of his infamy. To-day, to-morrow, twenty years hence, as long as my arm can wield a sword, or aim a pistol at his heart, I shall seek satisfaction and revenge for the death of poor Louisa. I wished to avoid you; I dreaded your tears, your reproaches, your despair! But my last thoughts were for you. Here is the letter I wrote to you, in which I bade you farewell. Receive it now, since a fatal chance has placed you on my road. Do not endeavour to detain me. It is a reparation I owe, and in risking my life I expiate in some sort my wretched credulity, and the error I should have been the first to disbelieve." Matilda stood before him dumb, motionless, her hands joined; but when she saw him preparing to depart, she seized him violently by the arm. "What!" cried she, with an accent of concentrated rage, "I must be again resigned! patience, for ever patience! Another can know the passion, feel and awaken a heart to love; but my lot is ever the coldness and the insensibility of the marble! No, no; it shall not be thus. You ask too much; you ask for one act of virtue more. I ask of Heaven but to preserve my reason, which I feel ready to abandon me, to prevent the fatal secret of my heart ascending to my lips; that my voice may expire before, in my madness, I reveal the terrible truth!" "What do you mean?" demanded De Monville, alarmed, and, in spite of himself, impressed with a vague foreboding of something horrible, "What does this folly imply?" "Must I again explain why I sufWas fer? Can you deceive me? this woman, then, so very beautiful? She must have been so, since even the recollection of her is stronger than my love! Tell me how could she have loved you with a passion deeper than mine?" Here Matilda threw herself madly upon her knees before him. "Promise me," said she, "that you will not go-that you will forget this woman-for my sake—for me, a bewildered, wretched suppliant at your feet!" De Monville was moved, but not shaken. He felt the distress of his wife, and knew how violent must be her grief to dictate such passionate and incoherent language. But her words fell upon his ear more than upon his heart. Since the eve, his whole thoughts, his whole soul, were devoted to the memory of Louisa. He disengaged himself, and advanced towards the door. Matilda rose precipitately, and gazed on him for a few seconds, as if to be certain he was going to quit her. "And so," said she, "you leave me! All I have said to detain you is vain. You mean to go?" "I must." "And return here avenged or dead?" "Yes." "And you leave me during your absence to my solitude and despair! In the presence of your adversary no thought of me will make your heart beat quicker or your hand less steady. And what awaits me? You will return to deplore her loss, or be brought back a corpse-perhaps, a dying man, whose last accents I shall hear repeating the name of Louisa, Oh, on such terms I would rather, a thousand times rather, see you dead at my feet! Alfred, Alfred, you cannot know the agony you cause me! You cannot know that you are driving me to madness! But," she exclaimed, with sudden vehemence, and placing herself before the door, "you shall not go - you shall not fight! Who is your antagonist? St. George, is it not?" "Who else can it be?" "He will not refuse. I have received his answer." 66 "But if he deny having written the letter, what will you then do?" "I will brand him as a coward. I will collar him with one hand, and strike him to the earth with the other." "And then he will fight, and you will perish! Hear me!" said she, approaching him, and speaking in a hoarse, unnatural whisper, "it was not he who wrote the letter." "Who then?" asked De Monville, with a fearful apprehension of the truth. "One whom you cannot strike. One who cannot, will not let you expose your life. One who, on her knees, again beseeches you to remain; whom her love for you alone has rendered criminal; whose love for you now betrays her. It was I!" At this frightful revelation, the features of De Monville assumed a ghastly hue; he laid his hand on the chimney to support himself, but speedily recovered." "You!-you!" repeated he, after an interval of terrible silence. "Yes, I!" said she, endeavouring to take his hands; but he shuddered at her touch, and cast her violently from him. He looked earnestly upon her, and in an instant, as it were, all was explained; his mind fathomed the depths of that profound dissimulation, the abyss of that heart, a volcano burning beneath its snows. length, he cried,— At What had she done to you, madam ?" Matilda advanced towards him. "You ask me what she had done. SHE LOVED YOU!-that was her crime. Do not ask how I was informed of the visits of M. Preville. I was jealous. With gold I bought all the secrets I wanted to know. I it was who wrote the letter, and took every precaution related by the old professor. Yesterday evening I went to his lodging, obtained the paper written in my own hand, and destroyed it. I bribed Marian, and she stole the ring which was to serve as a proof against her mistress. I did all this, and it seems to me a dream; I can scarcely believe it myself. I cannot even think I have revealed my dreadful secret to you. Alas! my reason wanders. But why have I spoken? Because your life was in danger-because I desired to save you!" "It was, then, to you her servant delivered the ring ?" said De Monville, with a look of indescribable fury. "Give it me!" "It is no longer in my possession Your looks terrify I have not got it. me-your voice makes me tremble! Have you no pity for me?" "Had you any for her?" Her, always her!" "Do you forget she is dead-that you are her assassin ? Pity for you!" said he, with a frightful laugh; "pity!-never, never!" "And have I not suffered? Have I not been jealous? Am I not still so? Did I not suffer when, victim to a passion which has made me the wretch I am, I saw you day after day leave the house to visit her? Did I not devour my tears in silence? Calm and insensible to all appearance, did not my heart beat with joy even at the sound of your footsteps? Did I not tremble with rapture at the tone of your voice, or when your hand touched mine? And what has been my lot for the last two years? During the day, SHE, SHE alone occupied your thoughts. At night, in your dreams, her name alone was on your lips. Did I ever complain? And to-day, when the fear of losing you has driven me to madness, and forced me to speak, you cast me from you without pity! Your eyes have not a tear for my agonies, your heart not an excuse for my guilt-guilt occasioned by excess of love! She could die, for you loved her. But what will be my fate, to live, if you love me no longer? Oh, pity me, Alfred,-pity me, pity me! Let fall on me but one look of former times-of yesterday, and I will leave you! You will deplore her loss; and when the bitterness of grief is past, I will return,-I will kneel to you, and crave forgiveness!" She had crept close to him; he thrust her back again. "Infamous woman!" exclaimed he. "Give me the ring, if you still possess it!" "What will you do with it?" "Cover it with kisses before your eyes, that you may witness, before our eternal separation, how fondly I loved her to whom it belonged!" 66 Separation!" exclaimed Matilda, rising with the energy of despair,"separation! Ah, this is too much! You think me weak and trodden down to earth! Separation! Am I not your wife? How will you obtain it ? Will you say I killed your mistress through jealousy? Where is the proof? The letter? I have destroyed it! Never will I quit you with life!" "Madam, after this hour, we shall never more see cach other on earth." Every day-I will daily importune you with my love, my complaints, my jealousy!" "Silence, madam, silence!" "Ah! you think you have suffered because you have lost a mistress; and another woman, whose mind you have distracted, obtains from you, as the price of her love, but threats of a separation. No, no; we are bound, indissolubly bound to each other; no power on earth shall separate us. Our life may be a hell, but, accustomed to suffer, I accept my lot." Wild and distracted, she had seized her husband's arms, who vainly endeavoured to free himself, and who felt himself provoked beyond endurance. At this moment the study door was suddenly thrown open, and three men entered. De Monville, making a last effort to disengage himself, pushed his wife rudely from him. She staggered and fell to the ground. Alfred turned to the intruders. my delay-a domestic quarrel, which I cannot hide as I have done the preceding ones. My wife desires a separation, which I would not consent to. But I no longer object to it. Your testimony as to what has just taken place shall be my punishment for an act of brutality I blush for too late."* He drew near his wife, and said, in a low voice, "Madam, if you refuse to agree to a separation, I will dishonour you in the eyes of these gentlemen by acquainting them with your crime." A month afterwards the separation was legally pronounced. Two months had scarcely elapsed, when De Monville appeared in mourning for the death of his wife; and before the year was over, Reinsberg followed a rich funeral, which came out of an hôtel in the Rue de Grenelle. The old professor was handsomely provided for by his friend, but he never quitted his humble garret in the Rue St. Romain. It may be necessary to explain to the English reader, that in France it is necessary to prove an act of violence on the part of the husband to afford grounds for a claim of separation made by the wife. MANNERS, TRADITIONS, AND SUPERSTITIONS OF THE SHETLANDERS. It is a fortunate arrangement of Na- or Our freshwater lakes and streams boast of salmon, and are peopled with that species known by the name of burn-trout-exquisite eating, and weighing often above six pounds. When the rains of August or September have swollen the burns they come to spawn, leaping over every impediment in their way, and in their eagerness to gain their purpose they frequently run into shallow water and are captured. Sometimes they are taken by setting a net across the mouth of the burn, where it empties itself into the sea, at the time of the tide-flood. Another method of taking them is by the houvie, a sort of pouch made of the stalks of the dock, wide at one end and narrow at the other. The water is then dammed up in a pool across the stream, leaving an open space in the middle sufficient to admit the wider end of the houvie, and when this is firmly fixed a person with a stick in his hand wades down the burn, driving the fish before him until they enter the net; the narrow end prevents their turning and making their escape. This way of catching burntrout I have seen practised successfully with a common hand-towel. I have drawn a round dozen out in nearly as many minutes; and in our sequestered dwellings, when a stranger is suddenly thrown upon our hospitality, this ready process is an infallible means to secure a principal dish for dinner or supper. It may appear curious that in our islands, where articles of common food are limited and scarce, certain kinds of fish, which are esteemed delicacies in the Scotch and English markets, should be held in such mean repute as to be hardly thought worth the trouble of catching. For instance, we have a great many excellent lobsters on our coasts, but they are rarely sought after by the natives, either for their own use or for exportation. Some years ago, three smacks from England came to Shetland upon an adventure of lobsterfishing, and caught several thousands. This number, they alleged, might have been doubled but for the laziness of the inhabitants whom they had employed to assist them. They furnished them with trap-baskets, and paid at the rate of twopence each for every live lobster brought to the vessels; yet the Shetlanders cared little for the employment, although some of them were able to earn nine or ten shillings a-week in this man or four fathoms water, and are taken up by an instrument made for the In Bixter Voe they adpurpose. here to the bottom, like the stones of a pavement, having their acute ends turned up, and when found in this position they are taken with more difficulty. Cockles, welks, buckies, periwinkles, &c. are very common, but eaten chiefly in times of scarcity. In the parish of Yell, during the scarcity that prevailed in 1837, no less than 115 barrels of cockles were collected from ten families, who had been reduced to the necessity of subsisting upon that food during the preceding spring. By far the most useful of our marine supplies, as an article of domestic consumption, is the coal-fish (Gadus carbonarius), with its innumerable fry, which may be eaten from the age of a few months to that of eight years and upwards. They swarm in myriads around our shores, and may be said to constitute a principal means of subsistence to the poorer class of inhabitants. They are reckoned a safe and nutritious food, and are caught with fly or bait, without any other expense than the mere labour of fishing them. This branch of our marine economy is not only one of the most ancient, but one of the most beneficial. The fry of the coal-fish, which in the different stages of their growth are known by a great variety of names, begin to appear along the shores about the middle of May, and they are caught with the fly towards the middle of August. When first seen they are about an inch and a half in length, and bear the name of sillocks. This appellation they retain until they have drunk of the first tide of summer-that is, until the beginning of May next year-when they are called piltocks; and even at this age they seldom exceed ten inches in length. When two years old they are called bilyia piltocks; when three years old, steven piltocks; and afterwards they are known by the name of seath. In some parts of Scotland the vocabulary of this fish and its progeny is still more complex. "In Orkney and Shetland," says Dr. Neill," the fry are called sillocks or sellocks; at Edinburgh, podleys; and at Scarborough, pars. The year-old coal-fish is the cooth of Orkney, the piltock of Shet land, the pillock of the Hebrides, the glassock of Sutherland, the cuddie of the Moray Frith, the grey-podley of Edin. burgh, and the billet of Scarborough. In Orkney it is 1, a sillock; 2, a cooth; 3, a harbin; 4, a cudden; 5, a sethe. The full-grown fish is also in different places termed a sey, a greyling, a greylord, &c." Dr. Campbell, who wrote his Political Survey of Great Britain about seventy years ago, makes a very ludicrous mistake in his notice of the Shetland Isles, when speaking of this fish. He says, "As for sillocks and piltocks, which are a kind of small whale, the meaner sort live on their flesh, such as it is!" It is clear the learned doctor was no naturalist, and knew little of what he was writing about, otherwise he never would have committed such a blunder. Some credulous people believe that barnacles grow into solan geese, and that a hair of a live horse's tail, if buried in water, will, in process of time, become an cel; and in this category of scientific transformations we must evidently class Dr. Campbell's strange hallucination. Most probably he was led into the error by the similarity of the name pillock to palach or pellock, the appellation commonly given in Scotland to that species of whale called the porpus or porpoise. The poet Campbell, in his Gertrude, enumerates this amongst other national reminiscences of his Caledonian exile in the distant Wyoming :— "Green Albin! what though he no more survey Thy ships at anchor on the quiet shore, Thy pellocks rolling from the mountain bay, Thy lone sepulchral cairn upon the moor, And distant isles that hear the loud Corbrechtan roar !" The piltocks frequent the deep water and tide-way, and many leave the coast along with the herring. Sometimes, but rarely, they are caught in winter, when two or three years old; indeed, they seldom appear in any considerable numbers after the second year of their age until they have become the true seath, when, if we may judge from their size compared with their former magnitude, they cannot be under eight or ten years old. They are |