hang myself. I laugh him and his comrades to scorn. If he has tricks of fence, I have a long arm, that will drive my sabre through his bones as easily as his will penetrate my flesh."

The thought of the blows made him insensible to reason. Soon Chazy, the maître d'armes, Corporal Fleury, Furst, and Leger came in. They all said that Zebedee was in the right, and the maître d'armes added that blood alone could wash out the stain of a blow; that the honor of the recruits required Zebedee to fight.

Zebedee answered proudly that the men of Phalsbourg had never feared the sight of a little blood, and that he was ready. Then the maître d'armes went to see our Captain Florentin, who was one of the most magnificent men imaginable—tall, well-formed, broad-shouldered, with regular features, and the Cross, which the Emperor himself had given him at Eylau. The captain even went further than the maître d'armes; he thought it would set the conscripts a good example, and that if Zebedee refused to fight he would be unworthy to remain in the Third Battalion of the Sixth of the Line.

All that night I could not close my eyes. I heard the deep breathing of my poor comrade as he slept, and I thought: "Poor Zebedee! another day, and you will breathe no more." I shuddered to think how near I was to a man so near death. At last, as day broke, I fell asleep, when suddenly I felt a cold blast of wind strike me. I opened my eyes, and there I saw the old hussar. He had lifted up the coverlet of our bed, and said as I awoke: "Up, sluggard! I will show you what manner of man you struck."

Zebedee rose tranquilly, saying: "I was asleep, veteran; I was asleep."

The other, hearing himself thus mockingly called "veteran," would have fallen upon my comrade in his bed; but two tall fellows who served him as seconds held him back, and, besides, the Phalsbourg men were there.

"Quick, quick! Hurry!" cried the old hussar.

But Zebedee dressed himself calmly, without any haste. After a moment's silence, he said: "Have we permission to go outside our quarters, old fellows?"

There is room enough for us in the yard," replied one of the hussars.

Zebedee put on his great-coat, and, turning to me, said: "Joseph and you, Klipfel, I choose for my seconds." But I shook my head.

"Well, then, Furst," said he.

The whole party descended the stairs together. I thought Zebedee was lost, and thought it hard, that not only must the Russians seek our lives, but that we must seek each other's.

All the men in the room crowded to the windows. I alone remained behind upon my bed. At the end of five minutes the clash of sabres made my heart almost cease to beat; the blood seemed no longer to flow through my veins.

But this did not last long; for suddenly Klipfel exclaimed, "Touched!"

Then I made my way-I know not how-to a window, and, looking over the heads of the others, saw the old hussar leaning against the wall, and Zebedee rising, his sabre all dripping with blood. He had fallen upon his knees during the fight, and, while the old man's sword pierced the air just above his shoulder, he plunged his blade into the hussar's breast. If he had not slipped, he himself would have been run through and through.

The hussar sank at the foot of the wall. His seconds lifted him in their arms, while Zebedee, pale as a corpse, gazed at his bloody sabre, and Klipfel handed him his cloak. Almost immediately the reveille was sounded, and we went off to morning call. These events happened on the eighteenth of February.

JULES VERNE.

SCIENCE, so prominent in the nineteenth century, has not been without its romancers. Of these, Jules Verne (born at Nantes in 1828) has been the greatest and most popular. He followed in the footsteps of Edgar Allan Poe, only applying a more exact science than the great American inventor of hoaxes and wonder tales. Verne's ingenuity has made the most surprising use of the remarkable facts of mechanics, physics and electricity. In his "Five Weeks in a Balloon,"

"A Journey to the Centre of the Earth," "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," "From the Earth to the Moon," "The Mysterious Island," "Hector Servadac ; or, the Career of a Comet," and "The Purchase of the North Pole," he has almost exhausted the plausible wonders of astronomy, submarine and subterranean exploration, and scientific invention. In "The Castle of the Carpathians" he has pictured elec tricity as a secret agent of the marvellous. No one has yet succeeded in securing such a vraisemblance as he in tales of this type, although M. Camille Flammarion, his compatriot and a celebrated astronomer, has written several clever romances concerning life in Mars and other worlds, and Mr. H. G. Wells, a later British writer, has produced some ghastly stories of zoological and botanical fiction, a romance of vivisection ("Dr. Moreau's Island"), and a Martian romance ("The War of Worlds"). Jules Verne, who was educated for the bar and began by writing plays, has shown more versatility, however. In "Michael Strogoff" he has told a thrilling tale of a blinded courier of the Czar. In "Dr. Ox's Experiment," a chemist vitalizes a whole Flemish village to a dangerous state of feverish excitemetn by impregnating the atmosphere with excessive oxygen. Verne here describes sleepy Quinquendon with a master's brush. His most celebrated tale, "Around the World in Eighty Days," is a peerless story of adventure. His hero, Phineas Fogg, a member of the London Travelers' Club, accomplishes this feat, with his servant, to win a wager, and comes back only at the last stroke of the clock. The feat then (1874) almost incredible has since been actually surpassed.

THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA.

AND now, how can I retrace the impression left upon me by that walk under the waters? Words are impotent to relate such wonders! Captain Nemo walked in front, his companions followed some steps behind. Conseil and I remained near each other, as if an exchange of words had been possible through our metallic cases. I no longer felt the weight of my clothing, or my shoes, of my reservoir of

air, or of my thick helmet, in the midst of which my head rattled like an aimond in its shell.

The light, which lit the soil thirty feet below the surface of the ocean, astonished me by its power. The solar rays shone through the watery mass easily and dissipated all color, and I clearly distinguished objects at a distance of a hundred and fifty yards. Beyond that the tints darkened into fine gradations of ultra-marine, and faded into vague obscurity. Truly this water which surrounded me was but another air denser than the terrestrial atmosphere, but almost as transparent. Above me was the calm surface of the sea. We were walking on fine, even sand, not wrinkled, as on a flat shore, which retains the impression of the billows. This dazzling carpet, really a reflector, repelled the rays of the sun with wonderful intensity, which accounted for the vibration which penetrated every atom of liquid. Shall I be believed when I say that, at the depth of thirty feet, I could see as if I was in broad daylight?

For a quarter of an hour I trod on this sand sown with the impalpable dust of shells. The hull of the "Nautilus," resembling a long shoal, disappeared by degrees; but its lantern, when darkness should overtake us in the waters, would help to guide us on board by its distinct rays. Soon forms of objects outlined in the distance were discernible. recognized magnificent rocks, hung with a tapestry of zoophytes of the most beautiful kind, and I was at first struck by the peculiar effect of this medium.

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It was then ten in the morning, the rays of the sun struck the surface of the waves at rather an oblique angle, and at the touch of their light, decomposed by refraction as through a prism, flowers, rocks, plants, shells, and polypi were shaded at the edges by the seven solar colors. It was marvelous, a feast for the eyes, this complication of colored tints, a perfect kaleidoscope of green, yellow, orange, violet, indigo, and blue; in one word, the whole palette of an enthusiastic colorist! Why could I not communicate to Conseil the lively sensations which were mounting to my brain, and rival him in expressions of admiration? For aught I knew, Captain Nemo and his companion might be able to exchange thoughts

by means of signs previously agreed upon. So for want of better, I talked to myself; I declaimed in the copper box which covered my head, thereby expending more air in vain words than was, perhaps, expedient.

Various kinds of isis, clusters of pure tuft-coral, prickly fungi, and anemones, formed a brilliant garden of flowers, enameled with porplutæ, decked with their collarettes of blue tentacles, sea-stars studding the sandy bottom, together with asterophytons like fine lace embroidered by the hands of naiads; whose festoons were waved by the gentle undulations caused by our walk. It was a real grief to me to crush under my feet the brilliant specimens of molluscs which strewed the ground by thousands, of hammerheads, donaciæ (veritable bounding shells), of staircases, and red helmetshells, angel-wings, and many others produced by this inexhaustible ocean. But we were bound to walk, so we went on, whilst above our heads waved shoals of physalides, leaving their tentacles to float in their train, medusæ whose umbrellas of opal or rose-pink, escaloped with a band of blue, sheltered us from the rays of the sun and fiery pelagiæ which, in the darkness, would have strewn our path with phosphorescent light.

All these wonders I saw in the space of a quarter of a mile, scarcely stopping, and following Captain Nemo, who beckoned me on by signs. Soon the nature of the soil changed; to the sandy plain succeeded an extent of slimy mud, which the Americans call "ooze," composed of equal parts of silicious and calcareous shells. We then traveled over a plain of sea-weed of wild and luxuriant vegetation. This sward was of close texture, and soft to the feet, and rivalled the softest carpet woven by the hand of man. But whilst verdure was spread at our feet, it did not abandon our heads. A light network of marine plants, of that inexhaustible family of sea-weeds of which more than two thousand kinds are known, grew on the surface of the water. I saw long ribbons of fucus floating, some globular, others tuberous, laurenciæ and cladostephi of most delicate foliage, and some rhodomeniæ palmatæ, resembling the fan of a cactus. noticed that the green plants kept nearer the top of the sea

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