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transgression!

Ah men men! were an amount of elapse ere he replied to her appeal? Was there aught of penalty strictly proportioned, on a similar scale, to the self-reproach mingled with those hidden meditations? any amount of moral turpitude of which ye, strong lords of consciousness of duties left undone, which, performed, God's creation, are guilty, in your sinnings so lightly might have obviated that which had occurred? Or did visited as to seem hardly sin at all; what hell, present the proud religionist's mind revert to the disgrace which or future, were profound enough for your incalculably might be reflected on him, his house, his name, in the deep damnation! But then, ye are the lords of the cre- eyes of his fellow-citizens, and especially of his own sect? ation-manly, just, generous, equitable legislators for At all events, no tone of pity, no faintest gleam of mercy,. yourselves, and the companions, equal to yourselves, save was to be discovered in the accent of the voice in which in their love-demanding weakness, whom God has given he at last said, more as if speaking to himself than to you-the Creator's last, best gift, without which Para- her:dise was imperfect and unblest!

One of the epochs most strongly marked by general license was that in France, in which our heroine lived. And it may be thought, therefore, that the general tone of the times would have saved her from the cruel fate which has been represented as being before her. But it must be remembered that she belonged to a peculiar and isolated class; and that, in all respects, a severe and harsh one. Of the habits and manners of that class, who have made the period in question notable for its licentiousness, Pauline Bartenau, and those around her-those who were to make her fate-knew nothing. Nor could it have been possible to single out an individual, who would stand more utterly alone and friendless in an unknown world, than would the Huguenot's poor daughter, when abandoned by her own immediate friends, and driven forth into the wilderness of a world of which she had never seen or known anything.

It came at length; that dreadful hour of her father's first knowledge of his daughter's fall; that hour awaited in trembling expectation for so long; that hour, whose horrors importunate fancy had painted throughout the watchings of so many sleepless nights. It came, and realised her worst anticipations. It was a fearful interview, that last one between the father and the motherless daughter. Few words were said by either, though so much had to be told by both. Her sin, her shame, the doom that was to avenge it by the father. Cold, calm, self-contained as ever, the Huguenot heard the half-uttered words that told his daughter's tale. No gush of pity, no burst of rage altered the wonted rigidity of his upright form, or lighted up his cold, grey, quiet eye. Her story was said, wrung from her panting bosom in half-articulated words; and Pauline remained on her knees before him, with difficulty preventing herself from sinking prostrate on the floor. Her rich dark locks had, in her agitation, escaped from their confinement, and hung in disordered but beautiful masses over her pallid brow and ivory neck. That lovely face, swollen with weeping, was upturned towards him, and the beseeching eloquence of those dark tearful eyes could not have appealed in vain to any human bosom not indurated into stone-cold apathy. The hands joined in supplication, and outstretched towards him, added their expression of helpless wretchedness to the figure, which might well have inspired a Tintoretto or a Guido with a perfect representation of the Magdalene. But still he, the father, stood apparently unmoved; so unmoved, that those who knew him not might well have supposed that he had before been aware of the facts then made known to him.

And what was passing in the mind of the hard, impenetrable man during the long cruel pause, so interminable in its agony to the poor suppliant, that he suffered to

"This, too, was to be, and must needs have come therefore. But woe-verily, woe-to the lost soul by whom the offence cometh "

Then, turning more directly to the still kneeling figure of poor Pauline, he said, pointing in the direction of the

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Go forth! go from me, and from my house. Our paths, henceforth, must be different-FOR EVER! Alone with my God must I walk the remainder of my pilgrimage through this vale of tears; for it hath seemed good to Him that not even here should cleave unto me aught of the strange woman, after whom I strayed in my youth, sinfully taking to my bosom a wife not from the number of His elect. And, of a truth, from a bramble men do not gather figs. Rise, and go forth."

He turned, and was leaving the room; Pauline was motionless, as if turned into marble; till, rousing herself by a sudden effort, she sprung forward, caught his hand and in an accent in which the slightest possible tone of eproach might be detected mingling with that of supplication as she pronounced the word-father, said impressively

"Father! my father! you send me, then, to death ""'.. She was going on, but he disengaged his hand, and raising it as if to represent the impassable barrier which was to separate them for ever, he replied, slowly and sternly

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And with these words the good man left the sinner. They were the last, with one exception, that Pauline ever heard from her father.

He passed from the room; and she remained, for a while, in the attitude and on the spot where he had left her, stunned by the blow, and incapable of fully comprehending its reality. At length, slowly, and almost dreamily, she gathered herself up, and rose to her fect. The immediate consideration of what next was to be done then forced her mind to contemplate the future that lay before her. All dark! no ray to cheer! no possibility of hope! alone! helpless! friendless! no hand to sustain, guide, assist! no voice to soothe! no heart to love and cherish! Like Hagar, she was to go forth into the wilderness; but that which lay before her was the worser and more desolate wilderness, a cruel, scornful world, thick set with cold strange eyes, that glare upon the stricken one, warning her off from the shelter of each heart. Oh, for the desert! the real desert! where beneath no eye save the benignant, the pitying, the merciful one of her Heavenly Father, she might lay her down, and be at rest!

World! world! decent, decorous, pious, proper world! how many Hagars perish, and are even now perishing, in the wilderness to which thou hast driven them forth?

Might she but die! To sleep and wake no more to this weary, weary world! Oh, what a boon were that! To die!-so easy! so quick! so sure! and then rest, rest! repose and darkness! no prying eyes! no scoffing smiles! one plunge, and all is over!

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On the 22d of October, in the year 1685, Louis XIV. Ha! devil! art thou there? Thou knowest well thy revoked the edict of Nantes. Rarely, perhaps, has the uneasiness of a royal conscience produced results so extime, and skilfully presentest to the miserable thy master-stroke of temptation. But his thee hence! This tensively, grievously, and permanently injurious, as did woman, weak, hardly smitten, and prostrate, is yet none that day's pious work. Much of evil has arisen not rarely Many of the lastingly mischievous of thine. Shall she do murder?-a double murder? Then welcome, life! dark, stormy, cheerless, dreary influences, which have so lamentably retarded the prolife!—welcome, for that dear sake!-welcome, struggling,gress of civilization in France, may be ascribed to the toil, and pain!

her.

And Pauline walked forth from her father's house, and closed its door behind her, the wide world all before She was not without the means of obtaining immediate shelter, did she but know where to apply for it; for she possessed and carried with her sundry trinkets, some of no small value, which had been the property of her mother. It was not likely that any vanities of this kind should have been acquired beneath the roof of the Huguenot husband and father, by either mother or daughter. But the articles which were now to serve her daughter in her urgent need, and which had been the cherished memorial of her own bright youth, had been brought by her from the sunny land of her birth, and had been the gifts of her fond foster-parents.

from similar causes.

personal failings of the " grand monarque," and still more, probably, to qualities, which have been ordinarily reckoned among his virtues. That they should still so be reckoned by a large proportion of the Frenchmen of the nineteenth century, is one of the most convincing proofs of the small progress hitherto achieved by the nation towards a general comprehension of sound principles of genuine civilization-or, to speak perhaps more fairly, of the very large portion of the path which yet remains to be travelled over. Very few, however, even among the most blindly violent of the renascent Jesuit-animated party in France, would, in all probability, be found to defend the revocation of the edict of Nantes in the present day, at least as a measure of policy, even if they should deem it to have been a laudably zealous effort on religious grounds.

It was surely one of the blindest pieces of fury and folly that fanaticism ever prompted. Its immediate results in depriving France of a very large portion of its incomparably most valuable inhabitants, the shock to commerce, the stagnation of industry, the penalties inflicted on integrity, and the premium offered to rascality. All this is well known; and those who have had an opportunity of reading the scarce and highly curious little

The first desperate plunge had been made. Pauline was homeless in the streets of Niort. And many a weary, despairing hour did she wander purposeless before she could determine on making any application for food or shelter. She was, however, at length fortunate in the selection she made. Instinctively she had sought the poorer quarter of the town; and there at last she had addressed an old woman who was standing at the open door of what seemed to be a very poor watchmaker or mender's shop. She had summoned all her physiog-quarto volume of M. Thomas, on the history of the revonomical skill to her aid before she had dared to take the She step in question; and it had not deceived her. stated her position, her condition, but not her name, and showed her means of paying for what aid might be afforded her. She was kindly received; and we will not inquire how large a share of this result was produced by the exhibition of the trinkets, and how much by the statement of her distress. The old woman was very poor. Her husband obtained a very scanty livelihood by working at his trade as a watchmaker, in mending the watches of his poor neighbours, and the trinkets of their wives; for no part of the population in France, however poor, is without such ornaments. But he also was old, and his failing eyes rendered his work daily more diffi

cult and more slow to him.

With this good couple our poor outcast found a home for the present pressing moment, and there we must leave her, both because the traditionary sources of this historiette say nothing further of the immediately subsequent part of her life; and because the one other passage there, which we shall add to the two already related-her birth, that is, in the prison at Niort; and secondly, the event which gave its colouring to all her future years, and which does so for most women, is all that is necessary to complete the sketch we wish to present to the reader.

cation of the edict of Nantes, are aware of the savage fury with which the authorities of the government en deavoured to avoid the inevitable consequences of their own act. The irreparable mischief inflicted on the country by the expatriation of the IIuguenots was too manifest to escape the penetration even of Louis XIV.'s priest-ridden government. Departure out of the country, therefore, was made highly penal; and the gaols and the galleys were filled with unfortunate professors of “the religion," as it was termed, who had been taken in the attempt to escape from the shores of their persecuting

country.

Notwithstanding every precaution that could be taken, however, and notwithstanding the severities exercised on those who were caught in the attempt, a very large number of Protestants, especially from the southwestern provinces, contrived, as is well known, to effect their escape; carrying with them to more hospitable shores their arts, their industry, and their energies. It was in 1685, just as Madame de Maintenon-herself born, as we have seen, of Huguenot parents in the prison of Niort, for the sake of their religion-was consolidating and maturing her influence over the king's mind, that this blow fell on France. It was therefore just about thirty years from the date of that second passage in our heroine's life, which was related in the preceding chapter.

It was a dark night towards the latter end of Novem- | dow and turning himself towards the preacher; "as dark ber in that year, and the narrow overhung streets of the as we could wish; but I fear Duperrier may have all the interior of the little town of La Rochelle were yet darker more difficulty in finding any one willing to undertake the than the quays and basin, and the roadstead beyond it. business in hand." For the style of the architecture was-and is there stillsuch as to more than counterbalance the feeble effect of the scanty lamps, which, like angels' visits, few and far between, seem only to enhance the gloom beyond the little circle of their ineffectual illumination. The streets were built en colombage," as the French call it; and many of them-most of them, indeed--remain so to the present day. The phrase means, that the upper stories project sufficiently to overhang a space large enough for a good "trottoir." They are supported on arcades, which thus form a barrier between the foot-passengers and the street.

In a dark and meanly furnished upper room of one of the houses in the Rue des Gentilhommes, on the night in question, two old men were sitting, engaged in close and apparently anxious conversation. They had no light beyond that which was communicated to the room from the meagre oil lamp which swung suspended on a cord stretched across the street, immediately below their window. And this, as it was kept incessantly in motion, by the wind, which was howling dismally up the narrow little street, shed a vacillating and flickering light into the apartment. The two seniors sat in such a position with reference to the window, that the light fell now on one face and now again on the other. Both were men apparently in extreme old age, and both had evidently been tall, well-proportioned men in their day. One however, was now bent almost double by the weight of years and infirmities. But the other was still upright, and it seemed, almost vigorous in his green old age. The light was uncertain and but momentary, as it flashed alternately on one and the other of them; but yet, so marked were the features it then lighted up, and so striking the entire figures of the two elders, that any one who had known them in former years would not have failed to recognize in the first the preacher Riberac, and in the second the merchant Jacques Bartenau.

"Fear neither that, nor ought else in this matter, Maitre Jacques Bartenau," replied his friend, and the hale firm voice in which the words were said, contrasted strongly with the feeble and broken appearance of the speaker, "The raging of the ocean is less fierce than the hatred of the ungodly, and the Lord who has thus far delivered us out of their hand, will not permit the violence of his tempest to cast us back into their net."

"I will not doubt it, my friend," returned Bartenau, "yet our trusty friend Duperrier has been absent much longer than he anticipated."

He began to pace the little chamber, in which they were sitting, backwards and forwards, with a firm and measured step, ever and anon stopping at the window to throw a glance into the street, and relapsed into silence.

The few words spoken, however, have been sufficient to make the reader fully comprehend the position and circumstances of the two old men. Noted both of them throughout their own town, and almost throughout the entire province as rigid, uncompromising, and bigoted Huguenots, and influential leaders of their sect, they had of course been among the first persons attacked by the agents of the king's intolerance on the publication of the new law. They were not long in determining to attempt the only chance which was left them of passing the brief remainder of their lives in the free profession and exercise of their religion-escape and emigration. It was a severe and painful measure for two octogenarians to adopt ; and in the case of the merchant, involved no inconsiderable sacrifice of property. But what availed property to an old man tottering on the verge of the grave, and alone in the world. Nothing! Nor did this consideration cause Bartenau a moment's hesitation. The love of gold was not among his failings. And if he had continued during many years to pursue those avocations, which added to a store already large enough for all his wants, it was due to the force of habit and the difficulty of abandoning an occupa

The thought that the wealth he was about to abandon was useless-that he had no one to share his prosperity

Time had dealt more hardly with the more ardent spirit|tion which long use had rendered almost necessary to him. of the two. The preacher was not one of those of whom it can be said that "the blade has worn out the scabbard." For though the incessant activity of that hot and eager spirit might have worn out three or four tenements of ordinary clay, the hard wiry tenacity of the preacher's physical nature had bid defiance to the wear and tear of more than eighty years. But time, which had failed to quench the fire of his eye, or to rob his head of his long and silvery tresses, or to paralyse the vigour of the harsh but powerful voice, had yet succeeded in bending the rigid slender figure, which had been once as inflexible as the spirit that animated it.

The merchant was still upright as ever-still stiff and stern-the very picture of inflexibility and resolution. The once dark head was bald, but a few long straggling locks of grisly grey that floated from behind the ears, and a long and ample grey beard gave expression and dignity to the figure.

He rose and stepped towards the window, and having opened the casement looked out in both directions long and anxiously.

It was an

that he was alone in the world; this may have caused him a pang, but it was a secret one; for never since the day that Pauline left his door, now some thirty-five years since, had her name, or any allusion to her, passed his lips. Securing, therefore, enough of gold to support himself and the companion of his flight for the few years they should yet need aught that money could procure, he determined to attempt escaping from France. attempt far from being unattended with risk and difficulty; yet practicable enough to those possessed of money and influence. Arrangements were easily made with the skipper of a Dutch ship, which traded regularly between Amsterdam and La Rochelle; and for a consideration he agreed to linger in the offing on his approaching departure for the shores of Holland, having selected a moonless night for that purpose, and receive on board the wealthy merchant and his companion.

This, however, was the simplest and easiest part of the matter. The difficulty was, to get from the shore "It is a rough night," he said, elosing again the win- to the vessel. It was difficult to escape the perpetual

surveillance with which the jealousy of the government | rable work of that strong but unworthy priest who laid surrounded the Huguenots sufficiently to get from the shore at all, and as difficult to obtain the service of a boatman who might be trusted; for the betrayal of a couple of escaping heretics, and those such notable ones as the preacher Riberac and the rich merchant, into the hands of the authorities, was a service sure to command no trifling remuneration.

It was in quest of this necessary service that the friend Duperrier, already mentioned by Bartenau, was now absent. He was the owner of the house in which the two old men now were, and in which they had found an asylum, when hunted from their own dwellings. La Rochelle, which had ever been a notable stronghold of the Huguenot party from the earliest times of Protestantism, and which to the present day has a larger number of Protestants, in proportion to its population, than any other town of France, rendered good and important service to the religionists in the evil days which followed the revocation of the edict of Nantes. It was from that friendly port, and in the ships employed by Protestant capital and industry, that the greatest number of escapes were effected by the hunted Huguenots from the atrocious persecution of Louis XIV.

It may be easily imagined that the good burghers of La Rochelle did not play the good part they did without much suffering, self-sacrifice, and risk to themselves. But whatever faults the sectarians of those days in France may be chargeable with-and they are many and grave-want of devotion to the cause of their party, and to the persecuted members of it, was not among them. Thus Louis Duperrier, a worthy man who distinguished himself afterwards too conspicuously, in the good work of aiding fugitive heretics with the means of concealment and flight, to escape the vigilance of the authorities himself, and who ultimately was rewarded for his humanity by several years at the galleys-this worthy citizen, who was a commercial connexion of Bartenau's, had received him and the preacher into his house, and was now engaged in the very critical errand of finding a trustworthy boatman to convey his dangerous guests to the ship which awaited them in the offing.

At length the patient watch of the two octogenarians was rewarded by the sound of their host's footsteps ascending the stairs. He had entered the house not by the front door, which opened into the Rue des Gentilhommes, but by a back one, which was approached by a narrow alley from the quay.

His tidings were soon told. He had been successful, and had secured the services of a person in whom implicit confidence might be placed. There was, however, a something strange and constrained about his manner, which struck both the old men. It seemed as if there was more to tell behind, which he did not think proper to explain. Any doubt, however, of Duperrier's loyalty was out of the question; so the fugitives prepared to follow him, without further loss of time, to the spot where their boatman was to meet him.

CHAPTER IX.

A NIGHT SCENE IN THE ROADSTEAD OF LA ROCHELLE.
A.D. 1685.

The spot which had been selected for this purpose was a part of the shore, a little beyond the mole-the memo

the foundations of the modern monarchy of France, and of all those days of miserably miscalled "glory" which have cost France, and humanity in general, so dear. Benignant Nature is labouring daily in the kindly task of removing and obliterating this mighty monument of Richelieu's tyranny and oppression; but it may still be traced, "dorsum immane mari summo," a speaking evidence of the impotence of the mightiest efforts of brute force to coerce, permanently, the march of human opinion. It was beyond or outside this that Jacques Bartenau, and Andrè Riberac, were to take boat. The beach there was less frequented, and their boat would have a better chance of traversing the space between the town and the vessel awaiting them in the offing, unchallenged and unobserved. In fact, the risk of observation would have been small in any case on such a night as the one in question. The pitchy darkness of the somewhat stormy November night favoured their enterprise, and rendered the duty of the coast-guard an extremely difficult one.

The most dangerous part of the trajet was that across the open space of the quay. It was possible enough that any patrolling party might challenge and detain three persons passing seawards under such circumstances, and at such an hour. The open space was, however, passed in safety, and the point of embarkation as safely reached. Two persons were there found waiting their arrival. One, wrapped in a large cloak, was sitting in the boat, and occupied the place of the steerer. The other stood on the shore, holding the boat with a boat-hook, and ready to assist his expected passengers in their embarkation. The darkness was such that the individual in the stern of the boat could with difficulty be perceived at all by those on the beach. Of the form, features, or stature of this person, nothing whatsoever was distinguishable. Nor was the light sufficient to permit any very accurate survey of him who stood on the shore. He seemed to be a tall, powerful man, dressed in dark-coloured clothing, and that was all that could be seen.

He stretched forth his hand in silence to assist the merchant into the boat. The latter turned to take leave of Duperrier, and, before accepting the proffered hand of the boatman, asked, with a slight degree of anxiety in his

manner

"You have confidence in these persons, Duperrier? Methinks that, when much trust must be placed, it would have diminished the risk of treachery to have trusted but one."

"You would not have been more safe with either one of these than with both," returned the Rochellais citizen, with some dryness of manner.

"And you have made them aware," continued Maitre Bartenau, "that a larger reward awaits their faithful performance of this service than would be likely to be gained by betraying us?"

"You need not fear, I repeat," said Duperrier, speaking almost with severity of manner; "you need in nowise fear to trust your life, and aught more precious yet, to the guidance and protection of these persons. Go, therefore, Jacques Bartenau, and may God be with you in a foreign land; and may he there make to descend into your heart the lesson which will this night be afforded you."

He hastily embraced both him and the preacher, and turned quickly to retrace his steps towards the town.

The style and method of this farewell and departure were, to say the least, not calculated to re-assure the minds of the fugitives. Yet they felt it almost impossible to suspect treachery on the part of so old and longtried a friend of the cause, as was Louis Duperrier of La Rochelle. The consideration, moreover, that if treachery were intended, they were already-two octogenarians as they were totally in the power of the two individuals of the boat, be their intentions what they might, sufficed to show them the futility of hesitation in the enterprise they had commenced.

So the merchant first accepted the proffered hand of the man who was holding the boat with a boat-hook, and stepped into the boat; and Riberac followed him. They scated themselves in silence. The man followed them in, assumed the oars, and the boat left the shore. No word was spoken during the half-hour which was occupied in conveying them to the ship's side by either of the four persons in the boat. The oarsman and the steerer both performed their parts in perfect silence. The latter continued almost motionless; and the folds of the large cloak which enveloped his figure were so disposed as effectually to conceal the face, even had the passengers been disposed to scrutinise it as closely as the darkness would permit.

Nothing further occurred which could in any way tend to awake suspicion of foul play on the part of the fugitives. The boat glided swiftly through the black-looking water beneath the vigorous strokes of the muscular oarsman; and before long the masts and cordage, and dark | hull of the vessel, which was for the present the haven of their hopes, were visible through the thick darkness to the eager eyes of the two old men.

A few minutes more and the boat glided smoothly with skilfully-directed movements alongside the ship; a preconcerted signal-word was spoken by Bartenau, and promptly answered by a man looking over the side of the vessel; and a rope ladder was quickly thrown over the side to facilitate the embarkation of the expected exiles. It so happened that the preacher, Riberac, was on the side of the boat nearest to the ship. So he first essayed to avail himself of the not very easy means of ascent which the hempen steps afforded. The stout boatman, and those on board, assisted him to the utmost of their power; but still the infirmity and stiffness of his timebent figure rendered it no easy affair.

It was while he was in the act of being lifted rather than stepping up the ship's side, that the steersman of the boat suddenly arose, and dropping the heavy cloak, confronted the merchant, who had also risen to his feet, and pronounced the word

"FATHER!"

Yes, it was indeed the Huguenot's outcast daughter and her son, his grandchild, who had rendered this dangerous service to her aged, oppressed, and fugitive father. Well, indeed, might Louis Duperrier say that the old man might entrust his life, or aught else that he held more precious, to the guidance of the conductors that he had provided for him!

Yes! it was indeed his lost daughter. The old man's faculties were not so benumbed by the weight of years as to prevent his ear from instantly recognising the once familiar voice, though it pronounced but that single word -"father!" But it was fated that another faculty

should lend its powerful aid in carrying the appeal home to the octogenarian father's heart: for just as Pauline rose to her feet before her father, and addressed him for the first time for thirty years, it so happened that the clouds parted, and the moon shed her light upon the scene. And there stood, visibly to each other, those tworemarkable figures, face to face in the boat. The slender and elegantly-formed person of Pauline was as beautiful as ever it had been, as upright, as graceful in its outline. Some of that pliant mobility, for which it had once been so remarkable, it might have lost; or it might be that the emotions of the moment imparted a degree of rigidity to the frame they were agitating. At all events, time and misfortune had added dignity to the expression of the figure. The once jetty hair had become grey, and its long and abundant tresses were bound closely around her finely-shaped head, which was uncovered now that the hooded cloak which she had previously worn was thrown off. The same causes had given a certain firmness, and almost severity of expression, to the still beautiful features. The cheeks were sunken, and all the lines of the face were strongly and deeply marked. It seemed as if suffering and years had brought out the latent similarity in the features of the daughter to those of her father.

The young man, his grandson, had ascended the side of the ship to assist in taking the old preacher below; and, consequently, the father and daughter were alone in the presence of each other. Pauline had made her appeal,

and uttered no further word; but the eloquent pleading of her expressive eyes implored her father's forgiveness, and parting blessing. The old man stood stricken and motionless, and, for a moment, he seemed undecided and wavering, for nature pleaded strongly even in that indurated heart. But the evil suggestions of that worser nature, which years had made all-powerful within him, prevailed to crush down the risings of pity, and affection, and remorse. Pride—a hard, unconquerable, veritably satanic pride-prevailed, and the old man, lifting his outstretched hand, with the palm turned outwards towards the outcast, as if to intimate the impassable nature of the gulf which was between them, turned away in silence, and with the assistance of those who had now returned to the ship's side, mounted the ladder with a firm step, and reached the deck.

The business of getting under weigh immediately began; the boat was pushed off from the side, and Pauline was once more alone in the world with her son.

CHAPTER X.

66 HIC JACET"

It had been the work of but a moment, this last and eternal separation of the father and the daughter. The boat was already at some distance from the vessel; the young man had already resumed his place at the oar, and Pauline remained still standing on the spot, and in the attitude in which she had confronted her father, as if stricken speechless and motionless. Striken, indeed, she was, with a heavy blow. But it fell on a head long since accustomed to the buffets of the world, disciplined to meek endurance, whose daily portion for many a long and weary year had been bitterness and sorrow; and the broken reed had been too utterly crushed to be capable of much further injury. Yet the pang was a sharp one; and, after a moment or two, the outcast raised her meek

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