bought a salmon in the market, in whose stomach the lost ring was found: its value enhanced by the strange recovery, the ring became an heirloom, and was in the possession of one of the alderman's descend: ants some forty years ago. A similar accident, ending in a similar way, is recorded to have happened to one of the dukes of Lorraine.

Monk Gerbert, who wore the tiara as Sylvester II., a man of whom it was said that-thanks to the devil's assistance-he never left anything unexecuted which he ever conceived, anticipating Roger Bacon, made a brazen head capable of answering like an oracle. From this creature of his own, Gerbert learned he would not die until he had performed mass in Jerusalem. He thereupon determined to live for ever by taking good care never to go near the holy city. Like all dealers with the Evil One, he was destined to be cheated. Performing mass one day in Rome, Sylvester was seized with sudden illness, and upon inquiring the name of the church in which he had officiated, heard, to his dismay, that it was popularly called Jerusalem; then he knew his end was at hand; and it was not long before it came. Nearly five hundred years after this event happened, Master Robert Fabian, who must not be suspected of inventing history, seeing, as sheriff and alderman, he was wont to pillory public liars, wrote of Henry IV. Af ter the feast of Christmas, while he was making his prayers at St. Edward's shrine, he became so sick, that such as were about him feared that he would have died right there; wherefore they, for his comfort, bare him into the abbot's place, and lodged him in a chamber; and there, upon a pallet, laid him before the fire, where he lay in great agony a certain time. At length, when he was come to himself, not knowing where he was, he

freyned [asked] of such as were there about him what place that was; the which shewed to him that it belonged unto the Abbot of Westminster; and for he felt himself so sick, he commanded to ask if that chamber had any special name. Whereunto it was answered, that it was named Jerusalem. Then said the king: "Laud be to the Father of heaven, for now I know I shall die in this chamber, according to the prophecy of me beforesaid, that I should die in Jerusalem;" and so after, he made himself ready, and died shortly after, upon the Day of St. Cuthbert, on the 20th day of March, 1413.'

Three of the most famous battles recorded in English history 'were marked by a strange contrast between the behavior of the opposing armies on the eve of the fight. At Hastings, the Saxons spent the night in singing, feasting, and drinking; while the Normans were confessing themselves and receiving the sacrament. At Agincourt, the poor condemned English' said their prayers, and sat patiently by their watch-fires, to 'inly ruminate the morrow's danger;' while the over-confident French revelled the night through, and played for the prisoners they were never to take. On the eve of Bannockburn, says Paston, who fought there on the beaten side, 'ye might have seen the Englishmen bathing themselves in wine, and casting their gorgets; there was crying, shouting, wassailing, and drinking, with other rioting far above measure. On the other side we might have seen the Scots, quiet, still, and close, fasting the eve of St. John the Baptist, laboring in love of the liberties of their country.' Our readers need not be told that in each case the orderly, prayerful army proved victorious, and so made the treble parallel perfect.-Chambers's Journal.

the monarch-the most absolute that ever reigned over France. The influence of Fouquet, of Colbert, and of Louvois was great, but that of la Vallière, of Montespan, of Maintenon, so moulded the inward and the outward life of their royal master

that the reign of each of these sultanas made a distinct epoch in his. That of the first was idyllic; its home was the sunlit glades, the umbrageous groves, the bosky dells of the woods of Versailles, as yet untrammelled by the gardener's art or denaturalised by the vast palace that now rises amongst them. What else could be the gentle reign of sweet Louise de la Vallière? The second was gorgeous, magnificent, oriental, a glittering of jewels, a clashing of cymbals, a braying of trumpets, and a pæan of victory, such as befitted the puissance of the haughty Duchess de Montespan. The third and last, sombre, fanatic, a penitential psalm, broken by the hollow moans of a famishing, persecuted people, by the death-cries of the wounded and the hurried tramp of flying soldiers; then the death-dirge-the funeral pall descends, and all is over. Thus the history of his mistresses is the history of Louis the Fourteenth and his reign.

To the name of Madame de Maintenon, however, the epithet mistress' must be applied in a broader and more honorable sense than to the names of her predecessors; in her case we should rather use the term 'wife,' as there can be little doubt that such was the relation she held towards the king. Perhaps there is no more extraordinary history upon record than that of this woman, who, after being born in a prison, and passing through so many strange phases of life, rose from the depths of positive destitution to be the queen, in all but name, of one of the proudest monarchs who ever wielded sceptre.

Françoise d'Aubigné was descended from an ancient and honorable family of Anjou. Her grandfather was Théodore Agrippa d'Aubigné, an inflexible Huguenot, and the friend and companion of the great Henry. Her father, Constant d'Aubigné, was a black sheep, who, after acquiring wealth and consideration at Court for betraying his co-religionists, for which treachery his father disinherited him, was detected in some treasonable correspondence with the English and thrown into the prison of the Conciergerie of Niort. His wife, a noble heroic woman, then enceinte, obtained permission to share his captivity, and there, on the 27th of November, 1635, nearly three years before Louis the Fourteenth, was born Françoise. Her godfather was the celebrated Duke de la Rochefoucauld, her godmother was

the daughter of the Baron du Neuillant, the governor of Niort.

In misery, hunger, and raggedness passed the days of parents and children-for there were two other little ones, boys, besides the new-comer-until Madame de Villette, Constant's sister, hearing of their sad position, brought them help and took away the children to her home, which was situated in the neighborhood. But when the prisoner was transferred to the Château Trompette at Bordeaux, the mother, unable to endure the thoughts of complete separation, took back her little daughter, whose home for some three or four years was thus within the gloomy prison walls, the prison-yard her playground, the gaoler's daughter her only playmate.

In 1639, after endless solicitations, Madame d'Aubigné obtained her husband's enlargement, after which they embarked for Martinique, to try their fortunes in a new world. During the voyage little Françoise fell dangerously ill, and was at last laid out as dead. The body was just about to be committed to the sea when the mother, as she held it in a last passionate parting embrace, felt a slight movement. "My child is not dead!" she shrieked. "Her heart beats!" The little girl was put back into bed, and in a few days was restored to health.

By what trifles are the destinies of men and of nations decided! Had not the mother's heart craved for yet another embrace, or had the sailor who was to have been the gravedigger of the sea been but a moment quicker, the Edict of Nantes might never have been revoked, and the latter years of the reign of Louis the Fourteenth might have been wholly different. What wonderful events hang upon moments!-upon some apparently insignificant life!

In Martinique fortune gave Constant d,Aubigné yet another chance. He acquired some large plantations, prospered, grew rich. After a time Madame d'Aubigné had occasion to visit France; when she returned she found her husband once more a beggar: during her absence he had gambled away all that he possessed. After this he obtained a small appointment in a village of the island, and there his wife devoted her life to the education of her children, but more especially to that of her daughter, who already gave promise of more than ordinary talent. She

taught her to read Plutarch and ancient history; and to habituate her mind to reflection she obliged her to exercise it both in composition and in letter-writing, in which last Françoise excelled throughout her life. The noble and devoted mother, who had herself been so schooled in adversity, desired to instil into the child's mind something of her own courage and fortitude.

One day the house took fire. Seeing little Françoise weeping bitterly, Madame said reprovingly, "I thought you had more courage. Why should you weep thus for the loss of a house ?" "It is not for the house I am weeping," answered the child quickly, "but for my doll!" The child is the father of the man-the mother of the woman. In those words are the germ of the future intensely selfish nature of Madame de Maintenon.

The next event of importance was the death of Constant, which happened in 1645. Madame d'Aubigné returned to France poorer even than when she left it. She was reduced to live by the labor of her hands; but indefatigable as ever, she set to work to endeavor to reclaim some remnants of her husband's first fortune, to gather in old debts, to get for her children something of the heritage which had been left behind by their grandfather, Agrippa d'Aubigné.

She once more, although unwillingly, confided her daughter to Madame de Villette, who readily undertook the charge. The cause of Madame d'Aubigné's unwillingness was, that her sister-in-law was a Calvinist. The result justified her Catholic scruples, for Madame Villette at once proceeded to train her little niece in the doctrines of the Reformed faith.

Years of tribulation, of poverty, of successive misfortune, of silent endurance, of living in the shadow of life, had hardened and chilled Madame d'Aubigné's character into coldness and severity, beneath which her virtues and affections were concealed. Madame de Villette, who had lived in the sunshine of life, was on the contrary smiling, tender, loving; and so, child-like, the little Françoise soon began to prefer this cheerful lady to the troubie-saddened mother, and to embrace all her teachings with the utmost docility.

One day Françoise refused to accompany her mother to mass. Madame d'Aubigné, terribly alarmed for her daugh

ter's salvation, with her usual energy at once appealed to Anne of Austria to issue an order for the girl's restoration to her own custody. The order was granted, and the young Huguenot was handed over to her godmother the Countess de Neuillant, a zealous Catholic, to be brought back to the Catholic faith. But Françoise was not yet to be converted, so as a punishment for her contumacy she was set to perform the most menial offices, among others, to measure out the corn for the horses and to look after a flock of turkeys. "It was there, in the farmyard," she used to say, "I first began to reign." As not even these degradations could bend her firm spirit, she was sent away to the Ursuline Convent at Niort. Strange to say, her Huguenot aunt, confident in the strength of her niece's convictions, and anxious to remove her from the painful position she held in Madame de Neuillant's house, consented to pay for her board while at the convent. Alas, for Madame de Villette's confidence! The arguments of the good abbess and her ghostly confessor proved so potent that Mademoiselle d'Aubigné was after a time induced to formally recant her "errors," and to become from that time forth a good Catholic, upon which her good aunt indignantly withdrew from her all further assistance. Pious Madame de Neuillant having thus preserved her goddaughter's soul, considered that she had fulfilled her duty to the utmost, and left the body to do the best it could; in other words, she declined to afford her any pecuniary aid whatever; of course the good pious sisters of St. Ursula could not be further troubled with a person who was penniless; so, her conversion complete, poor Françoise was shown the convent door, outside which stretched a desert, friendless world. The only person to whom she could turn was her mother, who could scarcely feed herself, much less her daughter. It was a miserable half-famished life from which in a little time merciful death released one of these women. Yes, poor Madame d'Aubigné was at last permitted to lay down her cross and rest her weary head in the lap of mother earth.

An evil training this for a young girl who had not yet reached her fifteenth year! A training to wither the heart and to fill the soul full of bitterness, the flavor of which abides with us evermore; ay,

though Fortune thereafter empty down our throats her cornucopia, filled with all the sweets of the earth. A childhood of privation is a poor preparation for a noble life; little that is truly generous, tender, and merciful ever came from it, but much that is hard, cold, selfish, and hypocritical.

For three months after her mother's death Françoise remained shut up in a room at Niort, existing heaven knows how. At the end of three months pious Madame de Neuillant, afraid, perhaps, of some scandal falling upon her proselyte, paid her a visit, and shortly afterwards placed her at an Ursuline convent in Paris, from which she occasionally passed to the salons of her protectress. Mademoiselle d'Aubigné was beautiful, graceful, accomplished, clever, spirituelle; she attracted the attention of the visitors, among whom were some of the most distinguished and most celebrated people of the age. It was here that she was introduced to the Abbé Scarron, poet, satirist, buffoon, famous in the days of the Fronde for his lampoons against Mazarin and the Court; a monstrous deformity, who it was said had the free use of no member of his body except his tongue and his hands. When a young man he had, in a mad carnival freak, personated a savage, and run naked through the crowd pursued by a mob; being in danger of his life he was obliged to conceal himself in a marsh; a palsy, from which he never recovered, was the consequence of this disgraceful freak. His appearance at thirty (three years afterwards) is best described in his own words: "My head is a little broad for my shape; my face is full enough to make my body appear very small; I have hairs enough to render a wig unnecessary; I have many white hairs, in spite of the proverb. My teeth, formerly square pearls, are now wood colored, and will shortly be slate colored. My legs and thighs first formed an obtuse angle, afterwards an equilateral angle, and at length an acute one; my thighs and body form another; and my head, always dropping upon my breast, makes me a pretty good representation of the letter Z. I have got my arms shortened as well as my legs, and my fingers as well as my arms. In a word, I am an abridgment of human miseries." But in spite of all he was gay, sans souci, and was for ever jesting upon and laugh

ing over his own sufferings and hideous

ness.

This deformity fell in love with beautiful fifteen-year-old Françoise d'Aubigné! He was witty, kind, generous, compassionated her sad position and offered her his hand, and, marvellous to relate, she accepted it! Even allowing her to have been frigid by temperament, what must she not have suffered of privation, of misery, of the bitter humiliations of poverty and dependence, to sell her young life to this paralyzed monstrosity for a home?

She was just sixteen at the time of her marriage. "The new wife," says SaintSimon, “pleased all the company who frequented Scarron's house, which was very numerous and of all kinds; it was the fashion to go there-wits, courtiers, citizens, the highest and most distinguished personages of the day; and the charms of his wit, of his knowledge, his imagination, and of that incomparable gaiety, always fresh amidst all his afflictions, that rare fecundity and pleasantry of the best taste that we still admire in his works, attracted everybody to his house."

This was the age of the Fronde, an age in which every moral restraint was broken through, and riot, debauchery, and licentiousness reigned supreme. It was also the first, and most vigorous, of the literary epochs of France; it was the epoch of the Duchess de Rambouillet and her lovely daughter, the foundresses of the Précieuses, to whom the French tongue is indebted for so many of its graces and for all its conversational polish; it was the epoch of Ninon l'Enclos, the modern Aspasia; of the Hôtel Vendôme, with its society of theorists, epicureans, scoffers, and sensualists; of the réunions of the poets at the cabarets of the Pomme du Pin and the Croix de Lorraine. Nor were the gatherings at Scarron's house in the Marais the least among the coteries, for here assembled all that was noble, great, witty, and dissolute. Hither came Turenne and Condé, Beaufort, De Retz, Coligni, Villarceaux, Madame de Sévigné, Saint Evremond, La Rochefoucauld, Bussy Rabutin, Molière, La Fontaine, Corneille, Boileau, Chapelle, Bachaumont, the Abbé Chalieu, &c.

Whether Madame Scarron kept herself immaculate in the midst of this noble, brilliant, and very immoral society we have no means of positively determining. Ninon

l'Enclos, in a very broadly-stated anecdote about her and the Chevalier de Meré, who professed himself her adorer, asserts she was not. Madame Scarron was certainly the bosom friend of that celebrated courtesan and of all the other Laïses and Aspasias of the period, and we all know the old proverb about handling pitch. But, on the other hand, it may be urged that Ninon l'Enclos and her sisters were tolerated in the best society of the time, even by such women as Madame de Sévigné; that they were among the most brilliant and witty of her husband's coterie, and being such it was impossible for her to neglect them. Yet, even when she became the cold ascetic wife of Louis the Fourteenth, Madame de Maintenon never slighted Ninon l'Enclos, never refused a favor to her or her friends. She evidently feared her. Scandal compromised Madame Scarron's name with that of the all-conquering Fouquet, from whom her husband received a pension, and who had her portrait hung beside that of la Vallière at Vaux. The letters, however, which would confirm such an accusation are generally admitted to be forgeries.

But, be that as it may, she was prudent, preserved the outward forms of decency, and was at all times exact in the performance of religious observances. She won great influence over her erratic husband, and exercised it for good; from the time of their marriage his writings became less gross and immoral, and the conversations at his réunions somewhat purer.

Nine years was the period of this strange union, and then Scarron died. Incorrigible jester to the last, his almost parting words were, "I never thought it was so easy a matter to laugh at the approach of death." But nevertheless he was greatly troubled about the future of his young wife, to whom he was tenderly attached.

Grim Poverty, which had been kept at bay during these nine years of married life, once more pounced upon his victim. Scarron possessed no more than he derived from the productions of his pen and the bounty of his friends, and all such means died with him. More scandals against poor Françoise; Fouquet again, and the Marquis de Villarceaux. She goes back once more to the Ursuline Convent in the Rue St.-Jacques, where she is suddenly surprised by the queen renewing in her favor her husband's pension, with an addition

of five hundred francs; after which she retires to the hospital of the Place Royale, lives an irreprochable life in the exercise of charity and religion, is received at the Hôtel d'Albret and at other great houses, where her graceful, pleasing, and refined manners render her a universal favorite.

The key-note of her conduct at this period is to be found in her own words, written just after the renewal of the pension: "I was raised a hundred points above interest. I sought for honor." Whatever might or might not have been her youthful indiscretions, she had now rigidly renounced them; to be esteemed, honored, was now her ambition. What was the ultimate object she proposed to herself by this conduct is not exactly clear; marriage with a man of high rank and great fortune was offered her, which she refused on account of his libertine character, and because she could neither love nor respect him. We have all our peculiar ambitions; the widow Scarron had hers, truly a laudable one, which was to be more respectable than her contemporaries.

This refusal greatly offended her patrons and patronesses, who considered that, being poor, she had no right to take upon herself the judgment of what would constitue her happiness. About the same time the death of Anne of Austria again deprived her of her pension and reduced her once more to a state of destitution. She applied to the King for its renewal, but in vain. She was on the point of accepting a small post in the household of Mademoiselle d'Aumale, who was about to leave France to wed the King of Portugal, when she was advised to seek an interview with Madame de Montespan, whom she had frequently met in society. The interview was granted, and Madame de Montespan, deeply moved by the widow's sad story, undertook to present a petition to the King, and to use her utmost endeavors to get it granted. It was impossible that so small a favor should be refused to the favorite sultana; and so widow Scarron was preserved from voluntary exile.

The fortunate event was celebrated by joyous suppers at Ninon l'Enclos', followed soon afterwards by a sudden return to devotion and by constant attendance at the sermons of Bourdaloue. Some three years passed away thus.

We now come to the turning-point in