"A title! Nay, now you are playing with my simplicity."
"No, Marie; I am the nephew of the Vicomte de ——, and for aught I know, may be the possessor of that name at this moment—the legal heir to his estate. My father, ruined by his extravagance, and, I grieve to add, by his crimes, had caused himself to be disowned by all his relations. He fled with me to Paris, where he soon after died, leaving me nothing but his seal and his papers. I wrote to my uncle for assistance; but although being then quite a boy, and incapable of having personally given him offense, he refused it in the most cruel manner; and I was left to my own resources at a time when my name and education were rather a hindrance than a help, and I found no opening for entering into any employment suited to my birth. My uncle had then two fine, healthy, handsome boys; the youngest is dead; and the eldest, I heard accidentally, in such a state of health that recovery is not looked for by the most sanguine of his friends. I never breathed a word of all this to you, because I never expected to survive my cousins, and resolved to make an independent position for myself sooner or later. Do you remember the other day an old gentleman stopping and asking some questions about the coat of arms I was painting?"
"Yes; he asked who had employed you to paint those arms, but I was unable to inform him."
"Well, my dear, he came again this morning to repeat the question to myself; and I am now going to satisfy him, when I expect to bring you some news."
Marie was in a dream. Unlike gardeners' daughters of the present day, she had read no novels or romances, and it appeared to her as impossible that such an event should happen as that the cap on her head should turn into a crown. It did happen, however. The old gentleman, a distant relation and intimate friend of the uncle of Auguste, had come to Paris, at his dying request, to endeavor to find out his nephew and heir; and the proofs Auguste produced were so plain, that he found no difficulty in persuading M. B——de that he was the person he represented himself to be. He very soon after went to Belgium, took legal possession of all his rights, and returned to hail the gentle and long-suffering Marie as Vicomtesse de ——, and conduct her and the children to a handsome apartment in the Rue ——, dressed in habiliments suitable to her present station, and looking as lady-like as if she had been born to fill it. She lived long and happily, and continued the same pure, humble-minded being she had ever been, whether blooming among the flowers at Bouloinvilliers, or pining for want in a garret in the Faubourg St. Antoine. Two of her daughters are alive now. Her son, after succeeding to his father, died, without children, of the cholera, in 1832; and the son of his eldest sister has taken up the title, under a different name, these matters not being very strictly looked after in France.
[From Dickens's Household Words.]
THE PRODIGAL'S RETURN.
Many travelers know the "Rutland Arms" at Bakewell, in the Peak of Derbyshire. It is a fine large inn, belonging to his Grace of Rutland, standing in an airy little market-place of that clean-looking little town, and commanding from its windows pleasant peeps of the green hills and the great Wicksop Woods, which shut out the view of Chatsworth, the Palace of the Peak, which lies behind them. Many travelers who used to traverse this road from the south to Manchester, in the days of long coaches and long wintry drives, know well the "Rutland Arms," and will recall the sound of the guard's bugle, as they whirled up to the door, amid a throng of grooms, waiters, and village idlers, the ladder already taken from its stand by the wall, and placed by the officious Boots in towering position, ready, at the instant of the coach stopping, to clap it under your feet, and facilitate your descent. Many travelers will recall one feature of that accommodating inn, which, uniting aristocratic with commercial entertainment, has two doors; one lordly and large in front, to which all carriages of nobility, prelacy, and gentility naturally draw up; and one at the end, to which all gigs, coaches, mails, and still less dignified conveyances, as naturally are driven. Our travelers will as vividly remember the passage which received them at this entrance, and the room to the left, the Travelers'-room, into which they were ushered. To that corner room, having windows to the market-place in front, and one small peeping window at the side, commanding the turn of the north road, and the interesting arrivals at the secondary entrance, we now introduce our readers.