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"Are we to hide here in the cellars?" she said.

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No," replied the pastor, as he came to a great baulk of timber, or what had once been the wine-cellar, "follow me."

He knew that house better than she or her brother. With a vigorous push the timber yielded a little, and a bolt was shot. It was a heavy door, and led to a passage under ground.

Stooping and groping his way, the pastor led them on for a hundred yards or so, till they saw light glimmering between the crevices of rock just before them.

"This should turn," said Duchesne, putting his shoulder to a large mass of stone. It yielded a foot or so, but the pivot had rusted, and a pile of loose shale lay in the way.

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Now, in six words," said the old man, as he kissed the child and took mademoiselle's hands, "squeeze through here and you will find yourselves in the little clump of wood beyond the old cherry orchard. Then strike to the right and go on till you come to the river bank; you have then but two miles to walk to old Gregoire's house-you know him, he is the ferryman, and true as steel. There I will join you after dark, if I am alive; if not, a messenger will bring you this token that he comes from me, and tell you what to do." As he spoke he held up his watch, pushed them through the opening, and turned again towards the passage.

The insurgents had drawn up in front of the balcony, the Protestants were on the balcony itself, both sides looking with hostile intentions, when a strange sound was heard coming along the open road-a sound of the marching of many men, the tatoo of a dozen drums, and the crunching of wheels, mingled with wild

cries.

Pastor Duchesne heard it as he emerged from the house again, after having stumbled along the subterranean passage.

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"I shall take care of mine and of this boy's better than if I had you. Adieu!" and he bent his head in prayer.

Every head was bent also, and the men went slowly out, scattering over the fields by the backway.

Then the roar grew louder, a wild mob of men, among whom, I shame to say, were some women, tramped along the road with cries and curses, half naked, smeared with dirt, and armed with all kinds of weapons, but almost all of them wearing red caps; they howled the burden of a terrible song. There were no horses among them, but two men carried something on a kind of hand-bier.

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In front of the house they stopped, and two three, who seemed to be leaders, called for silence. When the clamour ceased, the stillness seemed intense. A dead calm was in the sultry air; a great heavy cloud tipped with lurid light hung in the heavens.

"Is this the house?" asked one of the leaders "This is the house," replied a fellow who seemed to be lieutenant of Pithon's band. "This is the crow's-nest citizen."

"Then let us put up the sign," shouted a hideous wretch in a leather apron, girded with a long rope, and carrying a sledge-hammer over his shoulder. "There have been plenty of such these last three days, and they are effective."

There was some commotion round the bearers of the hand-bier. The man in the leathern apron unwound the rope from his waist and flung an end of it over the blasted limb of the great plane-tree. A shout, a sharp jerk, a scream of laughter, and curses, and a man's dead body swung there-the body of Jean Corneille. "We couldn't save him even if we'd been

"Listen! it is a regiment of soldiers," said so minded," shouted the leader. "He went Hugo, seizing his hand.

Not so; it is a body of insurgents," replied the old man after a pause. "The wolves are coming now in packs.'

The sounds reached the ears of Pithon's men, and with a wild shout they hurried towards the road.

Now is the time," said Duchesne, and beckoning Hugo to follow him, he went through the house, snapping up here and there an article of jewelry, a watch, or any portable thing of value. There were very few of such things.

Meantime the uproar on the road grew louder.

where the intendant Foulon and Berthier, his son-in-law, grinned their last, as pike-heads. All's one!"

"Pithon! Pithon! where's Pithon? Come, comrade, let us have no private affairs to interfere with business. Come!"

The Pastor Duchesne and Hugo had seen the horrid spectacle and heard the words that accompanied it. The insurgents were preparing to fire and sack the house. The old man drew his companion away, and both descended to the cellar. When they emerged into the open air and looked back, a terrible storm had broken; a peal of thunder shook Le

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Platane, and the great plane-tree creaked as a vivid flash lighted its ghastly burden. They hurried forward, anxious for the safety of mademoiselle and little Elizabeth, who were out in the storm.

"Well, Hugo, my dear lad, never mind; I have set ten more looms going since you left us. Thank Heaven you are safely back, my boy. Alas, poor France! Duchesne is no more fit to be trusted, and yet we should be glad you went, for here are two dear souls saved alive-though, fancy little Elise coming over in a hamper on board that fishing-smack. They thought it was full of a great goose, didn't they, my child?" and the elder Du Boisson lifted the little emigrant on his knee.

For a time mademoiselle and her little niece lived with this dear family; but soon Elise must learn something, and so became a pupil at that school of La Providence which the refugees founded in the early troubles. As to mademoiselle, she was married in less than two years, for she was a Protestant, though her brother had remained a Catholic. Not till they had grown well used to their asylum did the pastor tell aunt and niece of the dreadful death of Jean Corneille, and by that time Louis Du Boisson and his wife had found a daughter in Elizabeth Elizabeth a brother in Hugo-well, no, not quite a brother either, for one day when she came home from her studies, an armful of books in a blue bag over her shoulder, her great lustrous eyes full of intelligence, her hair falling in ringlets that blew about her like a fine silken veil, Hugo found out the secret of his heart and of hers. On the old bench of the old garden they plighted their troth, and Hugo's father only laughed when he heard of it, saying, he knew long ago what it must

come to.

Madame was a little cold. She came of the noblesse, you see, and then Jean Corneille was but a steward; but who could look at Elise without loving her? Not such a gentle creature as Madeleine Du Boisson. Thus the story ends, dear, as all stories should end; but yet there is a word still to say.

The Pastor Duchesne, ninety years old, is sitting on that very same bench in the old gay garden at Bethnal Green. Louis Du Boisson sits beside him, stouter, rosier, older, and with his crisp dark hair turning white. Madame, more than ever like that fine Sèvres china, stands snipping the withered leaves from a bush of blush-roses.

In the suburbs of the town of St. Ambroix a lady and gentleman alight from a carriage 2D SERIES, VOL. I.

at the sign of the "Golden Bear," and stand at the door to ask a question of the landlord.

"I see no signs of the place," says the gentleman; "it cannot have sunk into the earth. Surely it must have been burned on that terrible night, though the pastor says no. You were too little to remember where it stood, dear. We will inquire.'

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"What! Le Platane?" says the landlord, with open eyes. Why, over yonder, where the barrack is being built. It was a mere ruin for ever so long, and then came the restoration, and then the hundred days—that was when it was burned-what the democrats left, the reactionists finished. Vive le Roi!"

"And of one Pithon, does anybody know what became of him?"

"What Pithon? He-ah, yes as he had helped others to a pinch, so he himself sneezed in the sack."

The bloody footsteps of the revolution had overtaken the enemy of Jean Corneille.

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BEHIND THE SCENES AT SEVILLE.

[Henry Blackburn, born at Portsmouth, 15th February, 1830. Traveller, journalist, and sometime editor of London Society. In 1871 he received an appointment in the civil service commission. His works are Life in Algeria; Travelling in Spain; The Pyrenees, illustrated by Gustave Doré; Artists and Arabs; Normandy Picturesque; Art in the Mountains, the Story of the Passion Play in Bavaria; The Harz Mountains, &c. He seizes the most picturesque characteristics of life and scenery, and reproduces them admirably with pen and pencil.]

The curtain has gone down at last-Don Alphonso has touched the last note on his guitar, and the dark-eyed prima donna, with the gigantic false roses in her hair, has heaved her last sigh from the casement above. Jealous lovers in false wigs and black conspirators all have sheathed their pasteboard daggers for the night, and the stage is clear for the ballet, or what our good friend the impresario, who has French proclivities, calls a pantomime d'amour.

It is Christmas-time at Seville, and the people who never do any work to speak of, now take holiday, and disport themselves in most rampant fashion. Every day and every night there has been some grand foncion, something to see, to do, or to suffer. We are fairly "weary of the world," of the Seville world of saints' days, high-masses, miraculous cures, cock-fights, bull-fights, cachuchas, and fandangos.

But to-night is a special festival, and we have promised our host, Don Pedro, who manages matters theatrical in Seville, that we will come to see his daughter dance the bolero. There was nothing new in seeing the "bolero," the baile nacional of Spain. Had we not seen it the day after we arrived in the city, as performed in the second-floor-back of a dark street, by two or three painted and powdered' señoritas, whose especial business it was to exhibit to strangers the manners and customs of their country? had we not paid five francs each to sit for an hour in a crowded room, choked with dust, and deafened with the clash of castanets; and had we not had black mail levied upon us by those painted eyes, and our purses emptied, as one of the customs of Spain? Had we not, after a few weeks' sojourn, seen through the folly of these things, and gone boldly with a great English painter (one no longer amongst us, who lived and worked at Seville, and brought home to England more of the living power of Murillo and Velasquez,than any artist of his time) over the bridge to that most racketty and disreputable suburb, Triana, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, to see and study with a painter's eye the grace and beauty of

the bolero as danced by wild gipsy kings and queens, who live here in picturesque poverty, whose life in youth is to dance and to sing? suburb of Granada come out to join in passionHad we not seen the population of a whole ate joy and sorrow, as expressed in motion by one or two skilled performers dancing to the monotonous twang of a cracked guitar? We had seen all this, and we had begun to understand how truly dancing in Spain was a part of the nation's existence; but we had not yet seen the audience of a theatre under its influence. The great charm of the Spanish theatre, according to Ford, is the national dancematchless, unequalled, and inimitable-only to be performed by Andalucians. It is the essence, the sauce piquant of the night's entertainment. However languid the house, however laughable the tragedy, or serious the comedy, the sound of the castanet awakens the most listless: the sharp, spirit-stirring click is heard behind the scenes, the effect is instantaneous-it silences the tongues of countless women-on n'écoute que le ballet!

The little theatre in Seville-where opera and ballet seem as much de rigueur as at the Haymarket Opera House in London when Grisi and Cerito were presiding stars-is full to the ceiling to-night, with a noisy, clamorous crowd, who cannot help smoking surreptitiously during the performance, and whose consumption of glasses of water is marvellous to behold. Looking through the curtain which divides us so slightly from the rows of señoritas in dark veils (some so close that we could whisper to them from our hiding-place), this seething mass of humanity looks dangerous in its excitability and, considering the small space into which they are crowded and the sparks and little waves of smoke that curl up here and there, it is a positive relief to see so much cold water distributed amongst them.

But the orchestra is tuning up, and the signal is given to clear the stage. As we stand at the wings, Don Pedro comes proudly forward with his daughter, a little bright-eyed girl of fifteen, dressed, not in ordinary ballet costume, with skirts ungracefully short and scanty, but in the natural, national dress of Andalucia, familiar to everyone in pictures, but especially charming here, both in colour and character, as a contrast to the tinsel and artificiality of the modern stage. She wore a high comb and black lace veil, with a bright red camellia in her hair, and held in her hand a fan, the whole armour of battle of a southern coquette. Her face glowed with pleasure and delight, her bare arms were not whitened, her

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