incapable of weathering medical storms. " Put a
little water into your wine" is a quiet way of
telling a man to govern his temper. "To make
the water come into one's mouth " is said of
other things besides eating and drinking. Deep
waters run smooth. The stillest waters are not
the most amusing. A bottle of holy water is
the most uncomfortable prison in which you can
confine an imp or demon. Fishing in troubled
waters is practised politically as well as
piscatorially. There are waters of youth, waters of
life, strong waters, and waters of strife. To be
always in hot water is a disagreeable predicament,
which is often a man's own fault; on the
other hand, wet blankets overcast the circles
they frequent, with an unpleasant chill.

THE BONES OF THE BOURBONS.

"No man," says the Koran, "knows the spot
on earth where his grave shall be made." The
Bourbons thought they knew, but, like meaner
folks, they were out in their reckoning, so far,
at least, as related to their final place of
sepulture. In vain they built themselves a mighty
mausoleum. For eleven hundred years the
abbey church consecrated to St. Denis held the
bones of Capets, Carlovingians, and the
descendants of " the good king Dagobert," but the
revolutionary storm of 1792 swept away all
before it, and scattered these and all the other
relics till then held sacred. There are few
events of that terrible time more completely
demonstrating the subversion of the royalty
which had endured so long, than the decree of
the Convention of the 6th of August, 1792, six
months after the execution of Louis the
Sixteenth, which sent the rabid populace of Paris
trooping to St. Denis to obliterate the recollection
of the kings of France by destroying their
very tombs and burying their remains in the
common fosse. A description of what St. Denis
contained, and of the manner in which its
treasures and its tombs were disposed of, may serve
to convey some idea of this contrast.

A few words must first be given to the abbey
church of St. Denis itself. Every one is familiar
with the tradition which fixed its site, when,
after decapitation on the banks of the Seine, the
martyred saint walked with his head in his
hands for two good leagues to choose his burial-
place. The date of this occurrence is nearly as
doubtful as the alleged miracle—one, by the by,
which we meet with as having happened to other
decollated saints in various parts of France—
but most writers assign to it the year A.D. 250,
or thereabouts, saying that a pious lady, named
Catulla, recently converted to Christianity,
built a chapel on the selected spot, where were
inhumed, besides St. Denis, Rusticus and
Eleutherius, two fellow-martyrs of the same
persecution. It was a very humble edifice, but, two
hundred years later, the chapel was augmented
by the care of Saint Geneviève, and, receiving
gradual additions, became, in the sixth century,
an abbey of some pretensions. To the gratitude,
however, of Dagobert, who sought sanctuary
there from the anger of his father, Clotaire, it
owed its chief extension; for when that monarch
came to the throne, he fulfilled a vow made in
the days of his distress, by greatly embellishing
the abbey church. The origin of this vow is
thus recorded in verse, which, so late as the
beginning of the seventeenth century, was still
to be seen inscribed in Gothic characters on the
second portal of the building:

Sanct-Denys, apostre de France,
Après avoir acquis à Dieu
Les François, par grande constance,
Apporta sa teste en ce lieu:
Catulle, femme de ce nom,
Le corps receut honestement,
Et le martyre de grand renom
Enseuelit dévotement.
Quand Dagobert, fils de Clotaire,
Fuyoit son indignation,
Il ne peut qu'en ce seul repaire,
Recouurer consolation.
Entre nous donques qui passez
Soyez recors du temps iadis,
En saluant les saintes passez
De ce monde en Paradis.

In the work of extension Dagobert was greatly
assisted by his minister, Eligius (better known
as St. Eloi), the most skilful worker in precious
metals of his time, and the bodies of the three
martyrs were removed from the chapel of Catulla
and reverently placed in three sarcophagi covered
with fine gold, and adorned with jewels—
enrichments which, however, were not allowed to
remain till the period of the revolution, some
money-wanting king having, in the mean time,
replaced all this finery by shrines of simple
silver. Having paid this respect to the patron
saint of France, King Dagobert resolved that
the abbey should be his own sepulchre, and
accordingly left directions for the erection of a
monument to his memory—which, having been
destroyed by the invading Normans, was rebuilt
by St. Louis, and still attests the skill of the
artists of the thirteenth century. This tomb,
which is of Portland stone, stands (or stood
when we, ourselves, were last at St. Denis) on
the left hand side on entering the church, in a
recess under the four pillars which sustain one
of the towers, and is in the shape of a Gothic
chapel, much decorated, and covered with bas-
reliefs, descriptive of a legend which is related
as follows by Montfaucon, whom we translate:
"A certain personage, named Ausvaldus, returning
from an embassy into Sicily, landed on a small
island, where lived an old anchorite, named John,
whose sanctity drew many persons thither to be
recommended in his prayers. Ausvaldus entered
into conversation with this holy man, and,
discoursing upon the Gauls and King Dagobert,
John told him that, having been warned to pray
to God for the soul of that prince, he saw on the
sea a number of devils who held King Dagobert
fast bound in a skiff, in which they were taking
him, beating him all the while, to the infernal
regions (aux manoirs de Vulcain); that Dagobert
cried out, calling to his aid Saint Denis, Saint