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It was related how Claude Duval, the French page of the Duke of Richmond, took to the road, became captain of a formidable gang, and had the honour to be named first in a royal proclamation against notorious offenders; how at the head of his troop he stopped a lady's coach, in which there was a booty of four hundred pounds; how he took only one hundred, and suffered the fair owner to ransom the rest by dancing a coranto with him on the heath; how his vivacious gallantry stole away the hearts of all women; how his dexterity at sword and pistol made him a terror to all men; how, at length, in the year 1670, he was seized when overcome by wine; how dames of high rank visited him in prison, and with tears interceded for his life; how the King would have granted a pardon, but for the interference of Judge Morton, the terror of highwaymen, who threatened to resign his office unless the law were carried into full effect; and how, after the execution, the corpse lay in state with all the pomp of scutcheons, wax lights, black hangings and mutes, till the same cruel Judge, who had intercepted the mercy of the crown, sent officers to disturb the obsequies.
The peasant's supposition was not improbable. A woman such as Louise Duval appeared to be of vehement passions and ill-regulated mind was just one of those who, in a moment of great sorrow, and estranged from the ordinary household affections, feel, though but imperfectly, the necessity of a religion, and, ever in extremes, pass at once from indifferentism into superstition.
He was in his uniform a splendid and martial presentment of military youth, and indeed he was much the junior of his compeers. "Who are Captain Girard's people, Papa?" she asked Colonel Duval next morning, as the family party sat at breakfast in quasi seclusion at one of the small round tables in the crowded dining-room, full of the chatter of people and the clatter of dishes. "Girard?"
I was soon deeply interested in M. Duval, and I invited him to come to the café after dinner. I paid for his coffee and liqueurs, I offered him a choice cigar. He did not smoke; I did. It was, of course, inevitable that I should find out that he had not had a play produced for the last twenty years, but then the aureole of the hundred and sixty was about his poor bald head.
The next morning he was on hand early enough to see General Duval return from an exercise gallop, and there was a small black boy on the colt's back. "Come here, Gabe," said Pitkin. "Ain't that Curry's nigger jockey?" "Yes, suh; that's Jockey Moseby Jones, suh." "What's he doing around this stable?" "He kind o' gittin' acquainted with the Gen'al, suh." "Acquainted? What for?"
They would not suffer the corpse of their hero, of the man who had ridden from London to York in four-and-twenty hours to be mangled by the rude hands of unmannerly surgeons. The death of Claude Duval would appear to have been no less triumphant. Claude was a gentlemanly thief. According to Butler, in the famous ode to his memory, he
I was afterwards accquainted with some particulars of the conversation by Miss Mirvan; who told me that Madame Duval informed them of her plan wih the utmost complacency, and seemed to think herself very fortunate in having suggested it; but, soon after, she accidentally betrayed, that she had been instigated to the scheme by her relations the Branghtons, whose letters, which she received today, first mentioned the proposal.
"No more of that damned foolishness about Switzerland," he said, aloud. "I belong to France. I am going with the other boys to save her. I was born for that." He took off his cap and stood still for a moment. He spoke as if he were taking an oath. "By Jeanne d'Arc!" It never occurred to Pierre Duval, as he trudged those long kilometres toward the front, that he was doing a penance.
It appears that when he arrived at Aix-la-Chapelle he found that Louise Duval had left it a day or two previously, and according to scandal had been for some time courted by a wealthy and noble lover, whom she had gone to Munich to meet. Louvier believed this tale: quitted Aix indignantly, and never heard more of her. The probability is, M. Vane, that she must have been long dead.
"A Doctor Duval, of Lynchburg, Va. got offended with a very faithful, worthy servant, and immediately sold him to a negro trader, to be taken to New Orleans; Duval still keeping the wife of the man as his slave. This Duval was a professor of religion." Mr. SAMUEL HALL, a teacher in Marietta College, Ohio, says, in a recent letter: "When I was in the family of the Rev.
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