I have said how handsomely they were dressed as long as they were with their mother.  When I saw the boy at Venice, who perfectly recognized me, his only garb was a wretched yellow cotton gown.  His little feet, on which I had admired the little shiny boots, were without shoe or stocking.  He looked at me, ran to an old hag of a woman, who seized his hand; and with her he disappeared down one of the thronged lanes of the city.

From Venice we went to Trieste (the Vienna railway at that time was only opened as far as Laybach, and the magnificent Semmering Pass was not quite completed).  At a station between Laybach and Graetz, one of my companions alighted for refreshment, and came back to the carriage saying:—­

“There’s that horrible man from Baden, with the two little boys.”

Of course, we had talked about the appearance of the little boy at Venice, and his strange altered garb.  My companion said they were pale, wretched-looking and dressed quite shabbily.

I got out at several stations, and looked at all the carriages.  I could not see my little men.  From that day to this I have never set eyes on them.  That is all my story.  Who were they?  What could they be?  How can you explain that mystery of the mother giving them up; of the remarkable splendor and elegance of their appearance while under her care; of their barefooted squalor in Venice, a month afterwards; of their shabby habiliments at Laybach?  Had the father gambled away his money, and sold their clothes?  How came they to have passed out of the hands of a refined lady (as she evidently was, with whom I first saw them) into the charge of quite a common woman like her with whom I saw one of the boys at Venice?  Here is but one chapter of the story.  Can any man write the next, or that preceding the strange one on which I happened to light?  Who knows? the mystery may have some quite simple solution.  I saw two children, attired like little princes, taken from their mother and consigned to other care; and a fortnight afterwards, one of them barefooted and like a beggar.  Who will read this riddle of The Two Children in Black?

ON RIBBONS.

The uncle of the present Sir Louis N. Bonaparte, K.G., &c., inaugurated his reign as Emperor over the neighboring nation by establishing an Order, to which all citizens of his country, military, naval, and civil—­all men most distinguished in science, letters, arts, and commerce—­were admitted.  The emblem of the Order was but a piece of ribbon, more or less long or broad, with a toy at the end of it.  The Bourbons had toys and ribbons of their own, blue, black, and all-colored; and on their return to dominion such good old Tories would naturally have preferred to restore their good old orders of Saint Louis, Saint Esprit, and Saint Michel; but France had taken the ribbon of the Legion of Honor so to her heart that no Bourbon sovereign dared to pluck it thence.