VICTOR DUCAXGE. 541 



great-grandfather, when he beheld the demolition of his last tower at Patavy ; 

 he, for the love of religion, and you for the honour of the monarchy, lost your 

 weathercocks, your rights of seignory, your blazoned shields, and what is 

 worse, your stamped crowns. France is a republic; the throne is to let ; 

 the aristocracy are wandering beggars, and Europe is getting whipped. This 

 is no time for being proud. Will you let your noble race perish with you 

 when Providence gives you, in its mysterious wisdom, a means of support in 

 an adorable pastry-cook? Calculate, my dear Marquis, with the prudence of 

 Ulysses, not with the pride of Agamemnon. To be sure you set out to make 

 war, and it may not be so noble to make pies ; but what is there that mis- 

 fortune and fidelity do not ennoble? Well then, marry the pastry-cook : 

 primo, because she has as much cash as a baron's daughter; secundo, because 

 you have not a sous, and that it is disagreeable to trudge the streets when it 

 rains or hails, and for a miserable salary to be at the beck of sundry varlets, 

 who call you Monsieur, while treating you like a lacquey ; tertio, and it is 

 the best and strongest reason, because a hungry stomach has no ears, and a 

 fasting marquis must dine.' 



" Upon this, Timothy, Marquis of Kerneseck, pirouetted upon the toe of 

 his left foot, with a grace and elasticity quite French, and wiping the dust 

 from his shoes with his Rouen handkerchief, pulling down his sleeves, 

 adjusting his collar, and presenting his right hand forward, like Vestris, he 

 hastened to declare his tender passion to Julia, at the moment she was en- 

 gaged in taking tartlets from the oven." 



Julia, of course, was delighted at being made a Marchioness, and the 

 Marquis on his part, was well fed and happy, selling his patties with 

 his sword by his side, and glorying in being the inventor of pies a la 

 Marquise; when lo ! one fine morning, he reads the intelligence of the 

 peace of Amiens, and of the permission granted to the Emigres to re- 

 turn and recover whatever portion of their property had escaped the 

 revolutionary hammer. Accordingly, he sets off for his Castle of 

 Git-au-Diable, with his spouse and daughter. On the road he falls in 

 with his brother Gregory, in the capacity of a carter, his sister An- 

 doche, in that of cook in a tavern ; and on reaching Moulines the 

 party is joined by Martin, who had been made a captain in the navy 

 by Napoleon. The sagacity of the latter discovers that, owing to an 

 informality in the sale of the domain of Git-au-Diable, a small farm 

 might still be recovered ; and his interest with the government having 

 secured this, the good people of Ghyl au Bois are surprised by the 

 sudden appearance of the long absent family, in a wretched cart, 

 which they mistook for the equipage of Polichinello. 



Curiosity was the only feeling that the illustrious descendant of 

 Clovis excited in his quondam vassals. The Cure alone, though a 

 stranger to the Marquis of Kerneseck, received him with demon- 

 strations of joy. 



" By instinct by some inexplicable power of homogeneity some secret 

 instruction of natural alliance, and mutual succour, a parson and a lord 

 sympathize in all places, times, and circumstances. An innate sentiment 

 teaches them that they participate in the same essence that they are sprung 

 from the same principle, and that they are uterine brothers, twin-born of the 

 great feudal mother, and nourished with sacred milk. Lords without par- 

 sons parsons without lords, is a greater anomaly than partridge without 

 lemons. Hence it was that tears of joy rolled down the cheeks of the good 

 Cure of St. Medard, and that the sight of the ci-devant lord produced upon 



