"I know not how thou'st come by this idea, my love; but sure I am that never yet did I refuse to do a service to them, and have oft minished mine own means in swelling those of the ungrateful."

Having by the means just related--means perfectly understood by women,-well for their own credit as for their husband's honour would it be, if they always used influence to as good a purpose as the Countess did!-contrived to soften the fury which Robert felt at his first entrance; the Countess judged that she might now venture on speaking to him in a different manner, and hope. to be attended to, when counselling him to delay his departure.

She therefore told him, that if he would wait patiently but for a few days, till, as might be expected, the first heat of her brother's anger was diminished, she would go and peremptorily demand the reason of his late apparent displeasure. This knowledge being attained, she felt no doubt, she said, of shortly arriving at the bottom of the dark plot, which she, equally with Robert himself, fancied to have

been carried on against him.

She professed

herself to be quite confident of success, and said she had no doubt, that in a short time Robert would be on as friendly a footing as ever with the King.

The Countess having made this promise: Robert, after much entreaty and great difficulty, was prevailed upon to give his word not to quit Paris till such means of reconciliation had been tried.

Whether Jeanne was altogether as sincere, in making these assertions, as she appeared to be; whether she was really sanguine of success, or merely affected to be so, in order to gain time for further converse with her husband respecting his dangerous projects, must be left to the reader to judge.

Intending, amongst other things, to represent to her brother the extreme improbability of Robert's having committed such an act as the one he had been accused of; she might have hoped to have led Philip to truth by reason.Woe unto him, whose sole dependance for the conversion of another to truth, is on reason!To hope this, is, in fact, no less than to give the

VOL. II.

E

person himself, whom he would convert, credit for at once possessing reason, and being void of passion.

Set a man to a problem in mathematics; patiently, slowly, step by step, will he go through the train of demonstration leading to the proof. But, try him on some worldly matter, in which his interests, his vanities, his inclinations, are engaged; and then see what a mess he'll make of it! Passion, in such cases, is the only counsellor. If the person to be convinced, have committed an injustice-pride,—be it named dirty pride, in order to distinguish it from that pride, which, tending to enoble, is itself noble-dirty pride prevents him from avowing it.

There are, no doubt, persons in the world the very reverse of this; and who, by falling into the opposite extreme, create equal disorder, and the same mischief: and who either from goodness of disposition, or indolence-from piquing themselves on being open to reason, or from some other cause, good or bad, are easily led aside from their resolves, and perpetually shifting them at the representation of others.-But how humi

liating is it to think of this! To feel, that, be our characters what they may-kind or cruel, generous or illiberal-that, which ever way we run-however we be indifferent to Virtue, or strive to attain her-it will in the end nearly amount to the same thing; and that, she, steping aside from us, we shall eventually find ourselves housed with Error.-The perfectibility of human nature!-What silly, what sickening, cant!-La pauvre nature humaine! thou hast vanity alone to support thee in this wretched world.

CHAPTER VIII.

Coriolanum quondam, damnatio injusta, miserum et indignum exilium ut iret, ad oppugnandum patriam impulit."

T. LIVIUS, lib. 28. c. 29.

"Consilia callida, prima specie, læta, tractu dura, eventu tristia"-is a maxim I have somewhere read, but I know not in what book. Philip found its truth; and, after the battle of Cressy, might have looked back upon his conduct to Robert, and deplored it: as being the event of his whole reign which had produced the greatest misery to the kingdom, as well as to himself.

Since the scene at the Council, Robert had not once left his apartment, and it was on the even