MY ARIZONA CLASS,

’ portraits, from Saint Louis through to the last Bourbon
of the old line. Henry the Fifth (Count de Cham-
bord) was an embodiment of what had been to them

merely a list of names.

The former universal distrust and reliance on force,
not on right or law, was shown not only by this forti-
fication of a residence, but by the village huddled
under one of its walls. for protection. No outlying
life was safe then any more than lately with them-
selves in this Indian country, where the fort on the
hill made safety for their village close by. But while
with us everything worked together to bring in safety
and law, there everything, for centuries, had been
dependent on individual caprice.

We had fancied walking down the straggling, un-
paved village street, and seeing nearer its small,
thick-walled, almost windowless houses—dark, damp,
unventilated nests of fever and rheumatisms, in pain-
ful contrast to the noble space and luxurious comfort of
the castle. One could see why when those ignorant
people began to question this order of things they did
not reason, but destroyed.

A smell of bread-baking drew us to the village
bakery, where we got some, intending to eat and be
réfreshed for the long drive back to Vichy. We did

_try to eat that bread, the baker-ess was looking on
so doubtingly, but it was impossible. Sour, bitter,
gritty and tough all at once, and made of nothing we
could recognize as flour, yet this forlorn stuff had
been carefully baked on a layer of still coarser mix-
ture, under the yard-long loaves. There was the
pate du pauvre, and there too were the village poor
eagerly waiting to getit; so old, so deformed by
labor and want, so sad a sight that our hearts grew as
heavy as the bread.

I told my class that poverty was a relative word in
our country, and that here in the Western new country,
where every one shares willingly, and each helps as

_he can, there is no comprehension of the hopeless
state of the poor of the old world.

But this is off the track from Francis, who might
have been named Prince Fortunatus, for his birth
brought him so much, it seemed as though all the
fairies had combined to endow him. The throne of
France, health, beauty, fair talents and a pleasant
sort of nature which made him liked; his thinking
done for him by his loving and wise mother, Louise
of Savoy, who had much of that common sense and
gallant courage of a later member of her house, Victor
Emanuel, his best feelings warmly met and nourished

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by the love of his charming, talented sister, Reine
Marguerite des Marguerites, as he fondly named
her, “ Queen Daisy of all Daisies; the noble Bayard
his devoted friend — ought not this fortunate youth
to have made some good use of his life? His reign
was gay and brilliant, but what of it lasted? Even
the Field of the Cloth of Gold failed to keep peace
with England.

Close by all this splendor two plain figures come
out upon the historical canvas of that time. One, the
worn and disappointed old mariner, Columbus, his

useful and heroic life wearing away in poverty and long

imprisonment: these were his bitter portion for hav-
ing enriched Spain with a new world. They put on
the Royal Standard —

A Castilla y & Leon
Nuevo mundo dio Colon,

and Columbus himself they put in prison — to their
everlasting shame.

His figure is disappearing. Just coming forward
is a young boy who has neither wealth nor power,

 

MARIE ANTOINETTE,

whose own parents can do so little for him that he
must leave home and get his food from house to
house by his music; and so, among his music-loving
fellow-Germans the young Luther makes, unaided, his
first appearance.

Of these three lives what has outlasted ?