could not find one of them, and thence the
central pyramid. Give me that, and certain
landmarks I recollected, would take me back to the
village in which Prudence dwelt. Now, according
to all the rules of romance, I ought to have
wandered up and down the forest all night, and
never found the pyramid. But these rules were
reversed in the present instance. The first path
I took led me to one of the seven avenues, and
far away from me, indeed, but quite distinct, I
saw the pyramid and its gilt ball glittering in
the light of the setting sun. I took heart and
walked fast, and reached it. But before I started
on my next expedition I sat down at the foot of
the pyramid, and rested a few moments. It was
a divine evening. The long low rays of the sinking
sun poured from the west down one of the
avenues; fire and gold are nothing to the splendour
which swept along the green earth up the
old trunks of trees, and reached their topmost
boughs in the rosiest hues. It was a magnificent
spectacle; but I looked at my watch,
and rose. I turned round the pyramid, then
stood still. A woman was lying on the earth at
my feet.

Asleep? I stooped; her eyes were fixed and
open; her lips had parted in the gasp of her
last agony; her face was livid. I knew it. This
was the face of Prudence, the serpent-charmer,
the viper-killer. She was dead. I took her
swollen hand, with the marks of a fatal sting on
it still; when I dropped it, it fell back loosely,
with that inert weight which tells so much.
She was dead—the woman whom I had seen all
life and fury in the morning, and the red
sunlight swept across her rigid face, and only
seemed to render its sternness more apparent.
How had it happened? Had she been surprised?
Had she struggled with her enemy, as I had
striven against her all night in my dreams?
One thing I felt sure of; she had not been stung
here. The fatal bite had been inflicted in some
remote spot, whence she had crept to this; then
the venom had seized her heart, till sight
first, then life, had failed her. Remedies, if
applied in time, might have saved her; but there
had been no one at hand to give them.
Exhaustion, the intense heat of the day, and
something too, perhaps, in her own constitution, had
quickened the action of the poison, and brought
on this unusually sudden termination.

I stood and looked at her in a stupor. She
lay on the very spot where I had sat twenty-four
hours before, thinking of Diana of Poitiers and
numerous dead men and women. And she, one
of those strange links which connect the present
and the past, had gone to join them. Some
ancestor of hers had been a viper-charmer in those
days, and had, maybe, exhibited his skill in the
royal presence, whilst another charmer looked
haughtily on, conscious of equal power.

I left her there at the foot of the pyramid,
on the cold earth, in the gathering darkness of
evening, and I walked as fast as I could to the
cottage I had left that, morning. Save that no
low whistle came stealing over the plain,
everything looked as it had looked on the previous
evening. When I pushed open the door of
Prudence's cottage, I again found her husband
busy at the hearth cooking in the iron pot.

"Many vipers, Prudence?" he asked, without
looking up.

"It is not Prudence," I said.

He turned round with a start, and knew me at
once. He rose in sudden excitement.
"Monsieur, monsieur," he said, "you must
tell me where you found that herb. It is the herb.
I made the tisane to-day, and I have tasted
Prudence's once, and it is the same; for—look!"

He went to the inner room, and came out with
a dead viper two feet long.

"You killed that!" I said.

He nodded; then added, "I do not mean to
tell Prudence just yet. She would be jealous;
besides, I want to show her that two can have
the secret."

How I broke the news I cannot remember; but
the final words came out:

"Your wife is lying dead in the forest."

I had no need to add, "a viper has stung her."
He knew it. He sank down on his stool, stared
wildly, and, throwing up his hands, said:
"Ah, Heaven! Then it was true!"

This, and no more, was my adventure.

Two years later, indeed, I paid another visit
to the forest, and met Mathieu. His right arm
was in a sling, and with his left hand he was
gathering dried sticks and withered boughs. He
complained bitterly of his poverty. "Then you
have not taken to viper-killing?" I said.

He shook his head gloomily.

"It cannot be done without the secret, and
two cannot use it and live."

"But you need not tell it to any one."

He looked slyly at me; and his look said:
"She did not tell me, and yet I found it out."
My impression is, that Mathieu feared I should
take to viper-killing.

A word of warning. Some imprudent reader
may, fancying that the Solanum I have alluded
to was the herb used by Mathieu, be tempted
to try it. To that reader I say, it was NOT the
herb.

        OUR LENGTHENING DAY.

THE lengthening day of spring, ladies and
gentlemen, has often been compared to the smile
of nature. The face of earth becomes more
expansive, beaming with brightness, and wreathed
with dimples. The fields laugh, and the forests
sing for joy. Our lengthening day more resembles
her frown. It is a grim threat, none the less
terrible for menacing, mysterious, and unknown
consequences. Length of days, in this sense,
implies for us anything but length of life. And it
is impossible to suppress the fact that our day is
gradually growing longer and longer. When it
shall have attained the length of a month—its
utmost limit—the earth, as a residence, will be much
less eligible than it is at present.