against a stone-bench, half-hidden among the shoots of the beechtree, under whose shade it formerly afforded a resting-place to the noble saunterers of the palace. The very canal stil Ishelters among its flowering flags and water lilies a few overgrown golden carp, glittering among the more sober-suited fishes of its waters, like the last courtiers of the place. For Queen Blanche and her successors were in turn succeeded at her Pleasaunce of the Seine by nobles of high degree; nor was it until the last century that it fell into plebeian hands,

"And laughing Ceres re-assumed the land!"

It happened, however, that at the period immediately preceding the frightful epoch of the French Revolution, the Tremblaye had brighter things to boast of than its golden carp,-purer things than even its crystal fountains. The little farm, concealed within its cozy nook, was tenanted by a worthy wight named Mathurin, whose two daughters enjoyed the envied appellation of the Roses of Corbeil. It is impossible to conceive two lovelier creatures, or two more closely resembling each other in person,—more thoroughly dissimilar in character and disposition. There was but a year's difference between them in age; there was a century's in sentiment! Manette, the elder sister, was a light, lively, gay-hearted creature, riante as the landscapes of Corbeil. Justine, the younger, with the same blue eyes, the same silken hair, the same trim ancle and well-formed figure, was sad and sober; and the neighbours, who noted among themselves her gravity of aspect, were apt to attribute it to the influence of the broken constitution of her mother, who died of a pulmonary disorder in giving her birth. Both sisters, however, by the discretion of their deportment, strengthened the high distinctions attained by their beauty; and Mathurin, although watchful over the two nymphs of the Tremblaye as a miser over his gold, was not afraid to let his daughters take their stand on market-days upon the Place de Notre Dame of Corbeil, with their fair faces shaded by the wide straw-hats in use among the peasants of the departments of Seine et Oise, to preside over the sale of the vegetable produce of his farm, and more especially over the stand of garden-flowers and exotics, the pride of the gay parterres surrounding the limpid bath of the Reine Blanche. Manette was a great adept in the art of persuasion to a customer. Recommended by her animated accent and laughing eyes, his stalest melons and greenest grapes were readily purchased by the Parisian cockneys, who came down to Corbeil to swallow a mouthful or two of country-air, and of whatever else Providence might send them; while Justine, an expert florist, had so much to say, and said it so gently and well, touching the culture of her clove-pinks and geraniums, that there appeared every probability of Mathurin's being enabled to add a second cow to his pastures, and another brood or two of ducks to the clear ponds of the Pleasaunce, in the course of the summer. Everything prospered with them. While the father busied himself with the cares of his farm, the daughters contrived to render it available. The barley-mow and the hay-rick diminished,— the beds of ranunculuses and tulips were bereft of their brilliant show but Mathurin's long leathern purse grew heavier, his linen-press was stocked; and, at length, he took his pipe at even as well as morning tide, without much self-reproach on the score of economy. He even made the girls partakers of his gains, and Justine had the happiness to

;

secure from her earnings a weekly mass for the spiritual repose of her mother, at the altar of the Sacré Coeur in the church of St. Spire!

Manette, however, had other objects to which to devote her superfluous wealth. Manette was young and pretty enough to be curious in the lace of her pinners, and the lawn of her kerchief. It was observed one day, as she took her usual stand on the market-place, that she exhibited a pair of long gold ear-rings under her straw hat, and that a cross of gold was suspended to the black velvet which habitually encircled her slender throat; and one or two of the most censorious of the ladies of the Faubourg, who were accustomed to exchange a few civil words with the Roses of Corbeil, while they laid in their stock of mignonette seed, turned disdainfully away when they noticed this accession of finery. Mademoiselle Benoîte, indeed, the squint-eyed daughter of a retired notary at St. Germain, was heard to whisper that it was no wonder Manette of La Tremblaye grew so fine, now that she was rowed over the river so often by young Monsieur Clérivault of the Douze Moulins; and now that young Monsieur Clérivault, of the Douze Moulins, found the fountains of La Tremblaye so refreshing during the midsummer heats. The prudes and scandal-mongers were determined to espy mischief in the innocent coquetry of poor Manette!

One sultry summer afternoon, however, the young girl herself happened to overhear these insinuations of her customers, when she not only pettishly removed from her person the ornaments which had caused them to arise, but instantly took her way homewards, sobbing with indignation, and leaving to her sister the disposal of her merchandise, and the task of remonstrating with her detractors, in extenuation of Manette's proceedings.

"You well know, Mademoiselle Benoîte," said Justine, in her usual mild, conciliating tone," that if Monsieur Clérivault finds his way to La Tremblaye, it is only in the way of business for his father's mill, and much against my sister's inclinations. You, who are a kinswoman of his family, cannot but be aware that Manette has more than once complained to the old gentleman of the importunities of his son."

"Is it in the way of business for the mill," retorted the provoked spinster," that my cousin Clérivault escorts Mademoiselle Manette to all the ducasses of the neighbourhood? Charlet, the ferry-man, related to me only yesterday, that he had himself encountered the young people one evening after dusk."

But her accusations were cut short; the looks of Justine warned the evil speaker that some person of importance stood beside her; and, as Mademoiselle Benoîte turned hastily round, the large dark eyes of Félix Clérivault scowled her into silence. Manette, having met him lounging as usual upon her path homewards to the farm, had appealed to his justice against the insolence of his cousin. Nor did she hesitate to assail him with her usual epithets of feminine disdain; and the revenge of Félix was to wreak upon the ancient virago threefold the measure of ill-usage he had received from the object of his affectious.

It was not every one, however, who would have adventured so boldly as Manette to vent reproaches on Félix Clérivault. Félix was a man whom, if few people loved, most people feared; although in every way extrinsically endowed to win affection, and only qualified to excite apprehension by a sort of taciturn reserve, inspiring involuntary mistrust of

his temper and disposition, he was chargeable with no act of violence, no act of injustice; he was charitable, generous, humane; yet his associates, one and all, refrained from making him their friend; and from the singular motive that they felt convinced he was capable of becoming a bitter enemy. And thus it was that few people loved Félix! He was the son of old Clérivault, the rich miller of Corbeil; but he was nothing

more.

The mill-or, as it is called on the spot, the Douze Moulins of Corbeil, (although no less a number than twenty-eight are comprehended in the one huge building, resembling at a distance rather a strong fortress than a humble corn-mill,)-was then a recent erection ;-one vast wing of the building being devoted to the government service of the public hospitals of Paris; the other to the private speculations of Clérivault. At a time when all other branches of commerce were declining, under the influence of the political dissensions already agitating the kingdomwhen the rich silk-weavers and bronze-founders of Paris were beginning to foresee a turn to their prosperity,--the staff of life was not the less needed that its consumers were bent on establishing a general equalization of their rights. Bread was wanted at Paris, whether Girondin or Jacobin ruled the senate; and old Clérivault, profiting by the facilities afforded by the vicinity of the river Juine to the spreading corn-fields of La Brie, towards the provisionment of the capital, had invested a large portion of his fortune in the creation of an establishment likely to perpetuate his name, and multiply his means beyond all calculation.

His whole life had, in fact, been spent in the task of money-getting and money-sparing, and the pastime of deceiving the world as to the extent of his gains and his savings. No one, not even his only son, had the most remote idea of the amount of Clérivault's property; but when it was rumoured in Corbeil that he had made overtures for an alliance between Félix and Mademoiselle de Montigny, co-heiress of the Château de St. Port, the gossips of the town decided that he must be a bolder or a richer man than they had previously imagined; the aristocratic "De" prefixed to the name of the young lady, being equivalent to the value of at least thirty thousand crowns, in a marriage contract with the son of the Miller of Corbeil. Neither the distinction it imparted, however, nor any other attraction, sufficed to overcome the opposition of Félix to the match. While Mademoiselle Benoîte and her crew were busy in computing what amount of wealth could justify the Clérivaults in pretending to so grand a connexion, the young man explicitly declared to his father his determination to wed elsewhere!

This might have been held sufficient provocation; but when Félix came to particularize that the partner he had chosen was no other than pretty Manette, the twin Rose of Corbeil, the gardener's daughter of La Tremblaye, the wrath testified by old Clérivault against his son was easy to be accounted for. The cast-off prejudices of the great usually descend to the little; and at a time when even the peerage of France was beginning to republicanize,-when Versailles itself had declared in favour of the natural equality of the human species, it was time for the Miller to disdain the inter-alliance of his family with that of a market-gardener; nor could an Emperor of Germany, insulted by the determination of his son, the King of the Romans, to espouse the

daughter of some petty baron of the empire, have shown himself more fiercely indignant than old Clérivault.

"I had already heard from our Cousin Benoîte," cried he, “that it was inferred in the town no good would come of your everlasting visits to the sty of a farm yonder, over the water: but, look you, Master Félix, if ever again you set foot upon the turf of the Tremblaye, I will assuredly put the width of my threshold between you and me for evermore;-ay! Sir, and marry again-(Mademoiselle de Montigny, per. haps, why not the father as well as the son?)-and beget sons and daughters, who shall not thwart me in my old age, although they share my inheritance with my elder and more stubborn child."

"You cannot do better, Sir!" replied Félix, without moving a muscle of his handsome but impassive countenance. "Although you deny my choice, I am far from inclined to find fault with yours. Marry Mademoiselle de Montigny-disinherit me if you will. I have still two strong arms, and as strong a heart, to enable me to get my own living, and pursue my own inclinations."

And Clérivault, well aware of the obstinacy of his son's resolves, gave over the case for lost, and even made a solemn progress to the Château de St. Port, to offer his apologies to the family of Montigny, and tender the retractation of his proposals.

Yet in spite of this resignation and these formal measures, all hope of the alliance was not at an end. Old Clérivault had an abettor in his projects on whom he little calculated. He could not be more firmly determined that Félix should never become the husband of the gardener's daughter, than Manette, that she would never become the wife of the Miller's son! No! it was not for him that she had added the offending trinkets to her costume or folded the snowy lawn upon her bosom-it was not for him that she loitered by the way on the road from La Tremblaye to the market-place:-it was not for him that she ensconced her well-turned foot in slippers of Spanish morocco, to dance upon the greensward at the annual fête of St. Etienne at Essonne. There were other attractions at the Mill of Corbeil than the homage of Félix Clérivault; and Mathurin's daughter, so inaccessible to the addresses of one who wooed her with the stern gravity of a Spanish hidalgo, or rather with the jealous but impassioned tenderness of an Orosmanes, had given her heart, with very little asking, to young Valentin, the son of Charlet, the ferryman of Corbeil.

As it has been already observed, the prejudices of the great are eagerly adopted by the little; and the rich miller could not express himself more vehemently against his son's attachment to the daughter of the market-gardener, than did the market-gardener, in his turn, on hearing his daughter's engagement to the son of a poor ferryman of the Seine. Clérivault wished to marry Félix to the high-born Clarisse de Montigny Mathurin, to marry Manette to the wealthy Félix. Clérivault threatened to disinherit his son-Mathurin threatened to horsewhip his daughter; and when, on the evening succeeding the general éclaircissement, Félix rowed over to La Tremblaye, and, having fastened his boat to the usual stump, made his way towards a stone-bench among the acacias, where often at the same hour he had found the two daughters of Mathurin sitting together-now talking, now listening, sometimes

to each other, sometimes to the gurgling of the springs among the grass, or the whistling of the blackbirds in the groves of St. Germain, he was bitterly taxed by Manette with the indignities he had been the means of drawing upon her endurance.

"It is a cruel thing of you, Monsieur Félix," said she, "to persist in persecuting me thus; after I have again and again told you that were you Count of Corbeil, or the King of France himself, I would never be your wife! And now you have provoked my father to misuse me, (the first time he ever breathed a harsh word against either of his children!) I do but detest you the more!"

"Hate me, and welcome!" said Félix, in an unaltered voice. "I have heard you say as much before, Manette, and been nothing moved. But never till to-day-never till from your father's lips this morning, did I learn that you preferred another-that you stooped to bestow the love denied to me, upon yonder beggar, the son of a beggar-the hireling drudge of my father's mill! What in heaven-what on earth-do you see to move your affection, in such a fellow as Valentin? Answer me, Manette,-what do you see to like in Valentin ?"

"That if he were rich, like yourself, Monsieur Félix Clérivault, he would not always be thinking of riches, and giving the name of beggar, as a word of reproach, to others less fortunate than himself; for Valentin has the heart of a prince!"

as you

"Truly a ragged prince, and with a precious cabin for his palace! " retorted the Miller's son, at once justifying her accusation; will find when you take your place yonder in Charlet's hovel, among the ten half-fed, half-clothed brats who call him father!"

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And who, even for that scanty food and scanty clothing, are indebted to the labour of Valentin!" added Manette, with firmness; "of Valentin who, when his work at the mill is over, comes back to his father's hut with a smile upon his face and a song upon his lips; and, instead of grumbling and murmuring that his limbs are aching with toil, sits down cheerfully to his osier-weaving or mat-work; or, during the summer season, rows off as stoutly as though his arms had not done a turn of work through the day, to cut reeds for the thatchers or the tile-makers. And for what does he labour? To lay up hoards for himself, or to purchase the means of selfish pleasure?-No, Monsieur Félix, no!-to get bread for his paralytic mother-raiment for his brothers and sisters-rent to requite your own purse-proud father for the use of the miserable hut you hold so cheap. Proud as you are of your fortune, your very means have been swelled by his industry."

Manette," whispered the gentle Justine, laying her hand imploringly upon her sister's shoulder," you know not how great an injury you may be doing Valentin by this violence!"

"I understand you!" replied Manette, aloud, "although you are afraid to speak out. You mean that Monsieur Félix will be a powerful and malicious enemy to him. Courage, courage, sister! Valentin, by the sweat of his brow and the labour of his hands, earns wages from the Miller of Corbeil; but he is not, therefore, the slave of either old Clérivault or his son. There is nothing to fear for Valentin; nor any reason why I should not acquaint the gentleman who is base enough to taunt him with beggary, that I would rather make one in the hovel by the river side-among its merry inmates and the warm hearts that