the richest brown hair, tossing in curls on his
shoulders, the most brilliant black eyes, and the
handsomest figure in the world. The court
ladies soon found out that he had a pretty
hand, and a most elegant leg, and, we may
be sure, contrived to let him know it. It was
discovered, with admiration, that he put his
hat on exactly as the late king did, and no one
put on a hat like the late king. They said he
danced "like an angel." A hundred little traits
are recorded of his amiability, his naiveté, his
taste for innocent amusement. He wept when
his governess was taken from him, calling her
his " dear maman," presenting her with jewels
of some six thousand pounds' value. He was
shrewd and clever, and actually wrote—or had
written for him—a little geographical treatise
on "The Rivers of Europe." This the courtiers
voted a prodigy of genius. He was smart.
" Lord, how ugly he is!" said the lively youth,
as a rather plain-featured prelate was presented
to him. The bishop looked at him sourly and
walked away, saying, "What an ill-bred boy !"
and it began to be whispered that in Master
Louis a spice of malice was showing itself.

There were serious questions abroad and at
home then pressing; the finances in frightful
disorder; the navy in a state of dry rot, moral
and physical; but the court was absorbed with
far more important matter. What was Universal
Dry Rot to the exciting question of the Cap and
the Crossing of the Moor with which men's
minds were now agitated? Was the President
of the Parliament to take off his cap? Who
were entitled to this salute? Who had the right
of going round by the benches, and who that of
crossing the floor diagonally? These famous
questions very justly made a great noise at the
time. The two governors of the king taking
him out to drive one day, fell into a hot dispute
about their places in the carriage; and it being
found impossible to arrange this affair, the drive
had to be given up. The life-guardsmen and
gendarmerie presently fell out about their order
of riding with the king's carriage, and the
dispute could only be settled by nicely allotting
the right of the hind wheel to the gentlemen of
the guard, and the fore wheel to the gendarmes.
Those nice impalpable refinements about the
"familiar entry" and the "bedroom entry,"
the "grand entry" and the "first entry;" the
confounding of which degrees was matter of
life and death. Noodle, who had the familiar
entry and could actually see the king as he lay
in bed, was more beatified than Doodle, who had
only the first entry, and could see the king
up and in his dressing-gown. This butterfly
spawn—they were not men or women—were
fretting and breaking their hearts for promotion
from one rank to the other; but the man
to whom royalty, stepping into its sheets,
handed the bed-chamber candlestick was trebly
blessed, and went next day frantically
proclaiming his triumph, and made others burst
with envy. Only the other day we heard of
some young Bourbons gravely holding"
pour-parler" over the grand question of a flag—was
it to be the old white flag or the tricolor? and
there results a noble yielding of the point on
one side, and what is called a "Fusion!" Poor
fools, and with no flagstaff to fly it from! This
playing with bits of ribbon, and fleurs-de-lys, and
flags and such toys, runs in the family. They
are all chips, not of the old block, for there is
no old block to get chips off, but of the old
bending rotten reed.

In what a corrupt hothouse is the young
royal lily reared! The air is heavy with
unwholesome scents; through which pierces a
sharp reeking vapour from the festering mass
underneath. It is a sewer painted and gilded
over; it is corruption glorified. There is an
old Church legend of an angel leading a youth,
and their meeting a dead dog in the last stage
of decomposition, the odour of which made the
youth nearly faint, but affected the angel not at
all; and of their falling in with by-and-by a fine
and elegant young man in gorgeous raiment, and
breathing round him clouds of musk; on which
the angel turned sick in his turn, revolting from
the odour of vice which overbore the musk. This
quaint apologue is a type of this age. How
shall the bright handsome youth with the
flowing curls—who still says his prayers and
confesses—pass through untainted? The stairs, the
galleries, the saloons are packed close with fauns
and satyrs in beautiful snowy bag-wigs, in the
bleu de roi coats overlaid with gold and flaps,
in lace ruffles and swords—the most elegant
creatures in the world, only their hairy limbs
and cloven hoofs are hidden carefully in those
blushing silk hose. Packed closely, too, with
sweetly-powdered wood-nymphs and Eastern
odalisques, brilliant in the glow of the rouge-pot,
behooped, beflowered, bepatched. Exquisite
dainty bits of Sèvres porcelain; but, alack!
cracked all of them. Ever so slightly, the little
faint lines crossing faintly, but still cracked.
Here are the famous peaches, all at three sous, of
younger Dumas; choice fruit, with the slightest
little discoloration on one side. There was no
uncomfortable strait-lacing, no cramping moral
shackles. It was the gayest, liveliest, wittiest,
prettiest, and I fear—in fact, I am sure—the
freest society in the universe.

In those days it was an eternal jokery. Those
old clumsy weapons of reason, and argument, and
syllogism, and good sense, as applied to serious
matters and affairs of state, were never so much
as dreamt of; such rusty weapons were powerless.
But the quip, the quatrain, the mot, and the
calembourg, fell in light showers, and were worth
the whole Ars Logica. And it must be confessed
that the little sparkling, hissing trifles thus
turned, by the ladies chiefly, are, for neatness
and pungency, of the very highest order. The
fine ladies fell out with one another, and spat at
each other little rhymed personalities, which were
handed round the court and enjoyed. Little
personal imperfections, such as madame's "skinny
throat," and madame's suspected "tendresse"
for her bottle, were all fair game. The beautiful
ladies, unhappily, "se grisaient"—exceeded
in their cups—rather often, and awkward