I have stated that the same conditions are apt from time to time to produce identical trains of thought. A little trait of the famous founder of the Bourbon dynasty in France is on exactly parallel lines with an actual incident which occurred within our personal knowledge, and might have done so within that of a thousand others. The rank of one of those concerned in the original anecdote communicates to it, however, an additional zest. It is said that, on one occasion, as Henry IV. was leaning out of window, a fellow about the palace, mistaking him for an intimate, slapped him behind. The king turned round sharply, and the other, in a terrible fright, stammered out that he thought it was So-and-so--Jacques or Jean. “Well,” returned Henry, good-naturedly, “if it had been, you need not have hit so hard.” An involuntary gravitation to a certain portion of our frame seems to be a universal and immemorial instinct of human nature. The truth to say, this choice _morceau_ has been attributed to Sully as well as to his royal master. But too many sayings are either vamped-up and utterly worthless, or are laid before us in a shape which arises from sheer ignorance of the costume of the subject, like the ridiculous descriptions which occur in the _Bravo of Venice_ and other melodramatic romances. To any one who is conversant to a fair extent with the strict and stern _régime_ under the old French monarchy, what can be more absurd and self-convicting than the subjoined relation?-- “An honest dragoon, in the service of Louis XIV., having caught a man in his house, after some words told him he would let him escape that time; but if ever he found him there again, he would throw him out of the window. Notwithstanding this terrible threat, in a few days he caught the spark there again, and was as good as his word. Sensible that what he had done would soon be known, he posted to court, and throwing himself at the king’s feet, implored His Majesty’s pardon. The king asked what his offence was; on which the soldier told him how he had been injured. ‘Well, well,’ said the king, laughing, ‘I readily forgive you; for, considering the provocation, I think you were much in the right to throw _his hat_ out of the window.’ ‘Yes, please your Majesty,’ said the man; ‘but then his head was in it.’ ‘Was it?’ replied the king: ‘well, my word is passed.’” There was scarcely a court in Europe with which such an incident could have been less happily associated; and it is almost difficult to call to mind any constitutional system, except perhaps that of the first Napoleon or our own Charles II., where such a _tête-à-tête_, so to say, could have taken place.