"Mais! que de singeries faites-vous là, Madeleine?" said he, and flip!—with his pencil he sent the thimble out from her hand, flying—neither he, nor the girl, nor I saw whither it went, or where it fell.
And—just thus stands the author of this little work, offering his trifle to the gentle and well-disposed reader, who is inclined, may be, to be pleased with it, and to adopt it. But up comes the envious reviewer, and with his pen—flip—he sends the poor little article away—away—away, into the limbo of forgotten books, "que de singeries faites-vous là—avec cette bagatelle là?"
[Illustration: Jacques Coeur's knocker.]
APPENDIX.
A.—MONUMENTS FROM THE ALYSCAMPS.
1. The inscription to Cornelia, daughter of Marius, is something of a puzzle. Against its genuineness may be urged that he is represented as conqueror of the Cimbri, whereas the Cimbri were not defeated till the following year, near Vercelli. Now it is strange that he should have left his daughter at Arles instead of moving her into Italy; and it is also odd that, if she were left there, he should be designated as conqueror of the Cimbri, whereas in the engagement with the Cimbri he shared the glory with Catulus; and he alone was victor over the Teutons and Ambrons near Aix. Moreover, one would have supposed that at Arles he would have been entitled the conqueror of these latter, the terror of whom had fallen on the province, and not of the Cimbri who did not menace it.
On the other hand, the inscription is in shockingly bad Latin; Calpurnia is made conqueror of the Cimbri, not her father, by a grammatical blunder; and one would suspect a forger would have avoided such a grotesque error, which is quite in agreement with other blunders made by the sculptors of monuments in the Alyscamps, who were clearly Gallo-Greeks, and hardly understood Latin.
Also—and this is remarkable—the name of the girl is Calpurnia; and Caius Marius was a native of Arpinum, and when this town was taken by the Romans from the Samnites, in B.C. 188, the franchise was given to the inhabitants, who were enrolled in the Calpurnian gens. Now this is a little fact that it is most improbable a forger would know—but it quite explains the girl receiving the name of Calpurnia, if genuine.
2. The Tomb of Julia Tyranna. The inscription runs:—