Of his far-reaching, high-aspiring Art!
His fancy seeks with thee each starry clime,
And thou art on the signet of his heart.
Be _still_ the symbol of a spirit free,
Imperial bird! to unborn ages given--
And to my soul, that it may soar like thee,
Steadfastly looking in the eye of HEAVEN.

_FIEL A LA MUERTE, OR TRUE LOVE'S DEVOTION.

A TALE OF THE TIMES OF LOUIS QUINZE.

BY HENRY WILLIAM HERBERT, AUTHOR OF "THE ROMAN TRAITOR," "MARMADUKE
WYVIL," "CROMWELL," ETC._

(_Continued from page 12._)

PART II.

The castle of St. Renan, like the dwellings of many of the nobles of
Bretagne and Gascony, was a superb old pile of solid masonry towering
above the huge cliffs which guard the whole of that iron coast with
its gigantic masses of rude masonry. So close did it stand to the
verge of these precipitous crags on its seaward face, that whenever
the wind from the westward blew angrily and in earnest, the spray of
the tremendous billows which rolled in from the wide Atlantic, and
burst in thunder at the foot of those stern ramparts, was dashed so
high by the collision that it would often fall in salt, bitter rain,
upon the esplanade above, and dim the diamond-paned casements with its
cold mists.

For leagues on either side, as the spectator stood upon the terrace
above and gazed out on the expanse of the everlasting ocean, nothing
was to be seen but the saliant angles or deep recesses formed by the
dark, gray cliffs, unrelieved by any spot of verdure, or even by that
line of silver sand at their base, which often intervenes between the
rocks of an iron coast and the sea. Here, however, there was no such
intermediate step visible; the black face of the rocks sunk sheer and
abrupt into the water, which, by its dark green hue indicated to the
practiced eye, that it was deep and scarcely fathomable to the very
shore.

In places, indeed, where huge caverns opening in front to the vast
ocean, which had probably hollowed them out of the earth-fast rock in
the course of succeeding ages, yawned in the mimicry of Gothic arches,
the entering tide would rush, as it were, into the bowels of the land,
roaring and groaning in those strange subterranean dungeons like some
strong prisoner, Typhon, Enceladus, or Ephialtes, in his immortal
agony. One of these singular vaults opened right in the base of the
rock on the summit of which stood the castle of St. Renan, and into
this the billows rushed