though a monarch of France could not be bought or sold for any number of gold bezants, the plague had him cheap--in fact, for an old song. "He died," says that bold writer, M. Alexandre Dumas, who spins you off the most interesting history, all out of his own head--"he died on a bed of ashes, on the very spot where the messenger of Rome found Marius sitting on the ruins of Carthage"--an interesting topographical fact, seeing that nobody, now-a-days, knows where Carthage stood at all--always saving and excepting M. Alexandre Dumas. We stood before a grey, massive tower--a Gothic finger of mouldering stone. "Louis de Malagne," said my old _cicerone_, "a traitorous Frenchman, delivered these holy walls to our enemies of Burgundy, and a garrison of the Duke's held possession of the sacred city of Aigues-Mortes. But the sacrilege was fearfully avenged. The oriflamme was spread by the forces of the king, and the townspeople rose within the walls, and, step by step, the foreign garrison were driven back till they fought in a ring round this old tower. They fought well, and died hard, but they did die--every man--always round this old tower. So, when the question came to be, where to fling the corpses, a citizen said, 'This is a town of salt; salt is the harvest of Aigues-Mortes--let us salt the Burgundians.' And another said, 'Truly, there is a cask ready for the meat;' and he pointed to the tower. Then they laid the dead men stark and stiff, as though to floor the tower. Then they heaped salt on them, a layer two feet thick; then they put on another stratum of Burgundian flesh, and another stratum of salt--till the tower was as a cask--choke-full--bursting-full of pickled Burgundians."