failures, and its failures which look like
success. The thing we may not do is to imagine that an intended lesson
is conveyed by it.

"THE FLIGHT OF THE DUCHESS" is the adventure of a young girl, who was
brought out of a convent to marry a certain Duke. The Duke was
narrow-hearted, pompous, and self-sufficient; the mother who shared his
home, a sickly woman, as ungenial as himself. The young wife, on the
other hand, was a bright, stirring creature, who would have been the
sunshine of a labourer's home. She pined amidst the dreariness and the
formality of her conjugal existence, and seized the first opportunity
of escape from it. A retainer of the Duke's, whose chivalry her position
had aroused, connived at her escape, and tells the story of it.

The Duke had decreed a hunt. Custom prescribed that his wife should
attend it. She had excused herself on the plea of her ill-health; and he
was riding forth in no amiable mood, when an old gipsy woman, well known
in the neighbourhood, accosted him with the usual prayer for alms. He
was curtly dismissing her, when she mentioned her desire to pay her
respects to the young Duchess. It then occurred to him that the sight of
this ragged crone, and the chronicle of her woes, might be an excellent
medicine for his "froward," ungrateful wife, and teach her to know when
she was well off; and after speaking in confidence with the old woman,
he bade him who recounts the adventure escort her into the lady's
presence. The interview took place. The Duchess accompanied her visitor
to the castle gate, ordered her palfrey to be saddled, mounted it with
the gipsy behind her, and bounded away, never to return. The attendant
had watched and obeyed her as in a dream. She left in his hand, in
gratitude for what she knew he felt for her, a little plait of hair.

These are the real facts of the story. But we have also its ideal
possibilities, as reflected by the imagination of the narrator. He had
seen the gipsy metamorphosed as she received the Duke's command, from a
ragged, decrepit crone into a stately woman, whose clothing bore the
appearance of wealth; and as he mounted guard on the balcony which
commanded the Duchess's room, he saw the wonder grow. A sound as of
music first attracted his attention; and as he looked in at the window
he saw the Duchess sitting at the feet of a real gipsy-queen: her head
upturned--her whole being expanding--as the gipsy's hands waved over
her, and the gipsy's e