window of the carriage and shook his hand gaily, and she made a like gesture; but as the train steamed out of the station she sank back against the cushions, her small body shaken with sobs.

Eugene and Elizabeth exchanged letters pretty frequently during the early days of their separation. In reply to the news of her mother's slow convalescence, he of course alluded to the time of her return; but Lizzie felt that the faintly expressed wish for her presence was even stronger than the actual fact. In the silence of her mother's sick-room she had taken a great resolution. One day she sat down and wrote a long letter to her husband, of which the following is an extract :

"Isn't consciously to perpetuate a mistake the greatest mistake of all? So much of the tragedy of human life arises from blind clinging to a false position. Do not let us, with our eyes open, enact any such tragedy. Your marriage with me was the marriage of a mood. It is not your fault that it has changed. I love you too well to let you suffer because you were ignorant of your own nature. In the beginning I wished I could commit a crime for your sake, so that you might be altogether rid of me. That may not be; and I must be content to intrude as little as possible into your existence. Here with my mother I can take up the threads of the old home life, and think sometimes of a dream of love I once had. My mother wants to start a little school again, and I must help her with it. You won't urge me to return, dear, when I tell you that the life of those last six months was a terror which still haunts me. It was a constant striving to be something I was not, and the fear of bringing shame and reproach upon you was always with me. At times I saw something in your eyes when you looked at me that made me tremble. I could not live and have you look at me so again. Thank all your friends for their kindness and patience with me. I feel sure you must in the end approve my decision-perhaps in your heart you do so already."

Eugene wrote a passionate letter of remonstrance in reply to this. All the feelings he had ever had for Elizabeth flickered up for a while at the thought of losing her. He went down to Birmingham to try what a personal interview would do, and she met him at the station dressed in the grey garment and wide black hat which she had latterly discarded in deference to more fashionable taste. It was with remorse that he noticed how, during her short absence from him, the faint colour had come back to her cheek, and her manner had resumed its wonted calm, and she had lost the scared look of the last few months. They took a long walk

together through the suburb of Edgbaston out into the country and Eugene exerted all his eloquence; but he failed to change her decision. The most that she would agree to was that he should pay her an occasional visit here, and that they should write to one another at intervals. In the evening she walked back with him to the station, and after seeing him off, made her way home with a firm step, but with a heart that felt like breaking.

Eugene's step-mother and sisters rejoiced in secret when they found that Elizabeth's visit to her mother was likely to be of unlimited duration; but openly they declared her behaviour shocking, and pitied poor Eugene to their friends for his desertion by his wife. His own visits to Birmingham, at first tolerably frequent, occurred at longer and longer intervals. His practice at the Bar increased rapidly, and he looked to the pastimes of his world for relief from his labours. Elizabeth's own life became absorbing too. Her wish to help her fellow creatures had been more than a passing whim, and it was in doing what she could "to make the lives of others less difficult" that she was able sometimes to forget the trouble in her own. And on the rare occasions when a meeting took place between her and her husband, she, looking into the coarsened lines of his face, saw something there which touched her pity, and made her question whether it had not been happier for him also had he adhered with her to the choice of the better part.

Ο

THE EMPEROR OF ANNAM

AND HIS CAPITAL.

NE fine autumn day, when I was travelling from Hong Kong to Hoihow, I got into conversation with a French gentleman named Deloncle, who was on his way from France to Tonquin. I do not think he was the well-known authority upon colonial questions who bears that name, but he held an official post which the famous interpellateur had, I believe, once also held, that of chef de cabinet at Hué. At any rate, he was a very amiable man, and he invited me to visit him at Hué; he said the best time to see that place was at the tet, or New Year's rejoicings, when I could assist at the Court functions. Tet is a Chinese word, adopted into Annamese ; it is the chich of Peking, the setsu of Japan, and the chêl of Corea, and a very good etymological specimen of how words are borrowed from China, just as the different European nations borrow and mutilate, to suit their own idiom, Latin or Greek words. There are twenty-four fortnightly tet in the year, but the tet par excellence is that of the New Year.

I did not think more about M. Deloncle's invitation until the Chinese New Year was approaching, when it so happened that two British skippers got into a mess at Tourane and Haiphong, and I thought it a desirable thing to personally inquire into their respective difficulties. I therefore wrote to M. Deloncle, who meanwhile, with that rapidity which characterises French official movements, had once more been ordered home; but a colleague of his, the ViceResident at Kwang-nam, an old acquaintance of mine, was good enough to assure me of universal hospitality. As our vessel was starting from the bay a telegram was thrown on board by a steamer arriving from Hong Kong announcing the death of the Duke of Clarence, and I had just time to give orders for the flag to be halfmasted at the consulate.

I found Haiphong very much altered since my first visit in 1888. A malarious mud flat with a few dreary rain-sodden bungalows had become transformed into a neatly laid out town with boulevards, a

good hotel (for those parts), club, "docks" (the French for bonded warehouses), and of course innumerable barbers and cafés. Mr. Jack, a Scotch engineer, was even building a good-sized steamer But for the present I will allow the description of Tonquin to stand over, and will at once transfer myself by the fortnightly French mail steamer to Tourane. Tourane had also improved since my first visit; but it was still far from fin-de-siècle in appearance. One of my fellow-passengers was a Saigon editor named Ternisien, and as I met him strolling pensively along the "bund," he said: "Honteux! honteux!" (pointing to a number of groggy wooden lamp-posts about six feet high, "glazed" with paper). "Méthode d'éclairage dans la capitale d'Annam!" The sandy unpaved "bund," wretched hotel, and general shiftless aspect of everything certainly justified M. Ternisien's remarks if he had any just reason to expect a second Saïgon; but he was essentially a man of civilisation, and had neither seen Tourane as it originally was, nor done any roughing it in the East.

The French have, as a matter of fact, already done a great deal for Tourane. A handsome new residency had been built, there was the nucleus of a public garden in which M. Lemire, the Resident, had placed a number of Brahministic antiquities; the Frenchmen were all very hospitable, and ate well: the European troops had excellent new roomy barracks; and altogether things were not half so bad as the editorial "spleen" seemed to think.

My application for permission to visit the imperial capital of Hué was apparently rather a shock to the residential powers. The local Resident had first to consult the Resident-Superior at Hué, and the Resident-Superior had to obtain the permission of the GovernorGeneral at Hanoi ; it seemed to me strange that so much trouble should be taken concerning the movements of so insignificant a personage as myself; however, no Englishman had, at least within the memory of local men, ever been to Hué before, certainly no British official, least of all one of those much-suspected and dangerous individuals, a British Consul, openly bent on seeing the Emperor himself. But the French colonial authorities are everywhere as reasonable as they are hospitable, as I had already found in New Caledonia and elsewhere, so long as it is frankly explained to them what business a stranger is about; and after a couple of days' telegraphing (for all I know with the consent of the President himself, whose son, M. Carnot, happened to be in the Resident's drawingroom when I was there) I received permission to start in the following words: "Monsieur Parker est libre de visiter Hué quand cela lui

plaira." The preparations for our departure-a Swiss banker's son was my travelling companion-were superintended by the late Baron de Montaignac, the obliging commissioner of customs, who moreover rescued me from the miseries of the local hotel, and kindly offered me quarters in his own hospitable home. At ordinary times it is possible to get to Hué by water with comparative rapidity by way of Thuân-an, but this method of conveyance is severely dependent upon the state of the bar, the chances of crossing which safely are telegraphed to Tourane every day; but the wretched steam-launches which carry out this service are, like nearly all steamers in these French colonies with the exception of the ocean-going boats, managed by and overcrowded with Chinese; moreover they always run at night, so that you see nothing. Though the bar was declared maniable that day, an inspection of the steam launch at once caused me to decide for the land route, and accordingly, Annamese passports were obtained for us, enabling us to secure corvées, or posting coolies, at each station. As in China, dislocation and disorganisation are the rule in Annam at the New Year, and it was only after the local magistrate had been sent for and severely rated by the ViceResident of Kwang-nam that a very inferior lot of bearers for the first stage were hastily procured at exorbitant rates. Persons who may in the future desire to travel overland in Annam are strongly recommended to try the native hammock, in preference to the European arm-chairs slung on poles, as used by us. The hammock looks like a coffin: the passenger lies flat on his back upon a sort of canvas or net-work bed, suspended from a pole, and carried on the shoulders of two men. Of course this hammock can be made as comfortable as is desired with pillows and rugs; but even in winter it is so warm at Tourane that a bamboo rest for the head is all that a reasonable individual need require. Attached to the pole is a roof of glazed wood, like the top of a Noah's Ark, distant only about a foot from the traveller's face. This protects him completely from the sun, whilst there is ample light and air admitted below the "eaves"; apart from which the rapid movement of the coolies itself produces an agreeable current. I tried one of these later on with

success.

Tourane is an outlying place, and not on the high road between Hué and Kwang-nam, which is at all times supplied with tram bearers. Tram is the romanised Annamese pronunciation according to Portuguese ears of the Chinese word chan or tsan, "postingstation"; but it is only a makeshift, and really sounds like the word charm in English. As soon as ever you get on to the royal road,

VOL. CCLXXXII.

NO. 1994.

K