fruitless life had come to an end. The baronet was awoke only by the rustling entrance of Mrs Mason to pour out the chocolate-Mr Thorpe's awkward haste to set her chair-the bringing in of wax-lights-the pause before grace was said, with the tutor's devout formality. The evening talk was as duly closed by Mr Thorpe's reading of the appointed prayers-another advantage never gained by Lady Willoughby till their departure abroad required a tutor.

As if there were not strange noises dying far and wide through the city, till across the river could be heard the great clock of the Invalides. As if the atmosphere of the world were not at that hour infected with inscrutable sympathies and mysterious desires; which gathered in Paris, as after long heat that malady of the air, felt keenly by the lower creatures: so that it might have been working vaguely even with Sir Godfrey. And as if,

though clouded and stagnant, even well-nigh lost, the judgment of the departed might not have exercised some acute thought-deeper even than the sharpest lawyer could track it.

So quiet, after prayers, was the outer night over the bare roofs, and lights, and distant pinnacles of the city-the glimpse of the river, the lamps on the bridge, the trees of the Champ de Mars-and so wide with its floating films of fair May-cloud, softening the few stars-that Rose Willoughby shaded her candle to peep out at it, lifting the blind, and putting her face close to the window-glass, after she had said her prayers, and was half ready to go to bed. Listening to Mrs Mason's steps in the next room, extinguisher in hand, lest her door should suddenly be opened to that lady's most indignant surprise-Rose thought still of to-morrow's drive toward Versailles.

Pleasant was it, on that bright hot morning, to escape at last from Paris altogether. Sir Godfrey, indeed, remained at home to write his letters, with the purpose of riding out to meet them on their return: and Mr Thorpe, on horseback, with charge of the magic passports, was the sole cavalier; shrewdly overseen, doubtless, by the hard-eyed, rough-visaged, experienced Jackson, to whose sturdy driving there lay no perplexity about those great, straight, formal French roads, with staring guide-posts and swarms of Parisian people.

Soon, in fact, does the grand road towards Versailles sweep away from sight of Paris in its wide basin, among avenues and closing woods. With no lanes, nor secluded cross-ways, save to towns, it was harder to leave behind the Parisian people; and they soon heard that Versailles was strip

Athalie.

ped of its glory, so far as they were concerned, since nothing was doing there that day; the king had gone to Marly, or Fontainebleau, instead of passing in state to the Assembly, as had been expected from the journals. Much to the relief, it must have been, of Lady Willoughby, who disliked crowds and pressures of people, with the bustle and the dust; and to whom foreign kings and queens had but a dim, half-chimerical reality, after all, compared with the accustomed Georges, whose power and royalty were interwoven with any thoughts she had of public life; yet she appeared as much vexed as it was possible for her to be, proposing still to go on and see the outside of the palace, the fountains, or the remaining courtiers, the "houses of parliament," which perhaps might be worth the pains. But these Charles disdained till another

day, when the king should have returned-being even set against the remotest view of the town, its very smoke or spires; and, out of his father's presence, Charles was always, by some peculiar force of his, indirectly master. His sister Rose, though the expedition had been fondly planned, nor did his arguments seem worth answering, too well knew the issue not to be resigned; while her governess, referred to as a matter of course, expressed as duly an entire acquiescence in any arrangement most satisfactory to Lady Willoughby, preserving an intense calm, and seeming to observe the various objects as their course was changed, the leaves of the trees, the tops of palisades, the very hats of market-people, with strange elevation of countenance, and with an air of suffering which required her vinaigrette. Even Jackson, who had a great share of the selfishness of privileged old servants, and greatly consulted his own personal ease, ventured to console his mistress, turning round and touching his hat, to remark that it was a long drive after all, and they would have had to put up at the town to bait these Flanders beasts-he carefully abstained from calling them horses —which it might cost a deal of trouble, as these French inns very likely had no stables; the inward satisfaction of Jackson, indeed, somewhat belied his rueful effort to look grieved. All-appeared disappointed, save the tutor, ever fain to be serviceable, if seldom very successful where the office was of the present kind. Yet that day Mr Thorpe was excelling himself, now riding on, or now remaining behind, always for some object; nor was it long ere he came posting back, his plain, ineffectual features animated, and his mild short-sighted blue eyes shining moist through the thin-framed spectacles which enlarged them, to mention that they were close to Sèvres, where the royal porcelain was made. And at Sèvres, with its quaint old village houses, and its bridge across the Seine to another village, seeing what could be seen of its manufactory, its water-mill where the clay was ground, or its woody island amidst the river, the earlier part of the day was spent. Then turning to make a wide circuit into the Versailles road again, where

the afternoon was to bring Sir Godfrey, the carriage passed at leisure through the quieter country that slopes and rolls westward from the Seine.

It was scarce country, indeed, where no hedgerows seemed to break up the wide spaces, no field-gates or clustered farms, nor half-sequestered hamlets, with the sprinkling on of solitary cottage and quiet house toward the next, where the church spire should rise, or tower; but sometimes with no division from the wide crops, save the lines of bushy pollards, they rolled over the paved roadway; again between continual park walls or wooden palisade, from which suddenly it would burst on the space about a large square village, with its cabaret and sign-board of the Lion d'or or d'argent, its old fountain-well, and double row of trees, noisy, and alive with children, while another road brought through it the market-life from Paris. Though over the nearest wood would peep the white turrets of chateaus, peaked with purple slate, or tin, or gilding, like chandeliers extinguished in the light of day; and near to them were the little stunted churches, with their rounded ends, the squat towers that had lids to them like pots and vases, or the mean belfries perched on the roofs; where the churchyard was blooming with flowers that made its cypresses and yews look gloomier, and the small lonely curacy near it, showing the cross on some wide gable, had an air of pious seclusion from the world. And still the parks spread round; the woods, with formal alleys striking through them, widened and surged outward, downward, into vale and over height; sometimes opening to let the high-road pass on with its vehicles and pedestrians, or the traffic that seemed greater for its confinement,-oftener to show the terraces and bowers of still nobler mansions than before, till the country appeared fading away. They had forgotten their forenoon disappointment: the girl's eyes sparkled as the sweet sense of being out of Paris grew, in spite of all it held in it; placid, tranquil, her mother leant opposite, while she breathed the freshness, enjoying the mere motion, and the vague variety as she heard it noticed, on pure trust, pleased at what pleased the othersit was not like England, indeed, but

how pure and exhilarating seemed the French air-its sun gave a still sleepier stillness to her mild eyes, yet with so healthy a tint and soft fulness of person, that the holding of her parasol, in Lady Willoughby, the trouble she took to observe an object, were pleasant to see; as Mr Thorpe, riding by, devoted his conversation to the governess and her; the while Charles, still in a discontented mood, vented it on the whole country, and leaning across to his sister, one elbow on his knee, kept up his side-current of livelier talk.

For one thing, their constant popularity displeased him, however acceptable to Rose. That national sharpness and curiosity had all at once become particularly disagreeable to the youth, in his grumbling humour; and it mingled through the whole thread of his discourse, not without some acute notions of the people's character, on which he appeared to have been oddly brooding. Nor the less was his zest in showing that France and England were natural foes, because his tutor on the other side rode discoursing benevolently to the reverse effect; while Mrs Mason responded, in all that propriety of sentiment, which was blended, in her dialogue to gentlemen, with a slight shade of delicate reserve. But really there was a domineering style of argument in Charles, if one ventured to express a different view, that provoked his sister in the endespecially as he was a year younger; she turned her shoulder to him, and sat resolutely looking the other way, as if absorbed in the mild commonplaces of Mr Thorpe, and Mrs Mason's weary platitudes, which diffused such additional complacency over her mother. After all, they were tiresome things, such as all good books and worthy people said over and over; though Charles had no right to look down on his tutor with such secret contempt, because he knew nothing of what Charles called "life" -or to hint, because he looked serious, that his mind had got bewildered among triangles ever since he studied so terribly for a degree, leaving out nothing but his memory: perhaps, indeed, it might be true that Mrs Mason, in spite of her early loss of some inestimable kind, had a sort

of soft regard for him, and paid him little attentions, especially at table, with the sugar,-though moderately, till the curacy at Stoke should be sure; but what she would not for a moment be so disrespectful to Mr Thorpe as to credit, was that a hopeless love, never to be revealed, consumed him, amidst all his learning, for -for herself. Her indignation mounted at the thought,-for a moment even at the excellent tutor, so highly respected by Sir Godfrey, with his thin hair already leaving his forehead bald, through long delay of any preferment-whose sister was his only relative alive, and was to keep his house when he had one, but most to Charles, with his rough boy's jokes ; even although the girl's thoughts wandered the more irresistibly to foreign counts and picturesque barons that had hovered in vision before the whole boarding-school, being now eagerly inquired after by her dearest friend, who was still there.

There were none of these, certainly, about the highway which the carriage struck into, alive though it was with people of every kind. Charles had ceased, at his mother's unusually earnest request, to whistle indistinctly between his teeth, as it was of all sounds the one that most annoyed her; he had even left off, of his own accord, the substitution of a drumming motion with a small cane against his boot, as he superciliously noticed the passengers. He got quite silent, in fact, to watch the passing faces that seemed bent towards Paris; though the faint smoke of another large village appeared in the hollow, prettier than any they had passed, among inclining vineyards and whole knolls of roses. It might have been St Genevieve's own, with that holy well resorted to by kings, where she had kept her sheep long ago; and where, at the May fête of la rosière, they still crowned the most virtuous girl in the place with roses; as the last work of Madame de Genlis had informed Mrs Mason. The summer afternoon sloped wide above it, full of light and the swarming hum of insects, through the outspread walnut leaves, flickering amber in the sun, from over the white wall that was dappled by the shadows; while

the hedgeless corn-fields on the other side were rippling under the long air from the woods, one sea of tenderest green, full of blue-cockle flowers and scarlet poppies; the cottage casements flashed from amidst a pinkwhite glow of orchard - blossom, of milky cherry-boughs, of old rugged propped-up pear-trees that foamed over to the moss-green thatch, with the wooden chimney shot high, as it breathed blue among the leaves; with here and there a hooded dovecot window on the roof, where the pigeons sat sunning and swelling themselves, and cooing, white, blue, and purple together, in a gush of warm lightall the place beneath them bespattered and splashed with whiteness, through the shadow, to the very foliage of the nearest branch. The hum of the place burst round them as they crossed its little bridge, rattling over the rough causeway; and there were no carriage-ways save through the villages and towns.

It was odd that for some time along the road, as if to meet the lad's inclinations, the notice of them had been unaccompanied with signs of interest; every one had seemed occupied with his neighbour, talking, or hastening on somewhere; the voices had even grown suppressed as they passed. Here they were busier still, and talking louder, in a perfect babble of sounds. It was wonderful, at least to Charles Willoughby in his private mind, how the cobblers lived-the weavers, blacksmiths, or carpenters, found time to work; how the mill wheel had a hand to feed it, or the women to mind their matters; they were letting their pitchers run over, in fact, at the old carved fountainspout, till there was a little brook across the street, down into some one's door-steps, and a duck that seemed comparatively quiet began to lead her troop of ducklings that way. The French infants even, held plainly enough here and there, in full sunlight, to their slatternly feeding-places, looked dissatisfied as the throng pressed about the doorway of a cabaret, with the sign of the Golden Crown: a horse stood by it with foam-flecked sides, and his head stooped in its corn-bag; while a man in a green jacket, with a leather case

slung across him by a belt, apparently a courier, gesticulated in vain from the open window; the door being blocked up by a drunk dragoon, who stood swaying slightly to and fro, yet balancing himself carefully, as he surveyed the various groups from his half-closed eyelids with extreme sternness and grave suspicion; till at length drawing himself up, to extend his hand with a summons for attention, he essayed to speak; but all at once rushed forward with furious gesture amongst the crowd, where he fell flat from the steps. The blood gushed from his features, women shrieking, men running, without a glance behind, as the landlord hurried to his aid from the tavern, followed by more dragoons, who stamped their spurred feet upon the steps, and half drew their sabres, with fierce gestures and execrations. Yet as the carriage passed on through the narrow and awkward street, however slowly, it did not attract attention from any of the party except Charles, who preserved a seemingly sullen silence; not distracted by so much as a look to his sister, when her governess said there must be something improper going on, and sloped her parasol that way, using a scented handkerchief, with evident desire that the young lady should do the same; while his mother had no more suspicion of its not being common to villages all over the world, possibly on a market-day, than a duchess. The tutor was, as usual, on before, with his little note-book, to put down the name of the place, the probable population, and apparent area of the church, according to some dim theory that had been growing on him since he crossed the Channel. As for Jackson, he merely whipped his horses, and made a slash at some dogs, with obvious inclination to curse whatever came in his way. So they rolled through by degrees in sight of the church; but there was a greater throng at that end, in and about the low-walled enclosure before a smart new building, the use of which was not plain at first sight; for considering the size of the place, with the general squalidness of the long cottages or bald white houses, really the number of people of all ages was extraordinary, till one observed that single

roofs seemed shared among ever so many families,-a thing the odder to the lad, as at school he used to know plenty of Eton folks, from bargemen to bat-maker. He even thought, somehow, of that one visit to Stoke. Oh! that was the school-the first he happened to have seen in France; and that youngish man, in an old figured dressing-gown, with a sharp dry face, standing up on something, without a hat-the schoolmaster; while they pushed and jumped to hear him, though quietly enough except for the hushing of each other, since the schoolmaster had evidently a weak voice; it only reached the carriage in an occasional screech, when he lifted his hand impressively in the air. "Ecoutez-ecoutez, au Père Pierre!" This Père Pierre must be rather an odd fellow; why, his school was in a perfect riot within, to judge by the dust, the flying books, and the noise sometimes louder than his voice outside. But he was not making a speech-the white article he held up to the blaze of the sun was not a pocket - handkerchief, but-yes-a newspaper. He must have a good deal of influence there, this teacher at least over the grown-up men, with leather aprons and bare arms-one could not help marking him-with that scanty head of hair done up in bobs from his temples, and such a short queue behind, not to think of his short nose and high cheekbones, or a chin as bare as one's palm. Perhaps something had happened something important. battle somewhere? There was peace, though. Some murder, it was likely -or a shipwreck-well, at any rate these boys didn't mind, so crop-headed and stunted-looking, who were playing pitch-and-toss with such an oldmannish look in their 'eager faces, at the end of the school. There were more beneath the big bulging churchgable, with its black ugly windows and its zigzag crack in the plasterin such long old livery coats, with plated saucer-buttons. Actually it was with the buttons they were playing-as if it had been money-cutting them off their coats, too, and their breeches, to rush back for another chance! The silent speculations of Charles reached their climax in pro

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found wonder. It was beneath his notice to regard Mrs Mason's words, as they cleared the place, and began to rise from the hollow-that it was an interesting village, so lively, so full of a holiday air, not without a degree of quick intelligence. "After labour," his mother said, lifting up her eyelids, "it must be pleasant."

Beyond the church and an old crooked, high-arched bridge, was Mr Thorpe in the turning of a very narrow by-road, stony and grass-grown, that took a winding as if to avoid the village, by ditch-side and over rubbish, till it caught the highway behind again: the worthy tutor had drawn up his horse, he was settling his spectacles, putting in his note-book, and feeling in his pocket for some coin, apparently to bestow on a man he had been talking to. A very singular group revealed itself as they reached him. A dark-faced jet-eyed man with a beard, black and bushy, his rough cap in hand, and a little organ slung from his back, stood replying to Mr Thorpe in strange broken French, mingled with English; while he seemed carefully to keep the trees between himself and the village: somewhat further down the by-way sat a disconsolate-looking boy with a guitar, beside a crouching monkey; while another man held the chain of a huge muzzled beast, shaggy and brown, which reared on its hind-legs, now growling, now dancing, now shrinking from the threatened whip, like a creature enraged by the distant voices. Their trade had been ruined, the man said; for it was the first time they had been turned out into the chemin des affronteux, belonging to thieves and villains. It would be known for miles round Paris in a day, for it was wonderful how the news travelled there. They had often been at Charlemont before, and were received well. The bear felt it worst, he thought. He was as good a bear as you would see, owing to his love of society. Perhaps it might have been owing to some news in the place-but one could not know what tunes would offend people nowadays, to dance to.

At Mr Thorpe's condolence, however, backed by his gift of a six-sous piece, the Italian retreated thankfully. They watched him as he was joined