than did the hindermost one. It was the old
old story of the serpent with its tail in its
mouth.

And while he who had paid forty sous for his
dinner was gazing on this, and musing upon it,
the deft waiter approached him from behind
with the sleepy pear. He saw him in the glass.
He was a very white-faced waiter, and his grin
was ghastly. Late hours, much gas, and the
steam of many dinners, had made him hopelessly
pallid. Never too much flesh had he, I wot,
and that which he had originally possessed had
wasted away beneath the influence of the gas-
burners and the stew-pans, so that he looked
now, merely as though a wan leathery integument
had been drawn for decency's sake over
his skull. With his closely-cropped cranium,
whiskerless jaws, gleaming teeth, sunken eyes,
hollow cheeks, white cravat, with his monstrous
bow, and ever present smirk, he was uncommonly
like a genteel death's head. Something like a
shudder came over the guest as he looked upon
this fetch of Mortality, smirking in the midst of
the vast image of Eternity streaming away from
him. As there were more mirrors, so were
there more Death's-head waiters; and they
encompassed him on every side, and went on
for ever and ever. Oh! mortal man, for ever
and ever.

That Life should be so dovetailed into Death,
faster and firmer than the cuuningest joiner,
with his glue and his mortice, ever dreamt of, is
but natural, is but the way of the world, is but
decreed beyond our comprehension and our
conception. Better, perhaps, to take them as
they come, and wait for the end in humble
hope, than to continue peering into the looking-
glasses till we go mad.

Much the more so, as the yellow forehead of the
King of Terrors is often wreathed with flowers,
as the worm that never dies has the prettiest
painted skin imaginable, as Death is but the
reverse side of an arras all woven in gay designs
representing the innocent pastimes of Arcadia,
and the lives of gods and goddesses. What did
Mr. Wordsworth's simple child, down Rydal
Mount way, know of death? The churchyard
was her playground. Those who slept beneath
were not dead, but her brothers and sisters, and
they were seven. Death, after all, is of the
chameleon kind. Scan him very narrowly and
he changes hue. Get over the embarrassment
of a first acquaintance, and he turns out to be
somebody else. He is no longer Death, but
Life Eternal.

Now, there was a certain little maiden who
had lived ail her life on the very brink of the
grave; who had been cradled, as it were, in
a coffin, and swaddled in cereclothes, and
whose playthings were, after a manner, skulls
and cross-bones, a mattock and a spade. Of
course I am speaking metaphorically. The
certain little maiden, pretty little Mademoiselle
Amanda, had no bodily acquaintance with the
ugly things I mention. Yet she knew all about
them, heard them talked about every hour in the
day, lived over them and bore their icy
neighbourhood with great philosophy. Why should she
trouble her innocent young head about such
horrors? She had been for long years accustomed
to them; besides, they were her good papa's
business, not hers. She was very fond of her
good papa. She was very fond of everybody.
She was but seventeen years of age; and at that
period of life I have known youngsters who
were fond of spiders and monkeys, and the
ugliest of dogs, and the crossest of cats.

Mademoiselle Amanda lived in the left wing
of the Edifice, which was but one story high.
The Edifice was called (I am afraid) The Morgue.
Her good papa had his office in the opposite
wing, and there he kept his huge vellum-bound
and brass-clamped registers, which were quite
as bulky, and well-nigh as numerous, as the
books of a London banking-house. Papa was a
public functionary. He held a responsible
post in the service of the good city of Paris, and
lodging, fire, and candles were allowed him gratis.
Amanda's sitting and bed room were just over
the large room on the ground floor, occupied by
the lodgers in the Edifice. The lodgers never
disturbed her, although they came in at all hours,
some of them very unseasonable. They were
the quietest lodgers in the world. They seldom
stopped more than two or three days, and,
strange to say, they paid nothing for their bed,
or 'their board—if that could properly be called
board which was in reality stone. Amanda's
parlour was quite a grove of singing-birds. She
had two canaries, she had a thrush, she had a
linnet. She had a blackbird who sang the
"Marseillaise" and the " Parisienne"—airs not
then entirely prohibited in France—but who
discreetly avoided the imputation of being an
out and out Republican of the red kind by now
and then tuning up " La Belle Gabrielle " and
"Vive Henri Quatre," but who was not, by
any means, a Bonapartist bird, seeing that he
could never be persuaded to give so much as a
bar of " Partant pour la Syrie."

Amanda's walls were hung with pretty lithographs
and water-colour drawings. On her
balcony, overlooking the old houses on the
quays, with their high roofs and blinking little
windows, with the narrow bright blue Seine
shining between, and the towers of Notre-
Dame overlooking all, she had a miniature
conservatory. Yes, she had roses and geraniums
and forget-me-nots, and the modest sweet-
smelling mignonnette. She adored flowers: so
seemingly did Blaise, her cat, though ofttimes
chastised for lying perdu among the foliage,
whence at his ease he could blink with covetous
eyes upon the birds in their cages. She was
fond of music too, this accomplished little
Amanda, and had not only a pretty cottage
piano made by Pleyel, but absolutely a harp—
a harp from the great Erard's factory. Her
good papa denied her nothing. Sheets of music
lay about—dulcet little barcaroles, and romances,
and chansonettes, the which she warbled,
accompanying herself meanwhile with such sweetness
and such grace, as frequently to elicit from
her guests twitters of approving criticism. Then