He! he! When she comes to sue-- Let's see. What's the thing to do? Kick her? No! There's the perliss! Sorter throw her off like this! Hello! Stop! Help! Murder! Hey! There's my whole stock got away! Kiting on the house tops! Lost! All a poor man's fortin! Cost? Twenty dollars! Eh! What's this? Fifty cents! God bless ye, Miss! BRET HARTE. AUT DIABOLUS AUT NIHIL. THE TRUE STORY OF A HALLUCINATION. The career of the Abbe Gerard had been an eminently successful one--successful in every way; and even he himself was forced to acknowledge it to be so as he reviewed his past life, sitting by a blazing fire in his comfortable apartment in the Rue Miromeuil previous to dressing for the Duc de Frontignan's dinner-party. Born of poor parents in the south of France, entering the priesthood at an early age, having received but a meagre education, and that chiefly confined to a superficial knowledge of the most elementary treatises on theology, he had, in twenty-five years, and solely by his own exertions, unaided by patronage, obtained a most desirable berth in one of the leading Paris churches, thereby becoming the recipient of a handsome salary and being enabled to indulge his tastes as a dilettante and _homme du monde_. The few hours snatched from those absorbed by his parochial duties he had ever devoted to study, and his application and determination had borne him golden fruit. Moreover, he had so cultivated his mind, and made such good use of the rare opportunities afforded him in early life of associating with gentlemen, that when now at length he found his presence in demand at every house in the "Faubourg" where wit and graceful learning were appreciated, no one would ever have suspected he had not been bred according to the strictest canons of social refinement.