freedom louder and more enthusiastically than ever before; in fine, no instrument, no means, however humble and apparently insignificant, shall be neglected when the proper moment arrives, but until it does arrive I must wait, wait patiently, wait though while waiting an internal fire consume me, and my veins throb with anxiety and expectation to the point of bursting." He sank into a chair, and, burying his face in his hands, was lost in profound thought. Meanwhile, a lovely woman, leading a beautiful girl of eight years and a handsome boy of nine, had noiselessly entered the apartment. It was Haydee, the wife of Monte-Cristo, Haydee grown mature and more beautiful than ever. Her night-black tresses were gathered in two wide braids at the back of her shapely head, so long that they reached below her waist. Her eyes were as bright as stars, and her slender hands, tipped with their pink nails, as white as the lily; her tiny feet, encased in Cinderella slippers of rose-hued satin, peeped out from beneath ample Turkish trousers, which were semi-transparent and disclosed the outlines of her beautifully turned limbs; she wore a close-fitting gilet of pearly silk, adorned with gilt fringe and cut low, displaying her snowy neck and magnificent shoulders; her arms were encompassed but not hidden by flowing sleeves of filmy gauze as fine as the tissue of a spider's web; about her neck flashed a collar of brilliant diamonds of enormous value, and on her tapering fingers were rings of emerald, ruby and sapphire; on her head was a red fez, precisely similar to her husband's; her countenance, a perfect revelation of angelic beauty, was wreathed in sunny smiles that betokened thorough happiness and contentment. The little girl, Zuleika, the daughter of Monte-Cristo, was her exact image, a reproduction of her lovely mother in miniature, a promise of rare delight for the future. The child's costume was also modeled after Haydee's, but with modifications suited to her tender years. Zuleika was of a gentle, loving disposition, but a vein of romance and poetry had already developed itself in her notwithstanding her extreme youth. She sighed for the unknown delights of the sea, and the wail of the surf sounded to her like the most delicious of mysterious harmonies. Her infant imagination peopled the watery realm with spirits of good and evil always in contention, and the great ships, with their huge white sails, that she saw in the distance from the sandy beach of the Island of Salmis, were in her eyes the mighty birds of Arabian story.