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164 RONGY LE

CHATEAU.

too, 1t owes much of the injury which it has sus-
tained ; for when one party has turned a tomb into a
citadel, it cannot be expected that the other party
will respect the art which has been expended upon
it. Poor Metella, poor Crassus, a battered fortress
tomb, names only known enough to show how
much how every thing else has been forgotten.

Ruins, ruins still: nothing but ruins. How
loudly does Rome tell us, with all her past gran-
deur, and centuries of decay, that here we have
no continuing city.

Is she to rise again, now that she has been de-
clared, what she never has been before, the capital
of Italy ? God knows. Her Christianity has been
sadly corrupted we know too well. It is indeed a
standing proof of the power of Christianity that it
has been able to exist at all, amid all that has been
said and done in its name at Rome, and by Rome ;
but there is a whisper in the air, as if she were to
lift her head as a non-Christian power. If it be so,
it will only be the prelude to another ruin. Yet a
different whisper is abroad too, as if a great re-
formation were to take place, and that speedily, in
Italy ; as if the Italians would reform their own
Church, not abandon it to its ruin and their own.

If this is to be done, they must, under God’s
guidance, do it for themselves.

* Ttalia fara di se.”

Our part should be to watch, and pray, and help,
not to try and split them up. Let them see what
Protestants, particularly what we of the Church of
England are ; for they have strange notions, many
of them, about Protestants, and think that they
are much the same as Jews, or else mere infidels.
Let them see that we not only have something for
which to find fault with them, but that we also
have something good to follow ourselves, and that
we are following it.

If we can show them this, if they will see it, do
we not think that it will be a good thing for them ?

Ah, but how will it be, if they can turn round
upon us, and say, ‘Physician heal thyself” ?
What will it be but ruin for ourselves ?

RONGY LE CHATEAU.
A Story or 1870.

in October, 1870? The daring of a British
matron, still more of a British widow, is
proverbial ; but still, why was she at Roney,
of all possible times and seasons, in October,
when the Franco-German war was raging? and why did
she sprain her ankle there? That is what all her kind
Cheltenham acquaintances asked, and the only satisfactory
answer was that of her most particular friend, the Hon.
Miss Snapdragon: “My dear, Mrs. Fortescue cannot
live without excitement. To climb a precipice and sprain

her ankle one day, to have an interview with a Prussian
General the next, and write to the Zimes on the third,
is just the sort of thing that suits her.”

And how came I to meet and to know Mrs. Fortescue?
Well, once met, there was no great difficulty about know-
ing her. She was communicative, unreserved, above all,
uncontrolled by any male relations, and, as the Chelten-
ham ladies would have expressed it, “She didn’t care
what she did.” I believe the late lamented Colonel
Fortescue had ruled her with a rod of iron, and his
widow always seemed in the position of an emancipated
slave, rejoicing in her liberty to say and do as many silly
things as pleased her. Altogether she was not the
woman to keep a casual acquaintance long at a distance,
provided he was agreeable or useful. My meeting with
her was in this wise. I was an artist for one of the
illustrated papers, the Pictwrustic by name, and had
hitherto been hard at work in my vocation, wandering
over battle-fields, “assisting” at bombardments, dodging
in and out of the line of the fighting, following the two
armies after the fashion in which men whose stud is
limited to one horse follow the hounds; getting arrested
and released, and arrested and released over and over
again, and sending home batches of sketches sufficiently
full of bloodshed and horror to please the British public.
The proprietors of the Picturustic haye given me to
understand that the said sketches were much appreciated,
and as I ran many perils in the making of them, I am
glad to hear it. Just at the time I am speaking of, there
was a lull both in my labours and in those of the
warriors whose humble follower I was. Paris was invested,
and as I knew that the Pictwrustic had an artist in that
quarter already, I saw no good in going there. Somehow
or other, I had got out of the course of the armies, and
thus found myself with the world before me. It might
be worth while, I thought, to look up for future use a |
few of the objects of interest in the neighbourhood, seeing
that wars, happily, do not last for ever; and finding
myself only twelve miles from Roney le Chateau, the
history whereof may be read by whoso lists in the pages
of “ Murray,” I determined to go there. Roney Castle,
the most splendid specimen of feudal architecture in
France, was worth seeing, at any rate, besides which it
was quite possible, as far as I could make out the move-
ment of the armies, that some of my German friends
might be passing through there.

Roney does not boast of a line of railway, and convey-
ances were not so easy to find; but with some difficulty
I managed to get a country trap with a horse who had
three legs to go upon, and so reached my destination.
The immediate neighbourhood of Roney had seen no
fighting, and very pretty it was, with its rows of apple-
trees and poplars, and its cultivated hill-slopes, and
teams of sleepy-eyed, cream-coloured oxen, glorious in
red and blue tassels, wending their slow way along. The
mighty donjon tower of Rongy, fresh and smooth as if it
had left the mason’s hand but yesterday, stands on the
top of a steep hill, commanding the whole surrounding
country, and looking down on the little walled town
which nestles behind it ona spur of the hill. No wonder
the Lord of Roney was a proud man when he had built
this gigantic gasometer of a round tower, surrounded by
a strong wall, and four more round towers of very re-
spectable dimensions, but which are only turrets com-
pared to the great keep in their midst. No wonder he

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