nsufferably bright. It
seemed to me that contact with the magnetic gaze of the photographer had
lent them something of his own expression, and I confess that when my
eye met hers fully and steadily, mine was always the first to droop.

Knowing that she was in full correspondence with her lover, I asked
after Courtland, and she finally told me all she knew. He was still
suffering from the effect of the assassin's blow, and very recently had
been attacked by inflammatory rheumatism. His health seemed permanently
impaired, and Lucile wept bitterly as she spoke of the poverty in which
they were both plunged, and which prevented him from essaying the only
remedy that promised a radical cure.

"Oh!" exclaimed she, "were it only in our power to visit _La belle
France_, to bask in the sunshine of Dauphiny, to sport amid the lakes of
the Alps, to repose beneath the elms of Chalons!"

"Perhaps," said I, "the very letters now unopened in your hands may
invite you back to the scenes of your childhood."

"Alas! no," she rejoined, "I recognize the handwriting of my widowed
aunt, and I tremble to break the seal."

Rising shortly afterwards, I bade her a sorrowful farewell.

Lucile sought her private apartment before she ventured to unseal the
dispatches. Many of the letters were old, and had been floating between
New York and Havre for more than a twelvemonth. One was of recent date,
and that was the first one perused by the niece. Below is a free
translation of its contents. It bore date at "Bordeaux, July 12, 1853,"
and ran thus:

EVER DEAR AND BELOVED BROTHER:

Why have we never heard from you since the beginning of 1851?
Alas! I fear some terrible misfortune has overtaken you, and
overwhelmed your whole family. Many times have I written during
that long period, and prayed, oh! so promptly, that God would
take you, and yours, in His holy keeping. And then our dear
Lucile! Ah! what a life must be in store for her, in that wild
and distant land! Beg of her to return to France; and do not
fail, also, to come yourself. We have a new Emperor, as you must
long since have learned, in the person of Louis Bonaparte, nephew
of the great Napoleon. Your reactionist principles against
Cavaignac and his colleagues, can be of no disservice to you at
present. Napoleon is lenient. He has even recalled Louis Blanc.
Come, and apply for restitution of the old estates; come, and be
a protector of m