Ferdinand at Budapest, and for Austrian support of the declaration of Bulgarian independence. That support was meant by the Ballplatz as an anti-Serb rather than as a pro-Bulgar manœuvre. The independence of Bulgaria, and the growth of that nation in strength, are in themselves regarded by Baron Aehrenthal with a feeling much less than that of enthusiasm. But it was the best move at the moment from the point of view of the policy of dividing to conquer. Serbs would once more regard Bulgars with a lively jealousy and hatred. Upon the other hand, Turks and Bulgars would be effectually separated. Baron Aehrenthal encourages the Bulgars to declare their independence; Baron Marschall von Bieberstein tells the Turks that King Ferdinand's aggression is unpardonable. Yet Vienna and Berlin are at one, and their apparently contradictory courses support each other. Turks and Bulgars, standing apart, must each be more or less dependent upon their benevolent advisers. Together they would be invincible. Let dissension be sown between them.

We are very far from the end of this drama, and for the remainder of this generation, and perhaps for long after it, the Eastern question will be with us as constantly as the poor, and the Austrian question will be an inseparable part of it. If Bulgaria is supported by the Ballplatz it is only in order to render impossible the realization of the ardent dreams cherished at Belgrade and Cettigne. Henceforth there will be a steady attempt from the Austrian side to spread the view that the vision of a "Greater Servia" might be magnificently realized under the Hapsburg Crown. The annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina has been most vigorously advocated from the first by the Christian Socialists-the party with which the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is supposed to be most in sympathy. A

member of that party, Prince Alexis Liechtenstein, declared the other day that the great mass of the Serbo-Croats are already under the Hapsburg sceptre, since Montenegro and the kingdom of Servia only include a small minority of the race. "The centre of gravity around which Southern Slav unity will crystallize lies in Austria, not in Servia or Montenegro, since, according to the law of gravitation and mass, the greater attracts the smaller and not vice versa." A whole policy is contained in these words. The heir-apparent and Baron Aehrenthal in their private minds undoubtedly agree with it. Nor does Prince Liechenstein foreshadow any impossible plans. A Croat deputy in the Austrian Delegation has already secured the consent of his Slovene, Tsech, and Polish colleagues to a significant motion. It urges that Bosnia and Herzegovina shall never be attached to Hungary-in spite of the traditional claim of the wearers of St. Stephen's Crown to these lands—but that the annexed provinces shall be joined to Croatia and Dalmatia in order that the old triune kingdom of the South Slavs may be restored. Hungary would be held fast on both sides, and the independence movement among the Magyars would be inevitably extinguished.

The Dual system would be converted into a triple system leading perhaps to a final reorganization by which Bohemia and Poland would become autonomous kingdoms. To a great scheme of this kind the Archduke Franz Ferdinand is believed to incline. When Magyars declare that the results of Baron Aehrenthal's policy may be the most disastrous calamity suffered by their race since the battle of Mohacs, their language is exaggerated, but their sentiments are intelligible. Whether the new Hapsburg Imperialism achieves a splendid triumph or precipitates the very catastrophe that might

otherwise have been avoided, the evolu

tion of the Austrian question and its interaction through the South Slavs with the Eastern question, will yet furThe Fortnightly Review.

nish material for chapter after chapter of events among the most dramatic and momentous in the whole of modern history.

Calchas.

Wise persons going Savoywards, or the swallow-flight, break the journey at Dijon, which for an indolent halt is a very capital indolent halt indeed. And still wiser persons stop a day or two in Dijon, for Dijon of Burgundy is almost as fine an old dowagerduchess of a city as is Nancy of Lorraine. And one may kindly remember Dijon for many reasons. I remember Dijon for two in particular: for the finding of Captain Fluellen's baggage, and for the missing of a walnut spinning-wheel.

"Tis plain I was not in the humor the day I missed that spinning-wheel. Hobbinol, even Hobbinol my familiar, was powerless with me just then. For I am not the slave of Hobbinol, let me boast; there are hours, there are whole days when-but no matter. "Go to!" I said to Hobbinol that Whitsun day, almost in the words of a certain poet who is not the Laureate, though he writes for the Court Journal by-the-by:

Go to! I will collect no precious thing Inwrought of subtlest brain and deftest hand:

The young May sunshine warms th' awakened land,

The Spring is here I will collect the Spring!

So when I saw in the window of a timber-fronted bit of old Dijon a delicately light and spindly spinningwheel, as dainty an implement as ever was turned out of walnut for the fingers and toes of a Madame du Deffand, yet on sale for thirty-five francs only; and when Hobbinol said "Absurd!

Snap it up at once!" I said "Absurd!" to him. "How am I to get home an awkwardly packing concern such as that? Observe the enormously long distaff-thing, or whatever you call it! Go to, I will collect no spinning-wheel inwrought of subtlest brain and deftest hand!" And I didn't. And I have often repented it since. Alack, for our transient opportunities missed and our unavailing regrets!

The finding of Captain Fluellen's luggage was quite another pair of boots, however. Often I go to Dijon, and once when I was thinking of going to Dijon my friend the Captain said, at the Club, "There's a palace-tower at Dijon."

"There is," I agreed. the Hôtel de Ville."

"Tower of

"No! Tower of the palace of the Dukes of Burgundy. It's a hundred and forty-four feet high," he said. "I know; I ought to know. I spent the best part of a hot October day on the top of that tower, worse luck!"

"Did you, indeed? But whatever on earth made you do it, my dear Fluellen? Up a gross of feet like that?"

"Superior orders," he answered gravely. "I was signalling, you seeorders from the Etat-major below." And then I remembered; I looked at his handsome soldierly face that still wears the Louis-Napoleonic impériale, though that is snow-white now, and I remembered. I remembered that he, a Welsh Catholic of the vieille roche, in 1870 had fought for France.

"Exactly," said L. "Dijon has altered a good deal since then, don't you find?"

"I haven't seen it," he said. never been near the place again. Since you're going there shortly, however . . you might-" He paused. "I should rather like to know, after all," he went on. Then he paused again.

"Anything I can do for you there, Fluellen-"

"Well," he said suddenly, "you might perhaps call at the Hôtel Sonnez for me, and see Madame, and ask if they've still got my baggage?"

"? ? ?" I looked the query. "My kit, you know; I left it there," he said. "We had to quit in a hurry. And I've never been near Dijon since." Something came into his eyes just then -not tears, but rue, "for remembrance," and I looked out of window a moment, at the "sweet, shady side of Pall Mall."

As I strolled about Dijon a few days after that I came to the Hôtel Sonnez, and stared at it; for the Hôtel Sonnez is quite a monster caravanserai, that you enter by a Palladian portal, and is clearly a good deal less than a generation old. Yet it is thirty -well, you can count the exact number of years for yourself, John Bull, since you made the cardinal and irretrievable blunder of letting the Goth triumph over the Gaul; it is a good deal more than a generation next October thirtieth since, from the top of the Ducal tower, my gallant friend Fluellen signalled down to the Etatmajor the stages of General Werder's approach. I marched into that magnificent hotel almost as cautiously as Werder did into Dijon, and screwing up my courage to address a magnificent portier, I asked for Madame Sonnez. He stared and I flinched like Mr. Toots. "It is of no consequence," I was about to say, retreating in a way that Werder would have scorned. But the magnificent portier spoke. Madame X now," he said,

"It is quite

Monsieur would. Monsieur did. And Madame X-dark, portly, pleasant, but fifty-five, I imagine said, "Oh, Monsieur, you mean my poor Idead mother!"

we

"Dead, is she, poor lady?" I stammered. "But, Madame never think old friends can die or change, do we? Captain Fluellen never reflected that Madame, your mother-” "Le Capitaine Fluellen!" She interrupted me, she positively cried the name. "The Capitaine Fluellen!" So correctly she pronounced the name that I guessed how well she must have learned it in the old days, how often she must have uttered it, and with inflections how caressing then. Now, as she said it again, and murmuringly, her eyes also filled full with rue and remembrance. "Ah, Monsieur, I recall him well! He was of the most handsome, and of the most good . . But as for his baggage-"”

"Bother his baggage, Madame!" said I, but she refused to bother it. She bothered herself; she meditated; then she hunted in a drawer for a key, I protesting in vain. Diligently searching, she found. Perseverance had its reward. Her hand with the weddingring on it reappeared, and jutting out of that hand-for it was quite a small hand, by-the-by-I saw a key. "If Monsieur will give himself the trouble to follow?" she said, with the sweet clearness which is in Frenchwomen's voices, and she led the way out at the back of the caravanserai, and across a petrol-spotted paved yard, till we came to a low old building which used to be the Hôtel Sonnez in days when Fluellen lived there en pension, and Madame X was Mademoiselle. And there, within an otherwise empty room of that deserted hostel, she showed me a pell-mell lumber of mouldering trunks and peeling valises, rotting jackboots,

and saddlery that sent forth an ancient and pigskinny smell. "Perhaps the baggage of the brave Capitaine will be here," she said. "But, Monsieur, I do not know it from the others.

If I had known it from the others"she looked at me with eyes that hardly saw me "If I had known it from the others, I should have "

"Treasured it a little, perhaps-for the Captain's sake," I said in a voice which, I hope, was full of sympathy, yet not too pitying. For I had come to understand the story by then, and I was trying to see her as Fluellen must have seen her, neither portly nor fifty-five, nor wedding-ringed, all those years ago. "Madame," I said, "let us bother the baggage! Ma foi, do you think it was for his baggage that he sent me here? Mais non, mais non, Madame, but simply to hear of you again-of the belle Mademoiselle!"

"Mon Dieu, Monsieur!" Color had come into her clear pallor. "Why, then, did he never come himself?" And indeed I could not tell her why, for Fluellen has always been a bachelor. But "Wait till you come to Forty Year!" sang Thackeray the good and gentle, Thackeray the genial and wise, whom it takes a reader of forty year or more to read in the spirit:

Ho, pretty page, with the dimpled chin That never has known the barber's shear,

All your wish is woman to win,
This is the way that boys begin,-

Wait till you come to Forty Year!

panted on the quays as I lounged on the bridge that hoops the slow Saône, and the market-folk fanned them. selves with cabbage-leaves. Those market-women wore the most extraordinary and unaccountable head-dress ever seen. I say "seen" and not "to be seen," for if you have never seen it you will never see it now; Parisian cast-off fashions have everywhere supplanted the antique local garb. But all those years ago the quaint Burgundian coiffe was visible anywhere in Mâcon. Fluellen must have seen it in Dijon, and known it again, though the very burlesque of a Welsh-woman's headdress it was. Conceive a boy's flycage, made of a bottle-cork halfscooped away, and the aperture barred by inserted pins. Magnify that five times. Make the pins long ones and thick ones, with big black bead knobs to them, the knobs encircling the top of the cork like an effort by Martin Chuzzlewit in the Knobby order of architecture. Put the pins and knobs all round the cork. No flies inside, of course; the flies were all at the oxen. Now plant this choice confection quite centrally upon a disc of cardboard twice the diameter of the wearer's skull. Hang round the edge of the disc a valance of black lace, dropping three inches deep. Now pose the whole arrangement on the top of the head. Heaven knows how they kept it on; I don't remember, if I ever knew, but I dare say there would be chin-straps, or ribbons, or things. Of such was the Burgundy coiffe. When I went to Mâcon per motor-car the other day I could find no specimen of it anywhere, not even in the Musée.

There was something else I vainly looked for at Mâcon the second time. When I wandered through Mâcon the first time I came, as Mr. Pecksniff did, but less intentionally even than he, to the door of a Madame Gamp, and I joyed my then unpaternal eyes

with the sight of the signboard over that door. Why, indeed, should Madame Gamp not flaunt a signboard? And why should it not be one of armes parlantes? The botanical theory of the origin of small human beings is no new one; the gooseberry-bush hypothesis held good in England even when I was a child. In France that gooseberry-bush becomes a less fertile cabbage-patch, and the cabbage-patch theory explains to a French youngster why his mother calls him her petit chou. The picture on the signboard displayed Madame Gamp in her garden. Her foot upon a spade, and her whole considerable bulk bent hotly on her philanthropic effort. Madame Gamp was eradicating a giant cabbage, and there at the roots of it-do cabbages have roots, by-the-by?-lay an infant, just unearthed like a new potato, but weeping as potatoes never do, though potatoes, too, have eyes. When I went to Mâcon again the other day I hunted for that signboard, but it was not. Gone are the years, gone are the fly-cages, gone are Madame Gamp and her signboard into the Ewigkeit, like Louis-Napoleon, General Werder, the black out of Fluellen's impériale, and the svelte grace of Mademoiselle. Gone, too, are the spinster ladies who kept the little bookshop at Mâcon on the Quai. Tenderly courteous and considerate for my blooming youth, they sold me with compunc tion a copy of La Dame aux Camélias, I remember, pressing me first and earn. estly to purchase some more moral tale than that, for sleeping over in the long train to Paris. One's pathetical pleasure in that tale has also gone. Lots of things, you see, are gone. Sic transit. Tempus irreparabile fugit. And the rest of it. But Mâcon is not gone; the terraced old city still dozes on its hillside, though honking and tootling motor-cars rouse it for moments, every now and again.

Mâcon remains. If you are lucky, you may still see yokes of cream-colored oxen come wagging over the bridge. The Saône remains, broad, flat, full, slow, a very bovine breed of river indeed; grazing its way, so to speak, through endless buttercup meadows, all the meandering miles down from the tiny old bourg of Gray. Slow and somnolent, the Saône; and yet of the Saône I can say, "River, oh river of journeys, river of dreams!" It is here that I syncopate again, John; you will have noticed how guilty I am of syncopation. Or, rather, you will have noticed nothing of the kind, for "syncopation" is a term of art, and what does John Bull know of music? Nothing, by common consent. Handel you know, and Mendelssohn may be, but what of the stormy Weber, the insane Schumann, the satirical Berlioz, or Chopin the neurasthene? To syncopate, a highly respectable dictionary reminds me, is to commence a tone or note in an unaccented part of a bar and continue it into the following accented portion. Even so does the unaccentuated Saône lead us along to Gray.

Gray? Where is Gray? What was my surprise last year to find in a very pleasant guest and Goth-the Rektor of a Bavarian University-the only man I know who has ever been to Gray! My pleasant Goth from Erlangen has twice been to Gray, indeed; he went there first about the date when Captain Fluellen was still sunned in the honest smiles of Mademoiselle Sonnez de Dijon. Precisians will inform me that Erlangen is in South Germany, and that the Bavarian contingent never warred in Gaul so far north as Gray. May be, may be, Precisian; I will take your word for that. But my friend was not Rektor of Erlangen just then; he was a mere Pomeranian undergraduate and recruit from Bingen. The second time he went to Gray it was