Paris, said the Prince, will return ten rouges. If I were to go into the Faubourg St. Antoine I should be elected by the ouvriers unanimously, especially if the patrons opposed me. 66 next But the opposition, though it may give trouble, will do little good. The Corps Legislatif has no influence. The deputies,' say the people, are named by the prefects; we name the Emperor.' One thing, however, the Chamber will do if it be not done before, it will force the evacuation of Rome. We cannot remain the supporters of that odious tyranny and the obstacles to Italian unity. Every motive requires us to escape from such a situation." Billault," said Pietri, says that it will take three centuries to consolidate Italy." An additional motive," said the Prince, "for losing no more time." At about half-past nine we returned to the drawing-room, where we found the Princess, her two ladies, and Madame de -. Thousands of families kept little tricolors as sacred deposits. They loved, indeed, the House of Savoy, but they hated Piedmont, and felt degraded by the prospect of being swallowed up in the great kingdom of Italy." They are swallowed up now," I said, "in a still greater empire.' "Yes," said the Prince; but in an empire with glorious recollections, with a glorious present, and with a glorious future. The kingdom of Italy is glorious only in its hopes.' The Princess sat at first near the fire with her ladies, but she afterward came into the middle of the room, sat on an ottoman with a circle round her, and joined easily in a general unconstrained conversation. Paris, April 12th, 1862.-I paid my visit of adieu to Prince Napoleon. He, too, had been reading Lord Palmerston's speech, but not with the feelings of Thiers. I am delighted," he said, "to find a man who, with all his faults, is at the head of the statesmen of Europe, fully agreeing with me. The union of Rome to the rest of Italy is now only a question of time. I cannot believe that the time will be long, but while it lasts it is full of danger to the Emperor, to the Pope, to France, and to Italy. "The Pope's death," he continued, "would be a great misfortune." asked. on." "I never would have created," she "I have no doubt," he answered, said, "the temporal power of the Pope." that his successor is already agreed It injures his spiritual influence, just as his spiritual functions interfere with his political ones. But he has it, and I dread the immediate consequences of his losing it. I would keep the statu quo if I could; and such are the opinions of almost all whom I see." Subject, I said, "I suppose to the vetoes of France, Austria, and Spain?" "If the election," he answered, "be made sur le corps du Pape, that is, immediately after the death of the Pope, while his body is still on the bed in which he died, there is no veto. And such is Not," she answered, on one side the distrust of France in the College of "Not here," I said. 64 Cardinals that some one hostile to us will be named. Pio Nono is weak and timid and irresolute, but his successor may be a fool or a fanatic, still less accessible to reason than he is." Paris, April 2d, 1863.-I breakfasted with Prince Napoleon. The only other guests were his aides-de-camp and secretary. He asked me if there was much sympathy for the Poles in England. "Our sympathies," I answered, "at least our active sympathies, are only with the nations who have coasts. Besides, if a nation be regarded as one permanent individual, responsible for the acts of all its previous generations, no nation has more deserved its fate than Poland. While it was independent it was the torment of Europe and of itself. It was always engaged in religious civil wars; every party was constantly calling for foreign intervention; the nobles were petty tyrants, the people were slaves; they had no industry, or literature, or toleration; they gave up their commerce to Jews, and then persecuted them; they were utterly without the forbearance, the candor, and the justice which free institutions require. Since the partition they have been stirring up civil war throughout Europe. Every revolution has had Poles among its promoters, often among its exciters." "Well," said the Prince,' we are less severe. We forget what Poland was in what she is the victim of falsehood and of systematic oppression. Poles have fought by our side against foreign and against domestic enemies. They have assisted the people of France in their struggles against the aristocrats; they have been one of the elements of the revolutionary leaven which saves us from the general torpidity of the Continent. But I recognize in your language the coldness and if you will pardon the word the selfishness of English policy. You will never, as we do, fight for an idea. Then you think yourselves bound by the treaties of 1815. We detest them, we repudiate them, we have torn them to pieces. They were fetters when we were weak, we threw them off as soon as we became strong. It was his submission to them that overthrew Louis Philippe. "Your policy is formed on reasoning, ours on sentiment. It was sentiment, not reasoning, that made Louis Napoleon President, that made him Emperor. But, though you have no active sympathy for people without coasts, like Poland and Hungary, you must have a passive one, enough not to disturb you, but to make you look with pleasure on the active sympathy of less reasoning nations. "You cannot but admire the selfdevotion of the fathers and mothers who send out their children, or of the young men who, after confession and absolution, go out to die in battle against overwhelming numbers, or to be hunted down in the forests, which are their only fort resses. "You cannot but detest the barbarity of the Russians, who have turned the conscription, which our glorious revolution invented as the security for national independence and liberty, into the most odious instrument of oppression. If you will not fight for Poland, you will at least speak for her; and though speaking without acting is only a half measure, or much less than a half measure, it is far better than silence. Prussia is at the bottom of the scale of baseness and degradation. She joins the Czar in order to subjugate Poland for him, and so to leave him free to use his Russian soldiers to prevent his own subjects from insisting on a constitution. She has done still worse-she has violated the sacred right of asylum, the only resource of the oppressed. She has done what every civilized power in Europe would have refused, what, indeed, it would have been an insult to request from any civilized power. She has delivered the Polish refugees to Russia. She has delivered men of birth and education to be punished by the slow tortures of the Siberian mines, for having attempted to save their children from blows, degradation, and death, in the snow and forests of the Caucasus. This the Prussian ministers have not only done, but avowed. "With the light graceful irony which may be expected from a German, they describe it by saying, 'We have not delivered the refugees to Russia; we have only removed them from Prussia by the Russian frontier.' "Austria comes next. She is merely silent, not from love of her enemy, Russia, but because she fears to have to give up her share of the Polish robbery. "You, with your inactive sympathy, are the third accomplice. You say that the conduct of Russia is hateful, that of Prussia hateful and base, that of Poland heroic, and then you say, Poland has no coasts,' and fold your arms." And what," I said, will you make of your active sympathy? Your ministers tell the Poles to rely on the generous and liberal feelings of the Czar." 46 "That was a wicked insult," replied the Prince,"fit for a ministre sans porte-feuille. Happily the policy of the Emperor does not depend on that of his ministers. What we shall do I cannot tell. I am not in the Emperor's confidence; but that we shall do something --and something great-I am convinced. It may be a pacific intervention—it may be a warlike one. France does not wish for more wars. She has enough, and much more than enough, on her hands already. She is not, like the Americans, carried away by the new excitement of having armies and enormous debts. She knows that armies and debts are things to be kept as low as possible. But in a good cause-and there cannot be a better-France is always ready to sacrifice herself, or rather will insist on sacrificing herself. And certainly this is a case in which the Emperor will not resist the will of his people." The conversation passed to English His and the experience of an old man. foreign policy is thoroughly Englishbold, almost defiant, in words; cautious, almost timid, in conduct; except where no opposition is to be feared. He gratifies your vanity by his language to all, and by his action against the weak; but he takes care to keep you at peace. Then his speeches gratify the national taste for triviality and platitudes. Every one can understand, every one can sympathize with them, for they express merely what has been thought from the time of Adam and repeated from the time of Noah. He goes down to Glasgow, calls together the boys, and tells them that education is an excellent thing. Thereupon there is brouhaha. Then he tells them that peace is an excellent thing. More applause. Then he reminds them that they have a dock which would receive the Warrior, and the enthusiasm est à son comble. A French minister who should talk such banalités would be pelted. "You like, too, to be governed en plaisantant, quoique la plaisanterie soit quelquefois mauvaise. Your great men chaff familiarly the peuple, because the peuple is powerless. All parties know that it is the familiarity of contempt. In France. the familiarity is real, because the equality is real. Our servants are our equals. One of mine left me about a year ago; he had been with me seven or eight years. He knew nothing when he came, but learned his business in my service. he writes pour me faire part that he has a son, and to hope to have an opportunity de me serrer la main. 66 Now He will call on me, I shall shake hands with him, and perhaps in three or four months you will meet him dining with me.-Fortnightly Review. Ever again in his protecting clasp Enfold it? Who can tell! He can but kiss, Hath touched. Each line, each word read and re-read, He looks, and drinks her name into his soul. Loved Papa, "When will you come home again? "My own dear Papa!" As he reads this the tent to him grows darker, 66 Loved Papa, "When will you come home again? "My own dear Papa!" And now his head is bowed into his hands, And sudden blast? The bugle-call "To arms!'' And startled sleepers, at its fierce appeal, Half dreaming clutch their swords, and gasping wake, And on that father's heart the pealing cry Strikes cold as ice, though soldier there's none braver, That pleading child-voice sweetly calls: "Loved Papa, Across a rough hillside the light of dawn Upon the blood-soaked ground, where they lie thickest Dark dyed with gore, a bullet in his heart! A crumpled paper in his hand was clutched, Some childish writing by his life-blood stained. What are the words? One scarce can read them now: "Loved Papa, "When will you come home again? "My own dear Papa!" Temple Bar. MADEMOISELLE DE MERSAC CHAPTER XVIII. IN WHICH M. DE SAINT-LUC HEARS OF SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE. IT is an ill wind that blows nobody any good-even an east wind is welcome to outward bound ships-and Barrington's hasty exit from Algeria, if it caused some heart-aching in one quarter that we know of, was productive of nothing but unalloyed delight in another. Saint-Luc, as he stood upon his balcony, and watched the Euphrate steaming slowly out of harbor, rubbed his hands in glee, feeling that a formidable obstacle had been removed from his path. Whatever difficulties might yet intervene between him and the successful issue of his suit-and he was not disposed to underrate either their number or their magnitude-that of the presence of a possible rival need no longer be included among them; nor would it henceforth be necessary for him so to time his visits to the Campagne de Mersac as that they should not clash with those of the inevitable Englishman. He rode up the same afternoon to inquire whether Mademoiselle de Mersac had recovered from her indisposition; but he only left a card at the door, without dismounting, fearing lest a too speedy appearance upon the field so lately vacated by the enemy might savor of undue precipitation. In a like prudent spirit he refrained from any endeavor to meet Jeanne until the return of Madame de Breuil's weekly receptionday afforded him an excuse for once more turning his horse's head in the direction of El Biar; and even then, as it turned out, he failed to obtain the interview he had hoped for. Madame la Duchesse had discontinued her receptions for the summer months, the servant told him, in answer to his inquiry; but he would ask whether she was well enough to see monsieur. Mademoiselle Jeanne had already gone out. Under the circumstances, SaintLuc did not much care about being admitted; but as he could hardly say so consistently with politeness, he waited at the door, in a broiling sun, while the man departed on his mission, and was presently rewarded by a request that he would be so kind as to walk up-stairs, the Duchess being unable to leave her bedroom. The Duchess's bedroom was spacious, airy, and luxuriously furnished. It belonged to the modern portion of the house, and had nothing Moorish either in its construction or in its appointments. The low bedstead, with its lacebordered covering, the soft-cushioned chairs of all shapes and sizes, the Louis XIV. writing-table, the inlaid cabinets, and the numberless nicknacks were as evidently of Parisian origin as was the owner of all these pretty things, who, from the sofa upon which she lay, with her quilted silk peignoir wrapped about her, greeted Saint-Luc in feeble and rather querulous accents. "Come in, monsieur, and sit down. I do not apologize for receiving you here; the bedroom of a dying old woman is as much open to the world as a chapelle ardente." Saint-Luc, with the best possible intention, declared that, if he might judge by appearances, he was in the room of a lady who had a great many years of life and health before her; but his observation was not well received. "Eh, eh! what is the use of repeating such banalités as that," cried the Duchess, petulantly. I am hundreds of years old, and I have ailments enough to kill a Hercules. Add to that, perpetual anxiety and worry, for which you are chiefly answerable. "I, madame?" 'Certainly. You know that my one wish is to provide a home for Jeanne before I take my leave of her and of this troublesome world. How many months is it that I have been waiting, waiting to hear that you have arranged matters with her?" "Madame, you will allow that I am just as anxious as you can be to arrive at the result which we both desire. But you will also allow that the case is an exceptional one. And no doubt, too, you will remember that when I formally requested Mademoiselle de Mersac's hand, shortly after my arrival in Algiers, you yourself told me that I |