TEE SIX OF SPADES. 109 



one, but, like the remorseful villain in the tragedy, I 

 remember to have heard a clock strike in my infancy 

 I am overcome I burst into tears and become a 

 virtuous and exemplary character for ever afterwards. 



Sauntering in the garden one summer's evening with 

 cigar and book, and looking up from the latter, during 

 one of those vacant moods in which the mind, like 

 the jolly young waterman, is absorbed in " thinking 

 about nothing at all," my eyes rested on a rose. It 

 glowed in the splendour of the setting sun with such 

 an intense and burning crimson, the tints of vivid 

 scarlet gleaming amid the purpler petals, as light in 

 jewels or in dark red wine, that I shall never lose 

 my first admiration for Rose d'Aguesseau (Gallica), 

 although, having accomplished the mission intrusted 

 to her by Flora for my restoration, she has never since 

 appeared in my rosarium in such resistless beauty. 

 But I ever think fondly of my first fair love, 

 remembering among a thousand charmers the darling 

 of my early youth, as the heart of man is prone. 

 Bluebeard himself, I do not doubt, was wont some- 

 times to muse with special satisfaction upon the 

 fascination of that young lady on whom he first 

 lavished his affections, and subsequently tried his 

 carving-knife. 



The next evening found me in my accustomed seat, 

 but my cigar was exchanged for a pencil, with which 

 I was making careful notes, and my book was "Rivers 

 on the Rose." This dear little red book, coideur de 

 rose, so earnestly, so gracefully written, in a language 

 which, as Lord Macaulay says of Livy's, is "always 

 fresh, always sweet, always pure " (he might have 



