sumed upon having made the Mecca pilgrimage, seems to have led a tolerably comfortable life.

At length Muley Absulem of the sore eyes was commanded by his imperial papa to undertake the Meccan pilgrimage himself. Perhaps papa (who hated his heir) thought that Muley might catch the cholera by the way, and die in the odour of sanctity, which would be so very comfortable a consummation for all parties. Lemprière began to indulge in hopes of being permitted to return to Gibraltar; for he was heartily sick of Morocco by this time, and would have gladly abandoned all the fees which had been promised, but not paid him, for a sight of the western pillar of Hercules. But this was not to be. If Lemprière didn't know when he had a good patient, Muley knew when he had a good doctor. To think of taking him to Mecca-he being a Christian dog-was out of the question; but sore eyes were rather prevalent just then in the imperial family. The Emperor of Morocco himself had manifested a desire to consult the Bono Tibbib, so to the city of Morocco itself, by the highly-picturesque but rather incommodious route of Mount Atlas, was Mr. Lemprière sent. There was no compulsion, only he could not help himself. He was furnished with a strong escort of negro soldiers-the original "Black Guards," I apprehend*-who equally served the purpose of preventing the doctor from running away, and warning off any wild Arabs who might feel disposed to run away with the doctor.

When Lemprière arrived in the city of Morocco,-a very large, dirty, tumbledown city, with no public buildings to speak of save mosques, and a teeming, savage, bigoted population,—he was, in accordance with oriental etiquette, abandoned for some time to himself. For weeks not the slightest attention was apparently paid to him, although he discovered subsequently that he was watched day and night by a select body of spies. At length some very exalted court official called upon him, and hinted that if he chose to disburse something handsome in the way of backshish to the principal functionaries of the imperial household, he might, in process of time, be favoured with an audience by the Lord of the Thousand Umbrellas, Sidi Mahomet Khan, "Emperor of Africa; King of Fez, Suz, and Gago; Lord of Dara and Guinea, and Grand Sherif of Mahomet." Mr. Lemprière positively refused

* No pun is intended. The Emperor of Morocco maintains to this day a Black Brigade of Guards.

"For the satisfaction of those who might have occasion to visit the Court of Morocco on business"-not being privileged medical men-Mr. Lemprière has appended a "Table of Fees" payable at court. The Emperor himself heads the list; and his majesty usually expects a very big bribe indeed; then comes the "Introducer of Ambassadors," and then "the man who attends on his majesty at the 'Machoice'"-an officier de bouche, one would say; and then the men who clean his muskets, who make his tea, who groom his horses, who have the care of his lance, who keep his umbrella, who guard his saddles, who superintend his watch, who inspect his slippers, and who brush the flies off his face. The pay

to pay a single penny, and intimated that if Sidi Mahomet wanted to see him Sidi had better send for him. At length he was sent for. A number of Black Guards, armed with clubs and blunderbusses, came down to his dwelling, and literally "ran him" through the streets of Morocco, at a pace which may be called the "quadruple quick," to the imperial palace. He was not permitted to enter the hall of audience; for all persons admitted to the presence therein were expected to take off their shoes on the threshold, and to grovel with their noses touching the Turkish carpet of the imperial divan. A party of English officers, who had recently come up to Morocco to negotiate for the liberation of some Christians kidnapped by one of Sidi's Sallee rovers, had declined to "kotoo" in the manner desired (and by the way, in this present year 1868 the American Minister at the Court of St. James's can't go to her Majesty's drawing-rooms because the Lord Chamberlain says he must wear knee-breeches and silk stockings, and his own government prohibit him from wearing anything more courtier-like than a black swallow-tail coat, and pants to match); and Sidi Mahomet had determined to compromise matters in future by receiving visits from Christian dogs in one of the courts of the palace. It was in a species of backyard that Mr. Lemprière found the mighty Emperor of Africa; a sallow, skinny old man, nearly eighty years of age. His majesty was sitting in an old shabby yellow post-chaise of English build, with one mule in the shafts, and a pretty numerous team of Moorish courtiers on each side to help the mule.

About a month after this interview, the doctor was one morning sent for in a great hurry to the palace, to examine one of the sultanas who was indisposed, and report the case to his majesty. He was at once conducted to the gate of the harem, a very large arched entrance, guarded on the outside by ten soldiers. This led to a lofty hall, where a captain or alcaid, and a guard of seventeen eunuchs, were posted. This hall led directly to the harem itself. In the first court the doctor found a motley group of odalisques-this is a genteel age, so I say odalisques;" the doctor has a simpler name for these minor lights of the harem-with domestics and negresses. The odalisques were squatting on the ground in circles, chattering as fast as ever their tongues and teeth could trot. The servants and slaves were employed partly in needlework and partly in preparing their couscoussou-a farinaceous food of a "stodgy" description, something between Italian polenta and Scotch stirabout.

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The unwonted appearance of a Frank created a tremendous commotion among this piebald femininity, and some retreated precipitately to their apartments. Others, more courageous, approached, stared at the stranger, and demanded of his sable conductor, doubtless in the

ments to these gentry varied from twenty to five "ounces"-an ounce being a silver coin worth about fivepence English. What would our gamekeepers say to such a schedule of "tips" as this?

VOL. VII.

H

name of Mahomet and the forty-nine Imams, how this dog had come into their den. The moment it was known that he was a doctor, female scouts were despatched to tell the fair fugitives that the Bono Tibbib sent by the emperor to prescribe for the Sultana Lalla Zara had arrived. It was a case of "Bring all your sisters;" the converse of Mr. Dickens's experience of the Yankee boy who walked into his room, stared at him, flung open the window, and shouted, "He's here; bring all your brothers!" The lights of the harem forthwith mobbed Mr. Lemprière. Everyone seemed solicitous to find some complaint on which she might consult him; and even those who had not ingenuity enough to invent an ailment employed him to feel their pulse. Others pulled his coat, undid his knee-buckles, took out his watch, punched him in the ribs, pinched his cheeks, and blew the powder from his hair. "Their ideas of delicacy," adds the worthy medico, "did not at all correspond with those of our European ladies, for they exhibited the beauties of their limbs and form with a degree of freedom that in any other country would have been thought indecent, and their conversation was equally unrestrained." Unsophisticated Lemprière! why did he not survive to see an English "girl of the period," and to read the Saturday Review on that peculiar variety of the enchanting sex?

With considerable difficulty the surgeon struggled out of the bevy of houris. He was aided therein by the soprano, who had a stout bamboo cane, and laid about him therewith in most vigorous fashion. Presently, passing under a curtain, they came into a shabby whitewashed room; and there they found, sitting cross-legged on the floor, on a mattress covered with white calico, and surrounded by twelve white and twelve black attendants, a fat lady of about six-and-thirty. She was of Moorish parents, was the favourite wife of the emperor, and had been exceedingly beautiful; the lime-light, so to say, of the harem. Her sister sultanas, enraged at her preeminence, had naturally proceeded to poison her. In Europe Lalla Zara's rivals would have talked scandal about her; but scandal, in an oriental harem, is rather a dangerous commodity to deal in. You must prove your words. If they are proven, the bowstring very soon despatches the scandalised one; if you can't prove them, that or the bastinado may be your own fate. So the ladies who hated Lalla Zara had contented themselves with dosing her with arsenic in her couscoussou; and when Mr. Lemprière saw her she was reduced to a pitiable state of debility and organic irritation. Her beauty was quite gone. Her complexion, which had hitherto been exquisitely fair-I have seen myself Moorish women who were "ruddier than the cherry"-had changed to a sickly brown; and her teeth were utterly decayed. She had, however, two beautiful young children, on whom she looked with sad eyes.

The doctor did what he could for this all-but-extinguished light of the harem. He prescribed a course of medicines, and bade her be of good cheer; and he found the poor flabby sultana, although childishly

ignorant, scrupulously affable and polite. He was bidding her adieu when a female messenger arrived to say that the Bono Tibbib must at once proceed to visit another sultana-Lalla Batoom. The sable soprano somewhat demurred at this, as his instructions were confined to taking the doctor to Lalla Zara. However, where there is a will there is a way, especially when a woman slips in to complete the trio; and away to the apartments of Lalla Batoom was Mr. Lemprière hurried. This houri was a perfect Moorish beauty, about forty years of age, immoderately corpulent, with round and prominent cheeks, painted a deep crimson, small black eyes, and a visage completely guileless of expression. She was surrounded by a large party of odalisques, whom she had invited to "see fair," perhaps, between her and the Bono Tibbib.

It turned out that there was nothing more the matter with her than a slight cold. Mr. Lemprière felt her pulse, complimented her on her good looks, and prescribed something for her-probably syrup of squills. Then all the ladies declared that they were very bad indeed; only they didn't know exactly what was the matter with them. The contents of Mr. Lemprière's medicine-chest being very limited, he was fain to put these malades imaginaires off with fair words; but, bless you, they didn't want any of his physic. They were only anxious to pinch the doctor, and look at his clothes. He was asked if he was married, and how many wives he had. Then a teaboard, with four very small feet, was brought in; and the doctor was treated to a very nasty decoction of the Chinese herb, served in cups about the size of walnut-shells. Then, his clothes being nearly rent from his back by critical plucking and pulling on the part of the lights of the harem, and his arms black and blue with pinches inflicted to ascertain whether a Christian dog would cry out when pinched, he was suffered to depart. But he was not yet "through" with the harem. Lalla Douyaw, another of this wicked old emperor's wives, wanted to see him. She was really, Mr. Lemprière says, "what in Europe might be termed a fine woman." But this Lalla was no Moor. She was a native of Genoa; and at eight years of age had been shipwrecked with her parents on the Barbary coast. Her father and mother were at once sold, in accordance with the hospitable traditions of the country; and the poor little Italian child was snapped up for the harem of the unconscionable Lord of the Thousand Umbrellas. She had been ordered to turn Mahometan, and at first refused; but on the emperor mildly threatening to pull up every hair of her head by the roots-a decided improvement, I think, on King John's clumsy mode of procedure in regard to the Jews—she had adopted the faith of Islam. There is nothing like yielding to conviction.

There: have I said enough to dispel that Little Hallucination about the lights of the harem? You poets and painters, will you presume to weave any more of your gay figments about Lalla Rookh when you have had Lemprière on Lalla Zara, Lalla Batoom, and Lallah Douyaw brought into court against you?

ARTISTS IN LOVE AND POISON

THE fatiguingly-lively Madame de Sévigné, who skips with her pen round a murderess and a burning at stake as lightly as she does over the doings of a Ninon de l'Enclos or an indecorous dance, wrote after the execution of the Marquise de Brinvilliers, "At last it is all over. La Brinvilliers is floating about the air. Her poor little body was thrown after execution into a very large fire, and her cinders were dispersed to the winds; so that she now comes into our mouth with our breath, and by the contact of spiritual particles a taste for poisoning will get hold of us, at which we shall be quite astonished." The self-constituted lady-gazetteer of the seventeenth century was writing a good deal nearer the truth than she often did, when she penned that last paragraph. A taste for poisoning (quelque humeur empoisonnante) had got hold of society high and low, in her time, to a greater degree than she was aware of; and the sale of poudres de succession (of which the Brinvilliers boasted once in a genial state after dinner that she had a boxful for private use), together with the dispensing of other baneful compounds, formed the main occupation of one of the largest and most lucrative professions in Paris.

The age of Louis XIV. may well be called the grand siècle, for it was as great in its crimes as in its splendours. If society finds the proceedings of a Madame Rachel rather not to its taste in the present day, what would it say if a La Voisin should come to light as the head of a great class, with a host of noble clients and patronesses for customers? La Voisin began business as little more than the Madame Rachel of her time; and if after hearing the trial of the one, we look at the story of the other, and contrast the two together, we shall find the difference to be about as great as that of the Inferno of Dante would be to an Inferno by a popular poet,-if the latter should ever think of doing for Dante what he has done for Solomon.

To bury oneself even for a brief time among the records of crime is not likely to prove very exhilarating either morally or intellectually. Criminal records, it is true, may be called for the most part the refuse of history; yet refuse has its value, and even a dustman may tell from the state of the dustbin a good deal about the character of a family.

The doings of La Voisin, and the trial of herself and accomplices, two hundred and forty in number, before the secret tribunal of the Chambre Ardente, is the subject of these few pages; and if we are to say anything about it, we owe no thanks to Louis XIV., for he ordered every paper connected with the affair to be burnt, and not a

able