ution swept him off his feet. It was an
untried region--a conflict of elements unknown to the calculation of
man; he was whirled along by a force which whirled the monarchy, the
church, and the nation with him, and sank only when France plunged
after him.

I have no honour for a similar career, and no homage for a similar
memory; but it is from those mingled characters that history derives
her deepest lesson, her warnings for the weak, her cautions for the
ambitious, and her wisdom for the wise.

On the retiring of the party for the night, my first act was to summon
the old Swiss and his wife who had been left in charge of the mansion,
and collect from them all their feeble memories could tell Clotilde.
But Madame la Marechale was a much more important personage in their
old eyes, than the "charmante enfant" whom they had dandled on their
knees, and who was likely to remain a "charmante enfant" to them
during their lives. The chateau had been the retreat of the Marechale
after the death of her husband; and it was in its stately solitudes,
and in the woods and wilds which surrounded it for many a league, that
Clotilde had acquired those accomplished tastes, and that
characteristic dignity and force of mind, which distinguished her from
the frivolity of her country-women, however elegant and attractive,
who had been trained in the _salons_ of the court. The green glades
and fresh air of the forest had given beauty to her cheek and grace
to her form; and scarcely conceiving how the rouged and jewelled
Marechale could have endured such an absence from the circles of the
young queen, and the "_beaux restes_" of the wits and beauties of the
court of Louis the 15th, I thanked in soul the fortunate necessity
which had driven her from the atmosphere of the Du Barris to the
shades thus sacred to innocence and knowledge.

But the grand business of the thing was still to be done. The picture
was taken down at last, to the great sorrow of the old servants, who
seemed to regard it as a patron saint, and who declared that its
presence, and its presence alone, could have saved the mansion, in the
first instance, from being burned by the "patriots," who generally
began their reforms of the nobility by laying their chateaux in ashes,
and in the next, from being plundered by the multitudes of whiskered
savages speaking unknown tongues, and came to leave France without
"_ni pain ni vin_" for her legitimate sons. But the will of Madame l