sian, and the severest weather of an English January might almost be deemed autumnal, compared to the cold that often prevails at Odessa in November. the summer the whole steppe presented an endless black plain, in which the eye sought in vain for a green spot. Scarcely a breath of wind ever stirred, and the nights were as sultry as the days. However exhausted the frame might be, it was scarcely possi- One of the first words that a stranger learns in the ble to obtain any refreshing sleep. The moment steppe is burian. The constant topic of the farmer's either man or beast stirred, a thick black cloud was lamentations is burian; and the gardener, the herdsraised from the ground; nor could even a bird rise man, and the herd, join with equal bitterness in without filling the atmosphere with a column of what heaping maledictions on the detested burian. The looked more like smoke than dust. Even the plants curiosity of every new arriver is, therefore, soon exthat were most carefully tended by the hand of man cited by an expression of such constant occurrence, had a sickly look. The wheat, that usually rises to and after some inquiry he finds that every plant or so luxuriant a height, scarcely peeped from its fur- herb on which the cattle will feed is known by the , rows, with its red blades and cornless ears. The general name of trava, and that every woody, wiry, hunger and thirst of the poor horses rose to a scarcely stem, from which they turn away, is ruthlessly credible pitch, and the wretched animals were only classed in the condemned list of burian. Weeds of kept alive by driving them into the corn-fields, to various kinds are, indeed, of frequent occurrence, crop what had been intended as food for man. The owing to the salt and acrid nature of the soil; and few wells from which water could be obtained were many, which with us remain modestly concealed by guarded against intrusion by locks, and chains, and the grass, shoot up into bushes on the steppe, driving bars; but these were broken without hesitation, and the gardener and the husbandman to despair, and even where sentinels had been set, they were driven seldom rendering any other service either to man or away by the famishing multitude. All business was beast than that of helping to boil the Russian's naat a standstill, for no merchant could venture to send tional dish of borsht. The thistle deserves the first a caravan from the coast, when it was known that a place among the burian of the steppe. We have but draught of water could not be had by the traveller little notion in England of the height to which a without fighting for it. Many of the taboons* were thistle will often grow in Southern Russia, where it broken up altogether, the animals refusing to submit not unfrequently assumes the form and size of a tree, to any control, and dispersing in different directions overshadowing with its branches the low-sunken in search of water. Straggling horses were every-dwellings of the Troglodytes of the steppe. In where to be met with, rushing madly up the ravines, and sniffing the air in search of a few drops of moisture to cool their burning thirst." In many respects, the summer on the steppe is more cruel even than in the Sahara of Africa, or in the Llanos of Spanish America, for in neither of these does the moisture so completely disappear from the soil, and in the African desert, wherever there is water, a little terrestrial paradise of date trees and flowering shrubs is certain to be grouped around; but in the steppe, even the rivers flow only between grass, and reeds are the only shrubs by which the banks are fringed, while from the parched and gaping earth not even a cactus or an aloe peeps forth, into which a thirsty animal might bite to moisten its lips with the juice. In August, the dryness of the atmosphere reaches the extreme point; but before the end of the month, the night dews set in, and thunder-storms are occasionally followed by rain. The leaden dusky sky becomes clear and blue again, and every thing reminds you that the delights of autumn are approaching. The temperature of September is mild and refreshing, and the detestable black dust of the steppe, kept down by frequent showers, no longer gives to every creature the complexion of a negro. A fresh green herbage quickly covers the whole plain, and man and beast in a short while recover their strength and spirits. Could Darius and his troops, when they invaded Scythia, but have endured the thirst of July, they might easily have kept their ground in September, and would have had abundant leisure to prepare their winter quarters. Delightful the autumn of the steppe unquestionably is, but short and fleeting are its charms, for October is already a gusty Scythian month, marked by cold rains and fogs, and usually closing amid zamels and viugas; and as to November, that is set down as a winter month even by the most seasoned Rus * Herds of half-wild horses. places peculiarly favoured by the thistle, this de scription of burian will sometimes grow in such abundance, as to form a little grove, in which a Cossack on his horse may completely hide himself. Another description of weed that stands in very bad odour in the steppe, has been aptly denominated wind-witch by the German colonists. This is a worthless plant, that expends all its vigour in the formation of innumerable thread-like fibres, that shoot out in every direction, till the whole forms a light globular form. The little sap to be obtained from this plant is bitterer than the bitterest wormwood, and even in the driest summer no animal will touch the wind-witch. It grows to the height of three feet, and in autumn the root decays, and the upper part of the plant becomes completely dry. The huge shuttlecock is then torn from the ground by the first high wind that rises, and is sent dancing, rolling, and hopping over the plain, with a rapidity which the best mounted rider would vainly attempt to emulate. Hundreds of them are sometimes detached from the ground at once on a windy day, and when seen scouring over the plain, may easily be mistaken at a distance for a taboon of wild horses. The Germans could not have christened the plant more aptly, and in bestowing on it the expressive name by which it is known among them, they no doubt thought of the national legends long associated with the farfamed witch-haunted recesses of the Blocksberg; The wild dances with which fancy has enlivened that ill-reputed mountain are yearly imitated by the wind-witches on the steppe. Sometimes they may be seen skipping along like a herd of deer: sometimes describing wide circles in the grass; sometimes rolling madly over one another; and some times rising by hundreds into the air, as though they were just starting to partake in the diabolical festivities of the Blocksberg itself. They adhere to each other sometimes like so many enormous burrs, and it is not an uncommon sight to see some twelve of twenty rolled into one mass, and scouring plain like a huge giant in his seven-league boots. over the Thousands of them are yearly blown into the Black Sea; but with this salto mortale ends the witch's career, who loses in the water all the fantastic graces that distinguished her while ashore. bandry is usually managed with much caution, and the conflagration rarely extends beyond the limits intended to be assigned to it; but sometimes a fire arises by accident, or in consequence of a malicious As next in importance among the burian of the act of incendiarism, and then the " devouring elesteppe, the bitter wormwood must not be forgotten. ment," as our newspapers call it, rages far and wide, It grows to the height of six feet, and sometimes, in sweeping along for hundreds of leagues, destroying a very dry summer, the cattle will not disdain to eat cattle and corn-fields, and consuming not only sinof it. All the milk and butter then becomes detesta-gle houses, but whole villages, in its way. Theso bly bitter, and sometimes particles of the dry worm-fires are more particularly dangerous in summer, wood adhere to the wheat, in which case the bitter flavour of the plant is certain to be imparted to the bread. Poisonous herbs are but little known in the European steppes, but in those of Asia there is a great abundance of venomous fungi, which spring up in autumn in such quantities, that at times the plain appears to be covered with them as far as the eye can reach. They are mostly white, and sometimes make the steppe appear in the morning as though though there had been a heavy fall of snow during the night. The noon-day heat generally destroys them, but the following night often produces a fresh crop. We might, of course, extend our list of the botanical peculiarities of the steppe much farther, but, upon the whole, the variety of plants that grow upon this vast grazing land of the Tartars is more limited than would be supposed. Botanists, we believe, reckon only five hundred species as native to the steppe, and each species usually grows in large masses. For leagues together the traveller will see nothing but wormwood; and, on leaving so bitter a specimen of vegetation, he will come to a tulip-bed, covering many thousands of acres; and at the end of that, to an equal extent of wild mignionette, to which, cultivation has not, however, imparted the delicious perfume which recommends it to the horticulturist of more civilized lands. For days together, the droshky will then roll over the same description of coarse grass, ungainly to look upon, but on which the sheep thrive admirably, and which is said to give to Tartar mutton a delicious flavour that the travelled epicure vainly looks for in the gorgeous restaurants of Paris, or in that joint-stock association of comfort and luxury, a London club. owing to the inflammable condition, at that season, of almost every description of herbage. The flaming torrent advances then with irresistible force, towering up among the lofty thistles, or advancing with a stealthy snakelike step through the parched grass. Not even the wind can always arrest its destructive course, for a fire of this kind will go steaming in the very teeth of the wind, now slowly and then rapidly, according to the nature of the fuel that supplies its forces. At times the invader finds himself compressed between ravines, and appears to have spent his strength, but a few burning particles blown across by a gust of wind enable him to make good his position on new ground, and he loses no time in availing himself of the opportunity. A well-beaten road, a ravine, or a piece of sunk ground in which some remnant of moisture has kept the grass green, are the points of which advantage must be taken if the enemy's advance is to be stopped. At such places, accordingly, the shepherds and herdsmen post themselves. Trenches are hastily dug, the flying particles are carefully extinguished as they fall, and sometimes the attempt to stop the course of such a conflagration is attended with success. Often, however, the attempt fails, and the despairing hus. bandmen see one wheat-field after another in a blaze, their dwellings reduced to ashes, and the affrighted cattle scouring away over the plain before the advancing volumes of smoke. The course of one of these steppen-fires is often most capricious. It will leave a tract of country uninjured, and travel on for eight or ten days into the interior, and the farmer whose land has been left untouched, will begin to flatter himself with the belief that his corn and his cattle are safe; but all at once the foe returns with renewed vigour, and the scatA singular phenomenon of the steppe manifests it-tered farm-houses, with the ricks of hay and corn self when man presumptuously attempts to invade grouped in disorder around, fall a prey to the reit with his plough. The disturbed soil immediately morseless destroyer. The farmer, however, is not shoots forth every variety of burian, against which without his consolation on these occasions. The the farmer must exert unceasing vigilance, or else ashes of the herbage form an excellent manure for farewell to the hope of a productive harvest. If the the ground, and the next crops invariably repay him same land is afterwards left fallow, the burian takes a portion of his loss. Indeed, so beneficial is the possession of the field, and riots for a few years in effect, that many of the large proprietors subject their undisturbed luxuriance. A struggle then goes on land regularly every four or five years to the process for some years longer between the weeds and the of burning; but this operation is then performed grass; but the latter, strange to say, in almost every with much caution, wide trenches being first dug instance, triumphs in the end, and a beautiful pas- around the space within which it is intended that the ture-ground succeeds, which goes on improving from fire should remain confined. year to year, till it attains its highest degree of perfection. A reaction then ensues. A species of coarse grass, known by botanists under the name of stipa pinnata, takes possession of the ground, which it covers with its hard and woody stems, till the farmer, taking advantage of the first dry weather in spring, clears away the whole plantation by setting fire to it. The burning of the steppe is the only kind of manuring to which it is ever subjected, and is generally executed in the spring, in order that a fresh crop of grass may immediately rise, like a young phoenix, from the ashes. This department of Tartar hus To the same process likewise are subjected the forests of reeds by which all the rivers of the steppe are fringed, but this is deemed so dangerous, that the law imposes banishment to Siberia as the penalty for the offence. Nevertheless, there are few places where the reeds are not regularly burnt away each returning spring, at which season, during the night, the Dnieper and Dniester appear to be converted into rivers of fire. There are two motives for setting light to the reeds, and these motives are powerful enough completely to neutralize the dread of Siberia : in the first place, the reeds serve as a cover to multitudes of wolves, which, when driven by the fire either into the water or into the open plain, are easily destroyed by their remorseless enemies, the shepherds and herdsmen. The second motive is, the hope of obtaining a better supply of young reeds, by destroying the old ones. The reeds, it must be borne in mind, are of great value in the steppe, where, in the absence of timber and stones, they form the chief material for building. LETTER OF QUEEN CHARLOTTE. SINGULAR GROWTH OF FUNGI. Ar the present hour, when the nation is ebullient A VERY curious example of the growth of fungi with rejoicings on the auspicious birth of a male heir within the living animal body has lately been detect to the crown, the following holograph letter from her ed, and the knowledge of it has proved of great im. late majesty, Queen Charlotte (which is in our pos-portance. The silk-worm breeders of Italy and the session,) can hardly fail to interest the public. It south of France, especially in particular districts, relates, also, to the birth of a royal infant, the last of have been subject to a considerable loss by a disease that illustrious family it was her lot to bear; and termed muscardine, which sometimes attacks the breathes a kindliness and consideration for the per- worms in large numbers, just when about to enter the sonal welfare of a high officer of the court, which re- chrysalis state. This disease has been ascertained to flects honour on her character. Its simplicity of ex- be due to the growth of a minute vegetable of the pression and its style, remembering that the Queen fungus tribe, nearly resembling the common mould, was German by birth and education, will please the within their bodies. It is capable of being commureader. The date refers it, as we have observed, to nicated to any individual from one already affected, the youngest child of the royal race, the Princess by the introduction beneath the skin of the former of Amelia. It is written throughout in her majesty's some particles of the diseased portion of the latter, own hand, roundly and firmly, on note-paper, with and it then spreads in the fatty mass beneath the water-mark lines for straight writing; and, like all skin, occasioning the destruction of this tissue, kingly correspondence, begins at the top, and has the which is very important as a reservoir of nourish signature close at the end. We copy it, exactly in ment to the animal when about to pass into a state of the form of the original. The last two lines, date,* complete inactivity. The plant spreads by the exand signature, are on the second page. tension of its own structure, and also by the production of new germs, which are taken up by the circulat ing blood, and carried to distant parts of the body. The disease invariably occasions the death of the silkworm; but it does not show itself externally until afterwards, when it rapidly shoots forth from beneath the skin. The caterpillar, chrysalis, and moth, are all susceptible of having the disease communicated to them by the kind of inoculation just described; but it is only the first which usually receives it spontaneously. The importance of this disease to the breeders of silk-worms led, as soon as its true nature was understood, to careful inquiry into the circumstances which favour the production of the fungus; and it has been shown that, if bodies of caterpillars which (from various causes) have died during breeding, be thrown together in heaps, and exposed to the influence of a warm and moist atmosphere for a few days (as has been very commonly the case,) this fungus almost invariably appears upon them, just as other kinds of mould appear on other decaying substances; and that it is then propagated to the living worms by the diffusion of its germs through the atmosphere. The knowledge of this fact, and the precautions taken in consequence, have greatly diminished the mortality.-Popular Cyclopædia of Natural Science. "Lord Guildford. I hope the Country Air has been more beneficial to You during this very uncommon warm Weather, as You seemed to suffer so much when I saw You last in Town. I shall now establish myself for good at Windsor until my Month is up, & therefore desire Lord Guilford not to think of coming himself next Month, but let Mr. Mathias come as usual in the Country. The Usual Sum for my lying in will I think not be Necessary till then, but should it happen Sooner any directions from You to Mr. Mathias will be sufficient to have it in readiness whenever I call for it. We have the finest Rain here ever since four o Clock this Morning. I hope You have Your share of it also, as I am sure You must relish as well as we do. "N. L. Windsor, the 16th July, 1783." it Charlotte. To those who like to see such documents, our publisher will be happy to show the original.-Literary Gazette, Nov. 13. In this royally eventful year, besides a complete change of ministry, on the 3d of May died Prince Octavius, aged four years and a half, the youngest of their majesties' sons. The Prince of Wales, afterwards George the Fourth, attained his majority of 21 years, and (June 25) the House of Commons voted £60,000 for his separate establishment, the king taking on himself the whole of his annual expenses. Prince William Henry, afterwards William the Fourth, arrived from the West Indies, and proceeded on his travels to Germany. And on the 7th of August, three weeks after the letter was written, Queen Charlotte was delivered of a princess at the "N. L." (New Lodge) at Windsor, where, we have no doubt, Mr. Mathias was ready with the ready money. KINDNESS. A little word in kindness spoken, Has often healed the heart that's broken, A word-a look-has crushed to earth Then, deem it not an idle thing, A pleasant word to speak; The face you wear, the thoughts you bring From the Britannia. MEMOIRS OF MADAME LAFARGE. Memoires de Marie Cappelle, veuve Lafarge, ecrits par elle-même. Delaporte, Burlington Arcade. could also entertain such black desires, and coolly contemplate the most enormous crimes. But do we therefore believe in her innocence? No. The proofs of her guilt were too clear and strong to allow of even a doubt in her favour. We pronounce that opinion with no light feeling of the responsibility which attaches to its public declaration; we found it on an attentive examination of the various judicial proceedings which have taken place We have in our time read or looked through some thousands of volumes, but we regard as the most ex-in the French Courts, and our judgment is rather traordinary of them all, these memoirs of Marie Cappelle, the widow of Lafarge. They are quite different to the expectations we had formed of them. We had believed that the malignancy of the writer would have been the prevailing feature of the work; that the dark passions which had instigated her to the robbery of her friends, and the murder of her husband, would have blazed forth, now that her exposure was complete, and her sentence pronounced; and that she would have sought to be avenged on that world which had condemned her to perpetual imprisonment and shame, by the fabrication of slanders, which might have brought disunion into every family with which she had been connected. But if we except those calumnies necessarily incident to her account of the manner in which the diamonds of her friend Marie Nicolai came into her possession, her memoirs are full of grateful feeling, of warm and generous appreciation of the virtues of her relatives and friends, of affectionate solicitude for their welfare, and of lively recollections of their considerate kindness and love. She avoids reflections on the characters of those who appeared as the chief witnesses against her on her trial, and speaks, if coldly, at least without malice, of the mother and sister of M. Lafarge, who first charged her with his death, and by whose evidence she was mainly convicted. In her efforts to clear herself from guilt in the affair of the diamonds, at the expense of Marie Nicolai, she does not go beyond what is necessary for her own justification. She does not calumniate wantonly; she does not attempt to blast her character by accusing her of criminal intrigue, or of being guilty, in her flirtation with Felix Clavet, of any thing more than imprudence. confirmed than shaken by Madame Lafarge's own account of the occurrences attending the theft of the diamonds and the death of her husband. Her statements on the former subject, particularly, have not even probability to recommend them. How, then, can we reconcile the conviction of her guilt with the conviction, also, of the sincerity of those traits of pure and passionate affection, and amiable thoughts, and loving fondness, of which her memoirs present so many striking evidences. The task seems beyond human skill; and we are compelled to acknowledge that the depths of her soul are, to us, altogether unfathomable. Never, in our experience, did we meet with so remarkable an instance of the opposition of the good and evil principles of humanity in one soul. Thoughts which might become an angel, are opposed to the actions of fiends. If this contrast lay only on the surface our surprise might cease, but it has palpably a deeper root. We believe Marie Cappelle to be a liar, but not a hypocrite. The greater portion of these volumes have a strength of expression which can only spring from real feeling, and which simulation can never successfully adopt. We cannot reconcile the double nature which she seeins to possess, but we may yet believe in its genuineness; the contradiction we cannot comprehend, may still be real. The view she exhibits to us is an awful, but an instructive one. This woman was fitted by Heaven for the noblest objects of Christian life; her intellect was of a superior order, and her acquirements and accomplishments great; she was furnished with all capabilities for happiness, with a heart capable of almost boundless love, and with a sweetness of disposition and manners which captivated affection; she moved in the best society of a Nor is the absence of malignancy the only re-polished nation, and was placed by fortune above deeming point in the work. We are frequently surprised by gushes of strong fervid natural affection; by touching pictures of the pure and innocent delights of her childhood; by inexpressibly mournful recollections of the parents and friends whom death swept one after another remorselessly from her; by moving reflections on the destitution of the "pauvre orphelin," cast on the world at an age when she most needed the watchful eye of parental love; by the loving fondness with which she mentions the friends whom a gracious Providence raised up to shelter and protect her; and by the affectionate care with which she watched over her younger sister Antonine, and wished to devote a small portion of her fortune to her support. These and many other traits of a similar character, impress us strongly with the natural warmth and goodness of her disposition, and abate the wonder we should otherwise feel at her influence over those with whom she came in contact, and the strong affection towards her with which she succeeded in inspiring them. In the account of her wedding with Lafarge, there is something so amiable and pleasing in her solicitude to anticipate the wants and wishes of her friends in the wedding-gifts with which she presented them, that it is difficult to believe a heart so capable of kind and gentle feeling temptations to crime. Even the trials of her early years were calculated to soften and purify her nature; she could not have watched the death-struggles of her parents, nor have witnessed those deathbeds, she so affectingly describes, without being profoundedly penetrated with that humility of spirit and sorrowfulness of soul which naturally result from affliction, and are often the parent of piety and virtue. Yet in her case all these barriers against crime were broken down; and, step by step, she advanced into the lowest gulfs of human wickedness. An innocent flirtation led to deceit, and deceit to falsehood, robbery, and murder. To each act of guilt there is a link that binds her to the darker one that follows, and those links we shall endeavour, in a succeeding article, to mark distinctly. These mémoires have a secondary interest, from their lively pictures of French life and French habits. Those who scan their pages for scandal will be dis appointed. There is nothing in them to shock delicacy; but there is much to warn us of the fatal effects of that levity of conduct, and those loose notions of morality, which prevail almost universally on the Continent. Before we commence our examination of the work, we may say that the style is extremely animated, and often poetical, though without pretence. She writes not only with taste and skill, but with elegance, and combines great strength with great grace of expression. Her portraits are sketched forcibly, and with much apparent discrimination. Our horror of her crimes must not prevent the acknowledgment of her talents. It is this union of what we most admire with what we most detest that constitutes the singularity of her case, and will for ever render her name memorable as an example of the extremes that may unite in the human heart. Marie Cappelle was born in 1816 of an honourable family; her grandmother, she states, was the daughter of Colonel Compton, an Englishman; but being early deprived of both her parents, was committed to the care of Madame de Genlis, who educated her together with the children of the Duke of Orleans. She subsequently married M. Collard, a protege of Prince Talleyrand. He collected a small fortune during the crash of the Revolution, and then, disgusted with its horrors, retired to his estate at VillersHellon, where he passed the remainder of his days in contentment and peace. Three daughters and one son were the result of the union. The eldest mar ried M. Cappelle, a gallant artillery officer; the second the Baron de Martens, a Prussian diplomatist; and the third M. Garat, the director of the Bank of France. The infancy of Marie Cappelle was passed at Villers-Hellon, where her parents principally resided. She was their first, and for some years, their only child. When five years old she was given "une petite sœur" Antonine. The details of her childhood are related with much animation, but we have room for only one paragraph. and said that the absence would kill her. From that time her removal from St. Denis was decided on. Her fourteenth year was rendered remarkable by her first appearance at the Communion-table. We give a short extract, not on account of any interest it possesses, but to give a fair idea of the character of the work, and of the spirit in which it is written : fixed for my first communion, for that solemn act "The day of the Fète Dieu (Corpus Christi,) was which changes the child into the maiden, and which fore I passed through the portals of life. Already was to initiate me into the mysteries of heaven bethe hour of temptation approached; perhaps that of seduction; my heart beat more quickly, and elevated itself more proudly. An Ægide was to be given to the Christian virgin, and the religion which had eradled her infancy was about to receive her pure and feeble soul, to make it the depository of its truths and its laws, and to give it a refuge against the pleasures and sufferings of the world it was about to enter. radiant shone the sun, how profound was my emotion. "On the morning of this solemn initiation, how My mother dressed me in the white robe of the comthe symbol of the thoughts of innocence and faith municants, placed in my hair a branch of jasmine, that the priest in the even had placed in my soul; and then, before the hells had called us to the benediction of heaven, 1 knelt before her, while weeping, she blessed me.” We pass rapidly over the sudden death of her father from the bursting of his fowling-piece, and her despair at his loss: the second marriage of her mother, and her anger at the change; her desultory education and studies; her passion for music and "Villers-Hellon, that dear little corner of Picardy,romance. All give us the idea of a girl with an in is the paradise of my infancy. There I was happy, loved, petted, and spoiled. There I not only found my excellent grandfather, kind aunts, beloved cousins, the spring and the flowers-there were, besides, two nurses devotedly attached to me, who coaxed me when I was naughty, who had kisses to heal my hurts, and bonbons to dry my tears. There were the old coachman, with his white hairs, good peasants who bore us in the arms as they had borne our mothers; little children, who curtsied to us as we came from mass, and who mingled with our games afterwards." tellect above her years, with ardent affections, keen susceptibility, and passions which with difficulty endured control. While her character was yet in process of formation, and she stood on the threshold of life, just ready to emerge into womanhood, she sustained an irreparable loss. We give the death of her mother in her own words, because the passage is one of those which appear to us full of genuine feeling. Marie had herself been suffering severely from a contagious fever : "I was out of danger, but yet weak, when I learnt by an unguarded word from my physician that my When Marie had reached her twelfth year, the no- mother was seriously-very seriously ill. I would table discovery was made that she had been spoiled, have risen,-I would have flown to her room and and she was sent to a convent at St. Denis, in order to have claimed my right to watch over and tend her; be well disciplined. The vexation was extreme, but but that was impossible, for my sickness was conshe concealed it, lest it should be supposed that she tagious. I, who would have lain down my life for was grieved by the separation from the parents who her sake, was told that my presence would add to the had sentenced her to this dreary confinement. "Al- dangers which menaced her. What days of inquithough," she observes, "the submission of our ac-etude and anguish! I interrogated with equal anx tions and gestures was complete, yet the liberty of our thoughts was iminense; our mistresses never conversed with us, and we exchanged at our ease the falsest ideas. Our carriage was the guarantee of our moral perfections, as our gowns and our caps were that of our virtues." An attack of inflammation of the stomach, to which she was continually subject afterwards, gained her a month's absence from the convent, which was passed amid the gaieties of the new year in Paris. She danced a galop with the Duc de Nemours at the Palais Royale, and visited Mdlle. Mars and M. Cuvier. On her return to her confinement the contrast was so great, that her vexation produced a brain fever. In her delirium she accused her parents of unkindness, iety both noise and silence. All the day and part of the night I seated myself against the cruel door which separated me from her. Eugene [her fatherin-law] and Antonine tried vainly to deceive me by words of hope; there were tears in their words as there were tears in my presentiments; I guessed the truth; I was in despair; I felt myself becoming delirious; but at length they conducted me near her. "Pauvre mère! she was horribly pale; her lips were blue; her head was sunk upon her pillow; she suffered no more; she felt not our burning kisses on her poor hands; her settled regard was fixed upon Eugene; he seemed to count her tears, and to collect them as a treasure for eternity. For an instant she remembered us; she motioned Antonine to ap |