he continued: 'I do not intend to tolerate any insolence, and if

you do not get up of your own accord, I can easily find means to
make you walk without any assistance.'

"But she did not give any signs of having heard him, and remained
quite motionless. Then he got furious, taking that calm silence

for a mark of supremecontempt; so he added: 'If you do not come
downstairs to-morrow--' And then he left the room.

"The next day the terrified old servant wished to dress her, but
the mad woman began to screamviolently, and resisted with all

her might. The officer ran upstairs quickly, and the servant
threw herself at his feet and cried: 'She will not come down,

Monsieur, she will not. Forgive her, for she is so unhappy.'
"The soldier was embarrassed, as in spite of his anger, he did

not venture to order his soldiers to drag her out. But suddenly
he began to laugh, and gave some orders in German, and soon a

party of soldiers was seen coming out supporting a mattress as if
they were carrying a wounded man. On that bed, which had not been

unmade, the mad woman, who was still silent, was lying quite
quietly, for she was quite indifferent to anything that went on,

as long as they let her lie. Behind her, a soldier was carrying a
parcel of feminineattire, and the officer said, rubbing his

hands: 'We will just see whether you cannot dress yourself alone,
and take a little walk.'

"And then the procession went off in the direction of the forest
of Imauville; in two hours the soldiers came back alone, and

nothing more was seen of the mad woman. What had they done with
her? Where had they taken her to? No one knew.

"The snow was falling day and night, and enveloped the plain and
the woods in a shroud of frozen foam, and the wolves came and

howled at our very doors.
"The thought of that poor lost woman haunted me, and I made

several applications to the Prussian authorities in order to
obtain some information, and was nearly shot for doing so. When

spring returned, the army of occupationwithdrew, but my
neighbor's house remained closed, and the grass grew thick in the

garden walks. The old servant had died during the winter, and
nobody troubled any longer about the occurrence; I alone thought

about it constantly. What had they done with the woman? Had she
escaped through the forest? Had somebody found her, and taken her

to a hospital, without being able to obtain any information from
her? Nothing happened to relieve my doubts; but by degrees, time

assuaged my fears.
"Well, in the following autumn the woodcock were very plentiful,

and as my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as
the forest. I had already killed four or five of the long-billed

birds, when I knocked over one which fell into a ditch full of
branches, and I was obliged to get into it, in order to pick it

up, and I found that it had fallen close to a dead, human body.
Immediately the recollection of the mad woman struck me like a

blow in the chest. Many other people had perhaps died in the wood
during that disastrous year, but though I do not know why, I was

sure, sure, I tell you, that I should see the head of that
wretched maniac.

"And suddenly I understood, I guessed everything. They had
abandoned her on that mattress in the cold, deserted wood; and,

faithful to her fixed idea, she had allowed herself to perish
under that thick and light counterpane of snow, without moving

either arms or legs.
"Then the wolves had devoured her, and the birds had built their

nests with the wool from her torn bed, and I took charge of her
bones. I only pray that our sons may never see any wars again."

IN VARIOUS ROLES
In the following reminiscences will frequently be mentioned a

lady who played a great part in the annals of the police from
1848 to 1866. We will call her "Wanda von Chabert." Born in

Galicia of German parents, and carefully brought up in every way,
when only sixteen she married, from love, a rich and handsome

officer of noble birth. The young couple, however, lived beyond
their means, and when the husband died suddenly, two years after

they were married, she was left anything but well off.
As Wanda had grown accustomed to luxury and amusement, a quiet

life in her parents' house did not suit her any longer. Even
while she was still in mourning for her husband, she allowed a

Hungarian magnate to make love to her. She went off with him at a
venture, and continued the same extravagant life which she had

led when her husband was alive, of her own volition. At the end
of two years, however, her lover left her in a town in North

Italy, almost without means. She was thinking of going on the
stage, when chance provided her with another resource, which

enabled her to reassert her position in society. She became a
secret police agent, and soon was one of their most valuable

members. In addition to the proverbial charm and wit of a Polish
woman, she also possessed high linguistic attainments, and spoke

Polish, Russian, French, German, English, and Italian, with
almost equal fluency and correctness. Then she had that

encyclopedic polish which impresses people much more than the
most profoundlearning of the specialist, She was very attractive

in appearance, and she knew how to set off her good looks by all
the arts of dress and coquetry.

In addition to this, she was a woman of the world in the widest
sense of the term; pleasure-loving, faithless, unstable, and

therefore never in any danger of really losing her heart, and
consequently her head. She used to change the place of her abode,

according to what she had to do. Sometimes she lived in Paris
among the Polish emigrants, in order to find out what they were

doing, and maintained intimate relations with the Tuileries and
the Palais Royal at the same time; sometimes she went to London

for a short time, or hurried off to Italy to watch the Hungarian
exiles, only to reappear suddenly in Switzerland, or at one of

the fashionable German watering-places.
In revolutionary circles, she was looked upon as an active member

of the great League of Freedom, and diplomatists regarded her as
an influential friend of Napoleon III.

She knew everyone, but especially those men whose names were to
be met with every day in the journals, and she counted Victor

Emmanuel, Rouher, Gladstone, and Gortschakoff among her friends
as well as Mazzini, Kossuth, Garibaldi, Mieroslawsky, and

Bakunin.
In the spring of 185- she was at Vevey on the lovely lake of

Geneva, and went into raptures when talking to an old German
diplomatist about the beauties of nature, and about Calame,

Stifter, and Turgenev, whose "Diary of a Hunter," had just become
fashionable. One day a man appeared at the table d'hote, who

excited unusual attention, and hers especially, so that there was
nothing strange in her asking the proprietor of the hotel what

his name was. She was told that he was a wealthy Brazilian, and
that his name was Don Escovedo.

Whether it was an accident, or whether he responded to the
interest which the young woman felt for him, at any rate she

constantly met him whereever she went, whether taking a walk, or
on the lake or looking at the newspapers in the reading-room. At

last she was obliged to confess to herself that he was the
handsomest man she had ever seen. Tall slim, and yet muscular,

the young, beardless Brazilian had a head which any woman might
envy, features not only beautiful and noble, but also extremely

delicate, dark eyes which possessed a wonderful charm, and thick,
auburn, curly hair, which completed the attractiveness and the

strangeness of his appearance.
They soon became acquainted, through a Prussian officer whom the