balls.

"Then you do not know," said the doctor, coldly, concealing his
terror, "that in her sleep last night she called you: Philippe!"

"She called me!" cried the baron, dropping his pistol, which Stephanie
picked up. He took it from her hastily, caught up the one that was on

the bench, and rushed away.
"Poor darling!" said the doctor, happy in the success of his lie. He

pressed the poor creature to his breast, and continued speaking to
himself: "He would have killed thee, selfish man! because he suffers.

He does not love thee for thyself, my child! But we forgive, do we
not? He is mad, out of his senses, but thou art only senseless. No,

God alone should call thee to Him. We think thee unhappy, we pity thee
because thou canst not share our sorrows, fools that we are!--But," he

said, sitting down and taking her on his knee, "nothing troubles thee;
thy life is like that of a bird, of a fawn--"

As he spoke she darted upon a young blackbird which was hopping near
them, caught it with a little note of satisfaction, strangled it,

looked at it, dead in her hand, and flung it down at the foot of a
tree without a thought.

The next day, as soon as it was light, the colonel came down into the
gardens, and looked about for Stephanie,--he believed in the coming

happiness. Not finding her he whistled. When his darling came to him,
he took her on his arm; they walked together thus for the first time,

and he led her within a group of trees, the autumn foliage of which
was dropping to the breeze. The colonel sat down. Of her own accord

Stephanie placed herself on his knee. Philippe trembled with joy.
"Love," he said, kissing her hands passionately, "I am Philippe."

She looked at him with curiosity.
"Come," he said, pressing her to him, "dost thou feel my heart? It has

beaten for thee alone. I love thee ever. Philippe is not dead; he is
not dead, thou art on him, in his arms. Thou art MY Stephanie; I am

thy Philippe."
"Adieu," she said, "adieu."

The colonel quivered, for he fancied he saw his own excitement
communicated to his mistress. His heart-rending cry, drawn from him by

despair, that last effort of an eternal love, of a delirious passion,
was successful, the mind of his darling was awaking.

"Ah! Stephanie! Stephanie! we shall yet be happy."
She gave a cry of satisfaction, and her eyes brightened with a flash

of vague intelligence.
"She knows me!--Stephanie!"

His heart swelled; his eyelids were wet with tears. Then, suddenly,
the countess showed him a bit of sugar she had found in his pocket

while he was speaking to her. He had mistaken for human thought the
amount of reason required for a monkey's trick. Philippe dropped to

the ground unconscious. Monsieur Fanjat found the countess sitting on
the colonel's body. She was biting her sugar, and testifying her

pleasure by pretty gestures and affectations with which, had she her
reason, she might have imitated her parrot or her cat.

"Ah! my friend," said Philippe, when he came to his senses, "I die
every day, every moment! I love too well! I could still bear all, if,

in her madness, she had kept her woman's nature. But to see her always
a savage, devoid even of modesty, to see her--"

"You want opera madness, do you? something picturesque and pleasing,"
said the doctor, bitterly. "Your love and your devotion yield before a

prejudice. Monsieur, I have deprived myself for your sake of the sad
happiness of watching over my niece; I have left to you the pleasure

of playing with her; I have kept for myself the heaviest cares. While
you have slept, I have watched, I have-- Go, monsieur, go! abandon

her! leave this sad refuge. I know how to live with that dear darling
creature; I comprehend her madness, I watch her gestures, I know her

secrets. Some day you will thank me for thus sending you away."
The colonel left the old monastery, never to return but once. The

doctor was horrified when he saw the effect he had produced upon his
guest, whom he now began to love when he saw him thus. Surely, if

either of the two lovers were worthy of pity, it was Philippe; did he
not bear alone the burden of their dreadful sorrow?

After the colonel's departure the doctor kept himself informed about
him; he learned that the miserable man was living on an estate near

Saint-Germain. In truth, the baron, on the faith of a dream, had
formed a project which he believed would yet restore the mind of his

darling. Unknown to the doctor, he spent the rest of the autumn in
preparing for his enterprise. A little river flowed through his park

and inundated during the winter the marshes on either side of it,
giving it some resemblance to the Beresina. The village of Satout, on

the heights above, closed in, like Studzianka, the scene of horror.
The colonel collected workmen to deepen the banks, and by the help of

his memory, he copied in his park the shore where General Eble
destroyed the bridge. He planted piles, and made buttresses and burned

them, leaving their charred and blackened ruins, standing in the water
from shore to shore. Then he gathered fragments of all kinds, like

those of which the raft was built. He ordered dilapidated uniforms and
clothing of every grade, and hired hundreds of peasants to wear them;

he erected huts and cabins for the purpose of burning them. In short,
he forgot nothing that might recall that most awful of all scenes, and

he succeeded.
Toward the last of December, when the snow had covered with its thick,

white mantle all his imitative preparations, he recognized the
Beresina. This false Russia was so terriblytruthful, that several of

his army comrades recognized the scene of their past misery at once.
Monsieur de Sucy took care to keep secret the motive for this tragic

imitation, which was talked of in several Parisian circles as a proof
of insanity.

Early in January, 1820, the colonel drove in a carriage, the very
counterpart of the one in which he had driven the Comte and Comtesse

de Vandieres from Moscow to Studzianka. The horses, too, were like
those he had gone, at the peril of his life, to fetch from the Russian

outposts. He himself wore the soiled fantastic clothing, the same
weapons, as on the 29th of November, 1812. He had let his beard grow,

also his hair, which was tangled and matted, and his face was
neglected, so that nothing might be wanting to represent the awful

truth.
"I can guess your purpose," cried Monsieur Fanjat, when he saw the

colonel getting out of the carriage. "If you want to succeed, do not
let my niece see you in that equipage. To-night I will give her opium.

During her sleep, we will dress her as she was at Studzianka, and
place her in the carriage. I will follow you in another vehicle."

About two in the morning, the sleepingcountess was placed in the
carriage and wrapped in heavy coverings. A few peasants with torches

lighted up this strange abduction. Suddenly, a piercing cry broke the
silence of the night. Philippe and the doctor turned, and saw

Genevieve coming half-naked from the ground-floor room in which she
slept.

"Adieu, adieu! all is over, adieu!" she cried, weeping hot tears.
"Genevieve, what troubles you?" asked the doctor.

Genevieve shook her head with a motion of despair, raised her arm to
heaven, looked at the carriage, uttering a long-drawn moan with every

sign of the utmostterror; then she returned to her room silently.
"That is a good omen!" cried the colonel. "She feels she is to lose

her companion. Perhaps she SEES that Stephanie will recover her
reason."

"God grant it!" said Monsieur Fanjat, who himself was affected by the
incident.

Ever since he had made a close study of insanity, the good man had met
with many examples of the propheticfaculty and the gift of second

sight, proofs of which are frequently given by alienated minds, and
which may also be found, so travellers say, among certain tribes of

savages.
As the colonel had calculated, Stephanie crossed the fictitious plain

of the Beresina at nine o'clock in the morning, when she was awakened
by a cannon shot not a hundred yards from the spot where the

experiment was to be tried. This was a signal. Hundreds of peasants
made a frightful clamor like that on the shore of the river that

memorable night, when twenty thousand stragglers were doomed to death