ed by chagrin and anxiety, was attacked by a frightful apoplexy, which nearly ended in death, and from which she only escaped with the loss of an arm and a limb. Let any one judge of my position, placed as I was, between my mother at death's door, and my piece ready to be played; there all my past, here all my future; on the one hand all my hope, on the other all my heart."

mended itself that he at once made it the | sentation of 'Henri III.' my poor mother, crushbasis of his tragedy. In three months "Henri III." was finished, and received with enthusiasm, which this time Dumas did not allow to cool. He urged that one or other of his dramas should be immediately played, and the choice fell upon the last made. Two hours a-day were stolen from the Palais Royal for the rehearsals, till his impatient "chef" became exasperated, and he was at last given to understand that he must choose between his piece and his place.

"I answered (writes Dumas) that I held my place from the Duke of Orleans, and that in him alone did I recognize any right to take it from me; that as to my salary, it cost the budget 125 francs a month, that was another thing; I offered to renounce it. This offer was accepted. From that day I ceased to receive my salary, but also ceased to go to the office, to the great alarm of my poor mother. This alarm, it is true, had been awakened, and was cherished by the officious opinions that certain persons charitably gave her, the general burden of which was, that my piece would fail, and that I should lose my place; two prophecies, I think, that they should have spared her years, if not her heart. These opinions produced a greater effect than even they expected, who, under the mask of interest, made them a means of revenge. Three days before the repre

The day of the representation arrived. Dumas went to the Duke of Orleans, and begged him to assist at the solemn struggle that was to decide the "to be or not to be" of his life. His Royal Highness had a number of the nobility engaged to dine with him; but it was arranged that he should not only come himself, but bring his guests with him. The day was passed by the bedside of his mother; the evening found him in the theatre just as the curtain rose. The coup d'oeil was brilliant in the extreme. The first gallery was thronged with princes, starred with the orders of five or six different nations; the aristocracy crowded the boxes, and the act was listened to attentively; at the end women sparkled with jewels. The first of the second the curtain fell in the midst of applause; and from the third act to the end, it was a perfect delirium of success.

From Dickens' Household Words.

THE OLD CITY OF BLOIS.

I DELIGHT in a decayed old town. It is like a withered old beauty of the court of George the Third, and gives itself such airs, and boasts of its antediluvian conquests, and its former lovers, and the sonnets of its eyebrows-poor old thing-and shakes its ragged old fan, and darns its old finery; for it has fallen into poverty as well as age. Their experiences are indeed very similar, for the maid of honor had married a dissolute old lord, and had dissolute children, and they treated her ill and neglected her, and wasted their substance with riotous living; and the old nobleman is now dead, and the sons are all likewise departed;

and the last bearer of the name is the still haughty widow, sitting in her faded satin, and lodging above a greengrocer's in a narrow street, but always at the court end of the town; for she is utterly ignorant of the new terraces to the west of Tyburn, and inquires doubtfully even about the locality of Belgrave Square.

I don't think we have any city in Eng. land exactly answering this description of the attendant on Queen Charlotte: for when a town with us falls into the sere and yellow leaf as a resort of fashion, there comes some tremendous manufacturer of an enterprising mind, and turns the

ing away stone, iron, earth-everything, even the image of St. Fiacre, and leaving Blois "lone, sitting by the shore," without the power of visiting its opposite neighbors. And there were many churches at that golden time, all ringing out with joyous bells when the town made holiday; these are now reduced to the paltry number three, and have forgotten even how to pretend to look happy. But the charm of all, the crowning monument of the city's splendor, was the noble Castle of Blois. It was a real feudal palace, built in the purest taste, vast in its extent, magnificent in its decorations, and giving life, and wealth, and dignity to the whole county.

residence of the lord-lieutenant of the | been heard in every part of the city, carrycounty into a mill; and another makes an enormous warehouse of the great assembly room- (you see the rings of the ceiling yet, from which the chandeliers hung, and if you look minutely there are Cupids playing the harp, imperfectly hidden beneath dust and whitewash, all round the cornice); and behold! in a year or two the streets are alive with busy multitudes, and the air darkened (a little) with smoke; but there are reading-rooms, and school-rooms, and lecture-rooms, where there were none before; and intellect is at work, and there are signs of progress and improvement; and only Miss Rebecca Verjuice (how sour and crabbed she has grown!) sighs for the balls at the assembly in the olden time, when she met I do not speak of the time dear to the all the nobility of the district, and once hearts of patriotic Englishmen, when King even danced with a marquis (this was Stephen resided here, and probably prowhen his lordship's son was a candidate for vided himself in his native capital with the borough) and laments the change. But those expensive habiliments which Shakin France-gay, happy, gallant France- speare has not disdained to celebrate. And what numbers of those urban celebrities | what a fine touch of character it is, to there are! Charming young cities in the make that gross and coarse rival of Matilfifteenth century; beautiful, full-sized, da break forth into such vulgar reflections blooming cities in Louis the Fourteenth's time; but faded now-tattered, feeble, never more to flourish; yet interesting in their decay-venerable in their ruins; with traces seen through all their decrepitude of their former charms. For instance -there's Blois.

What a charming situation on the Loire! How splendidly in its gay young time it displayed the inimitable beauties of its position! its streets rising from the water edge in steeper ascent than Ryde, and boasting loftier houses than Bath. Then its bridge-wasn't that a thing to be proud of, spanning the clearest of French rivers, and leading directly towards the château? Not the great, strong, solid construction of the present day with its pyramid in the middle, surmounted by a cross, but the long narrow highway which ran between strong parapets, and sustained on its central portion the oratory of St. Fiacrethat saint who has since extended his protection to the fraternity of hackney coachmen, but was unable in seventeen hundred and fourteen to defend his own residence from the accumulated ice which on the beaking up of the frost in that year came down in heaped up masses, shocking against the piers, piling itself up over arch, over architrave, over parapet; and then with one great crash, which must have

on the tradesmen who supplied the clothes. Not of the times of that worthy peer do I speak, but of a more civilized and gentlemanly personage, the gay and gallant Louis the Duke of Orleans. That was the climax of the grandeur and the happiness of the city. There were crowds in the streets, hundreds of retainers in the castleyard, knights and nobles coming in to ball or tournament from Orleans or Tours, or even distant visitors from Nevers or Limoges. For Louis is young yet: this is in fourteen hundred and ninety-six, and he is only thirty-four years of age; he is planning new additions to his native château; he is recovering from the disagreeable three years he had spent in a prison at Bourges, where, by the kindness of his sister-in-law, Anne of Beaujeu, he is locked up every night in an iron cage; he is congratulating himself on his victories in the Italian campaign of Charles the Eighth ; he is consoling himself for the plainness of his wife, the gentle Jeanne de Valois (who had been forced upon him by her father Louis the Eleventh), with noble entertainments to all the beauties of the country. He is doing all these things, and Blois rejoices. It even breaks out into trade in the sunshine of royal favor. The gloves of Blois become famous-whether soft and white for the fair hands of princesses, or gaunt

galleries attached to its ancient suites of rooms, and a style of magnificence affected on state occasions, which contrasts strangely with our Queen rising at four in the morning to give a cup of hot coffee to the King of Sardinia before he put on his comforter and started by the train to Folkestone.

lets of proof for warriors in the lists; | in right of the tenants it contained; proudcloths are imported from Holland and er turrets were added to its walls, larger Flanders; merchants grow illustrious and rich; and the cream from St. Gervaise -alas! what must we confess? The glover is unknown; the cloth importation has ceased; the merchants are few and spiritless; and nothing remains but the famous St. Gervaise cream! So much more enduring (as a philosophic historian would say) are the products of agriculture than the ephemeral successes of trade. Suddenly a rumor finds its way to Blois that Charles the Eighth is very ill. The knights and nobles flock in faster than ever, the ladies smile more sweetly; the town rings out its bells more merrily; and when, in fourteen hundred and ninety-eight, the great herald, after a fatiguing journey from Amboise, dressed in mourning, all the fleurs-de-lis on his tabard covered with crape, enters the great hall in the château, and kneels at the Duke of Orleans' feet, the city knows no end of its pride and exultation; it has actually given birth to a king, and the racketing, handsome, outspoken inhabitant of the Castle is Louis the Twelfth of France. Vive le Roi!

What was the first thing this emblem and embodiment of chivalry does? He sends an insulting message to his poor little wife-Jeanne de Valois-and a message of a very different kind to the widow of his predecessor-Anne of Brittany. He pays a visit of condolence to the dowager-heiress of that wealthy dukedom, but the condolence ought to have been addressed to the king's daughter, who sat in silence and sorrow, and heard the rejoicings for her husband's elevation to the throne. Within the year the widowed Anne became a second time Queen of France; and Jeanne, disgraced, despised, repudiated, found refuge in a convent.

It is curious to observe that, in the course of time, this exemplary gentleman became brother-in-law to Henry the Eighth of England. But it is with the grand days of Blois we have to do, not with the characters of royal Bluebeards, in either nation. The French, of all the people in the world, know best how to house their monarchs. They have a massive taste in architecture which imprints something solemn on their royal dwellings, as if the divinity that hedged a king made his ordinary residence a sort of temple of earthly power. The Castle of Blois grew royal

There go the bells of all the seven churches-there go off-as loud as they are able, and fortunately without burstingthe six bewondered cannon that ornament the battlements. Here come the trades, very few of them, and very scant o' breath, with banner and music;-here come the knights in helmet and plume, riding two and two;-here comes a great escort of a hundred men of the picked archers of the guard; and here comes a trumpeter on a white horse, pausing every now and then, and blowing a blast to command silence, while a herald-the exact image of a knave of clubs-stands up in his stirrups and announces: "The high and puissant princes, visitors to our lord the king, the mighty, noble and magnanimous Philip, Archduke of Austria, and his spouse the great and very stupendous Princess Jeanne of Arragon and Castille." Great preparations had been made for their reception; and it is pleasant to read an account of the ceremony, for it reconciles us to our humble tap at the door or ring at the bell, and the modest announcement, "Mr. Brown, sir, and Mrs. Brown."

"The Princess Jeanne rode a handsome hackney, covered entirely with housings of crimson velvet. The Duchess of Vendôme, who had been sent to wait on her, followed, with all her ladies, caracoling on palfreys covered with black housings of the same material. More than six hundred horses carried the litters or drew the vehicles required by the stranger's train. It was night when the procession entered Blois, but the streets were lighted with immense tapers of yellow wax." This was not sufficient to prevent confusion, for the prince and his wife got separated in the crowd, and Philip first made his appearance in the royal presence. He marched from hall to hall between lines of halberdiers and archers, and at last attained a chamber where the royalty of France was sitting on a chair of state near the fire. Beside him stood the young Duke d'An