Again was the voice of the unseen speaker heard. door by which I had entered. Carefully and by the wreathing smoke, none saw, I passed my hand along the wall, but none heeded me. neither opening nor lock could I discover. Again and again I tried. The gallery was small, and not an inch had I left unfelt. My poor Sarah! at all risks, however, I must get help for her, and I was about to cry aloud for aid, when my own name spoken distinctly, and by a voice I knew, caught my ear. "These are the torments we testify can be endured for the cause," he said in deep, hollow tones, that showed how strongly mental resolve was struggling to subdue bodily anguish. "None have faltered, none have shrunk affrighted from the stern ordeal. "Woe to the degraded wretch who fails to obey !" 'Your prayer could not be received, Nadine Fedorovna; the Englishwoman, "But woe to that man or woman who Selina Brownlow, is already dead. Her does retract, who hesitates when the sumoney was necessary to the cause. Had preme moment arrives! We swear, and her life been spared, secrecy could not let each man and each woman approach have been secured. There would have and swear, that whatever be imposed upon been scandal, and enquiry. It was im- them, that duty they will fulfil, be it the possible, therefore, to accede to your peti-sacrifice of husband, wife, child, parent, tion. In deference, however, to your or of all that life holds dear. wishes her death was ensured by kind and gentle means. Be content, and be silent. The moment of our devotion approaches. The heroism of our nature is about again to be put to the test. We must show by courageous endurance of bodily suffering that our hearts are steadfast to the great cause, and that no tortures that can be inflicted upon us by our enemies the tyrants, to destroy whom we readily dedicate our lives, can suffice to weaken our courage, or force us to betray those who have engaged with us to conquer or to die. 66 "We swear that not one torture that can be inflicted on human frame shall he or she be spared." Then all drew near, and each resolutely took an oath, so awful in its words and character, that I dare not repeat it here. Amidst all my terror, amidst all the agonies of my mind, a murmured prayer rose to my lips that Almighty Mercy might not record, might blot out the impious threats, the impious desires. Again there was silence for a few moments; and then the same voice spoke. "It were best that the bodies of the two women should be disposed of as secretly as possible." As he spoke, there was a sound of steps as of persons moving, then a door closed, and once more silence fell upon the as Approach those who are prepared." More fuel was cast on the furnace, from which was now shot forth lurid and fitful flames, making visible many long, thin rods of iron that were projecting from it. The speaker seized one with his naked hand, and brandishing it aloft, endured without cry or groan the exquisite suffer-sembly. ing it must have caused him. A frenzy I know not how long it lasted; it seemed now seized the wretched crowd; they an age, it was probably minutes, when threw themselves upon the red-hot bars, those who had departed reappeared, bearburning themselves, burning others, as if ing between them a lifeless figure. they were incapable of feeling, or of understanding what torture meant. Then there was a sullen lull, and low suppressed groans and cries came from the miserable wretches. Through the mist and smoke I could at intervals distinguish the writhing figures beneath. Then the horror of the hideous sight, the awful sounds, the madness of the scene came upon me also in deepest intensity, and in my lofty gallery I fell crouching in the remotest corner, groaning heavily with those beneath in the agony of their sufferings, and from my own terror-stricken sympathy. But far away, hidden in the dimness of the great height, 66 'Oh, my Sarah, my dear, dear, faithful servant! can it indeed be you so cruelly done to death? Oh, my friend, my old once loving friend! is it possible that you have thus violated every law of hospitality, that you have thus requited years of loving friendship?' But now many persons, I could not distinguish how many, rushed into the hall in headlong haste. The other, the lady, was said by deep and angry voices, she has gone, she has escaped. The windows were open, she must have fled by the moat. There must be traitors amongst us. And a muttered roar of suppressed fury rolled through the vast hall. A second's pause, a second's indecision, then the stern and cruel voice of the president again was heard. "We need have no fear. The wolves are about. They are all around. They must already have found their prey. But," and here the cruel voice gave forth its harsh and guttural tones more slowly and more savagely than before, "he who quails at the sacrifice of wife, or child, or of all he holds most dear, is unworthy to be the leader of noble and devoted hearts. "Bring hither Nadine Fedorovna Perètekoff. I, her husband, devote my wife to the torture that her weakness and her cowardice have merited." A miserable, trembling woman was pushed, or dragged, before the hideous altar. By the light that came from its quivering flames I could see the convulsed, agonized features, the deathly pallor of my most unhappy friend. She fell on her knees. "Oh! Xavier, Xavier! pardon-pardon! I could not kill her I loved her so. She has been so good to me. She loved me. Ah! none have ever loved me as she has done. She asked of me food and shelter. No, I could not kill her. Oh! Xavier, Xavier! have mercy! I have given you all-all. For the love of the Blessed Virgin, spare me this once! By the memory of our dead children, spare me! Kill me if you will, but torture me no more! See how I have suffered, see how I have suffered! No, no," she cried, as she writhed in abject terror on the ground, "I can bear no more. Kill me, kill me, for the love of our Merciful Lady!" The wretched creature burst into bitter tears, and tossed her arms wildly in the air. Then I saw the scarred and tortured flesh, the twisted and distorted limbs, the hideous tokens of man's sinful lust for power, of his wicked crushing of wretched instruments in order to carry out his own ends. Without replying, he who stood before the altar, the man who in the world was the fascinating, accomplished Count Xavier Perètekoff, the husband of the beautiful and wealthy Countess Nariscka, now the avowed leader of a band of traitorous assassins and self-torturers, seized a large and heavy whip. I heard the rush the thongs made as they were whirled through the air. heard the horrid thud as they fell upon the bared shoulders of the victim. A shrill scream broke the silence, and again the awful weapon descended. I could endure no more I could forbear no longer. "I "Nadine! Nadine!" I shrieked. am here, I am here! You shall not suffer for me. Let them kill me if they will. God will avenge me. God will punish their wicked cruelty; but you shall not be tortured for me!" Again I shrieked loudly in the exquisite agony of my mind. Then a mist came over me, and I fell to the ground; but hardly had the words left my lips when there was a sudden rush from below. I was surrounded by a horde of blackened and half-naked savages. They seized me, they dragged me down. They pulled me to the spot where my unhappy friend, dabbled with blood, lay before the glowing furnace. A cruel smile curled round the lips of one who in days gone by had never opened them to me, save to utter flattering speeches or honeyed words. "You dare be present at a meeting of the Secret Society! You dare pretend to save one justly condemned! Know that you are yourself doomed," and quick as lightning a long, sharp knife glittered in his upraised hand. The steel just grazed my forehead, as I was dashed to the ground, dragging another victim upon me in my fall. A deep, hollow groan; a hideous stream of blood, and then, as if the demons of this awful Pandemonium had been let loose upon us, yells and curses rent the air. The doors were dashed inwards, a sudden rush of men poured into the hall. Blows and shrieks resounded on every side; strong men were hurled backwards, and cast to the ground by the powerful force brought against them. Women fought like demons, but were remorselessly shot, or cut down by the sword. But few minutes elapsed ere the whole band was overpowered. Not a man escaped, and then Serge - yes, Serge -came to me, no longer my servant, but now arrayed in gorgeous uniform, the officer in command of the attacking party. The keen, searching eyes seemed yet more keen, as they looked resolutely and fiercely around. The firmly closed mouth, the square, strong jaw, now seen, made the features I had once thought vacant, appear stern, severe, and implacable. "A carriage awaits you, madame," he said, as he raised me from the ground, I" and an escort through the forest will ensure your safety. You will pardon the deception I was forced to practise in order to unearth this nest of assassins and traitors. Without your unconscious aid we could not have made the necessary arrests. This great duty compelled me, While he spoke, the prisoners were being removed, and at this moment Count Xavier Perètekoff, heavily manacled, blackened with smoke, and still bleeding from the many wounds he had received during the desperate struggle, was being forced from the room. He turned, ere his captors could drag him through the doorway, and raising his shackled hands, shook them at his wife and myself with an expression of savage hate, that will remain with me to my dying day. "Fool and coward," he said, "may you die the death you so well merit - and I I curse myself for having been such a miserable fool as to trust a woman." Even as he spoke, another prisoner, a yet more hideous object than himself, from bleeding wounds and from impotent fury, in whom nought told of woman save the long hair streaming down her back, pressed a little forward, and whispered in his ear. It was the dame de compagnie, Tatjana Andreovna Durska. "Yes, yes," he muttered, "you perhaps are faithful. Faithful," he added with a grim laugh, "for we shall share the galTows and the hangman, or, still worse, the mine." I turned to Serge. It needed not much skill to see that life was now ebbing fast. Her sorrows and her pains were now fast drawing to a close. Each breath sent the life-blood rushing from the gaping wound she had received in saving my life. The convulsive sob with which she drew this breath, the slowly glazing eyes, said that death was very near. I raised her poor head. I pressed her against my heart. I kissed the suffering face, over which the grey shadow of the last moment was now fast descending. The fading eyes sought mine. The pallid lips quivered, and she struggled to speak. 'My Lina," she faintly murmured, "God be praised! I die in loving arms. This - this is rest." But even as she spoke a sudden terror came upon her. She started in wild alarm. "For God's dear sake, a priest!" she cried, "a priest to hear my confession. To absolve me from my great sins!" The crimson stream poured fast from her lips she sank back gasping and suffocated by the strangling blood. Again I raised her, signing to Serge to hold before her, so that her dying eyes might rest upon them, the little image and crucifix that every Russian soldier carries over his heart. The lips quivered yet more weakly, slowly and faintly came the word, "Forgive A quick convulsion passed over the livid features. A sharp spasm shook the hitherto motionless limbs. Again the "I cannot go," I said resolutely, "with-blood rushed in a purple torrent from her out my dear companion and servant; nor can I at present leave my poor friend, who is, I fear, severely wounded." "Poor wretch!" Serge replied, looking carelessly at the miserable object before him. "She has been only a tool, and a victim. These traitors have long suspect ed her, and but for her wealth, which they could not get at without her aid, would ere this have accomplished her death. But they have tortured her into silence and submission. Her heart was good, and she was faithful to our father, the czar. Still it is better as it is. Justice could not now have spared her." Oh, merciful Heaven! how that grace ful, beautiful creature had been tortured! How maimed and lacerated was that once exquisite form! mouth. A momentary but desperate struggle for breath, and then one of the most beautiful and gifted women I have ever known lay dead upon the floor of her own hall, a victim to the cruel and selfish ambition of the man to whom she had given everything. Serge would not permit longer delay. He hurried me from the ghastly scene, where the body of my unhappy friend was only one amongst the many dreadful objects that lay around. A carriage was in waiting, in which had already been placed my poor Sarah, still insensible from the effects of the poisonous narcotics that had been administered to her. Scarcely had I taken my seat, than the horses started at a hand-gallop. A detachment of dragoons closed around, and by the faint light of the dawn that was now gleaming palely between the stunted trees of the forest, we were rapidly borne away | days before the Revolution. She had, in from the spot where I had passed hours of such infinite agony-a night so infinitely terrible. ANDREE HOPE. From The Spectator. AN OLD FRENCH HOUSE. II. AFTER the death of the young Marquis de C, his mother's existence became less solitary, though not less formal, than it had been in his lifetime. Her aunt, the old Marquise de B- came to live with her; her cousin, the Comtesse d'O, paid her long visits; a few old friends, models of propriety, came often to stay with her. Sometimes younger friends and relations ventured for a few days into the stately precincts of G-, brought by that strong family affection and dutifulness which is so large a part of French character. And these young people must have needed all their principle to support life at all in such a freezing atmosphere. The rigid punctuality of the house, for instance, directed by old servants with whom no one dared to find fault, must have been almost beyond the attainment of ordinary mortals. You might be out walking in the woods on an enchanting day in spring; the free country outside those walls, the distractions of wild flowers, might have made you linger a little longer than was prudent. Then, as you were turning in at one of the park gates, still a long way from the château, the dinner-bell would begin to ring at half past five, and you would know that you had committed one of the unpardonable sins, -you were late for dinner. You might hurry back and rush into the château by a back door; but nothing could save you now. When you came down the great white staircase, you could see through an open door the party sitting at dinner unconscious of you. You went in and took your place; no one looked up or seemed to perceive your entrance; there was a dead silence, which made the bravest culprit tremble with nervousness. In a few minutes, probably, the talk was resumed; but nobody addressed the late comer. You were in disgrace for the whole evening, though you might be thirty or forty years old. Madame de C was not rich, and she was extremely charitable, so that the state kept up at G was a very different thing from what it had been in the fact, only about £1,500 a year; but such an income, to this day, goes very much farther in France than in England. She had a first-rate man cook, two valets de chambre, each of these, one must remember, housemaid, butler, and footman rolled into one, and doing three times the work of an Englishman. There were also two or three maids in the house, a dairymaid, a coachman, a gardener, a gamekeeper, and five or six men under them. The daily life of the mistress of the house began at six every morning, when she got up and went to mass at the church in the town. After that, she visited the poor, and the little hospital she had built, which was entirely supported by her. She was back at the château before the church clock struck ten; its last stroke was immediately followed by the breakfast bell, and then, for what reason I do not know, the church clock struck the hour a second time. After breakfast, the marquise and her guests went into the salon, cold and bare as it has been described, its only relics of splendor being the very fine family portraits, and the beautiful carving of the panelled walls. Here the ladies were all obliged to sit at needlework till two o'clock; and the men staying in the château, if they were well behaved, sat there too, and entertained the ladies; but, not unnaturally, they very often found this too much for them, and escaped to the outer world. At two the morning's bondage ended; people scattered and did what they pleased. Maname de C- went to her own affairs; sometimes she took a drive with one or two congenial spirits. After dinner, which was at half past five, the poor ladies sat down again to their needlework, the rebellious men escaping to smoke, if they could manage it without being found out, for one can easily understand that smoking was not a practice encouraged at G. At nine o'clock, the whole party played a round game, and this lasted till the clock struck ten, when the marquise wished her friends good-night. Then they all lighted the candles in their flat candlesticks, and set off to bed. All this sounds dismal enough, but the place and the life had their redeeming features too. The house had a kind of historic grandeur and beauty mingled with its sadness, -for certainly it was sad; the shadow of its mistress's sorrow hanging over it like a cloud. Yet the talk was often most cheerful and agreeable, as it could not fail to be among well-bred French people, and the warm sun shone on très modeste cuisinière. Je ne pourrais pas payer un cuisinier." "Oh, madame la Marquise," said the man, “j'ai été le cuisinier de Madame Dubarry, et je ne pense pas me résigner à entrer dans une maison ordinaire. Si vous voulez me prendre, j'aime mieux vous servir sans gages!" the great white walls, and streamed into the high rooms, and along the broad red corridors hung with pictures of the past. Outside, too, the place had its beauty; on the south terrace were two rows of fine, bushy orange-trees, tall and stately like the house; and in the park below, green and bright and shady, the long avenues of trees seemed to lead to unknown dis- Madame de B― had lost her husband tances; they, and the beautiful mysteri- and two sons, and was left alone in the ous charmilles in full foliage, seemed like world, before she came to live with her the approaches to some hidden fairy pal- niece; but she had not lost her wit and ace. Then, not all Madame de C's fun, or her love of the world and its ways, friends and companions were of the same and she certainly was a foreign element ascetic spirit as herself. The younger in the Château de G. While she guests at the château used to fly for sym-lived there, it was at least possible to pathy and amusement to the oldest person laugh; and the young relations perhaps in the house, who yet was the youngest found the old aunt's stories not less deand merriest, the Marquise de B- In lightful because they were stolen pleasher little apartment at one end of the châ-ures, like smoking, quite shut out from teau, she used to sit and tell her stories, the great rooms down-stairs. recollections of her long life, which would But I must not linger on these recollechave been quite impossible in the draw- tions of days which look actually bright in ing-room, in the hearing of Madame de contrast with the deeper twilight that folC. Her father was an Austrian noble, lowed them. Madame de B― died a and she had royal blood in her veins. very old woman, lively and charming to About the year 1785, he enraged his the last. The old friends passed away one family by falling in love with France by one, leaving the marquise much more and a French lady, gave up a brilliant lonely, and then, the last great trouble of marriage they had arranged for him, her life, came the war of 1870. A batbought large estates in France, and wished tle was fought close by, the little town to spend the rest of his life there. But the Revolution interfered with that. He and his wife were living in Paris with their little girl, who was about four years old. One day she was sent out driving in her mother's berline, with servants to take care of her, when the carriage was stopped by a mob, who seized the little girl, perched her on the car of the God-pushed her aside. She was able and dess of Reason, and drove her about all day in triumph. The little lady herself enjoyed this adventure immensely; but it was too much for her father and mother. Having got their child back, which they did not succeed in doing till the next day, they immediately left Paris, and took refuge at the court of Hungary, where their child was brought up; and many stories, more amusing than edifying, she had to tell of her young days. In the end, she married a French émigré, the Marquis de B-, and so came back to France. They succeeded in getting back some part of their property, but had very little money. Madame de B- used to tell that, after her arrival in her husband's half-ruined château, she had been trying to find a woman as cook, at very low wages, when one day an oldish man came to offer himself. She answered: "Impossible; nous sommes ruinés, et je ne cherche qu'une was occupied, and the Prussian general quartered himself and his officers in the château, with his artillery in the park. The poor marquise, though treated afterwards with great respect, received a shock on the first day which she never recovered. The first soldier who entered the château took her roughly by the shoulders and ready, however, to devote herself to the care of the wounded, and when the Germans had left, taking her horses with them, she turned the house into a hospital. She also nursed the many victims of the small-pox, which broke out with great violence towards the end of the war. A faithful friend who came to her as soon as the state of the country would allow, found her strangely changed from her former self. Her spirit was broken, the old sternness and stiffness were gone, and she had become quite gentle and affectionate. But all the old life was over; each year as it went by, as the marquise gradually failed in body and mind, seemed sadder to those who went there to visit and watch over her. A visit to G in winter, it was something formidable of its kind. As I have said, the place was remote from railroads; and this visit began with a drive |