contents of which are a matter of life and death) I beg you
will at once deliver to my wife; and let me conjure you, until
the crisis is over, to make my house at Romainville your home.

"ÉDOUARD PONTALBA."


Leaf the Last.

This is the 15th of January, 1858. France is in a blaze of excitement.
Last evening, in the _Rue Lepelletier_, an attempt was made to
assassinate the Emperor, by throwing grenades filled with fulminating
mercury under the coach that bore the Imperial family to the Italian
Opera. Count Felice Orsini, the murderer, himself desperately wounded,
has been arrested, and Paris is crying for his blood.

For several days I have been the honored guest of Madame Althie
Pontalba. It is a golden evening; the sky, an hour ago so clear and
blue, is piled with golden clouds, and stretches out into golden rivers,
with golden banks, flowing calmly down into a golden sea. The purple
slates on the church-steeple, the red tiles on the house-tops, the
gardens with their evergreens and jonquils and little blue violets
shrinking out of the frosty air, are wrapped in a golden mist. The light
streams through the windows in rays of pure gold, and trickles down the
walls in little golden currents. It is an enchanting little villa. The
steep gables covered with variegated slate, the thin fluted columns of
the verandas, the diminutive marble steps, the broad bow-windows with
their transparent plate-glass, look more like a fairy picture than a
reality. The trim shrubbery, the airy little statues, and even the white
palings, so frail and fanciful in their construction, are charmingly