"I did not release thee. I wear thy old and commonest gratitude bound him to ring still. But I release thee now."

"There is no if, Max. If thou art false to thy betrothed thou art now false to me as well as to her. I know not what thou spakest about the sin of robbing death, but 'well I know what robbing life means robbing it of trust and hope and love thou canst do nothing now for me, Max; but thou canst keep thyself from sin to her."

"Eh, eh, my good Herr Max! Goes all well at Regenstein? Eh, eh, eh? And the good Fräulein, too - hm!"

"I will see thee once more, Elsa," whispered Max, hurriedly; "and then, what must be, must be." He touched her hand, barely nodded to Herr Elias, and strode away.

"And what want you with me, my good Fräulein Elsa?" asked Herr Elias.

"What is the price of these ear-rings?" she asked, holding out her one piece of finery.

That depends, my good Fräulein. To buy or to sell?"

"What would you give for them?” "To you? oh, ah, eh twice their value, my good Fräulein Elsa." "Then six gulden, please, Herr Elias. You sold them for three."

"You are sharp, my good Fräulein Elsa. But the wear and the tear

"I have not worn them since they were new. Take them please, Herr Elias, and keep the gulden too."

66

Eh, eh! A present from a pretty girl?"

his first friend, his unwearied benefactress, his muse, his inspiring soul, his all but affianced wife, with chains no less, if not more powerful than those had been which no longer bound him to Elsa. If she released him, then indeed - but that must not even be dreamed. He knew she loved him, and he now felt that love like hers would surely set at naught tests and conditions as soon as they had failed.

In this mood, nerving himself against hope, he reached Regenstein. He rang as usual at the bell twice, three times, four times but no one answered. At last, however, the great gate was solemnly swung back by the old porter, who, instead of welcoming him with his usual ready bow, stared mutely and stolidly as though his wits were gone. In the courtyard all was silence.

"What means all this?" asked Max. "What has happened?”

The porter made an effort to speak, but failed. For all answer, like a man who moves mechanically without knowing what he was doing, he felt in his pocket and handed Max a letter unsealed.

"For you, Herr Professor," he managed to bring out at last, "when you arrived. Found, Herr Professor - from mademoiselle her gracious ladyship's lady's-maid—for you - my gracious lady—” Max took the paper and read hastily. "My own Max," it began, "I cannot rest till I have told thee how I wounded my own heart when I wounded thine. Forgive one who had begun to love so late that she hardly knows what love means who, while the shadow of that hateful man from Munich was on her doubted what she felt for thee. I know all now great or humble, I am thine always”. - his heart grew heavier still: by" when I saw thy prophetess I was glad; but I would rather a thousand times that thou hadst failed, and hadst found thyself unable to think of any face but mine. Thou wilt come soon-but I cannot let thee wait to know that I take thee now, not because thou art great, but because I love thee-that

"I have two left hands, Herr Elias and this morning I let your mirror fall -and father says the glass-it broke would cost

--

“Eh, eh, eh, eh, what!" exclaimed the old broker taking the ear-rings which, in spite of his bargain, he probably managed not to lose in the long run — "Eh, eh, eh, eh, eh!"

"But what he meant, or if indeed he meant anything, by this continuous exclamation, he did not explain.

XIX.

MAX, after leaving the old shop in the Adler-Gasse, went slowly along the road that led to Regenstein. He knew what he feared, but what he hoped he hardly knew. Would the baroness hold him to

"What means this?" asked Max. "It is unfinished-why is it given to me unclosed?"

"Herr Professor, my gracious lady the baroness passed away this morning at exactly a quarter before ten."

"Passed away? Where? How passed | struggles,- one with external opponents, away?"

"Dead, Herr Professor."

XX.

THE heart of Max Brendel, though it had ceased to beat for the woman who represented to him the empress-fancy of his soul, did not, in one single moment, throw off its burden. It was with the sorrow we all feel for those whom we shall never behold again that he looked upon the corpse of the Glass Queen. She had gone away forever into the unknown land whence she had come: she had died out of the artist's life his one dream of genius was dead, which had led him into many joys and many sins, and there remained to him henceforth only the homely love of the mortal woman for the mortal

man.

"And so ended," said Max Brendel when he first told Elsa the whole story, without gloss or reserve" and so ended the dream of a charlatan."

She believed every word-lookingglass and all. Had she not broken it with her own hands at the very hour when Max repented and the baroness died?

and one in the cabinet of his king. It is well known that the prince had the utmost difficulty in persuading his master into the war of 1866, into the dethronement of so many "legitimate" princes, into giving up Bohemia - which the king considered had twice been conquered by the Hohenzollerns and into the acceptance of the imperial crown. The king, on great occasions, has always yielded to the genius of his subject, but the struggle has often been severe, and Prince Bismarck, though always loyal, must have chafed fiercely from time to time under a restraint which, by keeping down his natural pus and tendency to impulse, and by forcing him to think out every plan, has probably been one element in his success. He has stated at least once that "the conceit of kings is limitless;" he has confessed openly in Parliament that he detests the arrangement of the Prussian ministry, under which every minister deals directly with the sovereign, and the premier has no constitutional supervision over all; he has declared his resolve not to work under a similar system in Germany, and now he appears confessing that he has even in the empire a battle to fight over many details of his administration. He was in 1872 and 1873 chancellor of the empire and head of the foreign office, yet he sent in "reports" to the king, he himself being at Varzin, which are really complaints that he could not remove an ambassador to Paris whom he utterly distrusted. Whether he had grounds for distrusting Count Arnim or not, whether his furious charges were libels, as Count Arnim's friends would say, or are statements necessary to the conduct of serious business, as the chancellor's friends would say, or are, as we should be inclined to think, just objections exaggerated, and so to speak, poisoned, by personal hatred and contempt, will never be known while the emperor lives, and is not our point to-day. What is certain is that the all-powerful chancellor distrusted and hated his most important agent, distrustTHE two memoranda or confidential re-ed him till he suspected him of grave supports to the king just published by Prince pressions of facts, hated him till he acBismarck in the Reichsanzeiger have al-cused him of a character for habitual unmost as much interest for the student of truthfulness, and still was obliged to keep history as for the politician. It has al-him on. He might, no doubt, have sent ways been believed that Prince Bismarck, in his resignation, but then the king like Richelieu, like Stein, like Marl- might have accepted it, and to a man borough, like Sir Robert Walpole, like, brimming with a consciousness of excep perhaps, most of the great statesmen of tional competence for great affairs, and modern Europe, had always to maintain bursting with plans for the future, that two equally difficult and simultaneous risk may well have seemed too great to be

“And art thou happy - here in this quiet place, teaching and toiling? Dost thou never envy Adolf Meyer, in all his glory, and think how things might have been? Art thou quite happy, with only thy work and me?"

"Only with thee, Elsa? Only with all the universe!" said Max Brendel. "A short cut to glory, indeed! Thou mayst not believe in witchcraft, but that is the devil's road, all the same. I have more than all the glory I deserve. All comes at last to him who has courage, and hope, and truth, and ·

"Patience!" said left-handed Elsa.

From The Spectator. PRINCE BISMARCK AND HIS MASTER.

--

endured. Hohenzollerns are not consti- | and the instinct of the premier in office is tutional emperors, either in fact or by not to allow that man to show himself too law the German constitution containing successful. If rumour may be trusted, no clause making ministers responsible the Bismarck-Arnim quarrel exists in Rusonly to Parliament-and the emperor sia between Prince Gortschakoff and might not always bear with resignations General Ignatieff, ambassador at Constanintended to limit his prerogative. At all tinople, and the policy of both is constantevents, without resignation there was no ly affected by the necessity each feels of removing Count Arnim, and the great not putting the other too much in the chancellor admits himself to have been as right. Ignatieff can neither coincide with annoyed, and limited, and overstrained by the chancellor nor disobey him — for the difficulties of the imperial closet, as either course would leave the chancellor ever Richelieu was by the still unexplained master of the field- and Gortschakoff character of Louis XIII., who, like the can neither support his ambassador nor Emperor William, had the faculty of rec- remove him, for either course might bring ognizing men. He has, as he murmurs, him to St. Petersburg as the emperor's "actually to compete " with Count Arnim adlatus. Germany is not an autocracy, for the confidence of his sovereign. That but the emperor, partly from his legal pothe prince is over-jealous, over-suspicious, sition, partly from the traditionary respect and does not quite understand the char- paid to him by all Prussians, and partly acter of his sovereign, who we take to be from his own force of character, which is a man quite incapable of making a mis much greater than his intellectual insight take as to the comparative value of the into affairs, holds a position which rentwo men, though not disinclined to retain | ders his favour all-important even to instruments whom the chancellor dreads, is little to the purpose. The fact remains, that the German chancellor felt himself hampered, to the extent of threatening to resign, by a trouble which never became patent to the public.

The incident brings out in the strongest light one immense executive embarrassment, which exists in all those despotisms or "strong monarchies" which are supposed to work in all executive departments so smoothly. If the monarch is not himself his own prime minister, the premier under an "independent" monarch has to encounter a difficulty at least as great and absorbing as that of conciliating or convincing Parliament. He has to retain his ascendancy over a sovereign who may not have quite the same objects, who is necessarily his inferior in political genius, and who is bound by his position to keep his eye steadily fixed on men who may be fit on a vacancy for the premiership. When such a man appears, the monarch must protect him, or must leave himself virtually without alternative premiers, that is, must surrender his own independence to the "necessary" premier of the hour. This protection inspires jealousy, and suspicion once excited, the course of government is at once impeded by a palace-struggle scarcely to be distinguished from an intrigue. In Russia, where the czar is really absolute, and can dismiss a chancellor by a nod, the personal struggle is a grand difficulty of government, and frequently affects the policy of the State. The czar must have his alternative man,

Prince Bismarck, and makes victory in his closet at least as essential and exhausting as victory in Parliament is to a British premier. The full advantages of personal government are not reaped except in the rare cases in which the man with hereditary rights is also the man most competent to govern. In Germany they are not reaped at all, except in those extreme cases in which the sovereign, feeling the momentary superiority of his man of genius, effaces himself, and accepts for the time the role of his own premier's chief administrator. In ordinary times, the situation only produces collisions in which the man of genius, even if not beaten, finds his strength wasted; or, as Prince Bismarck in this case has done, voluntarily wastes it himself on what is no better than an intrigue. He has not the resource of the statesman in a free country of flinging himself openly on Parlia ment, and is compelled to seek his support indirectly by bills, such as the present one for the modification of the penal code. No doubt he is seeking it, and it is this, we imagine, which the National Liberals have seen, and which is the cause of the great effect produced on them by the publication of the reports. They think that Prince Bismarck is fighting, consciously or unconsciously, their battle, that he is maintaining the power of the removable premier against that of the irremovable sovereign, and are disposed to let him strengthen his own hands in his own way,- that is, to enable him to prosecute a diplomatist for a disobedience

which the emperor might overlook. They | on a large scale. No one then would ever are purchasing a temporary victory at a ter- have dreamed of proposing it. But, as rible price that of destroying the inde- we all know, Germany has just now tried pendence and frankness of the German the experiment on a great scale. She is diplomatic service - but still their course buying gold, and selling off her silver. becomes partially intelligible. What re- And in consequence silver is cheaper mains unexplained, and we suspect inex- than it has ever been before. plicable, is the dread which a man so ex- Probably, if there were gold enough for ceptional as the prince, so full of con- all the world, it would be best that there fidence in himself, and so popular with should be only a single standard of value the people, evidently feels of a rival who, throughout the world, and that one-gold. whatever his powers, has no hold on the But this is impossible. Some have doubtcountry, and who palpably lacks the dis-ed whether there is gold enough even for cretion which is the necessary armour for such a war.

WHEN the great gold discoveries were made in Australia and California most people expected that there would be a more or less rapid fall in the value of gold as compared with silver. But, as a matter of fact, the effect has been the reverse. The value of silver as compared with gold was 59d. 3 far. per oz, or as I to 15.7 in 1849; it now is 54d. 3 far. or as I to 17.1. Not only what the best judges expected has not happened, but the very contrary of it has happened.

the nations which now intend to use it; and there certainly is not enough for all the world. Happily, the East has always been a country which had much silver, and for whose purposes silver was quite sufficient. The transactions of the East are small in comparison with those of the West, and therefore a bulky paying meIdium is not so inconvenient there as it would be here. Since economical history has been written silver has been always sent from Europe to China, India, and the richer parts of the East, and never more so than in our own time. The payments of England in silver to India during the cotton famine were probably the greatest cash payments ever made in so short a time by one country to another. There is, therefore, in the end a certain market for the silver displaced from Europe; it will ultimately go, as the rest has gone, to the East, where it is the ancient and the

And this has not been the result of any collateral cause; it is the direct conse-best-attainable paying medium. quence of the gold discoveries themselves. But for the moment there is a difficulty The effect of these discoveries has been in disposing of silver. There is no new suda great improvement in the currencies of den demand for it in the East. The case is the world, which, without them, would not not like that of the cotton famine. Then have been possible. The countries of we had incurred a large debt to India, and great commerce and large transactions we had to pay it in the only currency require a more valuable medium of ex- which she would take. We had to find change, bulk for bulk, than countries of an immense quantity of silver on a sudpetty trade and minor transactions. The den, and France-owing to the peculiar labour of paying 1,000,000l. in sovereigns is operation of her double standard — found only a tenth of that of paying it in rupees, it for us. But now there is no such debt; and therefore, where millions have to be the present problem is not to find the silpaid sovereigns are a ten times better cur-ver, but to find the use for the silver. rency than rupees. Gold is much the And this is a slower process. best currency for rich nations of large trade, though silver does well enough, and is in some respects most suitable, for poor nations of little trade. But thirty years ago it would not have been possible for the nations of great commerce to have adopted this best currency. There would not have been gold enough obtainable. The supply from the mines was then barely sufficient to maintain the existing gold currencies; it would have been entirely insufficient for establishing new currencies

Sooner or later, however, the ordinary laws that govern foreign exchanges will do it for us. The consequence of the low value of silver is that the rate of exchange is now Is. 9d. I far. per rupee (or less), the lowest or almost the lowest ever known. And this operates as a direct discouragement to ship goods to India. These goods are paid for in rupees, and when the merchant wants to bring home those rupees to England he finds that they do not go so far as they used to do. He has to pay much

more for every 1,000l. bill on England, and | London, and in the end this loss will be this extra cost destroys or diminishes his | equal to the other gain. profit.

A MOST valuable MS. has been discovered | chado states that it was lost during the great in the Azores. It refers to the colonization, earthquake of Lisbon in 1755. This most im in the year 1500, of the northern part of Amer- portant document is about to be published by ica, by emigrants from Oporto, Aveiro, and an erudite Azorian gentleman, and will throw the Island of Terceira. It was written by great light on the disputed question of the Francisca de Souza, in 1570. Barboza Ma-early discovery of America.