heard in it. A memorable storm of thunder could not so much as get into the throat of Monand lightning broke with that sweep of water, seigneur without the aid of four strong men beand there was not a moment's interval in crash, sides the Cook. and fire, and rain, until after the moon rose at midnight.

Yes. It took four men, all four ablaze with gorgeous decoration, and the Chief of them unThe great bell of Saint Paul's was striking able to exist with fewer than two gold watches One in the cleared air, when Mr. Lorry, escort-in his pocket, emulative of the noble and chaste ed by Jerry, high-booted and bearing a lantern, fashion set by Monseigneur, to conduct the hapset forth on his return-passage to Clerkenwell. py chocolate to Monseigneur's lips. One lackey There were solitary patches of road on the way carried the chocolate-pot into the sacred presbetween Soho and Clerkenwell, and Mr. Lorry, ence; a second milled and frothed the chocomindful of footpads, always retained Jerry for late with the little instrument he bore for that this service: though it was usually performed a function; a third presented the favored napgood two hours earlier. kin; a fourth (he of the two gold watches) poured the chocolate out. It was impossible for Monseigneur to dispense with one of these attendants on the chocolate and hold his high place under the admiring Heavens. Deep would have been the blot upon his escutcheon if his chocolate had been ignobly waited on by only three men; he must have died of two.

"What a night it has been! Almost a night, Jerry," said Mr. Lorry, "to bring the dead out of their graves."

"I never see the night myself, master-nor yet I don't expect to it what would do that," answered Jerry.

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Good-night, Mr. Carton," said the man of business-"Good-night, Mr. Darnay. Shall we ever see such a night again, together!"

Perhaps. Perhaps see the great crowd of people, with its rush and roar, bearing down upon them, too.

CHAPTER VII. MONSEIGNEUR IN TOWN.

Monseigneur had been out at a little supper last night, where the Comedy and the Grand Opera were charmingly represented. Monseigneur was out at a little supper most nights, with fascinating company. So polite and so impressible was Monseigneur that the Comedy and the Grand Opera had far more influence with him in the tiresome articles of state affairs and state secrets than the needs of all France. A happy circumstance for France, as the like always is for all countries similarly favored!always was for England (by way of example) in the regretted days of the merry Stuart who sold it.

Monseigneur had one truly noble idea of general public business, which was to let every thing go on in its own way; of particular public business, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea that it must all go his way-tend to his own power and pocket. Of his pleasures, general and particular, Monseigneur had the other truly noble idea, that the world was made for them. The text of his order (altered from the original by only a pronoun, which is not much) ran: "The earth and the fullness thereof are mine, saith Monseigneur."

Yet Monseigneur had slowly found that vulgar embarrassments crept into his affairs, both private and public; and he had, as to both classes of affairs, allied himself perforce with a Farmer-General. As to finances public, because Monseigneur could not make any thing at all of them, and must consequently let them out to somebody who could; as to finances private, because Farmer-Generals were rich, and MonMONSEIGNEUR, one of the seigneur, after generations of great luxury and great lords in power at the expense, was growing poor. Hence MonseiCourt, held his fortnightly gneur had taken his sister from a convent, while reception in his grand ho- there was yet time to ward off the impending vail, tel in Paris. Monseigneur the cheapest garment she could wear, and had was in his inner room, his bestowed her as a prize upon a very rich Farmsanctuary of sanctuaries, er-General, poor in family. Which Farmerthe Holiest of Holiests to General, carrying an appropriate cane with a the crowd of worshipers in golden apple on the top of it, was now among the suit of rooms without. the company in the outer rooms, much prosMonseigneur was about to trated before by mankind, always excepting sutake his chocolate. Mon-perior mankind of the blood of Monseigneur, seigneur could swallow a who, his own wife included, looked down upon great many things with ease, and was by some him with the loftiest contempt. few sullen minds supposed to be rather rapidly swallowing France; but his morning's chocolate

A sumptuous man was the Farmer-General. Thirty horses stood in his stables, twenty-four

male domestics sat in his halls, six body-women waited on his wife. As one who pretended to do nothing but plunder and forage where he could, the Farmer-General-howsoever his matrimonial relations conduced to social morality -was at least the greatest reality among the personages who attended at the hotel of Monseigneur that day.

The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance upon Monseigneur. In the outermost room were half a dozen exceptional people who had had, for a few years, some vague misgiving in them that things in general were going rather wrong. As a promising way of setting them right, half of the half dozen had become members of a fantastic sect of Convulsionists, and were even then considering within themselves whether they should foam, rage, roar, and turn cataleptic on the spot-thereby setting up a highly intelligible finger-post to the Future, for Monseigneur's guidance. Besides these Dervishes were other three who had rushed into another sect, which mended matters with a jargon about "the Centre of truth:" holding that Man had got out of the Centre of truth-which did not need much demonstration-but had not got out of the Circumference, and that he was to be kept from flying out of the Circumference, and was even to be shoved back into the Centre, by fasting and seeing of spirits. Among these, accordingly, much discoursing with spirits went on-and it did a world of good which never became manifest.

For the rooms, though a beautiful scene to look at, and adorned with every device of decoration that the taste and skill of the time could achieve, were, in truth, not a sound business; considered with any reference to the scarecrows in the rags and night-caps elsewhere (and not so far off, either, but that the watching towers of Nôtre-Dame, almost equidistant from the two extremes, could see them both), they would have been an exceedingly uncomfortable businessif that could have been any body's business, at the house of Monseigneur. Military officers destitute of military knowledge; naval officers with no idea of a ship; civil officers without a notion of affairs; brazen ecclesiastics, of the worst world worldly, with sensual eyes, loose tongues, and looser lives; all totally unfit for their several callings; all lying horribly in pretending to be- But the comfort was, that all the company at long to them; but all nearly or remotely of the the grand hotel of Monseigneur were perfectly order of Monseigneur, and therefore foisted on dressed. If the Day of Judgment had only all public employments from which any thing been ascertained to be a dress day, every body was to be got these were to be told off by the there would have been eternally correct. Such score and the score. People not immediately frizzling and powdering and sticking up of hair, connected with Monseigneur or the State, yet such delicate complexions artificially preserved equally unconnected with any thing that was and mended, such gallant swords to look at, real, or with lives passed in traveling by any and such delicate honor to the sense of smell, straight road to any true earthly end, were no would surely keep any thing going forever and less abundant. Doctors who made great for ever. The exquisite gentlemen of the finest tunes out of dainty remedies for imaginary dis- breeding wore little pendent trinkets that chinkorders that never existed smiled upon their ed as they languidly moved; these golden fetcourtly patients in the ante-chambers of Mon-ters rang like precious little bells; and what seigneur. Projectors who had discovered every with that ringing, and with the rustle of silk kind of remedy for the little evils with which and brocade and fine linen, there was a flutter the State was touched, except the remedy of in the air that fanned Saint Antoine and his setting to work in earnest to root out a single devouring hunger far away. sin, poured their distracting babble into any Dress was the one unfailing talisman and ears they could lay hold of, at the reception of charm used for keeping all things in their Monseigneur. Unbelieving Philosophers who places. Every body was dressed for a Fancy were remodeling the world with words, and mak- Ball that was never to leave off. From the ing card-towers of Babel to scale the skies with, Palace of the Tuileries, through Monseigneur talked with Unbelieving Chemists who had an and the whole Court, through the Chambers, eye on the transmutation of metals, at this won- the Tribunals of Justice, and all society (exderful gathering accumulated by Monseigneur. cept the scarecrows), the Fancy Ball descended Exquisite gentlemen of the finest breeding, to the Common Executioner; who, in pursuance which was at that remarkable time-and has of the charm, was required to officiate “frizzled, been since-to be known by its fruits of indif- powdered, in a gold-laced coat, pumps, and ference to every natural subject of human inter- white silk stockings." At the gallows and the est, were in the most exemplary state of ex-wheel-the axe was a rarity-Monsieur Paris, haustion, at the hotel of Monseigneur. Such as it was the episcopal mode among his brother homes had these various notabilities left behind Professors of the provinces, Monsieur Orleans, them in the fine world of Paris that the Spies among the assembled devotees of Monseigneur -forming a goodly half of the polite company -would have found it hard to discover among the angels of that sphere one solitary wife who, in her manners and appearance, owned to being a Mother. Indeed, except for the mere act of bringing a troublesome creature into this world -which does not go far toward the realization of the name of mother-there was no such thing known to the fashion. Peasant women kept the unfashionable babies close, and brought them up; and charming grandmammas of sixty dressed and supped as at twenty.

and the rest, to call him, presided in this dainty dress. And who among the company at Monseigneur's reception, in that seventeen hundred and eightieth year of our Lord, could possibly doubt that a system rooted in a frizzled hangman, powdered, gold-laced, pumped, and white silk stockinged, would see the very stars out!

Monseigneur having eased his four men of their burdens and taken his chocolate, caused the doors of the Holiest of Holiests to be thrown open, and issued forth. Then what submission, what cringing and fawning, what servility, what abject humiliation! As to bowing down in body and spirit, nothing in that way was left for

Heaven-which may have been one among oth- | out of its way. At last, swooping at a streeter reasons why the worshipers of Monseigneur corner by a fountain, one of its wheels came to never troubled it. a sickening little jolt, and there was a loud cry from a number of voices, and the horses reared and plunged.

Bestowing a word of promise here and a smile there, a whisper on one happy slave and a wave of the hand on another, Monseigneur affably passed through his rooms to the remote region of the Circumference of Truth. There Monseigneur turned and came back again, and so in due course of time got himself shut up in his sanctuary by the chocolate sprites, and was seen

no more.

The show being over, the flutter in the air became quite a little storm, and the precious little bells went ringing down stairs. There was soon but one person left of all the crowd, and he, with his hat under his arm and his snuff-box in his hand, slowly passed among the mirrors on his way out.

"I devote you," said this person, stopping at the last door on his way, and turning in the direction of the sanctuary, "to the Devil!"

With that he shook the snuff from his fingers as if he had shaken the dust from his feet, and quietly walked down stairs.

But for the latter inconvenience the carriage probably would not have stopped; carriages were often known to drive on and leave their wounded behind; and why not? But the frightened valet had got down in a hurry, and there were twenty hands at the horses' bridles. "What has gone wrong?" said Monsieur, calmly looking out.

A tall man in a night-cap had caught up a bundle from among the feet of the horses, and had laid it on the basement of the fountain, and was down in the mud and wet, howling over it like a wild animal.

"Pardon, Monsieur the Marquis!" said a ragged and submissive man; "it is a child." "Why does he make that abominable noise? Is it his child?"

"Excuse me, Monsieur the Marquis—it is a pity-yes."

The fountain was a little removed; for the street opened, where it was, into a space some ten or twelve yards square. As the tall man suddenly got up from the ground and came running at the carriage, Monsieur the Marquis clapped his hand for an instant on his swordhilt.

"Dead!"

He was a man of about sixty, handsomely dressed, haughty in manner, and with a face like a fine mask. A face of a transparent paleness; every feature in it clearly defined; one set expression on it. The nose, beautifully formed otherwise, was very slightly pinched at the top of each nostril. In those two compres"Killed!" shrieked the man, in wild dessions, or dints, the only little change that theperation, extending both arms at their length face ever showed resided. They persisted in above his head and staring at him. changing color sometimes, and they would be occasionally dilated and contracted by something like a faint pulsation; then they gave a look of treachery and cruelty to the whole countenance. Examined with attention, its capacity of helping such a look was to be found in the line of the mouth and the lines of the orbits of the eyes being much too horizontal and thin; still, in the effect the face made, it was a handsome face, and a remarkable one.

The people closed round, and looked at Monsieur the Marquis. There was nothing revealed by the many eyes that looked at him but watchfulness and eagerness; there was no visible menacing or anger. Neither did the people say any thing; after the first cry they had been silent, and they remained so. The voice of the submissive man who had spoken was flat and tame in its extreme submission. Monsieur the Marquis ran his eyes over them all, as if they had been mere rats come out of their holes. He took out his purse.

He threw out a gold coin for the valet to pick up, and all the heads craned forward that all the eyes might look down at it as it fell. The tall man called out again, with a most unearthly cry, "Dead !”

Its owner went down stairs into the courtyard, got into his carriage, and drove away. Not many people had talked with him at the "It is extraordinary to me," said he, "that reception; he had stood in a little space apart, you people can not take care of yourselves and and Monseigneur might have been warmer in your children. One or the other of you is forhis manner. It appeared, under the circum-ever in the way. How do I know what injury stances, rather agreeable to him to see the you have done my horses? See! Give him common people dispersed before his horses, that." and often barely escaping from being run down. His man drove as if he were charging an enemy, and the furious recklessness of the man brought no check into the face or to the lips of the master. The complaint had sometimes made itself audible, even in that deaf city and dumb age, that, in the narrow streets without foot-ways, the fierce patrician custom of hard driving endangered and maimed the mere vulgar in a barbarous manner. But few cared enough for that to think of it a second time, and in this matter, as in all others, the common wretches were left to get out of their difficulties as they could.

With a wild rattle and clatter, and an inhuman abandonment of consideration not easy to be understood in these days, the carriage dashed through streets and swept round corners, with women screaming before it, and men clutching each other and clutching children,

He was arrested by the quick arrival of another man, for whom the rest made way. On seeing him, the miserable creature fell upon his shoulder, sobbing and crying, and pointing to the fountain, where some women were stooping over the motionless bundle, and moving gently about it. They were as silent, however, as the men.

"I know all, I know all," said the last-comer. "Be a brave man, my Gaspard! It is better for the poor little plaything to die so than to live. It has died in a moment without pain. Could it have lived an hour as happily?"

"You are a philosopher, you there," said the Marquis, smiling. "How do they call you?"

men, who had tended the bundle while it lay on the base of the fountain, sat there watching the running of the water and the rolling of the Fancy Ball-when the one woman who had stood conspicuous, knitting, still knitted on with the steadfastness of Fate. The water of the fountain ran, the swift river ran, the day ran into evening, so much life in the city ran into death according to rule, time and tide waited for no man, the rats were sleeping close together in their dark holes again, the Fancy Ball was lighted up at supper, all things ran their course.

CHAPTER VIII.

MONSEIGNEUR IN THE COUNTRY.

A BEAUTIFUL landscape, with the corn bright in it but not abundant. Patches of poor rye where corn should have been, patches of poor pease and beans, patches of most coarse vegetable substitutes for wheat. On inanimate nature, as on the men and women who cultivated it, a prevalent tendency toward an appearance of vegetating unwillingly—a dejected disposition to give up, and wither away.

Monsieur the Marquis in his traveling carriage (which might have been lighter), conducted by four post-horses and two postillions, fagged up a steep hill. A blush on the countenance of Monsieur the Marquis was no impeachment of his high breeding; it was not from within; it was occasioned by an external circumstance beyond his control-the setting sun.

The sunset struck so brilliantly into the traveling carriage when it gained the hill-top that its occupant was steeped in crimson. "It will die out," said Monsieur the Marquis, glancing at his hands, directly."

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In effect, the sun was so low that it dipped at the moment. When the heavy drag had been adjusted to the wheel, and the carriage slid down hill, with a cinderous smell, in a cloud of dust, the red glow departed quickly; the sun and the Marquis going down together, there was no glow left when the drag was taken off.

But there remained a broken country, bold and open, a little village at the bottom of the hill, a broad sweep and rise beyond it, a churchtower, a wind-mill, a forest for the chase, and a crag with a fortress on it used as a prison. Round upon all these darkening objects, as the night drew on, the Marquis looked with the air of one who was coming near home.

Few children were to be seen, and no dogs. As to the men and women, their choice on earth was stated in the prospect-Life on the lowest terms that could sustain it, down in the little village under the mill; or captivity and Death in the dominant prison on the crag.

Heralded by a courier in advance, and by the cracking of his postillions' whip which twined snake-like about their heads in the evening air, as if he came attended by the Furies, Monsieur the Marquis drew up in his traveling carriage at the posting-house gate. It was hard by the fountain, and the peasants suspended their operations to look at him. He looked at them, and saw in them, without knowing it, the slow, sure filing down of misery-worn face and figure, that was to make the meagreness of Frenchmen an English superstition which should survive the truth through the best part of a hundred years.

Monsieur the Marquis cast his eyes over the submissive faces that drooped before him, as the like of himself had drooped before Monseigneur of the Court-only the difference was, that these faces drooped merely to suffer, and not to propitiate-when a grizzled mender of the roads joined the group.

"Bring me hither that fellow!" said the Marquis to the courier.

The fellow was brought, cap in hand, and the other fellows closed round to look and listen, in the manner of the people at the Paris fountain. "I passed you on the road?" "Monseigneur, it is true.

of being passed on the road."

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I had the honor

Coming up the hill, and at the top of the hill, both ?"

"Monseigneur, it is true."

"What did you look at so fixedly?"

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Monseigneur, I looked at the man.

He stooped a little, and with his tattered blue cap pointed under the carriage. All his fellows stooped to look under the carriage.

"What man, pig? And why look there?"
"Pardon, Monseigneur; he swung by the
chain of the shoe-the drag."

"Who?" demanded the traveler.
'Monseigneur, the man."

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May the Devil carry away these idiots! How do you call the man? You know all the men of this part of the country. Who was he?"

"Your clemency, Monseigneur! He was not of this part of the country. Of all the days of my life I never saw him."

"Swinging by the chain? To be suffocated?"

"With your gracious permission, that was the wonder of it, Monseigneur. His head hanging over-like this!"

He turned himself sideways to the carriage and leaned back, with his face thrown up to the sky and his head hanging down; then recovered himself, fumbled with his cap and made a bow.

The village had its one poor street, with its poor brewery, poor tannery, poor tavern, poor stable-yard for relays of post-horses, poor fountain, all usual poor appointments. It had its poor people too. All its people were poor, and many of them were sitting at their doors shredding spare onions and the like for supper, while many were at the fountain washing leaves and grasses and any such small yieldings of the earth that could be eaten. Expressive signs of what made them poor were not wanting; the tax for the state, the tax for the Church, the tax for the lord, tax local and tax general, were to be paid here and to be paid there, according to solemn inscription in the little village, until the The picture produced an immense sensation wonder was that there was any village left un-in the little crowd; but all eyes, without comswallowed. paring notes with other eyes, looked at Mon

"What was he like?"

"Monseigneur, he was whiter than the millAll covered with dust, white as a spectre, tall as a spectre !"

er.