Odd Bits of History: Being Short Chapters Intended to Fill Some Blanks

ODD BITS OF HISTORY BEING SHORT CHAPTERS INTENDED TO FILL SOME BLANKS
BY HENRY W. WOLFF
LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN & Co. AND NEW-YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1894.
(All rights reserved.)
The chapters composing this book appeared originally in the shape of review articles. I owe acknowledgments to the Editors of Blackwood's Magazine , the National Review and the Gentleman's Magazine for the permission kindly accorded me to republish them.
To my regret I find, on receiving the clean sheets, that pressure of time and a rather troublesome nervous affection of one eye have led me to overlook a few printer's errors, such as: p. 70, occassion for occasion ; p. 137, Fuensaldana for Fuensaldaña ; p. 253, Nicephoras Phorcas for Nicephorus Phocas ; p. 267, Polydore Virgil for Polydore Vergil . The misprints will in every instance, I believe, explain themselves.
H. W. W.
CONTENTS.

The Pretender Charles Edward resided here three years in a house which is still pointed out. So you may read in Murray, under the head of Bar-le-Duc. The information, which is apt to suggest inquiry to those who, like myself, are fond of picking up a little bit of neglected history on their travels, is, as it happens, not altogether accurate. For, in the first place, the Pretender who resided at Bar was not Charles Edward at all— could not have been Charles Edward, who was not born till five years after the Pretender who did reside there had left. In the second, so little is the house still pointed out that, on my first visit to Bar, in August, 1890, I could actually not find a soul to give me even the vaguest information as to its whereabouts. Even mine hostess of the Cygne, in whose stables, I afterwards discovered, some of the Pretender's horses had been put up, had never heard of our political exile. Cela doit être dans la Haute Ville — Cela doit être dans la Basse Ville — Eh bien, moi je n'en sais rien . Why should they know about the Pretender? There were no thanks, surely, due to him. While in the town, he had given himself intolerable airs, had put the town to no end of expense and all manner of trouble, and in the end had slunk away without so much as a word of thanks or farewell, leaving a heavy score of debts to be paid—and, up in a cottage perched on the very brow of the picturesque hill—for which some one else had to pay the rent—one pretty little Barisienne disconsolate, betrayed, disgraced. There was, in fact, but one man belonging to the town who had taken the trouble to trace the house from the description given in the local archives—a description, indeed, exact enough—M. Vladimir Konarski, and he was away on his holiday. There was nothing, then, for me to do, but to go home with an empty note-book, quoad Bar, and return in 1891 to resume my inquiry.