side?" she asked, with the first signs of alarm
that she had shown yet. "Has your wife got
any eau-de-Cologne, any sal volatile in her room?
Don't exhaust yourself by speaking—point to
the place!"

He pointed to a little triangular cupboard of
old, wormeaten walnut-wood, fixed high in a
corner of the room. Mrs. Lecount tried the
door—it was locked.

As she made that discovery, she saw his head
sink back gradually on the easy-chair in which
she had placed him. The warning of the
doctor in past years—"If you ever let him faint,
you let him die"—recurred to her memory, as if it
had been spoken the day before. She looked at
the cupboard again. In a recess under it, lay
some ends of cord, placed there apparently for
purposes of packing. Without an instant's
hesitation, she snatched up a morsel of cord;
tied one end fast round the knob of the cupboard
door; and seizing the other end in both hands,
pulled it suddenly with the exertion of her whole
strength. The rotten wood gave way; the
cupboard doors flew open; and a heap of little trifles
poured out noisily on the floor. Without stopping
to notice the broken china and glass at her
feet, she looked into the dark recesses of the
cupboard, and saw the gleam of two glass bottles.
One was put away at the extreme back of the
shelf; the other was a little in advance, almost
hiding it. She snatched them both out at once,
and took them, one in each hand, to the window,
where she could read their labels in the clearer
light.

The bottle in her right hand was the first
bottle she looked at. It was marked—Sal volatile.

She instantly laid the other bottle aside on
the table without looking at it. The other bottle
lay there, waiting its turn. It held a dark
liquid, and it was labelled:—POISON.

PRINCELY TRAVEL IN AMERICA.

GIVE two performers the same piece of music
to execute successively, and you will hear two
series of quite different musical effects. Set
two artists to sketch the same landscape, and
you will obtain two pictures which are anything
but a repetition one of the other. So likewise
with written description. Style, habits of
thought and observation, vary so widely in
different individuals, that it is as impossible for
two travellers to make the same remarks on
what they see, as it is for two clocks to keep
strictly accurate time together.

Prince Napoleon, during his recent American
tour, was accompanied by at least two ready
writers. Of the first, Monsieur Sand, we have
already given a short specimen.* A second,
Lieutenant-Colonel Ferri Pisani, aide-de-camp
to the prince, has also published a volume of
well-written letters on the United States.

* A French View of Stars and Stripes, page 612,
volume vii.

That two books on the same subject are better
than one, is proved by a little anecdote told by
our present writer. M. Sand, for nobody knew
what reason, thought proper to pass a night
in a carriage, instead of in the tent prepared
for him. The cold prevented his closing his
eyes all night long, and morning found him
in very bad humour. He was blind to the
picturesque and novel spectacle around him,
which would have delighted his illustrious
mother. He was bitter against America in
general, and against the South in particular.
He was specially indignant at the conduct of
a herd of oxen, who surrounded his dormitory,
and kept him awake with their concerted bass
music. From that moment his anti-slavery
views assumed an intenseness, which
demonstrates that broken sleep may prejudice a
traveller unfavourably. Let us hear, therefore,
what our author has to say respecting other
influences.

When Prince Napoleon arrived in America,
in July 1861, the Federal party was in deep
discouragement. With the exception of the prince
himself—whose faith in the issue nothing can
shake, and of certain statesmen at Washington,
who are personally engaged in the question—
nothing was to be met with in the Northern States
but apprehensions, sinister auguries, presentiments
of a coming catastrophe, and that in
the republican as well as the democratic
party, in the diplomatic corps as well as
in the intellectual and financial aristocracy
of the country. The predictions then current,
inspired by the lessons of history, and supported
by logic and probability, were completely
unfavourable to the cause of the North. Never, they
said, can the five or six hundred thousand men
necessary to subdue the South be levied out of a
population averse to the profession of arms, and
generally indifferent, if not divided, touching the
question of slavery. Recent events seem to
confirm the conviction.

West Point is a sort of American Polytechnic
School, which, while no one suspected it, was
nursing many of America's present and future
great men. Nothing but the civil war, the
governmental anarchy, and the humiliating
position of the United States in respect to the
rest of the world, could have brought about so
unexpected a result. These men first appear on
the military stage; but everybody feels that they
must shortly pass on to political scenes. Already
the South has chosen a West Point man, Jefferson
Davis, for president; for West Point is divided
like the rest of the nation, and supplies chiefs to
both parties. Generals Beauregard and
Johnstone are at the head of the Secessionist
movement ; McClellan and McDowell are the heroes
of the Union. Their names replace in every
mouth the names of politicians whose faults have
brought the United States to the brink of the
abyss. It looks almost like a game of French
and English at school. In the war of Western
Virginia, McClellan had to cope with two West
Point chums, one of whom was killed, the other
taken prisoner. Beauregard and McClellan, the