upon the monks, and one day caught as many of their fowls as he
could; cut off their beaks and their spurs with a cleaver, and threw them
back again over the hedge. This was cruelty so marked that I could not
refrain from relating it.

Vassor did not long remain in this retreat, but returned to Paris, and
still being unable to gain a living, passed into Holland, from rage and
hunger became a Protestant, and set himself to work to live by his pen.
His knowledge, talent, and intelligence procured him many friends, and
his reputation reached England, into which country he passed, hoping to
gain there more fortune than in Holland. Burnet received him with open
arms, and obtained for him the post of under-preceptor to the Duke of
Gloucester. It would have been difficult to have found two instructors
so opposed to the Catholics and to France, or so well suited to the King
as teachers of his successor.

Among so many things which paved the way for the greatest events, a very
strange one happened, which from its singularity merits a short recital.
For many years the Comtesse de Verrue lived at Turin, mistress, publicly,
of M. de Savoie. The Comtesse de Verrue was daughter of the Duc de
Luynes, and had been married in Piedmont, when she was only fourteen
years of age, to the Comte de Verrue, young, handsome, rich, and honest;
whose mother was lady of honour to Madame de Savoie.

M. de Savoie often met the Comtesse de Verrue, and soon found her much to
his taste. She saw this, and said so to her husband and her mother-in-
law. They praised her, but took no further notice of the matter. M. de
Savoie redoubled his attentions, and, contrary to his usual custom, gave
fetes, which the Comtesse de Verrue felt were for her. She did all she
could not to attend them, but her mother-in-law quarrelled with her, said
she wished to play the important, and that it was her vanity which gave
her these ideas. Her husband, more gentle, desired her to attend these
fetes, saying that even if M. de Savoie were really in love with her, it
would not do to fail in anything towards him. Soon after M. de Savoie
spoke to the Comtesse de Verrue. She told her husband and her mother-in-
law, and used every entreaty in order to prevail upon them to let her go
and pass some time in the country. They would not listen to her, and
seeing no other course open, she feigned to be ill, and had herself sent
to the waters of Bourbon. She wrote to her fathe