ould pity me. I have
but one consolation--a lovely baby, Julie, a girl: I had almost said an
angel. Were you as fond of your first child, I wonder, as I am of mine?
And did you utterly forget your husband, when the little darling was
first put into your arms? Write and tell me."

_Number III._ 1811.--"I have hardly patience to take up my pen But I
shall do something desperate, if I don't relieve my overburdened mind in
some way.

"After I wrote to you last year, I succeeded in getting my husband away
from the detestable University. But he persisted in hanging about
Germany, and conferring with moldy old doctors (whom he calls "Princes of
Science"!) instead of returning to Paris, taking a handsome house, and
making his way to the top of the tree with my help. I am the very woman
to give brilliant parties, and to push my husband's interests with
powerful people of all degrees. No; I really must not dwell on it. When I
think of what has happened since, it will drive me mad.

"Six weeks ago, a sort of medical congress was announced to be at the
University. Something in the proposed discussion was to be made the
subject of a prize-essay. The doctor's professional interest in this
matter decided him on trying for the prize--and the result is our return
to the hateful old town and its society.

"Of course, my husband resumes his professional studies; of course, I am
thrown once more among the dowdy gossiping women. But that is far from
being the worst of it. Among the people in the School of Chemistry here,
there is a new man, who entered the University shortly after we left it
last year. This devil--it is the only right word for him--has bewitched
my weak husband; and, for all I can see to the contrary, has ruined our
prospects in life.

"He is a Hungarian. Small, dirty, lean as a skeleton, with hands like
claws, eyes like a wild beast's, and the most hideously false smile you
ever saw in a human face. What his history is, nobody knows. The people
at the medical school call him the most extraordinary experimental
chemist living. His ideas astonish the Professors themselves. The
students have named him 'The new Paracelsus.'

"I ventured to ask him, one day, if he believed he could make gold. He
looked at me with his frightful grin, and said, "Yes, and diamonds too,
with time and money to help me." He not only believes in The
Philosopher's Stone; he says he is on the trace of some explosive
compound so terrifically d