accidents were the results. A poor lady, one of
the belles of the day, strayed out of the staid
cloisters of sobriety in the company of some of
the elegant gentlemen of the court, and in that
helpless state was nearly blown up with
fireworks, and dreadfully burnt at the hands of
playful spirits. Gentlemen pretended to
be short-sighted in chapel, and would kneel down
on some old duchess, taking her for a prie-Dieu.
Songs and epigrams were of course the fruit of
these pranks. Still the young king stepped lightly
over the silken nets and the golden gins and
snares hidden with flowers, and flung himself
into hunting and fowling with a positive fury.
He was a Royal Young Meadows, singing, by
anticipation,

                 —— who cared a jot,
                 For he envied them not,
           While he had his dog and his gun!

To which objects of affection let there be added
also, his wife, on whom he doted, as boy-husbands
dote.

I fear very much that this virtuous lady was
(innocently) at the bottom of the mischief that
followed. She was too austere, too rigid a
paragon. She repelled his fondness coldly, and
thought "most loving mere folly." Therefore she
had soon to sing " Heigh-ho the holly!" With
the Lurleïs and water-nymphs singing and
waving their long arms, and growing bolder
every day, she could not have been too careful.
The vile crew about him found him in a
moment of irritation, chilled by her austerity, and
artful Mephistopheles Richelieu, their accredited
agent, is at hand with a bait. Down goes the
light paling of virtue and decency: the first of
the four sisters is installed as titular sultana, and
the whole court rejoices. Alas! for the youth
with the flowing brown locks, who was so pious,
and cared not a jot while he had his dog and his
gun. These pastimes were now found insipid.
"Je n'aime pas les plaisirs innocens," said a
fine lady whom her careful husband had taken
down to the country. The reign of Sardanapalus
the Second has begun. It is no longer
succession of ministries of men in power, but of
sultanas. Mothers educate and beautify their
daughters with a view to this proud distinction,
closing their eyes in peace and happiness if they
have seen them thus provided for. From a
royal king he becomes a royal sultan, and from
a royal sultan a royal Swine. How loathsome,
how sickening the details! We turn away
our eyes, blushing, from that rout of painted
brazen creatures, and are thankful that we have
no such degrading era to soil our history, not
even the days of that lax person with the little
dog who was but too indulgently called the
Merry Monarch.

Our dramatic situation stands out effectively:
that scene round the sick-bed when
Sardanapalus had roused himself to go to the
wars. Among the camp equipages lumbered
along a huge berline containing the painted
ladies of the royal suite, at whom the soldiers
jeered and sang insulting songs even under the
royal windows. Was this not degrading enough
for Bourbon majesty? And soon after Sardanapalus
falls sick. The scene, I say, is splendidly
dramatic. The royal roué in the centre tossing
miserably on his bed in fever, moaning, now
bled in the foot, now purged, now bled again,
and wholly given up to the experiments of
ignorant quacks. The painted ladies and their
esquires and agents are creeping about on tiptoe,
whispering, plotting, counterplotting, and
trembling, while their arch-emissary Richelieu keeps
the door fast against all comers who may whisper
danger—even against the princes. One forces
his way in boldly with "Lacquey, do you dare
to stop me?" and at the breach enters too a tall
stern figure, in the purple and lace and the gold
cross of a prelate, who, stooping to the king,
breathes the word "Confession." It was
Fitzjames, Bishop of Soissons. Now was about to
be played an embodiment of the old legend
which sings how, when Great Nameless was
sick, Great Nameless would enter a monastic
order, but when he got well, he was anything
in the world (rather out of the world) but
monastic. Sardanapalus is impatient, and will not
believe in danger, like most of his name and
kind. Time enough to-morrow. Stern prelate
persists. His majesty can begin to-day and finish
to-morrow. The light ladies are gasping outside,
and one breaks in and rushes to his pillow.
"Go away, go away," says Sardanapalus, half
crying, "we have been very wrong;" and
presently feeling a strange sensation, he roars
loudly for a confessor and faints off. The
confession is made, and as a first point the stern
bishop sends notice, "by order of his majesty,"
to the ladies to pack up and be gone forthwith.
They hang down their eyes and look at each
other, but their esquire Richelieu steps forward.
"Mesdames," he says, "if you have only
courage to remain, and brave the order wrung
from, a sick man, I will take it all on myself."
"Ah ! is it so?" said the stern prelate, turning
on him with flashing eyes. "Then let the
churches be shut, so that the disgrace may be
more conspicuous, and the reparation due to an
outraged Lord more complete!" The ladies were
cowed, they and their champion, and slunk away.
But the stern bishop was not done with them
yet : "Sire, the canons of the Church forbid us
to administer the Viaticum while these persons
are in the city. Your majesty is at the point of
death. There is no time to lose."

The wretched creatures were literally hooted
from the town. Then was the communion
administered. "Oh," snivels Sardanapalus, "what
an unworthy king I have been!" Yet one more
sacrifice is demanded by the stern prelate, who
calls in the whole world, and tells them that his
majesty has charged them to say how sincerely
he repents of these awful scandals, &c. The
crowd murmurs, "He is killing our king," and
scowls fiercely at the priest. But I confess,
looking back to that scene—to the figure of the
stern prelate doing his duty fearlessly and almost
harshly, in the midst of that crew of valets, lords,
and dukes, who were lower even than valets—
we feel it is the only wholesome bit of fresh air