ard, but died in the service of his own country at the beginning of
Richelieu's Valtelline war. The most noteworthy thing in his rather
eventful life was, however, his marriage. This also has a direct
literary interest, at least in tradition, which will have his wife,
Diane de Chateaumorand, to be Astree herself, and so the heroine of "the
first [great] sentimental romance." The circumstances of the union,
however, were scarcely sentimental, much less romantic. They were even,
as people used to say yesterday, "not quite nice," and the Abbe Reure, a
devotee of both parties to it, admits that they "_heurte[nt] violemment
nos idees_." In fact Diane was not only eight years older than Honore
and thirty-eight years of age, but she had been for a quarter of a
century the wife of his elder brother, Anne, while he himself was a
knight of Malta, and vowed to celibacy. Of course (as the Canon points
out with irrefragably literal accuracy in logic and law) the marriage
being declared null _ab initio_ (for the cause most likely to suggest
itself, though alleged after extraordinary delay), Diane and Honore were
not sister- and brother-in-law at all, and no "divorce" or even
"dispensation" was needed. In the same way, Honore, having been
introduced into the Order of St. John irregularly in various ways, never
was a knight of it at all, and could not be bound by its rules. Q.E.D.
Wicked people, of course, on the other hand, said that it was a device
to retain Diane's great wealth (for Honore was quite poor in comparison)
in the family; sentimental ones that it was a fortunate and blameless
crowning of a long and pure attachment. As a matter of fact, no
"permanent children" (to adopt an excellent phrase of the late Mr.
Traill's) resulted; Diane outlived her husband, though but for a short
time, and left all her property to her relations of the Levis family.
The pair are also said not to have been the most united of couples. In
connection with the _Astree_ their portraits are interesting. Honore
d'Urfe, though he had the benefit of Van Dyck's marvellous art of
cavalier creation, must have been a very handsome man. Diane's portrait,
by a much harder and dryer hand, purports to have been taken at the age
of sixty-four. At first sight there is no beauty in it; but on
reinspection one admits possibilities--a high forehead, rather
"enigmatic" eyes, not at all "extinguished," a nose prominent and rather
large, but straight and with well, but no