THE TRAIN.

THE DEAD LADY'S RING.

A TALE, IN FOUR CHAPTERS, BY THE AUTHOR OF SKETCHES OF CANTABS."

PART 1.-THE YEAR TWO.

CHAPTER I.-DOCTOR SEEMAN'S FIRST PATIENT.

URING the stormy days of the first French Revolution, there lived in a narrow street in Paris, not far from the old Sorbonne, a young German, or rather Alsatian doctor, named Heinrich Seeman. His garret windows, situated some hundred feet above the ground, commanded a dismal view of the roofs and chimney-pots of the Quartier Latin; but, on the other hand, their great elevation rendered them impervious to the angry sounds and tumults of the distracted city. If Heinrich did not enjoy a long vista of stately streets and arcades, neither was he subjected to the occasional view of an aristocrat's head balanced on the top of a pike, or of the neverfailing tumbril, with its daily supply of provender for the jaws of the guillotine. The philosopher might have meditated, and the dreamer indulged his idle fancies, in that little apartment, at a spiritual distance of a thousand miles from the crimes murders, and massacres enacted just a hundred feet beneath him.

Now, it so happened that the young doctor was precisely one of those dreamers and idle philosophers for whom the situation might be supposed to possess a charm. Wrapped up in his favourite studies, he seldom left his little garret ; for all that, the prospect from its windows was a dreary one. Not that any fears for his personal safety kept him at home-his obscurity shielded him from danger, or, at any rate, from

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the apprehension of danger. He was the son of a retired physician at Strasburgh, and had studied and taken out his diploma at his native place. Some two years previous to the opening of our story, he had removed to Paris, less with a view to immediate practice, than to the advantages to be derived in the way of perfecting himself in his profession, from the neighbourhood of the University. But the whirpool of new ideas, which sucked in so many feeble brains-sometimes along with the heads which contained them-spared neither professor nor student of that period. Anything like a regular course of study was impossible, with the cannon booming outside the walls of the lectureroom, and the cry of "To arms!" sounding in the ears of the pupils. It was not unusual for a medical lecture to pass into a chorus of the Marseillaise, or for the professor's rhetoric to be smothered under the red cap with which his audience insisted on crowning him. After a time the University itself was suppressed. Heinrich Seeman retired to his apartment, and set himself to study medicine and science on his own account. As often happens in a like case, he soon found himself diverging into remote paths of knowledge, which possessed a peculiar attraction for his mind, in proportion as they lay out of the beaten track. That sceptical age was likewise-as if to prove the junction of extremes—one of the most credulous of modern times The impostures of Cagliostro had not long before turned the most intelligent as well as the most exalted heads, in the various capitals of Europe. Saint Germain and Mesmer were not forgotten. A belief in alchemy, the philosopher's stone, the elixir of immortality, and other delusions of the kind, burst out at various points in what has happily proved an expiring blaze in the socket. Magnetism and clairvoyance, destined for yet another revival in our own day, occupied the thoughts of retired philosophers, side by side with that other gigantic delusion, the perfectibility of the species. Into all these mystical studies the dreamy, unpractical character of Heinrich Seeman's mind had induced him to plunge deeply. His nights were employed in poring over Nostradamus and his prophecies; he consulted—with a slight blush, it must be owned-piles of receipts for the transfusion of blood, and the mutation of sublimate of carbon into diamond; and was deeply versed in what was then supposed to be a correct version of the mysteries of Isis and Anubis. The legends of his native river jostled strangely in his mind with these newer forms of superstition. He cherished a dim, and, to himself, half intelligible, belief in a kind of presiding genius or benign fairy always at hand, though unseen, to rescue him at a critical moment, and destined one day to elevate him to the heights of his professson. In short, he sadly neglected not only his legitimate studies, but even his personal appearance, and all the hints and tender glances of his landlady's daughter were entirely thrown away upon him. Perhaps the epithets with which she took a final leave of him, if not exactly synonymous, as she, no doubt, meant them to be, may be taken as giving a fair view of his character at this period, "C'est un savant-un incurable," she said, with a toss of her pretty head; and, thenceforth, the dirty concierge was left to wait, single-handed, upon the wants of Heinrich, who scarcely so much as perceived the change of attendants.

Occasionally, however, feeling somewhat numbed by the perpetual solitude of his life, he would indulge in the recreation of a walk, generally selecting the evening for the purpose, and the quiet streets of the Marais and the Cité for the scenes of his rambles. He had got a habit of dropping, at these times, into a little cabaret, or wine shop, not far from where the terrible Bastille had recently struck a sickening awe into the passer-by. Here, as he sat over his pipe, in a quiet corner, a few waifs from the external life of the great city floated before him. Carriers, on their road to Meaux and Epernay, stopped there to drink a parting glass to the Goddess of Reason; recruits on their road to a grave in Holland, or it might be to a marshal's baton, celebrated the triumph of Dumouriez in ribald songs; patriots, adorned with tricolour sashes, harangued on the virtues, and, in prudent unison with the event, on the infamy of Brissot, Vergniaud, Péthion, Danton, and Hebert, turn by turn; sometimes a savage, with hands yet imbrued with blood, rushed in to re fresh his fainting limbs, wearied with the labour of "exterminating the aristocrats." The young doctor, who was now and then dragged into the conversation of those around him, may be excused for having praised the government of the day, and drunk more than one bumper to the "immaculate" Robespierre. The breath of life was held, during those wild saturnalia, upon no other tenure. But more commonly, he was suffered to sit alone in his corner, in tranquil meditation. His attire seemed to bespeak his poverty and obscurity, the two best witnesses with the sovereign people. Another was not wanting in the person of the tavern-keeper, a man of great influence in his section, and who had contracted a regard for his modest customer. When questioned on the subject, this friend of Santerre never failed to give the young man the highest possible character, as a model of republican simplicity, the enemy of priests, kings, and rich men, and of all religion, morality and decency whatsoever.

It happened that one winter evening, in the month then styled Nivose, and in the year II., Heinrich Seeman sat in his favourite corner; his meditations were painfully diverted from their usual topics, by intelligence received that day from Strasburgh; his father wrote that he should be unable to remit him his modest allowance, then due, for another six weeks at the least. What was still worse, old Docter Seeman appeared to have fallen under the suspicion of the local authorities, and though he considered his influence with some of the most powerful among them to be sufficient to shield him from immediate danger, yet such a protection could not be counted on for long amidst the frequent shiftings and displacements of the period. There were certain reticences, too, in the letter, and mysterious expressions, which set the young man thinking; recalling, as they did, similar passages in former letters, the meaning of which he had not been able, at the time, clearly to make out. Heinrich, in reflecting on the peril of his family, almost forgot to entertain the harassing question of how the next six weeks were to be got through, without funds or credit, As he ventured, at last, to approach this question, like a timid bather creeping into cold water, he was diverted for a moment by a remark addressed to him by a person whom he had mechanically observed to take a place at the opposite

side of the small table at which he sat. This person, whom he now examined more closely, was a young man seemingly about eighteen, of a somewhat feminine expression of countenance. The long black hair, which fell on the shoulders, after the fashion of the youth of the period, served to heighten the brilliancy of his complexion, on which no signs of beard were yet discernible. His eyes were singularly dark and searching, giving, somehow, the idea of a man older than the rest of his appearance would seem to indicate. He was dressed respectably, and even with a certain air of refinement. Heinrich had just time to put together these flitting observations, when the stranger repeated his remark.

"You are a physician, I believe, citizen," said he.

“I am a physician, or, I should rather say, a student of physic, who has earned nothing as yet beyond his diploma. Has not the citizen landlord, for I presume that it is from him you hold your information, told you as much?"

The stranger smiled. "And your opulence," he continued, “is not such as to excite the just indignation of the sovereign people. Am I right?"

"Parbleu ! citizen," replied Heinrich, with a glance downwards at his own threadbare attire, "I can guess where you got that notion, and am not, for my part, disposed to deny its truth."

"And you would not be averse to earning a good round sum, say a hundred écus, or thereabouts, not in assignats as he said this, the stranger glanced round to make sure that no one was within earshot"but in good old-fashioned metal, such as the piece I now ring on the table? Am I right again?"

"I would do anything-anything consistent with the principles of liberty and fraternity, that is to say," returned Heinrich, for the thought suddenly dawned upon him that he might be talking to a spy, "to earn the sum you mention; for heaven knows, I stand sufficiently in need of it."

"Nothing more consistent with fraternity than what I propose. I simply want you to visit a patient."

"A patient! Good! And yet," put in the Doctor, with a fresh dash of suspicion, "I thought there had been physicians of eminence already in Paris, without applying to one has who never had a case of his own."

"Never mind that. We have sufficient confidence in your skill for our purpose, Heinrich Seeman," returned the stranger. "And as for there being physicians of eminence in Paris, you must be aware that there arise in families certain delicate cases where secrecy, so rare among medical men now-a-days, is the highest qualification required. Now, in your discretion I have the highest faith."

"In my discretion! And pray, citizen, what can you know of me? And how can you possibly tell that you are not talking, at this moment, with one of the greatest bavards in the world?"

"Never mind again, I tell you. This is not the moment for explanations; it is the moment to decide whether you accept my offer; a hundred écus for your attendance on a sick person, with, perhaps,