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son had no choice but to follow in the footsteps of his father, and it is on this that the story turns.

S. I do not think I should like it. People say that Pierre Loti is a clever writer?"

A. There is no doubt of that, but he is too realistic for English taste. I should not put that powerful book, Mon frère Ives, into your hands, I think. By the bye, when we were speaking of that very uncertain writer who calls herself Henry Gréville, I ought to have recommended her amusing continuation of Dosia-la fille de Dosiawho turns out rather like her charming mother in her naughty youth, and who scandalises Dosia as much as if she herself had been the most prudish of damsels.

S. Tell me of some memoirs.

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A. If you can get the Souvenirs of the Vicomte Walsh, do. He came of an Irish family, who followed James II. to France, and remained there until the Revolution, when they took refuge in England. This is one of the few memoirs which describes the life of the émigrés. The most aristocratic lived in Baker Street-Baker Street! gathering round the Comte d'Artois, and they met of an evening and plaited straw hats, which were carried round to the shops in a coach' by some young member of the party; sometimes he was successful in selling them, sometimes not-there were heavy hearts when the hats came back. The priests and poorer refugees lived wherever they could get a cheap lodging, in dire poverty, but cheerfully and with dignity, though some would have starved outright but for the money given them by the English Government. The Vicomte once met a girl of noble family reduced to carrying milk cans slung on her shoulders in order to earn a little money for a sick mother.

S. I wish that many of the émigrés had not at last gone home and abused England who sheltered them.

A. It must have been bread salter than ever Dante ate which they lived on, ruined, exiled, in a strange land, and among a people then much more insular and unlike themselves than now. Even Madame de Staël, who saw us under comparatively favourable circumstances, liked our principles, but not ourselves.

S. I dare say that the English ladies whom she met could not even talk French as well as Chaucer's Prioress, and were far too shy and too much afraid of her to do themselves justice.

A. Apropos of Madame de Staël, read her Dix années d'exil, a book whose wit and worth should always keep it in memory.

S. One hears a good deal now of Russian novels.

A. Yes, they have come into fashion in France; but I can hardly judge of them, as I only know them in translations. Tolstoi strikes me as gloomy and powerful, with a dash of coarseness beyond what he really needed to make his stories faithful pictures. Turgenieff makes it his mission to show the good qualities of the Russian

peasant, though overlaid by superstition and all the vices born of serfdom; and on the other hand, he has no words hard enough for the sins and follies of the upper classes, and the corruption of government. His stories are well constructed, and the characters are strongly drawn, but often too unlike any known to ourselves to strike us as natural, though I have no doubt they are. He is a terribly grim and hopeless writer.

S. I wonder he was allowed to publish.

A. His first book seems to have escaped the censor, who passed it as a mere picture of Russian life near Oral; but it made such a sensation that the Government was alarmed, and banished Turgenieff to his estates. The late Czar, however, then Czare witch, was much moved and struck by the revelations the book contained, and with considerable difficulty obtained his pardon and leave for him to come to Petersburg. He soon left Russia after this, and died in Paris in 1883. I should think his books would act rather as a solvent than a reconstructive force, for there is no hope in them, and no belief in a better future for Russia.

SIEGLINDE.

BY R. METCalfe.

'Strive, suffer, attain.'

CHAPTER I.

THE sun was setting behind the Castle ramparts, flooding portcullis, buttress, and keep with glory, and striking sparks of fire from the glass within the mullioned windows.

Far below the plain stretched away, level as an open palm, and crossed by silver lines marking the course of the river which had come down from the distant mountains as a tumbling torrent, but now meandered through calm pastures as still waters, except at such times as they were swollen to overflowing by heavy rains. The plain was bounded on one side by a forest which stretched away as far as the eye could see, giving grateful shade in summer, supplying fuel in winter to the Castle and its dependencies, and giving employment to the charcoal-burners who had their huts in the clearings of its lonely depths.

The trees were taking on their autumn stains of red and gold, and glowed in the sunset light as though splashed with wine, and hung with coronals.

Far away, over the eastern sky, the reflections from the burning west melted into etherealised vapours, and in the faintest, furthest distance, apparently lifted above the horizon's edge, might be discerned, now and again, what looked still like floating cloud-forms, but were in reality the thin outlines of the blue hills of Wonne Land.

But it was said that only by the pure-hearted could this lovely distant vision be seen, and then only at times-either at early dawn when the morning's eyelids first lifted in the east above those hills, or at the lighting of the west at the sunset hour, when the reflection of its glory was thrown for a few moments upon their summits.

There were two people watching for this vision on the high battlements of the Castle's eastern tower. One of these was a lady, whose head was covered by the long veil denoting one of high rank, which floated round her fair young face and fell over the silken robe; it was held in its place by a slender gold circlet clasping her head, and from which a pure crystal star of peculiar shape fell, and glistered upon her forehead; her head was bent forward eagerly, and her eyes looked onward to the distant horizon's edge with a certain calm assurance of joy; her hands were clasped together, like one who prayed while she watched. The other person seemed to be the warder of the Castle, for he carried a large horn tipped with silver in the

belt of his leathern jerkin; his face was rugged and honest, and now brought into relief as it was by the glow of the sky, while he leaned upon his staff, with keen eyes fixed upon the eastern line, and deeply set under their grey, shaggy brows, it seemed the very image of vigilance or of patient expectancy.

A sudden radiant smile overspread the lady's face like a reflection of the light, and she turned to the old retainer who stood at a little distance behind her, exclaiming, 'There, there, Werner, do you see it-my lord's beautiful land?'

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Werner nodded his head with a smile of content.

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'Yes, madam,' he answered; the sight is a cheering one for old eyes like mine, and many days when I stand here and watch it in the dawn, I almost think I can trace out the towers and spires of its cities. Yesterday I saw it thus, so clear was the morning's light upon its mountains; and then when the sun drew up the white morning mists and they rolled over the plain towards me, I could almost believe I saw my lord riding out with his retinue and coming to visit us.'

The lady had not seemed to hear much of the warder's speech, so rapt was her gaze upon the ethereal vision in the far east, which already had begun to fade into grey as the sun dropped behind the dark western forest; but perhaps this quick fading, or Werner's last words, brought a shadow over her lately radiant look, as she said'Oh, Werner, it seems very long since your liege left us for Wonne Land; I cannot help sometimes wondering when he will return here.'

'I do not wonder,' answered Werner, in all the years that I have served my liege I have learned such trust in him, I think nothing could go wrong that he is pleased to do, for I have often found by experience that what I presumed to think wrong, which my lord may have been pleased to do, turned out to be right for us all, and if I had had my way I should have made a sorry mess of it.'

The lady of the Castle turned towards the old servant and smiled. 'Ah, faithful Werner, you reprove my little faith; you have known my lord longer than I, and have served him well, even in those days which seem so long ago to me now, before my lord wedded me, when I was an unhappy child in the castle of my father. By the way, Werner, do you know if it is true that my father has been seen of late upon the estate of Kuno, that wicked enemy of my lord? One of my women has told me so.'

As she spoke she threw a look of some fear towards the left where the dark forest-line girdled the distance. Some miles beyond those forest depths there lay a wide country of wild and barren moorland; travellers who had lost their way had told shudderingly of their perils from treacherous heath-bogs and morasses, in which some had lost their lives, and how the further they had journeyed on the wilder and more strangely dismal grew the land, seamed with bleak rocks, and covered by coarse, blunted grass, wherein no flower or delicate thing

seemed able to grow, and how still farther lay the unwholesome marsh lands always wrapt in grey, clammy mists where none dared to penetrate, but where it was believed that Kuno, the powerful lord of that country, had his castle. With that Prince, Sieglinde's lord was at deadly feud, and his serfs and retainers had often some hard fighting in repelling this enemy's bold attacks upon the estate, and the treacherous robberies by his servants of the cattle or timber of Lord Agathos.

It was here that the Lady Sieglinde's father, Oscar, had been seen by some of her servants, while on an expedition beyond the boundaries of the estate for the purpose of driving home some strayed cattle. Oscar was lord of a country at some miles distance, a stern and rugged land, where, in one of the mountain fastnesses, he had his castle of the 'Wolf's Stronghold.' There Sieglinde had spent her strange, wild childhood and maidenhood, the chief pleasures of which had been to follow her father and his boon companions to the hunt of the wild boar and deer, or to the shooting of the quails that flew in great flocks across the moorland.

These and the decking of her father's halls with boughs and the tusks or feathers of the quarry, as the case might be, for his frequent feastings, when she sang snatches of the wild hunting songs which Wenzel, the old minstrel, had taught her, accompanying her voice with the sounds of his rude creuth-were the maiden's pastimes, while for harder tasks she had to sweep and strew the stone floors with rushes or straw, and assist the old crone, Kunigunde, when she cooked the great joints on the kitchen hearth for the revels. No gentler pursuits were hers, nor thoughts of a higher life, though it was true that from time to time strange yearnings, which she was unable to understand, came and looked in upon her soul like fitful lights gleaming for a moment over dark waters, bringing only a vague pain. Was it not a solution of their mystery when suddenly a wondrous revelation, an unhoped-for answer to her gropings, came into Sieglinde's life?

Lord Agathos had come to woo her, and the face of the old life was changed; old things had passed away, and she might not rest in them any more, for the call to the new life had come, and she must rise and follow. Great rejoicings had there been at his Castle when Lord Agathos wedded Sieglinde; and standing before the altar of the chapel in her white, shining bridal dress, he had hung upon her forehead the crystal star which was to be the token of her fidelity, and which had the strange property, common also to some jewels, of increasing its lustre or becoming dim, according to the faith and love of the wearer.

There had been much for Sieglinde to learn and unlearn in that new life of hers, much to learn of her new ties, duties, and responsibilities, and together with these there grew also an humble, everincreasing knowledge, seeming to gather force each day, of the great goodness, wisdom, and love of Lord Agathos.

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