thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment. Therefore remove sorrow from thy heart, and put away evil from thy flesh; for childhood and youth are vanity.""

"And yet,” said Isabelle, thoughtfully and sadly, "is it not written in the same book, 'that the sons of men themselves are as the beasts; for that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts-even one thing befalleth them:-as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath, so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of man which goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast which goeth downward to the earth?' It is true, as we are told by the poet, that 'every yesterday has lighted fools the way to dusty death.' Alas! has the wise man in his generation any exemption from the destination of the fool?"

My friend," said the old lady, “there is an expression, if I mistake not, of doubt in the manner in which you have repeated these words. If I read your face aright, there is a questioning there of the ways of Providence, and a challenging of his wise purposes, which it is not for mortal minds to dare.

Beware how you tempt the Most High, by perverse applications and wilful misconstructions, even of those passages of inspired writing which seem at first of singular, or even of equivocal meaning, but which, if considered in apposition with the general tenor of the texts with which they are surrounded, must only tend to direct our hearts with still greater force to that fountain of joy, of which we all hope to drink in the kingdom of heaven.”

Our heroine's mind was in an agitated state. She could not now command that discretionary moderation of thought and language, which out of respect to the feelings of others, had on general occasions, and especially in all previous conversations with this kind old lady, prevented her from giving utterance to her real sentiments on these important points. Overpowered now almost to the loss of her reason, by the complication of troubles with which she was surrounded; stunned by the intelligence of the duel, and the mention of her dreaded husband's name, which she had just casually heard from the window, she could not help giving way to the bitter feelings which had taken possession of her soul.

"It is all a mockery and a farce," she cried aloud. "Tell not to me the ten-times repeated tale

of spiritual consolations, and recompenses in another world!-Why do we suffer here? What caused these tears to flow? Why should there be evil on the earth?-Answer me that, and I will kneel and kiss the cross with a hundred times more than the zeal of the most credulous devotee! Recompenses in another world forsooth!-I need them not! I ask them not at the hand of him that made me! Too well contented should I be to obtain only eternal repose: too welcome were the boon of annihilation to one whose whole existence has been misery, and yet whose only effort has been to promote the happiness of others;-but in vain! My cheeks are channelled with perpetual tears; my eyes ache with weeping for the wickedness of man; my life is one protracted agony. Why was I ever born?—I never asked for existence from him that gave it!—I have sought to die, and my evil destiny has still arrested my design. We are born against our will, and we die against our will, and the events of our lives are fashioned in the mould of fate; and then we are told, in mockery, that we are free agents. We are put in, like cotton to the mill, at one end of the machinery of life, and sent out again at the other: the works go on, and the wheels run round, and dread changes

are wrought in us, and strange revolutions take place in our natures, and we learn to curse instead of bless, and find bitterness in what we took for bliss ;-but it is a farce to tell us that our movements are the results of our own free will."

The old lady was consternated, and shocked : she remained an instant silent, as if doubting what course she should adopt, when the conversation was interrupted by the timely arrival of a travelling carriage, which stopped at the house-door in the street below.

The new arriver turned out happily to be none other than the friend of our heroine's youth, the fair and still faithful Principessa de Collini, who, with her husband, Pisatelli, had just returned from Italy; and in passing through Fontainebleau, which is on the high road from Lyons to Paris, had seized the opportunity of paying a visit to one whom she so much respected as the old lady of the mansion. Her appearance was a great relief to this excellent individual; and the idea immediately struck her, that she might convert her casual presence into a real and substantial good to Jeannette Isabelle.

Their views upon religious points being now discovered to be so essentially opposed, and it being

evident that repose was necessary for the reestablishment of our heroine's shattered health, it was soon arranged between the old lady and the principessa, that the latter should so far change the destination of her immediate journey, as to convey Jeannette to a retired chateau near Meaux on the Marne, which belonged to a member of Pisatelli's family, and was at present unoccupied. This would be better for our heroine's tranquillity than Paris; here also she would be safe from the discovery of her husband, who seemed at present to have made Paris the place of his abode; here, in company with the amiable companion of her infancy, she would be able to talk over the scenes of their childhood in happy Italy, and be spared those painful collisions of opinion, of which the recent conversation with the old lady had given so unpromising a specimen. It was judged better, as her infant, Florence, seemed now rather to have become an object of repulsion to her than of pleasure, to leave the child for the present under the care of the lady of the house and Victoire: and these arrangements being hastily made among the other parties, the passive Jeannette Isabelle, in a state of mind bordering nearly on madness, and neither advocating nor impeding the measure, suffered