Renouard's translation of the _Metamorphoses d'Ovide_, 1637, "_enrichies
de figures a chacune Fable_" (very odd figures some of them are!) and to
be bought "_chez Pierre Billaine, rue Sainct Iacques, a la Bonne-Foy,
deuant S. Yues_." It has held no honoured place upon the shelves; it has
even resided au rez-de-chaussee,--that is to say, upon the floor; but it
is not less dear,-- not less desirable. For at the back of the
"Dedication to the King" (Lewis XIII. to wit), is scrawled in a
slanting, irregular hand: "_Pour mademoiselle de mons Son tres humble et
tres obeissant Serviteur St. Andre._" Between the fourth and fifth word,
some one, in a smaller writing of later date, has added "_par_" and
after "St. Andre," the signature "_Vandeuvre_." In these irrelevant (and
unsolicited) interpolations, I take no interest. But who was Mlle. de
Mons? As Frederick Locker sings:

Did She live yesterday or ages back?
What colour were the eyes when bright and waking?
And were your ringlets fair, or brown, or black,
Poor little Head! that long has done with aching![1]

"Ages back" she certainly did _not_ live, for the book is dated "1637,"
and "yesterday" is absurd. But that her eyes were bright,--nay, that
they were particularly lively and vivacious, even as they are in the
sanguine sketches of Antoine Watteau a hundred years afterwards, I am
"confidous"--as Mrs. Slipslop would say. For my theory (in reality a
foregone conclusion which I shrink from dispersing by any practical
resolvent) is, that Mile. de Mons was some delightful
seventeenth--century French child, to whom the big volume had been
presented as a picture-book. I can imagine the alert, strait-corseted
little figure, with ribboned hair, eagerly craning across the tall
folio; and following curiously with her finger the legends under the