feelings."

A few words of description should undoubtedly be vouchsafed to the decoration of her apartments at Versailles. Artistic from birth, Julie de Poopinac inaugurated almost a revolution in colour schemes: her salle des populaces (room of the people), where she received supplicants for alms and various other favours, was upholstered in Godstone blue, with hangings of griffin pink; her salle à manger (dining-room) was a tasteful mélange of elephant green, cerise, and burnt umber. Her salle de bain (bathroom) deserves special mention, owing to its bizarre mixture of mustard colour and vetch purple—while her chambre à coucher (bedroom) was a truly fitting setting for so brilliant a gem. The walls were lined with costly Bridgeport tapestries in brown and black, picked out here and there with beads and tufts of gloriously coloured wool. The bed curtains were of soft Norwegian yellow, with massive tassels of crab mauve, while the carpet and upholstery were almost entirely Spanish crimson with head-rests of Liverpool plush! It was here, of course, that she wrote most of her poems.[3]

Her world-renowned "Idyl to Summer":—

"Dawn,
The poplars droop and sway and droop,
A lazy bee
With wings athread with gold and green
His merry way with esctasy
He takes, amid the garden blooms—
Ah me, ah God, ah God, ah me!
Dawn...."

And the perfectly delicious light poem dedicated to Louis—

"Beloved, it is morn—I rise
To smell the roses sweet;
Emphatic are my hips and thighs,
Phlegmatic are my feet.
Ten thousand roses have I got
Within a garden small,
Give me but strength to smell the lot,
Oh, let me sniff them all!"

Then her rather sordid realistic poem to Louis's death-bed commencing

"Oh, Bed
Wherein he frequently disposed
His weary limbs when day was done,
His last long sleep has murmured down—
Oh Bed—beneath your silken pall,
His eyes aglaze with death, and dim
With age—are closed.
Oh, Bed!"

It was of course after Louis's death that Julie was forced to seek retirement in her château in Old Brittany. There for many years she lived in almost complete seclusion, writing her books which were the inspired outpourings of a tortured soul: "Lilith: the Story of a Woman"; "The Hopeless Quest," an allegorical tale of the St. Malo sand-dunes, then unexplored; and "The Pig-Sty," a biting satire on life at Court.

Then the storm-cloud of the revolution broke athwart the length and breadth of fair France, relentless, and indomitable and irredeemable. Julie was arrested while blackberrying in a Dolly Varden hat. With a brave smile, Ben-Hepple tells us, she flung the berries away. "I am ready!" she said.

You all know of her journey to Paris, and her mockery of a trial before the tribunal—her pitiful bravery when the inhuman monsters tried to make her say "À la lanterne!" Nothing would induce her to—she had the firmness of many ancestors behind her.

We will quote Ben-Hepple's vivid description of her execution:—

"The day dawned grey with heavy clouds to the east," he says. "About five minutes past ten, a few rain-drops fell. The tumbrils were already rattling along amidst the frenzied jeers of the crowd. The first one contained a group of ci-devant aristos, laughing and singing—one elderly vicomtesse was playing on a mouth-organ. In the second tumbril sat two women—one, Marie Topinambour, a poor dancer, was weeping; the other, Julie de Poopinac, was playing at cat's cradles. Her dress was of sprigged muslin, and she wore a rather battered Dolly Varden hat. She was haughtily impervious to the vile epithets of this mob. Upon reaching the guillotine, Marie Topinambour became panic-stricken, and swarmed up one of the posts before any one could stop her. In bell-like tones, Julie bade her descend. 'Fear nothing, ma petite,' she cried. 'See, I am smiling!' The terrified Marie looked down and was at once calmed. Julie was indeed smiling. One or two marquises who were waiting their turn were in hysterics. Marie slowly descended, and was quickly executed. Then Julie stepped forward. 'Vive le Roi!' she cried, forgetting in her excitement that he was already dead, and flinging her Dolly Varden hat in the very teeth of the crowd, she laid her head in the prescribed notch. A woman in the mob said 'Pauvre' and somebody else said 'À bas!' The knife fell...."

MADCAP MOLL

THE DUCHESS OF WAPPING
From the world-famous portrait by Sir Oswald Cronk, Bart.

NOBODY who knew George I. could help loving him—he possessed that peculiar charm of manner which had the effect of subjugating all who came near him into immediate slavery. Madcap Moll—his true love, his one love (England still resounds with her gay laugh)—adored him with such devotion as falls to the lot of few men, be they kings or beggars.

They met first in the New Forest, where Norman Bramp informs us, in his celebrated hunting memoirs "Up and Away," the radiant Juniper spent her wild, unfettered childhood. She was ever a care-free, undisciplined creature, snapping her shapely fingers at bad weather, and riding for preference without a saddle—as hoydenish a girl as one could encounter on a day's march. Her auburn ringlets ablow in the autumn wind, her cheeks whipped to a flush by the breeze's caress, and her eyes sparkling and brimful of tomboyish mischief and roguery! This, then, was the picture that must have met the King's gaze as he rode with a few trusty friends through the forest for his annual week of otter shooting. Upon seeing him, Madcap Moll gave a merry laugh, and crying "Chase me, George!" in provocative tones, she rode swiftly away on her pony. Many of the courtiers trembled at such a daring exhibition of lèse majesté, but the King, provoked only by her winning smile, tossed his gun to Lord Twirp and set off in hot pursuit. Eventually he caught his roguish quarry by the banks of a sunlit pool. She had flung herself off her mount and flung herself on the trunk of a tree, which she bestrode as though it were a better and more fiery steed. The King cast an appraising glance at her shapely legs, and then tethered his horse to an old oak.

"Are you a creature of the woods?" he said.

Madcap Moll tossed her curls. "Ask me!" she cried derisively.

"I am asking you," replied the King.

"Odds fudge—you have spindleshanks!" cried Madcap Moll irrelevantly. The King was charmed. He leant towards her.

"One kiss, mistress!" he implored. At that she slapped his face and made his nose bleed. He was captivated.

"I'faith, art a daring girl," he cried delightedly. "Knowest who I am?"

"I care not!" replied the girl.

"George the First!" said the King, rising. Madcap Moll blanched.

"Sire," she murmured, "I did not know—a poor, unwitting country lass—have mercy!"

The King touched