Down deeply beneath the voice of my kind,
'Mong grim cruel monsters each wrathfully blind.

XXII.

And methought the polypus moved up near,
And to clasp me its hundred arms it swung,

Oh, then in the ecstacy of my fear,

I left the firm coral to which I had clung:

But the whirlpool which raging then grasped me again,
Showed mercy, and spared me when aid was in vain."

XXIII.

In wonder enwrapt, for awhile stood the king,
Then said," the goblet is thine own ;
And yet more, I promise this glittering ring,
Thick studded with many a costly stone,

If thou'lt dive once again, and news bring to me,
Of what thou may'st find in the depths of the sea."

XXIV.

With tender pity his daughter heard this,

And thus with suppliant words began,
"Dear father, ah, let this fearful sport cease,

He hath done for thee now what none other can;
And thy offers may tempt him to plunge in again,
For the proud thirst of triumph man ne'er can restrain.”

XXV.

Then the monarch impatient of further control,

Hurled it far in the foam of the gulf's fiercest might; And said, "if he bringeth to me that golden bowl,

I'll count him my noblest and bravest knight,

And espoused to my daughter this day shall he be,
Thus requiting her pity and sympathy."

XXVI.

And a spirit unseen to his soul seemed to speak,
And courage like fire shone forth from his eye,
As he saw the blush suddenly mantle her cheek,
Then saw her grow pale and sink down with a sigh:
So calmly resolving the maiden to win-

For life or for death once again he plunged in.

XXVII.

Then heard they the tumult with dread and amaze,
As it swept on with thundering sound;

And the maiden o'erbending with fond loving gaze,
Stood watching the billows that madly whirled round;
And their eddying circles swept on as before,
But the bold hearted youth was seen never more.

May,

A DUEL IN 1788, AND IN 1794.

FROM THE FRENCH OF MARIE AYCARD.

III.

"PARBLEU," said the marquis, his anger somewhat cooled by this act of vengeance, "your lover is by no means as brave as he is handsome. While you are like a lioness robbed of her whelps, he flies, leaving you to the full fury of my anger. I have said but a single word to him-Begone!' and he has obeyed like a lackey. You are wrong, Madame, to stoop thus to a man of the robe; it is derogatory to your character; it will injure you. If I should ever take it into my head to relate this little adventure to our friends, you would sadly fall in their esteem. A little lawyer, Madame-fie! What are you thinking of? Adieu, Herminie, adieu! send after your handsome counsellor; I resign all my rights to him."

With these words he turned upon his heel and left the apartment, humming a fashionable air; but beneath his affected carelessness he concealed a cruel sting, a bitter feeling of vexation; he was wounded in his vanity and in his love. A petty youth, who durst not look him in the face-whom he had chased from his presence by a single word, had, notwithstanding all this, supplanted him in the good graces of the woman who had ruined him, and who had reduced him to the necessity of allying himself to an obscure family; but this was not all; this same youth had subdued the heart of the marquise, so young, so beautiful, so graceful and so charming, and doubtless, pure also, and whom he had basely abandoned at the moment when he had given her his name, in permitting, nay, almost in commanding her to cherish an adulterous and dishonorable passion. Although perverted by the licentious manners of the time, M. de Lussan was endowed with natural good sense; besides, the sight of his young wife had not failed to make an impression upon him; her gentle, budding, artless beauty, had fascinated him almost without his knowing it. On leaving the house of Madame de Saint Didier, be shuddered as he thought upon the imprudent words which had escaped him in the marquise's presence; he directed his coachman to drive him home, with the intention of re-entering his wife's apartment, and of repairing by his gallantry, and even by his tenderness, the wrong of which he had been guilty towards her an hour before.

"No, no! my little M. Cressy," he said to himself upon the way home, "you shall not visit my estate of Lussan; no, you shall not accompany the marquise-you shall remain at Paris-I leave you Madanie de Saint Didier; that ought to satisfy you."

He reached his hotel; he laid aside his court dress, and entered his wife's apartment, now attired in a costume befitting a newly married bridegroom. A waiting maid, fast asleep, alone occupied the bedchamber. He awoke her.

"Your mistress?" he said.

"The marquise has gone out."

"

These few words, "The marquise has gone out," tingled in the ears of M. de Lussan like the sound of a bell ringing and dying away after a prolonged vibration.

"The marquise has gone out!" he cried, "at this hour! In a carriage, doubtless?" No, my lord marquis, on foot." "And alone?" "Alone." "How do you know this?" "When I entered Madame's apartment to aid her to undress I did not find her here; I called, I questioned the domestics of the hotel, but no one had seen her. The porter told me, at last, that Madame had directed him to open the door for her, as she wished to go out." "And he obeyed?" "Yes, my lord marquis, Madame appeared to be very anxious to leave the hotel, without being seen by the domestics; she gave the porter two louis, apparently in order to purchase his silence; but Fritz has no secrets from me, and my devotion to my lord marquis-"

"It is well! the marquise has gone out at my orders; I know where she is leave me !"

The marquis but too well suspected where the marquise probably was, and he reflected with rage, that, instead of leaving M. Cressy at the dwelling of Madame de Saint Didier, he had driven him from the house, and had sent him home, so that it was probable that the two lovers would meet. Thus, everything turned against M. de Lussan, who, unacquainted with the counsellor's place of abode, could not even go in search of his wife. Then, stricken himself by that immorality, the bitterness of which he had thus far inflicted upon others, he reflected, for the first time, upon the depravity of those around him, and upon the shame which he had just heaped upon himself with such gaiety of heart.

But in this chamber in which he now found himself, upon the same arm chair in which he was seated, the marquise had an hour before reflected in her turn. Reared beneath the paternal roof, and amid the austerity of a convent, the only man besides her father whom she had seen familiarly, was M. Cressy, whose remarkable beauty had touched her heart. M. Cressy was her relative; before M. Mélan had acquired his present wealth, Cressy was destined to become her husband, and both had exchanged those vows of eternal love, which, although uttered in good faith, still usually vanish before the will of the parents. To say nothing of the letters which contained the proofs of their mutual ardor, the young people had exchanged rings, which they were reciprocally to restore to each other, in case that either should prove unfaithful to their VOWS. In love matters, nothing should excite our surprise. M. Mélan informed his daughter that she must no longer think of her cousin Cressy, and that it was his wish that his grandsons should be marquises.

The maiden was dazzled by the title of the marquis; she saw M. de Lussan, and yielded. She would be introduced at court; she would have servants in splendid livery; she obeyed without much repugnance. There still remained the ring which she had received from her cousin.

In the mean while the marriage took place, and she was awaiting her husband, when M. de Lussan appeared in her apartment, and addressed her in language which she was far from anticipating, and which, in her artlessness, she did not entirely comprehend; all that caught her attention in the arrangement which was proposed to her, was, that she could receive her cousin's visits and enjoy his society.

Vexation then revived a passion, which for several days had been quite banished from her mind; and the marquise, disdainfully abandoned by her husband, and wounded in her vanity, afraid, besides, to confide her secret to another, took a step which proved both her ignorance of the world and her excessive artlessness. Having wrapped herself in a thick mantle, she slipped two louis into the hands of the porter and hastened to the abode of M. Cressy; the pretext with which she justified this step,

was the necessity of remaining faithful to a part of her vow, that of restoring her cousin's ring. But how many things had she to say to him! how many disappointments to impart to him! how many new vows to exchange! Had she been better acquainted with the world, she would have comprehended that the marquis had just permitted her every license, except a step so hazardous as this; she would have known that vice has its prudence, or, at least, its hypocrisy.

As we have said, the marquise lodged in that portion of the Boulevards which lies adjacent to the house of Beaumarchais; M. Cressy lived at the point of the Marais, the nearest to these Boulevards. The distance was not far from one dwelling to the other, although the road was deserted, since, at that time, the houses which border upon this Boulevard, to-day so densely populated, were not then built; but it was scarcely eleven o'clock, and to a brilliant July day had succeeded a lovely night, lighted by a bright moon, which shone in a clear and starry sky.

The marquise had scarcely left the hotel when she was seized with terror, and was upon the point of returning; she summoned all her resolution, however, and seeing that she was neither followed nor watched, and that the few passers whom she encountered paid no attention to her, she took courage again, and reached, without obstacle, the door of her lover's dwelling. It was now necessary to knock and pass the formidable lodge of a loquacious porteress, to whom she was known. The marquise knocked, the door was opened, and the porteress exclaimed

"Holy virgin! is it you, mademoiselle Mélan? you here at this hour, and all alone! So the marriage is broken off then, and you are not a marquise?" "M. Cressy! M. Cressy!" said the marquise hastily, "is M. Cressy at home?" "Ah! M. Cressy!" replied the porteress, "I thought that this day would be his last. He shut himself up in his chamber to weep; but about five o'clock a pretty chambermaid came, bringing a letter for him. Then M. Cressy made his toilette, and in a short time a beautiful lady came herself in a superb carriage, and they rode off to the opera." "To the opera!" cried the marquise, in a tone of grief. "Listen, my pretty demoiselle!" said the porteress, "if the marriage is broken off he has done wrong; but if you are a marquise, why he must, of course, try to find consolation elsewhere."

The marquise drew a ring from her finger, and reached it to the porteress.

"You will give that to M. Cressy," she said.

And she left the house with a swelling heart, her eyes filled with tears, having lost almost at the same moment, the illusions of a first passion, and those more reasonable expectations which a wife may well base upon the love of a husband.

"If she is not married," thought the porteress, "who then has given her the beautiful diamonds which dangle from her ears and sparkle upon her fingers?"

In the meanwhile the marquise, who had overcome her fears in order to reach her cousin's house, was now in a mood to be alarmed at her own shadow. Her limbs trembled beneath her; she was scarcely able to proceed upon her way; she started at the slightest sound; the opening of a window, the passing of a carriage near her, drove her to seek refuge beneath the porch of some shop, or in the recess of a carriage gate, uncertain if she would have strength to advance farther. It was necessary for her, however, to proceed onward; it was necessary for her to reach her hotel, and probably she would have found her way thither without great difficulty, if, at a few paces from her dwelling, those

diamonds, which, according to the expression of the porteress, dangled from her ears, had not betrayed her. Four men, evidently intoxicated, who were returning from a tavern in the environs of the Bastile, stopped her upon the Boulevard.

"And where are you going all alone thus ?" said one of them, who had caught a glimpse of the sparkling jewels. "It is some pretty girl in search of a lover," said the second, raising his hand to the marquise's ears. "For how much will you sell us these beautiful earrings?" added

a third.

And as the marquise stretched out her hands by an instinct of self-defence, the fourth perceived the valuable stone which decorated one of her fingers, and he added

"I must have that ring; you are too polite to refuse it to me."

The words of these men, their intoxication, whether real or feigned; their gestures, which were becoming alarming, all combined to inspire the marquise with an emotion of fear, much more reasonable than that which she had thus far felt. She uttered loud cries; she struggled in their hands; and losing at last the hope of escaping the danger which menaced her, she sank to the ground in a swoon.

When she recovered her senses, she found herself in the rear shop of a fruiterer; a woman was bending over her rubbing her temples with vinegar, while a young soldier, with his sword still unsheathed, was gazing upon her attentively, and seemed to await with anxiety the moment of her return to consciousness. Before these two persons perceived that her swoon was at an end, she had an opportunity to see them and to hear their words.

"You have done a praiseworthy action, master soldier," said the fruiterer's wife, but it has not cost this young girl much trouble to earn these beautiful diamonds, which you have preserved for her. But no matter, that is no reason why they should rob her." "You are deceived, madam," replied the soldier; "I am sure that she is an honest woman, although I am unable to explain by what chance she was alone, at this hour, upon a deserted Boulevard. No matter, you shall be well rewarded for your kindness. I do not know what I should have done, if you had not opened your door to me. I am but a simple soldier, yet I have a few crowns laid up, and if the husband of this dame does not recompense you, I promise-" "The husband! And do you think that she has a husband? It is easy to see that you do not dwell in this quarter. Here there are none but poor girls, who never have diamonds, or girls of the opera." "Softly!" rejoined the soldier, "she is coming to her senses; look, she is opening her eyes!"

The marquise, outraged by her husband-forsaken by her lover, had just escaped a serious danger, only to be misjudged and wounded in her honor; she rose half-erect upon the bed upon which they had laid her, and with her eyes filled with tears, she said to the fruiterer's wife

"I am not what you think, madam; I am the marquise de Lussan, and-" "Yes, yes, a fine marquise, in truth!" replied the woman, rudely; "a marquise alone, on foot, upon the Boulevard! And where did you come from in this dress?" "From my cousin's, to whose house I had been sent by my husband," said the marquise, with a frankness which proved her simplicity. "And on what errand ?" asked the woman.

At this insulting question, which would by no means have embarrassed a lady of the court, the marquise lost countenance, stammered, blushed, and cast her eyes to the ground. The woman and the soldier exchanged a significant glance, while an expression of scorn, and at the same time