"_Mon cher_," said the baron in very good French, and in a tone of the most familiar equality with the descendant of the princes and heroes of grand mediaeval Italy--"_Mon cher_, give me one of your excellent cigars. I think I have put all matters in train." "You have found out--" "No; not so fast yet," said the baron, lighting the cigar extended to him. "But you said that you should be perfectly contented if it only cost you L20,000 to marry off your sister (to whom that sum is legally due), and to marry yourself to the heiress." "I did indeed." "Then I have no doubt I shall manage both objects for that sum, if Randal Leslie really knows where the young lady is, and can assist you. Most promising, able man is Randal Leslie, but innocent as a babe just born." "Ha, ha! Innocent? _Que diable!_" "Innocent as this cigar, _mon cher_--strong, certainly, but smoked very easily. _Soyez tranquille!_" CHAPTER XV. Who has not seen--who not admired, that noble picture by Daniel Maclise, which refreshes the immortal name of my ancestor Caxton! For myself, while with national pride I heard the admiring murmurs of the foreigners who grouped around it (nothing, indeed, of which our nation may be more proud had they seen in the Crystal Palace)--heard, with no less a pride in the generous nature of fellow artists, the warm applause of living and deathless masters, sanctioning the enthusiasm of the popular crowd;--what struck me more than the precision of drawing, for which the artist has been always renowned, and the just though gorgeous affluence of color which he has more recently acquired, was the profound depth of conception, out of which this great work had so elaborately arisen. That monk, with his scowl towards the printer and his back on the Bible, over which _his form casts a shadow_--the whole transition between the mediaeval Christianity of cell and cloister, and the modern Christianity that rejoices in the daylight, is depicted there, in the shadow that obscures the Book--in the scowl that is fixed upon the Book-diffuser;--that sombre musing face of Richard, Duke of Gloucester, with the beauty of Napoleon, darkened to the expression of a Fiend, looking far and anxiously into futurity, as if foreseeing there what antagonism was about to be created to the schemes of secret crime and unrelenting force;--the chivalrous head of the accomplished Rivers, seen but in profile, under his helmet, as if the age when Chivalry must defend its noble attributes, in steel, was already half passed away: and, not least grand of all, the rude thews and sinews of the artisan forced into service on the type, and the ray of intellect, fierce, and menacing revolutions yet to be, struggling through his rugged features, and across his low knitted brow;--all this, which showed how deeply the idea of the discovery in its good and its evil its saving light and its perilous storms, had sunk into the artist's soul, charmed me as