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The Upper Rhine : Mayence to the Lake of Constance
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indulged in an intrigue with her by night that recalls theadventure of Enginhart with the daughter of Charlcmagne : '—with this difference, however, that at Ingelheim, the younglady carried the gentleman upon her Shoulders, so that thefootsteps of her lover should not he left printed in the snow;whereas, in the gardens of Anna, Duchess of Courland, it wasthe Marechal who bore the maid of honour in his arms, sothat the snow might teil no tales on the morrow. " The pre-caution was good," writes the French biographer, " but, unfor-tunately, Maurice was surprised in one such excursion, and theDuchess, in her indignation, broke off the marriage, andbanished the deceiver for ever from her presence." This mis-adventure cost the Marechal not only the duchy of Courland,but also the chance of becoming Emperor of Russia whenAnna succeeded to the throne of the Czars, as she did in 1730.

"There!" concludes M. Guinot, with a fine theatrical" tag " to his histoirette, " that is what Maurice de Saxe gainedand what he lost through love; and that is the reason why theCupid weeps over the tomb of the hero." *

"And now," says one of the foreign guide-books, after

* It was during the general European warwhich began in 1740 that MarechalSaxe gained the triumphs by which he is best known. He commanded the Frencharmy at Fontenoy in 1745, and won a memorable victory over the English andtheir allies, which he followed up by the conquest of all Belgium. At thisperiod he was lying ill at Paris—suffering under a severe attack of dropsy. Hewas tapped only five days before the battle was fought, and, spite of the remon-strancesof his physicians, went to the iield, where he was carried about in a litterduring the engagement. In 1747 he gained a second victory over us at Laffelt,and died in 1750, loaded with honours by the French ; " who were indebted tohim," says Professor Creasy, " for the two chief of the very few successes theyhave ever had in fair pitched battles against the English." If he had not beena Lutheran, it is said the Marechal would have been buried at St. Denis—in theroyal vaults — at the side of Turenne, who, though " bom of the Reformed reli-gion," was converted to Romanism by Bousset (and the prospect of a royalfuneral, perhaps ?). For the same reason, we are told, Saxe could not be deco-rated with the " blue ribbon"—the " Order of the Holy Ghost" being essentiallya Catholic honour !