“Your majesty sees already that it is a piece of madness; for a woman can’t complain of the small advance in her career who to‐day is a queen, and not a year ago lived in a stable. A stable is a disgrace to nobody, sure enough; for, after all, Our Lord, though he was God, lived in one when he made himself man.” “So the good Doña Ramona wishes to be God, eh!” “You’ve hit it, your majesty.” “Well, we will please her as far as we are able. Let your majesty step into the dining‐room and drive the wolf from the door, and on returning you will find your wife, if not changed into God, changed into something which is like to him.” The royal consort turned into the dining‐room, but, do what he would, he could scarcely swallow a mouthful. Everything seemed to disagree with him, and the cause of it lay in his feeling within him a restlessness which seemed to forebode some misfortune. He made his way homewards, and on arriving at the palace of the crown he saw, with as great sorrow as dismay, that the palace was closed and deserted. “What has happened here?” he inquired of a passer‐by. “The emperor has put an end to the kingdom of Micomican, re‐establishing the ancient province, and re‐incorporating it with the empire.” Juan had neither courage nor strength to ask more. He wandered about for hours and hours like one demented without knowing whither, when suddenly he found himself at the door of the stable where he had lived with his wife, and on pushing open the door, which revolved on its hinges, he found his wife installed there once more. The only thing Godlike which the woman who had entertained the criminal ambition of becoming like to him, consisted in the similarity of her dwelling to the stable which God occupied when he became man. The Distaff. “In der guten alten Zeit wo die Königen Bertha spann.” “In the good old times when Queen Bertha span” is a thrifty proverb still current in France and some parts of Germany where the distaff is yet seen beneath the arm of the shepherdess, looking, as she tends her flock, precisely like S. Genevieve just stept out from her canvas, or that more modern saint of the hidden life, Germaine of Pibrac, who is always represented with her spindle and distaff. In the very same fields where S. Germaine watched her flocks and twirled her spindle in the old scriptural way, keeping her innocent heart all the while united to God, have we seen the young shepherdess clad in the picturesque scarlet or white capuchon of the country, which covers their heads and half veils their forms—guarding their sheep and spinning at the same time.