chelle, the husband of my nurse, has arrived; and he tells me,
that this escritoire contains the title-deeds of my family. I was
resolved that you alone should open it. In the frame of that picture,
in a secret drawer, is the key." The spring was touched, the key was
found; and in the little chest was discovered, untouched by chance or
time, the document entitling my beautiful and high-hearted wife to one
of the finest possessions in France. By a singular instance of good
fortune, the property had not been alienated, like so many of the
estates of the noblesse; and it now lay open to the claims of the
original proprietorship. I hastened to Paris. My claim was
acknowledged by the returned Bourbon, and Clotilde had the delight of
once more sitting under the vine and the fig-tree of her ancestors.
The old domestic had made it the business of years to obtain the means
of reaching England. But the war had placed obstacles in his way every
where, and he devoted himself thenceforth to the guardianship of his
precious deposit, as the duty of his life. He was almost pathetic, in
his narration of the hazards to which it had been exposed in the
perpetual convulsions of the country, and in the rejoicing with which
he felt himself at last enabled to place it in the hands of its
rightful mistress, the last descendant of the noble house of De
Tourville.--But I had still to experience another gift of fortune.

On the evening of my birth-day, Clotilde had given a rustic fete to
the children of her tenantry; and all were dancing in front of the
chateau, with the gaiety and with the grace which nature seems to have
conferred as an especial gift on even the humblest classes of France.

The day was one of the luxury of summer. The landscape before me was a
rich extent of plain and hill; the fragrance of the vast gardens of
the chateau as rising as the twilight approached; my infants were
clustering round my knee; and in that thankfulness of heart, which is
not less sincere for its not being expressed in words, I came to the
conclusion, that no access of wealth, or of honours, could add to my
substantial happiness at that hour.

My reverie was broken by the sound of a _caleche_ driving up the
avenue. A courier alighted from it, who brought a letter with a black
seal, addressed to me. It was from the family solicitor. My noble
brother had died in Madeira; where he had gone in the hopeless attempt
to recruit a frame which he had exhausted by