Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 2.djvu/52

34 writing tender letters in Latin verse to her husband, but also a wise and just Princess to her people, "showing herself by spirit and independence to be the most worthy of all her race to wear the ducal crown." So three cheers for good Duchesse Anne, and long life to the hardy, happy women of Brittany!

"While Miss Lavinia was making these observations and moralizing upon them, the younger ladies were enjoying discoveries and experiences more to their tastes.

They had not been in the house half a day before Madame C. informed them that "Mademoiselle, the so charming miss whom they beheld at dinner, was to be married very soon; and they should have the rapture of witnessing a wedding the most beautiful."

They welcomed the prospect with pleasure, for Dinan is not a whirl of gayety at the best of times; and that spring the drought, rumors of war, and fears of small-pox, cast a shadow upon the sunny little town. So they surveyed Mademoiselle Pelagie with interest, and longed to behold the happy man who was to be blessed with the hand of this little,