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Bowing low, accordingly, the seigneur returned grateful thanks for the honor done to him and his in the person of his daughter, and called Heaven to witness that everything he possessed, from his sword and life down to the least of his creatures and last penny in his coffer, was the king's to command. Nevertheless, saving their presence, he could not deny that so summary a dismissal of M. de Saulx appeared to him a hard chance, and he was reluctant that that gentleman should be left in misapprehension of the true bearings of the case.

lady, whom he confides uncondition- the natural gratification of a parent ally to me, to guard and cherish SO at hearing his child's praises sung in long as seems good to me, and to dis- such high quarters, M. de Vieilleville pose of according to my sovereign will, was fairly at his wits' end. In all sinwith many other courteous protesta- cerity he still adhered to the cause of tions, to the effect that he hopes much the generous youth who had been his from my generous protection and the own free choice, and had received in bounty with which it is known I am his heart, as far back as the days of in the habit of rewarding those among Metz, that endearing title which namy maidens whose services have ture denied when it withheld a legitiproved agreeable to me. In fine," mate son of his name. Yet much exCatherine declared, facing the seign- perience of courts could not fail to eur with that majesty of mien which warn him of the madness of setting she could so well assume, "I have to himself in opposition to the sovereign inform you that the hand of your will. Imperious eyes were bent upon daughter is already disposed of. him, and he did not take long to realNothing doubting of my unique av- ize his own situation, or the danger of thority in this matter, I promised it jeopardizing his young friend's future away several days ago to the Grand- prospects by an indiscreet advocacy. Seneschal of Lorraine, for his eldest son, the young Duilly, of whose personal merit you cannot fail to be informed, as well as of the high dignity, wealth, and puissance of his noble house. I will only add that, in consideration of its kinship with that of Lorraine, into which my own daughter is about to marry, and because of the great sympathy subsisting between this princess and your daughter (which is so tender and constant as to be a marvel to all), it has been decided that the one shall accompany the other into Lorraine in the capacity of FirstLady-in-Waiting, and this over the heads of many whose claims were pressed by very great and powerful protectors, for I can assure you that there has been no lack of applicants for the place. And now that you may know the young girl's own inclination, and how little the constraint put upon it, I leave you to hear the tion which passed between her and my daughter within this very hour." Thereupon Madam Claude took up the thread of discourse, recounting her version of the morning's interview with so much grace, heart, and good feeling, that the king was sensibly affected, and Madam Catherine turned aside to wipe her eyes. Indeed, by this time, what between the eloquent loquacity of these ladies' tongues, the respect due to their exalted rank, and LIVING AGE. VOL. XV. 748

conversa

of

His Majesty readily admitted the justice of this complaint, but observed that M. Vieilleville need suffer no farther uneasiness on that score, as he would take it upon himself to inform M. de Saulx, of his altered prospects. The young gentleman was thereupon summoned in haste from the tenniscourt where he was engaged, and received on the spot the various brevets and other papers in confirmation his new appointments, besides a gift of two thousand crowns out of the king's privy purse. But alas! hardly had he time to congratulate himself on his good fortune than the thunderbolt fell. By the king's command he was called upon to renounce all claims on the hand of Mademoiselle de Vieilleville, and forbidden, under pain of royal displeasure, so much as to ad

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 acquisttions 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

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 was but one are informed, singled out fair Vieille

"whereat,"

The

From Belgravia.

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

ville for special honor by breaking at it given to force open the petals of the least a dozen more spearheads on her half-blown rose; not for M. le Grandday than on the one preceding (that Senechal's eldest son the lovely blush flower as of the great duke's besides which suffuses this pale sister), calling up her father at supper-time to Madam Claude, blithe and radiant, in take a seat at his own table among gold skirts outspread and jewel-spanprinces of the blood, we gled bodice, flings a passing smile as read, "was no little murmuring and she pirouettes down the middle. jealousies in certain quarters." 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."

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 After all, now our story is done, and oldest thing in the country, and that is 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

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.

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

be troubled, for instance, to find another town with a public monument (in private grounds) erected to commemorate the fact that Magna Charta was not signed there but somewhere else altogether; nor has even Peebles, which, in the opinion of its inhabitants, in the matter of pure devilment leaves Paris far behind, produced a book by a native author, which triumphantly shows that, even in the eyes of the most giddy follower of pleasure, it is not and cannot be regarded as dull. Our business is not with these things. They belong to the borough, and not to the Ipswich road, away out beyond the Southgate.

Now, why does that unimportant Suffolk road, after going straight along for miles in the most businesslike way, end by making such a despicably bad shot at the town-in fact, not even an "outer," but a complete miss? Simply because the road was there before the town was, and not as a mere trackway, but a regularly built highway that meant money and expense to divert. It so happens that one of the glories of that little town is, perhaps, the oldest building in the country that remains complete and unaltered as it left the builder's hands. It is a solitary tower of pure Norman work, to which nothing has ever been added and very little has been taken away. The surface of the earth itself has risen eight feet since that tower was built, but compared with the road the tower is a baby. One thing, however, the borough has done to the road, though it could not divert it, and that is to bite a bit out of it. If Mr. Pickwick's coach, instead of turning to the right, had gone straight on along the opposite arm of the cross-ways in the direction of Newmarket, it would soon have come to a stoppage. That the road went on straight once upon a time is pretty clear, and it can be picked up again further on, but it has been blocked in that direction for many a year. And the reason of that is that they were in a way exceedingly sharp men of business in the Middle Ages (quite contrary to what our sentimentalists tell us of the days of chivalry); and the Abbots of St. Edmunds, one of

whom proved more than a match for King John himself in a haggle about fees for the confirmation of his election, were hardly likely to allow the traffic of a main road to go past their walls when it might just as well come through and pay tolls at my lord abbot's gates, and provide guests for the profit of the innkeepers who were my lord abbot's tenants. So, though there was not money enough to build a new and better road down the hill straight to the town, there was enough to block up a mile or more of it and turn the traffic off, and any one who knows the place will appreciate how thoroughly and scientifically this was done.

Since this road is such a very old affair, let us get back as far as history will take us, and see what will be found. Now, the prehistoric period lies at different depths in different countries. Like other things, it depends on the latitude, and is by no means the same, for instance, in Rhodesia as it is in Egypt. There is a history of East Anglia of a sort from its foundation, which the Chronicle, by the way, places impossibly late compared with the other early English kingdoms. Some of it is true and much of it is certainly mere make-up. If by history is meant something definite and certainly localized in time and place, then history in West Suffolk goes back through kings and abbots and parliaments, and a "mysterious murder in high life," that nowadays would have been a fortune to the newspapers, and a battle or two of which very little is said, onward to the days of King Edward the Confessor. There it begins to get misty, but still, in a way, it is possible to go back to King Cnut, who, if one may judge old men by modern motives, was an exceedingly clever statesman with a terribly long memory, and if he could be resuscitated would make an excellent colonial secretary. Beyond that, things get very dim indeed, and no one seems to do anything sensible; but right away at the very end-placeless and dateless, without ancestors and without posterity-is a figure labelled Bederic, of whom all that is known is that he was

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