forest, and, after the usual forms, deposited by the Maréchaussée of Corbeil in his father's hovel, previously to interment, she set out alone for Charlet's cottage, to comfort the living, to mourn over the dead!

It was a grievous sight,-that miserable hut standing alone in the midst of the green meadows on the borders of the Seine, like a thing abandoned to the mercy of nature-that miserable hut whose prop was now reft away that refuge for those who had none left to succour them, none left to minister to their wants, or wipe away their tears! Mathurin's daughter lifted the latch as gently as though it were possible that any under Charlet's roof could at such a season be sleeping; and with the calmness of despair entered the house of mourning.

And mournful, indeed, was the spectacle! There, on the only pallet, lay the paralytic mother, hiding her face in the clothes, that she might not look upon the disfigured corpse of her first-born-the mattress affording the customary bed to the children having been already carried out and sold by the poor ferryman, to secure the means of a decent burial for his boy! And there the livid body of Valentin lay stretched upon the very rushes which his own hand had cut for so different a purpose; while his little brothers and sisters, deprived of their rest, and terrified, and hungry, were huddled together in a corner, staring with wonder at all that was passing. Charlet, usually so reckless amid his wants and misfortunes, sat with his head drooping on his breast, and scarcely raised his eyes on Manette's entrance; nor was it till she went close up to him, and kneeled at his feet, and called him "father," and reviled herself as the cause of the mischief which had happened, that the unhappy man seemed moved to consciousness.

"Had he lived, I should have been your daughter," said Manette, hiding her weeping face upon his knees," and then, all I had would have been yours. Accept it now, Charlet, for his sake," she continued, placing in his hand a small bag containing the amount of hers and Justine's earnings. tr Accept it now, when it can be useful; for to me, worldly goods are henceforward vain." And she wept long and bitterly, while the little children, who had been taught by Valentin to love her, crept forward and clung to her gown, and whispered to her to be comforted, for that their brother was surely with God!

He,

Yes, he is with God!" said the broken-hearted old man, in a hoarse voice. "He whose loss renders these little ones worse than fatherless, and gives so bitter a pang to the poor grey-headed parents to whom he never, never gave pain before, must be with God. My boy may appear at the tribunal of Grace with the stain of self-murder on his soul. who never injured mortal man, may have been moved to lift his hand against his own precious life. But Heaven judges us not as we judge each other; Heaven witnessed the cares, the trials, the struggles of my blessed Valentin, and noted the maddening brain and breaking heart of the proud pauper-the tender son-the good brother-the good Christian; and Heaven will forgive him!"

"Why, why did he forsake us?" ejaculated Mathurin's daughter, rising from her knees and tottering towards the body. "Oh, Valentin! Valentin! why did you forsake me?" and lifting up the cloth with which the pious care of the father had covered the face of the dead, she imprinted a fervent kiss upon the blue lips of him who should have been her husband, unterrified by the starting eyes-the distended nostrils— and all the ghastly evidence of his mode of death.

5

At that moment her father and sister, having missed her from the farm, and readily conjecturing her route, entered the cottage in search of Manette; but Mathurin's displeasure against the deceased was over now, and instead of expressing dissatisfaction at his daughter's proceedings, he not only advanced with tearful eyes to sprinkle holy water on the body of her ill-starred lover, but asked permission of Charlet to follow it to the grave. The worthy Bernardin had already expressed his intention to be present at the burial ceremony; and when the remains of the "warm and true" Valentin were deposited in the pauper's trench of the churchyard of St. Germain, they were transported thither on the shoulders of his comrades, and followed by so vast a concourse of his fellow-workmen and friends, that the incense of their affliction was as that of a burnt-offering, calculated to propitiate the mercy of God towards the suicide.

It is probable that a catastrophe so lamentable would have produced a greater sensation and elicited a closer scrutiny in a little town so uneventful in its history as Corbeil, but that the still fiercer disasters of the French Revolution had already begun in the capital; and even the tongue of Mademoiselle Benoîte found a nobler topic in the misfortunes of Marie Antoinette of France than in those of the Roses of Corbeil. There was no time for sympathy in the sorrows of individuals!

Clérivault, perplexed by apprehensions lest the vast granaries of his halle should attract the rapacity of the populace, whose excesses were now every hour on the increase, gratified without hesitation-almost mechanically-the request of his son that he would assign the gratuitous use of one of his wholesome cottages to Charlet's afflicted family; nor was it needful for Félix to covenant in return that he would seek no further intercourse with the beauty of La Tremblaye; the old man having already ascertained, that from the period of Valentin's untimely end, his rival had made a sacrifice of the ill-omened connexion. Even Mademoiselle Benoîte was ready to avow that Monsieur Félix had altogether renounced his intention of a marriage with Manette.

Meanwhile, not only Mademoiselle Benoîte, but every gossip of the united community, was secretly marvelling over the extraordinary change that had taken place in the deportment of young Clérivault; and one and all inferred, from the haggard aspect of his face, and the gradual emaciation of his person, that his attachment to Mathurin's daughter had been deeper-seated than they had imagined possible. The sacrifice of his passion was evidently preying upon his constitution; he grew languid tremulous-his strength was failing-his temper softened-his audacious deportment had given place to mild depression; instead of sharing the political enthusiasm of the tiers état of which he formed a part-instead of exulting in the degradation of an order which he had been accustomed to revile as his natural enemy-Félix appeared to regard with utter indifference the alarms of his father and the triumphs of the republican party.

The young man was not, however, altogether so careless as he appeared. Félix nourished in his heart an important project. Although he had done his part towards the resistance of the foreign alliance created for the suppression of civil and religious liberty in France, by supplying an active substitute to the conscription, he now determined to devote his personal services to his country; and, fully aware of the oppo

sition he was likely to experience from a parent who reverenced him as his heir fully as much as he loved him as a son, departed in secret from Corbeil to volunteer in the ranks of the republican army.

"Resolved to accomplish my part as a citizen, by defending the rights of the nation against the insults of the minions of Pitt and Coburg," said the letter which he subsequently addressed to his father in explanation of his intentions, " I have spared you the pain of opposing my immoveable resolve; and to evade your pursuit, my dear father, have entered the army of the republic under an assumed name; nor, till I have proved myself worthy to be classed among the most faithful of her sons, shall I revisit Corbeil. My last entreaty is that you give all your confidence to Bernardin, your true and diligent servant; and that you do not neglect the destitute family of Charlet the Ferryman."

"I knew it would be thus," murmured the gentle Justine, as she sauntered along the river-walk of her father's garden looking towards the mill of Corbeil, when intelligence of young Clérivault's departure transpired in the town. "I was sure he could not remain here, haunting the same spots and communing with the same associates as before. He is right to fly. Félix has nothing more to do at Corbeil; his penance must be accomplished elsewhere. Miserable, miserable Félix! What thoughts, what recollections accompany him in his flight;-what griefs, what terrors have been undermining his health! Yet Manette, who so dearly loved Valentin, has seen and suspected nothing of all this; while I, I so long, so hopelessly devoted to Félix, discerned his conscience-struck affliction from the first moment I saw him gazing yonder from the shore on Charlet's hovel! The Forest of Sénart,—the Forest of Sénart! Oh! that I could free myself from the imagination of that scene, that fatal, fatal night! No sooner am I left alone than involuntarily the whole black business rises before me. I fancy their encounter, I seem to hear their quarrel,-I seem to see the struggle in which Valentin must have fallen a victim, ere the dreadful idea presented itself to Félix of making him pass for a self-murderer! Appearances avouched the imputation, appearances deceived the officers of justice, deceived his comrades, his master, his father, his friends, his affianced wife, but they did not deceive me; for it was not on Valentin's life, but on the well-doing of Félix Clérivault that my happiness was pledged. And, oh! how have I watched over his repentance, his despair! Had he triumphed in his wickedness, I should have learned to hate him but to see him self-convicted,-penitent,-wretched,—although thrice secure from discovery! Miserable, miserable Félix! Driven from his home by the clinging curse of reminiscences henceforward to be attached to his birthplace-Oh! when will he venture to return to Corbeil ?"

Meanwhile the tumults of revolutionary violence were raging; and this question, at first universally reiterated in the little town, soon came to be repeated only by old Clérivault and Justine. The old man had already resigned the presidency of the mill to Bernardin, the overseer; and the fine domain of St. Germain having become national property by the emigration of the noble family with whom it was hereditary, the Château was readily appropriated by the assignats of the Miller of Corbeil. Thither, with a scanty household, he retired; and there, uncared for and alone, falling gradually into a state of imbecility, it

was a gratification to him, when tottering round the lawns whose beauty he was incapable of appreciating, to be accosted by the younger daughter of his neighbour Mathurin, with inquiries whether tidings had reached him from his son, and how it fared with the armies of France. But the old man's answer was ever the same :- "The armies of France were triumphant, but no tidings from his son! Great names were beginning to arise from obscurity in the annals of the country,-Lannes, Victor, Bernadotte, Murat, Duroc, Berthier, Suchet, Soult. A great soldier had conquered to its banners the eagle-plumed ensign of victory; but no conjecture enabled Clérivault to discover under what designation Félix had either fallen on the field of honour, or was struggling onwards in the career of fame. It was rumoured in the town that once, when a brigade, on its march to join the army of the Sambre and Meuse, halted at Essonne, a superior officer was seen galloping back to the high road in the dusk of the evening from the portal of the church of St. Spire, where, in the tronc des pauvres, adjoining the mausoleum of Count Haymon, of Corbeil, a bank-bill of considerable amount was found on the succeeding morning. But none could say that the stranger was Félix Clérivault; and if indeed he, the suns of Egypt and Italy had "written strange defeature in his face."

At length (it was at the triumphant epoch of the recognition of le soldat heureux as first Emperor of France) the Miller of Corbeil, long sickly and doting, was finally gathered to his rest; when a public advertisement having been legally circulated by the authorities of the department, and the sale of the property subsequently announced,-the heir, the long-absent, the half-forgotten Félix,-appeared on the spot in the person of one of those eminent generals whose names had long been rife in the mouths of the inhabitants of Corbeil, and their destinies commended to heaven by the prayers of their fellow-countrymen. But when, shortly afterwards, the equipage of General Le fine summer evening entering the iron gates of the park of St. Germain, the notion of the presence of one of the heroes of Marengo, of the Pyramids, of Austerlitz, seemed to have superseded all recollection of Félix Clérivault. The villagers gazed on the noble person of the handsome, grave, middle-aged soldier, whose head was more than slightly silvered by the toils of war, and saw no trace of the petulant youth they had been accustomed to watch, eighteen years before, crossing the river to La Tremblaye to laugh and jest with the Roses of Corbeil.

was seen one

To his eyes, meanwhile, the season and the scene were much as when he quitted them. He had become a hero, a statesman ;-Europe was familiar with his name, and his voice had obtained weight in the councils of France. His port was now erect and stately,-his step firm and measured, his voice stern and commanding; he had learned to control the desires and passions of others, he had learned to control his own. Nothing in him but was altered. But there rolled the same blue Seine, -there smiled the same vineyards,-there stood the Mill of Corbeil, -there rose the woods of St. Germain,-there the chimneys of the farm of La Tremblaye,-there, far below in the meadows, crumbled the ruins of a hovel, the hut of the ferryman, and there-there, in the distant horizon, gloomed the Forest of Sénart. And, lo! unsilenceably resounded in his ears the mandate, " Thou shalt do no murder!"

It was some comfort to him to learn that Mathurin was no more, and

the family of Charlet the ferryman dispersed and forgotten. "And the Roses of Corbeil ?" inquired General Le ——, in a low voice, as, accompanied by the gamekeeper of St. Germain, on the evening of his arrival, he pursued his way along the terrace, gazing through the grey evening light upon the open country.

"Mathurin's elder daughter, mon Général, she who married the young farmer named Baptiéret, is the mother of ten fine children, and still living at the Tremblaye," said the garde-de-chasse. "Her sister, Justine, poor soul! has become a Sister of Charity."

Hastily proceeding in their walk, the opening of the upper avenue of the château towards the vineyards brought them in sight of a fine, comely-looking countrywoman driving two cows, and accompanied by a lout of a farming-boy and two healthy little girls, with untrimmed heads and dirty faces.

"Tiens, voilà justement Ma'ame Baptiéret et ses enfans!" continued the gamekeeper. "Ma'ame Baptiéret! Holà, Ma'ame Baptiéret! voici Monsieur le Général, qui s'informe de vous et de votre famille!"

And General Le found himself perforce required to stand and receive the awkward courtesies of the great fat countrywoman before him, and listen to her history of her father's dying of an asthma, and her own happy match with Baptiéret, the cowboy! Brave garçon si jamais y en fût, et bien-aimé de ce pauvre Valentin. Monsieur le Général se rappelle, sans doute, ce pauvre Valentin ?"

66

Alas! what else but the remembrance of Valentin had kept him so long an alien from his father's hearth, so long an exile from home? And it was for the woman before him that he had borne so much,-incurred so much,-sinned so greatly, so irreparably! Poor feeble human nature! Poor murdered Valentin!

But the trial thus voluntarily encountered proved too much for Félix ; and, after remaining a few hours longer at St. Germain, General Le quitted for the last time a spot abounding in soul-harrowing reminiscences -reminiscences rendering vain his toils of honour, his career of glory.

is now at

For the brief remainder of his life, the fine mansion of St. Germain remained uninhabited. But the grave of General Le Ehrenbreitstein, his monument in the Panthéon, and his property, having been bequeathed to the foundation of a military hospital, otherwise invested. Strangers abide at the château,—a company of speculators have assumed the direction of the Mill of Corbeil;-and nothing remains to commemorate the past, but the clear fountains of La Tremblaye, and a deserted grave in the churchyard of the village of St. Germain,- -a grave whose accusing voice will be heard by the guilty soul even through the fearful stillness of eternity!

C. F. G.

[ED.-It may be necessary to state that the foregoing tale bears no reference to the respectable family by whom the fine mills of Corbeil were established, and who are now proprietors of the domain of St. Germain.]