Khlestakof-Good-by, Antón Antónovich !
Governor-Good-by, your Excellency!

Women's Voices-Good-by, Iván Alexándrovich!
Khlestakof-Good-by, mámenka!

Driver-Gee-up, my beauties!

[Bell tinkles; the curtain falls.

Enter the JUDGE, CHARITY COMMISSIONER, GOVERNOR, DOBCHÍNSKI, BOBCHÍNSKI, and LUKA LUKÍCH.

Judge-Who was it then who first gave out he was the Revizór? Answer me !

Charity Commissioner [shrugging his shoulders] - It all happened in such a way that I wouldn't tell you, if you were to kill me. Our wits were befogged-it was the devil's doing!

Judge-Who started the idea? Why, there they arethose enterprising young bucks!

[Points to DOвCHÍNSKI and BOвCHÍNSKI. Bobchinski- I swear it wasn't me! I never thought Dobchinski-I hadn't the least idea

Charity Commissioner - Undoubtedly it was you!

Luká Why, certainly it was; they ran like mad from the inn with the news" He's here, he's come, he pays no money!" A fine bird you discovered!

Governor-Of course, it was you you gossiping busybodies, you damnable liars !

Charity Commissioner - I wish you had gone to the devil with your revizór and your stories!

Governor All you do is to run about the town and meddle with everybody, you confounded chatterboxes, you tittle-tattling scandal mongers, you short-tailed jackdaws!

Judge-You confounded bunglers!
Luká-You dirty nightcaps!

Charity Commissioner - You pot-bellied drivelers!

[All crowd up to them threateningly.

Bobchinski - Yéi Bóhu, it wasn't me, it was Dobchinski! Dobchinski-No, Peter Ivánovich, you certainly were the

first to

Bobchinski-No, I did not-you began it.

Enter a Gendarme.

Gendarme - The Inspector General sent by Imperial com

mand has arrived, and requests your attendance at once. He awaits you in the inn.

[They are thunderstruck at this announcement. The ladies utter simultaneous ejaculations of amazement; the whole group suddenly shift their positions and remain as if petrified.

IRMA'S REMORSE.

BY BERTHOLD AUERBACH.

(From "On the Heights.")

[BERTHOLD AUERBACH: A German writer; born in 1812; died in 1882. He was of Jewish extraction, and received his education at the universities of Heidelberg and Munich. His parents designed him for the Jewish priesthood, but his philosophical tastes being somewhat advanced for his time, he finally abandoned that career. His writings cover a wide range, including history, biography, philosophy, and fiction. He wrote, among others, a "Life of Frederick the Great," published under the pseudonym of Theobald Chauber, and a version of Spinoza's philosophy in the German, a work displaying much painstaking care. Among a great number of other works may be mentioned "On the Heights," generally considered to be his best work in fiction, and "The Villa on the Rhine." "The Head Forester" was published two years before his death.]

HE who destroys his life does not destroy his own life alone.

The child who afflicts a father assists in preparing his grave.

Upon my brow there stands an inextinguishable print, a Cain mark from the hand of my father.

I can never again look at my own face, nor can I ever let the eye of another look on it.

me.

Can I flee from myself? Everywhere myself must follow

I am a castaway, lost, and ruined

Such was the dreary monotone that rang through Irma's soul again and again.

She lay in the darkened room, where not a sunbeam was allowed to penetrate, nor a ray of light to enter; she was alone with herself and darkness. Her thoughts called to her like voices, on the right, on the left, from above, and from below, everywhere- and it often seemed to her as if her father's hand hovered through the gloom with an outstretched finger of flame.

She heard without the voices of Bruno and the physician; Bruno wanted to ask her many things, Gunther wished to return to the capital. Irma answered that she could see no one; she commissioned Gunther with a thousand greetings to all who cared for her.

Gunther charged the family doctor and the maid to watch carefully over Irma; he sent a messenger to Emmy in the

convent.

Irma remained in darkness and in solitude.

The tempter came to her, and said :—

"Why dost thou pine away thy young life? the whole world lies before thee with its splendor and beauty. Where is a trace upon thy brow? the hand that left it is stiff and decayed. Rise up! the world is thine! why languish away? why mortify thyself? everything lives for itself, everything lives its time. Thy father has consummated his life, consummate thou thine own! What is sin?-death has no right to life, life alone has right

Hither and thither the struggle tormented her, and suddenly in the gloom she seemed to have before her the New Testament scene, in which Satan and the Archangel dispute about the body of Moses.

"I am no dead body," she burst forth, "and there are no angels and there are no devils! All is a lie from generation to generation they sing to all sorts of tales as they do to children in the darkness.

"The day is here. I can pull aside my curtain and the world of light is mine. Have not thousands erred like me, and still live happy?"

She rushed to the window. It seemed to her as if she lay buried alive in the earth, her imagination transported her to that one grave –

"I must have light, light!"

She raised the curtain.

A broad ray of light came in. She sprang back; the curtain fell again and she lay in dark

ness.

Presently she heard a voice which went deep to her heart. Colonel Bronnen had come from the capital to show the last token of respect to Eberhardt; he begged Irma—and his strong voice was half stifled to do him the favor and let him mourn with her for the dead.

Irma's blood seemed to congeal in her heart. She opened

the door and held out her hand to her friend in the dark; he pressed it, and she heard him, strong man as he was, weeping loudly. As if storm-driven, the thoughts passed through her mind: there stands a man who could rescue thee, and thou couldst serve him, and be subject to him- but how wouldst thou dare?

"I thank you," she said at last; "may you ever feel the happiness of having acted kindly to the departed one and me"

Her voice faltered; she could not say more.

Bronnen went: he left her in the darkness.

Irma was again alone.

The last hold which she had left in life was broken. Could she have imagined what lines, from a torn letter picked up on the public way, Bronnen had in his pocket, she would have screamed aloud.

One thought alone was ever awake within her. What was it to her to see the sun rise so many thousand times more, and every sunbeam and every eye would make writing the glare, and words would be an everlasting terror to her. Fatherdaughter who would efface those words from language, that she might never hear them again, never read them again?

She felt a sort of unfathomable void in her mind. The one and only thought was ever returning, it was never to be exhausted, and yet every side of it had been weighed, and brooding reflection had turned it over and over, with crushing power, indefatigably and yet wearyingly, in a thousand different aspects.

Then there came on that stupor of mind which is utter thoughtlessness. Nothing to think, nothing to desire, nothing to do. Chaos had fallen over the individual man, and beyond it hovered intangible objects. Let them come; be still as a beast for sacrifice, upon whose head the ax of the officiating priest is to be uplifted. The destiny must be accomplished; thou canst do nothing, thou canst only stand still and not shrink away from it.

Irma lay thus for hours.

Outside her room, the pendulum of the great clock ticked, and the sound seemed ever saying, "Father-daughter, daughter-father." For hours she heard nothing but the ticking, and ever the words, Father-daughter, daughter father! She longed to call out and order them to stop the clock, but she forbore. She tried to force herself not to hear these words

in the ticking of the pendulum. But she could not succeed. Father-daughter, daughter — father! the pendulum still kept on repeating.

That which had once been the free play of her humor, now played with her. “What hast thou seen of the world?" she said to herself. "A little segment. Thou must now make a journey round the whole earth; that shall be thy pilgrimage, and so thou wilt forget thyself. Thou must become acquainted with the whole planet, on which these creatures creep about, who call themselves men, and who stupefy their misery with digging and planting, with preaching and singing, with chiseling and painting, until they die. Stupefaction is every

thing"

And in her mind pictures formed themselves, carrying her into boundless distances, the faithful servant pitching the tent in the desert, and perhaps some wild race approaching

Half dreaming she heard the tomtom, and saw herself borne away, adorned with peacock's feathers, and dusky young forms dancing round her.

Her lively fancy had once amused itself with the idea, and it now arose of itself before her, half maddening her, as the sense-confusing dance closed around her.

It was the depth of the night. All were sleeping.
Irma opened her door gently and glided out.

She went to the chamber of death. A solitary light was burning at the head of the body; he lay in an open coffin, with a bunch of corn in his hand. The servant, who was watching by the corpse, looked amazed at Irma ; he only nodded and did not speak a word.

Irma grasped her father's hand. Had that hand but rested in blessing on her head, instead of

She knelt down and kissed the icy cold hand with her burning lips. A thought, a sense-distracting thought, flashed through her mind: "It was the kiss of eternity! Burning flame and icy coldness had met together. It was the kiss of eternity"

When she awoke in her room, she knew no longer whether she had been dreaming, or whether it was a reality that she had kissed the dead hand of her father; but this she feltthat deep within her innermost soul there lay something like a drop of ice, immovable, indelible.