haps, but that can be no objection under called Triddelsitz, and gave him instructhe circumstances." tions, and called for Krischan Dasel, and Axel knew that, but he did not let him- ordered him to put the horses to the carself be so easily persuaded, his condition | riage, and prepare for several days abwas too desperate, and he begged earnest- sence, and came in to his wife with a face ly that if the Herr Proprietor had no which was not merely free from distress money to spare, he would keep him with but full of security, so that she was his credit. "Good heavens! gladly," said tounded, and took back her promise. Muchel, "but with whom? Who has any money now?"

"Could not Moses help?" asked Axel. "I don't know him at all," was the reply, "I have no dealings with him. Your father did business with him, and you know him yourself. Yes, I would go and see him."

That was all the comfort Axel got; smoothly as an eel, the Herr Proprietor slipped through his fingers, and when he got on his horse, and rode home, all was dark around him, but it was darker still within.

David and Slusuhr came again, they beset him in the most shameless manner, and whatever he might say of Pomuchelskopp's later intentions, they would know nothing about them, they only knew that they must have their money.

as

"Are you going a journey?" she asked. "Yes, I must travel on business, and shall probably go as far as Schwerin. Have you any commands for the sisters?"

She had merely greetings to send, and after a little while Axel said good-bye, and got into the carriage, and drove to Schwerin. He had told his wife but half the truth; he had no other business but at Schwerin, and with his sisters. It had occurred to him, during the night, that his sisters had money; his father had left them a little house, with a garden, and fifteen thousand thalers, and their capital was invested at four and a half per cent., and they lived on the interest; to be sure, in rather slender circumstances, but the Kammerrath cauld not do better for them, and had reckoned that the brothers-in-law, and especially Axel, would be able to assist them a little. This capital had occurred to Axel in the night, he could use it at once, it would help him immediately, and he could pay them interest for it, as well as strange people, but he would give them five per cent., and, though he was hard up for the moment, the devil must be in it, if he could not pay them again. This prospect was what had so enlivened him.

He rode hither and thither, he knocked here and there; but there was nothing to be had anywhere; and weary and discouraged he came home, and there he was met by the quiet eyes of his wife, which said, clearly enough, that she suspected everything, but her mouth was silent, and her lips closely compressed, as if a fair book, in which stood many a word of comfort, must remain forever closed to him. When the young Herr came to Schwerin, Since the time when Habermann had been and explained his business to the sisters, sent off in such a disgraceful manner, and and complained of the bad year, the poor she had become aware of the great injus- old creatures became very soft-hearted tice she had done him, out of love to her and comforted him, as if the whole world husband, she had said nothing more to had gone against him, and when Albertine, him about his difficulties; she could not who was the cleverest of them, and who help him, and she would give him no occa- looked after the money matters, began to sion to betray himself and other people speak very gently of securities, the other with new falsehoods. But this time he was, two, and especially Fidelia, interrupted for the moment, in great anxiety, and his her. That would be very narrow-minded, excitable, vexed, hasty demeanor betrayed their brother was in need, and so were his distress more fully than usual, and many people in the country, and their when she retired that night, and looked brother was their pride, and their only delong at her child, the thought flashed pendence, so their blessed father had said, through her head and heart, he was yet shortly before his death; and when Axel the father of her dearest on earth, and he readily promised to give them security on seemed to her so pitiable that she wept the estate Albertine surrendered, and the bitterly over him, and she promised her- three old maidens were greatly delighted self to speak to him with friendliness, the that they could help their dear brother. next morning, and to take upon herself, He was also fortunate, in getting hold of willingly, her share of his self-imposed the money; a couple of Jews had it, and burdens. he found them, and a little interest was But when morning came, Axel come due on it, and this he took likewise, for he down stairs, with singing and piping, and 'intended, of course, that his sisters should

receive their full fifteen thousand thalers | "He had a large packet and a small again, and from this time get five per cent. packet." interest on it.

No, I cannot do it, I cannot do it; the foot which I have once planted in that fine "To Schwerin? What business had he estate, I can never draw back," said our old at Schwerin?"

From The Cornhill Magazine.
A WEEK IN PARIS.

were blazing in their meridian splendourwhen three days' festivities at Compiègne Tout le monde descend ici. The train involved nine superb toilettes. Now black stopped sharp on the edge of a broken em- is the only wear with the fair sex, and a bankment. A rapid stream sweeping single robe may cover any quantity of round under brown cliffs, past a white-shortcomings and secrets, and fully account walled village nestling among trees; shiv- for an ascetic slenderness of baggage. ered, powder-blackened semi-arches of a Now a man provides himself, as for a walkrailway-bridge jutting out from either ing tour in the high Alps, with his couple bank, and beside them a passage of planks of flannel-shirts, his brushes, sponge, chickrising and falling on pontoons moored with en, and bottle of Bordeaux. Necessity chains across the river; that was the con- obliges him to circumscribe his toilette dition of the permanent way of the great requisites within limits strictly portable railway of the North that links Paris and Providence whispers to clothe himself ir London. All the world does descend, and the comparatively venerable garments of a characteristic figure these pilgrims cut, heaviness, that shall indicate his sympa who have reversed the Hegira and are re-thies with the sorrowing city, and avoil turning from their flight. Every man is exciting the covetous susceptibilities ɗ his own porter, and staggers along under the patriots. his individual impedimenta. The French Such are the first signs of the times, bu bourgeois is little of a pedestrian at the they thicken as you go forward. Some best of times, and never so little of one where by the shattered station of Enghien, as when wrapped up for a long journey in you come on the belt, eloquent of the early spring. His boots are thin, and his abomination of desolation, that girdles the great-coat thick; he has his throat envel- Paris of the siege. A straggling growtl oped in a voluminous "plaid," with the of weed, over what used to be the perfec ends cast back over his shoulders. He has tion of scientific gardening. The acres of entered for the race for a good seat in the bell-glass that were wont to glisten over train on the other side, with all the ner- the Parisian asparagus, lie gathered into vous excitability of the national tempera- heaps of fragments. Fruit-trees grubbed ment. He sees some lean ones, with little up, and espaliers broken down for firing. to speak of in the way of wardrobes, cut- Here and there a purposeless labourer ting into the running, and forgetting there plodding about the waste; now and then are seats for all, he begins to punish him- a pair of requisitioned horses, jogging Gerself before he is fairly started. For him- man officers along a dusty high-road, self, he is heavily weighted with his bundle stripped of its poplars. But if the arts of wraps, his stick, his umbrella, his hand- of peace have gone out of fashion, everyportmanteau, and his brass-handled carton- where you see evidences of the thoughtful a-chapeau. And when he does turn up at ingenuity of war. Railway-stations turned the winning-post, to find comfortable seats to formidable stockades; huge tree-trunks, for half as many again as had entered for roughly split down the middle, driven in the welter race, his condition is deplorable. by way of palisade-fences, cuirassed against Even a course of barbarous commons in rifle-balls with torn-up rails: the breadth pseudo-restaurants in Soho and Leicester of a rail left breast-high for firing through. Square has not brought him into training The garden-walls are loopholed: the lower after a lifetime of heavy breakfasts and windows of the houses loopholed and bardinners and objectless lounging on the ricaded. Hardly one of them, great or Boulevards. I say nothing of the ladies small, that can boast a whole pane of glass, of the caravan, who, by natural French a plank in its floor, a lath partition or a gallantry, are cast on the chivalry of the ceiling. The glass seems to have been rare railway-porters, if they do not care smashed all over the seat of the blockade, to carry their own baskets and bundles. in pure lightness of heart, and by way of It may be presumed the luggage passen-playful distraction. As for the gutting of gers can rush under themselves in circum- the houses, that comes of reason, and not stances like these is not over heavy. Yet these are the circumstances under which, the other day, one made the journey to Paris, and they struck the key-note to the condition of the city. Imagine a Frenchwoman of position starting for the capital with a solitary bandbox, in the days when the lavish glories of the Lower Empire

of wantonness. With the thermometer twenty degrees below freezing-point, dry fuel was at a premium, and growing wood is green. Naturally, when you have sacrificed the spare furniture of your temporary quarters, you proceed to demolish the shell that houses you, although you may be the first sufferer, just as a starving man

pawns his waistcoat in December, greatly | cheap in the circumstances, when the mas

contre cœur.

-

ters of the situation might command their own market, that, remembering the legends of the recent scale of prices, one could not resist the suspicion he might be starting from " cent with the idea of making a bargain. But only five francs it was, and even had he asked more, as he very justly observed, these were not the times to marchander.

At St. Denis the German Emperor's soldiers were mounting guard over such of the ashes of the Kings of France as French Republicans have spared. Over the grand portals a German shell has torn out a ragged oriel, although, otherwise, the pile has suffered little. That is much more than can be said for the Double Couronne de St. Denis, the outlying fort Here and there a gas-lamp along the whence the solitary sentinel gazes down long Rue de Lafayette, always lively and on the train from under the folds of the busy, but now swarming with Moblots and German tricolour. The parapets are men of the Line; the bleu et garance masses breached, the scarp crumbled into the of the uniforms streaked in bands of black glacis, while the earthworks are ploughed by the few women who mixed in the crowd. by shells, until the place looks more like Flags of gay colours and sad associations a market-garden prepared for spring sow- flaunted frequently from the balconies, the ing than anything you have passed as yet. melancholy red and white of the ambuAfter those sensational flying glimpses lances. The Boulevards are comparatively from the windows, there comes a reaction a blaze of light; for although the shops and as the train drags through dull, undam- cafés were either closed or illuminated aged seven-story houses into the Gare du with petroleum, every second lamp was Nord. Yet vague anxieties find you food flickering with indifferent gas. for reflection. Is the station, as it was two And when I went out upon them after days before — vide our Special Correspon- dinner, they were crowded as ever they dence passim in the hands of a mob from used to be; but what a difference in the the north-eastern suburbs, who strip all crowds. I took my seat in front of the arrivals of foreign exterior, on the chance Grand Café, where a waiter and a half, a of coming at a Prussian spy? Have they long man and a small boy, had replaced enthroned la mere guillotine by this time, those flying columns of well-drilled Gerand is she waiting to welcome the unwary mans one used to know so well. There traveller to her cold embrace? Or, if not, was a constant coming and going of Mohave they really eaten all the cab-horses, biles and Nationals, tripping awkwardly and must you perform the athletic feat of about over the legs of the chairs and tables carrying your own baggage through Paris and their own swords. On the pavement streets to the distant hotel? Your mind in front was a double stream of ill-fitting is promptly relieved as to the presence of uniforms swaggering by, as if each underthe patriots and their sharp-edged play-sized, ill-set-up hero had saved his country thing, for the vast station is tranquil as ever it was. More so, indeed, for there are fewer porters. But one of them, with the quickness of professional training, recognizing an English face through the dirty window-panes, hangs on to your doorhandle, and courteously hands you out. "The means of getting to the hotel? Are there fiacres by hazard?" A shrug of the shoulders, eloquent of uncertainty as to my getting one, is the reply; but although failing my finding one, he volunteers to carry my luggage himself to the Rue Neuve St. Augustine, unselfishly he does his very best for me. The circumstances leave small space for negotiation with the drivers. One hundred and fifty excited Frenchmen rush in behind: eight fiacres and two or three small omnibuses in front; and what are they among so many?

"How much to the Hôtel Chatham ?"
"Cinq francs," in a broad Norman patois.
"Cinq francs" sounded so absurdly

in his own proper person: hordes of blouses, as if all the roughs of Belleville and La Villette had given themselves rendezvous, and spread like a flight of locusts over the pleasant places of the Italiens. The most taking figures in the seething flood were the hardy mariners, who cleft their way through its waves. Long strictly confined on board fort, they had got leave for larks ashore at last. You saw none of the gandins and petits crevés of the Empire. The more dressy of the civilians were clearly patrons of the Bon Diable and the Belle Jardinière. Such women as there were, generally speaking, were strictly "of the people," and obviously, for the most part, strongminded or light-virtued-many of them broad-jawed, fierce-eyed types of the class which recruited the famous Amazons of the Seine. The poorest of them paid the dramatic tribute of a piece of rusty crape or ribbon to the public sorrow; but it was