"Assassinated!" cried Deslandes, with a voice in which indignation was mingled with grief. "I am the victim of an infamous trick."

The wounded man raised his right hand, from which the blood flowed in abundance. At this sight he became very pale.

"Here I am, a cripple," said he, with an accent of agony; never be able to play the violin again!"

"I shall

"Very well, you can play the horn," replied M. de Loiselay with vivacity" it is no matter for the violin. Let us look at your hand. You have only broken your finger, the ring finger, the least necessary of all. What a singular shot!"

At the cry of the substitute, Barbeyrac and Blondel had hastened towards him, each on his side; the old emigrant stopped them with an imperative gesture

"To your places, gentlemen, we have not finished."

Saying these words, he stooped to pick up the pistol which Deslandes had dropped; he examined a moment with curiosity the mark left upon the stock by the ball, and afterwards presenting the weapon to the substitute :

"You are very fortunate to have escaped with the loss of a finger," said he; "hold: if your wound prevents you from shooting, use your left hand."

Deslandes took the pistol with a gesture of rage.

"Perish the assassin," cried he, aiming at Blondel, whose respiration was suspended, until an inoffensive report assured him that the danger was over.

"Load the pistols again, this shall be a duel to the death!" cried the substitute, exasperated at the apparent treason of his friend.

"Calm yourself," said M. de Loiselay, gently; "I know by experience that it is very disagreeable to be wounded, but it is an unfortunate chance which must be taken; it was agreed that only one shot should be exchanged, and the laws must be executed, even by those who suffer. The affair is terminated; wrap up your hand in your handkerchief, and let us be on our way to Paris. The main thing now is to find a surgeon. I told this little gentleman he was wrong to neglect this precaution."

While the emigrant endeavored to appease the irritation of Deslandes, Blondel and his second hastened their preparations for departure. "We must leave the wood separately," said Barbeyrac to M. de Loiselay; "two shots must have been heard, and without doubt, the alarm has by this time been given to the guards and the gens d'armes."

"I yield to your prudence, which appears to me to be astonishing, considering your age," replied the old gentleman, with a smile of mockery; "you can go if you please, on foot; we will keep the carriage."

Barbeyrac and Blondel speedily availed themselves of the consent of M. de Loiselay, who directly found himself alone with the young magistrate. The latter having wrapped up, as well as he could, his

wounded hand, both re-entered the carriage in which they had come to the scene of action, and were soon on their way to Paris.

"Well, Deslandes," said the old man, shaking his head, "do you now acknowledge the utility of the position that I made you take? If you had been placed as you were at first, instead of being touched on the finger, you would have received the shot in the middle of your breast."

"Would that it had been so," replied the substitute, whom pain had inspired with a disgust of life: " if I had died at that moment, I should not have had this infernal suffering."

"How do you know?" responded the old gentleman; "nobody is sure of going straight to heaven, and I fear the sufferings even of purgatory may exceed those of a broken finger."

"It is impossible," cried Deslandes, writhing on the seat of the carriage, while he convulsively pressed with his left hand his mutilated finger.

A

On returning home, the substitute found himself subjected almost immediately to the tortures which await the unfortunate duellist. very skilful surgeon, who was summoned by M. de Loiselay, declared on the first examination of the wound, that amputation of the shattered finger was indispensable, and he proceeded to it without delay, notwithstanding the lamentations of the young magistrate, who, we must confess, showed but little stoicism on the occasion.

"To be maimed at my age," cried he, in a plaintive tone, when the operation was over.

"What is a finger ?" said M. de Loiselay, by way of consolation. "In hunting, every day more serious accidents happen. What should you say if it had been necessary to take off a leg or an arm?”

At this moment the voice of the old gentleman seemed ferocious to the substitute, and his expression sanguinary. Instead of making any reply, he turned away his head, and maintained a ferocious silence.

In the afternoon, Messrs. de Rochelle and de Jonquieres presented themselves successively at the hotel of Deslandes; but, on learning that a duel had already taken place, and seeing their adversary hors de combat, they understood that there was no longer any motive for their visit, and both declared to M. de Loiselay, that they were satisfied, and regarded the affairs which were personal to them, as entirely terminated.

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"You did not deceive me," said the old man to the young magistrate, with an air of congratulation; there were three duels. Do you know that this day's work does you honor? you will long remember it."

"Sacristie! for the whole of my life," cried the substitute, from whom the pain in his hand extorted a horrible grimace.

For nearly a fortnight Victor Deslandes was made a prisoner by his wound, the different phases of which were successively accomplished, without any new accident. Of all the persons whom he knew in Paris, one alone, during these hours of suffering and ennui, gave him proofs of real interest in him. This was M. de Loiselay. Each day, the

old gentleman came to pass a part of the afternoon with his wounded friend. To amuse him, he brought one morning a chess board, and the two gentlemen were able to resume the quiet diversion to which they were accustomed to devote almost all their evenings at D***. The affectionate cares of the old gentleman made the conduct of Blondel, from whom he had not heard since the day of the duel, appear still more dark.

There must have been some diabolical machinations, somewhere, said Deslandes to himself, after having looked in vain during a week for a visit from his friend-our arrangements were too clearly made to allow the possibility of such a monstrous mistake. The fact of this pistol loaded with ball can only be explained by the abominable treason of which I was made the victim. Every thing seems to indicate that Blondel had resolved to get rid of me: but why? for what end? What have I done to him?

One of those ideas which reason repulses, but which fever accepts without debate, shot like lightning across the mind of the substitute. Has he not money belonging to me, thought he, groaning at the idea; thirteen thousand francs which remain in his hands as a deposite, three thousand on the old account, and two thousand more which I lent him on the day of my arrival, make eighteen thousand francs, which he owes me. Who knows if it is not out of his power to repay me, and that foreseeing a demand for reimbursement, he has devised this duel as a means of acquitting himself, by killing me. It would be horrible, but there are such dreadful things done in Paris! The fortunes of Blondel, notwithstanding his display, appear to me very problematical. I do not know that he owns a rod of land, or a cent in the funds; the great speculations of which he is always talking, are subject to the chances of all operations of the kind, where people gain to-day, to lose to-morrow. On the other hand, he spends a great deal, he plays, he is a gambler, and an unlucky throw may do every thing. Yes: I cannot account for his strange conduct in any way, but by attributing it to some dark motive. If he did not feel himself guilty, he would certainly come to see me. His absence tells the whole story.

The same day that Deslandes had come to this conclusion, an unexpected avowal of M. de Loiselay showed him the injustice of it. "Your adversary and his second have not had the politeness to pay you a visit?" said the old man to him.

"I have not seen either of them," replied the wounded man, with constraint.

"That does not surprise me : how could you expect proper conduct from people, who in a duel, load pistols with powder alone." "What do you mean?" said Deslandes.

"Birds of a feather flock together, and I judge M. de Gustan from his second. Can you believe that this little gentleman thought it a very pretty thing to make you fight with cork bullets. Fortunately, I overruled these impertinences."

"Fortunately!" cried the substitute, looking at his arm in a scarf.

"Undoubtedly; what is the loss of a finger, to the ridicule with which you would have been covered, notwithstanding your good faith, by a duel of this sort. Now I think of it, I would lay a wager that M. de Gustan was no stranger to this pretty idea; he was pale as death when you fired at him, and I do not believe him of very firm nerve-besides, it appears to me very improbable, that a second should allow himself to play such a trick without being authorised to do it by his principal."

On learning that he might thank M. de Loiselay for his wound, Deslandes bestowed internally on the old man the most thundering anathema he could imagine, and then said:

"Blondel was deceived, as I was, without doubt; but since he has nothing to reproach himself with, why does he not come to see me? Perhaps he has met with some accident."

The uneasiness which he felt on account of his friend, combined with that which he could not prevent himself from suffering when he thought of his money, would not allow him to wait until he was able to leave his apartment, to have his apprehensions cleared up. He resolved to write to Blondel, and sent him a note, scrawled with his left hand. To this epistle, he received no answer. This circumstance redoubled the anxiety of the substitute, who, seeing his purse growing almost empty, began to feel serious embarrassment at the disappearance of the depositary on whom he depended to fill it again.

He is undoubtedly passing some days in the country, said he to himself, attempting to tranquillize his mind; but what can be the motive of his absence? he makes no excuses: his conduct is selfish to a most revolting degree. It is the trait of a man without heart, a false friend. Certainly, I have never been under an illusion with regard to him, but I did not think him capable of behaving with this brutal carelessness.

Deslandes had soon another subject of uneasiness more serious than this. Ile perceived that the language of M. de Loiselay had undergone a complete metamorphosis, since the arrival of the old man in Paris. The advocate of ambition, of adventures, and bold attempts, had become, by some transition, the friend of retreat, of moderate life, of sober and quiet tastes. Instead of encouraging the substitute in his presumptuous hopes as he had formerly done, the emigrant let pass no occasion of numbering the rocks with which that ocean is strewed, which must be crossed by aspirants, before they reach the end of their wishes.

"For one who arrives in port, ninety-nine make shipwreck on the way," would he often say; "and with how much fatigue, ennui, and discontent, does the one who succeeds purchase his success. In truth, man has no more cruel malady than that effervescence of his mind, which leads him to disdain the solid good which he possesses, to run after a fortune, which often proves illusory and chimerical."

Where is his sermon going to lead him, thought Deslandes, who, to make the old gentleman see his own contradictions, reminded him of

the advantages he had gained under the consulate, when he played the part of solicitor.

"Where one succeeds, another is ruined," replied M. de Loiselay, in a dogmatic tone. "In every thing, success is the exception; beside," added he, with a sort of fatality, "it is not g anted to every body to reach Corinth.”

In the daily conversations of the two provincials, every time the ambition of the substitute took flight, like a kite whose string the schoolboy is untangling, the old man, with a pitiless stroke, would pull down the rostat already lost in the clouds. If Deslandes talked to him of the council of state, he would respond by speaking of the tribunal of the first instance at D***.

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Your leave of absence must be out," said he to him, one day : "have you asked to have it prolonged ?"

"Yes," replied the young magistrate, "but it was only an act of politeness on my part,-I have bid adieu forever to the court house at D***."

"It is best not to swear to any thing," replied the old emigrant, shaking his head. "After all, the place to which you still hold the title is a very good thing; worst come to the worst, many others would be well content with it at your age: you are only twenty-seven, I believe?"

Pitt was prime minister at twenty-four."

"And Napoleon first Consul at thirty: I know that, but, I, who have made all the campaigns of the army of the princes, and who am now passed sixty-eight years, do you know what my rank is? Captain, my dear friend, the cross of St. Louis, that I no longer wear, and a pension of five hundred francs; here is every thing definitive which I hold from a career, which, between ourselves, has been a little more laborious than yours. You see that every body cannot become Pitt or Bonaparte."

According to the custom of those choice spirits who lay claim to place themselves ont of the common law, Deslandes was not convinced of the justice of such a comparison. That M. de Loiselay had obtained in his military career only an inferior rank, appeared to him to be naturally explained by the mediocrity of the old gentleman; but that he, full of intelligence and talent, should vegetate longer in a subaltern employment, this was evidently absurd, odious, revolting, impossible.

The good man has come down considerably in the last two months, thought he formerly he understood matters; he saw clearly; his advice was generally very sensible; but there is no longer any way of having reasonable conversation with him. Would he not persuade me, that I must esteem myself happy to have reached at my age, the glorious office of substitute to the King's attorney. I have seen the moment when he proposed to me to go back to D***—nothing_from him will surprise me-he may advise me, one of these days, to marry Mad'lle Bescherin !

This laughable supposition, on which he could not pause for a moment, without a smile of pity, was the next day realized; and notwith