A shudder of cold, or her modesty perhaps, at first made her hesitate. But she recalled the order of Schahabarim, so she went forward; the Python lowered himself, alighting upon the nape of her neck in the middle of his body, allowing his head and tail to hang down like a broken necklace, and the two ends trailed on the floor. Salammbô rolled them around her sides, under her arms, between her knees; then taking him by the jaw, she drew his little triangular mouth close to her teeth; and with half-closed eyes she bent back under the moon's rays. The white light seemed to enshroud her in a silvery fog; the tracks of her wet feet shone on the stones; stars twinkled in the depths of the water; the Python tightened against her his black coils, speckled with spots of gold. Salammbô panted under this too heavy weight; her loins gave way, she felt that she was dying: the Python patted her thighs softly with his tail; then the music ceased, and he fell down.

Taanach drew near to Salammbô, and after arranging two candelabra, of which the lights burned in two crystal globes filled with water, she tinted with henna the inside of the hands of her mistress, put vermilion on her cheeks, antimony on her eyelids, and lengthened her eyebrows with a mixture of gum, musk, ebony, and crushed flies' feet.

Salammbô, sitting in a chair mounted with ivory, abandoned herself to the care of her slave. But the soothing touches, the odor of the aromatics, and the fasts she had kept, encrvated her: she became so pale that Taanach paused.

"Continue!" said Salammbô; and as she drew herself up in spite of herself, she felt all at once reanimated. Then an impatience seized her; she urged Taanach to hasten, and the old slave growled: "Well! well! mistress! . . . You have no one waiting for you elsewhere!"

"Yes!" responded Salammbô, "some one waits for me." Taanach started with surprise, and in order to know more, she said: "What do you order me to do, mistress, if you should remain away?"

But Salammbô sobbed, and the slave exclaimed: "You suffer! What is the matter with you? Do not go! Take me! When you were a little one and wept, I held you to my

heart and suckled you, and made you laugh by tickling you with my nipples. Mistress!" she struck her withered breasts, exclaiming: "You sucked them dry. Now I am old! I can do nothing for you! You do not love me any more! You hide your troubles from me, you disdain your nurse!" With fondness and vexation the tears coursed down her face, in the scars of her tattooing.

"No!" said Salammbô, "no; I love you; be comforted!"

Taanach, with a smile like the grimace of an old monkey, recommenced her task. Following the directions of the priest, Salammbô ordered her slave to make her magnificent. Taanach complied, with a barbaric taste full of elaboration and ingenuity.

Over a first fine wine-colored tunic she placed a second one, embroidered with birds' plumes. Golden scales were fastened to her hips, from her wide girdle flowed the folds of her blue, silver-starred gown. Then Taanach adjusted an ample robe of rare stuff from the land of the Seres, white variegated with green stripes. She attached over Salammbo's shoulders a square of purple, made heavy at the hem with beads, and on the top of all these vestments she arranged a black mantle with a long train. Then she contemplated her, and proud of her work, she could not keep from saying:

"You will not be more beautiful the day of your nuptials!"

"My nuptials!" repeated Salammbô in a reverie, as she leaned her elbow on the ivory chair.

Taanach held up before her mistress a copper mirror, wide and long enough for her to view herself completely. She stood up, and with a light touch of one finger put back a curl that drooped too low on her forehead. Her hair was powdered with gold, crimped in front, hanging down her back in long twists, terminating in pearls. The light from the candelabra heightened the color on her cheeks, the gold throughout her garments, and the whiteness of her skin. She wore around her waist, on her arms, hands, and feet such a profusion of jewels that the mirror, reflecting like a sun, flashed back prismatic rays upon her :-and Salammbô stood

beside Taanach, leaning and turning around on all sides to view herself, smiling at the dazzling effect.

Suddenly the crow of a cock was heard. She quickly pinned over her hair a long yellow veil, passed a scarf around her neck, and buried her feet in blue leather buskins, saying to Taanach:

"Go, see under the myrtles, if there is not a man with two horses."

Taanach had scarcely re-entered before Salammbô descended the stairway of the galleys.

"Mistress!" called out the slave. Salammbô turned around and placed one finger on her lips, in sign of discretion and silence.

Taanach crept quietly the length of the prows as far as the base of the terrace, and in the distance by the moonlight she distinguished in the cypress avenue a gigantic shadow moving obliquely to the left of Salammbô: this was a foreboding of death.

Taanach went back to her room, threw herself on the floor, tore her face with her finger-nails, pulled out her hair, and uttered shrill yells at the top of her voice.

ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN.

UNDER this joint-name Emile Erckmann (born in 1822) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-90) published their famous series of Alsace-Lorraine romances. Both were born in the department of Meurthe, which France saved from Germany, and it was but natural that they should not only describe faithfully the middle-class Rhenish people, but also depict the saddest and least glorious of the Napoleonic battles which so terribly affected their native region. One was a lawstudent, the other a school usher; and both groped some time before they found their forte, but then they stood on solid ground. To them Napoleon represented the terror rather than the glory of war; the drain of life and blood to satisfy the empty dreams of ambition. In their eyes Napoleon had forfeited the gains won for the people by the Revolutionists who preceded the Empire. These views they real

istically bodied forth in their novels, such as "Mme. Therèse; or, the Volunteers of 1792," "The Conscript of 1813," "The Invasion-Waterloo," "The Story of the Hundred Days," "War," "The Blockade; or, the Siege of Phalsbourg," "Brigadier Frederic," etc. Not only did they write thus of the wars of Napoleon, contrasting the lustre of the revolutionary victories to Bonaparte's defeats, but they spun many rustic and sentimental tales of the Vosges and Black Forest. "L'Ami Fritz" (Friend Fritz) is an Alsatian idyll, a delicate little story of an old bachelor's love for a pretty country girl. Another story tells of a feud between brothers ended by the love-making of their children. One of their strongest tales, dramatized by themselves, is "The Polish Jew," known to English play-goers as "The Bells." Mathias, the Jew, murders a rich traveler, and throws the body in a lime-kiln. Haunted by the sound of bells ever thereafter, Mathias finally dreams that he is made, by a mesmerist, to confess his crime in court. He is found dead of terror in bed on his daughter's wedding morn.

THE CONSCRIPT'S DUEL.

AT Frankfort I learned to understand military life. Up to that time I had been but a simple conscript; then I became a soldier. I do not speak merely of drill,—the way of turning the head right or left, measuring the steps, lifting the hand to the height of the first or second band to load, aiming, recovering arms at the word of command-that is only an affair of a month or two, if a man really desires to learn; but I speak of discipline-of remembering that the corporal is always in the right when he speaks to a private soldier, the sergeant when he speaks to the corporal, the sergeant-major when speaking to the sergeant, the second lieutenant when he orders the sergeant-major, and so on to the Marshal of France-even if the superior asserts that two and two make five, or that the moon shines at midday.

This is very difficult to learn; but there is one thing that assists you immensely, and that is a sort of placard hung up in every room in the barracks, and which is from time to time read to you. This placard presupposes everything that

a soldier might wish to do, as, for instance, to return home, to refuse to serve, to resist his officer, and always ends by speaking of death, or at least five years with a ball and chain.

But about this time an extraordinary event occurred. You must know that my comrade, Zebedee, was the son of the gravedigger of Phalsbourg, and sometimes among ourselves we called him "Gravedigger." This he took in good part from us; but one evening after drill, as he was crossing the yard, a hussar cried out: "Hallo, Gravedigger! help me to drag in these bundles of straw."

Zebedee, turning about, replied: "My name is not Gravedigger, and you can drag in your own straw. me for a fool?"

Do you take

Then the other cried in a still louder tone: "Conscript, you had better come, or beware!"

Zebedee, with his great hooked nose, his gray eyes and thin lips, never bore too good a character for mildness. He went up to the hussar and asked: "What is that you say?"

"I tell you to take up those bundles of straw, and quickly, too. Do you hear, conscript?"

He was quite an old man, with moustaches and red, bushy whiskers. Zebedee seized one of the latter, but received two blows in the face. Nevertheless, a fist-full of the whisker remained in his grasp, and, as the dispute had attracted a crowd to the spot, the hussar shook his finger, saying: "You will hear from me to-morrow, conscript."

"Very good," returned Zebedee; "we shall see. You will probably hear from me too, veteran.”

He came immediately after to tell me all this, and I, knowing that he had never handled a weapon more warlike than a pickaxe, could not help trembling for him.

"Listen, Zebedee," I said; "all that there now remains for you to do, since you do not want to desert, is to ask pardon of this old fellow; for those veterans all know some fearful tricks of fence which they have brought from Egypt or Spain, or somewhere else. If you wish, I will lend you a crown to pay for a bottle of wine to make up the quarrel."

But he, knitting his brows, would hear none of this. "Rather than beg his pardon," said he, "I would go and