"I think not," replied Monsieur G---- to this last question--"I think not, Monsieur Latouche; it certainly is not, if you bought that house with the money of that young man's mother which was left to him at her death: take my advice, be content with what you have, for I am not very sure that if this matter were investigated, you yourself might not find your way to the galleys instead of sending him there." There was something in the tone of Monsieur G---- that wonderfully calmed Emanuel Latouche, who at first had been inclined to fight it out strongly, but upon second thoughts; he swore he was ill treated--very much ill treated; but as "sufferance was the badge of all his tribe," he walked out of the room, grumbling as he went. And as for the rest--why, "Hey, for the wedding!" A PARTY OF PLEASURE. Every one knows that there is a vast tract of barren sand, called by the French people Landes, which, skirting the Bay of Biscay, extends for many hundred miles, from the mouth of the Gironde into the Spanish province of Biscay. The breadth of this sandy zone is from twenty to a hundred miles, all of which is wild, sterile, and desolate, the only relief to the bleakness of these moors being the shadow of several vast forests of pine, which have been planted at different times in the patriotic hope of winning the desert into cultivation. Such a tract is, of course, thinly peopled, but still it is so in a degree, and there are even to be found spots of luxuriant fertility, first cousins to the oasis of Ammon _côte de la mer_. One of the wildest parts, however, lies between Bordeaux and a little fishing town called La Teste, situated on the edge of the "Basin d'Arcachon," a large inlet from the Bay of Biscay, to which it is joined by a narrow channel of some leagues in length. It had long been my wish to explore these Landes, and at length an advertisement appearing in one of the papers that a diligence would go to La Teste one day in the Christmas week, I instantly caught at the idea, and my travelling companion, a M. de B----, and myself, engaged places in this conveyance under the idea of seeing the Landes at our ease. However, one of the party cried off the night before, and De B---- and myself set out without him armed with a partridge-pie and a pair of pistols. The diligence was crowded with a company consisting of two Jew brokers, three pointer dogs, an exciseman, and two sportsmen, together with guns and brandy bottles, and having been drawn slowly for about two leagues through roads that would be a disgrace to the Sandwich Islands, our conductor made us get out to lighten the carriage.