"Couldn't I come alone?" "Of course, but he's fun. He fights so with Aunt Paule. How they hate each other!" the child said. "Do they?" dreamily. "How you do dream, Bee! I wish Edgar would come back. The letter to-morrow will say when he'll be here, won't it?" "Yes." dancing children.' Hooray! you'd never believe!" "Neither do I believe now." And She turned from the window abruptly and took a cup of tea from the hands of the squire without the least sign of thanks. Again only two people had seen the "children." On the following morning Bee's maid As usual there had been a war of at Scarbourne took her mistress a cup words between "old Hatherley" and of tea before getting up, at the same Miss Yearsley, and the alert little lady time carrying her a letter with the had moved off to the window of the Singapore postmark. Bee was sitting morning-room. There she stood watch-up in bed wide-eyed and terrified. ing the glories of the setting sun athwart "Oh, Davis !" she cried, "why did the trellis of wintry tree boughs. The you not come when I called you in the park shone golden in the yellow light, night?" crimson and scarlet bars as of fire swept the purpling sky. The woman had heard nothing. hold me, Davis ! Hold me! Am I really Oh! ma'am — yes. And it is the loveliest morning! What was it, ma'am?" "Dreadful! dreadful! I cannot say. He is dead, he is dead, I am sure! They murdered him." Was Bee wandering? "Oh, Davis - say it is only a dream! And I went to sleep again—yes, I "No-but you Devonians are mad-know I did, and I have dreamt it all der than I thought you." over again, and you woke me. Am I "How so? I always say we are mild in my senses and sane." "Look there!" and Aunt Paule pointed, and her face was a picture of scorn. "A school treat on a February day!" "Stuff, Aunt Paule," May said, but like the rest she went towards the window. 66 - am I?" Sure, yes, my dearie. Drink some tea and read the letter. There's a letter from the young squire, ma'am, and you'll see treuly how he's well an' 'carty." After a bit the good soul-she had been the old nurse at the Hares' left her young mistress quiet, but strangely tired-looking and pale. erley." But he suddenly stopped. "Miss Bee to be like that! "" the "It looks like it," he said in a non-woman said to herself. "I'd never ha' plussed sort of way. "They are not believed it if I hadn't seen it. I'll be Scarbourneites, though - I'd have had glad when the master's back. Let her my say there." lie; the old squire must have his breakfast alone - he's done it afore." 66 Well, they are enjoying themselves. Dancing, actually! Mary," to Mrs. Hare, where are you giving them their feed? "Aunt Paule!" shouted Yorick, An hour later she went up-stairs again. No sound. Bee was still and quiet, and the open clapping his hands, "you've seen the ing door disturbed her not. "If I only could have you under my control for a week!" Davis listened. What a good sleep | limp hands played with the arms of the -a sleep now with good dreams surely, easy-chair. for her waking thoughts had been gladdened by the Singapore letter. The letter was in Bee's hand still, though the white fingers were loosened by sleep. White fingers! Nurse Davis sprang forward, for Bee's fingers were not white, but brown, and tanned, and rosy. There is nothing more to say except a few words which thicken the mystery about the "Children of Harricombe." Mr. Hatherley, the bachelor squire, was utterly broken down by the loss of his children. Like a helpless, hunted creature he fled always to Harricombe Manor. “I am weary of living, and there's Her words were uttered without a secondary meaning, but some electric force in them flashed a meaning into the poor old squire's brain. He both spoke and acted. And Aunt Paule became squiress of Scarbourne in a very few weeks. and both the prophecies of the "Children of Harricombe"—that of joy as well as that of sorrow were fulfilled for the only people to whom they had been revealed. From Blackwood's Magazine. TWO PRINCESSES OF THE HOUSE OF BOURBON. A SINGULARLY interesting little volume, truly unique of its kind, has been lately published in Paris. It is the diary of a child, daughter of the martyred King Louis XVI., who alone of the royal family survived the terrible events of 1789-94, and who, during her captivity in the Tower, had kept a record of the harrowing march of events which successively deprived her of father, mother, aunt, and brother; blighting the May-day of her youth ere it had well unclosed, and leaving her at the threshold of life a saddened and sobered woman. We are often told nowadays that people do not care to hear anything further about the great French Revolution; that its stock of horrors has been so widely illustrated by brush and pen as to afford no further material for picture or romance, one day he ejaculated the sufferings of the tremulously, sinking down into an easy- martyr-king and of his family so exhaustively treated as to be no longer capable of producing the faintest emotion in the breast of a blasé and satiated Yet when - as in the generation. the truth!" chair. Fiddlesticks!" Aunt Paule cried in answer. It was another winter, but with the season she was back at the manor, and as alert and masterful as ever. ed. 1 Mémoire écrit par Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, sur la captivité des Princes et Princesses "Rouse yourself, squire!" she add- ses Parents depuis le 10 Août 1792 jusqu'à la mort de son frère arrivée le 9 Juin 1795. Publie sur le manuscrit autographe appartenant à Madame la "I cannot, simply cannot," and his Duchesse de Madrid. Paris: Plon, Nourrit et Cie. present case a voice reaches us, so to say, from the grave, relating with the authority of an eye-witness the story of last century's great tragedy, in simple, childlike language, and with an absolute veracity of detail which brings before us the scenes described with a vividness unachieved by the ablest historian, is not the tale thus told of far deeper and more pungent interest than the most thrilling romance that ever was penned ? grown old, can there remain a soul unthrilled by the sound? Their voices, alas! do not stray through What the playgrounds of imagination. they are re-telling here is a true history, where ignoble buffets and a crown of thorns have left their mark as on Veronica's veil. its centenary! When on the threshold of This passion-story likewise is entitled to 1893 France turns back to salute once more her great ancestors, does not justice demand that above their heads she should contemplate those whom they have crucified? The original manuscript of these memoirs, which it is our purpose here to discuss, is traced, as we are told in the preface, in a common school copy-book of extremely coarse paper, containing thirty-five and a half written pages of thirty-one centimetres height and twenty-two centimetres breadth. This copy-rible book is covered with a sheet of the same coarse paper, bearing this inscription: Mémoire écrit par Marie-Thérèse Charlotte de France, sur la captivité des Princes et Princesses ses Parents depuis le 10 Août 1792 jusqu'à la mort de son frère arrivée le 9 Juin 1795. In order to introduce this interesting journal to the English reader, we cannot do better than transcribe the opening words of the distinguished French writer (the Marquis Costa de Beauregard) to whose able pen we already owe many interesting works relating to the history of those times. A hundred years have passed since the King Louis XVI. entered the Temple,1 and since his daughter Madame Royale, in traeing the first lines of this memoir, opened the mournful account where were successively to be recorded the tortures and outrages of each day. The irregular lines of her manuscript are, so to say, still quivering with the tremulous motion of her little hand and the accelerated beatings of her heart. Like that strange instrument which has succeeded in imprisoning sound, this writing has become the receptacle of infinite sufferings. And as moaning these now escape, childlike yet, despite the century in which they have 1 August 13, 1792. Nothing more would remain to be said as introduction to the memoir of Madame Royale, if it were not necessary to make known how it came to reach us, and if some hitherto unedited letters were not departure from the Temple, that of her tercaptivity. there to complete, by the account of her The chronicler goes on to relate how, on the 15th of June, 1795, Madame Royale, who, since the departure of her aunt, Madame Elisabeth, had reached that extremity of suffering where all hope of remedy, relief, or consolation has ceased to be, heard her prison door open. She was reading at the time, and did not even turn round her head, trembling to encounter the face of some bloodthirsty monster. But no; the new-comer was a woman, who fell down at her feet, and the young princess saw two tearful eyes regarding her with an unmistakable expression of affection. The stranger told her name - Madeleine Hilaire la Rochette, wife of one citizen Bocquet Chanterenne. Having heard that the committee of general security had decided to place a woman as companion to the daughter of Louis Capet, she had offered herself, inspired by a secret devotion to the king's unfortunate daughter, and had succeeded in obtaining her nomination, in recognition of certain services rendered to the Republic by her husband as well as her father. Instantaneously all the pent-up affection of Madame Royale's young heart, which during the last sad years had been famished and starved from want of love, was transferred to this new companion. Madame de Chanterenne's arrival in the Temple was like a ray of sunshine, come just in time to save from perishing this poor little prison flower, deprived so long of air and light. On Madame de Chanterenne likewise devolves the painful duty of breaking to Madame Royale the deaths of her mother, aunt, and brother, and there are few things in history more intensely tragic than the following scrap of dialogue recorded by M. de Beauchesne in his work entitled "Louis XVII. : "Madame has no more parents." Despite, however, the terrible sufferings she has undergone, Madame Royale is still a child at heart, and it is inexpressibly touching to see how, under the unwonted influence of sympathetic affection, her long-forgotten gaiety reasserts itself in unexpected fashion. Within a very few days of her new friend's arrival into the Temple, we find the princess writing playful little notes to Madame de Chanterenne, whose more formal appellation is soon exchanged for her Christian name of Renée, caressingly metamorphosed into Renête; and it is into this friend's trusty hands that Madame Royale, on leaving the Temple on the evening of the 18th of December, 1795, deposits the precious manuscript which forms the subject of this paper. To-morrow will be a very sad day for you. But, my Renête, try to occupy yourself- think of the happiness of seeing your family again. It is so sweet to be with our relations and friends. Do not think of me too much, since it afflicts you. I shall have every care for the persons whom you recommend to me, and, above all, I shall remember you and your respectable family. I thank you, my Renête, for all your goodness and obligingness towards me during the six months we have spent together: I shall never forget that time. I end, my Renête, for I know not what I am saying. To-day is a great day for me, and my head is troubled. Farewell, lovely, good, sweet, amiable, gay, obliging, frank, charming Renête.. As this manuscript, as well as all the letters of Madame Royale, had not left the hands of Renête, they might be supposed to be absolutely inedited. Such, however, is not quite the case, at least in so far as the record of the captivity in the Temple is concerned; and, as the narrator goes on to explain, the public may have caught stray glimpses of it in the following manner : — One day at Mittau, it seems, Madame Royale desired to have back the manuscript which she had given to Renête. This was in 1805. Did she wish, perhaps, to compare her prison sufferings with those which she had to endure after her departure from France? Perhaps. Howsoever this may have been, Madame reclaimed the manuscript from Madame de Chanterenne by the hands. of the faithful Clery, and herself made of it a copy. She added a few phrases, Madame de Chanterenne did not accompany the princess on her journey to Vienna, for the Austrian emperor, Joseph II., had made the cruel stipulation -for what reason is not very apparent —that none of the women attached to Madame Royale during her captivity in the Temple were to remain with her when she left the country. That poor Madame de Chanterenne was cruelly wounded by this hard decree is sufficiently betrayed by the following letter suppressed a few others, and finally, addressed to her by Madame Royale on the eve of her departure, and which furnishes the best possible proof of the young princess's tender heart as well as of her wholesome common sense. on her return to France, she sent back to Renête the original so much prized by her. The copy made at Mittau was given to Madame de Soucy, probably in mem ory of the journey in which she had, manuscript, but which, for the reader's after the departure from the Temple, elucidation, have been parenthetically accompanied Madame to Vienna. inserted. How and why Madame de Soucy permitted herself in 1823 to print these pages, is what we are unable to say. But she did so, and great indeed was Madame the Duchesse d'Angoulême's displeasure on learning this indiscretion. By her orders all the copies that could be discovered were bought up and destroyed. Of these, two or three, perhaps, had escaped the search. Monsieur Nettement had taken cognizance of them. Monsieur de Pastoret made use of this source, from which likewise Monsieur de Beauchesne made numerous extracts. Finally, Monsieur le Baron de Saint-Amand has drawn from it largely for his book entitled "La Jeunesse de Madame la Duchesse d'Angoulême." But these different publications only serve to accentuate the interest of these reminiscences, which until now have never been published in their authentic text. Monsieur de Pastoret, in especial, has treated the writing of Madame in such cavalier fashion as to deprive it of the great character of simplicity, surest proof of this relic's authenticity. A relic indeed, whose strange destiny bears some analogy to that of the saint who has bequeathed it to us; storm-tossed until a last wave has brought it to Frohsdorf. A few months only before the death of Monseigneur the Comte de Chambord, the grandson of Madame de Chanteret had sent the MS. to the prince as a sort of supreme homage. Madame, the (late) Duchess of Madrid, inherited this treasure in her uncle's succession; and it was at Viareggio that the august princess permitted that the autograph of Madame Royale should be, so to say, retraced by a faithful hand.1 In giving the following extracts from the journal of Madame Royale, we have carefully preserved the faulty spelling of some of the proper names, as well as the omission of certain words which have been overlooked in the original 1 M. Gabriel de Saint Victor. EXTRACTS FROM THE JOURNAL OF MADAME ROYALE. The king, my father, arrived at the Tem ple with his family, Monday the 13th of August, 1792, at 7 o'clock in the evening. The cannoneers wished to conduct my father alone to the tower and leave us at the castle. Manuel had received on the way a decision of the commune to conduct us all to the tower. Pethion [Petion] calmed the rage of the cannoneers, and we entered the castle. The municipals kept my father in view. Pethion went away. Manuel remained. My father supped with us. My brother was dying of sleep. Madame de Tourzelle conducted him at eleven o'clock to the tower, which was decisively to be our lodging. My father arrived at the tower with us at one o'clock in the morning: there was nothing here prepared. My aunt slept in a kitchen, and it is said that Manuel was ashamed in leading her there. On the second day there was brought to us during dinner a decree of the commune, ordering the departure of those persons who had come with us. My father and mother opposed this, as did likewise the municipals on guard at the Temple. The order was then momentarily revoked. We spent the day all together. My father instructed my brother in geog raphy; my mother taught him history, and made him learn verses; my aunt taught him to reckon. My father had luckily found a library, which kept him occupied. My mother had tapestry to work at. |