how his hero, a simple knight, he said, was to come into the battle of Agincourt riding on a cow, as the knights did in those days when even cows were chivalrous. He finally decided for that story of the eighteenth century which he did not live to finish. Perhaps he thought the early fourteenth and fifteenth centuries too remote from daily life to suit his purpose; and yet those distant times seem very near as one reads of Jehan and Franck de Borsellen and their foes and their friends, living in that strange, pedantic, bygone and yet most present hour, as it is here described. Knightly romances were in people's minds in the beginning of the last century, evoked by mighty wizards of the North and of the South, whose spells could raise the past again from the past. Tradition lives its own life. more or less compared to Time. are spoken of still by the peaceful bleau as if they were yesterday. What are a few centuries The days of Henry V. inhabitants of FontaineThat bridge was broken down by the English'-a driver said, as he pointed with his whip: it has never yet been restored. No, madam, I am not speaking of the Germans,' he insisted; the bridge was destroyed long before they came, by the English who were here, and who did such great damage in the days of Jeanne d'Arc.' Over here what a wave of past prowess and stately achievement is still recorded by the ancient shrines among which we habitually live and move! We pass along the Embankment, from the Abbey to the Temple, to the Tower where any day you may watch the river flowing on with its freight, or listen to the Beefeater describing the Regalia, perhaps, and quietly telling of hairbreadth escapes, of desperate fights, of splendid festivities; and as he points to a glorious ruby, shining peaceably in Edward VII.'s crown, we listen as he tells us how it was in the helmet worn by Henry V. at Agincourt and by the Black Prince before him. It was given to the Black Prince, so I am informed by a kind student of ancient lore, by Peter the Cruel, who had taken it from the Moors. We have an old sketch-book, shabby and battered, which was my Father's. Out of this old sketch-book, sadly defaced by ruthless children, we reproduce some of the notes and sketches which evidently belong to the unfinished story of the Baron de Borsellen and his companions. He was studying at the Louvre, and his notes are a medley of old and new, of now and of then slight sketches are there labelled Callot, Hollar, C. Vernet; and, besides the sketches, we find heraldic things-items concerning early costumes and armours and shields and stately casques. Here is a pencil sketch labelled ' Louis de France, son of Philip III., died 1319'; another of 'Robert, Comte de Clermont,' in his coat of mail with his great sword and heavy iron legs; there is the slightly indicated figure of Agnes de Loisy and a memorandum: Her gown is quartered with her arms and her husband's in lozenges'; and then again comes a map, rather than a drawing of Philippe de Valois, on whose trappings the fleurde-lys are just indicated. Romané de Clos Vougeot himself may have been one of the two knights encountering each other. The men-at-arms are evidently carefully copied, as must be the helmet with its kingly crest. We have the knights in all their ponderous dignity and the sketches of the footsoldiers with their piques and cross-bows. There is also a note referring to Les Tournois du Roi Réné d'après le manuscrit et les desseins par Champollion Figeac.' The reproduction of these drawings may interest the readers of the adventures of Franck de Borsellen. As for the two full-page pictures, they seem to concern the actual events which are here chronicled. Some such impression must have been in my Father's mind when he wrote of the rise of that campaign which ends this fragment of the story, and in which little Franck de Borsellen realises for the first time the terrors as well as the pomp of the fields of glory he had dreamt of. To these notes should be added grateful acknowledgment to a student of the past, who from his peaceful precincts |