“The duchess (de Grammont) related that one evening, when M. de Carotte was at a large party, of which she made one, he was requested to consult the planets and make known what would be the destiny of the persons assembled there. This he evaded by every possible pretext, until, finding they would take no excuse, he declared that, of the whole of the company then before him, not one would escape a violent and public death, from which not even the king and queen would be exempt.”
The White Lady
The cholera was raging in Bavaria; several of the small mountain villages had been depopulated. King Ludwig, Queen Therese, and the Court remained at Aschaffenburg, as the pestilence was peculiarly fatal at Munich, a place Queen Therese disliked very much, when, unexpectedly, either on account of some state ceremonial or from one of his usual fits of restlessness, Ludwig announced that the Court would return to Munich in three days. On the evening before they started, the queen and several of her ladies were sitting in one of her apartments in the palace, the last but one of the suite. She was in low spirits, and all were unhappy at the prospect of the return to Munich. It was a warm summer evening, drawing towards dusk. Presently a lady, dressed in white, came into the room, and, making a slight reverence to the queen, passed on into the inner room, which opened from the one in which they were sitting. A few moments after she had passed it struck all present that they did not recognize her; also, that none of the other ladies on that day were wearing white dresses. The queen and some others arose from their seats and went into the room to see whom it might be, and found it empty! There was no mode of egress except the door by which they had entered, and the room was on the second story, so that no one could have got out of the window. Suddenly all felt that it must have been “the White Lady,” whose visit is believed to foretell the death of one of the Bavarian royal family, and some of the ladies fainted. The court went to Munich on the next day, according to appointment, and three days after Queen Therese died of cholera.
MISCELLANEA CURIOSA
Loyalty to Prince, Disloyalty to Self
A case of disinterested generosity and moral delinquency without a parallel is that recorded of a Scotch peasant, who sheltered the Pretender, Prince Charles Edward, after his defeat at Culloden Moor, in 1746, when the price of thirty thousand pounds was set upon his head, and who was afterwards hung for stealing a cow!
Singular Expedient
A strange story is that related in a paper on “English and Irish Juries,” in All the Year Round. The presiding judge in the case, Sir James Dyce, chief justice of the Court of Common Pleas, astonished at the verdict of acquittal in so plain a case, sought an interview with the foreman, who, having previously obtained a promise of secrecy during his lifetime, confessed that he had killed the man in a struggle in self-defence, and said that he had caused himself to be placed on the jury in order to insure his acquittal.
Queer Parliamentary Enactment
When the bill was in Parliament for building the famous bridge at Gloucester, there was a clause enacting that the commissioners should meet on the first Monday in every month, “except the same should fall on Christmas day, Ash Wednesday, or Good Friday.” The blunder as to the last two is palpable, and a moment’s reflection would show that Christmas Day can never fall on the first Monday of the month. The mistake passed unobserved, and still stands in the Act.