"Ho, ho, ho! do you hear what young Lesenne says ?"

It was during the morning dressings in tent No. 4. We had commenced our work earlier than usual, for the Archbishop of Paris was expected to visit the Ambulance this morning, and bless the tents and men. Perhaps it was the expected arrival of His Holiness that had put the "boys" in such good spirits; at any rate, whatever might be the cause, they were noisy and jubilant to an unusual degree passing the "mots militaires" from mouth to mouth, with evident zest and spirit. This time it was the hoarse guffaw of the big zouave in the corner.

"Quoi donc!" called out Doucet from his bed, where he sat complacently dressing his stump of a leg.

"He says he's got a pin in the big-toe of his right foot --- ho, ho!"

Now poor Lesenne had lost his right leg on the field of Malmaison, that was all; but somehow the laugh had got started, and exploded at the most pointless sallies. It was rather cruel in the zouave, too, though. I'm sure he didn't mean it, for the young, fresh looking wife of the amputé sat by his side, and blushed red as a rose at the merriment directed against her husband.

"Le Major will take it out for you," came from the other end of the tent.

"Yes," said a fair haired, slender young Parisian, a corporal in the National Guard, and a good representative of the Bourgeois class, with his ready intelligence, volubility, and quickness of apprehension, "yes, so he will, ma foi! and, by the way, have you heard, comrades, what Buisson and those fellows in No. 1 said of the Major the other day?"

"No-no; dites---let's hear---what was it?" cried several.

" La petite mère told it to me; eh bien, Lebars, you know, said the doctor was so good and kind to them, and Buisson --- he speaks up and says: 'oui, but he's got one fault.' 'Eh, what's that?' the rest cry out, and Lebars was mad, I warrant you. 'Why,' says Buisson, 'he don't speak French.' 'That's true,' some say; but Sol, the cute little fellow with the fractured arm---of the line, ain't be? yes, I thought so, well, he says, 'yes, that's so, but if he did, he would be perfect, and if he was perfect he wouldn't live any longer'."

"Ha, ha! hi, hi ! Pfui! that beats you, Doucet!" : were the cries that went round.

"Mon Dieu! it was not bad," replied Doucet grumpily, "but ---but I have my plan."

"Il a son plan
Plan, plan, plan, plan
Mon Dieu! quel beau plan
Je sais le plan de Trochu,"

sang the zouave, raising his great voice in song. The familiar air, a parody on Trochu's pedantic announcement of his "plan" was caught up immediately, and hummed all round the ward.

"Doucet ! --- allons! ---the plan --- the plan ! "--- the boys shouted, when some degree of quiet had been restored.

Thus called upon, Doucet, who was undeniably the dryest wag in camp, proceeded to pose himself for a speech. He doffed his fez, laid aside his cigarette, patted his stump, and in high shrill tones, which grew sharper and more bitter as he went on, began:

" Messieurs --- et mesdames (ou sont elles?), once upon a time there was a young eagle born in France. His sad flight was first winged at Strasbourg ---O what a flight was there, my comrades! Time passed, and this eagle grew and strengthened; and one day in his consuming lust for dominion and power, swept down upon Boulogne as upon a sheep gone astray. But forth came the ram of the fold, and showed his horns, and with his filthy crew the eagle vanished and fled into darkness. And from darkness he came again (is it not so?) and lighted on the shores of our belle France. Quoi donc! we fed him, we fatted him, we petted him, we put him in a gilded cage (hisses) ---oui! in the Elysée. But he swelled and strutted and plumed himself and became too big for his gilded cage; he drew vultures and harpies round him, and through them, he made himself king and head of all the guileless tribe of birds. Higher, higher still higher, he flew and circled, and then, on a sudden, darted down---whither? down upon his own people --- his own empire, and, surrounded by his parasites, dug beak and talon in that people's entrails --- pah! Thus gorged with flesh and drenched with gore, he perched him on the loftiest peak --- the bloody-crested king of birds (loud applause), and so years and years this mighty eagle governed all his cliff and valley. But one day great eagles from the North came sweeping down --- black, foul creatures with bristling beak and claw --- and they pounced upon the old eagle, and carried him away, with all his splendid army, to the chill North, and then --- and then coming, besieged the lay. Ha! would you have the moral?"

A shout went up through the barrack --- a shout in which something of mirth, bitterness, and ferocity were strangely mingled. The wit and humor of this people are inexplicable. All Paris laughs at the coarse and obscene caricatures of Alfred le Petit; at the clubs the awful profanity and impious jests of the orators are received with applause; the scurrilous ribaldry chalked on the tents in the Jardin des Tuilleries excite the laughter and afford amusement to the passers-by. Doucet was a born humorist, and saw things in the most incongruous light; but, like many other intelligent soldiers of the line, he felt that he was a wronged man, wheedled and gulled by his emperor. Consequently, his humor was soaked and soured in gall, as it were. He had put to his lips the sponge dipped in hyssop, and to a healthy mind, his fun was dry, caustic, extravagant.

But the laugh was loud and long, for it was something the boys could understand and enjoy ---this rude kind of parable, and Doucet settled contentedly to his task again, screwing his mouth into a pucker habitual with him after making a hit.

Then there was silence for a while in the ward, until Doucet, apparently gratified by his success and willing to encourage, called out to Arnaud for a song. But there was another reason for the request, and some of us understood it directly. By the side of the orator lay a wounded German --- a tawny-haired, blue-eyed Saxon, Bruno by name, of manners so gentle and quiet and subdued that he drew us all to him He understood not a word of the French jargon about him, and it was his wont, in the loneliness of his heart, when he could not have Keeler or Lisette, the Alsacian nurse, to talk to him, to talk or sing lowly to himself. He was in intense suffering, and this was about his only consolation. But the consequences of the custom might often have been unpleasant for him, had it not been for Doucet, who when he heard rising louder the hum of those military airs, to which his foe had marched to victory, would drown it with a jest or laughter. He felt for the poor German, and would save him from abuse and taunts; and so, when Bruno, at first lying still amid the uproar that followed Doucet's speech, at length fell into the familiar burden of the "Wacht am Rhein," humming it softly, and then, as the blue eyes brightened, in louder strains, the good-natured wag broke in with his boisterous demand for a song.

The minute after, there arose from the other end of the tent, the quaint old melody of the "Départ pour la Syrie," sung in soft, plaintiff tones, rudely perhaps, but with genuine feeling.

"Amour à la plus belle,
Honneur au plus vaillant,"

he sang, lingering on the last notes, and repeating them once more, the voice dying away as if loath to leave the sweet sounds. It was Arnaud, Maurice Arnaud, our Troubadour; he came from the south of France, and there seemed to be a mixture of Spanish blood in his veins. He had a dark, rich complexion, with fine tints on his cheeks, jet-black hair, glossy and wavy, with moustache of the same, eyes large and dark, with a wonderful lustrous expression in them; an almost feminine beauty, of a mild, innocent, gentle nature, he was wild, violent, uncontrollable during his fits of delirium. He spoke a sort of Langue d'Oc, and his comrades could not always understand him; there was a musical softness and richness of intonation in his patois never observable in the northern dialects of France. For the dreamy light in his eyes, and the tenderness of his manner when conscious, he might well be called a Troubadour, and indeed, be descended from those wandering minstrels of the middle ages. As he sang the Départ, those great dark eyes were full of fire and tenderness; he had fought stoutly, fiercely, as his nature prompted, and fallen with his face toward the foe, and now would the other stanzas of the song come true? Would he recover of his wound, and go back to the provinces, and find his Isabella waiting for him there ? Were these his thoughts and hopes? Alas! if so, destined to meet no fulfillment. If the Isabella of his chanson shall ever see him more, it will not be in this world, but in another and brighter beyond, where our songs shall never end. Yet on the earth, God give us strength to sing

"Amour It la plus belle,
Honneur au plus vaillant."

The song had scarcely ceased when the Archbishop was announced, and the men relapsed into a respectful silence as the door opened, and His Excellence, escorted by the staff, entered, and after invoking his blessing upon the ward altogether, walked around among the beds addressing the occupants.

A large, wild, benignant face, full of strength and wisdom --- that was all we saw, or cared to see; one forgot the ecclesiastical garb, and the insignia of lofty pretensions in the presence of that countenance. There are good and pure men of every creed, and, here was one evidently. Though his form was a trifle bent, and brows and cheeks somewhat furrowed with age, there was that in the glance of his eye and in the firmness of his step which told of vigor yet unimpaired and gave promise of years to come. But how sudden, how awful was, the old man's death! Among all the revolting acts of the Commune, there was none more revolting and terrible than the massacre of Monsieur Darboy and his colleagues; among the resplendent heroisms in the annals of French history, there is none more resplendent and worthy to be remembered, than the unflinching courage and patient fortitude of this noble-minded man at the moment of death. A gentleman of our staff was with the archbishop, in his miserable cell at the prison of La Roquette, the last hour of his life, before he was summoned, in his long purple soutane, before those inhuman, blood-crazed ring-leaders of the Commune in the court-yard of the prison, and set up against the wall to be shot down like a dog; and he declared to us that he was never in his life witness to a calmness more supreme and an intrepidity more lofty, before the expectation of a violent end.

He stepped among the beds now, and spoke words of comfort and encouragement to the wounded. Instinctively you felt it was his vocation, that he was not unfamiliar with suffering, and understood the men and their needs. "Suffer like a Christian," he said to one severe sufferer (the very words are preserved in the Semaine Religieuse) "for the sake of God and your country, in order to merit the palm of victory which heaven reserves for all those who have performed their duty bravely, whatever be the results of their efforts here upon the earth." Thus from couch to couch he went, with helpful words and tender sympathy, adapting himself with wonderful readiness to the variety of wants and diversity of cares. Before leaving, we solicited his signature in the ambulance register, and he sat down, an wrote in a large, trembling hand, the simple title --- " l'Archevêque de Paris," a truly modest autograph. We had had some swelling entries like the following "John Monel, Attaché au Génie pour la lumière Electrique, 42 Rue Paradis Poissonnière"; or again: "Dr. Debout, Med. Inspecteur des Eaux de Contrexeville (Vosges) et à l'ambulance de Luxembourg." Let us honor true modesty and worth and manliness whenever we find them; let us reverence right-feeling and right-doing, be the " credo" what it may.

There was a scene at the dinner-table that day of unusual dramatic interest. The first part of the meal had passed off very quietly, and we were lingering over our café noir, that is the doctor, the dominie, Rienzi, Cantatrice, Frank, and several others.

There was one person, however, whom it is necessary to particularize more specially. Jasienski was a Pole, and, by his own asseveration at least --- a Polish count. He had come to the ambulance in the early days of the siege, volunteering his services as an aid for the field. The committee was overrun with like offers, and was therefore obliged to decline them; but the man continuing to press his suit, and finally offering to undertake any work to which they might sat him, representing himself to be in poor circumstances and unable to gain a livelihood in any other way, they took him at his word, made no further enquiries, and put him to work on the grounds, transplanting shrubs and laying out walks. He was a nobleman, perhaps, but what would you? There was a philological professor of many languages already in the field. "Work, however humble, is never degrading," exclaims the gloved and perfumed cant of this nineteenth century; but one day when the rumor spread that the mild-eyed, insignificant looking man, digging in the front grounds, was a count---really a count in his own country, it was strange what excitement the news occasioned. Now counts and countesses are sufficiently numerous in Paris, as every body knows, and one would judge that, not being altogether unlike other people, they would be treated like other people. What is more to the purpose, you are still among your own democratic countrymen, where no social distinctions of the kind are observed, you know. To be sure it was a little strange again, that Jasienski should all of a sudden be raised to the higher and softer position of purveyor to the hospital; that the ladies should take to praising his polite and dignified demeanor; that the gentlemen should be seen in attentive conversation with him. It was all a little strange, you see, but then, as the dominie observed, with his wonted sagacity and insight into motives, it doubtless was due not to the influence of rank but the qualities of his mind. Surely that was the true explanation of the matter. The scholar of many languages did possess these "qualities of mind," you understand, and so was still kept at work with his spade and pickaxe. Friends, is there not a smack of the great world in this little episode? I wonder whether the dominie had read of Shimei.

By-and-by, however, suspicions had arisen as to the truth of the rumor current; unbelieving minds spoke out their infidelity, and the probity of the Pole was called in question. The doctor would crack his joke that--- "may be he was a count, but he had---"turned out to be no a-count, as the French say," and Madame Bernois was heard to assert most vehemently Jasiaski !" (so she called him) ---" he's an ass, whatever else he am." The upshot of it all was that the poor man came to be looked upon with coldness and suspicion, shunned and reviled, also, by those who had once been on a par with him.

His fall, and the consequent reaction of treatment and regard, affected him, most strangely of all. Whatever might have been the character and position the man in the past, when he first entered the ambulance, he was at least quiet, unobtrusive, and gentlemanly in conduct; but rendered prominent by the unfortunate disclosure of his rank, he grew to fancy himself quite an important and necessary personage. It was Malvolio living over again, with the disease somewhat mitigated by time, yet it was Malvolioism. The services he rendered henceforward, were rendered condescendingly, and with the air of one who was conscious of his superiority to menial offices of any kind. He preserved, even after his fall, the same calmness of mien, the same dignity of deportment, and the same affectation of imagined greatness.

Now Jasienski, among other whims of his present mood, had for some time past been paying delicate attentions to Cantatrice, but that strong-minded and vivacious young lady had laughed him off in a most unlover-like fashion, using him only so far as he was serviceable in replenishing the general larder, and therein he was extremely serviceable, as we all could attest. Cantatrice herself was not in the least given to sentiment; in fact the only occasion on which she was ever known to yield to any expression of that tenderness and passion, of which the sex is said to be susceptible, was one day after dinner when she sang Leonora to Signor Rienzi's Manrico in Verdi's opera of Il Trovatore; and I feel bound to add that that unusual display of feeling, which quite overcame the tuneful Italian, who sat listening with ardent eyes upraised, was altogether and unquestionably feigned, for the dominie afterward declared to us in private and in his most solemn manner, that she actually winked at him when the tender Italian wasn't looking, yes, winked at him from the corner of her eye, twice or thrice during the duet. She was indeed a remarkable young lady, handsome withal, (except that her mouth was too large, and her lips too full, for beauty), with rich, olive complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes that glanced with fun, shrewdness, and good-nature; very outspoken she was, lively, active, and jolly, too, if not rather brusque at times, possessing a fine sense of humor, a merry laugh, and a high, clear soprano voice, which she had been cultivating for the stage. Few men would have the presumption or courage to make love to this girl, whose pathos and sentiment, if she had any, were wasted on the morning's marketing at the Halles, the superintendence of the kitchen, and the care of the linen department. For the Pole to undertake the siege of such a heart, and to undertake it in his composed and deliberate way, as if the dot had been settled and the time of the nuptials fixed, was the crowning act of the farce. Something, we were sure, must come of it, and this is the way it fell about.

We were lingering over our coffee, I say, when Jasienski, who had been, as was his wont, silent and reserved throughout the meal, suddenly, and without more preliminary warning, set down his cup, wrenched back his chair with a hastiness unusual with him, arose and stood erect, fumbled at his napkin with the left hand, thrust the other in the breast of his coat, and looking around on the amazed company calmly and unmoved, addressed the gentleman, who by reason of his clerical rank, occupied the head of the table in the following terms:

"Monsieur Prettyman; I have von leetle chose zat I wish to say to you in ze presence of zese messieurs --- von little chose where there is necessity for your services. You is a priest, is it not? and you can perform ze ceremonie of marriage in ze French language so I can understand --- ah ! Eh bien zis is ze chose : I am in ze conondrum; I'se want to get married."

It was very sudden. The man spoke with a gravity which raised him above the suspicion of being in jest; besides, he was never known to stoop to vulgar sport of that nature. The doctor looked curious; two little red spots appeared on the cheeks of Rienzi; the reverend gentleman was all aghast.

"Well ?" he managed to articulate at length, as the speaker stopped to give due emphasis to his announcement and to collect his wits for the next essay continued mildly,

"I been in ze ambulance, he continued mildly, "and you have known me, for a long time ---a long time; and you knows who I am in my own pays, is it not? Some here do say zat I am not a count" -

No, no!" cried the doctor, nudging the dominie next him," not that exactly --- only no ac --- count."

"Monsieur le docteur," was the Pole's dignified rejoinder, turning to the gentleman addressed," Je ne comprends pas votre badinage. You know, Monsieur Prettyman, zat I am an honest man at least; you know what is my charactère, and zat I will not deceive. Ze von chose zat I wish is zis: zat when you marry me, you will marry me in zis jolie chambre wiz all my friends --- mes cher amies here --- to be present at ze -----"

"Ha-ha, hi-ha! Hold me, Kent, oh, I say, oh !" roared Frank, falling back into Kent's arms in a paroxysm of laughter.

"Diamini !" muttered the Italian between his teeth, his face aglow with passion.

The Pole contemplated the young man for a minute with something akin to pity in his look, then went on as sedately as before.

"You need no laugh, messieurs, it is a serious matere. To marry in zis chambre --- zat is not the only difficulté --- zere is anothère; I do not know zat the demoiselle --- la reine de mon coeur --- does retaliate my affectione, mais I will see."

Another outburst from irrepressible Frank, another glance of pity and patience from the speaker, who turning finally to the chair where Cantatrice sat, spread out his hands in a most humble and beseeching fashion, and asked softly:

"Mademoiselle, will you marry me?"

For the last two or three minutes Cantatrice had been bending low over her cup of coffee, so that it was impossible to detect the expression of her face but now she rose from her chair, her cheeks all aflame, a dangerous flash in her eyes, and looking more bewitching than she had ever done before.

Snatching up her coffee-cup she east its contents right into the face of her admirer, and screaming with laughter, rushed out of the room, sending forth peal after peal of merriment until she reached and locked herself in the sitting-room. Drenched with the murky potion, and in his amazement standing irresolute, the Pole was a most pitiful and ludicrous picture; at length, however, he hastened, dismayed, from the apartment, and following Mademoiselle, threw himself against the sitting-room door, but all in vain. It was barred fast. On the advice of Frank, he retired to make a change of costume. All the rest of the afternoon a tall form was seen stalking up and down, near the sitting-room, twirling his moustaches and looking terribly fierce and hostile. It was Rienzi, the Italian.

THE dreary light of a December afternoon was pouring into our apartments at the chevalier's maison, and mingling with the ruddy glare of the hearth-fire, before which Frank and Kent were stretched out, panting and exhausted from their recent exercise. For they had been engaged in a close bout with the foils, and masks, gloves, upturned chairs, and pieces of music now lay strewn about in confusion. Both good swordsmen, the untiring patience and wary watchfulness of Kent, which went a good ways to answer for longer training, had at last worn out the impulse and baffled the skill of the other, who laughingly owned to a fair defeat.

Ah well" he said, still breathing hard, and looking musingly at the scintillating sparks as they flew upward, "the race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong --- eh Kent? "

"You're a fine swordsman, Frank---brilliant is the word," was the reply.

"So is that fragment of pine in the grate ---see how it flares up and shoots off those fine particles of fire ---a brilliant burner, but it don't burn as long and well as the faggot of oak yonder."

"Humph !"

"Energy is the one thing needful, mon brave; isn't it Goethe that exalts energy above all the other virtues, and, declares it will accomplish anything. George! I've had twice your experience with the foil, and yet you contrive to beat me everytime. Energy is a grand thing; how high above the homme d'esprit---there isn't any English term will fit that---towers the man of energy."

Kent leaned over, took Frank's face between his hands, and peered down into the clear, honest gray eyes, with a comical expression in his own, then raised his hands deprecatingly, and exclaimed simply.

"Ciel!"

Frank laughed, and getting up, gave the bell-rope a violent jerk.

"Henri," he said to the colored boy, as he thrust his head in at the doorway, "bring us some more wood ---some of those oak sticks --- ha --- ha !"

The darkey disappeared, returned almost directly with the wood, deposited it at the fireplace, and was turning to withdraw, when

"Arrêtez, Henri," said Kent, "haven't I seen you before in Regnault's studio ?"

"Oui, monsieur," was the respectful reply.

"Model, eh ?"

"Monsieur has guessed right."

"What do you pose for?" asked his interlocutor.

"The arm, monsieur," and rolling up his sleeves, he displayed with all the pride of an athlete, an arm of almost perfect mould. It was not the size of the biceps ---they only measured something over fourteen inches---that made the arm remarkable; it was the full development and exquisite proportion of all the parts. Every sinew stood out like a whip-cord, and seemed to be more distinct than on a white man's arm. The slightest motion of the member set every muscle in visible play; it was a real pleasure to grasp the rounded fulness of the upper arm, and feel the muscles rise and fall. His wrist was large and strong, and yet not out of proportion with the forearm, the downward curve being full of grace. The elbow was not too fleshy, as it often is in a woman who has a beautiful arm, but round and full enough to the eye.

"How long do you have to pose, Henri?" Kent asked.

" Sometimes only one hour, and sometimes, two, three, and four hours, monsieur."

"Do yon ever get tired?"

"Yes, monsieur, but I forget it all when I'm paid. off."

"And how much do you get usually ?"

"That depends, monsieur. For two hours, I may get ten francs, and then again I may not. But I never got more than twenty or twenty-five francs for one pose."

"That seems like a good deal to make in so short a time."

"It is not much, monsieur, because the artist may not want us again for several days, and meanwhile, what shall we do?"

"Why, do you make it a business?"

"Some do, monsieur, but I have to work also, and sometimes even Chabriet has to work; Chabriet poses for the face, and so he gets more."

"Ah, that's the way you're paid then?"

"Yes, monsieur, and the neck and bust bring more than the face, you see; and some earn plenty of money. There's Mlle Ferrand --- she stands for the whole figure --- she makes forty and fifty --- yes, and sometimes a hundred francs --- and over that too."

" Aren't you sometimes afraid of getting sick and thin, and so losing the beauty of your arm?"

"No, monsieur, because I take regular exercises on the bar, and use the dumb-bells."

"See here, Henri," said Frank, " do you know how to fence?"

"A little, monsieur," was the modest rejoinder.

"Gaudeamus igitur," he shouted, "aha, Master Kent, I've found your match at last. With such an eye, and such an arm --- ye gods, what an arm ---"Here," he cried, thrusting foil and gloves on the bewildered negro, "stand up now; ready?---garde!---feinte de droite!---de dégage !---de liement !---bon---bon! you have the trick of the wrist, I see. Now Kent, make ready."

Nothing loth, Kent donned gloves and mask, and snatching up his foil, took his position, with many a cautious glance at the length of his opponent's arm. It seemed at the first glance that the two were not equally matched; the tall, slender form of the student was physically inferior to the stout, broad, muscular frame of the darkey; but on the other hand Kent's thrusts and returns were quick as lightning, and the movements of his body so wonderfully rapid that the other was twice, or thrice a trifle confused. Henri's power lay principally in the strength and suppleness of his wrist, and sometimes it seemed as if he would twist his opponent's foil out of his hand by sheer force of muscular energy. It was an exciting contest; the flash and whir of the foils, the feints, the fancy hits, the advances and the retreats, the lithe bending and swift glancing of the figures, and the steady eyeing of the two, made one look on with flushed cheeks and bated breath. Frank was infinitely delighted, hovering around the fencers as you see gamesters hovering around a pair of fighting bantams in some of Hogarth's cartoons.

"Bon!" he exclaimed, "a good thrust. Pfui, Henri, that was poor; try again --- now, feinte de liement --- so, aha, master Kent ---vite! - reculez! ---las!"

But the model was giving way. With all his robustness of form and strength of arm, the student had one incalculable advantage over him; his power of entire concentration, acquired by long habits of patient study, and his tenacious energy of purpose, which made his eye glow like a live coal in the dark, were so great that irresistibly the darkey seemed to yield to their influence. One despairs of contending against such intense earnestness and indomitable tension of will. Morally he was conquered, but still he fought on, falling back on a quality sometimes as efficacious as others higher in the scale --- doggedness. But the loss of a button on his foil put a stop to the struggle, Kent protesting he had never stood up against so plucky an adversary, and the darkey declaring that monsieur was a master of the foils.

The twilight was softening around, when we gathered about the grate once more, and fell into a train of indolent musing. It was just the hour for silence and dreamy imaginings --- what the French so musically call au crépuscule -and, perhaps influenced by the comfortable warmth of the fire and the loneliness of the hour, our thoughts seemed to go back by tacit prearrangement to the by-gone days beyond the sea. As sometimes happens, too, our reflections appeared to be led simultaneously through the same channel to the same end; for presently Kent spoke out and said:

"I wonder how the American is getting on."

"Just what I was thinking," said Frank.

"And I."

"Suppose we go down and cheer him up a little," he suggested again. The proposition was received favorably, and we left the twilight and the dreaming, and descended to the patient's room.

The American, as he was called, was a young man of good family from Kentucky, who had been brought to the ambulance suffering from a severe wound caused by the bursting of a shell in his lodgings in the Latin quarter. The injury proved to be so serious on examination that it was found necessary to amputate the leg. Immediately after the operation, he was removed to a separate room in the maison, which was arranged solely for his occupation and convenience : the best attendants were provided, and everything done to render him comfortable. It was something so wholly novel to have a fellow-countryman under care, that the greatest interest and solicitude were manifested in his welfare. À cry of suffering wrung from English-speaking lips was infinitely touching. At first his progress toward recovery was rapid and constant; under the stimulating diet, carefully administered, he grew stronger and fleshier, and the light of health came into his eyes. But it was only for a while. Then one of those sudden relapses ensued which are so inexplicable in their beginnings and so fatal in their consequences; the mysteries of the Bible are not more unaccountable than the mysteries of some diseases and the student of medicine can no more discover the whys and the wherefores of certain material phenomena than the blindest disciple of faith the whys and wherefores of certain spiritual things. After this change, the patient sank lower and lower; he became pale, feverish, emaciated, and all hope of recovery died away in his heart. It was painful to witness the sluggish apathy in which he lay day after day. Occasionally hope would reanimate him, but the reaction of despair inevitably came again.

When we entered his room, he was lying on the bed, with his poor, thin face turned toward the bright fire that crackled in the grate. His eyes---sunken in their sockets and inflamed with fever---looked wild and strange when he turned them on us, and tried to greet us with a smile.---Oh, the bitterness and hopelessness of that smile! Human faces and human voices had become indescribably dear to him now that in his blindness he could find no other anchor to which to cling, and even these were not long to be seen or heard. We seated ourselves near his bed, and got to talking on the topics of the day, doing what we could to enliven and amuse him. But it seemed as if he was not to be diverted from the one abiding idea. The fire burned down, and dusk waned and faded into evening, and still we kept on cheerily talking. Finally the subject of home was touched on, and instantly, like the tension of a harp cord, that loosened makes discord with the other strings, but tightened emits .according harmony, the man's nature responded to the sweet memories restored at the mere mention of the word; and he broke out into an odd jumble of reminiscences, gradually, however, growing calmer and clearer in statement.

He talked well; in fact he was a gentleman, and had the manners and language of a gentleman and scholar. He described to us his home in Kentucky, told us of his reckless youth, how he had come to Paris to read law, how he had misused his time and opportunities, and how he had been inveigled into idle and dissolute habits. Throughout his story there ran the melancholy of a disappointed man and the sad impression of a misspent life. The wood on the hearth burned lower, and crumbling, sank with a groan, sending showers of cinders up the chimney, but he did not think of stopping, moving on from incident to incident until he came to the account of the reception of his injury in Paris. The dying embers were casting flickering shadows on the wall when he gave the conclusion to his tale in nearly the following words:

"Shut up in Paris by the siege and unable to send word to my family of my condition and place of residence, the scanty funds in my possession soon dwindled away. I could not bring myself to accept the gratuitous provisions dealt out at the cantons. It may have been one of the mistaken notions of my southern breeding; but it was impossible for me to become a beggar or a public pensioner. My pride---as some would call it---militated against even the pangs of hunger and the sense of cold; and pride, at the end of the hard struggle, conquered. Throughout that cold, dreary month of December, the pittance on which I subsisted barely sufficed to satisfy the cravings of appetite. I knew there was a hospital in the city established by my countrymen with doors open to all in sickness and misfortune like myself, and I also knew that to others in my situation the generous heart of Mr. Washburn had gone out in warm sympathy and active relief. But I did not attempt to seek him out, though I often thought of doing so; why it is perhaps not necessary to say. It was another case of proud pauperism.

"The bleak days of January came, and still there was no relief. My purse was almost drained; and with food at the enormous prices which it then brought, what was I to do? I remember paying sixty centimes for a poor little lark, but it had a keen relish in the midst of my staple meal of hominy and black bread. Fuel I could not in any way obtain. Morning after morning I lay abed to keep warm, and even while I lay, there would come that indescribable longing for something to check the waste and consumption which I was perfectly conscious was going on inside. Withal, the scream and crash of shells, as they fell in the vicinity, awakened another kind of fear, for my nerves were unstrung and my courage shaken.

"But inactivity was intolerable, and I was generally driven to desert my bed, though it were to meet the horrors of another day. The future looked dark, as the present was dark, and the world seemed full of suffering, misery, and despair. I care not to reveal all the wild fancies, the horrible dreams, the fantastic images that chased one another across my poor brain in those hours. It is like a terrible nightmare now; I can hardly convince myself that it was true. Night would come on apace, and still no succor. The same unutterable yearning --- the same sense of void, the same sharp pains---that was all. The shells would, indeed, seem to fall nearer, and sometimes my head would be heated and aching and my lips parched and dry. There was no help but in sleep --- and sleep would not come.

But there was not long to wait. One cold night in the early part of January --- how well I recall it now !--- I was preparing to retire as usual. All day long the booming of artillery had resounded over the city, and in the quarter where I lived the shells had fallen more thickly and rapidly than I ever remembered them to have fallen before. I was but a shadowy simulacrum of myself and in a fearfully nervous state --- starting and trembling at every near explosion of a shell. My friend who occupied the adjoining room had gone to bed.

"I sat up late into the night, dreaming of the past and the old house on the banks of the Ohio. One by one the scenes became distinct, and I could fancy, as I can now, that we were all gathered round the lamp in the pleasant sitting room. Mother was there sewing, her eyes full of tenderness and her voice a little tremulous with age, and sister, too, reclining at her feet, and another whom I thought in time to wed. Somehow, it does me good to tell this now. I remember---oh, so distinctly!---the night before leaving home I found her on the sofa in the old parlor, her large eyes suffused with tears and her dark hair falling all disheveled about her face, and tried to console and cheer her. Oh, if I had only staid, what peace and content and sweet communion had been mine!

"Crash! I started up in my bed and gazed round: here were nothing but bare walls and misery and squalidness. That shell must have struck nearer than usual, I thought, and pressed my hand on my throbbing heart; all was darkness; it might have been a dream. I was conscious that my mind was wandering, and determined to try and get a little rest before dawn. I sat down on the side of my bed to take off my shoes and stockings in preparation for retiring. But even while I was untying my shoelaces, there came on a sudden a great rushing noise --a dull report --- a blinding flash --- and I knew no more."

He ceased, and lay back among the pillows exhausted by his unwonted efforts. The fire in the grate had burned out, the shadows on the wall departed, and the gloom of night gathered round. But it was not long so. The moon rose slowly above the drifting clouds, and poured her pale, cold light down into the sufferer's room, and then athwart his bed. For a minute his face, pinched and ghastly, lay in a bar of silvery light. It was like a solemn premonition; for not many nights afterwards the angel of death came to him, and the weary heart of the American beat no more.

CHRISTMAS passed drearily away. There was no hanging up of stockings at the hearth the night before; there were no gleeful spirits and bright eyes in the early morning, no merry party, no Christmas dinner, no joyous sleigh-ride on the river and dancing till morning; no, except in the sacredness of memory, all those home scenes of bygone times were no more for us. The day rose and set in gloom, and we went about in a melancholy, absent way, hardly doing honor to poor Nöel, Santa Claus's French cousin. There was an interchange of books, I remember, and Frank, after rummaging all Galignani's, of all books in the world to send an Episcopal clergyman, sent the dominie Parwin's Origin of Species. Even that drew forth but a sickly smile when we heard it; and as for Achates --alas! his wits were over the channel, and he didn't notice us at all. But the day passed at last, and the new year came on apace. The days were sharp and clear, and the nights bitter cold. But we had resolved on a different policy, and there was to be a merry party to see the old year out and the new year in.

It was in the gray twilight of that cold last night of the year that we assembled in the comfortable dining room at the chevalier's maison. A bright wood fire was burning in the grate, casting a red glow through the room and diffusing a genial warmth. Kent was there, and Frank, the doctor and the dominie, and several others. Madame Bernois was in her glory; the arrangements for the dinner had been placed entirely in her hands, and she promised us a princely entertainment. She summoned us to the table at an early hour. We drew up our chairs, nothing loth, and lo! were no sooner set than presented with the following menue

Frank roared, the doctor pronounced it excellent, and the dominie looked horrified.

"But the rat --- the rat!" said his reverence with a look of perplexity and dismay, "really now I can not go that; cat and dog are bad enough, but the rat---oh!"---

"St. Peter,"---began Kent---

"Listen, reverend seniors," interrupted Frank with mock gravity, "here is some mistake. Assembled in solemn conclave in this most renowned city of the world, the Savans of the Academy of Sciences, after having tasted and tested the meat of sundry hitherto so-called noxious animals, served under strong spices appointed therefor, have recorded as the result of their grave and erudite deliberations that the rat, as a staple element of alimentation, infinitely superior to the cat or dog."

"Bold pioneers in the paths of prejudice!" remarked the doctor.

"And furthermore," continued the orator with commanding wave of his hand, "it is stated by this august and learned body that no fears need be entertained on the subject of provisions, for there are yet some 25,000,000 of these said precious animals in the city."

"Knowledge profound and minute!" commented the doctor.

"And consoling," added the dominie, resignedly.

The potage was very good, but decidedly unflavored by any thing akin to dog-meat, for we all agreed it was not much inferior to the bouillon we were wont to get at Duval's.

And now," said the dominie, wiping his fingers daintily, " I'm prepared for your pâtés, Madame, which by a similar course of reasoning I infer to be pâtés de lapin, is it not so?"

"Non," exclaimed her ladyship indignantly, "François, servez le chat, si vous plait. Vite!"

"I don't believe, ---I can't believe it," groaned the dominie, with a look of despair. "Doctor, I call you to witness" ---

"By George! ---its jolly." Frank was surveying a half-eaten morsel poised on his fork. "Why, hang it! its a rabbit, Kent, true as I'm alive. I say, Madame Bernois, where did you get this rabbit this time of year ?"

The dominie was relieved. Fearfully, and with great reluctance he tasted a bit, and behold! his face brightened at once; he followed it by another and another.

"Good---quite tender for a starved rabbit," he said, plying his fork contentedly.

"Dat's no lapin, Monsieur le Curé. Tink dis chile tell lie for nuthin ?" broke in Madame, waxing more indignant.

The dominie dropped his fork and looked up in blank alarm.

"Doctor, I appeal to you, now."---

It's not a rabbit," answered that gentleman waggishly. "Look here !" and he held up a thigh bone, "did you ever see a bone in a rabbit's leg as large as that, sir?"

The proof was positive, and the clerical gentleman looked blank. "The Lord help me in such a strait; it's startling to reflect on --- cat-flesh in the stomach of the Rev. Cranmer Prettyman. Think of it!---But no! I don't believe it --- I do not, sir, indeed---no, no!"

"You not believe him, eh !" shrieked Madame; "bien, attendez --- attendez un instant, monsieur," and she ran out of the room, and we heard her screaming down the long stairs, "Eugênie ! --- Eugénie !"

"What's up ?" asked Frank, looking round. But nobody knew; and pretty soon a pair of heavy sabots came clogging up stairs, and then Madame Bernois entered, and walked up to the table, followed by a little, bent, wrinkled, cunning-faced old hag --- Eugénie, sliding along in her wooden shoes.

"Voila !" exclaimed Madame pointing to her maid of all work, who stood holding up by the nap of the neck the skin of a large sized cat, "las ! do you believe him now, eh?"----

The poor gentleman rose from his chair and walked up and down the room, too disturbed for utterance.

"Go," he said at last to the hag, who withdrew, leering over her triumph, "go, I am satisfied. Ah, well---it's done, and cannot be undone."

"What --- the cat ?" asked the doctor innocently.

"Gentlemen, I beg of you, some mercy, if you please, some" ---

"Rabbit, sir?" said Frank.

The third course actually turned out to be rabbit, and the fourth a gigot de poulie.

"Dar," said madame, her eyes glowing with pride and satisfaction as she perceived the relish with which the last dishes were partaken of, "de fust cost you forty francs at the restaurant---how many dollars am dat ? ---and de poulie, well, it cost you twenty-five francs if you get him at all."

"This seems like cheating the wounded," said Kent.

"Non, non! you pay for it yourself- out of your own pocket, Massa Kent; oh yes, I'll make you pay for him --- ha, ha!"

"It's curious," Kent continues, with a glance at the dominie, "how people's prejudices stand in the way in the matter of food. Now I hold horse-steak, properly sauced and garnished, to be as good as the sirloin of a cow. The grain may be a little coarser, the color a tinge darker, the odor a trifle stronger, but that matters little after all. Do you remember the test we applied once, Frank ? "

"S'George," exclaimed Frank, pouring oil on his salad with epicurean exactness of measurement, "but I do. We tried a horse and a cow steak together, sir--- how funny that sounds, eh ! ---'twas in October, when the rationing had just begun. 'Pon my soul, there wasn't much difference twixt the two; liked one as well as the other."

"It is certainly a remarkable fact," began the dominie, clearing his throat for a discourse, "now in China and Japan "

"Your glass is empty; let me help you," interrupted the doctor, with the gravest and most tender solicitude for the reverend gentleman's needs.

" C'est comme il faut," chimed in Frank again,---

who said that, mes chers ?"

"That,"--- the dominie pronounced it with the dogmatic authority of a man who is aiming for a bishopric, "is a proverb, probably of French origin, which"---

" A little of the sauterne, sir? yes ? --- there---it's quite good, isn't it? By the way, have you ever eaten any elephant, sir? "

"No; I hope not" faltered the persecuted gentleman.

"It's not bad, I assure you," continued the doctor, but I understand the trunk is the tenderest portion and the best eating."

It ought to be," remarked Kent; "they charge forty francs per pound for the meat of the proboscis, and only fifteen francs for a pound of ordinary. Most all the animals of the Jardins des Plantes have been put in requisition, now, so that you can have bear, camel, yak, seal, antelope, or hippopotamus."

"The Lord help us!" exclaimed the dominie piously, sipping his wine.

"With all these provisions," remarked one of the guests, "it doesn't seem as if there could be so very much suffering from want of food."

"It isn't that," replied the doctor, getting serious now that the dominie was quenched, "people suffer not so much from sheer want of food --- there is really little of that kind of deprivation --- as from a want of proper food. Bread compounded of peas, oat-meal, and straw, the dry flesh of starved horses, and sour wines, is not the sort of aliment to strengthen and sustain."

"Besides," added Kent, "you will remember that we don't see the suffering, if there is any. It's not the rich nor the very poor that find difficulty in obtaining food; it's the middle class---the bourgeoisie---who are too poor to pay ---or at least, on account of the condition of rents, unable to pay, the prices asked, and too proud to beg at the cantons. Look at the queues at the butcher-shops of Gros-Caillou. The American was an example of what I mean."

"How do you account for the death of the poor peasants who were found in the Rue Denoyez?" asked Frank.

"They died of cold, I think, and not of starvation, as was alleged."

"Shouldn't wonder," Frank replied; "wood is scarcer than bread, I can tell you: Auguste couldn't get a stick the other day."

"There rich and poor suffer alike," continued Kent, who was talking more than usual this evening, but so modestly and intelligently that it was pleasant to hear him. "I went with the doctor the other day to see Madame Cuillard" ---

"What! the Cuillard related to the House of Italy who lives upon the avenue just above here in that quaint-looking chateau?" asked the dominie, reviving somewhat, and the next minute half startled at his own temerity.

"The same; she is wealthy, you know, as well as noble born, and has surrounded herself with the choicest things of art and luxury. Well, we were conducted to her boudoir, where she lay reclining on a low sofa warmly covered, and her maid by her side sewing. There was no fire in the grate, and the air of the room was chill and uncomfortable. She had sent her last few sticks of wood, procured with great difficulty, to a needlewoman of hers, ill and confined to bed at the lodge. She did not tell us that; we learned it from the sick woman herself. When strangers talk of the lightness and fickleness of Frenchwomen, tell them that 'little unremembered act of kindness' of Madame Cuillard. It is not an exception to a comprehensive rule, I do assure you."

"The Marquise de Girard is in the same boat," said Frank, warming with his friend's enthusiasm. "There's another of your frivolous, unfeeling women of fashion! She marshals her waiting-women every day in a cold, cheerless room --- no, even she can't get fuel --- and there she sits among them, chatting and making lint, and doing up confitures, for the different hospitals. What a despicable thing! Of course French women are only fit for riding, dressing, loving, and being made love to ! --- bah !"

The cloth being now removed, we drank a final toast to the "Absent ones," amid a thoughtful silence of several minutes, and then drew up our chairs round the hearth, where a glorious fire was blazing, and settled down cozily for a comfortable evening. From the depths of a dark closet the dominie produced a suspicious looking tin-can, whose bottom and sides were black from repeated scorchings, and filling it with water, placed it dexterously between a couple of logs in the grate, where soon it was boiling and bubbling and sputtering in the pleasantest wise imaginable. That good-hearted, Christian gentleman, the Vicar of Wakefield, had a weakness, it will be remembered, for his bottle of gooseberry wine, and so a fondness for a social glass of toddy was one of the major failings of our friend, the dominie. Toddy, too, is commonly concomitant with discussion, if we may trust the good stories that are sometimes told of the old-fashioned Scottish divines, and it is therefore not surprising that the company was before long launched into the labyrinths of metaphysics. The reverend gentleman led the way, Kent following closely, and occasionally bringing him back to the main path; Frank puffed away at his cigarette in a way that showed his total indifference to the subject, and the doctor now and then edged in a facetious remark that entirely upset the gravity necessary to philosophic dissertations of this kind.

All things sublunar have an end, and it is true even of disputes that reach beyond the moon and above it. The discussion came to a close, and, on the principle of unbending the bow after prolonged tension, the dominie was called upon for a song. In response he rendered the funeral-like dirge of the Old Sexton, rolling it off in his deep base with fine effect. In resuming his seat, he plucked up spirit to request the doctor to dance a jig for the edification of the company, which he declared, would give additional variety to the pastimes of the evening. The doctor replied with equal gravity that as it had always been his province to make other people dance, he had never taken the trouble to learn the steps himself, and sat down amid cries of "hear "---" hear!"

Then we had an oddly-told story from Frank, after which a song by Kent, and finally a recitation from Tennyson's In Memoriam. But it was getting late, and we grew less inclined to talk as the hour of midnight drew nearer. The great logs in the grate no longer blazed and burned, but lay smouldering together, and emitting lazy circles of smoke and cinders.

Half past eleven struck, and henceforward there was an almost unbroken silence. A shade of sadness crept over our spirits; the old year was near its close --- the joys and sorrows, the struggles and failures, the promises and hopes, of a whole year almost over with.

"The shadows flicker to and fro;
The cricket chirps; the light burns low
'Tis nearly twelve o'clock."

Old memories came floating in from the past, filling the heart too full for utterance. Why mention them? They're not all blythe and happy memories, even for the youngest of us; for shadows fall in the sunlight sometimes as well as in the vale. The minutes lengthen out, beat by beat; the stillness grows oppressive. The dominie holds his watch in his hand, and we see the slow-revolving hands. Click-click-click, and at last it is twelve o'clock.

"There's a new foot on the floor, my friend,

"And a new face at the door, my friend, A new face at the door."