In both cases, the ministers of the fallen king were impeached. In even smaller circumstances, other coincidences have been recorded. During the combats of both revolutions, the temperature was excessively warm for the season of the year--a circumstance not wholly without its weight, if the well-known barometric nature of the Parisian temperament be considered; and a few days after, in both years, an extraordinarily terrific tempest burst over the capital, obscured it for many hours in darkness, and swept down the new flag placed aloft upon the column of the Place Vendôme. Coincidences, predictions, revelations--all may, perhaps, be looked upon, by the sceptically reasoning mind of plain matter-of-fact, with scorn. To such, then, they are here only given as curious matters of historical interest. At the same time, in the uncertainty as to the issue of the convulsions under the throes of which Europe is at present writhing, the troubled mind may surely attach itself to the obscure revelations of such strange announcements, and endeavour clearly to see its way through their dimness, without too much deserving the stigma usually attached to superstitious credulity. SIGISMUND FATELLO. CHAP. I.--THE OPERA. It was a November night of the year 184-. For a week past, the play-bills upon the convenient but unsightly posts that disfigure the boulevards, had announced for that evening, in conspicuous capitals, the first performance of a new opera by a popular composer. Although the season of winter gaieties had scarcely begun, and country-houses and bathing-places retained a portion of the fashionable population of Paris, yet a string of elegant carriages, more or less coroneted, extended down the Rue Lepelletier, and deposited a distinguished audience at the door of the Académie de Musique. The curtain fell upon the first act; and a triple round of applause, of which a little was attributable to the merits of the opera, and a good deal to the parchment palms of a well-drilled _claque_, proclaimed the composer's triumph and the opera's success, when two men, entering the house at opposite sides, met near its centre, exchanged a familiar greeting, and seated themselves in contiguous stalls. Both belonged to the class which the lower orders of Parisians figuratively designate as _gants jaunes_; the said lower orders conscientiously believing primrose gloves to be a covering as inseparable from a dandy's fingers as the natural epidermis. The younger of these two men, the Viscount Arthur de Mellay, was a most unexceptionable specimen of those _lions dorés_ who, in modern French society, have replaced the _merveilleux_, the _roués_, and _raffinés_ of former days. Sleek of face and red of lip, with confident eye and trim mustache, his "getting up" was evidently the result of deep reflection on the part of the most tasteful of tailors and scrupulous of valets. From his varnished boot-heel to the