—should have excited suspicion. The dainty
volumes taken home proved to be a company
of little lepers, fashionably dressed, and
destined for ''the ladies' boudoir." As I look
at their gilding and their pretty "getting
up," and feel the scent of those boudoirs still
clinging to them, I think they must be very like
the masked heroes of the court, the human
lepers who went about in the bag-wigs and sky-
blue silken coats.

As this miasma lifts itself slowly and opens
partially, we, who are looking back, see the
strangest spectral figures and ghostly lights
flitting to and fro, like exhalations over a
marsh. It seems like the last grand round
of the masked ball, when the Pierrots and
Débardeurs are fetching up their wildest antics;
and we take a sort of morbid interest in this
unholy rout, from knowing that this and that
poor wretched reveller will be by-and-by dragged
out into the cold glare of daylight, and
sacrificed bloodily, with all the paint and gauds
on. Poor unconscious mummers! They show
us glimpses of their fairy land. We cross
over from Dover, and find at Dessein's, getting
ready to post it up to Paris, the Prince of
Gossip, the most delightful of scandal-mongers
—most welcome of cronies—diverting Sir
Nathaniel Wraxall. He has the choicest bits
in his wallet. He has been round all the courts
in his light carriage, scandal-hunting. But there
is scandal and scandal as there is fagot, and
fagot; and the babbling baronet only relished
such as dealt with courtly matter: as those
dark whispers concerning Caroline Matilda, the
indiscretion of the illustrious Empress Catherine,
the fatal escapade of the Count Kœnigsmarck,
and other little adventures. If he
should but offer us a seat in his chaise, what
a feast of tattle we shall have, as we rattle
through Montreuil and Abbeville, and those
other posting towns, by which the Reverend
Mr. Sterne had already travelled—sentimentally!
We rattle into Paris at nightfall, under
the lanterns hung from lines across the streets,
and plunge into the revel with the rest. We
go out to Versailles upon a gala day, see
the great waters spouting, and then look on
from reserved places as their gracious
majesties dine before the world. Such
magnificence, such fine clothes, such a happy people!
Then, their majesties rise and walk among
their faithful subjects. A heavy bulky figure,
with the onion-shaped head of the sou-piece,
shambling from leg to leg, as though one
limb were shorter than the other; a good-
natured fatuous face, suffering much from the
heat—this was his majesty, the eldest son of
the Church. But on his arm—the fat arm of
this shambling Lewis—leans that famous lady,
the hapless queen, for whom, alas, Mr. Burke's
ten thousand swords should have made that
famous leap from their scabbards. As she moved
among those Versailles bosquets, and trimmed
hedges, and spouting mermen and other
conceits, there was in her walk and carriage
something that verged upon the goddess. Sober
Englishmen, posting it round the world upon
the grand tour, presented by his Grace of
Dorset our ambassador, became infatuated,
and linger on for months. The cold classical
mind of Mr. Burke was clearly unsettled by
this vision; and later on in Parliament, as in
other places, he was accustomed to rave of this
enchantress. One special declamatory raving is
often spouted on a school-room platform, and
Master Pickle hymns it with appropriate sing-
song, how it was now sixteen years since he saw
the Queen of France, and that surely mortal eye
had never rested on anything so lovely. It is
to be feared she took too much delight in that
turning of heads: conquests to which contributed
mainly that light forward manner of hers
and that superb hair with which she used to
play fantastic tricks.

She flits past—in the tricky light of the
memoirs of her time—with a new head-dress for
every day, each a prodigy of inventive talent.
She set the fashion of that coiffure à la hedgehog,
which suggested the outline of quills of
that animal, and, with a gay capriciousness,
made all her ladies carry gardens, forests,
mountains, parterres, and other curious devices, upon
their heads. A naval captain raised the public
to enthusiasm by acquitting himself with
respectability in action, and presently fashionable
tresses were seen to be trained into a faint
likeness of a frigate of war, which ingenious style
was christened à la Belle Poule, the name of
the vessel. Some forty years back there was
pointed out to Dumas the Elder, a man who had
often constructed these frigates, parks, and
cabriolets (for mimetic vehicles of this nature
were also borne upon the head) for the queen,
and had manipulated professionally those long
soft tresses with comb and irons and lubricants.

We see her still—in the Will-o'-the-wisp light
of the memoirs—walking in the gardens, playing
games with a herd of doubtful gallants, a sort
of hoyden queen and royal Glorvina. She was
about as indiscreet as that full-blown lady who
was imported for a noble George of our own.
She fretted, like the full-blown lady, against the
nets and strings of etiquette with which she
was hampered. A sort of reigning school girl,
she ran races on donkeys, was thrown from her
donkey a little awkwardly, and was picked up
with a very curious speech. She showered
nicknames plentifully, laughed loudly, said what
first came into her head, and (we are afraid) was
a little too fond of admiring any handsome
gallant she saw. The babbling baronet—very
clubbable he must have been—who was at my
lord duke's, the ambassadors', and the court
and nobilities, and knew the old marshals and
the whole squadron of demireps—tells some
odd stories. He describes the Descampativos,
or Games of Romps, to which the royal lady
was passionately addicted, but in which he
there may have been no harm. The
Romps were conducted on these principles:
the scene was usually the greensward of the
palace gardens, St. Cloud or Versailles; the
trees were hung with lamps, and the public