more or less satisfactory close, than, still homeless and landless, he hurried likewise to Brussels, which was then the recognised gathering-place of all the poor victims of Richelieu's grasping policy. However, in one way he had been forestalled. In the interval the old countess, thinking in her innocence that nothing could so effectually put a stop to undesirable love-making as an actual marriage, had compelled her beautiful daughter to marry Leopold D'Oiselet, Prince de Cantecroix, a great personage both in the Franche Comté and in Germany. That ought to have made all things sure. In truth, it did nothing of the kind. Beatrix and Charles remained as infatuatedly in love as before, and pursued their amour seemingly with all the greater zest and determination, because there was now a legal hindrance. The husband, as it happened, was not the only difficulty in the way. All the Lorrain princes and princesses--expelled, like Charles, from their own country, and assembled in the capital of the Austrian Netherlands--set their faces dead against the lady, and positively refused to have anything to do with her. Beatrix did not care. She could afford to snap her fingers at Nicole, Nicolas-Francois, Claude, Henriette, and the rest of them, so long as Charles remained true to her; and soon we find her, the lawful wife of Prince Cantecroix, openly avowing herself "the fiancée" of the Lorrain Duke, who was himself lawfully married. The old lady, foiled once more in her precautions, once more packed her daughter off out of harm's way--this time back to Besançon. As a matter quite of course Charles hereupon proposed to the crowned heads with whom he was in league, that the next campaign must necessarily be carried on in the Franche Comté, where, indeed, the French had somewhat alarmingly gained the upper hand, and were at that time rather embarrassingly (for the Spaniards) investing Dôle. As if to support him in his pleading, a deputation of Comtois magnates arrived at Brussels, headed, for irony, by the Prince de Cantecroix himself, petitioning the victor of Nördlingen, with all the urgency of which they were masters, to come to their rescue. Charles did not keep them waiting long. He promptly led his army back to their old quarters at Besançon, where he scarcely repaid Cantecroix in a Christian spirit. For his father-confessor informs us that, being a devout "Catholic," and believing implicity in the efficacy of masses, he caused no less than three thousand such to be said, to obtain from Heaven his rival's death. He drove the French away from Dôle, but after that he would not stir another finger. Fighting was all very well, but there was metal more attractive at Besançon. The old countess, had submitted at last to the inexorable ruling of fate. It was of no use transporting Beatrix backwards and forwards, while Charles followed so persistently after, and her own husband was so blind, or else so helpless. Things must be allowed to take their course.