he meekest, the mildest, the least haughty man on
earth, having no more pride in him than the kitchen knife. It was
known in every street in Paris that from the day the good man married
Peggy Kirkpatrick she never allowed him to forget the enormous honor
that a daughter of the penniless, bare-legged clan of Kirkpatrick had
done him and the kingdom of Spain, in marrying him. The poor man has
long been with the saints in heaven, and few of them deserved the
martyr's crown more than he.

Yet Peggy Kirkpatrick was not a bad woman. On the contrary, she was
incapable of a mean action, generous with a Spanish, rather than a
Scotch, generosity, and although she undoubtedly hastened Count
Riano's death by harping upon the glories of the Kirkpatrick family,
she paid him great attention in his last illness. As for his funeral,
never was there anything so grand.

In Madrid, whither she carried him, events are still dated from the
Count Riano's funeral. Madame Riano wished to borrow the catafalque
under which Louis le Grand had lain, and was mightily offended when it
was refused her. The funeral lasted six weeks from Paris to Madrid.
The Spanish Court paid the widow much honor, but not giving due space
to the Kirkpatricks in some formal letter of condolence, or matter of
that kind, Scotch Peg shook the dust of Spain from her feet and
returned to Paris to remain, as she said, until Charles Edward Stuart,
the English prince, was restored to the throne of his ancestors.

She was a great, tall woman, as red as a cow, but not unhandsome. She
had a stride like an ostrich, and always carried her nose to the wind
like a cavalry charger. At her side, in place of a sword, hung a huge
fan, which she flourished around very much as if it were the claymore
of the Kirkpatricks. Princes of the blood fled before Scotch Peg.
Marshals of France turned tail and ran. Cardinals and archbishops
quailed at her onslaught. When everybody else in Paris was calling
Cardinal Dubois "the devil's cardinal" behind his back, Peggy
Kirkpatrick called him so to his face--and she was of the same
religion, too. It was she who stalked up to Count Saxe at the king's
levee at Fontainebleau, and bawled at him:

"So you are going on a marauding expedition after the crown of
Courland!"

"Madame," replied my master, turning red with rage, "I am a candidate
for election to the crown of Courland. If elected by that august body,
the Diet of Courland, I shall accept, and I