blade. How it came there I had no means of knowing, but its presence seemed to confirm Temple's hideous story, if confirmation had been needed. I struggled for a moment with a feeling which I believed to be the sickness of death, and was conscious of nothing more till I found myself some hours later on the couch in my own room, Dr. Simpson standing by my side. It was not for some days that I made any inquiry as to Temple's burial, and it was a great relief when the physician told me that he had made every necessary arrangement. I do not know, nor do I wish to know, where he is buried. After Long Years. As the hart panteth for the water-brooks, As the scared otter looks Toward his wet covert when the dogs are near,— TEMPLE BAR. JULY 1861. The Seven Sons of Mammon. A STORY. BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. CHAPTER XIX. DOWN AMONG THE BAD MEN. NLY to die! It is not, after all, so difficult. Only to die. Have I "ONLY not heard, over and over again, the man in Hamlet slowly mouthing out the poet's magnificent reflections on the easiness of death? Yes; who would bear all this wretchedness and misery when the quietus offers itself at once in the shape of a bare bodkin? The Romans used to throw themselves on their swords. Could I throw myself on this half-blunted vilely-forged cutlass? Psha! I might as well attempt to cut my throat with a pedlar's razor. It is bad enough to have one's neck half sawn through with a leathern stock, without hacking and hewing at it with this rusty ploughshare. Ah! if I had but one of my Sowar's swords far away-the keen glittering blade in its wooden scabbard, the sword that, like Saladin's, would divide a veil cast upon it, or cleave a down-cushion in twain. How many years is it since I read the Talisman? I remember: it was at school. Lowman, the usher, lent it me. I think I lent the poor fellow five shillings in return, for he was desperately poor, and we were always laughing at his torn elbows and great ragged collars. 'Cocky Lowman' we called him, from his one eye that used to look round the corner. I wonder where he is by this time. Happier than I am, Heaven help me! Dead perhaps. Only to die! Number one hundred and three went off last night, quietly and calmly as a lamb, and gently murmuring about his mother in Heaven. It was consumption. La poitrine, as the Chirurgeon-Major called it. His mother, ay, his mother! We found her portrait in a locket hung round his neck, when the infirmier came to put the linceul on him. I VOL. II. F F am forgetting my own language. And yet the young ruffian was here but last night, and had committed, the commissary said, two murders. His mother:-and mine? "I am hale and strong, and absolutely relish the abominable victuals they give us, just as I used to do in our old bivouac days. Wretched and forlorn as I am, I find myself counting the minutes to dinner, and then again to my pipe, and the cabaret, and the dominoes. Will it end, I wonder, in my becoming a callous ruffian like that villanous old Le Camus? Perhaps. I might cease then to Think. "But only to die! If I could only die! How does a man set about blowing his brains out? There are pistols enough to be had. But could I kill the Secret as well as myself? Ah, Florence Armytage, Florence Armytage! if I had you here, I would show you that the companionship of these wretches has made me as desperate as they, and either you or I should perish, but there should be an end now and for ever to our infernal compact. "The woman says she loves me. 'Love me in return,' she never ceases to write; 'give me but one little word of love, and riches, freedom, happiness, shall be yours.' Yes, freedom, and riches, and happiness, and a fiend for a helpmate. I cannot even bring myself to lie to her. I detest, I abhor her too much. "I am hidden from the world, and have no country and no name. Dominique Cosson, Frère laïque of the Marist Fathers of Good Works at Hoogendracht, or François Vireloque of the Hulks, Belleriport, it is all one. To-morrow it may please her to give me a new alias, and to conceal me under some fresh disguise. What if I broke the oath she extorted from me? What if I defied her to do her worst? Ah! that worst. Father, mother, brethren, honour, position, and fame, would be all sunk in one great gulf of ruin and dishonour. Can my father have been as insane, as guilty, as would appear from those fatal papers? How did she become possessed of them? Would their production have the blasting result she predicted? I dare not hope otherwise. It must be so. The lighted match is in my hand, and one spark would set our house in a blaze. "For how many years has that woman been the curse of my life? If, when I came home first, I had gone straight to England, I might have avoided falling into her toils. But Fate ruled that I was to tarry in Paris, to know her, and become her slave. Am I wholly guiltless either? Did I never fan the flame of her wretched love? Have I ever been false, even for a moment, even in thought, to the woman who gave me her heart, and who should now be my bride? What is she doing now? Where is she? To her I am dead-dead and buried. Has she forgotton me? Has she ever felt grief at my loss? Is it assuaged now, and is she intent on becoming another man's wife? A strange girl! I dare not doubt the love she professed for me. I admire, I esteem, I revere her; but do I love her as I should? Was there not always something austere and frigid about her that repelled me when I would have grown fond? Her letters were as haughty as she herself was. Lovers talk nonsense. She never did. She never responded to one word of endearment; and when she subscribed herself as 'with sincere affection,' it was as though she had stated herself to be my 'obedient servant.' "Is this to be the end of my miserable life? Are there any more scenes wanting to complete the drama of sorrow? Will despair pass from sullenness to desperation? and shall I have at last the despicable courage to kill myself? I should not be the first guardian of this pesthouse who had made an end of his intolerable captivity. Did not Le Camus tell me about Briffard, my predecessor, who, months ago, hanged himself in a saw-pit? He had been a garde-chasse, a game-keeper,-and had shot a poacher dead. Even the sulky and morose comrades he had here avoided and mistrusted the man upon whose hands there was blood. He had never been punished for his crime, nay, had received reward—such as it was-for an act of 'courageous devotion,' as the Procureur Impérial called it; but he was none the less a pariah and an outcast. The poacher whom he had slain left a wife and children. The woman, his widow, used to make a journey to Belleriport every Easter and every New Year,-she had to come over a hundred miles on foot, poor woman, and wait for Briffard at the dockyard-gates, and show him her dead husband's shirt, with the bloody rent in the breast where his slugs had entered, and solemnly curse him. Easter and New Year, New Year and Easter, she never missed. The convicts used to call the doomed man Cain. Like Cain, his punishment was greater than he could bear, and one day he hanged himself. The shop where he bought the rope is close to the cabaret. I pass it every day. He wanted the halter, he said, for a dog. It was for himself. The commissary never liked Briffard. He told him one day that it was only through a lucky accident that he did not wear a brand on his shoulder and irons on his ankles. The manner of his death was an excuse for denying military honours to his funeral. Military honours? Yes; they go through that mockery even with a dead garde-chiourme. We are supposed to form part of the armed force, and to be under les drapeaux de l'étatthe banners of the State; its upas-tree, rather. "I have not killed a man as Briffard did; yet he could not have been wretcheder than I am. A phantom continually haunted him, it was said the ghost of the poacher he had shot. I too am haunted, by the phantom of Myself. My own phantom! A strange one to be pursued by. I see myself rich and prosperous, and caressed. Coming home to a feast of love and happiness. Poor men were envious of me even while they flattered. Mothers intrigued and fawned, and strove to palm off their daughters upon one who was heir to so many thousands a year. Thousands a year! How long is it since I had any money? How I hunger for the paltry copper dole a day which is allotted to me for my hangman's office! Thousands a year! I have not five francs in |