of a brave soldier, whose whole life has
been devoted to the service of his country. Besides, the extraordinary
way in which the crime was discovered, seems to place the culprit beyond
the limits of my severity. I leave her punishment in her own hands. If
I understand her character, if any feeling of dignity remains to her, her
heart and her remorse will show her the path she ought to follow."

Paul handed the paper open to the general, ordering him to take it to
Count Pahlen, the governor of St. Petersburg.

On the following day the emperor's orders were carried out.

Vaninka went into a convent, where towards the end of the same year she
died of shame and grief.

The general found the death he sought on the field of Austerlitz.

THE MARQUISE DE GANGES--1657

Toward the close of the year 1657, a very plain carriage, with no arms
painted on it, stopped, about eight o'clock one evening, before the door
of a house in the rue Hautefeuille, at which two other coaches were
already standing. A lackey at once got down to open the carriage door;
but a sweet, though rather tremulous voice stopped him, saying, "Wait,
while I see whether this is the place."

Then a head, muffled so closely in a black satin mantle that no feature
could be distinguished, was thrust from one of the carriage windows, and
looking around, seemed to seek for some decisive sign on the house front.
The unknown lady appeared to be satisfied by her inspection, for she
turned back to her companion.

"It is here," said she. "There is the sign."

As a result of this certainty, the carriage door was opened, the two
women alighted, and after having once more raised their eyes to a strip
of wood, some six or eight feet long by two broad, which was nailed above
the windows of the second storey, and bore the inscription, "Madame
Voison, midwife," stole quickly into a passage, the door of which was
unfastened, and in which there was just so much light as enabled persons
passing in or out to find their way along the narrow winding stair that
led from the ground floor to the fifth story.

The two strangers, one of whom appeared to be of far higher rank than the
other, did not stop, as might have been expected, at the door
corresponding with the inscription that had guided them, but, on the
contrary, went on to the next floor.

Here, upon the landing, was a kind of dwarf, oddly dressed after the
fashion of sixteenth-century Venetian buffoons, who