away, when he called after me, "Signora! where
are you going? That order of release is mere
waste paper,"—"I am going to the Marquis
d'Afflitto, to see if he dare interfere with its
execution."And away I rushed, with very little
ceremony, into the prefect's private room, and,
holding out my order of release, demanded to
know if he interfered with its execution? He
looked up in a languid way, and asked the
prisoner's name. When I told him, he said,
with some embarrassment, "Oh yes, oh yes! I
remember there was a letter on the subject—
but circumstances have occurred since—in
short, your husband is free—free to-day, if you
choose."Away I sped to the procuratore
again, but he again delayed me. "Of course,
what you say is true, signora, but your word is
not enough. The Marquis d'Afflitto signed the
letter forbidding the release, and that document
remains; he must, therefore, hold me harmless
by signing also the order of release." What
should we say in England of a legal officer who
required to be held harmless for executing the
law? I turned wearily back—for I had by this
time very little strength left—to go once more to
D'Afflitto for his signature: when the procuratore
said: "It is too late to-day, signora; the
marquis will be going to dinner now; it is after
office-hours already. I will accompany you
to-morrow, to explain to him why his signature is
necessary; but to-day, at this hour, I could not
presume."This made me so furious that it
restored all my strength. I seized him by the
arm, saying, "It is not too late, you shall come
now."He uttered no other word of opposition,
but followed me as meekly as a lamb. As we went
up the grand staircase, weary and angry as I was,
I could not help smiling to see him nervously
arranging his collar, dusting his boots with his
pocket-handkerchief, and brushing his hat with
his coat-sleeve, as we approached the great man's
room. D'Afflitto—with whom the procuratore
spoke in whispers, hat in hand—made no
difficulty; he signed the order at once. I never
thanked him, nor looked again in the direction
where they stood. I flew to the prison, threw
my order to the jailer as I rushed by him, and
never stopped to breathe till I reached my
husband's cell.

In five minutes more we were hurrying
through the hateful corridors I knew so well,
and the tears rushed to my eyes to see kindly
faces looking through the gratings in the doors
of the other cells, and to hear words of pleasant
congratulation spoken by the poor hopeless
wretches we left behind. It was then past six
o'clock A.M. I had been running about Genoa
ever since eight o'clock that morning, without
ever remembering to eat or drink, so that now,
when all was over, I suddenly found I could
scarcely stand. Somehow, we got down the long
long flights of stairs, and passed through the
old cloisters into the open air; somehow, we got
into a carriage; and the next thing of which I
have any distinct remembrance is of being on
the sofa at home, with my husband and the
manservant standing looking at me with faces of great
bewilderment, and giving me some Marsala to
drink.—Yes, one thing more I do remember, and
that is, how very good that Marsala was!

THE ROUGH SIDE OF FUR.

IT is a winter afternoon in London, the air is
alive with snow; a lady and her three daughters
enter the shop of one of the chief furriers of
Regent-street. A stuffed tiger grins impotently
at the door; the shop-windows are mantled with
furs fit for an empress—white as the thrice-driven
snow, silver-grey, zebra-striped, barred,
spotted, spangled. These ladies know not where
they come from, or who obtained them; they buy
capes, gloves, pelisses, all of fur, and re-enter
their carriage clad like Lapland princesses.

This same afternoon, the hunter who slew
those sables, those ermines, and those grey
squirrels, is far away in Eastern Siberia toiling
in his dangerous trade—digging pitfals for
bears, watching the grey squirrel, setting traps
for the marten, skimming over the snow plains
on his great snow-shoes, or flogging the reindeer
that draw his sledge till he maddens them
to a gallop, as the only chance that he has of
escaping the snow whirlwind.

Let us go to the great Russian fair at
Novgorod. Elbowing Chinese, Tartars, Magyars,
Austrians, and Muscovites, we are sure to find
whole bands of fur-hunters laden with their
peltries. A year or two ago it was computed
that, from the district of Kirensk alone, there
was annually sent to this great market six
hundred marten-skins, six thousand ermine-skins,
one hundred and fifty bear-skins, and
four hundred thousand skins of the " petit gris,"
or grey squirrel.

The fur-hunter clothes himself in a tunic of
hair-skin, breeches of reindeer-leather, boots of
badger-skin, and cap of the lambs wool of
Astracan. In this dress he can roll in snow,
or wade through icy water, without suffering
much from the cold. His ancestors, who were
simple, and hardier than himself, guided themselves
northward by observing that the side of
the tree that faces the north is always the
mossiest; but the modern hunter never neglects
to carry a small compass in his pouch to lead him
on straighter and surer to the ermine country.
This brave minister of our luxury uses a gun
of a very small calibre. More than three hundred
of the balls he fires go to the pound; a
larger ball would injure the ermine fur, and its
use would also compel the hunters to carry with
them a cumbrous load of lead.

Kirensk, where most of the fur-hunters live,
is a district on the shores of the Lenæ, in Eastern
Siberia. When the Cossacks, riding eastward
some two centuries ago, discovered these tribes,
they were mere savages, living on fish and
reindeer's milk, and clothed in sable skins. They
killed the ermine with arrows, the ends of which
were tipped with wooden balls. They were in
time conquered and displaced by the Sirians, a
people of Finnish origin. Their huts are now