During her last illness, which made a great sensation in Paris and in the French camp, she confessed ten times to a priest, having always something new, some little forgotten sin to communicate. The gallants of Paris, and all her former admirers, laid her body in state for twenty-four hours, with a maiden crown on her head; but the austere curé of St. Gervais very properly denounced this proceeding as a ridiculous scandal, and tore it from the corpse; yet Marion looked so beautiful in her pure white shroud, that the 'Gazette Historique de Loret,' of the 30th June, 1650, has the following epigram upon her:-- 'Le pauvre Marion de l'Orme, De si rare et plaisante forme; A saissi ravis au tombeau, Son corps si charmant et si beau!' Marion had three sisters, all very attractive girls. The eldest, Madame de la Montague, a beautiful blonde, was wont somewhat rashly to boast--'we have no riches, but we have honour;' yet my friend Viscount Dundrennan, like M. de Moret, nearly broke his neck when descending one night from her chamber window. The youngest and least artful was married, to M. Maugiron, Treasurer of the Artillery du Roi, who served with me in the campaign of Alsace. As they lived in the arsenal, old Marechal de la Meilleraye, though he had not a tooth in his head, fell in love with her; but finding that she was carrying on an intrigue with the Cardinal de Retz, he revengefully deprived her poor husband of his commission; and this is all that I know of the family of the gayest woman that ever influenced the scandalous, joyous, and immoral city of Paris. CHAPTER XXIX. ARRESTED. To resume my own narrative: I had proceeded from the Rue St. Jacques, after a somewhat devious course, along the Rue Betizi and the Fosses St. Germain l'Auxerrois, when at the place where the latter is intersected by the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, a dark and ancient street that leads from the Rue St. Honoré to the Seine, I found all the oil-lamps extinguished, and a fiacre, surrounded by twelve foot musketeers of the Comte de Treville's company, standing fairly in the centre of the way. At that moment the clock of St. Germain tolled two; but daybreak seemed far distant, as the shadows lay deep and black in the quaint and overhanging streets of Paris. 'Halt, monsieur, and give up your sword,' said a muffled man, whose voice was familiar to me. 'Not to a mere mousquetaire,' said I, unsheathing it, and standing on my guard; 'and least of all to one of your rank, my ex-captain of horse; for now I recognise you, worthy Monsieur de Brissac.' 'Bah! did not Francis I. of France give up his to the son of a butcher?' 'True, when only three of the Scottish Guard remained on their feet beside him, and a mountain of slain lay round them. By St. Andrew--' 'Hark!' said a musketeer; 'a Huguenot swears by St. Andrew.' 'Surrender your sword, Monsieur Arthur Blane, I command you!' reiterated Brissac. 'You have a warrant, I presume?' 'Peste! you are particular!--'