wo of his sworn acquaintances in England
will be _quite_ cross when I tell them.

_SATURDAY_

Had my first experience of surf bathing to-day, at Easthampton. Apart
from spraining my wrist, being grazed all over, stunned by a breaker,
and finally swept several miles out to sea, I enjoyed it thoroughly.

_MONDAY_

Met Mr. Liveright--what a dear!

JULIE DE POOPINAC

[Illustration: JULIE DE POOPINAC

_From a Miniature_]

For several years all France rang with the name of Julie de Poopinac--or
to give her her full title, Angelique Yvonne Mathilde Clementine
Virginie Celeste Julie, Vicomtesse de Poopinac. As the most peerless of
all the beauties at Court during the last years of a desperately
tottering throne, she has been hailed and heralded (and is still in some
outlying villages in Old Provence and Old Normandy) as almost an
enchantress, so great was her beauty and her wit. Born in a stately
chateau in Old Picardy, she was brought up in comparative seclusion; her
father, the Duc de Potache,[1] spent his time at Court, so that her
radiant loveliness was left to mature and develop unnoticed. Her
childhood was uneventful, but at the age of seventeen this ravishing
creature was wedded by proxy to Gustave de Poopinac, a dashing young
officer in the Garde du Corps,[2] and at twenty-five she came to Court
in order to see her husband; but alas! Fate, seated securely in
Destiny's irreproachable turret, willed it that her journey should be in
vain. She left Old Picardy a merry, laughing married woman--and arrived
at Versailles a widow. Gustave, the husband whose love she would never
know, perished at an early hour on the morning of her arrival, at an
adversary's sword-point behind a potting-shed near the Petit Trianon.
Rumour whispered that it was on account of a woman that he fought and
lost, but this last blow of Providence's hatchet was spared his girl
bride, innocent, secure in her supreme purity and innate virginity. If
evil tongues had even mentioned the word "woman" to her, she would not
have known what they meant.

Gradually the pain of her loss grew less. She commenced to enter into
Court life with a certain amount of zest. Ben-Hepple tells us that it
was during a masked carnival in the Park of Versailles that she first
attracted the attention of the amorous King. He had dropped behind Du
Barry for a moment to tie up his bootlace, and Julie, running girlishly
along the moonlit path, bumped violently