ining to herself the reason of the taste and
accumulated fallacies of this picture, she sought, in turning over
the pages, something which could fix her attention; she saw the word
"Druid."

"Ah! here is a great character," said she. "I shall no doubt read of
one of those mysterious sacrificers of whom Britain, I am told, still
preserves the monuments; but I shall see him sacrificing men. That would
be a spectacle of horror; however, let us read it."

Saying this, Marie read with repugnance, knitting her brows, and nearly
trembling, the following:

"The Druid Adamas delicately called the shepherds Pimandre,
Ligdamont, and Clidamant, newly arrived from Calais. 'This
adventure can not terminate,' said he, 'but by the extremity of
love. The soul, when it loves, transforms itself into the object
beloved; it is to represent this that my agreeable enchantments will
show you in this fountain the nymph Sylvia, whom you all three love.
The high-priest Amasis is about to come from Montbrison, and will
explain to you the delicacy of this idea. Go, then, gentle
shepherds! If your desires are well regulated, they will not cause
you any torments; and if they are not so, you will be punished by
swoonings similar to those of Celadon, and the shepherdess Galatea,
whom the inconstant Hercules abandoned in the mountains of Auvergne,
and who gave her name to the tender country of the Gauls; or you
will be stoned by the shepherdesses of Lignon, as was the ferocious
Amidor. The great nymph of this cave has made an enchantment.'"

The enchantment of the great nymph was complete on the Princess, who had
hardly sufficient strength to find out with a trembling hand, toward
the end of the book, that the Druid Adamas was an ingenious allegory,
representing the Lieutenant-General of Montbrison, of the family of the
Papons. Her weary eyes closed, and the great book slipped from her lap
to the cushion of velvet upon which her feet were placed, and where
the beautiful Astree and the gallant Celadon reposed luxuriously, less
immovable than Marie de Mantua, vanquished by them and by profound
slumber.

CHAPTER XVI. THE CONFUSION

This same morning, the various events of which we have seen in the
apartments of Gaston d'Orleans and of the Queen, the calm and silence
of study reigned in a modest cabinet of a large house near the Palais
de justice. A bronze lamp, of a gothic shape, struggling with the