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"Would you insult me so cruelly? answered she.

Then they bestowed upon him the daughter of a priest of On, or Annu, who was called Asnath, a name which can be explained as AsNeith, thus signifying that she was consecrated to the mother of the sun. After this, only one thing remains to be proved to make us sure that the Pharaoh under whose reign Joseph came into Egypt was indeed the Shepherd king Apepi."

Here we are at last!" exclaimed Madame Véretz joyfully. "I always loved that Apepi without knowing him."

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"Oh, I do not pretend to rank him too highly," answered he, and I should not dare to affirm even that he was a person to be loved; but he was a man of merit, and you will see that he was in some measure worthy of the consideration which you wish to bestow upon him. Neither can I say that he was handsome, although there was character in his face. Do you ask how I know this? In the Museum of the Louvre, madame, in Cabinet A of the Historical Museum, there is a figure of green basalt, somewhat defaced, in which some pretend to recognize the best Saïte manner. Unfortunately, the tablets bearing the inscriptions have disappeared. Madame, I have the strongest reasons for believing that this precious statuette is not Saïte at all, but the portrait of one of the Shepherd kings, and that this Shepherd king is Apepi. So you perceive-" He lifted the glass to his lips again and took a second swallow methodically, as he did everything; then pursued his reading:

"For this purpose we are obliged to go further back. It was toward the end of the year 1830 before the Christian era that the sovereigns of the dynasty of Thebes began to rise against the Hyksos. After a long and painful struggle, in which they underwent every change of fortune, they drove the Shepherds into Lower Egypt. More than a century after, the king Raskenen was seated upon the throne of Thebes; he is mentioned in a papyrus at the British Museum, the importance of which no one can fail to estimate. It happened, so it is written in this papyrus, that the land of Egypt fell into the hands of wicked rulers, and at that time there was not a king who was possessed of strength, health, or life. But, behold! the king Raskenen appeared, full of life, health, and strength, and he reigned over the region of the south. The wicked had possession of the fortress of the sun, and the entire country was subject to their impositions and taxes. The king of the wicked ones was called Apepi, and he chose for his lord, so says the papyrus, the god Sutech, that is to say, the god Set, who is no other than the Greek god Typhon, genius of evil."

"It is true," interrupted Madame Véretz, "that Sutech, Set, and Typhon, upon close examination, do resemble each other strongly."

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"O madame-please!" said he to her; we are just coming to the principal point."

And he resumed: "He erected in his honor a temple of solid masonry, and served none other of the gods of Egypt. So the papyrus teaches; and this important document proves: 1. That the Shepherd kings had taken up their abode in the Delta; 2. That they had all Lower Egypt under their domination; 3. That Apepi—”

Just then it occurred to him that it was long since he had heard the adored voice, that voice which sang Mignon's song to him so well; so, turning toward the divan, he said: "He was also called Apophis, but Apepi is his real name. Which of the two do you prefer, Hortense?" Hortense made no response; perhaps her emotion at the narration had taken away her power of speech.

"Apophis or Apepi!" screamed Madame Véretz to her "choose boldly. Monsieur de Penneville leaves it to your decision."

Alas! she made no reply.

Horace started; he felt a chill run through all his frame, like a premonition of destiny. He rose, seized a light, walked hastily toward the divan. It was only too true; he could doubt it no longer-Madame Corneuil was asleep!

A little more, and he would have let fall from his hands the lamp which had thrown so much light upon his disaster. He placed it upon a stand.

"

Heavens! how she sleeps!" exclaimed Madame Véretz. "Are you not something of a magnetizer?" She moved toward her daughter as if to awaken her. He drew her back, saying with a bitter sneer:

"Oh, respect her repose, I implore you!”

It would be wrong to believe that the selflove of both author and reader did not suffer greatly. Light broke in upon him: he suddenly came to understand that for several months he had either deceived himself or allowed himself to be deceived. Perfectly motionless, with cool, fixed, and piercing eye, he gazed upon the face of the beautiful sleeper, whose pose was charming, for she knew well how to sleep. Nothing could have been lovelier than the disarray of her beautiful hair, one curl of which fell on her cheek. Her lips were parted in a half smile; probably she was dreaming sweetly; she had sought refuge in a land where there was no Apepi.

Horace continued to gaze at her, and I know not what scales fell one by one from his eyes. Charming as she was, he saw her graces disappear every moment, and was on the point of

thinking her plain. In truth, he recognized her no longer. The miracle, which took place at Sakkarah on coming out of the tomb of Ti, had been undone; the connection between the sleeper and Egypt was at an end. On leaving Cairo she had borne away in her golden hair, in her smile, and in her eyes, some of the sunshine which ripens the dates, and delights the heart of the lotus, and cheers the yellow sand of the desert with mirages, and from which the history of the Pharaohs can not hide its secrets. The aureole with which it had crowned her brow was extinguished in a moment, and he also perceived that her eyelashes were too long, her lips too thin, and her arms, which were softly rounded, ended in clutching hands, with claws beneath them; that there were little lines round her brow and mouth, and these coming wrinkles which he had never before observed betrayed to him the base workings of sordid passions—that restlessness of vanity which makes women old before their time. Whence came this sudden clairvoyance? He was angry, and, say what they may, intense anger is luminous.

"You must forgive her," said Madame Véretz; "I have been watching her narrowly from the corner of my eye; she struggled bravely: unfortunately, her nerves are not as strong as mine. You had already put her to severe tests; she bore them honorably, but how can one hold out longer against that most dreadful of all bores, the Pharaonic bore? Be careful, my dear Count, she has so much esteem and friendship for you; sometimes it only takes a very little whim to weary a woman's heart."

For long months a vision had been the delicious companion of his days; she had never left him; she was interested in everything that he did; she ate and drank with him, she worked with him, and dreamed with him. She spoke to him, and he answered, and they understood one another before the words were spoken. Her voice melted his heart. She had golden hair, which had one day touched his cheek; she had lips, too, which his own had touched twice. As he went on thinking, his anger made him forget his grief; the poor fellow would have given a great deal to have his two kisses back again.

And yet he still had a faint hope. “No, it can not be; such things do not happen," thought he. "She could not have let me leave her thus for ever. She will call me back; she is busy in writing to me now. Jacquot will come before midnight, bringing me a note which will explain all." No Jacquot came, and soon a neighboring clock struck midnight. Its melancholy stroke resembled a funeral-toll. The clock mourned for some one who had just died, and Horace realized that his dear companion, his vision, was no longer in the world. Henceforth he would be alone, utterly alone, and his solitude filled him with dread. His head fell upon his breast, and great tears rolled down his cheeks.

When he lifted his head, he saw he was not alone; that on his table before him stood a little statuette a foot high, looking at him. Her name was Sekhet, the helper, and she stretched toward him her pretty little catlike face full of pitying kindness. He ran to her, and took her in his hands. “Ah!” said he, "you are here; how

She pointed alternately to the closed eyes of could I have forgotten you? I am not alone if her daughter and the seventy-three leaves.

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you remain to me. Some one said on this very spot that roses would fade, but the gods remained." As he spoke thus, he caressed her slender figure and her rounded thighs, and ended by kissing her devotedly on the forehead. It seemed to him as if the good little Sekhet really pitied his sorrows, and was moved and touched by them; that she had a kind little heart, like one of the gray nuns, or simply like a good, honest human being. It seemed to him also that there were tears in her eyes, goddess as she was, and that she returned his kiss, although she was nothing but a bit of blue porcelain. It seemed as if she said to him, "You have come back to me, and I will never lend you to any one again." And yet, good Heavens! she had lent so little of

A head appeared above the window-sill, and him. a voice exclaimed from without :

He felt comforted, as if he had purified both

"Add sixteen to that, madame. It is best heart and lips. He stood before the glass, and always to be exact."

The Count de Penneville went back to his room with death in his soul. That which he so bitterly regretted was less a woman than a dream.

gazed upon himself. He saw that Count Horace's eyes were somewhat red, but, notwithstanding that, he saw that Count Horace was still a man. He went in search of two large empty

trunks which he had put aside in an outer closet; he dragged one after the other into his chamber; two minutes later he began to pack them.

On the next afternoon the Marquis de Miraval, who strangely enough had omitted that day to cross the lake, although the weather was really beautiful, received two letters, one of which was brought by the postman, the other by Jacquot, in a new suit of clothes.

The first, written in fine and steady handwriting, was expressed in the following manner:

“MY DEAR UNCLE: The situation is vacant and at your service. If you have any commands for Vichy, please forward them to Geneva, where I shall pass to-night, and leave to-morrow by the express-train, which goes at three o'clock, or, to speak more correctly, at twenty-five minutes past three. Allow me to convey to you my best wish for your happiness, and the assurance of my unchanging affection."

The second, hurriedly scribbled, contained these words:

"MONSIEUR LE MARQUIS: Unfortunately you spoke the truth. He either did not love at all or else very lightly, since he can not forgive the woman whom he pretended to love for having dozed during the reading of his paper upon the king Apepi. I will leave you to imagine what my daughter thinks of it all; she has taken the full measure of the man, and a woman no longer loves the man whom she thus measures. I have heard that he left immediately, so you need fear my imprudence no longer. Nothing henceforth can hinder you from revealing to me your secret, or rather, do better still, come and tell it to us to-night and dine with us."

Savoy, full of fish. There is an inn on the shore, so I engaged a room there, where I kept all my equipments, and every morning I crossed the lake to satisfy my passion. Since I promised you that I would be as truth-telling as AmenHeb (chief scribe), I will show you how far I was carried away by this mania. I left Lausanne for Ouchy with the sole intention of getting near fish; I forgot so entirely the business which brought me here that I only went to see my nephew twice-one day when it blew, and another when it rained, because there was no fishing on those days. I also declined two most attractive invitations to breakfast, because if I had accepted them I should have given up the pleasure of fishing for two whole days. The lamentable part of it is, that, in spite of my pains, my application, and perseverance, I caught nothing but a few miserable gudgeons. I kept saying to myself: 'This is too much; I will leave it all. But I did not leave it. When I returned to Lausanne, my faith in fish would return, but I believe in them no longer. Thus our illusions vanish like our youth; our path is strewed with them. Nevertheless, yesterday, by some incomprehensible miracle, I did succeed in catching a good-sized eel, who kindly condescended to take my bait-so on that I leave. The honor of my

white hairs is secure.

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sion which came over the face of Madame VéWe will not attempt to describe the expresretz as she took in the full meaning of this reply, the cruel embarrassment which she experienced in communicating it to her daughter, or the terrible scene which that adored angel made for her.

Jacquot carried back the following answer to Madame Corneuil is less to be pitied than her

Madame Véretz:

"DEAR MADAME: So I must reveal to you my dreadful secret! I have an unfortunate passion, which I conceal carefully, out of respect for my white hairs. Those of my friends who know it have mercilessly made fun of me. With blushes I confess it to you, I dote on fishing! When Madame de Penneville sent me to Lausanne to manage a family affair, I consoled myself for my inconvenience by remembering that Lausanne was near a lake, where I might fish. My first thought on arriving was to buy fishinglines and all the other necessary apparatus. I did not dare to fish in your neighborhood for fear I might be surprised, and that my nephew would laugh at me. I made inquiries, and was told that there was a pretty little place near Evian, in

mother, since, in her misfortune, she at least has one resource, that of relieving her mind by the most vehement reproaches, the most virulent recriminations, and exclamations like “Are you not to blame for all this?" It is related that in this century lived a queen who was very intelligent, very enlightened, full of good sentiments, who exercised a great and rightful influence in affairs of state. It happened, unfortunately, that she was once mistaken, and the fate of a lifetime is sometimes settled in a minute. From that moment she was no longer consulted. The people she recommended were no longer accepted; her august husband said, "I suspect them all-they are the friends of my wife." So, once having been mistaken, Madame Véretz lost all her influence, all her credit. Her daughter will remind her to all eternity that she once allowed her to

let go her prey, to chase a phantom with white to enter, the Marquis de Miraval, his great-uncle, hair.

When the Count Horace de Penneville entered the station at Geneva, impatient to go by the train which leaves, not at three o'clock, but at twenty-five minutes past three, in the afternoon, he was greatly astonished to find, seated in a corner of the very carriage which he happened

who remarked to him, as he helped him to stow away carefully all his numberless little parcels under the seat and upon the rack, "My son, I have thought the matter well over, and have come to the conclusion that there is no faith to be put in women who like Apepi one day and dislike him the next."

THE COMEDY WRITERS OF THE RESTORATION.

THE

HE comedy of the Restoration may be divided into two schools: the first, of which Dryden, Mrs. Behn, and Shadwell are the chief representatives, followed the Spanish and old English comedy more closely than the French; the second, of which Etherege, Sedley, and Wycherley are the masters, molded its forms almost entirely upon French models. It is this latter division which the present article proposes to consider.

to have had a little the start of his future brother dramatist. He was already a favorite of the King's; he wrote erotic verses, not spoiled for the royal palate by a prudish regard for decency, soft, flowing, and no-meaning, exactly on a level with the royal imagination; a gay, easy, pleasant style of conversation, well-sprinkled with jests and stories of the same type as the verses, had quite won for him the royal heart, and placed him among the highest in the royal favor. In 1663, however, an extraordinary frolic brought him into unpleasant notoriety. During a debauch at a house of ill-fame in Bow Street, with Lord Buckhurst and Sir Thomas Ogle, he stripped off his clothes, went out upon the balcony, and, after conducting himself in a manner too disgusting to describe, preached a blasphemous sermon to the mob who gathered round; a riot ensued, the windows were smashed in, and the preacher had to beat a hasty retreat. Such abominations as these could not be allowed to pass unpunished even in that age: my gentlemen were cited to appear at Westminster, and Sedley, after being severely reprimanded by the Lord Chief Justice, was ordered to pay a fine of five hundred pounds. After this, a biographer informs us, "Sir Charles took a more serious turn, applied himself to business, and became a member of Parliament, in which he was a frequent speaker." A reference, however, to the pages of Pepys does not confirm the assertion as to his sudden reformation. Under date October 12, 1668, the diarist writes: "Pierce do tell me, among other news, the late frolick and debauchery of Sir Charles Sedley and Buckhurst running up and down all the night, almost naked, through the streets; and at last fighting, and being beat by the watch and clapped up all night; and how the King takes their parts; and my Lord Chief Justice Keeling hath laid the constable by the heels to answer it next sessions: which is a horrid shame." In the same paragraph we are also Sir Charles, being a wealthy baronet, seems told that "the King was drunk at Saxam with

There is such a remarkable similarity between the lives, as well as the works, of Etherege and Sedley that the story of the one, with a few differences, tells that of the other. Both were descended from good county families: Etherege, a commoner, was born in 1636; Sedley, the son of a baronet, came into the world three years later, in 1639. The first was entered as a student at Cambridge - the second was sent to Oxford. Both left their respective universities without taking a degree. Etherege, finding Puritan England too dull for his fancy, went abroad and took up his residence in France; while Sir Charles, equally disgusted with the Government, retired to his Oxfordshire estate. At the Restoration he came to London with other royalists to pay his duty to the Throne; and George Etherege, who had long since returned from his travels and was studying the law, quitted his gloomy chambers in the Inns of Court, and, casting aside for ever such dry, uncongenial pursuits, mingled with the throng of butterfly wits, fops, debauchees, and penniless cavaliers, whose flaunting finery or tarnished tinsel now, in lieu of sober grays and browns, swaggered along the streets, and whose roistering songs and fiddles had drowned the nasal hymns of the "godly." His first comedy, The Comical Revenge; or, Love in a Tub," at once won him the favor and companionship of Dorset, Rochester, Buckingham, and introduced him to Sedley, who was already one of that brilliant, dissolute band.

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Sedley, Buckhurst, etc., the nights that my Lord Arlington came thither, and would not give him audience, or could not; which is true, for it was the night that I was there and saw the King go up to his chamber, and was told that the King had been drinking." We have frequent glimpses of Sir Charles vouchsafed us by Mr. Pepys: how he conducts himself at the play-now disparaging the acting and mimicking the actors' pronunciation aloud; now flirting and bandying wit with a lady in a vizard, and drawing the attention of the audience from the stage; now employing ruffians to beat Kynaston so severely, for having abused him in some part, that he can not perform, and the theatre is closed in consequence.

Pepys was present at the performance of his first play; here is his account of its reception (May 18, 1668): "It being almost twelve o'clock, or little more, to the King's playhouse, where the doors were not then open; but presently they did open; and we in, and find many people already come in by private ways into the pit, it being the first day of Sir Charles Sedley's new play so long expected, The Mulberry Garden'; of whom, being so reputed a wit, all the world do expect great matters. I having sat here awhile and eat nothing to-day, did slip out, getting a boy to keep my place; and to the Rose Tavern, and there got half a breast off the spit, and dined all alone. And so to the play again, where the King and Queen by and by come, and all the court; and the house infinitely full. But the play, when it come, though there was here and there a pretty saying, and that not very many neither, yet the

whole of the play had nothing very extraordinary in it all, neither of language nor design; insomuch that the King I did not see laugh nor pleased from the beginning to the end, nor the company; insomuch that I have not been less pleased at a new play in my life, I think."

And, although Mr. Pepys's judgment of plays is usually a very fallible one, it was pretty correct this time. "The Mulberry Garden," which took its title from a place of public resort, upon the site of which Buckingham Palace now stands, is a very dull comedy indeed. It is half sentimental -very nearly approaching to tragic-and half humorous, the two phases succeeding each other in alternate scenes. Horatio, Eugenio, Philander, Diana, and Althea, the sentimentalists, talk throughout in rhyme. Here, as a specimen, is a speech of one of the lovers :

"The very minute I beheld your face,

You might in mine the growing passion trace;
Now trembling fear did her pale color spread,
Then springing hope brought back the native red:
Joy may be seen, and grief itself unfold,
And so, my love, though it be never told;

In every look my passion was confest,
And every action my high flame exprest:
As foolish witnesses their cause o'erthrow,
My acts to hide it did it clearly show."

The comic plot introduces all the usual characters of the comedies of that time-the two or three town rakes, the amorous widow, a couple of frisky, longing young damsels, and a couple of foolish old men; the scenes, however, are dreary and insipid, and do not give us much idea of the author's wit, of which we have been told so much. The comic dialogue is written in prose. The two plots are quite independent, and either could be wholly omitted without at all affecting the understanding of the other. The comedy, however, is curious as a picture of the manners of a transition period. The action is supposed to take place just previous to the Restoration, and if the picture be a true one, which

there seems little reason to doubt, that event did

not bring about such a violent reaction in morals
and manners as is generally supposed, the reac-
The Mulberry
tion having already well set in.
Garden of 1659, as a place of intrigue and assig-
nation, was not at all behind St. James's Park, as
Wycherley describes it in "Love in a Wood";
and Harry Modish, Ned Estridge, and Jack Wild-
ish were as fine rakes, and undisguisedly so, as
ever flaunted their debauchery under the merry
monarch.

There is a striking resemblance between “The calls the latter "a silly play," but it is superior to Mulberry Garden" and "Love in a Tub." Pepys Sedley's. Here again we have five sentimentalists talking in rhyme—a brother and two pairs of lovers; one gentleman is desperately enamored of a lady who does not love him, but he is loved by her sister; he challenges his successful rival and is disarmed in the duel, but, resolved not to live to see his Graciana in the arms of another,

he runs upon his sword; the wound, however,
not proving mortal, he is about to repeat the ex-
periment, when he is held back by his friends.
His exclamation thereat is a fine bit of bathos:
"My sword, I doubt, has failed, in my relief:
It has made a vent for blood, but not for grief.
Let me once more the unkind weapon try:
Will ye prolong my pain? O! cruelty!"

Here again, as in "The Mulberry Garden," there is no connection between this tragic story and the farcical comic plot, in which, however, there is much more life, incident, and humor, than in Sedley's comedy. Dufoy, the French valet, is extremely comical; 'Sir Frederick Frolick is a model roisterer of the time, for which either his creator or Sir Charles might have sat; he is always attended by a band of fiddlers and half a

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