heard the quivering motion, and as he started the dagger missed his heart and struck his shoulder. He gave one muffled cry for help and then fell forward from the step on which he stood, face downward. The native looked at him as he lay and then turned and walked slowly down the path by which the woman had fled. It was Jagat Rao who had struck the blow, and it was his wife Sundari he now followed to her home. III. Jagat Rao's house stood in the Brahman street of Premanagaram. It was a large, square building, the largest house in the street, planted close round with cocoa-nut trees. No windows opened to the outside; the entrance was through a massive iron-studded gate leading to the inner courtyard. Straight in front were the cooking rooms, on either side the guest room, all covered in by a deep verandah; above, on an upper story, were the sleeping apartments, from which close-latticed windows opened to the courtyard. The household consisted but of Jagat Rao, his mother, Sundari his wife, and their child. Jagat Rao's wealth was known to none, but it was whispered abroad that with the wealth he had inherited from his family, and that which had passed into his hands while in the Government service, he would have been able to daily feed a thousand Brahmans and weigh himself against gold for every festival in the year. It was also an open secret, though he never avowed it, that by him rest-houses had been built and endowed, groves planted, and wells dug by the wayside for travellers in every part of the district, while the renown of his liberality to guests and to the poor was spread abroad from Benares to Cape Comorin. Great as was Jagat Rao's wealth his power was greater, for there were few men in the district who had not sought his services at one time or another, while there were many whose fortunes and fame he held in the hollow of his hand. But now a great sorrow had befallen his home, for Sundari had proved faithless. He had himself traced her to the home of the Englishman whom he had stabbed in his rage. His caste and kinsmen, the very villagers who were wont to bow so lowly as he passed, would all soon hear of his shame. He himself would carry it abroad in his heart and face. Henceforth he would walk about among his people who would no longer heed his words. They would look and wonder and gather together to talk and look wise over the great sorrow that had fallen on the home of Jagat Rao. That night when his aged mother had heard of her home's shame, she had with wrathful pride urged him to heap the courtyard high with sandal wood, lead her there, and with his wife and child purify the stain on his race in the kindling fire; but the traditions of his family knew no such need. The Brahman caste knew subtler means to avenge the insults they never tamely brooked. Holy writ told how, when oppressed and suffering, his forefathers had dropped the sacred texts to seize the sword and sweep from their path those who did them wrong. In his wild rage he had wreaked his vengeance on the foreigner, and had now to deal with Sundari, his wife, who had stolen home. Jagat Rao stood in the silent courtyard gazing at the light which shone flickering now and then through the latticed windows of her room. The white walls of the courtyard shone bright beneath the calm star-laden sky; every window except the one from which the light came was closed and the wooden shutters barred. As Jagat Rao stood in the shade of the deep verandah opposite his wife's room, his hand resting on the head of a yawning monster carved out in quaint device from one of the age-eaten supporting sandal-wood pillars, the dead silence seemed to send a strange rest over his surging thoughts. Once or twice he bowed his head and tears came welling to his eyes as his heart grew faint with all a woman's pity for the stern decrees of fate which swept him onward in their unrelenting course. His lips moved, but the mystic prayer of all India, whose sound is as that of the roll of great chariot wheels dying away in a gentle whisper as though echoing from the gates of a far-off unknown, he could not utter, for as the first sacred sound "Om', Om'," came to his memory he paused and his face grew stern. Images of the Englishman and his own wife once more crowded in before him and as in fancy he again slew the Englishman the figure of his wife seemed to glide in between them and fix her unmoving yet pleading face on his, as if she waited for the wrathful look of anger to pass away and be fixed once more in love on hers. Once he tried to smile as the face drew nearer, but in an instant the surging sea of all that made him one with the pulsating life around of strife and heaving unrest seemed to swell up from the earth and roll in from the far-off depths above, leaving him once more the sport of his own passions. With the stern cry, "the hand that has sown the seed must reap the bitter fruit," he crossed the court, ascended the broad stairs to Sundari's room, and there paused for a moment at her wellknown door. No sound was heard within. He entered and, closing the door, stood still with folded arms. At the far side of the room his wife lay weeping on some soft cushions placed on the ground, her face turned towards the wall, round which ran a dado painted with pictures of scenes from the life of the chaste Sita. Some distance away lay a child sleeping placidly. At the sound of the opening of the door Sundari started up and gazed with frightened look at the stern face of her husband. She then advanced towards him, prostrated herself on the ground, placing her hands on his feet. Hastily drawing back Jagat Rao bade her arise. His wife raised herself but remained kneeling, her face buried in her hands. "Sundari," her husband said coldly, "you were not ashamed to show your face to the foreigner; why do you now hide it?" "My lord commands and I obey," replied Sundari, sadly, fixing her dark lustrous eyes, soft as those of a fawn, on those of her husband. For long they gazed in each other's eyes, Sundari with look simple as that of a child, for though a mother she was not yet fourteen years of age. As the tears gathered and dropped from her long eye-lashes she moved not her hand to wipe them away. As Jagat Rao gazed on the youthful beauty of his wife, he, for a moment, forgot his own lustful jealousy. He saw there only her pleading look of love, her figure, the glowing beauties of which were but half concealed, her moulded arm clinging as a tendril, and small well-shaped caressing hand. His wild heart throbbed to seize her, bear her thence, and in some hidden place far-off from following man, hold for himself her there all alone. "Sundari," at length he said, “it was but my folly that I dreamed that I could stay your thoughts and hold your heart. I ought to have known that woman's heart was ever restless as the sun-born butterfly, whose wings move tremulous to depart ere it has well alighted on the flower that for a moment stays its hovering flight." "My thoughts have never strayed," moaned Sundari. "To my lord I have ever clung as close as the bee clings to the lotus. I twined my life with his even as the twining tendril clings to the mango tree. Thrust from his side my heart lies chill and cold and no fire of love throbs within my veins. I have done wrong to my lord, a bitter wrong, and the fates have followed quick my footsteps. The bitter fruit I have fully eaten, and now but wait for your hand to fire my funeral pyre. When my lord sces my soul hereafter he will smile in pity at my sin and not in anger." "Sundari," said Jagat Rao, "mine was the fault to have let you go free and not to have held you closer bound. Then would you not have crept forth, as a dancing girl, to a house I have never entered without a shudder of pollution, a house where degraded outcaste slaves prepare the foreigner's food and wait upon his table, to seek the love————” "My lord, my lord," cried Sundari, raising her hands piteously. "I sought not the foreigner's love." "What sought you, then?" angrily cried Jagat Rao. "My lord, my sin is great, what can I say?" moaned Sundari, once more bowing down her head. "Sundari," replied Jagat Rao with cold contempt, "you have sunk outcast and degraded, so that in this life and after death your soul can never more find rest. You have become one with the foreigners who know not of our thoughts, who shower ridicule on all our ways," he continued with rising anger, "who sneer at our lofty lineage and pride of birth, and mock at our long thought out hopes for here and hereafter. They have no feeling for woman's unprotected state, and know not the difference between the dancing girl and the wife of a twice-born Brahman. You I loved; you were mine, mine, moulded from your earliest youth to see in me your husband, father, brother. I saw you grow and cherished your every word and thought as mine alone. You are now outcaste, never to see my face again, for here you will live alone; the foul wrong you have done our race, known to none save to my mother and myself." "My lord, my lord," cried Sundari as the door closed after Jagat Rao, "it was to save your soul that I did all." Jagat Rao had hurried from the room, for his quick ear had caught the sound of a hurried knocking at the outer gate, and he knew that a messenger had come with the news that Ralph had been stabbed. (To be continued.) R. W. FRAZER, T° A MARSHAL OF FRANCE O be great and yet intimate is the heritage of few. Kings and warriors play their part upon the larger stage of life, and urge us to forget that passion, jealousy, and private malice were ever among their qualities. It is the field of battle, not the gaming table, that seems to befit the masters of the world, and in the clash of states the whisper of love is too often silenced by the blare of the trumpet. Wherefore, your admiration is the greater, when one of the immortal heroes descends to a confidence, and gossips (so to say) at your fireside of triumph or defeat, vaunting the smiles of fair women, and the favour of kings. Thus it is that François de Bassompierre lives in our memory: if the statelier records proclaim his prowess and fidelity, his Memoirs reveal an accomplished and debonair gentleman, with whom his own candour invites you to make acquaintance across the disparting centuries. His family was German and of immemorial nobility. The County of Ravelstein, the Barony of Bestein, were the heritage of unnumbered ancestors, who since time began had been accustomed to the service of emperors and of kings. So that when he was born, on 12th April, 1579, at four o'clock in the morning, at the Château of Harouel, a life of splendour and magnificence was already prepared him. His childhood was spent in the seclusion of Lorraine, and he set forth upon the grand tour, with a conscious pride in his destiny and lineage. Everywhere he was received with the honour which is paid to illustrious descent, and under the auspices of mighty princes he became accomplished in all the learning and elegance of the age. If in Germany he pursued the study of Aristotle with a dangerous zeal, Italy provided a gracious diversion, and at Naples he perfected himself in those knightly exercises, which won him instant glory at the Court of France. The august Pignatelle was his riding-master, until old age set its seal upon a distinguished career; he learnt the art of dancing, wherein he excelled all his contemporaries, from Agostino himself, while Marquino taught him the use of lance and rapier. Thus |