treason. Then he began to doubt. | lie the ancient dead. And he came to the wicket, which Brother Jerome was opening just at_the_dawning. And the crowd was already waiting with their cans and bowls to receive the alms of the good brethren. I had MEANS to penetrate all his thoughts, as well as to know his acts. Then he became a slave to a horrible fear. He fled in abject terror to a convent. They still existed in Paris; and behind the walls of Jacobins the wretch thought himself secure. Poor fool! I had but to set one of my somnambulists to sleep. Her spirit went forth and spied the shuddering wretch in his cell. She described the street, the gate, the convent, the very dress which he wore, and which you saw to-day. "And he passed through the crowd and went on his way, and the few people then abroad who marked him, said, Tiens! How very odd he looks! He looks like a man walking in his sleep!' This was said by various persons: By milk-women, with their cans and carts, coming into the town. By roysterers who had been drink By the sergeants of the watch, who eyed him sternly as he passed near their halberds. "And now this is what happened. In his chamber in the Rue St.ing at the taverns of the Barrier, for Honoré, at Paris, sat a man alone it was Mid-Lent. —a man who has been maligned, a man who has been called a knave and charlatan, a man who has been persecuted even to the death, it is said, in Roman Inquisitions, forsooth, and elsewhere. Ha ha! A man who has a mighty will. "And looking towards the Jacobins convent (of which, from his chamber, he could see the spires and trees), this man willed. And it was not yet dawn. And he willed; and one who was lying in his cell in the convent of Jacobins, awake and shuddering with terror for a crime which he had committed, fell asleep. "But though he was asleep, his eyes were open. "And after tossing and writhing, and clinging to the pallet, and saying, 'No, I will not go,' he rose up and donned his clothes -a gray coat, a vest of white piqué, black satin small-clothes, ribbed silk stockings, and a white stock with a steel buckle; and he arranged his hair, and he tied his cue, all the while being in that strange somnolence which walks, which moves, which FLIES Sometimes, which sees, which is indifferent to pain, which OBEYS. And he put on his hat, and he went forth from his cell; and though the dawn was not yet, he trod the corridors as seeing them. And he passed into the cloister, and then into the garden where "But he passed on unmoved by the halberds, "Unmoved by the cries of the roysterers, By the market-women coming with their milk and eggs. "He walked through the Rue St Honoré, I say: tile, 'By the Rue Rambuteau, By the Rue St. Antoine, By the King's Château of the Bas By the Faubourg St. Antoine. "And he came to No. 29 in the Rue Picpusa house which then stood between a court and garden — "That is, there was a building of one story, with a great coach-door. "Then there was a court, around which were stables, coach-houses, officcs. "Then there was a house - a two storied house, with a perron in front. "Behind the house was a garden garden of two hundred and fifty French feet in length. a "And as one hundred feet of France equal one hundred and six feet of England, this garden, my friends, equalled exactly two hundred and sixty-five feet of British measure. "In the centre of the garden was a fountain and a statue-- or, to speak Decapitation of Charles Premier at Vitehall. “Decapitation of Montrose at Edimbourg. Decapitation of Cinq Mars. When I tell you that he was a man of taste, charming! "Through this garden, by these statues, up these stairs, went the pale figure of him who, the porter said, knew the way of the house. He did. Turning neither right nor left, he seemed to walk through the statues, the obstacles, the flower-beds, the stairs, the door, the tables, the chairs. "In the corner of the room was THAT INSTRUMENT which Guillotin had just invented and perfected. One day he was to lay his own head under his own axe. Peace be to his name! With him I deal not! "In a frame of mahogany, neatly worked, was a board with a half-circle in it, over which another board fitted. Above was a heavy axe, which fell you know how. It was held up by a rope, and when this rope was untied, or cut, the steel fell. "To the story which I now have to relate you may give credence, or not, as you will. The sleeping man went up to that instrument. "He laid his head in it, asleep." "He then took a little penknife out of the pocket of his white dimity waistcoat. "He cut the rope asleep. "The axe descended on the head of the traitor and villain. The notch in it was made by the steel buckle of his stock, which was cut through. "A strange legend has got abroad that after the deed was done, the figure rose, took the head from the basket, walked forth through the garden, and by the screaming porters at the gate, and went and laid itself down at the Morgue. But for this I will not vouch. Only of this be sure. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of in your philosophy. More and more the light peeps through the chinks. Soon, amidst music ravishing, the curtain will rise, and the glorious scene be displayed. Adieu! Remember me. Ha! 'tis dawn," Pinto said. And he was gone. I am ashamed to say that my first movement was to clutch the check which he had left with me, and which I was determined to present the very moment the bank opened. I know the importance of these things, and that men change their mind sometimes. I sprang through the streets to the great banking house of Manasseh in Duke Street. It seemed to me as if I actually flew as I walked. As the clock struck ten I was at the counter and laid down my check. The gentleman who received it, who was one of the Hebrew persuasion, as were the other two hundred clerks of the establishment, having looked at the draft with terror in his countenance, then looked at me, then called to himself two of his fellowclerks, and queer it was to see all their aquiline beaks over the paper. Come, come?" said I, "don't keep me here all day. Hand me over the money, short, if you please!" for I was, you see, a little alarmed, and so determined to assume some extra bluster. "Will you have the kindness to step into the parlor to the partners?" the clerk said, and I followed him. "What, again?" shrieked a baldheaded, red-whiskered gentleman, whom I knew to be Mr. Manasseh. "Mr. Salathiel, this is too bad! Leave me with this gentleman, S." And the clerk disappeared. "Sir," he said, "I know how you came by this; the Count de Pinto gave it you. It is too bad! I honor my parents; I honor their parents; I honor their bills! But this one of grandma's is too bad it is upon my word, now. She've been dead these five and thirty years. And this last four months she has left her burial-place and took to drawing on our 'ouse! It's too bad, grandma; it is too bad !” and he appealed to me, and tears actually trickled down his nose. "Is it the Countess Sidonia's check or not?" I asked haughtily. But, I tell you, she's dead! It's a shame! - it's a shame! it is, grandmamma!" and he cried, and wiped his great nose in his yellow pocket-handkerchief. "Look yearwill you take pounds instead of guincas? She's dead, I tell you! It's no go! Take the pounds — one tausend pound! ten nice, neat, crisp hundred-pound notes, and go away vid you, do!" "I will have my bond, sir, or nothing," I said; and I put on an attitude of resolution which I confess surprised even myself. Wery vell," he shrieked, with many oaths, then you shall have noting-ha, ha, ha! noting but a policeman! Mr. Abednego, call a policeman! Take that, you humbug and impostor!" and here with an and here with an abundance of frightful language, which I dare not repeat, the wealthy banker abused and defied me. Au bout du compte, what was I to do, if a banker did not choose to honor a check drawn by his dead grandmother? I began to wish I had my snuff-box back. I began to think I was a fool for changing that little oldfashioned gold for this slip of strange paper. Meanwhile the banker had passed from his fit of anger to a paroxysm of despair. He seemed to be addressing some person invisible, but in the room: "Look here, ma'am, you've really been coming it too strong. A hundred thousand in six months, and now a thousand more! The 'ouse can't stand it; it won't stand it, I say! What? Oh! mercy, mercy!" As he uttered these words, A HAND fluttered over the table in the air! It was a female hand: that which I had seen the night before. That female hand took a pen from the green baize table, dipped it in a silver inkstand, and wrote on a quarter of a sheet of foolscap on the blotting-book, "How about the diamond robbery? If you do not pay, I will tell him where they are." What diamonds? what robbery? what was this mystery? That will never be ascertained, for the wretched man's demeanor instantly changed. Certainly, sir; oh, certainly," he said, forcing a grin. "How will you have the money, sir? All right, Mr. Abednego. This way out." "I hope I shall often see you again, I said; on which I own poor Manasseh gave a dreadful grin, and shot back into his parlor. I ran home, clutching the ten delicious, crisp hundred pounds, and the dear little fifty which made up the account. I flew through the streets again. I got to my chambers. I bolted the outer doors. I sank back in my great chair, and slept. My first thing on waking was to feel for my money. Perdition! Where was I? Ha! on the table before me was my grandmother's snuff-box, and by its side one of those awful those admirable— sensation novels, which I had been reading, and which are full of delicious wonder. But that the guillotine is still to be seen at Mr. Gale's, No. 47, High Holborn, I give you MY HONOR. I suppose I was dreaming about it. I don't know. What is dreaming? What is life? Why shouldn't I sleep on the ceiling? —and am I sitting on it now, or on the floor? I am puzzled. But enough. If the fashion for sensation novels goes on, I tell you I will write one in fifty volumes. For the present, DIXI. But between ourselves, this Pinto, who fought at | friends the man has? He is always the Colosseum, who was nearly being roasted by the Inquisition, and sang duets at Holyrood, I am rather sorry to lose him after three little bits of Roundabout Papers. Et vous ? DE FINIBUS. asking us to meet those Pendennises, Newcomes, and so forth. Why does he not introduce us to some new characters? Why is he not thrilling like Twostars, learned and profound like Threestars, exquisitely humorous and human like Fourstars? Why, finally, is he not somebody else? My good people, it is not only impossible to please you all, but it is absurd to try. The dish which one man devours, another dislikes. Is the dinner of to-day no to your taste? Let us hope to-morrow's entertainment will be more agreeable. WHEN Swift was in love with Stella, and despatching her a letter from London thrice a month by the Irish packet, you may remember how he would begin letter No. XXIII., I resume my original subject. we will say, on the very day when What an odd, pleasant, humorous, XXII. had been sent away, stealing melancholy feeling it is to sit in the out of the coffee-house or the assem-study, alone and quiet, now all these bly so as to be able to prattle with people are gone who have been boardhis dear; never letting go her kind ing and lodging with me for twenty hand, as it were," as some commenta- months! They have interrupted my tor or other has said in speaking of rest: they have plagued me at all the Dean and his amour. When Mr. sorts of minutes: they have thrust Johnson, walking to Dodsley's, and themselves upon me when I was ill, touching the posts in Pall Mall as he or wished to be idle, and I have walked, forgot to pat the head of one growled out a "Be hanged to you, of them, he went back and imposed can't you leave me alone now? his hands on it,-impelled I know Once or twice they have prevented not by what superstition. I have my going out to dinner. Many and this I hope not dangerous mania too. many a time they have prevented my As soon as a piece of work is out of coming home, because I knew they hand, and before going to sleep, I were there waiting in the study, and like to begin another: it may be to a plague take them! and I have left write only half a dozen lines: but home and family, and gone to dine at that is something towards Number the Club, and told nobody where I the Next. The printer's boy has not went. They have bored me, those peoyet reached Green Arbor Court with ple. They have plagued me at all sorts the copy. Those people who were of uncomfortable hours. They have alive half an hour since, Pendennis, made such a disturbance in my mind Clive Newcome, and (what do you and house, that sometimes I have call him? what was the name of the hardly known what was going on in last hero? I remember now!) Philip my family, and scarcely have heard Firmin, have hardly drunk their glass what my neighbor said to me. They of wine, and the mammas have only are gone at last; and you would exthis minute got the children's cloaks pect me to be at ease? Far from it. on, and have been bowed out of my I should almost be glad if Woolcomb premises and here I come back to would walk in and talk to me; or the study again: tamen usque recurro. Twysden reappear, take his place in How lonely it looks now all these that chair opposite me, and begin one people are gone! My dear good of his tremendous stories. friends, some folks are utterly tired of you, and say, "What a poverty of Madmen, you know, see visions, hold conversations with, even draw Every man who has had his Ger man tutor, and has been coached through the famous "Faust" of Goethe (thou wert my instructor, good old Weissenborn, and these eyes beheld the great master himself in dear little Weimar town!) has read those charming verses which are prefixed to the drama, in which the poet reverts to the time when his work was first composed, and recalls the friends now departed, who once listened to his song. The dear shadows rise up around him, he says; he lives in the past again. It is to-day which appears vague and visionary. We hum bler writers cannot create Fausts, or raise up monumental works that shall endure for all ages: but our books are diaries, in which our own feelings must of necessity be set down. As we look to the page written last month, or ten years ago, we remem ber the day and its events; the child ill, mayhap, in the adjoining room, and the doubts and fears which racked the brain as it still pursued its work ; the dear old friend who read the commencement of the tale, and whose gentle hand shall be laid in ours no more. I own for my part that, in reading pages which this hand penned formerly, I often lose sight of the text under my eyes. It is not the words I see; but that past day; that bygone page of life's history; that tragedy, comedy it may be, which our little home company was enacting; that merrymaking which we shared; that funeral which we followed; that bitter, bitter grief which we buried. the likeness of, people invisible to you and me. Is this making of people out of fancy madness? and arc novel-writers at all entitled to strait-waistcoats? I often forget people's names in life; and in my own stories contritely own that I make dreadful blunders regarding them; but I declare, my dear sir, with respect to the personages introduced into your humble servant's fables, I know the people utterly I know the sound of their voices. A gentleman came in to see me the other day, who was so like the picture of Philip Firmin in Mr. Walker's charming drawings in "The Cornhill Magazine," that he was quite a curiosity to me. The same cyes, beard, shoulders, just as you have seen them from month to month. Well, he is not like the Philip Firmin in my mind. Asleep, asleep in the grave, lies the bold, the generous, the reckless, the tender-hearted creature whom I have made to pass through those adventures which have just been brought to an end. It is years since I heard the laughter ringing, or saw the bright blue eyes. When I knew him, both were young. I become young as I think of him. And this morning he was alive again in this room, ready to laugh, to fight, to weep. As I write, do you know, it is the gray of evening; the house is quiet; every body is out the room is getting a little dark, and I look rather wistfully up from the paper with perhaps ever so little fancy that HE MAY COME IN No? No movement. No gray shade, growing more And, such being the state of my palpable, out of which at last look the mind, I pray gentle readers to deal well-known eyes. No, the printer kindly with their humble servant's came and took him away with the manifold short-comings, blunders, and last page of the proofs. And with slips of memory. As sure as I read the printer's boy did the whole cortège a page of my own composition, I find of ghosts flit away, invisible? Ha! a fault or two, half a dozen. Jones stay! what is this? Angels and min-is called Brown. Brown, who is isters of grace! The door opens, and a dark form-enters, bearing a black —a black suit of clothes. It is John. He it is time to dress for dinner. says dead, is brought to life. Aghast, and months after the number was printed, I saw that I had called Philip Firmin, Clive Newcome. Now Clive Newcome is the hero of another story |