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From Bentley's Miscellany.

THE GREEK BRIDE TO HER DEAD LOVER.

BY MARY C. F. MONCK.

I KNEW it when no joyful voice with triumph | And gaze upon thy broad white brow, so stern linked thy name,

When silently, with downcast eyes, the victors homeward came;

I felt it when the measured tread paused as they reached thy door

It needed not that I should see the ghastly corse they bore;

Yet as thy bride should stand I stood beside thy bloody bier,

And if my heart felt like to burst, mine eye dis

dained a tear.

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and yet so fair.

O Ion! Ion! shall my heart awake no warmth in thine?

Can Death himself so close thine ear to agony of mine?

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From the Leisure Hour.

A STORY OF

THE following events, which shed an interesting light on French manners and morals and the state of society at the period, took place but a short time before the birth of Louis XIV., the "Grand Monarque" of France. Anne of Austria, the mother of that sovereign, and queen of Louis XIII., had partly by the machinations of the wily Cardinal Richelieu, who had his own ambitious purposes to serve, and partly by her own imprudences, been for some years estranged and separated from her husband. She is accused by historians of having carried on a forbidden correspondence with her relations in Spain, and of having held various communications with other powers at that time engaged in actual hostility against France. There may have been morally no crime in such acts as these, and, considering the feelings of an accomplished and enthusiastic woman towards her personal friends, much might be said in extenuation of them; but they were doubtless illegal and unconstitutional, and the suspicion of her guilt exposed her to the indignation both of the king and his minister. That she was not entirely guiltless not merely of an interdicted correspondence, but of making it the medium of political intrigue-has since been proved; but in apology it may be said, that she was suspected and persecuted before she was guilty, and then was weak enough to revenge herself upon Richelieu by endeavoring to defeat his designs by means of the offense for which she had been unjustly punished. Thus, it is now well known that she endeavored by her letters to prolong the hostility of the Duke of Lorraine to France; and when at length the Cardinal had persuaded the Duke to disband his army, she sent to the latter, by an especial messenger, a fool's cap, as a commentary expressing her opin

ion of his conduct.

The name of this messenger was La Porte, a name well known in the court history of the period. He was a man remarkable for his incorruptible fidelity,

THE BAS TILE.

and no less remarkable, be it said, for the unscrupulous sacrifices he was ever ready to make, and did make-sacrifices not only of personal ease and self-interest, but of truth and moral obligation in order to preserve that one virtue of fidelity intact.

The Queen's chief agent in her intercourse with her relatives and friends was the Marquis de Mirabel, the Spanish ambassador in the Low Countries. A letter to him from the Queen having been intercepted, the perusal of it gave Richelieu a clue to the nature of the correspondence going on. He immediately suspected La Porte, who was the Queen's attendant, of being her accomplice. Anne, at this moment, had quitted Paris, leaving her faithful attendant behind her to conclude some arrangements which she had not had time to finish; and with him she had left a letter to be conveyed to the Duchess of Chevreuse, an intrigante whom the minister had banished the court. La Porte was to have given this letter for conveyance to a person of the name of Thibaudière; but Thibaudière had been bribed by Richelieu to betray La Porte to any partisan of the Queen who might trust him. When offered the letter to the Duchess he begged La Porte to keep it till the following day; to which the latter, suspecting nothing, assented.

As La Porte, after visiting a sick friend, was returning home that night, he was seized, on passing the corner of the Rue Coquillière, by a man, who, advancing behind, placed his hands over the prisoner's eyes and pushed him towards a coach. Ere he could resist, he found himself grasped by a strong party, and was forcibly hoisted into the carriage. The doors, which were without glass, were closely shut, and he was whirled off in darkness, without knowing why or by whom he had been arrested. When at length the vehicle stopped, some gates, through which it had passed, were closed behind it, the doors were thrown open, and the unfortunate attendant of the Queen found himself in the court of the Bastile, with five of

the king's musketeers seated with him, | and, with a couple of his friends similarly and a detachment of some dozen more waiting to receive him.

They commanded him to alight, and without ceremony began searching him. The letter of the Queen to the Duchess was found on his person, and was of course seized; and La Porte was then passed over the drawbridge, between two ranks of musketeers with their matches lighted, and with an ostentation of grave ceremony, which impressed him with the belief that he was charged with a crime of deepest dye. In the guard-house he was detained for half an hour, while a dungeon was prepared for him, which his jailers took care to inform him had last been tenanted by a malefactor who had just been led out to execution. He was then conducted to that stone tower in which Richelieu was in the habit of placing those of his prisoners whom he had destined to a speedy death, and was there thrust into a dungeon closed with three doors-one within, one without, and one half way through the thick wall. This cell was lighted only by a loophole pierced through the thick masonry, with an aperture of only three inches in diameter, and defended from approach by three separate iron gratings. A bed and a table were the sole furniture, with the exception of a straw pallet, for the use of the soldier who was to keep guard over him.

La Porte endeavored to eat his scanty supper, and then lay down on his bed. He had not yet slept, when he was roused by the report of a musket. This was followed by a loud call to arms. Then the doors of the dungeon was heard to open without, and a stranger was thrust in upon them in the dark. The new-comer, upon being questioned, proved to be a young man, whose history affords a singular illustration of the state of life among a certain section of the wealthy class of the period. He had committed no crime or offense of any kind, but had been sent to the Bastile, at the instance of his own mother, for the double purpose of keeping him out of harm's way, and of placing him in a position where he would gain experience of the villainies, the hypocrisies, the delusions, and the treacheries of courtly life before he began to mingle in it, and would thus be prepared to combat the machinations he would be sure to meet with, and escape becoming their victim. But he had grown tired of his college,

situated, had conspired to effect his escape. Having the "liberties of the Bastile," they had been able to communicate with their friends without, and had fully matured their plan; but at the moment of execution the moon shone out, and discovered them in the act of scaling the walls. The sentinel on duty gave the alarm by firing his musket; they were caught flagrante delicto, and committed separately to close confinement.

On the following day La Porte was summoned from his dungeon by a sergeant. Alarmed at the summons, he demanded its purport, but could obtain no reply. At the foot of the stairs he was surrounded by soldiers, and led across the court through a crowd of prisoners in the enjoyment of "the liberties," who flocked to see him pass. They shrugged their shoulders, and plainly regarded him as a doomed man; one of them recognizing him as the attendant of the Queen, placed his finger on his lips an admonition which La Porte, as the depository of his royal mistress's secrets, hardly needed.

They led the prisoner to the governor's room, where he found the well-known La Potterie, a creature of Richelieu's, who began to question him as to the letter found on his person. asking who was to have been the bearer of it. La Porte lied unblushingly, and said that he intended to send it by the post. La Potterie replied, that it was plain, from expressions in the letter, that it was to be delivered by a messenger, who would impart additional information; and La Porte, adhering to his falsehood, the judge produced a number of other letters, from which the prisoner saw with horror that his apartments had been entered and his papers seized.

Though the letters which had been seized were in cipher, they fortunately contained nothing of great importance; but the sight of them threw poor La Porte into terror and apprehension, lest those who had searched his apartments had discovered a secret recess in the wall, most artfully contrived, in which the most important of his documents were concealed, together with the key to the cipher in which they were written. If these were discovered, he felt sure that he was a dead man. He controlled his terrors, however, as well as he could, and tried to assume an indifferent behavior. As La Potterie proceeded with his ques

tions, it became apparent that he was not in possession of the information which the secret repository would have afforded, and La Porte regained the calmness he had assumed. He soon saw that Richelien had no certain knowledge of any thing against the Queen, and he therefore resolved unscrupulously to deny every thing which he was not forced to confess. The examination lasted two hours; but La Porte returned to his dungeon without having spoken a word that could compromise his mistress.

La Potterie resumed the examination again and again. On the third visit he informed the prisoner that a letter from the Queen to the Marquis de Mirabel had been intercepted and shown to her, and that she had not only avowed the correspondence, but had stated that La Porte was the secret agent by whom it was carried on. This was a gross falsehood, devised to make the prisoner confess; and though La Porte suspected such to be the case, his knowledge of the Queen's character led him to fear that it might yet be true. He was now left to meditate on his position and passed some hours in agonies of anxiety.

Just as he was stepping into bed, the doors of his dungeon flew open, and a sergeant at the head of an armed escort ordered him to descend to the court. La Porte, convinced that they were going to put him to death, besought the sergeant to tell him whither he was going, but obtained only an evasive reply. In the court he found a carriage and a body of archers, and he felt assured that his last hour was come. In this state of terror he was carried through all the ordinary places of execution in Paris; but instead of stoping at the scaffold, as he expected, was conducted to the Palais Royal, and there ushered into the presence of Richelieu himself. Here he underwent a fresh examination from that stern prelate, who plied him with cunning questions in rapid succession, but without eliciting the information he sought. Baffled by the coolness of La Porte, who adhered to his first statement, he tried to bribe him by promises of reward, assuring him at the same time that he could betray no trust, as the Queen herself had made a full confession. La Porte knew this last statement to be false, because, had the Queen confessed, Richelieu would not have been so ignor

ant of certain grave facts as he showed himself to be.

Finding promises and threats alike useless, the prelate, with a view to confuse the prisoner, repeated the questions which La Potterie had asked respecting the letter directed to the Duchess of Chev reuse, and demanded who was the person that should have delivered it. La Porte replied as before, that he was going to send it by the post. "You are a liar,” said Richelieu, in a vehement passion; you would have sent it by Thibaudière; you offered it to him the day before. As in a trifle of this nature you do not speak the truth, you can not be believed in any thing. Now, then, what do you say to that ?"

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La Porte, seeing that Thibaudière had betrayed him, coolly replied that he had said what was not true in this matter, and that he had done so because he did not wish to compromise a gentleman, his friend, for a matter which, as his Eminence had observed, was of so trifling a nature. The equivocation was ingenious, and Richelieu, with a sneer, allowed it to pass. He then commanded La Porte to write to the Queen, denying that he had aided in the correspondence which she had acknowledged; but La Porte replied that he dared not address such a letter to his mistress. Richelieu rejoined angrily, and ordered the prisoner back to the Bastile. "You promised," said La Porte, with singular assurance, "that I should not be sent to the Bastile if I told the truth."

"But you have not told the truth," said the Cardinal, and back you go."

La Porte was made to sign his deposition, and then conveyed back to prison. Richelieu, irritated as he was, could but admire the firmness and fidelity of the Queen's attendant, and he exclaimed bitterly: "Oh! that I had but one person so devotedly attached to me."

In spite of his refusal, La Porte was subsequently compelled to write a letter to the Queen, and he was soon shown an answer, apparently signed by his mistress, commanding him to answer truly all questions that should be put to him. But he remained still as uncommunicative as ever, not being convinced of the authenticity of the letter. He was then forced to write again and again to the Queen, who all this time was in agony lest he should be in

duced to confess facts which she had repressed, or should be put to the torture for denying what she had acknowledged. In this terrible strait the Queen had recourse to a friend, the amiable Madame de Hauteforte, who undertook the peril ous and difficult task of conveying to La Porte, in a dungeon of the Bastile, accurate information as to what the queen had really confessed, and what she denied.

sent the infamous and sanguinary Lafeymas to try his arts with La Porte. This man left no means untried to cajole, to terrify, or entrap the prisoner. He threatened, he promised, he lied; he embraced, he kissed him; and, finding all this in vain, he suddenly changed his tone, and, drawing forth a paper, showed La Porte his sentence of condemnation to the question ordinary and extraordinary. He then took him down to the chamber of the rack, and showed him all the instruments of torture, causing the sergeant to explain the use of the planks, the pulleys, the wedges, the screws, and to dilate upon the agonies which they caused.

the attendants he would choose. La Porte named La Rivière, an intimate of the judge, and who he knew would not scruple to say any thing the Cardinal wished. Lafeymas, overjoyed, apprised Richelieu of his success; and in a few hours La Rivière was confronted with La Porte, who commanded him in the name of the Queen, whose message he affected to bear, to reveal every thing that he knew concerning her.

Disguised as a domestic servant, Madame de Hauteforte went to the grate through which the prisoners who had the "liberties of the Bastile" were allowed to speak to their friends. There she found means to interest in her favor a gentleman of the name of De Jars, who readily un- Whatever La Porte may have felt at dertook to convey any papers she might the exhibition of this chamber of horrors, intrust to him, to La Porte. As La Porte he was now perfectly well prepared to was allowed no visitors, and was day and escape becoming a victim. Pretending, night in presence of a musketeer, who however, to be profoundly moved, he now kept watch over him, the undertaking of acknowledged that he had something to De Jars gave small promise of success. confess, if one of the Queen's attendants He performed it, however, to admiration, were brought on her part to command in the following ingenious manner. Hav-him to do so. Lafeymas asked which of ing access to the top of the tower in which La Porte was confined, he bored a hole through the roof into the topmost story, in which were confined some prisoners of no note, from Bordeaux. He easily induced these men to pierce the flooring of their room to that below, which was then occupied by the Baron de Tenence and another gentleman. The Baron and his friend as readily made a third hole into the dungeon of La Porte. The whole of the prisoners, in fact, entered eagerly into the conspiracy to defeat their jailers, to which they were nerved as much by hatred to the minister as by charity towards their fellow-prisoners. An easy means of communication was thus soon established between De Jars and La Porte. As soon as the soldier on guard left the dungeon of the latter, notice was given to those above, and down came a cord through the three apertures, bearing the notes of De Jars, and returning with the answers of La Porte-which latter were written with ink made from burnt straw and oil saved from the salad of his supper. It was not long ere, by this means, he had imparted to the Queen the joyful intelligence that he had not betrayed her, and had obtained in return such information as secured his own life from peril.

All this was accomplished just in time. Richelieu, determined to get at the truth,

La Porte, assuming the air of a man de livered from a heavy responsibility, said that, such being the case, he would confess every thing, though, had he not received her majesty's command, he would have died a thousand deaths sooner than have betrayed her secrets. He then deposed freely to precisely those facts which he knew by his secret instructions the Queen had avowed; and denied, with the frankest air in the world, that any thing else had taken place.

Completely deceived by the similarity of the confession, and convinced that he had elicited the truth, Richelieu abandoned all further persecution of the Queen and her faithful attendant. For once in his life his fraudful policy had found its match, and was defeated by stratagems superior even to his own. La Porte was released from the Bastile; the king sent for his wife, and became reconciled to her after years of estrangement and separation.

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