quickly and gayly, as if he were re- other worshippers, and when Mass was solved to rouse her from her abstrac- said it seemed to Eugénie that one of tion-"thou must not grieve for me; these was lingering like herself to it is only because I think the winter speak to M. le Curé. will come before I am here again, and Eugénie went out of the cburch and that there will be no one to dig or to stood waiting in the road. The sky fetch wood and water for thee, that I was overcast, and the cool gray haze lament; and this, too, is wrong. We seemed in keeping with the intense have not sought this, my mother, it is stillness. It was a bare treeless spot, sent to us; and hast thou not always told me that if we bear the crosses sent us willingly they are not hard to bear?"

He bent down and kissed her, and then she gave way. She hid her face on the shoulder of her darling, and sobbed and cried bitterly; but when this was over she dried her eyes and tried to look cheerfully in his face.

and not even the chirp of a bird or the whir of an insect broke the quiet. There came a footstep, and Eugénie started and recognized a girl with a lilac kerchief drawn forward over her cap.

Ma foi, Françoise, who would have thought of seeing you so far from home at this hour, and it is neither Sunday nor a fête day?"

"It is I who am a selfish old La mère Duclos looked searchingly woman," she said; "what do I know, for an instant, but then the downcast my Jacques? Thou wilt come back to blushing face answered all questions. me perhaps a corporal-who can say? When M. la Curé came out of the for thou art brave, my boy, and thou sacristy he found Eugénie kissing wilt make a good soldier. Allons-I Françoise as if she were her own must think of thy linen. How soon?" Here she broke off abruptly and turned

away.

"In two days, my mother," said Jacques simply; but he was glad that she went away and left him; he felt that they were only prolonging a common misery by this show of courage toward each other.

child.

The good priest walked part of the way home with Eugénie, and then she went in alone and spent this last sorrowful day with her son.

They had not many words for each other; now and then Jacques, as he passed where she sat stitching, stooped down and kissed his mother. In the afternoon he had to go to Trochu, and this absence was almost a relief; for the brave old woman struggled hard to keep from tears, and the very sight of the loved face made her eyes swim as she bent over her work.

They kissed each other as much as usual when they said good night, but Eugénie could not sleep. She was up with the sun, and it rose early then, and after she had set her son's breakfast she trudged off to the little church, just this side of Trochu, the church of Then came the sad good night, and Notre Dame de la Grâce. But for the at last the dreaded moment of parting. altar lights the church would have been It had been so long in coming through in darkness; there were only a few those hours of suppressed sorrow! and

yet now it seemed to Eugénie that the and yet not to be able, perhaps, to day had made a bound from morning see me?" to afternoon. All was ready-Jacques and his bundle; his mother too was ready to go with him; only Bobot was left behind.

The men were all to be marched to the nearest railway station, their destination being Orleans; but Jacques had got his mother to promise she would leave him before he fairly started.

Eugénie cannot thwart his slightest wish. They are close to Trochu now, and Jacques stops.

"Good-bye, my mother!" He takes her in his arms, almost lifting her off the ground, and she feels the sobs he cannot keep back now.

"God bless you, my Jacques!" and it is over. He hurries away so fast that, when he turns back to kiss his stand hand, the small bent figure seems far a crowd, off as it stands gazing after him. (To be continued.)

"What use," he said, "to and be pushed aside in

APOLOGIES.

We do not, of course, speak of moment we come under their ken in extorted apologies, about which there street, church or market, they are can be but one opinion. The whole spinning apologies-something civil to tribe, whether handsonie, frank, ample excuse omissions, some device by or grudging, are essentially hard for which to secure the credit of kindness. the apologizer to stomach. But there or sympathy without the trouble. Here are people who are always making is a person-such a one seems to say apologies uncalled for, to whom they to whom I have not shown all the are meat and drink. Apologies are consideration which he is naturally the medium of their accost, the staple solicitous to receive from me. I must of their intercourse, their notion of apologize. "Mr. So-and-so," he becivility, their method of making gins, "I am ashamed to look you in themselves affable and pleasant, the the face, but if you knew my engageoil which is to make the wheels of ments;" or, "I fear I passed you the society run smooth. Such a habit is other day without recognition; but, clearly incompatible with humility and indeed, it's the way I often serve my a just self-estimate. It is an unpar- best friends. Pray forgive-pray exdonable assumption that the attentions cuse." Or it is some act of forgetfulin which they may happen to fail are ness which may have wounded our matters of importance to the non- self-love; some supposed expectation recipients of them. Experience teaches which they have disappointed; some us of certain persons that, from the opinion they hold in opposition to our

own; some success on which they have pointed six o'clock to dine with the civic neglected to congratulate us. And all magnates of a county town, he had the while we are driven to the feeble not made his appearance when ten resource, the self-contempt of protes- o'clock struck. In despair, the assemtations and disclaimers. For apologies bled company sat down to such dinner are not passive inflictions; they are as was left to them, and were still enamong the severest taxes on good nature gaged on the fish when the great man and forbearance; of all forms of self- was ushered in. They looked for an assertion the most embarrassing to apology, but with bland smiles and those exposed to them, apologies put serenest courtesy he knew how to put everybody they come near in a false them all in the wrong, simply observposition-irksome, uneasy, irritating, ing, "I am glad you did not wait." exasperating-and, what is worse, If anybody felt uncomfortable, and as morally, into a position of insincerity, if good manners had been violated, it bordering, it may be in sheer despera- was not Lord Palmerston. tion, on absolute fibbing. The object The present age may congratulate of apologies finds himself, from the itself that apologies are no longer the very nature of the case, in a predica- necessity of polite conversation which ment out of which it is impossible to they once were. If people now are escape with credit. We would gladly profuse in them, it is because they fit tell our friend that if he kept away for something in their own nature; nobody six months we should never miss him; exacts them. How men lived through that his seeing us or not is a matter the elaborate verbiage of disparageabsolutely insignificant, that, above all, his company and apologies bore us inexpressibly at this moment. But whatever looked like pique would only cut-and-dried forms which did duty on minister to the complacency which it is our object to put down. The apologizer must for the time being take the superior stand.

ment which seems to have accompanied every social ceremonial in the last century may puzzle us, only there were

both sides, and spared a harassed invention. If the lady must flout her own good fare and careful providing, as an inevitable part of her welcome as the respect due to her guest— And, Captain, you'll do us the favor to stay And take a short dinner here with us to-day; You're heartily welcome, but as for good cheer,

You're come in the very worst time of the

year;

We suspect that an accomplished man of the world does without the machinery of apologies altogether, as being clumsy and subject to inconveniences. There are occasions when ordinary men must "say something," If I had expected so worthy a guest must excuse themselves, and make out a case, even though the fallacies are too transparent to deceive the most credulous. It is the act of a mastermind to turn the tables upon those to whom apology is due. It is told of Lord Palmerston that, having ap

reminds us, has flatteries at hand, and the guest on his side, as another writer knows how to reply in such reassur

ances as:

And, madam, quoth he, may this bit be my poison,

A prettier dinner I never set eyes on.

After

All that we have said relates to violent temper, which was perpetually voluntary gratuitous apologies, the precipitating him into scrapes. class of obtrusive explanations which frankly avowing himself in the wrong have their origin in a desire to set off to the persons he had injured, he and make the best of self, rather than added: "The worst of this temper of to humble that self before a just dis- mine is, that I have to apologize to pleasure-excuses which are prompted fools." The poor and untaught find by egotism rather than sympathy. It apologies so impossible to a proud nature should be a rule to make no apologies that, rather than say the word, they which cost us nothing; they are mere will encounter any amount of hardship selfish indulgences. It is much easier and privation. But of all sufferers, of for the listener to behave properly all grudging unwilling apologizers, an under the confession of genuine shame honest child is the greatest. To him and sense of misconduct, than under to have to say, "I am sorry; mea the smug afflictions we complain of. culpa, I have been to blame," is the Somebody ought to be uncomfortable bitterness of humiliation. He has under any apology that is worth the learned no subterfuges, finds no soothname, and common justice shows that ing emollient balm in the way of doing the sufferer should not be the recipient it; he stands in the depths in which of excuses. There are few persons to his elders only profess to find themwhom the question can be indifferent, selves. Be indulgent to the struggle befor few of us are absolutely guiltless tween nature and grace. Do not press toward our less attractive acquaintance too far the sore and wounded spirit, exof making a string of civil artificial cuse some awkwardness in the manner, words do the duty of self-sacrifice. and some evasion in the matter, mindNo two things are more opposite than ful that, of the two extremes, it is the volunteered and the compulsory better for the character through life apology. This was felt by a man of a to find apologies hard work than easy.

"Knowledge," says John Ruskin, spect to food. We no more live to "is mental food, and is exactly to the know than to eat. We live to conspirit what food is to the body (except template, enjoy, act, adore; and we that the spirit needs several sorts of may know all that is to be known in food, of which knowledge is only one), this world, and what Satan knows in and it is liable to the same kind of mis- the other, without being able to do any uses. It may be mixed and disguised of these. We are to ask, therefore, by art, till it becomes unwholesome; it first: Is the knowledge we would have may be refined, sweetened, and made fit food for us, good and simple, not palatable, until it has lost all its power artificial and discolored? and secondly: of nourishment; and, even of its best How much of it will enable us best for kind, it may be eaten to surfeiting, and our work, and will leave our hearts minister to disease and death. There- light and our eyes clear? For no fore, with respect to knowledge, we are more than that is to be eaten without to reason and act exactly as with re- the old Eve-sin."

MADEMOISELLE DE LAJOLAIS.

(FROM THE FRENCH OF MME. EUGENIE FOA.)

BY B. F.

Early on a Sunday morning of June, and afflicted. While standing close to 1804, a closed carriage, drawn by four her mother, the latter gazed with spirited steeds, might have been seen on the route from Strasburg to Paris. The great number of gentlemen on horseback who escorted the carriage, and the close surveillance they kept, showed the importance of the arrest they had made.

dismay at the high walls which, like grim sentinels, stood on all sides of her, but, above all, at these repulsive looking men who stood around her talking in whispers, and casting long sinister looks upon her and her mother.

One of those men, having a large bunch of keys suspended from his belt, left the group and approached the

Arrived before the walls of Bicètre, the carriage was turned into the yard of the prison, and the massive doors prisoners. which had been thrown open fell back with a harsh grating. A gendarme approached the carriage, and ordered the inmates to alight.

"You must follow us, madam," addressing the elder lady who still kept her face concealed.

The two ladies moved a step. "No, no-not you, you are free," said he to the young lady.

Two ladies stepped out. Their dress, although soiled with dust, was rich. It could easily be seen that "I do not quit my mother," she they had been arrested without being answered with a soft voice, while allowed time to make their toilette. drawing the shawl more closely around Their head, neck, and arms, were bare; them.

a cashmere shawl-a very rare article "Well! you must, however, leave of dress in those days-hastily drawn her, for I have no orders to put you to over the shoulders of both, bound them the solitary."

close together. Of the two persons "Oh! do not separate me from my

wrapped within the shawl, one was daughter," sobbed the mother, pressing middle aged, her head covered with her daughter convulsively to her bosom, beautiful black hair, and she concealed and turning to the jailer a countenance her face in her handkerchief; the emaciated by suffering.

other was a light-complexioned girl of "I have orders, madam," interapparently fourteen summers, ex-rupted the jailer, as gruffly as his voice tremely pale, and evidently uneasy of conscious authority could permit. VOL. VII.-2.