United States or Malawi ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"She was a French lady and her maiden name was Ternaux, and when her friend, Madame Roquemaure, died, she bequeathed to her this mirror, which once graced the dressing-room of Marie Antoinette in the Tuileries." "What a prize!" breathed Mona, as she gazed reverently upon the royal relic. "May I take it, Uncle Walter?" "Certainly," and the man lifted it from the box and laid it in her hands.
Suffice that, after marching from the Pyrenees at a high rate of speed, the army reached the Rhone at the point where Roquemaure now stands, a short distance above Avignon. This point had been chosen by Hannibal because it was one of the few spots at which the Rhone runs in a single stream, its course being for the most part greatly broken up by islands.
Bougainville and Roquemaure fell back, abandoned St. John and Chambly, and joined Bourlamaque on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where the united force at first outnumbered that of Haviland, though fast melted away by discouragement and desertion. Haviland opened communication with Murray, and they both looked daily for the arrival of Amherst, whose approach was rumored by prisoners and deserters.
Their ingeniously compiled legend runs in this wise: Clement's death in the castle of Roquemaure occurred while he was on his way homeward from the Council of Vienne; where keeping with the King the bargain which had won for him the Papal throne he had abolished the Order of the Templars and had condemned their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, to be burned alive.
The man grew pale at this question, but after a moment he replied, though with visible effort: "It was given to your great grandmother by a Madame Roquemaure, an intimate friend, who was at one time a lady in waiting at the court of Louis the Sixteenth." "What was her name?" eagerly asked Mona "my grandmother's, I mean."
Since my first acquaintance with this neighbourhood, more than twenty years ago, the aspect of the country hereabouts has in no small degree changed. Hop gardens in many spots have replaced vineyards, owing to the devastation of the phylloxera. It was in the last years of the third Empire that the inhabitants of Roquemaure on the Rhone found their vines mysteriously withering.
But what most attracted the attention of the ancient inhabitants of France were bright-colored shells. The caves of Roquemaure have yielded nearly a thousand disks and beads made of cockle-shells; at Cro-Magnon more than three hundred shells were picked up which formed a collar or necklace, which was not however so valuable as that of the man of Sordes.
Roquemaure lies sixty-five miles from the sea, and it was necessary to cross the Rhone at some distance from its mouth, for Rome was now thoroughly alarmed, and Scipio, with a fleet and powerful army, was near Marseilles waiting to engage Hannibal on the plains of Gaul. During the last few days' march no inhabitants had been encountered.
Here he left an officer named Roquemaure with a detachment of troops, and again advanced along a belt of quiet water traced through the midst of a deep marsh, green at that season with sedge and water-weeds, and known to the English as the Drowned Lands. Beyond, on either hand, crags feathered with birch and fir, or hills mantled with woods, looked down on the long procession of canoes.
It was a fatal blow to Bougainville, whose communications with St. John were now cut off. In accordance with instructions from Vaudreuil, he abandoned the island on the night of the twenty-seventh of August, and, making his way with infinite difficulty through the dark forest, joined Roquemaure at St. John, twelve miles below. Haviland followed, the rangers leading the way.
Word Of The Day