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for the infant dead. The lady, giving it a kiss on the forehead, laid it on the spot prepared for it, as upon a bed, arranged it there, covering it with a pure while linen cloth, and pronounced these parting words: "Farewell, Cecilia! rest in peace! This evening we too will join you, to rest together forever. In the mean while pray for us; for I will pray for you and the others." Then, turning again to the monatto, " You," said she," when you pass this way in the evening, may come to fetch me too; and not me only."

So saying, she re-entered the house, and after an instant appeared at the window, holding in her arms another more dearly loved one, still living, but with the marks of death on its counteShe remained to contemplate these so unworthy obsequies of the first child, from the time the car started until it was out of sight, and then disappeared. And what remained for her to do but to lay upon the bed the only one that was left her, and to stretch herself beside it, that they might die together? as the flower already full blown upon the stem falls together with the bud still infolded in its calyx, under the scythe which levels alike all the herbage of the field.

"O Lord!" exclaimed Renzo," hear her! take her to thyself, her and that little infant one: they have suffered enough! surely, they have suffered enough!"

7727

MARGARET OF ANGOULÊME.

MARGARET OF ANGOULEME, Queen of Navarre; born at Angoulême, France, in April, 1492; died in Bigorre, France, in 1549. She was brought up at the Court of Louis XII. She married Charles IV., last Duke of Alençon, in 1509, who died soon after the battle of Pavia, in 1525. In 1527 she became the wife of Henri d'Albret, King of Navarre, and her daughter was the mother of Henri IV. She read her Bible in French, and then wrote some mystery-plays on New Testament scenes, which were enacted in her Court. She also wrote a book on divinity, called "Le Miroir de Âl'me Pécheresse" (1533). She wrote "l'Heptaméron" (1558), a story on the plan of Boccaccio's "Decameron" and Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales." She also wrote "Jehan de Saintré."

FROM THE "HEPTAMERON."

I.

A LITTLE Company of five ladies and five noble gentlemen have been interrupted in their travels by heavy rains and great floods, and find themselves together in a hospitable abbey. They while away the time as best they can, and the second day Parlemente says to the old Lady Oisille, "Madame, I wonder that you who have so much experience. do not think of some pastime to The other sweeten the gloom that our long delay here causes us." ladies echo her wishes, and all the gentlemen agree with them, and beg the Lady Oisille to be pleased to direct how they shall amuse themselves. She answers them:

"My children, you ask of me something that I find very difficult, to teach you a pastime that can deliver you from your sadness; for having sought some such remedy all my life I have never found but one - the reading of Holy Writ; in which is found the true and perfect joy of the mind, from which proceed the comfort and health of the body. And if you ask me what keeps me so joyous and so healthy in my old age, it is that as soon as I rise I take and read the Holy Scriptures

seeing and contemplating the will of God, who for our sakes sent his Son on earth to announce this holy word and good news, by which he promises remission of sins, satisfaction for all duties by the gift he makes us of his love, Passion, and merits. This consideration gives me so much joy that I take my Psalter and as humbly as I can I sing with my heart and pronounce with my tongue the beautiful psalms and canticles that the Holy Spirit wrote in the heart of David and of other authors. And this contentment that I have in them does me so much good that the ills that every day may happen to me seem to me to be blessings, seeing that I have in my heart, by faith, Him who has borne them for me. Likewise, before supper, I retire, to pasture my soul in reading; and then, in the evening, I call to mind what I have done in the past day, in order to ask pardon for my faults, and to thank Him for his kindnesses, and in His love, fear, and peace I repose, assured against all ills. Wherefore, my children, this is the pastime in which I have long stayed my steps, after having searched all things, where I found no content for my spirit. It seems to me that if every morning you will give an hour to reading, and then, during mass, devoutly say your prayers, you will find in this desert the same beauty as in cities; for he who knows God, sces all beautiful things in him, and without him all is ugliness."

Her nine companions are not quite of this pious mind, and pray her to remember that when they are at home the men have hunting and hawking, and the ladies have their household affairs and needlework, and sometimes dancing; and that they need something to take the place of all these things. At last it is decided that in the morning the Lady Oisille should read to them of the life led by Our Lord Jesus Christ; and in the afternoon, from after dinner to vespers, they should tell tales like those of Boccaccio.

One of the tales opens thus:

II.

"In the city of Saragossa there was a rich merchant who, seeing his death draw nigh, and that he could no longer retain his possessions, which perhaps he had acquired with bad faith, thought that by making some little present to God he might satisfy in part for his sins, after his death, as if God gave his grace for money."

So he ordered his wife to sell a fine Spanish horse he had, as soon as he was gone, and give its price to the poor. But when the burial was over, the wife, "who was as little of a simpleton as Spanish women are wont to be," told her man-servant to sell the horse indeed, but to sell him for a ducat, while the purchaser must at the same time buy her cat, and for the cat must be paid ninetynine ducats. So said, so done; and the Mendicant Friars received one ducat, and she and her children ninety-and-nine.

"In your opinion," asks Namerfide in conclusion, "was not this woman much wiser than her husband? and should she have cared as much for his conscience as for the good of her household?" "I think," said Parlamente, "that she loved her husband well, but seeing that most men are not of sound mind on their death-beds, she, who knew his intention, chose to interpret it for the profit of his children, which I think very wise." "But," said Gebaron, "don't you think it a great fault to fail to carry out the wills of dead friends?” "Indeed I do," said Parlamente, "provided the testator is of good sense and of sound mind."-"Do you call it not being of sound mind to give our goods to the Church and the Mendicant Friars?" "I don't call it wanting in sound-mindedness, said Parlamente, "when a man distributes among the poor what God has put in his power; but to give alms with what belongs to others I do not consider high wisdom, for you will see constantly the greatest usurers there are, build the most beautiful and sumptuous chapels that can be seen, wishing to appease God for a hundred thousand ducats' worth of robbery by ten thousand ducats' worth of buildings, as if God did not know how to count."

"Truly I have often marvelled at this," said Oisille; "how do they think to appease God by the things that he himself, when on earth, reprobated, such as great buildings, gildings, decorations, and paintings? But, if they rightly understood what God has said in one passage, that for all sacrifice he asks of us a contrite and humble heart, and in another St. Paul says we are the temple of God in which he desires to dwell, they would have taken pains to adorn their consciences while they were alive; not waiting for the hour when a man can no longer do either well or ill, and even what is worse, burdening those who survive them with giving their alms to those they would not have deigned to look at while they were alive. But He who knows the heart cannot be deceived, and will judge

them, not only according to their works, but according to the faith and charity they have had in Him."-"Why is it, then," said Gebaron, "that these Gray Friars and Mendicant Friars sing no other song to us on our death-beds save that we should give much wealth to their monasteries, assuring us that that will carry us to Paradise, willy-nilly?" "Ah! Gebaron," said Hircan, "have you forgotten the wickedness that you yourself have related to us of the Gray Friars, that you ask how it is possible for such people to lie? I declare to you that I do not think that there can be in the world greater lies than theirs. And yet those men cannot be blamed who speak for the good of the whole community, but there are those who forget their vow of poverty to satisfy their avarice." "It seems to me, Hircan," said Nomerfide, "that you know something about such a one; I pray you, if it be worthy of this company, that you will be pleased to tell it to us." "I am willing," said Hircan, “although I dislike to speak of this sort of people, for it seems to me that they are of the same kind as those of whom Virgil said to Dante, 'Pass on, and heed them not' ('Passe oultre et n'en tiens compte ').

III.

The following conversation contains the comments on a tale told of the virtuous young wife of an unfaithful husband, who by dint of patience and discretion regained his affection; so that "they lived together in such great friendship that even his just faults by the good they had brought about increased their contentment."

"I beg you, ladies," continues the narrator, "if God give you such husbands, not to despair till you have long tried every means to reclaim them; for there are twenty-four hours in a day in which a man may change his way of thinking, and a woman should deem herself happier to have won her husband by patience and long effort than if fortune and her parents had given her a more perfect one." "Yes," said Oisille, "this is an example for all married women. "Let her follow this example who will," said Parlamente: "but as for me, it would not be possible for me to have such long patience; for, however true it may be that in all estates patience is a fine virtue, it's my opinion that in marriage it brings about at last unfriendliness; because, suffering unkindness from a fellowbeing, one is forced to separate from him as far as possible,