indeed, asserted his equality when he uing the career of glory which he had proposed to glorify the sides of White- there inaugurated. But shade was fast hall with a series of paintings which superseding the sunshine. Where all should illustrate the history of the Order had been a joyous paradise there was of the Garter. But when he named now but confusion, with prospect of that £75.000 as his honorarium (Rubens hav-being more confounded. At the sight of ing received only £3000 for the ceiling), the coming catastrophe, and with a full the subject was dropped. Vandyck prob- consciousness of its significance, the ably overreached himself, and named great painter's heart seems to have failed the above large sum because he was sure him. He fell suddenly and dangerously that whatever estimate he made, the king sick. The king, in the midst of all his would reduce it from 25 to 50 per cent., own troubles, felt they were added to by and was not sure to pay the sum agreed the peril which threatened Vandyck. “I on, even then. Thereafter, Vandyck would give three hundred guineas," he kept within his studio, painting the por- said, "to the doctor who could save his traits of the foremost in the land, and life!" Money could not buy it. On the further gratifying both himself and them,9th of December, 1641, the noble artist, by inviting them to dinner, in order that the profuse, but kindly-hearted man, lay he might arouse and study their expres-dead in his chamber at Blackfriars. The

sion.

burthen of his glory was greater than that of his years; he was but forty-two! A few days later, they carried him up Ludgate Hill, to Old St. Paul's; and they laid Anthony Vandyck by the side of the princely John of Gaunt.

There is something pitiable in the mean spirit of the king, haggling with the painter whom, nevertheless, he delighted to honour. In an account of Vandyck's latest work executed for his Majesty, with the price the artist set on each, duly In the elegiac verses of Cowley, the appended, occurs "Le Prince Charles artist is floated to heaven, where he beavecq le Duc de Farc." Vandyck estimat- holds such inconceivable beauty as to ed the value at two hundred pounds, the make him almost wish for his pencil royal patron of art appreciated the value there. Among all the celestial powers at half that sum. Worse, or more un- and brightnesses, "reverend Luke salucky, is it for the king's character, at lutes him, first of all." The poet assures least as an accountant, when he adds up us, however, that no brightnesses could the various items in the schedule, and make Vandyke forget his beautiful young making two and two to be equal to wife. They could only render his loving three, arrives at a total involving a remembrances of her more intense. mistake of seventy-five pounds in the Maria Ruthven, we know, had won Anking's favour. Vandyck himself, how-thony Vandyck from Margaret Leman, and ever, was not without a chaffering spirit. It once showed itself where it might be least looked for. Lord Conway reminds Strafford of a curious trait in this artist's character: "You were so often with Sir Anthony Vandyck," he says, "that you could not but know his gallantry for the love of Lady Stanhope, but he is come off with a coglioneria, for he disputed with her about the price of her picture, and sent her word that if she would not give the price he demanded, he would sell it to another that would give more.” *

An ambitious spirit turned Vandyck's thoughts, for a while, towards France. Remembering the unfinished galleries of the Louvre, he felt the noble ambition of being appointed to decorate them. In 1640, he left his splendid home in the Blackfriars, and went over to Paris, but bis suit failed, and he returned to his studio in London, in the hope of contin

• Strafford's Letters, ii. 48.

other saucy beauties of lively husseydom. When Cowley says to the widow of the painter, "You, and a new-born you, he left behind," he refers to the baby-girl whom Vandyck consigned to the additional love and guardianship of the poet's sister, Kate Cowley.

That baby-girl had been christened on the morning of her father's death. That widow had once been a joyous maid of honour in the court of Henrietta Maria, though her father, Patrick Ruthven, was in ward in the Tower, under suspicion of having had something to do with the Gowrie conspiracy. Ruthven was the fifth son of the first Earl of Gowrie, and Maria Ruthven was thus nobly born. Little further is known of her; King Charles may be said to have given his wife's favourite maid to his own favourite painter. Vandyck bequeathed to his widow and the little Justiniana all the property he possessed in England. Subsequently, the daughter

complained that her father's estate had village would be doing. The house-doors perished during the wars between the are all shut, and the inhabitants invisible. king and Parliament. If this be strictly In the whole line of street, which is white correct, the artist's illegitimate daughter, with a deep coat of snow, there is not one Maria Theresa Vandyck, of Antwerp, to soul to be met abroad, except, perhaps, whom he left four thousand pounds, M. le Curé, in his black soutane and cape, fared better than her half-sister Justinia- stalking along under an umbrella; or na. But Justiniana Vandyck was not ill- some solitary woman, in blue cloak and provided. She became the wife of Sir white cap, going upon urgent necessity John Stepney, of Pendergast, Pembroke-from one place to another. And I cannot shire. The last male descendant of that say that it was pleasant out-of-doors on marriage, Sir Thomas Stepney, died the particular evening of which I speak. childless, in 1825. Justiniana wedded The trees were all clothed in white garwith a second husband, Martin de Car-ments, each branch and twig outlined bonell, Esq., and if the blood of the great painter is to be traced at all, in England, it can be only through the descendants of the last-named couple.

From Good Cheer.

THE COUNT'S DAUGHTERS.
PART I.-MARIAGE A LA MODE.

I.

The

with delicate snowy lacework against the sky; but the wind blew a little fine snow in one's face, blinding one as one walked; and the white carpet under foot, though beginning to be crisp with frost, was not yet hard enough to be dry. As the wintry evening closed in the stray passenger felt himself like a ghost, moving noiselessly along the muffled way, past all those closed doors and curtained windows from which nobody ever looked forth. There was not even a glimmer of firelight here and there to enliven the scene. THE village of Saint-Martin des Côtes close little stove which was used at is an average French village, as villages Saint-Martin by all who could afford it, go, amid all the changes of society and sent no kindly gleam of light abroad; nor revolutions of various kinds which even were the red wood-embers on the hearth, the calmest hamlet has not been able to where they existed, very much help to remain entirely unaffected by. It is situ- the vision; and consequently here were ated in one of the southern departments none of those charming revelations of of France, a region full of natural wealth; cottage interiors, pleasant glimpses of a but the village itself lies beyond the reach privacy which is not afraid to be seen, of trade, and is neither wealthy nor pro- which would make such a walk cheerful ductive. It consists of an irregular street in England. Everything was still, except of houses, with a little place half-way, here and there the sound of the saw, with and various elbows of road leading into which two people generally a man and the quiet fields, each of which has half-a-woman-were sawing their wood outside dozen houses scattered at the corner. their cottage door. Even at this necesThe church is at one end of the village, sary work they looked benumbed, and and the château at the other. In a quar-made haste to get in again, to shut the ter of an hour you can walk leisurely door and escape from the dreariness outthrough its whole extent, passing the post-office and the few little scattered shops, the cabaret of Jean Bolant, and the hotel of the Lion d'Or. Here and there the cottages are diversified by a big white house, with green shutters, generally closed, to all the windows, standing apart from the road. The one with the great gateway at the side, is the house of M. le Maire, who is also the notary of the place; and another belongs to the doctor. In winter-the season at which I intend to present this village to you -it is benumbed and silent as a place of the dead. The people are all in-doors; even the children, in their sabots, are not clattering about as the children of an English |

Ici

side. Except these two people sawing,
and one or two soldiers on furlough who
came out from the cabaret with a slight
air of bravado, attended by a dog of
doubtful race, who was still more defiant
than they, not a soul was to be seen.
cles hung from the thatched roofs; at
some of the closed doors were heaped up
faggots of green broom and gorse, which
all the world had a right to cut for fuel,
but which, all crusted over with the white
long films of frost, looked more like or-
nament than use. There was a scent of
wood-fires in the air-fires, let us hope,
less smoky and pungent than could be
made from the piles of broom. The sky
drooped low, and hung heavy and blurred

over all, shutting in the village, as with a
lid. Altogether, it was a dismal night.
"Good evening, M. le Curé," said a
small lady in an English waterproof, who
was going towards the château, the one
solitary figure going that way, as she
paused to address the other solitary
figure in its black robes tall, stout,
and ruddy, under a big umbrella-who
was going the other way. "You are late
this evening; some charitable errand, no
doubt ?"
"Good

evening, Madame Charles. Yes; I have been at Beaulieu, where poor old Annette Dupin is dying. It is two leagues from here, and one slips a good deal upon the snow; but it is one's duty. M. le Vicaire has made a much longer course on the other side of the parish; that is his district; probably he has done six leagues to-day. One must do one's duty, dear madam, even though it snows." Certainly," said the little lady. "It is disagreeable, but one gets accustomed to it. M. le Vicaire was out in the war, and I suppose he does not mind.”

The curé made a little scrape with his foot, and a bow, and gave her an uneasy smile. He was perfectly willing to trudge two leagues at any time for old Annette Dupin, or any other of his parishioners, but he did not like it to be thought that he did not mind.

"Pardon me, it is I who keep you." said Madame Charles; "and when I passed the presbytère I smelt something very good, warm, and nice, that will comfort your heart after your four leagues. Bon soir and au revoir, M. le Curé; you are to dine at the château to-morrow."

66

Nothing makes me so happy," said the curé, with another bow; and then the two dark figures separated, and kept on their several paths clearly outlined against the white. Perhaps the good smell which had made itself apparent to the nostrils of Madame Charles had crept by anticipation into those of the tired and chilled priest as he trudged on his homeward way with renewed energy; but Madame Charles had other things to think of. “Figure to yourself," she said within her own mind, as she went on, "that the caprice of a young girl may yet put a stop to so excellent an arrangement;" and she breathed hard and quick at the very thought of such a possibility. "But Hélène has few caprices, thank Heaven," she added to herself, shaking off from her cloak a few large tremulous flakes of the newly-fallen snow. She had turned down a kind of avenue, at the end of which the great tower of the château stood glimmering between two lines of trees. There were neither gates nor lodge to this avenue. It stood free and open as any lane, one broad line of snow with trees on each side all outlined and tricked out in snow-garments; though in that light it was impossible to see the jewels of frost with which they gleamed. The snow was strewn with little leaflets, which continued to sail down one by one among the snowflakes as the wind detached them two little leaves together and the ghost of a berry- the sheddings of lime-trees upon the path. On one "The-the-futur; the the mon- side was the wall of the garden, on the sieur," said the curé, with a deprecating other the park stretched away into the smile, and a little bow of assent to the heavy sky and white distance, full of big restriction imposed upon him. "One ghosts in white, or russet towers of dead understands, of course, that two young foliage stiff and dry, oaks and beeches persons of their condition, until they have which had died afoot, as it were, without met, cannot perhaps entirely conclude-" even strength to throw their dead robes "No, M. le Curé," said Madame from them. Madame Charles went rapCharles; "until they have seen each idly down this snowy road, cheered by other, my brother and sister will allow the fire which glimmered from the window nothing to be considered as concluded. of her own room, and hastened her steps. They might find each other disagreeable. The great tower was attached to the dark Those ideas which come to us from Eng-mass of the château only by one angle. land forbid

"It is our duty," he said; and then, finding no sympathy in his interlocutor, he added, "Monsieur le Vicomte passed through Beaulieu in the great berlin while I was there. It was said that he went to the railway to meet some one from Paris. I would not be indiscreet for worlds; but it is perhaps the gentleman - the fiancé of Mademoiselle Hélène ?"

"Not exactly the fiancé - that is going too far."

Ah, the ideas of the English-how strange they are!" said the curé, with a soft laugh; "but I keep madame in the cold, in the snow ———

It was not like the round tourelles of the garden front, but was square and roofed with red tiles, and stood out boldly into the moat with an aggressive rather than defensive air. The room in it, from which

many anxious inquiries, had selected a worthy of the hand of Mademoiselle Hélène, was expected to arrive every moment. She had never before seen him, it is true, but that only added to the excitement. The reader may perhaps suppose that among the trio in the deep recess of the window there was one heart that of the heroine of the occasion which was torn by tragical emotion, and that the timid look out into the night of the gentle Hélène was, in her own consciousness, and perhaps in those of her companions, an emblematic gaze into the darkness of the life which lay before her, and which she was doomed to spend with a partner, possibly uncon

the firelight glimmered, was one of the best in the château; and at this moment it was the only one which showed any light. But for this point of cheerful suggestion the landscape would have been sufficiently melancholy. The great old house occupied three, or rather two and a half, sides of a square. The half-side attached to the great tower, and in which was the old gateway which faced you as you approached, acted the part of a screen, and veiled the rest of the mansion from you; and this great shadowy pile, all dark and silent, planted so firmly in the white waste of snow, with the solid line of frozen moat marking out its outline, and neither light nor life about to relieve the gloom, was more discour-genial, and certainly a stranger to her aging than attractive to the imagination. When Madame Charles passed through the gateway and across the square of desolate flower-garden to the great door in the principal front of the château, and disappeared there, shaking the snow from her, and pushing off from her feet the handsome little sabots which, half out of deference to country customs, and half for comfort, she wore at Saint-Martin, all life and movement died out of the morne and melancholy scene.

thoughts and habits. But truth compels me to avow that Hélène was not at all tragical. She was extremely quiet, seated at the side from which she could see least, shrinking back from the window, and showing, one would have said, the least curiosity of the three; but the flutter in her heart and a certain quickness of breathing which would have betrayed her to any keen observer as the principal person concerned, were signs of no painful emotion. While the others talked over her head, Hélène was silent; she allowed Clotilde and Mélanie to push in before her without a word.

But there was neither misery nor terror in the intense quiet of her excitement. She felt the importance of the occasion ; that was all. Hush! was that the far-off sound of the horses' hoofs ? — the rattle and jingle of the great berlin as it jolted over the snow? I hear them!" cried Clotilde. "Listen! they are coming through the village. I know the crack of Urban's whip as he passes the Lion d'Or ; and now the dogs! Mélanie, come closer; I tremble; I shall be the first to see them I always am - it is my destiny; they are coming down the avenue! Now! Now!"

Could it but have been possible to throw a gleam of actual light, however, as I am about to throw a historical one, upon a certain dark window, one of the long line on the west side, the spectator would have found the prospect brighter. There was nothing outside to distinguish this special window from the dozen others which formed a close line, with dark clusters of ivy interposing between the white sashes. All were equally dark to the outside and lighted nothing better than a long and narrow corridor. The window of which I speak was the only one in the line which was not filled up with something. Huge cupboards, chiefly used for wood, were fixed into all the other recesses, but this one had been left open, with a wooden seat round it; and "Clotilde, let Hélène see," cried Méas it commanded the immediate approach lanie, drawing back her irrepressible to the château and a long stretch of the cousin, who had pushed forward. "What park, it was a popular haunt in pleasant is it to us in comparison?" and then weather. Why it should have been Mélanie too forgot herself in the excitecrowded on this very dark, very coldment of the moment. Clotilde pressed night, the reader will perhaps have imagination enough to divine after the brief gossip which he has listened to in the village. A great domestic event was about to take place. A perfectly eligible young man, of good family, good character, and sufficient means, whom her parents and friends, after much thought and

forward. Mélanie leant over Hélène's head. Half-stifled between them, the expectant one, the heroine of the moment, was aware of nothing but a flash of sudden light, and the sound of the horses pulling up, and the door of the carriage opening. "Which is he?" cried Mélanie over her head. "Le grand?"

"No; le petit - he who is standing with his hat off. Oh, how cold he looks! They enter they are coming up-stairs. Mon Dieu! Mélanie, we are safe, are we not? no one will come here?" Hélene has seen nothing," said Mélanie, taking the offensive by way of vindicating herself for her own share in the eclipse of her sister. "And as I said it was she who ought to have been first. Dear child, how she trembles! It is perhaps the cold. She must not have an attack of the nerves to-night. Quick, quick, let us go to Hélène's room; and, Clotilde, tell them to make haste with the chocolate. After all, how cold !-how dreadfully cold it is here!"

Hélène's chair. The two sisters were like each other. They had brown eyes, and dark-brown hair coiled and twisted with elaborate neatness. They were very plainly dressed in dresses of dark grey trimmed with fur; and they were pleasant to look upon, in their freshness and roundness of youth; but they were not beautiful. Hélène had a sweet expression, which captivated all older people and children, but which was scarcely striking enough to impress the mass of her contemporaries. Mélanie was prettier, but more cloudy and dreamy and variable than became a French girl perfectly well brought up, and with a tendency to romance which struck despair to her mother's heart. They had been too much excited to For the moment they had changed posiperceive it before. Happily, Hélène's tions, however, Hélène having become room, with its glowing stove and double doors, was close at hand. Enveloping her in a cloud of chatter and comment, they rushed into this refuge with the silent heroine between them, and placed her in the warmest corner, with her feet close to the stove, and a cup of steaming chocolate in her hand. An attack of the nerves on this night, of all others, when she was to see him for the first time! "Mon Dieu!" cried the energetic Clotilde, not for the world. I will run to my aunt's room for her famous orangeflower water; and, Mélanie, you must rub her hands and her feet

"I am quite well," said Hélène. "I have no attack of the nerves. I am only cold; it is you who will have an attack of the nerves, Clotilde, if you do not sit down and get warm."

"She saw nothing, this poor dear Hélène," said Mélanie. "Here are some of the little cakes you like eat, chérie; they will do you good. But he is handsome, he is spirituel, he is charming, How delightful it will be to say mon beaufrère! But you, Hélène ! ma très-chère, ma toute belle, you saw nothing at ali?"

serious by reason of the crisis, while Mélanie was full of the gaiety of an excitement which affected her only in the second degree.

Clotilde was the cousin of the two young ladies by their mother's side. She was large and full and fair, as she had a right to be, being a Flemish maiden from those low rich countries which border Belgium towards the sea. She was an only child, an orphan, and an heiress; and the question of her marriage was a much more difficult one than had been this of Hélene.

"You are going to like him," she said (I am aware that this is a very clumsy English phrase to represent the " Tu vas l'aimer," which was what Clotilde really said; and I regret much not to be able to use the endearing and delightful tu, which marks the difference between domestic and loving talk and ordinary conversation in France - and indeed in all countries except our own)—"you are going to like him. Though you have not met him, I can see it in your eyes. Why is it that I cannot be like you? Listen, girls; there is a new monsieur in Provence who has been spoken of for me. They tried to keep it from me, but I know my uncle Gervaise has gone to inquire about him, his disposition, and his lands, and all that. Ah! it is well for you to smile. If the blessed Virgin and my patroness Sainte Clotilde do not interfere for me, what shall I do? If all Clotilde had gone to the other end of is suitable if he is rich enough and the large room to bring a favourite Sèvres not too wicked what shall I do? I cup from the shelf on which it stood. have refused so many already: they say When she had poured out her chocolate I am capricious-romanesque - I don't she seated herself, with a very serious know what besides. The blessed Virgin face, on a low chair by Hélène's side. grant that he may be wicked, or deMélanie had placed herself on the arm of formed, or not sufficiently rich!"

"I shall see afterwards," said Hélène. "How droll it all is how strange! Mélanie," she whispered, "let us talk of something else. You can turn the conversation 1 am not clever enough. But to think he is here in the house; tones! I cannot talk. Let us think of something else."