rushed in terror to my own apartment. I pondered long on my vision or dream, but the more I pondered the less was I able to decide whether it was merely the result of a swoon caused by a blow on the head, or a shock from the galvanic apparatus of the clock, or whether my spirit had in reality been transported away into space for some minutes, there to receive a special warning.

the bell. Was it another premonition?' I asked myself. At first thought it must be a mistake on my part, but some further consideration showed me that it was indeed a repetition of the ten figure of the symbol. Being the youngest son, my hour, as affairs were going, would come last, or, according to my interpreta tion of the symbol, in the tenth year after the murder. It was a warning to me in person that my days were exactly num- "My brothers soon discovered that I bered. As I fully realized this, the angry had ruined the clock, and they were very blood flew to my temples, and I lost all angry. When I attempted an explanation self-control. Enraged and desperate, I they said I was a fool, and refused to forgot everything but the infernal machine listen. At this I lost my temper, and we before ine. I grasped a heavy oaken had a great quarrel, the result of which chair, and concentrating all my fury into was that I decided to take my share of the one tremendous, crashing blow, I shat- estate, or rather its equivalent in money, tered the old clock into a thousand frag and depart from the wretched place altoments. At the same instant I received a gether. I breathed easier, however, bepeculiar and violent shock as from an cause the clock was in a condition beyond electric current of intense power. The the possibility of repair, and I had a faint chair was stricken from my hold, and a hope that with the destruction of the strange, tingling sensation first perceptible odious thing the remainder of our family at the ends of my fingers spread almost might escape the fate which I firmly be instantaneously over my entire person. I lieved had been marked out for them. I fell back, and sank, as it seemed to me, went to Paris, and tried to forget the into a bed of softest down, with an inde- whole of our unfortunate history, and scribable sense of comfort and delicious lose sight of the hateful symbol in a mad languor. My body appeared to have lost whirl of pleasure. But to no purpose. I all weight, and was wafted gently off into had been there only a few months, when ethereal space. Like a feather I sailed I received news of the sudden and pecul away on perfumed zephyrs. A delightful iar death of the eldest of my remaining feeling of eternal rest and tranquillity brothers. I made a calculation, and found pervaded the whole universe as I drifted that he had died just two years after my airily on and on. Distance was nothing, father, and therefore seven after the day and weight had vanished. My will-power of the murder. I was now sure that I had forsaken me, but after a time I succeeded in concentrating my thoughts enough to wonder what had befallen me. Whither was I drifting? I thought. Was I dead, and was this my spirit only that was thus drifting-drifting? Would I - could I remain forever in this blissful condition, drifting without time, without care, through all eternity? There appeared to be no beginning, and there was apparently no end, and I was wafted dreamily on. Suddenly a sweet voice whispered in my ear, 'Prepare thy soul; ten minutes past five is the hour, and the year is not far hence.'

"The voice died away, and darkness fell in place of the glorious light. A cold, chilling sensation swept over me, and I strained my eyes into the deep gloom. I found myself on earth, and recognized the outlines of my father's old chamber, with the fragments of the clock scattered about me. The room was nearly dark, for night was coming on. The tomb-like stillness frightened me. I sprang to my feet and

was not the victim of an absurd supersti tion, or a diseased imagination. Indeed, I was positive that my solution of the clock-symbol was the correct one, however strange it might seem. Accordingly I knew I had but three more years of this life left to me, and I again warned my remaining brothers that they had respectively one year and two years more to live. For my own part I was driven half mad by the vision of the old clock, which was constantly before me, the hands fixed at ten minutes past five, and the dial sometimes presenting the outlines of ghastly heads. Every clock I saw intensified this hideous vision, and I soon grew to hate the very sight of one. I longed for some desert land or mountain fastness, away out of the world, where there should be no clocks. At last in my despair I resolved to flee to America, and somewhere in the vast solitudes of the Great West find some lonely vale where I could live secluded and alone. I would spend the remainder of my days there, regardless

ease.

of time, in reckless adventure and careless | poor man, assuring him he was merely the victim of his own imagination, and Having learned to speak English urging him to shake off his melancholy. from my mother, when a child, I found no But it was unavailing. He retired sadly difficulty with the language on my arrival. to the chamber assigned to him, and in I made no haste to reach the mountains, the morning when we opened it to wake for I tried to banish entirely all thoughts him and chaff him about his fears, we of time. I strove to consider myself found him cold in death, an expression of still in that outer world that had appeared the most intense agony still resting on his to me in my vision, where time and dis- contorted features, and on his throat some tance were banished. But I could not curious blue spots, looking as if some forget that dreadful haunting symbol. O bony hand had clutched long and hard God, what misery! You cannot realize around his neck. We buried him under it, my friends. It clung to me and fol- a pine-tree, and it was many months belowed me everywhere everywherefore I could rid myself of the disagreeable everywhere. Then it received fresh em- sensations produced by this extraordinary phasis; I received notice of the death of occurrence. F. S. D. one of my brothers. He died exactly a year after the last. I immediately severed all communication with the remaining brother, so that I should not know the date of his death, and I retired into comFrom Temple Bar. plete solitude in a wild and unknown THE COURTS OF THREE PRESIDENTS: cañon, in the vain hope of escape, but the THIERS, MACMAHON, GREVY. symbol came up more vividly than ever. WE all read in the newspapers how, on Every rock took the shape of a curious the day when the Duke of Albany's clock, striking over and over again the lamentable death occurred, M. Jules Ferfatal number, and the dismal cawing of ry, the French prime minister and secrethe ravens fell like mockery on my ears. tary for foreign affairs, gave a dinnerI felt that I should go stark mad if I re- party. An Englishmen having expressed mained in that place, so I quitted it and astonishment that this dinner had not wandered ceaselessly from valley to val. been put off, a Frenchman answered by ley, and from crest to crest, seeking diver- asking whether Lord Granville would sion. I staid in one town or in one countermand a banquet in case M. Wilhabitation only long enough to rest and son, M. Grévy's son-in-law, were to die? learn the road to another. Still the ap- Our countryman seems to have concluded parition followed me, and even to-night as that Lord Granville would not let his hosI pushed my way through the snow, I pitalities be interfered with by M. Wilheard the same ten strokes of the bell. I son's decease; and perhaps he was right. felt that the fatal hour was not far off. M. Daniel Wilson holds more effective I was becoming benumbed, and my horse power than was ever possessed by a found his own path. I knew not where to dauphin of France; but his father-in-law go, but suddenly I found myself face to is only the chief of a government, not the face with this house and almost under the head of a court, and M. Wilson's exist glowing window. As soon as I became ence has therefore never been brought warm, the stagnant blood coursed through officially to the cognizance of foreign rulmy veins, and life appeared beautiful to ers. It does not follow, however, that me. For the first time in many weary because M. Wilson is a private person, years I almost forgot my fate and the the French government is bound to look hateful symbol. Imagine, therefore, my upon the relations of foreign monarchs as despair when my eyes fell on that clock being exactly in the same position as this and beheld its awful warning. My heart gentleman. It is more than probable that stood still, and the blood froze in my if Marshal MacMahon were still presiveins. I knew that my hour was nigh. Ident, the foreign secretary would not have know, I feel, that the tenth year is done, and that to-morrow morning, at ten minutes past five, my soul will take its flight into the mystery of mysteries. The deed of blood will be avenged. So be it."

He ceased, and stared despondently into the fire. No one spoke for some time; then we did our best to console the

given a dinner on the day when a child of the queen of England had died suddenly on French soil. It is equally probable that there would have been no such dinner if M. Thiers or M. Gambetta had been president.

But presidents are not all alike. In their views as to the functions of a repub

At this time there was no suspicion but this idea did not make its way at all. among politicians that M. Thiers had M. Thiers ended by saying that the rooms serious thoughts of founding a republic. were too large, while Madame Thiers deHis government was composed mostly of spised them for being full of draughts Royalists, who were anxious for a fusion and having chimneys which smoked. between Henri V. and the Orleans princes. Nevertheless, M. Thiers was nettled at All the scholarly doctrinaires who during seeing that the Republicans objected the empire had written for the Revue des quite as much as the Royalists to see Deux Mondes and the Journal des Dé him occupy the royal apartments. "Stubats, had been appointed to prefectships pid fellows!" he exclaimed on seeing a and posts in the diplomatic service; and caricature which represented him as a in the drawing rooms of the Duchesse ridiculous pigmy, crowned with a cotton Decazes, the Comtesse d'Haussonville, nightcap, and lying in an enormous bed and the Comtesse de Rémusat, who had surrounded by the majestic ghosts of the all three come to Bordeaux to open Bourbon kings. Then half-angry, halfpolitical salons, the prospects of fusion amused, he ejaculated with his usual viformed the staple topic of conversation. vacity: "Louis XIV. was not taller than M. Thiers himself never spoke of the I, and as to his other greatness I doubt republic at Bordeaux, and he went counter whether he would ever have had a chance to the Republicans on the two points which of sleeping in the best bed of Versailles if they considered of vital importance to he had begun life as I did."* Shortly their party; that is, he refused to move after this, M. Mignet meeting Victor that the Assembly should be dissolved Hugo spoke to him in a deprecating way after the peace with Germany had been about the fuss which had been made over voted, and he would not hear of Paris be- this question of the royal apartments. “I coming again the seat of the government don't know," answered the poet. "Des and legislature. His own preferences idées de dictature doivent germer sous ce inclined to Fontainebleau as a political ciel-là." (Ideas of dictatorship would be capital; but he did not object to Blois. likely to sprout under that tester.) This He was opposed to Versailles because of was reported to Thiers, who at once cried: the reactionary significance that would be "I like that! If Victor Hugo were in my attached to the establishment of the gov place, he would sleep in the king's bed, ernment in the city of Louis XIV.; Ver- but he would think the daïs too low and sailles, however, was obviously the most have it raised." convenient place, and the Royalists were M. Thiers went to reside at the Préfecpowerful enough to enlist public opinion ture of Versailles; and soon the outbreak in favor of it. Then, to the great indigna- of the Communist rebellion caused the tion of Madame Thiers, the Royalists at château to be filled with a very motley once took measures to prevent M. Thiers collection of lodgers. For weeks the sufrom sleeping in the grand monarch's bed-perb Galerie des Glaces, where the kings room. The château, they said, was to become the abode of the legislature; the State rooms must be devoted to the use of members; and the private apartments should be occupied by the president of the Assembly, M. Grévy.

M. Thiers would, no doubt, have liked very much to sleep in Louis XIV.'s bed, and to have for his study that fine room with the balcony, on which the heralds used to announce the death of one king and the accession of another in the same breath. His secretary and faithful admirer, M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, went about saying that it was fitting the "national historian" should be lodged in the apartments of the greatest of the kings;

Pouvoir Exécutif." This reminds one of a joke made
by the Legitimists during the republic of 1848. The
Place Royale in Paris had been renamed "Place des
Vosges." Upon this the Royalists took to calling the
Grand Opéra (under the kings, Académie Royale de
Musique) "L'Académie des Vosges de Musique."

had held their revels, and where latterly William I. of Prussia had been proclaimed emperor of Germany, was used as a dormitory for deputies who could not afford to pay the high prices that were then being asked for rooms in Versailles. Some of the lower apartments were converted into ambulance wards. M. Grévy, appropriating only a small suite for his own use, left Louis XIV.'s bedroom to the sittings of the finance committee. Versailles so overflowed with refugees from Paris that every spare room in every house was requisitioned. M. Thiers lodged more than twenty of his own friends at the Préfecture, and gave them a daily breakfast of café au lait or chocolate. For their

Compare this with the retort of Fléchier, Bishop of Nîmes, upon a nobleman who twitted him with being a chandler's son: "Yes, it's true my father made candies, and judging you by your wit, I should think that if your father had brought you up to the same trade you would have gone on making candles all your life."