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moment. Who could be harsh or unjust to another, if that remembrance was always present, as it ought, to all of us?-He thought her quiet character would suit yours, and perhaps be animated by it, as he chose to hint in a poetic way, which gave you, no doubt, much comfort and encouragement. At least, like a wise father, he ensured your care of her by knitting your line of life with hers. Come, forgive the cabalism, and be content with a mere woman, composed, as all the sex are, of both sylph and salamander. If she refused to go with you to Paris, it was because she could serve you better by coming to beg my help, and by selling her jewels to buy the court's pardon. And now she comes to beg, not to buy, yours.'

Ariette came in, covered with her veil, and stood at a timid distance, though beckoned forwards.

"Do you not see,' said the good physician, "the moon is waning, and this is the moment when a gentle soul may be communicated!"

"I give her mine fully and for ever," said her husband, "if she drops that mysterious and cabalistic veil."

"Ah!" she replied, " be prepared to see me with a different face-I wore it only when I felt my aspect changing to one which might displease you."-And after a little pause she threw off her veil, and discovered eyes full of laughing brightness, and cheeks which betrayed, notwithstanding the tears that still glistened on them, a few dimples ready to express some merry malice.

"Be a shrew sometimes, but a tender-hearted woman always!" said Valamour, throwing the horoscope into the fire; and Ariette, who never wore the veil again except when his peevishness required her silence, preserved no other secret of cabalism.

European Magazine.

MARGUERITE DE VALOIS,

FIRST WIFE TO HENRY THE FOURTH.

WHEN Charles the Ninth gave his sister in marriage to Henry the Fourth, he said, "J'ai donné ma sœur en mariage à tous les Huguenots de mon Royaume." She soon began to live upon ill terms with her husband, and was confined in one of the fortresses of Navarre. She thus forcibly describes the effect of solitude upon her mind:

"I received these two advantages from my misfortunes and my confinement: I acquired a taste for reading, and I gave into devotion; two things for which I never should have had the least taste, had I remained amidst the pomps and the vanities of the world. For these advantages I am perhaps not so much indebted to fortune as to Providence, who had the goodness to engage for me two such powerful remedies against the evils which were to happen to me in future. Sorrow, contrary to gaiety, which carries our thoughts and our actions out of ourselves, makes the mind rally within itself, exert all its powers to reject the evil, and to seek after the good, in hope to find out that sovereign and supreme good, which is the readiest way to bring itself to the knowledge and love of the Deity.'

The Memoirs of Marguerite are very entertaining. The translation of Plutarch's Lives by Amyot was a very favourite book with her in her confinement, and she appears to have transfused into her Memoirs that naiveté et vieux Gaulois which we admire so much in his style.

Marguerite, who understood Latin, on seeing a poor man lying upon a dunghill, exclaimed,

Pauper ubique jacet.

In any place, in any bed,

The poor man rests his weary head.

The man, to her astonishment, replied,

In thalamis hâc nocte tuis regina, jacerem,
Si verum, hoc esset, pauper ubique jacet.

Ah, beauteous queen, were this but true,
This night I would repose with you.

Marguerite ill-humouredly retorted:

Carceris in tenebris plorans hác nocte faceres,
Si verum, hoc esset, pauper ubique jacet.

If this were true, thou wretched wight,
A gaol should be thy bed to-night;
Where stripes and fetters, whips and pain,
Thy tongue's strange licence should restrain.

Marguerite was divorced from Henry on his accession to the throne of France, and led up Mary de Medicis, his second wife, to the altar at St. Denis to be crowned. She was extremely charitable to the poor, and liberal to scholars and men of talents. Her palace at Paris was the rendezvous of the beaux esprits of that capital. She was beautiful in her person, very fascinating in her manners, and danced with such peculiar grace, that the . celebrated don John of Austria went incognito from Brussels to Paris to see her dance.

Beside Memoirs of her Life, which are imperfect, she wrote some poems. In the former she thus describes what passed in her bedchamber on the morning of St. Bartholomew:

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My husband rose early in the morning to play at tennis, before he should see the king. He and his gentleman left me. I, perceiving that it was day, and supposing that the danger which my sister had predicted to me was over, overcome by watchfulness, told my old nurse to shut the door of the room, that I might sleep more at my ease. About an hour afterwards, I was awakened out of a very profound sleep by hearing the door knocked at very loudly, and by hearing a man cry out, Navarre! Navarre! My nurse, thinking that it was the king, my husband, who wished to come in, ran to the door and opened it immediately. The person,

VOL. I.

however, that knocked thus violently, was a Monsieur de Tejan, who was wounded in the elbow with a sword, and had likewise another wound in the arm with a halbert; and who was closely pursued by three dragoons, who all of them together forced themselves into the room. Tejan, anxious to save his life, threw himself upon my bed. I, perceiving myself held down by him, threw myself upon the side of the bed, and he after me, taking hold of my waist. I had not the least acquaintance with him, and in my fright did not know whether the soldiers intended mischief to him or to myself. At last, however, it pleased God that Monsieur de Nancey, captain of the king's guards came in to us, who, finding me in this situation (although he was a man of great humanity), could not refrain from laughter; and storming at the soldiers for their insolent intrusion, sent them away, and granted me the life of the poor man, who still held by me. I afterwards ordered his wounds to be dressed, and himself put to bed in my closet till he was recovered.

"When I had changed my shift (which was covered with blood), M. de Nancey told me what had happened, and informed me that the king my husband was with the king my brother in his apartment, and that not a hair of his head would be touched. Then making me throw my night-gown over me, he conducted me to the room of my sister the duchess of Lorraine, and which I entered more dead than alive. As I was passing through the ante-room (the doors of which were all open), I saw a gentleman of the name of Bourse, in endeavouring to escape some soldiers that were pursuing him, fall down dead nearly at my feet, run through with a halbert. I fell down at no great distance from him on the other side in a swoon, into the arms of Monsieur de Nancey, firmly persuaded that the same thrust of the halbert had run us both through. Recovering, however, I made the best of my way to my sister's bedchamber, where I found M. de Meossins, first gentleman of the bedchamber to the king my husband, and Armagnac, his first valet-de-chambre,

who came running up to me, desiring me to save their lives. I then hastened to pay my respects to the king and queen; when, falling upon my knees, I requested them to spare the lives of these gentlemen; with which request at last they complied."

THE LOCK OF HAIR.

The course of true love never did run smooth.-SHAKSPEARE.

"WELL, take it, Henry!" said a lovely girl, as she cut a tress of hair from her amber locks, and which, as she twined it around her ivory fingers, appeared like gold contending for beauty with alabaster-"But how long will thy love for her who once owned it continue?" and she faintly smiled, as Friendship does when smoothing the pillow of suffering, while her heart whispers, it is in vain. "Nay, nay, Ellen, has not that love been the orb which has cheered my morning of life; and think you that I will forsake its beams amidst the difficulties which may impede my noon-day path? Ah no! on the bright current of pleasure, and on the storm-tossed waves of adversity, thou shalt be the polar star to guide me from destruction."-" Be it so, Henry, and remember that death must arrest the pulsations of faithful woman's heart, ere it will cease to love!"

Months rolled on, and saw Henry established in a subordinate mercantile situation, exposed to the temptations of a dissolute metropolis, and far from the scenes consecrated by the pure feelings of a first affection. Still Ellen was gladdened by the continuance of his love, still she perused with delight the repeated, the ardent declarations of his affection. But, alas! too soon did those declarations become less and less frequent; too soon was their tone chilled by estrangement; too soon did their total discontinuance dash into a thousand atoms the defences erected by hope for the preservation

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