over to St. Dto fetch it, as soon as I am done digging." so as to fix it firmly against the wall, laid a large one over the powder in the aperture, and Thus saying, he shoveled out a few spade- then piled the earth up all round, taking care not fulls of earth, while Henriette watched him from to embarrass the fuse. Then getting a lantern, the window, with the blind drawn down, so that he set fire to the end of the slow-match. she could see the garden below, without being Henriette shrieked with fright; but he only seen. In less than a quarter of an hour, Monsieur looked up, nodded his head significantly, and d'Andaure returned, blamed the gardener sharp-walked away. The anguish, and horror of her ly for his slowness, and soon after sent him away, telling him to take the brown horse, and the cart, and fetch what he had been ordered to bring. He then went away himself, and Henriette, soon after, heard the roll of wheels as the gardener went upon his errand. All then became still in the house, and round it. She did not know that all the servants had left the place, and the complete silence seemed to her strange. She became nervous and alarmed; but still she sat near the window, sometimes weeping, and sometimes looking out, while the blind was moved gently backward and forward by the air. Presently, she heard a step, and a grating sound; and turning her eyes in that direction, she saw her husband rolling a small barrel along the gravel walk. Curiosity now superseded other emotions; and she watched him till he rolled it up to the spot where the gardener had been digging, which was close against the aperture in the foundation wall which I have mentioned. Then he rolled it into the little pit, and laughed strangely. Its position did not seem to suit him, at first; and he turned it one way, and then another, adjusting it with great care. "What could be in that barrel?" Henriette asked herself. She had heard of people burying treasures. The barrel seemed to be heavy, though it was so small; and she concluded that it must contain gold. sensations were now indescribable. For a few Suddenly the thought came across her mind that the match might have gone out, and she went timidly toward the window. But there it was, burning still. It had made very little proShe was soon undeceived. Monsieur d'An- gress, but it had made some. When she had daure went away, and came back again, bring- looked at it before, the spot of light was in the ing with him a gimlet in his hand, and round green grass; now, it was upon the farther edge his arm a large coil of what seemed to be small of the gravel walk. She looked at her watch, record. Then he bored a hole in the barrel, in-marked how long it took to cross an inch or two serted one end of the cord in it, and then stretched the other out to its full length, some twelve or fourteen yards, then putting his hands in his pockets, he pulled out two powder flasks, and emptied the contents into the aperture in the wall. The truth flashed suddenly upon her mind: the barrel contained gunpowder: the cord was a slow-match: it was his intention to blow up the tower in which he had confined her; and he had sent away the gardener, for the purpose of doing so undisturbed. Terror and anguish seized upon her; and, forgetting that he was mad, she called to him, beseeching him to forbear, entreating, imploring, adjuring. But it was all in vain. Her husband looked up, and laughed, only saying, "Ah, it will soon be over. Make ready for we are going a journey, mon amic. From that moment he seemed to hear nothing that she said; but went about his work as quietly and deliberately, as if he were transplanting a shrub. He gathered a number of stones together, placed them round the barrel, of the walk, and calculated how many minutes she had to live. Slowly, slowly it went on. An hour and a half would elapse, at the least, before it could creep up to the powder. A momentary flash of hope arose. The gardener might return. But then, when she remembered the distance he had to go, the hope went out; and she sat, and gazed at the match, with the leaden apathy of despair. Then, strange to say, sweet dreams of what might have been, began to present themselves to her imagination: how happy she could have been with Alphonse de Breuil, even with very limited means! and then she turned her eyes to the match again, and thought of death. The memory of many a little incident of sweet early times came up before her eyes: childhood's pleasures: youth's hopes and warm affections: the visions of dawning love. She sat as a dying woman, recalling all the things of a past life, while the slow fire marched insidiously onward, shortening every instant her allotted space by almost imperceptible degrees. Very strange and very terrible were her sensations, varying almost ness. All her senses seemed to be sharpened with the horrors of her condition. It came up, up, over the fresh turned earth, which her mad husband had cast over the powder. Not above an inch or two was left. Her ear caught the sound of horses' feet, galloping hard, before the riders came from behind the trees. The next moment a party of men appeared. But it was in vain. She knew it; she saw it: not an inch of the match was left. Gallop hard as they would, they could not reach the house in time. Oh, horrible, to be dashed to pieces with hope and relief in sight! every instant through the long and dreadful pe- | carried it with her to the window, and pressed it riod of suspense. Sometimes her brain would to her breast with her crossed arms. The feelseem to turn with the horror of her situation. ing of all hope in this world, of all doubt in reShe felt as if in a dream: all around her be- gard to the dread reality, passed away There came unreal to her imagination: she could have was the small spark creeping along the slowlaughed she could have sung; but soon, very match. There was the locked door behind her. soon, the stern reality rushed back upon her It was Fate. Yet she could not take her eyes again with all its fearful circumstances. Some- from that spot of light, that glimmered there like times a gleam of hope rose up in the midst of the the fascinating eye of the serpent. Stilly, steaddark blank of her despair, like one of those small ily she gazed at it. It crept over the grass, wandering sparks which burst forth in a charred among the green blades-nearer, nearer; somepaper, long after all fire has seemed extinct. times hardly perceivable, but yet her eye detected Sometimes a soft and gentle melancholy possess-it, and marked its progress with terrified acuteed her a calm, resigned, tranquil expectation of coming fate. A bird began to sing in one of the trees of the garden, and she thought it wonderfully sweet a light cloud floated over the sun, checkering the brilliant yellow lustre of the morning by a blue shadow. Oh, how beautiful! She felt like a person on the eve of quitting their home-a home still loved, though there might have been pangs and sorrows there-and every joy and pleasure was remembered, every sweet thought, and gentle emotion of life came back to gild the scene she was parting with forever. Oh, warm, bright, cheerful, happy world, how hard, how sad is it to part from thee! It was a dream -it must be a dream. There could not be such a thing in reality. It was too frightful to be true. It was but a horrible vision. Could that little spark, which had now nearly reached the midway of the gravel path, be bearing her on every instant nearer to eternity? Could that slow, creeping light be the messenger of death, to tear her away from all kindly relations, from all sweet enjoyments, from the loves, the hopes, the emotions, the affections, even from the sorrows of life-a little spark like that! Impossible! Yet there it was, creeping on, creeping on, tardy as the snail, but sure and even. Once she thought it had gone out. Some black ashes concealed it from her eye. She sprang up, and could have danced for joy. Ah, no! It reappeared again, brighter than before. Five minutes after, just round the corner of the tower, where she could catch a glimpse of the open country beyond the park, two horsemen appeared. She saw them, and too early thanked Heaven for help. But they were not coming to the chateau their horses' heads were turned the other way. She leaned forth from the window: she called to them: she shrieked. The wind was from the west, and bore her voice away; and riding quietly on, they were hid behind the trees. Henriette sank down again, and covered her wes with her hands. When she looked out once more, the spark of fire had reached the nearest edge of the walk Two feet more it had to travel, and then all would be over. It was inevitable. Fate was upon her. She tried to calm her whirling brain, to think of death of God-of salvation-to cast from her the clinging garniture of this world's hopes, and robe herself in faith for the world to come. She walked slowly and quietly to the place where stood the crucifix, and taking it from the table, Suddenly the bird began to sing again. How strangely, and at what strange moments imagination acts. To her ear, the song seemed to say, "Fly far-Fly far-Fly far: Fly, fly, fly!" The spark was burying itself in the earth. The sound seemed a warning from an angel. She darted from the window to the farthest nook of the room, where the tower was joined on to the main building: she crouched behind the bed. Suddenly there was a roar that deafened her, and her heart stood still. The windows were dashed to pieces; the tower rocked and shook ; the stout rafters and the heavy walls rent and cracked, and then she felt the whole mass swaying slowly, fearfully. Then, with a rattle as if a mountain had fallen, the front wall of the tower, part of the west angle, and a considerable portion of the flooring were cast a mass of ruins into the garden below. Where was she? Was she living-was she dead?--what had happened? All thought seemed for an instant to have been extinguished; all consciousness. But gradually her breath came back and her recollection. Through the clouds of smoke and dust, she saw the blue sky, and the trees of the park. Her bed stood firm before her; a picture of her father hung against the wall; but beyond that was an awful fissure, and the whole front of the chamber was open to the outer air. She paused, trembling, and not daring to move, or only move to press the crucifix to her lips. Was she safe? she asked herself. Was she yet safe? Would not the tower still fall! Suddenly a beam went rattling down from above, carrying part of the ceiling with it. It fell heavily on the flooring that remained. But there it rested, and the tower remained unshaken. "Henriette!" cried a voice from without, which she recognized as that of one of her hus band's cousins. "Good God! what is all this? | dwell upon or to relate the particulars of the terHenriette-Henriette!" Young rible event which had just occurred. She would She crept slowly forward, holding by any object near at hand, and dreading every step, till she could see out into the garden. Every thing there seemed confused and indistinct-partly | perhaps from the whirling of her own brain, and the faint sinking of her heart-partly from the clouds of mingled dust and smoke which still Ose up against the yellow light, paling the sun-devising her death; and clasping her hands, shine She saw several figures, however, grouped together at a little distance, gazing up at the tower. Their faces she could not distinguish; but she stretched forth her beautiful arms, exclaiming, "A ladder!-Oh, bring a ladder!Quick!" The next moment some one tried the lock of her chamber-door, and then pushed it hard; but she called to them in terror to forbear, saying, "For Heaven's sake do not shake the tower! It is all shattered. Bring a ladder to the window -quick-quick!" He she exclaimed eagerly, "Seek for him, seek for They placed her in the cottage, and while two or three remained to guard her, the rest hurried back to the chateau. The great doors were locked. Two smaller ones were tried in vain; and the windows were too high up to be forced open. But one of them remembered that the breach in the shattered tower gave entrance by the great saloon, and through it they made their Poor girl, she forgot it had windows no longer. way into the main body of the house. They Speedily a ladder was brought, raised carefully, hunted through all the chambers on the lower and lightly placed against remnants of flooring. floor, without success--the lesser saloon, the Some one ascended from below, and as he came dining-hall, the library, the marquis's dressingshe saw that it was a young cousin of her hus-room: he was not there. They then went on to band's, who had ever been kind to her. She crept the floor above, which was an entresol, and in toward the edge, trembling lest the shaken boards | several rooms they entered, were equally unsucand beams should give way beneath her little cessful. At length, however, they came to a door feet at every step. But they stood firm; and, which was locked, and there they knocked and aided by the lad, she descended safely to the shouted. They were going on, when one of the garden. gentlemen exclaimed, "Stay; open that door opWhen her feet touched the solid ground, how-posite, and give us some light. The floor is wet ever-when the peril and the agony were overwhen she was safe, rescued, restored almost from death to life, the emotions of thankfulness and relief proved more overpowering that even terror had been, and she fainted. On opening her eyes again, she found the same people round her; but it was the face of Alphonse de Breuil that bent so anxiously over her. They gave her a little time to recover, and then young Claude d'Andaure told her that, while walking in the streets of St. D, with his friend, De Breuil, and some other gentlemen, he had met the old gardener of the chateau. From him he heard that all the servants had fled, thinking their lord mad; and that Henriette herself had been locked into her chamber by her husband. The old man added, that he did not believe the Marquis to be mad at all, but only out of humor; but apprehension took possession of the kindly lad, and De Breuil proposed that they should set out instantly. Other relations were gathered together in haste, and a party of some six or seven gentlemen were now assembled before the chateau. The explosion of the barrel of powder, and the fall of part of the tower, had at once directed their attention to that part of the building; but they had as yet seen no living soul in the neighborhood, except Henriette herself. Many were the questions they asked her, as they led her to the old gardener's cottage. But it was with difficulty they extracted a reply lindefined, but painful feelings rendered her unwilling either to here." The door was opened, and then they saw a stream of blood flowing from under the locked door, across the passage. An entrance was speedily forced, and then all was revealed. The marquis was seated in a chair, with his head bent forward upon the table, so that his face could not be seen. But the whole parquet was dabbled with blood, an open razor lay upon the table, and it was soon found that he had cut his throat from ear to ear. He was quite dead; but it was evident that the act of suicide had not been long committed; for the body was still warm, and the limbs flaccid. His watch lay upon the table beside the razor; and it is probable he had waited there, counting the minutes till the explosion took place, and, then satisfied that he had accomplished his object, had destroyed himself. It was a sad history, which the family endeavored to bury in silence, as far as possible, and there being little publicity for any thing at that time in France, they were, to a great degree, successful. A few procès verbeaux recorded the facts, and these were suppressed in the boxes of a police-office. But I heard the story, while traveling through that part of the country, from old Doctor S, the physician at St. Valery, to whom I had letters. He had been one of those consulted by the relations of Monsieur d'Andaure on the first appearance of mental aberration, and had made it his business subsequently to obtain all the particulars of his after-fate and death. He told me that Henriette had not married as soon as might have been expected, although she was now her own mistress, and possessed of a considerable jointure, in the enjoyment of which, strange to say, her husband's relations left her unmolested. But the terrible events through which she had just passed, and a long period of anxiety and grief which had preceded, impaired her health, and depressed her spirits. She remained a widow for more than two years; and the old doctor imagined that it was a wound which Alphonse de Breuil received in battle, as well as some attempts of her mother to resume an ancient and extinct domination, which had at length induced the fair young widow to bring her lover's term of probation to an end. She was again married, he said, on her twenty-first birthday, and bestowed upon Alphonse a larger family than French husbands are usually blessed with. PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS. Ir was in one thousand eight hundred and two, I was at St. Valery, and the same good old Doctor S———, who lodged me in his own house, and taught me to eat snails and vipers (N. B. This is literally in poor Mr. White's manuscript), gave the following account of curious experiments which he had made during the Revolution.* These proceedings puzzled the worthies of the mob who were then uppermost very much, the old doctor said, and might probably have got him into a scrape with the Sans Culottes, who always hated every thing they did not understand. But he was saved, he intimated, by other experiments, which led him to conduct that greatly excited their admiration. "The various theories of muscular motion," he said, "and of the voluntary, and involuntary movement of the muscles, induced me to be present, if I had an opportunity, whenever an execution was going on; and, I need not tell you, my good friend, that they were tolerably frequent in those times. I had various objects in my investigations; but the principal one was to ascertain, if possible, how long the brain retained its sensibility, when the supply of blood was cut off by the separation of the sensorium from the heart; whether consciousness remained after the separation; or whether the action of the heart and the brain was so necessary to both, that the functions of each stopped, as soon as the one was parted from the other. I had made some experiments upon a turtle; but, for reasons that will be evident to you, they did not satisfy me; and I determined to pursue them with the human subject, for which the Revolution gave ample opportunity. My fondness for the scaffold made me a great favorite with the crowd, and established an intimate friendship between me and the town executioner, who was a patient of mine, and the most desperate coward I ever saw when he was ill. I thus had him under my thumb, and we arranged our matters * Several of these statements, more interesting to the man of science than the general public, which Mr. Harcourt had preserved, have been omitted here by the editor. quite easily. Though he had a decided taste for blood, and all the natural qualifications for his trade, the poor man was sometimes over-fatigued with the number of executions at that time. The mob itself occasionally grew tired of him, and when any thing occurred to attract their attention in another direction, or to render the great square an unpleasant abiding place, the neighborhood of the scaffold would be quite deserted, and the condemned man, the executioner, and the guard, had it all their own way. We watched for one of these opportunities, and one came sooner than we expected. Seven gentlemen had to have their heads cut off one morning; and I mounted the scaffold early with my friend, who was rather languid and indifferent. He did not seem to enjoy his morning's pastime as much as usual; but if he was cool and at his ease, his patients, as he called them, were hardly less so; and it would have surprised any body who does not know how soon human nature reconciles itself to any thing, to see with what sang froid people can undergo the guillotine. Five had already been shortened by the head, and two only remained to suffer: a Monsieur St. Martin, a gentleman with whom I was well acquainted, and who chatted with me quite jocosely while he was taking off his cravat, and another with whom I had no acquaintance. I did not even know his name, and I do not think any body in the town did; for they chopped off his head anonymously, and inscribed him in the register, "Aristocrat: nom inconnu.” Just as they were going to begin with St. Martin, and the people who thronged the square gave a howl as he stepped forward, down came a pour of rain, which set the worthy Sans Culottes scampering, and we were soon left very nearly alone. Those poor devils will have their skins washed for once," said Monsieur St. Martin, unbuttoning his shirt-collar, and looking up at the knife. "For my part, I shall not need an umbrella, I shall be under shelter so soon." I just whispered a word or two to the executioner: our friend was put in the proper position, and down came the knife. The executioner instantly snatched the head from the basket, and held it up by the hair. I put my lips to the ear, hallooing out as loud as I could bawl, "Pierre St. Martin;" and then looked at the face. The eyes, which were wide open, and as lively as ever, rolled quickly round toward the side on which I had spoke, and then stopped. I thought I saw a movement of the lips, too, as if in an effort to speak; but it was not as successful as in the case of the physician Douban. This seemed so far satisfactory. It went some way to show that sensation lingered in the sensorium after the brain was separated from the heart. I hinted to my friend the executioner, however, that I must have some more experiments, to see if the result would be always the same. "No time like the present," he said. "We have still got another to try upon; and we may not again get so good an opportunity as this." They were just bringing the last man out of the cart, and I stepped politely up, and asked his name. "Excuse me, sir," he said. "I shall have no name at all in three minutes, and it is not worth while to trouble myself with so useless a piece of baggage for so short a time." I was a little vexed; but I formed my plan in a moment, and told the executioner what to do. As soon as the head was off, he took it up, and held the face right toward me. I had an open penknife in my hand, and I darted the point toward the pupil of the eye. The eyes closed instantly, remained closed for a moment, and then opened again. There was no sort of convulsive movement that I could detect about the features; and here was another indication. Still, I do not mean to say that these experiments were as satisfactory as I could have desired. It was lucky, however, that I seized that opportunity; for that very night my worthy friend of the pulley and the knife was struck with complete paralysis of his lower extremities. You may see him in the town, dragging about his legs in a go-cart. The man who was appointed in his room was a brutal fellow, without any real love for science, and I never could get him to give me any facilities whatever. One time, when I was applying to him, he growled forth a hope that he should have me under his hands some day; adding, "And then you will know as much about it as you want to know." I thought it best, after that, to hold aloof, and let him forget me. HESTER. CHAPTER I. "I don't know, sir," the child answered, with her eyes fixed on his. "A good many gentlemen do buy them for their children," she added, after a moment's thought. "For their children, do they? got a child, so there's a halfpenny. me one-a good one." Well, I've Now give "There's the biggest, sir," the child said, with an instinctive feeling that the biggest was best suited to her customer. “Thank you, sir;" and she was moving away. "Stay still!" growled the gentleman. "Yes, sir," said the child, staying still accordingly. "You must lead a very pleasant life, no work, no lessons, nothing to do all day but to play with these birds. Come, don't you?" "I don't ever play, sir," she said-not saying it as if it were any thing strange. "Not play!" cried the gentleman, quickly. "Why, what on earth do you do, then?" "Just go about with them all day, sir." "Go about with what?" "With the birds, sir." "Oh, with the birds, do you? Well, there's nothing very hard in that." "No, sir," said the child faintly, thinking he waited for an answer. "And when you've sold the birds, what do you make of the money?" And she sells "I take it home to my mother, sir." "Oh, you've got a mother? birds somewhere else, I suppose?" "No, sir, she makes them." "And sits comfortably at home while she HEY'RE only a ha'penny, sir-any one sends you out to sell them? Well, I like that! THE you like ;-only a ha'penny." "No!" said the gentleman addressed, with great emphasis and decision, looking neither to the right hand nor to the left, but with inflexible determination straight before him. "Oh sir, please do!" the first little voice said again. It was a very sweet, faint, childish voice, and there was a very earnest, plaintive tone in it, as it made its simple entreaty. Perhaps the gentleman thought so; for, with a sudden jerk of his head, he turned round, and fixed a pair of very bright gray eyes upon the little ragged creature who was struggling, not very successfully, to keep up with his rapid pace. He came to a stop as soon as he saw her, and planted his walking-stick firmly in the ground. "They're all different, sir," the child said, eagerly but timidly presenting a little bird, formed of a flat piece of pasteboard, covered with black velvet, for the approbation of the stranger. "And what do you think I'm going to do with that?" the gentleman asked fiercely, as he gazed with unspeakable contempt upon the diminutive object that was being held up to him. "I thought you'd buy it, sir," the child said, in a frightened whisper, drawing in her hand again, and preparing to back out of sight. "You thought I'd buy it, did you? And did you think I'd play with it too?" the gentleman said, with still increasing emphasis. |