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Men with names belonging to the proudest French nobility the De Lusignans, De Clissons, De Lumleys, De Bourbon-Chalens, etc., are chartering vessels, arriving in Rome by scores and hundreds, and hence hurrying to the front to take their places as privates in the Zouaves. That, however, does not describe the most important sphere of their activity which was the ante-chamber, nay, the boudoir of St Cloud.

With its triple enclosure, its dungeons, its interior court-yards, its machicolations, its underground passages, its ramparts piled one upon the other, like a bark on a bark and a shield on a shield, the ancient Château of the Clissons rises before your mind and is reconstructed. The memory of past existences exudes from its walls with the emanations of the nettles and the coolness of the ivy.

A rising taste for literature attached me to French books, to their authors, and their country: at the very moment the French troops were passing Chambery, I was reading Brantome's 'Celebrated Captains'; my head was full of the Clissons, Bayards, Lautrecs Colignys, Monlmoreneys, and Trimouille, and I loved their descendants as the heirs of their merit and courage.

A rising taste for literature attached me to French books, to their authors, and their country: at the very moment the French troops were passing Chambery, I was reading Brantome's 'Celebrated Captains'; my head was full of the Clissons, Bayards, Lautrecs Colignys, Monlmoreneys, and Trimouille, and I loved their descendants as the heirs of their merit and courage.