This is beautiful and true; beautiful, because it is true. There is nothing of fancy nor of art, the intense feeling gushes, warm and strong, from the heart of the writer, and it comes home to the heart of the reader, filling it with sweetness.--Am I wrong in supposing that the occasional obscurity of the old French will not disguise the beauty of the sentiment from the young wife or mother, whose eye may glance over this page? It is painful, it is pitiful, to draw the veil of death and sorrow over this sweet picture. What is this world? what asken men to have? Now with his love--now in his cold grave, Alone, withouten any companie![25] De Surville closed his brief career of happiness and glory (and what more than these could he have asked of heaven?) at the seige of Orleans, where he fought under the banner of Joan of Arc.[26] He was a gallant and a loyal knight; so were hundreds of others who then strewed the desolated fields of France: and De Surville had fallen undistinguished amid the general havoc of all that was noble and brave, if the love and genius of his wife had not immortalised him. Clotilde, after her loss, resided in the chateau of her husband, in the Lyonnois, devoting herself to literature and the education of her son: and it is very remarkable, considering the times in which she lived, that she neither married again, nor entered a religious house. The fame of her poetical talents, which she continued to cultivate in her retirement, rendered her, at length, an object of celebrity and interest. The Duke of Orleans happened one day to repeat some of her verses to Margaret of Scotland, the first wife of Louis the Eleventh; and that accomplished patroness of poetry and poets wrote her an invitation to attend her at court, which Clotilde modestly declined. The Queen then sent her, as a token of her admiration and friendship, a wreath of laurel, surmounted with a bouquet of daisies, (Marguerites, in allusion to the name of both,) the leaves of which were wrought in silver and the flowers in gold, with this inscription: "Marguerite d'Ecosse a Marguerite d'Helicon." We are told that Alain Chartier, envious perhaps of these distinctions, wrote a satirical _quatrain_, in which he accused Clotilde of being deficient in _l'air de cour_, and that she replied to him, and defended herself in a very spirited _rondeau_. Nothing more is known of the life of this interesting woman, but that she had the misfortune to survive her son as well as her husband; and dying at the advanced age of ninety, in 1495, she was buried with them in the same tomb.[27] FOOTNOTES: [18] Elton's Specimens. [19] Querir. [20] Ja--jadis (the old French _ja_ is the Italian _gia_). [21] Ainz:--cependant (the Italian _anzi_). [22] She calls them "the Vultures of Albion." [23] Duisant, _seduisant_. [24] Fremissant. [25] Chaucer. [26] He perished in 1429, leaving his widow in her twenty-fourth year.