LITMIR.BIZ

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friend; and, drawing the instrument from his pocket, he accompanied his sister, in the most ravishing manner, on a little gold and jewelled harp, of the kind peculiar to his nation.

      All the airs which the Hebrew maid selected were written by composers of her race; it was either a hymn by Rossini, a polacca by Braham, a delicious romance by Sloman, or a melody by Weber, that, thrilling on the strings of the instrument, wakened a harmony on the fibres of the heart; but she sang no other than the songs of her nation.

      "Beautiful one! sing ever, sing always," Codlingsby thought. "I could sit at thy feet as under a green palm-tree, and fancy that Paradise-birds were singing in the boughs."

      Rafael read his thoughts. "We have Saxon blood too in our veins," he said. "You smile! but it is even so. An ancestress of ours made a mesalliance in the reign of your King John. Her name was Rebecca, daughter of Isaac of York, and she married in Spain, whither she had fled to the Court of King Boabdil, Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe; then a widower by the demise of his first lady, Rowena. The match was deemed a cruel insult amongst our people but Wilfred conformed, and was a Rabbi of some note at the synagogue of Cordova. We are descended from him lineally. It is the only blot upon the escutcheon of the Mendozas."

      As they sat talking together, the music finished, and Miriam having retired (though her song and her beauty were still present to the soul of the stranger) at a signal from Mendoza, various messengers from the outer apartments came in to transact business with him.

      First it was Mr. Aminadab, who kissed his foot, and brought papers to sign. "How is the house in Grosvenor Square, Aminadab; and is your son tired of his yacht yet?" Mendoza asked. "That is my twenty-fourth cashier," said Rafael to Codlingsby, when the obsequious clerk went away. "He is fond of display, and all my people may have what money they like."

      Entered presently the Lord Bareacres, on the affair of his mortgage. The Lord Bareacres, strutting into the apartment with a haughty air, shrank back, nevertheless, with surprise on beholding the magnificence around him. "Little Mordecai," said Rafael to a little orange-boy, who came in at the heels of the noble, "take this gentleman out and let him have ten thousand pounds. I can't do more for you, my lord, than this--I'm busy. Good-by!" And Rafael waved his hand to the peer, and fell to smoking his narghilly.

      A man with a square face, cat-like eyes, and a yellow moustache, came next. He had an hour-glass of a waist, and walked uneasily upon his high-heeled boots. "Tell your master that he shall have two millions more, but not another shilling," Rafael said. "That story about the five-and-twenty millions of ready money at Cronstadt is all bosh. They won't believe it in Europe. You understand me, Count Grogomoffski?"

      "But his Imperial Majesty said four millions, and I shall get the knout unless--"

      "Go and speak to Mr. Shadrach, in room Z 94, the fourth court," said Mendoza good-naturedly. "Leave me at peace, Count: don't you see it is Friday, and almost sunset?" The Calmuck envoy retired cringing, and left an odor of musk and candle-grease behind him.

      An orange-man; an emissary from Lola Montes; a dealer in piping bullfinches; and a Cardinal in disguise, with a proposal for a new loan for the Pope, were heard by turns; and each, after a rapid colloquy in his own language, was dismissed by Rafael.

      "The queen must come back from Aranjuez, or that king must be disposed of," Rafael exclaimed, as a yellow-faced amabassador from Spain, General the Duke of Olla Podrida, left him. "Which shall it be, my Codlingsby?" Codlingsby was about laughingly to answer--for indeed he was amazed to find all the affairs of the world represented here, and Holywell Street the centre of Europe--when three knocks of a peculiar nature were heard, and Mendoza starting up, said, "Ha! there are only four men in the world who know that signal." At once, and with a reverence quite distinct from his former nonchalant manner, he advanced towards the new-comer.

      He was an old man--an old man evidently, too, of the Hebrew race--the light of his eyes was unfathomable--about his mouth there played an inscrutable smile. He had a cotton umbrella, and old trousers, and old boots, and an old wig, curling at the top like a rotten old pear.

      He sat down, as if tired, in the first seat at hand, as Rafael made him the lowest reverence.

      "I am tired," says he; "I have come in fifteen hours. I am ill at Neuilly," he added with a grin. "Get me some eau sucree, and tell me the news, Prince de Mendoza. These bread rows; this unpopularity of Guizot; this odious Spanish conspiracy against my darling Montpensier and daughter; this ferocity of Palmerston against Coletti, makes me quite ill. Give me your opinion, my dear duke. But ha! whom have we here?"

      The august individual who had spoken, had used the Hebrew language to address Mendoza, and the Lord Codlingsby might easily have pleaded ignorance of that tongue. But he had been at Cambridge, where all the youth acquire it perfectly.

      "SIRE," said he, "I will not disguise from you that I know the ancient tongue in which you speak. There are probably secrets between Mendoza and your Maj--"

      "Hush!" said Rafael, leading him from the room. "Au revoir, dear Codlingsby. His Majesty is one of US," he whispered at the door; "so is the Pope of Rome; so is . . ."--a whisper concealed the rest.

      "Gracious powers! is it so?" said Codlingsby, musing. He entered into Holywell Street. The sun was sinking.

      "It is time," said he, "to go and fetch Armida to the Olympic."

      PHIL FOGARTY.

      A TALE OF THE FIGHTING ONETY-ONETH.

      BY HARRY ROLLICKER.

      I.

      The gabion was ours. After two hours' fighting we were in possession of the first embrasure, and made ourselves as comfortable as circumstances would admit. Jack Delamere, Tom Delancy, Jerry Blake, the Doctor, and myself, sat down under a pontoon, and our servants laid out a hasty supper on a tumbrel. Though Cambaceres had escaped me so provokingly after I cut him down, his spoils were mine; a cold fowl and a Bologna sausage were found in the Marshal's holsters; and in the haversack of a French private who lay a corpse on the glacis, we found a loaf of bread, his three days' ration. Instead of salt, we had gunpowder; and you may be sure, wherever the Doctor was, a flask of good brandy was behind him in his instrument-case. We sat down and made a soldier's supper. The Doctor pulled a few of the delicious fruit from the lemon-trees growing near (and round which the Carabineers and the 24th Leger had made a desperate rally), and punch was brewed in Jack Delamere's helmet.

      "'Faith, it never had so much wit in it before," said the Doctor, as he ladled out the drink. We all roared with laughing, except the guardsman, who was as savage as a Turk at a christening.

      "Buvez-en," said old Sawbones to our French prisoner; "ca vous fera du bien, mon vieux coq!" and the Colonel, whose wound had been just dressed, eagerly grasped at the proffered cup, and drained it with a health to the donors.

      How strange are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my throat--I was on the ground--my prisoner had escaped, and a gigantic warrior in the uniform of a colonel of the regiment of Artois glaring over me with pointed sword.

      "Rends-toi, coquin!" said he.

      "Allez an Diable!" said I: "a Fogarty never surrenders."

      I thought of my poor mother and my sisters, at the old house in Killaloo--I felt the tip of his blade between my teeth--I breathed a prayer, and shut my eyes--when the tables were turned--the butt-end of Lanty Clancy's musket knocked the sword up and broke the arm that held it.

      "Thonamoundiaoul nabochlish," said the French officer, with a curse in the purest Irish. It was lucky I stopped laughing time enough to bid Lanty hold his hand, for the honest fellow would else have brained my gallant adversary. We were the better friends for our combat,

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