so that no one would ever have suspected them of concealing a demagogue. He tells me that between one and two o'clock of the afternoon, I am to come out and descend into the high road, and hide among the brushwood, for that at that hour he would be waiting with my horse, so that I should be able to continue my road. Having said this, he strolled away in an opposite direction, with his hands behind him, as if returning from a walk. I looked after him as long as I could, and then my heart began to beat. Was he really my cousin? The genealogical history which he had sketched for me was it a true one? It went back, anyhow, to the third wife of my great-grandfather. He and his uncle had heard my arrest spoken of in their village, near Scalea, and had immediately hastened to my help.

Vitaliana had understood that she must give me time to escape before allowing the gendarmes and the soldiers to follow on my traces. Her brother Albert had set off that night with my two Albanians to carry to my mother the bad news of my arrest. Her father, old Cataldo, had gone out early into the town, to get news of me if possible. At a word of my uncle's, Vitaliana had run to the porte cochère and fastened it securely, and then shut the other doors one by one, as I have described; and retiring into her room, locked herself in, and remained there praying.

VII.

ABOUT an hour had elapsed when I heard guards and gendarmes passing along my hedge and looking for me. They were spread in every direction, not knowing which road I had taken, for the washerwomen denied having seen me. Poor souls! I had even thrown a piece of silver to them.

Breathless and tired, my persecutors halted before the very bush where I lay crouching, and I had the pleasure of listening to a conversation relating to myself, which gives me a goose-skin to think of even now, here at table, after ten years have elapsed. [And as he spoke, Tibère drank down a glass of Xeres, and then went on with his story.]

The gendarmes halted for half an hour, and it was then that I learnt how a man can remain half an hour without breathing. Lizards came sliding coldly over my face, and I had not moved; flies, ants, wasps, had devoured me-still I lay motionless; I felt myself growing rigid through a sort of moral catalepsy. At last, the gendarmes resumed their road, and with my ear on the ground I listened to their footsteps retreating and to the sound of their voices dying away in the distance. All my being seemed concentrated in seeing and hearing; I could hear the hearts beating of the birds perched among the branches; I could see tiny insects. creeping among the vine leaves; I remarked a hundred different beautiful shades in the gradations of the sun's colour, as by degrees it rose higher and higher above the horizon. And, yet, how long the time appeared! how I hated the song of the birds! Every sound was for me an enemy— a trap. I was as thirsty as though I had been eating salt or drinking spirits all the night long. The stomach is an implacable organ. A great

black snake-an innocent serpent enough-comes gliding in under my bush; this reptile's eyes (which are wonderfully beautiful, by the by) meet mine and fix themselves upon me; the snake pauses, raises its graceful head, and goes away elsewhere. Presently it is a great green lizard—a brute of the lizard tribe who comes to meet me; I spit in his face, and he beats a retreat. At last, I dare move, and I take out my watch.

My watch says twelve o'clock, and I remain with my eyes fixed upon its face. Ye powers! how long an hour takes to pass! An hour! will it ever, ever finish? However, at last I see the two hands pointing to number one, and I begin to breathe again. It was the hour I had agreed upon with my cousin. Five minutes more I wait, better to see, better to hear, better to seize the nature of the pulsations of the surrounding world. Then I let my lungs work freely, and I go out. I could have wished that eternal night should have overshadowed the world; instead of which a Neapolitan sun was blazing, dazzling, implacable. I look round me; not a soul is to be seen; I look into the distance-no one! I suddenly changed extravagantly in humour, I do not know why, and I began to sing, "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre, en guerre, en guerre;" repeating the "en guerre," however, more faintly each time. Then I suddenly stopped, grew timid once more, and went creeping almost among the vines and the hedges. At two o'clock I find myself at the spot which my cousin had designated. I examine it well. I remark the oak surrounded with olivetrees, the ruinous house behind. It is impossible to make a mistake. Seeing that I am not mistaken, I sit down and I wait. An hour passes.

Still listening intently, I watch mechanically a train of red ants at their work. Half-past three, still no cousin. Had he forgotten the time? had he forgotten the place? At four o'clock not a sound in the air but the hum of the insects, who come out now the heat of the day is over. But my horse does not appear. Had he been stopped? At five o'clock not a living soul is to be seen; my watch creeps on so slowly, that it is enough to give me a vertigo. What I thought, what I felt, at that moment I can never tell you. A medley of meanness, of fear, of grief, of despair, of suspicion, of despondency, of agony. My cousin had gone away before I reached the place. The young man was not my cousin at all. He was selling and betraying me at that very hour. The gendarmes had arrested him on the road. The old priest was a spy. And then, again, what could I do? I did not know the foot-way to my own house across the mountains. And always the same thought-I am betrayed; I am sold. I was alone, in the midst of the unknown, followed and tracked like a wild beast. At half-past five, no one yet. This agony would have aged Cato-Plutarch's Cato himself.

The blood started in my veins like sparkling fire. Four or five times I pace round the old tree, listening still. But no sound, only the humming of the wings of the insects, the slight rustling of the leaves under the breath of the breeze. Little by little all grows quiet, one sound ceasing after another, and then night spreads out her solemn veils. At last, with

a bound, I rush into the road, like a tiger springing on its prey, scarce knowing what I did or what I wanted. It was seven o'clock.

I then saw a man, a fisherman apparently; I drew back instinctively; but he saw me, and came towards me. No longer able to avoid him, I spoke to him.

My good man," said I, "I have lost my way; if you will put me upon the road to Lauria, or accompany me there, I will pay you well for your day's work."

The man smiled, he looked round, and then, putting his finger on his lips, said, "Hush! I know you well enough. I was a Campotenere with you. Do not be afraid! What do you want?"

"Well, since you know me, save me! take me safely to my mother's house, and enough shall be given to you to keep you for two years."

"I can't do it, sir; my wife is reduced to eat of wheaten bread (in her last agony), and the curieux is at her bedside (the confessor); what would they say if I were to leave her? The police would remember my absence in such a case; my journey with you would be discovered; and no woman in the country would have me again, if I left her to die all alone." "But at least-but then-but that"

But all I said was useless; nothing would change, nothing would tempt this man, who had a head like the head of an apostle-at the same time obstinate, violent, brutal, tenacious, wily, and brown like the towers of an ancient castle, marked with wrinkles. He led me to the sea-side, to an old abandoned shed which had belonged to the douane; there he left me while he went home to fetch me bread, and to see if his old drolesse was not crevée. Half an hour later he returned, bringing some fried fish and a loaf. This he brought, begging my pardon for having kept me so long. It was not his fault; his wife was dead at last, and he had had to cover up the fire, to light the lamp, to throw a few grains to the fowls; and he added that he had now a few hours at his disposal, until the priest should come for the burying next day, and that he could accompany me as far as

At this moment I hear a distant noise-far away and scarcely perceptible. It makes the gravel ring upon the road. It approaches and grows more and more distinct-the striking of hoofs advancing, the gallop of a horse. Can it be the gendarmes coming to arrest me? had this old fellow only gone off to denounce me? Still the noise approaches, advances, advances. A horse urged to its utmost speed, a horse that suddenly neighs, my own horse, which knew I was near, and was calling me.

My cousin had been watched all day long, and had not been able to get away without discovering my retreat. I spring into the saddle, without the aid of either rein or stirrup. I feel that I am in the saddle, and my cousin is clinging on behind. With a stroke of the whip we set off as hard as we can go. I am saved.

Stranger than Fiction.*

"I HAVE seen what I would not have believed on your testimony, and what I cannot, therefore, expect you to believe upon mine," was the reply of Dr. Treviranus to inquiries put to him by Coleridge as to the reality of certain magnetic phenomena which that distinguished savant was reported to have witnessed. It appears to me that I cannot do better than adopt this answer as an introduction to the narrative of facts I am about to relate. It represents very clearly the condition of the mind before and after it has passed through experiences of things that are irreconcilable with known laws. I refuse to believe such things upon the evidence of other people's eyes; and I may, possibly, go so far as to protest that I would not believe them even on the evidence of my own. When I have seen them, however, I am compelled to regard the subject from an entirely different point of view. It is no longer a question of mere credence or authority, but a question of fact. Whatever conclusions, if any, I may have arrived at on this question of fact, I see distinctly that I have been projected into a better position for judging of it than I occupied before, and that what then appeared an imposition, or a delusion, now assumes a shape which demands investigation. But I cannot expect persons who have not witnessed these things, to take my word for them, because, under similar circumstances, I certainly should not have taken theirs. What I do expect is, that they will admit as reasonable, and as being in strict accordance with the philosophical method of procedure, the mental progress I have indicated, from the total rejection of extraordinary phenomena upon the evidence of others, to the recognition of such phenomena, as matter of fact, upon our own direct observation. This recognition points the way to inquiry, which is precisely what I desire to promote.

Scepticism is one of the safe and cautious characteristics of the English people. Nothing is believed at first; and this habitual resistance to novelties might be applauded as a sound instinct, if it did not sometimes obstruct the progress of knowledge. The most important discoveries have passed through this habitual ordeal of derision and antagonism. Whatever has a tendency to disturb received notions, or to go beyond the precincts of our present intelligence, is denounced, without inquiry, and out of the shallowest of all kinds of conventionalism, as false, absurd, and dangerous. Let us suffer ourselves to be rebuked in

* As Editor of this Magazine, I can vouch for the good faith and honourable character of our correspondent, a friend of twenty-five years' standing; but as the writer of the above astounding narrative owns that he "would refuse to believe such things upon the evidence of other people's eyes," his readers are therefore free to give or withhold their belief.-ED.

these exercises of intellectual pride by remembering that in Shakspeare's time the sun was believed to go round the earth; that the laws of gravitation, and the circulation of the blood were found out only yesterday; this wonderful, wise world of ours being fearfully ignorant of both throughout the long ages upon ages of its previous existence; and that it was only this morning we hit upon the uses of steam by land and sea, and ran our girdle of electricity round the loins of the globe. Who says we must stop here? If we have lived for thousands of years in a state of absolute unconsciousness of the arterial system that was coursing through our bodies, who shall presume to say that there is nothing more to be learned in time to come?

To begin my narrative at the beginning, it is necessary to say that I had heard, in common with all the world, of the marvels of spirit-rapping and table-turning; and that my desire to witness phenomena which I found it impossible to believe, and difficult to doubt, considering the unquestionable judgment and integrity of some of my informants, was early gratified under the most favourable circumstances. It must be understood that, although employing the terms spirit-rapping and table-turning, I by no means admit them to be accurate, or even appropriate. Quite the contrary. As descriptive phrases, they are simply absurd. They convey no notion whatever of the manifestations to which they are supposed to be applied; but they are convenient for my purpose, because they have passed into general use.

For my first experience, I must take the reader into a large drawingroom. The time is morning; and the only persons present are two ladies. It is proper to anticipate any question that may arise at this point, by premising that the circumstances under which the séance took place precluded all suspicion of confederacy or trickery of any kind. There was nobody in the apartment capable of practising a deception, and no conceivable object to gain by it. Being anxious to observe the proceedings in the first instance, before I took part in them, I sat at a distance of about six or seven feet from the tolerably heavy sofa table at which the ladies were placed, one at the end farthest from me, and the other at the side. It is important to note their positions, which show that if their hands had any influence upon the movements of the table, such influence must have operated at right angles, or in opposite directions. Their hands were placed very lightly on the table, and for three or four minutes we all remained perfectly still. The popular impression that it is indispensable for the hands of the sitters to touch each other, and that they must all concentrate their attention upon the hoped-for manifestation, is, like a multitude of other absurdities that are afloat on the subject, entirely unfounded. No such conditions are necessary; and instead of concentrating the attention, it is often found desirable to divert attention to other matters, on grounds which, at present, may be considered experimental rather than positive.

After we had waited a few minutes, the table began to rock gently to