answered by a long low howl. Lazare smiled with pleasure, as he waved his hand towards him, and led the way from the tower.

I had but time to leave two louis-d'ors on the block of wood, when he called out to me to follow him. The pace he walked at, as well as the rugged course of the way he took, prevented my keeping at his side; and I could only track him as he moved along through the misty rain, like some genius of the storm, his long locks flowing wildly behind him, and his tattered garments fluttering in the wind.

It was a toilsome and dreary march, unrelieved by aught to lessen the fatigue. Lazare never spoke one word the entire time; occasionally he would point with his staff to the course we were to take, or mark the flight of some great bird of prey soaring along near the ground, as if fearless of man in regions so wild and desolate; save at these moments, he seemed buried in his own gloomy thoughts. Four hours of hard walking brought us at last to the summit of a great mountain, from which, as the mist was considerably cleared away, I could perceive a number of lesser mountains surrounding it, like the waves of the sea. My guide pointed to the ground, as if recommending a rest, and I willingly threw myself on the heath, damp and wet as it was.

The rest was a short one; he soon motioned me to resume the way, and we plodded onward for an hour longer, when we came to a great tableland of several miles in extent, but which still I could perceive was on a very high level. At last we reached a little grove of stunted pines, where a rude cross of stone stood-a mark to commemorate the spot where a murder had been committed, and to entreat prayers for the discovery of the murderers. Here Lazare stopped, and pointing to a little narrow path in the heather, he said—

'Spa is scarce two leagues distant; it lies in the valley yonder; follow this path, and you'll not fail to reach it.'

While I proffered my thanks to him for his guidance, I could not help expressing my wish to make some slight return for it. A dark, disdainful look soon stopped me in my speech, and I turned it off in a desire to leave some souvenir of my night's lodging behind me in the old tower. But even this he would not hear of; and when I stretched out my hand to bid him good-bye, he took it with a cold and distant courtesy, as though he were condescending to a favour he had no fancy for.

'Adieu, monsieur,' said I, still tempted, by a last effort of allusion to his once condition, to draw something from him-'adieu!'

He approached me nearer, and with a voice of tremulous eagerness, he muttered

'Not a word yonder, not a syllable! Pledge me your faith in that!'

Thinking now that it was merely the recurrence of his paroxysm, I answered carelessly, 'Never fear, I'll say nothing.'

'Yes, but swear it,' said he, with a fixed look of his dark eye; 'swear it to me now, that so long as you are below there'-he pointed to the valley-'you will never speak of me.'

I made him the promise he required, though with great unwillingness, as my curiosity to learn something about him was becoming intense.

'Not a word!' said he, with a finger on his lip, 'that's the consigne.'

'Not a word!' repeated I, and we parted.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BORE-A SOLDIER OF THE EMPIRE.

Two hours after, I was enjoying the pleasant fire of the Hôtel de Flandre, where I arrived in time for table d'hôte, not a little to the surprise of the host and six waiters, who were totally lost in conjectures to account for my route, and sorely puzzled to ascertain the name of my last hotel in the mountains.

A watering-place at the close of a season is always a sad-looking thing. The barricades of the coming winter already begin to show; the little statues in public gardens are assuming their greatcoats of straw against the rigours of frost; the jets d'eau cease to play, or perform with the unwilling air of actors to empty benches; the tables d'hôte present their long dinner-rooms unoccupied, save by a little table at one end, where some half-dozen shivering inmates still remain, the débris of the mighty army who flourished their knives there but six weeks before-these half-dozen usually consisting of a stray invalid or two, completing his course of the waters, having a fortnight of sulphuretted hydrogen before him yet, and not daring to budge till he has finished his 'heeltap' of abomination. Then there's the old half-pay major, that has lived in Spa, for aught I know, since the siege of Namur, and who passes his nine months of winter in shooting quails and playing dominoes; and there's an elderly lady, with spectacles, always working at a little embroidery frame, who speaks no French, and seems not to be aware of anything going on around her-no one being able to guess why she is there, she probably not knowing why herself. Lastly, there is a very distracted-looking young gentleman, with a shooting-jacket and young moustaches, who having been 'cleaned out' at rouge et noir, is waiting in the hope of a remittance from some commiserating relative in England.

The theatre is closed; its little stars, dispersed among the small capitals, have shrunk back to their former proportions of third and fourth-rate parts-for though butterflies in July, they are mere grubs in December. The clink of the croupier's mace is no longer heard, revelling amid the five-franc pieces; all is still and silent in that room which so late the conflict of human passion, hope, envy, fear, and despair, had made a very hell on earth.

The donkeys, too, who but the other day were decked in scarlet trappings, are now despoiled of their gay panoply, and condemned to the mean drudgery of the cart. Poor beasts! their drooping ears and fallen heads seem to show some sense of their changed fortunes; no longer bearing the burden of some fair-cheeked girl or laughing boy along the mountain-side, they are brought down to the daily labour of the cottage, and a cutlet is no more like a mutton-chop than a donkey is like an ass.

So does everything suffer a 'sea-change.' The modiste, whose pretty cap with its gay ribbons was itself an advertisement of her wares, has taken to a close bonnet and a woollen shawl-a metamorphosis as complete as is the misshapen mass of cloaks and mud-boots of the agile danseuse, who flitted between earth and air a few moments before. Even the doctor-and what a study is the doctor of a watering-place!-even he has laid by his smiles and his soft speeches, folded up in the same drawer with his black coat for the winter. He has not thrown physic to the dogs, because he is fond of sporting, and would not injure the poor beasts, but he has given it an au revoir; and as grouse come in with autumn, and black-cock in November, so does he feel chalybeates are in season on the first of May. Exchanging his cane for a Manton, and his mild whisper for a dog-whistle, he takes to the pursuit of the lower animals, leaving men for the warmer months.

All this disconcerts one. You hate to be present at those déménagements, where the curtains are coming down, and the carpet is being taken up; where they are nailing

canvas across pictures, and storing books into pantries. These smaller revolutions are all very detestable, and you gladly escape into some quiet and retired spot, and wait till the fussing be over. So felt I. Had I come a month later, this place would have suited me perfectly, but this process of human moulting is horrible to witness; and so, say I once more, En route.

Like a Dutchman who took a run of three miles to jump over a hill, and then sat down tired at the foot of it, I flurried myself so completely in canvassing all the possible places I might, could, would, should, or ought to pass the winter in, that I actually took a fortnight to recover my energies before I could set out.

Meanwhile I had made a close friendship with a dyspeptic countryman of mine, who went about the Continent with a small portmanteau and a very large medicine-chest, chasing health from Naples to Paris, and from Aix-la-Chapelle to Wildbad, firmly persuaded that every country had only one month in the year at most wherein it were safe to live there-Spa being the appropriate place to pass the October. He cared nothing for the ordinary topics that engross the attention of mankind; kings might be dethroned and dynasties demolished; states might revolt and subjects be rebellious-all he wanted to know was, not what changes were made in the code but in the pharmacopoeia. The liberty of the Press was a matter of indifference to him; he cared little for what men might say, but a great deal for what it was safe to swallow, and looked upon the inventor of blue-pill as the greatest benefactor of mankind. He had the analysis of every well and spring in Germany at his fingers' end, and could tell you the temperature and atomic proportions like his alphabet. But his great system was a kind of reciprocity treaty between health and sickness, by which a man could commit any species of gluttony he pleased when he knew the peculiar antagonist principle. And thus he ate-I was going to say like a shark, but