demonstrably impotent, love should be allowed to try its hand as a substitute. In the above views Victorine naturally concurred; but she met with no more success in urging them than the French forces, according to Max, could hope for were they to attempt carrying Metz and Strasbourg by storm.

'All that you say, my child,' her mother sadly replied, only means that you love a Prussian. I have called that a great misfortune for you; do not make me call it a disgrace! How can it be possible for you to marry the man? Does one, I ask you, marry one's father's murderer ? '

Victorine's father had not been murdered by Max Arndt, whoif that mattered-was not even a Prussian, being a Bavarian by birth and a good Catholic by religion; but to put forward such pleas on his behalf was evidently waste of breath. The girl had to choose between her lover and her mother, the latter of whom confronted her uncompromisingly with that issue.

'You are of an age to decide for yourself, Victorine,' the old woman said; 'your life belongs to you, not to me. Do what you will with it. But if you become a Prussian, you are no longer my daughter. You know,' she went on, her voice breaking and the tears flowing from her tired eyes, 'whether I love you or not; you know that you are all I have in the world, and that it would break my heart to lose you by death or by something worse than death. Well, it makes no difference! From the moment that you commit this infamy we are strangers. I can never speak to you or look at you again. J'ai dit!'

It was perhaps inevitable that the little domestic tragedy should end as it did, although in any other country it might have had another sequel. For all her willingness to believe that her actual nationality was an accomplished, unalterable fact, Victorine was a Frenchwoman, and one consequence of her being so was that in this dire extremity it seemed to her less possible to break her mother's heart than her own. She yielded rather suddenly and without murmuring-as one yields to sheer necessity, on recognising it as such.

So Max Arndt went his way, after delivering himself of some bitter reproaches and making some unmerited, uncontradicted accusations. He went his way, and suns rose and set, and Victorine served customers with beer, as before. Two years later she married Jules Roux, a farmer of the neighbourhood, who may have been conscious of stooping a little in taking to wife the daughter of a

cabaretière, but who proved himself a kind husband, and with whom she lived happily enough, as happiness goes in a wry world. Omelettes are not made without breaking eggs, and if the breaking of a human heart or two should chance to be among the microscopic outgrowths of decisions taken for high reasons of State, high statesmen are in small danger of sleeping any the less soundly on that account.

Long after all the statesmen concerned in the transfer of Lorraine to the German Empire had entered upon the sleep which knows no waking, Suzanne Kopp held firmly to the hope that their impious work would be undone; but by degrees she had to relinquish that of beholding with her own eyes the vindication of right and justice. By degrees she came to perceive that if Russia ever embarked upon war with a formidable foe, it would not be for the sake of restoring the lost provinces to her ally; and although the establishment of the Triple Entente, of which she read in the newspapers, gave her a certain satisfaction, she had even less confidence in the English, a selfish, commercial people, little given to taking up arms in support of a neighbour's quarrel. The incident of Agadir warmed her heart and gave her some comfort. At last we show that we are no longer afraid to talk to them!' she cried. But, as the result of much talk, followed by territorial concessions, that cause for strife passed peacefully away, and she was conscious that her own life also was passing towards its end. At the age of seventy-five she was a very old woman, bent almost double and hobbling about the house with difficulty, supported by two sticks; yet she would not give up her independence or the business which she still carried on through underlings, refusing the hospitality constantly pressed upon her by her daughter and her son-in-law.

'No, no, my children,' she would answer; I like better to die in my own bed under my own roof. Come and see me when you are not too busy, and when you cannot come yourselves send me the little ones. I have all I want in this world-except one thing, which you cannot give me.'

Honest Jules Roux was in the habit of turning the conversation when his mother-in-law made allusion to that one thing. Not that he was out of sympathy with her upon the subject; but he was a prudent man who did not wish for trouble with the authorities, and who very sensibly opined that nobody is ever the worse off for keeping his mouth shut. On similar grounds he did not care to let his children visit the Gasthaus zum Weissen Ross too often.

Their grandmother also was prudent, or had been; but now in her old age she had grown garrulous and sometimes seemed unable to control herself, saying what would have been better left unsaid. It was a pity that she should stuff the children's heads with tales of 'old, unhappy, far-off things, And battles long ago—a still greater pity that she should teach them to sing the Marseillaise and Mourir pour la Patrie. To die for one's country-à la bonne heure! But how does one serve one's country, or a country to which one has unfortunately ceased to belong, by being arrested and sent to prison for sedition?

Victorine, now middle-aged, placid and stoutish, was of her husband's mind. Seldom glancing at a newspaper, and taking little interest in international politics, she was nevertheless aware that nobody dared to threaten Germany and that nobody, except her poor old mother, dreamed any longer of such a thing as the retrocession of Metz and its neighbourhood. For herself, she could not remember her French infancy, and if she did not greatly like the Germans as a people, perhaps she could not forget that once upon a time she had found it possible to love one of them. At any rate, she did not want war. What decent, peaceable farmer's wife, domiciled in the destined area of military operations, would?

But it is not of farmers' wives or other peaceably disposed persons that the rulers of this world (who, to be sure, are themselves for the most part ruled by forces beyond their control) think when diplomatic suavities are silenced by an order for mobilisation. Such an order came with startling suddenness to Gravelotte on a certain summer morning and brought consternation to the heart of Victorine Roux, who had taken up her quarters at the Weissen Ross some days before in order to be with her evidently dying mother. Old Suzanne lay on her narrow bed, in full possession of her faculties and in no pain, but slowly ceasing, like a worn-out machine, and speaking scarcely at all. The news that Germany was at war with Russia and France, and perhaps also with England, was kept from her until evening, when the children came rushing in to announce it with an electrifying effect upon their moribund grandmother.

'At last!' she cried, trying to raise herself— at last la revanche ! Oh, thanks be to the Blessed Virgin! I have prayed so much!— I have prayed so long!'. . .

She was in a sort of ecstasy. That war would mean victory for France she no more doubted than she cared to inquire why war had

come at all. Jules Roux, anxious, perturbed, and by no means overconfident as to results, related some history to her about a rupture between Austria and a small country called Servia, which Russia held herself bound to protect, and explained that, Germany being the ally of Austria while France was the ally of Russia, all Europe had to be set in a blaze; but she made short work of that, remarking, with truth, that when one wishes to fight one need never search far for a pretext. Presently she turned towards Victorine and said quaintly with a glad smile: C'est ton brave homme de père qui doit se frotter les mains là-haut!'

Almost it seemed as if joy and excitement had brought her back to life from the very brink of the grave; but nothing could have accomplished that miracle, although it may be that the end was retarded by sheer longing to behold once again the beloved French uniforms on the scene where so many had lain trampled and stained in the mud and blood of four-and-forty years back. It was, of course, impossible for such a spectacle to be witnessed within ten days, and at the close of the tenth day old Suzanne's family were grouped round her bed, expecting that every laboured breath she drew would be her last. She appeared to be unconscious; yet, when a servant stole into the room and said something to her son-in-law, she caught the low words and started.

'They are in Alsace?' she panted- we are in Alsace? We have taken Altkirch? Ah, merci, mon Dieu, merci !'

Making a supreme effort, she lifted her head and began, in a cracked, quavering voice, to chant the Marseillaise—

'Allons, enfants de la patrie,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé!...

The poor, withered, colourless hands beat time upon the patched quilt, fire gleamed for an instant in the sunken eyes, and with that faltering, pathetic pæan upon her lips old Suzanne Kopp passed away from a troubled world-felix opportunitate mortis !

'MY FATHER.'

BY THE HON. A. E. GATHORNE-HARDY.

A HUNDRED years ago, on Saturday, October 1, 1814, a third son, afterwards christened Gathorne, his mother's maiden name, was born to John and Isabel Hardy at Bradford in Yorkshire. William Wilberforce, the philanthropist, wrote at once to his old friend the father, congratulating him on the addition to the good breed of Hardy,' and there was already little risk of the 'good breed' becoming extinct, as three sisters and two brothers had preceded him into the world. Six sisters followed in the course of the next fourteen years. Families were families in that and the succeeding generation! I myself had five brothers and five sisters, and sixtyseven first cousins.

'Saturday's bairn has far to go!' So runs the old proverb. If construed literally, the distich is not very applicable to my father, who seldom cared to leave his beloved home unless absolutely obliged to travel; but there is a sense in which his pilgrimage was indeed a long one, as he completed his ninety-second year before he passed peacefully away on October 30, 1906. His public life has been recorded in the biography which I compiled from his diaries and correspondence. On this his centenary I wish to dwell only on his home life and personal characteristics.

In his diary for August 12, 1853, there occurs this strange entry. I am unable to identify the 'Wallis' whose admonition he quotes:

'Wallis said a strange thing to me, perhaps a true one, that I require some great trial or affliction for my character. A sad need if it be so! Can I not be schooled without it? If it be to improve me for ever I must not dread it.'

6

He was 'schooled without it.' There never was a long life more free from great trials and afflictions,' and his character expanded and softened in almost unbroken sunshine. Bereavement he did not altogether escape, and he felt deeply the loss of two beloved daughters and a son who were taken from him in the prime of life; but the marvel lies in the extent to which he was exempt from the ordinary lot in this respect. His almost-to me quite— perfect wife' blessed his home till 1897, the sixtieth year of their