period of anarchy-of the sanguinary conflicts between inhabitants of the same city,-brethren of the same lovely, but distracted, country.

Even to those withdrawn from the sight of warriors with "garments rolled in blood," of heaps of slain and wounded, among which women and helpless babes, accidentally killed by the maddened combatants, were seen, even to those who did not personally witness these horrors, the sounds of the tocsin and alarm-bells, intermingled with the booming of cannon, the answering peals of musketry, and the cries of the infuriated multitudes, as they met in mortal shock, were enough to elicit feelings of the deepest anxiety as well as commiseration for the victims of this unnatural strife.

Where was Victor Delorme during this period of confusion, of anarchy, of bloody conflict? Lured on by the ignis fatuus of his destiny, still cheated by the hope that some brilliant prize awaited him, he rushed madly on. Exhorting, encouraging, leading on his followers to every attack, foremost among the most intrepid, he exposed himself to every danger, and seemed to possess a charmed life.

But at the head of the last storming party, in the battle that carried the palace of the Tuileries and gave the insurgents their final triumph, Victor encountered the unyielding resistance of desperation.

Three hundred of the Swiss guards had turned to bay within the palace, faithful to the sovereign to whom they had sworn fidelity. Superhuman courage I could not avail to save these unfortunate men from the fearful odds brought against them, and they fell,

fighting to the last in the cause which they had espoused as their own

But not unavenged. Many a brave youth, trusting in his own strong arm, and in the encouraging voice of his enthusiastic commander, met his death-blow from the stronger and more practised arm of a Swiss guardsman. Victor himself, as he and his companions rushed like a whirlwind through the portals of the Tuileries, received a thrust from a bayonet that pressed him backward into their arms. He raised his sword on high, with a cry of "victory!"—but the next moment, that arm fell powerless by his side.

The battle was won,-the last conflict over, and the tri-colored flag floated above the dome of the palace, and was streaming from every height. The lilies of France, soiled and blood-stained, were trampled beneath the feet of the conquerors.

Victor was borne in triumph in the arms of his companions into the palace of the Tuileries. There were still the splendid apartments, rich with costly furniture and artistic decorations, where kings and princes in regal pomp had so lately moved in careless ease and luxury. There stood the throne, empty and but a name, the sovereign who had so lately filled it surrounded by obsequious courtiers, now an exile and a wanderer, "with none so poor to do him rever

ence."

Victor, still borne in the arms of his companions and followers, was brought near the emblazoned seat of majesty.

"Place him on the throne!" they exclaimed. "It is the only seat worthy of one so noble! If he lives,

we will sustain him; if he dies, it is an honor that his bravery well deserves to die on the throne of France!"

"Not there! not there!" exclaimed Victor, with a shudder, as they ascended the steps of the throne. "Oh, do not mock me so cruelly in this last hour of my existence ! "

But they heeded not the supplication, and intent on their own wish of rendering to their brave leader what they deemed the highest mark of their admiration of his valor, persisted in seating him on the throne.

His eager companions supported him on either side, but the warm life-blood was ebbing fast from the deep wound in his breast. For a moment Victor raised his drooping head, and unclosed his eyes-they were heavy and glazed. He looked around him, and a strong shudder passed over his frame.

"This, then, is the fulfilment of the brilliant destiny that has lured me on to a bloody death!" he murmured. "Oh, Beatrice!"

His head sunk again. "Forgive," "oh God!"

"Mother!" he murmured.

A slight convulsion followed the last half-articulated words, and the spirit had passed from time to eternity!

Victor Delorme lies buried beneath the monument that marks the spot where "the victims" of the revotion were interred. The stranger who pauses to meditate on that spot, while examining the richly sculptured façade of the Louvre on the one hand, or the ancient church of St. Germain L'Auxerrois on the

other, naturally recurs to the period when the courts of the former echoed in low murmurs the sanguinary order for the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and the bell of the latter pealed forth the dire signal for its execution. His thoughts are not with the brief career, and briefer termination of the lives, of nameless heroes, but with the mighty dead whose names, either for good or evil, have filled the pages of history.

Victor Delorme was buried near the spot where he had received his mortal wound.

There was one fair hand to hang a garland of immortelles over his early grave. Bright eyes rained pious tears to the memory of one beautiful and gifted as herself, but led astray by the restless demon of ambition,-lured on by false theories and a fancied destiny.

WHEN Reginald awoke to consciousness, after the long insensibility caused by the wound he had received from the hand of the assassin,-having thus fulfilled almost literally his promise to Constance to protect her "with his life" from the dangers that surrounded her, he found himself beneath the hospitable roof of Mr. Melville, and watched over with all the tender solicitude that his generous devotion had naturally awakened.

But the revolutionary tempest that was raging with such pitiless fury up to the very portals of the hotel, within whose walls he had found a shelter and a home, rendered every effort unavailing to procure the proper surgical assistance, at the moment it was needed; and when this difficulty was at length removed, it was impossible to arrest the fever that succeeded the extraction of the ball, which had so nearly been a messenger of death.

For many days life fluttered feebly through his veins, and his wandering senses imperfectly, and at long intervals, recalled the event that had reduced