Is it folly, or nonchalance, or philosophy, or pertinacity: or what is it in me, that after all, when La Fleur had gone downstairs, and I was quite alone, I could not bring down my mind to think of it otherwise than I had then spoken of it to Eugenius? And as for the Bastille, the terror is in the word. Make the most of it you can, said I, to myself, the Bastille is but another word for a tower; and a tower is but another word for a house you can't get out of. Mercy on the gouty! for they are in it twice a year. But with nine livres a day, and pen and ink and paper and patience, albeit a man can't get out, he may do very well within, at least for a month or six weeks; at the end of which, if he is a harmless fellow, his innocence appears, and he comes out a better and wiser man than he went in.

I had some occasion (I forget what) to step into the courtyard, as I settled this account; and remember I walked downstairs in no small triumph with the conceit of my reasoning. Beshrew the somber pencil! said I, vauntingly, for I envy not its power, which paints the evils of life with so hard and deadly a coloring. The mind sits terrified at the objects she has magnified herself, and blackened: reduce them to their proper size and hue, she overlooks them. 'Tis true, said I, correcting the proposition, the Bastille is not an evil to be despised. But strip it of its towers, fill up the fosse, unbarricade the doors, call it simply a confinement, and suppose 'tis some tyrant of a distemper, and not of a man, which holds you in it, the evil vanishes, and you bear the other half without complaint.

I was interrupted in the hey-day of this soliloquy, with a voice which I took to be of a child, which complained "it could not get out." I look'd up and down the passage, and seeing neither man, woman, nor child, I went out without further attention.

In my return back through the passage, I heard the same words repeated twice over; and looking up, I saw it was a starling hung in a little cage. "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling.

I stood looking at the bird: and to every person who came through the passage, it ran fluttering to the side towards which they approach'd it, with the same lamentation of its captivity, "I can't get out," said the starling. God help thee! said I,

but I'll let thee out, cost what it will; so I turned about the cage to get the door: it was twisted and double twisted so fast with wire, there was no getting it open without pulling the cage to pieces. I took both hands to it.

The bird flew to the place where I was attempting his deliverance, and thrusting his head through the trellis, pressed his breast against it, as if impatient. I fear, poor creature, said I, I cannot set thee at liberty. "No," said the starling; "I can't get out, I can't get out," said the starling.

I vow I never had my affections more tenderly awakened; nor do I remember an incident in my life where the dissipated spirits to which my reason had been a bubble were so suddenly called home. Mechanical as the notes were, yet so true in tune to nature were they chanted that in one moment they overthrew all my systematic reasonings upon the Bastille; and I heavily walked upstairs, unsaying every word I had said in going down them.

Disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, Slavery, said I, still thou art a bitter draft! and though thousands in all ages have been made to drink of thee, thou art no less bitter on that account. 'Tis thou, thrice sweet and gracious goddess, addressing myself to Liberty, whom all in public or in private worship, whose taste is grateful, and ever will be so, till Nature herself shall change. No tint of words can spot thy snowy mantle, or chemic power turn thy scepter into iron; with thee to smile upon him as he eats his crust, the swain is happier than his monarch, from whose court thou art exiled. Gracious Heaven! cried I, kneeling down upon the last step but one in my ascent, grant me but health, thou great Bestower of it, and give me but this fair goddess as my companion, and shower down thy miters, if it seems good unto thy Divine Providence, upon those heads which are aching for them.

THE CAPTIVE

THE bird in his cage pursued me into my room. I sat down close by my table, and leaning my head upon my hand, I began to figure to myself the miseries of confinement. I was in a right frame for it, and so I gave full scope to my imagination.

I was going to begin with the millions of my fellow-creatures born to no inheritance but slavery; but finding, however affecting the picture was, that I could not bring it near me, and that the multitude of sad groups in it did but distract me,—

I took a single captive; and having first shut him up in his dungeon, I then looked through the twilight of his grated door to take his picture.

I beheld his body half wasted away with long expectation and confinement, and felt what kind of sickness of the heart it was which arises from hope deferred. Upon looking nearer, I saw him pale and feverish; in thirty years the western breeze had not once fanned his blood; he had seen no sun, no moon, in all that time; nor had the voice of friend or kinsman breathed through his lattice! His children!

But here my heart began to bleed, and I was forced to go on with another part of the portrait.

He was sitting upon the ground upon a little straw, in the farthest corner of his dungeon, which was alternately his chair and bed; a little calendar of small sticks was laid at the head, notched all over with the dismal days and nights he had passed there; he had one of these little sticks in his hand, and with a rusty nail he was etching another day of misery to add to the heap. As I darkened the little light he had, he lifted up a hopeless eye towards the door, then cast it down, shook his head, and went on with his work of affliction. I heard his chains upon his legs, as he turned his body to lay his little stick upon the bundle. He gave a deep sigh. I saw the iron enter into his soul! I burst into tears. I could not sustain the picture of confinement which my fancy had drawn.

THE SWORD

WHEN states and empires have their periods of declension, and feel in their turns what distress and poverty is, I stop not to tell the causes which gradually brought the house of d’E— in Brittany into decay. The Marquis d'E—— had fought up against his condition with great firmness; wishing to preserve and still show to the world some little fragments of what his

ancestors had been; their indiscretions had put it out of his power. There was enough left for the little exigencies of obscurity. But he had two boys who looked up to him for light; he thought they deserved it. He had tried his sword, it could not open the way, the mounting was too expensive, and simple economy was not a match for it: there was no resource but

commerce.

In any other province in France save Brittany, this was smiting the root forever of the little tree his pride and affection wished to see reblossom. But in Brittany, there being a provision for this, he availed himself of it; and taking an occasion when the States were assembled at Rennes, the Marquis, attended with his two boys, entered the court; and having pleaded the right of an ancient law of the duchy, which, though seldom claimed, he said, was no less in force, he took his sword from his side. Here, said he, take it; and be trusty guardians of it till better times put me in condition to reclaim it.

The president accepted the Marquis's sword; he stayed a few minutes to see it deposited in the archives of his house, and departed.

The Marquis and his whole family embarked the next day for Martinico, and in about nineteen or twenty years of successful application to business, with some unlooked-for bequests from distant branches of his house, returned home to reclaim his nobility, and to support it.

It was an incident of good fortune which will never happen to any traveler but a sentimental one, that I should be at Rennes at the very time of this solemn requisition. I call it solemn; it was so to me.

The Marquis entered the court with his whole family: he supported his lady; his eldest son supported his sister, and his youngest was at the other extreme of the line next his mother; he put his handkerchief to his face twice.

There was a dead silence. When the Marquis had approached within six paces of the tribunal, he gave the Marchioness to his youngest son, and advancing three steps before his family, he reclaimed his sword.

His sword was given him: and the moment he got it into his hand, he drew it almost out of the scabbard: 'twas the shining

face of a friend he had once given up: he looked attentively along it, beginning at the hilt, as if to see whether it was the same, when observing a little rust which it had contracted near the point, he brought it near his eye, and bending his head down over it, I think I saw a tear fall upon the place: I could not be deceived by what followed.

"I shall find," said he, "some other way to get off."

When the Marquis had said this, he returned his sword into its scabbard, made a bow to the guardians of it, and with his wife and daughter, and his two sons following him, walked out. O how I envied his feelings!

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

ROBERT LOUIS BALFOUR STEVENSON. Born in Edinburgh, November 13, 1850; died at Apia, Samoa, December 3, 1894. Author of "An Inland Voyage," "Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes," "New Arabian Nights," "Treasure Island," "The Silverado Squatters," "A Child's Garden of Verse," "Prince Otto," "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," "Kidnapped," "Underwoods," "The Merry Men, and Other Tales," "Memoirs and Portraits," "The Black Arrow," "The Master of Ballantrae," "Ballads," "The Wrecker," "David Balfour," "Island Nights' Entertainments," "The Ebb Tide."

Stevenson's writings are notable for their beauty of style and the cheerful spirit that pervades them. They seem to be suffused with sunshine.

A LODGING FOR THE NIGHT

It was late in November, 1456. The snow fell over Paris with rigorous, relentless persistence; sometimes the wind made a sally and scattered it in flying vortices; sometimes there was a lull, and flake after flake descended out of the black night air, silent, circuitous, interminable. To poor people, looking up under moist eyebrows, it seemed a wonder where it all came from. Master Francis Villon had propounded an alternative that afternoon, at a tavern window: was it only Pagan Jupiter plucking geese upon Olympus? or were the holy angels molting? He