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 "Heart!" exclaimed she, provoked at his apparent want of feeling, "heart! You have no heart. You are nothing but brains where your heart should be."

This disposition Fontenelle inherited from his mother. She was niece of the celebrated dramatist Corneille, a pious and excellent woman, but not easily moved. Fontenelle used to say of her: "My mother was a quietist. When I would express some unorthodox opinion before her, she would say,'My son, you will be damned.' But it did not trouble her."

Gray hairs and wrinkles are slow in coming to such temperaments.

On the contrary, intense grief blanches the hair in a few hours. Every one is familiar with the opening lines of Byron's Prisoner of Chillon:—

"My hair is gray but not with years,     Nor turned it white      In a single night, As men's have done with sudden fears."

In a note, the poet mentions Ludovico Sforza as the example he had in mind. The story is this: Ludovico Sforza, called from his dark complexion Ludovico the Moor, was Duke of Milan at the close of the fifteenth century. He was a cruel and unscrupulous man, as were all the Italian rulers of his day, from Alexander Sixth downward. By his political action, but especially by poisoning a nobleman who was under French protection, he drew upon himself the enmity of