Platane, and the great plane-tree creaked as a vivid flash lighted its ghastly burden. They hurried forward, anxious for the safety of mademoiselle and little Elizabeth, who were out in the storm.

"Well, Hugo, my dear lad, never mind; I have set ten more looms going since you left us. Thank Heaven you are safely back, my boy. Alas, poor France! Duchesne is no more fit to be trusted, and yet we should be glad you went, for here are two dear souls saved alive-though, fancy little Elise coming over in a hamper on board that fishing-smack. They thought it was full of a great goose, didn't they, my child?" and the elder Du Boisson lifted the little emigrant on his knee.

For a time mademoiselle and her little niece lived with this dear family; but soon Elise must learn something, and so became a pupil at that school of La Providence which the refugees founded in the early troubles. As to mademoiselle, she was married in less than two years, for she was a Protestant, though her brother had remained a Catholic. Not till they had grown well used to their asylum did the pastor tell aunt and niece of the dreadful death of Jean Corneille, and by that time Louis Du Boisson and his wife had found a daughter in Elizabeth Elizabeth a brother in Hugo-well, no, not quite a brother either, for one day when she came home from her studies, an armful of books in a blue bag over her shoulder, her great lustrous eyes full of intelligence, her hair falling in ringlets that blew about her like a fine silken veil, Hugo found out the secret of his heart and of hers. On the old bench of the old garden they plighted their troth, and Hugo's father only laughed when he heard of it, saying, he knew long ago what it must

come to.

Madame was a little cold. She came of the noblesse, you see, and then Jean Corneille was but a steward; but who could look at Elise without loving her? Not such a gentle creature as Madeleine Du Boisson. Thus the story ends, dear, as all stories should end; but yet there is a word still to say.

The Pastor Duchesne, ninety years old, is sitting on that very same bench in the old gay garden at Bethnal Green. Louis Du Boisson sits beside him, stouter, rosier, older, and with his crisp dark hair turning white. Madame, more than ever like that fine Sèvres china, stands snipping the withered leaves from a bush of blush-roses.

In the suburbs of the town of St. Ambroix a lady and gentleman alight from a carriage 2D SERIES, VOL. I.

at the sign of the "Golden Bear," and stand at the door to ask a question of the landlord.

"I see no signs of the place," says the gentleman; "it cannot have sunk into the earth. Surely it must have been burned on that terrible night, though the pastor says no. You were too little to remember where it stood, dear. We will inquire.'

"What! Le Platane?" says the landlord, with open eyes. "Why, over yonder, where the barrack is being built. It was a mere ruin for ever so long, and then came the restoration, and then the hundred days-that was when it was burned-what the democrats left, the reactionists finished. Vive le Roi!"

"And of one Pithon, does anybody know what became of him?"

"What Pithon? He-ah, yes as he had helped others to a pinch, so he himself sneezed in the sack."

The bloody footsteps of the revolution had overtaken the enemy of Jean Corneille.

"Son and daughter," said Louis Du Boisson, as he sat in his little parlour a week afterwards, "I have bought for you the house I spoke of in Essex. Call it Le Platane if you like, but I wouldn't. The name's unlucky, and we are all English now."

GERTY'S GLOVE.

BY FREDERICK LOCKER.

"Elle avait au bout de ses manches, Une paire de mains si blanches!"

Slips of a kid-skin deftly sewn,
A scent as through her garden blown,
The tender hue that clothes her dove,
All these, and this is Gerty's glove.

A glove but lately dofft, for look-
It keeps the happy shape it took
Warm from her touch! What gave the glow?
And where's the mould that shaped it so?

It clasp'd the hand, so pure, so sleek,
Where Gerty rests a pensive cheek,
The hand that when the light wind stirs,
Reproves those laughing locks of hers.

BEHIND THE SCENES AT SEVILLE.

[Henry Blackburn, born at Portsmouth, 15th February, 1830. Traveller, journalist, and sometime editor of London Society. In 1871 he received an appointment in the civil service commission. His works are Life in Algeria; Travelling in Spain; The Pyrenees, illustrated by Gustave Doré; Artists and Arabs; Normandy Picturesque; Art in the Mountains, the Story of the Passion Play in Bavaria; The Harz Mountains, &c. He seizes the most picturesque characteristics of life and scenery, and reproduces them admirably with pen and pencil.]

The curtain has gone down at last-Don Alphonso has touched the last note on his guitar, and the dark-eyed prima donna, with the gigantic false roses in her hair, has heaved her last sigh from the casement above. Jealous lovers in false wigs and black conspirators all have sheathed their pasteboard daggers for the night, and the stage is clear for the ballet, or what our good friend the impresario, who has French proclivities, calls a pantomime d'amour.

It is Christmas-time at Seville, and the people who never do any work to speak of, now take holiday, and disport themselves in most rampant fashion. Every day and every night there has been some grand foncion, something to see, to do, or to suffer. We are fairly "weary of the world," of the Seville world of saints' days, high-masses, miraculous cures, cock-fights, bull-fights, cachuchas, and fandangos.

But to-night is a special festival, and we have promised our host, Don Pedro, who manages matters theatrical in Seville, that we will come to see his daughter dance the bolero. There was nothing new in seeing the "bolero," the baile nacional of Spain. Had we not seen it the day after we arrived in the city, as performed in the second-floor-back of a dark street, by two or three painted and powdered señoritas, whose especial business it was to exhibit to strangers the manners and customs of their country? had we not paid five francs each to sit for an hour in a crowded room, choked with dust, and deafened with the clash of castanets; and had we not had black mail levied upon us by those painted eyes, and our purses emptied, as one of the customs of Spain? Had we not, after a few weeks' sojourn, seen through the folly of these things, and gone boldly with a great English painter (one no longer amongst us, who lived and worked at Seville, and brought home to England more of the living power of Murillo and Velasquez,than any artist of his time) over the bridge to that most racketty and disreputable suburb, Triana, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, to see and study with a painter's eye the grace and beauty of

the bolero as danced by wild gipsy kings and queens, who live here in picturesque poverty, whose life in youth is to dance and to sing? Had we not seen the population of a whole suburb of Granada come out to join in passionate joy and sorrow, as expressed in motion by one or two skilled performers dancing to the monotonous twang of a cracked guitar? We had seen all this, and we had begun to understand how truly dancing in Spain was a part of the nation's existence; but we had not yet seen the audience of a theatre under its influence. The great charm of the Spanish theatre, according to Ford, is the national dancematchless, unequalled, and inimitable-only to be performed by Andalucians. It is the essence, the sauce piquant of the night's entertainment. However languid the house, however laughable the tragedy, or serious the comedy, the sound of the castanet awakens the most listless: the sharp, spirit-stirring click is heard behind the scenes, the effect is instantaneous-it silences the tongues of countless women-on n'écoute que le ballet!

The little theatre in Seville-where opera and ballet seem as much de rigueur as at the Haymarket Opera House in London when Grisi and Cerito were presiding stars-is full to the ceiling to-night, with a noisy, clamorous crowd, who cannot help smoking surreptitiously during the performance, and whose consump tion of glasses of water is marvellous to behold. Looking through the curtain which divides us so slightly from the rows of señoritas in dark veils (some so close that we could whisper to them from our hiding-place), this seething mass of humanity looks dangerous in its excitability and, considering the small space into which they are crowded and the sparks and little waves of smoke that curl up here and there, it is a positive relief to see so much cold water distributed amongst them.

But the orchestra is tuning up, and the signal is given to clear the stage. As we stand at the wings, Don Pedro comes proudly forward with his daughter, a little bright-eyed girl of fifteen, dressed, not in ordinary ballet costume, with skirts ungracefully short and scanty, but in the natural, national dress of Andalucia, familiar to everyone in pictures, but especially charming here, both in colour and character, as a contrast to the tinsel and artificiality of the modern stage. She wore a high comb and black lace veil, with a bright red camellia in her hair, and held in her hand a fan, the whole armour of battle of a southern coquette. Her face glowed with pleasure and delight, her bare arms were not whitened, her

face was not powdered, her little feet and ankles were shapely, and not overstrained or made angular under the ballet-master's hand. Such was Perea Nena in the bloom of youth. Who that has seen her in Paris or London during the last few years will remember her triumphant début in a pantomime d'amour?

Soon the curtain rises to a scene of an orange-garden, lighted up with coloured lamps. There is a terrace, a lake, and the full moon is shining down. As the curtain disappears above our heads the close, hot air comes into our faces, and the impatient sounds of a hundred tongues. Nena trembles a little as she stands waiting by the side, tapping her feet to the click of the irresistible castanets; but at the signal she is ready, and tripping past us, all sparkles and smiles, faces the audience, who greet her with a shout of welcome. Spiritstirring dance-music, now slow, now fast, but not as strictly in time as we are accustomed to hear it, comes from below the footlights; a little posturing, hesitating, coquetting, and most graceful and indescribably eloquent swaying of the arms and limbs, and then the Nena glides through the orange-groves, flitting and flying, the little feet twinkling to the music, following its passages apparently without method, but in perfect time, and with such abandon, grace, and enjoyment as we never see on any other stage. Tripping from flower to flower, now floating apparently half in air, now settling on a green bank, the Spanish butterfly imparts the fulness of her grace and joy to the excited audience, who had seen all this a hundred times before! Strange contrast to a grand ballet d'action, with its army of trained warriors in muslin, crowding together behind the scenes, and forming in wonderfully disciplined groups before a listless audience at Her Majesty's Opera in London. Here all is quiet on the stage, and the excitement and enthusiasm come spontaneously from the audience. Thus they watch with eager eyes and half-held breath the Spirit of the Dance, as she flits before them with her black tresses flying in the wind; when there enters upon the scene Don Juan-young, handsome, gallant, glittering with silver buttons and lace the model caballero. He steals softly to the Nena a kiss, surprise, flight down the orange-groves, rapid movement in the orchestra, silence and suspense with the audience, and soon the pair appear again under the trees. Then pantomimic love-making, stirring music, passionate declaration, adoration, expressed in a dance in which there were few steps but more meaning and intensity

than could be described in any words, or conceived by a northern people. The eye especially is delighted with the picturesque beauty of the two young figures, the harmonious colouring of their dresses, the rich red embroidery on velvet, the sparkle of gold lace and silver filigree, without a suspicion of tinsel or stage sham. There they stand together, entrancing and bewitching all beholders.

"Beautiful expression of joy, youth, hope, and fervour!" says one eye-witness; "beautiful similitude and pantomime of love!" Suddenly they disappear from the stage, and as suddenly dart forward from opposite sides, like separated lovers, who after long search, have found each other again; no thought, apparently, of spectators, no care for the world before the curtain; their world is with each other. Their happiness is contagious; it is a delight to watch them together, and the audience is now so sympathetic, so entranced, that what immediately follows comes as a shock-a general calamity. What is the matter a misunderstanding? The music stops suddenly, the pair hesitate in the middle of what we should call a most graceful pas de deux, in which the arms and hands had, strange to say, taken more part than the feet. They expostulate, they are silent, all but their eloquent eyes. A pause of agonizing suspense, and their world of love stands still! Then pantomime of explanation, expostulation, quick music, the angry rattle of castanets; trip, trip, and away they glide from one another and the world, now one of general confusion and despair, both before and behind the curtain. Are we dreaming? Can it be possible, looking out from our hiding-place on the stage, that we can see tears in those faded señoritas' eyes, and at least a hundred people with a shade of sorrow over their hardened faces, because the sun has set for a moment on two young lives? This is the mystery of the dance of Spain, which no words can describe, and no ballet-master in Paris or Vienna can understand. But stay-here comes the Nena upon the stage alone; there is an expression of sorrow and repentance in her face, and the end can be imagined. Soft music and a delicately-touched guitar, a clear voice through the orange groves, a lover on his knees by her side, reconciliation, rapture, music in quick time-music such as only comes from stringed instruments under nervous hands-and then a dance of joy that brings happiness to all hearts.

And how does it all end? With loud and universal calls before the curtain, and enormous