he said, wildly, “was my ruin; my love, my fortune, all my joy on earth, and hope in heaven, were sold for these accursed heaps. I sold my bride, with all her tenderness and beauty, for these detested stones,-ha! ha!-that now mock me like so many fiends." The night had set in darkly ere he went to his wretched home. his spirit was utterly crushed, and his frame soon sank also. Before long, he was unable, as well as unfit, to attend to his ministerial duties; and his numerous flock saw with pity, that their pastor's career, it was probable, would soon draw to a close. Six months had not passed, when the girl he loved, and whose attachment was the last silver cord to which he had clung, was married to a young farmer in the neighbourhood. Even had she been faithful, what prospect remained to the Curate of supporting a wife on the miserable pittance to which the loss of his bequest reduced him? But his feelings were embittered by the knowledge that she had brought a small portion to her husband, which was bequeathed to her by the will of the lady whom she had served. Another Curate also was found to supply the wide parish of Calartha; but the people, in kindness, continued to allow their former Minister his poor salary, from the conviction, perhaps, that he would soon cease to be a burden to them. He still loved, when his failing strength permitted, to walk out into the wild paths that had so long been familiar to him; and his feet, it was observed, though they sometimes fainted by the way, seemed to wander mechanically to the scene of his dazzling hopes and of his ruin; and there he would stay for hours, grasping, at times with a trembling hand, some stray stones, richly veined with the mineral, while his hollow eye and attenuated form showed that poverty and wealth would soon be alike indifferent to him. One day he had been absent from his home much longer than usual, and his mother and sister went forth to trace his steps to the well-known scene, and found him reclined peacefully there; but the flitting remains of strength had been exhausted beneath the heat of the day. They called on his name, and bade him come to his home: but he heard them no more; for life was extinct, and it seemed, from the expression of his features, that he had welcomed death. THE HEIRESS' COMPLAINT WHY tell me, with officious zeal, JEANNOT AND COLIN. MANY credible persons have seen Jeannot and Colin of the village of Issoire in Auvergne, a place famous all over the world for its college and its cauldrons. Jeannot was the son of a very renowned muledriver; Colin owed his existence to an honest labourer in the neighbourhood, who cultivated the earth with the help of four mules, and who, after he had paid the poll-tax, the military-tax, the royal-tax, the excise-tax, the shilling-in-the-pound, the capitation, and the twentieths, did not find himself over-rich at the year's end. Jeannot and Colin were very pretty lads for Auvergnians: they were remarkably attached to each other, and enjoyed together those little confidentialities, and those snug familiarities, which men always recollect with pleasure when they afterwards meet in the world. The time dedicated to their studies was just upon the eve of elapsing, when a tailor brought Jeannot a velvet coat of three colours, with a Lyons waistcoat made in the first taste; the whole was accompanied with a letter directed to Monsieur de la Jeannotiere. Colin could not help admiring the coat, though he was not at all envious of it; but Jeannot immediately assumed an air of superiority which perfectly distressed his companion. From this moment Jeannot studied no more; he admired himself in the glass, and despised the whole world. Soon after a valet-de-chambre arrives posthaste, bringing a second letter, which was addressed to Monsieur the Marquis de la Jeannotiere; it was an order from Monsieur the father, that Monsieur the son, should set out for Paris directly. Jeannot ascended the chaise, and stretched out his hand to Colin with a smile of protection sufficiently dignified; Colin felt his own insignificance and burst into tears: Jeannot departed in all his glory. Those readers who like to be instructed as well as amused, must know that Monsieur Jeannot, the father, had very rapidly acquired a most immense fortune by business. Do you ask how it is one makes a great fortune? It is because one is fortunate. Monsieur Jeannot was handsome, and so was his wife, who had still a certain bloom about her. They came up to Paris on account of a law-suit, which ruined them; when fortune, who elevates and depresses mankind at will, presented them to the wife of a contractor for the army-hospitals, a man of very great talent, who could boast of having killed more soldiers in one year than the cannon had blown up in ten. Jeannot pleased the lady, and his wife pleased the contractor. Jeannot soon had his share in his patron's enterprise; and afterwards entered into other speculations. When once you are in the current of the stream, you have nothing to do but to leave your bark to itself; you will make an immense fortune without much difficulty. The mob on the bank, who see you scud along in full sail, open their eyes with astonishment; they are at a loss to conjecture how you came by your prosperity; they envy you at all events, and write pamphlets against you, which you never read. This is just what happened to Jeannot the father, who quickly became Monsieur de la Jeannotiere, and who, having purchased a marquisite at the end of six months, took Monsieur the Marquis his son from school, to introduce him into the fashionable world of Paris. Colin, always affectionate, sent a letter of compliment to his old school-fellow, in which he wrote his "these lines to congratulate” him. The little Marquis returned no answer: Colin was perfectly ill with mortification. The father and mother provided a tutor for the young Marquis. This tutor, who was a man of fashion, and who knew nothing, of course could teach nothing to his pupil. Monsieur wished his son to learn Latin; Madame wished him not: accordingly they called in as arbitrator an author, who was at that time celebrated for some very pleasing works. He was asked to dinner. The master of the house began by asking him: "Monsieur, as you understand Latin, and are à courtier." "I, Sir, understand Latin? not a word," replied the wit, "and very glad am I that I don't; for there is not a doubt but a man always speaks his own language the better, when his studies are not divided between that and foreign languages: look at all our ladies, is not their vivacity more elegant than that of the men? Their letters, are they not written with a hundred times the animation? Now all this superiority they possess from nothing else but their not understanding Latin." "There now! was not I in the right?" said Madame: "I wish my son to be a wit: that he may make a figure in the world; and you see if he learns Latin he is inevitably lost. Are comedies or operas played in Latin? In a law-suit, does any one plead in Latin? Do we make love in Latin?" Monsieur, dazzled by all this ratiocination, gave his judgment; when it was finally determined that the young Marquis should not lose his time in becoming acquainted with Cicero, Horace, and Virgil. But then what was he to learn? for he must know something: could not he be shown a little geography? "What would that serve?" replied the tutor: "when Monsieur the Marquis goes to any of his estates, won't the postilions know which way to drive him? They'll certainly take care not to go out of their way; one has no need of a quadrant to travel with; and a man may go from Paris to Auvergne very commodiously, without having the least idea of what latitude he is under." "You are right," replied the father; "but I have somewhere heard of a very beautiful science, which is called astronomy, I think.” "The more's the pity then," cried the tutor; "does any one regulate himself by the stars in this world? and is it necessary that Monsieur the Marquis should murder himself by calculating an eclipse, when he will find its very point of time in the almanack, a book which will teach him moreover the moveable feasts and fasts, the age of the moon, and that of all the princesses in Europe." Madame was entirely of the tutor's opinion; the little Marquis was overjoyed; the father was very much undecided. "What must my son learn then?" said he. "To make himself agreeable :-if,” replied the friend whom they had consulted, "he knows but how to please, he knows every thing; that is in an art he can learn from his mother, without giving the least trouble either to that master or this." At this speech, Madame embraced the polite ignoramus, and said to him, "It is very plain, Sir, that you are the most learned man in the whole world; my son will owe his entire education to you: however, I conceive that it will be as well if he should know a little of history." "Alas! Madame, what is that good for?" replied he: "there is nothing either so pleasing or so instructive as the history of the day; all ancient history, as one of our wits observes, is nothing but a preconcerted fable; and as for modern, it is a chaos which no one can disintricate: what does it signify to Monsieur your son that Charlemagne instituted the twelve peers of France, and that his successor was a stutterer?" Nothing was ever better said," cried the tutor; "the spirits of children are overwhelmed with a mass of useless knowledge; but of all absurd sciences, that which, in my opinion, is the most likely to stifle the spark of genius, is geometry. This ridiculous science has for its object surfaces, lines, and points, which have no existence in nature;" ten thousand crooked lines are by the mere twist of imagination made to pass between a circle and a right line that touches it, although in reality it is impossible to draw a straw between them. In short, geometry is nothing but an execrable joke.” Monsieur and Madame did not understand too much of what the tutor said; but they were entirely of his opinion. "A nobleman like Monsieur the Marquis," continued ne," ought not to dry up his brains with such useless studies; if at any time he has occasion for one of your sublime geometricians to draw the plan of his estates, can't money buy him a surveyor? or if he wishes to unravel the antiquity of his nobility, which rises to the most obscure times, can't he send for a benedictine? And it is the same in every other art. A young lord, born under a lucky star, is neither |