"Here is the duke,' he said solemnly, 'the old duke, Gontran the Miser!'

.

"And as he lifted a corner of the drapery, now stiff as cardboard, and the gold became visible, the old madman, raising the sword, tried to fell me by a blow on the head; but an indescribable gurgle escaped from his chest, and he sank down, uttering a long-drawn sigh!

"Seized with horror, I held the lamp to his face, and saw that his left temple was blue-black, his eyes turned in their orbits, and that a bloody froth was oozing from his lips.

"Daddy Zulpick!' I cried.

"He did not answer.

"I soon comprehended that he had been struck dead by apoplexy! Was it the sight of the gold? Was it for having broken his oath, in refusing me my share of the spoils? Was it because his hour had come, as ours will come? I knew not, and I did not trouble myself about it fear of being surprised under such circumstances in presence of the body froze my blood. I should certainly have been accused of murdering Zulpick, that poor weak old man, for the purpose of carrying off his property. What was I to do?-make my escape and leave him there. That was my first idea; but while I was ascending the stairs, the distress of losing all those riches I had so long coveted made me go down again. I forced from Zulpick's hands the sword and the cup, which he held clutched in his stiffened fingers, and replaced them, with the coronet, on the coffin. Then taking Zulpick's body on my shoulder and the lamp off the ground, I went up to the vault above. There I extended the old ropemaker on his stump-bed, and, after putting back the earth and rubbish, lowered the flagstone into its place. That done, I carefully opened the door of the vault and looked anxiously out. Everybody near was sleeping. It was not yet two o'clock in the morning, the moon spread the broad black shadows of Saint Etienne over the hardened snow. I escaped towards the Schlossgarten, and slipped into my bedroom through the park

entrance.

"Next day all Brisach learned that Zulpick had died of a stroke of apoplexy. He was buried on the following day; the old gossips of the village, the sailors, and the raftsmen, in procession, conducting him to the cemetery.

"For three weeks I continued to drag my truck. At the end of that time the sale, by public auction, of the vault, the stump-bed, and the chair of Zulpick took place; and as I still had by me the 200 florins I had earned in your service, I became the purchaser of all these effects for the sum of three goulden, which did not fail to astonish the neighbourhood, Monsieur Durlach included. How could a simple domestic have become possessed of three goulden? I showed to Monsieur Durlach the memorandum you had given me, and there

were no more objections on that subject. Very soon, indeed, a report was spread that I was a rich man, who dragged a truck as a penance. Others said that I had disguised myself as a servant for the purpose of buying the ruins of Old Brisach at a low price, and selling them again in one lot to the Emperor of Austria, who proposed to rebuild the castles of the Hapsburgs from bottom to top, in the style of the twelfth century, bringing back the old ritters, chaplains, and bishops. Some, more judicious, inclined to believe that I simply wanted to establish at Brisach a straw-hat manufactory, such as there were in Alsatia.

"From the time of my acquisition, Mademoiselle Fridoline was no longer the same to me; she did not know what to think of all the reports that were circulated concerning me, and appeared more timid, and more reserved than hitherto. I saw her blush at my approach, and when I announced my intention of returning to my own country she became very sad. It even appeared to me the next day that she had been crying, a circumstance pleasant to me; for I had resolved to accomplish my dream entirely, and what remained of it to be done was not the least agreeable part.

"What more is there for me to tell you, Monsieur Furbach? The rest of my story is easily to be guessed. Shut up in my burrow at night, the door well secured, I again went down into the lower vault, and when I saw myself in full possession of the treasure, when I calculated these immense riches, and said to myself that for the future want could never reach me, how can I express to you the feeling of gratitude that took possession of my soul?

"And later, when I had effected at Frankfort the exchange of some hundreds of my gold pieces with Kummer, the banker, who was astonished at the antiquity of the coins, which dated from the time of the Crusades; and when I returned to Old Brisach, like a great personage, on board the dampfschiff Hermann,' for the arrival of which I had so many times waited in the snow, how shall I describe to you the astonishment and delight of Fridoline, as, blushing and agitated, she saw me take my seat at the travellers' table; the affectionate congratulations of Daddy Durlach, and the confusion of Katel, who had been used to treat me with a high hand sometimes, calling me a sluggard, when I appeared to her too melancholy and sighed by the corner of the hearth. Poor Katel! she had done it with the best intentions in the world, shaking me up a little to raise my courage; but now she appeared confused, speechless, and stupefied, at having ill-treated the great personage she saw gravely installed at table, in his dragon-green witchoura, lined with sable.

"Ah! Monsieur Furbach, what singular contrasts there are in the world, and how wrong the old proverb is, which says 'the frock does not make the monk!' It is useless to abuse money, seeing what a

position it gives a man. I shall never forget that the moment I opened my trunk, and took out my cash-box and opened it on the table, good old Durlach, very prudent by nature, and who, until then, had somewhat doubted the solidity of my opulence, suddenly seeing the gold glitter, very respectfully took off his black silk cap, and said pettishly to Fridoline:

666

'Come, Fridoline, bring the armchair for Monsieur Nicklausse: you think of nothing!'

"And when I told him that the dearest of my wishes was to obtain his granddaughter in marriage, he, who a few weeks before would have been indignant at such a proposition, and would very quickly have shown me the door, now appeared to be completely overcome by it.

666

Certainly, certainly, my dear Monsieur Nicklausse! You do us a great honour!'

"He made one condition, however, that I should remain at the Schlossgarten; 'not wishing,' he said, 'that an establishment founded by his grandfather should pass into the hands of strangers.'

66

Fridoline, seated in a corner, wept silently.

you

"And when, kneeling down before her, I asked: Fridoline, do love me? Fridoline, will you be my wife?' the poor child was hardly able to reply:

"You know well, Nicklausse, that I love you!"

'Ah, Monsieur Furbach, such recollections compel us to bless this despicable gold, by whose means alone such happiness is possible!' Nicklausse paused, and for some time remained meditative, his elbow on the table, his forehead resting on his hand. He appeared to see all the happy and unhappy days of the past defile before his mind's eye; he was moved to tears. The old bookseller's head was bowed, and he too sat lost in reveries that were not at all habitual with him.

"My dear friend," he said suddenly, rising as he spoke, “your story is wonderful; but after reflecting on it, I own I can't make it out. Can it have been an effect of magnetism, the little cross you showed me at Munich having belonged to Gontran the Miser? Who knows? In any case, I know I shall have frightful dreams to-night." Nicklausse made no reply: he had risen from his seat and lighted his old master to his room in silence.

The moon shone on the high windows of the room; it was nearly one o'clock.

The next day Monsieur Furbach went away to Bâle on the dampfschiff. He waved his hand from the deck in sign of farewell, and Nicklausse answered him with a wave of his hat.

Slipped out of History.

A CENTURY has passed away since there died, in 1767, a lady whose name and memory have slipped out of history; yet she was a remarkable person, and the mother of three kings! Who can remember even that much of Marie Josephe de Saxe?

In the year 1748 the Dauphine of France, by giving birth to a princess, disappointed the entire kingdom in what the people considered they had a right to expect from her. The plain Spanish girl had been married to the very fat boy, the heir to the throne, for other purposes. France wanted "princes," and here was this impertinent Marie Therèse d'Espagne, who began her mission by giving them a princess. The nation refused to fire even a squib in her honour. The lady, as if she was herself ashamed at having fallen short of expectation, straightway died. The Church condescended to sing a contemptuous De profundis, and everybody thereupon began to forget her, except the fat young Dauphin himself, who loved his ill-favoured wife and cried like an honestly afflicted schoolboy.

Before that ill-conducted and much-censured princess was in her grave, half a dozen daughters of high and mighty potentates were in agitation as to succeeding her. Marie Antoinette, daughter of the Emperor Charles VII., would have given her ears for the succession. A little princess at Lisbon, not yet in her teens, began playing at being a Dauphine. Amelia of Prussia looked and coveted, but her destiny was to become Margravine of Baireuth, and to write that delicious book about her experiences. At Madrid there was a dark Antonia, sister to the late Dauphine, who longed to leap into her sister's place, and was not far from succeeding. With these, there were, at the rather riotous Court of Dresden, two daughters of Augustus III., Marie Anne and Marie Josephe, to either of whom the brilliant inheritance seemed open. The wife of Louis XV. favoured Spain; the mistress of Louis, Madame de Pompadour, smiled on Saxony. Of course the mistress prevailed. Then came the embarrassment of selection; but then appeared also a man whom nothing embarrassed-Maurice de Saxe, the illegitimate uncle of both ladies. "I have promised myself for years," he said, "to make Marie Josephe Queen of France, and I must keep to my engagement." And then solemn hyperbolised Nothings (called men) at Court impressed upon him the old story that France was in urgent want of male heirs. "Marry Marie Josephe," said Marshal Saxe, "and I undertake that you shall have a Duke of Burgundy before the year is out!"

As the great Marshal never failed in anything he undertook, Marie Josephe was the fortunate lady. The public declaration, however, was not published till after a grand mass had been celebrated for the repose of the soul of the first wife. When the Spanish spouse had thus been set permanently at rest, the fat lad who was her widower sent to the Saxon princess his portrait and an abridgment of French history, in order that she might gather some idea on two matters concerning which she had been hitherto contentedly ignorant.

While Marie Josephe was curiously scanning the portrait of the obese but somewhat pleasant lover who had never beheld her, and while she was painfully trying to grasp some of the leading incidents in the history of the country of which she fondly and vainly expected to be one day queen, her royal mother was perusing with much interest a couple of private and confidential letters from Marshal Saxe. In one the warrior wrote on French fashions in dress with the sprightly profundity of a marchande des modes. In the other he dealt with weightier matter, reminding the mother of what France expected from her daughter, and what he had undertaken as to the fulfilling of that expectation. Therewith, much good counsel. He especially urged that the princess should carefully avoid the extremes of haughtiness and of familiarity. These were really the two rocks on which poor Marie Antoinette subsequently made shipwreck. The Parisians were cursing her for an aristocrate, when the red-heeled courtiers at Versailles, offended by her excessive familiarity with all persons who shared in the recreations of her rather monotonous life, stigmatised her as the princess with democratic impulses. Saxe counselled his niece to avoid familiarity with her ladies. "The women of the French Court," he wrote to her mother, "are all as witty as so many devils, and they are just as wicked. They will try to draw her into the quarrels which they are continually having among themselves;" and his advice was that she should leave the painted and powdered hussies to settle their own dissensions.

Two very important personages were sent to Dresden on the formal demand being made for the hand of the princess. These were, the Duke de Richelieu and a master tailor! The former was at the head of a glittering body of fine gentlemen. He was a great lover of ladies, and his report on the particular lady in question included words to the following effect: "She is in no respect a perfect beauty, but she possesses every imaginable grace. She has a large nose, and full fresh lips, with eyes full of life and fine significance. If,” adds the gallant but not too dignified Duke, "there were many like her at the opera, an auction there would realise the very highest of prices."

The master tailor, despatched to measure the princess for the French dresses which she was to put on after crossing into France, was not less enthusiastic. His hand, on doing its tailor-office, had