remember, and which, would have told her
so much. For only a few years before Adam's
opera of Richard le Roi had made the story
of the Minstrel Blondel and our English
Coeur de Lion familiar to all the opera-
going part of the Parisian public, and Clément
had bethought him of establishing a
communication with Virginie by some such
means.

"The next night about the same hour the
same voice was singing outside the window
again. Pierre, who had been irritated by
the proceeding the evening before, as it had
diverted Virginie's attention from his cousin,
who had been doing his utmost to make
himself agreeable, rushed out to the door
just as the Norman was ringing the bell to
be admitted for the night. Pierre looked up
and down the street; no one else was to be
seen. The next day the Norman mollified
him somewhat by knocking at the door of
the concièrgerie, and begging Monsieur
Pierre's acceptance of some knee-buckles
which had taken the country farmer's fancy
the day before, as he had been gazing into
the shops; but which, being too small for his
purpose, he took the liberty of offering to
Monsieur Pierre. Pierre, a French boy,
inclined to foppery, was charmed, ravished by
the beauty of the present and with monsieur's
goodness, and he began to adjust them to
his breeches immediately, as well as he could,
at least, in his mother's absence. The
Norman, whom Pierre kept carefully on the
outside of the threshold, stood by, as if
amused at the boy's eagerness.

"'Take care,' said he, clearly and
distinctly; ' take care, my little friend, lest you
become a fop; and, in that case, some day years
hence, when your heart is devoted to some
young lady, she may be inclined to say to
you'—here he raised his voice—'No, thank
you; when I marry, I marry a man, not a
petit-maître; I marry a man, who, whatever
his position may be, will add dignity to the
human race by his virtues.' Farther than
that in his quotation Clément dared not go.
His sentiments (so much above the apparent
occasion, met with applause from Pierre, who
liked to contemplate himself in the light of a
lover, even though it should be a rejected
one, and who hailed the mention of the
words 'virtues' and 'dignity of the human
race' as belonging to the cant of a good
citizen.

"But Clément was more anxious to know
how the invisible lady took his speech.
There was no sign at the time. But when he
returned at night, he heard a voice, low-
singing, behind Madame Babette, as she
handed him his candle, the very air he had
sung without effect for two nights past. As
if he had caught it up from her murmuring
voice, he sang it loudly and clearly as he
crossed the court.

"'Here is our opera-singer!' exclaimed
Madame Babette. 'Why, the Norman grazier
sings like Boupré,' naming a favourite singer
at the neighbouring theatre.

"Pierre was struck by the remark, and
quietly resolved to look after the Norman;
but again I believe it was more because of
his mother's deposit of money than with any
thought of Virginie.

"However, the next morning, to the
wonder of both mother and son, Mademoiselle
Cannes proposed, with much hesitation, to go
out and make some little purchase for
herself. A month or two ago, this was what
Madame Babette had been never weary of
urging. But now she was as much surprised
as if she had expected Virginie to remain a
prisoner in her rooms all the rest of her life.
I suppose she had hoped that her first time
of quitting it would be when she left it for
Monsieur Morin's house as his wife.

"A quick look from Madame Babette
towards Pierre was all that was needed to
encourage the boy to follow her. He went
out cautiously. She was at the end of the
street. She looked up and down, as if waiting
for some one. No one was there. Back
she came, so swiftly that she nearly caught
Pierre before he could retreat through the
porte-cochère. There he looked out again.
The neighbourhood was low and wild, and
strange; and some one spoke to Virginie,—
nay, laid his hand upon her arm—whose
dress and aspect (he had emerged out of a
side-street) Pierre did not know; but, after a
start, and (Pierre could fancy) a little scream,
Virginie recognised the stranger, and the two
turned up the side-street whence the man
had come. Pierre stole swiftly to the corner of
this street; no one was there: they had
disappeared up some of the alleys. Pierre
returned home to excite his mother's infinite
surprise. But they had hardly done talking,
when Virginie returned, with a colour and a
radiance in her face which they had never
seen there since her father's death."

A REMINISCENCE OF BATTLE.

THERE are some scenes which, once
witnessed, are burnt in upon the retina of the
brain, and hold their place thereon (however
various may be the pictures that succeed
them), distinct for evermore.

We cannot forget them, if we would.
Unbidden by us, and unrecalled, as it seems, by
any association of the present, they rise to
thrill us with their passion, or to scare us
with their horror, and, independently of time
and place, rivet our thoughts alike in solitude,
in the crowd, at noonday, or in the deep stillness
of the night. Before us may be taking
place a very different scene, amidst quite
other circumstances, but we look through it
as through a veil upon the face beyond it,
or as through the haze of summer upon a
landscape of which we know every feature
well, and need not to see more plainly;
while, if we close our eyes, ah, me! upon