Blackens beneath it: such my father's doom.
Give the king verses, let him call them his;
Give witticisms; they win where pity fails;
Try thou but these, and we may hope success.

C. Could Francis see that look, and kiss that hand
I now have kist and dare to hold, but dare not
(Lest my heart break) release . . .

D.                                                  Go, win my suit,
For thou canst win it, and none other can.
Go, tarry not.

C.                   The word wings me away;
For the first time I go hence willingly.

SCENE II. DIANA AND CAILLETTE.

D. Well hast thou sped, Caillette! It ill beseems
To show my gratitude within these walls;
Beside, I hasten to the court to thank
Our gracious monarch for his clemency:
To thee I owe it all.

C.                                'Tis only Fools
Who plead for mercy to an angry king.
I of all fools am the most fortunate.
Many are merry, few of them are happy,
I am for life. I will ask one more favor.

D. Ask any.

C.                    None from you, my sovran lady;
One from our sovran lord.

D.                   What can that be?

C. Freedom from court, from courtier, and from king.
O! would God grant me evermore to kneel
Upon these fragrant rushes, close before
The tapestry where tread these slender feet!

D. Hush! hear you not the horses tramp the stones
Under the archway? Many days of rest,
Since my disquietude hath kept me in,
Make them impatient to prance forth again.
I see you in your fit habiliments
Ready to come with me.

C.                                                To follow.

D.                                                                No;
To sit in front of me, that I may see
The face of him who saved my father's life.

SCENE III. FRANCIS, DIANA, CAILLETTE, CHANCELLOR.

Fr. What means this whispering at the folding-door,
Before the curtain and behind it?

Chan.                                             Sire!
Caillette, your Majesty's appointed Fool,
Hath ventured to come forward with a dame
Who, from her father's criminality,
Must have incurr'd your Majesty's ill-will.

Fr. Ill-favor only can incur ill-will
With me.

Chan. Too surely she is not ill-favor'd.

Fr. Let her then enter. Never would Caillette
Bring ugly one or cruel one to me.

Enter DIANA and CAILLETTE.

Fr. Diana! troth! I am well pleas'd to see
Thy beauteous face within this hall again.
Thy suit is granted.

D.                                   Gracious Sire! I come
To offer my most humble thanks for this.

Fr. Thou couldst have won without an intercessor,
But thou hast chosen well in choosing him:
No one is worthier of a lady's love.

D. I think so, Sire! He has all mine where God's
And your own laws have sanction'd it.

Fr.                                                        None else?

                         [Without a reply she turns to CAILLETTE.

D. Caillette! take thou my hand: before thy king,
Before thy God, accept my gratitude.

Chan. By heaven! she kisses him! For shame! for
shame!

Fr. None but a virtuous woman dared do thus.
There have been modest poets; Caillette is
The only modest fool that ever lived.

VITAL HEAT.

WE all of us like to make ourselves as
comfortable as we can; the mere aspect of a
neatly-laid grate, with a thick foundation of
chips and shavings overlaid by a stratum of
the black shining pebbles which are known
to cooks as nice round coal, is sufficient to
alleviate the uneasiness which agitates us in
a Highland hostelry when a rainy afternoon
sets in. If the man who invented sleep was
a blessed benefactor to the human race,
certainly the hero who stole fire from
Heaven was an adorable philanthropist.
Man is not only a cooking animal, but an
animal who loves to kindle a blaze, and then
to exclaim, "A-ha! I am warm." The
reflected heat of a chimney-corner, when
the wind is roaring out of doors; the snug
retreat afforded by a goose feather bed
beneath and Witney blankets above, when
the windows are covered with hoar-frost and
the roofs of the opposite houses are glaringly
white; a hot cup of coffee before encountering
the raw air of early November morning;
the gleams of genial sunshine in June which
help the invalid and the aged to hold on to
life just a little longer; the earthen pot filled
with burning charcoal, with which a
continental belledame sometimes warms her
fingers, sometimes smokes her own hams, and
which—edifying spectacle that I have
witnessed—she sometimes flings at her
husband's head; the snow cupola beneath which
the Esquimaux creeps to shield himself from
the icy darts of the North; all stoves,
whether Arnott's, American, or Prussiennes;
all calorifères, heating apparatuses, and hot-
water systems, are so much material evidence
of the fact that Man, together with his
dependents and favourites (whether animal,
parasitical, or vegetable), is a lover of tepid
temperatures. Any medium approaching
to zero is to him an abomination and a
detestable state of things.

Meanwhile, few of us reflect that we are
all furnished with a little internal stove,
which is of infinite service in gratifying our
taste for warmth. We are fitted up with an
apparatus for the distribution of the heat so
generated, more complete and less liable to
get out of order than that of John Weeks
and Company's best-warmed hothouse or
than the thousands of feet of pipe which, it
is advertised, can be efficiently and economically
heated from one of Ormson's powerful,
patent, jointless, tubular boilers. If you
doubt it, do me the friendship to shake me
by the hand, and you will discover what a
warm-hearted fellow I am. For, I am a
living organism.

Now, although living organisms are subject