When I left the guard-house that night it was already long after dark:  the last trains from Monte Carlo were due within half an hour of each other.  I hastened to the station.  Almost at its entrance I met an old friend whose face, I noticed, was deadly pale.  He was a man of considerable influence, and I at once concluded that he had received bad news from the seat of war.  I asked eagerly what was the matter.  “Can you keep a secret?” “Of course I can,” I answered.  “If you divulge this one it may have serious consequences for yourself,” he returned gravely.  “I promise to keep silent.”  “Well, then, there has been a fight before Sedan.  Napoleon III. has laid his sword at the feet of William of Prussia.”  “My God!” I cried, “is it possible?” “It is but too true.  I have just seen a ciphered telegram which came via Cologne and Turin.  It is not known in Nice, and will not be so for hours yet.  Do not say a word about it:  if you do it may cost you dear.  No one will believe you, and they will take you for a spy, a Prussian or a pessimist.”  I understood at once the prudence of this advice.  Presently the train came up, we parted, and I took my place.  The third-class carriages were full of volunteers, recruits and conscripts from Mentone.  They were singing a tue tete the Marsellaise.  I shall never forget the terrible impression the song made on me.  The triumphant words shouted out by the men seemed more sorrowful than those of the De profundis: 

  Allons, enfants de la patrie,
  Le jour de gloire est arrive.

“The day of glory” indeed had arrived.  On we went as fast as the wind, and the singing continued uninterruptedly until we reached Nice.  Here I found the station full of soldiers preparing to start by the 2 A.M. train.  When we entered the station, hearing the shouts of “Le jour de gloire,” they joined in enthusiastically.  The next morning by daybreak the official despatch arrived.  To describe the consternation it produced would be impossible, or the frantic glee with which the Republic was proclaimed.  The next day the mob tore down all the imperial eagles and bees from the public buildings; M. Gavini, the Bonapartist prefect, had to escape the best way he could over the frontier, and madame his wife made her way to the station under a shower of potatoes, eggs and carrots, and a volley of insults and coarse epithets; Gambetta’s father, a fine white-headed old gentleman, a grocer, was carried in triumph through the streets; the timid trembled for their lives; the wildest reports were circulated; the town was placed in a state of siege; but “le jour de gloire” did not arrive.  It has not arrived yet, and may not do so for some time to come; but it must arrive sooner or later, or there will be no such thing as peace in Europe.

R. DAVEY.

A PRINCESS OF THULE.

BY WILLIAM BLACK, AUTHOR OF “THE STRANGE ADVENTURES OF A PHAETON.”