true. He But to see her now, it is narrant. will take no medicine from her. He pushes her away. Before Charlotte came he sent for me, and spoke as well as his poor throat would let him, this poor general! His daughter's arrival seemed to comfort him. But he says, 'Not my wife! not my wife!' And the poor thing has to go away and cry in the chamber at the side. He says-in his French, you know-he has never been well since Charlotte went away. He has often been out. He has dined but rarely at our table, and there has always been a silence between him and Madame la Générale. Last week he had a great inflammation of the chest. Then he took to bed, and Monsieur the Docteur came the little doctor whom you know. Then a quinsy has declared itself, and he now is scarce able to speak. His condition is most grave. He lies suffering, dying, perhaps yes, dying, do you hear? And you are thinking of your little school-girl! Men are all the same. Monsters! Go!" what he did. He prayed that Heaven might And he had behaved with wicked injustice toward Philip, who had acted most generously toward his family. And he had been a scoundrel-he knew he had-and Bunch, and MacWhirter, and the doctor all said so—and it was that woman's doing. And he pointed to the scared wife as he painfully hissed out these words of anger and contrition: "When I saw that child ill, and almost made mad, because I broke my word, I felt I was a scoundrel, Martin; and I was; and that woman made me so; and I deserve to be shot; and I sha'n't recover; I tell you I sha'n't." Dr. Martin, who attended the general, thus described his patient's last talk and behavior to Philip. It was the doctor who sent Madame in quest of the young man. He found poor Mrs. Baynes, with hot, tearless eyes and livid face, a wretched sentinel outside the sick chamber. "You will find General Baynes very ill, Sir," she said to Philip, with a ghastly calmness, and a gaze he Philip, who, I have said, is very fond of talk-could scarcely face. "My daughter is in the ing about Philip, surveys his own faults with room with him. It appears I have offended great magnanimity and good-humor, and ac- him, and he refuses to see me." And she knowledges them without the least intention to squeezed a dry handkerchief which she held, correct them. "How selfish we are!" I can and put on her spectacles again, and tried again hear him say, looking at himself in the glass. to read the Bible in her lap. "By George! Sir, when I heard simultaneously the news of that poor old man's illness, and of Charlotte's return, I felt that I wanted to see her that instant. I must go to her, and speak to her. The old man and his suffering did not seem to affect me. It is humiliating to have to own that we are selfish beasts. But we are, Sir -we are brutes, by George! and nothing else!" And he gives a finishing twist to the ends of his flaming mustaches as he surveys them in the glass. Poor little Charlotte was in such affliction that of course she must have Philip to console her at once. No time was to be lost. Quick! a cab this moment: and, coachman, you shall have an extra for drink if you go quick to the Avenue de Marli! Madame puts herself into the carriage, and as they go along tells Philip more at length of the gloomy occurrences of the last few days. Four days since the poor general was so bad with his quinsy that he thought he should not recover, and Charlotte was sent for. He was a little better on the day of her arrival; but yesterday the inflammation had increased; he could not swallow; he could not speak audibly; he was in very great suffering and danger. He turned away from his wife. The unhappy generaless had been to Madame Bunch in her tears and grief, complaining that after twenty years' fidelity and attachment her husband had withdrawn his regard from her. Baynes attributed even his illness to his wife; and at other times said it was a just punishment for his wicked conduct in breaking his word to Philip and Charlotte. He must see his dear child again, and beg her forgiveness for having made her suffer so. He had acted wickedly and ungratefully, and his wife had forced him to do Philip hardly knew the meaning of Mrs. Baynes's words as yet. He was agitated by the thought of the general's illness, perhaps by the notion that the beloved was so near. Her hand was in his a moment afterward: and, even in that sad chamber, each could give the other a soft pressure, a fond, silent signal of mutual love and faith. The poor man laid the hands of the young people together, and his own upon them. The suffering to which he had put his daughter seemed to be the crime which specially affected him. He thanked Heaven he was able to see he was wrong. He whispered to his little maid a prayer for pardon in one or two words, which caused poor Charlotte to sink on her knees and cover his fevered hand with tears and kisses. Out of all her heart she forgave him. She had felt that the parent she loved and was accustomed to honor had been mercenary and cruel. It had wounded her pure heart to be obliged to think that her father could be other than generous, and just, and good. That he should humble himself before her smote me with the keenest pang of tender commiseration. I do not care to pursue this last scene. Let us close the door as the children kneel by the sufferer's bedside, and to the old man's petition for forgiveness, and to the young girl's sobbing vows of love and fondness, say a reverent Amen. By the following letter, which he wrote a few days before the fatal termination of his illness, the worthy general, it would appear, had already despaired of his recovery: "MY DEAR MAC,-I speak and breathe with such diffi culty as I write this from my bed, that I doubt whether I shall ever leave it. I do not wish to vex poor Eliza, and in my state can not enter into disputes which I know would ensue regarding settlement of property. When I left England there was a claim hanging over me (young Firmin's) at which I was needlessly frightened, as having to satisfy it would swallow up much more than every thing I possessed in the world. Hence made arrangements for leaving every thing in Eliza's name and the children after. Will with Smith and Thompson, Raymond Buildings, Gray's Inn. Think Char won't be happy for a long time with her mother. To break from F., who has been most generous to us, will break her heart. Will you and Emily keep her for a little? I gave F. my promise, as you told me I have acted ill by him, which I own and deeply inment. If Char marries, she ought to have her share. May God bless her, her father prays, in case he should not see her again. And with best love to Emily, am yours, dear Mac, sincerely, CHARLES BAYNES." virtue. On the receipt of this letter Charlotte dis- | permitted himself to be misled, and had weakobeyed her father's wish, and set forth from nesses not quite consistent with the highest Tours instantly, under her worthy uncle's guardianship. The old soldier was in his comrade's room when the general put the hands of Charlotte and her lover together. He confessed his fault, though it is hard for those who expect love and reverence to have to own to wrong and to ask pardon. Old knees are stiff to bend: brother reader, young or old, when our last hour comes, may ours have grace to do as much! CHAPTER XXX. RETURNS TO OLD FRIENDS. THE three old comrades and Philip formed the little mourning procession which followed the general to his place of rest at Montmartre. When the service has been read, and the last volley has been fired over the buried soldier, the troops march to quarters with a quick step, and to a lively tune. Our veteran has been laid in the grave with brief ceremonies. We do not even prolong his obsequies with a sermon. His place knows him no longer. There are a few who remember him: a very, very few who grieve for him-so few that to think of them is a humiliation almost. The sun sets on the earth, and our dear brother has departed off its face. Stars twinkle; dews fall; children go to sleep in awe, and maybe tears; the sun rises on a new day, which he has never seen, and children wake hungry. They are interested about their new black clothes, perhaps. They are presently at their work, plays, quarrels. They are looking forward to the day when the holidays will be over, and the eyes which shone here yesterday so kindly are gone, gone, gone. A drive to the cemetery, followed by a coach with four acquaintances dressed in decorous black, who separate and go to their homes or clubs, and wear your crape for a few days after-can most of us expect much more? The thought is not ennobling or exhilarating, worthy Sir. And, pray, why should we be proud of ourselves? Is it because we have been so good, or are so wise and great, that we expect to be beloved, lamented, remembered? Why, great Xerxes or blustering Bobadil must know in that last hour and resting-place how abject, how small, how low, how lonely they are, and what a little dust will cover them! Quick, drums and fifes, a lively tune! Whip the black team, coachman, and trot back to town again-to the world, and to business, and duty! I am for saying no single unkindness of General Baynes which is not forced upon me by my story-teller's office. We know from Marlborough's story that the bravest man and greatest military genius is not always brave or successful in his battles with his wife; that some of the greatest warriors have committed errors in accounts and the distribution of meum and tuum. We can't disguise from ourselves the fact that Baynes When he became aware that his carelessness in the matter of Mrs. Firmin's trust-money had placed him in her son's power, we have seen how the old general, in order to avoid being called to account, fled across the water with his family and all his little fortune, and how terrified he was on landing on a foreign shore to find himself face to face with this dreadful creditor. Philip's renunciation of all claims against Baynes soothed and pleased the old man wonderfully. But Philip might change his mind, an adviser at Baynes's side repeatedly urged. To live abroad was cheaper and safer than to live at home. Accordingly Baynes, his wife, family, and money, all went into exile, and remained there. What savings the old man had I don't accurately know. He and his wife were very dark upon this subject with Philip; and when the general died, his widow declared herself to be almost a pauper! It was impossible that Baynes should have left much money; but that Charlotte's share should have amounted to--that sum which may or may not presently be stated—was a little too absurd! You see Mr. and Mrs. Firmin are traveling abroad just now. When I wrote to Firmin, on the 28th of February, 1861, to ask if I might mention the amount of his wife's fortune, he gave me no answer: nor do I like to enter upon these matters of calculation without his explicit permission. He is of a hot temper; he might, on his return, grow angry with the friend of his youth, and say, "Sir, how dare you to talk about my private affairs? and what has the public to do with Mrs. Firmin's private fortune?" When, the last rites over, good-natured uncle Mac proposed to take Charlotte back to Tours her mother made no objection. The widow had tried to do the girl such an injury that perhaps the latter felt forgiveness was impossible. Little Char loved Philip with all her heart and strength; had been authorized and encouraged to do so, as we have seen. To give him up now, because a richer suitor presented himself, was an act of treason from which her faithful heart revolted, and she never could pardon the instigator. You see, in this simple story, I scarcely care even to have reticence or secrets. I don't want you to understand for a moment that Hely Walsingham was still crying his eyes out about Charlotte. Goodness bless you! It was two or three weeks ago-four or five weeks ago, that he was in love with her! He had not seen the Duchesse D'Ivry then, about whom you may remember he had the quarrel with Podichou, at the club in the Rue de Grammont. (He and the duchesse wrote poems to each other, each in the other's native language.) The Charlotte had long passed out of the young fellow's mind. That butterfly had fluttered off from our English rosebud, and had settled on the other elderly flower! I don't know that Mrs. Baynes was aware of young I liked his bad for all that, traveling was good sport sometimes. | cards and going to the café; how the dinners And if the world would have the kindness to go those Popjoys gave were too absurdly ostentaback for five-and-twenty or thirty years, some of tious; and Popjoy, we know, in the Bench last us who have traveled on the Tours and Orleans year. How Mr. Flights, going on with that Railway very comfortably would like to take the Major of French Carabineers, was really too, diligence journey now. etc., etc. "How could I endure those people?" Philip would ask himself, when talking of that personage in after-days, as he loved and loves to do. "How could I endure them, I say! Mac was a good man; but I knew secretly in my heart, Sir, that he was a bore. Well: I loved him. I liked his old stories. old dinners: there is a very comfortable Touraine wine, by-the-way: a very warming little wine, Sir. Mrs. Mac you never saw, my good Mrs. Pendennis. Be sure of this, you never would have liked her. Well, I did. I liked her house, though it was damp, in a damp garden, frequented by dull people. I should like to go and see that old house now. I am perfectly happy with my wife, but I,sometimes go away from her to enjoy the luxury of living over our old days again. With nothing in the world but an allowance which was precarious, and had been spent in advance; with no particular plans for the future, and a few five-franc pieces for the present-by Jove, Sir! how did I dare to be so happy? What idiots we were, my love, to be happy at all! We were mad to marry. Don't tell me with a purse which didn't contain three months' consumption would we dare to marry now? We should be put into the mad ward of the work-house: that would be the only place for us. Talk about trusting in Heaven. Stuff and nonsense, ma'am! I have as good a right to go and buy a house in Bel Having myself seen the city of Tours only last year, of course I don't remember much about it. A man remembers boyhood, and the first sight of Calais, and so forth. But after much travel or converse with the world, to see a new town is to be introduced to Jones. He is like Brown; he is not unlike Smith. In a little while you hash him up with Thompson. I dare not be particular, then, regarding Mr. Firmin's life at Tours, lest I should make topographical errors, for which the critical schoolmaster would justly inflict chastisement. In the last novel I read about Tours there were blunders from the effect of which you know the wretched author never recovered. It was by one Scott, and had young Quentin Durward for a hero, and Isabel de Croye for a heroine; and she sate in her hostel, and sang, "Ah, County Guy, the hour is nigh." A pretty ballad enough; but what ignorance, my dear Sir! What descriptions of Tours, of Liége, are in that fallacious story! Yes, so fallacious and misleading, that I remember I was sorry, not because the description was unlike Tours, but because Tours was unlike the description. ment, as I had to marry when I did. We were paupers, Mrs. Char, and you know that very well!" "Oh yes. We were very wrong-very!" says Mrs. Charlotte, looking up to the chandelier of her ceiling (which, by-the-way, is of very handsome Venetian old glass). "We were very wrong, were not we, my dearest ?" And herewith she will begin to kiss and fondle two or more babies that disport in her room-as if two or more babies had any thing to do with Philip's argument, that a man has no right to marry who has no pretty well-assured means of keeping a wife. So Quentin Firmin went and put up at the snug little hostel of the Faisan; and Isabel de Baynes took up her abode with her uncle, the Sire de MacWhirter; and I believe Master Firmin had no more money in his pocket than the Master Durward whose story the Scottish novel-grave Square, and trust to Heaven for the payist told some forty years since. And I can not promise you that our young English adventurer shall marry a noble heiress of vast property, and engage the Boar of Ardennes in a hand-to-hand combat ; that sort of Boar, madam, does not appear in our modern drawing-room histories. Of others, not wild, there be plenty. They gore you in clubs. They seize you by the doublet, and pin you against posts in public streets. They run at you in parks. I have seen them sit at bay after dinner, ripping, gashing, tossing a whole company. These our young adventurer had in good sooth to encounter, as is the case with most knights. Who escapes them? I remember an eminent person talking to me about bores for two hours once. O you stupid eminent person! You never knew that you your self had tusks, little eyes in your hure; a bristly mane to cut into tooth-brushes; and a curly tail! I have a notion that the multitude of bores is enormous in the world. If a man is a bore himself, when he is bored-and you can't deny this statement-then what am I, what are you, what your father, grandfather, son-all your amiable acquaintance, in a word? Of this I am sure. Major and Mrs. MacWhirter were not brilliant in conversation. What would you and I do, or say, if we listen to the tittle-tattle of Tours? How the clergyman was certainly too fond of Here, then, by the banks of the Loire, although Philip had but a very few francs in his pocket, and was obliged to keep a sharp lookout on his expenses at the Hotel of the Golden Pheasant, he passed a fortnight of such happiness as I, for my part, wish to all young folks who read his veracious history. Though he was so poor, and ate and drank so modestly in the house, the maids, waiters, the landlady of the Pheasant, were as civil to him-yes, as civil as they were to the gouty old Marchioness of Carabas herself, who staid here on her way to the south, occupied the grand apartments, quarreled with her lodging, dinner, breakfast, breadand-butter in general, insulted the landlady in bad French, and only paid her bill under compulsion. Philip's was a little bill, but he paid it cheerfully. He gave only a small gratuity to the servants, but he was kind and hearty, and they knew he was poor. He was kind and hearty, I suppose, because he was so happy. I have known the gentleman to be by no means civil; and have heard him storm, and lector, and brow-beat landlords and waiters as fiercely as the Marquis of Carabas himself. But now Philip the Bear was the most gentle of bears, because his little Charlotte was leading him. Away with trouble and doubt, with squeamish pride and gloomy care! Philip had enough money for a fortnight, during which Tom Glazier, of the Monitor, promised to supply Philip's letters for the Pall Mall Gazette. All the designs of France, Spain, Russia, gave that idle "own correspondent" not the slightest anxiety. In the morning it was Miss Baynes; in the afternoon it was Miss Baynes. At six it was dinner and Charlotte; at nine it was Charlotte and tea. "Any how, love-making does not spoil his appetite," Major MacWhirter correctly remarked. Indeed, Philip had a glorious appetite; and health bloomed in Miss Charlotte's cheek, and beamed in her happy little heart. Dr. Firmin, in the height of his practice, never completed a cure more skillfully than that which was performed by Dr. Firmin, Junior. "I ran the thing so close, Sir," I remember Philip bawling out, in his usual energetic way, while describing this period of his life's greatest happiness to his biographer, "that I came back to Paris outside the diligence, and had not money enough to dine on the road. But I bought a sausage, Sir, and a bit of bread-and a brutal sausage it was, Sir-and I reached my lodgings with exactly two sous in my pocket." Roger Bontemps himself was not more content than our easy philosopher. So Philip and Charlotte ratified and sealed a treaty of Tours, which they determined should never be broken by either party. Marry without papa's consent? Oh, never! Marry any body but Philip? Oh, never-never! Not if she lived to be a hundred, when Philip would in consequence be in his hundred and ninth or tenth year, would this young Joan have any but her present Darby. Aunt Mac, though she may not have been the most accomplished or highly-bred of ladies, was a warm-hearted and affectionate aunt Mac. She caught in a mild form the fever from these young people. She had not much to leave, and Mac's relations would want all he could spare when he was gone. But Charlotte should have her garnets, and her tea-pot, and her India shawl-that she should.* | And with many blessings this enthusiastic old lady took leave of her future nephew-in-law when I am sorry to say that in later days, after Mrs. Major MacWhirter's decease, it was found that she had promised these treasures in writing to several members of her husband's family, and that much heart-burning arose in con he returned to Paris and duty. Crack your whip, and scream your hi! and be off quick, postillion and diligence! I am glad we have taken Mr. Firmin out of that dangerous, lazy, love-making place. Nothing is to me so sweet as sentimental writing. I could have written hundreds of pages describing Philip and Charlotte, Charlotte and Philip. But a stern sense of duty intervenes. My modest muse puts a finger on her lip, and says, "Hush about that business!" Ah, my worthy friends, you little know what soft-hearted people those cynics are! If you could have come on Diogenes by surprise, I dare say you might have found him reading sentimental novels and whimpering in his tub. Philip shall leave his sweet-heart and go back to his business, and we will not have one word about tears, promises, raptures, parting. Never mind about these sentimentalities, but please, rather, to depict to yourself our young fellow so poor that, when the coach stops for dinner at Orleans, he can only afford to purchase a penny loaf and a sausage for his own hungry cheek. When he reached the Hôtel Poussin, with his meagre carpet-bag, they served him a supper which he ate to the admiration of all beholders in the little coffee-room. He was in great spirits and gayety. He did not care to make any secret of his poverty, and how he had been unable to afford to pay for dinner. Most of the guests at Hôtel Poussin knew what it was to be poor. Often and often they had dined on credit when they put back their napkins into their respective pigeon-holes. But my landlord knew his guests. They were poor men--honest men. They paid him in the end, and each could help his neighbor in a strait. After Mr. Firmin's return to Paris he did not care for a while to go to the Elysian Fields. They were not Elysian for him, except in Miss Charlotte's company. He resumed his newspaper correspondence, which occupied but a day in each week, and he had the other six-nay, he scribbled on the seventh day likewise, and covered immense sheets of letter-paper with remarks upon all manner of subjects, addressed to a certain Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle Baynes, chez M. le Major Mac, etc. On these sheets of paper Mr. Firmin could talk so long, so loudly, so fervently, so eloquently to Miss Baynes, that she was never tired of hearing, or he of holding forth. He began imparting his dreams and his earliest sensations to his beloved before breakfast. At noonday he gave her his opinion of the contents of the morning papers. His packet was ordinarily full and brimming over by posttime, so that his expressions of love and fidelity leaked from under the cover, or were squeezed into the queerest corners, where, no doubt, it was a delightful task for Miss Baynes to trace out and detect those little Cupids which a faithful lover dispatched to her. It would be, "I have found this little corner unoccupied. Do you know what I have to say in it? Oh, Char sequence. But our story has nothing to do with these lotte, I," etc., etc. My sweet young lady, you painful disputes. can guess, or will one day guess, the rest; and |