Teresa herself was attractive. Her eyes were dark and sparkling, as Italian women's are wont to be, but they had a softness that gave a peculiar depth to their charm; her features, though not too pronounced, were well formed, and her skin was fairer than is usual with Italian women. And she was not only attractive, but clever. Ever since her mother's death, which had taken place some ten years before in giving birth to a second daughter, Teresa had looked after the domestic arrangements, and the prospect was that the man she accepted would succeed her father in the inn.

So it is not to be wondered at that at fair and festa, or at harvest or vintage-gathering, her hand was greatly in request; and many were the offerings of flowers and fruits that were brought to her. But of her admirers there were two more noted than all the restPaolo Benzi, the village blacksmith, and Carlo Speni, the mule-driver between the village and the city. Carlo had been her friend from childhood; but Paolo had come from the Neapolitan side a few years before, and had settled in the village. Now, though Carlo was favoured by the father, Teresa loved Paolo. But she hated the thought of vexing her father, and her devotion to him encouraged her in her deceptions. Her secret thoughts and her unnoticed smiles were all for Paolo; but she had to make feint of openly wooing Carlo, hard as it was for her. Often as she went singing about her work, while her father sat thinking what a fine pair she and Carlo would make, she was thinking sadly to herself, in spite of all her outward cheer, "I know what's in his head; but for all that I know at the same time I shall never marry Carlo;" and a sigh would steal from her in the pauses of her song.

Of course it could not wholly escape Carlo that she looked on his rival, the blacksmith, with favour; but he flattered himself that the authority of the father would be enough to secure success to his suit in the long run. So he waited, but he could not help watching; for when was lover in such circumstances ever without jealousy? But Paolo waited and watched likewise, for love made him determined; and the sweet consciousness that he was loved rendered him strong and resolute. So one evening he wandered up the hill behind the village by a road to a vineyard, which he knew that Teresa was wont to visit. He sauntered leisurely along, not taking much notice of the beauty of the olives and the wild vines that festooned the way; and at length he sat himself down under a mulberry-tree to rest. He had not sat long when he saw Teresa round a corner of VOL. L.

the road; but, to his great chagrin, Carlo was with her, carrying her basket and smiling down on her. Paolo was stung as he had never been before, and crept round to the other side of the tree to hide, and gathered himself together with a muttered curse. They came on slowly, as though they were both ccncerned to prolong the journey-to make each step take as much time as possible; and Paolo could hear snatches of their conversation-only snatches, for if he had heard the whole he might have taken consolation instead of vowing

revenge.

"How nice it will be to live up there in the summer, in the little house beside the yard, when we are man and wife," said Carlo, who had been induced by recent observations to appeal to the old man and to speak to Teresa more plainly than ever.

"It is nice living up there," said she; "but I love the village."

"No doubt you do," said he; "but one wants a change. I always think more of the village when I have been longer away than usual."

"Men are maybe different," said Teresa; "I have no wish for changes.'

"Tis good to be content," said he; "I know I won't be content till I have you for my own-my very own;" and then he kissed her just as they passed the tree which concealed Paolo. She blushed, though so far as she knew there was no eye to see, and made feint to put a step's space between them; but, recalling the need for appearances, she drew closer again and whispered

"Women's love is different from men's love, I think, Carlo: it likes to wait and feel each day that it is growing."

"It may be," said Carlo; "but if love grows by waiting, how have we ourselves got here?" and he smiled at his own remark. Teresa laughed also; and they two went on; and, as they disappeared, Paolo heard the silvery echoes of their laughter. He crept down the hill behind them, like some ominous shadow. Instead of going home, he opened his workshop; and, on pretext of being busy, began to work again, and puffed and blew and hammered till the people wondered what on earth had come to the blacksmith. Paolo was that night doing more than forging vine-rods.

Things went on for a while without change; Paolo saw Teresa occasionally; for sometimes he would go to the inn with a farmer who had come to the village to settle accounts with him; and then he always took heart of grace, for he read love for him in Teresa's eyes in spite of

21

her attempts at womanly disguises. But neither to her nor her father did he say aught of what lay so near his heart.

Months passed on and the winter came. One evening the village was thrown into great consternation by the arrival of one of Carlo's mules that had evidently broken away from its master in some great danger. As on that occasion Carlo was carrying commodities of more than ordinary value, it was presumed that he had been carried off by brigands; and that in a short time he would return. But weeks passed on, till they grew to months, and still no word of Carlo. Jacopo and others, who had loved and respected him, had caused all sorts of inquiries to be made, and had offered rewards, but with no effect. And gradually Paolo had thrown himself into Jacopo's way, till at length the latter was forced to own that Paolo was clever and discreet, and, as all hope of Carlo's return had now passed, he was not averse to his becoming a sweetheart to Teresa. There was no need for a long wooing; and they two were wedded within a year and a half from the time that Paolo had sat under the mulberry-tree and muttered his curses.

But, in spite of their love for each other, Paolo and Teresa were not so happy as they had told themselves that they would be. There was a something that lay between them unspoken-a something only guessed at, but dark and gloomy, and it distressed them. Paolo would mutter in his sleep, and Carlo's name could be clearly heard in the mutterings; for now Paolo was haunted by a great fear. The robbers whom Paolo had bribed with all his savings of these half-dozen years to rid him of a rival, had done more than he had bargained for,-they had compelled Carlo to go with them in a very adventurous expedition which was not so successfully carried through as most of their enterprises; and he was seen and described, and orders were sent to try and apprehend him as one of the leaders of the brigands. So it was not safe for him, as he conceived, to show himself in the village; and when he heard that Paolo had married Teresa, he grimly accepted his hard fate, and was even consoled by the thought that some day it would give him the better chance of revenge. And his chance came sooner than he had hoped. A relative of Paolo in the Neapolitan territory had died, leaving him his money, and it became necessary that Paolo should go there to arrange matters. He performed his journey safely, and, having realized the wealth that had been left

him, was returning home, and had got within a few miles of the village, when he was set upon by the brigands, his treasure taken from him, and he himself stabbed in various places, and left for dead on the way. He certainly would have died had not a friendly shepherd found him and carried him to the nearest farmhouse, from whence he was in time taken home.

He was so seriously wounded, that there was no hope that he would ever be able to go about again. And as he lay thus faint from pain and loss of blood, a child was born to Teresa. At the first blush she knew it all— how Paolo, for love of her, had terribly wronged Carlo, and how now Carlo had revenged himself upon them both. She felt that she had sinned in making a pretence of love even to please her father, and blamed herself sorely for being the cause of all the evil by having been deceitful. The thought of all this soon bred a change in her. She grew serious and thoughtful; and whilst ministering to Paolo's needs, would speak to him of religion. Now, when she went to confession, the padre did not dismiss her with the old style of words; but would say to her tenderly:

"My daughter, trials like these are hard to bear, and little sins sometimes bring heavy burdens; but you did it hoping to save your father's peace, and the saints will not judge you so hardly as you judge yourself. Go in peace, and forget not to ask help of our sacred mother Mary. She is always ready to succour such as you are, and to pour the oil of consolation into such wounds as yours."

And often in the bright Italian afternoons, Teresa was to be seen, accompanied by her little sister Beatrice, carrying her baby up the valley to where, at the ruined convent, there was a shrine, as there is in many remote as well as in the most frequented corners of Italy. To these shrines all classes of people repair, to implore the intercession of the Madonna for themselves and those who are dear to them. At the shrine Teresa bestowed simple gifts, and begged mercy for herself and a blessing for the child who had been born to her in such sad circumstances. All the people in the district knew her story, and knew her habit of going daily to the convent shrine, where she would linger for hours. They pitied and sympathized with her sorrow, for she who was so late the petted beauty had now become a gentle and devout woman.

Carlo escaped to France, and was never heard of again. Paolo was crippled for life.

B. ORME.

ROUGE-ET-NOIR.

[Horace Smith, born in London, 1779; died 12th July, 1849. He was the author of about twenty novels, the best known of which are Brambletye House, Jane Lomax, and The Moneyed Man. In conjunction with his brother James, he wrote the Rejected Addresses, which obtained great popularity. He was a profuse miscellaneous writer of prose and verse, possessed of much humour. The following sketch is from Gaieties and Gravities, which was first published in 1826, 3 vols.]

-"Could I forget

What I have been, I might the better bear
What I am destined to. I'm not the first
That have been wretched-but to think how much
I have been happier!"-

SOUTHERN.

Never shall I forget that accursed 27th of September: it is burned in upon the tablet of my memory; graven in letters of blood upon my heart. I look back to it with a strangely compounded feeling of horror and delight; of horror at the black series of wretched days and sleepless nights of which it was the fatal precursor; of delight at that previous career of tranquillity and self-respect which it was destined to terminate-alas, for ever!

On that day I had been about a fortnight in Paris, and in passing through the garden of the Palais Royal, had stopped to admire the beautiful jet-d'eau in its centre, on which the sunbeams were falling so as to produce a small rainbow, when I was accosted by my old friend Major E, of the Fusileers. After the first surprises and salutations, as he found that the business of procuring apartments and settling my family had prevented my seeing many of the Parisian lions, he offered himself as my cicerone, proposing that we should begin by making the circuit of the building that surrounded us. With its history and the remarkable events of which it had been the scene I was already conversant; but of its detail and appropriation, which, as he assured me, constituted its sole interest in the eyes of the Parisians, I was completely ignorant.

After taking a cursory view of most of the sights above ground in this multifarious pile, I was conducted to some of its subterraneous wonders, to the Cafe du Sauvage, where a man is hired for six francs a night to personate that character, by beating a great drum with all the grinning, ranting, and raving of a madman;-to the Cafe des Aveugles, whose numerous orchestra is entirely composed of blind men and women;-and to the Cafe des

Varietes, whose small theatre, as well as its saloons and labyrinths, are haunted by a set of sirens not less dangerous than the nymphs who assailed Ulysses. Emerging from these haunts, we found that a heavy shower was falling; and while we paraded once more the stone gallery, my friend suddenly exclaimed, as his eye fell upon the numbers of the houses "one hundred and fifty-four! positively we are going away without visiting one of thegaming-houses was the meaning of the term he employed, though he expressed it by a word that the fashionable preacher never mentioned to ears polite."-"I have never yet entered," said I, "a pandemonium of this sort, and I never will:-I refrain from it upon principle; -Principiis obsta;' I am of Dr. Johnson's temperament, I can practise abstinence, but not temperance; and everybody knows that prevention is better than cure."-"Do you remember," replied E- "what the same Dr. Johnson said to Boswell-'My dear sir, clear your mind of cant;' I do not ask you to play; but you must have often read, when you were a good little boy, that 'vice to be hated needs but to be seen,' and cannot have forgotten that the Spartans sometimes made their slaves drunk and showed them to their children to inculcate sobriety. Love of virtue is best secured by a hatred of its opposite: to hate it you must see it: besides, a man of the world should see everything.' But it is so disreputable," I rejoined."How completely John Bullish!" exclaimed E- "Disreputable!

why I am going to take you to an establishment recognized, regulated, and taxed by the government, the upholders of religion and social order, who annually derive six millions of francs from this source of revenue; and as to the company, I promise you that you shall encounter men of the first respectability, of all sects and parties, for in France every one gambles at these saloons,-except the devotees, and they play at home."-He took my arm, and I walked upstairs with him, merely ejaculating as we reached the door-“ Mind, I don't play.'

Entering an ante-room, we were received by two or three servants, who took our sticks and hats, for which we received tickets, and by the number suspended around I perceived that there was a tolerably numerous attendance within. Roulette was the game to which the first chamber was dedicated. In the middle of a long green table was a circular excavation, resembling a large gilt basin, in whose centre was a rotatory apparatus turning an ivory ball in a groove, which, after sundry gyrations,

descended to the bottom of the basin where there was a round of little numbered compartments or pigeon-holes, into one of which it finally settled, when the number was proclaimed aloud. Beside this apparatus there was painted on the green baize a table of various successive numbers, with divisions for odd and even, &c., on which the players deposited their various stakes. He who was in the compartment of the proclaimed number was a winner, and if he had singled out that individual one, which of course was of very rare occurrence, his deposit was doubled I know not how many times. The odd or even declared their own fate: they were lost or doubled. This altar of chance had but few votaries, and merely stopping a moment to admire the handsome decorations of the room we passed on into the next.

"This," whispered my companion, for there was a dead silence in the apartment, although the long table was entirely surrounded by people playing,-"this is only the silver room; you may deposit here as low as a five-franc piece: let us pass on to the next, where none play but those who will risk bank-notes or gold." Casting a passing glance at these comparatively humble gamesters, who were, however, all too deeply absorbed to move their eyes from the cards, I followed my conductor into the sanctuary of the gilded Mammon.

Here was a Rouge-et-Noir table, exactly like the one I had just quitted. In its centre was a profuse display of gold in bowls and rouleaus, with thick piles of bank-notes, on either side of which sat a partner of the bank and an assistant, the dragon guards of this Hesperian fruit. An oblong square, painted on each end of the green table, exhibited three divisions, one for Rouge, another for Noir, and the centre was for the stakes of those who speculated upon the colour of the first and last card, with other ramifications of the art which it would be tedious to describe. Not one of the chairs around the table was unoccupied, and I observed that each banker and assistant was provided with a rateau, or rake, somewhat resembling a garden hoe, several of which were also dispersed about, that the respective winners might withdraw the gold without the objectionable intervention of fingers. When the stakes are all deposited, the dealer, one of the bankers in the centre, cries out—“Le jeu est fait," after which nothing can be added or withdrawn; and then taking a packet of cards from a basket full before him, he proceeds to deal. Thirty-one is the number of the game: the colour of the first card determines whether the first row be black or red: the dealer turns up

till the numbers on the cards exceed thirtyone, when he lays down a second row in the same manner, and whichever is nearest to that amount is the winning row. If both come to the same, he cries "Apres," and recommences with fresh cards; but if each division should turn up thirty-one, the bank takes half of the whole money deposited, as a forfeit from the players. In this consists their certain profit, which has been estimated at ten per cent. upon the total stakes. If the red loses, the banker on that side rakes all the deposits into his treasury; if it wins, he throws down the number of napoleons or notes necessary to cover the lodgments made by the players, each one of whom rakes off his prize, or leaves it for a fresh venture. E- explained to me the functions of the different members of the establishment-the inspector, the croupier, the tailleur, the messieurs de la chambre, &c., and also the meaning of the ruled card and pins which every one held before him, consulting it with the greatest intenseness, and occasionally calling to the people in attendance for a fresh supply. This horoscope was divided by perpendicular lines into columns, headed with an alternate R. and N. for Rouge and Noir, and the pin is employed to perforate the card as each colour wins, as a ground-work for establishing some calculation in that elaborate delusion termed the doctrine of chances. Some, having several of these records before them, closely pierced all over, were summing up the results upon paper, as if determined to play a game of chance without leaving anything to hazard; and none seemed willing to adventure without having some species of sanction from these sibylline leaves.

An involuntary sickness and loathing of heart came over me as I contemplated this scene, and observed the sofas in an adjoining room, which the Parisians, who turn everything into a joke, have christened "the hospital for the wounded." There, thought I to myself, many a wretch has thrown himself down in anguish and despair of soul, cursing himself and the world with fearful imprecations, or blaspheming in that silent bitterness of spirit which is more terrific than words. I contrasted the gaudy decorations and pannelled mirrors that surrounded me with the smoky and blackened ceiling, sad evidence of the nocturnal lamps lighted up at the shrine of this Baal, and of the unhallowed worship prosecuted through the livelong night. Turning to the window, I beheld the sun shining from the bright blue sky, the rain was over, the birds were singing in the trees, and the leaves flutter