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TO READERS AND CORRESPONDENTS.

THE author of the paper signed

66

"Chiron," will find a note for him

at our Office, 33, Old Bond Street.

Next month we will avail ourselves of the information respecting the Puckeridge hounds and country, received too late for insertion in the present number.

The Editor regrets that the lines on the Duke of Grafton's resignation of his hounds were not calculated for the SPORTING REVIEW.

The communication respecting the H. H. races, and the presentation of a piece of plate to Major Barrett, is too retrospective for publication in a periodical for June. We thank our correspondent, however, not the less for his politeness.

Vols. V., VI., and VII., bound in fancy cloth boards, and lettered, are now ready.

HYDE MARSTON;

OR, RECOLLECTIONS OF A SPORTSMAN'S LIFE.

BY THE EDITOR.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH-LA FRATERNITE D'ARGUS.

"These shall the fury passions tear,
The vultures of the mind;
Disdainful Anger, pallid Fear,

And Shame that skulks behind :-
Or pining Love shall waste their youth;
Or Jealousy, with rankling tooth,
That inly gnaws the secret heart;

And Envy wan, and faded Care,

Grim-visaged, comfortless Despair,

And Sorrow's piercing dart."-GRAY.

ABOUT a league from Paris, on the road to Versailles, there stood― and probably continues to stand--a small château, as French as white stucco, green doors, and jalousies, and an avenue of poplars as straight as a ramrod, flanked with wooden fauns and dryades, could make it. It was a place of no pretension, but there was an air of comfort and condition about it rarely exhibited by that desolate refuge, that stone and mortar omnibus-the hackney hotel garni. Still, the style of company by which it was frequented was by no means in keeping with the humble abode at which they were wont to assemble. At its wicket were to be seen dashing equipages and curvetting coursers depositing their aristocratic-looking burthens, while the stores of choice fruits, flowers, and viands, that constituted its daily supply, bespoke tastes and appliances befitting a palace. The neighbours, however, knew that its occupants were English, and that was sufficient to reconcile them to any exhibition of caprice on the part of a people whose wealth they were disposed to admit gave carte blanche to their humour. Gay forms, brilliant costumes, rich appointments, and strains of melody, were the tokens whereby it was known to the many :-how was it revealed to the few?

London is said to be the rallying-point of the broken in fortune; Paris is the rendezvous for the desperate. In the character of the French native we have an interpretation of the causes that people the Morgue with its ghastly company, and choke the current of the Seine with the clay that has "put off immortality." In the metropolis of England is to be seen-alas! too often--the misery that lacks the

courage to beg; in that of France, there is as much, perhaps more, actual wretchedness, but you meet it not abroad. In her streets, poverty stalks in unshrinking hardihood. Hunger there wears a bold, wild eye; the homeless, houseless wanderer, the sneer that seems to set fortune at defiance. He is not one of those who are content to perish piecemeal reckless and gladiator-like, he gives his breast to fate-if he succeed, it is well; if he fail, he dies, and leaves no mark.

nence.

Among the honourable professors of the occult art of "living by one's wits," I have said the Baron von Hoffman attained high emiDesperation had sown both invention and audacity within his brain. In his career, as wave follows wave, had one scheme succeeded another more or less successful in its fulfilment. By one of the chances of life he had been placed, for a few moments, in the company of Caroline G., shortly after she had become an inmate of my Surrey retreat. Thither he tracked her steps, analysed the demeanour of its haughty mistress, and conceived and effected his scoundrel purpose. Caroline was not to be classed with those women who "have no characters at all." The crooked adventurer read truly in her lofty but compressed brow, in her proud lip and reckless eye, a world of latent daring. He fixed upon her as the fitting tool to carve out a speedy fortune. He saw her shaped to become the nucleus of a party, the conductress of wily intrigues, one around whom victims and associates would alike range themselves in emulation; whose beauty waited on her wit, and whose eagerness of attainment, infirmity of purpose would never baffle: in short, une maitresse femme, worthy the court of Louis XV. By what means he invoked "the spirits that tend on mortal thought" to unsex her sufficiently to meet his views, may be rather surmised than explained. While yet flushed with the guerdon of guilt, he placed her in Paris, where circumstance, and his arts, soon filed her mind to the desired temper.

From that period stole into existence a strange association of which few, even of its principal members, were aware of the ultimate scope. Gradually augmenting in number, its " brothers" exchanged signs of recognition, of intelligence, or warning, within the precincts of the splendid hotels of the Parisian capital. None are ignorant of the second-hand mania of our gallic neighbours, borrowed from Germany, for mystic brotherhoods. In Paris are always to be found scores of half-lunatics, half or whole sceptics, ready to combine for any conceivable or inconceivable project; for plunder or politics; for lust or learning; for merriment or murder. This society, this fraternité d'Argus, multiplied and waxed wealthy. Three times in the week, at an abode of almost princely adornment, met, for pleasure or consultation, its ostensible chiefs. There, counts, marquises,

chevaliers, rich speculators of all kinds, men of mark and likelihood, gathered around the fairest dame in Paris-its mistress. None bore more lightly than Caroline the burthen of dark secrets; nothing was more recherché than her dress and equipage, nothing so exquisite as her petits soupers. Who, save her accomplices, were to detect the uneasy scrutiny that often accompanied her courteous reception of a stranger, or the depth of terrible meaning in the eyes that would follow his step ere he disappeared into some inner chamber. Or if men won and lost fortunes within her walls, if wealthy foreigners were seen for a brief week or two to pay adoration at her shrine, and then altogether decline from Parisian circles, none traced their ruin and despair to the sumptuous hotel of the Place Vendôme, nor as the result of the hidden orgies of the guests of a certain maisonnette, hard by the ancient woods of Satary. Meanwhile strange stories circulated through the drawingrooms of the light-hearted metropolis, descended thence, a theme of breathless commentary to grisettes and valets, and were as suddenly hushed and forgotten. The substance of one of these was as follows: a rich Sicilian, attended by several domestics, had appeared at a fete given by Caroline, on the first night of his arrival in Paris; subsequently he had supped with Von Hoffman and others, at a country chateau, and they had seen him no more. On the succeeding day it appeared that he had dismissed his train, intimating he had no present need of their services, as he should immediately proceed incognito to England, whence he would dictate further instructions. One servant was not to leave Paris till he heard from him. This person remained for months in vain expectation. At last, his funds totally exhausted, and in mortal uneasiness, he made fruitless inquiries as to the fact of his master's embarkation, and, finally, applied to the police. That efficient body had, at one time, obtained a clue to the mystery, but it was either lost or dropped; and while inquiry was still afoot, a communication from the Sicilian himself quieted rumour. It was dated from an inn on the shores of a Westmoreland lake, and contained an enclosure to his homme d'affaires, in Palermo, which his servant was requested to deliver in person. This was an instrument to empower him to raise a considerable sum, to be transmitted to a certain house in Paris for his use. An Amiens banker, commissioned by him, remitted his servant a cheque payable in Paris, sufficient for the exigencies of his journey.

Not long after the first establishment of Caroline in France, she attended the so-called races at the Bois de Boulogne. At that period, this course des chevaux was an anomaly in Parisian life; and the solid bergeres of a duchess in the old quartier St. Germains, might as well

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