The strangers were duly supplied with their supper, of which, with appetites sharpened by the mountain air, they greedily partook.

A fresh pitcher of Sondrio wine gave fresh point to the Curate's jokes, and increased volubility to his tongue. The uncouth appearance of the three stangers formed to his wine-warmed imagination an irresistible provocative to mirth; and the curate plied them with an incessant fire for several minutes. But nothing could draw the men out of their sulky and dogged retirement. One of them growled forth an incivility, which the Curate retorted with a boisterous laugh, and proceeded to talk of other matters. The strangers took no interest whatever in his discourse, except once when he mentioned that he was about to proceed the following day to Sondrio, where he was to receive two hundred crowns for the repairs and improvement of his chiesicciuóla-a diminutive term of endearment by which he designated his parochial church. A keen observer might have perceived them pricking up their ears, and looking significantly at each other. But the Curate was too intent upon draining his pitcher, which done, he gave the company his benediction, and took his departure for the night.

that even the rushing of the torrent from the neighbouring cliffe could not, in any reason, account for the Curate's assumed deafness to the appeal. The Curate, however, had the heart of a lion under his habit of serge, and he still kept on his way.

A third voice now cried "Stand!" And the Curate recognised one of the hang-dog countenances of the inn, as a tall man planted himself right in the middle of the road. The Curate looked first over his right, and then over his left shoulder, and saw that the two other ruffians were closing in upon him from behind.

This unpleasant imbroglio put an end to all idea of resistance by open force. So the Curate plunged his spurs deep into the sides of his horse -for the thought of his well-laden purse (that rare commodity in his possession!) gave him even more than his usual energy.

The Padre made a bold attempt to dash past the man in front, when a ball from behind passed like lightning through his horse's head; and horse and rider rolled upon the earth.

It now became tolerably clear to the priest, that those who adopted this summary mode of stopping a horse's career, would not be over scrupulous as to the means which they might adopt for arresting his

dexter arm, and a desperate impulse to prostrate his assailant to the earth. Fortunately, however, he thought twice upon the subject; and bore the blow without a murmur, notwithstanding that he was some six inches taller than his adversary.

The three robbers were by this time on their knees in the middle of the road, scrambling up the coins-lire -that were scattered about. The Curate was seated by the road-side, at a few yards' distance, taking note of what was passing. How he grudged every coin that passed into the robbers' pouches! How he longed to commence the professional work of compelling restitution!

One of the robbers—the man who had put so sudden a stop to the career of the Curate's poor horse-had thrown aside his discharged carbine; the second was armed with a stout cudgel, which had already made familiar acquaintance with the Curate's sconce; and the third, who stood nearest to him, had in his girdle a pair of loaded pistols.

Having thus ascertained the resources of the enemy, the Padre decided on his plan of campaign; and although the opposed forces were very far from being equal, he did not despair of victory. The Curate had been mindful both of soul and body. For the soul he had provided in the shape of a rosary and breviary-for the body with a stout stick, his wonted companion, more especially on rent days.

The robbers, seeing that they were three to one, and that they had only to deal with a priest, had not thought it necessary to deprive him of his stick. They would as soon have thought of disarming a crippled beggarman!

The Padre, however, seizing a moment when they were taking the last "long and lingering look" to ascertain whether any of the money might by any possibility have escaped their search, stole behind the man with the pistols, and made his cudgel descend like lightning on the robber's scull. The man rolled senseless at his feet.

Instantaneously, and before the other two had one moment given them to recover themselves, he snatched up the two pistols out of the fallen robber's girdle, and with one in each hand, rearing himself up to his full height, and planting himself firmly on his legs, with head erect, and expanded chest :

"Fall back, you scoundrels!" he exclaimed; "back, or you are both dead men!"

The robbers swore, and growled, and grumbled, but it was useless. With pistols still in hand, the Curate held them covered; and awed by his air of unflinching resolution, the robbers cowered before him, and literally trembled. He made the one take up the saddle of his dead horse, and the other the body of his wounded comrade, who began to manifest some signs of life, and in this order he compelled them to march before him to his home, which he entered amidst the triumphant shouts of his wondering parishioners.

The Curate was content with his victory. He let the robbers go without delivering them up to justice; but, shaking his cudgel, he gave them this parting admonition: "Ricordate, vagabondi, che i dottori della chiesa portano bastone e breviario!"

"Remember, you vagabonds, that the doctors of the church carry a R. staff as well as a breviary!"

R.

CAEN, in Normandy, the birthplace of this heroine of the revolution, is one of the most ancient and curious towns in France. The churches are numerous, the steeples grotesquely constructed, and surmounted with cocks and arrows of a most venerable appearance. Caen also abounds with old houses, whose frameworks of wood are visible round their borders, most fantastically sculptured and painted. The town is shaped precisely like a horse-shoe. In allusion to this circumstance a French topographical writer has the following impudent remark :-"Providence, or chance, is sometimes pleased to write history with houses. Every one knows that Caen, under William the Conqueror, and at several other times, gave England several violent kicks of a horse's hoof, of which England still bears the marks," (donna aux Anglais de violens coups de pied de cheval, dont l'Angleterre garde les marques!)

In visiting Caen some time since, I explored it with especial pleasure as the birth-place of Charlotte Corday, in whose story I took the liveliest interest. Strange to say, I met with some amongst her fellow-townsmen, who had never heard even her name!

I inquired of several. To one I said: "Will you be kind enough to inform me in what part of the town is the house that used to be occupied by Charlotte Corday?"

"Monsieur, voici celle de Malherbe," was the reply.

Others gravely answered that they knew no lady in Caen of that name, and referred me to the post-office!

This ignorance is, in a great measure, explained by the extremely modest and retired life which Charlotte Corday led in Caen before the éclat of the great deed, of which Paris, and not Caen, was the theatre.

MADEMOISELLE MARIE CHARLOTTE DE CORDAY, the granddaughter of the celebrated CORNEILLE, was of a noble but reduced family: she was born near the village of Saint-Saturnin des Ligueries,

not far from Caen. Like the maid of Orleans, she passed her early youth in the fields, clad in a simple russet gown, with bare arms and shoulders, running, with her loose hair flying in the wind, through a forest of orchards which abound in that part of Normandy. The straw roof of the house in which she was born has been replaced with tiles. It has a court-yard attached to it, with some apple-trees in the midst of it, a bell hung in a turret, a well, an enclosing wall, and a tuft of ivy which forms a sort of cloak to a shoulder of the wall.

Near Saint-Saturnin is shown the source of a streamlet, partly concealed beneath osiers and willows. Some old men assured me that they had seen Charlotte, while a child, lifting water from this source in the hollow of her hands. This humble streamlet, which loses itself in the grass, but which somewhere doubtless re-appears, quitting its solitude and silence to mingle with foaming billows, presented to my mind a touching image of the life of Charlotte Corday-calm and limpid in the rustic shade, but troubled profoundly at a later period, and in a great city, by the breath of revolution.

Charlotte Corday quitted this charming rural life to enter at Caen into the convent of the Holy Trinity. This establishment, founded by Queen Matilda, the consort of William the Conqueror, had, with the advance of time, acquired great revenues and high prerogatives. The Religieuses of the order of Saint Benedict wore black robes, with the exception of the guimpe, or stomacher, and the veil, which were both white. They lived under the same roof, but without being cloistered, and each had the privilege of taking one or two young ladies as boarders. Charlotte Corday was received into this convent, together with her sister, by Madame de Lauvagny, their aunt, who had taken the vows. The vast and commodious buildings of the convent extended to a little hill be

hind, including gardens, courts, and oratories. The church, which is still standing, is a very curious edifice in the Anglo-Norman style of architecture. Its exterior chaste, grave, collected, with but few doors or windows visible, gives it very much the air of a veiled nun at prayer. It was evening when I visited the church. The wind sighed through its ancient towers. The moon rose behind them enveloped by a white cloud. She looked like a pale nun, in her snowwhite wimple. What a sad, yet pleasing light does the view of places and objects cast upon the remembrances of history! It was indubitably at the Abbaye-des-Dames that Charlotte Corday acquired that severe and sombre turn of mind, which, excited by events at a subsequent period, resulted in so tragic a close.

An aged Religieuse informed me that Mademoiselle de Corday applied herself at first to devotional pursuits with the utmost ardour and enthusiasm. But, mixed with her religious zeal, there was a fund of pride and obstinacy, which often produced a reprimand from her aunt. Here she learned to read and write, to draw and work at tapestry. But for the other ordinary employments of female leisure, she had the utmost repugnance. Her bold and firm hand was not made to hold a needle. When she had attained her seventeenth year, as her tastes were not centred in the cloister, and as the revolution, though still distant, presented nevertheless a menacing aspect, and diverted numerous females from conventual life, Mademoiselle de Corday left the Abbey of the Trinity for the house of Madame de Bretteville at Caen.

After a very lengthened search, I at length succeeded in making out this house, in which Charlotte Corday passed so many of her adult years. It was situated in the Rue Saint Jean, No. 148. Though recently repaired, this house has undergone few changes, and through the portions which have been retouched it is easy to discern its ancient form. Hid in the extremity of a small court, it has a perfectly historical character. Well might a dark and terrible resolution ripen under

neath that humid roof, thickly covered with moss, in an ill-lighted chamber, before a sad and solitary window, where the process of silent thought was never disturbed by the sight of wayfarers in the street. The sun seldom, if ever, shines upon the court. Its aspect is cold and severe, and it appears saddened by an eternal shadow. The massive staircase, which leads to the chamber formerly occupied by Mademoiselle de Corday, is of stone, with a voluted balustrade. As an Italian monk compresses his lips and lowers his eyes in ascending the Santa Scala, I, a simple traveller, regarded for some minutes, with sad looks, the rigid steps of that stone staircase which Charlotte Corday descended on the 9th July, 1793, never more to press it with her footsteps.

Upon the occasion of this visit, I got into conversation with an aged turner, who, when a child, occupied with his mother the shop situated at the opposite side of the street. "I see her still," he said, "in that corner of the court, by the side of the well, with a blue riding-dress, a plain felt bonnet of a conical shape, set off with ribands, and a starched gauze fichu upon her bosom. She was a proud and beautiful young woman, who did not romp or sing like other girls, who laughed little, and spent her time in reading."

The only remembrance, in truth, that Charlotte Corday has left behind her at Caen, is a remembrance of beauty and wisdom. The first circumstance appears the more remarkable, as the women of Normandy are, for the most part, good-looking. They are almost the only women in France that know how to carry their heads properly. In whatever shape they twist their head-gear, whether into the form of "helmets," of "pyramids," of cathedrals," or of

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obelisks," for they have all these shapes and designations-the cumbrous appendages being uniformly fastened under the chin with lacethey carry their heads well and proudly. This circumstance is no doubt attributable, in a great degree, to the superb style of coiffure, as well as to its positive weight. The women

of Caen are said to come next in the statistics of French beauty to Caux, which is admitted to be the Georgia of France.

There is but one authentic portrait of Charlotte Corday in existence. All the artists (and their name is legion) who, during the revolution, and in these latter times, have applied themselves to the delineation of this historic head, have been content with the ideal. David, the painter, in his "Death of Marat," not having the beautiful model before his eyes, could only give his recollection of the face of this heroic woman, who was executed a few days after she had slain the monster, who was absurdly styled the "Friend of the People." Since that period, the artists of France have invented a Greek head, a sort of goddess of Liberty, in the Girondiste taste, which they have christened at all hazards, Charlotte Corday. During the trial her likeness was taken, and thousands of copies of the engraving were bought up with avidity; but its fidelity was pretty much on a level with all such catchpenny productions. The true likeness of Charlotte Corday forms a most interesting historical document, of which we should be deprived, but for a felicitous and singular chance.

M. Lecurieux, a celebrated French portrait-painter, walking one day under the pillars of the Halles, at Paris, discovered, exposed for sale at the door of a vender of odds and ends of furniture, a smoked and dirty painting, which he suspected to possess some intrinsic value. It bore the traces of mutilation by sabre-cuts. He purchased it for three francs. Upon his return home Lecurieux washed the picture, and immediately there appeared, beneath the crust which covered it, a charming female head. Continuing his work of cleaning, the artist saw with delight these words forming themselves, and traced by a pencil with the same colour in which the robe was painted, "Charlotte Corday."

This portrait, of which an initiated person would guarantee the resemblance, as in the case of those of Titian or Vandyke, without ever

having seen the original, was evidently taken from nature. The date it bears is 1789; and Charlotte Corday was then in her twenty-first year. The painter has represented her in the costume of the time, wearing a corset of silk which gives considerable prominence to the bosom, and throws the shoulders very much back. The neck and bosom are very much uncovered by the robe, but partially concealed by a fichu; the hair very abundant, disposed in numerous tufts, and sprinkled with a light cloud of powder. The forehead is not very high, but beautifully shaped. The eyes are of a greyish blue, like the sky of Normandy, and the look is fixed and resolute. The mouth is so fresh and pure-looking, that it seems never to have been touched by a human lip. The chin, slightly angular, announces a firmness of character which is equally read in the eyes and in the set of the head; but-what is particularly worthy of remark, and suggestive of sad thoughts, when we reflect upon the termination of her career-the most charming portion of the portrait of Charlotte Corday, the most engaging by its softness and exquisite formation, the most perfect in grace and in dazzling whiteness, is that neck, which was afterwards severed by the guillotine!

This portrait, which is a perfect masterpiece, both of drawing and colouring, affords no bad illustration of the prevailing manners at the end of the eighteenth century. The gallantry and scented frivolity of that epoch may be read in the corsage of blue satin, in the extravagant shape into which the coiffeur has twisted the hair, in the coquettish sprinkling of powder; in the delicate rose-tints which bespread the cheeks; in the sweet and priceless dimples of the mouth, in the eyes which are the very colour of love. The nascent revolution shadows itself forth in the look of severity and deep reflection, which the innate principle of thought imparts to those bright blue eyes; in the stormy pallor of the brow; the energetic expression which the lips, with all their sweetness, wear, and the imperious carriage of the head.