the story of my race? do you know that since my childhood I have vowed hatred to that nation? Tenez, Madame, this M. Jones who frequents your salon, it was but respect for you that has enabled me to keep my patience with this stupid islander. This Captain Blackball, whom you distinguish, who certainly shoots well, who mounts well to horse, I have always thought his manners were those of the marker of a billiard. But I respect him because he has made war with Don Carlos against the English. But this young M. de Kew, his laugh crisps me the nerves; his insolent air makes me bound; in beholding him I said to myself, I hate you; think whether I love him better after having seen him as I did but now, Madame?" Also, but this Victor did not say, he thought Kew had laughed at him at the beginning of the evening, when the blanche Miss had refused to dance with him.

"Ah, Victor, it is not him, but you that I would save," said the Duchesse. And the people round about, and the Duchesse herself afterwards said, yes, certainly, she had a good heart. She entreated Lord Kew; she implored M. Victor; she did everything in her power to appease the quarrel between him and the Frenchman.

After the ball came the supper, which was laid at separate little tables, where parties of half-a-dozen enjoyed themselves. Lord Kew was of the Duchesse's party, where our Gascon friend had not a seat. But being one of the managers of the entertainment, his lordship went about from table to table, seeing that the guests at each lacked nothing. He supposed, too, that the dispute with the Gascon had possibly come to an end; at any rate, disagreeable as the other's speech had been, he had resolved to put up with it, not having the least inclination to drink the Frenchman's blood, or to part with his own on so absurd a quarrel. He asked people, in his good-natured way, to drink wine with him; and catching M. Victor's eye scowling at him from a distant table, he sent a waiter with a champagne bottle to his late opponent, and lifted his glass as a friendly challenge. The waiter carried the message to M. Victor, who, when he heard it, turned up his glass, and folded his arms in a stately manner. de Castillonnes dit qu'il refuse, Milor," said the waiter, rather scared. "He charged me to bring that message to Milor." Florac ran across to the angry Gascon. It was not while at Madame d'Ivry's table that Lord Kew sent his challenge and received his reply; his duties as steward had carried him away from that pretty early.

"M.

Meanwhile the glimmering dawn peered into the windows of the refreshment-room, and behold, the sun broke in and scared all the revellers. The ladies scurried away like so many ghosts at cock-crow, some of them not caring to face that detective luminary. Cigars had been lighted ere this; the men remained smoking them with those

sleepless German waiters still bringing fresh supplies of drink. Lord Kew gave the Duchesse d'Ivry his arm, and was leading her out; M. de Castillonnes stood scowling directly in their way, upon which, with rather an abrupt turn of the shoulder, and a "Pardon, Monsieur," Lord Kew pushed by, and conducted the Duchess to her carriage. She did not in the least see what had happened between the two gentlemen in the passage; she ogled, and nodded, and kissed her hands quite affectionately to Kew as the fly drove away.

Florac, in the meanwhile, had seized his compatriot, who had drunk champagne copiously with others, if not with Kew, and was in vain endeavouring to make him hear reason. The Gascon was furious; he vowed that Lord Kew had struck him. "By the tomb of my mother," he bellowed, "I swear I will have his blood!" Lord Rooster was bawling out" D him, carry him to bed, and shut him up;" which remarks Victor did not understand, or two victims would doubtless have been sacrificed on his mamma's mausoleum.

When Kew came back (as he was only too sure to do), the little Gascon rushed forward with a glove in his hand, and having an audience of smokers round about him, made a furious speech about England, leopards, cowardice, insolent islanders, and Napoleon at St. Helena; and demanded reason for Kew's conduct during the night. As he spoke, he advanced towards Lord Kew, glove in hand, and lifted it as if he was actually going to strike.

"There is no need for further words," said Lord Kew, taking his cigar out of his mouth. "If you don't drop that glove, upon my word I will pitch you out of the window. "Ha!... Pick the man up, somebody. You'll bear witness, gentlemen, I couldn't help myself. If he wants me in the morning, he knows where to find me."

"I declare that my Lord Kew has acted with great forbearance, and under the most brutal provocation-the most brutal provocation, entendez-vous, M. Cabasse?" cried out M. de Florac, rushing forward to the Gascon, who had now risen; "Monsieur's conduct has been unworthy of a Frenchman and a galant homme."

"D. — it, he has had it on his nob, though," said Lord Viscount Rooster, laconically.

"Ah, Roosterre! ceci n'est pas pour rire,” Florac cried ṣadly, as they both walked away with Lord Kew; "I wish that first blood was all that was to be shed in this quarrel."

"Gaw! how he did go down!" cried Rooster, convulsed with laughter.

"I am very sorry for it," said Kew, quite seriously; "I couldn't help it. God forgive me." And he hung down his head. He thought of the past, and its levities, and punishment coming after him pede claudo. It was with all his heart the contrite young man said “God

forgive me." He would take what was to foliow as the penalty of what had gone before.

"Pallas te hoc vulnere, Pallas immolat, mon pauvre Kiou," said his French friend. And Lord Rooster, whose classical education had been much neglected, turned round and said, "Hullo, mate, what ship's that?"

Viscount Rooster had not been two hours in bed, when the Count de Punter (formerly of the Black Jägers,) waited upon him upon the part of M. de Castillonnes and the Earl of Kew, who had referred him to the Viscount to arrange matters for a meeting between them. As the meeting must take place out of the Baden territory, and they ought to move before the police prevented them, the Count proposed that they should at once make for France; where, as it was an affair of honour, they would assuredly be let to enter without passports.

Lady Ann and Lady Kew heard that the gentlemen after the ball had all gone out on a hunting party, and were not alarmed for fourand-twenty hours at least. On the next day none of them returned; and on the day after, the family heard that Lord Kew had met with rather a dangerous accident; but all the town knew he had been shot by M. de Castillonnes on one of the islands on the Rhine, opposite Kehl, where he was now lying.

OUR

CHAPTER XXXV.

ACROSS THE ALPS.

UR discursive muse must now take her place in the little britzska in which Clive Newcome and his companions are travelling, and cross the Alps in that vehicle, beholding the snows on St. Gothard, and the beautiful region through which the Ticino rushes on its way to the Lombard lakes, and the great corn-covered plains of the Milanese; and that royal city, with the cathedral for its glittering crown, only less magnificent than the imperial dome of Rome. I have some long letters from Mr. Clive, written during this youthful tour, every step of which, from the departure at Baden, to the gate of Milan, he describes as beautiful; and doubtless, the delightful scenes through which the young man went, had their effect in soothing any private annoyances with which his journey commenced. The aspect of nature, in that fortunate route which he took, is so noble and cheering, that our private affairs and troubles shrink away abashed before that serene splendour. O sweet peaceful scene of azure lake and snow-crowned mountain, so wonderfully lovely is your aspect, that it seems like heaven almost, and as if grief and care could not enter it! What young Clive's private cares were I knew not as yet in those days; and he kept them out of his letters; it was only in the intimacy of future life that some of these pains were revealed to me.

Some three months after taking leave of Miss Ethel, our young gentleman found himself at Rome, with his friend Ridley still for a companion. Many of us, young or middle-aged, have felt that delightful shock which the first sight of the great city inspires. There is one other place of which the view strikes one with an emotion even greater than that with which we look at Rome, where Augustus was reigning when He saw the day, whose birth-place is separated but by a hill or two from the awful gates of Jerusalem. Who that has beheld both can forget that first aspect of either. At the end of years the emotion occasioned by the sight still thrills in your memory, and it smites you as at the moment when you first viewed it.

The business of the present novel, however, lies neither with priest nor pagan, but with Mr. Clive Newcome, and his affairs and his companions at this period of his life. Nor, if the gracious reader expects to

hear of cardinals in scarlet, and noble Roman princes and princesses, will he find such in this history. The only noble Roman into whose mansion our friend got admission was the Prince Polonia, whose footmen wear the liveries of the English royal family, who gives gentlemen and even painters cash upon good letters of credit; and, once or twice in a season, opens his Transtiberine palace and treats his customers to a ball. Our friend Clive used jocularly to say, he believed there were no Romans. There were priests in portentous hats; there were friars with shaven crowns; there were the sham peasantry, who dressed themselves out in masquerade costumes, with bagpipe and goat-skin, with crossed leggings and scarlet petticoats, who let themselves out to artists at so many pauls per sitting; but he never passed a Roman's door except to buy a cigar or to purchase a handkerchief. Thither, as elsewhere, we carry our insular habits with us. We have a little England at Paris, a little England at Munich, Dresden, everywhere. Our friend is an Englishman, and did at Rome as the English do.

There was the polite English society, the society that flocks to see the Colosseum lighted up with blue fire, that flocks to the Vatican to behold the statues by torchlight, that hustles into the churches on public festivals in black veils and deputy-lieutenants' uniforms, and stares, and talks, and uses opera-glasses while the pontiffs of the Roman Church are performing its ancient rites, and the crowds of faithful are kneeling round the altars; the society which gives its balls and dinners, has its scandal and bickerings, its aristocrats, parvenus, toadies imported from Belgravia; has its club, its hunt, and its Hyde Park on the Pincio: and there is the other little English world, the broad-hatted, long-bearded, velvet-jacketed, jovial colony of the artists, who have their own feasts, haunts, and amusements by the side of their aristocratic compatriots, with whom but few of them have the honour to mingle.

J. J. and Clive engaged pleasant lofty apartments in the Via Gregoriana. Generations of painters had occupied these chambers and gone their way. The windows of their painting-room looked into a quaint old garden, where there were ancient statues of the Imperial time, a babbling fountain, and noble orange-trees with broad clustering leaves and golden balls of fruit, glorious to look upon. Their walks abroad were endlessly pleasant and delightful. In every street there were scores of pictures of the graceful characteristic Italian life, which our painters seem one and all to reject, preferring to depict their quack brigands, Contadini, Pifferari, and the like, because Thompson painted them before Jones, and Jones before Thompson, and so on, backwards into time. There were the children at play, the women huddled round the steps of the open doorways, in the kindly Roman winter ; grim, portentous old hags, such as Michael Angelo painted, draped in