Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850Various
General
Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 1. No 1, June 1850
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Civilization -- Periodicals; Culture -- Periodicals
The chronicle of the _Religieux de St. Denis_ describes one of these
masked balls, which was held in the court-yard of that venerable abbey,
temporarily roofed over with tapestries for the occasion. The sons of
the Duke of Anjou, cousins of the king, were prepared to invade Naples,
in right of their father, to whom Joanna of Naples had devised that
inheritance. Previous to their departure, their royal cousin resolved to
confer on them the order of knighthood. An immense concourse of guests
were invited to witness the splendid ceremonial, and take part in the
jousts and tournaments which were to follow. The king had selected a
strange scene for these gay doings. The Abbey of St. Denis was the last
resting-place of the kings of France. Here mouldered the mortal remains
of his predecessors, and here were to repose his bones when he, too,
should be "gathered to his fathers." The celebrated "Captain of the
Companies," the famous du Guesclin, the saviour of France in the reign
of his father, had paid the debt of nature many years before, and
reposed there among the mortal remains of those whose throne he had
guarded so well. The astonishment of the guests was extreme, when it
appeared that the exhumation and reinterment of du Guesclin formed part
of the programme of the revels. The old warrior was taken up, the
funeral rites solemnly gone through, three hundred livres appropriated
to the pious use of masses for his soul, and the revelers dismissed to
meditate on the royal eccentricities.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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