We may expect from the accomplished pen of Carlo Torrigiani, son of the marquess, and who is advantageously known in this country, from having traveled here, an account of this curious and valuable relic, which has been upward of a century in the possession of his family.
Should Mr. Wilde finish his biographical work concerning Dante, which promises to be a proud achievement in American literature, he intends, I understand, to apply for permission to have both likenesses copied, and should circumstances warrant the expense, to have them engraved by eminent artists. We shall then have the features of Dante while in the prime of life as well as at the moment of his death.
G. C.
THE TAKING OF THE VEIL
One of the most remarkable personages in Parisian society during the last century was Renée Charlotte Victoire de Froulay De Tesse, Marchioness De Crequi. She sprang from the highest and proudest of the old French nobility, and ever maintained the most exalted notions of the purity and antiquity of blood, looking upon all families that could not date back further than three or four hundred years as mere upstarts. When a beautiful girl, fourteen years of age, she was presented to Louis XIV., at Versailles, and the ancient monarch kissed her hand with great gallantry; after an interval of about eighty-five years, when nearly a hundred years old, the same testimonial of respect was paid her at the Tuileries by Bonaparte, then First Consul, who promised her the restitution of the confiscated forests formerly belonging to her family. She was one of the most celebrated women of her time for intellectual grace and superiority, and had the courage to remain at Paris and brave all the horrors of the revolution, which laid waste the aristocratical world around her.
The memoirs she has left behind abound with curious anecdotes and vivid pictures of Parisian life during the latter days of Louis XIV., the regency of the Duke of Orleans, and the residue of the last century; and are highly illustrative of the pride, splendor, and licentiousness of the French nobility on the very eve of their tremendous downfall.
I shall draw forth a few scenes from her memoirs, taken almost at random, and which, though given as actual and well-known circumstances, have quite the air of romance.