Vendee, George Cadoudal. In the midst of these dark plots for personal
aggrandizement and political fortune, we leave, for the moment, the
sombre, sullen soul of Olivier Dalibard.

Time has passed on, and spring is over the world. The seeds buried in
the earth burst to flower; but man's breast knoweth not the sweet
division of the seasons. In winter or summer, autumn or spring alike,
his thoughts sow the germs of his actions, and day after day his destiny
gathers in her harvests.

The joy-bells ring clear through the groves of Laughton,--an heir is born
to the old name and fair lands of St. John. And, as usual, the present
race welcomes merrily in that which shall succeed and replace it,--that
which shall thrust the enjoyers down into the black graves, and wrest
from them the pleasant goods of the world. The joy-bell of birth is a
note of warning to the knell for the dead; it wakes the worms beneath the
mould: the new-born, every year that it grows and flourishes, speeds the
parent to their feast. Yet who can predict that the infant shall become
the heir? Who can tell that Death sits not side by side with the nurse
at the cradle? Can the mother's hand measure out the woof of the Parcae,
or the father's eye detect through the darkness of the morrow the gleam
of the fatal shears?

It is market-day at a town in the midland districts of England. There
Trade takes its healthiest and most animated form. You see not the
stunted form and hollow eye of the mechanic,--poor slave of the
capitalist, poor agent and victim of the arch disequalizer, Civilization.
There strides the burly form of the farmer; there waits the ruddy hind
with his flock; there, patient, sits the miller with his samples of corn;
there, in the booths, gleam the humble wares which form the luxuries of