Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 66, No 405, July 1849

"Admirable in principle," said la Chapelle, smiling, "but difficult in practice. You yourself, my dear Dominique, who now take so lofty a tone, and who feel, I am quite sure, exactly as you speak – you yourself, if I am not greatly mistaken in your character, would be the last man to sit down quietly under injustice. Your natural ardour and impetuosity would soon upset your moral code."

"Never!" vehemently exclaimed Dominique. "La Chapelle, never will I suffer my passions thus to subdue my reason! What gratification of revenge can ever compensate the loss of that greatest of blessings, a pure and tranquil conscience? What peace of mind could I hope for, after permitting such discord between my principles and my actions? La Chapelle, you wrong me by the thought."

"Well, well," replied his friend, "I may be wrong, and at any rate I reason in the abstract rather than personally to you. I heartily wish you never may suffer wrong, or be tempted to revenge. But remember, my friend, safety is not in over-confidence. The severest assaults are for the strongest towers."

A knock at the room-door interrupted the conversation. It was the porter of the lodging-house, bringing a letter that had just arrived for Dominique. On recognising the handwriting of the address, and the postmark of Montauban, the young man uttered a cry of pleasure. It was from home, from his mother. He hastily tore it open. But as he read, the smile of joy and gratified affection faded from his features, and was replaced by an expression of astonishment, indignation, grief. Scarcely finishing the letter, he crumpled it in his hand with a passionate gesture, and stripping off his dressing-gown began hastily to dress. With friendly solicitude la Chapelle observed his varying countenance.

"No bad news, I hope?" he inquired.

For sole reply, Dominique threw him the letter.

MOTHER AND SON

Dominique Lafon was the son of a man noted for his democratic principles, who, after holding high provincial office under the Republic and the Consulate, resigned his functions in displeasure, when Napoleon grasped an emperor's sceptre, and retired to his native town of Montauban, where he since had lived upon a modest patrimony. Under Napoleon, Pascal Lafon had been unmolested; but when the Bourbons returned, his name, prominent during the last years of the eighteenth century, rendered him the object of a certain surveillance on the part of the police of the Restoration. On the occasion of more than one republican conspiracy, real or imaginary, spies had been set upon him, and endeavours made to prove him implicated. Once he had even been conducted before a tribunal, and had undergone a short examination. Nothing, however, had been elicited that in any way compromised him; and in a few hours he was again at liberty, before his family knew of his brief arrest. In reality, Lafon, although still an ardent republican, was entirely guiltless of plotting against the monarchy, which he deemed too firmly consolidated to be as yet shaken. France, he felt, had need of repose before again entering the revolutionary arena. His firm faith still was, that a time would come when she would dismiss her kings for ever, and when pure democracy would govern the land. But before that time arrived, his eyes, he believed, would be closed in death. He was no conspirator, but he did not shun the society of those who were; and, moreover, he was not sufficiently guarded in the expression of his republican opinions and Utopian theories. Hence it came that, like the Whig in Claverhouse's memoranda, he had a triple red cross against his name in the note-book of the Bourbon police, who, at the time now referred to, had been put upon the alert by the recent assassination of the Duke of Berri. Although the circumstances of that crime, and the evidence upon Louvel's trial, combined to stamp the atrocious deed as the unaided act of a fanatic, without accomplices or ulterior designs, the event had provoked much rigid investigation of the schemes of political malcontents throughout France; and in several districts and towns, magistrates and heads of police had been replaced, as lax and lukewarm, by men of sterner character. Amongst other changes, the Judge of Instruction at Montauban had had a successor given him. The new magistrate was preceded by a reputation of great vigilance and severity – a reputation he lost no time in justifying. By the aid of a couple of keen Parisian police agents of the Procureur du Roi, whom he stimulated to increased activity, he soon got upon the scent of a republican conspiracy, of which Montauban was said to be a principal focus. Various reports were abroad as to the manner in which Monsieur Noell, the new judge, had obtained his information. Some said, the plotters had been betrayed by the mistress of one of them, in a fit of jealous fury at a fancied infidelity of her lover; others declared, that hope of reward had quickened the invention of a police spy, who, despairing of discovering a conspiracy, had applied himself to fabricate one. Be that as it might, a number of arrests took place, and, amongst others, that of Dominique's father. The intelligence of this event was conveyed to the young student in a few despairing lines from his mother, whose health, already very precarious, had suddenly given way under the shock of her husband's imprisonment. She wrote from a sick-bed, imploring her son to lose no time in returning to Montauban.

Gloomy were the forebodings of Dominique as the mail rattled him over the weary leagues of road between Paris and Montauban. Yet, when he reached home, he half hoped to be greeted by his father's friendly voice, for, himself convinced of his innocence, he could not believe the authorities would be long in recognising it. He was disappointed. The sorrowful mien of the domestic who opened the door told a tale of misfortune.

"Oh, Monsieur Dominique!" said the man, an old servant, who had known the student from his cradle, "the house is not wont to be so sad when you return."

"My mother! where is my mother?" cried Dominique. The next instant he was at her bedside, clasping her poor thin fingers, and gazing in agony on her emaciated features. A few days of intense alarm and anxiety, acting on an exquisitely susceptible organisation, had done the work of months of malady. A slow fever was in her veins, undermining her existence. Dominique shuddered at sight of her sunken temples, and of the deep dark furrows below her eyes. It seemed as if the angel of death had already put his stamp upon that beloved countenance. But he concealed his mental anguish, and spoke cheeringly to the invalid. She told him the particulars of his father's arrest. She had already written to some friends, sent for others, and had done all in her power to ascertain exactly the offences of which Lafon was accused; but the persons who had made the inquiries had been put off with generalities, and none had obtained access to the prisoner, who was in solitary confinement.

Dominique Lafon was tenderly attached to both his parents. Upon him, their only child, their entire affection was concentrated and lavished. They had made him their companion even from his earliest years, had tended him with unwearying solicitude through his delicate infancy, had devoted themselves to his education when he grew older, and had consented with difficulty and regret to part from him, when his arrival at man's estate rendered it desirable he should visit the capital for the conclusion of his studies. Dominique repaid their care with devoted love. His father's consistency and strength of character inspired him with respect; he listened to his precepts with veneration and gratitude; but he idolised his mother, whose feminine graces and tender care were intertwined with the sweetest reminiscences of childhood's happy days. He now strove to repay some portion of his debt of filial love by the most unwearying attendance at the invalid's pillow. His arrival brought a gleam of joy and hope to the sick woman's brow, but the ray was transient, and quickly faded. The vital flame had sunk too low to revive again permanently. She grew weaker and weaker, and felt that her hour approached. But her spirit, so soon to appear before her Maker, yet clung to an earthly love. Whilst striving to fix her thoughts on things heavenly, they still dwelt upon him by whose side she had made life's checkered pilgrimage. She wrung her hands in agony at the thought that she must leave the world without bidding him a last farewell. She asked but a moment to embrace him who, for five-and-twenty years, had been her guardian and protector, her tenderest friend and companion. Dominique could not endure the spectacle of her grief. He left the house to use every endeavour to obtain for her the indulgence she so ardently desired.

The first person to whom he applied was the Judge of Instruction, Monsieur Noell. Provided with a medical certificate of his mother's dying state, he obtained admission to that magistrate's cabinet. He found a tall thin man, with harsh strongly marked features, and a forbidding expression of countenance. The glazed stare of his cold gray eyes, and the cruel lines about his mouth, chilled Dominique's hopes, and almost made him despair of success. The youth preferred his request, however, with passionate earnestness, imploring that his father might be allowed to leave his prison for a single hour, under good guard, to visit the bedside of his expiring wife, in presence of such witnesses as the authorities would think proper to name. The reply to this prayer was a formal and decided negative. Until the prisoner Lafon had undergone a second examination, no one could be admitted to see him under any pretext whatever. That examination was not to take place for at least a week. Dominique was very sure, from what the physicians had told him, that his mother could not survive for a third of that time.

The frigid manner and unsympathising tone of the magistrate, and the uncourteous brevity of his refusal, grated so unpleasantly upon the irritated feelings of the student, that he had difficulty in restraining a momentary anger. In less imminent circumstances, his pride would have prevented his persisting in a petition thus unkindly rejected, but the thought of his dying mother brought patience and humility to his aid. Warmly, but respectfully, he reiterated his suit. The magistrate was a widower, but he had children, to whom report said he was devotedly attached. Harsh and rigid in his official duties, in his domestic circle he was said to be the tenderest of fathers. Dominique had heard this, and availed of it in pleading his suit.

"You have children, sir!" he said; "you can picture to yourself the grief you would feel were your deathbed unblessed by their presence. How doubly painful must be the parting agony, when the ear is unsoothed by the voice of those best beloved, when no cherished hand is there to prop the sinking head, and close the eyes for ever on this world and its sufferings! Refuse not my father the consolation of a last interview with his dying wife! Have compassion on my poor mother's agony! Suffer her to breathe her last between the two beings who share all her affection! So may your own deathbed be soothed by the presence of those you most dearly love!"

Doubtless Monsieur Noell's ear was well used to such pleadings, and his heart was hardened by a long course of judicial severity. His glance lost nothing of its habitual cold indifference, as he replied to Dominique's passionate entreaties with a decided negative.

"I must repeat my former answer," he said; "I neither can nor will grant the indulgence you require. And now I will detain you no longer, as you may perhaps make use of your time to greater advantage in other quarters."

He rose from his chair, and remained standing till Dominique left the room. The tone of his last words had wellnigh crushed hope in the young man's bosom. But as long as a possibility remained, the student pursued it. He betook himself to the Procureur du Roi, whose office constituted him public prosecutor in cases of this kind. That functionary declared himself incompetent, until the prisoner should have undergone another examination. Until then, the only appeal from the judge was to the minister of justice. Dominique instantly drew up and forwarded a petition; but before it reached Paris, his mother breathed her last. She met her death, preceded and attended by acute sufferings, with the resignation of a martyr. But even after the last sacrament of her religion had been administered, and when she earnestly strove to fix her mind on eternity, to the exclusion of things temporal, the thought of her husband, so long and tenderly beloved, and absent at this supreme hour, intruded itself upon her pious meditations, brought tears to her eyes, and drew heartrending sobs from her bosom; her last sigh was for him, her latest breath uttered his name. This fervent desire, so cruelly thwarted, those tears of deferred hope and final profound disappointment, were inexpressibly painful to contemplate. Upon Dominique, whose love for his mother was so deep and holy, they made a violent impression. Bitter were his feelings as he sat beside her couch when the spirit had fled, and gazed upon her clay-cold features, whereon there yet lingered a grieved and suffering expression. And later, when the earth had received her into its bosom, that pallid and sorrowful countenance was ever before his eyes. In his dreams he heard his mother's well-known voice, mournfully pronouncing the name of her beloved husband, and praying, as she had done in the last hours of her life, that she might again behold him before she departed. Nor were these visions dissipated by daylight. They recurred to his excited imagination, and kindled emotions of fierce hatred towards the man who had had it in his power to smooth his mother's passage from life to death, and who had wantonly refused the alleviation. Nay more; convinced of his father's innocence, Dominique considered the judge who had thrown him into prison as in some sort his mother's murderer. He had accelerated her decease, and thrown gall into the cup it is the lot of every mortal to drain. The physicians had declared anxiety of mind to be the immediate cause of her death. Dominique brooded over this declaration, and over the misfortunes that had so suddenly overtaken him, until he came to consider M. Noell as much an assassin as if he had struck a dagger into his mother's heart. "What matter," he thought, "whether the wound be dealt to body or to soul, so long as it slays?" He had nothing to distract his thoughts from dwelling upon and magnifying the wrongs that had deprived him of both parents, one by death, the other by an imprisonment whose termination he could not foresee. At times his melancholy was broken by bursts of fury against him he deemed the cause of his misfortunes.

"Could I but see him die!" he would exclaim, "the cold-blooded heartless tyrant – die alone, childless, accursed, without a friendly hand to wipe the death-sweat from his face! Then, methinks, I could again be happy, when his innocent victim was thus revenged. Alas, my mother! – my poor, meek, long-suffering mother, – must your death go unrequited? For what offence was your life taken as atonement? By what vile distortion of justice did this base inquisitor visit upon your innocent head a transgression that never was committed?"

Meanwhile the captivity of the elder Lafon was prolonged. A second examination relaxed nothing of his jailor's severity, and his son's applications to see him were all rejected. Dominique wrote to his father, but he received no answer; and he afterwards learned that his letter had not been delivered when sent, but had been detained by Noell, who, finding nothing criminatory in its contents, had subjected it, with characteristic suspicion, to chemical processes, in hopes to detect writing with sympathetic ink, and had finally made it accessory to an attempt to extort a confession from the prisoner. This information, obtained from an understrapper of the prison by means of a large bribe, raised Dominique's exasperation to the highest pitch.

"Gracious Heaven!" he exclaimed, "are such things to be endured in silence and submission? Has human justice iron scourges for nominal offences, – honours and rewards for real crimes? On a false accusation my father pines in a dungeon, whilst my mother's murderer walks scatheless and exalted amongst his fellows; but if the laws of man are impotent to avenge her death, who shall blame her son for remembering her dying agony, and requiting it on those who aggravated her sufferings?"

And he walked forth, pondering vengeance. Unconsciously his steps took the direction of the prison. Long he stood, with folded arms and lowering brow, gazing at the small grated aperture that gave light and air to his father's cell, and hoping to see his beloved parent look out and recognise him. He gazed in vain: twilight came, night followed, no one appeared at the window. Dominique knew not that it was high above the prisoner's reach. He returned home, fancying his father ill, nourishing a thousand bitter thoughts, and heaping up fresh hatred against the author of so much misery. That night Michel, the old servant, came twice to his room door, to see what ailed him, since, instead of retiring to rest, he unceasingly paced the apartment. Dominique dismissed the faithful fellow to his bed, and resumed his melancholy walk. But in the morning he was so pale and haggard that Michel slipped out to ask the family physician to call in by accident. When he returned, Dominique had left the house. In great alarm – for his young master's gloomy despondency at once suggested fear of suicide – Michel tracked his steps. His fears proved unfounded. With some trouble he ascertained that Dominique had quitted the town on the top of a passing diligence, with a valise for sole baggage, and without informing any one of the object of his journey.

THE DOUBLE DUEL

Antony Noell, the judge, had three children, and report lied not when it said that he was tenderly attached to them. A harsh and unfeeling man in his official capacity, and in the ordinary affairs of life, all the softer part of his nature seemed to have resolved itself into paternal affection. His two sons were students at the university of Toulouse; his youngest child, a blooming maiden of twelve, still brightened his home and made his heart joyful, although she soon was to leave him to finish her education in a convent. The two students were gay handsome lads, but somewhat dissipated; fonder of the bottle and the billiard-room than of grave lectures and dry studies. They were in small favour with their pedagogues, but in high repute with their fellow collegians; whilst peaceable citizens and demure young ladies regarded them with mingled aversion, interest, and curiosity, on account of certain mad pranks, by which, during their first half-year's residence, they had gained a certain notoriety in the quiet city of Toulouse.

It happened one night, as the brothers came both flushed with play and wine from their accustomed coffeehouse on the Place du Capitole, that Vincent, the elder of the two, stumbled over the feet of a man who sat upon one of the benches placed outside the establishment. The passage through the benches and tables was narrow; and the stranger, having thrust his legs nearly across it, had little reason to complain of the trifling offence offered him. Nevertheless he jumped to his feet and fiercely taxed young Noell with an intentional insult. Noell, full of good humour and indifferent wine, and taking his interlocutor for a fellow student, made a jesting reply, and seizing one of the stranger's arms, whilst his brother Martial grasped the other, dragged him into the lamp-light to see who he was. But the face they beheld was unknown to them; and scarcely had they obtained a glimpse at it when its owner shook them off, applying to them at the same time a most injurious epithet. The students would have struck him, but he made a pace backwards, and, seizing a heavy chair which he whirled over his head as though it had been a feather, he swore he would dash out the brains of the first who laid a finger on him.

"I do not fight like a water-carrier," he said, "with fists and feet; but if you are as ready with your swords as you are with your insolence, you shall not long await satisfaction."

And offering a card, which was at once accepted, he received two in return. The disputants then separated; and as soon as the Noells turned out of the square, they paused beneath a lamp to examine the card they had received. Inscribed upon it was the name of Dominique Lafon.

It was too late, when this quarrel occurred, for further steps to be taken that night; but early on the following morning Dominique's second, a young lawyer whom he had known during his studies at Paris, had an interview with the friends appointed by the Noells to act on their behalf. The latter anticipated a duel with swords, and were surprised to find that Dominique, entitled, as the insulted party, to fix the weapon, selected the more dangerous and less usual one of pistols. They could not object, however, and the meeting was fixed for the next day; the arrangement being that both brothers should come upon the ground, and that, if Dominique was unhurt in the first encounter, the second duel should immediately succeed it.

In a secluded field, to the right of the pleasant road from Toulouse to Albi, and at no great distance from the tumulus on whose summit a stone pillar commemorates Soult's gallant resistance to Wellington's conquering forces, the combatants met at the appointed hour, and saluted each other with cold courtesy. Dominique was pale, but his hand and eye were steady, and his pulse beat calmly. The two Noells were cheerful and indifferent, and bore themselves like men to whom encounters of this kind were no novelty. The elder brother took the first turn. The seconds asked once more if the affair could not be peaceably arranged; but, receiving no answer, they made the final arrangements. Two peeled willow rods were laid upon the ground, six yards apart. At ten yards from either of these the duellists were placed, making the entire distance between them six and twenty yards; and it was at their option, when the seconds gave the word, either to advance to the barrier before firing, or to fire at once, or from any intervening point.

The word was given, and the antagonists stepped out. Vincent Noell took but two paces, halted and fired. He had missed. Dominique continued steadily to advance. When he had taken five paces, the seconds looked at each other, and then at him, as if expecting him to stop. He took no notice, and moved on. It was a minute of breathless suspense. In the dead silence, his firm tread upon the grass was distinctly audible. He paused only when his foot touched the willow wand. Then he slowly raised his arm, and fired.

The whirling smoke prevented him for an instant from discerning the effect of his shot, but the hasty advance of the seconds and of two surgeons who had accompanied them to the field, left him little doubt that it had told. It had indeed done so, and with fatal effect. The unhappy Vincent was bathed in his blood. The surgeons hastened to apply a first dressing, but their countenances gave little hope of a favourable result.

Pale and horror-stricken, not with personal fear, but with grief at his brother's fate, Martial Noell whispered his second, who proposed postponing the second duel till another day. Dominique, who, whilst all his companions had been busy with the wounded man, had remained leaning against a tree, his discharged pistol in his hand, collected and unsympathising, stepped forward on hearing this proposition.

"Another day?" said he with a cruel sneer. "Before another day arrives, I shall doubtless be in prison for this morning's work. But no matter; if the gentleman is less ready to fight than he was to insult me, let him leave the field."

The scornful tone and insinuation brought a flush of shame and anger to the brow of the younger Noell. He detested himself for the momentary weakness he had shown, and a fierce flame of revenge kindled in his heart.

"Murderer!" he exclaimed, "my brother's blood calls aloud for vengeance. May Providence make me its instrument!"

Dominique replied not. Under the same conditions as before, the two young men took their stations. But the chances were not equal. Dominique retained all his coolness; his opponent's whole frame quivered with passionate emotion. This time, neither was in haste to fire. Advancing slowly, their eyes fixed on each other, they reached at the same moment the limits of their walk. Then their pistols were gradually raised, and, as if by word of command, simultaneously discharged. This time both balls took effect. The one that struck Dominique went through his arm, without breaking the bone, and lodged in his back, inflicting a severe but not a dangerous wound. But Martial Noell was shot through the head.

The news of this bloody business soon got wind, and the very same day it was the talk of all Toulouse. Martial Noell had died upon the spot; his brother expired within forty-eight hours. The seconds got out of the way, till they should see how the thing was likely to go. Dominique's wound prevented his following their example, if he were so disposed; and when it no longer impeded his movements, he was already in the hands of justice. Frantic with grief on learning the fate of his beloved sons, Anthony Noell hurried to Toulouse, and vigorously pushed a prosecution. He hoped for a very severe sentence, and was bitterly disappointed when Dominique escaped, in consideration of his wounds and of his having been the insulted party, with the lenient doom of five years' imprisonment.

FIVE YEARS LATER

Five years of absence from home may glide rapidly enough away, when passed in pursuit of pleasure or profit; dragged out between prison walls, they appear an eternity, a chasm between the captive and the world. So thought Dominique as he re-entered Montauban, at the expiration of his sentence. During the whole time, not a word of intelligence had reached him from his home, no friendly voice had greeted his ear, no line of familiar handwriting had gladdened his tearless eyes. Arrived in his native town, his first inquiry was for his father. Pascal Lafon was dead. The fate of his wife and son had preyed upon his health; the prison air had poisoned the springs of life in the strong, free-hearted man. The physician declared drugs useless in his case, for that the atmosphere of liberty alone could save him; and he recommended, if unconditional release were impossible, that the prisoner should be guarded in his own house. The recommendation was forwarded to Paris, but the same post took a letter from Anthony Noell, and a few days brought the physician's dismissal and an order for the close confinement of Lafon. Examinations followed each other in rapid succession, but they served only to torment the prisoner, without procuring his release; and after some months he died, his innocence unrecognised. The cause of his death, and the circumstances attending it, were loudly proclaimed by the indignant physician; and Dominique, on his return to Montauban, had no difficulty in obtaining all the details, aggravated probably by the unpopularity of the judge. He heard them with unchanging countenance; none could detect a sign of emotion on that cheek of marble paleness, or in that cold and steadfast eye. He then made inquiries concerning Anthony Noell. That magistrate, he learned, had been promoted, two years previously, and now resided in his native town of Marseilles. At that moment, however, he happened to be at an hotel in Montauban. He had never recovered the loss of his sons, which had aged him twenty years in appearance, and had greatly augmented the harshness and sour severity of his character. He seemed to find his sole consolation in the society of his daughter, now a beautiful girl of seventeen, and in intense application to his professional duties. A tour of inspection, connected with his judicial functions, had now brought him to Montauban. During his compulsory absences from home, which were of annual occurrence and of some duration, his daughter remained in the care of an old female relation, her habitual companion, whose chief faults were her absurd vanity, and her too great indulgence of the caprices of her darling niece.

Dominique showed singular anxiety to learn every particular concerning Anthony Noell's household, informing himself of the minutest details, and especially of the character of his daughter, who was represented to him as warmhearted and naturally amiable, but frivolous and spoiled by over-indulgence. On the death of his sons, Noell renounced his project of sending her from home, and the consequence was, that her education had been greatly neglected. Madame Verlé, the old aunt already mentioned, was a well-meaning, but very weak widow, who, childless herself, had no experience in bringing up young women. In her own youth she had been a great coquette, and frivolity was still a conspicuous feature in her character. As M. Noell, since his sons' death, had shown a sort of aversion for society, the house was dull enough, and Madame Verlé's chief resource was the circulating library, whence she obtained a constant supply of novels. Far from prohibiting to her niece the perusal of this trash, she made her the companion of her unwholesome studies. The false ideas and highflown romance with which these books teemed, might have made little impression on a character fortified by sound principles and a good education, but they sank deep into the ardent and uncultivated imagination of Florinda Noell, to whose father, engrossed by his sorrows and by his professional labours, it never once occurred to check the current of corruption thus permitted to flow into his daughter's artless mind. He saw her gay, happy, and amused, and he inquired no further; well pleased to find her support so cheerfully the want of society to which his morose regrets and gloomy eccentricity condemned her.

One of Dominique's first cares, on his return to Montauban, was to visit his parents' grave. Although his father died in prison, and his memory had never been cleared from the slur of accusation, his friends had obtained permission, with some difficulty, to inter his corpse beside that of his wife. The day was fading into twilight when Dominique entered the cemetery, and it took him some time to find the grave he sought. The sexton would have saved him the trouble, but the idea seemed a profanation; in silence and in solitude he approached the tomb of his affections and happiness. Long he sat upon the mound, plunged in reverie, but with dry eyes, for the source of tears appeared exhausted in his heart. Night came; the white tombstones looked ghastly pale in the moonlight, and cast long black shadows upon the turf. Dominique arose, plucked a wild-flower from his mother's grave, and left the place. He had taken but three steps when he became aware he was not alone in the churchyard. A tall figure rose suddenly from an adjacent grave. Although separated but by one lofty tombstone, the two mourners had been too absorbed and silent in their grief to notice each other's presence. Now they gazed at one another. The moon, for a moment obscured, emerged from behind a cloud, and shone upon their features. The recognition was mutual and instantaneous. Both started back. Between the graves of their respective victims, Anthony Noell and Dominique Lafon confronted each other.

A dusky fire gleamed in the eyes of Dominique, and his features, worn and emaciated from captivity, were distorted with the grimace of intense hatred. His heart throbbed as though it would have burst from his bosom.

"May your dying hour be desolate!" he shrieked. "May your end be in misery and despair!"

The magistrate gazed at his inveterate foe with a fixed stare of horror, as though a phantom had suddenly risen before him. Then, slowly raising his hand, till it pointed to the grave of his sons, his eye still fixed, as if by fascination, upon that of Dominique, a single word, uttered in a hollow tone, burst from his quivering lips.

"Murderer!" he exclaimed.

Dominique laughed. It was a hideous sound, a laugh of unquenchable hatred and savage exultation. He approached Noell till their faces were but a few inches apart, and spoke in a voice of suppressed fierceness.

"My father and my mother," he said, "expired in grief, and shame, and misery. By your causeless hate and relentless persecution, I was made an orphan. The debt is but half paid. You have still a child. You still find happiness on earth. But you yet shall lose all – all! Yet shall you know despair and utter solitude, and your death shall be desolate, even as my father's was. Remember! We shall meet again."

And passing swiftly before the magistrate, with a gesture of solemn menace, Dominique left the cemetery. Noell sank, pale and trembling, upon his children's grave. His enemy had found him, and security had fled. Dominique's last words, "We shall meet again!" rang in his ears, as if uttered by the threatening voice of hostile and irresistible destiny. Slowly, and in great uneasiness, he returned into the town, which he left early the next day for Marseilles. To his terrified fancy, his daughter was safe only when he watched over her. So great was his alarm, that he would have resigned his lucrative and honourable office sooner than have remained longer absent from the tender flower whom the ruthless spoiler threatened to trample and destroy.

THE HORSE-RIDERS

Months passed away, and spring returned. On a bright morning of May – in parched Provence the pleasantest season of the year – a motley cavalcade approached Marseilles by the Nice road. It consisted of two large waggons, a score of horses, and about the same number of men and women. The horses were chiefly white, cream-coloured, or piebald, and some of them bore saddles of peculiar make and fantastical colours, velvet-covered and decorated with gilding. One was caparisoned with a tiger-skin, and from his headstall floated streamers of divers-coloured horsehair. The women wore riding-habits, some of gaudy tints, bodices of purple or crimson velvet, with long flaunting robes of green or blue. They were sunburned, boldfaced damsels, with marked features and of dissipated aspect, and they sat firmly on their saddles, jesting as they rode along. Their male companions were of corresponding appearance; lithe vigorous fellows, from fifteen to forty, attired in various hussar and jockey costumes, with beards and mustaches fantastically trimmed, limbs well developed, and long curling hair. Various nations went to the composition of the band. French, Germans, Italians, and Gipsies made up the equestrian troop of Luigi Bartolo, which, after passing the winter in southern Italy, had wandered north on the approach of spring, and now was on its way to give a series of representations at Marseilles.