uncle

There has been great excitement in the city to-day-manifestations against peace. Lucien walked with Nina and me to the Trocadéro. It was crowded with people gazing through glasses at the distant heights, on which it was said Prussian guns were visible, but we could not distinguish them. Uncle Lucien was in great spirits. He thinks it is impossible that the siege should last more than a fortnight at most. A large and well-appointed army is ready, or nearly so, to march from the banks of the Loire to our relief. Our besiegers, caught between two fires, will experience a Sedan reversed

and aggravated. But it is a terrible prospect, more blood-more graves-more anguish. Even peace may be too dearly bought for some, perhaps for us.

September 23-We have not seen Victor today. I fear there will be many days on which we may not do so. It is anxious work, though Uncle Lucien says, except in case of a general attack, his Mobiles will not as yet be brought under fire. But then, Uncle Lucien despises the Moblots, and trusts most in the troops of the line; a French soldier, in spite of all that has happened, is yet his beau ideal of valour.

Mamma is certainly better-this clear, bright weather is refreshing after the heavy heat of last month—and as yet she can take her usual walks in the Luxembourg Gardens, which are not closed to the public, though large herds of oxen and sheep are penned in parts of them. She is really stronger, and bears up wonderfully against her sorrow for Léon and anxiety for Victor. One inconvenience of the siege already troubles me on her account-milk is becoming very scarce, and consequently very bad, and it is such a staple of diet to her. There has already been fixed a maximum price for meat. It is dreadful to think what it would be if the siege should be prolonged for weeks; but it is one comfort that no one thinks that possible.

Nina was very anxious to join one of the ambulances, but submitted at once to our remonstrances with that dull, apathetic acquiescence she now yields to all our wishes. That passive submission is so very strange in her, so foreign to her nature and her old ways. I am troubled sorely about her. She is so utterly crushed and broken, does not murmur or complain, or even speak of her sorrow; but I think her fair face grows paler and more rigid each day. God and the holy saints comfort her. I cannot.

September 24.-There has been a great victory to-day. Uncle Lucien brought us the tidings. The Prussians have been driven out of Ville Juif with great loss; it is said many thousands of prisoners are taken, and a great number of cannon. The streets leading to the ramparts are crowded with eager citizens waiting to see them pass. Victor is away, perhaps in action.

I went this morning to see Marie Fournier.

She was in great distress; her husband, a kind, easy, worthy man, a good and honest citizen, has proved a bad soldier-been arrested for neglect of duty. Marie was fearing he would be shot, as it is said some soldiers who ran away at Châtillon will be. I met some of them being paraded through the streets with their coats reversed and a placard on their breast inviting all good citizens to spit upon the cowards. They were soldiers of the line; poor wretches. But there is no danger of their fate for Jules, who, of course, belongs to the National Guard; and Uncle Lucien thinks the capital sentence will not be carried out on them even.

September 25.-Victor came home last night. It seems the importance of yesterday's fight was greatly exaggerated; still it was a success. He has heard that the Prussian king has taken up his quarters at Versailles, in the glorious palace dedicated "A toutes les gloires de la France;" that he occupies the gorgeous apartments of La Grande Monarque, and that the stately saloonsand galleries echo to the tread of German soldiers. Well, it will not be for long. Uncle Lucien says there is no doubt that there is great disaffection and discontent among the Prussians, and that they are nearly starving. It will be impossible, he says, to find supplies for them so far from home, with hostile armies hanging round their rear. To-day the city looked bright and gay as of yore.

CHAPTER XII.

A MYSTERY SOLVED.

"But how can finite measure infinite?
Reason! alas, it does not know itself!
Yet man, vain man, would with this short-lived plummet
Fathom the vast abyss of heavenly justice."

DRYDEN.

September 26.I have had I have had a word with Augustine. Victor was urging him yesterday to join the "Frères Chrétiens" under Monseigneur Bauer, late confessor to the Empress, now chaplain to the Ambulance de la Presse. Augustine replied that there were already too many attached to each ambulance; that many had been refused daily, and that he would rather give what assistance he could independently-his half clerical dress would be a passport. The subject dropped then,

but I said afterwards, when he and I were alone, "I think I would rather choose your part, Augustine; it is a nobler mission than to defend your country even-to save the souls of your countrymen. It is a pity you were not a priest now; it must be so blessed to go as such among the wounded and dying with all the blessings of the Church. There must be so much pain that cannot be eased-of spirit and of body-except by her consolation."

He turned round, and, to my horror and amazement, answered in a deep low voice, "I shall never be a priest, Renée!"

Strong surprise deprived me of the power of speech, and just then some one entered the room. Augustine whispered to me when we parted for the night, "Do not repeat what I said to any one, Renée; above all to my mother. One day I will explain."

What can be the reason? The holy office was so completely his own choice, the dream of his boyhood, and the cherished vision of his youth. And it will be such a terrible sin to turn his back on it now, his vocation always seemed so strong. And mamma, how she looks forward to seeing him ministering in his priestly robes at the altar. "If I could see him thus once before I die, Renée, perhaps even receive the body of the Lord from his hands, the strongest wish left me on earth would be fulfilled," she said only yesterday. Words that struck my heart with a shiver of pain, for I felt they rung the death-knell of her own and Léon's life. I hear Nina's step, and must close.

September 27.-Nina came to me last night as I was writing. Something in her agitated look told me of new-born hope, and as she took her place at my knee and looked up into my face, her eyes kindled and her face flushed. "Renée," she said, "I have thought of a plan by which we may get news of Léon."

Then she told me how much she had wished to engage in ambulance work, chiefly for the sake of the chance it gave of meeting with wounded Germans, from whom it might be possible to learn something of Léon's fate. But we opposed it, and she gave it up. And to-night I have found the clue to the passive submission that so characterizes her conduct of late. She

feels that Léon's fate, whatever it may be, and our painful ignorance concerning it, are alike the bitter fruit of her waywardness and sin. God is angry with her, and the bolt that he has hurled at her has smitten us too. But it is all her fault, she thinks, and she has made a solemn vow never to oppose her will to another's again, lest it should draw down further chastisement, not upon herself only, but upon those bound to her by the electric chain of affection, vibrating to all that concerns her. She says, daily, hourly, she fails in keeping this vow; that though to us she appears so broken, so spiritless, her will surges up still in wild impulses of rebellion not only against the little contradictions and oppositions of daily life, but against God even, against his dealing with her, which yet she owns to be so just, and with us. "I would not willingly crush a worm," she said; 'yet God stoops to punish one like me. I have deserved it all, I know; but you have not, and mamma."

I tried to reason with her, and show her that we were only fellow-victims with thousands of others of the terrible scourge of war, whose indiscriminate lash falls on all alike-on the tenderest and noblest the heaviest; that we all need chastisement for our sins and shortcomings, and that it is better to suffer it here than beyond the grave.

She only shook her head and said, "It is of no use, Renée; when Uncle Lucien speaks of France being now suffering the righteous judg ment of God for the open infidelity and irreligion she has hoisted as a banner since the dreadful days of '92, it all comes home to me. God is holy, and God is righteous; and though we are such puny things, he notices all our ways. I know he is angry with me. I feel it."

I could not comfort her. How can I? I know she already spends too much of her feeble strength in fasting and prayer. Times without number I have found her prostrate before the crucifix in her room. Oh! will this sorrow be a life-long one? Will Léon ever come back to us?

Nina's hope of tidings was based on the possibility of Augustine's meeting with German prisoners and wounded in the various ambulances. It is a very slight one. I must speak to him about it.

Mamma is not so well. Prices of things are already very high; great part of our income is dependent upon the interest of railway stock, in which most of our own and Uncle Lucien's property is invested. I fear, if the siege lasts much longer, we shall be actually short of money. True, there are Uncle Lucien's rents; but we have to pay so exorbitantly for common necessaries, still more for the delicacies that are requisite for mamma. Justine is almost frantic each time she goes to market. To-day the stall-keeper told her she must blame Bismarck, not her.

But every one seems to think the Army of the Loire cannot fail to be here in a few days. A carrier-pigeon has brought encouraging news from Tours, to which city the civil government was removed before the commencement of the siege. Uncle Lucien is on duty to-night on the ramparts. He says the National Guards are improving in drill and discipline, the Mobiles becoming good soldiers, and the sailors who man the forts splendid fellows; so there really seems no reason for despondency.

September 28.-Uncle Lucien came home to day in great spirits. He says 10,000 Prussians are hemmed in in the wood of Ville Juif; that it is evident the German force is weak, and that they dare not attack, as they keep resolutely under cover, and do not reply to the fire of our forts. It is said the Prussian soldiers are very unwilling to carry on the war, and that sentences of friendship and apology addressed to Frenchmen were found on the walls of houses they had evacuated. The papers are full of confidence; they say the people of London have risen en masse to compel the Queen of England to come to our help, and that the greatest admiration and sympathy is felt for Paris by foreign nations.

But I do not like the tone of the papers; even Uncle Lucien disapproved of some of the articles, in which Paris was compared to the Christ on the cross, and said to be, like God, immortal. He says it is to such profanity France owes the chastisement under which she is smarting. Under the Bourbon kings each regiment had its chaplain, each soldier could be religious. But all that is changed now. However, they did not seem much better in those days, only everything looks softened through the mists of time.

September 29.-Victor came home this morning full of hope and spirit. He was in the engagement of Ville Juif, but was not hurt. He could not remain long with us, his regiment being stationed outside. He thinks the silence and inactivity of the Prussians a ruse, and says the Government is wrong in not attacking them at once, as they are strengthening their positions daily. He told us that spies are taken almost hourly, and was full of anecdotes of ridiculous blunders that have been made. We have seen several people arrested in the streets ourselves. No one is now to be allowed to pass the gates, under penalty of being shot. We must not be fearful if he does not appear for a day or two, as it will not often be possible for him to leave his post. He has seen and questioned several German prisoners, but fears there is little hope of news of Léon reaching us. His visit was like a breath of fresh air and hope, as it always is; but our hearts are heavy for him, with the dull booming of the fort-guns ever reminding us that death is riding in the air. Dearest mamma's health and spirits are failing; she was very wearied to-day with just crossing the street into the Gardens, and she felt the air sharp and cold.

September 30.-There has been fighting going on to-day, but as yet we do not know the result. We are getting familiarized with the dull heavy boom of the guns, which at times seems to shake the very house, as though they were close at hand, at others is scarcely audible. But my mind has been less occupied with the fighting and Victor than with what Augustine told me this morning. He asked me to come with him into the Luxembourg Gardens, as he wished to speak to me alone. For a time we paced up and down the broad chestnut avenue in silence. Augustine's face was fixed and his eye averted, and I waited for him to begin to speak. At last he turned to me and said in short sharp accents, "Renée, I need not ask if you remember what I said to you the other night. Your eyes have never ceased to question and reprove me since. No; do not begin to excuse yourself,—you have a right to know. I know my conduct has long been a riddle to you. I have only allowed it to be so to save you pain, and-and-my mother. Yet now I do not see how I can do so longer. Renée,

I shall never be a priest. How can I tell my mother that? And yet until I do so I am living a lie! That at any rate I scorn." He paused, as though expecting an answer.

I could only stammer out, "O Augustine! why?-what is this?-what does it mean?"

"Why?" he answered slowly, with calm bitterness. "Because I cannot be the priest of a faith in which I do not believe. What is this? No hasty whim, no light fleeting fancy; but the mature result of long hours of wrestling and doubt, of agony and despair; and it means that two things lie before mee-a course of deception and trickery, from which my whole soul revolts, or the bringing down a crowning grief upon my mother's loving devoted heart, beneath which its few remaining beatings will be stilled."

And then he told me the history of the past two years. Did time and space permit I would not fully repeat it here, for the wedge whose point first entered Augustine's soul was but a single expression, a chance word dropped from the careless lips of an ecclesiastic upon whom he had looked as among the sainted ones of the earth. And knowing thus how vast a matter so small a force will move, I will not risk its entrance into other minds by giving it here. Suffice it to say, doubt, fear, disbelief did enter. Not lightly had his reluctant grasp let go the banner of the ancient faith of his fathers. But to a mind like his-meditative, penetrating, reasoning-to question was to analyze, and to analyze was to dis

more.

of the fathers of the Church, and waded through volumes of theological discussion and inquiry. He found only "muddy waters, darkened lights, broken harmonies." These are his own words. But now he says the mists of superstition, and the trammels of tradition and habit, have been swept from his heart and brain by the clear, steady light of reason, and he doubts no He believes nothing-only in a Deity above, a Creator-not a ruler, not a judge. The teachings of the Church-the immortality of the soul, purgatory, heaven, hell-he speaks of as myths invented by crafty, designing men for their own selfish end. Oh, it is too dreadful! I cannot write of it-Auguste, Auguste, my poor misguided brother-this is worse even than Léon's loss. For if those beautiful words in his letter were Protestant errors, he was no heretic, but a good and true Catholic. One thing is clearmamma must not know; it would kill her.

When Augustine had finished speaking, I sat stunned. The Gardens were almost empty, and we had seated ourselves under one of the great chestnut-trees; the ground was strewn with the ripe nuts gleaming ruddy brown through the pearly white lining of their spiky husks, and the sun poured down with golden brilliance through the amber-tinted leaves. I think I shall never see unpicked chestnuts again without a thought of that sorrowful hour.

After a time Augustine put his arm round me and drew me closely to him, murmuring tenderly, "My poor little sister! you must not grieve for this; I would not have distressed you now, but I could keep silence no longer." I burst into tears.

For a time he let me weep; then he said, "You see my difficulty now, Renée. I am no longer the victim of doubts and fears. I am a free man. I do not wish to disturb your faith as long as its chains are of flowers, not of iron as mine were. But I know it will be such a grief to poor mamma. She wrings my heart almost daily by speaking to me as to one whose rightful duty and office it is, before all others, to sympathize with her about things which to her are such holy, solemn, sacred realities; which to me are shadows, vapours, dreams! Renée, how shall I tell her ?"