only true love of the unfortunate creature's life.

Des

But as we reach the end of this mystical Calvary we are irresistibly reminded of two other lovers whose very similar story was told us long ago in a far simpler fashion. Grieux joins the company of archers who are escorting to Havre de Gráce the cart where the girls who have been sentenced to transportation sit huddled together on a few armfuls of straw; and among them he recognizes his dear mistress of bygone days. But in what a condition! "Her linen was torn and soiled, her once delicate hands were roughened by exposure. The whole charming personality which had once commanded the worship of the world was there, but reduced to an unspeakable state of dejection and demoralization." But when he had sworn to her that he would never leave her, that he would follow her and make her fate his own, "the poor child burst out into such a passion of love and grief that I almost feared for her life." They go to America, and, "insensibly through an intercourse ever calm and serious, they learn to appreciate the beauty of a virtuous love." This was how they said things in France in those old days when literature consisted in the simple expression of clear ideas. Since then romanticism has been with us and sanctified the coutesan. It then emigrated to Russia, became imbued with mysticism and dissolved in pity, and fortified itself by theories on the excellence of suffering and the virtue of expiation. It required all this infinite elaboration to produce a character like Maslova.

Can it be said, then, that Tolstoï, great artist though he be, has actually won the extraordinary wager which he once undertook to lay? Has he not rather confessed by implication that it cannot be won, since he has recoiled from the logical dénouement of his

story, which would have been the mar riage of Nekhludov and Maslova? The truth is, that sins differ both in character and degree. There are those which can be expiated by repentance, though not effaced from the memory. On the other hand, there are stains so deep and durable, involving so complete a vitiation of the entire being, that all the waters of the sea would not wash them out. Of this latter kind was the defilement of Maslova. Jesus pardoned the Magdalene; but Jesus was God, and we are but men, and poor men at that. Jesus also invited the Magdalene to follow Him, which is by no means the same thing as restoring her to a place in an organized society. No society can exist without the frame-work that holds it up; and this is what Nekhludov, absorbed as he is in his humanitarian dreams, too readily forgets. Those whose chains he so rashly proposes to break understand the truth dimly, though they understand it better than he, and they warn him beforehand that he will fail.

"I am a prostitute," Maslova says to him, "and you are a prince," thus reminding him that there will always be a gulf between them, let him do what he will. The peasants among whom he proposes to divide his lands all have an impression that in thus acting he is merely doing his duty in the station to which he has been called. More selfishly, but not altogether unreasonably, speaks the governor of the prison:"You really must not go nosing about everywhere in this way! It is not, if you'll excuse my saying so,' your business!" And when we hear another official observe, "I have duties to perform which have been entrusted to me on definite conditions, and I must justify the confidence reposed in me," we are constrained to admit that even though an official, he speaks the language of a

man of honor. 1 In his pursuit of an

ideal of absolute justice, Nekhludov overlooks one of the main conditions of the problem: namely, that he himself is but one part in a whole, and that he cannot act independently of the universal order. Born at a certain epoch in the development of humanity, he has obligations to those who came before him, and whose cumulative efforts have made him what he is. They cannot, of course, relieve him of the higher obligation to soften the lot of the disinherited, and to diminish, as far as in him lies, the sum of human suffering; but in assuring him his place in the world they have also given him a mission which he cannot disallow. Tolstof himself has somewhere told the story of a certain episode in his own life where his logic failed and left him in the lurch. Passing through one of the gates of Moscow, he saw a grenadier come down from the Kremlin, and brutally drive away a beggar seated under the arch:

"I waylaid the soldier, and asked him if he knew how to read.

"Of course I do. Why?'

"Did you ever read the Gospels?' "I have.'

"Did you ever read the passage about feeding the hungry?

The Revue des Deux Mondes.

"I then quoted the text, with which he seemed familiar, and he also seemed troubled and at a loss for a reply. At last, however, a gleam of intelligence came into his eyes, and he turned upon me, saying:

"Did you ever read the military regulations?'

"I had to acknowledge that I had never done so.

""Then don't say another word,' said the grenadier; and he walked away, shaking his head violently."

It is the same with us. We read the Bible, but we neglect to complete our information by reading the military regulations. Until the day when their authority is abolished, certain elementary propositions will remain unanswerable. The judge who goes forth to breathe the balmy air of a fine spring morning, instead of fulfilling his duty by administering the law, the warden who opens the prison doors on the pretext that he cannot deprive a human creature of its freedom, and, in fine, whoever, soldier or citizen, deserts his post, whether in the army or in life, is a defaulter-and no fine words can alter the fact.

René Doumic.

"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick." If this was true for those who endured the hardships of the siege of Ladysmith, it was no less true for those who, from outside, watched with alternations of renewed assurance and bitter disappointment the repeated attempts of the gallant force under Sir Redvers Buller to penetrate the screen of invisible foes which divided them from their goal. At Pietermaritzburg

the tension was extreme. Ladysmith is no further from Maritzburg than Southampton from London, and the ties that bind them together are much closer; for, in so small a community, everybody knows something about everybody else. A large portion, possibly one-third, of the manhood of Natal was at the front, in the Natal Volunteers or in the Colonial Irregular Corps. Many of these were in Lady

smith, the rest with the relieving force. There was hardly a family in the Colony which had not the direct interest of the life or liberty of a son, a brother, or a father at stake.

Maritzburg had received a large accession to the number of its inhabitants. Refugees, who had been driven from their homes in the northern part of the Colony, had found a haven there. A number of ladies-officers' wives who had been living with their husbands at Ladysmith before the war-had been compelled to leave, almost at an hour's notice, just before the investment began. Many of them had remained at Maritzburg, hoping to rejoin their husbands after a brief interval. The brief interval grew into weeks and months, and still relief seemed so close at hand that it was not worth while moving. Communication was possible, but very uncertain. Letters were despatched by native runners, and arrived-sometimes. When the weather was sunny, and the press of military work not too great, a brief message could be sent by the heliograph. Such communication was sometimes worse than none at all. A curt undated heliogram came to tell a wife that her husband was dangerously ill. She could do nothing; she could not go to him, or send him anything. She did not even know the nature of his illness. She could only wait till the next gleam of sun should bring more news-better, or the worst. It was torture to be so near and yet so helpless; and they were most wise, as well as most helpful, who gave their time and energies not to brooding over their own sorrows, but to visiting the hospitals, relieving impoverished refugees, or making a comfortable home for convalescents.

The days and the weeks passed. Colenso, Spion Kop, Vaalkranz, each sent its flood-tide of wounded officers and men to fill the hospitals at Mooi River and Maritzburg, and the hospital ships

at Durban. The ambulance wagons were a daily sight, waiting at the station for the arrival of the hospital train, or galloping through the streets with their team of eight mules. The weeks and the months passed, and the question began to be asked: How much longer could Ladysmith hold out? Had they food? Had they ammunition? Would dysentery and enteric leave enough men to man the defences? Sir George White, splendide mendax, allowed none but the most cheerful accounts to reach the outside world, and, though it was impossible not to suspect an intention to discourage the enemy, it was not till after the relief that we knew to what straits they had been reduced. The casualty list had reported a grievous tale of deaths from sickness, but the garrison had carefully and courageously concealed the weakness of the survivors. It is probable that the Boers, good as their information generally was, were deceived on this point. At any rate, no pains were spared to mislead them. After the Boer attack of January 6th on Cæsar's Camp and Waggon Hill an officer of the Imperial Light Horse was sent with a flag of truce to deliver their dead to the Boers: He was a fine, strong man, who showed no signs of the privations of the siege. It SO happened that the Boer officer who met him had known him well at Johannesburg, and naturally they conversed. "How is it," said the Boer, "that you are as fat as a pig? We have been told that you are all starving in Ladysmith." "Starving," said the officer, "why, we are rolling in plenty. This is what most of our men are like," and he called up one of his men who had not yet lost an abnormal degree of corpulence, and exhibited him for the edification of the astonished Transvaaler.

At last the relief came. Kimberley and Paardeberg had prepared the way,

of interest. Dawn had broken as we approached Frere, and, steaming slowly over the improvised timber bridge, we could see dimly the futile tracery of the fallen girders. A little farther on the discredited armored train reposed peacefully in a siding. At Chieveley the station was full of men in dirty khaki or shirt-sleeves, crowding to buy the Maritzburg papers. On the platform lay the shattered remains of the station safe. At Colenso, the terminus for the time being, there was plenty of movement. The Governor, Sir Walter Hely-Hutchinson, had arrived by special train half an hour before, and was breakfasting in a tent in preparation for the ride to Ladysmith. Laden wagons were standing ready for despatch, with bales labelled "Lady White's present-Jerseys." The station buildings had suffered severely from shells, and when the place was reoccupied a dead horse was found in the Parcels Office; but rapid repairs had been effected, and little sign of injury remained. It was otherwise with the bridges. One span of the road bridge had been blown up, and one end of the displaced girder was still supported on the pier, while the other rested in the bed of the river. It had been replaced by a temporary structure of timber, strong enough to carry wagon traffic. The railway bridge, the best part of a mile lower down the river, had been more thoroughly smashed. The piers still stood, but all five girders had completely fallen. Preparations for a temporary bridge on piles were visible, but they had not advanced far. A foot bridge, near the level of the river, was ready for use by the following Thursday.

After crossing the road-bridge, I turned to the right, to follow the line of the railway to Pieters and Nelthrope, in the direction, speaking generally, of Sir Redvers Buller's final advance; and at once I found myself among the low,

bare, stony kopjes, which gave its strength to the Boer position in face of Colenso. Along the crest of each little hill was a trench, with its breastwork of heaped-up earth and stones, the larger stones being often so arranged as to leave loopholes. On the reverse slopes of the hills were countless shelter-huts, half burrowed under the ground, half walled with piled stones, generally roofed with corrugated iron. Some small detachments of British troops were in occupation, and had made themselves comfortable in the deserted huts. The whole face of the country bore the marks of all this scratching and digging and burrowing, as though some prehistoric race of underground dwellers had taken up their abode there. What struck the eye most was not trenches or shelters, but the mess. Every where the hillsides were strewn with empty tins-biscuit tins, beef-tins, tins of every description. Enormous biscuit-tins were the most conspicuous. Their white metal shone and glistened in the sun, and for miles dotted the red-brown rocky slopes with specks of light. For six or eight miles from Colenso the litter was unending. There were bottles, straw, paper, cartridge-wrappings, broken wagons or carts, occasionally dead bullocks and horses, painfully evident to more senses than one. Here and there was a deserted Kaffir hut. A platelayer's cottage, with its tiny garden nestling in a little clump of trees, had, by some happy accident, escaped uninjured in the desolating flood of war. On the other hand, a small farmhouse, a mile from Pieters Station, was a complete wreck. Windows and furniture were smashed, and doors broken open; rotting saddles, locks of doors, fragments of furniture and the inevitable empty tin cans strewed the ground on every side.

Besides the all-pervading litter, there were more definite traces of the fight