After a few weeks' oblivion Edouard returned to his senses, but was far too weak to lift a hand. He saw the young Dr. Palmeriello and Olympe seated by his bedside, and eagerly talking; then his senses deserted him for a time again. When he recovered, he was astounded at a sudden revelation of Olympe's perfidy, which he afterwards described to Pierre in the following terms:

Ce fut alors que j'aperçus un tableau que j'aurai pris moi-même pour une vision de malade, si d'autres preuves et les aveux les plus complets n'eussent changé mes soupçons en certitude. En face de moi, sur le mur de la chambre, je vis deux grandes ombres projetées par la lueur des bougies, qui se trouvaient alignées de façon à ne fournir qu'un foyer de lumière. Ces deux ombres représentaient une femme assise sur les genoux d'un homme, et comme renversée, la tête en arrière. Je n'eus pas la force de soulever mes paupières pour voir le haut de ce groupe, où la tête de l'homme devait se trouver, mais cette tête que je cherchais vint d'elle-même se poser dans mon rayon visuel. Elle s'approcha de celle de la femme, et l'attitude des deux ombres était celle d'un baiser. J'avoue que, dans le premier moment, ce tableau ne fit pas une vive impression sur mon esprit engourdi. Il me fallut quelque temps pour comprendre la portée d'une telle révélation; mais bientôt j'arrivai par degrès à l'étonnement, à l'indignation et à l'horreur.

But this was not all. Olympe invited the young doctor to sup with her, and Edouard overheard them arranging pleasure-trips they were going to make together. They evidently thought him dead, for Palmeriello said: "Se non è mortx, poco manca." By the time Edouard had regained a little strength, he taxed Olympe with her treachery, but she declared it was a fever fantasy. Subsequent events, however, turned suspicion into certainty, and then the hardened woman threatened to confine him in a madhouse if he dared to breathe a syllable on the subject. Edouard was only too glad to escape from such a fury, and returned to Paris, broken-hearted. The shock had been too great for his enfeebled frame, and, worse still, he yet felt an ardent passion for the fallen woman.

Not long, and Olympe also came to Paris, with the young doctor in her train. She felt convinced that Edouard had told his story, and she, therefore, determined to brave public opinion. A trial of strength then ensued between Olympe and her old lover, in which Olympe was defeated, and in her rage she dismissed the doctor, who returned to his nothingness, cursing the hour in which he had yielded to the syren.

Thus disarmed, Olympe made an attack on Edouard, pleading her faults and praying his forgiveness. She declared that she would kill herself, go into a convent, cut off her hair and send it to him if he did not relent. Edouard, however, remained firm, and she was as good as her word. One evening, when seated at his piano, he received a parcel: on opening it, he found it contained Olympe's beautiful tresses. Then she changed her batteries: she began writing him the most frenzied letters, which M. de Musset cruelly immortalises, and from which we will quote a passage, illustrative of the grande passion as felt, or at least described, by Madame Sand in her stormy youth:

L'heure de ma mort est en train de sonner. Chaque jour qui s'écoule frappe un coup, et dans quatre jours le dernier coup ébranlera l'air vital autour de moi. Alors, s'ouvrira une tombe, où ma jeunesse et mes amours descendront pour jamais: et que serai-je ensuite? Triste spectre, sur quelles rives iras-tu

errer et gémir? Grèves immenses! hiver sans fin! Il faut plus de courage pour franchir le seuil des passions et pour entrer dans le calme du désespoir que pour avaler la ciguë.

Pourquoi m'avez-vous réveillée, mon Dieu, quand je m'étendais avec résignation sur une couche glacée ? Pourquoi avez-vous fait passer devant moi le fantôme de mes nuits brûlantes? Ange de mort, amour funeste, ô mon destin, sous la figure d'un enfant blond et délicat, oh! que je t'aime encore! Quel est ce feu qui dévore mes entrailles? Il semble qu'un volcan gronde au-dedans de moi et que je vais éclater comme un cratère. O Dieu! prends donc pitié de cet être qui souffre tant! Pourquoi les autres meurent-ils? Ne pourrai-je succomber sous le fardeau de ma douleur ?

Tall language this, as the Americans would say-so tall that we could not dare to translate it, for fear of rendering it worse nonsense than it is in the original. The English language cannot attain such an altitude of bombast. We leave it to our readers to make any sense of it.

Still Edouard remained stern: for at the very time Olympe was sending him these despairing effusions, it was the current rumour that the fickle Ariadne was consoling herself by the society of a German musician, Hans Flocken (Chopin). Piqued by Edouard's obduracy, the lady tried one supreme effort: she called up Pierre one night, confessed all her faults to him, and implored his intercession with Edouard. She only wanted to see him once more and be assured of his forgiveness : then she would die happy. Edouard at length weakly consented, and the result was a revival of the old liaison and a condonation of all that was passed.

But it did not last long: Edouard had again causes for jealousy. Hans Flocken wrote, asking an interview; and though Olympe assured him she had not answered the letter, Edouard was certain that she had. Then, another male friend wrote, seeking consolation, and the reply was shown to Edouard. He noticed in it these words: "Chasteté et sainte amitié," which Olympe was very fond of using, and he remarked on it thus: "Ma chère, vous parlez si souvent de chasteté que cela devient indécent. Votre amitié n'est pas plus sainte que celle des autres.". This retort sent Olympe into a furious passion, and she threatened to stab Edouard, who laughingly disarmed her.

Before long they separated again, and though Olympe did her utmost to lure him back, Edouard was firm. A curious incident quite extin-` guished the last spark of love. Meeting Olympe one afternoon, she so earnestly begged him to come and dine with her, that he consented, for fear of causing her pain; but when they reached the door, she said, with unusual hesitation, that she hoped he would have no objection to meet a friend she had already invited-Hans Flocken. Edouard burst into a loud laugh, and quitted her for ever.

Twenty years later, Edouard was lying on a bed of sickness, Pierre reading to him the paper. On coming to the name of William Caze,

Edouard remarked :

"Voilà celle qui m'a empoisonné. Je suis comme ces gens qui avaient diné une fois chez les Borgias ou les Médicis et ne se remettaient jamais."

"N'exagérons point," dit Pierre, "examinez les choses en philosophe. I y a, selon moi, des circonstances atténuantes."

"Ah!" s'écria Falconey, "je suis curieux de voir cela."

"Si l'on y regardait bien," reprit Pierre, "on trouverait peut-être dans les

facultés et le talent du maestro l'excuse de la femme. William Caze, obligée par son art à faire parler les passions, éprouve un ardent besoin de les connaître, d'en écouter le langage, de les voir de près, d'observer dans le cœur des autres toutes celles qu'elle est incapable à sentir. De là cet appétit déréglé de complications, d'aventures, de changements, d'amours interrompues, reprises, abandonnées. Le calme et le bonheur, si doux qu'ils soient, ne lui enseignent plus rien après certain temps: de là le désir de rompre, de passer à autre chose. La femme aimerait encore volontiers: mais le compositeur s'impatiente et dit, 'Assez d'amour, nous savons cela par cœur ; occupons-nous un peu de jalousie, de désespoir, de tromperie, d'infidélité.' C'est ainsi qu'elle trompe et devient infidèle."

The apology is ingenious, and, we dare say, true; still it did not justify Olympe in destroying the reputation of those she had loved, and, when all was over, describing one as a madman, another as an imbecile, a third as a man without delicacy. Aware of this amiable weakness on the part of the lady, Edouard, before his death, drew up the narrative we have analysed, and handed it to Pierre with the letters he had fortunately preserved. Pierre solemnly promised his dying friend that if the day came when (to use Edouard's words) "elle avait l'audace de mentir à Dieu et aux hommes jusqu'à dire que j'ai été un ingrat, un fou et un méchant, quand c'est elle qui m'a trahi, enlevé la raison et empoisonné le cœur arrive alors, comme la statue du Commandeur au souper de Don Juan."

The day has arrived: Olympe has charged her lover with being all this, and worse; but Pierre has kept his word. Never has a more frightful revelation of woman's perfidy been laid bare than that presented to us in "Lui et Elle."

It may be that there is a degree of harshness in thus dissecting a woman's heart, and showing what terrible thoughts it can treasure up for so long a time, but it must be confessed that George Sand courted the reprisal. She wrote a book to blacken the character of a dead man, and his brother has come to the rescue. That "Lui et Elle" is in every respect true there cannot be a shadow of a doubt; and at the same time it is equally certain that "Elle et Lui" is a tissue of falsehoods, strung together with most malicious design. If this severe lesson produce the proper effect, and Madame Sand be induced, through fear of further reprisals, to refrain from drawing other pictures from her own lifehistory, we shall be only too glad. But we fear it has arrived too late. Were a new edition of Madame Sand's works to be published, they might justly be collected under the title of "Elle et Eux," for the system of revelation of past amours has become a monomania with her.

OUR NATIONAL DEFENCES.

THE present attitude of Great Britain is universally felt and admitted to be neither dignified nor satisfactory. The lovers of Peace, the worshippers of Mammon, and the trucklers to Power, are for the time being in the ascendant. There are peculiarities in the position of the potentate who has lighted the firebrand of war and devastation in the heart of Europe, which to a certain extent vindicate their cause. It is just possible that the Emperor Napoleon III. is a highly ambitious chieftainambitious in the noblest sense of the word-and that he is prepared to sacrifice men and treasure, his subjects and their resources, in the liberation of an alien people from the rude and haughty exactions of the Kaiser. It is utterly needless to argue with those who have adopted such a conclusion that it is opposed to all historical precedents-to all precedents on the part of the said chieftain himself—that it is unlikely, and almost impossible; they will persist in it till events bring with them the conviction that they are duped-just as they stoutly maintained that there would be no war at the time when the French were actually toiling over the Alps or being shipped for Genoa, and the Austrians were grouped along the Ticino. It is well, perhaps, that there should be differences of opinion, or the publicist would have nothing to record but bare facts. Still more marvellous and strange are the springs that move diplomatic action. They defy and set at nought that opinion which alone is likely to be correct in the long run-public opinion. It would be easy to show that that opinion has already veered round from due peace to a point half way between doubt and discontent and opposition. Already they say war was undertaken and countenanced for the liberation of the Italians from the yoke of Austria, but what has the occupation of Leghorn and Florence by the French, and the expulsion of the Grand-Duke of Tuscany-what has the revolutionising of Parma and Modena, and, above all, what has the rebellion of the States of the Church, to do with the rights and claims of the Lombardo-Venetian territory? They were not under the yoke of Austria, even if their sovereigns were in some cases in the interest of that power. But if being interested in a cause is a sufficient excuse for insurrection, revolution, and war, not a state in Europe would be safe from invasion beyond the moment which was propitious for such an act. Diplomatists have begun, then, by disavowing the self-elected and usurping government of Tuscany-the precedent is not precisely a safe one. Other events will soon follow to show how slippery and treacherous is the ground upon which the confiding and eclectic Anglo-Frankish politicians have taken their perilous stand.

But even the partisans of peace, of Napoleon III., and of economy (we purposely leave out of Lombardo-Venetian liberation, for all would be in favour of that if accomplished by themselves), are at variance among themselves. One party, appealing to the prodigious cost of preceding wars of intervention and the accumulation of the national debt, advocate inflexible neutrality. They forget that sometimes outlay made in time

saves far greater expenditure in the future. Mr. Bright went so far as to insult the intelligence of the Birmingham people by propounding that the whole of the continental wars had been a mistaken and useless expenditure of money. Why, if it had not been for Aboukir and Trafalgar, for Vittoria aud Waterloo, where would Great Britain have been at the present moment? Such utter perversion of the teachings of history is unworthy of any man who pretends to be a political teacher, still more so of a professed statesman.

But, say another party, neutrality is an abstract idea, and an impraeticable state of things. Not a day may elapse before neutrality is imperilled by word or deed. It is non-intervention that we would imply. The conclusion, so far as it goes, is a wise one, but even it is not felt to be perfectly satisfactory. All Europe is arming against the great disturber of peace-the adventurer who has cast the incendiary torch into the midst of everything that is inflammable and dangerous. They pant to extinguish the flame ere it spreads further. They love peace as much as any of the classes we have before described, but they feel that with such a state of things to deal with, the only way to bring it about is not to truckle or to hold aloof, but to unite and put the upstart and the dangerous down. It is not surprising that under such circumstances there are some-and their number is daily increasing-in this country who feel that to stand by in insular selfishness and surliness, folding their arms and buttoning up their pockets, scorning to sympathise with any of the belligerents, contemplating with gloomy moroseness the remote possibility of getting somehow or other involved, and still ever waiting for a long-dreaded invasion, is not only undignified and discreditable, but is still more unwise and impolitic. If we have no interest in the balance of power, in the fate of nations, and in the disasters of our fellow-creatures, albeit, aliens, have we no interests at stake outside of our islauded home? have we no moneys invested, no commercial relations, no rock and island strongholds, no active intercommunications with other allies, friends, or dependencies to uphold? Truly the position is untenable, and can only last so long as circumstances permit it to do so.

But why not assume a tenable position-one that shall at once mark a bold, a manly, an honourable, and a decisive policy? A bad man is abroad, ready to step in the footsteps of his great predecessor; all Germany is arming to resist or to put down the disturber; why not stand forward and unite in the great and holy cause? Would it not be better than to wait to be humbled? That nation which has no allies when friends are in trouble, deserves none when trouble in its turn comes to it. That nation has no policy which sympathises with one, and fears to anger another. Some go so far as to say, if the great disturber is victorious, Egypt will be his reward; if conquered, he must invade England to propitiate his people and soldiery. Why, if such was really the position of things, where is the policy of non-intervention ? If Napoleon succeeds, we must go to war; if he fails, we must go to war; the logical result would be, then, to go to war as soon as possible, while the devastator's hands are full, and while there are potent and efficient allies in the field. But, while we wish to confront the difficulty in a fair and manly way, we by no means wish to involve ourselves in