throat, and
strangles him.

She has only time to thank her deliverer; to tell him why his devotion
is unavailing--to provide for his safety by writing in the album from
which he has torn the fatal page, that he has slain a man who would have
outraged her: and that her last breath is spent in blessing him.

A merry voice is heard; and the young, light-hearted girl comes all
unconscious to the scene of the tragedy. The curtain falls before she
has entered upon it.

The betrayal of the lady, the transaction of which she becomes the
subject, and her consequent suicide, are taken from an episode in
English high life, which occurred in the present century.

"THE TWO POETS OF CROISIC" is an extract from the history of two writers
of verse, whose respective works obtained from circumstances a brilliant
but short-lived renown. It forms part of a reminiscence, supposed to be
conjured up by a wood fire near which the narrator, with his wife, is
sitting. The fire, as he describes it, is made of ship-wood: for it
burns in all the beautiful colours which denote the presence of metallic
substances and salts; and as his fancy reconstructs the ship, it also
raises the vision of a distant coast well known to his companion and to
himself. He sees Le Croisic--the little town it is--the poor village it
was[81]--with its storm-tossed sea--its sandy strip of land, good only
for the production of salt--its solitary Menhir, which recalls, and in
some degree perpetuates, the wild life and the barbarous Druid worship
of old Breton times.[82] And in the bright-hued flames, which leap up
and vanish before his bodily eyes, he sees also the two ephemeral
reputations which flashed forth and expired there.

Rene Gentilhomme, born 1610, was a rhymer, as his father had been before
him. He became page to the Prince of Conde, and occupied his spare time
by writing complimentary verse. One day, as he was hammering at an ode,
a violent storm broke out; and the lightning shattered a ducal crown in
marble which stood on a pedestal in the room in which he sat. Conde was
regarded as future King of France: for Louis XIII. was childless, and
his brother Gaston believed to be so; in consideration of this fact, men
called him "Duke." Rene took the incident as an omen, and turned his ode
into a prophecy which he delivered to his master as the utterance of
God. "The Prince's hopes were at an end: a Dauphin would be born in the
ensuing year." A Dauphin was born