thou _shalt_ hear me out—and thou didst swear yesterday I should live in a cloister cell forever!—and I replied to thy words _then_, ‘not long!’—I have thought better _now_—and _now_ I answer ‘_never_!’ Lo here!—lo here! ye who have marked the doom of Armand—mark now the doom of Marguerite! Ye who have judged the treason, mark the doom of the traitress!” And with the words, before any one could interfere, even had they suspected her intentions, she raised her right hand on high, and all then saw the quick twinkle of a weapon, and struck herself, as it seemed, a quick slight blow immediately under the left bosom! It seemed a quick slight blow! but it had been so accurately studied—so steadily aimed and fatally—that the keen blade, scarcely three inches long and very slender, of the best of Milan steel, with nearly a third of the hilt, was driven home into her very heart—she spoke no syllable again!—nor uttered any cry!—nor did a single spasm contract her pallid features, a single convulsion distort her shapely limbs! but she leaped forward, and fell upon her face, quite dead, at the King’s feet! Henry smiled not again for many a day thereafter—Charles De La Hirè died very old, a Carthusian monk of the strictest order, having mourned sixty years and prayed in silence for the sorrows and the sins of that most hapless being. ----- [1] See the Duello, page 85. * * * * * THE STRANGER’S FUNERAL. BY N. C. BROOKS. A solitary hearse without mourner or friend wheeled by me with unceremonious speed. It filled my heart with feelings of the most chilling desolation, which were augmented perhaps by the peculiar gloom of the evening. I reached the rude grave in which the corpse was deposited, and learned from the menial who was performing the last rites that it was a young German of fine talents, with whom I had travelled a few months before, who, far from his home and friends, had fallen a victim to the prevailing epidemic.—Letter of a Friend. No solemn bell pealed on the air, No train in sable gloom Moved slow with the holy man of prayer To stand around his tomb; The hearse rolled on without sign of love To the church, in lonely woe, Where bent the solemn heavens above The opened grave below: But he recked not of the heavens o’ercast, Or the yawning gulf of death; For with him Earth’s bitterness had passed, Ere passed his fleeting breath.