We must once more--following the course of human nature as it is at all times, but more especially as it then was, before all the great asperities of the world were smoothed and softened down, and one universal railroad made life an easy and rapid course from one end to another--We must once more then, following the common course of being, shift the scene, and bring before our readers a new part of the great panorama of that day. It was then at the lordly palace of Versailles, in the time of its greatest and most extraordinary splendour, when the treasures of a world had been ransacked to adorn its halls, and art and genius had been called in to do what riches had been unable to accomplish; while yet every chamber throughout the building flamed with those far-famed groups, cast in solid gold, the designs of which had proceeded from the pencil of Le Brun, and the execution of which had employed a thousand of the most skilful hands in France; while yet marble, and porphyry, and jasper, shone in every apartment; and the rarest works, from every quarter of the world, were added to the richness of the other decorations: before, in short, the consequences of his own ambition, or his successor's faults and weaknesses, had stripped one splendid ornament from that extraordinary building, which Louis XIV. had erected in the noon of his splendour--it was then that took place the scene which we are about now to describe. The Count de Morseiul had scarcely paused even to take needful rest on his way from Poitou to Paris, and he had arrived late at night at the untenanted dwelling of his fathers in the capital. The Counts de Morseiul had ever preferred the country to the town, and though they possessed a large house in the Place Royale, which then was, though it is now no longer a fashionable part of the city; that house had become, at it were, merely the dwelling-place of some old officers and attendants, who happened to have a lingering fondness for the busy haunts of men which their lord shared not in. The old white-headed porter, as he opened the gate for his young master, stared with wonder and surprise to see him there, and nothing of course was found prepared for his reception. But the Count was easily satisfied and easily pleased. Food could always be procured without any difficulty, in the great capital of all eating, but repose was what the young Count principally required; and, after having despatched a messenger to Versailles, to ask in due form an audience of the King as early as possible on the following morning, to cast himself on the first bed that could be got ready, and forgot in a few minutes all the cares, and sorrows, and anxieties, which had accompanied him on his way to the capital.