The heart of the Grand Duke was now wholly at the command of the aspiring Bianca, and in spite of the exhortations of the Cardinal, the Duke's brother, she became, in a short time, Grand Duchess of Tuscany. her frame, and pining away rapidly, she || father, the Grand Duchess is in great want fell sick and died. of your assistance." So saying he hugged him close to his breast, and was immediately struck with the sight of a beautiful new-born child, which the good father had concealed in his bosom. He took it from him, and called out so loud that the Duchess heard him, "God be thanked! the Grand Duchess is happily delivered of a chopping Prince;" and he directly presented the little 1 Her ambition, however, could not be satisfied without producing an heir to the throne, and she took the resolution of feign-one to the by-standers. ing pregnancy, and of substituting a foreign child. When she took to her chamber, and at length to her bed, no one was more rejoiced than her infatuated husband. When she thought it time to play the last scene of this farce, she suddenly alarmed the palace at midnight; and ordered her Confessor, a barefooted Carmelite, to 'be called. The Duchess, incensed to fury, resolved on vengeance. Now the Cardinal was particularly fond of almond soup; she therefore caused an almond soup to be made, which she strongly poisoned. The Cardinal suspecting her, seated himself as usual at the table, but refused the soup which the Duchess politely pressed upon him. "Well," said the Grand Duke, “1 will take some of the soup myself;" and accordingly took a plate of it. Unable to prevent his eating it, the wretched Bianca saw she was undone;' she ate up, therefore, all that remained of the almond soup, and died with her husband, on the 21st of Oc The Cardinal hastened to the antichamber of the Grand Duchess, where he walked up and down reading his breviary. The 'Duchess begged him, for God's sake, to be gone. The Cardinal answered, drily:"Let her Highness attend to her own business, and I will mind mine." As soontober, 1587. The Cardinal 'succeeded to as the Confessor appeared the Cardinal flew to meet him with open arms." Welcome, welcome," said he, "my dear ghostly the Dukedom under the name of Ferdinand I. and reigned till the year 1608. CHARACTERS OF CELEBRATED FRENCH WOMEN. CHARLOTTE COUNTESS DE BREGY. she served her friends also with an ardour as if the favours she asked were for herself; them; where she dare not contradict she defended them to the utmost of her power, and great ability of reasoning. Fortune and honours were with her but secondary considerations: and, in short, to use her own words when speaking of herself, she acted in the world conformably to what it ought to be, and too little according to what it is. SHE was one of the ladies of honour to Queen Anne of Austria, and was distin-nor would she ever listen to a word against guished at that court for her wit and beauty; the turn of her mind was metaphysical; and love was more in her fancy and imagination than in her heart. No lady was fonder of praise and flattery; but she was grateful for it, as she repaid it with interest; gentle and civil from politeness, she was naturally of a proud and scornful disposition; wedded to her own opinion, she had dissimulation enough to affect to adopt. that of others; modest and discreet from pride, she passed through life with an unblemished character, though very much given to intrigue, gaiety, and dissipation, Constant, however, and secret, she was the chief favourite and confidante of the Queen, and never abused the trust reposed in her: MADAME DE MONTESPAN. THIS lady, renowned more for her beauty and sterling wit than for the amiability of her disposition, was long the favourite mistress of Louis XIV.; haughty and self-willed, the charms of her person and conversation alone enslaved the mo- the Romish church, though naturally fond narch, for he detested her pride and arro- of the pleasures of the table. When she gance, together with her spirit, which was banished the court, she wrote a most knew no controul. submissive letter to her husband, imploring Yet the originality of her sprightly sal-him to receive her, or to allow her to retire lies, and for which her whole family were to any one of his estates in the country, proverbial, her extraordinary beauty, and which he might please to name. On his her being the mother of several of the positive refusal to her requests, she retirKing's children, long ensured her swayed to St. Joseph, rue St. Dominique, over the royal captive; and had it not been where she practised the severest austerity for the arts of Madame de Maintenon in and outward ceremonies of mortification: supplanting her, she might have retained she wore hair cloth next her skin, and gave her situation of favourite to the end of her || away immeuse sums in charity; making life. with her own hands clothes for the surrounding poor. Yet her excessive pride, the leading feature in her disposition, was visible to the last: she exacted from her attendants that homage and servility as if she had been really a Queen; one chair only, of state, and covered with crimson || velvet, had a place in her apartment; on this she sat, while her visitors remained standing: and her extraordinary beauty, which survived all the attacks of vexation and time, together with her majestic air, caused her acquaintance to adopt themselves easily to her arrogance, and all declared she looked in the place which nature had intended her to fill. Amidst all her foibles she yet retained a sincere veneration for the duties of religion, and never missed a mass: one of her gay friends, who was allowed to speak to her with freedom, smiled at this punctuality, which, in the present way of life in which Madame de Montespan was engaged, she treated as hypocrisy. "Not so," said the Marchioness; "because we fail in our duty in one point, should that make us negligent in all, and suffer us to lay aside the || most important?" The devotion, however, of Madame de Montespan was of the Italian kind; it consisted solely in outward ceremonies; she strictly kept all the fasts enjoined by SELECT ANECDOTES. LORENZO RICCI, THE LAST GENERAL OF THE JESUITS. As the Pope has thought proper to reestablish this order, it may not be uninteresting to our readers to know something of the famous Lorenzo Ricci, a man who acted by no fixed principle, but from a spirit of intrigue fixed himself in the arduous situation he enjoyed. ness. His deportment towards the great was a compound of pride and impertinent stateliOften his Swiss would enter his chamber, and say to him, "Reverendissimo, the Cardinal York waits below at the gate, desirous of speaking with you." He would reply:"To-day I give audience to no one. Is not to-day post day? Five or six of my Viceroys in the East and West Indies are expecting my orders." And, in short, it is requisite to quote a short dialogue be tween Lorenzo and his Swiss, in order to give our readers a specimen of his extraor dinary insolence. "Swiss. Half a dozen Bishops and as many noblemen, will take no denial. "General. The generation of vipers; I am not at home. "Swiss. The Pretender of England desires admission. "General. Let his pretending Majesty be pleased to wait till I have finished this letter to his actual Majesty the King of Spain." He was so prepossessed with his order, that he imagined the Romish church must fall to the ground without his support; and on this opinion was founded that obstinacy which in him was beyond example. The worthy Ganganelli, the best and most enlightened of all who have ever sat on the papal throne, saw himself obliged to pub- || passionate people, telling them he was at the point of death; and he has often been met by those very people in full health the day after. lish a bull for the abolition of the society of Jesuits; they were treated as dangerous insurgents, and they had no one to thank but their impolitic General. He himself was arrested as a malefactor, and shut up in the castle of St. Angelo. When the bull of abrogation was read to him he turned pale at the sudden calamity: at the same time he said, that indeed he had looked for a reform, but he never could imagine the total demolition of the order. But how could he have ever looked for a reform, when he had inflexibly resisted it? His pallid countenance was but an index to his inward agony at seeing an end to his boundless and haughty dominion. Cut off from all hope, he might yet have rendered himself estimable by adopting the virtues of a private ecclesiastic; but he behaved on his examination like a man attacked by banditti, who is resolved to part with nothing till he sees the sword or the pistol levelled at his breast: he became therefore a dangerous member of civil society, and Pope Ganganelli acted right when he refused the petitions of the brotherhood for his release. This haughty and extraordinary man died in the year 1775, in the Castle of St. Angelo, lamented by none but by the blindest bigots. SAMUEL BOYSE. THIS ingenious person, who had received the rudiments of education at a private school in Dublin, was sent to the university of Glasgow, where, before he was twenty, he married a tradesman's daughter in that city, who was of a very dissolute character, and soon ruined him. He was born in the year 1708, and in 1740 he was so reduced that he had not even a shirt or coat which he could appear in. In 1742 he was in a spunging house; from whence, after a long continuance there, he obtained his liberty. His imprudence and wants, however, still increased, and in order to alleviate them he had recourse to the following expedients to obtain benefactions. Sometimes he would raise subscriptions on poems which he never meant to compose; at other times he would order his wife to write to some comNo. 63. Vol. X. F While he resided at Reading, in the year 1745, his wife died; on which he tied a piece of black crape round the neck of a little dog, which he always used to carry about in his arms. When he was in liquor he always imagined her to be alive, and would use much invective against those with whom he thought she might then be in company. After he quitted Reading he grew more sober and decent, and great hopes were entertained of his reformation; but his health declined daily, and after a lingering illness, he died in an obscure lodging in Shoe-lane, in 1749, and was buried at the expence of the parish. ACCOUNT OF THE ABBE VATTEVILLE. WHEN the Baron Vatteville was Ambassador to the court of England, Vatteville, his brother, the subject of this sketch, was a Colonel of a regiment in the service of Philip IV. of Spain, and distinguished himself in a very gallant manner in several engagements. Dissatisfied with the slowness of his promotion, he quitted the service, and turned monk; but scarce had he taken the vows when, weary of seclusion, he obtained a sum of money of his family, and without any one suspecting his intention, he, by means of a trusty friend, procured the habit of a Cavalier, and armed with a brace of pistols and a sword, he dressed himself, went out of his cell, and took the way which led to the gardens. Whether by chance, or whether the Prior had some suspicion of his design, Vatteville met him in the garden, and stabbed him on the spot. He then leaped the wall, on the other side of which was a horse ready to receive him. He set off at full gallop to an immense distance, and only stopped once to refresh his horse. He arrived at a desolate spot, where there was no other habitation to be seen but a little inn. He ordered a leg of mutton to be put on the spit, and another piece of meat to be dressed, and which was all the provision in the house. He had scarce begun to taste a morsel when another traveller arrived, and finding nothing in the X ANECDOTE OF THE PRINCE DE CONTI AND AN officer of the French navy, who had a very particular request to make to Louis XIV, sought frequently, but in vain, informed, that the best method was to follow the King when he went a hunting. house, he made no doubt but what the Carthusian friars, of which he had been a guest who had arrived before would wil- || member, and saw some of his brother lingly give him a share of a dinner which monks who were then alive. He died at appeared an ample sufficiency for two per- the age of ninety, in 1710. sons; but Vatteville pretended that there was no more than enough for himself. A dispute arose, and the new comer seized on both of the dishes. Vatteville not being able to take them from him, discharged one of his pistols, shot him through the head, placed the other on the table, and threatened the landlady and a servant, who ran in at hearing the noise, to treat them into speak to his Majesty, and was at length the same manner if they did not quit the room and let him dine in peace. He then made his escape, and experienced a variety Not being ready at the time the monarch of adventures in his travels, which he con- set off, the officer, resolving to find him cluded by retiring into the dominions of out, and not knowing on which side he the Grand Signor; where he took the tur-hunted, perceived just before him one who ban, entered his service, and so distinguish- || seemed to him, at least, nothing more than ed himself that he was made Basha, and a valet de chambre. "Stop, friend," said had the government of some places in the he, "where is the King?" The stranger, Morea, while the Turks and the Venetians without even turning his head, answered, "Follow me." Irritated at this answer, which he thought very impolite, he exclaimed, "By my faith, my good fellow, I think thou art a droll subject, not even to take the trouble to turn round thy head and see who thou art speaking to. Tell me, wilt thou or no, on which side the King hunts?"—" Follow me, I say,” replied the stranger. were at war. This circumstance gave birth to the idea of seeking to return in safety to his native land. He made a secret. negotiation with the Venetians, who obtained for him at Rome absolution for his apostacy, secularisation also, and a considerable benefice in Franche Comté, by means of which, he delivered up to them those places formerly under his government. Enraged at what he fancied a new insult, the honest sailor, who was mounted on a very bad horse, whose restiveness kept him too far off to ask the reason again for this odd behaviour, contented himself with swearing a multitude of oaths, and followed as close as he could. When he returned to his native province, at the moment in which Louis XIV. was at war, he served France so essentially, that he obtained several distinguished honours; particularly an honourable and creditable authority at Besançon. The Archbishopric becoming vacant, the King named him to succeed to it; but the Pope, shocked at the idea of making an archbishop of an apostate, renegate, and one publicly known as a murderer, constantly refused his bulls; and Vatteville was obliged to be contented, in exchange, with two good Abbies, and the Archdeaconry of Besançon. He lived there in a style equal to that of the first nobility; he had a pack of hounds, | and a most sumptuous table; he was outwardly respected, and really dreaded; hesion. paid frequent visits to the monastery of The stranger, at length, joined the King, and all the courtiers having made a circle, they did homage to the Prince de Conti, who, turning to the mariner, and addressing the King, said, "Sire, here is a brave officer desires to speak with you; may I request permission to recommend him to your Majesty's particular consideration." The King immediately granted the request of the worthy seaman, who returned overwhelmed with gratitude and confu THE DIVORCE.-A TALE. RELATED BY A MOTHER TO HER DAUGHTER. (Concluded from Page 120.) opportunity of ranking her amongst the muses to those sycophants who had assisted her in writing it. Your father was, in some measure, confined in his countinghouse, and no longer met with even the complaisance of a kept mistress from the woman who was making a beggar of him, and who disgraced him by sporting his MORE Scrupulous in my conduct than wished to pass herself for a wit, and accordwhen Mr. Dormeuil's presence encouragedingly published a novel, which furnished an me, my society was limited to a small number of ladies of respectability, and of men whose age and known good morals formed a rampart against slander. I did not give up the title which my husband had given me; his initials remained on my carriage, I had them engraved on my plate, and took particular care to have it stand conspicuous. Whoever had hesitated to call me Madame Dormeuil, would have ceased from that very moment being admitted into my com pany. I knew that she who held my place was hurt at my pretensions: but was I accountable to the woman who had reduced me to the last verge of despair ? name. In vain did he attempt to remonstrate, he could not even obtain an explanation : in answer to all his representations and intreaties, the woman to whom he had sacri ficed me would say: "Indeed, if you go on at this rate, it will soon be impossible to live with you any longer." Alas! those very same words he had formerly addressed to me, and my submission had not moved him to pity. Most unfortunately he adored that woman, who was too void of feelings and delicacy not to abuse her empire over him: a single caress would sooth and pacify him; and so long as he could afford to pay for her caresses, I was but too well convinced that she would retain him in her I struggled to devour my grief, in order to attend to your education, my dear child; neither did my sufferings prevent me from bringing you up in the same principles which I had imbibed. Better it is to suffer than to be guilty. Informed of every circumstance that occurred in Mr. Dormeuil's family, I was, I confess, impatient, in the expectation that the woman whom he had associated to his destiny, should avenge her whom he had forsaken. Neither was I de-chains. ceived in my presentiment. Could she be a dutiful wife, who had acquired that title only by breaking asunder bonds already formed? Prodigality and inconsiderate pomp had succeeded to good order, regularity, and comfort in your father's house. He had renounced certain and honourable commercial operations to venture into idle speculations, which, whilst a man is obliged to keep up appearances, will but too often leave him on a sudden destitute of every resource. His new companion, who had beheld in their union only a fortune to be gained, and the liberty of indulging her extravagant propensities, soon became the prototype of fashion. At balls, at the theatres, in the public walks, admirers thronged around her; her house was open to the amateurs of pleasure and dissipation: she besides He Although, when he married her, she was portionless, he acknowledged her having brought him a considerable fortune. When she became a mother, she appeared to be jealous of you, my dear child, and succeeded in prevailing on your father to make all his purchases in the name she bore prior to her having assumed that of Dormeuil. thus became dependent on her, yet he was weak enough to yield consent to her insinuations. Thus he was removing you from his heart as he had formerly discarded me, and deprived you of your rights as he had divested me of mine. The uncertainty attending his speculations was an additional motive for him to use the name of Mademoiselle Olivier: he imagined that he was || securing to himself a resource in case of misadventure. Unfortunate Dormeuil! what was become of the probity hereditary so far in thy family? The example that || X 2 |