ville (whose reputation needs no advocacy of mine, or of any one's, and is honored from one end of France to the other) it only remains to be said that his promised word once given remains as fixed as the stars in their course, and is no more to be turned aside. How, then, would it be possible for me, a child and dependent, to fly in his face, defying his deliberate purpose? On my soul, madam, I should never dare attempt it,—no, not on the longest day of my life! Left to my own resources, poor coward that I am, I foresee that your Highness's gracious design must suffer defeat, and I be deprived of every joy I know. Alas! no hope remains unless my dear mistress herself, out of her charity, and the kindness which she professes for me, shall deign to interpose, and by her sovereign authority bring about the desired change."

Madam Claude asked for nothing better. She jumped up at once, skipping and clapping her hands for joy, and declaring that she must be off without a moment's delay to consult with the queen on ways and means. "Fear nothing, sweetheart," she called back from the threshold, wafting kiss on her finger-tips, "I'll soon win my own way, as you shall see, and my own first Lady-in-Waiting, so help me Heaven and my good motherwit!"

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Certainly if any power on earth could remove mountains, 'twas that of the august lady to whom Claude now addressed herself. The day was not an hour older when M. de Vieilleville received word that his Majesty desired speech of him, and on hastening to the royal closet found there, impatiently awaiting his arrival, an august trio, composed of the king's Majesty, Queen Catherine, and Madam Claude of France. Hardly giving him time to make his reverence, an interrogation was straightway opened on the subject of M. de Saulx, with full particulars requested of the hopes or expectations which had been held out to that gentleman.

Now, at court, as elsewhere, honesty

is often found to be the best policy, as well as an excellent safeguard against surprise in ambush. Such was the maxim of this worthy gentleman, at all events, and one from which he saw no cause for deviating on the present occasion. Without beating about the bush he made answer that, subject to the royal will, he had ventured to guarantee his young friend the post of lieutenant-governor under his own command at Metz, besides the promise of a company (having now served his three years), and promotion to the rank and emoluments of a Gentleman of the Chamber.

"So far, so good," quoth the king, adding that the necessary papers should be forthcoming. "But tell me, Vieilleville," he pursued, "has not this fortunate young gentleman been permitted to cherish other hopes more desirable still, and more precious than any you have yet mentioned?"

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Now, indeed, the drift of the king's remarks could no longer be mistaken. M. de Vieilleville, however, was solved on making a bold stand, and did not deny (since his Majesty was good enough to inquire), that a matrimonial engagement of long standing subsisted between the said Comte de Saulx and his second daughter, Philomèle, which had not yet received public announcement, but was none the less binding on both parties. And thereupon he launched out into an eulogy of his proposed son-in-law, whose birth, possessions, valor, good health, good looks, and many other excellent qualities he warmly extolled, winding up by declaring that there was no one to whom he could confide his daughter with greater confidence.

But at this point Queen Catherine, who had hitherto remained silent, broke in. "I see plainly," she cried, "that the Sire de Vieilleville has quite forgotten a certain letter which he wrote to me some four years ago, when first his daughter was committed to my charge. That letter I have still, and find in it, over his proper signature, a complete surrender of his own parental rights in the said young

dress her again, or even approach the frontiers of Lorraine so long as she made that country her residence.

Who has not pitied the fate which overtakes a gallant cavalier when, riding at full tilt, he is brought up by a sudden check and rolls sprawling in the dust? Nothing for it, in such plight, but to pick himself up as best he may, and limping off, sore and mortified, seek out some retired spot in which to nurse his wounds. Farewell to the dear delights of lists and tenniscourt; farewell to triumphs in the ballroom, at masquerades, and festivities. No more loitering for him in royal ante-chambers; no more joyous fanfare of the royal chase, or junketings with Catherine's merry maids beneath the greenwood tree and adown silvery river reaches!

"This poor count," declares the veracious historian, "at this news, was greatly taken aback." We can well believe it, and feel naught but sympathy at learning that the unhappy gentleman passed a restless night, belaboring his pillow and cursing the hour that gave him birth. Many a one under like provocation, has done the same before and since. But daylight brought cooler blood, and a wise resolution to get away so soon as possible from the scene of his disaster. Carnival, indeed, was drawing near, and M. de Saulx had little mind to run the gauntlet of unseasonable witticisms. He made haste, then, to bolt the king's bribe, and dispose of his new acquisitions for what they would bring; conscious of no other inconvenience, if we are to believe this naïve recital, than was natural on the depreciation of a forced sale. The point of honor, it is evident, varies to suit different times and customs, whereas dear human nature remains always the same. No one need mistake the angry would-be cynical declaration (confided doubtless to all who would listen) that for his part M. de Saulx deemed himself well escaped, and no such loser, either, when he came to reckon up his profits against the trifle forfeited. Just Heavens! as if there was but one

woman on earth, or he the man to break his heart over such light weight. "Perish the whole tribe," he anathematizes, low but deep, "from our fine lady of Italy, with her smooth-tongued cajoleries, down to this pretty puppet that jumps so nimbly at her bidding!"

And now, for the last time, behold the rejected suitor, his back finally turned on the perfidious world of courts, wending his moody way into Provence, where lie the paternal estates. Leave has been asked and obtained of the king's Majesty, not forgetting most humble grateful thanks, and dutiful respects as well paid to M. de Vieilleville.. In both pockets gold pieces jingle an accompaniment to the prancing of a high-mettled steed, the parting gift of the said seigneur, though not in this instance named after its donor as was customary. But with every allowance made the society of a jilted lover is best to be avoided. It may not prove of the most enlivening on the present occasion, or likely to beguile a lonely road, despite the softening influence of April weather, budding thickets, and the song of cuckoo, lark, and nightingale, which have come to celebrate the triumph of love and spring in the land.

No sooner had M. de Saulx disappeared over the brow of the hill than the betrothals of Mademoiselle de Vieilleville and M. le Grand-Senechal's eldest son were solemnized in the queen's apartment and under her special patronage. King and queen graced the ceremony, assisted by their daughters, the most high, virtuous and excellent Infants, the Ladies Elizabeth, Claude, and Marguerite of France; together with other great princes, princesses, and noble lords and ladies, not forgetting, it is to be hoped, the tip-toeing bevy of queen's maids.

Still more splendid, if less unique, was the marriage which took place a few days later at Paris, following on that of the Demoiselle de Nemours, and making use of the same sumptuous paraphernalia. His Majesty, we are informed, singled out fair Vieille

Loyal Servitor spares us no jot of his eloquence when describing these honors and the attendant festivities. “Admirable above all," he writes, "was the spectacle of the ball at night, with its parade of jewels, laces, broidery, and priceless stuffs, both of gold and silver. Truly our eyes fairly winked at the sight, and we were all but blinded by this dazzling display, particularly after supper, when torches were alight in the great hall. I'll warrant thee, those fabulous goddesses and nymphs of legendary times, celebrated by our poets, would scarce dare show their faces in such an assembly, so greatly would their lustre tarnish by comparison, not only in actual beauty, but because of the fine apparel wherewith our ladies know so well how to embellish and set off their charms."

Still less could shy young Philomèle hope to dazzle or eclipse in that bright galaxy. Her place, rather, was among the timorous nymphs and sylphid shapes, half of earth, half air, that fly the garish light, mirroring their beauty in dim woodland pools, or dancing by twos and threes, as one sees them in Corot's pictures, along the margin of silvery streams ere morning mists are lifted.

After all, now our story is done, and proud Lorraine left master of the field, does not a doubt intrude that possibly his triumph may prove less enduring than he deems it? And who shall certify that the wrongs of injured Provençe are to pass quite unavenged? Far from M. de Duilly, it is true, was any suspicion of such failure, as he led his bride through the mazes of a Bransles du Haut Barrois, her slender right hand close clasped in his own, to hold and direct so long as life lasts. But not to his iron grasp is

From Belgravia.

THE ANCIENT WAY: A TRIVIAL TOPIC. "Monumentum ære perennius."

This is a very old country, and without knowing or heeding it we are all of us more or less in bondage to the past. Our lives are shaped by what is left to us, and whether we turn to the right or to the left every day was really determined for us untold years ago. County councils-more imperious than emperors-cannot alter it; even they, like the rest of us, must work with what they have. For if one searches among the monuments of the work of the dim forgotten dead, there comes out the curious result that some of the commonest and more ancient of them are still in use every day for their original purpose. There are, of course, carbonized stumps of the piles of lake dwellings, and by those that have the skill there are flint instruments to be found by the score. But one would not call a pocket-knife, or even the stump of a gate-post, a monument. Stonehenge and its brethren are so old that no one knows anything whatever about them, but they can hardly be older than the oldest thing in the country, and that is a country road. Before men build a temple or a town, it is without all contradiction that they must make a way to it. But that the road should remain as a monument when town and traffic have passed away seems at first sight unlikely. Yet it is so.

Now, ancient monuments are very precious things. There is a society to protect them, and there is usually rather more outcry when its owner proposes to touch one than when a dozen or so Englishmen are shot down

in Africa. To practical people the ancent monument is dear, because it supplies a reason for archæological picnics, and papers afterwards before (more or less) learned societies, and even-if fates and the editor are kindly-for an article in one of the magazines. And these people work themselves up into a genuine fever of admiration for the beauties of their monuments, which colors their own lives and those of others, so that at this moment there are men in England ready to compel a quarter of Egypt to remain desert rather than allow the stone floor of an island temple which they have never seen, and never will see, to be periodically flooded by the waters of the Nile. But there are others who value the ancient monument, not so much for its beauty (of a truth it is far more often unbeautiful than not), but for the scraps and fragments of unwritten history which cling to it. Now, when things are desired, their value is proportionate to their scarceness, and the older history gets the less there is of it, and so the more precious i. ought to be. Let us see, therefore, whether there are any fragments, even ever so small, to be scraped off that very ancient monument, a country road. But, first of all, is it really so very ancient, after all?

When Mr. Pickwick rode up by coach from Ipswich to Bury St. Edmunds, it took him about three hours, for though the mail-coach of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers is supposed to have gone at least ten miles an hour, that did not allow for stoppages and patches of bad road. Although our ancestors would never have confessed it—a mailcoach drive being considered one of the peculiar glories of Britain-after three hours of it passengers were quite ready to stretch their legs, and began to watch the milestones to the next stopping-place. So, as the coach ran along the broad road between what were then promising young trees, but which have now grown up and arched over the way so as to make it dark at nights and ghostly, all except the unfortunate couple who had the hind seat facing the guard, and got the wind down the back

of their necks, looked steadily ahead towards their destination. They passed (though they did not know it) to the left, buried in a wood, a kind of amphitheatre, of which no man knows the maker or the purpose; but our ancestors, having no imagination to spare except for witches, decided that it was a big bull ring, and so named it. Presently the coach came to the lip of a valley, where the road ran down straight in a steep descent for the better part of a mile, a place not to be adventured at a trot with a light heart. And there in front of them, on the other side of the valley, ought to have been the town they were seeking. Only it was not there at all, but away to the right, looking pretty enough among the trees, which have the mysterious property of hiding themselves away in some manner before you get to them, so as to leave nothing but mean houses and squalid fences. Nevertheless, the road went straight and steep down the face of the hill, paying no regard to the town instead of slanting off to it in a gentle slope. So Mr. Pickwick was carried down one hill and through a brook and up to the top of another hill, where there was a green and cross roads and a sharp turn before he could be driven past the ladies' school on which he made that unlucky raid, through narrow, crooked streets and past a couple of big churches, to his destination. And here it may be said that the reviser and compiler of the posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club has in this instance shown less attention to topography and local detail than he is generally credited with, and though the natives do their best to make things fit in right with Mr. Pickwick's adventures, they cannot manage it satisfactorily anyhow.

Concerning that half-forgotten little town, some things have been written, and many more might be, for there is hardly any collection of habitations except the brand new residential suburb, or the miles of mean streets that cluster round factories in the North and elsewhere, that has not a character of its own which is interesting. One would