others, who raise Olivia's body from the ground and bear it quickly to the inn.
Maxwell, who has just arrived, meets the little procession at the door, and in a few brief words Yorke explains what has happened. No harm was done, he thought; he had kept her head above water all the time; it must be merely a faint from cold and fright.
"Not up-stairs," said Maxwell, opening the parlour-door, as the bearers entered the passage with their burden; "this way — in here:" and the hapless Olivia was laid on the same couch which had borne that morning the dead body of her husband.
And now, while the doctor and the landlady and Mrs. Polwheedle and Lucy are busy over the prostrate form, Yorke, wrapped up in a big overcoat of the landlord and covered with shawls, stands by the tap-room fire. He cannot bear to leave the spot, and this rough sort of vapour-bath will keep him from catching cold. But the children are sent off in the carriage, and the servants will explain why the others are detained. Comedy and the commonplace tread close upon the tragic in the actual business of life; and as Yorke stands before the blazing fire drinking hot spirits-and-water, while the landlord takes a glass also to keep him company, and begins a maundering story of how he got upset in a punt seven years ago, and some half-dozen tap-room loungers stand hard by discussing the events of the day, in undertones out of consideration for Yorke, nothing could well be more prosaic or matter-of-fact than the aspect of the scene. But he can drink the cordial and hold his feet to be scorched by the fire, while yet thinking over the tragic fate of the woman once so passionately loved, now pitied with a feeling that for a time left no room in his heart for other emotions — thinking, too, of the death of the noble soldier who seemed when first he knew him to deserve the envy of all younger men. And now what would be the end of this calamity and woe? He, the noble, the gallant, the unfortunate husband had found peace at last; but what further sufferings awaited the unhappy wife?
A long time must have passed, for his clothes are almost dry, when the good doctor appears at the door and beckons him to come into the passage.
"It is all over," said the old man, in a low voice. "It was the shock that killed her; life must have passed away before you brought her to land. Who could wish it were otherwise? Still in your wet clothes? You must look to yourself now, my dear friend, or you too will be a sufferer.
MADAME DE MAINTENON.[1]
The law of the old French monarchy which excluded women from direct inheritance of the throne, by no means excluded them from great and often paramount influence in affairs of State. Indeed it would
- ↑ A singular ill-fortune has attended Madame de Maintenon's literary remains. The task of publishing her letters in the first instance fell into the hands of an adventurer of some talent and more impudence — Laurent Angliviel de la Beaumelle. His edition, several times reprinted in the eighteenth century, has been accepted as fairly trustworthy down to recent times; the more so as he was known to have been assisted by the ladies of St. Cyr, who furnished him with valuable original documents. It now appears that his edition teems with forgeries of the most flagitious kind. He not only tampered with the text of genuine letters, often actually re-writing them and interpolating fraudulent additions of his own, but he forged whole letters by the dozen whenever unwelcome gaps in the authentic correspondence suggested or permitted the deception. The almost incredible extent of his imposture was only exposed when the late M. Théophile Lavallée commenced his edition of Madame de Maintenon's general correspondence. M. Lavallée had himself been a dupe, like all preceding writers, of La Beaumelie's mendacity. About twenty years ago the need of a new and critical edition of Madame de Maintenon's letters and other works was much felt, and two editors devoted themselves to the task, independently and in ignorance of each other's labours, the Duc de Noailles and M. Lavallée. M. Guizot brought them into communication, and M. Lavallée was charged with the whole undertaking. Unhappily, he has died before completing his task, only four volumes having appeared of his edition of the letters, which was intended to comprise ten.
M. Lavallée had a culte for Madame de Maintenon, and his work, extending over twelve years, devoted to her memory, was truly a labour of love. He disinterred autograph letters, whenever they had been preserved, and accepted only such copies as were guaranteed by being transcriptions from the originals made by the ladies of St. Cyr. It was on confronting these authentic documents with La Beaumelle's edition that the magnitude of the latter's fraud was first brought fully to light. It is not too much to say that Madame De Maintenon has been hitherto chiefly known and painted on the faith of this unscrupulous inventor. Even the best and most recent books are filled with his fabrications; e.g., Henry Martin, in his elaborate and painstaking "History of France," quotes almost exclusively the apocryphal letters; expressions as familiar as household words, supposed to be Madame de Maintenon's, are now proved to be fictions of La Beaumelie's. For instance, the famous sentences, "Je le renvoie toujours affligé, jamais désespéré" "Cela m'engage à approuver des choses fort opposées à mes sentiments," etc., etc., are not Madame de Maintenon's at all, though it is difficult to banish them from the mind. As M. Lavallée says, it will take a long time before the false impression created by La Beaumelie's imposture is dispelled, if it ever is entirely.
Of course, we have to take M. Lavallée's word for these statements. But I believe his honourable character has never been doubted, and his work proves him to have been a most painstaking and well-informed editor. When I quote Madame de Maintenon's letters, it is to his edition I refer, except when otherwise indicated.
