RONGY LE CHATEAU.

165

grew masterful and lawless, and treated luckless tres-
passers on his land worse than ever Giant Despair treated
the two pilgrims ; that he flung his private enemies down
those fearful owbliettes in the keep, and coolly left them
to perish of hunger and broken bones; that he set the
power of the Crown at defiance, and nearly drove his
nominal lord the King beside himself with impotent rage.
And at last came the sad day for the Roney family,
when they had to recognize the fact that their walls
could not stand against the new royal artillery, and
they had humbly to surrender, and live like peaceable
subjects for the future, a great come-down from their
former high estate.

But I did not mean to write a history of Roney, and
if you want to know the exact style of its architecture,
and the thickness of the walls, and the height of the
donjon, you must look in “ Murray” or “Joanne.” I know
that it impressed me wonderfully at first sight, and
almost awed me for the instant with a feeling of its
strength, even though the next moment I began to re-
flect how deceptive that strength was, and what wild
work a few well-aimed shells would make with it. But
L was very hungry, and as I wound slowly up the
ceastle-hill, my mind began to turn fondly to the un-
poetical consideration whether the “Poire d’Argent”
could give me a good dinner.

When, however; my vehicle clattered into the yard of
the “ Poire d’Argent,” I found every body in a state of
excitement, not at my arrival, but from some other cause,
the nature of which I began to suspect when I espied
certain mystical white chalk letters, the look of which
had of Jate been familiar to me, scrawled on the door.
Yes, it was les Prussiens—there could be no doubt of
that.

The poor little hostess, a thin, eager, Frenchwoman,
who looked as if she habitually overworked herself, was
pouring forth her sorrows with great volubility to her
husband, the ostler, and the cook. The two latter fune-
tionaries seemed to enter into her feelings; the landlord,
or the patron, as his wife called him, a half savage, half
muddled-looking fellow, who evidently did no¢ overwork
himself, appeared to be resigned to despair, only taking
his pipe out of his mouth to growl forth a remark now
and then. I had hardly descended from my trap before
my hostess was expatiating on her woes to me. “The
Uhlans” had been there the day before, and had marked
out their billets in the town, and as the inn was about the
best house there, they had appropriated the whole of it
to the invaders’ use.

“ Madame, I can quite feel for the difficulties of your
situation,’ I said, thinking I must do what I could to
console her, “but I know something of the Prussians,
and I have no doubt that they will conduct themselves
well.”

Ah, no, but that was not the whole of her trouble.
Here were “les Prussiens,’ on the point of arriving in
force, and there was an English lady with her daughter
in the best rooms, and they could not make the quarter-
master understand about it, and he had marked the
English lady’s room off for Hauptmann von Reimer; and
altogether she did not know what to do. But she would
give me a dinner, she said, and I could no doubt find a
room somewhere else in the town.

Lam sorry to say that at first I did not concern myself
much about the matter. One grows heartless in war time,

pe ee eee eee ee

and one sees so many small inconveniences of this kind.
But my hostess was a pleasant, clever little body, and I
pitied her, for I suspected she had a hard life of it with
that brutal-looking husband of hers ; moreover, she gave
me such an excellent dinner that my benevolent instincts
awoke, and I was finally so far moved as to consent to go
and see the English ladies, whom she represented to be
in dire distress.

I found the door of the best room most undeniably
chalked with Hauptmann yon Reimer’s name; the writer
had leant with such a vicious determination upon his
letters that they were fairly cut into the wood. My
hostess, after pointing out the fatal inscription to me,
knocked, was admitted, and after a brief colloquy with
those within, I was ushered in. There I beheld for the
first time Mrs. Fortescue, lying on her bed, and evidently
perfectly helpless as to walking, but dressed most fault-
lessly in the height of the fashion; very charming she
must have been when young, and even now she was an
attractive woman, with an oval face, and a pretty pink
colour, set off by wavy fair hair. Her daughter—Mees
Fanny, as the hostess had called her—was sitting by her ;
a nice-looking English girl, twenty at least, but the
gauchest and shyest of damsels that ever I came across.
She blushed up to her eyes, and seemed so utterly con-
founded by the situation that I wished myself well out of
the room, feeling that I should never make any way with
her; but luckily, her mother wes quite competent to talk
for the two, and no ways reluctant to confide her whole
history to me, in answer to my inquiry as to whether I
could be of any service. It appeared that Mrs. Fortescue
was a widow from India, and was left well off; that when
she came back to England she found her only child every
thing that ‘a mother could wish in essentials, and ad-
mirably educated by a couple of maiden aunts—speaking
French and German well, and drawing “in a charming
manner’’—but a mere child in every thing else. So Mrs.
Fortescue, finding that not even her brilliant example
could teach Miss Fanny to flirt, or to make the most of
her good looks, took her to Paris in the hope of putting
some amount of French polish on her. I don’t profess
that these were exactly Mrs. Fortescue’s words; if they
had been, poor mademoiselle would probably have blushed
and fidgetted on the edge of her chair even more than
she did; but this appeared to me to be the substance of
them. Paris, it seemed, did not do much towards effect-
ing the desired result; even when Fanny had a dress
from Worth’s which cost 200 francs, she put it on “so
that it looked no better than her commonest ;”—but any
way the course of education was cut short by the approach
of the Germans. “It would have been so stupid to go
home straight,” said Mrs. Fortescue, with a pleasant
smile, as if she had been uttering the most rational re-
mark in the world, “that we came this way back. You
see what a splendid ruin it is, quite worth paying a visit
to, and such a subject for Fanny’s pencil—no doubt she
will make beautiful sketches of it ;—but somehow or
other I was climbing yesterday in a part the gardien
warned me to ayoid, and J had the misfortune to sprain
my ankle. The French doctor says I must not attempt
to walk—indeed, I cannot, which settles the question—
and here are those horrid Germans all coming to turn us
out of our rooms to-morrow. Do help us if you can,
dear Mr. ” And here she again smiled a sweet
smile of inquiry, and paused for my name.