he
centre, looking out on the gay landscape. Everybody talkt and drank
healths, and all was mirth and good humour: the bride's parents were
perfectly happy: the bridegroom alone was reserved and thoughtful, ate
but little, and took no part in the conversation.

He started on hearing musical sounds roll down through the air from
above, but grew calm again when he found they were only the soft notes
of some bugles, travelling along with a pleasant murmur over the
shrubs and through the park, and dying away on the distant hills.
Roderick had placed the musicians in the gallery overhead, and Emilius
was satisfied with this arrangement.

Toward the end of the dinner he called the butler, and, turning to
his bride, said: "My love, let poverty also have a share of our
superfluities."

He then ordered him to send a number of bottles of wine, and abundance
of pastry as well as other dishes, to the poor couple, that with them
too this might be a day of rejoicing, to which in aftertimes they
might look back with pleasure.

"See my friend," exclaimed Roderick, "how beautifully all things in
this world hang together! My idle trick of busying myself in other
folks' concerns, and chattering about whatever comes uppermost, though
you will never give over finding fault with it, has at all events been
the cause of this good deed."

Several persons began making pretty speeches to their host on his kind
and charitable heart; and Roderick's neighbour lispt about the
sweetness of romantic compassion and sentimental magnanimity.

"O say no more!" cried Emilius indignantly: "this is no good action;
it is no action at all; it is nothing. When swallows and linnets feed
on the crumbs that are thrown away from the waste of this meal, and
carry them to their young in their nest, shall not I remember a poor
brother, who needs my help? If I might follow my heart, ye would laugh
and jeer at me, just as ye have laught and jeered at many others, who
have gone forth into the wilderness that they might hear no more of
this world and its generosity."

Everybody was silent; and Roderick, perceiving from his friend's
glowing eyes how vehemently he was displeased, was afraid that in his
present irritation he might forget himself still further, and tried to
give the conversation a rapid turn on other subjects.

But Emilius was become restless and absent; his eyes wandered, more
especially toward the upper gallery, where the servants who lived in
the