score of your hacked gorgets and vant-braces. What avails a taper leg in a boot of steel, a white neck if it be buckled in mail, a curled head if it be hid in a helmet?-Youth, let thine eyes be opened, and the virtues of tissue be revealed unto thee.'

My mails contain some suits indifferent costly," said Paladour; "but the disquietude my mind I would say the negligence of my knave

of

contents

Away, away to thy mails examine their and if but a point, a thread be missing, torture thy 'squire; put all the damsels in the castle to a rack of thine own devising, and strain it to thine utmost strength!" "How merrily thou talkest, Sir Aymer," said his sad companion.

"Now heaven forefend," said Sir Aymer, with an expression of ludicrous solemnity, "for here be waged the loves and lives of two doughty knights on the issue-go, array thee in thy panoply here is a wasted leg to thy full calf a narrow chest to thy ample shoulders -a bald forehead to thy thick dark

locks in the teeth of such deadly odds, I defy thee to combat; go, accoutre thee as thou mayest, and the lady Isabelle be at once judge and prize of the field - but mark meso speed me tissue and velvet, if I make thee not an example to all presumptuous youth, no masses shall be able to redeem my tailor's soul from purgatory!"

"I skill so little in gauds," said Paladour,

that thy tailor's soul is in small danger.”

As he prepared to retire, the splendid retinues of the Lord of Courtenaye entering the hall made him pause: though he was in armour, and concealing himself among the crowd, he thought the eye of the Lord of Courtenaye rested on him for a moment. The train passed on, and he was almost alone at the door; he cast back one glance on the splendid hall, and some shadows of faint reminiscence rose before him he thought he had beheld that place before, and struggled with the recollection, but could not dismiss it.

Meanwhile the guests crowded fast and frequent into the hall, the costume of which,

rude as it might appear to modern refinement, boasted a wild barbaric splendour with which modern refinement could not dare to vie. The light effused from the torches of the attendants, who arranged themselves at the backs of the guests as they sat, fell on the rich liveried habits emblazoned with the arms of Courtenaye and Beaurevoir; and on sheets of tapestry suspended round the walls, where figures, though uncouthly delineated, glowed in all the richness of silk and silver. The subjects were grouped, perhaps, with more than poetical license: the giant Termagant (a corruption probably of Tres-magne) was conflicting with Goliath of Gath Bathsheba was ministered to by the three Graces in her bath- and Cupid was aiming his mischievous darts at king David the while. In another compartment, the sacrifice of Iphigenia was paralleled with that of Isaac, and Abraham and Agamemnon (who had probably never met before save in the head of a mythological nun who wove the tapestry), were portrayed in the same panel, knife in hand; while, by some

singular confusion of appropriate situations, Diana was carrying away Isaac, and a ram caught by the horns was butting away amid the foliage that wreathed the classic altar of the Grecian sacrifice. It could not be said that these persons, in extenuation of their manifold absurdities, had nothing to say for themselves, for from their mouths issued long labels announcing their names, characters, and destination, as well as could be told by needle. Between these sheets of tapestry hung the por traits of armed chiefs and feudal beauties

all the high ancestry of a lordly line*; and the chandelier suspended from the ceiling blazed with lights, and shed its aromatic diffusions over viands and banquetters. Nor was the flavour of the one unworthy the rank of the other; there were the red-legged partridges so famed in Languedoc, the livers of geese fattened by Jews (then eminent in that art), spails stewed in oil of Lucca, conger

*This is no anachronism. The castle of Rochefoucault, in France, was said by Arthur Younge, before the revolution, to contain portraits as far back as 1110.

and sturgeon, cranes and swans, Tuscan veal, marchpane and marmalade, and "princely peacock's gilded train," with its brilliant plumage and its bill on fire, for the dainty; and for stomachs more robust, the boar's head and the haunch of the hart of ten duly broken. The richest wines of France and Italy sparkled in the goblets of the knights, which they did not fail to drain; and at every pledge from the carved and gilded galleries of the halls, the minstrels sounded their loud and joyous strains, with the exception of Vidal, who had seated himself among them, and who looked round with an absent and earnest expression, as if awaiting the arrival of some one for whom he was to touch the harp he leant on in silence.

Paladour, as he lingered at the door, and his dazzled eye passing over the group, fell for a moment on Sir Aymer, now no longer a veteran and skilful martialist, but a mere superannuated fop "frounct and trickt" from head to foot, sighed to himself unheard, "he bears him like an aged elm, around which the' vines of pleasure still cling, flushing lovely and