nd finds that he
has in some sort inherited the respect and consideration formerly shown
to his defunct rival. The politeness of the _raffines_ is as
overpowering as their envy is ill concealed; and, as to the ladies, in
those days the character of a successful duellist was a sure passport to
their favour. The raw provincial, so lately unheeded, has but to throw
his handkerchief, now that he has dabbled it in blood. But the only one
of these sanguinary sultanas on whom Mergy bestows a thought, is not to
be found. In vain does he seek, in the crowd of beauties who court his
gaze, the pale cheek, blue eyes, and raven hair of Madame de Turgis.
Soon after the duel, she had left Paris for one of her country seats, a
departure attributed by the charitable to grief at the death of
Comminges. Mergy knows better. Whilst laid up with his wound, and
concealed in the house of an old woman, half doctress, half sorceress,
he detected a masked lady, whom he recognised as De Turgis, performing
for his cure, with the assistance of the witch, certain mysterious
incantations. They had procured Comminges's sword, and rubbed it with
scorpion oil, "the sovereign'st thing on earth" to heal the wound the
weapon had inflicted. And there was also a melting of a wax figure,
intended as a love charm; and from all that passed, Bernard could not
doubt that the Countess had set her affections on him. So he waits
patiently, and one morning, whilst his brother is reading the "Vie
tres-horrifique de Pantagruel," and he himself is taking a guitar lesson
from the Signor Uberto Vinibella, a wrinkled duenna brings him a scented
note, closed with a gold thread, and a large green seal, bearing a Cupid
with finger on lips, and the Spanish word, _Callad_, enjoining silence.

The best picture of the massacre of St Bartholomew we have read in a
book of fiction, is given by M. Merimee, in small compass and without
unnecessary horrors. Less than an hour before its commencement, the
Countess informs her lover of the fate reserved for him and all of his
faith. She urges and implores him to abjure his heresy; he steadfastly
refuses--and she, her love redoubled by his courageous constancy,
conceals him from the assassins. In the disguise of a monk, he escapes
from Paris, and makes his way to La Rochelle, the last stronghold of the
persecuted Protestants. On the road, he falls in with another refugee,
the _lanzknecht_ Captain Dietrich Hornstein, similarly disguised and