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could learn no further particulars. He turned to quit the gardens just as the band was striking up for a fresh dance, a wild German waltz air, and mingled with that German music his ear caught the sprightly sounds of the French laugh, one laugh distinguished from the rest by a more genuine ring of light-hearted joy the laugh that he had heard on entering the gardens, and the sound of which had then saddened him. Looking toward the quarter from which it came, he again saw the Ondine of Paris.' She was not now the centre of a group. She had just found Gustave Rameau; and was clinging to his arm with a look of happiness in her face, frank and innocent as a child's. And so they passed amid the dancers down a solitary lamplit alley, till lost to the Englishman's lingering gaze.

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CHAPTER X.

THE next morning Graham sent again for M. Renard.

"Well," he cried, when that dignitary appeared and took a seat beside him; "chance has favoured me."

"I always counted on chance, Monsieur. Chance has more wit in its little finger than the Paris police in its whole body."

"I have ascertained the relations, on the mother's side, of Louise Duval, and the only question is how to get at them." Here Graham related what he had heard, and ended by saying, "This Victor de Mauléon is therefore my Louise Duval's uncle. He was, no doubt, taking charge of her in the year that the persons interested in her discovery lost sight of her in Paris; and surely he must know what became of her afterwards."

"Very probably; and chance may befriend us yet in the discovery of Victor de Mauléon. You seem not to know the particulars of that story about the jewels which brought him into some connection with the police, and resulted in his disappearance from Paris."

"No; tell me the particulars."

"Victor de Mauléon was heir to some 60,000 or 70,000 francs a-year, chiefly on the mother's side; for his father, though the representative of one of the most ancient houses in France, was very poor, having little of his own except the emoluments of an appointment in the Court of Louis Philippe.

"But before, by the death of his parents, Victor came into that inheritance, he very largely forestalled it. His tastes were magnificent. He took to 'sport' 67

LIVING AGE.

VOL. II.

kept a famous stud, was a great favourite with the English, and spoke their language fluently. Indeed he was considered very accomplished, and of considerable intellectual powers. It was generally said that some day or other, when he had sown his wild oats, he would, if he took to politics, be an eminent man. Altogether he was a very strong creature. That was a very strong age under Louis Philippe. The viveurs of Paris were fine types for the heroes of Dumas and Sue

full of animal life and spirits. Victor de Mauléon was a romance of Dumas — incarnated."

"M. Renard, forgive me that I did not before do justice to your taste in polite literature."

"Monsieur, a man in my profession does not attain even to my humble eminence if he be not something else than a professional. He must study mankind wherever they are described — even in les romans. To return to Victor de Mauléon. Though he was a ‘sportman,' a gambler, a Don Juan, a duellist, nothing was ever said against his honour. On the contrary, on matters of honour he was a received oracle; and even though he had fought several duels (that was the age of duels), and was reported without a superior, almost without an equal, in either weapon the sword or the pistol - he is said never to have wantonly provoked an encounter, and to have so used his skill that he contrived never to slay, nor even gravely to wound, an antagonist.

"I remember one instance of his generosity in this respect, for it was much talked of at the time. One of your countrymen, who had never handled a fencingfoil nor fired a pistol, took offence at something M. de Mauléon had said in disparagement of the Duke of Wellington, and called him out. Victor de Mauléon accepted the challenge, discharged his pistol, not in the air-that might have been an affront but so as to be wide of the mark, walked up to the lines to be shot at, and when missed, said, 'Excuse the susceptibility of a Frenchman - loath to believe that his countrymen can be beaten save by accident, and accept every apology one gentleman can make to another for having forgotten the respect due to one of the most renowned of your national heroes.' The Englishman's name was Vane. father?"

Could it have been your

"Very probably; just like my father to call out any man who insulted the honour of his country, as represented by its

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Pray go on."

was

be-actions of feeling. The men we adore one day we execrate the next. The Vicomte passed at once from the popular admiration one bestows on a hero, to the popular contempt with which one regards a petty larcener. Society wondered how it had ever condescended to receive into its bosom the gambler, the duellist, the Don Juan. However, one compensation in the way of amusement he might still afford to society for the grave injuries he had done it. Society would attend his trial, witness his demeanour at the bar, and watch the expression of his face when he was sentenced to the galleys. But, Monsieur, this wretch completed the measure of his iniquities. He was not tried at all. The Duc and Duchesse quitted Paris for Spain, and the Duc instructed his lawyer to withdraw his charge, stating his conviction of the Vicomte's complete innocence of any other offence than that which he himself had confessed."

"What did the Vicomte confess? you omitted to state that."

"The Vicomte, when apprehended, confessed that, smitten by an insane passion for the Duchesse, which she had, on his presuming to declare it, met with indignant scorn, he had taken advantage of his lodgment in the same house to admit himself into the cabinet adjoining her dress

"One day it was in the midst of political events which would have silenced most subjects of private gossip- the beau monde was startled by the news that the Vicomte (he was then by his father's death, Vicomte) de Mauléon had been given into the custody of the police on the charge of stealing the jewels of the Duchesse de (the wife of a distinguished foreigner). It seems that some days before this event the Duc, wishing to make Madame his spouse an agreeable surprise, had resolved to have a diamond necklace belonging to her, and which was of setting so old-fashioned that she had not lately worn it, reset for her birthday. He therefore secretly possessed himself of the key to an iron safe in a cabinet adjoining her dressing-room (in which safe her more valuable jewels were kept), and took from it the necklace. Imagine his dismay when the jeweller in the Rue Vivienne to whom he carried it, recognized the pretended diamonds as imitation paste which he himself had some days previously inserted into an empty setting brought to him by a Monsieur with whose name he was unacquainted. The Duchesse was at that time in delicate health;ing-room by means of a key which he had and as the Duc's suspicions naturally fell procured, made from an impression of the on the servants, especially on the femme key-hole taken in wax. de chambre, who was in great favour with his wife, he did not like to alarm Madame, nor through her to put the servants on their guard. He resolved, therefore, to place the matter in the hands of the famous who was then the pride and ornament of the Parisian police. And the very night afterwards the Vicomte de Mauléon was caught and apprehended in the cabinet where the jewels were kept, and to which he had got access by a false key, or at least a duplicate key, found in his possession. I should observe that M. de Mauléon occupied the entresol in the same hotel in which the upper rooms were devoted to the Duc and Duchesse and their suite. As soon as this charge against the Vicomte was made known (and it was known the next morning), the extent of his debts and the utterness of his ruin (before scarcely conjectured or wholly unheeded), became public through the medium of the journals, and furnished an obvious motive for the crime of which he was accused. We Parisians, Monsieur, are subject to the most startling re

"No evidence in support of any other charge against the Vicomte was forthcoming-nothing, in short, beyond the infraction du domicile caused by the madness of youthful love, and for which there was no prosecution. The law, therefore, could have little to say against him. But society was more rigid ; and, exceedingly angry to find that a man who had been so conspicuous for luxury should prove to be a pauper, insisted on believing that M. de Mauléon was guilty of the meaner, though not perhaps, in the eyes of husbands and fathers, the more heinous, of the two offences. I presume that the Vicomte felt that he had got into a dilemma from which no pistol-shot or sword-thrust could free him, for he left Paris abruptly, and has not since reappeared. The sale of his stud and effects sufficed, I believe, to pay his debts, for I will do him the justice to say that they were paid."

"But though the Vicomte de Mauléon has disappeared, he must have left relations at Paris, who would perhaps know what had become of him and of his niece."

"I doubt it. He had no very near relations. The nearest was an old célibataire of the same name, from whom he had some expectations, but who died shortly after this esclandre, and did not name the Vicomte in his will. M. Victor had numerous connections among the highest families - the Rochebriants, Chavignys, Vandemars, Beauvilliers. But they are not likely to have retained any connection with a ruined vaurien, and still less with a niece of his who was the child of a drawing-master. But now you have given me a clue, I will try to follow it up. We must find the Vicomte, and I am not without hope of doing so. Pardon me if I decline to say more at present. I would not raise false expectations. But in a week or two I will have the honour to call again upon Monsieur."

"Wait one instant. You have really a hope of discovering M. de Mauléon?

"Yes. I cannot say more at present." M. Renard departed.

Still that hope, however faint it might prove, served to reanimate Graham; and with that hope his heart, as if a load had been lifted from its mainspring, returned instinctively to the thought of Isaura. Whatever seemed to promise an early discharge of the commission connected with the discovery of Louise Duval seemed to bring Isaura nearer to him, or at least to excuse his yearning desire to see more of her to understand her better. Faded into thin air was the vague jealousy of Gustave Rameau which he had so unreasonably conceived; he felt as if it were impossible that the man whom the "Ondine of Paris" claimed as her lover could dare to woo or hope to win an Isaura. He even forgot the friendship with the eloquent denouncer of the marriage-bond, which a little while ago had seemed to him an unpardonable offence: he remembered only the lovely face, so innocent, yet so intelligent; only the sweet voice which had for the first time breathed music into his own soul; only the gentle hand whose touch had for the first time sent through his veins the thrill which distinguishes from all her sex the woman whom we love. He went forth elated and joyous, and took his way to Isaura's villa. As he went, the leaves on the trees under which he passed seemed stirred by the soft May breeze in sympathy with his own delight. Perhaps it was rather the reverse: his own silent delight sympathized with all delight in awakening nature. The lover seeking reconciliation with the loved one from whom some trifle

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IT came in the way of my work recently to visit a colony of navvies engaged in the construction of the heaviest portion of the works on the new line of railway at present being made between Settle and Carlisle. The headquarters of this scattered colony are on the slope of an outlying buttress of Ingleborough Hill, at the foot of which is a deep hole in the limestone, whence issues the headwaters of the Ribble. From some old legend of a suicide, this wild and savage place bears the curious name of Battywife-hole. Three or four hundred navvies are housed in the wooden huts, covered with black felting, that have been set down at hap-hazard on to the slope above the river-head, and there are various settlements bearing outlandish names bestowed upon them by the navvies themselves. Inkermann, Sebastopol, Belgravia, Jericho, Salt Lake City-all these can be reached with no greater exertion than half an hour's wade through the deep, treacherous, oozy bog of which much of the moorland is composed. True, when reached, they are not much to look at, but they are racy of phases of that curious half-savage navvy life, which has in it so much that is interesting to the student of the by-tracks of human life.

While staying in Batty-wife-hole, I became acquainted with a family which I shall call Pollen. The father had been a navvy in his earlier days; but having saved a little money, had set up a tommyshop, and was making money. His wife was a robust, powerful, purposeful dame, of immense energy, considerable surfaceroughness, and real genuine kindliness of heart. During my stay, I was indebted to this burly navvy-woman for several good turns, in connection with which there could be no thought of self-interest. There was a married daughter who lived in a caravan at the gable of the parental hut, and there were two unmarried daughters, one an extremely pretty girl of about twenty, the other considerably younger.

Pollen had taken a letter for me down | evinced in subscriptions to sick funds to Ingleton, and in the afternoon I looked and doctors' bills; clear-headed applicain to see whether he had come back. tion of labour to produce a definite result; His good lady reported his non-arrival, above all, a sense of the right that man adding- "Afore we comed here, we and master alike have to fair-play and were on the Surrey and Sussex; ' and honest dealing: all these virtues are to this morning, Betsy Smith, a lass as my be found in the kit of the navvy. He is daughter knowed there, comed here to see a man with whom there is some satisfacher mother, as is married on old Recks; tion in working, and a man as to whom and my girls, they be to have a holiday you can attribute any failure in the for to spend wi' their old friend. Well, I attempt to elevate him into a position of bid them tighten themselves up a bit, and permanent comfort and respectability not tak' a basket, and go to the top of Ingle- to any inherent infirmity of nature, but to borough Hill, the three on 'em, for a day's want of early training, and to the potent 'scursion like; and when they'd come influence of strong drink." back, I'd have tea waitin' an' a cake, and I'd get in a bottle or two of wine, and we'd make a bit of a feast on't, you see, sir, for the lasses mayn't see one another no more in this here life." It seemed as if I had achieved the footing of a friend of the family; and Mrs. Pollen invited me, "if I would not think it beneath me," to look in and participate in the modest festivities of the evening. Beneath me! Why, it was the very thing I desired.

The "lasses" had got down from Ingleborough Hill, and were seated round the huge coal-fire in Mrs. Pollen's keeping-room. It was a state occasion; and the six navvies, who are lodgers, were relegated to their own sleeping-apartment, where I found Mr. Pollen, slightly the fresher from his journey to Ingleton, and having his hair cut by one of his lodgers prior to entering the sphere of gentility in the other room. Mrs. Pollen was painfully polite, and her notions of my capacities for rashers of bacon eaten along with buttered toast must have been based on her experience of navvies. The young ladies were at first slightly distrait, but Ingleborough air had given their appetite a beautiful fillip. Mr. Pollen was benignly jocose, with a slight tendency to hiccup. After tea, he entertained me with an historical account of Batty-wife hole, from his first appearance in a van on its soil, exactly three years previous. Shortly afterwards, he said, "some chaps came down to make experimental borings, and they had to bide wi' us in the wan, for there were nowheres else to bide. All that winter there were ten of us living in that van, and a tight fit it were, surely. Of a night I used to have to stand by it for half an hour with the bull's-eye as a guide to the men home-coming through the waste. Sometimes one would stick, and his mates would have to dig him out; there were two chain o' knee-deep water four times a day for the fellows atween their meat and their work.

The navvy population of Batty-wifehole do not keep fashionable hours. Half-past five was the hour named by Mrs. Pollen, and I was punctual. As I came up the road from the "Chum-hole," through Inkermann, to the mansion of the Pollens, the face of the swamp in the watery twilight was alive with navvies on their way home from work. They stalked carelessly through the most horrid clinging mire. What thews and sinews, what stately, stalwart forms, what breadth of shoulder, and shapely development of muscle were displayed by these homecoming sons of toil! The navvy is a very rough diamond; but when you come to mix with him familiarly, and to understand him, you come to realize that he is a diamond. His character has never been more accurately delineated than in the words which I venture to quote, written by an engineer who knows him to his very marrow. "The English navvy has his bad points. Very bad points, they are, no doubt, but, as a rule, they have all a common origin. The fountain of all, or almost all, the troubles of an "It were a winter! The snow lay on English employer of this description of the backs of the hill-sheep for two months labour is the ale-can. But with these at a stretch, and many on 'em were frozen bad points there are many elements of as hard as a chip. But we got over it the true pith and ring of the English somehow; and in the spring, Recks and character. Industry like that of the bee-me built this cottage, and the works behive; sturdy toil such as that which was gan in fair earnest. There's been a good commanded by the builders of the pyra- many deaths - what with accidents, low mids, or the brick-building kings of Nine- fevers, small-pox, and so on. I've buried veh; firm fellowship and good feeling, three o' my own. I'm arter a sort the

undertaker o' the place. You passed the lodgers. Sundry smothered and gasping little church down at Chapel-a-dale, near squeakings of a fiddle had been audible the head of the valley. Well, in the three lately from that apartment, the sounds years I've toted over a hundred of us being suggestive of the existence of an down the hill to the little churchyard ly- assertive and pertinacious violin, upon ing round the church. T' other day I which the navvies were collectively sitting, had toted one poor fellow down—he sternly determined that while they lived, were hale and hearty on Thursday, and it should not violate the decorous quiet on Tuesday he were dead o' erinsipalis; incumbent on lodgers whose respected and I says to the clerk as how I thought host and hostess were entertaining visitI had toted well nigh on to a hundred ors. The "lasses," I had noticed, were down over the beck to Chapel-a-dale. He yawning a little after tea, as if the hill-air goes, and has a look at his books, and of Ingleborough had induced a somnifercomes out, and says, says he: Joe, ous tendency. As the tap was heard at you've fetched to t' kirkyawd xactly a the door, a glance of mutual intelligence hundred and ten corps! I knowed I and a smile of satisfaction passed round warn't far out. They've had to add a the younger ladies, and in truth Mrs. piece on to t' churchyard, for it were Pollen herself did not frown as she chock-full. And there were one poor fel- called: "Come in." Enter a stalwart low I toted down the hill as don't lie in navvy, whose powerful frame contrasted Chapel-a-dale. It were the first summer comically with his shamefaced countewe were here, and a cutting had been nance. He was blushing from ear to ear, opened outside the Dents-head end of the yet there was a twinkle in the big black tunnel. Five men were in a heading as eye of the good-looking fellow that might was being driven in along the track of speak of a consciousness he was not altothe tunnel. There came on such a fear-gether taking a leap in the dark. He bore ful thunderstorm as nobody hereabout a message from the navvy brotherhood in ever saw the like afore or since. The end the other room. He craved humbly of of the cutting was stopped up, and the "Mother Pollen " that he and they should water came tearing down the hillsides be admitted to participate in the festiviinto it, and soon filled it like the lock of ties of the evening, whereunto they ena canal. The chaps in the heading were gaged to contribute by instrumental and caught afore they could get out; as the vocal music, replenishment of the refreshwater rose, three swam into the cutting, ments utterly regardless of cost, and good and tried to scramble out. As the water behaviour. Pollen pronounced at once rose, they got on a wagon that was in the for their admission. Mrs. Pollen only heading, and tried to prop themselves up stipulated for order; and the navvies between some barrels that were on it. trooped solemnly in, and seated themWe could just see one, the tallest on the selves on the extreme edge of a form. two- the face of him just above the Mrs. Pollen offered them wine, of which water, and his hands held afore his all ceremoniously partook; and then the mouth, to fend off the water that came black-eyed navvy took Mrs. Pollen aside, lipping over him every now and then. an interview which resulted in the introHe could get no higher for the head of duction of a pail of strong ale and a botthe working, and it was horrible to see tle of whisky. The navvies were a dehim. But we were tearing like mad at cided acquisition. First, the black-eyed the bank of earth that was blocking the navvy played a lively spring on his fiddle. cutting, and at last we got a hole jumped I may remark, that he had imperceptibly through it, and then the water soon found edged off the form, and had dexterously its own vent, and emptied the cutting. taken up new ground between Miss The shorter of the two men in the head- Pollen and the lass from the "Surrey and ing was drowned, and his mouth stopped Sussex." Then Tom Purgin sang My up wi' clay. He came from Kingscliffe Pretty Jane. Mr. Purgin was a smart in Northamptonsheer, hard by my own ruddy-faced young fellow with black curlnative place; and I got a coffin for the ing hair, and the physical development of poor chap, and toted him down to Ingle- a Hercules. "Tom is the best man on this ton, and sent him home by the railway." section," whispered Pollen to me. A dance I don't know to what greater length Mr. followed-something between a reel and Pollen's gossiping reminiscences might an Irish jig-in which the black-eyed have extended, if they had not been inter- navvy immensely distinguished himself rupted by a tap at the door communicat- by playing and dancing at the same time; ing with the room inhabited by the navvy while the noise his big boots made in the

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