f a moral, immovable, mute impotence.

ALFRED.

Humph!... I see you have finished, at last, your cigar;
Can I offer another?

STRANGER.

No, thank you. We are
Not two miles from Luchon.

ALFRED.

You know the road well?

STRANGER.

I have often been over it.

XVI.

Here a pause fell
On their converse. Still musingly on, side by side,
In the moonlight, the two men continued to ride
Down the dim mountain pathway. But each for the rest
Of their journey, although they still rode on abreast,
Continued to follow in silence the train
Of the different feelings that haunted his brain;
And each, as though roused from a deep revery,
Almost shouted, descending the mountain, to see
Burst at once on the moonlight the silvery Baths,
The long lime-tree alley, the dark gleaming paths,
With the lamps twinkling through them--the quaint wooden roofs--
The little white houses.
The clatter of hoofs,
And the music of wandering bands, up the walls
Of the steep hanging hill, at remote intervals
Reached them, cross'd by the sound of the clacking of whips,
And here and there, faintly, through serpentine slips
Of verdant rose-gardens deep-sheltered with screens
Of airy acacias and dark evergreens,
They could mark the white dresses and catch the light songs
Of the lovely Parisians that wander'd in throngs,
Led by Laughter and Love through the old eventide
Down the dream-haunted valley, or up the hillside.

XVII.

At length, at the door of the inn l'HERISSON,
Pray go there, if ever you go to Luchon!
The two horsemen, well pleased to have reached it, alighted
And exchanged their last greetings.
The Frenchman invited
Lord Alfred to dinner. Lord Alfred declined.
He had letters to write, and felt tired. So he dined
In his own rooms that night.
With an unquiet eye
He watched his companion depart; nor knew why,
Beyond all accountable reason or measure,
He felt in his breast such a sovran displeasure.
"The fellow's good looking," he murmur'd at last,
"And yet not a coxcomb." Some ghost of the past
Vex'd