Let us hope that it was not there that she fell in with one whom in an hour of weakness she permitted to console her too tenderly for the absence of her crusading lord. Had she waited with patience but only nine months longer for his return, all would have been well. For he did return as nearly as possible about that time; and, arriving at his own castle-door, met one whom he at once recognized as his wife's confidential maid coming out of the house and carrying a large basket. The natural inquiry whither she was going, and what she had in her basket, was answered by the statement--uttered with that ingenuous fluency and masterly readiness for which ladies' maids have in all countries, and doubtless in all ages, been celebrated--that the basket contained a litter of puppies which she was taking to the river to drown. Alas! the girl had adhered but too nearly to the truth. There _were_ seven living and breathing creatures in the basket, and the confidential maid had been sent on the very confidential errand of drowning them. Woe worth the day! They were seven little unchristened Christians, doomed to die one death as they had been born at one birth--the result of that erring noble lady's fault. The methods of injured husbands were wont to be characterized by much simplicity and directness of purpose in those days. The noble crusader invoked the aid of no court, either spiritual or lay. He happened to remember the existence of a certain dismal cavern in the sandstone rock not far from his dwelling. The entrance to it was very easily walled up. That cavern became the noble lady's prison and deathbed, as well as her grave! And a valuable possession has that lady's death and grave become to the descendants of her lord's vassals, for many a gulden is earned by guiding the curious to see the spot and by retailing the tragic history. Well! and of the two changes, the two abolitions, which have been here recorded, which was the most needed, which the most salutary, which the least mingled in its results with elements of evil? Poor Baden piteously complains that it does not take half the money in the course of the year that it used to receive as surely as "the season" came round in the old times. And the poor, wholly unconverted by maxims of political economy, declare that there have been no good times in the land since the destruction of the monasteries. After all, Abbot Fischer (that was the name of the last of the long line) and his monks were less objectionable than M. Benazet and his croupiers. Could we perhaps keep the scales even and make things pleasant all round by re-establishing both the abolished institutions--restoring the croupiers and "makers of the game" to their green table, and requiring them out of their enormous gains to re-endow the convent? "C'est une idée, comme une autre!" as a Frenchman says. T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. SONG.