same; he is sometimes red, sometimes grey-young in the morning, old at night-a zealous gambler among gamblers, and a go-ahead, easy fellow among profligates."

The observation was not very respectful to the party it was addressed to, but it was only a drop in the cup of bitterness which it was Prosper's fate to imbibe slowly to the dregs.

The second interrogation of Prosper was attended by no more important results than the first. It was in vain that the judge taxed the young man with extravagance, laid stress upon his connexion with "Gypsy," whose antecedents, as known to the police, were not much in her favour, and reverted both to his father and to Madeleine; nothing came of it, except that Prosper suggested that the testimony of the porter who saw him deposit the moneys in the strong-box should be obtained. This man, we have before said, was ill, and M. Patringent went to his house to see him. The porter deposed that he had fetched the money from the bank, that he saw Prosper put it into the strong-box, and that, after securing it, he left the bank.

"It is very serious! very serious!" said the judge to his clerk, as he left the house.

IV. THE HOTEL DU GRAND-ARCHANGE.

The hotel of the "Great Archangel" is one of the most magnificent on Quai Saint Michel, where is also the Hôtel du Nord, celebrated by Albert Smith. Madame Alexandre was a powerful woman, partial to cheap jewellery, fond of good eating and drinking, but sharp upon her husband, whom she had been waiting for some time before that gentleman, who was no less a personage than our friend M. Fanferlot, made his appearance. "The Squirrel" was exhausted, and to his wife's saturnine inquiries as to the cause of his detention he replied that he had been playing all day at billiards with Evariste,. M. Fauvel's valet-dechambre, and had allowed him to win various sums of money in the hopes of extracting some useful information from him, but to no purpose.

"If I was in your place," retorted madame, "I would consult M. Lecoq. You will never find out anything by yourself."

M. Fanferlot let fall his knife and fork in horror. He who had meditated carrying the inquiry to a successful issue without aid! But to repudiate madame's advice was a thing which he knew was not permitted, so he contented himself with replying that it was probably the best thing he could do. "And how is the little one ?" he inquired, to change the conversation. The "little one" was Niña Gypsy, who had taken an apartment at the "Grand-Archange," under her real name, Palmyre Chocareille.

"The little one is quite well," madame vouchsafed to respond, "and suspects nothing. She gave Jean a letter to post, which is in my possession."

"You have a letter !" exclaimed the Squirrel, "and you do not produce it. Quick! perchance it may solve the enigma."

Madame did not condescend to hurry herself, but, after a few more mouthfuls and a tumbler of wine, she got up, and, going to her desk, brought forth the letter. M. Fanferlot hastily opened it. It was addressed to M. de Clameron, to be delivered by him to M. Raoul de

Lagors. The writer intimated that Prosper was in prison, accused of a robbery, which she knew he had not committed, and if he (Raoul de Lagors) did not come to his aid, she would consider herself disengaged from her promise not to reveal a conversation she had overheard between him and M. de Clameron. She would expect M. Raoul at the Hôtel du Grand-Archange the next day, between twelve and four.

M. Fanferlot was copying the letter, when Jean opened the door and made a signal. The Squirrel had just time to escape by a back door, when Gypsy came in. The poor girl was sadly altered in appearance; her cheeks were hollow, and her eyes were red with weeping.

"What, dear child!" said Madame Alexandre, are you going out?" "I am obliged to do so. I have just received a note from a stranger who calls himself a friend of Prosper's, and who wishes to meet me at nine this evening, at the omnibus office, opposite the Tour Saint Jacques."

No sooner was Gypsy in the street than the Squirrel rushed from the back room, and, hastily putting on the blouse and other outward insignia of a working man, he was on her track. He watched her into the offices, and followed a minute afterwards, taking a place in a dark corner. Gypsy was soon joined by what appeared to be a respectable-looking bourgeois, with white whiskers; and the two were quickly absorbed in anxious converse, of which, however, the Squirrel could not hear a word without betraying himself. After a time the bourgeois rose up, and offering his arm to Gypsy, who seemed at once to place perfect confidence in him, they went out. Needless to say, that the Squirrel was in an instant on their footsteps. No sooner on the boulevard, then they called a hackney carriage, and the bourgeois handed in the lady. The Squirrel took up a position behind. The carriage drove along the Boulevard Sebastopol, and by the time it had reached the Boulevard St. Denis, M. Fanferlot was well shaken and fatigued; but he was not surnamed the Squirrel for nothing, and he held on with the tenacity peculiar to that little quadruped. At length the vehicle stopped at a wine-merchant's, at the top of the Rue du Faubourg Saint Martin. The Squirrel disengaged himself from his trying position, and waited five minutes, expecting to see the parties descend. But no one getting out, he ventured to reconnoitre, when what was his surprise at finding that the birds were flown! There was no one in the carriage. They had played him a trick-had got in by one door and gone out at the other! He saw it now in a moment. It was half-past eleven when M. Fanferlot regained his domicile; and it can easily be imagined, when he asked madame if Gypsy had come back, and when, in return for a curt "no," he had to explain how he had lost sight of her, the encomiums which he received from his better-half for his cleverness and sagacity.

272

ON ANOTHER SPITEFUL LETTER.

BY J. E. CARPENTER.

HERE we are at the end of the year!
(Ah! would that I could forget her!)
And what do you think, now? Fanny dear
Has sent me a spiteful letter:

She says that we both love, you know who,
And vows that her love's the truer ;
She says she knows my eyes are blue,
But she's sure that her own are bluer.

She asks-it is envy, so I don't care
(But to think of that girl's deception!)-
Would I send her a line to tell her where
I purchased my last complexion:

I know, when at Brighton we met last year,
That her face was wan and sallow;
The light in her eye I will grant you, dear,
But then lights burn best in tallow.

She says-and you know her Italian hand,
With its points as sharp as daggers-
How I dare by his side when she's near to stand
Her comprehension staggers;

That the look he gave when we parted last,
Which I thought was so soft and tender,
Meant nothing at all; for that look was cast
At her foot, which was on the fender.

And she says that he "laughs at my girlish ways,"
And in mockery calls me "gushing;"
But he doesn't know yet what a part she plays,
And can play, too, without blushing.
She is fast enough when he's out of sight-
I have heard her his "softness" mocking
And she lectures us upon woman's right,
And the songs she sings are shocking.

She says

I may try my best; and I will,

For I'll not believe it-never!

Though she writes with a dash, my hopes to kill,

That "he doesn't think me clever."

If I were a man, with a head and heart,

I would rather live in a hovel

With love and a crust, than a life apart

With a wife who could write a novel.

And she adds, too-and somehow I own she's right—
That I've lost too many chances;

And she even boasts that she danced last night
With him ever so many dances:

And now to write on the New Year's-eve,
And to send me that spiteful letter!

Oh! I'll never again in a friend believe-
But I ought to have known her better!

273

ALEXANDRE DUMAS AND HIS SCOTCH POINTER.*

To hunt was the primeval condition of man, and the first monarch was a mighty hunter before the Lord; but it is quite certain that the French are not descendants of Ham and Cush, nor are they, in our sense of the word, sportsmen. The exceptions, as in the case of poor Jules Gérard, only prove the rule. They hunt, and shoot, and angle; but they hunt, every man blowing a horn as if on a stage, they shoot with fragile implements inlaid with silver and cushioned with velvet-like toys, and they angle for gudgeons at St. Cloud. The Parisian chasseur is a stock for ridicule to his less ambitious compatriots, and the word "sportsman" has been adopted in the language to represent à gentleman in jack-boots prancing-not cantering-in the Bois.

Imagine the author of "Le Chasseur de Sauvagine" (no Frank, but a hardy Breton coaster), of twenty-nine volumes (Levy's edition) of "Impressions de Voyages," of ten volumes of " Mémoires," and of two hundred and eight volumes of prose (yet by no means prosaic) works of fiction and otherwise, opening the history of his bêtes as follows: "Perchance you are a chasseur?

"Perchance you

have fowls?

"Perchance it has happened to you that your chien de chasse (the French make no distinction between pointers, setters, retrievers, spaniels or terriers) has, with the best possible intentions, strangled your fowls, mistaking them for pheasants or partridges?"

If English dogs could read, as in olden times foxes read the newspapers to ascertain where the hounds would next meet, and French pugdogs did the notices to the effect that all dogs would be shot on these premises, they would certainly worry the enditer of such a calumny if ever he ventured into a British cover. It happened to the writer to be one day alone with a Scotch pointer-a dog which if lent to a friend for a day's shooting would sulk at the first miss, but at the second would turn tail, and forthwith make its way home, leaving the mull to do the best he could for himself for the rest of the day-on a remarkably cold winter day, the snow lying from six inches to a foot in depth, and that in a peculiarly wild and lonely part of the Lammermuirs. Sancho-such was the pointer's name-came to a dead stand at a gorse-bush whose prickly fronds hung pendant over the snow; the writer hurried up the side of the hill, and joined issue. A hundred yards, fifty, twenty, still nothing rose! Pussy, perhaps, unwilling to leave its form. So only five yards were placed between it and the fowling-piece. Still nothing! At length dog and master were together, dog never stirring an inch. When its master came up, it exhibited, however, the slightest possible signs of distress-as if it could have made a mistake! To make a long story short, master looked over the dog's nose at the bush, and discerned after a time a ball of cut grass, which, upon being opened, was found to contain a hedgehog. Such was Sancho's distress at finding that he had pointed a hedgehog, that he could not be got to hunt or point again all

* Histoire de mes Bêtes. Alexandre Dumas. Michel Lévy Frères.

that day! Sancho had presentiments. "Dogs," said Michelet, "are candidates for humanity." No matter how far his master went shooting from home, he would not travel by the stage-coach; but when his master adopted that mode of conveyance after a hard day's work, he would make his own way home across fields, no matter the distance. One day, however, he was perforce placed between his master's feet on the front footboard of the mail-coach to the south; for the journey was to be a long one. By some terrible misadventure the poor pointer made a plunge forwards, fell between the horses, was thrown off on one side, and the off wheels went over its neck. Poor Sancho! he lies buried in a humble village of Northumberland, after seeing a deal of country and much rough weather.

Now, imagine such a dog as that being told that he could possibly mistake barn-door fowls for pheasants or partridges! Why, it is enough to make his ghost arise and his noble spirit bay till heard from Holy Island to Bamborough. We shall next hear of English dogs pointing or setting, like the Parisian chiens de chasse, at larks and water-wagtails!

M. and Madame Mélingue and two children were going to dine with Alexandre Dumas père, when his country-house was still in course of erection. Not knowing the precise whereabouts, they took a fly at Pecq.

"Drive to M. Dumas's."

"Where is M. Dumas's ?"

"On the route de Marly."

"But there are two routes de Marly-an upper one and a lower one. Has not M. Dumas's house a name?"

"Yes," said Madame Mélingue; "it is the Château de MonteCristo."

And from that time forward M. Dumas's country-house became known as the Château de Monte-Cristo. The veridic historian avers that he had not the fatuity to give it that name himself. M. Dumas informs us he detests beasts, but that he adores animals. Yet he entitles his book "Histoire de mes Bêtes." Well, he had at Monte-Cristo five dogs, Pritchard-a reminiscence, we suppose, of the missionary who nearly set England and France by the ears-Phanor, Turk, Caro, and Tambo. He had a vulture called Diogenes, from his living in a tub. He had three monkeys-why the monkeys are enumerated after the vulture is a matter that concerns M. Dumas's idea of natural classification. These monkeys were named after a celebrated translator, an illustrious romancer, and a distinguished actress. He had also a blue and red parrot, called Buvat, a green and yellow parrot, called Papa Everard, a cat, called Mysouff, a golden pheasant, called Lucullus, and a cock, called Cæsarthe genuine Gallican Cæsar. Then there were a peacock and hen, a dozen fowls, and two pintados, or guinea-hens. This was in 1850; but when the celebrated romancer wrote the history of his bêtes, he resided in the Rue d'Amsterdam, where he had a fighting-cock yclept Marlborough, two gulls named M. and Madame Denis, a heron named Charles-Quint, a bitch named Flora, and a dog named indifferently Catinat and Catilina; and it is the history of the latter which is mixed up with that of the fowls and birds, Catinat, or Catilina, being the iden