ouverneur de Nostre Dame; much art that is
now entirely concealed from the dim eyes of posterity.[324]

[Illustration: A MAP OF THE "TENDRE" COUNTRY.

(_From an English translation of "Clelie."_)]

Speeches, with descriptions, letters (which are always given in full as
if they were documents of state), conversations and incidental anecdotic
stories, were among the most usual means employed to fill up the many
volumes of an ordinary heroical romance. For the volumes were many:
"There never shone such a fine day as the one which was to be the eve of
the nuptials between the illustrious Aronce and the admirable Clelie."
Such is the beginning of the first volume of "Clelie, histoire romaine,"
by Madeleine de Scudery, published in January, 1649. It happens that the
marriage thus announced is delayed by certain little incidents, and is
only celebrated towards the end of the tenth and last volume published
in September, 1654. Volume I. contained the famous "Carte du Tendre," to
show the route from "Nouvelle amitie" to "Tendre," with its various
rivers, its villages of "Tendre-sur-Inclination," "Tendre-sur-Estime,"
with the ever-to-be-avoided hamlets of Indiscretion and Perfidy, the
Lake of Indifference and other frightful countries. Let us turn away
from them and go back to our heroes.

One of their chief pleasures was to tell their own stories. Of this
neither they nor their listeners were ever tired. Whenever in the course
of the tale a new person is introduced, the first thing he is expected
to do is to tell us who he is and what he has seen of the world.
Sometimes stories are included in his own, and when the first are
finished, instead of taking up again the thread of the main tale, we
merely resume the hearing of the speaker's own adventures: a custom
which sometimes proves very puzzling to the inattentive frivolous reader
of to-day. As for the supposed listeners in the tale itself, the men or
women the hero has secured for his audience, they well knew what to
expect, and took their precautions accordingly. We sometimes see them go
to bed in order to listen more comfortably. In "Cassandre," the eunuch
Tireus has a story to tell to Prince Oroontades: "The prince went to his
bedroom and put himself to bed; he then had Tireus called to him, and
having seats placed in the _ruelle_, he commanded us to sit," and then
the story begins; and it goes on for pages; and when it is finished we
observe that it was included in anoth