ds there
ever remains a sure seat upon Olympus, unshaken by the winds, untouched
by rain or snow, crowned with a cloudless radiance,--yet upon man
come vanity, sorrow, and strife; like the leaves of the forest he
flourisheth, and then passeth away to the "weak heads of the dead,"
([Greek: nekuon amenaena karaena],) conquered by purple Death and strong
Fate.

To the eye of sense, and in the circumscribed movements of this world,
the desolation seems complete and the defeat final. But the snows of
winter are necessary to the blossoms of spring,--the waste of death to
the resurrection of life; and from the vastest of all desolations does
our Lady lead her children in the loftiest of all flights,--even from
all sorrow and solitude,--from the wastes of earth and the desolation of
AEons, to ineffable joy in her Saviour Lord.

* * * * *

VICTOR AND JACQUELINE.

I.

Jacqueline Gabrie and Elsie Meril could not occupy one room, and remain,
either of them, indifferent to so much as might be manifested of the
other's inmost life. They could not emigrate together, peasants from
Domremy,--Jacqueline so strong, Elsie so fair,--could not labor in the
same harvest-fields, children of old neighbors, without each being
concerned in the welfare and affected by the circumstances of the other.

It was near ten o'clock, one evening, when Elsie Meril ran up the
common stairway, and entered the room in the fourth story where she and
Jacqueline lodged.

Victor Le Roy, student from Picardy, occupied the room next theirs, and
was startled from his slumber by the voices of the girls. Elsie was
fresh from the theatre, from the first play she had ever witnessed; she
came home excited and delighted, ready to repeat and recite, as long as
Jacqueline would listen.

And here was Jacqueline.

Early in the evening Elsie had sought her friend with a good deal of
anxiety. A fellow-lodger and field-laborer had invited her to see the
play,--and Jacqueline was far down the street, nursing old Antonine
Dupre. To seek her, thus occupied, on such an errand, Elsie had the good
taste, and the selfishness, to refrain from doing.

Therefore, after a little deliberation, she had gone to the theatre, and
there forgot her hard day-labor in the wonders of the stage,--forgot
Jacqueline, and Antonine, and every care and duty. It was hard for her,
when all was ended, to come back to compunction and explanation, yet to
this s