not feel contempt. A good priest is very good. Then you do not want me to pay?" "No," said the bishop, "keep your money. How long did you take in earning these one hundred francs ?" "Nineteen years." "Nineteen years!" the bishop gave a deep sigh. The man went on, "I have all my money still; in four days I have only spent twentyfive sous, which I earned by helping to unload carts at Grasse." While he was speaking the bishop had gone to close the door, which had been left open. Madame Magloire came in bringing a silver spoon and fork, which she placed on the table. "Madame Magloire," said the bishop, "lay them as near as you can to the fire"; and, turning to his guest, he said, "The night breeze is sharp on the Alps, and you must be cold, sir." Each time he said the word Sir with his gentle grave voice the man's face was illumined. Sir to a convict is the glass of water to the shipwrecked sailor of the Meduse. Ignominy thirsts for respect. "This lamp gives a very bad light," the bishop continued. Madame Magloire under stood, and fetched from the chimney of monseigneur's bedroom the two silver candlesticks, which she placed on the table ready lighted. "Monsieur le Curé," said the man, "you are good and do not despise me. You receive me as a friend, and light your wax candles for me, and yet I have not hidden from you whence I come, and that I am an unfortunate fellow." seated by his side, "You need not have this is not my house, And The bishop, who was gently touched his hand. told me who you were; but the house of Christ. This door does not ask a man who enters whether he has a name, but if he has sorrow; you are suffering, you are hungry and thirsty, and so be welcome. do not thank me, or say that I am receiving you in my house, for no one is at home here excepting the man who has need of an asylum. I tell you, who are a passer-by, that you are more at home here than I am myself, and all there is here is yours. Why do I want to know your name? besides, before you told it to me you had one which I knew." "Is that true? you know my name?" "Yes," the bishop answered, "you are my brother." Victor Hugo. DESCRIPTIVE GROUP TELLSON'S BANK, FROM "A TALE OF Two CITIES" Tellson's Bank by Temple Bar was an oldfashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the House were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction. that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson's (they said) wanted no elbow-room, Tellson's wanted no light, Tellson's wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.'s might, or Snooks Brothers' might; but Tellson's, thank Heaven! Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson's. In this respect the House was much on a par with the Country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable. Thus it had come to pass, that Tellson's was the triumphant perfection of inconvenience. After bursting open a door of idiotic obstinacy with a weak rattle in its throat, you fell into Tellson's down two steps, and came to your senses in a miserable little shop, with two little counters, where the oldest of men made your cheque shake as if the wind rustled it, while they examined the signature by the dingiest of windows, which were always under a showerbath of mud from Fleet-street, and which were made the dingier by their own iron bars proper, and the heavy shadow of Temple Bar. If your business necessitated your seeing "the House," you were put into a species of Condemned Hold at the back, where you meditated on a misspent life, until the House came with its hands in its pockets, and you could hardly blink at it in the dismal twilight. Your money came out of, or went into, wormy old wooden drawers, particles of which flew up your nose and down your throat when they were opened and shut. Your bank-notes had a musty odour, as if they were fast decomposing into rags again. Your plate was stowed away among the neighbouring cesspools, and evil communications corrupted its good polish in a day or two. Your deeds got into extemporised strong-rooms made of kitchens and sculleries, and fretted all the fat out of their parchments into the bankinghouse air. Your lighter boxes of family papers went up-stairs into a Barmecide room, that always had a great dining-table in it and never had a dinner and where, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty, the first letters written to you by your old love, or by your little children, were but newly released from the horror of being ogled through the windows, by the heads exposed on Temple Bar with an insensate brutality and ferocity worthy of Abyssinia or Ashantee. But indeed, at that time, putting to death. was a recipe much in vogue with all trades and professions, and not least of all with Tellson's. Death is Nature's remedy for all things, and why not Legislation's? Accordingly, the forger was put to Death; the utterer of a bad note was put to Death; the unlawful opener of a |