tion now was to go and look at this woman, just as he might
have thrown himself under the breath of the sweet south on a bank of
violets for a while, without prejudice to his galvanism, to which he
would presently return. But this evening the old drama had a new
catastrophe. At the moment when the heroine was to act the stabbing of
her lover, and he was to fall gracefully, the wife veritably stabbed
her husband, who fell as death willed. A wild shriek pierced the
house, and the Provencale fell swooning: a shriek and a swoon were
demanded by the play, but the swooning too was real this time. Lydgate
leaped and climbed, he hardly knew how, on to the stage, and was active
in help, making the acquaintance of his heroine by finding a contusion
on her head and lifting her gently in his arms. Paris rang with the
story of this death:--was it a murder? Some of the actress's warmest
admirers were inclined to believe in her guilt, and liked her the
better for it (such was the taste of those times); but Lydgate was not
one of these. He vehemently contended for her innocence, and the
remote impersonal passion for her beauty which he had felt before, had
passed now into personal devotion, and tender thought of her lot. The
notion of murder was absurd: no motive was discoverable, the young
couple being understood to dote on each other; and it was not
unprecedented that an accidental slip of the foot should have brought
these grave consequences. The legal investigation ended in Madame
Laure's release. Lydgate by this time had had many interviews with
her, and found her more and more adorable. She talked little; but that
was an additional charm. She was melancholy, and seemed grateful; her
presence was enough, like that of the evening light. Lydgate was madly
anxious about her affection, and jealous lest any other man than
himself should win it and ask her to marry him. But instead of
reopening her engagement at the Porte Saint Martin, where she would
have been all the more popular for the fatal episode, she left Paris
without warning, forsaking her little court of admirers. Perhaps no
one carried inquiry far except Lydgate, who felt that all science had
come to a stand-still while he imagined the unhappy Laure, stricken by
ever-wandering sorrow, herself wandering, and finding no faithful
comforter. Hidden actresses, however, are not so difficult to find as
some other hidden facts, and it was not long before Lydgate gather