ust; our women,
stripped in the market-place, shriek under the pitiless lash of the
oppressor. One man, sworn to protect Italy with his life, can save her,
and has refused. That man dies."

"And you are pledged to kill him?"

"I am pledged to see you safely without these walls by this day
fortnight."

"And you?"

"I remain."

"Marcel, you are crazy."

"M. Granger, you are polite."

That night fortnight I was away; and this was the message that sent me:

"TO M. ARTHUR GRANGER:

"Your fatal discovery on the morning of my departure makes you
the only man to whom I can appeal. Let me pray the appeal be
not in vain. In the folly of my youth, while sojourning in
Italy, I joined a powerful secret order, whose demands cease
only with death, and whose penalty for denial is a sudden and
bloody end. You can judge, then, my anxiety on being compelled
to admit to my establishment, disguised as a servant, one of
its highest officers, and my horror at hearing of his abrupt
departure. Since then I have learned the unhappy cause. My life
is in another's hands. It is for him to command, and for me
blindly to obey. There are two beings in this world dearer to
me than my soul's salvation. To you, M. Granger, as a Christian
gentleman, I commend them. The sealed note inclosed (the
contents of which are a matter of life and death) I beg you
will at once deliver to my wife; and let me conjure you, until
the crisis is over, to make my house at Romainville your home.

"EDOUARD PONTALBA."

Leaf the Last.

This is the 15th of January, 1858. France is in a blaze of excitement.
Last evening, in the _Rue Lepelletier_, an attempt was made to
assassinate the Emperor, by throwing grenades filled with fulminating
mercury under the coach that bore the Imperial family to the Italian
Opera. Count Felice Orsini, the murderer, himself desperately wounded,
has been arrested, and Paris is crying for his blood.

For several days I have been the honored guest of Madame Althie
Pontalba. It is a golden evening; the sky, an hour ago so clear and
blue, is piled with golden clouds, and stretches out into golden rivers,
with golden banks, flowing calmly down into a golden sea. The purple
slates on the church-steeple, the red tiles on the house-tops, the
gardens with their evergreens and jonquils and little blue violets
shrinking