The Argosy — page 335: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

314 Fair Normandy. Turning our backs upon this, before us rose the picturesque and beautiful hill, which throws a glamour of romance over the town of Dreux, redeeming it for ever, in spite of the modern handiwork of man, from the tame and the commonplace. As we saw it to-night, faintly outlined, it looked full of beauty ; its steep and rugged sides towering to a considerable height; an apparent wilderness of shrubs and trees adorning it with delightful wildness and profusion. ‘The height is crowned by the ruins of the castle of the Comtes de Dreux, those powerful nobles of the Middle Ages, who became extinct towards the close of the 14th century. The ruins now consist of the remains of an old donjon, a Norman gateway, and a Gothic chapel dating from the r2thcentury. In 1590 and again in 1593, Henri IV. besieged the town, and on the second occasion destroyed the castle. Upon the summit of the hill, enclosed within walls, in the midst of a beautiful garden, surrounded by walks, which by day are free to the world, and whence you have a magnificent panorama of the town at your feet, the winding rivers and far stretching plains: in the midst of this little paradise rises the modern chapel, built in the form of a Greek temple, surmounted by a cupola, which is the mausoleum of the House of Orleans. It was erected by Louis Philippe when he was Duke of Orleans. Here are interred the last Duchesse de Penthievre; the Princesse de Lamballe, massacred at the Revolution ; the beautiful and accomplished Princesse Marie of Wurtemburg, daughter of the King; the Duke of Orleans and the mother of Louis Philippe. But it was only in 1876 that the bodies of the King and Queen, the Duchess of Orleans, and the Princes of Condé, were removed from Weybridge and placed here in the chapel of the Virgin. This we much wished to see, but it was a winding and uphill walk from the town. Should we have time to do it? What if we lost the train onward to Chartres? What of H. C.’s priceless curiosities, left in charge of the porter? of our heavier gear, which, registered for Chartres, would certainly go on without us? ‘That at least was safe, thanks to the admirable French system of registration: admirable, except at the moment that you have to register your own baggage, and find yourself at the end of a long and very slowly decreasing string of passengers ; or in front of an irritating registering clerk, who seems to be attending to everything on earth except his legitimate business, and turns an absolutely deaf ear to your mild remonstrances. It is at these moments that you need the amiability of a saint and the patience of Job, though the chances are that you possess neither the one nor the other. Happy the man who can take all things calmly ; who, in moments of irritation, commands his temper and keeps under subjection his nervous system, and by means of a polite smile conceals the agonies he is suffering as successfully as the Spartan lad concealed the terrible fox. It is the truest philosophy : Eomichbooks.co