empress his arm, and escorts her over the bridge to her apartments. The prince remains on the terrace with the two other ladies and the lapdog, while M. Mocquard disappears again on the side allée. "It is high time for us to be off," the captain said to me, "for I have the inspection, and must fetch the parole before his majesty leaves. The emperor has ordered a phaeton, and intends to drive himself." The captain then accompanied me down stairs and across the court-yard to the great gates, where the porters and footmen bowed to me most politely. A moment later I was standing on the outer terrace and looking down into the barrack-yard beneath, where the rappel was being sounded, and hundreds of glittering soldiers were hurriedly running about. On the same day I read the following notice in an evening paper: "The emperor came this afternoon from St. Cloud to Paris, in order to inspect the new Boulevard du Prince Eugène; he was in a light open phaeton, and drove himself. The Prince Impérial was seated by his side: the first time he has accompanied his majesty on such a drive. The carriage was without escort, and there were only two footmen behind. His majesty was received with loud shouts on all the boulevards, and the public were delighted at the pleasant salutes which the little prince offered on all sides." It was this, then, the little prince had asked and coaxed from his father a trip with papa, and not, as usual, in the large, stupid fourhorsed state coach, surrounded by clattering dragoons and galloping aides-de-camp. Poor pretty child! Twenty years ago the Comte de Paris was playing on the same spot, as handsome as you, and merry and envied as you. And more than fifty years ago another beautiful boy, whom his proud father created a king in his cradle, also played on that terrace; he was even called the most fortunate child in the world, because the world would be his inheritance. He has long been dead, and his name alone passes like a pale shadow through history, like that other unfortunate prince who died a wretched death in the Temple. Great France is harsh and cruel to the heirs of her throne-those flowers which the mild October has hitherto spared, a single frost can nip and kill, and leave nothing but wild destruction-and the child who sported under them will then succumb, like them, to iron, inexorable fate. But enough, perhaps more than enough, of these melancholy reflections. I must break off now, though I have far from exhausted my portfolio. I may, possibly, take it up again on another occasion, to add further specimens of my collection of Parisian notabilities. 356 THE BLUE WARBLER.* THE Warblers are dear to us from the earliest reminiscences of our youth. They were the first of the persecuted race of winged and feathered songsters to whose nests we devoted attentions that are now looked back to with regret. We knew them then as 66 Fauvettes," for the hedge-rows and groves that we haunted in their pursuit were in the sunny land of France. They have not, however, the less held by us in our old age. Sweetly-singing black-caps build every year in the trimmed limes that front our study window; the garden warbler never fails to come with the first leaves of spring; a pair of bright-coloured red-starts build in an abandoned dove-cot perched high upon the gable end of the stables; and the familiar redbreast, albeit sadly persecuted by wary suburban cats, is never absent winter or autumn. It will be readily understood that we are not of those who destroy birds for the trifling occasional mischief that they do, and forget the vast amount of good that counterbalances such. But the robin, which, in rural cottages, brisk alights On the warm hearth; then, hopping o'er the floor, is bereft of his characteristic familiarity in suburban residences by his well-known propensity to chase others of his own species. Coming into the breakfast-room, the untoward mirror betrays an imaginary rival; he flies at it, and combats his reflected self, till, weary with the struggle, he withdraws from the contest, and neither crumbs nor bits of bread will tempt him back again into the room. He is, however, the suburban gardener's most intimate friend, ever welcoming his presence, and giving back a song for every worm that he turns up for him. Bewick, in his early editions, used the term "Fauvette" for some of the warblers-a family which, notwithstanding their numbers, is, he says, confessedly obscure and indetermined; but in subsequent editions, beginning, we believe, with that of 1832, he preferred that of Warbler, as he says better suited to our own language. The same amiable and accurate ornithologist describes a blue-throated robin as "an innocent and beautiful little visitor," but whether it is the same as the "Fauvette Bleue" of the French, we are not prepared to say, for we have never met with either. Be this as it may, it appears that an interesting little bit of local history attaches itself to the Blue Warbler-a rara avis-even on the Continent. Only a very few years ago, an isolated, pointed rock rising up on the right bank of the Loire, just below its conference with the Maine, like a great Druidical stone, was well known to all in the neighbourhood, who called it "la Pierre-Bécherelle." But now the railroads have come-the old monolith stood in the way-it was tumbled down, and the trains pass over its body. Nothing remains of it but a truncated cone. It is so with many another object. How many landscapes have been spoiled, quiet corners invaded, parks cut in twain, and solitudes turned into roar *La Fauvette Bleue. Récit des Bords de la Loire. Récits des Landes et des Grèves. Par Théodore Pavie. ing acres of ashes and cinders by the unsparing rail? But all is for the best in the best of worlds, and, if you regret the past, the locomotive will snort and scream at you with a perfect cognisance of its own dirty superiority. La Pierre-Bécherelle, however, deserved a better fate. Situated at one of those points at which the Loire opens into an almost lake-like expanse, it constituted a kind of observatory, from whence any one whose soul was not closed to the beauties of nature, could contemplate a panorama of no ordinary beauty and extent. There was one person dwelling in the neighbourhood who in those times never failed to pay a daily visit to this rocky observatory. This was Dr. Christian, a thin, bald, old man, with a plum-coloured coat with very long lappets. He had served many years in the navy, and had now retired upon a modest competence, selecting this picturesque spot to pass the last few years of his life in peace. He spent his days in gardening, in excursions-the object of which was the search for birds, insects, and plants-and in visiting a few poor patients, to whom he tendered his gratuitous services. He was one of those good old souls who are always busy, always observing, always comparing and learning, and always, in consequence, happy. Such an existence, however much fashionable townspeople may sneer at it, is at once pleasant and enviable, and it also lasts longer than a "faster" and more turbulent career. The doctor was an early riser-another provocative of rude healthand he had as a companion a little spaniel, which, from its ferreting propensities, he had designated Bistouri. He was thus seated one morning at a very early hour on his favourite monument, when a fisherman's boat put off from one of the islands, which are here inhabited, towards the bank. An old fisherman stood at the bows, whilst a young, slim, handsome girl propelled the frail bark by the movements of a single oar at the stern. "Tiens!" (our Own Correspondent has got hold of this inevitable word), said the girl, "there is Bistouri; the doctor can't be far off." 66 Why, did not you see him perched like a heron on the top of the Pierre-Bécherelle ?" replied the old man. Nearly at the same moment the doctor appeared upon the riverbanks. "Good morning, Father Léonard; good morning, Madeleine. How are you, my good friends? Has the fishing been successful this morning ?" "As to the fishing, nothing remarkable,” replied Léonard, "but as to our health, thanks to you, doctor, I have got rid of that low fever. Shall we have the pleasure of taking you over to the island of Béhuard?" "Well, I will go over with you. At this season of the year one has a chance of finding rare plants and even curious birds." "Ah!" said the young girl, smiling, "you are still in search of your blue warbler ?" "Precisely so, Madeleine; that bird is only to be met with in the osier-beds of the Loire." "It does not appear to abound there neither, for it is now some time since you have been seeking for it," persisted the damsel. "Well, perhaps, with patience I may succeed. At all events, I will cross over to the island with you." And, so saying, the doctor got into the boat, Bistouri following behind. Arrived at the point of the island, he had himself put down on the sandy beach, and at once took his way to the luisettes-beds of osiers that grow spontaneously in the mud of the Loire. They frame in the whole island. with a fringe of verdure, and make it appear as if it had only recently been reclaimed from the water. Such is not the case, however; the island is of great antiquity. Already in the thirteenth century there stood a chapel there which was celebrated throughout the whole country. Louis XI., who fell so deeply in love with the fair province of Anjou that he finished by taking it away by force from his uncle, Duke René, replaced this sanctuary by the charming church which is still in existence, and he had his sullen and saturnine profile placed in one of its brightcoloured windows. The doctor, more occupied by the unvarying history of nature than by the changing history of men, attached but slight importance to these reminiscences. Solely absorbed in his pursuit of the blue warbler, he forced his way into the very depths of the osier-beds, regardless of the treacherous soil below, and which often let him in far above his ankles. His long-skirted plum-coloured coat was covered with the floculent down of the willow-pods, and his brow was bathed in per spiration, and yet he met with nothing but tit-mice, and shy sedge birds, or reed warblers. Still he persevered, for the bird he sought for ought to be there, or nowhere else. He had arrived, after some hour or two's exertion, at a spot more swampy, and where the growth of osiers was more dense than elsewhere, when he thought that he perceived the blue wing of a little bird that warbled as it slid, rather than flew, beneath the branches. "Behind, Bistouri, behind!" whispered the doctor, breathlessly, and yet authoritatively. "I really believe that that is it! Is it a vision ? No, the titmouse has not that velvetty blue; and then, again, those light abrupt movements, and at the same time those sharp quick musical notes, they can only belong to a warbler." The shy bird, however, kept on its way, diving into the shade, to rise again and glance by the sun like a meteor. It seemed to take a coquettish pleasure in showing itself now and then to the anxious doctor, and then, as quickly burying itself in the obscurity below, tantalising him in his breathless pursuit. "I would lay any amount of money," said the doctor to himself, "that it is the blue warbler; but the certitude of the fact is still wanting, and without that we cannot admit anything as determined in natural history." "Ah, little bird !" exclaimed the doctor, rescuing a shoe dislodged by the mud, and wiping his brow with the traditional cotton kerchief, "you have wings, and I have only feet; the chances are not fairly divided between us. But ah, I think it has settled on a branch, now, if ever, I shall see it!" But at that very moment the cracking of a large branch of a tree at no remote distance, followed by the sound, as it were, of a heavy body falling, and the sudden barking of Bistouri, made the little songster take flight again. Rushing forward, instead of the blue warbler that the doctor thought he should at length contemplate in all its rare beauty, he stumbled upon the body of a young man stretched in the mud, so near the river that his feet touched the stream. "Plague upon the intruder!" exclaimed Doctor Christian, in the first impulse of his disappointment. "Where did he fall from?" He to whom these words were addressed, and who could not hear them, fell from the branch of an aspen. Round his neck was a stout rope that would infallibly have hung him, had not the treacherous branch given way. The doctor loosened the rope, turned him on one side, moved his arms to and fro, and pressed his ribs gently, till he breathed. Shortly afterwards the patient opened his eyes and sighed deeply. A few minutes more and he had recovered his senses, and, perceiving who it was that had tendered him in his sad plight, he said: "Is it you, Doctor Christian! Where am I?" 66 Why in the mud, my good friend. If you had selected an oak instead of an aspen, for your experiment, you would be in the air-a dangling corpse." "It would, perhaps, be better that it were so.' "Life, young man, is a blessing, and if it has its pains and griefs, we must learn to combat them. Come, rouse yourself; lean against this tuft of osiers. See how pleasant it is to live on a fine day like this!" "True!" replied the young man; "it is pleasant to live, but not when all that was worth living for is lost. When the branch broke I had already lost all consciousness. Had I died they would have said in the island, Jacques has hung himself!' Madeleine would not have had a a tear for me. I should soon have been forgotten." "Come, come, what is lost, is lost. So you love Madeleine, the fisherman's daughter, do you?" "Alas, it is so! We have been brought up together as children in the village of Béhuard. I am a soldier now; my leave is about to expire, and I must join my regiment." "Well! you will find her when you come back again." "Yes, I shall find her-married! There is a mariner who courts her. A great dark fellow, with gold anchors for ear-rings; he is richer than I am, and Father Léonard encourages him because he has money and lives on the Loire." "And Madeleine ?" "Madeleine treats me as a friend. She is not proud. She is not proud. She says good morning to me just as she would to any one else." you think 66 If was to remain at home," continued the doctor, "do you that you should succeed with Madeleine? What do you do?" My family have a few acres of land; we grow hemp, which we steep in the river." 66 "This boy must know something about the blue warbler," said the doctor to himself; and then continuing aloud, "You have still three years of service ?"' "Alas! yes, three long years." "Well, there is only one way, my poor boy, of getting you out of it, and that is by purchasing your discharge. If you have not the wherewithal, come to me some morning early and I will see what I can do." "Are you in earnest, doctor? I shall never be able to repay you." "I am quite aware of that, but I do not offer to lend you the money. |