ly
indistinguishable, and others bulging hideously out of their frames--we
came to the library, a really noble room, lofty, panelled with walnut
wood, floored with polished oak, and looking over a wide expanse of
level country. Long ranges of empty book-shelves fenced in with broken
wire-work ran round the walls. The painted ceiling represented, as
usual, the heavens and some pagan divinities. A dumb old time-piece,
originally constructed to tell the months, the days of the year, and the
hours, stood on a massive corner bracket near the door. Long antique
mirrors in heavy black frames reached from floor to ceiling between each
of the windows; and in the centre of the room, piled all together and
festooned with a thick drapery of cobwebs, stood a dozen or so of old
carved chairs, screens, and foot-stools, rich with velvet, brocade, and
gilded leather, but now looking as if a touch would crumble them to
dust. Over the great carved fireplace, however, hung a painting upon
which my attention became riveted as soon as I entered the room--a
painting yellow with age; covered with those minute cracks which are
like wrinkles on the face of antique art, coated with dust, and yet so
singularly attractive that, having once noticed it, I looked at
nothing else.

It was the half-length portrait of a young lady in the costume of the
reign of Louis XVI. One hand rested on a stone urn; the other was raised
to her bosom, holding a thin blue scarf that seemed to flutter in the
wind. Her dress was of white satin, cut low and square, with a stomacher
of lace and pearls. She also wore pearls in her hair, on her white arms,
and on her whiter neck. Thus much for the mere adjuncts; as for the
face--ah, how can I ever describe that pale, perfect, tender face, with
its waving brown hair and soft brown eyes, and that steadfast perpetual
smile that seemed to light the eyes from within, and to dwell in the
corners of the lips without parting or moving them? It was like a face
seen in a dream, or the imperfect image which seems to come between us
and the page when we read of Imogen asleep.

"Who was this lady?" I asked, eagerly.

The _concierge_ nodded and rubbed her hands.

"Aha! M'sieur," said she, "'tis the best painting in the chateau, as
folks tell me. M'sieur is a connoisseur."

"But do you know whose portrait it is?"

"To be sure I do, M'sieur. It's the portrait of the last Marquise--the
one who was guillotined, poor soul, with her husb