Mme. Veuve Brunet, homme de lettres, Chasseur de la 1° Légion," &c. He had made up his mind not to serve, and consequently built at Jardies a splendid villa, which was the subject of Jules Janin's jokes. "I am glad to hear it," said the talented critic. "I am certain the villa will be

for sale within a year, and I will buy it." His last abode was in the Allée Fortunée, now known as the Allée de Balzac, which was superbly fitted up, although the author was quite ruined. But then he had a faith in his good fortune, as will be seen from the following anecdote, supplied by Amédée Rolland :

De Balzac's fixed idea during his whole life was to gain millions. His ambition was to rival in luxury MM. Alexandre Dumas and Lamartine, who, prior to the revolution of 1848, were the two most luxurious authors in the world. To gain those millions he would have gone to China; and he wanted his friend Laurent-Jan to go with him to the Grand Mogul, asserting that he would give him tons of gold in exchange for a ring De Balzac possessed, and which descended in a straight line from Mahomet. He woke the poor fellow at three in the morning to impart this noble project, and insisted on setting off at once in a post-chaise-of course, at the expense of the emperor. He was seriously angry with Laurent-Jan for twelve hours because he refused to go.

Henri Monnier also tells a characteristic anecdote of the great author. After the success of " Père Goriot," he had an idea worth half a million : it merely consisted in opening a grocer's shop on the Boulevard des Italiens, where all the world would flock to buy from the distinguished writer. At Jardies, when he could not carry out his fantasies, he had a simple way of satisfying his desires. He would take a piece of charcoal, and write upon the walls and ceilings: "Here a chimney of Parian marble;" "Here a ceiling painted by Eugène Delacroix ;" "Here a mosaic flooring made of all the rarest woods."

De Balzac was an indefatigable writer: from 1827 to 1848 he published ninety-seven works, every word of which he wrote himself, without the aid of a secretary or a corrector of proofs. For the theatres he did not work so industriously, owing to a certain want of the poetical afflatus : thus, he once gave Théophile Gautier a five-act tragedy to put into rhyme, and was quite surprised that it was not finished in three days. His first piece was Vautrin," brought out at the Porte St. Martin in 1840, and suppressed, as one of the actors mimicked a very high personage. His next piece was the "Ressources de Quinola," performed at the Odéon; and his last, " Mercadet," which met with enormous success at the Théâtre-Français. In 1849, he had in rehearsal a play called "Le Roi des Mendiants," which was, however, never performed.

In 1850, De Balzac returned to Paris with a wife whom he adored, and whom he had loved for many years, the Countess Eve de Hanska. Her fortune would have enabled him to live in comfort for the rest of his life, but death was eager for its prey. He died on the 18th of August of the same year, at the age of fifty. His funeral was attended by all the celebrities of the capital, and the cords were held by M. Baroche, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, and Francis Wey. The funeral oration was pronounced by Victor Hugo at Père Lachaise, in the presence of an enormous crowd. He lies between Charles Nodier and Casimir Delavigne, and his bust in bronze, by David d'Angers, crowns the summit of the monument. A few days later, a special decree ordered his bust to be

placed in the museum at Versailles, that Pantheon of French celebrities. Like Béranger, the author of the "Comédie Humaine" had not the honour to be a member of the Académie Française: he failed twice in his attempts to enter it, just as he had missed the Monthyon prize in 1835 with his "Médecin de Campagne." The learned Areopagus, when the question of admitting De Balzac was discussed, gave as the pretext for refusal his want of sufficient fortune. "As the Academy does not want me in my honourable poverty," the candidate wrote on this occasion to his friend Charles Nodier, "it will have at a later date to do without my riches."

That De Balzac should not have been honoured during his life is not surprising, for he had raised himself a relentless band of enemies by his haughtiness and vanity. No occasion was neglected to hold him up to ridicule his smallest and most harmless weaknesses were branded, and men even sought, at rare intervals, to doubt his ability. It is possible that in England a fairer appreciation of his talent can be obtained than in his fatherland, and what strikes us most in his works is his thorough nationality. We know no other French author who reproduces in such photographic wise the virtues and defects of his countrymen and women, or is so thoroughly French in his ideas and incidents. For this reason his works will never become popular in England, nor do we wish to see them so, for the doctrines they generally inculcate are quite subversive of those ideas of morality which fortunately obtain among ourselves. Still the study of such a man's life is interesting, as proving that the minutest observer falls into the self-same errors which he ever so stringently rebukes, and it is only another instance of the truth of Burns's lines:

Oh! would some power the giftie gie us

To see ourselves as others see us.

Now that the man is beginning to be forgotten in France, and his failings regarded as amiable weaknesses, his writings are growing more popular than ever, for there is no doubt that in his peculiar line he is unapproachable. Whether De Balzac prostituted his undoubtedly great talents by the selection of such subjects we need not here discuss, but it seems to us that, unless the French people encouraged and admired such dangerous books, we should have fewer imitators of Balzac, and more followers of Souvestre. We regret much, for the sake of France, that we are forced to the conviction that every work written by De Balzac gave one more blow to French morality, and that the deplorable condition of society in that country is in a great measure owing to the success of the school of which he was the arch teacher. The author of "Le Père Goriot" has passed away from us, but the terrible influences his pernicious doctrines exercised upon society will last as long as the reputation of the author.

157

THE BARRED-UP ROOMS.

I.

THE clocks of a small country place were chiming ten on a dark night, as one, dressed like a police-inspector, made his way across a piece of waste land. His destination was the Maze, a house belonging to Lord Level. A mysterious occurrence had taken place there the night previous, which caused the police to intrude: Lord Level had been stabbed in his bed. The officer rang a loud peal at the outer gate, and a policeman, expecting who it was, came from the house in answer to the ring. He waited when they got inside: he knew he should be questioned. His superior closed the gate, walked up the garden path, and placed his back against a tree in the vicinity of the house.

"What have you learnt? Any clue to the assassin ?"

66

The policeman dropped his voice to a whisper and began to answer, as though afraid the very trees might hear. Speak up," sharply interrupted the inspector: "the open air does not carry tales."

The man obeyed. "It's a clear case, sir, as ever we came across; against Lady Level."

It takes a great deal to astonish a police-inspector, but the words certainly astonished the one in question. "Against Lady Level?" he repeated. "His wife !"

"She's the one, sir. But who'd think it, to see her? Only nineteen or twenty, and enough beauty to knock you over, with blue eyes that look you down in their haughtiness. She's dressed out like them high ladies do dress, in light blue silk, with her neck and arms uncovered. There's a gentleman with her now, some friend of the family, and he won't let us go on with our investigation. He came and stopped it, and said we were acting against Lord Level's wishes."

"But why do you suspect Lady Level?"

"Look here, sir. It's a sure thing that nobody got in; the doors and windows were safe when the house went to bed, and safe when it got up; there has been no robbery, or anything of that sort, and there's no suspicion to be attached to the servants: and then there's the facts themselves. The servants were roused up in the middle of the night by Lord Level's bell ringing violently, and my lady screaming, and when they got to his room, there he lay, fainted dead off, stabbed in two places, and she pretty near fainting too, and dropped down in a chair in her silk dressinggown, and the knife it had been done with flung or carried into the ehamber opening from it"

"An unoccupied chamber ?"

"Lady Level's; the one she had been sleeping in. Not a sign or symptom was there of anybody else being about, or of anybody's having been there. Her ladyship's version is, that she was woke up by Lord Level calling to her, and found him stabbed and bleeding: that's all she'll confess to knowing of it."

"And he ?"

"He says nothing, as I hear, except that he won't have the police

VOL. XLVI.

M

meddle with it. But as he's off his head, he mayn't know what he's saying."

"How does Lady Level account for the knife being in her room ?" "There it is," cried the man. "Whenever these violence-workers, let 'em be duchesses or chimney-sweeps, do a deed, and think they do it securely, there's certain to be some outlet where suspicion can creep in. They over-do it, or they under-do it. If anybody else had done it, and put the knife in her room, she must have seen it done. And why did she put it there? They have got a fatality on them and they can't help themselves if she had dropped the knife in his room and not taken it to hers, things would not have looked so strong against her."

"But her motive for attacking him-her motive? Is any apparent ?" "They were on bad terms," said the policeman. "The servants heard a violent quarrel between them that night, previous to her going to her room."

The inspector mused. "Did they tell you this, as confirmatory of their suspicions against her ?"

"They don't suspect her," he replied. "I and Cliff have drawn our own deductions by what they have said, and by self-observation."

"It appears scarcely credible that a young woman like Lady Level, hardly six months married, should attack her husband," observed the superior, as he moved from the spot. "Where are these servants ?"

"In the kitchen, sir. This way. There's no establishment, because the family never live here. Lord Level came down and got his knee hurt in some way, and then my lady followed him, against his will, it's whispered, and sent for her maid and man-servant.”

The lower part of a window, close to where they had halted to speak, was hidden by dwarf shrubs, and the ever-observant eye of the inspector, less observant, perhaps, in the darkness of night than at noonday, had failed to detect that it was open. Yet at this open window, listening to his words and drinking them in, stood Lady Level.

Partially standing, partially leaning against a strong arm which was thrown round her for her support the arm of her early friend, Mr. Ravensworth. Half fainting, she had listened to the words of the officers. Mr. Ravensworth, strangely perplexed and doubting-perplexed by the aspect things wore, yet unable to believe her guilty-had besought her to tell him the truth, whatever it might be.

She quitted Mr. Ravensworth as the men moved away; she leaned against the side of the window, shocked, indignant, terrified, as might have been seen from her countenance, had there been light to view it. 66 Arnold, is this to be borne ?”

He folded his arms. He felt for her deeply: were she connected with him by near ties of blood, he could not have been more anxious to protect her: but a strong doubt that she might be guilty, was working within him. He knew that she had received much provocation from Lord

Level.

"How can they dare to entertain such suspicions? If they-if they -oh, Arnold, they never will arrest me !--they never will publicly accuse me!" she uttered, as a new phase of possibilities occurred to her.

"Blanche, listen. All that can be done for you, I will do; but I cannot work in this uncertainty. Tell me the truth; be it good or be it

bad, I will stand by you; but, if I am to be of service to you, I must know the truth. Did you-did you"-he hesitated to put the question so pointedly" was it you who struck Lord Level ?"

No. Have I not just told you so ?"

"What you told me I do not understand. You say you saw it done

"Then I did not see it done," she petulantly interrupted; and no more questions would she answer.

"Let me take you to the lighted room," said Mr. Ravensworth; "you are trembling with the cold."

"Not with the cold," was her reply.

The fire had gone low, but he stirred it into a blaze, and drew the easy-chair near it for Lady Level. He stood by, saying nothing.

"Suppose they should openly accuse me?" she began, after a silence. "Would they take me ?"

"Blanche," he retorted, in a sharp, ringing, imperative accent, "are you guilty? Tell me, one way or the other, that I may know what to

be at."

Lady Level rose and confronted him, her dark blue eyes wearing their haughty expression-for the first time, to him. "You have known me for many years, known me well.”

"I have."

"Then, are you not ashamed to repeat that question? I guilty of attacking Lord Level!"

"I would rather believe myself-I could as soon believe my own wife guilty of such a thing; but why have you equivocated with me? You have not told me the truth, as to what passed that night."

"He charged me not to tell."

"Five minutes ago you told me yourself you saw it done: now you say you did not. What am I to think ?"

"In saying I saw it done, I spoke hastily: what I ought to have said was, that I saw who did it. And then, to-day, Lord Level insisted that I had been dreaming," she abstractedly continued. "Arnold, do you believe that we can see visions or dream dreams that afterwards wear to the remembrance the semblance of realities ?"

“I wish you would not speak in riddles. The time is going on, those men of the law may come in to accuse you, and how am I to defend you? I cannot, I repeat, work in the dark."

There was a long pause: Lady Level was deliberating with herself. "It may be better that I tell you all."

"You know that you may trust me," he replied.

"I went to rest last night angry with Lord Level, for we had spoken irritating words to each other. I lay awake, I dare say for an hour, indalging bitter thoughts, and then I dropped asleep. Suddenly something woke me: I cannot tell you what it was: whether it was any noise, or whether it was the opening of the door between my room and Lord Level's. All I know is, that door was wide open, and some one stood in it with a lighted candle. It was the strangest object, Arnold: it seemed to be dressed in flannel, flannel drawers and a flannel shirt, with long hair and wild eyes. In the confusion of the moment I believed it must be Lord Level, and I was struck with amazement, for Lord Level was