declined it, and the duke, consequently, emptied it himself. The cavaliers in the meanwhile, were gazing with some curiosity at the mysterious horseman, but Richelieu allowed them no time to do so. "To horse!" he commanded. In an instant the troop'were mounted, and drew up in two lines. "Count Tourville," the duke said, "you will form an advanced post with two gentlemen. You will ride round the castle and signal to us whatever may happen. Prince Conti, you will post yourself with another gentleman on the skirt of the forest, and cover our rear; and now, gentlemen, forwards!" the filled glasses were clinked together amid singing and toasts. Others still arrived singly, and were greeted with cries of joy. They dismounted and attached their horses to some branch. A young lieutenant, the Marquis de Chauvelin, amused the company by counting them over whenever a new comer arrived. At length he arrived at the result that they were all present, except their leader, the Duke de Richelieu. It had grown almost dark, and only a few stars stood in the heavens, when two horsemen slowly approached the bivouac fire from the direction of Paris. No sooner did Chauvelin notice them, than he alarmed the whole troop. "Two Tourville galloped ahead with his horsemen !" he cried; "that is contrary companions and carried out the duke's to the agreement. The number is full; commands. Richelieu, who had again it is not the duke, for he will come been joined by the mysterious horseman, alone." He quickly leaped into his sad- placed himself at the head of the main dle and galloped to meet them. When body, and led it against the castle, while twenty paces distant he pulled up his Conti followed slowly and stopped in horse, cocked a pistol, and challenged observation on the forest edge. Richethem. A loud laugh from Richelieu lieu was just riding round the swamp answered his manœuvre. Chauvelin into which the road ran, when Tourville bowed politely. "Are you assembled?" came back at a gallop. the duke asked. The officer bowed. As they rode together towards the forest, Chauvelin noticed that Richelieu's companion wore a black velvet mask. With this exception, there was nothing remarkable about his appearance. He seemed a powerful man, and was dressed in an elegant black suit and horseman's boots. On his black hat was a bright red bow, and he wore the scarf distinguishing the whole troop. When they approached the fire, he kept behind and a little apart, while Richelieu dashed up, accompanied by Chauvelin. The cavaliers surrounded the duke with shouts, lifted him off his horse, carried him in their arms with a wild laughing tumult round the fire, and seated him on the wine cask. "First a glass of wine," Richelieu cried, "and then the war-subordination commences." He emptied the glass which one of the gentleman handed him, had it filled again, aud carried it to the man in the mask. The latter, however, They are stirring on the walls," he shouted. "Men are running up and down; it will be earnest." The duke waved his hat joyfully. "All the better! the adventure is perfect. To your post, Tourville," he commanded. The count returned, and the duke shouted, "Dismount!" The cavaliers leaped from their steeds and fastened them to the willows which spread out their withered branches over the swamp. "Forwards!" They crept up the mound to the castle, Richelieu and the man with the mask in front, the rest in open order. Suddenly the sound of a galloping horse was. heard, and Tourville dashed up. "Duke," he cried, "this is getting beyond a joke; they are mounting guns on the walls.", "Back!" Richelieu commanded. The cavaliers hurried to the hollow, where they were hidden from the castle, and collected again near the willows. "They have artillery," Tourville repeated. "Nonsense! they will not fire upon harmless revellers," Chauvelin objected. "They take us for robbers," Tourville was of opinion. "Supposing they fire?" others shout ed; and the cry of "A flag of truce!" | up the rope-ladder, while others tried to was repeated on all sides. "Advance, trumpeter!" said. "I will read the declaration of war once again.” ascend by the help of the holes. The the duke head of Richelieu, Chauvelin, and the man in the mask were already raised above the parapet, when there was a Accompanied by the trumpeter, he flash from the castle keep; Bengal lights hurried up the hill; on the walls he now blazed along the walls, and lit up the distinctly saw the outlines of human country for a long distance. Masked forms planting guns, and pointing them men filled the bastion; the guns were down the hill. At the foot of the walls rolled up to the embrasure, and just as the trumpet was blown thrice, and the Richelieu stood on the wall and set a declaration of war read, but Richelieu re- foot on the nearest gun, a full salvo was ceived no answer, and the spectral, me- discharged at the assailants. A wild nacing movement on the walls continued. cry from the wounded and the dead, as The duke returned to his band. "What it seemed, rang through the air. is to be done?" he asked. "I expect she is not in the castle, and her besotted serfs will blow us away with their guns like summer flies." "To horse!" some shouted; "let us return to Paris." Others caught hold of their reins. In the midst of the tumult Richelieu's voice could be heard: "We will not fly! Shall the nobles of France be intimidated by a couple of cannon? We are here, so let us advance." "Victory or death!" shouted Chauvelin. And the cavaliers burst into a peal of laughter. The enthusiastic lieutenant turned away at this insult, and sharpened his sword-blade on the sole of his boot. After the duke had attempted in vain to make the man in the mask retire, he asked whether the pistols were loaded. "As you ordered," said Chauvelin, "one with bullet, the other blank." "Very good, now advance!" The cavaliers crept up the hill, covered by bushes and hollows in the ground, as far as possible. Presently they stopped, and Chauvelin alone crawled along the ground. He reached the wall, and cimbed up unnoticed, by putting his feet and hands into holes where stones had fallen out. When near the embrasure, he produced a rope-ladder, fastened it to a projecting stone, and let it fall down. At the same instant, Richelieu leaped up and waved his sword. The cavaliers did the same, and rushed toward the castle with the shout of "Notre Dame!" This was the moment when they expected to be received with a salvo, but the castle guns were silent. The cavaliers reached the wall; some climbed Then came noisy shouts of laughter, and then again a yell from dripping-wet, splashing, half-drowned men-not bullets, but dense streams of icy water from upwards of a dozen immense fire-engines received the cavaliers, and produced a really annihilating effect upon them. Here flew away a hat, there a sword; one fell off a ladder, and carried two others with him. In vain did Richelieu and Chauvelin attack the enginemen with the flat of their swords-in vain did the man in the mask leap on a captured gun and try to defend it against the garrison. Others advanced with hand-squirts, and completed the victory by their musketry fire. The cavaliers fled, laughing, cursing. and yelling. Those who had scaled the wall were compelled to follow, if they did not wish to be captured. They rushed, followed by the salvoes of the engines, down the hill to the hollow, where they arrived dripping and shivering. "There is nothing to be done," shouted the duke, "but to blow a retreat." The trumpet rang out, every one tried to gain his saddle, while peals of laughter rang from the walls. Tourville and Conti joined the dripping army, and, followed for a long distance by the laughter of the victors, they galloped back to Paris. On the morning after the unsuccessful attack on the mysterious castle, the Duke de Richelieu appeared in the king's antechamber, and was not admitted. This had never happened to him before. He asked almost violently for the reason, and the chamberlain on duty declared, with a shrug of the shoulders, that his majesty was very poorly. Richelieu was obliged to content himself with this. But on the following day, too, the king's door was closed against him. He appeared to yield to his fate, and the report was soon spread that the duke was ill. A court gentleman called twice a day to inquire into his health, and at last the king expressed a wish to see him. On the next day the duke had quite recovered, and when he appeared at Versailles the pages hastened to open the doors of the royal apartments to him. "Well, what is the matter with you?" Louis XV. cried to him, as he entered. "Well, what is the matter with you, sire?" Richelieu asked, as he gazed at the king in amazement. Louis was seated in an arm-chair in a costly dressing-gown of Oriental fabric, with thick silk handkerchiefs bound round his neck and head. It produced the impression of an old woman rather than of a king of France, the ally of the great Frederick. "There there," the king said, in a sort of hoarse chant-"it strikes there." And he pointed to his head, neck, and chest. all the victims of the fire-engines. In the halls of Versailles, on guard, on the parade ground, everybody is coughing. Everybody is hoarse, and the young gentlemen call the illness the Russian cough." "But "Not bad," said Louis XV. what good is it to me?. I am utterly destroyed for several weeks; I must keep my room, and I am ennuyé. I did not wish to see you. Kaunitz is ill, the marquise is ill; and do you know why, Richelieu? She wishes to punish me for my adventure. My condition betrayed Now she believes more than did happen, or was intended to happen. She behaves as if she had detected me in an infidelity." me. "You were not very far from it either." The king had a tremendous fit of coughing, and wrung his hands with a glance at Heaven. "Mon Dieu! I unfaithful!" he cried, as loudly as if he knew the marquise was listening at the door. "But the scandalous cold. I tremble with fury when I think that millions are going about who have no cold, and that all the trouble was in vain. Oh! the world is growing worse daily; the men are suffering from colds in the head, and the women from virtue." The adventure, however, was fated to cost France more than a royal cold. The Russian lady was an agent of her empress, and, recommended in this strange way, she carried through, with Kaunitz's assistance, the alliance of the three "petticoats" against Frederick the Great. POETRY. Stands on the summit of the mountain, Heimdall, whose piercing eye can see He bids them pass the Bridge in order. "Heimdall, the White God," "is the warder of the gods, and is placed on the borders of heaven, to prevent the giants from forcing their way over the bridge. He requires less sleep than a bird, and sees by night as well as by day, a hundred miles around him. So acute is his ear that he can hear the grass growing on the earth, and the wool on a sheep's back."-Ibid. He bids them enter, one by one, The youngest first, then all the others, Until at last remains alone The first and strongest of the brothers. Thor now his giant foot would fain Set on the Bridge that glittering wonder! But Heimdall waves him back again; "Tarry, thou lover of the thunder. "The Bridge Bifrost was never made Your strength can ford the abysses aëry." Black grew his brow at Heimdall's word; Shut out from life? left sad and lonely?" "Nay," then replied wise Heimdall; "nay; Now gazed great Thor, first on the black To the fair Bridge the rest are treading. "The eldest I"-his musings run- "Therefore forbid the flowery portal; Unfair! and Odin's eldest son Renounces this your life immortal. " Then Odin spake; "Son Thor," quoth he, "What matter, when the goal is ours, Or Kormt and Ermt, with fierce endeavor?" Beneath, firm-footing found his feet, He breasts the tide with ne'er a shiver, Blue shone the sky on no defeat, He won the Fountain thro' the River! Oh, thou whose life may little know Of summer sunshine or of flowers, Unmurm'ring, stem the tide of woe! Fight bravely through the black storm showers! -For this has thou been made the stronger. -Good Words. C. P. —Chamber's Journal, THE GLOVE. THE OLD LETTER. SINCE you have asked, I needs but tell the history I BURNED the others, one by one; but my cour- "Twas thus I found it,-through the city's bustle age failed at last, I wandered one still autumn eve, alone: A tall slight form brushed by with silken rustle, And passed into a carriage, and was gone. One glance I had, in that I caught the gleaming Of violet eyes, o'er which the rippling tress Glanced gold,- -a face like those we see in dreaming, As perfect in its shadowy loveliness. And so she passed, a glorious light about her Clothed, like a summer-dawn, in silver-gray, And left the crowded street as dark without her As winter skies whose moon has passed away. This little gauntlet which her hand was clasping, Fell from her as she reached the carriage door, And floated down, as flutters from the aspen Some trembling leaflet whose brief day is o'er. And I,-I found it on the pavement lying, Pale as the marble Venus-missing hand, Or some small flake of foam which Ocean, flying, Leaves in a furrow of the moistened sand. She was so like some queen of the idealWith that bright bow, those soft eyes' shadowy gleam I fain would keep this pledge to prove her real, To mark her difference from an airy-dream. And though her glove has unto me been donor Of much sweet thought, yet I can think it well That she should know as little of its owner As I of her from whose fair hand it fell. Why should I drag her from her high position, Her niche above this work-day world's long reach? Hardly a fact, nor wholly yet a vision, She joins for me the better parts of each. A WOMAN'S NO. I said my love was deep and true; A mocking word, a smile at best, How earnestly I tried to plead ! Her eyes roved idly here and there, Her fingers toyed with chain or hair, She scarcely seemed my words to heed. At last I said, "then is it so? My darling, must I go away? I turned to go and leave her free; PASSING AWAY. O River of Time! how ceaselessly Thou flowest on the boundless sea! Whether upon the sunny tide The sweet Spring blossoms drop and glide, Or whether the dreary snow-flakes only Fall in the winter cold and lenelyWhether we wake or whether we sleep, Thou hastest on to Eternity's deep. 'Twas long ago, in my life's sweet May, So often, so sadly, the people say, For what is the transient? and what will last? Our time is flying. The years sweep by As our seas are spanned by arching skies, And though the tides may fall in life's shallow bay, Eternity's deep is not ebbing away. MY MOTHER'S GRAVE. 'My mother's grave, my mother's grave! Oh! dreamless is her slumber there, And drowsily the banners wave O'er her that was so chaste and fair: Yea! love is dead, and memory faded! But when the dew is on the brake, And silence sleeps on earth and sea, And mourners weep, and ghosts awake, Oh! then she cometh back to me, In her cold beauty darkly shaded! 'I cannot guess her face or form; But what to me is form or face? I do not ask the weary worm To give me back each buired grace Of glistening eyes, or trailing tresses! I only feel that she is here, And that we meet, and that we part; And that I drink within mine ear, And that I clasp around my heart, Her sweet still voice, and soft carresses! 'Not in the waking thought by day, |