And while I speak of it, I may as well mention that we have seen them
too, or some of them--those fair ladies _he_ had never seen, and who had
already melted away before his coming, like the snows of yester year,
_les neiges d'antan!_ Bertha, with the big feet; Joan of Arc, the good
Lorrainer (what would she think of her native province now!); the very
learned Heloise, for love of whom one Peter Esbaillart, or Abelard (a
more luckless Peter than even I!), suffered such cruel indignities at
monkish hands; and that haughty, naughty queen, in her Tower of Nesle,

_"Qui commanda que Buridan Fut jecte en ung Sac en Seine...."_

Yes, we have seen them with the eye, and heard them speak and sing, and
scold and jest, and laugh and weep, and even pray! And I have sketched
them, as you shall see some day, good reader! And let me tell you that
their beauty was by no means maddening: the standard of female
loveliness has gone up, even in France! Even _la tres sage Helois_ was
scarcely worth such a sacrifice as--but there! Possess your soul in
patience; all that, and it is all but endless, will appear in due time,
with such descriptions and illustrations as I flatter myself the world
has never bargained for, and will value as it has never valued any
historical records yet!

Day after day, for more than twenty years, Mary has kept a voluminous
diary (in a cipher known to us both); it is now my property, and in it
every detail of our long journey into the past has been set down.

Contemporaneously, day by day (during the leisure accorded to me by the
kindness of Governor----) I have drawn over again from memory the
sketches of people and places I was able to make straight from nature
during those wonderful nights at "Magna sed Apta." I can guarantee the