hieroglyphics graven as with iron stylet on his
brow, round his eyes, beside his mouth, puzzled and baffled instinct.
Ere long, however, if I did not know, at least I felt, the meaning of
those characters written without hand. There sat a silent sufferer--a
nervous, melancholy man. Those eyes had looked on the visits of a
certain ghost--had long waited the comings and goings of that strangest
spectre, Hypochondria. Perhaps he saw her now on that stage, over
against him, amidst all that brilliant throng. Hypochondria has that
wont, to rise in the midst of thousands--dark as Doom, pale as Malady,
and well-nigh strong as Death. Her comrade and victim thinks to be
happy one moment--"Not so," says she; "I come." And she freezes the
blood in his heart, and beclouds the light in his eye.

Some might say it was the foreign crown pressing the King's brows which
bent them to that peculiar and painful fold; some might quote the
effects of early bereavement. Something there might be of both these;
but these are embittered by that darkest foe of
humanity--constitutional melancholy. The Queen, his wife, knew this: it
seemed to me, the reflection of her husband's grief lay, a subduing
shadow, on her own benignant face. A mild, thoughtful, graceful woman
that princess seemed; not beautiful, not at all like the women of solid
charms and marble feelings described a page or two since. Hers was a
somewhat slender shape; her features, though distinguished enough, were
too suggestive of reigning dynasties and royal lines to give
unqualified pleasure. The expression clothing that profile was
agreeable in the present instance; but you could not avoid connecting
it with remembered effigies, where similar lines appeared, under phase
ignoble; feeble, or sensual, or cunning, as the case might be. The
Queen's eye, however, was her own; and pity, goodness, sweet sympathy,
blessed it with divinest light. She moved no sovereign, but a
lady--kind, loving, elegant. Her little son, the Prince of Labassecour,
and young Duc de Dindonneau, accompanied her: he leaned on his mother's
knee; and, ever and anon, in the course of that evening, I saw her
observant of the monarch at her side, conscious of his beclouded
abstraction, and desirous to rouse him from it by drawing his attention
to their son. She often bent her head to listen to the boy's remarks,
and would then smilingly repeat them to his sire. The moody King
started, listened, smiled, but invariably r