"Baron," said his Majesty, "Monsieur de Beaugency was deeply in love with the Marchioness; but he was more deeply still in love--since he would not renounce it, to please her--with the embassy to Prussia. And you, you love the Marchioness so much better than you love me, that you would only enter my service for her sake. This leads me to believe that you would be but a lukewarm public servant, and that Monsieur de Beaugency will make an excellent ambassador. He will start for Berlin this evening; and you shall marry the Marchioness. I will be present at the ceremony." "Marchioness," whispered Louis XV. in the ear of his god-daughter, "true love is that which does not shrink from a sacrifice." And the King peeled the second orange and eat it, as he placed the hand of the widow in that of the Baron. "I have been making three persons happy: the Marchioness, whose indecision I have relieved; the Baron, who shall marry her; and Monsieur do Beaugency, who will perchance prove a sorry ambassador. In all this, I have only neglected my own interests, for I have been eating the oranges without sugar.... And yet they pretend to say that I am a selfish Monarch?" THE MISSING MARINERS, A DREAM OF THE ARCTIC SEAS. This fanciful sketch was written and published, before the fate of Sir John Franklin and his Discovery Ships was known. There was not a curtain of any kind over the window. Now, there are few things that I dislike more than this total want of privacy in a bed-room. Opposite to a dead wall at a foot's distance, so that none but bogies could peer within, or looking out through a port-hole over the lonely sea, I confess to an almost old-maidenish particularity in this respect. Failing, therefore, in sundry efforts to substitute a great coat for a curtain, or even to delude myself into a sense of seclusion, by planting an open umbrella upon a chair before the window, I finally abandoned my efforts, determined to brazen it out, blew out my light, and tumbled into bed, not in the best of humours. You remember, perhaps, the bitter cold night and the flurry of a snow storm, that came abruptly upon us, a few weeks since. That was the time of which I write--the place was a country village. And what a freezing night it was! The east wind blew gustily and drearily. It was moonlight, but dull and grey; and as I lay in bed, without raising my head from the starveling bolster vainly eked out by a meagre carpet bag, I could see a single pine tree, on a steep bank right opposite my window, nodding, and bowing at me by fits and by starts, as though the capricious spirit of the night wind had bid it mock me. How I longed for the sight of a chimney-pot!