will wait here, among the leafy thickets; till our tutelary Countess, in black domino,' announce the moment, which surely must be near.

The night is of the darkest for the season no Moon; warm, slumbering July, in motionless clouds, drops fatness over the Earth. The very stars from the Zenith see not Monseigneur; see only his and the world's cloud-covering, fringed with twilight in the far North. Midnight, telling itself forth from these shadowy Palace Domes? All the steeples of Versailles, the villages around, with metal tongue, and huge Paris itself dull-droning, answer drowsily, Yes! Sleep rules this Hemisphere of the World. From Arctic to Antarctic, the Life of our Earth lies all, in long swaths, or rows (like those rows of Heyducs and snoring Concierge), successively mown down, from vertical to horizontal, by Sleep! Rather curious to consider.

The flowers are all asleep in Little Trianon, the roses folded-in for the night; but the Rose of Roses still wakes. O wondrous Earth! O doubly wondrous Park of Versailles, with Little and Great Trianon, and a scarce-breathing Monseigneur! Ye Hydraulics of Lenôtre, that also slumber, with stop-cocks, in your deep leaden chambers, babble not of him, when ye arise. Ye odorous balm-shrubs, huge spectral Cedars, thou sacred Boscage of Hornbeam, ye dim Pavilions of the Peerless, whisper not! Moon, lie silent, hidden in thy vacant cave; no star look down: let neither Heaven nor Hell peep through the blanket of the Night, to cry, Hold, Hold! -The Black Domino? Ha! Yes! - With stouter step than might have been expected, Monseigneur is under way; the Black Domino had only to whisper, low and eager: "In the Hornbeam Arbour!" And now, Cardinal, O now! Yes, there hovers the white Celestial; in white robe of linon moucheté,' finer than moonshine; a Juno by her bearing: there, in that bosket! Monseigneur, down on thy knees; never can red breeches be better wasted. Oh, he would kiss the royal shoe-tie, or its shadow if there were one: not words;

means;

only broken gaspings, murmuring prostrations, eloquently speak his meaning. But, ah, behold! Our tutelary Black Domino, in haste, with vehement whisper: "On vient." The white Juno drops a fairest Rose, with these ever-memorable words, "Vous savez ce que cela veut dire, You know what that ❞ vanishes in the thickets, the Black Domino hurrying her with eager whisper of "Vite, vite, Away, away!" for the sound of footsteps (doubtless from Madame, and Madame d'Artois, unwelcome sisters that they are!) is approaching fast. Monseigneur picks-up his Rose; runs as for the King's plate, almost overturns poor Planta, whose laugh assures him that all is safe.1

O Ixion de Rohan, happiest mortal of this world, since the first Ixion, of deathless memory, who nevertheless, in that cloud-embrace, begat strange Centaurs! Thou art Prime Minister of France without peradventure: is not this the Rose of Royalty, worthy to become ottar of roses, and yield perfume forever? How thou, of all people, wilt contrive to govern France, in these very peculiar times - But that is little to the matter. There, doubtless, is thy Rose (which, methinks, it were well to have a Box or Casket made for) : nay, was there not in the dulcet of thy Juno's "Vous savez" a kind of trepidation, a quaver, as of still deeper meanings!

Reader, there is hitherto no item of this miracle that is not historically proved and true. In distracted black-magical phantasmagory, adumbrations of yet higher and highest Dalliances hover stupendous in the background: whereof your

1 Compare Georgel, Lamotte's Mémoires Justificatifs, and the Mémoires pour of the various parties, especially Gay d'Oliva's. Georgel places the scene in the year 1785; quite wrong. Lamotte's royal Autographs' (as given in the Appendix to Mémoires Justificatifs) seem to be misdated as to the day of the month. There is endless confusion of dates.

2 Lamotte's Mémoires Justificatifs; Ms. Songs in the Affaire du Collier, &c. &c. Nothing can exceed the brutality of these things (unfit for Print or Pen); which nevertheless found believers, - increase of believers, in the public exasperation; and did the Queen, say all her historians, incalculable damage.

Georgels, and Campans, and other official characters can take no notice! There, in distracted black-magical phantasmagory, let these hover. The truth of them for us is that they do so hover. The truth of them in itself is known only to three persons: Dame self-styled Countess de Lamotte; the Devil; and Philippe Egalité, who furnished money and facts for the Lamotte Memoirs, and, before guillotinement, begat the present King of the French.

Enough, that Ixion de Rohan, lapsed almost into deliquium, by such sober certainty of waking bliss, is the happiest of all men; and his tutelary Countess the dearest of all women, save one only. On the 25th of August (so strong still are those villanous Drawing-room cabals) he goes, weeping, but submissive, by order of a gilt Autograph, home to Saverne; till farther dignities can be matured for him. He carries his Rose, now considerably faded, in a Casket of fit price; may, if he so please, perpetuate it as pot-pourri. He names a favourite walk in his Archiepiscopal pleasure-grounds, Promenade de la Rose; there let him court digestion, and loyally somnambulate till called for.

I notice it as a coincidence in chronology, that, few days after this date, the Demoiselle (or even, for the last month, Baroness) Gay d'Oliva began to find Countess de Lamotte 'not at home,' in her fine Paris hotel, in her fine Charonne country-house; and went no more, with Villette, and such pleasant dinner-guests, and her, to see Beaumarchais' Mariage de Figaro running its hundred nights.

CHAPTER X.

Behind the Scenes.

"The Queen?" Good reader, thou surely art not a Partridge the Schoolmaster, or a Monseigneur de Rohan, to mistake the stage for a reality!—"But who this Demoiselle

1 Gay d'Oliva's First Mémoire pour, p. 37.

d'Oliva was?" Reader, let us remark rather how the labours of our Dramaturgic Countess are increasing.

New actors I see on the scene; not one of whom shall guess what the other is doing; or, indeed, know rightly what himself is doing. For example, cannot Messieurs de Lamotte and Villette, of Rascaldom, like Nisus and Euryalus, take a midnight walk of contemplation, with footsteps of Madame and Madame d'Artois' (since all footsteps are much the same), without offence to any one? A Queen's Similitude can believe that a Queen's Self, for frolic's sake, is looking at her through the thickets; a terrestrial Cardinal can kiss with devotion a celestial Queen's slipper, or Queen's Similitude's slipper, and no one but a Black Domino the wiser. All these shall follow each his precalculated course; for their inward mechanism is known, and fit wires hook themselves on this. To Two only is a clear belief vouchsafed: to Monseigneur, a clear belief founded on stupidity; to the great creative Dramaturgist, sitting at the heart of the whole mystery, a clear belief founded on completest insight. Great creative Dramaturgist! How, like Schiller, by union of the Possible with the Necessarily existing, she brings out the’Eighty thousand Pounds! Don Aranda, with his triplesealed missives and hoodwinked secretaries, bragged justly that he cut down the Jesuits in one day but here, without ministerial salary, or King's favour, or any help beyond her own black domino, labours a greater than he. How she advances, stealthily, stedfastly, with Argus eye and ever-ready brain; with nerve of iron, on shoes of felt! O worthy to have intrigued for Jesuitdom, for Pope's Tiara ;- to have been Pope Joan thyself, in those old days; and as Arachne of Arachnes, sat in the centre of that stupendous spider-web, which, reaching from Goa to Acapulco, and from Heaven to Hell, overnetted the thoughts and souls of men! — Of which spider-web stray tatters, in favourable dewy mornings, even yet become visible.

1 See Lamotte; see Gay d'Oliva.

1

The Demoiselle d'Oliva? She is a Parisian Demoiselle of three-and-twenty, tall, blond and beautiful; from unjust guardians, and an evil world, she has had somewhat to suffer.

In this month of June 1784,' says the Demoiselle herself, in her (judicial) Autobiography, I occupied a small apart'ment in the Rue du Jour, Quartier St. Eustache. I was 'not far from the Garden of the Palais-Royal; I had made 'it my usual promenade.' For, indeed, the real God's-truth is, I was a Parisian unfortunate-female, with moderate custom; and one must go where his market lies. 'I frequently passed 'three or four hours of the afternoon there, with some women ' of my acquaintance, and a little child of four years old, whom 'I was fond of, whom his parents willingly trusted with me. 'I even went thither alone, except for him, when other com'pany failed.

'One afternoon, in the month of July following, I was at 'the Palais-Royal: my whole company, at the moment, was 'the child I speak of. A tall young man, walking alone, 'passes several times before me. He was a man I had 'never seen. He looks at me; he looks fixedly at me. 'I observe even that always, as he comes near, he slackens 'his pace, as if to survey me more at leisure. 'stood vacant; two or three feet from mine. 'himself there.

A chair

He seats

'Till this instant, the sight of the young man, his walks, 'his approaches, his repeated gazings, had made no impres'sion on me. But now when he was sitting so close by, I

1 I was then presented' to two Ladies, one of whom was remarkable for the richness of her shape: she had blue eyes and chestnut hair' (Bette d'Etienville's Second Mémoire pour; in the Suite de l'Affaire du Collier). This is she whom Bette, and Bette's Advocate, intended the world to take for Gay d'Oliva. The other is of middle size: dark eyes, chestnut hair, 'white complexion: the sound of her voice is agreeable; she speaks per'fectly well, and with no less faculty than vivacity: this one is meant for Lamotte. Oliva's real name was Essigny; the Oliva (OLISVA, anagram of VALOIS) was given her by Lamotte along with the title of Baroness (Ms. Note, Affaire du Collier).