It is not good dress nor handsome features,
luckily, that make the hero ; for the marshal was
a little fubsy slovenly man, looking like a Jew
hawker, and his wife was not much better in
dress or bearing.

We passed through the infirmary, where the
attendants seemed kind and humane; there was
no appearance of restraint. As we passed one
room, a pretty young woman, neatly dressed,
came tripping forward in a fantastic manner that
seemed more than half assumed, and asked the
governor to be set at liberty, as she was quite
recovered. The governor smiled coldly with
some stern formula of refusal, upon which she
walked away with strange or rather insane
gestures, and a spurious Bedlamite walk.

"What has that woman done?" M. Billet said
to the attendant physician, a trim little man in
blue tail-coat and brass buttons.

The doctor looked at the governor. The
governor telegraphed him permission to speak.

"She has several times attempted to murder her
husband, and she now shams madness in order
to escape due punishment." I gave up
henceforward all trust in prisoners with pretty faces.

The governor turned his stony blue eyes on us
with a look of relief as he led us back to the
office we had first entered. He had done with
us — he washed his hands of us.

The grubby little beetle-browed clerk in the
grimy uniform looked up at us, his pen between
his yellow rat-teeth, with a look that seemed to
say, " What! those accursed outer-barbarians
back again! Well, never mind; the day will soon
come when I shall have to enter their names in
my register."

The governor said nothing, but removed his
military cap and bowed; we took off our hats and
bowed — the door closed upon him.

"That governor is a fearful Tartar, I'm sure,"
I said to M. Billet.

"I think," replied M. Billet, with a quiet
smile, " he must be brother to that old General
Maimenoff, the commandant in Siberia, who,
when the Polish prisoners used to ask him for
mercy, was accustomed to reply, sternly, ' Man,
the hand with which I wrote pardons belonged
to the arm that I lost at the battle of
Smolensko.'"

SHADOWY MISGIVINGS.

I MAY as well begin by stating that my name
is Blushman — Percival Blushman. I believe
an unusual name; but that will not affect the
course of the little true narrative which I am
about to introduce, and which I hope will " run
smooth."

Further preliminary particulars in reference
to Percival Blushman may not perhaps be
found uninteresting. From childhood upwards,
I have always had a leaning — a yearning, in
fact — for the noble. The grand, the
colossal, fills my mind with a strange sensation
of speechless awe. Nature's grandest works
are to me always sublime in the direct
proportion to their size and strength. An elephant
someway seemed to affect me with a greater
thrill of admiration than, say, a powerful mastiff,
though the latter might naturally furnish more
immediate grounds of alarm. Yet so it was.
Even such a thing as a cattle-show had on
these grounds a strange fascination for me; and,
a prey to mingled feelings of repulsion and
attraction, I found myself surveying the gross
charms of the kine so mysteriously and
wonderfully fattened. Yet so it was. All
monstrous developments — Great Easterns, Great
Exhibitions for all nations, and even the stalwart
forms of the heroes of the ring, all excited
this elevating tone of mind — morbid, some of
my friends called it. Yet so it was.

I was reading for the Bar. I had determined
to walk that famous Westminster Hall, which a
Scarlett, a Ffollett, and the rest of the profession,
had walked. Everything, too, about it was
large, stately, grand — and that impressed me.
The statutes, the reports, the suits (of law),
the suits (of costume), the wigs, the abuses,
the excellences, and (sometimes) the fees, all
were on a monstrous and overgrown scale. It
struck me, too — but this might have been
fanciful — that the physique of the men was greater.
But about their professional reputation there
could be no question, boasting such men as a
Scarlett, an Erskine, a Ffollett, and many more.

I was, then, reading for the Bar, with a view
of being "called" by the Honourable Society
of Lincoln's Inn. The Honourable Society of
Lincoln's Inn. How euphonistic! It seemed
to come to me rolling down a church aisle
like an anthem. I was reading hard, very hard;
I felt the responsibility of the course I had
chosen; of the path made sacred by the steps
of a Scarlett, of a —— but I must not allude to
those famous names again. I determined not
to see my fellow-creatures; I declined routs,
and female society generally; I rose in the
mornings two hours earlier than I was accustomed
to— that is to say, at half-past eight ; and
it being now close on a Christmas week, I
had, with the calm disposition of a suttee,
declined a dancing, shooting, driving, riding,
general merry-making party, down in the country.
Tears came almost to my eyes as I rose with
the lark at the cold dull hour of half-past
eight, and I thought of Greyforest, for I had
been there before, and shot, and driven, and
danced. But then I thought of a Scarlett,
and of — the rest, and how they, too, rose
betimes as I was doing, and laboured, and gave
up shooting and dancing. And then, sternly, I
brought all my law books together in a pyre, and,
laying myself down on the top — a true suttee—
set fire to — that is, began to read again with
desperation.

I grew ill in the struggle. I have heard the
expression used " broke down"—I think it a
good one. So I broke down. I confess it was
hard to say what had broken, or where it had
broken, or why the breakage should have been
down and not up, or at least in a lateral direction.