TWO HISTORIC RIVALS. M. WITTE. THE HOLYHEAD ROAD. A ROMANCE OF THE ARIZONA DESERT LAND. PRINCESS CLEMENTINE AND VICTOR NAPOLEON.

Otago Witness, Issue 2671, 24 May 1905, Page 71

TWO HISTORIC RIVALS.

M. WITTE.

THE HOLYHEAD ROAD.

A ROMANCE OF THE ARIZONA DESERT LAND.

PRINCESS CLEMENTINE AND VICTOR NAPOLEON.

(T. P.'s Weekly.) Some little time ago I called attention to a, modified view of a great historic personality who is generally supposed to have been very literally famous for every infamy. If Lucrezia Borgia has her apologists, surely one might be found for Catherine de Medici? It is not, however, the view of the professional whitewasher that I wish to bring forward, but merely a new facet, or what will probably be one to most of my readers, of a woman who was certainly the central figure in Europe at the sunset of the Renaissance. A new facet is always interesting, and it is just this new facet of Catherine de Medici that Miss Edith Sichel presents in her fascinating study of "'Catherine de Medici and the French Reformation."

To begin with, this author is nottat all an apologist, and is merely content to de- j ta c h herself from a period of halfpenny j newspapers in. order to appreciate a period j which accepted Machiavelli as a serious j historian- and Csesar Borgia as a' model i - prince. ' That was the period, and Ca-the- j " xine berself-'is symbolic of its decay. She j has- become a notorious figure, the Florentine poisoner, tfie astroiogist of Blois, who ' read. the doom, of her enemies in, the poison- i 'ons secrets of- her^own heart. That is how ■ we have been taught' to think of her, and at the same time, through some caprice of 'the centuries, we think of her great rival, Diane d© Poitiers, as a romantic huntress whose tenderness and self-sacrifice more than redeemed the waywardness of her love. Certainly Miss Sichel teaches us to adjust our point of View in regard to the long and bitter drama that played itself out between these two women. Catherine was half French and half Italian, the daughter of a Bourbon and) a Medici, the - niece of Leo X. She was only 15 when her marriage with Henri took place. An immense sum was settled upon her by France, and -Kir kinsman, Clement VII, promised a larger dowry, which seems never to have been paid in full. The wedding pageants were magnificent. Everybody talked of her dresses, her retinue, and the gorgeousnes-s of this international marriage. Then between Francois I andt Clement VII there commences a long and skilful duel, the Pope endeavouring to' secure from the King a crusade against the Turks, the King trying to probe the secret intentions of Clement towards the different European Powers. In the meantime endless compliments are recited in Latin, together ■with equally artificial verses. At last it _ is all- over, and Catherine is .'alone with the sullen boy who was eventually to be into kingship, but not by her. From the very beginning the 15-year-old * Jbride seems to have been convinced of the . ' absolute necessity of "continual dissimulation. Paris did not take kindly to this descendant of - Florentine - bankers who might become their queen. The "tricky conduct of the Pope in regard to her dowry had not added to her prestige. The little, lonely Florentine, who had already an almost measureless capacity for slow, cold hatred, found herself surroundiad by beautiful and brilliant who, none the less — well she. knew it — were children to "her, if only she could get her chance. Catherine knew how to defer ; it was for- _ tunate that she commenced this lesson early. She deferred almost immediately to Margaret, Queen of Navarre, the King's sister, "who was kind to -her. Then she "deferred to Francois I, and studied' Greek so that she might- be admitted to this fashionable Platonism which was so soon to embitter her whole life. And she would ride- astride by the side of Francois I as he hunted, laughing gaily at his loud, obvious jests, so that he' found her, this Florentine, steeped in generations of dissimulation, a good and simple comrade, and enrolled her duly in his "Petite Bande" of blondes and brunettes whose business it was to follow him from Les Tournelles to Fontainebleau, from the Chateau of Am- • brpise to the city of Blois. '"The fair and irresponsible ghosts of the little .band." ' comments Miss Sichel. "still meet us on its palace staircase, the spiral, shell-like staircase which seems made to lead aerially from one golden pleasure to another." Of this irresponsible band 1 the Duchesse d'Estampss was the presiding genius, to he opposed very shortly by .the woman whose personality has passed into legend, but whose existence was for years and years little less than torture to Catherine de Medici. 11. It was in 1556 that Diane de Poitiers almost literally captured the husband of Catherine de Medici. Catherine could do nothing except ally herself with the Duchesse di'Estampes, who was the accepted rival of Diane. It was indeed the tragedy of Catherine's position that it was considered beneath the dignity of tragedy. She, the wife of the future King of France, hardly acknowledged! herself •worthy of rivalry with this huntress who was also able to woo with all the artifice of that terrible new Platonism. The Duchesse d'Estampes with her "petite bande," and her alliance with the Guises and the Connetable Montmorencv, was able to give battle to this upstart, but Catherine herself could 1 only look on. ~ Miss Sichel Writes : At this period of her life it was Catherine's >^ose to efface herself and pass unnoticed. "Her role was not to have one, unless it were to sue for the King's favour." And the nullity of her conduct while "she was Daupnine, which looked like want of character at the time, was the strongest proof of her strong will. For deliberately biding her hour, she made herself like a sheet of blank paper * "Catherine de Medici and the French - Information." By Edith Sichel. (Constable, \ss.)

to the world till the light should come ; that would reveal the writing below the surface. Meanwhile, she had to bear neglect, even at public festivals, as well as the frank contempt of the public for her childlessness. There was a time, some 10 years after her marriage, when Francois actually meditated) her divorce from Henri. Catherine, now Dauplune, ; still remained without children, and at a great family council Diane de Poitiers persuaded the King that a separation of the husband and wife was the only wise course. Catherine appealed to Francois I. She had, she said, heard of what had been proposed. She wouldi sacrifice herself willingly for the benefit of France, or she would remain in the service of its King. It was for Francois to decide. Catherine wept during this appeal, and the King, who disliked tears, decided in her favour. Diane was defeated, and the Dauphine won one of her few triumphs against her insolent rival. Wihen, in 1543, a son was at last born to Catherine, it was Diane de Poitiers, robed 1 in the black and white of her widowhood, who received the little being into the world and constituted heiself the garade-malade of the mother. It was surely no wonder that Catherine, in spite of all her verbal gratitude, retained "une plaie fort saignante au cceur." The Florentine was very patient : Thosf around her saw but a meek and rather spiritless young woman ; but to us, whti know what followed, she rather appears like the panther lying low in the brushwoyd before it springs — passive only to .hide sts presence. Self-defence, at that moment, was her only possible policy. While the King lived she had at least a protector. But when he died, the case was different, and no one was afraid to be her foe. Madame d'Estampes lost her power, and Diane reigned unchecked. The death of Francois released one longI suppressed individuality, that of the Dauphin. The case of Catherine, however, ■was even harder than before. The sullen boy had beeoine a man under the tutelage of Diane, andi silently Catherine had noted his mental growth. For he was no nonentity, though Dandolo, of Venice, wrote of him : "Natheless, he hath a nature which one cannot but call taciturn and sombre." Such as he was, he was the only human being in the world whom Catherine loved. 111. For the odd thing about this incongruous tragedy is that this woman did) love her husband. l In later life her one confidante was her daughter Elizabeth of Spain, and to Elizabeth she wrote what was for her an extraordinary "piece of self-re-I velation : I M'amye, commend yourself very much to God, for you have seen me of old as contented as you are now, and believing that' I should never have any trouble but this one : that I was not loved in the way I wished by the King, your father, who dloubtless honoured me beyond my deserts ; but I loved him so much that I was always afraid of him, as you know well enough. And now God has taken him away from me. . . . In so far, m'amye, think of me and let me serve as a warning to you not to trust too much in the love of your husband. Again, we find her writing to the Con1 netable Montmorency : "I know full well ' that I must not have the happiness of being ; near him — which makes me wish that you j had my place and I yours, so long as the j war lasts — and that I could do him as I much service as you have done." She ; served him well as a diplomatist in Paris, 1 and Henri learned to respect her intellii gence, though he never gave her a fracI tion of his heart. Always between him and her there was one woman, Diane de Poitiers, Grand Seneehale de Rouen, Duchess de Valentinois. Diane was 17 years older than Henri 11. He had met her for the first time in 1536, when lie was 20 and she was a widow of 37. The spell this lady held over Henri was extraordinary. Brantome, in one little sentence of obvious mendacity, found her beautiful. '"I saw Madame la Duchesse de Valentinois," he says, when she was 70, "as iair of countenance and as amiable as when she was 30." Diane died at the age of 64. "It was a grievous thing," comments I a French historian, '"to see a young prince adore a faded face, covered with wrinkles, and a head fast turning grey, and eyes which had grown dim and were even sometimes red)." It may have been so, but she was fond of Henri, of whom his own father had said, "I do not care for dreamy, sullen, sleepy children." And Catherine had to watch year by year this growing influence, every detail of which she could analyse only too easily. Precisely as sY c herself had subdued that mordant Florentine intelligence of hers to suit the bluff humour of Francois I. so Diane, with so much less difficulty, adapted herself io I Henri's moodiness. to his direct simplicity, and to his delight in hunting. IV. It -was the curse of Catherine, whose own life was one long period of dissimulation, to see her rival successful mainly by reason of sincerity. It was terrible for tin; j woman, who. however decadent, stood for the culture and the traditions of the Italian Renaissance, to be set aside easily, contemptuously even, by one whose pose it was to stand for what was national in the French offshoot of the Renaissance. Aronri Diane at Anet there circled) a brilli.mt group of poets, and architects, and siii^ptors, who were all Frenchmen. Such men as these made Anet a 10splendent citadel of the French Renaissance, ana Diane, the typical Frenchwoman, was well equipped to play the part she had chosen as its queen. Her palace was, indeed, a kind of Thelema — the home of nature and of intellect, of beauty and of ease. "Fais cc que -vudras" might well have stood written over it's portal; Rabelais would) have

wandered there content, nor would Diane have been too refined to laugh at his jokes with the true Gaulois spirit. To her, as to her fellows, gaiety was more necessary than delicacy. Twice only after Henri's death did Catherine refer to his long abandonment. V. Diane's rivalry seems to have extended through almost the whole range of political and domestic affairs. She interfered with Catherine eve a in the tutelage of Mary .Stuart, the future Queen of Scots. It was easy for her to win over Mary because of her own alliance with the powerful Guises. Other things, Miss Sichel tells us, helped, and then she gives this curious comment on the way in which the terrible Catherine de Medici was regarded in her own court : The fastidious "Reinette d'Ecosse" in a naughty fit, probably after a Latin lesson with - tbe elder Queen, called Catherine "une fille de marchands" — an amusing sidelight on the view that the Guises took of the Medici. The- saying was promptly repeated to Catherine. From that time forward, though her outward behaviour never varied, though she treated' her daughter-in-law with honour, Mary fell out of her good graces. In spite of everything, the Florentine, always cold, always reasonable, undemonstrative in the white heat of her resentment, remained faithful to the man who had become a King through the influence of Diane de Poitiers. The spirit of the centuries, always ironical, particularly ironical in French history, willed it that Henri's last message should be to this much-tiied Queen. The year after Mary Stuart's marriage the weddings of Marguerite (Henri'« sister) and Elizabeth (his daughter) were celebrated with great splendour. There was to be a joust, in which the King himself was to take part. The night before this pageant Catherine dreamed that her husabnd had lost an eye, but paid no attention to it. As tbe King and his adversary, Montgomery, advanced on their horses, a boy in an upper gallery leaned forward and cried out loudly, "Sire, do not fight !" But he was summarily repressed 1 , nor did be himself know why be had spoken. Tbo fighting began ; the King and his foe had several rounds, and Henin was always, victorious. At last be sent word to Catherine that "he would try one more bout for the love of her," a wonderful message for her to get when we remember tbat it was his last. Ono& again the King and' Montgomery &et to — once again Montgomery made a thrust witli his lance ; but this time it struck home, and Henri sank to the ground witti the blade in his eye. Henri was carried out from the lists to the palace of Lcs Touraelles, where he died 10 days afterwards. Catherine was stricken with profound grief, but there was something else in her heart as well. j^.t last her moment had come; at last she allowed herself the stx-ange luxury of

acting with direct brutality. Diane was '" ordered to return the Crown jeavels and the numberless presents that Henri had sent to her, every one of which had been ;i .stab to the woman who waited. The long, tedious game of waiting was over, and Cathprine, as a King's widow, could at labt piove to the world that hatred at least had not been bred out of_ the house of Medici. It is a curious picture, this, or the wronged wife taking a just vengeance on the woman who had stolen her husband's love; but it is well to place it side by side with that of Catherine the astrologist and poisoner of Blois, even if, for its sake, one takes a little of the glamour fiom the legend of Diane de Poitiers, Duchesse de Valentinois. — L. L. L. : I

(London Daily Telegraph, February 4.) M. Witte is a heavy, lough-henn piece of gram led manhood, brawny, awkward, restless, and almost defiant, whose glance pierces, interrogates, judges'. He walks as if with girded loins ready for the combat, and although gifted with a kind of homely and for< ible speech, "«liich on lare occasions rises to the level of eloquence, he is naturally taciturn and active. Long experience has taught him to form opinions of his fellows almost as unflattering as those oi Sir Robert Walpole, and quite as accurate. The long years he has lived and worked among bureaucrats have enabJed him to understand the type and gauge its potentialities, and have led him | to look down upon them all with a certain ' | disdain, which better acquaintance seldom ! dispels. For be him.'-elf is the very reverse of the typical Russian chinovnik. He is a j despiser of mere formulas, a hater of use j and wont, and a frank admirer of mental , gifts and original views. He has often ' i been accused of intolerance and haughtiness j I towards his colleagues, and there .is much i in his manner towards them to lend colour to the charge; but in truth he is impatient of th p. wooden-headed stupidity which is so common, in the I'anks of Russian j officialdom. But he has a wonderful gift ' for ferreting out unusual talent in the most j unlikely places. Thus, among the flotsam 1 and jetsam of official. society, M. Witte found, rescued, and utilised men who were | virtually submerged. Many of his most helpful fel'ow-workers were individuals upon whom the Russian bureaucracy looked j askance. As some of M. Witte's bitterest I personal enemies were also men of in1 teilectual parts, he turned their bitterness into sweetness by financial alchemy, first changing the silver of their incomes into t gold, and its preoariousness into assured , certainty. It is amusing and unedifying | to note how, quickly gifted writers, wlio at first discerned ruin to th-e Empire in the Finance Minister's policy, were mad© to perceive that that apparent ruin was but the beginning of an. era of rare prosperity. Thenceforth they changed their censures into eulogies, and swelled the band of M. Witte's admirers. One of ihe most violent and irritating of his critics, who thought any stick was good enough for the Finance Minister, was enlisted, in his choir of worshippers by the gift oi 100,000 roubles wherewith to manufacture a marvellous kind of plough which he had invented for the good of the Russian peasantry. But if M. Witie possesses the knack of discovering high mental gifts where, other men would not even suspect their presence, he is less successful in finding high moral qvalities. PossiVy the reason is because they are much rarer. The fact is, however, that several individuals wt>om he : raised from poverty, obscurity, or oblivion to more or less prominent positions in the ' Administration, when weighed in the j balance, were found sadly wanting. Viperlike, some turned against him after his fall, while others sank deep in the Se-r- ; bc-nian bog. I I am assured by men who speak with ; knowledge and experience that it is a very j trying task to work together with M. j Wi+te, because he recognises no bounds jof human poweis. The bodies as well as the minds of his assistants must be I elastic like his own, and capable of standi ing the strain of accomplishing in a week j of extra assiduity a task which, under lvcrmal conditions, would require six months. He feels and shows silent contempt for the man who urges that this or that ! cannot be done within the time- fixed. The work he is at present engaged upon would I have taken any Ministry years to accomplish. M. de Plehve had hundreds of i officials for two years gathering data, combining them, and drawing conclusions, in order to reach some result respecting peasant reform". M. Witte seized the ex- \ cellent data -\vbich was used by the Zemstvos, end used them to build up a complete system of agrarian reform, which strikes one by its simplicity. He elaborated it in , a leaflet of a few pages, whereas M. de Plehve had published six big volumes, and ' had not got near the end when he was assassinated. Ihe programme which M. Witte was set , to carry out after the Imperial Ukase ap- ( peared includes reforms in every branch ! of the Administration, and reforms, too, which have to be deftly hedged' round with i conditions, provisos, and limitations of all kinds. And the result is expected within a few weeks. But one thing is quite certain, that however shadowy those, reforms , may have been in theory, they will be real , enough when M. Witte's practical mind has , shaped and prepared them to be embodied i in institutions. Officials of inferior intellect hate M. Witte if they have to ! collaborate with him. They feel as a dog j might feel if yoked together with a buffalo, i and it is literally torture for a narrowminded man to be forced to look at things j through M. Witte's eyes. Like Samuel j Johnson, he can give reasons but not j brains, and he allows his fellow-workers to foel what it is that is lacking. Two years ago it was stated that at a sitting of the Council of the Empire he. once _ spoke energetically, eloquently, and ur- ! gently. His speech, however, which was \

1 very unwelcome, was brought to an abrup close by the remarks of the distinguished chairman, but M. Witte would not be suppressed He was then informed that his point ox view wies quite clear to his illustrious hearers, but he evidently thought tLey were unablt to appreciate it, sor, irrepressible, like the ancient Greek statesman, lie went on hurling arguments, epithets, statistics, appeals, and winged words, which were falling like hail upon the august assembly when the sitting was suddenly adjourned. Among myriads of utier ciphers M. Witte is tie one figure w liich can give them positive value; certainly hitherto none other has arisen. In Russia M. Witte lis bated, feared, or misunderstood. Above, beloAV, and around him are enemies, sceptics, critics. That the Russian Democrats should condemn the financial policy with which M. Witte'fa name is associated can j>urprise no one. Whatever its aim, there am be no doubt about its result, which is positively disastrous. It is a cunning system of financial canalisation, through v/hich the resources of the Russian people are drawn off to the Treasury in St. Petersburg, a.nd there accumulated for purpo«os which nrfi dangerous to foreign .States and disastrous to the Russian nat:on. Hence a shrewd observer once remarked ihat M. Witte had starved jiis countrymen, and M. de Plehve bad whipped them for ciying. But many of M. Witte's enemies know little of his policy. Their dislike emanates from less leasonable sources. After his fall M. Witte was looked upon by the bulk of tlie .Liberals as the nation's : hope. He was called the Russian Necker. They may have been right or wrong in tbeix appreciation and forecast, but they were certainly mistaken when they con- , demned him scon afterwards for accepting I a mission to realise the reforms embodied iin tbe Ukase. He ought, they urge, to j have refused on the ground that the concessions were not large enough. For hall i a loaf m politics is rot better than no 1 bread. Foreigners have no good motive to condemn M. Witte or to belaud him. That ia i a matter for his own countrymen. If they are satisfied with, the disaslrcnis results of his policy, that is their business. All that interests the outsider is the fact that ho is the one strong man in the Empire, the rriaster of the situation in virtue of the kingship which falls to the one-eyed~~in-dividual in a realm of the blind. i i

Time was when Irish Viceroys did not go near Ireland for months; indeed, in one or two cases, scarcely at all; but there i was some excuse in view of the difficulty , of getting there and again of getting away. | For instance, George IV, in 1821, took a week to get to England, having twice had to put bafk by reason of contrary winds. He bad repeatedly averred that be should scon repeat his visit, but he never did, and one cannot feel surprised. - The Lord-lieutenant's journeys along the great road to Holyhead were in those days, an event, and it was the custom-fior the landlords of inns their Excellencies patronised en route to place their coats-of-arms in their'establishments. It must have been about 1770 that the chance journey of a future Lord-Lieutenant along the road was destined to bring, by one of those fortuitous courses of circumstance we call luck, an extraordinary influence on the career of one of tihe most brilliant Irishmen of the last century. Some trifling mishap caused a cononetedl l>cst-ehariot-and-four to stop at a postinghouse and small hotel. The two gentlemen who descended and entered found their nos- : tiils agreeably tickled by a savoury odour, ' and forthwith discovered that they were 1 ravenous, and could do no better than j satisfy their appetite then and there. But to their mortification the landlady informed them that the joint then roasting was all she had at the moment, and that even that had been ordered by a young Irish gentleman. What was to be done? It wao agreed that he should be asked to partako of ife with them. But the young Irish gentleman sent down word that he entirely declined to accept this proposal, and while this aggravating message was being considered, he himself appeared on the scene, aaid, reccgnising that the travellers were unmistakably gentlemen, said, "But if you gentlemen will do me the honour to partake of the joint with me, I shall be most happy to have your company." This proposal, no doubt made in a genial manner, was as pleasantly accepted. As not unfrequently i happens, an impiomptu party is oftentimes far pleasanter than a set one, and so it proved on this occasion. In those days a good bottle of wine \ was often to be found in a wayside postkighi.>use. The bottle went round, and the Irishman —a handsome, cheery young fellow —soon won upon his company, who , were very much struck by his manners, appearance, and a.greeableness. At length 1 cno asked him what he was going to da w!th himself in the world ; and when he said he proposed to enter the Irish priesthood, they pointed out that lie might do i far better than that in England. ! Just before entering their carriage they desired him to call on them in London, i and on looking at their cards he read the names of the Duke of Portland (afterwards ' Prime Minister) and Mr Charles James Fox. The invitation was accepted, and before long O"Beirne was occupying a coni fidenti.il position at the instance of the Duke, and giving literary aid to Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. The Irish priesthood notion was rolled aside, and O'Beirne ! entered the Church of England, and acconij panied Lord Howe as chaplain and secretary on his pacificatory mission to America. In 1782, when the Duke of Portland bej came Prime Minister, he made his host ol j the leg of mutton his private secretary, and before quitting office he gave him rich preferment. Twelve years later lie went to Ireland as chaplain and private secretary —to Earl Fitzwilliam, whose Viceroyalty, I though but lasting six months, was an 1 epoch in Irish history; and subsequently

[ v. as appointed to ths Bishopric of Meath, and is said to have made a model prelate. He married a daughter of the Hon. F. Stuart, «, son of tho Earl of Moray. Here, th-en, is an episode of the- old Holyhefld load. ■

Arizona is noted for so many wonders that it is not remarkable so strange a freak as a band of wild monkeys has remained almost unknown. Often as th* lone prospector or cowboy stops a few moments at Tres Alamos Springs, Yavapai County, to "rest and quench his thirst with water from this cold spring, he is surprised by a queer sound, as of scampering feet, and on investigation may see a mocking, ugly face peerng over the cliff or out of a tree, and as suddenly disappear among the rocks. Seldom is a good view of these queer creatures to be had, for they are very shy. A cattle man, while resting at the springs not long ago, noticed the metallic glare of something half buried in the sand. Scratching away the sand, he found a metallic box, which contained "a rude map and closely-written pages from a note book. The description and map' evidently refer ! to the long-sought "Nigger Ben," which is supposed by many to be only a myth. It seems that years ago three Italian organ grinders, with their monkeys, travelling from Ehrenburg to Prescott, turned aside from tho road to rest under the shade of a Palo Verde tree. Here they found an old Indian dying of thirst. They shared the contents of their canteens with him and gave him food. Grateful for their loudness, the old Indian told them that if they could come with him he would show them a rich gold mine. They hesitated, and questioned him as to its richness. Stooping, he picked up a handful of pebbles and replied: "Mucho, mucho, lo mismo esta," as he swept his arm outward to indicate its richness and extent. —In Quest of Gold. — The organ grinders required no further urging, but started to follow the lame old Mojave. Two days Brought them to the Santa Maria River, and on the third day they reached a deep arroyo in the hills north of Peeples 1 Canyon. A small stream of clear water trickled from under a. big rock, and two or three small cottonweed trees grew near by. After making camp the Indian pointed westward, and said laconically, "Busca." Then Le threw himself upon the ground and rolkd a cigarette, as if that were his only interest in life. Westward the Italians hurried, and a few hundred yards' distance up a short arm of the main arroyo a dike of darkcoloured rock arrested their attention. They broke off a- piece, which glistened in the afternoon sunlight, and found it studded with the precious metal. It was everywhere in the ledge, sparkling wherever they broke the rock. They sat down and gazed at the golden treasure, and then broke off more, revelling in the dreams of a Monte Christo. Not until evening fell did they return to the camp fire. ' The Indian lay sleeping, but little sleep visited the- Italians during the night. On the morrow they filled; several bags with pieces of quartz from th*e ledge and prepared 1 to leave, for they had little, food with them, intending to return as soon as possible. They covered up the ledge, and marking the locality well drew a map of the place, with a few of the prominent landmarks. They wrote the facts of their discovery, with directions for the trail leading from the river. As the sun sank they started back, preferring to travel in the night to avoid), an attack by the Hualapais, the enemies of the Mojaves. The Italians reached Tres Alamos Springs in safety, ; resting there over night. They planned to start early next morning for Wickenburg, the neaiest town. j —Murdered by Hostile Indians. — I Before dawn, 300 or 400 Hualapai In- ! dians sprang upon them and killed two Italians and the Mojave. A third Italian, screened by a bush, made his escape. The j Indians left hastily, evidently in fear of pursuit by solddejs. When the Indians retreated the Italian returned, put the bodies of bis Mends to- ! gether, and, piling brush over them, set a match to it, thus cremating them, as the ; only means of saving the bodies from the coyotes. He put the chart and written pages in a box, and buried the box near the spring. Then, gathering up the gold, I and taking a canteen of water, he set out ' on a lonely journey across the desert. The monkeys were left free at the spring. A | teamster two days later found the Italian lying face downward in the sand. He had fallen a victim of thirst and the desert heat. The bags of quaTtz were clutched in his fingers, which held a note in Italian telling of the tragedy at Tres Alamos and the gold mine. —Monkeys Survived Owners. — The Indians were troublesome, and the teamster thought the written words might have been the fancies of a frenzied brain. So, taking the gold to Ehrenburg, he made : no effort to prove the truth of the Italian's I story. The monkeys, left alone, must have adapted! themselves to their new life, subsisting on mesquite beans, roots, and wild honey. They increased in number, and became the short-tailed monkeys of Tres Alamos.

The sudden departure of Princess Clementine for Cannes has revived the rumour of an engagement between her and Prin.ce Victor Napoleon. A year ago we spoke at length on this affair—giving our reasons for believing that her Royal Highness is possessed of too large a share of common sense to wish, to unite herself with a man of the Prince's type of character. We thought then, as we think now, that the Princess has seen too much of the miseries

of loveless matrimony to willingly fetter herself in this way. It is notorious that her position at her father's Court is a most uncomfortable one. She is the youngest of the three daughters of Leopold 11, King of the Belgians, and Queen Marie Htnriette, an Austrian archduchess. Her grandfather, Leopold I, was that beloved uncle. of Queen Victoria so well known for his influence over the early life of her Majesty. It was a sharp disappointment to Queen Victoria that her first cousin, Leopold, showed himself to be of a very different way of thinking from his stately father, and that he would have very little of the cousinly advice that she was all too ready to bestow upon him. His mother, the daughter of King Louis Philippe, was peculiarly sweet and charming, and for her Queen Victoria cherished the deepest affection. Why the son of a pair so near and dear should be not only unfriendly, but absolutely antagonistic, was a .puzzle to the aged Queen, until the diay of her death. She often tried to patch matters up, and invited him more than once to VVSndsor, together with his wife, Queen Marie Henriette. But the gulf only widened as the years went by. The future of his three daughters was a matter in which the English Queen had, of course, no authoritative voice ; but she did not hesitate to give her opinion very emphatically when the marriage of Princess Louise to Philip of Saxe-Coburg came to be discussed. The child was too young to know her own mind, she urged 1 . But King Leopold reminded her that Louise was a year older than the Princess Royal when she married. Queen Victoria thought the cases were nob in the least comparable ; and, as it turned out, she was right. That the marriage of Princess Louise to Prince Philip was an unhappy one was made patent to all the world by the proceedings in the law courts. The wretchedness of her sister Stephanie, who married the Crown Prince of Austria, was more decorously hidden. Death came to the aid of Princess Stephanie ; and, turning her back on Austria and her high position there, she marriec 1 Elmer de Lonyay, a Hungarian Count, who, it is said, is devoted to her, and with whom she certainly appears to be radiantly happy. Princess Clementine, the 'youngest of the three sisters, is now in her thirty-third year. She has been the witness of her mother's own wretched married life, and been the confidante of Louise of Saxe-Co-burg and Stephanie, Crown Princess of Austria. Life has no illusions for her. | She" has dutifully done her, part, in peculij arly trying circumstances. She clung to her mother to the end>; but she never failed in the respect due to the Bang, her I father. When Queen Marie Henriette died, and Stephanie hurried to her bedside for, a last farewell, the King—forgetting alike all fatherly feeling and the com- j mon respect due to the dying and the dead — ordered) his daughter to leave the palace within the hour. "If she had so far outraged her royal rank as to marry Count Lonyay, she should be no daughter of' his, and have no right to enter his I doors," he declared. ! Even then Princess Clementine's tact and ; loyal-heartedness proved equal to the occasion. She comiortedi her despairing sister, supporting and succouring her in her distress, and tried at .the same time to be to her father what a daughter can be — his ! good angel, his defence against evil. That is more than two years ago. Since then Princess Clementine's path has not been one of roses. But that she wishes to exchange the thorns she knows so well for unmeasured' and undefined troubles of marriage with Prince Victor we hesitate to believe ! His Imperial Highness — for that is undoubtedly his rightful title, and one recogJnisedi by the Courts of Europe — is in his forty-third year. He -was born at the Palais Royal at the very height of the j brilliant fortunes of his father's cousin, j the Emperor Napoleon HE. True it is | that his father hated the Emperor, and did not shrink from openly proclaiming that fact. The Emperess Eugenic also came in for i a- share of his contemptuous disapproval. When he brought his own" young wife to Court., he remarked, "It is well to have \ a decent princess in our family again" — a I speech Eugenic never forgot nor forgave. That poor wife of his, Princess Clotilde, of Savoy, yet lives. The daughter of King ! Victor Emmanuel and aunt of the present King of Italy, she has running in her i veins the proudest blood in Europe. Her marriage was merely a political arrangement ; and her life at the Palais Royal as the wife of "Plon-Ploh" must have been little less than a martyrdiom. She has returned to her beloved Savoy, and lives at Moncalieri, near Turin, where her sons, Victor and Louis, and her daughter, Lsetitia, Duchess-Dowager of Aosta, but seldom visit her. If- it were indeed true that Clementine of Belgium were to marry Prince Victor, no one would hail the event with such joy as his mother. It would be a chance for him, at least ; and a ray of hope on the dark fortunes of his life. According to an old) saying, there is safety intmumbers ; and when the list of Pietenders to the throne of France has been scanned, it is impossible to help feeling that the present Government of that country must be well secure against a serious upset in favour of would-be kings or emperors. The people who would like to see a restored French monarchy, run on modern lines, must find it difficult to choose between the Due d'Orleans and Prince Victor Napoleon. The haughty aloofness of Don Carlos also has its attractions for a limited party, devoted) to old Bourbon traditions. His eyes appear fixed on the crown of Spain, yet there is just the chance that, if his supporters obtained the crown of France for him, and proffered it with due obsequiousness, he might allow them to proclaim him as King Charles XI. An account lately given of these unem-

■ ployed highnesses actually included a I notice of another claimant for the French monarchy — one who may well be considered a dupe, if not an impostor, by eveiybody who heaia of him. This is a man' in his early thirties, who fancies^ his grandfather was the son of Louis XVI, — the poor little Louis XVII, who only reigned as a captive, under the control of a brutal gaoler. As might have been expected, a story was afterwards concocted to the effect that the royal boy was smuggled out of the temple and conducted to a place of safety, that he adapted the name of Charles William- Naundorff, and became a watchmaker. An ailing youth was substituted for him in the prison, died there, and was buried as the unfortunate and ill-used Louis XVII. The Naundorffites fail to explain why their watchmaker, if the true and legitimate son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, did not make his identity known after the restoration oi the Bourbon monarchy in Prance to the following personages — his sister; the Duchess d'Angonleme, who was with him during part of the captivity in the Temple, and who would have remembered much in common with him ; and his uncles, the Comte de Provence and the Cointe d'Artois, who successively became Kings of r ranee, because this rightful heir had disappeared. The Duchess d'Angouleme was a severelyconscientious woman, who would have done her draty by a brother, however unprepossessing or discreditable he might have become ; moreover, she had no children whose interests she might have preferred. She did not die till 1851 ; and the Naundorfntes kept carefully away from this Princess, who couldi so easily have disposed of their claims, one way or another. As regards a resemblance to the Bourbon race, with which these obscure pretenders — the mock Louis XVII, son, and grandson — have been credited, that is noj thing to depend on, for accidental likenesses of a striking type are by no means ! uncommon ; and it cannot be forgotten ttiat a royal family may have an assortment of illegitimate relatives, some of them in very low positions, yet recalling a kingly ancestry in personal appearance, if in nothing else. Ox the various Pretenders, for instance, who attempted to personate Richard, Duke of York — the younger of the two Princes in the Tower, said to have escaped while his elder -brother was being murdered) — it was recorded that one bore a- striking resemblance to King Edward IV, apparent to all beholders. He might well have* been an illegitimate son of that monarch- The question of an escaped Duke of York was definitely settled in Charles ITs reign, when the bones of the two boys were found together during some excavations in th© Tower. A divinely rightful King for France was lost in the person of Don Francesco d'Assisi, the husband of Queen Isabella of Spain, who lived) for many years near Paris in enjoyable "retirement. Though this Prince did not shine as King Consort of Spain, his mental endowments were of the Bourbon average. He was inoffensive, he appreciated peace, and with able Ministers might have done as well as most crowned heads. After the death of the Comte de Chambord, when disputes were rife as to the successor of Henri Cinq, ffobody dreamed of proposing the ex-King of Spain as a very suitable stopgap, as head of the House of France, by right of his descent in the male line from Louis XTV. The good gentleman himself never stirred in the matter ; yet one of his nephews, a son of that Duke of Seville who was killed in a duel, was sharp enough to see how the ground lay, and when an elder brother died in 1894, leaving no sons, this Spanish Prince advanced his own claims, and blossomed forth as Francois, Due d'Anjou, becoming a Frenchman with no loss of time. He wrote some good' letters to Don Carlos, reminding the latter that he had repeatedly declared that he, Carlos, should remain a Spaniard, and would never claim the crown of (France ; and his address to the Due d° Orleans was a masterpiece in its way, containing a protest against the assumption by Philippe of the arms of France, as borne by the senior Bourbon line, and reminding him that he hadt no business to wear the Order of the Saint- Esprit. Had the French people really desired a King, they might well have considered the qualifications of the spirited Francois, who had' shown himself a capable and energetic soldier many a time in the service of Spain. They remained indifferent to the great advantages offered) them by a few partisans of this Due d'Anjou, and the, splutter subsided in due course.