But one day, after my return from one of those splendid entertainments with which the Regent welcomed the Allied sovereigns, I found Clotilde deeply agitated. The picture of her relative was before her, and she was gazing at its singularly expressive and lovely countenance with intense interest. She flew into my arms. "I have longed for your coming," said she, with glowing lips and tearful eyes, "to offer at least one proof of gratitude for years of the truest protection, and the most generous love. Michelle, the husband of my nurse, has arrived; and he tells me, that this escritoire contains the title-deeds of my family. I was resolved that you alone should open it. In the frame of that picture, in a secret drawer, is the key." The spring was touched, the key was found; and in the little chest was discovered, untouched by chance or time, the document entitling my beautiful and high-hearted wife to one of the finest possessions in France. By a singular instance of good fortune, the property had not been alienated, like so many of the estates of the noblesse; and it now lay open to the claims of the original proprietorship. I hastened to Paris. My claim was acknowledged by the returned Bourbon, and Clotilde had the delight of once more sitting under the vine and the fig-tree of her ancestors. The old domestic had made it the business of years to obtain the means of reaching England. But the war had placed obstacles in his way every where, and he devoted himself thenceforth to the guardianship of his precious deposit, as the duty of his life. He was almost pathetic, in his narration of the hazards to which it had been exposed in the perpetual convulsions of the country, and in the rejoicing with which he felt himself at last enabled to place it in the hands of its rightful mistress, the last descendant of the noble house of De Tourville.--But I had still to experience another gift of fortune. On the evening of my birth-day, Clotilde had given a rustic fete to the children of her tenantry; and all were dancing in front of the chateau, with the gaiety and with the grace which nature seems to have conferred as an especial gift on even the humblest classes of France. The day was one of the luxury of summer. The landscape before me was a rich extent of plain and hill; the fragrance of the vast gardens of the chateau as rising as the twilight approached; my infants were clustering round my knee; and in that thankfulness of heart, which is not less sincere for its not being expressed in words, I came to the conclusion, that no access of wealth, or of honours, could add to my substantial happiness at that hour.