move, you could no doubt bring the battle to a successful issue; but as it is my turn to play, I am enabled to mate you (if you make the best reply) in seven moves, and I beg you to calmly examine the position, and acknowledge the inexorable fate which gives me the power to demand your surrender." Stung by this patronising admonition, I felt that desperation and a spiteful sentiment had so possessed me as to prevent me from quietly considering the state of the game to ascertain how far Mephisto was correct; so I told him rather impetuously, as if ignoring his announcement of mate, that he had better play, to bring the game to a conclusion. Without apparently noticing my temper, Mephisto took my knight with his rook, giving check, forcing my king to B 3.

He now sacrificed his queen by taking my rook, checking, and the game proceeded

Although now fully aware that my position was hopeless, I played on, making my moves mechanically and quickly, goaded by Mephisto's brusque manner, which he had assumed whilst these moves were being played. I had nothing left to do but to push my pawn, which he took with his knight, checking,

and I as readily and quickly played my king to Q3; whereupon Mephisto grasped his rook to give what I saw at once was a neat and finished mate.

My fate was decided, my services were assigned to the devil, and the deserved reward of a foolish freak made itself painfully felt. All this flashed instantaneously through my mind, and in despair I was on the point of sinking back into my chair, when I saw my opponent, to my great astonishment, allow the rook to drop out of his hand, whilst a fiendish laugh, which sounded like a yell of agony, shook the room and the house to its foundation. Utterly unable to comprehend the meaning of this finish of our game and the paroxysms of rage to which Mephisto gave vent, the reflections upon my fate became doubly painful. My diabolical master seemed to gloat over his conquest, and by his manners to prepare me for the tortures of But where was Mephisto? Neither sight nor sound revealed

his presence to me. His disappearance heightened the mystery of the whole scene; so much so, that I at first hesitated to raise myself out of my chair. It was quite evident that he had suddenly disappeared, but I failed to perceive the cause of this. Before leaving, he had swept the chessmen off the board-contrary to his former custom, when he had left me the position to study. Curiosity made me play over the game, bringing it again to the position in which he had announced mate in seven (oh, that ominous number!) moves, and I carefully repeated the continuation as recorded until I came to the last. The whole secret lay revealed! Mephisto could not, or would not, make the move! Why? Dear reader, I cannot tell you why; but if you take a chess board and men, go into your chamber, lock the door, set up the position as shown in the diagram, and make the moves as stated, you will understand why Mephisto could not, and I dared not, make the final move.

Astonishment at the turn my adventure had taken made me for the moment quite overlook the consequences. Mephisto, not having completed his last move, had not mated me; so, of course, according to his own stipulation, I had won the match: and in the excitement of the moment I cried aloud, "The devil is caught; henceforth his services will be mine, and I shall chain him to the chess-table to play for my amusement."

I had scarcely uttered these words, when I discovered Mephisto standing by my side, his piercing eye fixed on mine; and he replied, "I take you at your word; be it so ; but why for your own amusement only, when there are so many devotees to the game who will be anxious to measure their chess strength against me? You look at me in astonishment, no doubt, hardly realising the idea of my being publicly exhibited; but sit down, and I will tell you why I suggest this.

"You have, during my absence just now, discovered the reason of my inability to mate you in the number of moves I declared to do; hence I accept the game as a draw, and the match as decided in your favour.

"Fate has declared against me; and although I might have chosen a different course, it would have entailed upon me a sacrifice too great to be compensated for. I therefore assign to you my services, the nature of which you have already indicated. I can," he continued, "read in your face your surprise at the readiness with which I submit to the conditions of our compact; and to explain this, as well as to prepare you for the relation in which we are to stand to each other in the future, pray listen to the following: I have already informed you that my superior knowledge of the forces of Nature

and their practical application enables me to produce phenomera which appear to the ignorant the result of supernatural powers, and that I have used this physical advantage for the gratification of my desire to combat and punish deceit, pretence, and arrogance. It is not surprising that in return I should be reviled as the origin of sin, and that my control of the natural forces should be adduced as a proof of my wickedness. The earliest record of the world's history gives proof of the fact that ignorance on the one side and cunning on the other combined to ascribe to me the cause of all evil in the world; and although the ideas about me, my form and activity, may have altered during the last centuries, it was not until a superior mind, about two hundred years ago-Baruch Spinoza-proved, and endeavoured to convince his contemporaries, that the existence of an evil spirit interfering in the world's development was incompatible with the existence of an Almighty ruler of the universe. He was rewarded by expulsion from his community. Other enlightened minds followed, who attempted to free the public mind from the disturbed ideas about my being; who showed the absurdity of the horns, cloven hoof, and tail with which a diseased imagination had pictured me, and who combated the persecutions of witches as the outcome of overstrained fanaticism.

"Most of these men, whose views and ideas were in advance of their times, had to suffer for their boldness in combating the prevailing popular superstitions. Still, these numerous attempts to destroy the belief in the existence of an evil spirit which acts independently of the Almighty have not been without effect in enlightening the minds of the present generation; and the liberal views entertained on this subject by your men of science and by the clergymen of the English Protestant Church, for instance, induce me to believe that the time has come when I may boldly show myself in public. Let my presence in your midst be a proof of the fact that, whatever evil is done henceforth in the world, the devil has had no hand in it, and that any attempt to shift the guilt upon me should be looked upon as an indirect admission of the accuser's own guilty conscience. In this way will my presence here contribute to enlighten the public mind and destroy all superstition, and with this view I am willing to be chained, as you express it, to the chess-table. My consent is, however, subject to one condition, to which, no doubt, you will gladly accede. Let me maintain silence-silence in every tongue-since my natural tendency to expose imposition and conceit would niake enemies, which must be avoided; but we can admonish the boastful by defeat on the chess-board."

Here Mephisto finished, placed himself on the chair at the chesstable, and, with his face bent over the board, remained in sullen silence. In vain I attempted to elicit some further remarks from him about the many enigmas surrounding his whole being and his past career his tongue was tied.

He is now ready to do battle against all comers, the best opponent that any player was ever engaged with. He always smiles at his adversary, has no annoying habits, shows no temper, and when he has defeated his adversary, he merely looks up in acknowledgment of the honour shown him.

Who can solve the mystery?

Some readers may think they discover in the positions of the first two games, well-known problems by Mendheim and Lolli; but there can be no doubt whatever that, when composing the problems in question, these two famous chess-players had the advantage of Mephisto's assistance, [because he knew the positions so well, and the solutions of them are so truly diabolical.

I

THE HÔTEL RAMBOUILLET.

NTRODUCED into society at a very early age, there might, upon

the score of youth and inexperience, have been much ground for excuse had Madame de Rambouillet yielded to the coarse and licentious influences by which, at the Court of Henry IV. she was surrounded, and been swept, with her talents and genius, into a perverted channel. But, instead of this catastrophe, by the charm of her person and virtue alone, and without even the factitious aids of extraordinary advantage of position or fortune, she successfully inaugurated a new era in the history of social life. She levelled the artificial barriers which separated the world of letters from the world of fashion, she taught men and women that pure intellectual intercourse might subsist between them and elevate the tone of their common interests; and, whilst she lost none of the grace of a nature essentially womanly, she acquired, as prototype of the Précieuses, a position in which her opinion became an acknowledged and accepted standard of taste.

Imitation is the supreme flattery of admiration, and this homage was rendered to Madame de Rambouillet by the Précieuses ridicules whom Molière and Boileau so legitimately satirised; but to make Madame de Rambouillet responsible for all the vagaries and absurdities of the tribe of her would-be copyists would be as unjust as to make real æsthetics and high art responsible for the ludicrous excesses which Mr. Burnand mimics in his comedy "The Colonel." Madame de Rambouillet possessed that sense of the ridiculous which is the safeguard of genius against eccentricity, and the zest with which she assisted at the first representation of the Précieuses ridicules proves that she appreciated the aim of the satire. She had the fearless instinct of natural originality which always marks true genius, and was sufficiently sure of herself to venture to act upon her artistic impulses; but the ladies of other and baser clay who tried to copy her by rule and line failed as clumsily as might a flock of heavy farmyard fowls trying to imitate the spontaneous motion of some bird of the air whose flight sovra gli altri has excited their emulation.

It appears to us, however, that, setting aside discussions about