Many-toned were the exclamations of admiration at this declaration. "I have reconnoitred the position narrowly these few days," continued Count Dupont, "and I am now morally certain that that vagabond, Théophile Mardonnet, would give his ears to be out of the mess. He did not reckon on a fight, he has not the nerve for that; nor, do I believe, has he a past that can bear inspection, and inspected it shall be; if any one will take up my wager, I will lay one, that by to-morrow night's coach to Chartres I expedite Monsieur Théophile, ticketing him, fragile,' and bear the news of his sudden departure to his friend the sub-prefect without the said worthy having so much as guessed at what was going on." 6 Well, if you could manage that—” opined M. de Clavreuil. "That would be first-rate," interposed the Dowager. "By this time to-morrow it shall be settled," said, gaily, Henri Dupont, "and now I'll go and get rid of all this dust." "One moment, Henri," objected Olivier as his friend jumped up from his seat, "you have not asked my opinion; and-" he hesitated, and bending forwards on his rocking-chair, so that no one saw his face, "and," he continued, "I'm sick of the whole thing, and don't mean to be a deputy at all!" He uttered the last phrase loudly and with great volubility, and, leaving his seat, walked towards a window, turning his back to everybody in the room. It is difficult, in such cases, to describe the impression produced, and which embodies itself differently in each individual; but, above the various ejaculations which greeted M. de Beauvoisin's sudden proclamation, the one word "Olivier!" pronounced sternly by his mother, was distinctly audible. For the first time it, apparently, failed in its effect. "He is only jesting," observed Henri Dupont; "how can you seem to take him in earnest? But it is an unseasonable joke,” he added, more seriously, and going up to where Olivier stood. "You must remember, my dear fellow, that you no longer stand alone here now; you have set in motion the forces of the opposition in the entire Department, and all this is long past a joke.” Olivier turned suddenly round, and was, this time, evidently at bay. "I am not joking," he exclaimed; "but I am tired of being made a puppet of, and I will be so no longer. I hate parties and politics, and will have nothing more to do with them. I have been dragged into all this-as into everything else—against my will." "Olivier !" burst forth in Claire's pure tones, in strong reproachfulness. "I will not be bullied or cajoled," he continued. "I will not be treated like a cypher in my own house. I will have my own way like other men, and do that which pleases me. I have my own tastes and my own pleasures; and politics have nothing to do with them. I tell you I am sick to death of the whole thing, and it is I who retire from the contest. I have written to the prefect to tell him so; and, as I defy you to make a deputy of me without my consent, I wash my hands of the whole business. I will hear no more of it!" and, with these words, he overstepped the threshold of the window and was gone. Consternation was many-tongued upon this extraordinary behaviour of Olivier's. The Dowager said he must be insane; M. de Clavreuil was for strong measures, and forcing him to do his duty; Henri Dupont recommended a few hours' patience; and Claire, concentrating her indignation into one sentence, "These," said she, "are the fruits of the education you have given him ;" and, looking with haughty contempt at the Dowager, she left the room. Late in the day, Count Dupont caught sight of Olivier in a passage leading to his own apartment. One glance sufficed to show him signs of dejection in M. de Beauvoisin, which ill contrasted with the strange fierceness of manner he had so recently affected. He darted forwards, and, before his presence was perceived, he was standing close to his friend, and held one of the latter's hands in his own. "Olivier," he said, with affectionate earnestness, (for the countenance he looked upon gave him no desire to do aught save try to soothe), "my dear, good, old fellow, we are far too firm friends for any discussion whatever to sever us. Is it possible you can be serious in what you said this morning?" Olivier's face was terribly haggard and drawn. He answered nothing, but stared at Henri Dupont as though looking through and beyond him. 66 My dear Olivier," continued Henri, "what has happened?" Nothing at all," replied Olivier, eagerly. "Happened? why, what should happen?" "But why, then, this sudden retreat?" urged Count Dupont; "think it well over, my dear Olivier." "I have thought it well over," was the answer, but this time gently made, though in a tone and with an expression that struck dismay into the hearer. "And must it be?" "It must be." "Olivier," hazarded Dupont, "Claire—your wife-" (he felt the hand he held in his quiver) 66 you will lose-is there no means of—" "None; I cannot help myself, Henri," he added, in utter helplessness; and then, as though suddenly remembering a part he had forgotten to play,—“it is unbearable!" he exclaimed, in a loud voice, and with a flurried manner; "it is unbearable that one can't have one's own way! No friendship can stand such tyranny!" and, breaking violently from Henri Dupont, he rushed into his own room. The letter M. de Beauvoisin had received on the 5th of July, contained these words : "IF the official candidate is not elected, things that occurred seven years ago will be brought to light, and utter ruin ensue. There are people here who have proofs. If you can pass a few hours here to-morrow, I may be able to help you; if not, I see no safety anywhere. Rely on my friendship, "Asp." UNINTENTIONAL LYING. THE 'HE reply of the old Scotchman to the Psalmist's exclamation, "I have said in my haste that all men were liars," which Dean Ramsay records, might be indefinitely extended. "Deed, Dauvit, my man, if ye had lived in this pairish, ye might have said it at your leisure," is true of all parishes. The amount of unintentional lying which every man, who can speak at all, utters every day, is precisely one of those social wonders which are too near us to be observed. Not mis-statements of fact through ignorance, which cannot properly be called lying, but the unintentional and harmless exaggeration which it has become the habit of society to use. When a Chinaman proclaims his emperor to be the elder brother of the moon, or insists that his house, his wife, his children, and all that is his belong to you, he does not intentionally lie. The custom of his country dictates such expressions as the equivalent of certain meanings, and it is those meanings only which he desires to convey to you. Among ourselves, the most obvious instances of this habit lie in the signatures of letters, in which a man professes himself to be the obedient servant of another man whom he never saw, and whom he, perhaps, cordially despises. Indeed, it is to be remarked that when people begin to quarrel these expressions of exaggerated courtesy are heightened a hundred-fold. Moll and Sal have a slight difference. Presently, Moll becomes Mary, with a look of reproach in Sal's face. Then Sal becomes Mrs. Somebody; and, finally, the two women hurl “Madam” at each other, and endeavour to tear out each other's back-hair. When Tom and Harry begin to address each other in letters as "Sir," it means that they are already in private consultation with a solicitor. But the most common unintentional lying which exists in every parish, is the careless exaggeration of facts which are somewhat loosely fixed in the memory. There are some men who have won a brilliant reputation in society by experimenting on these vague limits. They are the story-tellers, who, with the main point of an occurrence in their mind, can crowd into the picture chance lights and trifling points which make the central group tell. Who would quarrel with such delightful persons over the little bit of romance which they introduce to heighten the effect of their tale? Facts are very good in their way, but we can always get plenty of them; and, at the best, they are not very enticing fare. What we want in society is a skilful cook who, by the exercise of a little discreet dressing, will serve up the plain elements of food in a manner to excite our surprise and pleasure. He must not over-do it. There are some bunglers who deluge the meal with a coarse sauce of their own, and the sauce is all that we see. When such men tell a story at a dinnertable, you will see the groundlings laugh, but the judicious will elevate their eyebrows; and, in the drawing-room, ask how S. or Z. could be such a fool as to tell such a ―. Mr. Thackeray used to say that he did not tell a fib often, but, when he did, he lied boldly and well. What we cannot tolerate is the unnecessary lying of a man who tries to make people smile by an unmistakable "crammer." This is vulgar work. The true story-teller does not abuse that latitude which everybody is inclined to give him. He plays about his subject with an artistic grace and ease, never permitting himself to go so far from it as to incur a charge of coarse invention. We allow him to change locality, dialect, and time. If he has told a story at one time about his uncle, we forgive him if he fathers it upon some notorious parliamentary man, who happens to be the subject of conversation. Only, he must not do so to the same people who heard him laugh at his uncle. Caution is necessary to the wittiest of story-tellers. As a rule, the stories which have any great fun in them, apart from the incidental peculiarities conferred upon them by the invention and wit-of the story-teller, are very few, and seldom met with. Perhaps we know the facts of the funny anecdote which sets all the table in a roar; these facts are of the dullest and most common-place kind. | Per se, they could not make anyone laugh. Are we not indebted, then, to the skilful manipulator who transforms this worthless material into a luminous jewel of wit or fancy? The man is not a liar; he does not intend to deceive. It is merely his good-nature and his intellectual quickness which prompt him to amuse you by his playful exaggerations. He does not encroach upon your pocket like a begging-letter impostor, nor raise a feud between you and your friends like a mischiefmaker, nor seek to serve any purpose of his own like the ordinary liar. He beautifies what he touches, for your delight. You might as well quarrel with the sun for altering the hue of the willows by a river-side; or impeach the veracity of the moon because, to make a beautiful picture, she hides away the squalor of a great town, and touches tenderly and lightly upon points which otherwise you would never have seen. If social conversation were to be limited to a bare statement of facts, what a lively pleasure we should have in each other's society! The most entertaining man among us would be the editor of the last new "Dictionary of Universal Reference;" and the favourite study of young ladies would be that charming volume "Things not generally considered to be worth the knowing." There is another kind of unintentional lying which is very common. Men-and more especially women-who have neither the wit nor the good-nature to please people by skilfully manipulating facts, permit to themselves a certain slovenly inaccuracy of statement in order to avoid the trouble of remembering. "You have visited Paris, I suppose?" you ask. 66 Oh, yes; a dozen times." They do not actually intend you to believe that they have been to Paris twelve times, when perhaps they have not crossed the Channel above six or seven times. Accuracy of statement costs the trouble of remembering; and when the thing is of little moment they do not care to incur that trouble. Now, as it happens, it was Miss Kellogg whom the lady saw in the part. But then she had seen Patti, and many another singer besides, play Maria in former years, and she does not concern herself to remember whether it was really this last season that she is thinking of. "Our two little girls are quite of an age," says one lady to another: " my Nelly was ten on her last birthday.” "Yes," says the other lady, carelessly, though her girl is nearly twelve; "and what a darling child she is?" "Pleasant spot!" says an artist to his visitor. "Yes, I should think so; I painted the whole of this picture there out of doors." The fact is that a recurrence of wet days compelled him to make a succession of tentative sketches out of doors, while three-fourths of the real labour of the picture was executed inside. Is he going to stop half-an-hour to explain to a non-artistic person how that process is possible, and how the picture was got up? No harm is done, in the estimation of the persons addicted to this habit, by such rough, loose statements. Men who would not utter an intentional falsehood to prevent their ears being chopped off, let statements notoriously untrue escape them by the dozen, simply out of laziness and habit; they do not stop in the middle of a conversation to see that their hearer has not misapprehended what they have been saying. "Well, perhaps he did think I said seventy instead of seventeen, when talking of the birds killed by the punt-gun. But what's the odds? He has forgotten all about it." There is yet another form of unintentional lying which is common. It consists of those exaggerations into which some people are always hurried when they endeavour to impress you forcibly with the truth or magnitude, or force of what they describe. Women are particularly addicted to this habit; perhaps because they find the men around them so dull and unimpressionable that a little additional vigour and colour must be employed in awakening their attention. "I know there are rats in the house," exclaims mamma, vehemently, "for the servants are continually telling me of them, day after day. The place is simply infested with rats, and we shall have them running over the "You saw Patti in the Figlia del Reggimento drawing-room floor presently." this last season?" you ask. The foundation for this prophetic cry is merely that one rat has been seen twice by the kitchen-maid. But what would the florid person with grey whiskers, who sits at the head of the breakfast table care or do in the matter if his wife limited herself to the plain facts of the case? "Go to Mrs. Hillyard's!" she says, at another time; "I actually have not an article I can put on." And yet go to Mrs. Hillyard's she does, and certainly not in that Paradisaical condition her words might lead a literal-minded person to expect. After all, this form of exaggeration comes into the same category as the Chinese hyperbole which we formerly mentioned. Nothing more is meant by the words than a certain pre-arranged equivalent. As we get acquainted with people, we discover how much they are addicted to exaggeration-what percentage we must take off everything they say. There are some men (there never was a woman of the kind) who exercise an extraordinary circumspection over their talk, and who make every expression, as near as they can, an exact and literal equivalent of the corresponding fact. As a rule, they succeed; but occasionally they are hurried into the sweeping expressions which most of us are in the habit of using. "Bah!" they cry, when no partridges are to be found, "there isn't a bird in the whole blessed county !" We once heard a man of this sort reply to some exaggerations of his wife by saying, in an injured tone, “From morning to night you do nothing but exaggerate." Which was the bigger exaggerator? Indeed, the most careful man cannot prevent himself being drawn into the utterance of these unintentional lies at which society, by common consent, winks. The question is, suppose he could wholly cure himself of the habit, whether it would be worth his while. The chances are that he would worry his life out in trying to conform to a gratuitously unnecessary virtue. "Who knocks, who knocks, my porter?" Now ope to me, I pray ! The wind doth cut me to the bone, The knight uprose in anger: "Perdition fall on mine, If I do ope my doors this night For any beggar's whine!" "A wanderer's curse fall on thee," The beggar wight did cry, "And may those wild words be fulfilled The Knight rose with the morning Full loud he called Garlinda, But answer made she none, And bitter was his mood; He rode as he were wood. "How fare you, noble master? How fare you in your quest?" He mopped, and mowed, and grinned at him, As though it were a jest. "Look up, my noble master, And you will see your child." "O, where! O, where !" the Knight he cried, And wept as he were wild. "Last night I asked for shelter," The little man replied, "Last night I came amidst the storm, But shelter was denied. Last night thou said'st in anger, It is fulfill'd, and thou may'st weep "Who art thou, elfish being? Then on that rock's high summit |