He counted one by one the paving-stones of his little court, without doubt to verify the exactness of his former calculations, for it was by no means the first time he had numbered them, when he perceived there, under his eyes, a little mound of earth raised between two stones, slightly opened at the top. He stopped; his heart beat without his being able to tell why. But all is hope or fear for a captive. In the indifferent objects, and the most insignificant events, he seeks some hidden cause which speaks to him of deliverance.

Perhaps this slight derangement on the surface might be produced by some great work under ground, perhaps a tunnel, which would open and make a way for him to the fields and mountains. Perhaps his friends or his former accomplices were mining to reach him, and restore to him life and liberty.

He listened attentively, and fancied he heard a low, rumbling noise under ground; he raised his head, and the tremulous air bore to him the rapid stroke of the tocsin, and the continued roll of drums along the ramparts, like a signal of war. He started, and with a trembling hand wiped from his forehead great drops of sweat.

Was he to be free? Had France changed its master?

This dream was only a flash. Reflection destroyed the illusion. He had no accomplices, and had never had friends. He listened again; the same sounds struck his ear, but gave rise to other thoughts. This stroke of the tocsin, and the roll of the drum, were only the distant sound of a church-bell that he heard every day at the same hour, and the accustomed call to arms, which need only excite emotion in a few straggling soldiers of the citadel.

Charney smiled bitterly, and looked upon himself with pity, when he thought that some insignificant animal, a mole who had without doubt lost his way, or a field-mouse who had scratched up the earth under his feet, had caused him to believe for an instant in the affection of men, and the overthrow of a great empire.

In order, however, to make his mind quite clear about it, stooping over the little mound, he carefully removed some of the particles of earth, and saw with astonishment that the wild agitation which had overcome him for an instant had not even been caused by a busy, burrowing, scratching animal, armed with claws and teeth, but by a feeble specimen of vegetation, with scarcely strength to sprout, weak and languishing.

VOL. XVIII. -5

Raising himself, profoundly humiliated, he was about to crush it with his heel, when a fresh breeze, laden with the perfume of honeysuckle and hawthorn, was wafted to him, as if to implore mercy for the poor plant, which perhaps one day would also have perfume to give him.

Another thought came to him to arrest his destructive intention. How was it possible for that little plant, so tender, soft, and fragile, that a touch might break it, to raise, separate, and throw out that earth dried and hardened by the sun, trodden under foot by him, and almost cemented to the two blocks of granite between which it was pressed.

He bent over it again and examined it with renewed attention. He saw at its upper extremity a sort of double fleshy valve, which folded over the first leaves, preserved them from the touch of anything that might injure them, and at the same time enabled them to pierce that earthy crust in search of air and

sun.

Ah, said he to himself, behold all the secret. It receives from nature this principle of strength, as the young birds, who before they are born are armed with a bill hard enough to break the thick shell which confines them. Poor prisoner, thou possessest at least the instruments which can aid thee to gain thy freedom. He stood gazing at it a few moments, and no longer dreamed of crushing it.

The next day, in taking his ordinary walk, he was striding along in an absent-minded manner, and nearly trod on it by accident. He drew back quickly, and, surprised at the interest with which his new acquaintance inspired him, he paused to note its progress.

The plant had grown, and the rays of the sun had caused it to lose somewhat of its sickly pallor. He reflected upon the power which that pale and slender stem possessed to absorb the luminous essence with which to nourish and strengthen itself, and to borrow from the prism the colors with which to clothe itself, colors assigned beforehand to each one of its parts. Yes, its leaves, without doubt, thought he, will be tinted with a different shade from its stem; and then its flowers, what color will they be. Yellow, blue, red? Why, nourished by the same sap as the stalk, do they not clothe themselves in the same livery? How do they draw their azure and scarlet from the same source where the other has only found a bright or sombre green? So it is to be, however; for notwithstanding the confusion and dis

order of affairs here below, matter follows a regular though blind march. Blind, indeed, repeated he; I need no other proof of it than these two fleshy lobes which have facilitated its egress from the earth, but which now, of no use in its preservation, nourish themselves still from its substance, and hang down, wearying it by their weight of what use are they?

As he said this, day was declining, and the chilly spring evening approached; the two lobes rose slowly as he watched them, apparently desiring to justify themselves from his reproach; they drew closer together, and enclosed in their bosom, to protect it against the cold and the attacks of insects, the tender and fragile foliage which was about to be deprived of the sun, and which, thus sheltered and warmed, slept under the two wings which the plant had just softly folded over it.

The man of science comprehended more fully this mute but decided response, in observing that the outside of the vegetable bivalve had been slightly cut by the nibbling of a snail the night before, of which the traces still remained. . . .

The philosopher had followed attentively all the progress and the transformations of the plant. Again he had contended with her by reasoning, and she had even an answer for all his arguments.

"Of what use are these prickly hairs that garnish thy stem?" said he. And the next day she showed them to him covered with a slight hoar-frost, which, thanks to them, kept at a distance, had not chilled her tender skin.

"Of what use in the fine days will be your warm coat, wadded with down?"

The fine days arrived; she cast off her winter cloak to adorn herself with her spring toilet of green, and her new branches sprang forth free from these silken envelopes, henceforward useless.

"But if the storm rages the wind will bruise thee, and the hail will cut thy leaves, too tender to resist it."

The wind blew, and the young plant, too feeble yet to dare to fight, bent to the earth, and was defended in yielding. The hail came, and by a new manoeuvre, the leaves, rising along the stem, shielding it, pressed against each other for mutual protection, presenting only their underside to the blows of the enemy, and opposed their solid ribs to the weight of the atmospheric projectiles in their union was their strength; this time the plant had come forth from the combat, not without some slight

mutilations, but alive and still strong, and ready to expand before the rays of the sun, which would heal her wounds.

"Is Chance then intelligent?" said Charney, "must I spiritualize matter, or materialize mind?" And he did not cease to interrogate his mute instructress; he delighted to watch her growth, and mark her gradual metamorphoses.

THE REPRIEVE.

(From "Picciola.")

THE intercession of Josephine had not then been as effective as it had at first promised to be. After her gentle pleading for the plant and the prisoner, when she placed in Napoleon's hand the handkerchief containing the missive, he recalled the offence to his pride given by the malapropos distraction of the Empress during the exhibition of the morning at Marengo, and the signature of Charney increased the disagreeable impression.

"Has the man become insane?" said he; "what comedy does he pretend to play with me? A Jacobin botanist! I shall not be surprised to hear Marat go into ecstasies over the beauties of nature, or to see Couthon present himself at the Convention with a rose in his buttonhole."

Josephine would have raised her voice to object to the title of Jacobin so carelessly given to the Count, but at this moment a chamberlain came to announce to the Emperor that the generals, the ambassadors, as well as the deputies of the Italian provinces, awaited him in the hall of reception. He hastened to join them. When there, inspired more by their presence than by the contents of the petition, he took occasion, from the name of the petitioner, to break forth with great violence against idealists and philosophers; returning again to the Jacobins, declaring that he knew very well how to subdue and bring them to seek for mercy. And he raised his voice with a tone of menace and resolution, not that he was really as much excited as he wished to make it appear, but, always ready to take advantage of circumstances, he wished that his words should be heard and repeated, especially by the Prussian ambassador present in the assembly. It was his proclamation of his divorce from the principles of the Revolution.

To please the master, each one added something to the speech. The Governor of Turin, above all, Jacques-Abdallah Menou, forgetting, or rather denying his former principles. broke

out into violent attacks upon the Brutuses of the clubs and taverns of Italy and France, and there was soon in the imperial circle a unanimous chorus of virulent imprecations against conspirators, revolutionists, and Jacobins, such that Josephine began to tremble before the terrible storm which she had raised.

Recovering somewhat from her alarm, she approached the ear of Napoleon, and in a half laughing tone said :—

"Sire, why all this violence? It is not a matter of Jacobins and revolutionists, but of a poor flower who has never conspired against any one."

"Do you believe that

The Emperor shrugged his shoulders. I am duped by such idle talk?" cried he. "This Charney is a dangerous man, and not a fool. The flower is the pretext; the end, the raising of the stones. It is an escape that he is planning. Menou, see that he is well guarded. And how has he been able to send his petition without its passing through the hand of the commandant? Is this the sort of surveillance that exists in the prisons of state?"

The Empress tried once more to defend her protégé. "Enough, Madame," said the master.

And Josephine, abashed and discouraged, was silenced, and dropped her eyes under the look with which he regarded her.

Menou, vexed by the reprimand of the Emperor, had not been sparing of his reproaches to the commandant of Fenestrella, and he in his turn had hastened to treat with rigor the two prisoners to whom he owed such sharp rebuke.

Girhardi, already separated him from his daughter, who, with a heart full of hope, had only came in sight of the gates of the fortress to be met with an order to quit immediately the territory of Fenestrella, to return there no more, had that morning been subjected, like Charney, to a domiciliary visit, but there had resulted from it nothing that could compromise him.

But emotions more painful than those resulting from the taking away of his manuscript were reserved for the Count.

When, to pass to the cell of the bastion, he descended to the court-yard, following the commandant and his two acolytes, whether Colonel Morand had not noticed it in passing before, or that he wished to be revenged for the obstinate silence of Charney during his visit, his anger seemed to be redoubled at the sight of the slight scaffolding erected around the plant.

"What is all this?" said he to Ludovic. "Is it thus that you watch your prisoners?"