[TO VIZ EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR:] Snt,—If you are not
already overdone with "links," I should like to contribute mine. Shortly after my marriage in 18,56 I went to France, and lived for some time with my husband's relations, his sister being the wife of the then Marquis de l'Aigle, whose grandfather was guillotined in the Reign of Terror, leaving two sons, the Marquis Esperance de l'Aigle, father of my brother-in-law, and Comte Victor de l'Aigle. The former I never saw, but the latter I knew very well, and he was, when I made his acquaintance, a charming alert old gentleman of ninety, hunting with his nephew's boar-hounds, and getting on and off his horse like a man of twenty-five, instead of a nonagenarian. He delighted in talking to me of his reminiscences,—how he had danced at the Court of Marie Antoinette, with her indeed, if I remember right, and how well he recollected—and this is the long link—his father pre- senting him as a boy of eight to Louis XV., and the King's remark that he was very like his father. Comte Victor de l'Aigle lived till within three months of his hundred-and-first birthday, dying in full possession of all his faculties in 1866. My eldest son, born in 1857, saw him, and can therefore boast of having been spoken to by a man who had seen and been spoken to by Louis XV. It always gave me a thrill when I used to sit with this dear old gentleman, and listen to his recollections of long ago, given so clearly that the events seemed to have taken place quite recently.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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