Monsieur de Liancourt. I am no politician, but allow me to propose this
toast, 'Success to those who have the wit to plan, and the strength to
execute.' In other words, 'the Right Divine!'"

Soon afterwards the guests retired.




CHAPTER IV.

"Ros. Happily, he's the second time come to them."--Hamlet.

It was the evening after that in which the conversations recorded in our
last chapter were held;--evening in the quiet suburb of H------. The
desertion and silence of the metropolis in September had extended to its
neighbouring hamlets;--a village in the heart of the country could
scarcely have seemed more still; the lamps were lighted, many of the
shops already closed, a few of the sober couples and retired spinsters of
the place might, here and there, be seen slowly wandering homeward after
their evening walk: two or three dogs, in spite of the prohibitions of
the magistrates placarded on the walls,--(manifestoes which threatened
with death the dogs, and predicted more than ordinary madness to the
public,)--were playing in the main road, disturbed from time to time as
the slow coach, plying between the city and the suburb, crawled along the
thoroughfare, or as the brisk mails whirled rapidly by, announced by the
cloudy dust and the guard's lively horn. Gradually even these evidences
of life ceased--the saunterers disappeared, the mails had passed, the
dogs gave place to the later and more stealthy perambulations of their
feline successors "who love the moon." At unfrequent intervals, the more