"He has had it, unless I am mistaken. He got it at Saxonbury." "What do you mean ?" inquired the baronet.

"I do not understand it, and indeed it is no business of mine; but when he came up from Saxonbury, he had certainly received his deathblow. A suspicion has crossed me whether your lovely daughter had anything to do with it. Pardon me, Sir Arthur, we are old friends: it is a thought mentioned only to you."

"I should like to see him," said Sir Arthur. "Will you go with me ?" They went. Raby Verner was still alive, but it was his last day of life. He lay panting on his humble bed, alone. A hectic flush, even then, lighted up his wasted cheek at sight of her father. Sir Arthur, inexpressibly shocked, sat down by him, and took his poor damp hand. "What can you have been doing to yourself," he asked, “to get into this state ?"

"I think it was inherent," he murmured. decline."

"You have had the best advice, I hope ?"

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My mother died in a

Raby made a movement of dissent. "A medical student, whom I know, has come in sometimes. I could not call in good advice, for I had not the means to pay for it."

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should

Oh, my boy," uttered Sir Arthur, in a tone of anguish, as he leaned over him, why did not let me know this? Half my purse you have been yours, for your mother's sake."

said.

"All the skill in England would not have availed me," he earnestly "Sir Arthur, it is best as it is, for I am going to her. She has been waiting for me all these years. She told me my lot would not be a happy one. But it will soon be over now," he added, his voice growing fainter," for earthly pain of all kinds has nearly passed away."

Curious thoughts were perplexing Sir Arthur Saxonbury as he quitted the scene. If a rude blow to his feelings had indeed caused Verner to sink into bodily illness, and thence to death, and that blow had been dealt by Maria Saxonbury, how very like it was to retribution for the blow Maria Raby had dealt out to him! He was a strong man, and had weathered it, but it had left more permanent traces on his heart than he had suffered the world to know. Sir Arthur lost himself in these thoughts, and then shook them off, as a disagreeable and unsatisfactory theme.

On Christmas-eve he returned to Saxonbury. After dinner, his two daughters only being at table, he told them of the death of the artist, Raby Verner. Mrs. Ashton expressed sorrow and surprise. Maria said nothing, but her face drooped, and a burning colour overspread it. Sir Arthur looked sternly at her. Her head only drooped the lower.

"It has been hinted to me that you tampered with his feelings," he said, in a severely reproachful tone. "Let me tell you, Maria, that the vain habit of encouraging admiration, whence it cannot legally be received, always tends to ill: and no right-minded girl would condescend

to it."

"I thought Maria talked a great deal with young Verner," remarked Mrs. Ashton. "Had he been of our own order I should have interfered; but I knew she could not be serious. He was only a painter."

"She killed him," was the significant answer of Sir Arthur. And Maria Saxonbury burst into tears.

NOTES ON NOTE-WORTHIES,

OF DIVERS ORDERS, EITHER SEX, AND EVERY AGE.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

And make them men of note (do you note, men ?)—Love's Labour's Lost, Act III. Sc. 1.

D. Pedro. Or, if thou wilt hold longer argument,

Balth.

Do it in notes.

Note this before my notes,

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting.

D. Pedro. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks,
Notes, notes, forsooth, and noting!

Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Sc. 3.

And these to Notes are frittered quite away.-Dunciad, Book I.

Notes of exception, notes of admiration,

Notes of assent, notes of interrogation.-Amen Corner, c. iii.

XIII. THE PRINCESS ORSINI.

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THROUGHOUT the War of the Succession in Spain, the real king of that country was not Philip V., a weak, hesitating, misplaced poor creature"-of whom his imperious grandfather, every inch a king, was heartily ashamed-but a woman, Marie-Anne de la Trémoille, by marriage the Princess Orsini, or, as the French render her married name, Princesse des Ursins. She was the daughter of the Duc de Noirmoustier, the most ancient duke in France, and was born in Paris in 1642, between the time of Richelieu's ministry and that of Mazarin. Her first husband was Adrien-Blaise de Talleyrand, Prince de Chalais-the nuptials taking place during the wars of the second Fronde, and while the mania for duelling was at its height. The Prince de Chalais figured as champion in a duel of four against four, in which the Duc de Beauvilliers was killed, in 1663. Henri Quatre's law against duels, memorably reinforced by Richelieu, being still in full force, and of alarming severity, the Prince de Chalais had to seek safety in flight, and succeeded in escaping to Spain, whither his wife followed him. Thence they arranged a departure into Italy, and the princess wended her way thither alone, and occupied herself with hiring an hôtel at Rome, and making preparations for what might be a protracted sojourn in the Eternal City. Here, however, the news reached her of her husband's sudden death. Many distinguished Frenchmen were dwellers in Rome, who hastened to condole with their bereaved countrywoman. And having condoled, they sought to console -by finding her another husband. With which view, says her biographer -for at last she has found one-M. François Combes, they introduced to her a very rich and high-born Roman seigneur, Flavio des Ursins, Duc de Bracciano, a Spanish grandee, and of the same family for which the virtues and sorrows of the noble widow of the Maréchal de Montmorency had won so much love in France, at Paris, Toulouse, and Moulins. The French court acquiesced in this match, and sent to the duc, as a mark of honour and satisfaction, the cordon des Ordres du Roi. Under

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these favourable auspices, the Princesse de Chalais gave him her hand in 1675, and became the Duchesse de Bracciano."* Henceforth the Orsini palace became the rendezvous of Rome's élite. The hostess was literally a host in herself. The charms of her person were the talk of the capital, and cardinals, ambassadors, statesmen, noblemen, flocked to her doors, to judge for themselves of the degree of grace and perfection to which a dame française could attain.

Her society was in particular attractive to men, in whose conversation she took more interest than in the lighter gossip of her own sex, and who found much to admire in the solidity of her mind, the justness of her opinions, and the accuracy and clearness with which she expressed them. Her husband, a common-place sort of being, was at first flattered by the homage she won, and complacently regarded it as a reflex homage to his own good taste, in having chosen such a wife. But in course of time his feelings underwent a change; he saw that he was a cypher in his own palace; his amour-propre was wounded; in making so brilliant a beauty the mistress of his house, he had virtually put himself out of doors. All this was a rankling sore, the mere thought of which made him wince. And yet it would never do to make this the ground of a quarrel. It would ill suit with ducal dignity to say, We must part, my wife and I, for she has eclipsed me at my own table, made a nobody of me under my

own roof.

Other pretexts for a disruption were by no means lacking. In the first place, the princess was extravagant in the extreme. Her expenses, he could truthfully allege, were enormous, and threatened to eat him out of house and home. Then again there was probably another source of disunion in the contest that was going on between the Pope (Innocent XI.) and Louis XIV. The Orsini family, says M. Combes, 66 was in some sort a sacerdotal family, while at the same time it walked at the head of the Roman aristocracy; it had always furnished the Church with pontiffs or cardinals; so that the probability is slight that the Duc de Bracciano, its chief, would, in these celebrated disputes, hold an opinion contrary to that of the Holy See, especially if, as was said to be the case, he had looked out for a son (having no child of his own) in the family of Innocent XI. himself—an adoption long kept secret from the world." No such inductions can be drawn from the acts which compose the life of the Duchesse de Bracciano. At Rome, as at Madrid, the ideas of the Court of Versailles on dogmatical questions, or on the relations between the Church and the State, were her own; and in Italy, by the very side of St. Peter's chair, she detested the Jesuits, in whom ultramontane doctrines were personified. To all appearance this formed a new stumbling-stone for conjugal harmony, already so severely shaken by all those differences of habits, appreciation, and tastes, which difference of country produced.

"Ce ménage ne fut pas concordant," says Saint-Simon, "quoique sans brouillerie ouverte, et les époux furent quelquefois bien aises de se séparer." It was agreeable to both parties to see as little of each other as need be. Without an explosion, then, without stormy outbreak and unseemly up

* La Princesse des Ursins. Essai sur sa Vie et son Caractère politique, d'après de nombreux documents inédits, par M. François Combes. Paris: Didier et Cie. 1858.

roar, Duc and Duchesse found it convenient to put the Alps between them. She twice revisited France, where she formed a close intimacy with her relative, the Maréchale de Noailles; and made acquaintance with Torcy, who could do justice to her ability; and was presented to Madame de Maintenon, now become the goddess of the Court. Her second journey took place about the time of the Treaty of Ryswick, when Louis-seeing England definitely opposed to him, and supported by the Dutch alliance-was turning all his thoughts towards Spain, as the only quarter weighty enough to counterbalance the now formidable union of his foes. Accordingly, the Court acquaintances of Madame des Ursins made a point of impressing on that influential lady the importance of keeping up the interests of France in the future succession to the Spanish throne, and of cultivating the good will of such Spaniards of distinction as she might meet with in Rome. On her return she had the good fortune to meet there with no less distinguished a Spaniard than Portocarrero, Archbishop of Toledo, "l'homme le plus influent de l'Espagne," who was come to receive his pall and cardinal's hat. A jealously exclusive Castilian, his pet project was to give Spain a king of Castilian choice, on the approaching demise of Charles II.,-to provide the nation at large with a sovran chosen by the men of Castile, as the elders of the Spanish family, a king who should be suitable to their tastes, their views, and the perpetuity of their ancient supremacy-above all, one that should not be elected by the votes of Aragon, Castile's hated neighbour and jealous rival. Portocarrero hoped to compass his ends by supporting the pretensions of a son of France, who would be willing, in return, to give scope to the cardinal's ambition of becoming the second Ximenes of Spain. This man the Princess Orsini did her best to conciliate, and with signal success. He was soon her admiring and respectful friend. He was even the means of restoring confidence between her and the duc; and so well did he speak in her favour, that his highness, soon afterwards stricken with mortal sickness, bequeathed to his widow the whole of his fortune, to the loss of young Livio Odelschalchi, by repute his adopted son. her gratitude, the Princess rendered Portocarrero some services with certain cardinals of the Court of Rome. This still further secured his attachment, and made him a ready listener to her eloquence in the cause of a French candidate for the Spanish crown. He found the eloquence all persuasive, and avowed himself convinced. Madame might rely on his favouring no claims but those of a Bourbon.

In

Madame's début in diplomacy was encouraging. Louis XIV. himself graciously complimented her on it, and granted her a pension in 1699the fortune bequeathed by her husband having gone to pay creditors and law-agents, for Don Livio Odelschalchi disputed the will, and, after protracted conflicts, bought the duchy of Bracciano of the needy duchess, and assumed the title. Two millions of livres he is said to have paid down ; and of this sum, only seventeen thousand livres a year remained to the ex-duchess when all claims upon her were discharged. Her title henceforth was not Duchesse de Bracciano, by which history has never had knowledge of her, but Princess Orsini, or Princesse des Ursins, by which she is historically familiar to all. A high-born Frenchwoman, Princess, and accomplished diplomatist, could hardly be suffered by Ludovicus the Magnificent to starve on seventeen thousand a year. The pension

was willingly granted. And now Madame des Ursins came to be looked upon as a French Ambassador at Rome. There was no competing with her reunions, and there appeared to be no resisting her influence. Opponents to French intrigues in Spain were softened down by coming in contact with her. Innocent XII. desired to see so important a personage, and told her brother (then Abbé, afterwards Cardinal de la Trémoille) that he (the Pope) should often seek counsel of her, and was persuaded she would give him better advice than his cardinals.

"The

On the 1st of November, in the year 1700, Charles II., the weakling sickly King of Spain, departed this life. In the previous October he had appointed the Duc d'Anjou his "only and universal heir." The Princess Orsini had no longer a political mission at Rome. Spain must now be her field of labour. For, a marriage of Philip V. with Maria Louisa, Princess of Savoy, being arranged, and Grandfather Louis being_quite aware that this young lady, though no older than Shakspeare's Juliet, that is to say thirteen, would govern Philip, it became essential, for French purposes, to fix on somebody to govern her. Accordingly, Louis selected the Princess Orsini to be camerara mayor, or first lady of the bedchamber, no insignificant post, as Lord Macaulay remarks, in the household of a very young wife, and a very uxorious husband. princess was the daughter of a French peer, and the widow of a Spanish grandee. She was, therefore, admirably fitted by her position to be the instrument of the Court of Versailles at the Court of Madrid. The Duke of Orleans called her, in words too coarse for translation, the Lieutenant of Captain Maintenon; and the appellation was well deserved. She aspired to play in Spain the part which Madame de Maintenon had played in France. But, though at least equal to her model in wit, information, and talent for intrigue, she had not that self-command, that patience, that imperturbable evenness of temper, which had raised the widow of a buffoon to be the consort of the proudest of kings. The princess was more than fifty years old, but was still vain of her fine eyes and her fine shape; she still dressed in the style of a girl; and she still carried her flirtations so far as to give occasion for scandal. She was, however, polite, eloquent, and not deficient in strength of mind. The bitter Saint-Simon owns that no person whom she wished to attach could long resist the graces of her manner and of her conversation. It is to be regretted that the brilliant Essayist "had not time," then and there— the then being A.D. 1833, and the there the Edinburgh Review-to relate how she obtained, and how she preserved her empire over the young couple in whose household she was placed, how she became so powerful that neither minister of Spain nor ambassador from France could stand against her, how Louis himself was compelled to court her, how she received orders from Versailles to retire, how the queen took part with her favourite attendant, how the king took part with the queen, and how, after much squabbling, lying, shuffling, bullying, and coaxing, the dispute was adjusted.* All these things, however, are related in due order and at full length by M. François Combes, in his recent monograph.

It was Portocarrero who insisted with the most urgency on the

*Macaulay's Essays, vol. ii. Art.: "Lord Mahon's War of the Succession in Spain."