"My dear Marchesa, I have called you friend, therefore, I will not aid L'Estrange to injure you or yours. But I call L'Estrange a friend also; and I cannot violate the trust that--" Audley stopped short, and bit his lip. "You understand me," he resumed, with a genial smile, and took his leave. The Italian's brows met as her eye followed him; then, as she too rose, that eye encountered Randal's. Each surveyed the other--each felt a certain strange fascination--a sympathy--not of affection, but of intellect. "That young man has the eye of an Italian," said the Marchesa to herself; and as she passed by him into the ball-room, she turned and smiled. FOOTNOTES: [8] Continued from page 557, vol. iii. [9] If, at the date in which Lord L'Estrange held this conversation with Mr. Egerton, Alfred de Musset had written his comedies, we should suspect that his lordship had plagiarized from one of them the whimsical idea that he here vents upon Audley. In repeating it, the author at least cannot escape from the charge of obligation to a writer whose humor, at least, is sufficiently opulent to justify the loan. From the London Examiner. IMAGINARY CONVERSATION AT WARSAW. NICHOLAS AND NESSELRODE. BY WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR. _Nicholas._--God fights for us visibly. You look grave, Nesselrode! is it not so? Speak, and plainly. _Nesselrode._--Sire, in my humble opinion, God never fights at all. _Nicholas._--Surely he fought for Israel, when he was invoked by prayer. _Nesselrode._--Sire, I am no theologian; and I fancy I must be a bad geographer, since I never knew of a nation which was not Israel when it had a mind to shed blood and to pray. To fight is an exertion, is violence; the Deity in His omnipotence needs none. He has devils and men always in readiness for fighting; and they are the instruments of their own punishment for their past misdeeds. _Nicholas._--The chariots of God are numbered by thousands in the volumes of the Psalmist. _Nesselrode._--No psalmist, or engineer, or commissary, or arithmetician, could enumerate the beasts that are harnessed to them, or the fiends that urge them on. _Nicholas._--Nesselrode! you grow more and more serious. _Nesselrode._--Age, sire, even without wisdom, makes men serious whether they are inclined or not. I could hardly have been so long conversant in the affairs of mankind (all which in all quarters your majesty superintends and directs) without much cause for seriousness. _Nicholas._--I feel the consciousness of Supreme Power, but I also feel the necessity of subordinate help. _Nesselrode._--Your majesty is the first monarch, since the earlier Cæsars of Imperial Rome, who could control, directly or indirectly, every country in our hemisphere, and thereby in both. _Nicholas._--There are some who do not see this.