heart.  Tucking up her petticoats, instead of going out by the ordinary exit she made off as fast as her heels could carry her out of the station to the fence which separates the lines from the road, climbed over it and ran as swiftly as a hunted deer through the fields, pursued by the two gendarmes, who, however, soon gave up the chase.  Her Serene Highness finally reached the Villa Arson, almost two miles distant, terribly frightened and with her clothes pretty nearly torn off her back.  Here she found that noble-hearted and Christian woman her mother, from whom she has never since separated.  Nor has she yielded up to her husband her little son, born soon after the flight from Monaco.  Vain have been the young man’s attempts to induce her to return to him, vain his appeals to the pope to use his influence, vain even the threats of law.  Last winter the prince induced the king of Italy to permit an attempt to abduct the child from the princess whilst she was staying in Florence with the grand duchess Marie of Russia, but the guards of the imperial lady prevented the emissaries of the Florentine syndic from even entering the palace, and the next day the princess of Monaco fled with her child to Switzerland.  What the future developments of this singular affair will be time will show.  The husband seems determined not to yield, and has recently employed the celebrated lawyer M. Grandperret as his counsel.  It is stated that undue influence of a malicious kind has been used to prejudice both the duchess of Hamilton and her daughter against the prince, but all who know the truly lofty mind of the duchess will be sure that, although the reason for the princess’s conduct has never transpired, it must be a very good one, or her mother would never uphold her as she does.  Not the slightest blame is attributable to the princess of Monaco, and her reputation remains utterly above suspicion.

The station of Monaco is about ten minutes’ walk from the town, which we now see is built upon a lofty rock forming a kind of peninsula jutting out from the mainland in the shape of a three-cornered hat.  It is about two hundred feet high, and rises almost perpendicularly from the water on three sides, and that which joins the rest of the coast is ascended by a winding and steep road which passes under several very curious old gates and arches, originally belonging to the castle.  The castle crowns the centre of the rock, and is a most romantic construction, possessing bastions, towers, portcullises, drawbridges and all the paraphernalia of a genuine mediaeval fortress.  It was built upon the site of a much more ancient edifice in 1542, and is a very remarkable specimen of the military architecture of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.  During the French Revolution it was used as a hospital for wounded soldiers, and subsequently fell into a state of pitiable decay.  It has, however, been repaired with great taste by the present prince within the last few years.