not contain at least a covert attack upon religion, in accordance with the principles of the fashionable philosophy, had a chance of success. Let us now tell the story of M. de Bocher’s acquisition of wealth. His origin indeed was of the lowliest, for his father was but a working mason in the days of the Grand Monarque. One evening, as the father was returning home with his work-basket on his shoulder and trowel in hand, a man wrapped in a long brown cloak, and closely followed by a carriage without any armorial bearings or ciphers, tapped him on the shoulder and asked him whether he would like to earn five-and-twenty louis. The mason eagerly acquiesced; and having entered the carriage, his eyes were bandaged, and the horses started off at a great rate. For several hours the carriage was driven rapidly about the streets of Paris, with the obvious intention of making the occupant lose all trace of the route he had traversed; and when the object had been accomplished, the carriage stopped suddenly in the court-yard of a large mansion. Bocher was then desired to alight; and was at once conducted, his eyes still bandaged, into a kind of cellar, where his eyesight was restored to him. Here he found two men, both armed, and with their faces concealed by masks. The poor man was in an agony of terror, believing that his last hour had come, but was somewhat reassured by the gestures of his companions, who, fearful of trusting their voices, made signs to him to make some mortar of the lime which was lying on the floor. A hole in the wall disclosed a recess; and the two men raising with difficulty a weighty strong box, placed it in the interior, and made signs to the mason to build up the wall afresh. Bocher, seeing that nothing was required of him but the legitimate exercise of his craft, quickly recovered his self-possession; and guessing that the proprietors of the treasure were obliged to quit the country, and had hit upon this device for concealing it until better times should dawn upon them, the notion of appropriating it to his own use flashed like lightning across his brain. When he concluded his work, as if intending to give a last polish to its completion, he placed his hand, thickly covered with wet mortar, on the new wall, and thus left the distinct impression of his five fingers on the hiding-place of the treasure-deposit. The promised five-and-twenty louis were then faithfully counted out into his hand; his eyes were again bandaged, and he was re-conducted to the carriage, which after following the same course of deception for three long hours, at last deposited him in the same street as that in which the man in the brown cloak had found him.