The Saint Paul globe. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1896-1905, 1902-08-22

traitor, and they simply took Villiers
de P1sle Adam, in all good faith, never
dreaming that after they were dead
there would appear a poet who was
ready to make himself the champion
and the vigorous defender of his out
RACED ancestor!
Never did Villiers show such activ-
1ty, such physical and moral energy as
IN the course of this business. The ex-
c1tement of the judicial struggle, the
newspaper polemics, the ransacking of
libraries, both far and near, put
new interest into his life And that
al ch-scoffer must have felt a curious
secret amusement in obliging all that
army of solicitors, barristers, judges
and their deputies, to occupy them
serves with the affairs of an iIluStrious
OLD gentleman who had been dead for
400 years, to decipher the quaint and
lncomprehensible manuscripts of the
thirteenth century, and to busy them
serves IN the nineteenth century with
the concerns of John the Bold, and the
fatally fascinating Isabeau of Bavaria.
Inc very morning after that memoir
able performance there appeared in
several daily papers a naughty and
indignant letter from the last of the
De PIsle Adam, in which he brilliantly
vindfcated his right to defend his IL
blasted, in a few scorching phases, the
work of the two unlucky collaborators;
and he finally declared that he was
about to appeal to the laws of the
country to obtain from them the chas-
tisement Of their crime of treason
against the national glory. There was
much giggling along the boulevards
at the poets new freak. The collateral
heirs of the acting rights of the play
turned a deaf ear to his threat, and
"Perrinet Leclerc" still held the bills,
It's success much increased by this
fresh puff. Forward, then, the officers,
the formalitieS, the dusty papers, all
the creaking machinery of the law! A
clever and intelligent young barrister,
an acquaintance of Villiers. eagerly
seized on this opportunity of distin-
gushing himself; for this action was
TO stir both the law courts and the
DouleVardS, and those who had to do
with 1T soon became famous.
The representatives Of Lockroy and
OF Anicet Bourgeois had to file their
answer to the summons duly served
upon them-a summons praying that
they might be forbidden to continue
the performances of a play wherein
they hbeled and illuminated thu direct
ancestor of the plaintiff, ''the said
Philippe Auguste Matthias de Villiers
de PIsle Adam, man of letters, which
at the defendants house. Herewith a
copy, whereof the price," etc.
The defendants answer was rather
clever. They asked the tribunal to rule
that the plaintiffs plea was inadmissi-
BILE; first, because he offered no proof
of his boosted direct descent from the
illustriouS house of Villiers de PIsle
Adam; second, because the chroniclers
of the time, and notably that of the
Monk Of st. Denis. authorized the
writer's of "Perrinet Leclerc" In pre-
senting the conduct OF the Marshal de
PIsle Adam, during the civil wars of
the reign of Charles the Sixth in an
unfavOrable light; third, because the
said Marshal de pTsle Adam, being O
historical parsonage, and writer might
criticise or praise him, according to
conscience or personal opinion, with
out being liable to any action on that
score Thus the fight began.
And now for some weeks, the poet
was undiscoverable. He buried HIM
self in the libaries and the archives.
His family had preserved the precious
family archives, and the poet possessed
irrefragable proof of his descent.
When, therefore, he had sufficiently
studied the formidable heap of docu-
ments bearing on the ten years of civil
war which stained the close Of the
reign of Charles the Sixth, he prayed
lSdVe 70 support MS request against
the authors of "Perrinet Leclerc;"
first, by the proof. resting on anthem
tic records, of his descent from that
Marshal de PIsle Adam whose honor
he claimed to defend; second, by prov
ing that no contemporary chronicler
gave to his ancestor that odious char
acter which Messrs. Lockroy and Bour-
geois had dared to make him play in
the history of his time. And, he added.
If 1t were true that the SO -called
Chronicle of the Monk of st. Denis did
contain a sentence which permitted
any doubt on that score, it was estab-
ished, on the other hand, that these
memoirs had no character for au-
thenticity.
All at once. an unexpected event, a
tragic-comic- incident, gave fresh in
terest to the affair. A family bearing
the name of Villiers, but which had
shown no proof of direct descent from
the grand master of the knights of
Malta, had been authorized, at the
time of the return of the Bourbons, to
add the name of L'Isle Adam to it's
own patronymic. Just as our villiers
was emerging from his tent, armed