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walked silently in, and were enchanted with the slow and solemn responses which, wafted through the long drawn aisles, sounded like a requiem to the repose of departed spirits. A silken curtain drawn across a gallery into which a door led from the convent, marked

the spot appropriated to the nuns; entranced a while we stood listening to their heavenly chorusses, but the recollection that we were to sail the next morning, and the thoughts of home which even then came across our minds, impelled us to a hasty departure.

CURIOUS ANECDOTE OF HENRIETTA DUCHESS OF ORLEANS.

determined to examine into the mystery, aud having rambled at the witching hour of night, towards the haunted arbour, soon got a full view of the ghost. His courage however was equal to his curiosity, advancing towards the phantom he threatened it with a sound cudgelling, if it did not say who and what in was."Ah! my good Sir," exclaimed the terrified ghost, "pray do not hurt me, I am only poor Philippinette!"

WHOEVER reverts to the reign of Charles II. ¦' ghost, bad really produced this extreme terror must recollect the share which his sister the Princess Henrietta, wife of the Duke of Orleans, had in his political connexion with the French court. Her death was extremely sudden, and has generally been supposed to have been caused by unfair means, nor did her husband escape suspicion; the manner in which it was accomplished, however, is not generally known. A valet de chambie in her service, just previous to the moment of his death, confessed that a person about the court came into the dining-room, opened a beaufet, and having taken out the goblet always used by the Princess, rubbed it with some paper. The valet asked him what he was doing at the beaufet? and why he touched the Princess's goblet? The other immediately answered, "I am thirsty, I looked for something to drink, and the goblet being dusty, I have wiped it with the paper."

This poor Philippinette was an old woman of a neighbouring village, more than seventy years old, without a tooth in her head, and frightful enough from her glaring eyes, hook nose, and distended mouth, to have passed at any time for au inhabitant of the infernal regions; being seized, and brought up to the palace, she was ordered to prison, but released at the instance of a Princess of the blood; who having sent for the beldame, asked her what After dinner the devoted Henrietta called for could have prompted her to this representaher usual draught of chicory water; but hadtion of a spirit, at such untimely hours, when no sooner swallowed it than she cried out "she ought to have been in her bed.—“Ah! am poisoned."-Many of those who were Madame,” exclaimed the hag, with great simpresent had drank of this chicory water, but plicity, "at my age one sleeps so little! one not out of the same goblet; they suffered no in- must have something to amuse them. Nothing convenience from it, but the Princess grew ever amused me so much in youth as to play rapidly worse and being carried to bed, linger- the ghost; and I was certain that those who ed out the night in most horrible torments, might not dread my white habit, would be and expired before the break of day. The sufficiently terrified when they saw my face. inauner and circumstances of her death seem Those whom I frightened made so many to have made some impression upon the profli- grimaces, that I was like to die with laughing; gate yet superstitious followers of the court, this sport was my only amusement, and chearand a report was soon current and universally ed me in all my labour of carrying burthens believed at St. Cloud, that the spirit of the through the day." Princess appeared every night in an arbour of the garden, where she had often been accustomed to spend much of her time when alive One evening a servant of the court passing by the arbour, saw something all in white, and which suddenly encreased in size; terrified attural enough that those who play the devil with the apparition he fled, and having told the cause of his alarm, fell sick and died. A few days after, an officer of the guards fully persuaded that something, though perhaps not a

If all other ghost stories were investigated as closely it would generally be found that they originate from some cause of the same kind; not all perhaps proceeding from the tricks of the fair sex; though some may think it na

the men in their youth, should amuse themselves with playing the ghost, in their more ad. vanced years.

L..

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Engraved for the 5th Number, New Series of La Belle Assemblee, June 1.1810.

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Engraved for the 5th Number, New Series of La Belle emblic; Published by J. Bell, June 1.1810.

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