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ment, and was forthwith consigned to the prison of Niort. Here Françoise D'Aubigné, afterwards the Marquise de Maintenon, first beheld the light, in the year 1635.

Constant D'Aubigné had always found a plank of refuge in his shipwrecks. To do him justice, though stained with every possible crime, he was brave and gallant. For this chivalric outside, Mademoiselle de Cardillac, his second wife, fell in love with and married him. He made away with her property, loved her passionately, and ill-used her tremendously, though not to the point of killing her, as he had done his first wife. She lived on, perpetually in prison or in exile. Madame de Villette, the sister of Constant, more touched by his misfortunes than revolted by his crimes, came to the prison at Niort to take away his three children, whom she brought to her château of Murçay. The little Françoise had the same nurse as her own daughter. But for this trait of mercy, poor Madame d'Aubigné might well have believed herself accursed of God and man; for even in the prison, where she divided her time between prayer and mending her husband's old clothes, the latter was employed in coining. She wrote to Madame de Villette with a profound feeling of misery and abasement: "I fear the poor little girl will give you much trouble; may God enable her to requite you." What a singular contrast was presented here between the cradle and the tomb! She who was born in a prison, and brought up on charity, died the wife of a powerful monarch. Suppose any one had prophesied this to the poor mother, her who was brought too low by want and misery even to nourish her babe!

Françoise d'Aubigné never forgot her aunt's maternal tenderness. In later times, when entreated to abjure Calvinism, she replied "I will believe anything you like, except that my aunt De Villette may be damned."

Yet another notice of her father. He was set at liberty, and sailed with his wife and children to Martinique. He once more succeeded in laying hold upon Fortune; played, and lost all. His wife was compelled to return to France with her children, leaving behind her unhappy husband, whom the severe lessons he had received had not been able to convert to good,

Madame de Villette; who had remained a Protestant, as much out of respect for her father as for Calvin. The young girl followed the religion of her aunt.

At this epoch, proselytizing was the order of the day. Madame de Neuillant, a relation of Madame d'Aubigné, obtained an order from court to withdraw Françoise from the maternal care of her heretical aunt. Mademoiselle d'Aubigné wept bitterly at the idea of a separation; for she regarded the château de Murçay almost as her native place. At length she quitted it to live with Madame de Neuillant, but in the determination to remain true to the mode of faith her beloved aunt had taught her. At first, caresses were vainly employed to wean her from it; then humiliations. She was placed on a level with the domestics of the establishment, and employed in the care of the turkeys.

"I commanded in the poultry-yard," she has somewhere said; "it was there that my reign commenced."

The woman who afterwards dwelt so near a throne might then be seen any fine morning following her feathered charge, with a velvet mask on her face to preserve her from the effects of the sun; a large straw hat upon her head, a switch in her hand, and a small basket containing black bread and cherries upon her arm. These cherries she was enjoined not to touch until she had learned by heart five verses of Pibrac. She usually learned one verse, and ate all the cherries.

Madame de Neuillant, tired out, at length, forcibly placed her obstinate young relative in the Ursuline convent at Niort, whence the latter was shortly afterwards dismissed, Madame de Neuillant refusing to pay the pension of a Huguenot. The young girl returned to her mother, who had scarcely yet recovered from her griefs. Madame d'Aubigné, who was a strict Catholic, conducted her rebellious child to the Ursuline convent in Paris. Here they had the good sense not to force Mademoiselle d'Aubigné's convictions, and she at length embraced the parental religion.

There lived at this time a wit and a poet, who had risen from the ranks of the people. Eccentric and crippled, he laughed at his own infirmities, and by the power of his intellect and the éclat of his humble dwelling, radiant Françoise d'Aubigné had already com- with liberty of thought, protested against visimenced her part of heroine. At Martinique ble grandeurs, the prestige of birth, and the she was attacked by a serpent. During the sumptuousness of rank and wealth. Around passage homewards she was nearly thrown Scarron's hearth were grouped Ménage, Péinto the sea for dead; but upon her mother lisson, Scudery, Benserade, Marigny, Saint pressing her lips to hers for a farewell kiss, Amand. At his table were welcomed Marthe supposed corpse opened her eyes and ex-shal d'Albret, the Marquis de Sévigné, the tended her arms. The vessel was afterwards Comte de Grammont, Martemart, Coligny, and assailed by corsairs, and escaped with diffi- twenty others of the same calibre. culty.

Mademoiselle d'Aubigné, on her arrival in France, was again received into the house of

"I also have a marquisate," he once said to the illustrious assembly-" the marquisate of Quinet."

Quinet was his bookseller.

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One evening there appeared in the witty cripple's saloon, where a goodly company were met to laugh and sup, a young girl of fifteen years of age, already handsome, but timid, who wept upon her entrance, being embarrassed by the shortness of her robe." She came from the provinces, where the courtfashions had not yet penetrated. Her mother was with her. The young girl was silent, but all comprehended the language of her eloquent eyes. Scarron was affected even to tears, for he had heard of Madame and Mademoiselle d'Aubigné. Upon that evening he was brimming over with wit and fun. The youthful guest was much more struck by these qualities than with the fine airs of the court gentlemen who were doing their best to make an impression on her inexperienced fancy. We see by this, how, even at that early period, intellect carried the day with her.

The girl and her mother returned to Poitou, and shortly afterwards Madame d'Aubigné left this weary scene, where her fainting spirit had been able to find no rest. Madame de Villette being likewise dead, Françoise d'Aubigné found herself almost alone in the world: she was compelled again to accept the protection of her Aunt de Neuillant, who allowed her to go 66 nearly naked through avarice," says Tallemant des Réaux. Decidedly the commencement of her life was not very promising.

She had left at Paris, besides Scarron, another sympathizing soul, Mademoiselle de St. Hermant. One of the letters that she wrote to that young lady was exhibited to Scarron, who answered it in a most flattering manner. It was the first gallant epistle she had ever received. This man, her future husband, we may certainly consider her first lover.

Madame de Neuillant now conducted her protégée to Paris, where she allowed her to see a little society, being at the same time proud and jealous of her beauty. The young lady became a prominent personage; her romantic adventures were generally discussed, and she was everywhere called "The Young Indian." People wondered what kind of future awaited this talented orphan, who talked like a charming book and attracted every eye. She dreaded a convent, but she equally disliked the idea of remaining in society without the protection of a husband. Yet how could she expect to marry without dowry? In this difficulty Scarron, who loved her as a sister or a daughter, offered her his hand. She gratefully accepted the proposition, being well aware that theirs would only be a marriage of the spirit. They were accordingly united in the spring of 1652. The notary asked what dowry Scarron intended to bestow upon his bride. Immortality," was the proud reply The names of the wives

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of monarchs die with them; that of the wife of Scarron will live to future ages.'

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It was Mademoiselle de Pons who lent the bride her wedding attire. The latter at once assumed the dignity befitting her new position; and from the first day wrought a change in her husband's establishment. "I will teach her plenty of fooleries," Scarron had said before their marriage; but he was disappointed in his mirthful design. To his hearth, haunted by fashionable vice, she brought the reviving freshness of virtue, the smiling and graceful virtue of seventeen. She was present at every conversation, at every supper; but, as her biographer says, "she claimed respect without imposing restraint:" and, according to Madame de Caylus, "passed her Lents in eating a herring at the end of the table," because she thought it better to show a little strictness amid the license by which she was surrounded.

From the day of the nuptials she assumed her post of femme savante, but with a modesty worthy of all praise. She was at the same time the pupil, the critic, and the secretary of Scarron, and his devoted wife. In his suffering, as in his merry hours, she was still by his side. She learnt Spanish, Italian, and even Latin, but she likewise learnt the duties of life. Little by little her husband's sway was eclipsed by her own. People came no more to hear him, but to hear and see her. "She had,” said M. de Noailles, "acquired an infinite charm of conversation." Every one knows about the servant who one day at table whispered in her ear, "Madame, be pleased to tell another story. There is no roast meat to-day."

Scarron's circumstances were not improved since his marriage. The roast meat was often wanting. Yet he always wished to live like the nobility. He even affected to protect the arts. A letter of Poussin's informs us that amid the tempest of the Fronde that great artist painted two pictures after Scarron's order. Mignard was an intimate friend. Scarron ordered pictures likewise of him. He painted the first and last portraits of Madame de Maintenon; the one in 1659, the other in 1694. Of these two portraits it is unhappily only the last with which we are acquainted. We only behold her in her decline," says M. de Noailles. "We picture her to ourselves in her dead-leaf robe and severe head-dress-regent of a court become serious like herself." Mignard painted her as St. Françoise; noble and dignified, but sombre and melancholy, without a single reflected ray of her youth lighting up her sallow visage

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"At

Madame Scarron lived at home. first," as Scarron wrote to M. de Villette, "she was very unhappy at not having either means or equipage to go abroad." After

wards her husband's infirmities retained her! The knell of Louis the Fourteenth's reign near his bedside. Her virtue daily gathered now sounded the reign of the monarch who, strength from the fact it was her sole wealth, believing that all the passions of France beat and would be her sole refuge. At length poor in his bosom, said," I am the State," because Scarron died the death of a stoic philosopher; he saw everywhere around him bravery and they placed over his grave the following touch- genius. Scarron's widow was not of this ing epitaph:splendid period. When she came near the throne the court was already in the decline of its splendor. We will follow her no further. The history of Madame de Maintenon, aged and a devotée, is known to all the world, for it is the history of France. In her youth she illuminated with a smile the troubles of Scar ron; grown old, she veiled with a mask of severity the royal dignity.

Passants, ne faites pas de bruit
De crainte que je ne m'eveille,
Car voilà la première nuit

Que le pauvre Scarron sommeille.*

* Passenger, don't make a noise, lest you waken This is the first night that poor Scarron has been able to sleep.

me.

ELEGY

From Punch.

WRITTEN IN A RAILWAY STATION.

THE Station clock proclaims the close of day;
The hard-worked clerks drop gladly off to tea;
The last train out starts on its dangerous way,

And leaves the place to darkness and to me.
Now fades the panting engine's red-tail light,
And all the platform solemn stillness holds,
Save where the watchmen pacing for the night,
By smothered coughs announce their several
colds.

Behind that door of three-inch planking made,

Those frosted panes placed too high up to peep, All in their iron safes securely laid,

The cooked account-books of the Railway sleep.

The Debts to credit side so neatly borne,

For those, who, mindful of their money fled
Rejoice in retribution, sure though late —
Should they, by ruin to reflection led,

Ask Punch to point the moral of his fate,

Haply that wooden-headed sage may say,

"Oft have I seen him, in his fortune's dawn, When at his levees elbowing their way,

Peer's ermine might be seen and Bishop's lawn.

"There the great man vouchsafed in turn to each

Advice, what scrip or shares 't was best to buy, There his own arts his favorites he would teach, And put them up to good things on the sly.

"Till to the House by his admirers borne, Warmed with Champagne in flustered speech he strove,

What should be losses, profits proved instead ; And on through commerce, colonies and corn,

The Dividends those pages that adorn

No more shall turn the fond Shareholder's
head.

Oft did the doubtful to their balance yield,
Their evidence arithmetic could choke;
How jocund were they that to them appealed!
How many votes of thanks did they provoke !
Let not Derision mock King Hudson's toil,
Who made things pleasant greenhorns to
allure;

Nor Prudery give hard names to the spoil

'T was glad to share-while it could share

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Like engine, without break or driver, drove

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From Chambers' Repository.
THE WAR IN ALGERIA.

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more than probable that the feebly-opposed outbreak of February, 1848, would have had a very different termination. But it was not to be so written.

by the famous ordonnances, would be drowned and forgotten in the triumphal echoes of the African victory. If so, the rash monarch was A SLIGHT blow on M. Deval, the French ruinously self-deceived; the coup d'état, aimed consul's cheek, in 1829, by the fan of Hus- at the popular liberties, failed miserably – sein, Dey of Algiers, afforded Charles X. an solely, as we now perceive, because launched unhoped-for chance of breaking the spell of some twenty years too soon, and by the wrong ill-fortune which attached to the transmarine hand; and the deposed dey arrived in France expeditions of France-of crushing, in the just as his discrowned conqueror was leaving general interest of humanity, a nest of pirates it forever. This, we may observe by the that for three centuries had infested the Medi- way, has not been the only time warlike adterranean; and chiefly and lastly, of divert- venture in North Africa has been associated ing the attention of his volatile subjects from with disaster to the House of Bourbon. St their new fancy constitutional government Louis died in the camp before Tunis; Charles - by the regilding of their old and tarnished X. in the same month wins Algiers and loses idol foreign conquest. The first-mentioned France; and but for the inopportune absence purposes were easily accomplished. The time in Algeria at a critical moment of De Joinchosen was summer, June, 1830. Great Brit-ville and D'Aumale, by far the most popular ain, to whose hostility previous maritime dis- and energetic of Louis Philippe's sons, it is asters were chiefly attributable, partially satisfied by a verbal assurance that no permanent occupation of the Algerine territory was contemplated, interposed no obstacle to the enterprise; and a fleet of upwards of a hundred There is reason to believe that Charles X., transport-ships, escorted by twenty vessels of and his minister, Prince Polignac, were quite war, under the command of Admiral Duperré, sincere in the assurances given to Lord Abersafely conveyed General Bourmont, 40,000 deen-that the only object of the French choice troops of all arms, and the necessary expedition was the thorough extinction of war-material, from Toulon to Sidi-Feruch, a Algerine piracy, so long the scourge and terpoint of the African coast a few miles west-ror of feeble commercial states; but it was ward of the city of Algiers — where the dis- one of the cruel necessities of Louis Philippe's embarkation, which occupied three days, was precarious position-resting as it did, welleffected without difficulty. Algiers, though nigh exclusively, upon the timid sympathies of strongly fortified to seaward, was incapable of the moneyed and middle classes, instead of serious resistance to a well-appointed and nu- upon those far more powerful buttresses of merous land-force; and after a brisk cannon-continental thrones, the traditions and instincts ade of the Emperor's Fort, to the south-east of the city, the dey offered to capitulate, on condition that private property and the religion of the inhabitants should be respected, and himself and his garrison of Turkish Janizaries, about 7000 in number, permitted to embark unmolested in person and effects. These terms were readily acceded to by General Bourmont; and the white flag of Bourbon France replaced (5th July) the red ensign of the pirates; the victors, moreover, finding themselves in the possession of public spoil to the amount of two millions sterling in gold and silver, besides twelve vessels of war, and more than a hundred bronze cannon. But this brilliant success availed the French king nothing in his conflict with the Paris democracy, if, indeed, it did not precipitate his fall, by inducing a belief in the royal mind, that the clamorous indignation sure to be excited

of a numerous army, and the passions and prejudices of the great masses of the population-that he was compelled to temporize with every whim and vanity of the popular mind that happened to be in any way associated with the military" glory " of France. Compelled by this pressure, the citizen-king's government, after the exhibition of much vao illation and infirmity of purpose, finally repudiated the engagement with Great Britain, and, admittedly against their better judgment, prosecuted the war we are about to sketch, sometimes with languid irresolution, at others with remorseless violence, till French Africa, as it is called, nominally comprised an area of 100,000 square miles, extending from Morocco on the west, to Tunis on the easta distance of about 500 miles and from the blue waters of the Mediterranean on the north, to the great Desert of Sahara - - the Arab's" Sea

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without Water" (El baher billa maa) -on the south, an average breadth approaching 200 miles. This country of hill and dale, plain and desert, sand and forest, rock and river, is divided into three provinces Constantina on the east, Titteri in the centre, and Oran on the west; of which Bona, Algiers, and Oran are respectively the principal maritime towns or sea-gates Algiers, or El Jezira ("the Warlike"), being placed near the centre of the coast-line between Bona and Oran, which are about as distant from each other as both are from France. Other important coasttowns are Mostaganem and Arzew, westward, and Bouteyah and Philippeville - the latter built by the French near Bona for greater facility of access to the interior of Constantina, eastward of the capital of Algeria. The great Atlas Mountains, which rise on the Atlantic sea-board of Morocco, stretch in broken and irregular masses across the three provinces in a south-easterly direction; whilst the less elevated ridges, known as the Little or Maritime Atlas, extend through the country from about Mostaganem and the mouth of the Shelliff River, in a direction more parallel with the coast than the central and southern ranges- from which the Shelliff, for nearly 300 miles, divides them. The heights of the Lesser or Northern Atlas vary from 200 to 1000 feet, and, together with the loftier chains and the extensive intervening valleys, occupy the greater portion of the surface of French Africa. Algiers itself is built in the form of an irregular triangle upon the seaward slope of Le Sahal, a magnificent amphitheatre of hills swelling gently up from the Mediterranean. These hills are based and girdled southward by the plain of Metidjah, which extends a distance of seven leagues only to the nearest ridge of the Little Atlas, in the midst of which, about forty-five miles south of Algiers, Medeyah, the capital of the province of Titteri, and, moreover, the key of the south country, is situated. To reach this city, and the equally populous, though not, in a military sense, equally important town of Milianah, from Algiers, the Col or Pass of Tencah, a dangerous mountain-defile, of which we shall have to make frequent mention, must be threaded. Two other towns in the vicinity of Algiers are Blidah and Koleah, separated from each other by the width of the Metidjah—the first nestled at the base of the Lesser Atlas, the other charmingly placed on the Mediterranean shore, about four leagues

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westward of Algiers. The chief inland towns of Oran are Mascara, near which Abdel-Kader was born, and, till his final overthrow, the governmental capital of the province; and Tlemecen, 100 miles south-west of Oran, near the borders of the Sahara, which there approaches unusually near the coast. Tlemecen is also but a few leagues eastward of the Desert of Angada, a debatable district, famous for its ostriches, on the confines of Morocco. Mascara is on the borders of Titteri, and inland ten leagues of Mostaganem. The only city of importance that breaks in the vast plains of the eastern province, is Constantina itself, fifty leagues from the coast, and perched upon high table-land, the southern boundary of which is the Libyan Desert.

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Conquerors and colonists out of numberPhoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Greeks of the lower empire attempted,. with more or less present success, the subjugation and settlement of this part of North Africa, and passed away, leaving few traces of their footsteps, till the Arabian invasion, under Kaled, Sword of God," in the eighth century, which, it is quite manifest, vitally impressed the language, manners, religion, and, in no slight degree, the physical conformation of the natives of this ancient Numidia. The popula tion of Algeria, about two millions, according to General Lamoricière's estimate, is essentially Asian, not African; and all, with the exception of the Jews and negroes, are devout votaries of Mohammed. This stronglymarked and diversified people consist of Berbers, otherwise Kabyles, Arabs, Moors, Kooloolis, Jews, and negroes from Soudan. The Kabyles (clansmen) are the descendants of the hill-tribes of North Africa, and, like their Numidian ancestors, are reputed to be brave and active, as well as cruel, inhospitable, and revengeful. They still occupy the mountain-ranges, and are skilled in agriculture and the ruder mechanical arts. Their dwellings are stone huts, straw-thatched and overgrown with palm-branches, in almost every one of which there is to be seen a copy of the Koran. They are broken into innumerable tribes, constantly at feud with each other, and arə governed, like their co-religionists the Arabs, by sheiks and holy men or maraboots - literally, men with rope-girdles — who possess immense influence over them. They understand Arabic, and those near the coast speak that language; and in complexion they differ little from the swarthy Arab, but their heads

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