ANECDOTE OF HAELAY. 239

opening to itself, which is afterwards walled up, so that nothing
is seen. When it is thought that the corpse has been closed
up sufficiently long to be free from odour the wall is opened,
the body taken out, and put in a coffin which allows a portion
of it to be seen towards the feet. This coffin is covered with a
rich stuff and carried into an adjoining room.

The body of the Due de VendSme had been walled up nine
years when I entered the Escurial. I was shown the place it
occupied, smooth like every part of the four walls and without
mark. I gently asked the monks who did me the honours of
the place, when the body would be removed to the other
chamber. They would not satisfy my curiosity, showed some
indignation, and plainly intimated that this removal was not
dreamt of, and that as M. de YendOme had been so carefully
walled up he might remain so !

liarlay, formerly chief president, of whom I have so often
had occasion to speak, died a short time after M. do Yend&me.
I have already made him known. I will simply add an ac-
count of the humiliation to which this haughty cynic was
reduced. He hired a house in the Eue de l'Univ0rsit6 with a
partition wall between his garden and that of the Jacobins of
the Faubourg St. Germain. The house did not belong to the
Jacobins, like the houses of the Rue St. Dominique, and the
Rue du Bac, which, in order that they might command higher
rents, were put in connection with the convent garden. These
mendicant Jacobins thus derive fifty thousand livres a-year.
Harlay, accustomed to exercise authority, asked them for a
door into their garden. He was refused. He insisted, had
them spoken to, and succeeded no better. Nevertheless the
Jacobins comprehended that although this magistrate, recently
so powerful, was now nothing by himself, he had a son and a
cousin, Councillors of State, whom they might some day have
to do with, and who for pride's sake might make themselves
very disagreeable. The argument of interest is the best of all
with monks. The Jacobins changed their mind. The Prior,
accompanied by some of the notabilities of tho convent, went
to Harlay with excuses, and said he was at liberty, if he liked