laughter rang out like the song of a bird, one peal leading to

another.
"I am quite jealous of the paper," she said, as she wiped away the

tears that her childlike merriment had brought into her eyes. "Now, is
it not a heinous offence," she went on, as she became a woman all at

once, "to read Russian proclamations in my presence, and to attend to
the prosings of the Emperor Nicholas rather than to looks and words of

love!"
"I was not reading, my dear angel; I was looking at you."

Just then the gravel walk outside the conservatory rang with the sound
of the gardener's heavily nailed boots.

"I beg your pardon, my Lord Marquis--and yours, too, madame--if I am
intruding, but I have brought you a curiosity the like of which I

never set eyes on. Drawing a bucket of water just now, with due
respect, I got out this strange salt-water plant. Here it is. It must

be thoroughly used to water, anyhow, for it isn't saturated or even
damp at all. It is as dry as a piece of wood, and has not swelled a

bit. As my Lord Marquis certainly knows a great deal more about things
than I do, I thought I ought to bring it, and that it would interest

him."
Therewith the gardener showed Raphael the inexorable piece of skin;

there were barely six square inches of it left.
"Thanks, Vaniere," Raphael said. "The thing is very curious."

"What is the matter with you, my angel; you are growing quite white!"
Pauline cried.

"You can go, Vaniere."
"Your voice frightens me," the girl went on; "it is so strangely

altered. What is it? How are you feeling? Where is the pain? You are
in pain!--Jonathan! here! call a doctor!" she cried.

"Hush, my Pauline," Raphael answered, as he regained composure. "Let
us get up and go. Some flower here has a scent that is too much for

me. It is that verbena, perhaps."
Pauline flew upon the innocent plant, seized it by the stalk, and

flung it out into the garden; then, with all the might of the love
between them, she clasped Raphael in a close embrace, and with

languishing coquetry raised her red lips to his for a kiss.
"Dear angel," she cried, "when I saw you turn so white, I understood

that I could not live on without you; your life is my life too. Lay
your hand on my back, Raphael mine; I feel a chill like death. The

feeling of cold is there yet. Your lips are burning. How is your hand?
--Cold as ice," she added.

"Mad girl!" exclaimed Raphael.
"Why that tear? Let me drink it."

"O Pauline, Pauline, you love me far too much!"
"There is something very extraordinary going on in your mind, Raphael!

Do not dissimulate. I shall very soon find out your secret. Give that
to me," she went on, taking the Magic Skin.

"You are my executioner!" the young man exclaimed, glancing in horror
at the talisman.

"How changed your voice is!" cried Pauline, as she dropped the fatal
symbol of destiny.

"Do you love me?" he asked.
"Do I love you? Is there any doubt?"

"Then, leave me, go away!"
The poor child went.

"So!" cried Raphael, when he was alone. "In an enlightened age, when
we have found out that diamonds are a crystallized form of charcoal,

at a time when everything is made clear, when the police would hale a
new Messiah before the magistrates, and submit his miracles to the

Academie des Sciences--in an epoch when we no longer believe in
anything but a notary's signature--that I, forsooth, should believe in

a sort of Mene, Tekel, Upharsin! No, by Heaven, I will not believe
that the Supreme Being would take pleasure in torturing a harmless

creature.--Let us see the learned about it."
Between the Halle des Vins, with its extensiveassembly of barrels,

and the Salpetriere, that extensiveseminary of drunkenness, lies a
small pond, which Raphael soon reached. All sorts of ducks of rare

varieties were there disporting themselves; their colored markings
shone in the sun like the glass in cathedral windows. Every kind of

duck in the world was represented, quacking, dabbling, and moving
about--a kind of parliament of ducks assembled against its will, but

luckily without either charter or political principles, living in
complete immunity from sportsmen, under the eyes of any naturalist

that chanced to see them.
"That is M. Lavrille," said one of the keepers to Raphael, who had

asked for that high priest of zoology.
The Marquis saw a short man buried in profound reflections, caused by

the appearance of a pair of ducks. The man of science was middle-aged;
he had a pleasant face, made pleasanter still by a kindly expression,

but an absorption in scientific ideas engrossed his whole person. His
peruke was strangely turned up, by being constantly raised to scratch

his head; so that a line of white hair was left plainlyvisible, a
witness to an enthusiasm for investigation, which, like every other

strong passion, so withdraws us from mundane considerations, that we
lose all consciousness of the "I" within us. Raphael, the student and

man of science, looked respectfully at the naturalist, who devoted his
nights to enlarging the limits of human knowledge, and whose very

errors reflected glory upon France; but a she-coxcomb would have
laughed, no doubt, at the break of continuity between the breeches and

stripedwaistcoat worn by the man of learning; the interval, moreover,
was modestly filled by a shirt which had been considerably creased,

for he stooped and raised himself by turns, as his zoological
observations required.

After the first interchange of civilities, Raphael thought it
necessary to pay M. Lavrille a banal compliment upon his ducks.

"Oh, we are well off for ducks," the naturalist replied. "The genus,
moreover, as you doubtless know, is the most prolific in the order of

palmipeds. It begins with the swan and ends with the zin-zin duck,
comprising in all one hundred and thirty-seven very distinct

varieties, each having its own name, habits, country, and character,
and every one no more like another than a white man is like a negro.

Really, sir, when we dine off a duck, we have no notion for the most
part of the vast extent----"

He interrupted himself as he saw a small pretty duck come up to the
surface of the pond.

"There you see the cravatted swan, a poor native of Canada; he has
come a very long way to show us his brown and gray plumage and his

little black cravat! Look, he is preening himself. That one is the
famous eider duck that provides the down, the eider-down under which

our fine ladies sleep; isn't it pretty? Who would not admire the
little pinkish white breast and the green beak? I have just been a

witness, sir," he went on, "to a marriage that I had long despaired of
bringing about; they have paired rather auspiciously, and I shall

await the results very eagerly. This will be a hundred and thirty-
eighth species, I flatter myself, to which, perhaps, my name will be

given. That is the newly matched pair," he said, pointing out two of
the ducks; "one of them is a laughing goose (anas albifrons), and the

other the great whistling duck, Buffon's anas ruffina. I have
hesitated a long while between the whistling duck, the duck with white

eyebrows, and the shoveler duck (anas clypeata). Stay, that is the
shoveler--that fat, brownish black rascal, with the greenish neck and

that coquettish iridescence on it. But the whistling duck was a
crested one, sir, and you will understand that I deliberated no

longer. We only lack the variegated black-capped duck now. These
gentlemen here, unanimously claim that that variety of duck is only a

repetition of the curve-beaked teal, but for my own part,"--and the
gesture he made was worth seeing. It expressed at once the modesty and

pride of a man of science; the pride full of obstinacy, and the
modesty well tempered with assurance.

"I don't think it is," he added. "You see, my dear sir, that we are
not amusing ourselves here. I am engaged at this moment upon a

monograph on the genus duck. But I am at your disposal."
While they went towards a rather pleasant house in the Rue du Buffon,

Raphael submitted the skin to M. Lavrille's inspection.
"I know the product," said the man of science, when he had turned his

magnifying glass upon the talisman. "It used to be used for covering
boxes. The shagreen is very old. They prefer to use skate's skin