"Oh, l'effronté !" shrieked Madame de Coquelicot. "Mon dieu! who could think any living mortal could have such audacious impudence, when he knows

"Knows!" chuckled the individual of jewels and curls, who I conjectured was the aforesaid Alcide Mathieu. "Something he will know when-" "Doucement, doucement, madame," said the miniature Vidocq, who, having got me into the griffes of the law was scarcely going to let me off so easily, "take care, or you will commit yourself for libel as well. Diantre!" said he, turning to me, "it is of no use resisting. Come, monsieur, do not oblige me to make a scene. Come with me quietly, like a gentleman. You have given us a great deal of trouble. If you would have settled these little matters privately with Monsieur Mathieu six months ago

The cool impudence of the fellow positively stunned me. I, who had never seen any one of them in my life, to be told I had given them a great deal of trouble, that I should have settled these little matterslittle matters, forsooth!-six months ago! I, who flattered myself that I was a cool hand, and knew life, if anybody knew it, to have let myself be trapped into this by that little demon, De Coquelicot! The devil within me was roused, and nothing short of knocking them all down would have cooled me in the least. As the fellow came up to lay his hand on me again, I set my back to the door and prepared to receive them scientifically.

"If you attempt to lay a hand on me again I shall knock you down. You are a gang of swindlers, and if you refuse to unlock the door, I will throw open the window, call in the police, and give you into custody"

"Ah ha! that is your game!" said the man, with a smile, moving himself to the window and giving a low whistle, while M. Mathieu, with a laugh, laid his grasp on my arms to pinion them behind me, and the Comtesse lay back in her dormeuse, laughing shrilly in concert. But that was rather too much of a good thing. There are limits to human endurance, and before he could touch me, I knocked him over with a tap on his face.

"Ah ha! for debt, for assault, for libel," murmured the other man, with a purr of enjoyment at the prospect of three such charges combined against one individual, as the door behind me opened with a jerk that made me stagger forward, and I fell helpless into the stern grasp of two gendarmes, who, I presume, at their commandant's whistle, had come up-stairs to cope with so bellicose and restive a prisoner.

"Will you go quietly now, monsieur ?" asked he, while my soi-disant creditor rose slowly from the floor, wiping the blood from his face and head with muttered oaths of vengeance.

up

It was no use not going quietly. I didn't want to blacken my name by being shown in an assault like some tipsy youngster. It was no earthly good talking sense to these rascals; they'd the best of it at present, and the only way to get the game into my own hands was to state the case to some sensible judge, who would give me a hearing and listen to the circumstances. Of course, in no court could they make out their case, and it was a perfect bewilderment to me what sort of game they

could mean to be playing, or why they should have pounced upon me as the victim of it-an Englishman only just landed in France, of whom they couldn't possibly know anything. So I went quietly, and the whole of the Rue Belphégor-et-Mélusine, from the sixième to the rez-de-chaussée of each domicile, appeared to me to have turned out to witness my convoy by gendarmes. There were ladies opening the jalousies to peep at me, children running out on the balconies to laugh at me, grim porters coming to the grilles to stare at me, gamins loitering in the gutters to make fun of me, while I swore sotto voce like a trooper at my own confounded folly in letting myself be trapped by that odious little Coquelicot, when there were fifty handsomer women in Paris, too! into such a ridiculous and apparently inextricable a scrape. However, I went quietly, not exactly enjoying my new position, but making the best of it with Tapleyan philosophy, consoling myself with the reflection that I should scarcely be put out of the world, like Mrs. Dombey, without making an effort, and that I, an Englishman, with friends by the dozen among the French noblesse and at the British Legation, would scarcely let myself be treated in this style without kicking up a dust about it, even if that dust were the whirlwind that should blow up the AngloFrench alliance.

It was three o'clock before I was taken into court, where, or by what rules, on my life, I hardly know now, it was so bewildering an affair that I took little note of particulars. The interval was passed by me as you, my sympathetic reader, can easily imagine, in much such a state of virtuous indignation as the Z. G. lion exhibits when his keeper makes him wait too long for his dinner. There were my accusers: the fat man with the jewels and curls, desperately, villanously Jewish, with a bandage on his forehead, which afforded me fiendish delight; there was pretty, gaily dressed, highly rouged Madame de Coquelicot, as witness, I suppose; there was my old man of the steamer; there was the wine merchant's agent; there was the tailor and his emissary; there was everybody arrayed in grim and inexorable array; and there was I, charged there with debt, assault, and libel. Wasn't it pleasant? and, for the commencement of a first day in Paris, hadn't it a nice couleur de rose aspect? How bitterly I swore at myself! Surely those oaths were as pardonable, under the circumstances, as Uncle Toby's!

I'd never been in a French court in my life. I didn't know who was who, nor how the proceedings were likely to commence. Somebody-I think the judge-eyed me fiercely. I dare say he thought me a hardened sinner; perhaps he'd been a refugee in his time, and been had up at Bow, or Westminster, and enjoyed the opportunity of retaliating a little on a son of Albion. He began in a stern voice:

"Vous, Léonce Victor Hervé

I put up my eye-glass and stared at him-an act which he seemed to consider an impertinence. I wonder why. I've put up that self-same eye-glass at some of the best women in the peerage, at her Majesty herself, lounging on the rails or driving down the Ring, and none of them took it as an offence.

"Hallo, sir,” said I, "wait a minute. That isn't my name."

"Do not address the court in that impertinent manner, sir. What do you intend to imply by so singular a remark as that it is not your name?"""

"I mean what I say, and there's nothing singular about it,” said I, heedless of the indignation with which everybody was regarding me for venturing to interrupt the court. "It's not my name. I'm an Englishman, and am called Leonard Villiers Hervey, as you can see in my passport; and as my friends-the British ambassador himself, if you very much prefer him-will swear to you at any moment. I have been brought here on false pretences, charged with false debts, under, as I see now, a false name. It is either a conspiracy or a case of mistaken identity. In either circumstance I shall expect to be indemnified for the trouble, annoyance, and insult to which I have been subject this morning, or I shall decidedly complain to the British Legation of the abominable manner in which a British subject is liable to be treated by a gang of French swindlers the moment he sets foot in Paris."

I hurled my words at him in the fiercest passion I ever was in in my life. I certainly astonished an audience then, if anybody ever did. The judge stared, the gendarmes stared, Madame de Coquelicot, the man of curls and rings, the wine-merchant, the tailor, everybody stared at me in my passionate peroration, and I caught the Comtesse's gasping whisper : Qui aurait pu croire qu'il y en eût un autre qui ressemblât tant à Léonce, et qu'un Anglais pût si bien parler le Français ? Ah, mon Dieu! je vois trop tard que ses yeux sont gris au lieu d'être bleus!”

It was a case of mistaken identity, luckily not so fatal to life or reputation as such a case has been more than once to some poor devil pulled up for a chance resemblance to another spirit worse off than himself. Two of my best friends-one French, one English-to whom I had sent, entered just at that minute, and corroborated my statement, which, after some delay and trouble, with the sight of my passport, sufficed to clear me from the charge of M. Léonce Victor Hervé's debts, though I am bound to say that the vigilant gentleman before whom I had been brought was desperately reluctant to let me go, and as intensely anxious to make me in the wrong, if he any way could, as any lady to talk away the character of her pet friend, or democrat to saddle a nobleman with all the sins of the Decalogue, and wouldn't let me off till he'd gone into it all from beginning to end, about fifty-six several times, in an examination which, frightfully as it bored me, afforded me much unchristian delight, by the evident torture it was to my persecutors, whose characters were probably not such as to render legal investigation highly acceptable. It seemed that M. Mathieu was a money-lender, brother to Madame Coquelicot, a widow, but not of a Count; that in the August before, at Ems, a luckless fellow had borrowed of the one and been bewitched by the other, and, I presume, been so driven to desperation between them that he had cut the concern, and fled unseen from Ems, owing the little widow his play debts, and her brother several sums, which M. Mathieu had lent him, knowing him to be a man of some fortune, and for which he held his I. O. U.s and bonds. They were sharps, sans doute, but probably M. Hervé must have been rather a disreputable fellow too, and their anxiety had naturally been to catch him again and sue him. The little fellow on board the steamer was a man sometimes employed by them to hunt down their lost prey, and who, when he saw me on board the Lord Warden, with a meerschaum and a Maude,

like those M. Hervé was in the habit of sporting, duly notified the fact to Madame below in the cabin, who, coming on board, recognised me at once as she thought, and set her little wits to work to enthral me in her fascinations till M. Mathieu should have legal traps ready, setting the old man to watch me wherever I went, who, in turn, apprised a winemerchant and tailor of my arrival, whom he knew to be creditors of poor Hervé, receiving, of course, a per centage for his information. So ran the story, simply enough, intensely as it had bewildered me, as it still bewildered Madame Coquelicot, who could do nothing during the examination but sniff at her flacon, and murmur, in humiliation, "Mon Dieu, comme j'ai été bête! Pourquoi n'ai-je pas remarqué que ses yeux étaient gris? Mais la ressemblance est extraordinaire tout le même !"

They sued me for assault, and I had to pay M. Mathieu something heavy for the pleasure of knocking him down; but I sued them for false imprisonment, so I had a quid pro quo, and we were quits. My fellowsufferer, with a Maude, a meerschaum, and a face like mine, I have never seen to my knowledge. I have given you noms de plume, pour cause; but I look eagerly out in the streets, at the clubs, at the Opera, in the parks, anywhere and everywhere, for anybody that may bear a resemblance to me, for I have a keen sympathy with M. L. V. Hervé; I can exactly fancy how that little demon of a Coquelicot bewitched and robbed him, poor fellow, as she'd have bewitched and robbed me if she'd had the chance; and if any gentleman reads this who owns a pipe with a grinning faun's head, who fell among thieves at Ems, and played too much écarté with a charming little woman with a nez retroussé and bright marmoset eyes, I shall be very happy to make his acquaintance and condole with him, and tell him farther particulars, viva voce, of HOW I WAS TRACKED BY TRAPPERS, in a case of mistaken identity, and THE EVILS THAT CAME FROM A MAUDE AND A MEERSCHAUM, innocent things enough, in their way, Heaven knows!

N.B. I learnt one lesson-learn it, too, ami lecteur: When Ulysses is travelling, he'd better keep to his Times, his Bradshaw, and his pipe, : wrap himself in his plaid, and not let himself be brought out by the fairest Calypso, however dainty her cream-coloured gloves, however bewitching her syren voice. But I fancy the advice is perhaps superfluous. Britons are safe enough to be silent on a journey, and put all their porcupine quills out-even to a woman!

2 N

VOL. XLIX.

HAILSTORMS AND THEIR PHENOMENA.

FEW occurrences in all the range of atmospherical phenomena are more calculated to excite terror and awaken curiosity than hailstorms. The dazzling and infrequent meteor and aërolite derives an interest of its own from its brief splendour, the mystery of its origin, and the wonder with which the inhabitants of the earth naturally regard bodies that seem to be fragments of the formations of other worlds. But hail-a phenomenon of the terrestrial atmosphere, like the thunder and the wind -is not the less remarkable for being familiar: the whirlwind may uproot the oaks that have stood for centuries, and scatter branches like autumn leaves, but a hailstorm is often more sweeping in its desolation. It is as fatal as the hurricane, and as awful as the thunderstorm, and often more destructive to life; and it is frequently attended by circumstances very surprising in their nature, and exceedingly difficult of explanation.

In the Bible, hail is frequently mentioned with circumstances of terror, as an instrument of divine vengeance. We have not only the plague of hail that smote the land of Egypt in the days of Pharaoh,* but in the flight of the Amorites we read that

"The Lord cast down great stones" (magnos grandinis lapides) "from heaven upon them unto Azekah, and they died: they were more which died with hailstones than they whom the children of Israel slew with the sword."+

In the prophetic, as well as in the historical books, hail is frequently mentioned; and it is alluded to in many places by the Royal Psalmist;

ex. gr.:

"The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the Highest gave his voice; hail stones and coals of fire.”‡

"He gave up their cattle also to the hail, and their flocks to hot thunderbolts."§

"He gave them hail for rain, and flaming fire in their land."||

But the terrors and the destructive power of the hailstorm do not need illustration from Scripture or from history.

Although hail destructive to animals and vegetation is rarely seen in climates not bordering on the tropics, its power to destroy life is frequently witnessed in India at the present day. There is something peculiarly terrific in the character of the tropical hailstorms, and in British India the average size of the hailstones, and the masses of ice that have occasionally fallen, greatly exceed anything known in Europe.

The phenomena of hailstorms are manifested with peculiar frequency and magnificence in the East Indies. Dr. George Buist, of Bombay, who gave much attention to this curious subject, prepared an historical list of sixty-one remarkable hailstorms, observed from the year 1781 to

Exodus ix. 25.

Ps. xviii. 13.

† Joshua x. 11.

§ Ps. lxxviii. 48.

Ps. cv. 32. The words "hogle" "hagol-stan," from which (it is hardly necessary to say) the English words are derived, occur in the Anglo-Saxon Psalter given by the great Earl of Arundel to the Royal Society.