emove a portion of the back-boarding of
the centre house. Presently, a closely-muffled figure, with a
dark-lantern and a bag in his hand, crept through the opening, and
made direct for the hearth-stone; lifted it, turned on his light
slowly, gathered up the treasure, crammed it into his bag, and
murmured with an exulting chuckle as he reclosed the lantern and stood
upright: 'Safe--safe, at last!' At the instant, the light of half a
dozen lanterns flashed upon the miserable wretch, revealing the stern
faces of as many gendarmes. 'Quite safe, M. Pierre Nadaud!' echoed
their leader. 'Of that you may be assured.' He was unheard: the
detected culprit had fainted.

There is little to add. Nadaud perished by the guillotine, and
Delessert was, after a time, liberated. Whether or not he thought his
ill-gotten property had brought a curse with it, I cannot say; but, at
all events, he abandoned it to the notary's heirs, and set off with Le
Bossu for Paris, where, I believe, the sign of 'Delessert et Fils,
Ferblantiers,' still flourishes over the front of a respectably
furnished shop.

PHILOSOPHY OF THE SHEARS.

The vestiarian profession has always been ill-treated by the world.
Men have owed much, and in more senses than one, to their tailors, and
have been accustomed to pay their debt in sneers and railleries--often
in nothing else. The stage character of the tailor is stereotyped from
generation to generation; his goose is a perennial pun; and his
habitual melancholy is derived to this day from the flatulent diet on
which he _will_ persist in living--cabbage. He is effeminate,
cowardly, dishonest--a mere fraction of a man both in soul and body.
He is represented by the thinnest fellow in the company; his starved
person and frightened look are the unfailing signals for a laugh; and
he is never spoken to but in a gibe at his trade:

'Thou liest, thou thread,
Thou thimble,
Thou yard, three-quarters, half-yard, quarter, nail;
Away thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant;
Or I shall so bemete thee with thy yard,
As thou shalt think on prating while thou liv'st!'

All this is not a very favourable specimen of the way in which the
stage holds the mirror up to nature. We may suppose that a certain
character of effeminacy attached to a tailor in that olden time when
he was the fashioner for women as well as men; but now that he has no
professional dealings with the fair sex but when they