We form but a faint idea to ourselves--a very very faint idea of the manners and customs of feudal times; but still less, perhaps, can we form any just idea of the every-day enormities, crimes, and vices, that were committed at the period we now speak of, and of what it was to live familiarly in the midst of such scenes, and to hear daily of such occurrences. The mind of most men got hardened, callous, or indifferent to acts of darkness and of shame, even if they did not commit them themselves; and the world of Paris heard with scarcely an emotion that this nobleman had been poisoned by another--that the hand of the assassin had delivered one high lord of this troublesome friend or that pertinacious enemy--that the husband had "drugged the posset" for the wife, or the wife for the husband--or that persons obnoxiously wise or virtuous disappeared within the walls of such places as Vincennes, and passed suddenly with their good acts into that oblivion which is the general recompense of all that is excellent upon earth. No one noted such deeds; the sword of justice started from the scabbard once or twice in a century, but that was all; and the world laughed as merrily--the jest and the repartee went on--sport, love, and folly revelled as gaily through the streets of Paris, as if it had been a world of gentleness, and security, and peace. Though of course Charles of Montsoreau felt in some degree the spirit of the day--though he thought it nothing at all extraordinary to be attacked by reiters in his own château, or stopped by fifty or sixty plunderers on the broad highway--though it seemed perfectly natural to him that man should live as in a state of continual warfare, always on his defence, yet the whole of his previous life having passed far from the daily occurrence of still more revolting scenes, in spots where calm nature and God's handiwork were still at hand to purify and heal men's thoughts, he had very different feelings in regard to the events and customs of the day from those which were generally entertained by the people of the metropolis. Thus, when he gazed up at the gloomy tower of Vincennes, and thought of the deeds which had been committed within its walls, together with the crimes and follies that were daily there enacted, a feeling of mingled horror and disgust took possession of his bosom; and had he not been impelled by a sense of duty, he would not have set his foot upon the threshold of those polluted gates.