a desire to know him completely, a wish mingled with remorse which turned to increased execration.

At last he advanced; then the stupefaction of surprise disappeared. Numbers of arms were raised, and he was lost to sight.

The staircase of the Acropolis had sixty steps. He descended them as though he were rolled down in a torrent from the top of a mountain; three times he was seen to leap, and then he alighted below on his feet.

His shoulders were bleeding, his breast was panting with great shocks; and he made such efforts to burst his bonds that his arms, which were crossed on his naked loins, swelled like pieces of a serpent.

Several streets began in front of him, leading from the spot at which he found himself. In each of them a triple row of bronze chains fastened to the navels of the Pataec Gods extended in parallel lines from one end to the other; the crowd was massed against the houses, and servants, belonging to the Ancients, walked in the middle brandishing thongs.

One of them drove him forward with a great blow; Matho began to move.

They thrust their arms over the chains, shouting out that the road had been left too wide for him; and he passed along, felt, pricked, and slashed by all those fingers; when he reached the end of one street another appeared; several times he flung himself to one side to bite them; they speedily dispersed, the chains held him back, and the crowd burst out laughing.

A child rent his ear; a young girl, hiding the point of a spindle in her sleeve, split his cheek; they tore handfuls of hair from him and strips of flesh; others smeared his face with sponges steeped in filth and fastened upon sticks. A stream of blood started from the right side of his neck; frenzy immediately set in. This last Barbarian was to them a representative of all the Barbarians, and all the army; they were taking vengeance on him for their disasters, their terrors, and their shame. The rage of the mob developed with its gratification; the curving chains were overstrained, and were on the point of breaking; the people did not feel the blows of the slaves who struck at them to drive them back; some clung to the projections of the houses; all the openings in the walls were stopped up with heads; and they howled at him the mischief that they could not inflict upon him.

It was atrocious, filthy abuse, mingled with ironical encouragements and with imprecations; and, his present tortures not being enough for them, they foretold to him others that should be still more terrible in eternity.

This vast baying filled Carthage with stupid continuity. Frequently a single syllable-a hoarse, deep, and frantic intonation would be repeated for several minutes by the entire people. The walls would vibrate with it from top to bottom, and both sides of the street would seem to Matho to be coming against him, and carrying him off the ground, like two immense arms stifling him in the air.

Nevertheless he remembered that he had experienced something like it before. The same crowd was on the terraces, there were the same looks and the same wrath; but then he had walked free, all had then dispersed, for a God covered him -and the recollection of this, gaining precision by degrees, brought a crushing sadness upon him. Shadows passed before his eyes; the town whirled round in his head, his blood streamed from a wound in his hip, he felt that he was dying; his hams bent, and he sank quite gently upon the pavement.

Some one went to the peristyle of the temple of Melkarth, took thence the bar of a tripod, heated red hot in the coals, and, slipping it beneath the first chain, pressed it against his wound. The flesh was seen to smoke; the hootings of the people drowned his voice; he was standing again.

Six paces further on, and he fell a third and again a fourth time; but some new torture always made him rise. They discharged little drops of boiling oil through tubes at him; they strewed pieces of broken glass beneath his feet; still he walked At the corner of the street of Satheb he leaned his back against the wall beneath the penthouse of a shop, and advanced no further.

on.

The slaves of the Council struck him with their whips of hippopotamus leather, so furiously and long that the fringes of their tunics were drenched with sweat. Matho appeared insensible; suddenly he started off and began to run at random, making noise with his lips like one shivering with severe cold. He threaded the streets of Boudes, and the street of Sœpo, crossed the Green Market, and reached the square of Khamon. He now belonged to the priests; the slaves had just dispersed the crowd, and there was more room. Matho gazed round him and his eyes encountered Salammbô.

At the first step that he had taken she had risen; then, as he approached, she had involuntarily advanced by degrees to the edge of the terrace; and soon all external things were blotted out, and she saw only Matho. Silence fell in her soul—one of those abysses wherein the whole world disappears beneath the pressure of a single thought, a memory, a look. This man who was walking toward her attracted her.

Excepting his eyes he had no appearance of humanity left; he was a long, perfectly red shape; his broken bonds hung down his thighs, but they could not be distinguished from the tendons of his wrists, which were laid quite bare; his mouth remained wide open; from his eye sockets there darted flames which seemed to rise up to his hair-and the wretch still walked on!

He reached the foot of the terrace. Salammbô was leaning over the balustrade; those frightful eyeballs were scanning her, and there rose within her a consciousness of all that he had suffered for her. Although he was in his death agony, she could see him once more kneeling in his tent, encircling her waist with his arms, and stammering out gentle words; she thirsted to feel them and hear them again; she did not want him to die! At this moment Matho gave a great start; she was on the point of shrieking aloud. He fell backward and did not stir again.

Salammbo was borne back, nearly swooning, to her throne by the priests who flocked about her. They congratulated her; it was her work. All clapped their hands and stamped their feet, howling her name.

A man darted upon the corpse. Although he had no beard he had the cloak of a priest of Moloch on his shoulder, and in his belt that species of knife which they employed for cutting up the sacred meat, and which terminated, at the end of the handle, in a golden spatula. He cleft Matho's breast with a single blow, then snatched out the heart and laid it upon the spoon; and Schahabarim, uplifting his arm, offered it to the

sun.

The sun sank behind the waves; his rays fell like long arrows upon the red heart. As the beatings diminished the planet sank into the sea; and at the last palpitation it disappeared.

Then from the gulf to the lagoon, and from the isthmus to the pharos, in all the streets, on all the houses, and on all the

temples, there was a single shout; sometimes it paused, to be again renewed; the building shook with it; Carthage was convulsed, as it were, in the spasm of Titanic joy and boundless hope.

Narr' Havas, drunk with pride, passed his left arm beneath Salammbo's waist in token of possession; and taking a gold patera in his right hand, he drank to the Genius of Carthage.

Salammbô rose like her husband, with a cup in her hand, to drink also. She fell down again with her head lying over the back of the throne-pale, stiff, with parted lips-and her loosened hair hung to the ground.

Thus died Hamilcar's daughter for having touched the mantle of Tanith.

THE UNDERTAKER.

By A. S. PUSHKIN.

(Translated by S. S. Skidelsky.)

[ALEXANDER SERGEJEVICH PUSHKIN: A Russian poet; born at Moscow, May 26, 1799; died at St. Petersburg, January 29, 1837. He was educated at the Lyceum of Tzarskoe Selo, and entered the service of the government, but his sharp and fearless attacks on various public men and institutions brought about his dismissal. He was sent to southern Russia in 1820, and thence, in 1824, to his estate near Pskov. His poems are as remarkable for their force and realism as for their beauty and elegance of form. They include: “Ruslan and Liudmila" (1820); "The Prisoner of the Caucasus" (1822); "Fountain of Bakhchiserai (1826); "Tzigani "Eugene Onegin (1827); (1828); "Poltava" (1829); "Boris Godunov," a tragedy; "A History of the Revolt of Pugachev" (1834); and many others.]

THE enlightened reader doubtless remembers that both Shakespeare and Walter Scott portray their gravediggers as cheerful and humorous creatures. With due deference to the truth, we cannot emulate their example, and must confess that the disposition of our undertaker fully harmonizes with his somber trade. Adrian Prokhorof was of a stern, thoughtful, and pensive temperament, and if he ever broke his silence it was only upon the most urgent occasions, such, for example, as reprimanding his daughters if he found them sitting idly at the window and gazing at the passers-by, or asking a threefold price for his coffins of those who were so unfortunate (and at times, perhaps, so fortunate) as to be in need of such articles.

Many and varied were the thoughts upon which Prokhorof's mind dwelt this evening while finishing his seventh cup of tea. He thought of the last funeral, during that memorable rain storm, which had caused so much damage to his hearse, robes, hats, ctc. He anticipated unavoidable expenses, for his undertaking supplies in general were in a very poor state indeed. Of course, he entertained great hopes with regard to the wealthy Mrs. Truchina, who for nearly a year had been hovering between life and death.

But Truchina was slow in taking her departure—a circumstance which had caused him no little anxiety. Besides, he entertained some fears lest her heirs should engage another undertaker, notwithstanding their faithful promise to award the job of burying their mother to him. Sadder and sadder grew Prokhorof as he advanced to his tenth cup of tea, but a knock at the door soon brought his thoughts and reflections to a standstill.

"Come in!" uttered the undertaker. A man who at a glance could be taken to be a German tradesman made his appearance and with a most happy smile upon his face approached the undertaker.

"I beg your pardon, kind neighbor," he began in broken Russian"beg pardon for disturbing your peace. . . . It is my wish to make your acquaintance. I am a shoemaker by trade and my name is Gottlieb Schultz. I live across the street in that little house, which faces your windows. I am celebrating my silver wedding to-morrow and we shall be greatly honored to have you and your daughters to dinner with us.

This invitation was courteously accepted. Precisely at noon on the following day the undertaker, accompanied by his daughters, started toward Schultz's residence.

The shoemaker's little house was crowded to its utmost capacity, mostly with German mechanics, their wives and apprentices.

Of the Russian officials there was only one present - an old policeman, Urko, who, notwithstanding his humble name and station in life, was well trained in the art of predisposing people of influence in his favor. He was very popular and was well known to all the German residents in the Nikitski district, and no social affair among them ever took place without his

presence.

Adrian Prokhorof became charmed with Urko almost at first