health and life itself, ascending the spire with incessant zeal, he who had been a martyr from his boyhood to asthma. But may not this have been a type of the man's spirit, this undaunted aspiration which willingly would yield up life itself to ascend towards heaven? She looked round with delight upon the rich windows, through which the sunlight falling reflected rainbow tints upon the cold, grey, severe columns; this radiance of heaven glorifying earth, and turning its duskiness and hardness into gorgeousness and light! To Isabel it seemed as if the children, and youths, and old, old women, who were praying in the church, must certainly have come there as part of the picture prepared for our edification, so quaint and picturesque were they.

As we stood in the church we saw two women advancing from a door close to the high altar. One was a lady handsomely dressed in a white satin bonnet and large Cashmere shawl; she was followed by a nurse, bearing before her a little baby lying on a cushion and covered with a long white lace veil. It was evidently a christening. They passed on to a side altar, where, amid flowers and golden candlesticks, and gold and azure tracery, stood a figure of the Madonna and Child. The little infant, on its cushion, was placed upon the altar before the Virgin; the lady and the servant knelt together and prayed. It was a beautiful little scene.

Leaving the church we went to the Au Theatre. It was half-past three, and the performance was just beginning. It was a strange sensation that of stepping out of the fresh keen air and sunshine into the darkness and noise and hot atmosphere of the little theatre. We had the most aristocratic places, in a box where I have seen the royal princes before now; and for these we paid eightpence each. To see so good an audience at so early a performance

would in England have been singular; such numbers of men, too, who with us would have been busy at their work till at the earliest six or seven o'clock. The piece was "The Musketeers of the Quarter-master's Lady," or "Wart a bisle." It was very droll and very capitally acted; and though, of course, Isabel understood hardly a word, she was greatly amused.

We drove home in the moonlight at six o'clock, and on reaching home found that Isabel's piano had arrived, so that there was another pleasure for us; and whilst I prepared tea she tried her new instrument.

CHAPTER IX.

A MOURNFUL WEDDING.-AN

INCURSION OF GERMAN

TEACHERS. THE STUDENT.

THE other evening, having called on Frau Amsel, whilst I sat talking with her a young lady came in almost out of breath, saying, "Put on your bonnet, my dear, gracious lady, and let us go to the Basilica; there is a wedding there!"

"I will go with you," said I, "for I have never yet seen a Catholic wedding."

We saw numbers of people crowding into the Basilica. It was growing dusk in the large church. A throng of spectators surrounded the space railed off round the high altar. Upon the marble steps leading up to the altar, and on either side, stood ladies and gentlemen belonging to the wedding party. The altar was decorated, as well as the flight of steps, with orange trees, and palms, and flowering shrubs: but few candles burned upon the altar, and the lamp suspended from the roof, containing the everburning flame, seemed only to make the gathering twilight more perceptible. The white-robed priests, the bride and bridesmaids in their white muslin dresses, the tall black figures of the bridegroom and his friends looming out from the top of that long flight of marble steps; the monotonous voice of the priest droning forth his marriage homily; the damp raw air of a November evening striking to the hearts of all; the mighty figures of prophets, and angels, and

martyrs upon the golden walls of the church, were shrouding themselves in duskiness and gloom; the feeble light of the tapers from the altar, illuminating nothing in the whole cold and solemn building save and except a huge golden crucifix, and farther off a lesser cross which gleamed out harshly and severely, and startlingly, as though the type of anguish, and suffering, and sacrifice, were to be the sole idea of life and marriage. All formed one of the most mournful scenes I ever witnessed, and quite haunts me even now when I recall it.

The priest prayed and joined their hands, and placed the rings upon their fingers; and one heard the money clink through the cold darkness, as the bridegroom, according to Roman Catholic custom, endowed his bride with his gold and silver, and his worldly goods. And whilst the priest still prayed, a tramp of feet, a sort of hushed roar, was heard through the church; and across the broad marble pavement came a train of black and white garmented priests, bearing funereal wreaths and banners :they were returning from a funeral!

The bridal train descended from the altar, and as they moved onward towards the sacristy, preceded by priests, we caught a glimpse of the bridegroom and bride, who, by this cold light, looked as rigid and cheerless as the whole scene: two elderly ladies who followed were, I noticed, dressed in black, as though it were a funeral! And as they went on through the church, they passed the mourners of the other ceremony, who were praying in their weeds, and burning small tapers; and yet further on, and still more in the gloom, and only revealed by a white cloth thrown over his face, as he sat in his confessional, they passed a priest shriving some poor penitent.

Was this not a cheerless wedding?

November 11th.-We have had an incursion of German teachers, in reply to Isabel's advertisement in the "Neuesten Nachrichten." The time mentioned in the advertisement was nine o'clock on Monday morning. But on Monday morning, long before nine, the incursion began. We had just sat down to our little breakfast-table, and were about to enjoy our first cup of tea, when Madame Thekla popped her head in at the sitting-room door, saying, in her usual mysterious and hoarse whisper, "that if we pleased, a lady was there asking if we wanted a German teacher!"

Isabel and I, sitting grandly upon our sofa, side by side, with the untasted breakfast before us, see a young and prepossessing girl enter very modestly, we push the table aside, offer her a seat, and commence the necessary inquiries. We think she will do, and take her address; still we will not decide until we see who else offers.

"Let us only make haste and finish our breakfast!" cry we; but ring! ring! ring! we hear at the door.

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Isabel, we are in for it now!" exclaim I; and before the words are spoken, Madame Thekla's head once more mysteriously appears in the doorway, and behind her looms forth a gaunt figure, wrapt in a long black cloak. The figure enters. The usual inquiries are made; we ask at what hours she could give the lessons, and she informs us "It muss be afternoon,—I much to do in the keetchin morning, I much to do,-I get marry in few weeks." She would not do.

Ring! ring! ring! Great talk in the passage: the door opens for the keetchin lady, and a vision of bonnets looms once more in the distance in the shape of a queerish old mother and a pretty but coquettish daughter. Ring! ring! ring! We are aware of German teachers seated in Madame Thekla's kitchen, in Madame Thekla's little