for me. On the other hand, he is always wanting me to do something for him. Yesterday he must needs set me down all the morning to mending his great leathern shot-belt, which I did, indeed, so well that I managed, before I was through with that rough, unwonted work, to run the scissors into my finger, and hurt myself horribly. Edmond, before Felix even noticed it, was at my side. He turned quite pale when he saw the blood on my hand; and, throwing a glance of disapprobation on his brother, he left the room to look for some English sticking-plaster.

"But Felix, when he at last saw what was the matter, jumps up, and crying, "Nonsense! nonsense!" seizes hold of my finger, thrusts it between his lips, and sucks out the blood so hard that he makes me cry. Then, before I can stop him, he catches up the scissors (the instruments of my mishap), and cuts a great piece out of my cambric pocket-handkerchief, as if it were merely a rag of hospital lint. Therewith he bound up the wound tightly, and stopped the bleeding in a minute. I confess that I felt a pain at the heart when, a minute afterward, poor dear Edmond came back with the sticking-plaster, and found that there was nothing left him to do for me. Felix, in his rough way, had done every thing.

""Tis a trifle, this. But-well, I hardly know why, Theresa, and yet I have noticed that on these occasions mother shakes her head and steals a furtive, unquiet look at Edmond, as he sits beside us, so quiet, so self-involved."

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Like this, there are many other letters from Juliet interspersed among the leaves of Edmond's journal. The dates run on to the middle of August. I do not give them all. The selection which I make is enough to throw sufficient light on the interior of these three hearts, happily yet unconscious of the precipice to which an unseen hand was slowly leading them down.

CHAPTER IV.

STRAWS UPON THE STREAM.

EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF COUNT EDMOND R. "20th July, 1814.

"THE Idea which man calls GOD only exists within the consciousness of man himself. Though we should take the wings of the morning and fly to the uttermost parts of the earth, yet we can find nothing there which we have not carried with us. Whether we scale the heights or sound the depths, mount up into Heaven or go down into Hell, we are equally unable to travel out of our own thought, or attain to any point of space beyond the reach of it. Nay, Space itself and Time are not things, nor even the qualities of things. They are only our manner of thinking of things; the modes and conditions of our consciousness. We are not the masterpieces of a Supreme Being who has formed us in his own image, but our idea of such a Being we have formed in the image of ourselves. We do not resemble him; he resembles us.

The action of all natural forces is spontaneous, selfimpelled, independent, and obedient only to the laws of creation. Attraction and repulsion, centripetal and centrifugal force: these are the determining poles of movement. They are the same under every denomination. The conditions of union and disunion are re

moved from our control within the centres of the inevitable forces that join and part. No extraneous power prohibits such and such a union. No extraneous power necessitates such and such another. These two principles are their own employers. The cause of their activity is in themselves. They create and destroy at their will and pleasure. In the nature of man the action of them is spiritual, as in the nature of the inorganic world it is material. This is the only difference I can discover. *

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"Hence this lacerating conflict in our own bosoms. We are the battle-fields, only, if forces we do not command. Armies whose leaders are to us unknown; powers we can neither summon nor dismiss, are camped upon the brain and tented in the veins of men. The war is theirs, not ours. We are the spectators of ourselves, not the lords. We are conscious where the conflict is waged. It shakes us at the most solitary outposts of thought, we are convulsed by it in the most central abysses of sensation, but nothing of it is our own save the ravage and the

pang. And man fancies that he is something great because something great is taking place within him.

So the sun-dial measured out the course of the world from hour to hour, and it imagined itself to be Time, and it dreamed that it was destined to become the compeer of Eternity. But a little cloud was blown across the sun, and the dial awoke from its dream of Time and Eternity, and relapsed into-Nothingness.

"As little as the dial could command the sun, can man command the mind in nature, of which he is the index; if he dares to think himself more-the dupe.

I

To no force within ourselves or others have we power to say, 'Be thou thus, and not otherwise; pass thou here, and not elsewhere.' In no one soul can the fiery effort of its intensest forces avail to strike from the soul of another the spark that lights, and warms, and kindles-love.

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"Machine or chaos? Behold the conditions of our being. Is the choice between them always ours?"

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JULIET TO THERESA.

"21st July, 1814.

"Because in my letters I speak so much of them, you think it necessary to warn me, my Theresa? Dear, you misjudge. Both of them together are not dangerous to my repose. Either of them, without the other, might be so. Poised between these two hearts, the balance of my own is undisturbed. I am at peace because I am in my place. My life is the necessary complement of theirs. We three are one. Two of us, without the other, would be but the moiety of a maimed individuality. Quite alone, I think no one of us three could exist. Felix and I are creatures to whom happiness is an instinct of nature rather than a consequence of conduct. We act more from tendency than intention. Edmond is both our measure and our goal. Toward him we move, and by him our movement is controlled.

"He perhaps, and he only of us three, could exist alone; for his is the self-sufficing spirit, and his char