nothing makes a man so unforgiving as the
consciousness of having inflicted a bitter wrong. He heard a sigh, heavy
and despairing as Francesca's when her dying prayer was spurned, a light
shadow flitted across the streak of moonlit grass, and, when he raised
his head, he was left alone, like Alp on the sea-shore, to judge the
battle between a remorseful conscience and a hardened heart.

Livingstone was seen no more that night; Constance glided in alone, and
her absence had been scarcely noticed. During the short time that she
remained, no one could have guessed from her face that her heart was
broken, any more than did Napoleon that the aid-de-camp who brought the
news of Lannes' victory had been almost cut in two by a grape-shot.

I speak it diffidently, with the fear of the divine voice of the people
before my eyes, as is but fitting in these equalizing days, when
territories, the title to which is possession immemorial, are being
plucked away acre by acre, and hereditary privileges mined one by one;
but it seems to me, in this, perhaps, solitary attribute, "the brave old
houses" still keep their pre-eminence.

They are not better, nor wiser in their generation (forbid it,
Manchester!), nor even more daring in confronting danger than the
thousands whose grandsires are creations of a powerful fancy or of a
complaisant king-at-arms. In that terrible charge which swept away the
Russian cavalry at Eylau, three lengths in front of the best blood in
France rode the innkeeper's son. The "First Grenadier" himself was not
more splendidly reckless, though he was a La Tour d'Auvergne. But in
passive uncomplaining endurance, in the power of obliterating outward
tokens of suffering, physical or mental, may we not still say, _Noblesse
oblige_?

Hundreds of similar isolated instances may be quoted from the annals of
the Third Estate; but, in the class I speak of, this quality seems a
sixth sense wholly independent of, and often contradicting the rest of
the individual's disposition.

I remember meeting in France an old Italian refugee. He had not much
principle and very little pride; he was ready _quidvis facere aut pati_
to get a five-franc piece, which he would incontinently stake and lose
at baccarat or ecarte, as he had done aforetime with a large ancestral
inheritance; but his quiet fortitude under privations that were neither
few nor light was worthy of Belisarius.

Very often, I am sure, his evening meal must have been