A GRAND MONARCH AND A LITTLE YELLOW IMP.
"One day the small devil-duke of a Chamillo hovered over the imperial free city of Strasburg. Entering by key-holes and doors ajar, he stole into the presence of the principal magistrates, and shortly after the impregnable capital of Alsace opened its gates at a show of French investment.
"For this important service Louis XIV. fancied that Chamillo would require the letters patent constituting him a prince. Not at all. Chamillo was tired of secular honors: he had seen the bishop of Strasburg officiating in scarlet, and he insisted on being made cardinal. The king could not make cardinals, and he doubted whether he could induce the pope to receive a devil among the upper clergy. He refused absolutely. Chamillo left him in dudgeon and went over to Prussia. Apparently he has remained there. At any rate, the French king's fortunes commenced at that epoch to decline, and the Peace of Ryswick almost deprived him of Strasburg, which the little yellow man wanted to get back for Germany."
We had quitted Strasburg by the gate of Austerlitz. While listening to my friend I kept an eye open, and examined the present state of the fortress, the incidents of the road to Kehl, and that fairy Ile des Épis, a perfect little Eden in the Rhine, where the tall trees and nodding flowers bury the tomb of Dessaix, with its inscription, "À Dessaix, l'Armée du Rhin, 1800." This bright morning-ride enchanted me, seasoned as it was with a goblin-story.
ILE DES ÉPIS.
"Behind this tale, now, there must be a fact," I said. "There is some bit of history concealed there. The common people never invent: they distort."
"It is possible," he answered. "I tell you the story as it was told me by one of my theodolite-bearers. You may find out the rest: it is in your line."
Kehl has been bombarded or razed a dozen times by French armies crossing the Rhine. The last occasion when the French ruined it, however, was not in vain-glory, but in impotent malice. They fired it on August 19, 1870, during the horrors of the Strasburg bombardment. It is a town formed of a single street—But I will enter no further into topographic details.
