"How much," exclaimed poor Rose, after finishing the letter-"how much he loved her! and how contemptuously he speaks of me!"

She remained for some time plunged in these bitter reflections-when perceiving the letter of her husband's friend still upon her knee, she was on the point of throwing it into the drawer without reading it-for nothing need be added, she thought, to the terrible letter of her husband. She changed her intention, however, and read the letter:

Many days rolled on without a reply-days | heroic effort. Clementine forever lost to me, which Rose passed a prey to conflicting emo- nothing remained but to obey my father; my tions. Sometimes she would thank Heaven that life, henceforward without purpose, might be she was the wife of a man of intelligence; some- useful to my brother-why should I refuse it to times, recalling to mind his treatment, she fell him? on my return I told my father I was ready into a profound chagrin, and felt herself humil- to obey him, and fifteen days after married iated in her dignity of wife even to the shedding Rose. I went to the altar as other men to the of copious tears. "It is because he is so far stake, with a calm resolution."......... above other men," she cried, "that he disdains me so much." Finally, one morning she received a letter bearing the post-mark of Paris. She broke it open with a trembling hand, for it appeared to her as decisive of her future fate. It was from her husband's friend, and contained besides one from Henri to him. She eagerly devoured the contents of the latter. It was a resumé by Henri of his thoughts and acts for the preceding twelve months or more. He depicted his quiet life at the chateau-his wanderings and reveries by the solitary streams or upon the "The melancholy revelations that your huslonely hillside; an intercourse with genial and band has made to me"-the friend says "will healing Nature that had effected his moral and complete your full comprehension of him, and intellectual recovery: he had not dared to re- prove to your mind that he has never acted the veal his sensations to his antipathetic family, part which has deceived you, as you have said, and had been obliged to assign as a pretext for with no little bitterness in the simplicity of your his frequent and protracted absences from home sixteen years. The morose, silent, unsociable a passionate desire for the chase. "My intellect youth of the chateau actually existed, and the underwent," he writes, "a complete transforma- exceptional circumstances in which your martion; the faculties which I had fatigued and ex-riage took place contributed to your great but hausted by too unremitting labor did not return not irreparable error." after my prostration by sickness; they might be called dried-up fountains from which nought could ever flow again, but at the same time, by an admirable compensation of Providence, unknown forces were accorded me, and my thoughts ran in a different current; a sentiment, confused at first, was followed by a distinct and rapid ar-tion was too great for her curiosity. ticulation; one day the form of my language changed, a revelation of the poetic spirit reached me, and I became a poet."

He went on to state how this life of dangerous reverie was suddenly interrupted and confounded by the apparition of Clementine; how passionately, insanely he loved her; how he lived only in her presence, or upon her souvenirs; and how cold, constrained, and even repelling was her manner toward him-so that at times he would fly her companionship and rush into the woods like a wounded wolf.

He concludes: "Most assuredly he is a poet, and a true poet. No one in Paris doubts that now, and it will not be long before every body at the chateau will think so too."

Rose did not undertake to divine the mysterious character of these last words-her emoThese let

ters flashed the whole implacable truth upon her soul, extenuating nothing, withholding nothing, but revealing to her at once both the immeasurable value of her husband's heart and the impassable abyss by which she was separated from it. The letter of his friend gave her no assurance-his encouragement to her to hope seemed naught but commonplace sympathy, and she threw the letter away in a sentiment of anger.

This friend, however-a true friend to her husband always-was not content to do onehalf the work of a proper understanding between the youthful couple. He wrote Henri at the same time, and urged him with the most stren

he had neglected and doubtless misunderstood; with her he would find his duty, forgetfulness of the past, and, as he believed, a calm and radiant future.

He then detailed the history of his marriage with Rose, "a young girl of fifteen or sixteen, whom I had hardly seen, and who seemed to me overflowing with common freshness of complex-uous exhortations to return to his wife, whom ion and untutored innocence." He tells his friend that he would not consent to marry her till his father had granted him a day for deliberation: "I wished to see Clementine to confess every thing to her, and learn my fate from her own mouth." That in the time accorded to him he had gone to Toulon, and, unseen by Clementine, had surprised her in a tête-à-tête with her cousin and lover; and had heard her, in the most heartless and mocking terms, ridicule his unbounded attachment for her.

"When I recovered from the shock," he writes, "I overcame myself by a violent and

VI.

The evening of the next day after Rose had received her letters, she was walking with her mother some distance from their house on the road to Toulon; they both were pensive and silent, arranging the future under the control of their fears or desires. Their preoccupation made them forget the growing lateness of the hour and the distance from home; night and

silence were around them; the moon was rising | Rose struck her foot against a stone, and came in the hushed sky, and her rays silvered the near falling. Henri caught her, and held her sombre foliage of the orange-tree. up by the armı.

Suddenly they started: the gallop of a horse was heard, evidently approaching them. The rider was urging his beast onward, and soon appeared at an angle of the road. By the light of the moon they distinguished the slender form and firm seat of the horseman.

"My God!" exclaimed Rose, hanging tremblingly to her mother's arm, "I believe thatI believe it is Henri!"

"Have you hurt yourself, Rose?" he asked. "No, thank you, Henri," she replied. They relapsed into silence, only Henri kept his wife's arm within his own; and they continued walking, pensive and mute, each thinking of the other, but neither daring to exchange a common thought.

In the mean time Henri looked at Rose, and found her quite changed from what she had

It was Henri indeed; and he was about pass-been. ing without seeing them, when Madame Lasere advanced into the middle of the road. The sudden apparition made the horse leap to one side. Henri controlled him, and looked to see what was the matter.

"Well, son-in-law," said Madame Lasere, "you would prefer to run me over than to see me!"

Henri immediately dismounted and saluted her respectfully. From a sentiment of timidity Rose had hid herself behind her mother.

But Madame Lasere unmasked her all at once. “Rose,” she said, “do you not welcome your husband home?"

Her whole countenance bore visible traces of the violent sensations by which her life had been shaken. She seemed to have grown quite thin; the magnificent freshness of her complexion, with which he had reproached her, had given way to that soft transparent paleness so charming in blondes.

Her hair, instead of being done up in flowing tresses, as she ordinarily wore it, was gathered up in short bands and negligently twisted behind her head. A slight swelling of the tracery of the blue veins running over the temples revealed a suppressed emotion. She walked slowly, with her eyes bent down, and with a

Rose stammered some words, and Henri, sur-languishing gait indicative of suffering. Seen prised at meeting her so suddenly, remained speechless.

To recover self-possession he offered his arm to the mother, and Rose clung to her other side like a frightened child. The horse, glad to have got rid of the spur, tranquilly followed his master, cropping the brushwood as he went along. For some minutes naught was heard but the sound of their feet upon the stones, and the jaws of the animal as he cropped the young sprouts.

They walked side by side, overcome by the embarrassment which the contrast of position with sentiments always produces. Their respective parts, apparently the most simple in the world, were in reality difficult and delicate. Each was silent, yet full of the desire to speak; and in this way they walked on till they came to a turn in the road, which led to Madame Lasere's residence, and where they found her carriage in waiting for her. Declining Henri's invitation to accompany them to their house, as she thought it much more politic to leave the young people alone, she bade them adieu and drove off.

thus, under the soft and sad rays of the moon, she resembled one of those beautiful angels of Andrea del Sarta descending against her will upon this world of misery and sorrow.

Henri was struck with a physiognomy so new to him; he believed he had never really seen Rose, and could not forbear looking at her, though unconscious of the great pleasure he took in the contemplation.

Rose, absorbed in her thoughts, did not perceive the attention of which she was the object; and while her husband was still looking at her, a tear, descending the whole length of her pale cheek, fell upon a spear of grass, where it shone for a moment like a rose-drop.

This mute tear moved the young poet's heart. "You weep, Rose," he said. "What is it that can trouble you? Is it my presence ?"

Her bosom rose as she heard his voice, but she remained silent.

"Answer me, dear Rose," he continued. "What is the matter? I am anxious to know the cause of your sorrow."

"There is nothing the matter with me, and I am most happy to see you," Rose at last said, The two remained all alone. For a long raising her large, dewy eyes to his face; and time they walked on, side by side, without even to demonstrate her satisfaction in seeing him looking at each other, each seeking a way of again, she pressed, though slightly, the arm bringing on a conversation. Their embarrass-upon which hers rested; then, as if ashamed ment was much increased by the departure of of too bold an act, she became suddenly red, Madame Lasere. They felt as if they were and for a moment her old color returned to near some solemn moment, and underwent that her countenance. mysterious and indefinable impression which almost invariably precedes the decisive acts of our lives. Cold and common phrases exchanged a month before between them had now become impossible.

Something so touching vibrated in her voice as she pronounced these few words—her look, her gesture were impressed with a grace so sweet, with a sentiment at the same time so timid and profound, that Henri felt troubled in

On entering the avenue of their residence his inmost soul.

"Why, then, do you weep?" he asked, affec-tered our house; come and sit near me, and let tionately.

What! you know!" cried Henri; "you, an early period among the Germans, Danes,

Rose! oh! no, it is impossible-who could have told you?"

serve the right; and the defeat in regular trial by battle of one accused of crime, was taken as positive proof of his guilt. Numerous instances must have occurred where the ends of justice were plainly defeated by the superior skill of a guilty combatant. But such accidental triumphs of guilt over innocence did little to shake the popular belief in the watchfulness of "The God of Battles;" and if an innocent person did suffer, why, there was the happy thought that the road from earth to heaven was a short and pleasant one to a good soul.

| last, after further painful entreaties, Henry condescended to accept the boon of a favorite's life; but it was too late now; the wretch bled to death before he could be removed from the field. Jarnac refused his right of triumphal procession, saying that he had gained all he fought for, namely, the re-establishment of his honor; whereupon Henry exclaimed, "that he fought like Cæsar, and spoke like Aristotle:" though for all that his kingly love and affection lay with the dead man. La Chasteneraye was only twenty-eight years old; but he was the What was the meaning of the word “honor" most expert swordsman in France, the best in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in wrestler, and the cleverest fencer; so skilled, inEngland and France, then the two most enlight-deed, in all these exercises that no one would ened nations of the earth, will be best shown by believe he could be conquered, and several fatal a few remarkable examples. duels were fought between those who knew and those who would not credit the result of the encounter.

One of the most noted of judicial combats was that between the French Counts Jarnac and De la Chasteneraye, in the time of Henry II. of France.

more.

The renowned Bayard had a fatal affair with the Spaniard Don Alonzo de Soto Mayor; whereby he got an infinitude of praise, because he delivered up the dead body to the seconds, and would not use it in any way of ignominy and scoff. His magnanimity was wonderful

La Chasteneraye accused Jarnac to Francis the First of improper conduct with his own mother-in-law. The King, who was much attached to Jarnac, repeated this accusation to him, willing to give him the power of refuting | ly belauded; such savage, ruthless, uncivilized it; for La Chasteneraye not only maintained fellows were even the heroes and nobles of his assertion, but swore that Jarnac himself had those dark and sanguinary times! But manconfessed the fact to him a dozen times and ners grew more humane as time went on; and Jarnac denied the whole charge with Charles the Ninth was the last king of France much vehemence, entreating the King's permis- who allowed or was present at a duel: the first sion to try the truth by single combat. Francis also who, by an ordinance dated fifteen hunat first consented to this; but afterward with- dred and sixty-six, prohibited the practice. A drew his consent, and in a short time he died. strange instance of humanity in the Saint BarAs soon as his successor, Henry the Second, tholomew murderer. But some remarkable ducame to the throne, Jarnac renewed his petition els took place meanwhile, chiefly in the reign for a single combat; which at last Henry grant- of Henry the Second. One was between Châed-he being on La Chasteneraye's side, as teauneuf, a minor, and his guardian LachesFrancis had been on Jarnac's; and, on the naye, an old man of eighty, concerning a lawtenth of June, fifteen hundred and forty-seven, suit touching the lad's property. As might be the King, the constable, the admiral, and the expected, Châteauneuf soon dispatched his feemarshals of France, together with the court and ble old antagonist, who accused him, by-the-by, nobility, assembled at St. Germain-en-Laye to of being secretly defended by a cuirass. A short witness this judicial combat. Jarnac, who had time after this, another youth, Saint André, just recovered from a sickness, was modest, quarreled and fought with Matas, an aged man, calm, and humble; La Chasteneraye was still who disarmed, lectured, and forgave him, when, somewhat weak in his sword-arm from a wound bidding him pick up his fallen sword and belately received, but was arrogant and insolent. have more rationally for the future, he was reThey attacked each other savagely, and were mounting his horse to ride away, when Saint soon both wounded. While La Chasteneraye André plunged his sword into his back, and left was making a furious lunge, Jarnac gave him him dead on the forest sward. The youth was that fatal coup which cut the ham of La Chas- not even rebuked at court for the murder; he teneraye's left leg, and, presently redoubling his had powerful friends; but Matas was blamed stroke, cut also the ham on the right. La for having provoked a fiery spirit by his reproof : Chasteneraye fell; and Jarnac offered him his Car Dieu s'en attriste (God is grieved), said life if he would confess that he had lied, and re- one, when the aged rebuke the generous young. store him his honor: the wounded man was si- Duprat, Baron de Vitaux, was one of the lent. Jarnac then turned to the King and be- most noted duelists, or, more properly speaksought him to accept the other's life for God's ing, murderers of his time. He began his sosake and love's; but the King refused. Poor cial life by killing his friend, Baron Soupez, who Jarnac, who did not wish to have the blood of had previously broken his hot pate by flinging his enemy on his soul, and had only fought to a candlestick at him. For this, Vitaux wayrestore to himself his lost repute, again entreat- laid and murdered him; then escaped, disguised ed La Chasteneraye to confess his error; but, as a woman. A gentleman, named Goumelieu, for all answer, he raised himself as well as he killed Vitaux's brother, a lad of fifteen: Vicould and cut at his generous adversary. At taux, accompanied by Boucicaut, a young no

Quélus and D'Entragues, two unworthy min-patched up after this, and Soeilles was beions of Henry the Third, fought near the Porte Saint Antoine. Riberac and Schomberg-a German-were the seconds to D'Entragues; Maugerin and Livaret to Quélus. When the two principals were engaged Riberac went up to Maugerin, proposing that a reconciliation should be effected.