reach of her arrow, the question sud- Jurta hesitated a moment whether denly arose whether, after her work the slender, full-grown one who rode of vengeance was completed, she could first could be the wife of Aulus Pacuescape unseen. Livius's daughter vius; but she knew that Livia would travelled under the escort of many not come on horseback, but mounted armed men, among them, Philippus on the towering beast called, even in had said, three Balearic archers. As those days, by the races of southern soon as Livia fell from her saddle Jurta Numidia, "the ship of the sand sea." meant to fly up the mountain, through So she let the hand holding the poithe cleft ravine. But would she have soned arrow fall, half fearing in her time? If she were seen, it seemed the heart that she might not be able to work of a moment to send a spear or a recognize her rival. huge stone at her back. True, she was agile and knew how to swerve; but the slightest scratch would suffice to mark her as the criminal.

What then?

She made no answer to the question. Why should she? Whatever the result might be, it would make no change in her resolve. The thought vanished as quickly as it had come. She looked no farther than the fateful moment when her missile would whiz down from the bow. This was the fulfilment of her life-task; everything else was a matter of indifference.

The female slaves were followed by ten or twelve men on foot, each leading a loaded pack-animal, and four mounted men with lances and Numidian daggers.

These seemed to close the procession. Jurta strained her eyes in vain; no one else appeared below at the turn of the road; the strange spectacle had ended with the last spearman.

She was just on the point of springing from her motionless posture and reproaching herself for having let the wife of Aulus Pacuvius pass, when the woman she so longed yet dreaded to see came down the road in all the charms of her mingled childhood and womanhood. Her well-fed, stately animal, on whose lofty, humped back she leaned half timidly in her saddle, wore trappings of gold and purple; her dazzling palla, her simple yet costly jewels, especially the diadem that confined her scarlet veil-in short, the whole array left no room for doubt; this

Meanwhile, chance seemed strangely to favor the Numidian's work. Livia, when approaching the path at the third hour after sunrise, curtly declared that it would be impossible for her to pursue this road with all her train the sight of the vanguard so close to the precipice made her giddy, and the noise of the people following excited her. The travelling marshal, Eutropius, was Livia, the daughter of the Liguan experienced Spaniard, vainly ex-rian rival, now the wife of the one hausted all his eloquence in advice and argument. Livia insisted that the whole escort must first pass the precipice and reach the less dangerous slope beyond. Not till then would she too, seated in the saddle of her richly decked animal, whose bridle was held by the trained old camel-driver, Oso, follow the others.

So it was done.

The Numidian waited. A long train of armed men appeared in view-some on foot, others seated on laden camels, most of them on Andalusian horses and mules.

man Jurta worshipped. And now, as though to remove the last shadow of uncertainty, Livia turned with sudden eagerness to the leader, and asked if he had given her letter to her father to the centurion's messenger.

"The mighty Livia Tabi will not wait a moment in vain, oh my mistress," replied Oso.

The crystal clear air bore these words so distinctly to Jurta that she started violently.

But there was yet time to collect her thoughts.

She fitted an arrow carefully to the

Five or six young girls - Livia's fe- string, then, panting for breath, fixed male slaves-followed.

her eyes on the lovely, innocent face.

So this was Aulus Pacuvius's happi

ness.

The thought was unspeakably bitter. But though her heart rose into her throat, something stirred in her convulsed bosom, which seemed to say, "Yes, now you understand how he was won from you! Cruel, cruel, to destroy so many charms, such happy innocence to stiffen the form that is his delight, blind the eyes which have irradiated his whole existence as the sun illumines the earth! Ah, she would be a great criminal, pitiless as the stones on the verge of the desert, if she thus, from her ambush, shed innocent young blood. And yet, it must be done! So down with these attacks of faint-heartedness, away with deluding pictures of others' joy and others' grief —now when naught save her own boundless wretchedness should stand clearly before her mind. Hence with these fancies!

She bent her bow. Her hand trembled, then her grasp became iron.

With steady glance she aimed at her victim's breast.

An instant more, and the fairest woman who ever breathed the air of this valley would receive her deathwound.

Livia, leaning back in her lofty seat, clung with both hands to the cushioned edge, and gazed with dilated, lustreless eyes at the terrible monster. She was utterly incapable of motion; no cry for help escaped her lips, no sigh her panting bosom.

The panther had doubtless decided that it would be wiser to snatch the dainty morsel from the saddle, and not first waste time in killing the huge beast which he could not drag away. So, stealing on one side, he raised his sleek head and fixed his glassy eyes on Livia with a look so unequivocal that the latter started and almost fell off backward.

At first Jurta had feasted her eyes on this exciting scene with passionate delight. She felt rejoiced that her enemy's doom was now sealed independently of what she, the Numidian, had planned. There was no escape. She herself, Jurta, spite of her hatred, might possibly have wavered at the last instant; ay, she felt it, and this vague doubt now became certainty. The sacred horror of murder which thrills even the untutored children of nature to the marrow, overwhelmed her with the force of a revelation. But when death came thus, like a lucky Hark! what was that? Had Livia chance sent by favoring fate, she could discovered her spiteful assailant? A shout for joy! If the bloodthirsty heart-rending shriek rang from the panther rushed upon the deserted, young wife's lips. Her broad-footed wretched girl, and tore her into pieces, beast, which had just moved on so Jurta might rejoice in this happy end, firmly and so proudly, stood as if attained without staining her own heart rooted to the earth, with dilated nos- and weapons; she might fervently trils, trembling in every limb. The thank the grey Spirit of the Storm and driver, as though pursued by a thou-joyfully recognize the wonderful fulsand fiends, had flung down the bridle filment of his promises. Livia, the and darted back along the road by which he had come.

Jurta looked in the opposite direction and found the explanation of this incomprehensible scene.

woman she abhorred, was given to death, and she, Jurta, had not stirred a finger. She was merely a witness of the terrible doom which brought deliverance to her soul.

But this mood, too, lasted only till the moment the panther stole to the camel's side.

A huge panther, which must have wandered hither through one of the little side ravines, crouched in the act of springing, barred the way. He still At the same instant Livia, starting seemed to hesitate. His long, waving up, stretched her arms in terror toward tail lashed his spotted flanks at regular the crouching monster, as if she hoped intervals, and his tongue licked his to strangle the foe with her feeble powerful jaws as if in sport. strength, a transformation took place in

Jurta, a sudden revulsion of feeling, | dazed, was staring at the dead panwhose mystery she herself could not ther. fathom.

"Are you amazed?" she began, grasping the frightened camel's bridle. Was it a sense of shame at the dis-"It is I, Jurta, the dark-skinned Nugraceful self-deception which had whis-midian, of whom you have heard, no pered "You will not kill, if you merely permit the murder?"

"My way leads in a different direc- It was a capital offence thus to hold tion," she said, sighing heavily. "Go up the papal dignity and court to ridito him with you- oh no, daughter cule. To be sure, the full penalty was The milder punishof Livius ! Make him happy, you seldom enforced. happy mortal! Be the light of his ment of the galleys for life was not, life, as I might have become had I one would suppose, to be faced without been something better than poor, hope- wincing; yet faced it was, day after less, sorrowful Jurta. Farewell!" day. Nor can we regret that it was so, remembering the cleverness of some of these jests. What, for example, more "Summus appropriate than the name Fontifex," here given to Sixtus V., the creator of so many of Rome's extraordinary fountains-still the wonder, if not exactly the admiration, of strangers?

Again a shriek escaped the young Ligurian's lips, a shriek even more terrible than the cry she had uttered when she saw the panther's glittering teeth.

Jurta, with an elastic spring, had leaped over the edge of the road into the blue depths below.

It was some time ere a hollow sound, barely loud enough to reach the ear, bore tidings of the fate of her shattered body.

Deep silence followed. The wide Numidian mountain wilderness seemed suddenly to sleep like the ocean when a storm has subsided. Livia heard naught save the wild throbbing of her tortured heart.

From The National Review. ROMAN SOCIETY A CENTURY AGO.

Of Pius VI. the pasquinade was almost prophetic.

The sixth Tarquin, the sixth Nero —
Rome has ever been ruined in the reign of

Again, take the witty lines which Rome read on this immortal statue on the 26th May, 1798, when the city was in hard bondage to France, whose emissaries were sacking palaces and the treasuries of churches, and making monstrous requisitions upon all Romans capable of responding to them:

Marforio: What's the weather, Pasquin?
Pasquin: Thievish weather.

The Roman satirists of the eighteenth century found plenty of scope for their lash among their fellow-citizens; but this ability to laugh in the

genial that it seems to condone some of the graver vices of Rome.

A HUNDRED years ago Rome, of course, knew nothing of a free press. Such an institution would have profited the Romans little; except, perhaps, as a stimulus to that education without which printed paper is of no avail. Still, there was something which then stood towards the bulk of the people much as the light, and not very reverent, Roman newspapers of to-day stand towards our fin de siècle Romans. De-midst of misfortune is an attribute so prived of her pasquinades, the Eternal City would have missed an eternal subject of conversation; the citizens would have lost touch with the events of the day; and the laughing, reckless, pleb. would have lacked the inspiration of many a hearty and echoing guffaw as the words of the latest witticism (ten to one a bitter satire) were read out by some erudite spectacled abbé, in the foreground of the crowd, for the information and entertainment of his neighbors.

One of the most remarkable of these placards was surely that which startled even the Romans in November, 1774. That was a time of interregnum. Poor Clement XIV. had died that terrible death which may, without doubt, be ascribed to the Jesuits. From being a sound and hearty man he had, in the course of a few days, become blotched and swollen. His bones dwindled and softened, and all the tokens were of

poisoning by some mysterious and ab- number. One was naked save for a

Anon the police had their opportunity. A whipping procession passed by on its way to the Campo dei Fiori, and formed a strong counter-attraction | by Silvagni. for the mob. The victims were two in Benedetti was a type of the great