fever, that Count Bismarck is anxious to treat, but that the stubborn old king refuses. The Prussians are deserting in large numbers daily, and bring accounts of the greatest disaffection, misery, and hunger prevailing in the Prussian camp. A despatch has been received from Gambetta saying the provinces are rising en masse. The troops in Paris are all ready to co-operate with the Loire army, whose arrival is expected daily,-250,000 have already arrived at Rouen. So I suppose the end will be soon. We await it with throbbing, sinking hearts.

October 13.-Alas! I fear all the bright hopes we cherished yesterday are illusions, like so many that have gone before. Victor came home for an hour or two to-day. He and Augustine agree that our position daily becomes more critical. The Prussians are working hard: daily, hourly, fresh links are forged to the iron chain that binds us in. Victor is eager for action. He says it is now or never, and that the armies of the provinces are myths, and trust in the intervention of foreign powers a delusion. The newspaper stories are false, and the Government know them to be so. News of a battle being fought at Châtillon was brought, and Victor hurried away.

October 14.—General Ducrot's reconnaissance was successful yesterday,-100 prisoners were brought in, but our troops had to retire before the concentrated forces of the enemy, and nothing seems really gained. The same old story. If Léon lives how his heart will ache for us, tossed to and fro at the meeting of the streams of hope and despair. Mamma grows frailer and weaker each day, and Nina is the shadow of her former self. I have not seen my little English friend again. Mamma scarcely leaves her sofa now; still I have gone into the Gardens each day about the hour the mother and child usually walked there, but they never come. Perhaps they have left. I have heard of permission being sought for several foreigners to leave the city, but have not yet heard that they have done so. I cannot understand the deep interest I feel in the stranger child, and the strong longing I feel to meet her once more. Yet it is very unlikely I ever shall.

October 15.-To-day Nina and I went to the Faubourg St. Germain to visit poor Adèle Brandt.

| Until yesterday we supposed she had left the city with her husband, young Hermann Brandt, whose German name procured him an order to leave the city in the rage against everything and every one of Teutonic origin that prevailed after Wörth, still more after Sedan. He was not born in Paris, but had resided here from early childhood; his habits, tastes, and associations were French. On the breaking out of the war, no thought of joining the ranks of the Fatherland occurred to him; the penalty of banishment for a term of years, decreed against those who failed to do so, was no punishment to him. But his name and lineage were German, and public opinion obliged him to depart soon after Sedan. He went to England, leaving, we now know, his | fair young bride of less than a year behind him.

Adèle Blanchard had been a friend of Nina's and a pet of mine before her marriage. She was but eighteen; an only and idolized child, even her marriage had not separated her from her mother. The young couple had taken up their abode in the old roomy mansion of her parents. When the fatal hour of separation arrived, poor Adèle's girlish heart was rent in twain with the strife of parting-the inevitable severance of one bond or other. Husband or parent must be left. Weak, delicate, timid, soon specially to need a mother's care, she chose the former. The siege, it was thought, could not last long; after it she would be able to rejoin her husband, or he return to her. So the young husband went alone to his exile, and the girl-wife remained in her old home. And I fear, when the iron barrier of the German host is at last removed, one mightier and higher, raised by a deadlier foe, will have grown up between those loving hearts. Death! Yes. Bitter self-reproach, and sorrowful longing, and anxious dread, have worn the silver cord of that frail young life so thin that the strain of her coming time of trial can scarcely fail to snap And they were so young, so happy!

it.

Day by day we are called upon to track the seared marks of war's fiery footsteps on other hearts and in other homes beside our own. Oh! for a St. Geneviève whose pure outstretched hands and holy upraised eyes might win for us a deliverance and victory other than that for which we wait now-a salvation won from Heaven by

October 16.-Another dreary day has dragged its slow long hours away, and there is yet no change. It almost seems as if the sharp pangs of storm and assault were better than this protracted agony of waiting. Many thought on Friday, the anniversary of Jena, the blow would have been struck by the revengeful foe; but still our forts fire, and no answer comes from the mute batteries on the opposite heights. The people are impatient to attack, but the Government holds back. It is said that a band of Amazons is forming: there seems to me other work for women in these sad days; and there are men enough, but even brave men and true are not necessarily soldiers. The Mobiles are reported to have behaved with great coolness and courage the other day at Clamart and Bagneux. I fear there is already great distress among the poor, but steps are being taken by the Government for their relief.

Augustine spent this evening with us. Neither of us has referred to our conversation that day in the Luxembourg-he has not, and I cannot. Gentle and kind as he is, there is in him that kind of reserve that, without conscious effort or intention, repels intrusion into his thoughts and confidence; at least I have always felt it so. With Léon it was so different: I never feared to offer him either confidence or sympathy.

Augustine has seen much sorrow and suffering these last days: some harrowing tales he told me make me ashamed of my own repining and depression; for after all, we have only one missing, and he as yet missing--not, we may at least hope, utterly lost.

Yesterday Colonel Loyd Lindsay arrived from England, bringing the generous gift of £20,000 for the sick and wounded from the noble-hearted British people. Sometimes I think it would be better for Nina, pale and delicate as she is, to be employed as she wished, in tending the sufferers in the ambulances, of which there are several quite near to us. I think it would in measure keep her mind from dwelling with such morbid bitterness on the past, with such sickness of dread on the revelation hid in the dim mists of the future. She seems little fit for such dreadful work, but I am really afraid she will sink under this long

of it to mamma, she was so distressed at the thought of her fragile frame being further taxed, that I could not press it. Dear Nina, she seldom, very seldom speaks of Léon; but she sits and listens while mamma and I recall precious memories of his goodness, and tenderness, and wisdom, drinking in every word, like some poor crushed flower the softly-falling evening dew. Oh! it seems as if, could I see her once folded in Léon's protecting arms, my dearest earthly wish would be fulfilled! Yet mamma, Augustine, Victor, all so precious, and so much to be desired for each.

For Uncle Lucien, I think, there is little danger. The National Guards man the ramparts, and until the Prussian fire opens, or an attack is made, that post is one of comparative safety. And if piety and devotion give claim to the special protection of the patron saints of Paris and of France-St. Geneviève and the Blessed Virgin-he may well bear a charmed life. There are few such good Catholics in these degenerate days in the land once proud to bear the title of eldest daughter of the Church.

October 17.-It seems generally acknowledged now that the assault and bombardment which, like the sword of Damocles, hung, or was supposed to hang, over our devoted city each day, and specially each night, will not take place. Either the Prussians have not succeeded in bringing those enormous Krupp guns, of which so much has been spoken, whose huge bulk and boasted range excited so much interest and attention when they stood in the foremost place so courteously allotted them in our gorgeous exhibition palace, or they must have yielded to the opinion of Europe, and relinquished so barbarous a plan. It is surely impossible that Paris, the gathering-place of all that is beautiful and refined, could possibly be exposed to the horror and havoc of a bombardment. But we once thought it equally impossible that she would be besieged.

October 18.-It is a month to-day since the siege commenced-only a month! and as yet there seems no prospect of immediate end. I am vexed with myself that I cannot feel more heroic, more patriotic; but I am only a woman, and in a

place. Each day mamma grows frailer, weaker; each day Nina's sad face becomes paler and more And what is the honour of France to me against these?

worn.

And will it be to the honour of France, this long weary struggle against overwhelming odds? I sit and listen to the conversation that passes when visitors are here,-almost all gentlemen, their wives and children have been sent away to watering-places or distant parts of the country,and my head grows giddy with trying to reconcile conflicting opinions. We are an impressionable race, we French, and our spirits rise and fall with every variation in the aspect of things. When I hear men speak of the honour and fame of France, of the ties that bind us to her, the duty we owe her, the humiliation she has suffered, my heart bounds high, and I feel as if I could be heroic, and sacrifice everything on the altar of my beloved country. But then others see only folly and the madness of despair in our attitude, at which, the journals tell us, all the world wonders. Others take a middle course, and while sorrowfully admitting the bitter necessity that rests upon us now to continue the strife, mournfully deplore that necessity, and painfully watch for the inevitable end. If only we could know the truth; but we have been so often deceived. Would that the Government would treat us, not as children, to be soothed and quieted by sugar-plums, or treated with gilded pills, but as reasonable men and women.

But perhaps, after all, we do not care to know the truth. Why else do we so readily believe what we wish, even after all our bitter experience? Nothing seems too great for our credibility. Some of the people even believe in a tunnel by which communication is kept up with the city and provisions and herds sent in!

October 19.-This morning, going into Nina's room at an unusually early hour in search of a remedy for Arnaud, who was crying with toothache, I found her stretched senseless on the floor before the little altar she has placed in the recess which she uses as an oratory. The wax tapers she had lighted had burned down to their sockets, and the gray light of the early dawn alone revealed her prostrate figure. I raised her in great

"My darling! how was it?" I asked. And then she told me what makes me feel more than ever the strong necessity of, as far as possible, diverting her mind from the one dark remembrance and the haunting anxiety that are pressing out her very life. Thoughts of Léon wounded, captive, suffering, grieving over her slight and scorn and unkindness in long hours of weariness and pain, or of a mangled form lying cold under the blood-stained sod of the battle-field so fatal to France, of a spirit wailing in the fiery pangs of purgatory, burn into her heart and brain incessantly; and sometimes of a meeting in which a stern, sorrowful face will turn coldly from one that was once averted from its pleading tenderness in heartless caprice. And she owns that midnight, and often early morning, find her kneeling before that picture of the Mother of Sorrows with the pierced heart, imploring her intercession for Léon, living or dead, and for pardon for her own sinful tempers past and present. We see little of them now, except sometimes in an irritability which we know to be the result of overstrained nerves and heart. But to her morbidly excited imagination every pettish word, every hasty and impatient thought or feeling, seems a deadly sin, capable of bringing down upon her and those with whom her life is bound up heavy blows of the avenging rod. She cannot now bear Victor's irrepressible fun and lightness of heart, only a little less exuberant than of old, and sometimes shows her pain in hasty words and deeds. And she fears God will punish her by taking Victor from us too. This is dreadful. Last night exhausted nature had given way, and she had fainted. Something must be done. But what? My poor, poor Nina! Her spirit is so sensitive, her nature so deep. Surely my fault was little less than hers. This may well be a

life-lesson against yielding to the impatient impulse of angry feeling. Had I not given way to resentful and bitter thoughts that unhappy day, all might have been different now.

October 20.-The event of to-day to us is the news brought by Augustine that a dear friend of Léon's a German-is lying wounded at the Central Ambulance. He received a severe bayonet thrust at Ville Juif a month ago, and has been ever since in the ambulance, but in a different ward from the one for more recent cases, in which Augustine has been chiefly engaged, and it was not till yesterday that the recognition took place. Augustine chanced to be addressed by name by one of the nurses near the pallet of a young Bavarian to whom he had before spoken several times. When he next turned towards him the latter beckoned to him, and surprised him by asking if he was any relation to the young Count Léon de Laborde, who spent some weeks in Munich little more than a year ago. Explanations followed, and the wounded soldier proved to be the son of a family from which Léon had received the greatest kindness during a short but severe attack of fever when he was in that city. Madame Erhardt had nursed him with motherly care and kindness, and their house had been his home after he had been sufficiently recovered to be removed from the hotel in which he had fallen ill. Karl Erhardt, the second son, and he had formed a warm friendship, which had been kept up by correspondence until the commencement of the war. And now Léon's friend and the son of his kind and gentle nurse was a captive and a sufferer amongst us. Of course, we all felt at once that whatever could be done to discharge the debt of gratitude we owed to him and his, must be done. He is on the convalescent list now, though his sufferings have been severe, and he will probably soon be released on parole. Mamma wishes that he should come here, and we all feel it would be only right, though it may possibly cause us some unpleasantness. So tomorrow, when Uncle Lucien returns from the ramparts, he is to take me to the Palais de l'Industrie and see how matters can be arranged. Poor Nina's wistful eye and changing colour spoke, to me at least, the question she shrank from putting into words. So I asked. No, the

young officer knew nothing of Léon, Augustine said. It was not likely.

October 21.-I went to-day to the Central Ambulance, and saw Karl Erhardt. Other sights I saw too, sights that have left my heart sick and sorrowful. It was my first visit to an ambu lance, it should not have been, with my health and strength, had I been able to leave mamma,and the pale, crippled, bandaged men moving feebly and painfully about the corridors and staircases, the long rows of beds, from which hollow eyes looked mournfully out of worn, wasted, suffering faces, were of themselves enough. But there was more. There had been fighting at Malmaison, and the wounded were being brought in. Ghastly, blood-stained, groaning figures were being lifted from an ambulance waggon as we entered; the hall was full of them; the broad staircase up which we passed crimsoned with freshly-shed blood; and in one room, covered with cloaks or rugs, rows of still, rigid forms!

Uncle Lucien led me quickly on, and before I could recover the overpowering agitation, I found myself face to face with Léon's friend. That he was such was all I remembered then. I did not think of him as German or foe, only as of one Léon loved, and who returned his warm friendship. At first I could scarcely see; and when the young German took my silently offered hand and said, "This is very kind, Mademoiselle de Laborde, but I fear it is too much for you," I fairly broke down, and burst into tears. Lucien gave me a seat, and conversed with Lieutenant Erhardt while I recovered my composure.

Uncle

My uncle was kind and courteous, as no true French gentleman can fail to be; and prepossessed in his favour as we were, it was impossible not to be taken with the frank young soldier. His face was pale, and bore traces of much suffering, but his dark, brilliant eyes were full of life and pleasure, his manner animated and winning. To our proposal that he should take up his quarters. with us when he should be able to leave the ambulance, he gave a most cordial and grateful consent. He hoped, he said, to obtain his release by exchange: he had an uncle who held a high position in the Crown Prince's army, who would, he had no doubt, accomplish this when he knew of his captivity. He had fallen far in the French

lines, and thought it most probable that he was supposed to be dead by his comrades.-"So my parents and friends are sorrowing for me, as you and yours are for poor Léon, mademoiselle," he said, with a dim mist passing over his bright eyes; and with those words our spirits fraternized.

He spoke so tenderly and highly of Léon, but, alas! I can see he thinks there is little chance of his having survived the terrible day of Sedan. He knows his regiment to have been decimated in one of those last desperate charges, and though what was left of it went into Germany, it was without officers. If he obtains his release, he will use every effort to ascertain the truth. He thanked us warmly for our generous kindness when Uncle Lucien, after hearing the doctor had pronounced him sufficiently recovered to leave in two or three days, promised to obtain an authorization billeting him upon us.

I came home more inclined to "individualize" the war than before. This warm-hearted, highspirited, right-minded young man is one of the host whom we class as "Prussians," to whatever

nationality they belong; and so was he of whom Léon speaks in that last letter. And we call them Goths and Vandals, Huns and Pandours-brutes and barbarians! The mass does not answer to the sample, certainly, if one-tenth of what we hear of the Prussians-officers even-be true,

October 22.-To-day brought no event, but a short visit from Victor. He thinks we are right about Karl Erhardt, and intended calling to see him and Augustine as he passes on his way back to his post at Neuilly. Dear Victor, our glimpses of his bright young face are brief and few now. The reconnaissance at Malmaison produced no results, as usual; except those I saw-and those, alas! are usual too.

Victor is scarcely tolerant of the name of Ducrot. That general's letter to General Trochu, justifying his evasion at Pont à Mousson, has not satisfied him; nor, I think, any really generous and high-minded person. If the obligation of actual possession of a safe-conduct no longer existed, certainly a moral one remained. And that is, I think, the general feeling. He is not "white-washed" in the eyes of most officers.

E have seen that the companions of Jesus wrote the books of the New Testament that their statements of the existence, worship, morals, and faith of the Christian Church are confirmed by their enemies, and that multitudes of heathens were turned from vice to virtue by the belief of the testimony of these men-they testified that Jesus Christ did many wonderful miracles-died for our sins, and rose again from the dead-that they saw, and heard, and felt his body, and ate, and drank, and conversed with him for forty days after his resurrection that he ascended up to heaven in their sight— that he sent them to tell the world that he will come again in the clouds of heaven, with his mighty angels, to judge the living and the dead-that he who believes these things and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned. This is their statement. The question is, Can we believe them?

1. The first thing which strikes us in their testimony is, that it stands out utterly different from all other religions. There is nothing in the world like it, not even its counterfeits. The great central fact of Christianity that Christ died for our sins, and rose again from the dead-stands absolutely alone in the history of religions. The priests of Baal, Brahma, or Jupiter, never dreamed of such a thing. The prophets of Mohammedanism, Mormonism, or Pantheism, have never attempted to imitate it. The great object of all counterfeit Christians is to deny it.

There is no instance in the whole world's history of any other religion ever producing the same effects. We demand any other instance of men, destitute of wealth, arms, power, and learning, converting multitudes of lying, lustful, murdering idolaters, into honest, peaceable, virtuous Christians, simply by prayer and preaching. When the infidel tells us of the rapid spread of