seas—she rounds the beautiful island in the
distance, lessens in the dim horizon, and
the Royal Rampshire is gone.

AN OLD PICTURE OF JUSTICE.

I will tell in as few words as possible
the history of a French criminal process in
the year one thousand six hundred and
ninety. A detailed account of it is included
by M. Oscar Honoré in an interesting book,
entitled Sketches of Private Life in the Old
Times.

In one of the ancient streets of Paris, near
the Sorbonne, there stood, until lately, a
house of four stories, built in the first years of
the reign of Louis Quatorze. Huge gates
studded with iron led into the coach-house,
they were locked by a heavy key which,
when the house was occupied as a mansion,
used to be entrusted to the coachman, and as
an appanage of his domestic estate hung on a
large hook in the kitchen. From the kitchen,
stabling, and other offices on the basement
story, a great staircase led up to the business-
hall, the reception-saloon, and the card-room.
In the business-hall was a massive chest
which contained the family plate, and a close
alcove built over the street which could be
used as the sleeping apartment of a servant.
The great staircase continued its way to the
floor above, and there—since a brief description
of the house is essential to a proper
comprehension of the narrative—it is to be
understood that there was a spacious ante-
chamber leading to the bedroom of the master
or mistress, which was the only other room
upon that floor, and that the windows of these
apartments opened on the court. In the bedroom
there were two doors opening upon a
small private staircase, one door being in the
alcove of the bed, and the other in a dressing
closet, which was the place in which the
strong-box—the cash-box of a period when
men had to keep much money in a bulk upon
their premises—was kept. The floor above
was similar as to the arrangement of its
rooms. On a floor above that were the
sleeping apartments of the servants, and at
the top of all was an enormous loft.

In the year sixteen hundred and eighty-
nine this house was inhabited by Madame
Mazel, a wealthy card-playing widow, frivolous,
luxurious, and full of little and great
enmities. She had three sons, named Savonnières-
Réné, a counsellor to the parliament ;
Georges, treasurer of France in the generality
of Paris ; and Michel, major of the regiment
of Piedmont.

The wife of her eldest son Réné was pursued
by Madame Mazel with an implacable
hatred. Thirteen or fourteen years before
the date of the events here to be detailed,
this poor girl, Madame de Savonnières, had
been arrested in the public street, by an
order of which the king had been beguiled, and
hurried off to a provincial convent, which had
continued from that time to be her prison.
She had made several efforts to escape, once
or twice even with a temporary success. It
afterwards became known that three months
before the event on which this narrative turns,
Madame de Savonnières had effected one of
her escapes, and was concealed in Paris at a
house in the Rue du Colombier, where she
was heard by some one to declare that, in
three months more, she would be free to go
back to her husband.

Madame Mazel's household consisted of
two young footmen who were brothers, of two
chambermaids who were sisters, of an elderly
female cook, a coachman, a sort of major-
domo named Le Brun, and of a parasitic
priest, the Abbé Poulard, who, after spending
twenty years among the Jacobins, had been
transferred to the order of Cluny, but had
transferred himself, by preference, to the
luxuries of the rich widow's household. He
ate the daintiest fare at madame's table, and
occupied in the guest's bed-chamber a huge
soft bed, where he slept, under hangings of
blue velvet and cherry-coloured satin.
Ecclesiastical proceedings of various kinds had
been instituted against him, but he
contrived to bear them patiently, and in spite of
all that the church or the world might say or
do, held to his post as madame's almoner
and favourite.

The Abbé Poulard was maintained in his
place, not only by the favour of Madame Mazel.
Through a sister of his, who was the
fascinating widow of a counsellor, he secured for
himself the brotherly regard of M. Georges
de Savonnières, second son of his patroness.
Réné the elder son was not unwilling that his
brother should be mated to the widow of an
old associate, and the third son was absent
upon military service. By help therefore of
this lady—Isménie Chapelain—who
received from Georges de Savonnières rich
presents of dresses brocaded in gold and silver,
costly headgear, silk stockings and embroidered
shoes, the Abbé Poulard was upon
good terms with all the family. Madame
Mazel, however, was in no such happy case.
Whatever tenderness she may have herself
felt for the Abbé, it is certain that she set
her face most obstinately against the idea that
her son Georges should pay court seriously to
the Abbé's sister. A marriage, much desired
by Madame Chapelain was, therefore, to be
regarded as impossible during the lifetime of
Madame Mazel.

I have said that the male servants in
madame's employment were two footmen, a
coachman, and the steward or major-domo
Jacques Le Brun. There had been another
footman, named Berry, who had been
dismissed under strong suspicion of having
robbed his mistress of one thousand five
hundred livres. Le Brun had served the house
during twenty-nine years as a confidential
servant, and was known to be so strict
in his fidelity, that he refused to accept the