and a song in German, and they laughed and seemed amused at my antics and capers. Captain Denis walked home with me to our lodgings, and I told him how I liked Sunday the best day of the week-that is, every other Sunday-because I went away quite early, and walked three miles to mother and grandfather at Winchelsea, and saw Agnes.

And who, pray, was Agnes? To-day her name is Agnes Duval, and she sits at her work-table hard by. The lot of my life has been changed by knowing her. To win such a prize in life's lottery is given but to very, very few. What I have done (of any worth) has been done in trying to deserve her. I might have remained, but for her, in my humble native lot, to be neither honest nor happy, but that my good angel yonder succoured me. All I have I owe to her but I pay with all I have, and what creature can do more ?

CHAPTER II

THE HOUSE OF SAVERNE

MADEMOISELLE DE SAVERNE came from Alsace, where her family occupied a much higher rank than that held by the worthy Protestant elder from whom her humble servant is descended. Her mother was a Viomesnil, her father was of a noble Alsatian family, Counts of Barr and Saverne. The old Count de Saverne was alive, and a chamberlain in the court of his Polish Majesty good King Stanislas at Nanci, when his son the Vicomte de Barr, a man already advanced in years, brought home his blooming young bride to that pretty little capital.

The Count de Saverne was a brisk and cheery old gentleman, as his son was gloomy and severe. The count's hotel at Nanci was one of the gayest of the little Court. His Protestantism was by no means austere. He was even known to regret that there was no French convents for noble damsels of the Protestant confession, as there were across the Rhine, where his own two daughters might be bestowed out of the way. Mesdemoiselles de Saverne were ungainly in appearance, fierce and sour in

temper, resembling, in these particulars, their brother Mons. le Baron de Barr.

In his youth, Monsieur de Barr had served not without distinction, being engaged against Messieurs the English at Hastenbeck and Laufeldt, where he had shown both courage and capacity. His Protestantism prevented his promotion in the army. He left it, steadfast in his faith, but soured in his temper. He did not care for whist or music, like his easy old father. His appearance at the count's little suppers was as cheerful as a death's-head at a feast. M. de Barr only frequented these entertainments to give pleasure to his young wife, who pined and was wretched in the solitary family mansion of Saverne, where the vicomte took up his residence when first married.

He was of an awful temper, and subject to storms of passion. Being a very conscientious man, he suffered extremely after one of these ebullitions of rage. Between his alternations of anger and remorse, his life was a sad one; his household trembled before him, and especially the poor little wife whom he had brought out of her quiet country village to be the victim of his rage and repentances. More than once she fled to the old Count of Saverne at Nanci, and the kindly selfish old gentleman used his feeble endeavours to protect his poor little daughter-in-law. Quickly after these quarrels letters would arrive, containing vows of the most abject repentance on the baron's part. These matrimonial campaigns followed a regular course. First rose the outbreak of temper; then the lady's flight ensued to papa-in-law at Nanci; then came letters expressive of grief; then the repentant criminal himself arrived, whose anguish and cries of mea culpa were more insupportable than his outbreaks of rage. After a few years, Madame de Barr lived almost entirely with her father-in-law at Nanci, and was scarcely seen in her husband's gloomy mansion of Saverne.

For some years no child was born of this most unhappy union. Just when poor King Stanislas came by his lamentable death (being burned at his own fire), the old Count de Saverne died, and his son found that he inherited little more than his father's name and title of Saverne, the family estate being greatly impoverished by the late count's extravagant and indolent habits, and much weighed

down by the portions awarded to the Demoiselles de Saverne, the elderly sisters of the present elderly lord.

The town house at Nanci was shut up for a while; and the new lord of Saverne retired to his castle with his sisters and his wife. With his Catholic neighbours the stern Protestant gentleman had little communion; and the society which frequented his dull house chiefly consisted of Protestant clergymen who came from the other side of the Rhine. Along its left bank, which had only become French territory of late years, the French and German languages were spoken indifferently; in the latter language M. de Saverne was called the Herr von Zabern. After his father's death, Herr von Zabern may have melted a little, but he soon became as moody, violent, and ill-conditioned as ever the Herr von Barr had been.

Saverne was a little country town, with the crumbling old Hôtel de Saverne in the centre of the place, and a straggling street stretching on either side. Behind the house were melancholy gardens, squared and clipped after the ancient French fashion, and, beyond the garden wall, some fields and woods, part of the estate of the Saverne family. These fields and woods were fringed by another great forest, which had once been the property of the house of Saverne, but had been purchased from the late easy proprietor by Messeigneurs de Rohan, Princes of [the] Empire, of France, and the Church, Cardinals, and Archbishops of Strasbourg, between whom and their gloomy Protestant neighbour there was no good-will. Not only questions of faith separated them, but questions of chasse. The Count de Saverne, who loved shooting, and beat his meagre woods for game with a couple of lean dogs, and a fowling-piece over his shoulder, sometimes came in sight of the grand hunting-parties of Monseigneur the Cardinal, who went to the chase like a prince as he was, with piqueurs and horn-blowers, whole packs of dogs, and a troup of gentlemen in his uniform. Not seldom his Eminence's keepers and M. de Saverne's solitary gardechasse had quarrels. Tell your master that I will shoot any red-legs which come upon my land,' M. de Saverne said in one of these controversies as he held up a partridge which he had just brought down; and the keeper knew the moody nobleman would be true to his word.

Two neighbours so ill-disposed towards one another were

:

speedily at law and in the courts at Strasbourg a poor provincial gentleman was likely to meet with scanty justice when opposed to such a powerful enemy as the Prince Archbishop of the province, one of the greatest noblemen of the kingdom. Boundary questions, in a land where there are no hedges, game, forest, and fishery questions-how can I tell, who am no lawyer, what set the gentlemen at loggerheads? In later days I met one M. Georgel, an Abbé who had been a secretary of the Prince Cardinal, and he told me that M. de Saverne was a headlong, violent, ill-conditioned little mauvais coucheur, as they say in France, and ready to quarrel with or without reason.

These quarrels naturally took the Count de Saverne to his advocates and lawyers at Strasbourg, and he would absent himself for days from home, where his poor wife was perhaps not sorry to be rid of him. It chanced, on one of these expeditions to the chief town of his province, that he fell in with a former comrade in his campaigns of Hastenbeck and Laufeldt, an officer of Soubise's regiment, the Baron de la Motte.1 La Motte had been destined to the Church, like many cadets of good family, but, his elder brother dying, he was released from the tonsure and the seminary, and entered the army under good protection. Mesdemoiselles de Saverne remembered this M. de la Motte at Nanci in old days. He bore the worst of characters; he was gambler, intriguer, duellist, profligate. I suspect that most gentlemen's reputations came off ill under the tongues of these old ladies, and have heard of other countries where mesdemoiselles are equally hard to please. Well, have we not all our faults?' I imagine M. de Saverne saying, in a rage. Is there no such thing as calumny? Are we never to repent, if we have been wrong? I know he has led a wild youth. Others may have done as much. But prodigals have been reclaimed ere now, and I for my part will not turn my back on this one.' Ah, I wish he had!' De la Motte said to me myself in later days, 'but it was his fate, his fate!'

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One day, then, the Count de Saverne returns home from Strasbourg with his new friend; presents the Baron de la

1 That unlucky Prince de Rohan was to suffer by another Delamotte, who, with his ' Valois' of a wife, played such a notorious part in the famous 'diamond necklace' business, but the two worthies were not, I believe, related.-D. D.