This was the third time that Madame de Montespan had practised this unworthy manoeuvre, unknown to the sorrowful favorite, who, as her insidious rival well knew, would believe the infidelity of the King, only on the testimony of his precious gift. Next morning, Le Nôtre found the rose-tree quite dead. The poor old man loved it as if it had been his child, and his eyes were filled with tears as he carried it to its mistress. Then Louise felt, indeed, that no hope remained. Pale and trembling, she took a pair of scissors, cut off the withered blossom, and placed it under a crystal vase. Afterwards she prayed to Heaven for strength to fulfil the resolution she had made. The age of Louis the Fourteenth passed away, with its glory and with its crimes. France had now reached that disastrous epoch, when famine and pestilence mowed down the peaceful inhabitants, and Marlborough and Prince Eugene cut the royal army to pieces on the frontiers. One day, the death-bell tolled from a convent tower in the Rue St. Jacques, and two long files of female Carmelites bore, to her last dwelling, one of the sisters of their strict and silent order. When the last offices were finished, and all the nuns had retired to their cells, an old man came and knelt beside the quiet grave. His trembling hand raised a crystal vase which had been placed on the stone; he took from beneath it a withered rose, which he pressed to his lips, and murmured, in a voice broken by sobs:-- "Poor heart! Poor flower!" The old man was Le Nôtre; and the Carmelite nun, buried that morning, was _Sister Louise de la Miséricorde_, formerly Duchesse de la Vallière. From the London Times. THE STORY OF STUART OF DUNLEATH.[12]