99

THE DEAF MAN OF KENSINGTON 155

CHORDS.

BOHEMIA 9

LITTLE GRISETTE 93

THE PIGEON GIRL 149

THE DEAD BOHEMIAN 279

BOHEMIA.

The farther I do grow from _La Boheme_,
The more I do regret that foolish shame
Which made me hold it something to conceal,
And so I did myself expatriate;
For in my pulses and my feet I feel
That wayward realm was still my own estate;
Wise wagged our tongues when the dear nights grew late,
And quainter, clearer, rose our quick conceits,
And pure and mutual were our social sweets.
Oh! ever thus convivial round the gate
Of Letters have the masters and the young
Loitered away their enterprises great,
Since Spenser revelled in the halls of state,
And at his tavern rarest Jonson sung.

THE REBEL COLONY IN PARIS.

* * * * *

I.

THE EXILES.

In the latter part of October, 1863, seven very anxious and dilapidated
personages were assembled under the roof of an old, eight-storied
tenement, near the church of St. Sulpice, in the city of Paris.

The seven under consideration had reached the catastrophe of their
decline--and rise. They had met in solemn deliberation to pass
resolutions to that effect, and take the only congenial means for
replenishment and reform. This means lay in miniature before a caged
window, revealed by a superfluity of light--a roulette-table, whereon
the ball was spinning industriously from the practised fingers of Mr.
Auburn Risque, of Mississippi.

Mr. Auburn Risque had a spotted eye and a bluishly cold face; his
fingers were the only movable part of him, for he performed respiration
and articulation with the same organ--his nose; and the sole words
vouchsafed by this at present were:
"Black--black--black--white--black--white--white--black"--etc.

The five surrounding parties were carefully noting upon fragments of
paper the results of the experiment, and likewise Master Lees, the
lessee of the chamber--a pale, emaciated youth, sitting up in bed, and
ciphering tremulously, with bony fingers; even he, upon whom disease had
made auguries of death, looked forward to gold, as the remedy which
science had not brought, for a wasted youth of dissipation and
incontinence.

They were all representatives of the recently instituted Confederacy.